Cool Zone Media book Club. But club uh uh is the cools of Media.
Club.
Welcome to cools On Media book Club, your weekly book club where you don't have to do the reading because I do the reading.
That's right. You can finally illiterate Max by forgetting how to read. You know, go ahead wherever you're listening right now and just hit yourself in the head as hard as you can, you know, knock some of that knowledge loose, because we're going to take care of the reading for you. Yeah, with a book, with a book, whatever, drain cleaner. It's all good. You know, you don't need to think anymore. We'll do that for you.
Yeah, you can trust us because we don't have political opinions.
That's right. I've never known politics, never.
Even heard of it. The episode I just finished recording kind of about the fact that in the eighties everyone pretended like they didn't have politics, and so therefore, yeah, had politics. So that's real on my mind. But I much prefer where we're at now, where instead people try to be upfront again about what they believe, so that you can go into it. Yeah, having a sense of how people are. Yeah, and Cory Doctoro makes it pretty
clear that his work is political. I don't know if y'all caught onto that by now.
No no, no political communism, I wouldn't guess no never.
Yeah, I do love the like taking the piss level of joke of the Communist Party, just meaning like when communism is a thing you do you know?
Yeah, I like that. Yeah, we go take the factory and make some shit of our own for a little while.
Yeah.
I've been thinking a lot about this in some of my own work too. Like, one of the interesting things about writing stuff that's supposed to have happened post a revolution is you're like a generation passed when all of
the politics that the people reading the book like. Theoretically, your characters should not be political in the same way as the reader, right, because totally the thing that everyone reading this is thinking about all of our problems and why a revolutionism or isn't needed, and everyone you know, living a generation after that, your politics are just like watching an old TV show, right, It's like trying to get into family matters or something. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, is
that what you added an accordionist? That's why I added in an accordion was that in family matters?
Yeah? Wait, that's Oracle right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're good.
Yeah.
Yes.
I made my living plane accordion on the street for a while, so I was very aware of the accordionists in pop culture because there weren't a lot of them. Yeah, but what I was aware of was awkward transitions into resuming the story.
Oh yeah, let's do it.
We are on part four, the rousing conclusion. I say that as if I'm joking. It is like a conclusion of party discipline, a novella by Corey Doctro, novella shorter than a novel and longer than a novelette. Where we last left our heroes, they had just left their communist party and they were ready to distribute shopping carts, all
very criminally. I love the idea that there's a lot of tension in this right because they're like, oh, they can actually get in an awful lot of trouble for printing out shopping carts and giving them the people, Like it's a successful bit of tension. How they're like, oh, we're high school kids having a laugh, but they're like, oh, this could destroy their future.
You had that experience, if you had any kind of a childhood of like suddenly you realize the drugs are a little bit harder, and like, oh my gosh, there could be consequences to this, Like this started out as just me going out with my friends, and something could really happen badly here.
Yeah, like someone in your friend scene dies from the terrible decisions that you all keep making, or yeah, goes to jail or right wrecks their brain.
Yep.
We rode back to Burbank with Charell on my lap and one of my butt cheeks squeezed which between the edge of the passenger seat and the door. The truck squeaked on its suspension as we went over the potholes, riding low with a huge load of shopping carts under tarps in its bed. The carts were pretty amazing, strong as hell, but light enough for me to lift over my head using crazy math to create a ten segrety
structure that would hold up to serious abuse. They were rustproof, super steerable, and could be reconfigured into different compartment sizes or shelves with grills that clipped on to the sides and light as they were. You put enough of them into a truck and they'd weigh a ton a literal ton in Jose. Our driver's truck was only rated for a half ton. It was a rough ride. Our plan was to pull up on skid row and start handing out carts to anyone around, giving people two or three
to share with their friends. Each truck had a different stretch we were going to hit. But just soon as we got close to our spot, two things became very apparent. One, there were no homeless people around because two the place was crawling with five to zero. The Burbank cops had their dumb old tanks out, big armored m wraps that they used for riot control and whenever they wanted to put on a show of force, and there was a lot of crime scene tape and blinking lights on hobby horses.
The thicker it got, the more scared we got. This kind of thing wasn't unusual for downtown Burbank. A couple times a month you could expect to see BPD flexing shutting down some street. There was no reason to suspect they were out there for us, but it was asshole tightly scary to be coming from a crime scene with a truck full of evidence and too many people in the front seat of the truck and looking at all this law turn it around. The whites of Cherrell's eyes
were showing, but her voice was steady. Jose, the driver didn't need to be told twice with robotic motions. He signaled a turn, pulled into an empty parking lot, put the truck into reverse, backed it out, and headed back the way we came. He wasn't the only one. While some of the drivers were pulling up to the roadblock and asking the cop which weighed a detour, others were turning around and finding their own way. Shit, shit, shit. His voice was a low monotone. I got an idea.
Cherrell's smile was funny and tight and not exactly good natured. Uh oh, she punched me on the shoulder. Shut up, I got an idea. We pulled up two blocks from Alai's house, a dead end street that backed into the railroad fence. Jose got the ramp in place without clanging it, and the casters on the carts rolled with the silence of elegant walk away engineering until we had them all arranged into two long snakes of shopping carts on the sidewalk.
Jose looked uncomfortable as he stood by the driver's door. You sure about this?
We got this.
Charel is a lot more confident than me, and there's no point in arguing with Cherrell when she's feeling confident. Still, Jose looked at me. I gave him a thumbs up and a smile, and Cherrell made the same gesture in a way that made sure that I knew that she was making fun of me. I know for a fact that one of the secret superpowers that we get as teen girls is that grown ass men can't stand it when we might be making fun of them, and Jose was no exception. He gave us a shake of his
head and drove off. Now what but I knew Charrell grabbed the handle at the back of one's snake. Now we push. She set off and left me to follow her. Look, it must have been three in the morning at this point, and if anyone saw us, they must have been left scratching their heads. But I don't think anyone saw us residential burbank streets three am. Nah. The lights were all off at Ali's house when we pushed our carts onto his lawn, but we could still hear corny candy billy
music coming through the door, which wasn't locked. Charrell let herself in without knocking. The living room was dimly lit by a few candles, and it smelled like unwashed people getting it on, which they had been doing until pretty recently. There were candy necklaces and cowboy hats everywhere along with the bodies. One of the bodies rolled over and squinted
at us. Ola Aleeh. Charrell said he was pretty if he liked him pretty, and when he wasn't being stupid, he was pretty smart, which was more than you could say of most of the boys I'd known. It wasn't crazy for Cherrell to like him, even if he was one hundred percent destined to crash land in the Land of Lost Losers forever, Charrelle. He scrambled to his feet, using a pillow to cover himself. Jesus, give me a seck. He gave us a view of his ass as he made his way to his bedroom, and then came back
out wearing a pair of jeans and nothing else. You guys are a little late. Party ended a couple hours ago, Charrell sucked her teeth. We didn't come here for your party, Alejandro. We're on a mission. He shook his head. I don't like the sound of that. You're gonna love it, fool, Shut up and listen. Charell didn't bother him with the little incriminating details. Just hit the high points. There were fifty shopping carts parked on his lawn, the greatest shopping
carts ever made. They were a gift to Burbank's homeless people. Don't need to know where they came from. We got to give them out on the down low. And that's where you and You're no good friends come into the picture. We need a street crew. I count ten of you. That's five shopping carts each. Call it an hour's work. You all have incurred quite a debt to society tonight with your debauchery and illegal dope fiending, and I'm here
to offer you a way to make it up. One of the cuttle puddlers groaned and told us to keep it down, and Ali shook his head. Sorry. I couldn't tell if he was apologizing to her, or to Cherrelle or all of us. Charelle switched from her stern glare to her million dollars smile. Come on, alih, these parties are getting old. But you can't even tell them apart anymore. How long before you get so tired you give up on it. On the other hand, you throw in with
us and have the experience of a lifetime. I heard her put something extra into that, and I looked back and forth between them without making it obvious, and she already hooked up with him. I didn't think so, but watching the two of them, I could see it was a close thing. Ali, What the fuck that was another of the sleepers? I looked more closely. I knew him, Dwayne Marshall graduated the year before. What the actual was everyone except me spending their weekends at Orgi's d Get up? Okay,
I want to ask you something. Ali was grinning now too, reflecting back to Cherrell's million Dollar Million wants smile. That girl is unstoppable, and that's why we all love her, much like we love ads that come into the middle of stories.
They're also unstoppable. You couldn't stop this if you wanted, unless you take out your phone and press the skip ahead button, which is easily within your willpower. Except for them, I'm going to say twenty eight percent of the audience who were engaged in some sort of task so precarious that they have to listen to the ensuing ads and to you, we say sorry.
That's so often me because I listened to podcasts while I like do a lot of physical crafting. And I'll be like, yeah, holding a shelf over my head with a drill, being like, ah, dang it. Yeah.
I'll see people be like I run some sort of heavy machinery and I can't skip ahead of the ads. Damn you people. And I just want you to know, as frustrating as it is, your occasional half attention is what funds our entire live. Yes, so thank you, yeah, you know, thank you and no one.
Else and we're back.
We're back. I hope that guy on the forklift is doing good.
Yeah, proud of you.
Proud of you, buddy.
Sleeping on the streets in Burbank is against the law, and if you can't pay the fine, you go to jail. The city's homeless aren't easy to find after dark, but there are a few places that are reliable. The food bank, the soup kitchen, the library parking lot. It's been years since the library opened its doors, but they kept the free internet. We split into four groups of two. I figured that Cherrell would go with Alai, but she's surprised by linking arms with me. Library. I covered my surprise
and shrugged. I guess I looked at her. How come you're not with Ali? He's with Serena. That was the girl we'd woken up at the start when we got Ali. They a thing. She shook her head. Not a thing, but you know, a thing tonight. Not my place to get it between them, schro what's going on with you, that fool? She pinched my arm. Nothing you need to worry about, she shook her head. Look, he's pretty, and when he's not high, he's pretty smart too. But Ali
Martinez isn't any kind of boyfriend material. He's okay for relieving tension, you know, having a little fun, but I'm not about to tie myself up to him. Look at him, those clothes, I stiffled at laugh. He'd even put on the miniature cowboy hat. That's why I only ever see him at his house. He's not much good on the outside, but in private, I shook my head. Chelle and I told each other everything, except it seemed like we didn't
not always. Graduation was weeks away, days really, and I'd assumed that whatever happened with the rest of the fools, I'd been locked up since I was five. I was going to be tight with Charrell forever. But she knew I thought Ali was a half wit, and so she hadn't told me about him. And Ali was a half wit. Plus he was hoking up with other girls right in front of her. She deserved better than that. A day before, I'd have had the impulse to tell Cherrell that she
was being more stupid than she had any excuse to be. Today, I felt like I just noticed a huge gap between us, but maybe it'd been there all along. We were besties, but we were also about to be graduates. Did grads have besties? We pushed our snake of carts to the library, the Buena Vista branch, where there were a handful of permanentish homeless tents and a larger population of rotating homeless leeching off the Wi Fi and the power outlet. Set
into the concrete benches. Someone had used cold chisels to smash out the dividers that were supposed to stop you from sleeping on them. There were a lot of spaces in b Bank where you could get busted for sleeping out, but everyone knew that the homeless ruled the Buoynevista branch in its park The wheels whispered as we steered them carefully up the driveway, passed the old night deposit box for books, dentened and fire blackened in the harsh yellow street lights. I guess it pays to be a light
sleeper when you're homeless. By the time we reached the middle of the parking lot, the wheels whisper had woken up at least a dozen people, silhouetted and sitting up on benches or in the grass, draped in blankets or wrapped in sleeping bags. We stopped. They looked at us, and we looked back. I felt like we were expected to give a speech or something. We come in peace. These are for you. A person stood. She was a white lady, not much older than me. She came closer.
I realized I recognized her. She'd been a senior my freshman year. She didn't look good, no obvious bruises or track marks, and she wasn't that dirty, but still she didn't look good. She smiled at me and nodded her head, like and I help you Uh, Hi, I wish Chrel would say something. I snuck her a look. She had checked out, looking glazed and tired and like someone who danced her ass off and scared herself to death and also was struggling with a shitty boyfriend. Hello. She had
a great voice. I couldn't remember her name, but a clear picture came to me her singing in front of the school jazz band at an assembly. Uh, I just heard of the shopping carts between us. We'd pushed forty. What if there were a lot more people than carts? Would we trigger a riot? Would we have to decide? Uh? Good work line that AP Forensics really did the trick we made these. They're really good, lightweight, strong, durable. I waved my hands over them like I was on home
shopping video. Neat. Her voice was lovely, her hair was limp and stringy, and there was something wrong with the way she looked at me, squinting. Hadn't she warn't glasses in high school? I wondered what had happened to them? Thought about how little difference a better shopping cart would make to someone who could barely see. She squinted harder at me. You go to burbank. Hi, don't you I nodded, yes, ma'am. They made her smile, pretty smile. Is this like a
shop project or something? I shook my head. Nothing like that. I looked around. It was well a factory Encino was shutting down, so we had a communist party there made these. You had a communist party. She really did have a pretty smile. That's epic. And you made these kids today. You're so ingenious. Give me hope for the future. Charrelle giggled a little at that. Welcome back, Cherrell. We made them for you, all of you. The white lady nodded.
When do you graduate this month? She nodded again. What are you doing after? I'm going to Glendale Community College for an associates and business administration. Then I was going to try for financial aid at Northridge. I'd said this so many times to so many people. It just tumbled out. I want to stay close to home, save money.
She nodded.
That's exactly what I did. Straight a's all the way. Watch out for Calculus for finance, my jors. It's brutal. I felt like I had been punched in the gut. I didn't know how she'd ended up sleeping on a park bench. But I hadn't thought that maybe it involved getting the same kinds of grades I was hoping to get. Well. Uh, I swallowed hard because my eyes were threatening to overflow with tears, deep breath. I don't know if you all can use these, but we hope maybe you could. They're
really good, light strong, they look really good. She was being polite, she had good manners. Thank you. Can we I mean, can we leave them with you to give out? She smiled and looked understanding, condescending, even like, oh honey, you have no idea, but also but you will. I'm sure I can figure something out. We walked away in silence, but once we were out of earshot, Charrell said, you think she's going to try and sell them, I mean
to the other people. I scowled at her. I was so unaccountably pissed at her, but she was just being Charrelle, No dummy, She's going to give them away to her friends. It was dawned now, pretty and pink, and the birds were waking up and saying hello to each other at the tops of their voices. Chelle, what are you doing after graduation? Girl? I'm going to sleep in every morning for a month. But after that, you mean college, Yeah, we turned left on Magnolia, the fancy stores to their
twenty four hour security guards. Some of those guys had familiar faces a couple years before they had been seen. They were the lucky ones. The unlucky ones were barely visible, wrapped in blankets and curled up real small behind signboards and trash cans. Some of them would have familiar faces, but only because they didn't take advantage of these deals.
That's right, if you want to stay off the streets or on the streets, but in a way that's like a nice street, you know, Like what's a good streets Sunset Boulevard, Yeah, Sunset Boulevard. That one's from the songs.
Yeah, Sister's a mercy song about it.
I like, sure, that's probably a happy song.
I'd imagine, Yeah, this was a mercy famously happy band.
All right. Well, I'm gonna just assume that and go ahead with my life scheduling music to play during this birthday party.
Because my birthday party to play Sisters a Mercy, But instead you're gonna play these ads.
Well, I hope. Eight year old Kindle from Duluth enjoys the birthday party soundtrack I put together, featuring that Sisters of Mercy's song, and also a minute and a half of me explaining to you that I'm going to put music in the little boy's birthday After that, it's pure sca baby.
Do you ever find yourself like in regular conversations and wanting to pivot to ads? Like it just gets to you.
It's like, how I imagine a great baseball player, Nolan Ryance. Sometimes he just throws a ball as hard as he fucking can. Yeah, like it probably comes out of nowhere. Unless you know him, then you're just like, oh, that's Nolan. He's just he throws a speedball every now and again. He can't stop himself too good at it.
Yeah, Well, now that we're back from those ads college, she blew air out. My mom has been asking me about that too. But you got into Glendale CC, right, Yeah, I got in linked her arm with mine. In the old days a year ago, two years ago, we'd come down to Magnolia on a Saturday and shop or window shop with the throngs of nice people like an outdoor mall.
We loved the high class vintage places that had survived the transition to Coteur brands because it was the owners behind the counter, not shop clerks whose fear of losing their jobs made them mean, and the owners would let people like us in, let us try on clothes we could never afford. Hadn't done that since junior year. And it wasn't the same at six am with the stores all closed, but still it felt so good to be with my bestie on this street, arm in arm, like
we were kids without a care in the world. I got in like it was a death sentence. But I'm not going charrelle. Why that's side. Come on, I knew you could get a loan, she snorted. How you think that white lady in the park living out of a shopping cart. Girl, you borrow a dollar for college, you pay back, and you miss a payment, you pay back one hundred. I want to spend my life on the run from a loan shark. I'll borrow money from an
honest criminal on the corner. Not some university. We had mandatory classes on debt management and student borrowing, and I had to admit that this is what they added up to. When you looked at them carefully. This was pretty much what they were saying, but Charrell, I didn't have anything else to say. When you're right, you're right. Charrell was right, So what was I going to do? I want to get some breakfast.
Bibi's.
They had the biggest portions in Burbank, pancakes the size of manhole covers, coffee, and buckets. We used to go there for breakfast after morning swim team at the y hadn't been in a year at least. Hell yeah, Cherrell linked arms with me. We didn't talk about school, or borrowing money or communist parties for the rest of the morning. The shopping carts were everywhere, pushed by homeless people all around Burbank. You could spot them a mile away every
time I saw one. In the weeks afterward, I felt a little warm tingle I made that I was eighteen years old and I had finally had something to show for the years i'd been walking around on the earth. The Communist party at Steelbridge didn't make the news, but the kids who'd been there gossiped about it, and I was the coolest girl in school the last month. A couple times I got to deny having anything to do with it. When impressionable freshmen came up to me and asked,
it feels true. I'd organized the whole thing. I coasted along towards graduation on autopilot. My finals were all done. My acceptance letter from Glendale CC was stuck to the fridge, and with it the letter pre approving my student loan. Every time I looked at it, I got the opposite feeling to the one I got when I saw one of those shopping carts. Mama paid for the gown and mortar board rental for my graduation, and Tisha made fun of me as I tried it on in the mirror.
When my phone twipped at me that night at three a m. And I answered it, Tisha mouthed, I'm telling like she always did, and I rolled my eyes like I always did. Sharrell, You're gonna get me killed, Mama, isn't joking? LINEE been along? Silence You okay? That walk away you met at the party with the hair, Yeah, I got a light feeling in my head, a light feeling in my guts. You still know how to get in touch with her?
Not a question?
Yeah, Tisha stared at me hard. She could tell from that one word something was up. Charrell you're not gonna you could come too, Like I hadn't thought that thought at least once a day for weeks and weeks, every time I thought about graduation, every time I looked at that letter on the fridge, Charrelle, it be an adventure, the adventure, what do you have to lose? I looked at Tisha. She had always been my mini me, and
tag along had turned into a truly good person. While I watched funny and sweet and trustworthy and sassy so sassy, I thought about Mama. I thought about Charrelle in those times we'd gone shopping together, or hung out or gone out for sports. I don't know Cherrelle, Honestly, I don't know. She drew in a breath, but I'd hate to lose it, whatever it is. Oh, Titia was staring at me like I might explode. I got that info though from that lady with the hair. I felt like the words were
coming out of someone else's mouth. Okay, don't think I should say over the phone, though, I'll bring it to school tomorrow. Put it under your door, mat, I'll get it tonight. Oh, I closed my eyes. You can knock on the window when you get here. Don't want to wake you up, get you in trouble. Maybe okay, okay bye. Then she wasn't at graduation. I thought of her every day that summer, working gig jobs, rating search results, saving
money for school. I kept the address of the walk away Lady with the hair, but I lost it somehow. Sometimes I think I see her dressed like a homeless but it always turns out to be someone else. All I tracked me down one day to ask if I knew where she was. I shrugged and didn't even laugh at the stupid little hat. Jrelle's mother called my mama a bunch of times, but by the end of summer that had stopped. The Semisadas through some good parties that summer,
and I got invited to some of them. None of them were as epic as my Communist party. The first day of Glendale CC, as I milled around with thousands of other confused freshmen, I got a buzz. It was an error message telling me that a message I'd never sent had bounced. The address wasn't when I recognized, but I knew who it was from. Rice Pudding Dash called me, Maybe who else could it be? I started to write it down carefully on a piece of paper, decided to
commit it to memory. I've never sent it a message, but I think of it every day as I watch my grades and my student loans roll in the.
End, ah lummer, I don't know, bummer, and also sounds very familiar to like, I don't know. I've been thinking a lot about the transition from being young to no longer being young, and the fact that we will all be continually processing Yeah, I guess because of the way that the Internet prizes certain kinds of discourse. I feel like the rest of our lives is going to be watching our generations process getting old, which is exhausting to think about. You should age out of being able to
be listened to public sphere. I remember hearing people in the nineties and stuff complain about how old people didn't have as much of a voice in media, and it was like these perpetually young, good looking people and all of your TV shows and movies, and I would like to go back to that. It turns out it sucks to watch everybody processed getting altered.
You're thinking because like Corey Doctor is writing this thinking about you, so you're just thinking about, like what it means to be graduating high school and often.
Yeah, yeah, that transition and that feeling I remember having when I was young, of like feeling like I could really do something different with my life than anybody had done before. Yeah, and watching everyone that you kind of had those dreams with all make the decision to get student loans.
Yeah totally. I Mean what's interesting is I made the other decision. I went walk away, right.
Yeah, I dropped out.
Yeah, I dropped out of college as soon as I was like, oh, I mean I can ride freight trains and like live in abandoned buildings. That sounds amazing, you know.
I lived in the back of a car.
Yeah, And like I'm glad I did that, and I think it set me up as a creative professional very well. It like fucked me over in a lot of ways. Right. But the thing I'm watching is a lot of people in my periphery who maybe made it to their mid thirties, like sometimes hanging out with people who'd sort of gone walk away yeah, but then didn't themselves, are starting to have this like third life crisis, you know, instead of
mid life crisis. Yeah, where they're like, oh, like maybe fuck these student loans and maybe like fuck this endless series of dead end jobs.
And you know, yeah, I hear a lot of people complain about like the stuff they didn't do when they were younger, and I do think a lot of people have that experience. If you have that one really good kind of I could have pivoted from this to doing
something very different with my life experience. You know it's the Communist party, Yeah, printing those shopping carts, like feeling that moment of potential and possibility and risk get further and further into your rear view mirror as you head on in a path that now could have been predicted. I guess as a yeahs a vibe.
And it's hard because it's like I'll do talks at colleges, right and people will be like, hey, what do you think about? Like people have straight up asked me at talks, being like should I drop out of college? Yeah? And I've been like, look, I have no regrets about the fact that I dropped out of college. I cannot recommend in good conscience one way or the other what people do with their lives around that kind of stuff, because I one, it's like this like feeling of weight where
I'm like, I don't know what you're dealing with. Well, if you're just screwed with a bunch of debt, maybe you should finish and get the degree at this you know, who knows, right, it's gonna be different for everyone. I'm still grateful for the decisions I made, but also like, I've got a lot of dead friends. I was like, Oh, I'm going to go off and live this adventurous, risky life, and a bunch of the people around me died in their twenties.
You know. Yeah, I think all the time about the line from a Rainy Night and Soho when of Shane McGowan's great songs. We watched our friends grow up together, and we saw them as they fell. Some of them fell into heaven, some of them fell into hell. And it's one of those flights that a few times a year I'll get news about somebody and that will just ring like a bell in my heart. God.
He was a real one.
Yeah, yeah, man, he lived it.
You know. He died a little bit young, but he died a lot later than I think he thought he was gonna.
For Shane McGowan, he died ancient. I'll say that I'll say, like, yeah, it's not saying I don't wish he had a healthier life, but he did pretty good living the life Shane McGough at Lift.
One of the things I really like about this story is the two characters balancing that right. Both of them are going to do the Communist Party, and one of them is going to go to community college on loans that she knows are dangerous, and one of them is going to go off and join a revolution that's dangerous, and for anyone who wants to know more about how that goes, I really highly recommend walk Away by Cory Doctor great book.
One of my favorite sci fi books of a long time. It feels like ye, I liked it a lot. I like that depiction of revolution. We talk a lot about what I think is going to happen in the process of happening, which is not the full scale collapse of the United States or kind of any other massive nation state, because the apparatus of physical control is so good, but
the apparatus of physical control is also extremely expensive. And one of the things I like about walk Away is it depicts the revolution being a thing that builds in areas where the direct ability of the state to exert control has crumbled because it's not profitable for the state to control that, and the state is effectively so corporatized that you actually get, in some ways a preferable situation to like a traditional authoritarian state where there's some sort
of like ego thing behind the people running it, of like maintaining a certain level of geographical control, as opposed to we're going to hold on to what makes a profit. Yeah, and in the areas that are no longer profitable for us, I think, is where you're going to see new ways of life explored and people will figure out what survival looks like. Yeah, you know in the world that is being created by climate change in those areas, right.
Yeah.
Part of why I liked walk Away so much and what I felt was so believable about Walkaways because when I was in North East Syria in twenty nineteen, I mean, that's what Rojava essentially is totally. It's an area where, because of a variety of reasons, and it was not profitable or feasible for the state to continue exerted control, and so people got to try something new and walk Away kind of reimagines that. But as like a social movement as like a trend.
Almost a subculture in a way.
Yeah yeah, subculture based around dropping out and building something new at the margins that you know grows and the way that I think we all hope something will one day in Like the cracks, it does well enough that it pushes them wide or open until the whole thing falls apart, which is I think a more realistic version of a good future. Then we'll finally figure out how to do a nineteen seventeen again, but this time it'll
work better totally. It'll work forever it instead of falling apart like eighty years later in a really embarrassing way.
This wheel is so much rounder, like it is one hundred percent rounder than the previous wheel.
Yeah yeah, I know that most of the people who are prominent in the movement right now are some kind of grifter or con man, but that will magically not happen when we get it together well enough to do a revolution. Prove me wrong, kids, prove me wrong, no, absolutely, I please, no, Like I'm desperate to be proved wrong.
I will eat my words. I will print them out on a piece of paper.
And oh man, if you guys want me to get up in front of the Revolutionary Committee every day and be like, wow, I fucked up. Yeah, Like yeah, do it and make a really good future for everybody. I would love that.
Well that's it for this week's cool Zone Media book Club, and you can check us out next week when we'll have more fiction. And I can't tell you what it is because I don't know what it is yet.
Yeah, that's right. Until next time, folks stock up on shopping carts. Yeah, it could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It Could Happen here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.