It Could Happen Here Weekly 17

so I won't get fine. Every week, I'm gonna be talking about all the things I find fascinating about the NFL. And I'm doing something that has never been done before. I'm opening my d M s. D MS now open listen every Tuesday and join me on the Bench. Subscribe now and listen to the Bench with Banetta podcast on the I Heart Radio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The art world, it is essentially a money laundering business. The best fakes are still hanging

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painting was fake. Um Listen to Art Fraud starting February one on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. M Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a

long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Welcome to it could happen Here a podcast about things falling apart, and today it's it's there. There's there's a little bit of I'm getting put back together, but today's mostly them falling apart. Um, I'm your host, Christopher Wong.

With me, I have Lucy who is a teacher in Chicago public schools and as part of the Teachers Union, and today we're going to be talking about just the absolute shit show that is being inflicted on teachers and students in public schools. And Lucy, how how are you? How are you doing? Um? You know, it's it's been kind of weird, but all in all, I'm in good spirits. I think my sisters and brothers and CTU are in

good spirits. So we're going to keep fighting the good fight. Yeah. So, before before we fully start to get into the teachers Union and Lord Lightfoot's fuckery, I want to sort of get a bit of context for people who don't live in Chicago or just don't know much about the only politics, because lord, you know, if you read sort of like media accounts of this, like you you, you you may be sort of misled into into thinking that there's like even some semblance of good faith going on here from

Loyd Lightfoot, And like I just I just want to like do a great like a Lord Lightfoot Greatest hits real for a second. So Lightfoot, like immediately after she got elected, like the like the first thing she does she starts, she's she literally she's like, Okay, there's too much crime on the subway. We're gonna put swat teams on them. So you know, you just be on the red lighte and there's just wat team and you know,

because again this is what happens. You put a swamp team on the fucking subway, they immediately shot a dude in the back for nothing, you just literally no reason. They shot him in the back. Um. So that that was like, that was like like the first like few

weeks of Lightfoot. And then during the uprising, she like she she turned the rich part of Chicago and she's like a medieval castle like she like like like raised all the drawbridges into the middle of the city so that no one could get into the central part of the city. It was like awful. And then you know, then as as as we sort of like there there's

more and more sort of bad lightfoot stuff. Most recently, so Chicago got a bunch of aid money from the federal government and she spent two one million dollars of it paying the police, not the schools. Yeah, nope, and CPD like these again, I think I talked about this before, but like when when the CIA was like our initial torturing program failed, where do we go to like find

people who know how to torture? They brought into Chicago Police Detective like and you know, and and this is the CPD, Like like like there's there's two have a CPD, right, there's there's like the torture CPD. And then related to them but not necessarily identical is the part of the CPD that's just a cartel. Like there there was there was a thing in in at the beginning of the tens were like it turned out that like the almost like the huge parts of the CPD were literally just

a cartel. They're running drugs. They were just like doing shakedowns for and and like one person total, like you got arrested by the FBI for and everyone else is just still there. It's great, it's a it's a time so that this is this is who Lorrily Lightfoot is. Um she sucks like everyone hates her like like her. The people who should be her political allies hate her.

Like Chicago Chargo got like a police reform bill, and the reason it was like a very mild one but the reason it happened was just that like like the like the Alderman passed it out of just pure spite because of how much they don't like Lightfoot. So this is this is the this has been my Christopher shouts that Lightfoot intruded this, but yeah, needs say life Foot not acting in good faith, just absolutely Batman villain. Yeah, villain's incredible. No, actually that's not fair because a lot

of Batman villains are kind of right. Yeah, yeah, she's she's she's she's like the nightmare refusion of like Batman and a Batman villain, Like what I what are you think? The worst aspects of both, and then made them the mayor. It's it's a yeah, I've been kind of Um so, I moved here almost a year ago from a smaller city, and I did not like the mayor in my city, and he really was a big fan of like the Lory Lightfoot playbook. But um, I guess people weren't as

politically involved there. And my first week working in Chicago public schools, um, somebody mentioned the mayor mentioned Laurie, and everybody kind of groaned, and I was like, oh, you don't like her, you don't like your mayor, And I mean I knew they didn't, but I was just kind of testing the waters, and this lady looks at me and goes, we hate her. I swear, like if you mentioned her name in this city, people practically spit on the ground. It's like it's amazing because like men demon Yeah,

it's like like Chicago dotoriously we all hate her. Politicians, but like Lightfoot, like like that there were you would find rama Manuel supporters, right, Like, I don't know a single lord like outside of the schools. Within the schools, everyone I know, like even even the even the cops don't like her, Like she keeps funneling hundreds of billions of dollars and they still don't like her. It's like, it's incredible. Do you unite the teachers union and the

police union. One siding that's the only thing that they've ever agreed on is fuck Lory Lightfoot. It's really incredible. So life, what's latest scheme? Um? Yeah, do you do you want to explain? I guess go back a little bit in into the history of sort of how how Chicago and Chicago Public schools have kind of been responding to COVID and then how they just did this stuff and yeah, I guess like, yeah, give us a background, like what's going on right now? Well, I'm going to

preface with two things. One, I am fairly new here, so I don't know all of the details. And two, I really want to emphasize that I'm just here talking for myself. I don't represent CTU in any way. This is just I wanted to talk about my feelings on things. So UM. What I do know is they were doing remote learning, and when I arrived here in March, we

were fully remote and UM. Then in the fourth marketing period, so like around like after spring break, UM we moved to a hybrid model, so we had parents and kids could like choose if they wanted to stay online or if they wanted to be in person. UM. I think like sixty percent or more, depending on what school UM chose the online option. Like a lot of parents just

were not comfortable putting their kids in UM. I know that there's been like a ton of talk about UM, you know, like the most economically disadvantaged families need the schools open, but it's kind of been the reverse. It's been the people who have UM more means are more interested in opening and people who uh are less well off are a little more resistant to it. I mean, that's not the same across the board. I don't want

to generalize too much, but that's been what I've seen. UM. I think, if I had to guess it, there's a lot of history behind that. Like UM, I mean, first of all, just can your family afford an illness like this? And people living in multi general generational households. And I think something that CPS and our government in general really fail to acknowledge is just how how much mistrust there is between government institutions, public schools, and UM people of color,

and for good reason. You know, they have been repeatedly just screwed over by these institutions. And I can absolutely understand why they might not trust a school district that says, hey, we'll keep your kids safe, because they weren't doing it before the pandemic. UM. So we had I had like seven kids in one of my classes, and like ten and another and then the rest of them were online. And I'm like sitting at a computer teaching to the

kids online and to the kids in their room. All the kids in the room are on their computers too. So that we can like still be like one cohesive class. UM. It was hard, and it was like kind of like mentally fatiguing, like just going back and forth like that. But you know, we made it work. I was kind of I was really proud of us, Like we made

it work. We made it happen. We stayed in contact with the families and the kids constantly, UM and like as things moved on and as numbers started going down, more people started warning their kids back UM, and then after spring break they UM well, so like after springbreak they let people come back. And then as we moved towards on our more and more kids were coming back. Which it was the school I was in was UM handling it very well. Our principle was really committed to

like keeping us safe. So there was UM testing Like once a week somebody would come back and be like, yo, go get your COVID test. UM. I don't know if kids were being tested, but I know teachers were. UM. Then summer happens. I ended up in a different school in the Austin neighborhood, which is UM a lot less advantage than the one that I had been working in, and we open back up fully in person, no remote

option like at all, like it. UM. The only people who could get remote were kids that were deemed medically fragile, but they had to one submit like tons of paperwork to prove that and to their siblings could not stay removed. So at that point, it's like, why, what's the point? And if you were a teacher who had a medically fragile child in the schools, your kid could be remote, but you couldn't, So then, you know, how is that going to work? UM? And I found in the school

where I was. You know, this is the issue with Chicago and with you know, most of the country is some schools have more resources than others. And the school I didn't know where to get tested. Nobody like told me. I think there was some kind of testing program, not sure, definitely nothing for students. UM. I've since moved to a high school that has more resources, but still I have not been able to figure out where the hec to

get testing. Which has been one of the biggest things that uh CTU is asking for is we want UM opt out testing instead of opt in testing, so you would automatically be registered to test, and if you didn't want to test, then you would have to opt out, which would end up with far more people getting tested and make it a lot easier, because a big part of why people are signing up is it's really hard, Like I don't know where to find it that everyone's

like it's in your emails somewhere. I've searched my email. I don't know, Like we get like emails a day, like yeah, and it's yeah, Like you know, I think anyone anyone who remembers what being in a school is like those they have, I mean just the absolute worst bureaucratic stuff, like it's it's it's it's like honestly, like it's like my experiences with like academia and like back in the high school, like their tech stuff was like worse than corporate sex stuff, which is like astounding. Mm hmm.

It's it's ridiculous. Do you want to jump into here into Lightfoot's like okay, Lightfoot has like invented a new kind of COVID denialism, which is like like she she's now turned into like a COVID test denihilist, Like it's incredible, like she she she has she went on this rant about how like COVID testing is a quote quasi medical procedure and how you're gonna get lost, like it's it's bizarre.

So this this journalist asked her about the testing because and I don't know which journalist that was, but I want to thank them so much because they have seen a lot of the reporters are actually out there trying to keep c t use demands in the conversation as opposed to this like whole oh lazy teachers don't want to work like fun off, we do want to be working. Um. But so I almost thought that she had like mixed up with this since and thought that they were talking

about vaccines. But even so, like stop it, stop, just stop doing that. But who is having a reaction to a COVID test? It is like literally a cute tip, like like you just stick They don't even stick it that far up your nose anymore. They just do a little in your nostril or like a mouth swot. Yeah. Like actually, like as someone who had like like I genuinely did have a kind of bad reaction because I jabbed it up really far and like I was like

sneezing a lot afterwards. But it's like, oh no, you sneezed a little bit like what what does it even mean? Like not like I feel like people are acting like this test is like this weird new technology it is. It isn't like right before the pandemic, Like a couple of months before I had the flu and I had exactly the same kind of test. They stuck a thing up my nose. It was hella uncomfortable. Um it took like two seconds. They stuck it on a little plastic thing.

I'm a bob and said, oh, looks like you have the flu. Yeah, it's I don't know where this is coming from. I think it's just she is not a very charismatic person, and she's not someone who does well under pressure. And right now she's back into a corner and she's acting out and it's been kind of wild, like I've seen she's she's also throwing other people around her under the bus. Yeah, Like she says something about Pedro Martinez, Like she says, the teachers aren't in charge

of this, Padre Martinez is in charge. She's the CEO. And I'm like, okay, so you're being this is setting him up to take the blame on this. Everything that you tweeted about, like it was she was like, no, no, it's actually the mayor's and sorry, it's it's actually the Uh, it's the principles responsible to the principles were like no, yeah,

CPS is kind of interesting. Um, this can be really good or really bad depending on what's school you're in, But the principles really have a lot of autonomy over their school. Um. I've now been in two schools where that's worked out great. My principal rocks. Um, if she ever hears this, I hope she knows that I said that. I think she's great. Um. Also, the principle I worked

at the beginning of school year was awful. Um so, but when it comes to like district wide protocols, like that's district wide and so CPS apparently had a meeting with principles where um I heard some rumors about this too, but I also saw that letter that they had posted. Um. The principles are one really frustrated because CPS isn't communicating stuff with them very effectively, and so parents will be

calling like do we have school tomorrow? And they don't know, but CTU knows, and it's telling their members, so the teachers all know the like more answers and the principles do, which is obviously really embarrassing if you're supposed to be in charge. Um. And then there they were told in this meeting with CPS, school is gonna be closed on Friday. Okay,

school's closed on Friday. Great, sounds good. And then Lightfoot gets on the day news and tells everybody that it will be done on a school by school basis, at principle's discretion, depending on if they have staff. So now all of these principles who had already told their students and families that, um, we're closing, look like they're the ones who closed it as opposed like, and that's it is rare for me to feel bad for a school

principle because that's my boss. You know, I don't like my boss, but I feel bad for them right now. Oh my god. Like you're just trying to like make sure that people have the information they need in a timely manner, and this lady is up here making you look like a monster. It's so unfair. Yeah, should we talk about what's been happening and we run up to the past sort of winter break, and then the stuff that's happening now because it's very grim and bad. Yeah,

so a lot of schools have been having COVID cases. Um, there's I'm not really sure what's going on with cps IS data. It kind of seems like they're not reporting it very faithfully or accurately. Like if you look at their tracker, they'll be cases and then suddenly they'll be gone. Um. We never really get a hard number ever. Like will be like if you have a student in your class who has been quarantined and we all know what it is,

but they don't say it. They'll be like, um, you know, uh, Johnny will be out for the next x amount of time due to health reasons. Please let him join via Google Meet And they never do. That's the other annoying thing is like the students, I think because they are either close contact or they're sick, um you know, to them, it's like a a break almost, like they're not going

to log in randomly. Like it's it's just with I think with kids, like once it stops being consistent and it's like back and forth all the time, it becomes very difficult for them to stay motivated because they're out of their routine. Like I I sometimes hate it when people say this, but it is kind of true. Kids kind of thrive on routine. Um. So at this point, now I have like a third of my class at any given moment will just not be there and it will be different third of the class every you know,

it kind of like rolls through. So all of my students are like different points in the curriculum. It's hard to like know what to teach each day because I don't know who needs what. It's hard to reach out to the kids that are at home and make sure that they get what they need because I'm so busy trying to catch these kids up and move these kids on and all that stuff, um, which I have seen some research. I'll see if I can find it. Um after we're done that like pointed out that like remote

learning isn't the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing that can happen is just flipping back and forth all the time and having huge numbers of kids absent from in person learning. Um. So we go on break and obviously we have O macron like sweeping through the country, and we all knew that there were going to be spikes, Like we knew that in Chicago had what was if Illinois had some like astronomically high number of new cravit cases like breaking records all over the place. Um CPS

has had huge increases. Yesterday we had forty three four cases in Illinois. It's that's a lot, like yeah, but yeah, so overbreak like the last like the Union and had been trying has been trying forever to get CPS to come in and agree to um a few things. So one in February we had a um an agreement that schools would flip to remote if they reached a certain threshold. That agreement has expired and CPS has refused to come to the bargaining table and negotiate a new one. They're

just like, no, we don't need it. We also have been trying to get them to do the opt out testing and a like surveillance testing programing in school so we can kind of just have little bits of data to understand like where are these cases. CPS doesn't want to do this. They don't want a threshold for flipping to remote because then they would have to flip to remote, and they don't want the surveillance testing because then they would have to flip to remote, and they just don't

want to flip to remote. Um. So finally over break, you know, it kind of came to a head, like they were still refusing to negotiate, like, um, one of the UH union delegates in my building said something about, um, they've been meeting. They go to these meetings like you know, like twice a week. They try to get these meetings to happen, and the mayor never comes and the CEO never comes, like they will either send lawyers or they don't show up. And it's like, dude, sounded so tired

into moralized, but he said that. I felt bad for him. Um, but yeah, So we voted that we were going to go in on Monday and Tuesday meet with our safety committees, get a feel for what's going on in school, and then we are going to have a vote on Tuesday night as to whether or not we will do a remote work action on Wednesday. And I know a lot of people have been like trying to make it sound

like this was very sudden, but it absolutely wasn't. Like we had a vote about whether or not we were interested in doing this, and then we had a vote on whether we're still interested on having a vote, and then we had the vote and delicates voted on if they wanted to hold an official like should we do an action vote? We did. Um, it was like seventy

voted yes. Um. There were some complaints that some people didn't get their ballots, but they did wait till they had enough yes votes to reach that to third majority that we needed. So you know, c TU has every step of the way really been making sure, um, this is actually what we want. This isn't just like unilateral things like Lorie keeps throwing that work unilateral around. It wasn't unilateral. It was like at least two there's the teachers in this district said I don't feel safe at school.

There's not enough staff in the building right now to even teach half my kids. A third of my kids are out. This isn't working. So yeah, so we voted that we're going to stay home and work remotely and

then we got locked out. Yeah, which again like and I want to almost refer gets on this for a second, because like even a lot of people who are sympathetic to to to the teacher's unions on Twitter, you see this a lot, they'll they'll be like the CTU went on a strike, and it's like, no, they didn't like teachers and teachers are not on strike. The teachers are attempting to work from home and school district will not

let them. Yeah, it's it's every morning. I get up at six thirty, I make my coffee and I sit down and I try to log in, and I know I won't be able to, but I do it anyway. Um. Thankfully, I had thought to download as much of my materials as I could prior to this, only my personal device, so I am still able to create lessons. Lands been making some very cool social study slides. I'm I'm so sure that my students are gonna love lots of cool

assignments for them to do. To um. But yeah, like this is a lockout and LORI keeps starting this word like illegal work stoppage around. It's not a work stoppage. We are actively working. She has legally it is in our contract that she can't lock us out and she did so. Yeah. So yeah, everyone's doing each other and saying illegal. But I know which side is right. Yeah, yeah,

you know. I I am not an enormal perspector of the law, but like this is this is both is one of the rare occasions where the thing that is

happening is both illegal and also just wrong. The reporting on this just has not gotten the actual fundamental thing which is happening here, which is a lockout, and it's enormously frustrating a lot of ways because you know, and I'd say this, okay, so the like local media reporting has been a lot better, but any like any national coverage has just I've seen it's just been like, yeah,

it's gonna be it. For part one of this interview, come back tomorrow for part two, when we will talk more about what's actually going on inside the schools and you know, generally do the media's job for them, because lord knows, they're not actually getting it right. You can find us that Happened here pod on Twitter and Instagram as usual, or you cannot find us. In fact, I encourage you not to find us, because good Lord, the arrand is bad. Goodbye, hello, and welcome to our show.

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man splaining. Men are hard enough to understand without the mind games. Listen to How Men Think on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to It Could Happen Here a podcast about things going badly and falling apart. And today we are back with part two for interview with lou See about how the Chicago Public school system is falling apart under the relentless assault of cruelty and malice and incompetence by the

Chicago Public Schools and by the Mayor, LORDE. Lightfoot. Enjoy There's everything I want to talk about a bit, which is when you've been back, when you've been sort of teaching in in these really like sort of like what what does it actually like to teach in these customs? And like, you know, how how safe actually is it? So? I mean I've been in a lot of different environments. When I was teaching middle schoolers, I did not feel super COVID safe. Um they are. I don't know if

people know this about middle school age kids. They love to touch each other, especially boys. They love to like wrestle. There was putting each other in headlocks. I am constantly having to just be like six feet six ft or three ft or whatever. CDC has said. We are now. Um, they don't put their masks on. They put their masks in their mouths all the time, like in their mouths. Um. Oh no, there's they're constantly finding like weird little excuses

to have their mask off. Like they'll just sit there with like like they're allowed to have water bottles because they can't use the water huntins. They'll just sit there with like a straw in their mouth for like extended amounts of time. And I'm like, I need you to put your mask up, take quicksips and put your mask up. And they're like I'm drinking, like I'm going to be drinking at the end of this day, but like, I know, take a quick sip, put your mask back up. It's

really really important for your safety. Um. And then I have other kids who are absolutely straight up like terrified of this because like they've lost parents, theyve lost grandparents. Um, it's it's really scary. UM. At the high school level, it's been a little better. High school kids are a

little more rational. UM, but I still have a few who are just like their masks are down around their chins all the time, we're under their nose and I'm I'll like several times of class fear, Like, okay, time for everybody to do a mask check. Make sure your mask is covering your nose, your mouth, your chin. Um, I'll remind them like I have a spouse at home who has an underlying condition and like, please don't have me bring home a deadly disease to him. That would

really not be great. Um, most of them are pretty good, but still they're getting sick. Like I think we had like forty kids out of my building one Monday, and like twenty eight staff members or something like that. We're out and we had one sub which is the other That's the other issue is this isn't really a question of, um, if we should go remote. It's a question of when

will we be forced to go remote. And we can either do that now before everybody has gotten sick and wait for this to subside and get some better mitigation strategies in place, or we can do it after everybody is sick, and then we're going to be scrambling to figure it out and also be sick at the same time.

I don't really see how that makes any sense. Yeah, that's the part of this, And I've just like I just like I don't get it, Like I just like fundamentally, there's there's like a bench break where it's like I don't understand why like Lightfoot and CPS are so insistance about not going remote, Like I get that, like, yeah, it's it's hard on kids, but it's like it's it's you know, it is the years two Like no matter what you do, it's it's hard on the kids, and

it's like, yeah, I also I wonder how much of it is the remote learning that's hard on them, and how much of it is just the um everything around them is crashing and following and burning around their ears because um, the messaging that they've been getting is that they don't matter, They're not important, their safety isn't important, their families aren't important, and um, some of them like want to be remote. A lot of them, a lot

of their parents want them to be remote. They're like, you know, it's not as good, but at least I feel safe. Some of them even thrived in remote like actually did pretty well. And I really wish that it was just an option for those students who actually did well with it, that they could just like if we even ended up with like a third of our students choosing it, it would mitigate this so much because that's a third of the people. Not they're to spread around.

Um So how how big? How big your class sizes are? Um? Right now the building I'm in now, I have like thirty in some my It was kind of similar at the last building, Like they're in that range. I have like always have like one or two that are like the twenty or below that are usually um special education like inclusion classes where I have co teacher. Um. But yeah, it's you know, some of them are pretty crowded, and

it really varies by school. Like there's definitely schools that have over thirty kids in a room, um and don't have the staff because it's just that's the other thing is they keep talking about. You know, I keep seeing people be like fire all the teachers, and I'm like, good luck, Like, yes, is chronically understaffed. What are you going to do? Yeah? I think again, like this job is really hard, Like it's being a teacher. Yeah, it's hard.

It's exhausting, and it's very very rewarding. Like when it's good, it's great. When it's bad it is miserable. Um. So yeah, and like what it looks like and I mean that's you know, it depends, it really depends on what school you're in. Um I think everybody can agree that it

is difficult right now. Um So we we have like air purifiers going and masks on, and I cannot understand what my kids are saying a lot of the time, like I do not know, and they speak so quietly like I need you to shout it, say it like you mean whatever it is. So you know, that's been challenging and frustrating and exhausting. But um the worst thing ever is finding out that one of my students is sick. Like I hate when they're I hate it when they hurt.

Like whenever that one of them is hurting, I feel bad. And knowing that their home sick is it's it's really upsetting and just it's you know, it's distressing for teachers to know that their kids are struggling in a way like that. Um So that's you know, we want them to be safe, you know, like these kids, it's like and this is this is true of the staff too.

When you're when you're getting sick, it's like, yeah, like some of these people will be okay, but enormous numbers of people are like so, man, these people are gonna die. So these people, a lot of these people are going to get disabled. Um yeah, I mean the long term long terfects been really bad. And you know, one off, if people remember we we did an episode with when Our Friends use a nurse and like, yeah, like he

he had long COVID. His long COVID was like he he couldn't do more than like like getting out of bed or like like walking across the room, which is to be battle day. Because if there there's you know, there there's an enormous range of sort of like of of long COVID side effects and yeah, it's like it's it's it's like CPS is just childe of schools. It's just like they're getting people killed. Yeah, it's and it's you know, that's like the question like they keep talking

about percentages and I'm like, these are human beings. Every one of the numbers is a human. So when you say like only you know, point whatever percent are going to be long term affected, like, Okay, those are people. Can we stop like dehumanizing them with these las like data points and um as for like the issue with like how like kids are less affected by or whatever like the fact is like the more we allow this to spread around, the more variants we're going to see.

And we don't know that the next variant isn't going to be the one that is really significantly harmful to children. And we are basically turning our schools into these peatree dishes where this thing can mutate and become stronger. And now we have vaccinated people who are in that mix, and it's becoming resistant to the vaccine. So you know, I'm a social stade teacher, not a science teacher, but this seems like a bad move to me. Yeah, yeah, it's I don't know, it's it's just sort of heartbreaking

a lot of ways. I mean, it's just like they've just decided that, you know. And again like I don't I don't know why Lightfoot's doing this. Like maybe it's just like she wants to share up her base thing because she's trying to build a base among like the just like rich, weirddoor ciders or something. But like it's she's a small business person. That's always when people are the small business owners who don't want to close schools

because then you know, their workers won't come in. And you know, I want to feel sorry for them, but I know, I don't know, Like I was like fuck you, because there's also a lot of small business owners who have been very supportive of us. We had uh there's like a taco place offering free burritos to us, Like I really appreciate that. Like there's a community who understand that, like the lives of our children are so much more important than you missing two weeks of profit, Like you

will figure that out. And if you want to bail out businesses, um, we can figure that out. But right now. And also, like is is saying like we have we aren't we refused to do anything that might be inconvenient for business owners, Like what is that? Yeah, and it's like it's like yeah, so you know. And also yeah, but like business owners did get bailed out, like they got they got they got zero present loans. Most of those loans got written off. And meanwhile, yeah, it's like, well, okay,

what did life to do with the COVID money? She she gave it to the cops. And oh, hey, guess guess who's also just a rapperants better of COVID. Oh yeah it's the cops. Yeah, resisted vaccines, the most the cops. I mean actually there there there there is one funny thing which I'm actually very excited about, which is that the cops are doing they're having their first so they

have a new class graduating. But for the police academies, which is really bad, and there's a whole well, one of one of the like Lightfoot's things was that there there was a huge campaign against building more police academies because you know, everyone hates child police apartment. They're awful. And if you have a hundred billion dollars for a new police academy, why or a hundred million or whatever it was, why can't you put some better ventilation in

the schools? Yeah, well it's gonna yeah, because because because like the CPD are like basically feudal lords. They have nights, they go out, they can shoot you, like they rob you. They just like any any any large number of like black kids on the streets, Like if you just have like fifteen kids walking around, like eight quad cars will show up. And you know that there was Lightfoot was like not her like one of her campaignings big of anything. It's like no, no no, we're gonna make sure we build

these academies. And but so they're they're having their first like rounded that they've been having trouble recruiting because good. Yeah, and and they're they're about to have their first police Academy exam and it's gonna be in person, and I am this is the only one are the few is this jaire Bosonaro where it's like I am rooting for the virus here, like please God save us from these cops. But yeah, it's it's but they're just bring at home and spread it around. Yeah, yeah, that's a sad thing.

It's it's just it's grotesque. And yeah, it's been this thing where I'm like watching, like the school system is just throwing their hands up and saying, we don't care. We're done. The health system, the health care system is like crashing and burning all around us. Nurses are quitting, hospitals are like we don't have room for more patients, Like did you have a cancer treatment schedules? Sorry? Did

you have a surgery scheduled? Sorry? I just saw somebody on Twitter saying she um has a brain tumor and she's supposed to have a surgery for it and she can't now because of COVID. Because they have no beds. There aren't any, And you're telling me that the right move right now is to keep the schools open, which has always been in every every pandemic that we've ever had. Schools and hospitals and prisons are like the place where

the whatever diseases spreads. And I know we've been claiming that like there's not been spread in schools, but we've now seen the data that there, in fact is a huge amount. Which I've been like screaming about this since we started that their contact racing models are they're absurd. There are like kaka esk Like basically, um so, we start from the assumption that everybody is six ft apart and wearing their mask at all times, which it's not. It's not even it's not even physically possible in a

lot of classrooms for that to be happening. And then too, we start with the assumption that those things work, and so you'll get a call from a contact tracer that's like, hey, um on, you know, like last Tuesday, Tuesday of last week, were you within six ft of any of your eighth graders for more than fifteen minutes? Funck? If I know Tuesday of last week was I near an eighth grader for fifteen minutes. I don't know. I have no idea even if, like even if I did know, what difference

does it make. It is an aerosolized virus. It is in the air, and the more you sit in classrooms, the more it accumulates. Like we have seen like studies about um this, We've seen studies about how CEO two accumulates in the air when there's crowds. We know that

stuff accumulates like that in classrooms, very very quickly. And you're gonna tell me that as long as I wasn't within fifteen or within six feet for more than fifteen continuous minutes, not even like um, not even fifteen minutes like added up throughout the day, just fifteen minutes continuously, I'm not going to get a virus. Are you shipping me?

Like that makes no sense? And so then if and if and if you're answer to those questions are no, because whatever you were following the rules, then they're like, Okay, you got COVID somewhere else, it wasn't at school. Yeah, no it doesn't. Yeah, it's nonsense. It's like I go

to work and I go home. I don't do anything else, so I don't know where else is coming from, like yeah, like and I also just want to do a brief digression about like okay, so like like I like I went to like a like a pretty good like like a pretty well like a very well funded like a Charicago area school. It's like, okay, those places, those places ventilation sucks. Like again, like again, I went to a

very well funded school. Like we had a we had drowned dead rats falling out of the ceiling like it was. It was incredibly my my, my great high school memories with my principle just like running full tilt pushing a trash can because dead drop. See my god, my school was wild. We had how bad it was like a kind of a chemistry teacher let a kid set off a smoke bomb like that they'd made like in a classroom, but it didn't work, so it just like actually blew up.

It was a time. But like like this croc based learning, Okay, you got to light the school on fire. But like like this is a this is like yeah, like these schools are not like they're not yea. I worked in at the beginning of the year was a hundred years old. It was built in nineteen twenty and there was always this like sewage smell around the bathroom because the pipes were messed up. It was weird like and you couldn't fix it. I think it was I was the second

or third time by building lived on fire. Like we there was a there was a whole thing in the building that was made of asbestos and they just had left it because it was like, oh, isn't exposed. Yeah, still have over Like I get like I went to like a good, well funded one of these schools, Like it's I think there's there's like there's there's these two

there's two things. I think it is. Interestingly, there's when you like talk to like the people who want the schools to open back up, right, they'll they're also talking about like oh no, it's fine. Everyone wears masks, everyone's vaccinated, everyone succeeds. Like no, no, they're not like this. This is how it works in this like imaginary play world you've created. Have you ever met a child? Like have

you met your own children? Like oh and that's the best is like, well, I've been having my kids wear a mask like you have your full of ship. Okay, because I hold that kid to put their masks on like fifteen times yesterday and I love them beautiful face. I hope they get to show it off someday, but

right now, cooped up, please, I'm begging you. And I'm like, I'm not like that teacher who's really authoritarian, Like I've never been good at like writing kids up and getting on them for stuff because it's just like, I don't know, I hate doing that. I hate being that person. So it's been like, really, it's like a struggle. It's like am I going to be the person who nags them every five seconds? Or am I gonna be um the teacher that they like and want to learn from? Like

you know, this isn't sustainable. So but you're asking like the attitudes of people who want to open schools back up, and I it's it's hard because I have talked to parents who are worried, but they are also very upset because they see that their kids are struggling. And I really do feel for them on that, like I really really do. It is hard to see a kid struggle, but it is harder, I think to see a kid sick.

That is really hard, and it's just this, like there are ways that we can overcome the difficulties of remote learning, Like we we can find ways to give them the emotional support, Um, we can find better socializing outlets. But I don't know how we fix like you've become very ill and your body isn't going to recover in the way that you thought it would, Like, I don't I can't fix that. So that's something I've heard from other teachers that like the preparagromout learning stuff like is harder

and takes more work than Yeah, it does. It's it's really rough. I don't like doing it. I want to be in the classroom, but yeah, and I just I just want to like once again, yell at all of the people who are like the teachers are lazy and it's like no, people like they're like, yeah, like you're you are advocating to do more work because that's that's the thing that will keep the kids safe, and it's yeah.

I think a lot of people don't understand like the behind the scenes how the sausage gets made of a classroom. But I think a lot of people have this idea that like we are given curriculum and plans and materials pre made, and sometimes that's true. It depends on your subject. Mine is social size is not a subject where that happens very much, which is part of why I like

it because I like to be creative. Um. So like my week looks like, UM, there are a lot of hours after school where I am sitting down, I'm looking at the standards that I need to teach, the topics that I need to teach, and I'm researching it and learning it and finding a way to teach that to kids who don't have the same like baseline knowledge that I have. UM. And then I'm creating like an activity

for them. I'm creating, um, you're I'm finding like material sources and like videos and stuff that they can watch that are going to help them, or things to read. I'm modifying those things for the kids who have um, you know, learning differences. I'm translating some of those things in the Spanish for kids who don't really read very well in English yet. So, like that's a ton of

work on its own. And then when we switch to remote, we have to figure out how to do all of that on Google Classroom, where now it has to all be typed like or you know, like how do I figure, like, how do I do a group project online? How do I let them do something creative that isn't just sitting here answering questions on a worksheet. That's hard and we've been really good at it, and I've found all kinds of really cool tools to do that with. But it's

so much work. And it's work that I'm willing to do because I care about my job. I enjoy my work. I love my students, but um, you know, and I want them to be safe. But like, you know, it is a ton of work. I'm not just sitting here eating bond bonds all day or drinking cocktails. Yeah, And I think there's there's like a larger sort of like like Americans have this like the sexist sort of like hatred of like in disrespect to people who do both

care work and a lot of creative work both. And then simultaneously there's this sort of like you know, the the there's there's there's a resentment to people who get

to actually do something that helps people. And you know, I think right now we're seeing just the most toxic fusion of that, which is that like, yeah, I know, like these like you know and instead of like you know, recognizing the enormous amount of work that that's going into all like that's going into into teaching, like the amount of sort of like the care and love that's going

into the creativity it's going into it. And just like the people people's willing to, like you're willing list to make like enormous sacrifices to try to keep these kids safe, they're just like no, Like the teachers are lazy, they don't want to work, they're going on strike, like and it's you know, and and and it's like they're doing this and it's like yeah, like you you're like they're killing their own kids. It's just like it's it's this

weird fusion of like we we I've had. The spaces is like a combination of like feminized care labor, emotional labor, and um that's sort of like like intelligence, yeah, like professional, um, white collar intellectual kind of thing. And then also we're teaching a um more introductory level of our subjects, so we're seen as like discount intellectuals who are also women

who do care work. So it's it's very frustrating, and I don't think a lot of people understand the amount of UM skill and expertise it takes to be a teacher and be effective at it. Like, it's not just I need to know social studies to the level that a twelfth grader would know it. It's I need to know social studies beyond that level and know how to communicate it to a high school student. And also I need to know a lot of stuff about like child development.

It's it's really it's something and um, I you know, I find that to be fun and challenging, but I wish it was respected and you know, and then you're talking about like people are sacrificing their own kids. I want to point out a lot like I think there's a racial component to this. UM. The people who are in wealthier schools and who are mostly white know that their kids are gonna be fine, Like they are in schools that actually do have the resources to distance, that

have air filters, that have good ventilation. Um, they're vaccinated, their kids are probably going to be fine. The kids that aren't going to be fine are lowing UM students

of color. And it has always been this way. It's always been this way with schools, like when schools were desegregated, we started with private school voutuers, and we started with all of these like uh, state testing requirements and withholding funding from schools that don't meet those you know, testing nerds and all of these like um, this extra oversight owned teachers like that stuff all comes back to white people don't want to have to worry about black people's kids.

That's it. And you know they will move their kids out to the north side or the suburbs or whatever. Notice that all of those suburbs schools have flipped. Noticed that Lory Lightfoot's kids are in a charter school that is not remote well and more than Lightfoot Lightfoot, Lightfoot won't like Lightfoot will not put herself in a room with the with the same number of people like to

go to every day. She won't. She was telling people at the press conferences they had to wear their masks, and then she wasn't wearing hers, which was very charnge to me. It's like that's what they like when when you when you get to the politician level, they know

it's dangerous, Like they know it. They they you can tell about what they do right now, Yeah, like they won't do it, but like no, no, they're they're perfectly willing to just send to send you off the die, to send all these kids off to die, and it's just, yeah, sometimes I feel I get kind of dooomer, and I wonder if, like, if that's not the plan, Like is it that? I mean, I don't really believe that. I think what it really is is this just like malicious neglect.

Like if you're somebody who's a policymaker and someone comes to you and it's like, I need you to care about this population here that doesn't have a lot of money and needs a lot of things, and you, the policymaker, are going to be like, oh, that sounds like so much work, And then somebody else is going to come to you and be like I need these things over here, and I do have a lot of money, and I do have a lot of influence, and I'm gonna make your life difficult if you don't do what I want.

They're gonna do with that other side once. And what the other side once right now is for kids to get back into school so they can have free daycares, parents can go to work, and that's and that's it. And teachers are standing here being like I didn't get a master's degree and do you know countless hours of professional development to be a babysitter, you know, and no, not to knock babysitters. I was in nanny for a long time. That is hard work. But um, I didn't

get a master's degree to be a babysitter. I got a master's degree to be a teacher. And I'm in an environment right now where I can't really teach effectively and all I'm doing is babysitting. They want to wear house kids. That is what we're doing with the schools. That's why they want them open. And it's you know, it's it's hard not to feel like they just started doing it because they hate us, even though I know

it's not. It's just it does feel that way. I will like, I will say that, like you're so if you become elected as the mayor of Chicago, like your job is to break the teachers union, Like that's that's like, that's that's that's that's like the role you're auditioning for. And they have been they have been trying to do

this for literally my entire lifetime. They've been trying to do this, like since before I was born, Like that's and honestly, like, wouldn't surprise me if this was another part of this was just them once again trying to break teachers union. Oh absolutely, like and if and not even just that, like yeah, you know, like not just on the sort of political level, like on the incredible cynical level of we'll just kill them. Well, it's it's a labor thing. Like, it's not just a Chicago teachers

union or even a teachers union thing. It is a labor movement across the board thing that. Um, the largest, I think the largest unionized workforce in the country is teachers, and we on top of that are a union of workers who have the power to absolutely bring our economy to a grinding hole if we want to. We could all go on straight right now and nobody's going to

do ship until we go back to work. Um, they could if they, you know, they could try to replace us with like people who are basically like hall monitors and give kids like canned curriculums. But they wouldn't really be learning very well, and parents wouldn't be happy with it, and they wouldn't be entering the workforce with the skills they need to make money for the economy to you know,

make money for the almighty Tao. So um. The it has been a project for decades in this country to try to break teachers unions because teacher unions occupy this space where they allow other unions to happen. Um. We have, you know, enough influence on politicians that they can't just disband the labor board and make unions illegal, which they would absolutely fucking love to And if they could just get rid of these damn teachers unions, maybe they could

do it. Um. So you know, and that's what you see with the education reform movement, where you have all these people advocating for bouchers and charter schools, and it's you know, they want to break labor. And I see a lot of I mean, now I'm gonna I'm gonna scold some of my comrades, but I see a lot of leftists who, um are really skeptical of teachers and don't want to support the teachers union. And I get it, Like there are a lot of teachers who really suck.

And there's a lot of teachers who are not radical, like most teachers are not radical. A lot of them are pretty conservative, but at the same time. If you were to abolish schools immediately right now and break up the teachers unions and all that, you're gonna get end up with. Rich people go to school, poor people don't. If your poor your kid goes to work, probably won't be in a coal mine, but you know they'll probably be like soldering my computer chips or coding or something

for like pennies an hour. And I don't want that world. And if you actually care about labor, then you need to support teachers unions because um, the public schools are central to all these communities that we want to be reaching, and the unions are the only thing making sure that they stay public. Yeah. Yeah, that's like I almost like again like to to to to anarchist comrades who are anti school, it's like, yeah, like I hate school, I'm for it, d D schooling is great, but we need

to do other things first. Yeah, you have to And like again like that you need to like like support the workers, not the institution. Like it's like it's like saying I'm a vegan, so I'm going to go after McDonald's in place, just like like so like I I my high school was like all this was much like incredibly conservative, but everyone was still in the Union. That was like the one. That was the one thing that was like, well, okay, they were there, there there. There

there were two counter failing forces. One was that I the Christians didn't seem to understand what liberation theology was, so occasionally they'd accidentally hire leftist because they were like, oh, you're a Christian, You're fine, you're from America. We're not

gonna question you further. The second thing was that even everyone everyone was in the Union, and that was like that was that was literally the only those are the only two left wing Like vague, I've gotten into so many teaching spaces by talking about how I like critical pedagogy and idn't understand very was a conference or being like, oh,

I'm really really really into Chicago history. I especially love the history of like labor in Chicago because it's it's huge people here here about it and they don't get that like I'm an anarchist, you know, and and a lot of the like um sort of like education reform language.

I think it's very funny. It is just lifted from radical like sociologists and anthropologists and educators who are trying to find ways to um dismantle like authoritarian structures in schools, and so they'll come up with these like, um, you know, like restorative practices and all this stuff, and then they kind of get they make their way up to the Ivory Tower and then get repackaged in this It's it's like, I don't know, it's like a machine or something that

like sucks up radical ideas, brings them up to the academy, repackages them to make them nice for politicians, and then spits them back out. And it is exhausting and I hate it. It makes me so mad. I'll never forgive people for what they did to the term restorative justice. Yeah, do you have anything else that you want to make sure that people like understand about what's happening in the

schools right now? Um, I guess just the biggest thing is I want people to understand that, like, this is a question of when and under what conditions are we going to be forced into a remote learning situation. This isn't like we want remote learning because we like it because it's fun. It's because it's going to happen if

you like it or not. The schools are going to close if you like it or not, because the unless you're okay with just like people are going to get sick and die and or going to work sick, which I think most of us agree that's insane. Um it is there are you. We're going to be in a situation where we don't have enough sta have to keep buildings open. So either we can try and mitigate that now and keep that from happening, or we can just start our hands up and say, fine, let's let the

schools collapse. I don't want the schools to collapse, So, um, if we could just go remote for two weeks and get some good testing in and have a vaccine requirement, And personally, I would like to advocate for remote as an option for parents who want it. I don't think that's on the table right now, but um, I think more parents out there should be demanding it. And I also would like to say to parents, you have a

lot of power that you don't understand. Um. The school districts listen to the parents so much more than the teachers. One parents voice is worth like ten teacher voices. So if you see something going on in your schools that you're not comfortable with, if you have questions, contact your principles, contact the district, talk to people, talk to the other

parents that you know, organize yourselves. Um, if we had, you know, strong parent organizations on our side, we would be absolutely unstoppable and we could have the school system that we want and that our kids deserve. Yeah. And I think I like the right figured this out a long time ago that you absolutely Yeah, look at what

they're doing to the school board meetings with CRT. Yeah, we could have that for people who are actually good people who care, like there's no there's no reason that all of the other parents couldn't be going and saying I want my kids to learn about race, and I want them to be wearing masks, and I want everybody to be vaccinated. Yeah. So I think I think I think that's a good note to end on. We you know, we can make this better. We just have to, you know,

work together. Yea. Do you have anything that you want to plug, like, do you have a way to support the teachers who Um, I think I'll send you a flyer that we have. It has some information for contacting Ottoman, getting COVID tests and a petition to sign um. If you could post that I would really appreciate that. I definitely can definitely do that. Awesome. Thank you coming. Yeah, good talking to you. Hey, Lead the listeners tag here.

Last season on Lethal Lit, you might remember, I came to Hollow Falls on a mission clearing my aunt Best's name and making sure justice was finally served. But I hadn't counted on a rash of new murders tearing apart the town. My mission put myself and my friends in danger. Though it wasn't all bad, I'm going to be real Ify Tig, I like you, but now all signs point to a new serial killer in Hollow Falls. If this game is just starting, you better believe I'm gonna win.

I'm tig Torres and this is Lethal Lit. Catch up on season one of the hit murder mystery podcast Lead Lit a tag Tara's Mystery out now, and then to an in for all new thrills in season two, dropping weekly starting February nine. Subscribe now to never miss an episode. Listen to Leave the Lit on the I Heart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're the hosts of the science podcast Stuff to Blow Your Mind, where every week we get to explore some of the weirdest questions in the universe, like if sci fi teleportation was possible, how would it square with the multitudes of organisms that inhabit our human bodies? Can we find evidence of emotions in animals like bees, ants, and crayfish? How would it

interplanetary civilization function just free will exist? Stuff to Blow Your Mind examines neurological quandaries, cosmic mysteries, evolutionary marvels, and the wonders of techno history. Basically, this show is the altar where we worship the weirdness of reality. If anybody ever told you you ask the weirdest questions, it is time to come join us in the place where you belong. The Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast new episodes publish

every Tuesday and Thursday, with bonus episodes on Saturdays. Listen to Stuff to Blow Your Mind on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When P. T. Barnum's Great American Museum burned to the ground in eighteen sixty five, what rose from its ashes would change the world? Welcome to Grim and Mild presents an ongoing journey into the strange, the unusual, and the fascinating.

For our inaugural season, we'll be giving you a backstage tour of the always complex and often misunderstood cultural artifact that is the American Side Show. So come along as we visit the shadowy corners of the stage and learn about the people who are at the center of it all in a place where spectacle was king. We will soon discover there's always more to the story than meets the eye. So step right up and get in line.

Listen to Grim and Mile Presents now on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more over at Grim and Mild dot com Slash presents. Alright, Robert, you want to opening us up with something I don't know. Nope, you're opening. The opening is is that is what you just did? Okay, wells already opened. Welcome to take it happen Here the podcast about how things things do be crumbling sometimes, including our ability to introduce the podcast that pages.

It's actually a very meta art piece about the Yeah, we started off very polished and slowly commentary on I don't know something. It's called figure out what. It's a commentary on it. It's called metamodernism. It's the post it's post postmodern. Anyway, Um, what are we talking about? Disinformation and various bullshit today. So among the many disinformation vectors online, Joe Rogan's podcast is obviously one of like the largest single single vectors. Um. Yeah, I mean I've said this before,

but I'll say it again. I don't think there's a cable news station as influential as Joe Rogan, you know, and you could you could make commentary on like, oh maybe they have a larger viewership in terms of like their actual ability to influence large numbers of people. Um, there's certainly no single cable news host that comes close to Joe UM. And I would argue probably no network that does. He's extremely influential by virtue of the fact that he's um a meathead of people seem to find

friendly and engaging, and he is very charismatic. He's good at what he does, he's good at talking. Yeah. So, multiple times during the past three weeks, Rogan has brought on two separate quote unquote doctors who have started to pedal something called old mass formation psychosis, which is kind of a new vector in the anti vax kind of argument and like headspace, so like as for like the it could happen here a portion of the episode, This

one's pretty simple. Could mass formation psychoses happen here? No way, not this time. We created it, not this time. No, not this time. It's totally made up, pure fiction. It's fiction. It's fiction. We made it up. We made this one up. It's a made up tail. It's a total fabrication. Nope, not really ever happened anywhere. I might also argue, no, nope, fictional. We've solved the podcast total this is not a thing,

total fabrication, made up tail. So yeah, well, but when whenever these like cook doctors bring up mass formation psychosis, you can actually kind of watch them get close to understanding something real, but then they veer off into reactionary nonsense. Like most powerful on sense, there is an element of truth that it is uh spinning off of, you know, So let's start off with some of the more kind of deranged examples and well then eventually providing at least

some background onto the whole massformation psychoa. This this idea, and then we'll kind of discuss some of the more slightly interesting aspects of this argument that Rogan seems fond of pushing right now. So, the first guy I want to talk about is Dr Peter McCole, which is not the not the guy that was trending on Twitter last week or whatever this was. This is someone else that Rogan brought on a few weeks previously who actually started

talking about this first. Um So background on McCole. By most accounts, he was like a top cardiologist for many years, you know. He he shares a similar story to other doctors who have become kind of COVID conspiracy celebrities. Former friends and co workers say he was a pretty reasonable guy and a good doctor, and then COVID he realized

he could be worth millions of dollars. Yeah, COVID ahead that he started to kind of go off the rails, and he he initially began developing conspiracy theories, in particular around hydroxychlor quinn um. And mccull was also in the news earlier this year due to or I guess uh,

due to legal dispute with his former employer, Baylor University Health. So. According to a lawsuit for nearly six months after McCall's employment had ended, he continued to use his professional titles, such as the Vice chief of Internal Medicine at Baylor University, and mis represented himself as a Baylor employee dozens, if not hundreds of times in media interviews in which he

spread disinformation about the pandemic. So the type of misinformation that he talks about, you know, pretty basic stuff of vaccines are neither safe nor effective. Um. He was a very early hydroxic quin proponent. Um. He claims that there's no asymptomatic COVID transmission at all, even if you're not vaccinated. Um. And he claims that you cannot get COVID twice once you have at once. The post infection natural immunity is one percent of protective against all future COVID disease, which,

of course this thing works that way, works that way. Yeah. No, everything I just said is not true. All of it can individually be disproved by the existance of Jayre Bosonaro, every single to say that, Chris, I'm looking over at my digital picture frame that is just loaded with like a dozen photos of JayR. Bolson Yaro in the hospital dying. Um. Yeah, I recommend everyone do that. It improves every morning. As soon as I walk up to my recording studio, I

see JayR. Bolson Yaro getting ship sucked out of his nose from a tube, and I just feel ready to take on the day. It beats coffee. Wow, that's strong words. Um. The other big thing and since how since I want to get into the mess, uh psychosis bullshit is that he McCall also asserts that fifty Americans have died from the vaccine shots. This is not true, um, looking at like death's possibly associated with it, It is like a

maybe a thousand or two thousand, which sucks, um. And but like that's that's the highest amount because again it's not even a lot of these things are not necessarily direct directly causal um, So it's hard to figure out what is what. But if there is a number, it's around the two wish thousand range. Uh not um. And mccaull thinks that, or at least promotes that the idea that like the vaccine, is a conspiracy theory to suppress hydroxical wor quin and therapeutic treatment for COVID. And this

conspiracy is organized at every level. Uh. Three different regions, corporations, Big Pharma, Hollywood, and and this is this is the mass formation psychosis, is that we've believed that both COVID is like a big problem and that the vaccine is the solution. So I'm gonna I'm gonna play a clip hopefully you guys can hear this of of of McColl talking about mass formation psychosis. Dope. We've seen mass psychosis in history, both more the horrific group suicides that have

happened with religious culture. We knew a Nazi Germany where people in a sense offered their children up to eugenics programs and a progressive mass psychosis, and they themselves walk into gas chambers and my gas that they didn't kick fight, go kicking skimming this type of that's a mass psychosis. So what Desmond says is it must be four conditions met for a mass psychosis. The first is the population must be isolated. People must be isolated for a plot period.

Number two, we must have things taken away from us that we previously enjoyed. Number three, there must be constant, free floating anxiety, anxiety of more viruses, more disability, more death, more anxiety. And then The last one is that Kapper number four is there must be a single solution offered by an entity and authority. The vacts scene, the only solution to the pandemic is the vaccine. We're in a

mass ecosis. And what Desmond says is with the vaccine, there is no limit to the absurdity that we will see, no limit to the absurdity. So this idea of here, take a vaccine, take any vaccine. That's absurd. Vaccines are different. There must be a winner, there must be a loser, must be something. Why why would it be any vaccine. It's the same with the mask where masks, it doesn't matter what kind of mask, just put it over your face. Absurdity,

the absurdity of well, I've already had COVID. The CDC says you can't get COVID again. Okay, so listeners at home should know so that you understand what this video is that the entire time he's talking, there's what appears to be the eviscerated corpse of a black woman lying underneath it. Like it's horrifying, It's like very how do

you like like something? I think it's one of the dolls that medical students learned how to do autopsies on It's not a real person, but it does look like the corpse of an eviscerated woman as he's just like chatting. The face really does look like it took me. I thought it was like I couldn't forget what was going on for like, yeah, I mean, yeah, they're the cadaver

dolls that they have for trading are quite good. Um, I kind of want to get one for the next time I'm in Texas and want to use an HIV lane. But that's the story for another day. So yeah, that's that's pretty dumb, especially the notion that people were hypnotized

into peacefully walking into gas. I just need to stay like that's that not Not only is that like that is objectively untrue to the extent that I could provide anyone interested with thousands of pages of reading from people who survived concentration camps about how they worked and why people walked into them, and a lot of it just boils down to the fact that it was they were

making a very rational choice, which was I have no options. Year, I cannot get out of this, but I can at least make sure that my children are not panicking in the last seconds before we're killed. And a lot of the people the the because a lot of the actual like grunt work of of key of loading humans into the gas chambers was done by other inmates who were also not going through psychosis. They were given a chance

to survive longer by helping to operate the camps. UM. And those people you can read, some of them did survive, UM. And some of them wrote about their experiences UM, which is some of the most harrowing shit like imaginable for a human being to possibly go through. It is all

tremendously well documented. And the most offensive thing I can imagine is saying that these people were somehow is saying Number one, it's incredibly offensive to say that they were going through some sort of psychosis and that's why they walked into the chambers and not This was the best option available to them, given what was going on and what like the situation they had been forced into. They did not have other options. UM. It was that or get machine gun to death. UM. And maybe you think

you would choose a different option, UM. But if you're critiquing them or trying to claim that like the only reason they would do that. What they did was that they had lost their minds Um, I will I will hit you in the face with a brick. Fuck you like that. That that's my answer to that. Actually, if you are someone who is interested academically and why people did some of the things that they did at at the death camps, um, and like why how that actually

functioned psychologically. It's like a short book. It's this way for the gas ladies and gentlemen. And it is a quasi fictionalized book by a guy named Taddius Borowski who was a survivor of the death camp. So it's based on his experiences at Auschwitzendakau Um and he he describes the way in which the world of the camps worked and the psychology of the camps worked. Um. And he's not and he's not a piece of ship grifter asshole.

He's a guy who lived through all of this. So if you actually care about any of this, just read that everything this guy says is wrong, and if I had a chance to, I would hit him in the face with a brick. Please continue, Garrison. Yeah, it really sucks because it's not just a combination of medical misinformation but also just the most ship sociology. UM, and it creates this a really a really disgusting package of of

of really bad sociology medical misinformation. Um. And like yeah, he's doing this too, like because he can make a profit off of it, So he's saying these things. So I know, UM, he mentioned a name, Desmond. Desmond's the guy who kind of coined this term. We'll we'll talk about more about him at the end, but for now, let's go on an ad break and we'll be back to talk about Dr Robert Malone, the other other guy who's been pushing this nonsense. So I probably will want

to hit with a brick even more so, honestly. And we're back talking now about mass formation, psychosis and the dumb people who are well or smart people who are using they're they're evil. That tough. So yeah. So after after McColl went on Rogan's show, it got that that

show got pretty popular. UM. One one big right wing kind of Trumpett media personality named Melissa Tate was permanently banned from Twitter after posting about the podcast and making the following post to her half a million followers, Global Bombshale.

Dr Peter McCall on the Joe Rogan Show says Maderna made the Coode vaccine long before COVID actually hit, and that the pandemic was a premeditated and concerted scheme by government and medical entities to then force vaccinations as the solution. So that's the type of narrative that they're trying to foster because the pandemics has been so good for Biden's approval ratings. It's really working out great for everybody. Uh us U S Senator Ron Johnson also promoted the interview,

saying Rogan asks excellent questions, McCall provides the answers. So yeah, um. So apparently the mass formation Psychosis Doctor Guy was enough of a hit that Rogan's team decided to very soon after bring on another line, conspiracy doctor doctor Robert Malone. So during the last week, Rogan invited Malone onto his show.

Malone's of of a virologist and and a immunization doctor who claims credit for inventing the m r n A vaccine in a pair of papers from the late eighties spoilers, he did not there was the vaccine before him, and work continued after him. Yeah yeah, um yeah. In in eighty nine, he published a paper UM kind of positing maybe mr NA can be binded with with other kind

of uh proteins. He did not really do any work on it besides just sing, I wonder if this could maybe happen, um, and then knowledge were people asking similar questions and publishing papers at the same time of the question. Yeah. So Malone actually thought this was too hard and abandoned this project very soon and then went to work for

like the military to develop other random like uh. He thought the RNA vaccines were too hard, so he went on to develop more stuff around DNA vaccines and has been working with like the military and various like big farmer companies fun vaccines for a while. More accurately, Dr Carrico and Drew Wiseman are two doctors that are widely agreed and acknowledged to have put the most development work and actual like like actually doing the science to make

m M RNA vaccines a thing, um. And then of course development of them was due to you know, work of hundreds of researchers. UM. So it's it's not you know, one person does not invent something like this, it's it's a group of a lot of people. But but it

makes it for an easy title for your viral video. Yes, and in fact, actually um uh logically, the That's a Journalist website reached out to Malone and for an article, and Malone replied Black stating that he did not actually literally invent the the vaccine, but instead developed a vaccine technology platform. Um. Then he presented logically copies with nine patents, um, none of which are the patents for functioning mrn A vaccines of course. Um. But but he he claims to

have patented mr and A technology. I mean he did. It's technology that doesn't work and never has and never has worked, and the patents are expired. Um. Anyway, I need to pat some ship. That just sounds like a real easy way to make a good grift. Yeah. So, you know, as we've seen with my O, but because because Malone has crafted this you know, narrative that I'm

the inventor of this thing. You know, look, just like we've seen with my like COVID Griffin name Doctor's episode behind the Bastards, just a little shred of like medical authority can be more often transformed with propaganda into something much greater than what it is, you know, whether that be claiming to be the inventor of the m R and A or you know, claiming to be the former

Heads Scientists adviser. Neither of those have to actually be true to work, because propaganda makes it true via like repetition. So yeah, it's it's the kind of thing where like dunking on these guys like it's important here to correct the record, it doesn't do anything. No, the fact that they and nothing that they say is true does not matter when it comes to them having an influence in

the community they have. If you get on Rogan, it doesn't like like you've already done the thing that you need to do to be able to to profit from this. It doesn't matter that you're lying. A few months ago, Malone went on to Steve Bannon Show to talk about how the vaccines make COVID worse worse actually, and you know this is the is the quote from Steve Bannon. You're hearing it from the individual who invented the m R and A vaccine and has dedicated his life to vaccines.

He's the opposite of an anti vaxer, right, So it's it's it's that picular. So yeah, start starting around June one, Malone began to make the rounds you know, Bannon Tucker, Glenn Beck, um, and now Joe Rogan. So you know, starting in June, he had like less than five thousand Twitter followers. Uh and just before his suspension at the end of December for spreading misinformation, he had like over

half million. Um. So yeah, So right after his Twitter suspension for lying about COVID and causing you know, misinformation to run to to run rampant around a health issue. Um, that's when Rogan invited him on and was right after he got suspended from Twitter. And there's been one particular clip from the interview that has really caught like the far right's attention. Um, you know, the tweet that's it's

it's connected to it was captioned on Joe Rogan. Dr Robert Malone suggests we are living through a mass formation psychosis. He explains how and why this could happen and its effects. He draws analogy to the nineteen twenties and thirties Germany. They had a highly educated population and they went barking mad. Um, they did not. They made a series of logical The Nazis did not go mad. They were not crazy, They

were not out of their mind. They were doing they were a large part of what they were doing was saying things that they knew were nonsense and lies in order to get elected because it riled people up. And then a large chunk of their policy was figuring out, well, if this is the ship that we've been saying, how do we how do we translate that into policy? Again,

realms have been written on this by credible researchers. The people who ran the camps were not insane, although they were often deeply depressed in suicidal because it's not good to run a death camp, they were all making rational decisions. And the people who let it happen, we're letting it happen because it was dangerous and scary to interfere in any way. They were all making rational decisions. There was no insanity responsible for the Holocaust, which is worse like

in the party everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What they're like, they're they're what they're doing is like they're they're they're they're trying to give people a way out right like that, you know, this is this is sort of like, oh, it's well, the Nazis went insane. All the people who follow them went and saying it's like, no, no, they don't. You don't get that way out like you. They chose

to do this. Yeah. The the scariest and most meaningful lesson to take from the Holocaust is that you yourself could be a part of a holocaust, even if you didn't support the killing, because it's extremely easy to not get involved and stop something like that once it reaches a certain level. And it's easy for the kind of political organizations that can make things like that possible to reach a point where they can carry that sort of

ship out because again, it's scary to fucking fight them. Uh, let's want the clips like a minute long, and I think it's worth watching to see both in the context of when Rogan decides to interject and when he decid it's not too basically European intellectual inquiry into what the heck happened in the twenties and thirties. You know, very intelligent, highly educated population and they went barking mad um And how did that happen? Um? The answer is mass formation psychosis.

When you have a society that has become decoupled from each other and has free floating anxiety in a sense that things don't make sense, we can't understand it, and then their attention gets focused by a leader or a series of events on one small point. Just like hypnosis, they literally become hypnotized and can be led anywhere. And one of the aspects of that phenomena is the people that they identify as their leaders, the ones typically that come in and say, you have this pain, and I

can solve it for you. I and I alone, okay, can fix this problem for you. Okay. Then they will lead. They will follow that person through how It doesn't matter whether they lie to them or whatever. The data are irrelevant. And furthermore, anybody who questions that narrative is to be immediately attacked. They are the other. This is central to mass formation psychosis, and this is what has happened. We

had all those conditions. If you remember back before, everybody was complaining the world doesn't make sense, blah blah blah um, and we're all isolated from each other, we're all on our little tools, we're not connected socially anymore except through social media. Um. And then this thing happened and everybody focused on it. That is how mass formation psychosis happens, and that is what's happened here. Horrible, completely wrong, um in every single way. UM. They the Germans were not

confused because nothing made sense. They were angry because of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. That were also angry because of what they saw as and what like, because of a myth that had grown up about why they had lost the first to World War, which was spread by people who were the equivalent in that time of Joe Rogan. They were scared of the left, of communism, of disorder, of riots in the streets, um and one whin Hitler took power. Most Germans did not like him.

They did not blindly follow him. He gradually gained the vast the support of the vast majority of Germany through a number of different, very logical things. One thing that he did that got him a lot of support was he took businesses and homes and money from Jewish people and from members of other groups that the Nazis were targeting,

and he gave it to Arians. There was a direct financial interest for a lot of people who got in line behind the Nazis, and he established a series of programs like the Strength through Joy program, that really did benefit in a way that they had not known before the German working class um. And a lot of this was again subsidized through the appropriations of things that had been owned by people that the Nazis were targeting. People

fell in line behind Hitler for logical reasons. He did not reach the highest point of his support from the German populace until the taking of Paris, which obviously that was something that a lot of Germans supported. They had spent four years failing to take the city in World War One. Um. Anyway, Sorry, it's all nonsense, it's all lies.

I think the reason why this is latching on so much to people on the right, like people on the right who who don't consider themselves fascists, who who think who would say Nazis are bad, right, there's they still are latching onto this because it provides a way for them to not understand how fascism actually works. Right. It provides an alternative explanation that makes them not have to actually think about what fascism is. Um. And that's why

they're latching onto it. And it also is already it's already a part of the conspiracies they have around vaccines and power structures. So because because it's the conspiratorial basis, instead of like thinking about power structures from like an anarchistical like like hierarchy lens, it reinforces the world views they have and makes them not half to interrogate the ones that they don't want to. Um it sucks. Malone's substack goes into more of this and it's it's it's

pretty bad. There's a this is a few quotes that I think really kind of tied this together, and then he has some horrible statistics. Um. He says, as many of you know, I've spent time researching and speaking about mass psychosis theory. Most of what I've learned is come from Dr Desmond. Dr Desmond is like the guy who

pointed this term um and uh, Malone writes. Desmond realized that this form of mass hypnosis, the madness of crowds, can account for the strange phenomenon of about of the population in the Western world becoming entranched with the noble lies and dominant narrative concerning the safety and effectiveness of the genetic vaccines, and both propagated and enforced by politicians,

science bureaucrats, pharmaceutical companies and legacy media. Of course, the obvious examples of massformation is Germany in the thirties and forties. How could the German people, who are highly educated, very liberal in the classic sense west in thinking people, how could they go crazy and do what they did to the Jews? How could this happen to a civilized people. A leader of a mass formation movement will use the platform to continue to pump the group of information to

focus on. In the case of COVID nineteen, I like to use the term fear porn. Leaders through mainstream media and government channel and government channels continuously feed the beast with more messaging that further hypnotize their adherents. Studies suggest that mass formation follows a general distribution. People are brainwashed

and hypnotized fully doctor and in the group narrative. In the middle are persuaded and may follow if no where the alternatives perceived, and thirty percent will fight the narrative. Those who rebel and fight against the narrative become the enemy of the brainwashed and the primary target of aggression. So that's the way he thinks. That is how which is really it's really subjing Like in terms of how he's building a narrative in his head and specifically building

a narrative for other people's heads to to view. Why do I feel distrustful of certain pieces of power but love other pieces of power? Yeah, and it's again like this idea that like well, Germany was liberals there, Germany had an enormous right wing movement, Like it was a

hugely conservative country in a lot of ways. It would also had a lot of leftist organizing and a lot of leftists in it, especially after World War One, but like the fry Corps ship, there were these massive, million strong right wing armed street movements that existed for the entirety of the Weimar Republic. Like it's again everything he

says is wrong. Yeah, and again it's like the notion that like are fully burnwashed, are in the middle of persuadable fight the narrative, it's like these these people who are upset, these like these specifically conservatives, were obsessed about thinking like I would have fought the Nazis. And because they don't understand how fashions and works and power dynamics, they don't understand how how they're actually getting pulled into the same thing. But they still view themselves as the

rebel right. They there's everybody wants to be right. Yeah, like they're still focused on being Yeah, it's absolutely like they're still focused on being the rebel and like we're rebelling against the vaccine that that is just like rebelling aginst the Nazis. And you're like, what, um, so I just want to say about those numbers if they're too completely made up? Yeah, yeah, when when people start throwing even numbers statistic exactly like that, it's because they're lying. Yeah,

it's because yeah, yeah, absolutely not. Yeah, that's that's complete nonsense. For one. Yeah, it's so so I get because now, the other thing that happened around this interview, because it didn't give a lot of traction among the right, is that whenever these things gained traction, they also developed conspiracy

theories that people are trying to suppress it. Like look at the Google algorithm when you type in certain keywords like I know that the day this was trending, it was like if you google dr Malone, the interviews only like the sixth result, The first one is this YouTube video debunky and like I did this and like no, the first result was the obviously viral video of him saying the thing, Like they just they can take one screenshot that maybe someone made or maybe because of one

person's computer algorithm that's what gave them and use this as like evidence that this is the entire system of the Internet suppressing the thing. Like, no, the Internet wants things to go viral. Now, there's certain things where they like trying to shut down the spread of dangerous stuff,

but this got very viral. This was not contained in any way, but because of this notion like they're trying to hide it, you know, it plays into their them thinking they're like they're them thinking that they are the

rebels or something. And there's also a very practical reason why the people who particularly know that they're lying do this, and it's because all of their success is based on a foundation of the way in which YouTube and Facebook and Twitter algorithmically amplified them and their predecessors, and they know that creating controversy over the fact that they're being suppressed um leads to more content that jin's that basically

algorithmically spreads their stuff more because more people are talking about it, because other people's channels start debating it, because idiots on the left are like, well, we should at least have them on platform them because we're anti censorship too, so let's debate them. And like all of this stupid ship feeds into spreading their stuff. It's a very intelligent strategy. Um, I hate it, but just in just in terms of

how ridiculous it is. I know, a few days ago, a Congressman Troy Nells said that I submitted the transcript from the Joe Rogan Experience podcast episode with Dr Malone to the Congressional Record. Big tech wants to restrict your access, your access to information, but they cannot censor the Congressional Record. Not tech is the entire reason why you know about these people. Yeah, entirely. So if it were not for big tech, Joe Rogan would be narrating videos of robots fighting.

So Jack so Beak got real into this because he loves anything that goes viral. If it weren't for big Tech, Jacks Obak would have died in the ditch of an oxycontent overdose. So he he got real into it. He changed his like he changed his Twitter name to Jack mass Formation, psychosis, psychosa Beck or some bullshit like that.

Stupid and it was it was tweeting about a NonStop for a week and like like a kid learning about a new topic because of synchronicity, He's he's gonna like projected onto everything he sees now because like this this new all encompassing topic that makes you avoid what fashions them actually is and then point out at the things you don't like. So of course he's gonna apply to everything he He made a tweet right before January six, um as the anniversary of the Capitol intermpted ku thing.

Regime media has launched a propaganda push against Ashley Babbitt today to psychologically prep their flock for the upcoming mass formation event planned for January six this week. This this is called priming and it's a textbook mass formation theory tactic. Wait till you see what of next? And it is the sixth today, has anything? What happened? Not goddamn thing? They got fucking Linn madwell Morenda does sing songs dedts,

you got gnel from Miranda? Did you see that? That wasn't He might have said something in the beginning that was due, but the performance has been played before on other things. Well and I am you know what, if we're taught trying to reach across the aisle. I am willing to admit that the popularity of lin Manuel Miranda might be a mass formation psychosis. Absolutely, the popularity of Hamilton's is a massformation psychos its. Absolutely, we're just being assholes.

But like, like seriously like it again, but it doesn't it does. The fuck is when it when it comes to again like the fact that he said there's gonna be this whatever psych mass formation psychosis event on the anniversary of January six, then it's going to be huge. Watch for it. Nothing happens, doesn't matter, never matters, will

never matter. Um because again, like it's it's I think one of the issues that we have here is the degree to which brain brainwashing and hypnosis and stuff are talked about within kind of discussions of a cultic milieu when they're not really a factor, not a factor in cults, not nearly as much as you think, yea, and not in the way that you think. There's things that like you could call brainwashing, but the the and you could even maybe call hypnosis, although that's a lot murkier. It

is a very technical thing. Yeah, But but the what actually like the stuff that's actually happens. Again, it's always much more logical and rational if you can just inhabit the mental space of the people who are in those communities because of what they're primed to believe first and because of what is happening socially, because of the degree to which they isolate themselves from people who are outside of that bubble. Like, that's why it's so hard to

get them out. It's not that like magically their brains have been taken over. It's that they have pretty methodically been put into a position where rejecting what is being told to them within this context is immensely more painful, um than just continuing to believe things that are not true. Um. And there are more consequences for it, you know. Um, you lose a support network, you lose a great deal of of of your own opinion of yourself and your

self worth if you start to reject this stuff. Um. And, once you can trap people in that, it's the same way that scientology works. Once you can trap people in that, um, it's the evidence of their eyes and the fact that like they're obviously being lied to and the things that they're being told about don't come to pass. It's this. It's the reason why you have a bunch of apocalyptic cults who say the days the world is going to end on this day and time that day and time comes,

the world doesn't end, and the cult goes on. You know, yeah, it's pretty it's pretty ridiculous. This, this whole thing was started by this professor of uncle psychology at a at a university in Belgium, Matthias Desmot. He seems to have a pretty bad understanding of history and actual like power structures, and does not know the least bit about fascism um, and has trying to craft this thing to fill in the gaps in his own knowledge and applies it to everything.

And I've read some of his stuff. It's it's nonsense. Um. Again that just like the doctors who talked about it, they're like, yeah, he's using this also is a way to explain how COVID is not real and how the vaccine is a is a ploy to do bad thing. It's it's all ridiculous, it's irresponsible, um. And they're using it as a tactic and hopefully it's just gonna blow over, but I'm sure it'll pop up everyone every once in a while again just like it popped up, you know,

a few weeks ago. But that's that's really all. I all I want to get into it. I I could say more, but I think we have said enough. Um, all right, all fucket, Yeah, that's it. That's all I've got. UM Read This Way for the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen by Thaddius Borowski. Um. It will. It will have a major impact on the way you see the entire world if you if you actually read it. Um, there's some

incredible pieces in there. One of one of the things that the Taddius points out is that like people only ever have like one kind of language for for talking about like the things that they feel, where whether it's something they they kind of vaguely care about or something they care about enough to murder over. And so when people engage in acts of like horrific violence on a mass scale, they often do it looking and acting like

they would if they were irritated at somebody in traffic. Um. And it's the most unsettling thing about being the victim of a genocide that you don't see the kind of hate and the kind of rage and the kind of like what you would expect someone would need to be amped up to. It's more of like you see, more like kind of boredom and and irritation and all that

stuff like it's not anyway read read read Daddy Sparowski. Um, he's I desperately wish Joe Rogan would just sit and narrate this book on his show, because I do actually a service in the world. Anyway. Um, that's that's the episode. I'm Jake Halbern, host of deep Cover. Our new season is about a lawyer who helped the mob run Chicago.

We control of the courts, We controlled absolutely everything. He brobed judges and even helped a hit man walk free, until one day when he started talking with the FBI and promised that he could take the mob down. I've spent the past year trying to figure out why he flipped and what he was really after. From my perspective, Bob was too good to be true. There's got to be something wrong with this. I wouldn't trust the guy. He looks like a little scum, big liar, stool bidgi.

He looked like what he was or at. I can say with all certainty I think he's a hero because he didn't have to do what he did, and he did it anyway. The moment I put the wire around the first time, my life was over. If it ever got out, they would kill me in a heartbeat. Listen to deep Cover on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Adoption of teens from foster care is a topic not enough people know about,

and we're here to change that. I'm April didn't what the host of the new podcast Navigating Adoption, presented by adopt us Kids. Each episode brings you compelling, real life adoption stories told by the families that lived them, with commentary from experts. Visit adopt us Kids dot org, slash podcast, or subscribed to Navigating Adoption presented by adopt Us Kids, brought to you by the U S Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, and the

ACT Council. This is Roxande Gay, host of The Roxanne Gay Agenda, the bad feminist podcast of Your Dreams. Now, what is the Roxanne Gay Agenda, you might ask, Well, It's a podcast where I'm going to speak my mind about what's on my mind, and that could be anything. Every week, I will be in conversation with an interesting person who has something to say. We're going to talk about feminism, race, writing and books and art, food, pop culture,

and yes, politics. I started show with a recommendation. Really, I'm just going to share with you a movie or a book, or maybe some music or a comedy side, something that I really want you to be aware of and maybe engage with as well. Listen to the Luminary original podcast, The Roxanne Gay Agenda, The Bad Feminist Podcast of Your Dreams, every Tuesday on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Could it

happen here? It maybe? I Robert Evans, host of this podcast, UM to introduce this today's episode, which is not my episode, it's it's Andrew's, uh episode. So, how how are you doing? Andrew Hood In that introduction, I'm good. I think it's um could use some work, but you know we'll shop it. Yeah. We we never workshop anything. We just we just roll right ahead. UM, so abolish that. Abolish introductions, you know, start in the middle. Why don't we just do that now?

In media res podcast. Yeah, we'll make every podcast like Finnigan's Wake, where the opening of the podcast is like halfway through a paragraph that the end of the paragraphs or at the end of the episode starts every everything will be a circle. Let's just Sophie. I think that's the new plan. Okay, Okay, Andrews, what do you guys for us today? Right? So today I wanted to talk about bio regions and bioregionalism. It's uh philosophy slash movement,

slash way of viewing things. There's a lot. So today we'll be exploring what it is, where it came from, and the role I see it playing in our strides towards anarchy. But first of course we really gets some context bioregionalism. Have any of you heard of it? By the way, I have heard the tournament right right, So

it's actually pretty recent, um, all things considered. UM. It was coined as a tomb by a guy named Alan Van new Cook, found of the Institute for Bioregional Research, and as a movement it really gained a lot of popularity in the late nineties seventies in the Ozaks, Appalachia,

Hudson River, and San Francisco Bay Area regions. UM. They had a conference in a prairie, interestingly enough, near Kansas City, and they've also had conferences in the Squamish bioregion of British Columbia as well as the Gulf of main By region on the Atlantic. And of course with all these different people coming together sharing all their different ideas talking about cool nature stuff, they developed a sort of a platform which they outline in papers on subjects changing from

agriculture to forestry, to arts, economics to community. So while it was a very North American focused movement and philosophy at first, it has also expanded to Europe and Australia and these groups, they hundreds of them all over. UM. They get involved with local ecological work like preservation and restoration, pumic culture or that, and they also form networks so they would link on specific issues like water conservation or

organic farming or tree planting. And of course bioreginal groups also get involved in attempts to make communities more self sufficient by mapping and utilizing local assets and well, as you come to see, um, bioregionalism and maps kind of go hand in hand away UM, because it really is about that sort of big picture looking at the earth

and the environment and outplace in it. So what is bioregionalism exactly In essence, it's a philosophy based around the organization of political, cultural, and economic systems around naturally defined areas called bioregions. Sort of bioregions. There are areas defined through physical and environmental features, including watershed boundaries, soil and

terrain characteristics, flora, fauna, and climate. Bioregionalism also stresses the determination of a bioregion is a cultural phenomenon and emphasizes local populations, local knowledge, and local solutions because humans are actually surprisingly part of nature. Our cultures or settlements they arise from nature, They arise from the characteristics of the bio regions that we inhabit. So I mean that to me is a clear virtualty and bioregionalism and land back.

And it also points to me um the fact that while bioregionalism maybe a fairly recent philosophy starsh movement, its roots and the ideas it presents are nothing new, you know, um, I mean bioregionalism posits that, you know, human societies must learn to our bioregions and the connections between them if we have to be ecologically sound. And this was an active is really old news, you know, for the indigenous peoples who have maintained these lands and been stewards of

these lands for thousands of years. I think that thinking in a bioregional scale allows us to establish regenerative and circular economies, effectively, restore local ecosystems, restructure our systems using ecological design principles, and of course deepen our cultural connections to the land we inhabit. So that to me really stresses the importance of bioregionalism in our approach to environmental issues.

Before I continue, I just wanted to say that for those who want to like visualize, because I know this is a podcast, you can only hear my voice. Um One Earth has a pretty decent map of bio regions on the website, so you could just google bio regions and it should come up. They basically have like five

bio regions on their map. And well, according to that map, trend that is part of bioregion Anti NT Stanning for neotropic and E Stanning for East and Turnadas grouped with South America and particularly the Venezuela Guyana's region for obvious reasons being that the Urn coup and other rivers that come from the Amazon flew out to you know, trend

ads shows really so clunky segue um. There a couple of different concepts that one might want to keep in mind when a aproaching or attempting to curate a bio

regional understanding of the world. Of course, perspective and a bioregional perspective is important, and it's basically one that seeks to ensure that political boundaries match ecological boundaries, highlighting the unique ecology of the bio region, encouraging the consumption of local foods where possible, encouraging the use of local materials where possible, and encouraging the cultivation of needs of plans

in the region. I will point out like from now, that's from what I've read about bioregionalism and the talks that I've seen, there are definitely some you know, liberal sensibilities, some capitalist realism um. In the way that some bioregionalists talk about, you know, things like organizing our politics and

our states and stuff around by regions. Obviously, you know, they are pushing things pretty far because they do talk about you know, going and really orienting our economy around you know, bio regions and thinking in terms of that. But at the same time, there's still like an almost passive acceptance in some of the readings that I've seen of capitalism. You know, I think that's pretty common in a lot of what I like to call almost radical

um ideas and philosophies and stuff. Of course, when I approached these ideas and these philosophies and stuff, I always try to, you know, keep that anarchist analytical freework in my head, understanding that you know, these ideas are still being filtered through an ultimately like Campitus society and capitalist world, and so you're gonna want to try to navigate that and sift that out and really get the nuggets of

gold within these ideas. I don't see states um, and I think you would agree with me being the path out of you know, that's a climate catastrophe um. For those who have been reading like you know, Against the Green and you know Griever's work, we know that states

have been pretty equalsider from their very inception. So I think that if poogionalism would be effective, I think it would be best if it stayed away from that sort of status um conception they do emphasize localism UM as the political localism, but it's always within the context of was often within the context of like the relationship between the local and the state and that sort of thing almost like a kind of I don't know if I'm using this to him correctly, even like monarchism, does that

makes sense some kind was it? Some kind of like municipalist almost something like that, But yeah, yeah, we should probably talk a little bit about like what what monarchism and municipalism are UM, just so people don't get kind of caught up on the terms UM. And particularly I think that like within a context of like the United States, UM, municipalism is kind of an easier way to sell folks

who may be more conservative on certain anarchists principles. It's basically the idea of yea strong community sort of control and autonomy UM, as opposed to uh, strong overarching kind of federal or state control over over you know, different communities. Yeah. Yeah, because menarchism is kind of like a weird grab bag thing. It's like, yeah, it's it's it's sort of like, okay, so you want to be in an arco capitalist, but you can't because you're just smart enough to realize that

you can't have a right to state. So either the America state is the only thing it does is enforced

property rights. And yeah, I think that's a slightly terrifying vision, but I think but you know it's it's yeah, it's a more self away than the average Yeah, but you know this is yeah, and I think that is less of a focus specifically on property rights and more of more based out of an understanding that UM like strong hierarchical federal or even state level control UM generally winds up creating reach a lot of a significant amount of like regional um uh, what's the word I'm looking for,

um inequalities UM and and is responsible for a lot

of like ecological devastation and whatnot. This idea that you can have like like one of the things that you would have with an actual municipalist system, as you wouldn't be allowed to operate a company like Coke Industries that's able to UM, you know, be based out of I think Kentucky, UM, but operate a series of refineries in the Gulf Coast that render large sections of that area uninhabitable because you would leave kind of control over what can be actually done in that area to the people

who live there, rather than being able to have UM a corporation by land there and have its right to pollute enforced by the state. Right, that's kind of like one little example. UM, there's municipalists. The system in northeast Syria and Rojava is is sort of a municipalist system

and one of the specifically libertarian. Yeah, I mean there's an distinction between like, well generally and m yeah, we're we're getting into the weeds a little bit here, but these are these are like that's kind of the basics of what those terms mean. Just so that people don't get lost when you when you bring them up, because I think a lot of folks, UM, you know, don't have necessary early that kind of those definitions don't just pop up in their head when you use that word,

right right, yeah, fair enough. UM. I also mentioned that states have been ecosidal from the inception, so I feel like I should probably trying to find that as well. UM equal side and ecosidal is UM is basically UM this idea that came out to the environmentalist movement, UM meanttive points to the survey harm to nature, the mass damage and destruction of ecosystems that's you know, caused over decades by you know these companies and really buy the

system as a whole. So it's often viewed through like a legal lens, as in, you know, these um companies should be tried for their crimes um and as like for committing equal side and that kind of thing, because it's off then view like as like illegal like lower Street put in police to classify equal side as a crime and that sort of thing. Um only a few countries have done that, like actually quotified eco side, but it is something that um so environmentalists pushed, you know,

really raise awareness as a crime against humanity and the planet. Yeah, I think it's also kind of important to understand with equal Side is that like there's a lot of focus I think in like left like in fronmutal movements just purely incorporations and even if you go back to the companies memes like Hunter companies destroying the planets like well yeah,

like like half of the merse they don't. Yeah, and so you know, yeah, this this is something like like with equal Side, it's like yeah, it's like it's not just corporations that do this. It's you know, it's it's the the state as a structure. It's the state as the institution. Is the state as exactly, Yes, their agencies is there sort of And that's that's what I try to Like, what I realized is it's kind of important. Known. I guess this is kind of like slowly like shifting

away from birationalism, but that's fine. Um. What I will say that I've tried to like consciously, um sort of put into practice is emphasizing that, like capitalism is not the only issue, you know. Um, Like I those people like try to separate capitalism on the state, as if they could ever truly be separated. Even people who understand that you know, acro capitalists misguided and that you know,

the state is necessary to maintain capitalism. There's some sort of like disconnect where there's like a whole ton of you know, organization and meaning and all that about capitalism. And you know, oftentimes these sort of efforts are like particularly reformist types and unions and stuff. They try to mediate with capitalism through the state, you know, through the government, look re local government or federal government, whatever the case in. And what I really try to emphasize is that it's

not enough to have like a theory of capitalism. I think it's even more important to have a theory of hierarchy because I think it avoids it helps to avoid getting into these sort of traps of like um well, class reductionism for one, but also like recreating certain structures within your organizations and in your efforts to change things, recreating the very you know, circumstances you're fighting against. You can't like condense everything into one problem, because try as

we might, it's not that everything is one problem. It's an interconnected mesh that binds all of our problems together. And you can focus on, you know, really big extensions of that mesh, but it still is kind of just the mesh, and the mesh isn't the thing, but it connects to the edges of all of the things. And yeah, that type of ecology can be useful and even even relating to bioregions in terms of how they also connect

with other territories and entities. I think it also you know it this is one of the sort of problems that you have if you know it's like, okay, so your plans it takes sort of sovereign state power. It's like, well, you do it right, But I mean the thing is if if you if you you know, you seeze control of power of a state, right, your borders are essentially just like where the state's war machine ran out of steam.

And you know, and this this becomes a normal's problem because like I mean, if if you look at the bioregional maps, right, it's like there's there's literally no way you could ever have states with these borders, because yeah, it's not like this, it's it's it's impossible, like you you cannot do it. And you know what that means is that states are sort of necessarily going wee, they're either going to be like a small fraction of a

bioregion or they have multiple in them. And that's another sort of that becomes a sort of logistical problem because you know, like if you want to look at like a lot of the worst sort of ecological sort of like human disasters, it's when you get states attempting to

apply like state environmental issues. Yeah, yeah, it's more certifically like it it's it's you know, they have something that like sort of works in one test environment, and then they broadly apply it across you know, an enormous sort of variety of areas and reasons to have their own biospheres and have their own and that stuff. That's like that's like the fastest way to kill an enormous number

of people. Yeah, just like it's like forcing a jigsaw piece that obviously doesn't fit into a spot where you wanted to, but you're just breaking the pieces. I want to say as well, that like that sort of I mean, at least the state's attesting it, right, Um. I remember I kind of remember the exact name of like the

the sort of like ideology or whatever. I think it was like this Elie Soviet Unian probably one of your name, This Elie Soviet Union in practice related to like farming that they just applied over like a vast vast region end up with like a huge decrease in like food production. I can't remember the name of it. Senku Oh, Yeah, yeah, it just had this he had this theory and it's just like pushing it and yeah, it led to some

serious issues. Yeah, and I think you know, if we're gonna have like what's important about sort of birationalism, it's you have to have if you're going to implement anything right. You know, it's especially when you're trying to sort of manipulate biospheres, you're trying to preserve a biosphears you have to have local knowledge from the people who have been living in these biospheres for you know, enormous amounts of time.

And that's something that states are really bad at and you know, tend to actively suppress and it's something you know, and I almost said this, there's there's a kind of like there's like a kind of neoliberal version of this stuff. Fe It's like, oh, well do you know who will have like local knowledge blah blah blah. And then they're like, well, well we'll have local knowledge, but they that this will

help them create market solutions to things. It's like that also doesn't work, and it's basically just motized Like yeah, but because that I really like sits letson sits well

with me. You know, like these sort of like see that you see a lot of liberals like doing it a lot of these days where they'll be like doing the whole land acknowledge one's thing and they'll be doing the that thing where they would just like say that oh this is from so and sue culture and whatever, and then just like boom and then carry yeah, carry on with business as usual. Yeah, which is I learned this technique from so and so tried, no, let me

work as a consultant for your company. Yeah thing, yeah, yeah, it's it's come out. It's commodifying the thing, and that that both produces a warped replication and then it also kind of makes the original thing seem like used in a weird way as well, like it wasn't designed. Yeah. Yeah, I once reminded a bit of alienation and how we are just sort of separated from, you know, aspects of

our actual humanity because of the structures we live under. Right, So instead of relating with the environment, or relating with our culture, or relating to other people, we're just relating through like these commodities and these products and these you know,

just bastardized versions of things. And I think that is also something that sort of leagues like some environmentalists in terms of there's there's there's almost like this subtle ill nation from the nature that um many of them seek to preserve, right where on the one hand, yes, you're trying to you know, preserve it and protect it and

as commendable brand. The other hand, the way you're going about it is basically like anti tactical to those schools because you don't have that connection with the nature that

you're trying to help. You know, what it seems like a lot of people not recognizing is that you know, humans are apart nature, right, and this is another bioregional concept, right, this thing called bioregional reinhabitation in it in being that um, meaning that we must come home to the geographical and physicalter and reinhabit, understand its ecological uniqueness and familiarize ourselves with the stories woven into the fabric of said land.

It's history, it's people with its cultures, it's flora, it's fauna. You know. It's only once we come home to the our byo regions and to our ecosystems, to all places, that we can really work together to see its potential, to see how we fit into it, how we can facilitate its healing, you know, bio region by bio region. Yeah, that definitely mirrors stuff I've been working on relating to that type of like cognitive dissonance that you're talking about.

And that alienation not just from like human to human, but human to human to place, because yeah, we have like developed this like this commodified other version of nature that isn't actually what nature is. Um it's it's it's we formed this thing that is separate from us, which is not how we need to think about it, because it should be. We are all part of the same of of of that same system. We are not separate from it, and we're not isolated from it or its effects.

We are just another part of it. So it's about getting in like getting a sense of ecology with both your bioregion and then the biosphere as as as a whole, and getting that ecology which kind of will break down this notion of nature being an other. And and I think because of the idea of nature being another that really kind of fosters our extraction that's led to our current problems because we don't use problems affecting us. We

give them as a practice as affecting the territory. And if we're if we're not the territory, then we can be safe. But that's not Sorry, go on, I think I think I may have talked about this on the show before but you know that there's another aspect here, which is that viewing humans is sort of like separate from like this abstract nature is how you get a

lot of really bad like racist environmentalism. Like if you haven't read The Trouble with y by, yeah Coroning, the Trouble with Wilderness is one of the things that like if you study, yeah, if if you do environmental studies at all, like this is one of the first things they hand you. And the reason they hand it to you is because it you know, so the the the image of wilderness that we have is sort of like, oh, it's just like completely untapped thing, and it's like, well, yeah, okay.

So the reason the reason we have this image of like a wilderness with nothing in it is because there used to be people there and we killed them all or fortunately imported them. Yeah yeah, yeah, and it's it's wilderness.

And yeah it was for us literally planted and called those forests were I think even more pointedly, you should it should be stated those forests were a work of engineering that's on par with the pyramids at Giza, if not like absolutely massively in excess of it there, they are a work of engineering that's every bit as impressive as any city ever built. Um and everything is like

intense and required as much knowledge and scientific understanding. People just all we had, all of those people had died by the time white folks really because of the spread of disease or just because of act Like yeah, like

I think that's true. Definitely the East coast with the West Coast, I think it's even grimmer because the West Coast you and this this happened, you still see this where like a lot of like theiricannational parks were literally like like people would go and ethnically cleanse the population that was there and then be like, oh hey look it's it's now wilderness. This is now and this this

is like the origin of the environmental movement. It's all of these like just like the most racist people you've ever seen in your life, like people yeah, well and even even even before them, like in you know, like

like early hundreds, like people like those guys. Yeah. Yeah, it's like like when when when those guys are talking about like the purity of the field, like they're everything they think about the wilderness is also just about the purity of the white race, and it's it's yeah, and if if if when you when when you start making that this like that's the separation between teams in nature, Like that's that's how you get this, Like that's how that's how you get these you know, ethnic cleansing like

genocide forests. I've been reading this very good book, just started last night, and I think we're gonna have the author on the show soon. Chris Begley. He's an underwater archaeologist and he wrote a book called The Next Apocalypse that's about collapses throughout history and how they actually differ from the popular conceptions of them. And he actually talks about a lot of the stuff we talk about in

this show UM. And one of the points he makes is that this idea of like lost cities in dark jungles and whatnotum is based entirely on misconceptions first of all about like what jungles are, and then second on like these these very eurocentric ideas towards what lost means.

Like he points out that every time there's been a lost city or civilization discover, it's because archaeologists just like asked the people living there where the ruins were in there, Like oh yeah, it's like right over there, like we we've known about this since forever. It was never lost, we just stopped living in that specific area. And the other thing he points out is that like this idea of a jungle as like a difficult and primeval place

is ridiculous. If you had to pick anywhere to be stranded in the world of in terms of bioregions, you would pick a jungle like the Amazon, because it's pretty easy to survive there. That's why people live there for so long. Yeah, there's a ton of the Amazons. You know, as we've discovered, you know, there were cities and stuff happening in the Amazon. You know, it was like planted.

There's food jungle like food forests and whatnot. Is the term people use it within the jungle like people set the people set the jungle in the Amazon up to provide them with food in a way that isn't exactly isn't the same as like what we consider to be agriculture,

but it's absolutely a kind of agriculture. And because people don't see it as agricultures, like, oh, that's just you know, they were just running around the forest before we arrived, you know, it's like, yeah, no, they had they had essentially built themselves a big smart house in the middle of the woods that provided them with everything they needed.

Um with upkeep that we would consider minimal based on like what a lot of our European ancestors, it certainly like did in terms of labor to keep farms going. Like if you compare, I mean you could also talk about how like peasants in the medieval period probably worked less than a lot of people in the United States duties like everyone works less, we do know, but it's a lot harder to keep like a mono culture farm

going than it is to to keep a food forest going. Yeah, because I mean, once it's established, it literally maintains itself. M What was the name of the book that you were talking about. Just it's called The Next Apocalypse and it's it's very good so far. Chris Begley is the author. I think we're gonna have them on next week. But um yeah, I've I've found it so far about a third of the way and very good, so much out. Okay, who wants to say we're back you just that's the now,

that's the exit area. You're welcome there we are or song. So yeah, once we have like embraced our understanding that you know, we belong to the land and not vices and must therefore pattern ourselves and societies based on its needs. Um you know, that's when we get to that place of bioregional regeneration, which is another key concept of bioregionalism.

And lastly, there's the concept of bioregional sensibility, which was developed by Mitchell Thomas Shoe, and it's about developing the observational skills to observe the bioregional history, to develop the conceptual skills to juxtapose you know, the scale of you know, the community and the region, and the bio ecosystem, the bioregion, all these different levels. Was ability to like think in

terms of all of them, to develop the imaginative faculties too. Really, I would say, play with multiple landscapes and develop the compassion. Two empathize with and work with both local and global neighbors, not just local and global human neighbors, but also you know, the flora and fauna living next door. There are a

lot of different bioregional practices happening all of the world. UM. I didn't note that it started in North America, but I noticed a lot of the big projects happening in like South America, you know, in Brazil, Sinaldo Ville, in Costa Rica Regenerativa, to think Colombia Regenerativa and the Pluriversity in the Himalayas as well, and many others. They're basically engaging in efforts involving applied education, ternity of agriculture systems, mapping,

green belt restoration. There's the you know, the green Belt project in Africa as well, and these are all efforts to really understand and work with the bio regions that these people inhabit. So just a few tips that I wanted to end us off with you before we and things off. UM. I was trying to link um, the things that I talked about in some way to what people on the groups they are part of, the organizations

they are part of, the communities are part of. Can do you know, as an action to strengthen their resilience or to develop you know, autonomy. Right in this case, it is the strength and resilience and also to develop

the vitality of the bio region you inhabit. So, first of all, I think it's important that we learn as much as we can about our areas and learn especially through action, whether it be through cleanups, you know, observing the space around you, whether it be through observing weather patterns um betther be through looking at the we're on hikes and looking at the way that the temperature changes and the texture of the soil changes as you go

up and down in um altitude. I think it's also important to try to get involved with actions too, um restore natural features and to understand the police that those natural features have in the broader by region. Of course, there are lots of sustainable projects happening all over the world.

You know, if they aren't any in your area, UM be the change you want to see, start one, make it happen, and really also, I would say, find ways to link projects for environmental sustainability and restoration with projects for human humanancipation. Find ways to like support access to

you know, basic human needs within your locality. To find ways to sort of because when we speak of bioregions and you know, living within our bioregions and so on and so forth, that's all well and good, But if, for example, your region has to import whole bunch of food all the time to support the population, I think there needs to be w used to UM decrease that sort of import and to find ways to UM live

sustainably within the area. Raise awareness, of course as well UM about bioregional thinking, systems thinking, social ecological thinking, and yeah, just get to we're okay anti work work for figuring these structures of more horizontal, barriginally ethical and sustainable way of life. And of course disrupt the projects that getting the way of those schools. And I see that as tentatively as I can. To avoid legal trouble. That's it. Take care of everyone and be kind to every other thing. Piece.

I call the Union Hall as his male life, and there I thank these people to planning to kill Dr King. On April four, Dr Martin Luther King was shot and killed in Memphis. A petty criminal named James Earl Ray was arrested. He played guilty to the crime and spent the rest of his life in prison. Case closed, right, James hyl Ray was upon the official story, the authorities would parade all we found a gun, the James old raybard in Birmingham that killed Dr King. Except it wasn't

the gun that killed Dr. King. One of the problems that came out when I got the ray case was that some of the evidence, as far as I was concerned, did not match the circumstances. This is the MLK Tapes. The first episodes are available now. Listen on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Look to your children's eyes to see the true magic of a forest. It's a storybook world for them. You look and see a tree. They see the wrinkled face

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Welcome to it could happen here a podcast that is remarkably today not really so much about things falling apart and is mostly about things in fact getting better and how we can do that. Um. I'm your host, Christopher. With me today is Garrison and we're also joined by Nick and Max, who are two members of the artist collective Solar Punk Surf Club who have released a very very interesting new game that we are here in part of talk about called solar Punk Features. Hello nick I, Max,

How how are you doing? Hey? Doing well? Thanks? Yeah, doing great? Thanks for having us on. Yea excited to have you to on. So I guess my first question is how did you too, get into game design and sort of first have the idea to do a sort of like political gaming project like this. It's a good questions. Oh, we're not, Um, we're definitely not game designers by profession

or trade. Um. We're members of the artist collective solar Punk Surf Club, and we're particularly interested in creating artwork and social practice that pre figures these kinds of egalitarian

futures that we'd like to see in the world. And so this game was something that we've been kind of a project that we've been thinking about and sitting on for a little while and was kind of something that made us excited, got us excited, and we think there's a whole bunch of other reasons that we think it's a really cool, um project to work on an important project, and um, yeah, so we kind of took a took a deep dive headfirst into the world of game design

and learning how to how to do that over the past. You're so okay, So how about we I guess also start with I guess explaining what solar Punk features is and sort of how it works, and then we can get into the sort of political aspect of this sort of game design project. So, solar Punk Futures is a storytelling game where players imagine pathways to a desirable future by collaboratively overcoming real world challenges. The object of the game is to collectively remember one of the stories that

grew into our utopia um. The idea is that through back casting, where you assume within the context of the game that players are already in utopia and merely remembering back to their ancestors struggle, that players can transcend the idea that what currently exists must necessarily exist, which social theorists Murray book Chin described as the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking. So we wanted to make a system

to facilitate collaborative performance sort of. We call it a collaborative performance of memory, but one that combines sincerity with

laughter and speculative storytelling. The game also combines a lot of different elements that we saw in other games, um, collaborative you know, the collaborative storytelling, cooperative gameplay, uh, some elements of role playing, and different kind of mechanics that we thought would build out that kind of like I said earlier, those prefigurations of those egalitarian world So we're trying to you know, we're trying to make a game that had the fiction and the idea you have utopia

built in uh in terms of the goals of the game, but it was also we wanted to build it into some of the mechanics of how the game is actually played too. Um. But my question from here is sort of well, I mean, I guess firstly is I think what sort of specifically drew you to solar Punk is sort of an aesthetic for for this, Like I know there's been a lot of sort of like the kind of social pology solar punk fusions, but I'm interested in

what you specifically to it. So we see solar punk as a visionary utopian politics and aesthetic that critically engages the reality of capitalist catastrophe while maintaining a radical optimism about humanity's hopes for a communal, ecological future. Nick was just speaking to this um. We see it as a restorative justice process on a planetary scale among p pole between humans and non human nature. So that means reclaiming

pieces of the past, pre pre capitalist culture. UM. That means material accountability for old practices, and it also means radical adaptability towards new ones. I think it provided a useful way of synthesizing several currents that we had already been thinking about and involved in between new media and social practice, thinking not just about images and objects in space, but also the set of social relations that those things produced. Yeah,

we're also we're like partisans within solar punk. I don't think there's I don't think there's too many pro capitalists within solar punk, but I think there are some people who are maybe drawn to the aesthetic but don't necessarily have a politics. But we do think that there's a kind of a latent horizontalism, a latent anarchistic politics in a lot of the aesthetics around solar punk, and so uh as a as a collaborative as an aesthetic that

is being defined collaboratively by people online and elsewhere. You know, we wanted to kind of stick out of position about what we thought a really realistic utopian world might look and feel like. Yeah, and I think this is something else I know YouTube I'm very passionate about. UM is about specifically using games as a medium to do this and sort of this as like this kind of storytelling

membrance as a specifically political intervention. So could you talk a bit more about you know, like a yeah, you know, good questions like okay, so why this and not on you know, on this sort of less more like like why this and not Guerrilla Gardening? Why this and not some other kind of organizing etcetera, etcetera. Um. Yeahn't should hear you to say about that? Yeah, well, I'm not gonna hate on Guerrilla Gardening. I definitely think it's a

both situation. Um, it's also in the game. Yeah, that's true. It's it's one of the cards, one of the tools that you get to use as an ancestor. Um. Yeah, I think, you know, there's a lot of different things that we were thinking about when we were thinking about why a game that I got a little bit into earlier. But you know, for one, UM, I think it helps reach abroad and often deep politicized audience with a fun way to kind of engage in some thorny political questions.

I think that games as a participatory medium were especially interesting for people who are interested in sort of anarchistic modes of teaching and education, in education through doing rather than lecture. Although you know, we were also read a lot of good political theories, so I'm not I'm not

opposed to that. Um And then I think, uh, you know, games are also fun, and there's a lot of there's a lot of political organizing and activism work that happens out there that feels that's hard and that is necessary to do. But just because a lot of the important work to be done is hard doesn't mean everything that's hard is important. And everything that's fun is you know, trifling or not going to help us get where we're going and and overthrow capitalism and build a new world.

So um, yeah, those are those are some of the reasons. Yeah, And I think that's especially sort of interesting point because I think a lot of what happens in left to spaces you get a bunch of people doing stuff and they burn not really fast because you know, you're doing

an enormous amount of work. It's all miserable. A lot of the times you're getting physically assaulted, and like, I think that's one of the things that's interesting to me about this is you need other forms of sort of community building and sort of like you need other forms of organizing that do not involve you being repeatedly traumatized

over and over again. And that, yeah, especially just working on something like this, and then I don't know, just playing with your friends and having having things that are like collaborative and joyful and community building is I think very important as a way to just you know, even just this is not a very basic logistical level, but

prevent people from burning out. Yeah, yeah, And and I definitely think that there's a role there to prevent people from burning out and and inspiring people with some of the fun ideas, the ideas that they come up with when they're not looking at a Google doc meeting notes, but instead they're playing a card game and maybe drinking a couple of beers and they're like, oh, how would I combine guerrilla gardening and um, you know, performance art too,

bring about you know, to solve a specific challenge of capitalism like deforestation or these are some of the cards in the game. Um, And so I think it can be inspiring, you know, it's also um, it can be educational. I played with some family. Uh I think the first time I played, when we got the physical copy that wasn't a play test, was with some family and they

don't necessarily identify as leftists of any kind. But we had a really fun game where we explored ideas of deconstructing borders, and uh, you know they were It wasn't like I was guiding them in this direction. It was just kind of the assumption of the game that there was utopia, got beyond this ingrained capitalist realism that there just isn't that there isn't an alternative, And they're like, okay, well the game says we're already in utopia, so that

means there's no private property. And I was like, whoa, that's a that's a jump I didn't expect from my from my family. One thing I'm interested in in terms of how it functions as a game is like balancing the actual more I don't know, fun based like role playing game elements with like it's kind of structure as a thought exercise, and like a world building game, like how how how do you approach trying to get a balance of like fun role playing as well as this

type of like reverse world building. I was kind of I was still a little bit on the y A game in the first place question, but I'm also intrigued by the balancing fun and politics question. If you don't mind, I wanted to go back to the y A game for just a second, um, because I think maybe it will lead into this. Games are, you know, an ancient form of art. I know, I said we work in new media before, but games are actually an ancient form of art, and I would argue social practice. Um. There's

a game called Senate. There's a game called the Royal Game of r which both date to five thousand years ago in ancient Egypt and ancient Mesopotamia, respectively. We did in making the game, we did a bunch of research on the history of of games. There's a fifteenth century game called the Game of the Goose from uh well, present day Italy that paired like these gorgeous illustrations, also

with like didactic moral instruction. In the early early twentieth century, the Surrealists created a series of games um with the intention of breaking through traditional thought patterns and unleashing the potentials of the unconscious. They also wanted to subvert academic modes of inquiry UM. And then today, you know, some of our most popular table top games, you know, I think Nick was mentioning this earlier, how they can sometimes

inscribe oppressive logics. So, you know, rather than a game where you're competing against other players to drive them into poverty, or a game where you're trying to colonize other players land, you know, for the purpose of world domination, we wanted to make a game that actually practices the cooperation, interdependence, care, consent, uh, these things that will be needed, you know, for it actually to transcend the social ecological crises of our day.

And kind of to that point, you know, I would say that games always reflect the beliefs and norms of their historical context. So with Solar Punk Futures, we wanted to kind of flip the script and UM project using you know, the modalities of like speculative fiction, collaborative performance, as I mentioned, the values and more is of a of a desirable future. So games are are very human thing, an ancient human thing. And why do people play games? Uh?

As I mentioned, you know, education is part of it, UM, but also building social bonds is another important piece, and that always is a company. It's a very like academic way of talking about it, maybe, but it is. It is fun. It has to be fun. That's why people do it. In terms of the to get a little deeper into the balancing question, you know, every game is

a balance between a bunch of different competing factors. There's a lot of people who were talking about the balance between randomness and planning in in games, and the balance um between structure and free form, and it's definitely something if there's any game designers out there thinking about making, you know, games like this, play testing it will help you so much because you know, the game in a rough form existed in the spring of last year, but

playtesting really helped us refine a lot of those questions and find that kind of balance between structure and freeformness. We wanted it to be accessible to people who aren't d n D players, but we've also played with people who play a lot of D n D and GM and all this stuff, and they took it in a lot of fun and wild directions that we didn't expect.

That helped inform kind of new ways that we could, you know, we added some optional rules in there for people who want to take it in a different direction or or add more complexity, or or even or for other people who need a little bit like a handhold and want to flip a coin to decide something rather than um, you know, come up with it totally on their own. So I think, um, yeah, it's a hard it's a hard thing to balance, you know, all the

different factors that go into a game. But I definitely think play testing and all the people who who played with us in those early games really helped helped us figure out the right balance. And to your earlier point about burnout, like activists burnout, Um, some people who we've invited to play the game maybe have have expressed this idea of like, well, um, I'd love to, but I don't have time, And maybe maybe they they think of

of gaming. And I know I've certainly been guilty of this too, of feeling like guilt over things that feel like it indulges like you should be doing the real work all the time. But you know, I think it's important to hold that in the perspective of the tradition of of feminism. Civil rights advocates, others on the left that have talked about the importance of um joy that needs to be integral to our struggles. There's the famous I'm a Goldman quip. If I can't dance, it's not

my revolution. So apps, you know, these ideas of like guilt and shame or martyrdom or whatever are kind of toxic parts of the old world that we need to to let go of. UM. So, I guess this is kind of coming back to say that there's as as Nick was saying, there is an ethical, pre figurative case of um of how games can allow people to um express themselves through play, but there's also a tactical one, and that games can be a structured way of thinking

about how do we create a liberated society? One everything I think is sort of interesting about well, like, I guess this is somewhat less true of tabletop games as in medium, because typical games are a lot of sort of cloud of storytelling ish stuff. But like I know, like like so, like I I play a lot of video games, right, and it's like it's like a lot of the structure of what gaming is is sort of like it basically it turned into like another job that

you have and it's interesting. Yeah, you know, and you you like, you get you get the same you even get like bogo like crossover between the terminology of like like you know, like I think like grinding is like the grind. Yeah, like grind. I think I think that came from gaming first and then moved over into the

weird grindset stuff. But like I think you're right, yeah yeah, and gamification, right, that's another way that like gaming is being almost like weaponized by capitalism to get squeezed just

a little bit more out of everyone. Yeah, there's there's a really interesting article whose name I am forgetting because I am yeah, I um, but Vicky Oustawal wrote it like a while ago that was about how like games are like it's you know, it's it's used sort of mechanically doing the same thing over and over and over again. But it's it's a problem because it's like it's it's labor that's like too perfect. It it doesn't create anything.

There's no sort of like like there's there's no sort of like um like aspect that produces like value that could be extracted. You're just sort of you're just doing a thing over and over again, and it's like and you know, and that then then that you know, becomes

a problem for capital in some sense. It's why there's all these panics about like everyone being addicted to gaming, because it's like, well, okay, you're not making money for us, But I think it's interesting simulator you could be driving

some actual Yeah. Yeah, but you know, I think it's interesting that this is a political intervention into that of creating something that's you know, precisely the opposite of that that it's you know, you're not sort of like it's not just like an incredible intensification of the sort of like reward systems of working. It's hey, we're gonna come together and we're gonna tell we're gonna you know, make

collaborative decisions and overcome challenges. And I think I think that's a very interesting sort of political angle to come at this from. Yeah, I think a lot of a lot of tabletop games in particular, compared to video games.

I think, well, i'll say, role playing games in particular put you in a driver's seat in a way that I think can is is hard, right, Like sometimes I'm too tired to or if I think, you know, I have a I have a D and D night, and I'm like, I don't know if I have the energy for this after working all day, um, whereas I might have energy to play you know, a video game RPG that kind of walks me, you know, handholds me through

a story. Um, it's kind of more like watching more passive. UM. But I do think that there's I just think there's something so important about thinking through what it might be like to live in this utopian society. And it's important, I think because if we don't well, for one, a ton of people just don't even think about it. Um. And so to the extent that this game is something that gets bought or played with families of people who are you know, one of the many people who have

been de politicized in this country. UM, I think that can be really helpful. But I also think that Um, I've played it and I've found really fun and exciting ideas that I wouldn't have thought about if I was staring at a power map or something and thinking where can we intervene in my city too, you know, help help solve this or that problem. So I think, yeah,

I think there's power there. So I think one of the thinks I think it's interesting to me about how you tube sort of the team put this product together. And it's also like you know, so like you can buy the versions of it that have like very very nice art, but you also just put the cards and the rules up for free and you can just sort of print and play its owner. Yeah, if you could talk a bit about decision you do that democratic accessibility

is really important to us. It's part of the concept that we wanted to integrate into every aspect of the game's production and distribution. And so yeah, the whole thing is available as a free print and play PDF download. UM.

It's all Creative Commons licensed. UM. So that's yeah. And you know, at the same time, as you mentioned, we we uh are interested in materiality and want wanted to create, um, something that could could a company, you know, a face to face interaction as well, which is you know, frankly, well, I'll just speak for myself. That's probably more my interest. UM, even though I think you know like that we have a tabletop simulator version two, which I think is really cool.

But as far as the decision to make the game, you know, free, free forever, um. We want people to play. We want it to be genuinely useful. Um, this is not a this is not a capitalistic business venture. We're running a break even budget and want to just keep doing projects and you know, elaborating like the solar punk

tradition and connecting it to social, ecological, communalist politics. So if this can be a catalyst towards being able to do more of that, then um, then that's you know, we'll have we'll have succeeded on our on our terms at least. What's the satus of physical copies of how can people if they want to use cards and stuff? What is how how would want to go about getting those? Yeah, so there's a couple of different ways. People can download

the free print and play if they like. If they really love it, they want to buy the physical copy. We sold out of the kind of first edition that we were able to afford to print, but we're raising money on Kickstarter for a second edition. So if people back us at a certain tier there I think it's forty five dollars or higher. Uh, you get a copy of the game when we're able to print them. Uh, And so yeah, so it's a um and of course, as Max mentioned, you can also play on tabletop simulator.

But yeah, we're we're really excited about it. I think we're also hoping to take it around to some you know, political workshops, probably on Zoom for the foreseeable future, um get maybe game convention, tabletop game conventions and stuff, and also some art art shows um to be announced, to be announced, but there's a couple of art shows that we're excited to be showing it in. So um yeah. Yeah.

One one thing I'm really excited about in terms of playing this at some point is the I think starting from the point of like you're trying to build the world now, you can really easy, it's really easy to run into ruts um starting at the end point than working backwards, I think because that produces that reverse type of thought. I think it's a little bit easier for to find the path than just starting here and looking at the world to be like, oh, how do we

do anything to make it better? Instead of being at the opposite place and being like, what's what is the way to backtrack? I think can maybe give you some connections and ideas that you may not have had otherwise because we're kind of always stuck in the now, how

do we get now better. So I would be very excited to try try this out at some point and uh and experience that backtrack thinking, because I think it's a Yeah, I'm really intrigued with that specific aspect of the game, because yeah, I'm sure there's gonna be a lot of solar Punk games within the next decade probably, Um, and this is one aspect that I think actually is really unique and something that's not just intrinsic to solar Punk. Um. You know, it's something that's kind of been added on.

So uh, that's something I'm really excited about. And yeah, I would love to love to pick this up uh soon. Yeah, thank you for saying that. Um. I think one of the things that we hope that the game does is help people break through that capitalist realism. Yeah, like there is no alternative. It's easier to imagine the end of

the world than the end of capitalism, et cetera. Um. And you know, similarly, if you ask people to imagine the future, uh, it's very hard and uh and if they are able to at all, it is often extrapolating sort of the worst trends of today into a dystopian future. Yeah,

I remember slightly. I remember So when when I was in I was in middle school or something, we had this society where we had to like write a you like write what are perfect like utopian society would be, and we like did it, and like three quarters of the like society people come up with were just like the worst imaginable dystopia. It was just like it's just

really grim. Sort of Yeah, if I was gonna, if I was gonna make what I thought was an accurate prediction of the future, it might be more similar to the first season of this podcast, then yeah, uh, some of the hopeful futures. But I don't I also don't think. I don't think the door is closed on any kind

of solar punk future. I think it's important. One of the important aspects that we included that that is that makes solar punk different than just kind of vague utopianism is that we think we ask people to also think about the barriers they run into, to think about, you know what, who's gonna who's gonna oppose you if you're trying to um, you know, deal with polluted water and you find some really great system and improve a region's water supply, you know, Nestley might come in and buy

the rights to the whole region, the whole watershed. So you know, imagining those that opposition, the material conditions that might change, and how you adapt to them. We hope that's something that people also benefit from who played this game and and make some prediction ends about the strategic decisions that capital is going to make to oppose your

your utopian vision. And I hope there are more solar punk games, Like you said, I hope there's a preponderance of solar punk art in the in the next decade. That would be amazing. And you know, to what you were just saying, you're right, solar punk doesn't mean the end of politics, doesn't mean the absence of conflict. Um. So I think we tried to integrate that into the game.

What makes a good solar punk stories that it is plausible yet distinctly anti utopian, anti dystopian rather um it you know, provides a glimpse into a future possibility for say, the reharmonization of humans with other humans, humans with non human nature, um, and that is going to involve some amount of opposition on the one hand and reconstruction on the other. In short to to critique by building as the slogan goes all right, yeah, plugs time. What do

you what do you need two have plugs? Uh? So yeah, we have an upcoming live stream on Twitch with Veterans for Peace. They have some gamers for Peace and Tuesday night on at eight p m they're gonna be playing solar Punk solar Punk Futures with us. Uh. If people are interested in the game, they can download it for print and play on our website at h T T P colon slash Slash the Future dot w TF uh

and UH. People can also find a link to our kickstarter on that website if they're interested in pre ordering physical copy, which we very much appreciate. We're getting close to funded. That's very exciting. I hope, I hope, I hope. I hope it gets funded. I want to see more of these because the art is extremely cool. And yeah, well, thank you to you for coming on this. This has been it could happen here and we'll see you the next time an episode goes up. I don't know when

that's gonna be right now, So yeah, wonderful extros. Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat Death of the universe. It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. Or more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our website cool zone media dot com or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources.

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