It Could Happen Here Weekly 17

it's there. There's there's a little bit of getting put back together, but today's mostly them falling apart. I'm your host, Christopher Wong. With me, I have Lucy who is a teacher in Chicogo 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. Hell yeah. So before before we fully start to get into the teachers Union and Lord Lightfoot's foory, 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 LORI, 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 is 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. And so you know, you just be on the red lane and there's a wat team and you know, because again this is what happens when you put a swat

team on the fucking subway. They immediately shown a dude in the back for nothing, 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 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 and 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 this is the the CPD. 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 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 four and everyone else is just still there. It's great, it's a it's a time. So that this is this is who Lorily Lightfoot is. Um, she sucks. Like everyone hates her 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 led Lightfoot instruted this. But yeah, needless to say, Lightfoot not acting in good faith.

Just absolutely Yeah, an 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 she's like the nightmare refusion of like batman and a Batman villain, like what if what do you think the worst aspects of booth 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 lay Put 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 you're theyre 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 Chogo 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 in them and they

still don't like her. It's like, it's incredible. How do you unite the teachers union and the police union. One something that's the only thing that they've ever agreed on is fuck Lory Lightfoot. It's really incredible. So Lifefoot's latest scheme, Um, yeah,

do you want to explain? I guess go back a little bit in 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 at all, 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 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 hectic at 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 in 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 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 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 off,

we do want to be working. Um. But so I almost thought that she had like mixed up with this person said 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 smile. Yeah. Like actually, like as someone who had like like I genuinely did have a kind of bad reaction because the guy jabbed it up really far and like I was like sneezing a lot afterwards. But it's like what, 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. Paedro 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 not sorry, it's it's actually the Uh, it's the principles. Responsive to the principles were like no, yeah, CPS is kind of interesting. Um, this can be really good or really bad depending on what school here put. The principles really have a lot of autonomy over their school. Um. I have 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 than 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's

gonna be closed on Friday. Okay, school's closed on Friday. Great, sounds good. And then Lightfoot gets on the dang news and tells everybody that it will be done on a school by school basis at principles 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 know, 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 were 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 they were going to be spikes, Like we knew that in Chicago had what was I Illinois had some like astronomically high number of new COVID 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 had been trying has been trying forever to get CPS two 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 program 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 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 when 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 the 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 preach that to third majority that we needed. So, you know, CT, you 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 refocus on this for a second because even a lot of people who were sympathetic to to to the teachers unions on Twitter, you see this a lot, they'll they'll be like the CTU

went on a strike. It's like, no, they didn't like teachers and teachers are not on strike. The teachers are attempting to work from home and the 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 one to 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 illegally. It is in our contract that she can't lock us out and she did so. 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 at 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 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 defined us, because good Lord, the internet is bad. Goodbye, 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 Lucy about how the Chicago Public school system is following apart under the relentless assault of cruelty and malice and incompetence by the Chicago Public Schools and by the Mayor, Lord 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 the in these really like sort of what what is it

actually like to teach in these classrooms? 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 have people know this about middle school age kids. They love to touch each other, especially boys. They love to like wrestle. They're was putting each other in headlocks. I am constantly having to just be like six feet six ft or three ft or

whatever CDC 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. There's they're constantly finding like weird little excuses to have their mask off. Like they'll just sit there with like like there're a lot to have water bottles because they can't use the water contains. 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, they've 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 mass 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, because 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 been like I just like I don't get it, Like I just like fundamentally, there's there's like a mental break where it's like I don't understand why like Lightfoot and CPS 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 it 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 year 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 like 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 gonna 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. Yeah, like I need you to shout it, say it like you mean whatever it is. So but 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. 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 some of these people, a lot of these people are going to get disabled. Um, yeah, I mean the long term, long terffects is really bad. And you know, one off, if people remember we we did an episode with on our Friends who's 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 just put him in bed all day. Because there's you know, there's 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 child cope 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 those 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 later 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 studie teacher, not a science teacher, but this seems like a bad move to make. 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 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, weird noorsiders 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 like 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 the 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 presented loans. Most of those loans got written off and meanwhile, yeah, it's like, well, okay, what did life to do with the COVID buddy? She she gave it to the cops. And oh hey, guess guess who's also just a rapperance 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 life Foot's things was that there there was a huge campaign against building more police academies because you know,

everyone hates child to police apart, right, 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 you put some better ventilation into schools? Yeah, well it's gonna Yeah, it's 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 in Lightfoot was like no no, not her, like one of her campaign thing big and pain things like 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 the cod is 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 what 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, I mean it's it's but they're just 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, been 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 schedule? 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 tracing models are they're absurd. They are like kafka esque, 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 racer 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 ft 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. But you're 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 does. 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 also just wanted 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 Chicago area school, and 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 drownd friend up. See my god lord, 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 made like in a classroom, but it didn't work, so it just like actually blew up like it was a time but like like like learning, Okay, I got to light the school on fire, but like like this is a this is like yeah, like like these schools are not like they're not the environments Yeah 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

background as the pipes were messed up. It was weird, like and they couldn't fix it. I think it was it 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 there because it was like it wasn't exposed. Yeah, abestos over like I get like I I went to like a good, well funded one of these schools, right 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 fun. 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 like 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 wearing masks 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 worth read, 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's something I've heard from other teachers that like the preparing remote 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 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 into 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 or 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 this 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, like you're willing listen 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 were 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 seeing 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 vouchers, and we started with all of these like uh, state testing requirements and withholding funding from schools that don't meet those, you know, test standards and all of these like, um, this extra oversight on 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 remote. Noticed that Lorry Lightfoot's kids are in a charter school that is not remote. Well, and more than Lightfoot Lightfoot Lightfoot, Lightfoot will not put herself in a room with the with the same number of people like a teacher should

go to every day. You won't. And she was telling people at the press conferences they had to wear their masks, and then she wasn't wearing hers, which was very challenge to me. Like that's what they like when when you when you get to the politician level, they know it's dangerous, Like they know they they you can tell 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 dumer 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, it 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, the 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 the teacher's 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, 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 teacher's 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 no, but

he's going to do ship until we go back to work. Um. They could if they, you know, they could try to like 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 do. 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 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 Ayannaka's comrades were anti school. It's like, yeah, like, okay, I hate school. I'm for 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 just 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 like like like so like I I my high school was like all them 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 were two counter fanidling forces. One was that I the Christians didn't seem to understand 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 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 I've gotten into so many teaching spaces by talking about how I like critical pedagogy and I don't understand Frary was a compete, 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 way is 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 staff 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 stay fine. Let 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. 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. Yeah, do you have anything that you want to plug? Like, do you have a way to support the teacher shore Um? I think I'll send you a flyer that we have. It has some information for contacting Alderman, getting COVID tests and potential to sign um. If you could post that, I would really appreciate. I definitely can

definitely do that. Awesome, Thank you, thanks for coming on. Yeah, good talking to you. All right, Robert, do you want to open on us up with something? I don't know? Nope, you're opening the opening is is that is what you just did's already opened? Well, come to take it happen here the podcast about how things things do be crumbling sometimes,

including our ability to introduce the podcast that page. 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 out 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 off, like the largest

single single vectors. 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, 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 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 near portion of the episode, This one's pretty simple. Could mass formation psyches this happen here? No way, not this time. We created it. Not this time, No, not this time is

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 tip, it's a total fabrication. Nope, not really ever happened anywhere. I might also argue, no, nope, fiction, We've solved the podcast, total fabric This is not a thing,

total fabrication, made up tale. So yeah, well, but when whenever these like cook doctors bring up mass formation psychoses, you can actually kind of watch them get close to understanding something real, but then they veer off into reactionary nonsense. Like most powerful nonsense, 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 Eurogan seems fond of pushing right now. So, the first thing I want to talk about is Dr Peter McCole, which is not the 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 McColl. 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 head that he started to kind of go off the rails, and he he initially began an helping conspiracy theories, in particular around

hydroxy chlora quinn um. And McColl was also in the news earlier this year due to or I guess uh, due to a 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 this represented himself as a Baylor and ploye 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. Vaccines are neither safe nor effective. Um. He was a very early hydroxical orkin 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 it once, the post infection natural immunity is a 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 existence of Jay 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 bolsa 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. Bolsonaro 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 he. McCall also asserts that fifty thou Americans have died from the vaccine shots. This is not true, um, looking at like deaths possibly associated with it, it is like 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 McCall thinks that or at least promotes that the idea that like the vaccine is a conspiracy theory to suppress hydroxical

work win 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 clip. Hopefully you guys can hear this of of of McColl talking

about mass formation psychosis. Dope. We've seen mass psychosis in history before 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 fight, go kicking and screaming. This type of that's a mass psychosis. So what Desmond says is it must be four conditions not

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 enjoy. Number three, there must be constant, free floating anxiety. Anxiety of more virus is more disability, more depth, more anxiety. And then the last one is that cap or number four is there must be a single solution offered by an entity and authority, the vaccine.

The only solution to the pandemic is the vaccine. We're in a mass echosis. 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 would it be

any vaccine. It's the same with the masks, where mass it doesn't matter what kind of mask, just put it over your 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 like I think it's like 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 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 real person. 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 Hi

e lane. But that's the story for another day. So yeah,

that's that's pretty dumb. Actually, the notion that people were hypnotized into peacefully walking into gas I just need to stay like that's the 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 here. 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 ex arians is um, which is some of the most harrowing ship 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 gunned 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 function? And 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 Auschwitz and Dachau. 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 break even more so, honestly. Yeah, 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 Mombshale. Dr Peter McCall on The Joe Rogan Show says Maderna made the code 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 pandemic 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 and McColl 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

Dr Robert Malone. So during the last week one, Rogan invited Malone onto his show. Malone's of of a virologist and and a immunization doctor who claims credit for inventing the m RNA vaccine in a pair of papers from the late eighties spoilers, He did not There was work on the vaccine before him, and work continued after him. Yeah yeah, um yeah. And 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 saying I wonder if this could maybe happen, um, And then knowledge into this due a bit. There were people asking similar questions and publishing papers at the same time

of the question and before. 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 fund 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 the 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 back stating that he did not actually literally invent the vaccine, but instead developed a vaccine technology platform. Um. Then he presented logically copies with nine patents, none of which are the patents for functioning mRNA vaccines. 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 and never has worked and the patents are expired. Um. Anyway, I need to past 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 but because because Malone has crafted this you know, narrative that I'm the

inventor of this thing. You know, like just like we've seen with my like COVID griff 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 head

scientist 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're 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 cod worse worse actually, and you know this is this is the equiped from Steve Bannon. You're hearing it from the individual who invented the M R and A vaccines and has dedicated his life to vaccines.

He's the opposite of an anti vaxer, right, So it's it's that. So, yeah, start starting around June one, Malone began to make the rounds you know, Bennon 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 run rampant around a health issue. Um, that's when Rogan invited him on. It 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 is

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 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 and 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 and then 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 followed 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 what 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 decides not to basically European intellectual inquiry into what the heck happened? I hate this guy already 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, 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, not connected socially anymore except through social media. Um. And then this thing happened and everybody focused on it. That is how massformation 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 Verst Si 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 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 win 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 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 anarchist or like like hierarchy lens, it reinforces the world views they have and makes them not have 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.

Realize is that this form of mass hypnosis, the madness of crowds, can account for the strange phenomenon of about 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, Western 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 in washedt and hypnotized fully doctor 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 subject 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 Free Corps ship, there were these massive, million strong right wing armed street movements that existed for the tyrety 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 fashion and works in powerdy namics, 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're 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 against 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 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 gain 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 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 Knells said that I that 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 of the Congressional Record. Not te is the entire reason why you know about these people. Yeah, yeah, entirely. So if we're not for big Tech, Joe Rogan would be narrating videos

of robots fighting. So Jack Sobiak got real into this because he loves anything that goes viral. If it weren't for big Tech, Jacks Beak would have died in the ditch of an oxycontent overdose. So 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 gonna like projected onto everything he sees now because like this this new all encompassing topic that makes you avoid what fashions an act really is and then point out at the things you don't like because 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 as a textbook mass formation theory tactic, wait till you see what comes next? And six today has anything? What happened? Goddamn thing? They got fucking lin Manuel Morenda

to sing songs? 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 pop ularity of lin Manuel Miranda might be a mass formation psychosis. Absolutely, the popularity of Hamilton's is a vest formation psychosis. 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 and 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. Yeah, 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, 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 you 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 like 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's going to end on this day and time that day in 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 clinical psychology at at a university in Belgium, Matthias Desmott. 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 tried 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 as 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. I think that's said enough. Um, all right, well fuck it, 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 Taddy has points out, does 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 a Sbarowski. Um, He's I desperately wish Joe Rogan would just sit and narrate this book on his show because it would do actually a service to the world anyway. Um. That's that's the episode 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 are you doing, Andrew? How do you feel 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 work shop anything. We just we just roll right ahead. UM. So abolished work and all that abolished 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 at the end of the aerographs 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, Andrew, 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 is there's a lot. So today we'll be exploring what it is, where it came from, and the rule I see it playing in our strides towards anarchy. But first, of course we should really get 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, founder of the Institute for Bioregional Research in and as a movement it really gained a lot of popularity in the late nineteen seventies in the Osaks, 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 bio 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 in Australia and these groups there are hundreds

of them all over. Um. They get involved with local ecological work like preservation and restoration, plumic culture or that. And they also form networks so they would link on specific issues like water conservation or organic farming or cheap 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 bradish routine 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 honor our bioregions and the connections between them if we have to be

ecologically sound. And this was sell 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 their 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 standing for neotropic and E standing for East, and tadas grouped with South America and particularly the Venezuela Guyana's region for obvious reasons being that the Urn cou and other rivers that come from the Amazon flew out to you know, trend ads shows really so clunky segue um.

There are a couple of different concepts that one might want to keep in mind when approaching 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 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 bio 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 announcemately like campus society and capitalist world and too you don't 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 Grievers work, you know that states have been pretty equalsider from their very inception. So I think that if power regionalism 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 in the context of was often within the context of like the relationship between the local and esteem and that sort of thing almost like a kind of I don't know if I'm using this to in correctly, but 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 minarchism 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 yeah, 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 say menarchisms kind of like a weird grab bag thing that'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 rights out of state. So either the Minerica 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, 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 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 means, 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, down't have necessarily 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 eco sidle from the inceptions, 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 meant to points to the surveyor harm to nature, the last damage and destruction of ecosystems that's you know, caused over decades by you know these companies and really

by the system as a whole. So it's often viewed through like a legal lens, as in, you know, these companies should be tried for their crimes um and as like for committing go side and that kind of thing, because it's often viewed like as like illegal like lower street put in please to classifiy equoside 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 just 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 as they're sort of and that's that's what I try to Like, what I realized is is kind of sports now and 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 and 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, aca capitalists are 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 meming 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, local re local government or federal government have the case. And what I really tried 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 to take 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 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 just you you cannot do it. And you know what that means is that states are sort of necessarily going, well, 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 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 states environmentalists. 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 regions 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 remember the exact name of like

the the sort of like ideology or whatever. I think it was like this Elie Soviet Union probably one of your name, this Elie Soviet Union 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. Like Senku. Oh yeah, yeah, he just had this, he had this theory and it's just like push it and yeah, it

led to some serious issues. Yeah, and I think, you know, if we're gonna talk like what's important about sort of birationalism, it's you have to have if you're going to implement anything right, you know, especially when you're trying to sort of manipulate biospheres, you're trying to preserve biosphares, 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 act to be suppressed and it's something you know, and I all said this there there's there's there's a kind of like there's like a kind of neoliberal version of this stuff. First, like oh, well do you know who local 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 like that also doesn't work and

it's basically just tootized. Like yeah, but because that I really like sits le doesn't sit 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. Whether they'll be like doing the whole land Acknowledge months 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's just like boom,

carry yeah, carry on with business as usual. Yeah, which I learned this technique from so and so tried, no, let me work as a consultant for your company. Yeah yeah, yeah. It's it's commod 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 structure as 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 it is also something that sort of pleagues like some environmentalists

in terms. So 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 of hearts nature, right, and this is not a bioregional concept, right, This thing called bioregional reinhabitation in it in being that um meaning that we must come who to the geographical and biophysicalter and reinhabit understand its ecologically uniqueness and familiarize ourselves with the stories woven into the fabric of said land. It's history, it's people with

it's 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 bioy 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 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 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 in 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 you 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 so I think. I think I may have talked about this on this 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 Wilderness by Yeah Coroning, the Trouble with Wilderness is one of the things that like if you, 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 this

like completely untapped thing. And it's like, well, yeah, okay, so that 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 reported them. Yeah. Yeah, and it's especially yeah, it was for us literally planted those forests were I think even more pointedly 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 every bit 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 acts like yeah, like I 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 the Incan National parks were literally like but people would go in 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 not people like those guys. Yeah, it's like when when when when those guys are talking about like the purity of the wild 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 humans 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 whatnot, UM 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 in a lost city or civilization discovered, 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 Amazon Amazon as 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 considered to be agriculture,

but it's absolutely a kind of agriculture. And because people don't see it as aricle, just like well, 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 that 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 Dudish like everyone works less we do now.

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 But what was the name of the book that you were talking about just now? 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 it or someone check that out. Okay, who wants to say we're back Just that's now, that's the exit area. You're welcome here we are or some so yeah, once we have like embraced our understanding that you know, we belong to the land and not vice and was 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 Show and it's about developing the observational skills to observe the bioregional history, to develop the conceptual skills to juxtapoose you know, the scale of you know, the community and the region, and the ecosystem, the bioregion, all these different levels. 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 developed 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 then Colombia Regenerativa and the Pluriversity in the Himalayas as well, and many others. They're basically engaging in efforts involving applied education, alternative 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 this 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, they're 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 done 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 bet to 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 and 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 new area. UM be the change you want to see Art one, make it happen.

And really also, I would say, find ways to link projects for environmental sustainability and restoration with projects for human umanancipation. Find ways to 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 ways 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 work anti work, work for figuring the structures of more horizontal, originally ethical

and sustainable way of life. And of course disrupt the projects like getting the way of those schools. And I see that as tentatively as I can to avoid legal trouble. That's it. Take care everyone and be kind to every piece. 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 you game that we are here in part of talk about called solar Punk Features. Hello, Dick, I, Max, How how are you doing? Hey? Doing well? Thanks? Yeah, doing great. Thanks for having us on. Yeah, excited to

have you too 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. That's a good question. So 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 it 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 year or 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 Chain 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 of 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 coology 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 people, 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 produce. 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 utop be in 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 a guerrilla gardening? Why this and not some other kind of organizing etcetera, etcetera. Um, Yeah, her you tube say about that. Yeah, well, I'm not gonna hite on guerrilla gardening. I definitely think it's a boation. Yeah,

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 game that I got a little bit into earlier. But you know, for one, UM, I think it helps reach abroad and often dep 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, like 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 lot 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 on a very basic logistical level, but prevent people

from burning out. 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 are too who 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, fund 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 to 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, if we 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 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 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 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 perhaps you know, these ideas of like guilt and shame or martyrdom or whatever need 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 tapletop games are a lot of sort of cloudy storytelling is stuff. But like I know, like like so like 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, I mean, 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 mind yeah, like mind. 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.

I gues it doesn't create anything. There's no sort of like I 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 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, is 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 truck 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 other things I think is interesting to me about how you Tube sort of the team put this project together is 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 it. So 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 accompany 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 set us of physical copies of how can people if they want to use cards and stuff? What is how how would one 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, 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 uh 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 unique and something that's not just intrinsic to sell their 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, etcetera. 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 acietm where we had to like write a you like, right, 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 and it was just like, it's just really grim certific. 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 than 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 asked 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 predictions 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 to 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 at eight p m they're gonna be playing solar Punk solar Punk Features 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 WTF 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 it gets fund and I want to see more of these because the art is extremely cool. And yeah, well, thank you to you for coming on 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. Thanks for listening.