2025 Q&A

Also media.

This is poetry. You don't edit poetry, well, you do edit poetry.

One of the things with poetry and poetry.

Stop talking. Welcome, Welcomed, It could happen here twenty twenty five Q and A edition. We have the whole team here, Mia Garrison, James, Robert Evans. I'm your producer, Sophie Lichterman. We're gonna answer some of your questions. How's everybody feeling.

Great, trepidacious, amazing, bad. I just got back from vacation, so anything's going to be bad. That's not me continuing to not look at my phone or computer.

Great.

Yeah, you should stop looking at the phone.

Hey, you guys, have you.

Guys aware what this Trump dude's doing?

Jesus Christ, very very yea. I went to the WJA holiday party this weekend and the amount of like twenty seventeen Trump jokes I had to hear.

Oh no, that's I'm against humanity.

God.

I love I love that party. I love that party.

I'm going to a holiday party tonight with some friends who do insurance for people who live in the US and go to Mexico, so I'm sure I will get lots of fun and exciting anecdotes.

Yeah, I am throwing a holiday party and planning it with a four year old, which is exciting. It's gonna be good.

One of my favorite experiences as us having our job is at almost every partday I go to somebody's like, so those the news.

Yeah, people just st to just summarize the fucking news.

Yeah, not good. Listen to executive disorder now.

I had to explain seven six four to a screenwriter yesterday and they were not happy.

Anyone who goes to a party that I am at knows that there's a gun on the table. If anyone asks me how the.

News is that, that's just the sprace that way fucking out.

Yeah, yeah, what's going on over there?

Erin Burma.

Let's let's let's answer some questions.

Let's all right, so we posted on Blue Sky, we posted on Instagram, and we have some of your questions. Let's start out with with a fun one. Can we have a fun, non incriminating story from your youth, any in all of.

You, no fun, non incriminating story about you.

I mean, for Robert, this is and James and maybe me. Statute of limitations for all of you should be fine.

Yeah, Garrison.

I cannot answer this at all.

I have a lot of interesting stories, but I've tried to think of something from my youth that I could actually share.

I can do one that I think non incriminating. I'm sad about having been part of it, but that's okay. I was gored by a bull when I was younger.

Story. I feel like if we put money on it, like two of us would have bet a bull was involved.

I've actually been present at several gorings various species. I probably have most of the gorings that it's available for a human being to witness because I've seen like a water buffalo goring.

Oh nice, that's got to be like the top goring.

Yeah, that was a really unpleasant day for everyone involved. A guy lost the use of his of his legs for a period as she recovered it later, which is nice.

So you can laugh about it, yeah, fun laugh about it.

Yeah, Well it's a funny. It's a funny story.

It's fun.

First of all, you shouldn't be unkind to animals, so I did deserve it, right. I don't think you should torn animals for human pleasure. I don't think you should make them suffer, and if you do, it's kind of your fault. So in that sense, it's funny.

I don't know that I've ever heard of a goring where I wasn't like, well, the animal was in the right clear.

I've earned the bull team of this. The funny part was that my friend who was staying with me, had previously not driven a manual vehicle. I had broken probably the bulk of my ribs right, like a lot of rib breaking, and we drove home like that, learning to use to clutch on the way, And that was one of the most painful experiences I think that's available to a human being.

Is it bad that the story that popped into my head was when I ripped my pants in front of the entire eighth grade class at our school picnic because I was wearing way too skinny of jeans playing basketball and my pants ripped and I was wearing TMI red onnies and pants ripped, so like my entire butt.

No, that's got to leave some scars. Yeah, that for me.

As as a person that I feel like, you just fuck the Yeah. But that was my fun non incriminating story from you.

Was the time.

From the entire eighth grade class that are like graduation picnic.

Yeah.

I love that you were like skinny jeans Icarus, Like that's something that.

Tight.

Why why it was the way things were back then.

So I know, I know, Robert, you have to have a fun one. I do.

I do.

What's the statute limitations on murder?

Uh?

No?

Very couple of weeks?

Fine, now I'll tell I'll tell a pants splitting story too. I got a really good one, Sovie. So I'm in I'm in rural northern India in this town called rishikash which is where like it's where like the Beatles had their Ashram. It's like a holy city. There's a lot of yoga there. You're up in like the Himalayan foothills. It's beautiful. The ganjes is actually like clean enough to swim in up there. But it's also crazy whitewater rapids.

Is what a sight.

We went to lunch that way.

There's still a restaurant there where they won't let Robert.

Still, James, there's more than one restaurant, Indie, I can't go back.

Yeah, there's a hotel in Bangkok that neither of us can go back to.

But no, they handled you puking in the parking lot like a trooper.

Yeah, because I puked directly into my nalgene like it, considering.

Exactly like a hero, Like a hero, James.

And then send a picture to Sophie.

Yeah.

Yeah, that was before I worked here. I sent a picture to Sophie of Nalgene for the puke, and.

I was like, let's hire that guy.

Yeah.

I feel like you get thirty seconds into our relationship that I told Sophia a story about me puking. So it's fine.

It was like fifteen seconds. Yeah, yeah, it might have been fifteen anyways, Robert, can we get an update to the sequel of After the Revolution?

It's done. I'm editing it. I even got edits back from my editor. I'm edit it should have been done so much faster. I could, like bring up the fact that my dad died last year, but that's really just me trying to make you feel sorry for me, and the fact that I am well past the time at which I expected to have this book done. But it is done and I'm finishing it and you will get to read it. Suit, I'm sorry.

Good for you, Good for you, Robert.

Wow, incredible.

Do you plan to cover recent political developments in Canada? I feel like that's a gair question.

Yeah, the answer is always yes.

The answer is yes to all of like, yes, we will be covering Canada.

I mean, especially Alberta.

I've been wanting to do stuff on Alberta and the Conservative Party there and a few of the key figures for a while. I've you know, we've all been busy. But yes, I should eventually do a dedicated thing I gat like and I do occasionally, right, usually usually once or twice a year. I try to get some Canada related things.

I've talked about Canada gar and I I feel like did something.

Yeah, I me'd like the Canadian election happened this year, right, Supreme Leader Carney is it is still still in power.

And will be for a while.

But yeah, specifically, the Alberta Conservative Party is rife with potential stories.

My recent political development in Canada that I would like to talk about is what's his name dating Katy Perry? Oh god, because it makes me upset?

Wait, who, that's not our problem anymore.

That's one famous Canadian person is It's justin.

It's just famous Jesus, not Bieber, not Biever Trudeau.

True, Okay, okay, still bad, still weird.

Tudeau and Katy Perry are dating a match made in Heaven.

Their Instagram official and the photos are upsetting.

I do feel like this is the potential we have a potential for, like the one Ring of couples Halloween costumes situation to happen here, and I'm excited for that.

But no, I'm I'm I'm living pretty close to Canada now, so I would like to travel up and do more Canadian stuff in the next year.

Yeah, you love Canada, Garrison, great deal.

Yeah.

Yeah. As a general rule, people, if you're ever asking, hey, this major thing is happening in another country, are you guys going to cover it? The answer is probably yes. But there are how many people are on this call five people, and there are I believe ten countries in the world at least.

So many are saying more, well, everyone's in a while, this is a civil war, and one of those splits into two. So I think there's actually eleven countries right now.

It's somewhere between five and eleven countries.

Yeah. Well, ironically, when there is a civil war, there's a decent chance. So I'll be traveling there and the twelve months.

We have a pretty broad remit here, and I do think we cover a lot of ground. But again, you know, there's there's only so many people on the team, and we have so many days in the week. So the answer is generally, if we think we can and have more to tell you than like here's an article I read, we'll try to do it. But yeah, you know, world big as small.

Yeah yeah, and there are other people who do excellent work on lost of things, so like, you know, we don't have to cover everything.

God, I missed the trucker convoy. That was fun.

That was a just forgot about that.

What about Roma Yadlu she's still kicking around Canada, Queen of Canada.

She got arrested recently. I don't know if she's out on bail or whatever they call it, and poutine bail or whatever in Canada, but they can't arrest her robot because she's the queen. Anyways, notes about that.

Yeah, what's a fiction book that y'all have been reading lately?

Ooh?

My answer is I work too much. I haven't read any good fiction book lately.

I've been reading a sci fi book called Children of Time.

Oh good, Oh, Adrian Tracossi, great guy.

Yes, I just read Winter in Madrid, because even when I'm reading fiction books, it still has to be about a Spanish civil war.

Yeah, so funny, that makes sense for you.

Load bearing element of my personality.

I'm restarting Sirens of Titan for the first time since I was a little kid, which is Kurt Vonnegut's sci fi novel and like everything Kurt Vonnegut wrote one of the best to ever do it. And then you know, I was on vacation, so I was just rereading some Warhammer books to not think about the news when I needed to look at a device.

Yeah. I'm gonna try to take a little time off around the holiday. So if people have good fiction books to recommend me, message me on Blue Sky.

I've been listening to Oh God, like the entire Kate Daniels series, which is a very fun sort of urban fantasy series where they have a magic apocalypse where sometimes there's these magic waves and magic works and technology stops working, but then they just flip randomly and so technology works in magic don.

Yeah, that's basically the plot line is shatter on Yeah.

Yeah, and it's fun.

I got absolutely flashbang jump scared by one of the characters in one of the spinoffs doing a full analysis of the whole translation debacle of the old world is dying, the new world struggles to be born. Now is a time of monsters, which I was not expecting the author of this fantasy book to know about. So it's a fun time. Yeah, there's lions, there's were hyaenas. It's it's good.

We'd like to see it cool.

Well, we're going to.

Take a quick break and we'll come back and continue answering some questions.

We're back.

So on that note, there's a broader question and it's a favorite media from twenty twenty five can be books, shows, movies, games, et cetera.

I mean, and or's gonna be up there for me.

And Door season two is definitely gonna be hard to be.

I really enjoyed that that new show, The Pit, the medical show.

Oh yeah, I've heard good things.

Yeah you would like that.

I liked it. It made me dizzy, but I liked it. It was interesting. I mean, we'll see how it does in season two. But the first season I was like, huh.

I finally started watching that smiling Friends show and that's fun.

Oh cool for for TV shows for me. Besides like and Orch's which is good. I think Rehearsal season two and the Paramount Nazi.

Episode season two, Yeah, yeah, it's more and more after single phenomenal.

As well as Tim Robinson's a new show, Chair Company, which I gets to the American conspiracy mindset better than almost anything I've seen. No parts of that are like rival that can film. Yeah, I still think. I still think Eddington is pretty good. It doesn't have as much like a depth or humanity as like one battle after another, which I quite enjoyed.

I like that a lot too. I watched the first two episodes of Chair Company and then was like, I need to wait until they are all out so I can derange myself and like stay up until Dawn watch.

Oh, it's so good.

That's the way I need to encounter this. But I'm excited for that.

I finished Chair Company now and it consistently keeps hitting.

Yeah.

I don't think Tim Robinson is capable of not pleasing me at this point.

That's good. That's a that's a healthy relationship.

Yeah.

I like the on on Netflix Adolescence that that mini series that was pretty good. The acting is incredible. There's just so many things this year that we're pretty decent.

TV has been good.

TV's been good.

TV has been good.

Yeah, I haven't watched Shit. I've just watched I've watched and Or and nothing else. So Hades too great game, very fun. Yeah, det de Cronos, et cetera, et cetera. Also, I want to talk about One of the Boys, which is a book from the beginning of this year we

I also watched Paradise. The ostensible focus on the show is that like a secret service agent goes to live with a president who is retired after like you know how the detail that they stay with and it becomes clear over the course of episode one this isn't really a spoiler that the president is living in an underground bunker with all of the other survivors of a catastrophe

I don't watch much TV, yeah, but I have been enjoying sticking to the theme. I guess ak Press have a translation now of two books that I very much enjoyed reading in other languages. One is called Zaragossa Bound, which is exclusively about the Druti column. I think it's probably the best book I've read on the Druti Column and Sons of Night by Antoine Jimenez, who was actually that was not his birth name, but he was an Haalian anarchist who fought with the International Group of the

Look, I think I can answer this next one. Given how we see media companies from Disney to Conde and ask purge or otherwise censor anyone centing against Trump. Do you fear iHeartRadio doing something to cool Zone. My answer is they've never, They've never censored us in the in the past, so I don't see it happening in the future. But you never know.

Yeah, I mean anything can happen. It's media. I'm on my third or fourth industry depending on how you count it, within the digital media space. But like what I'll tell you, right, now is that at the moment, and this has been true for almost a decade, we make them money and they in return say, keep doing what you're doing, kid, kiddos, bukaroos.

Yeah.

So yeah, that's about as good as it ever gets in media, in journalism. So you know, let's keep our fingers crossed.

Yep. What was a piece or series cools one media put together in the past year twenty twenty five that you were most proud or happy to be part of?

What about you gare?

Probably the piece that I'm most proud of in like a reflective sense is the dog Whistle Politics episode I did. I still think that's really relevant and a useful addition to like our cultural dialogue around understanding dog whistles coming out of the Trump administration. And like, even still now I will see see posts with people decoding false messages in overtly like nationalistic communications from the DHS again, and then this whole focus on like dog whistles versus the

Have had I would have had I would have fifty one fifty yeah, yeah, I would have put your ass on a seventy two hour hold.

So, like there's obvious stuff like that, Like yeah, no, they're they're clearly clearly doing like intentional nods towards like online fascist memes. And then they are also just posting regular, regular sentiments of like nationalist policy that people are then reading in coded statements to. And I don't think that whole practice is super useful when they're actually implementing this stuff.

Yeah, I'm proud of the Zizzian episodes that I did earlier this year, and those are my best episodes of the year, you know, I'm particularly this year have done a lot more back end supporting work, but I'm continue to be extremely proud of how ed Xytron's both show and influence in the industry that he covers has grown, especially as he's been really on the ball ahead of some of the breaking of open ais irrational exuberance. Been

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I have two things. One on sort of just a personal level, I'm really proud of the episode that I did that was sort of about Elon Musks Nazi Salute, but was mostly about the way that all of our reality has been consumed by spectacle and the way that we relate to each other through you know, through screens and through like images of media in a very you know, so this was this was a very guide to board sciety these medical episode.

I think for me, like still the border stuff. Really it made me really happy that like last year I went to the jungle and made a podcast and now one of the people I met has a place to live. That's really cool, and like it really makes me happy. Like not just when we can like shift the discourse. I think that's cool, but also when people listen to that and then change the things that they do, like every day or some like that's always what you want.

I'm super proud of the anti vaxx America series that I commissioned Steven to do. I think it was a really good, complete project that covered the story in depth more than anyone else. So if you haven't checked that out, check it out. We're going to go to another quick break and then we'll answer a couple more questions.

Sound good, cool, Yep, we're back all right.

This question says, as we become jokrified, Sure.

As we all become jokerified.

Eventually, what did it for each of you? I mean, let's just say, let's let's just answer in like the last year.

Sure not not overall a recent jokerification inciting incident.

I can answer that, And that might also be career since it's when we couldn't get into the DNC for comm layers to speech.

Oh no, that was nothing to me. That hurt me.

That hurt me so much because the DNC was so depressing.

It was so depressing, and.

The DNC was way worse than the RNC.

Post DNC certainly was a jokerifying moment for me.

It hurts Garrison. I had people reaching out to me in Portland who were worried about you after the DMC.

Yeah, the DNC was a jokerifying moment. I guess to piggyback off that though in terms of like a re sent joker moment working on the like Democrat left wing conspiracy stuff really did a number on me.

Yeah.

Yeah, and just like like seeing the scale of that stuff, especially around like the Charlie Kirk assassination, and just that that that whole moment definitely was like just drilling into my head.

Yeah, those uh, like truth tunnels that people went.

The whole team could attest to this, I was getting pretty out there.

You can't get back to Garrison sustained damage.

The uniformity of the embrace of counter factuals is like, like, I I don't even know what to do about it anymore. I don't feel like fact checking works. Yeah, I feel like positing alternate facts feels bad too, because then you're just like saying, well, I guess we're just openly having a life fight. Let's all have a big life fight. Let's see who's live.

Yeah.

No, And when you're when you're trying to be the only one holding on to like the like life raft of truth as everyone as everyone else is like drowning and like mad at you.

Yeah, it's like I, yeah, I don't know, you don't know how to handle that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Whenever I encounter someone who's like you think Trump got shot in the ear, Like, yes, yes, I do. Yes, In fact, I do think he got shot in the ear.

Yeah.

And also can we not like what it's a year ago late, like we're here now.

That one is so comprehensively disappointed to me because one of the little things it reveals is that there's even among progressives in the left, this belief that like, someone can't be injured by a gun and handle it reasonably well and not be a good person. Right, right, you have faked the fact that he didn't like can and piss himself. It has to be fake. It's like, no, he just like didn't freak out or whatever on a

You are surfing a cloud for a while there you're not anymore.

I think the insights I got from this like left wing conspiracism, like like seizure. Right, this is like the seizure of the left embracing desk. I got one of the biggest points of clarity I was on, like what's

For me, Yeah, the ice guided missiles, Yeah man, that fully fucking sent me like as someone who's been a journalist for a while, just seeing these outlets that you were previously kind of like the first time I had a byline in Mother Jones, I was pumped. Yeah, and then here they are just being like, love to know more about these missiles.

We have that.

Job, look at it.

I literally did that while I was like waiting for coffee or having a shit or something like. It took me that much time on my telephone to find that contract, Like, what is wrong with people.

Again, it's all just fucking shibolettes and virtue signaling boat like that. Why would that be worse if I've had guided missiles? Do you know how guided missiles work? Do you know the kind of tail that's required to make them function? Do you know the kind of like mechanical like experts that you have to have in order to like keep these things working and keep them usable? Why

Yeah, and they'd be as bad at using them as there and everything else.

And to be quite frank, the government is already using guided missiles to do war crimes via the military up. Yeah, yeah, people who know how to use them.

The other thing that really just wow, every single time that there's a mass shooting event, which is often in this country, the fact that they had to transvestigate the person every single time, Oh yeah, holy is unnecessary annoying. It makes me very angry, Yeah, very angry.

Fuck men.

Just I don't know recently there was a wide piece about like in range TV Calcasido, who's had on before and the matches, the matches he hosts.

And like the brutality matches. Yeah, probably thirty.

Percent of the piece was reflecting on the killing of Charlie Kirk and like nobody who goes to Carl's matches has been accused of shooting Charlie Kirk.

No again, And the guy who shot Charlie Kirk didn't shoot him because he trained doing matches. He shot deer. Yeah, and then he shot a guy in a similar way to how he'd shot deer.

Nor is he a trans person?

You know, what's a better practice if you're going to shoot someone one hundred something yards distance than a tactical shooting match shooting deer?

Like yeah, Like the whole thing is just like I know, Yeah, the discourse around mass shootings has become less helpful and more toxic.

No part of it's because I think there's a decent chunk of like progressives and left for whom like it's immoral to actually know anything about how guns work, or how shooting works, or gun culture works, so you can't actually like understand what you're talking about, which is another problem. There's a lot of problems. It's not high on the list of problems. But it annoys me.

Yeah, maybe it pitches me off irrationally more than it should. But like I just tried to find that frustrating, Like we cannot have a reasonable discourse around guns in this country.

No, No, that that ship sailed, Yeah, with some bullet holes in the hole.

One one last serious one. M what's everyone's opinion on the best implementation of dual power in the modern era? That's a mea question.

I mean, how are you defining modern era?

I guess how you defining dual power?

Yeah?

Yeah, and how long do you have the people who've objectively done the best job of it as Asapatistas.

And they've done the best job of it in large part because they've been willing to change the structure of their systems over time as things have worked and things have not worked, and as the systems that they've been using have decentralized. I don't know the fact that they were able to even even under a massive attack, they were able to do a massive expansion a few years ago. Yeah, they've held out against you know, the wrath of the Mexican state which is one of the most violent in the world.

Yeah. I mean I would in a similar veins talk about like the PKK and then the YEPGJ and REROJABA, right where you had these non state groups that had connections and that had some experience doing what we might call mutual aid prior to the government's collapse, and then kind of expanded that into these networks that began to mimic and replace state function in an area that about

Right, Yeah, I guess in less of a militaristic way, but more like a party capacity or like political proposal capacity. Probably some of the stuff coming out of the New York City Chapter of d say the past year, which is not reflective of DSA is an entire national organization, but specifically the New York chapter has been very very prefigative in actually doing like more like party oriented dual power.

Yeah, And obviously I think probably we should also talk some about like the different immigration defense hotlines and immigration defense reaction forces around the country that have shown really ramping up and doing a lot of really good and really difficult work under duress and under you know, fire, so to speak.

Yeah, I think people have built immedunity safety to keep that community safe when the state has failed to keep their communities safe, right, and sometimes it's put their communities in danger. Ye, And like especially, I think it is kind of heartwarming to me to see people who who were just like straight up statist liberals, right yeah, realizing that actually the cops aren't going to come and arrest Ice.

And I'd say, in general, James, the fact that there's a whole lot of normy people who would have you certainly would have described them as normies a year or two ago, that are now like, yeah, we gotta get rid of Ice. Maybe we've got to get rid of all these cops. Yeah, Bill Crystal, Yeah, Bill Crystal. Beyond the anti Ice train, right. Yeah, it's not bad. I do get the first. I'm not saying like we should

Said, Bill Crystal's coming to the Anarchist Book Fair and it's going to be serving Vegan Slov.

Is that even a joke? Garrisoner, Is that real? That could be real? Okay, but but it's it's just in general good that a lot of people who are like where my parents were politically twenty years ago are looking out at what's happening and being like, we got to get rid of these fucking people. Yeah, that's that's good. That's positive.

Yeah.

I would say that that's kind of like a downstream change from what I think will be the most long term positive change from the twenty twenty uprisings, which is a huge number of people who hadn't thought about the cops realized what the cops are.

Yeah, And to wrap it up, Robert, we got like multiple requests for you to do various accents.

Are you fucking shitting me?

Various what accents?

Since so many requests for you to do various access.

Well okay, some Australian ones, some Boston ones, Boston a few other but like the specific areas of Boston. I think they were asking about like like different like int Austin regional. Sure, sure, I'm sure you can just do those like one one one.

Oh all right, yes, enough of that to see? Is that for listening? Are our Q and A episode?

Okay? Yeah?

Oh they could happen a year?

Nailed it perfect?

You had no notes.

I'd say we reported the news, but this was definitively not the news.

Yeah we didn't do that.

Yeah, goodbye.

It could happen here is a production of cool Zone Media from More podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for it could Happen here, listed directly in episode descriptions.

Thanks for listening.