Part One: The Modern School & Francisco Ferrer: School Shouldn't Be Terrible

those three things. James. Have you ever been in a school? Yes, yeah, I have multiple times. Actually, how did how did that go for you? Well? Mixed experiences. To be honest, I've found it difficult both in their teaching and learning role, a lot of a lot of discipline. What would you say that you're a teacher? Sometimes? Yeah? I can. I can sometimes be a teacher. That's a thing I can be. Okay, Okay, just just taking notes, okay. And our producer is Sophie.

How are you doing today, Sophie? I'm doing well. Margaret, thank you for asking. How are you? I'm doing okay. I I'm completely wired on caffeine because I'm drinking a sparkling water that has a tiny amount of black tea in it, And are you drinking carbonation while podcasting? Oh fuck, you've told me that I'm not supposed to do this. Okay, but anyway, I basically don't drink caffeine, so this is gonna be extra fun. I'm personally very excited about it.

Ian edits our audio and on women wrote the theme music. So okay, there's this movie that I think rules and is not the subject of what we're talking about. Is also not Night Riders. It's called The Trotsky. Have you ever seen The Trotsky? Either of you? Trotsky? Does it? Does it have any ice pick scenes? Know? What it is? Is? It's It's from two tho nine. It's Canadian. It's about a rich kid who thinks he's the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky. Amazing.

He pisces off his dad by organizing his workers, so his dad sends him to public school as like punishment, and so he starts organizing the students. And the point of me telling you about this movie that I quite like, there's a part at the end where, um, some wild shifts happening and a character is forced to make a speech to rile up the students and His speech is

really simple. He's like school sucks. Right. People are like, yeah, I'm paraphrasing, but you know whatever, He's like, should it should? Should school fucking suck? No? And okay, that's a really simple part of a movie, right. But I think about this all the time, like school shouldn't suck? Yeah, yeah, there's When I was a kid, I hated school. I dreaded school. I developed an anxiety disorder in order to make myself actually sick in order to not go to

school whenever possible. But kids needn't need in education, and parents need childcare, and school should exist. They just need to be really different. So there have been tons of people throughout time who have worked on that, and there have been experiments that have lasted generations, some continue to the day. But today I'm going to talk about some of my favorite I'm watching James get excitedly be talking

about He's gonna be great. I'm gonna talk about some of my favorite such experiments, including the modern school, popular education, and the ideas of a Spanish anarchist whose name is Francisco Ferdair. But I'm gonna accidentally call him for our over and over again because there's a bunch of people in my family named for our and so every time I see this, I think for our, but for their Anyway,

that's not the important part. Francisco over threw assumptions about popular education, and his ideas got him murdered by the Spanish state. But his ideas outlasted him, like all of the best ideas do. So. But before I talk about him, we're gonna talk about nineteenth century education and some of Francisco's precursors, who I like, maybe just as much, some

of them, I maybe even like more. Um, how you how how much of I'm I'm curious because maybe people know that I don't always tell the guests that they're going to be on about, and I did not tell James what we're gonna be talking about. Is this a you heard all these folks? Yeah? Yeah, First of all, this has complete surprise to me. It's a nice surprise. Um, it's like Christmas without all the problematic baggage. Yeah, so

I have. I am. I wrote a decent amount about like the chapter in my dissertation about how how the Popular Front you want to call it the Popular Front right, like how anti fascist organizing tried to reimagine education in an anti fascist way, and how anarchists sports groups specifically tried to build physical education into education because they were really bummed that working class kids kept dying of tuberculosis or like engaging in child labor and then coming out

like people can't see me because this is an audio medium, but they come out like stunted or otherwise physically disabled, um from working in factories from a young age or drowning, big big thing with teaching working class kids to swim,

So I'm familiar with that. And then do the history of like anti fascist sports, so British nineteenth century education and ideas of like muscular Christianity and like using education to create young officers for the empire, using sport within the education to like do violence but stick to the rules and do as you're told. Like that that's why sport exists and where we took play and made it into sport. If there's a different things, right, support has rules,

play doesn't. And so I'm very familiar with the discourse on like Robert Arnold and the Rugby school and muscular Christianity. But I'm excited about this. Awesome, Yeah, no, this is good. You have. I was thinking, I was excited to have you as the guest for this one. So we're gonna lay our scene. Okay, wait, no, no no not. I keep thinking about the players sport thing. Um, did you grow up in in Calvin and Habbs No, okay, don't know. It's an American thing. There's this thing called Calvin Ball

that they play. Okay, and Calvin plays Calvin Ball and it Calvin Ball has rules. The rules change whenever you want them to constantly, um, and it is just the most fun game. You just go out and with the ball and your friends and you make up new rules as you go. And everyone's like, no, but that's a touchdown, Like no, it's a I don't know I know about sports,

Steven fake this right now and touchdown. Yeah yeah, okay, it's just I mean one of our friend Daniel, a mutual friend, Daniel like went to Italy recently and discovered some of these folk football traditions, which it's funny like every couple of years they'll pop up on Twitter and they'll be like, look at this crazy historical ship where people like play this ancient form of a game and like football, right, like what you guys call soccer, we

what we used to call soccer, right actually, because yeah,

it's a contraction of association football. So a sock is a contraction of association Yeah, idea about this, yes, because it's it's it's football with rules as opposed to ship folk football where that you can find all these were like two villages would have a competition, right, and they'd have inflated pigs bladder and it's like you get the pigs bladder into the opposing village, you score a point or you win the game, and like you know, stabbing

is frowned upon, Like you know, it's really not completely like gentlemanly to use like both narrows or ranged weapons. But I know that you fucking send it, like you get the balload, pick it up, you can get you do what you need to do, like and that these are the like these are the play routes which long predate sport, right, But there British imperialism takes that and it's like, no, we need to make young men to beata rules so they can go to other countries and

do colonialism. And from there we get sports and we get the rules, and we get this French aristocratic called Pierre the Kubita who codifies a lot of these things in Olympics, and okay, and then we continue to use that to reinforce like fascism right like we're doing right now in Italy and we did in ninety six. And it's great. There's no problems with it. Yeah, No, everything is going great. That is what people say about the

world right now. Um, nice and toasty the world right now and getting toastier where it is cozy is what everyone wants. Um. Yeah, anyone who's listening, if you listen to my Spanish Civil War episode with Jimmy Loftus, all of the stuff about the anti fascist Olympics came from James James's dissertation that they sent me before, um, while I was working on that episode. So all this stuff is going to come up a lot, and I'm really excited about But I didn't know any of that ship.

But like this concept of like play and things like that is relate to education, and so we're gonna lay our scene in nineteenth century France where a lot of it's going to start, even though it's a story about twentieth century Spain. Later, but you know, whatever, in the late nineteenth century education of France was in turmoil. On one hand, you had the Catholics. They wanted to teach without state interference. On the other hand, you had the liberals.

Basically they the secularists, and they wanted to teach without church interference, but they wanted very much state interference, right, And then you have the people who were like, well, what if we teach without state interference and without church interference. And you have this idea of popular education, which means education of the people, not like people like it, or pop education and popular as a million meanings, and basically popular education was like, hey, what if the working class

got to be educated too? And in Nordic countries you get this thing called folk high school. It's really interesting to me that, um, what you're talking about about, like folk football and stuff like I hate The only reason I'm ad at the Nazis is that they took the term folk and made it a bad thing. Well, I guess I have these have to be mad at the Nazis for more than that. If I'm mad about them taking the word in the first place, it done to my other unfortunate stuff you have. But that's one of

the bad things yeah, totally. Actually they're responsible for why airship travel is not popular, but that is a story for another time. Yeah, they've pready let it down. Um so all right, it was about okay, so you have full high schools. They start in Denmark, and except the airship chaining is true, but they started Denmark in the eighteen forties, not the airships, the full high schools, and the and full high schools were different everywhere. They actually

still exist there. But the idea is basically like fuck degrees fun, only rich people learning ship, Let's just teach kids. And especially at first, this meant like teach kids about democracy and ship like that in a boarding school environment. Um. And it's kind of interesting because I feel like it's not reversed now, but it's a little bit different now.

In the nineteenth century, at least in at least in the European context or the Western context or whatever, people who were obsessed with book learning and formal education were the more of the conservatives and progressive types at the time thought books were swell, but they cared about hands on instruction and they cared about integrating words. And it was this thing that we'll talk to about more called integrated education, um, where the body and the mind are

not so fucking separate. Meanwhile, in Western countries you get leftists and Marxists and anarchists, um, especially the anarcho syndicalists, and they're all talking about how to teach the working class. And the Republicans again um, not the Republican Party, but people who are like, let's not have kings anymore. They were on this too. And the third Republican France, which gets touched on in the Paris Commune episode, gets called

the Republic of Teachers France. In particular, one of the main goals of the popular education movement was actually to teach people to not be anti Semites anymore. I didn't realize this, but the the drey Fist affair, which we'll get to a little bit later in this basically they were like, oh, we should probably teach people about there's like other people in the world and that other people are people, and uh you know, um, so yeah, one of the goals of it. And in this environment we

get our our first named hero for today. You get Paul Robin. Have you ever heard of Paul Robin? I think I have no. Well, Paul Robin is a Frenchman, despite his name not sounding French at all to me. But what do I know. He was from the middle class and he wound up being at least called by some historians or the storian that I read anyway, specifically about this quote the greatest socialist educator of the nineteenth century.

And yeah, I don't know. I after reading this, I I have no particular doubts that he might have been the greatest socialist educator of the nineteenth century. He was born in eighteen thirty seven in Toulon, Mediterranean city in France. His family was devoutly Catholic in military and he went off to school. And once he went up to school, he was like, actually, I don't know about this stuff I was raised with. I'm gonna become a free thinker.

Um specifically, he became something known as a positivist, which I never run across before. You know, this positivism thing. I might have vaguely head of it, but it doesn't ring any like, I can't have a care and concept of what that means. Yeah, totally. And you know there's always like, you know, one day someone's going to look back and be like and then they were you know, they'll look at all the weird demarcations we have about ourselves in the early twenty one century and be like, huh,

they were on some weird ship. Um, yes, I think they will access to the Twitter arc I've will make it very clear that we're on some weird ship. And yeah, sorry, sometimes I think about that. They think about like if I was doing my dissertation but they had Twitter, like I would just be like fuck, like, like what to

do with all this? You know, like when they look back at our history, and especially the history of the left, maybe they'll be like as I don't know, maybe as bamboo still as I am when I look at the left in seven in Spain when they keep shooting each other and I'm like why, Yeah, it'll be like and then the cat Boys got into a fight with the Primitivest and You're like, what I thought they were all

on the same side. I don't get it. Bedroom discourse completely at bed time discourse divided the left and yeah, yeah, what a good future we have to look for. No, it's all gonna We're gonna learn from the lessons of the past. That's why we have shows like mine and shows like yours. I didn't actually introduce that you also have a podcast. You have a podcast? What is your podcast?

I do do it Could Happen Here, which is a podcast where we talk about things that could happen here or have already happened, or already increasingly things that are already happening, which is quite disturbing to listen. Drinking disturbed. Yeah, so if maybe you maybe you should listen. Yeah, that's the list. Yeah, but I put that on the schedule and you don't have yeah, so if he doesn't have much to do, so it's good to day with podcasts.

I need more podcasts in my life immediately. I've been not listening as many podcasts because I haven't been I'm on book tour and I haven't been um working around the house like cleaning and making stuff and like painting the wall or whatever it is wanting. Anyway, whatever, you listen to podcast, dear listener, I appreciate that you listen to it. Okay, positivism and okay, so free finkers. First of all, free thinkers are basically like kind of like

early atheists. I mean, obviously there's people didn't believe in God going back whenever, right, But free thinking was basically like it's a little bit less like we are atheists, and it's a little bit different than like we are agnostic and we kind of don't know. Freethinking was like, we believe that people should be able to think about the ship themselves without like just following church doctrine um. And a lot of them ended up atheistic, and a

lot of them ended up essentially heretical. As far as I can tell, I don't know. UM. Positivism is a philosophy that holds basically, shit is either true or it isn't. Science is the way that you find out if something is true or not true. It's kind of just an anti superstition sort of thing if you can't prove that something is true rejected. I'm not a positivist, but in a world ruled by the church, this sort of makes

to me is a decent step of rejection. So our guy Paul Robin, he's really into Darwin and he's really into not the church. He's like just not into the church at all. And he also gets into socialism. But interestingly, it was this positivism that drew him to the radical left of the left, towards the anarchists or as they saw him, solve themselves at the time, like the Prude hoist because he's in France at the time and there's this whatever anyway, Um, because Marks my, your abenitycher to

do that. That could have been an hour of podcasting right there. Yeah yeah no I um yeah no I I life is short yet if you want to hear more about Prude on this of the Paris Commune episode. So Marks and all the other socialists, they were not all the other many of the other socialists, they're into political parties and political action, like action that happens to the state, is what I mean by political action is

compared to direct action. Uh. But he was into direct action, and as he saw it, political action was kind of ephemeral. It was kind of superstitious because the state's not real. Yeah, and so fun femeral things based yeah yeah, yeah. He scienced his way into being an at that's amazing. Yeah, these rational scientific anarchism. Yeah. Uh. And he gets really excited about teaching, so when he finishes school, he becomes a teacher. Except they don't really let him do his

thing in France at the time. They can't they won't let him teach how he wants to teach, and because he wants to teach in a way that isn't academic, because academia is not very positivist by this conception, because it's this like ephemeral ivory tower. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, can identify strongly here, I mean joining this. Yeah, he wants to teach it a way that is practical and useful to his students, in a way that would be

useful to the worker rather than to the state. Right, And he's um, yeah, he's kind of into this idea that the a lot of these people will be talking about here, into this idea that school kind of like you're saying about how sport is training people to be soldiers. School is teaching people to be bureaucrats, is teaching people to be like, you know, I would say workers, but I mean like the working classesn't even go into school

most of this time. Yeah, very explicitly so right at the end of the like a nineteenth century, certainly by the nineteenth century, like it's teaching them to be citizens in a nation like Um, I'm sure you're familiar with peasants into frenchmen, like the idea, Okay, I can get this idea though. Yeah, yeah, it's it's a book, but it's the idea that you take all these distinct regional identities and then through like one of the things education

are the ones like roads, trains, military service. You take them from being like oh I I am Catlan, I am Breton, mask whatever wherever you're from, and turn them into French people by like no, like all French people shared is common education and they read and write French, not not Breton or Catlan. Or make them acceptable to capitalism, or make them useful cogs in the machine that produces stuff and people who have money. Yeah, so this is the stuff that Paul Robin is like, I'm not as

excited about this um. So he quits, and I like this because I've never run this across this like fuck lofty fake things like the church, the state, in academia,

you know, I only like science. And so he starts throwing down with the International Labor Movement, which is the time mostly called in in Europe, the International and he's he throws him with the anarchists, not because he's like I am an anarchist, right, but because they're more excited about education at that time than Marxist, and they're like more willing to kind of listen to him. Who I only learned this recently at the Marxists weren't getting called

Marxist yet. Marxist was first used as a pejorative by the anarchists against the Marxists because they're like, oh, you're just listening to the Secretary of the International. You just

keep doing whatever he says, you damn Marxist. And to be fair, apparently anarchists, I mean, obviously they got some of their name by calling themselves anarchists earlier, but they started like really getting called the anarchists as a pejorative the Marxists really like when you look at like when you look at Spain, right, it's still a phrase I'd like to use, actually a phrase I wasn't allowed to

use my dissertation, which was another topic. That they call themselves the libertarian left, and that fits like and also like it avoids the like a giant clusterfuck of identities that exist within the broad sphere of anarchism, like a totally different diagonal flags yeah yeah, which is part of over, isn't them sadly lost the word libertarians and at least in the United States context, because I'm like, I like to take it back. I think it's a really good

way to appeal to people. I'm diverting the fire and like I spent a lot of time in rural areas here and grew up in a rural area, and like I was been to a tenacious unicorn around specifically a couple of times when we've spoken about this. How like most people in rural areas do a whole lot of

anarchists shit, but would hate the label anarchist. But like, I think like left libertarian is where we can sometimes meet their as people Like you want to have guns in of your neighbors truck falls in the ditch, you pull it out for them, Like, actually, friend, you're doing anarchism. Yeah, totally. And you know who else will pull you out of a ditch? Um, will they? Sophie. Now, one thing that

sponsors tend not to have its tow trucks. Yeah, but you know, yeah, I don't think if you buy enough for their products or services, they could buy like a big truck, one of those ones with four wheels, and then yeah, then they can buy things. What if Triple A is our sponsor today. Oh snap, never, that would be that would be one of the age stands for anarchists. Yeah, totally anarchist automobilis yeah, yeah, yeah, they don't like traffic lights.

Traffic lights are restriction of personal freedom. Yeah. Well here's some advertisers. Okay, we are back and we are talking about how the Marxist in the Anarchists. Man, you're like, oh god, I'm so glad I'm listening to podcast this time on the fucking International in the Marxist the Anarchists

when they split. But one of the things I think it was like really interesting that came out of that for me is that, you know, Marx's idea Marx, Marx's ideas became the dominant ones because he was the guy writing everything down. So not only is history written by the victors, but would be victors might want to write the history. It's my theory. Yeah. Paul Robin, he's in the International. He's pushing for the liberation of education as

a central plank in the International. And his other main thing is feminism on including women's work within the labor movement, which is really contentious at the time, and not just this isn't like an anarchist versus Marxist split. This is a decent humans versus not decent humans split. And basically it is like, along with a few other people, he's like, women need equal pay, equal voice within the union. Um,

women shouldn't just be fucking servants of their husbands. And do you mean to tell me that gender is not false consciousness? Uh I, I don't know. Maybe, okay, sorry, Um, I think I think I think it's perfectly reasonable to say that the struggle for women's liberation is part of the struggle for class liberation. And Okay. One of the reasons I really like Paul Robin and the way he's talking about all this. He's really down for the labor movement. But he didn't want like a lot of other people

on clean some people talk about today. He wasn't like, we want education so that the labor movement will be strong. He was like, I want a labor movement so that workers have enough free time to participate meaningfully in their own education. Oh cool, Like the three eights thing, the three eights thing. Oh yeah, so it's certainly the Spanish anarchists had this thing, the three eight or eight hours for work, eight hours for education, self improvement in leisure

and eight hours for sleep. Oh yeah, totally yeah, and he's just like, I love it because he's he's education first, you know. And it's the same with women's rights. It wasn't so that women could join the labor movement. He wanted a labor movement so that there would be women's rights because women were also workers. And so he was like, well, this is what I want. The labor movement is how to get it? Um, And that is as someone who doesn't like working. Well, actually I like working for myself

and I'm like working for other people. But anyway, I like this about him. And so he's doing this work mostly in Brussels. In the late eighteen sixties, he gets married and um, the male historian I read about this, so I'm not going to call out by name, but included his wife's dad's name because his wife's dad was famous, and did not include his fucking wife's name. No, incredible, incredible speaking of the left. Needs to learn some ship

magnificent bro leftism. Yeah, after it was like paragraphs of being like, and he fought for women's rights, isn't that interesting? Okay? And by the late eighteen sixties, coal workers are striking across Belgium and nor learned France, and the state did what the state would do, give them might nice things help the work. No, the state fucked the workers up and like shot a bunch of people and arrested a bunch of people, intod all of its fucking usual bullshit.

Really yeah, no, I know, it's um big break from the norms for them. Yeah, I'm like, I don't know, I'm turning to notice a pattern with states in violence. Yeah, yeah, it's almost like even pro state people define a state as the monopoly of the legitimate use of force. Yeah, I wonder if we should investigate it further. We just except no, no, no, yeah, no, except to move on. So Paul Robin, he signs a letter of protest against police brutality and um, sorry, that's great. What what year

is this, because how long have we've been trying that ship? Yeah? Well what's interested is back then? Yeah, I know, right, this is the eighteen sixties, late eighteen sixties is like, hey, maybe police to tell is that? But getting op ed and it fixed it? Right? Well no, instead they arrested him and it's deported him from pell shit for writing a fucking signing a letter against police utility. Yeah, I think I pointed from the great state of Belgium too.

I know right, Um, there's really good fries there. Uh, get choking out, goodbye crasing and so the beer is good. I think about this whenever I think, like I get asked to sign my name to public letters, and I'm like, yeah, I'll do it if I agree. But people act maybe unfairly, maybe I'm being me into public letters, but they act like this is this like great thing where everyone's coming together signed this public letter, And I'm like, it is no skin off of my back to write some public

letter against police brutality right now. Like it, it will not affect my life in any negative way, whereas in the eighteen sixties you get fun before it. Yeah, amazing. He doesn't really like France, where he's from, so he fox off to Switzerland for a while, and then he goes back to France because it's eighteen seventy and France

in eighteen seventies getting spicy. This is the year before the alumni of the podcast the Paris Commune and Republicans and socialists and it or like, oh, let's like overthrow the government. Doesn't that sound fun? They're like, yeah, I would overthrow the government with you. And they're like well okay, and they like, you know, get engaged over with the government together and we all have left unity ever since. Um if you want to hear more about that in

this whole episode about it. The French government though they actually don't want to be overthrown. Yeah, no, and I know. And so Paul Robin and thirty seven other people get arrested for conspiracy and for writing a book full of like neat ciphers and instructions on how to make nitro glycerin. Amazing, it's the education yeah, yeah, the anarchist cookbook of the nineteenth century. Yeah. And I think Paul Robin actually didn't have anything to do with this book, but his name

is in it. There's a cipher for his name written into the book. Oh that sucks. I know. He just gets railroaded. If you're going to go down for the nitroglycerin book, at least write a nitric glycerain book, right, Yeah, but at least people were talking about them by cool

code names. I would love to get a copy of that and find out what his cool code name was okay, so and really after that though, the government realized he didn't have a choice in whether or not it was going to get overthrown because they're Napoleon guy who was also named Napoleon. He gets captured and the empire falls and the Republicans. The Republic starts and Paul Robin gets led out of prison. So, um, if you get arrested for trying to overthrow the government, you should hope that

your friends are like really working on it out there. Yeah. He gets out of prison and he's like, you know what, I missed my family in Belgium, and he goes back to Belgium. Okay, Belgium is like, we actually don't want you either. So he gets arrested and deported again back to France just in time. Paris Communy doesn't even hit yet. He gets back and it's all like in one fucking year.

He gets back in time to set up one of the precursor communes, the Paris Commune, where they take there's like several different cities that took over themselves and declared an independent city state that just usually last a couple of days. His was in the city Breast, which I don't know how to pronounce, and I should have looked up before I started talking. Yeah, I think that's it.

It's a bike race, okay, cool? Yeah yeah, yeah, alright, So I know, Andy, this is my entire engagement with his, most of France specifically, just like living in my car, racing bikes. That's awesome. So then it falls right and he goes back into fucking exile. So this guy cannot catch a break. And this time he goes, ah, where's he going? Yeah, where's he going? Now? He gets on a boat to London. Have you ever heard of the

town called London? Yeah? Interesting choice for him because he's gotten French speaking places so far, and I'm sure he'll encounter notes and a phobi yeah no, I assume not,

and people. And then he gets he gets there just as the fucking Paris Commune starts, and so we has to sit there in fomo and survivor's guilt as the as his like people trying to live the same dream as him, take over the largest city in Europe and declared a free place, and like everyone sets up all these educational programs and there's all this ship um and it and it's basically like sets up all the modern Western ideas about how to have a cool revolution, unlike

the sort of less cool revolutions where you just put capitalists in charge. Okay, so meanwhile, all this fucking weird in fighting is happening instead of the lovely union of all the different revolutionary parties is starting to starting to break up. They're they're no longer is enamored with each other. The International um Mars basically takes control of the International, and he commits it to a single political goal instead

of a broader coalition. And so when he declares that it is now a singular political goal and everyone has to agree with all of the things, Marks personally kicked Paul Robin out even before he kicked out the anarchists. Shortly after, Yeah, shortly thereafter he kicks out the anarchists more broadly, and the International fell apart because it actually

worked better as a coalition. Whoops. Anyway, Paul Robin he's an anarchist and that he doesn't like state or capitalism, but he doesn't actually really like the other anarchists, and I think he's still pretty bitter about this like book that got him fucking thrown in prison, and he doesn't like how conspiratorial and shipped all the other anarchists he knew, because he just wanted to like teach people, right, Yeah, so above all he's an education guy, a women's rights guy,

and a positivist, a scientist and so and it was those ideas that led him to his political beliefs. Right, So he goes back to his real love teaching, teaching and organizing educational systems, because it's not just enough to be a teacher for him. He's also just thinking about

pedagogy more more broadly. And France at this point has swung secular right, it is no longer as much rule by the Church and the Third Republicans doing its thing, and and so part of its thing is a free, obligatory and secular education, which is uh, a fucking step up, right, even if it's like, hey, here's how we Peasants into Frenchmen or whatever, it's still step up from what the

fucking Catholics monarchs were doing. And this Protestant, pacifist and anti anti semit guy was in charge of primary education. So he hooks Paul Robin up with the job. It's like, hey, you you're like a cool lefty pedagogy guy. Here's a job eighty. He gets and put in charge of an orphanage, the provost orphanage. And at very least he's in charge of the school at the orphanage. I think he's in charge of the entire orphanage itself. And this is where

he starts doing his most influential work. He's already been like part of numerous revolutions and like deported three or four times or whatever the funk, right, but taking over this orphanage and teaching kids is his influential work that changed the world. Most of the other pedagogical thinkers at the time remained thinkers, and we're just writing about these ideas, like wouldn't it be great if we did this? And he's like, well, I got a job, but now I'm

doing this. And he was really fucking good at administrating a school and teaching, and he was in charge of hundreds of students. Uh. It was forty eight when he first started, and by the end the time he left fourteen years later, it is a hundred and eighties students at a time at this university. And he believed in integrated education. And this is actually I'm kind of kind

of curious your thoughts about how this this works. It's an education that's both intellectual and practical for people from all classes. The upper classes need to get their hands dirty, the working classes need an opportunity to exercise their intellectual capacity. Uh. And and learning is a lifelong pursuit. He wants he gives his kids diplomas because he needs they need them in the world they're in. He's like that much of an ideological asshole, but he um, unlike some of the

people get to later. But whatever, he wants a world without diplomas where because you're never done learning. Um yea, And yeah, I still gave his kids diplomas. But and everything is taught alongside practical education and also sports and like like physical education, um, which I I don't know. I'm like, yeah, I'm interested to hear. What, Like did they do sports or physical culture? Like it's this whole

movement around this time, like the so called movement. Um it means falcon in check in check, but like it's like a physical culture even that isn't necessarily sport. But the idea is that it's part of a complete education to shape better citizens in the democracy, to create it was it was very Um, it was big in Catalonia

in the in the nineteen thirties. It sort of grew out of this check thing, but popping up all over Europe, you had these like physical culture things that weren't quite sport, and like sometimes they were very disciplined, like German turn in of course the Germans. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the Germans have developed like an authoritarian form of gymnastics, basically fashion fast dancing, sort of fast flash dancer. H yeah, yeah, yes,

it's it's fast flashdance. It's a horrible image. Yes, I'd be interested to know what kind of physical culture of sport that he kind of pursued. Do you know, I don't totally know. The stuff I'm reading, like doesn't get as much into it besides talking about how like how sport was included. Everything that you're saying about the rest of it does make me think that it might be more of this physic all culture stuff. But I couldn't.

But that's a little bit maybeing like, oh, yeah, I know he did the cool thing because he's a cool person to cool stuff, you know. Um, yeah, no, thanks, yeah, So I'm not totally sure. They were definitely anarchists who did competitive sport as well. I guess certainly by the time you get to popular sport in Spain in eighteen thirties,

ye of anarchists participating in competitive sport. The end is always like when we look at the popular Olympics, right, the ang goal is not to reward people who are born with particular physical excellence so much is to improve

the well being of the working class. Yeah, and and that is absolutely one of his whole things is he's not really big into competition, and he's like specifically into like helping each individual kid develop their interests and their strengths and like shore up their weaknesses and ship right. Like that is like more than the integrated education. It's like, yeah, okay, it's like both practical and petty or intellectual or whatever, but it's it's even more than that. It's like it's

not just personalized like from the outside. It's like from well, I'll just I'll just keep talking about what he did. So everything is taught alongside practical education. There's travel memoirs and personal accounts instead of most of the history books, right, because they're like, oh, this is a way to tie the history into something which might be familiar to listeners to the show. Uh, boys and girls were educated in

the same class. And this is like a big part of what all of the radical like, you know, people getting killed for their political educational beliefs, where like boys and girls should be taught in the same class, um, And it's both to ensure that they received the same education.

But also and this is really interesting to me, I didn't I only ever heard the like, oh, this is so, let you know, girls get the same education as boys or whatever, right, But part of it for him was that he believed that boys, by making friends with and interacting with girls, would be would actually understand girls and like less think of them as this other that they would then mistreat right and become insul Yeah basically, and like yeah, and and that or or even like happily

fucking but like only hanging out with the boys and treating women like objects. Yeah yeah, great, a separate spheres kind of gender world. And so boys would learn cooking and sewing, and they helped in the laundry, and everyone gets sex education, which I believe included a lot of birth control talk, because that's like something I'll get into about his whole thing later and Okay, the most contentious thing he did, certainly to his own kids. The most

contentious thing he did he put his kids in the orphanage. Amazing. Yeah, I think that's great. Yeah, he's like committed to this, being like he's doing as he would want done kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. Um and it, at least the one report I've read made this made his kids kind of unhappy, but it um, it made all the other kids very happy that they were like, oh, this person actually cares about us. We are actually being treated like we are as kids. Fair. If I was a kid,

I might be better too. But I also think it's yeah to kind of standing against the family. And one of the most interesting things about him, I think is that he's not writing his own Look how great I am, right, because all of the stuff he writes is like, here's how teaching works. And also all of this like we'll get into it, almost a creepy level of science, very explode whatever. He like he tracks everything about kids because he's a scientist and this way that I'll get into

in a minute. But but we it's not him being like I am the best and this is the best way to teach. Instead, everything we have about him was his kids writing, his his orphans writing. His biographer was someone who came up and was educated under him in this school, and like a lot of the people who carried on his work were people who were educated in

this system. Um. And the stuff we know about how the school itself ran, we know because the kids ran their own newspaper as part of the practical education about the going on of the school and what was working and what wasn't working about the educational system. Um, that's pretty cool. So that's this is why I don't suspect, uh, anything unforetold. So so his main pedagogical problem that he is running into, which is basically the problem that faces

everyone teaching anyone anything. And I'm actually kind of curious because your experienced with this as a teacher. It's basically like, how do you teach other people to be free? Like, how do you force other people to be like, no, you're free now, whether you like it or not. You know, Yeah, that's a reugh one, isn't. I think you just teach people and hope that they realize that themselves. But yeah, it's still a little different when you're running an orphanage,

Like I have not been in that position. I've worked volunteering orphanage before. That's kind of cool. Yeah, transformative experience for a little me. Yeah. I volunteered an orphanage for children with autism in Romania when I was like a teenager.

And just try to ask you. They have this thing about like increasing their productive capacity as a nation by people having more children, and they reward child bearing, okay, child having, and it's resulted in the culture in which from what this is me going off what I was told when of sixty years, I might be way off base, but they have a higher number of children who aren't living with their families for whatever reason then would normally be the case in the country of that size, and

especially children with things like autisms. Yeah, we're doing a little volunteering there. When I was like a teenager was one of my first like holy shit, like you know experiences of what like life is like for people who are not as fortunate as me. Yeah, that that makes a lot of sense. But you know what else makes a lot of sense, James m is that buying things? Yeah, we live in rewards you for no go ahead? Yeah, Well, advertisers do you think abandoned their children to an institution

which may or may not harm those children. Well, I think I like to think that as the these there's advertisers believe in their products so much that they subject their children to them. Okay, So so like if there was a Triple A orphanage where Triple A would raise your children as anarchist automobile people, they would they would gladly let the children live and thrive there. Well, it's actually, um, it's you were right about it's it's it's anarchist automobiles.

It's actually, um, it's a kind of a transformers thing. Um, we we turn children into Now, I can't do that. That's just not the direction I want to take this show. That's how we get away from the fossil fuel economy. There's only one way. Yeah, one child per wheel treadmill. Yeah. Uh, Well, if you want to participate in the economy that you're forced to participate in, you can do so by listening to these ads. We are back and we are talking about Paul Robin and not how he did not turn

any of his children into automobiles. As far as I'm awares, wasn't an island of Dr mur oh uh Ford, Dr Ford Moreau Island. Thing. He did away with exams, this part I'm okay, no, I'm back tack telling the truth instead of the bad joke. That didn't work. So he did away with exams, and he didn't use discipline, and he worked to have each student direct their own education. He provided tools, and he tried to create a structure by which students could learn. And the school taught folk dancing.

And they would spend like two months of the year at the seaside doing like natural observations but also just fucking hanging out at the water and ship. And this is the part that feels creepy. He he's really into science, right, So he he measured all of his pupils, their their growth, every part of their body, the angles of their faces they changed with growth, the kind the he would like, like record their stool composition, like when they pooped, um wow,

living laboratory kind of ship. Again, I don't think that I like I kind of looked into it. I tried to find out a little bit because I'm like, every time you hear about something that's like seems really cool. Sometimes it was like oh, and then there was like rampant child abuse or something. I don't think that that

was happening. I think that this was like nineteen century science guy being like, one day the world will need to know whether this French kid's cheekbones were at this angle at this age versus this other age where they were at this other angle or whatever. I can see, Like I don't have children, but like, I'm sure that there's an anxiety of like is my kid normal? Like every little thing about your child. Maybe if you could just look in his book and be like, yeah, that

poop is within the standard deviation. That's true. Yeah, maybe he wrote a book about like is your kid poop? Okay? Kids poop okay? Yeah, wouldn't be the first, He might be the first, he wouldn't be the last, and so okay. So, and there are some rules within the thing, right, it's a that no one's allowed to play soldiers because he doesn't want to turn it into like a military is something.

No one's allowed to sing the national anthem. Oh yes, And and there's no religious teachings for or against God. God is just not to be discussed in school. That is up to people's own fucking thing. That's great. Yeah, No, totally, because like I think it probably be like not the best to like have a school where you like and this is why God is fake, you know, because yeah, you're just gonna I know, so why introduce the idea if if you if you don't believe it's rational or useful,

why waste time on it? Yeah, totally so long, Yeah, yeah, I really like you know some of the some of these folks are gonnak about this's kind of a spectrum and how much they were trying to kind of indoctrinate kids versus like just free minds and see what will happen, you know. And I think he's more on the just free minds and see what will happen. It seems like it. And he's such a radical outlier that this he doesn't

immediately influence other folks in France. This doesn't like cause this like wave of like oh everyone be like this orphanage, right, but edguc waters from countries all over the world come and like study and like see what's up and like kind of pay attention what's happening at this school, which allows further influence a lot further down the line. Um and the church kept trying to shut him down, of course, because I mean, after all, he did let boys and

girls swim together. Um, And they almost shut him down in two because while he was in London he had written a bunch of manuals about birth control and in two the church or whoever fucking busy bodies like unearthed them and they're like, a ha, we found it. He wants people to be able to control whether or not they have children, you know, terrible, terrible step. Yeah. But the government actually kind of has us back a little

bit and they don't kick him out. There's this whole campaign to get him kicked out until two years later when a more centrist government comes into power. Uh, and they start passing all these anti anarchist laws. And I'll talk about the reasons why they're passing anti anarchist laws seem a little bit less weird to the fascineras laws

in a little bit. This is why we have the word libertarian, by the way, I mean, yeah, yeah, people, because at the time there were specific laws that like one of the censorship things was saying anarchist in the press, right, like the word itself, it would have been centered or would have been grounds for like having a publication shut down or whatever. So they started to use the word libertarian, which then came to the United States and got fucking hijacked.

And but yeah, there's like the initial use of libertarian was by French anarchists and their late nineteenth century to avoid like stay control. Okay, which are these specific laws and I'll talk about a little bit more. And one of the other stories that is going to be on this week's episode. You got this more centrist government and they want to show that they're not radical leftists, you know, So they caved to the church and his experiment and

popular education comes to an end. He's forced to retire. He's given a pension. So it's like it's better than it could have been. It's better than it's going to be for some of the other people. And and actually the school continues without him. I think that it's I found I had a hard time finding out the history after he left about whether his educational methods were continued. I believe that the school was continued by two of

his pupils, um, but I don't know how long. This is actually one of the thing that really bothers me and I play into it a little bit that I'm like telling you the biography about this great guy, right. Um. But the reason that we don't fucking know more about goddamn orphanage is because people only care about it because of Paul Robin, whereas like I care about it. I mean, Paul Robin's great, but like I want to know what happened to the orphanage. I want to know what happened

to the kids, you know, but I don't know. It seemed to have continued at least for a little while, and he's forced to resign. Um. Someone at the time put it in a in a journal in the US. Someone put it he was fired because he refused to teach the orphans that France is bigger than the world or that God is bigger than man. So of course he retired instead. Go ahead, Yeah, this is just like

a really love that nation. Yeah totally city. Yeah, especially the first part, Like that's what it hasn't been taught enough, so he just stopped being cool forevermore. Um, just kidding, he uh. He spent the rest of his life teaching birth control because he believes that a poor woman's right to family planning was the key to their emancipation. Both as women and a class because he's a fucking cool guy. Yeah.

Not all of his peers were his based as him, and they would like complain that he had abandoned quote the revolution in order to pursue raising orphans to think for themselves and providing women the means by wish to control their bodies and lives. Right the funk them, that's not what the revolution is. Yeah. Yeah. And then he's seventy five years old. It's and it's a really good run for back in the days of turriculosis, and he's like,

you know what, I'm on my way out. So he poisoned himself and because he was up no a positivist, scientist, weirdo at heart, he recorded all of the effects of the poison on himself as he died in case they were of any use to anyone later. Yeah, he's really in it to win it. Believes into what he's saying. Yeah, he puts his kids into the orphanage. He fucking records his own death. Um. Yeah, so he's just like noting, right, he's like like choking away and yeah, yeah, like thirty

second spasm high. Yeah, you have the writing just gets Yeah, like that money yeah, yeah, uh so the guy I know. And there's there's one more for today. I'm gonna give you one more because he leaves a legacy. The French state makes him forced them to put down the torch, but others pick it up. And before I talk about who picked up the torch, I got to talk about the anarchist outrages that were fueling the repression that got Paul Robin fired, which means I've got to talk about

some bombers. They're not my favorite thing about, Like I'm not super into the anarchist bomber thing. It's not my favorite part of anarchy. But what the movement was up to in eight nineties, friends, was was bombing people. And I want to talk about one of the more interesting ones, Rabbitshal, And he was this guy, Rabbitshal. He was he was born super down and out and he stayed that way

the rest of his life. His dad fucked off when he was eight, so he was left to support his mother, his sister, his brother, and his nephew as this like I don't know, sucking eight year old, right, And so he did what he did for the rest of his entire life. He worked odd jobs he played accordion on the UM. I think actually at Parlors he played accordion and he and he robbed graves. Wow. Okay, yeah, so its very French to him. Yeah yeah, so I'm like, now he's just a French go yeah yeah, yeah, you

see amazing, Like I'm extremely poor. He to support my fan, nail, pick up my accordion and bootstrap myself. Yeah totally. Um. And then if if that doesn't work, I'll go find someone else's who got buried with their accordion and get that one. Yeah. I do like that. Why not rub grades? They don't need that stuff? Yeah, similar crime. Yeah he heard it here first. Yeah, that's our next plug. Actually hired down, down and out needs some money, you know

who doesn't need it anymore? The dead um set entire families. It might not affect anyone's religious practice. Okay, there's downside. Okay, so the queen's been buried recently, just you could just go in u Yeah. I think actually if you turn in the queen's body, um, you get all of her money. Okay, it's like a bounty bounty situation. Yeah, wanted dead or life where it's a weekend at Bernie's okay, okay, right right, Yeah,

I am the queen. You gotta do it in the Crass plays Hello, Hello, Hello, and then you get all of her realm as well. You get to control a large part of the world. Yeah, that's true. Sophie is really excited about this bit, and it's like really excited that Margaret has gone down the path of strange bits about No, I just appreciate it that you did an accent. You'd never do that for that joy. I can only

do it when I'm imitating Crass. She was saving her queen beet for so long and now the opportunity has gone and she's mad, you know. Um okay. So Ravishal he he takes his mother's maiden name, Ravishal because his dad sucked and then he went through his life with only one name, which is objectively cool, m like Sodna, Yeah exactly. He starts hanging out with the anarchists and

they're fighting for the eight at our work day. Uh. And at one point, and this is the thing that's like worth noting about these like, oh, the anarchist started throwing bombs at ship and it's like, well, because they were labor organizing and then they all kept getting murdered. So they're like having an eight hour workday protest when the cops are like, well, what if we killed nine of you today, right, and so and then put three

people on trial. And so while these people are on trial, rabbish All he steals dynamite from a quarry and he bombs all the government people responsible for putting these three people on trial. And I'm not I'm not telling him he's wrong. And so he tells an informant by accident, right, and he's like bragging about at a bar and he gets put on trial. Uh, the informants house gets bombed by someone else, and Rabbishal he gets the death penalty. He sings on the way to the guillotine. What does

he saying? Fucking I wrote it down, but I don't remember it. It was like something, Yeah, they should have given him his accordion. He could have gone down absolutely. I know. I think he's sang one of the songs. Oh he was one of the songs of the guillotine from the French Revolution. Oh yeah, what a hero. Um yeah. And so I don't know. He has his hardest, fun shitty life and he fought against it. He died at

thirty two years old. More people bomb other ship and revenge, and it creates this cycle where everyone's bombing things and then in revenge, and then they get executed, and other people are bombing more things in revenge, and all these

anti anarchist laws get put into place. So once the anti anarchist laws get put into place, a poor twenty year old baker named Cesario stabs the president to death in public, and they offer him a plea deal if he snitches, and he says Cesario as a baker, never an informer, I know, And as he gets guillotined, he shouts out, courage cousins, long live anarchy, A go ahead, these people. I do love that. I know what happened. It is time beard where people just really fully inhabited

the bit right to the bitter rain. But yeah, it's very inspiration. So France, this is this is the kind of stuff that's happening that gets Paul Robin kicked out right. So France is like, all right, anarchists aren't allowed to associate with each other anymore. That's done. No more free association, not for anarchists. And so yet you get something called the Trial of the thirty, which, um, can you guess

what the Trial of the thirty was? Was it some kind of indurance event, maybe that they all had to compete for thirty hours or something for Margaret to deliver this please please please afform me. Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's a it's a trial of thirty people. Oh that's extremely disappointing, very literal name. Wow. Yeah, that's what a

what a shame? I know. So thirty alleged anarchists are put on trial for criminal association and it was completely bullshit trial because at that point in anarchist France, the anarchists weren't actually very very well organized, which was part of why they were resorting to bombing and stabbing and stuff, because they hadn't really recovered yet from the repression that they faced during the Paris Commune, that the whole left face during the Paris Community and they were just trying

to funk up the world. That's fucking everyone over. A lot of them were. There's another half to the anarchist movement in France at the time, which is that they were just hanging out and writing literature and poetry and ship because the art scene in Paris, was hella anarchist? It's like the punk scene of the nineteen nineties right where you're just like, if you're a punk, you're probably an anarchist. If you're a literary cool person in eighteen

nineties Paris, you're probably an anarchist. It's just the culture at the time. And so the people on trial are like authors and art directors and ship So thirty alleged anarchists are put on trial. One of them is an art critic named Felix Phinnen or Finian, the guy who coined the term neo impressionism, and he has a really fun bit in court. They asked him, um, are you an anarchist? Mr? Fenian? I am a Burgundian born in Turin.

Your police file extends to one seventy pages. It is documented that you were intimate with the German terrorist Komphmire. The intimacy cannot have been great as I do not speak German and he does not speak French. And then the whole courtroom laughs at the prosecutor. It has been established that you surrounded yourself with Kohen and Ortez. One can hardly be surrounded by two persons. You need at least three. And then they say, you are seeing conference

behind with them behind a lamp post. A lamp post is round, Can your honor tell me where behind a lamp post is? And I know at the court fails to prove any link between them because there wasn't one, right, they don't even speak the same language as each other. And they all get released, Almost all of them get released. Some of them actually get put in jail for conspiracy ship, but most of them get released. And what is all this have to do with education? You ask? You should ask,

what does all this have to do with education? Margaret? Well, I'm glad you asked. One of these guys. His name is Sebastian for A, And in nineteen o four he picked up Paul Robbin's torch. He'd also been raised by Catholics, uh, and he was actually going to become a priest until he was forced to support his family, which he didn't do by accordioning and grave robbing. Um. And he's soon I don't actually remember what he did, but it wasn't that.

I think he was middle class. He soon wound up an anarchist and his wife was like, oh funk this. I'm not dating you anymore. I was like a conservative Catholic. So he strikes out on his own and he works as an author and a speaker. Oh that's what he did, right, And he works tirelessly on the Dreyfus support campaign defending this guy, Alfred Dreyfus, alongside all of the decent human beings in France, including most all of the left. The super cliff notes version for anyone who dress affair, I

feel like the Dreyfus affair. When I first heard, I was like, isn't this some movie from the nineties. I don't remember it right, Yeah, it could be a punk band, Yeah, totally. What happened was this guy named Alfred Dreyfus, and he was a French soldier. He was a captain, and he was falsely accused of treason and it he was accused for treason because he was Jewish. That's like pretty much all there was, like some treason happened and it wasn't him and there was no evidence, but he was Jewish.

So he spent like twelve years trying to get exonerated. It became this huge international support campaign um, and he was like the people who were against him, they were pretty clear about their anti Semitism. They ran organizations with titles like the Anti Semitic League of France. So so I know, so for a along he's part of the Dreyfus campaign, and eventually he at leases a fifty ish acre farm outside of Paris, and he establishes a school in Commune called LaRouche or the Hive, which is a

creepy name for anything. But they raised bees and sold them through a workers collective to fund the whole thing, so I will forgive them for taking away creepy name. The rest of the money came from Sebastian himself, from his income from lectures and books, and which I think is just like a cool way to be, like, I don't know, if you're like making your living as a lecturer and author used that to support support schools. Yeah,

that's great. Would a pivot we could have made? A priest could have lost the soul I know, I know, and then he could have been a prisoner because he was in the trial of the third Um. And so they started school. Educational materials and equipment come from Paul Robbins previous school, which makes me think that maybe it was closed eventually I'm not entirely sure or whether Paul Robin was like, oh, you can have some of the stuff, right,

I don't totally know. At the Hive there's a farmhouse and orchard, woods and meadows and a farmland, and the whole thing has this like yeah it is this a narco pacifist vibe. And the government at first is like, all right, well, we're not gonna sunk with you, because thank god we have some past this anarchists. After like you know, like one of them, it just like knife their main guy. Um. They became less excited about paspists

once World War One kicked off. Let me tell you, yes, the Hive lasted for thirteen years until nineteen seventeen when for As personal finances suffered and he couldn't afford it anymore. Basically, the World War One fucked it all up, and the whole thing was run as a Soviet which means commune, not part of the Soviet Union, and decisions were made at a weekly general assembly by the staff and by the older students, which I believe included anyone over the

age of thirteen. Amazing, Yeah, this place, it's very cool.

This is actually the most excited I've ever been about like whenever I read these things about like and then all these radicals had their like back to little land thing where they got like fifty acres in the meadow and they like sold whatever, honey, I'm like, and then it all ended horrible and some poly drama and someone probably stabbed someone, like you know, it's like, like, I think that sticking her heads in the sand is like usually a really bad thing, right, And I think that

the thing that really excites me about this is that they didn't in Instead, they were like, we are a project that is part of the larger world that makes use of this idyllic landscape. Right. Um, I I haven't found anything negative about this is like the most like just pure positive. Like this place was just cool as far as I can tell, it seems really cool. And

the teachers and the staff were volunteer. They were given food and lodgings and of course an equal voice in how things were run, right, and they could use money from the communal pool for anything that they needed and they didn't need to justify their expenses. Um. And by all accounts, no one took advantage of that system and abused it. There were about fifty students at any given point aged five to sixteen. It was really competitive to get in, and the only favoritism was shown was towards

the kids of all these executed anarchists. So like, if you get executed by the state, at least your kids get a free education at the Hive, and tuition was pay what you can, without any emphasis in selection based on who had money. The school aggressively it did not teach anarchy. It taught autonomy. It taught students. It taught them what they wanted to learn, and really intentionally avoided

indoctrination into anarchism. And it was an integrated education like Paul Robbins Orphanage, and that practical skills and the heavier subjects were both emphasized. Students started an apprenticeship at thirteen and whatever skill they wanted. UM. Basically, up until your ten you do whatever you want and no one's allowed to tell you what you have to learn. UM. From ten to thirteen or maybe ten to twelve, you like

get the basics of a ton of different fields. And then at thirteen you pick an apprenticeship and you start doing labor for the farm as that apprenticeship, and you get a wage for the things that you make that gets sold by the cooperative. So I think the only people who got paid by this school were the students. UM and everyone is encouraged. Everything boys and girls taught were taught together their sex education. There's no punishments, there's

no rewards, but the reward of learning. UM students travel internationally, like their field trips are like, let's go to fucking Russia or whatever. Switzerland is the only one I know off the top of my head, but UM and international visitors come to see the place, and I don't know, and it I keep reading, I'm like waiting, I'm like, and when did it go off the rails? When did it go off the rails? It's it just it ran out of money because of World War One, which like

almost nothing fucking survived World War One. Lots of people did not survive World War One. Some countries didn't properly survive ward. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And this is not the most famous torch bearer of Paul Robbins's work. When we come back on Wednesday, we'll talk about Francisco Fare, the Martyr of popular education. I'm excited to learn more. It was pretty fun these people are really Yeah, it's so nice.

It's so nice not to do one while you're like and then he turned into a massive piece of ship and started doing some horror. Yeah, it's like a cleanse. Yeah, it's nice. James, do you have anything you'd like to plug at the end here you should listen to our other podcasts where we don't always talk about such happy and wonderful stuff, which is it could happen here. Um, if you wanna hear my opinions on stuff here about the shock. I just thought you can follow me on Twitter.

It's at James Dout, which is my name. Um. I have a book about the popular Olympics. It's linked to my Twitter bio. It's very expensive. If you aren't able to access that, then let me know. My d ms are open. I think that's all awesome, Margaret. And you have a book that people can purchase, correct, I do. I have a book called we Won't Be Here Tomorrow, and it is available wherever you get your books, including such cooperative bookstores as Firestorm Books in Asheville, North Carolina,

or Red Emma's in Baltimore, Maryland. Is published by the collectively run publisher A. K. Press. Um. Is that count as an accent if I just put on an affectation? I like it it. Yeah, it's authorial, it's very um. Well, I have been on book tour, so I have been talking about and you can actually catch me on book tour, which will be happening while you're listening if you're anywhere in the South and mid Atlantic and a tiny bit of the Midwest, but by that I really mean Cleveland.

And then you can catch me on tour talking about none of this stuff and instead reading new stories about people who pretend to be orcs or teenage lesbians in love with satanic death cults. Yeah, it's a queen and any of them. Will you do your Will you do your queen voice? Uh? I used to have a crass cover band called Best Before four, which was like my like steampunk crass band. And I can play big, a little a on accordion, and that is how I will do a queen song a queen voice. Okay, let's go

to those shows. Demand that. Yeah, probably, And we'll be back on Wednesday with the part two. He Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on 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 get your podcasts.