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It's autumn time to get cozy and nothing is cozier than one of Casper's award-winning mattresses. Of course, they've got their most popular mattress. The original hybrid, it's engineered for cool, comfortable sleep. You can get a more restful and more soothing night sleep if it's a little warm in your August with the wave hybrid mattress, which provides more support than foam alone. Or upgrade to the wave hybrid snow mattress with snow technology to give you a full night of cooler sleep if you need to try it to believe it, Casper offers free contactless delivery and a risk. Free Hundred night trial. Discover the Casper difference today at casper.com and use code here 100 for $100 off select mattresses that's code HERE 100. Thatcasper.com for $100 off. Hey there. I'm Scott rank, host of the podcast history unplugged. Now, it really is a dream come true to get paid to talk about history without all the stress while still being able to make a living. And I did it with Spreaker from iheart. Not only did they make it super easy to monetize my podcast, but ad revenue is 3 to four times higher with spreaker than with any other host I've worked with. So if you want to turn your passion into a podcast and give this a try, visitspreaker.com, that's SPREAKER. Dot com get paid to talk about the things you love. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Oh, it could happen here and earlier this week. Not the week you're hearing this, but the week we recorded it, it did it being the end of Roe V Wade via Supreme Court Fiat and also the coming end of 100 years of social progress and less. People get real organized and aggressive real ******* quick. I'm Robert Evans. Who else? Who else do I got on with me today? Is there a? Is there a? Is there a Christopher Wong? On the line, yes. There there is one. There are many others. But but I am me. Yeah. The others do not count. Is there a Garrison Davis on the line's the only one that I know of? That's right. That's right. We exterminated the others in a in a brutal set of purges, Ala Stalin. And then, of course, Shereen. Lani Yuna. Shereen? I'm. I'm here too. Would you like to introduce Sophie? Of course. I mean the one and only, Sophie. OK, well, that's us. Wow. And now today, I am intensely excited to introduce our guest who is a cool person doing cool stuff to steal from another one of our podcasters, cat green of the abortion access front. Cat, welcome to the show. Thank you for coming on. I know this has been a hell week for you. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. Now you and I have a friend in common, and you guys were actually at a national conference for abortion access when the news dropped a little early. Do you want to talk to us a little bit about what happened there? Now that the conference is over, I can say that we were in one of the worst cities in the world to be in when all of this happened. Orlando, FL. Which is basically made of paper sets, right? Yeah, honestly, you could have stopped that sentence at one of the worst cities to be in. Yeah, we had actually been out to dinner at the oldest restaurant in Florida earlier that night, and it was a lovely evening, even though, like some angry driver tried to kill our mutual friend over a parking space. Florida gloss over that part. Well, you know, I mean it it Florida. Yeah. You know, also the day had started with there already being a bomb threat at a clinic in Knoxville. So I was trying to help people find information about that earlier in the day. And then we went out to dinner thinking that we got to relax and then came back to the news as it was breaking and into the lobby of our hotel where the remaining providers and advocates that were there were. Just trying to make do. So cat, I I first of all, I guess we should talk about what the abortion access front does and and your job there because this is something I don't think a lot of people think about it. One of the things that's become clear to me from some of the reaction of some folks this week on the more liberal side of things is there is a general unawareness of how violent and intense the threats against abortion access providers have been for like 40 years. Yeah. Well, so abortion access front was founded by Lizz Winstead, my partner, who was the Co creator of The Daily Show, and started as a progressive advocacy and messaging hub. And so we were making funny videos about abortion, and then Trump got elected. We're like, oh wow, our jobs got way more serious all of a sudden. And so we had like 700 volunteers in the week after the 2016 election. And so we started becoming matchmakers for volunteers to different clinics around the country. And we were doing comedy tours where we were trying to build community around the clinics in different States and so we would do a comedy show, have a have a provider on at the end to talk about what was at stake locally and then get people to sign up to help because people didn't have access to contractors. And many of the places we were going, you know, like we would go out and do landscaping work when we were on tour. Because we were just trying to help out wherever we could and in the course of that. The Nice folks at the National Abortion Federation reached out to us and we're like, we're a little concerned about you putting providers on stage. Maybe we should talk about your security plan. So they they were out with us the first two years and then we're giving me information about people we needed to watch out for. So I got way more involved in creating these security plans around our shows and our tours and started doing a lot of my own research on anti abortion extremists because as we started talking to more. People that clinic escorts in front of the clinics. We were getting information about not just leadership, but the people on the ground who they were the most afraid of. So then I was like, I wish I could just put all this into something where I could look something up by a ZIP code and be able to tell who I need to watch out for in a particular area that didn't really exist. So there was just a whisper network of escorts and then the leadership research that Matt was doing. And so I started consolidating all my research into a database. For all of us to be able to use and track incidents and organizations and. Bad actors all over the country. I mean that's that's extremely important but also extremely cool. It is that you brought up right at the start of your what you were saying the that there was a shooting at the Knoxville clinic. That was there was a bomb scare at the at the Knoxville Clinic on Monday, and there was a there was an arson and Planned Parenthood in Knoxville this past New Year's Eve. And that same clinic, that same Planned Parenthood that was burned down on New Year's Eve, actually had its front door shut out about a year earlier and. Because this is one of the more frustrating cases. If you look this up, you can see that like the fire department has said, it was an arson. The ATF is investigating. The FBI is investigating. They've both get given the kind of boilerplate statements they given those instances. You don't see a lot from the local police. I'm curious if you have anything to say about like the degree to which the local police have been useful in responding to this. Well, I don't work with the local police at all. I. You know, I'm a TV person that got into doing extremist research. I'm an editor and that I I sort information, right? So, like, that made sense to me, but I law enforcement doesn't really take me too seriously. But. The people on the ground have a lot of thoughts about who it could be, right? There are known people in the Knoxville area who have caused all sorts of problems. There was another person in a different Community Center there, too, and several white supremacists were arrested after protesting a black Lives Matter event maybe two years ago. And so there's here's the thing, there's information about. The Knoxville Fire that went out on telegram with. An order of nine angles Nazi claiming credit for it and how hard can it be to find a Pagan Nazi in Knoxville? Like you go to a Golf Club and be like, who's hit you in the face here? You know, like. So yeah, I feel like there are hindrances to the investigation. And a lot of the, a lot of the activists on the ground have good leads that are not being followed. Yeah. Yeah. I guess that's probably the most direct thing that can be said about it. What? So to the extent that, like, there's seemingly not a lot in a lot of these states that is going to be done preemptively by law enforcement. When it comes to, like, actually tracing out the threats, uh, how much do you feel like you, you have a chance to actually stop them from carrying out an action? And how much of it do you feel is just like, we need to be documenting this for for when it happens. You know, we're already getting early warning about events. We're already because we tracked the people who there are a number of groups that create the same kind of actions that are either invasions or blockades at various clinics. And people who have been organizing around this for decades, right? So in tracking them and starting to put the pieces together, we're already getting early warning about where they're headed, about who needs to be alerted. You know, there have been, at this point 3 incidents just like I'm working with a group of volunteers. These are all people who either escort at clinics or part or even part of advocacy orgs that. You know are not getting paid to do Intel, but they they're invested in the cause and so they just follow this stuff on the regular. We're all in touch with each other. And all of a sudden it's like, oh, you know, this person who's been a part of 12 other blockades in the last three years has been seeing going on a tour and said the next three stops he's going to, let's tell all the clinics in the neighborhood what's happening and they can be a little bit better prepared. And that's, you know, I mean honestly, because the abortion. Movement is not super supported by law enforcement. Largely. It seemed like a necessary thing for everybody to start keeping their own records for their own safety, and that's really how all this came together. Now, it's interesting to me that you, you brought up one of kind of the lead suspects, I guess you might say, for the attack on the Knoxville clinic was an O9A dude. I'm wondering with kind of the threats you're seeing, obviously there's decades of attacks on abortion access providers, including a lot of fatal attacks, assassinations, acid attacks, numerous bombings and attempted bombings. How has the character of who is making the threats and who you see as threats started to change over the recent years? I mean, beyond anything is a big. Yeah, that's that's weird. You know, we've been following the same Christian nationalist for years and. Largely, they have the same playbook. They make a few changes to it. A lot of them are older, you know, it's lock and blocks or invasions. There's a few Catholics who get really aggressive and, like, shove their way into stuff, but it's not. It hasn't been big surprises until recently and and a lot of the time in the past, even when there was extreme violence happening amongst these people it it was still sort of tied back to. Christian identity stuff. And now we're really starting to see it branching out. And honestly, I blame. I blame a few things. One, just the Internet in general, but also. The pandemic kind of galvanized extremists across a lot of spheres, and you started seeing a lot of. Christian identity people that weren't necessarily militia people starting to mingle with militia people and then? You know, militia people starting to mingle with white supreme, like over white supremacist. And so now there's this cross breeding that's happening where, like, I mean the grippers are a great example of just like this weird amalgam of things that didn't exist in the same sphere before and now they're their own movement. Yeah, I I can't tell you how much I hate that. Like, other people who who aren't weirdos, who spend all of their time on Nazi telegram know what groypers are now. Yeah, it's extremely frustrating. It's it's the worst thing in the world. Yeah. One of the weird things about doing this type of research for years is seeing, like on YouTube, like, thumbnails by, like, Stephen Colbert talking about like, wacky, like nonsense that I've known about for years and him talking about it and like like, it's this big new thing. You're always like, oh wow, the the little tiny corner of the Internet I was just watching and staring at. Now is like. It's something that isn't like a regular libs political lexicon and that's like horrible yeah, no broken posting about the Kaliyuga, you know, yeah. That was that was a hard drinking night for me. Like, that was a hard drinking night for me. And it's so hard to explain to people why it's so bad. You're like, Oh well, it's it's just so once back in the 20s, there was this lady named Savitri Devi. Now. Yeah, it's it's it's really troubling because. It's making its way into traditional Christian identity stuff. You know, evangelical stuff. Quiverfull stuff is now starting to cross over way more aggressively with malicious stuff and and with like overt white supremacist, neo-Nazi stuff. It's such a problem because and this is something Umberto Echo, you know, noted a long time ago, but like, fascism is is deeply syncretic, right? And we're that's what we're talking about right now is its ability. It's like a katamari. I refer back to that game a lot because it just keep picking things up. And we don't really do that as much on like I, but everyone from like the center left to like weirdo anarchists and and and whatnot, like everyone's got their own little box, right? And there's some interplay, but for the most part, people on the left really like making boxes, and people on the right, it's just one big ball pit where everybody's smearing their diseases and snot around, and it's. Not great. No, and I mean. We need to figure out some sort of solidarity because, like, even with the abortion protests that are happening this week, we're already seeing people coopting things and turning it in really destructive directions. I mean, you know, the entire cult of Bob Avakian. You know, I mean, I'm actually worried about that, as at this point it feels like a legit Astroturf. It doesn't feel like they're fighting with actual abortion providers and saying that, you know, that, like, abortion funds are a problem. It's like this. Those are the people actually walking the walk and doing anything about this. What are you doing besides showing up in bloody pants and picking fights with cops? Like, yeah, it's this, you know, one of the more uplifting stories that's come out recently. That in France, the left is doing a Popular Front again in order to kind of rest control of the government from Macron. We'll see how it works, right. This is just something that's kind of been announced and but this is like, this has happened a few times in the past and different formulations, and I do kind of. It would be nice to see a broad Popular Front in favor of abortion access and a very blunt level, but that wouldn't involve people not just getting on board with trying to wrest control from the right back. Electorally. But people supporting a legalism a lot of people are going to have to do things that are not legal in order to maintain access to reproductive healthcare. You know, there's the other side of it is like. Hardline anarchists will have to realize that working with Libs is occasionally useful, and using them as body Shields sometimes can can let you do more illegal list type practice. So there's there's both in terms of like people who are really dogmatic on the left being like, OK, there's types. There's certain times where this type, this, this intersectional ISM can be really useful. And then people who are less radical having to be OK with more radical tactics happening. I mean, my biggest fear right now is the mass criminalization event that's about to happen, right? I, you know. No matter what people's pregnancies are going to be criminalized in various forms. If you have a miscarriage, it's going to be criminalized. You're going to have to be more cautious about how you use your phone and what you say in the emergency room and. You know what you say to people in your own family, and I don't think that most people on our side are prepared to have that level of caution or divorce themselves from technology and the way that kind of needs to happen for people to stay safe. I'm also worried that, like as a movement, we're not really identifying the fact that it's all about bodily autonomy, and so that means everybody trying to access trans Healthcare is is. As much or more so at risk. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, and and we have so much to learn from the sex work industry about all of this, right? Like, so much of what is happening now was built on, like, the permissiveness of what people accepted under FOSTA and SESTA. Absolutely. And, you know, that's how all of us got deprioritized and stupid algorithms in the 1st place. And and then all of a sudden, we weren't allowed to put ads out for, like, legitimate healthcare services. And. Keeping ourselves in boxes is really doing everybody a disservice because everybody that's been criminalized, everybody who just trying to exist is at risk right now is in this together. Yeah, it's, you know, there's that famous quote from who's a minister of some sort during, you know, the Weimar years about first they came for us, you know, yadda, yadda, yadda. And it is like it's always true with fascists, but that doesn't mean that people ever spot it while it's happening, right? Because there's, there's very few. Groups that mainstream America has less inherent sympathy for than sex workers. And the reality is that they were testing a lot of this out on those people because they are marginalized. And I guess one of the things I hope will see and that might have some positive developments is that there are a lot of sex workers out there with a lot of opsec tips that they can give other people now. That would be dope if, you know, there were folks like setting up clinics and stuff in that. Because I I think there's a lot of information that does need to get shared with folks who are not used to thinking about any of the stuff they're doing is illegal. I've been seeing stuff on, you know, Facebook among kind of friends of mine who are more middle of the road and family members who are pretty much centrist politically, where they're talking about like, hey, if you need to go on a camping trip in another state, I'll take you on your camping trip. And it's like, I get it, like, it's great to express solidarity, but will you feel that way when it's actually a felony and people are getting 20 years? Instances for doing it right, like, because that's where we're headed, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, people need to get more serious about moving their data out of the country altogether, you know, like thinking about what can be subpoenaed. The folks at hacking and hustling are doing really amazing work to spread sort of sex work and sex work adjacent upset knowledge to other communities too. Like, they're amazing. Oh, that's great. I was not aware of what they were doing. Would you mind giving like a little brief overview of what that is? I mean, I've only reached out to him, but I've only been in a couple sessions with them, but they're they're generally just sharing information about like tightening up your digital footprint and also. Being conscious about how having multiple like if you have to have a clandestine identity online, how you can keep that from leaking over into any of your other digital identities, right? It's, it's. And I mean, it's a really important distinction because even if you have something like a sock account on something like Facebook. Based on how you set it up and what other accounts it's connected to and who you friend in that process, it can very easily find its way back to you and the people connected to you. So how do you spell streams? Separate? Yeah. I mean, whenever somebody angers this podcast, we have Garrison tracked them down. It's very easy. Yeah, that is. That is, that is true. I have a whole, whole folder of people dropping their kids off at school. That's right. That's right. So you know, keep your eye out, HelloFresh. Don't screw with us again. Or that one reviewer that said that there was the woman on the podcast who was annoying. I know who you are. I I was able to, I was able to track back via your Apple account. Just one, just one review. Somebody tried to request access to one of my folders that's connected to. We had a January 6 document where we had identified a bunch of people. And so I just linked it to, you know, Google Drive things so that press people could get to stuff and somebody just out of nowhere tried to access one of them the other day and requested permission. I I'm just like all I had to do was look up your name in the word abortion. Like, come on and try a little harder. So, cat, I'm wondering, number one, for people who are like ****** and feeling helpless, there are things that folks can do to help, assuming you live in a state that there's anything at all around because, like a lot of people who are hundreds of miles away from any kind of clinic. But if you're not, I know there are ways people can help. Do you have any kind of pieces of advice for folks interested in being of use? There are so many things, right? I mean, right now, I think the. Biggest thing that the movement needs more than anything is abortion funds and practical support funds really need financial help because they are paying to move people around as night as needed to get them care right. So the money thing is always the obvious, but we're actually having an event on July 17th that is sort of an orientation day for new people coming to the movement who want to volunteer and don't know where. So we're going to cover things like how you become a clinic escort, what it means to volunteer. Like an abortion fund or practical support hotline. How you can get involved in lobbying groups, how you can get involved in direct action groups and sort of pre vetting people and then getting them out to the organizations that actually have capacity to take on volunteers right now. Because a lot of what's happening, like we already saw it in Texas where people really wanted to volunteer to help in Texas after SBA came down. But they were doing things like calling the Abortion Fund hotline to try and get to people and it's like, no, you can't clog up the hotline. That doesn't help anybody. So we're trying to take some of the lift off of the orgs that are already overtaxed that they're people, give them some background information, give them a better idea of what the landscape is in the movement. And then make the connections to organizations that have the capacity to take them on. So it's called operation Save abortion, and we're going to do a live stream and house parties all over the country. Awesome people are either watching the streams we're doing or having their own local people to talk about how people can get active locally in more direct ways. Yeah, and there's stuff like being an escort, which is is something I've been learning a little bit more about recently. I guess one of the things I'm interested in is like from a A a perspective of actually like keeping folks safe. Is that something that you feel has like a lot of value or or is that something? Yeah. Is that like people would want to like, look at, are there kind of resources for, for getting involved with that? There are. Clinic escorting is a little tricky right now because there's a whole lot of clinics that don't know if they're going to be open in eight weeks. So right now, well, that's all shaking out. I mean, if you already have an established relationship with your local clinic, definitely check in with them clinics in states that are going to see a surge. Pennsylvania, Illinois, New York. I mean, really anywhere that's still going to have abortion after the 26 states fall? The entire West Coast, New Mexico, right? Minnesota they are all going to need escorts. Which clinic escorting is walking a person from their car to the clinic door past protesters. It's generally I would say 99% of clinics are non engagement clinics so doing this means that you're there for the patient, you're not there to get in a protesters space. Some clinics have enough of a protester presence, like. Clinics in Charlotte, clinics in Jackson, Ms, where they have, they split it up and they have people that are there for the patients and people that are there to distract protesters and sort of pull them away from the door, you know, just get them a little bit removed so that they can get patients past them. This is a little bit less pleasant of a question, but. You know, I've I've done for a different cause, a lot of the same research where you're like spending time in these dark corners of the Internet making notes of people and threats being made. And I remember the horrible feeling of like having a specific kind of thing that hasn't quite happened before that I was sure was going to happen and then the ******* thing happens. Are there particular things you are worried about and especially like once this comes through like that, that are kind of on your horizon? Because there's stuff that that people need to be kind of preparing for in terms of like an escalation in in direct action against clinics. Absolutely. I mean, we're already seeing increased threats against clinics. This, this bomb threat the other day was a test balloon, right? But there are organizations like POW who are actively, aggressively invading clinics on the regular and doing things like stealing products of conception fetal remains, right? And parading them out to the public and naming doctors. In an effort to get them hurt, right, it's it's stochastic terrorism. They're not. They are not going to be the ones to pull the trigger. They are just putting it out there so that somebody else does The Dirty work for them. And so many people are guilty of that, right? The Church of Planned Parenthood is another good example, and they've had. You know, they've had a long presence in Spokane. They moved to Knoxville, TN. They've set up church plants in. Birmingham and they've they've been throughout Oregon and and in Oregon they were hiring the proud boys as their security which eventually unsurprisingly turned into a big fight when counter protesters showed up. The police showed up, tear gassed everybody and it's like, how is 1, how is this church to, you know like what is anybody trying to get out of this? And and so there's a lot of people who have been putting it out there for a long time. But. There's all this other ring language of calling people demons because it makes them easier to kill. There's going to be clinic violence. I mean, there's going to be more clinic violence. I should say. All of this is violent. It's violent to have people out there screaming at you and calling you a ***** with a giant sign of fetus. You know parts and and then, but I mean they're really waiting for somebody to like we're buildings on fire or shoot somebody and it's going to happen. Well, does anyone else have anything to get into here? I'm that happy now, that happy now, I think. It's just it's not gonna be like actual Nazi extremists that do a lot of these attacks either. I think especially with it being especially if if like if Roe V Wade does get fully taken away it that will justify a pretty violent action in the minds of like most regular Christians. Even when I grew up in like a pretty evangelical type of community, those types of like attacks against Planned Parenthood were. Almost like there was the, there was the overall feeling that they were like celebrated. And people who would do it would be lauded it as like biblical heroes for for like, for like just ******. A building like that was very much the sense that I got when I was a kid. Like, I I I remember thinking, thinking those thoughts like, oh, that's what like a good people do like, that's like people who are brave will go and burn down at an abortion clinic. They were openly celebrated. You know, the Army of God would have the White Rose. Language to raise money to by auctioning off the personal effects of people who had bombed clinics and shot doctors. And you see a lot of that mirrored now in things like the Saints calendar, right? And and so you see. You see. Neo Nazism and other white supremacist promoting. The Saints calendar and then directing people to the Army of God website. And then you see Christian nationalists finding accelerationist handbooks and having that knowledge now, right. And so they can have the knowledge and loosely collaborate without ever having to say, oh, I'm a part of, you know, great friend or the proud boys or whatever. They won't see themselves as extremists. They'll see themselves as like regular Christians. They'll see themselves as regular conservatives and. What they're doing is, like is like, sanctioned by God and it's like, good, righteous, holy work. So I think that is definitely something to keep your eye on because it's not all going to be like skull mask wearing people doing bomb threats. Yeah, it's gonna be like regular, like regular conservative Christians who are who are like been on this right words track the past, the past few decades. Most of the people that we track are are not part openly, part of extremist groups. Well, not openly part of like known militant extremists, right, but a lot of them. Our whole office, you know? There was Derek Evans was in West Virginia, you've got John Jacob in Indiana. Like the whole Oklahoma contingent. It like abolish human abortion is really just become a lobbying group that's trying to get people in office wherever they can. There's, I mean, they've gotten really strategic about getting people into smaller legislative roles so that they have more power to push things and and so that they look more respectable. Yeah. And it's that leads kind of to another point, which is that when you get right down to it, once the ruling comes through finally as it looks like it will, the vast majority of violence that's going to be done to abortion providers and to people seeking abortions and to people supporting them is going to be done by police. Like that's a that's the eventual end game here. Yeah, and that's that's the thing I'm the most afraid of, right, because it's so much easier to turn somebody in than it is to actually attack a person physically or a building even. And so that's what it's going to be. It's going to be people calling in their neighbors, calling in something from the hospital. Turning in their grandkids, you know? Well. Is there anything right now that's making you optimistic, cat not to put you on the spot? No, no, it's OK. I've thought about that a lot. I mean, honestly, the people working in this are so dedicated to helping people that that always gives me hope. And I genuinely feel like there's enough of us that have plans, you know, even if even if not everybody's on board with the same stuff, there are enough people really doing the hard work and being pragmatic. But what's happening, and not just cowing under the pressure of it, that are energized by helping people that I think there will always be people helping. They might not always be visible, but they're there and it's just going to be harder to find them so. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. Do you have anything else you'd like to plug before we kind of roll out here? Any place people could send donations or volunteer if they're into that? Oh, I mean, you can always donate to abortion access front. We're afront.org and there's a volunteer form there. But also, if you want to participate in our event on July 17th, you can go to operationsaveabortion.com and. There's a registration form there to get involved in the event. Well, thank you so much Kat Green, you are amazing and what you do is incredibly important and to everybody else, go find some way to help or you know at least. It's easy to pee in a water balloon and sorry, OK, well, that's the end of that. Football is back, and bet MGM is inviting new customers to join the huddle and enjoy the action like never before. Sign up today using bonus code champion and your first wager is risk free up to $1000. You'll also have instant access to a variety of parlay selection features, player props, and boosted odd specials. Just download the beta MGM app today. You go to bedmgm.com and enter a bonus code champion and place your first wager risk free up to $1000. 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Floor is a different movie topic, plus spoiler free reviews on the latest new movies in theaters and on streaming. And yes, they're always spoiler free so you don't have to worry about anything getting ruined for you. Plus interviews with actors, directors, and writers covering the behind the scenes of your favorite movies. I also keep you in the know with all the latest movie news and movie trailers. Listen to new episodes of movie Mikes Movie podcast Every Monday on the Nashville podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey y'all, this is Caroline Hobby, the host of get real with Caroline Hobby, honest women, honest talk. I love podcasting. It is so much fun because I have the most in depth, spiritual, soulful, real, honest conversations with women who are mothers, who are entrepreneurs, who have started their own businesses, who are married to celebrities, who are celebrities themselves. These women are juggling motherhood, being a career woman, starting their own businesses, taking leaps, knowing when to jump. These women are incredible and the conversations are so real it will hit every nerve in your body. As a woman, a little bit about myself, I was a country music artist and a trio. I traveled the country open for every celebrity you can imagine in country music. I also been on The Amazing Race twice, and I'm married to Michael Hobby, who is the lead singer of 1000 horses. And we have our precious daughter Sonny, who's two listen to new episodes of get Real with Caroline Hobby every Monday on the Nashville podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcast. It happened here, unfortunately. Work, yes. Nice, nice, great at this. Nice introducing you got it? Yeah, the this is this is it could happen here at the podcast where it it has happened. It sure does. If you're host Christopher Wong with me, we have like 17,000 people. We've got Garrison. Got we, got we got Sophie. Hey. We've got Robert, allegedly. We've got, we've got Shereen, we have for the first time, new friend of the pod, Shereen. Hello, new teammate. And we have returning I think. Yes. Yeah. Return. Well, I'm trying to. I'm trying to think how many returning guests we have. But. Yeah. Kieran. Yeah. Boy. Yes. And creator of our website that I love. Yeah. I'm so glad. I'm so glad you like it, love. Yeah. And we we are gathered here today to talk about something that sucks, which is the leaked draft of Samuel Alito's decision to overturn Roe V Wade. It's. Now, we're all mostly angry that somebody dared to leak a draft and upset the sanctity of the Supreme Court's deliberation process. Right? Right. That's definitely the thing that's been keeping me awake at night. Yeah, yeah. Ohh. A bunch of elderly ghouls who refuse to give up their grip on power can't deliberate in privacy. What does this world come to? Megan Powell, is that you? Yes. It's been me all along. How can I trust the Supreme Court if not everything happens in secret all of the time, always? My in on a serious note, I I would like to start this by stating my primary attitude towards the Supreme Court is that more stairways should be greased. Anyway, that's my contribution. We have been big proponents of horse Lube for years, years, years, and this stance continues. I think horse loop could solve a lot of problems. It could so many. So I I do think it is especially gross that, like, there's the whole side of media people who are making the story out that, Oh no, look at this leak. That is the worst thing to happen in human history. I can't believe this got leaked. And that is like a pretty dominant narrative going on for like over half the country even even like even on like CNN. That was like the first thing. It's pretty funny too, because like the original Rd decision also got leaked. Like, I don't have the text, but like the way it was getting through the verdict was gonna go. Also got leaked as like, OK. It's like, this is actually consistent, so why are we angry about this? It's clearly like, I I get why the Republicans are doing it right, because it's a way #1 that they can pretend to be victims. There's a lot of people comparing it to, like, the January 6th and ****. Yeah, sorry, it's the comparison to be made there is not that the leak happened. No. And that's and like, should it's like it leaked. Yeah. OK. How about the fact that the information inside leak is dangerous and is going to cause a bunch of people to die, so there should be more leaks of government things all the time. That's actually. I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The the the the Government should not be allowed to keep secrets. Like, I'm sorry, OK. You get like, no, no, no. Hey there. Apparently they're called civil servants, and they're doing everything in secret, like, we're supposed to know. I mean, in the perfect world, but they're spying on us. We have no privacy. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, whatever. It's only fair. There's also, like, yourselves. I mean, I guess maybe we'll eventually find out who did it. But, like, it's also we don't have to assume that it was a progressive that did it, for example. Like, I think the Conservatives have even more of a motive to release it because they're, like, mobilizing their people to, like, agree. Would be like, yes, yeah. Do we do we wanna do the, the, the, the weird Supreme Court inside baseball ****? Like, OK, so the the weird inside baseball **** is, so this is a draft decision, right? This decision, like, hasn't this is, this is not the law of the land yet. And the thing with draft decisions that they change. And the thing that's happening here is there's this weird split. There's there's like A322 split on like, what actually is it 3 two? Yeah, that that makes up 7, right. I'm like, what actually? Because so the the five conservative justices, like, don't like. Row, but there's, I mean particularly with like Roberts, there's there's kind of a split on like how far they want to take it. And so part of what could be going on here is that like so this, the version of of decision that got leaked is like. This is basically the most extreme thing they could possibly do. I, in terms of wide-ranging impacts on how we view personal rights, yeah, 22, I mean it's it's, you know, they talk about it later. Yeah. And like this is, you know, this is like the, the, the, the, the nerd, like Supreme Court walk watchers like didn't think that like this would be the thing, right. They just straight up overturned. Thought they would ship it a little bit first or like go after Casey. But like, no, no, they're just they're just straight up going after row and part of what could be the strategy here is like. A lot of OK, so the liberals on the Supreme Court like? Have been feckless and powerless for an enormous amount of time, and a lot of what they spend their time doing is trying to like get one or two sentences changed to be slightly less bad. And this could be an attempt to get the other conservative justices to, like, force them to rally around. Litos like. Unbelievably hard. And they're everything that's worth noting about this is that like Alito, Alito is like. I don't know. I mean, Kavanaugh is OK. So for for a very long time, Alito was like. Broadly considered by the legal community to be the worst legal mind in the Supreme Court. Like, he's a clown. He's like, his legal reasoning is is really bad. Like, even even by this, like, you know this, this has changed with Amy come Barrett and Kavanaugh to it to some extent. But, like, this is not, this is not a guy. This is not like a subtle, like a subtle legal mind. This is like, this is like a bull in a China shop who you throw out when you need to just, like, hit something with a hammer, right? And so. You know, like, yeah, part part of what the strategy seems to be is to try to try to coerce the other justices who are like. Like? Like Roberts, who was like slightly less fanatical than Alito is, and try to get them to rally around this like incredibly maximalist hard lined not only going after Roe, but going after like a whole bunch of other stuff that we will get to in a second. Yeah. So that's that's the, that's the sort of Supreme Court insight baseball **** that. Is. Possibly part of what's going on with the leak, but yeah, I mean, to be honest, I think that's whatever is going on in the league. The, the primary topics of interest to most people are going to be #1 the degree to which the rights trying to use this to distract from what they're actually doing. And more to the point, the concerted, the fact like this is what we're actually dealing with here is like the culmination of 40 ish years of pretty relentless, a mix of pretty relentless electoralism. Married to a very effective direct action terrorism campaign that has netted the right a tremendous. Been here? Yeah. I mean, like, and I feel like this, it's a crisis, but it hasn't been treated as a crisis. And, like, when ******* Democrats campaign, this is like such an urgent matter. And as soon as they're elected, it's suddenly, like, not as urgent. Like, look at ******* Biden. He ran on, literally caught, like, codifying it. He ran with that promise. And obviously that didn't happen. And then there's also like, to Roberts point from earlier, these justices are just. Like ancient and don't give up their power and. I mean there's no use in pointing fingers even though I like to do it. So like RBG for example, like if she had just retired at her ******* time, maybe there would be like one more justice that could ******* help us out. But there's a lot. I mean she's got her share of the blame. There's also the fact that we've had I think 6 justices appointed by Republicans in the last 30 years and only one of those Republicans actually won the popular vote, right, which was the goal. This is not just one of the most important things to understand about the anti abortion. Movement is that it's not centered like it didn't start and is not centered around abortion. It is centered around reversing all social progress of the last century and the inciting incident was the integration of schools, right. This all started over Brown versus the Board of Education. Abortion was just the thing they realized it was easier to rally people around than segregation and and that's what we're dealing with right now. So the the fundamentally this has always been an anti democratic movement. This has always been about codifying. Into law and locking into place for essentially forever a minority rule in which Christian extremists would get to govern the much larger chunk of the country that does not believe in those sort of things. Yeah, and I think that's also worth mentioning anytime someone talks about this because the media doesn't like the media, just runs PR for the anti Bush movement, which is that this is unbelievably unpopular. Like staggeringly unpopular. Nobody wants this. This is like, this is this is less like you can pick if like this is less popular than invading fantasy countries that don't exist. Like if if if you like this, this is this is significantly less popular than the burning police stations down. We have the polling data on that. It's like 20% less popular than lighting police stations on fire. Like it is unbelievably staggeringly unpopular. No one wants this except for a a very, very, very well organized, very politically connected, very wealthy and very powerful clique of Christian fascists. Yeah, well, the laws never reflect what the the most of the population. Though, right, like, look, yeah, exactly like the popular vote, for example, as you mentioned earlier. So it's like, I think there was a poll I was reading about this yesterday in June of last year, 2020, 168% of people thought abortion should be legal for for for any reason. Like there's no doesn't have to be like any kind of thing. So it's like it's and there's so many polls that also just like prove that most people don't want this hard and fast rule. But yeah, both parties I think utilize it to rally together people. No, but obviously for different causes. Yeah. And like the the first reaction from from from Democrats was, hey, donate to our campaign. It's like, yeah, Oh my God, yeah. This flood of emails. Read the room. You have all the power in quotes right now and you've done nothing. Like Vote Blue. They're saying that. And you get attacked by other Democrats by being like a radical leftist ruining the movement because like. It's not their fault. And I'm like you. You've had power multiple times in my 30 years of life where you could have done it easily. Yeah, like, like. And this is one of the things that like. OK like this stuff doesn't work on me because I remember when Obama had a 2/3 majority in this yeah they had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate had the house and not only did he not do this at Obama by by 2010 Obama is codifying anti is codifying anti abortion stuff, codifying the Hyde Amendment. So yeah it's like no like and this is the this is the thing the Democrats like they this is the best thing that's happened to the Democrats since Trump left office. Like the Democratic Party. They love this. This is the best. This is the best they could possibly happen to because now. What they can do is they can run on. We're going to bring abortion back every single election cycle. And they never do it right. Because every single, they'll never like the stuff that they run on. Like, yeah, they'll they'll they like. They will. Even if they got it somehow by, like magic, if they somehow got another 60 vote majority, they'd find a way to not do it because this is this is a permanent fundraising thing for them. Yeah. And they're they're desperately in need of money all the time, always. So if you take that away like. During my brief stint in the California Democratic Party, fundraising was always a big deal. And they didn't want to divest from fossil fuel and cops, because then where would the money come from? You can't take campaigning on raw away from them, because then, like, they don't ******* know how to activate grassroots organizers. It scares the **** out of them. So they will be ****** if they lose this, which is why nothing has happened. Speaking, Speaking of money, do you know who else wants your money? That's that's right, the products and services. Support this podcast. That's right. Wow. And you know. May make you infertile, so that's that's absolutely not. We heard not doing this today. We are back. I think it's was. So we'll be, we'll be talking about Supreme Court abortion stuff for a lot in the coming months. Oh boy. We'll be talking about various different facets of it, different like mutual aid, like in ways of going about kind of filling in the gaps which are going to become larger and whole bunch of other stuff relating to like right wing terrorism against abortion clinics and all that kind of stuff. And the other interesting aspect about this that I want to kind of briefly talk about is that. With the specific phrasing of the document, is it it it it threatens the whole, like, sect of personal rights, not just abortion rights, and could have far reaching impacts in terms of like privacy rights, in terms of possibly even backtracking on stuff like gay marriage and a whole bunch of other things. It's like, it's obviously the abortion angle itself is pretty massive and it affects, you know, half, half. The population, but there's a whole lot of other stuff that isn't that that indicates this, like. This trajectory towards this type of like right wing fundamentalist of Christian, like Christian fascist effort to hack away at all the things that they deem degenerate or things that they deem is undesirable. Well, I mean, the goal is to make America a Christian nation so Jesus can come back and rule it. And you can't do that if, you know, people are gay or people are allowed to be on birth control or people are allowed to marry outside of their race or go to school with people who don't look like them. Like I did read Jesus say all of those things. Yeah, it's it's definitely in the Bible somewhere if you, if you do like that poetry style where you blot out some of the words to make other words. Which is now. Yes, the thing we gotta. Get into that, I think is is is the primary question people have right is, like, beyond sort of the doom scrolling of of all of this and all of the fear about like, what's going to happen to Obergefell and Lawrence V Kansas and all this stuff. What are they going to go for next? Is like, what actually will work to oppose this **** right we at the moment I have not seen, and I don't believe there's any objective signs to the Democratic Party is going to be particularly useful in stymieing any of this ********. Cinema and mansion have already come out. Against removing the filibuster, Manchin has come out against voting at all in order to codify abortion access into into law and any kind of Federal Way. And yeah, I I get the sense that for most of them, it's a big fundraising opportunity. Now, we do have, that's not to say it's all bad news because it is kind of. There's a possibility that this will have a significant impact on the midterms. We got one kind of sign that way. And this the, the, the race in Michigan that just ended the special district or the special election where for the first time in quite a while, the district that Trump carried by like 16 points went to a Democrat now. The Republican that they were running against was the guy who said that women should lie back and enjoy it if they were getting raped. So this is one of those, like, I don't know how much we should see that as particularly emblematic of how things are going to more broadly go. But this does have there's an activation potential, right? Because outside of the fact that the Democratic Party in as a whole is feckless and primarily a method of fundraising for rich people. Actual Democratic voters are rightfully horrified about what's going on. And this has there's a potential here to activate a lot of people and get them organized in a productive way. So I think that has to be on our minds. And and so there's a mix of, I don't want to discount electoralism, but I think that in the immediate term, one of the things that people are going to have to do is provide actual material ways for folks to get access to the healthcare that's going to be increasingly denied to them now. We had a couple of episodes earlier in the year with Michael Laufer of the four Thieves Vinegar Collective he's just gone viral, and a vice article about the hacked abortion pills that that they've been guiding people in how to make. I think stuff like that is really useful. When I started posting about this online, someone pointed out that pro abortion activists in Germany recently flew drones across the border to Poland to drop off misoprostol like abortion pills, which were picked up. By people in Poland. UM, and there's, there's some, there's going to be increasing kind of organizing around that stuff like the Jane collective people are already organizing and from like national organizations to increase access in states where it's going to remain legal for people out of state. So I think that's going to be hugely important. Does anyone else have sort of ideas on kind of what what things people can do and are going to be doing to push back against this? Because I I do think it's got to be twofold. It's got to be both, you know, pushing back and sort of a legal sense and also pushing back by direct action in order to ensure that people still have access to this stuff. I don't know. I don't have faith in electoral, electoral anything. So I really think, like, if there's, if it's possible to find your own community and like, just almost, like with, I don't know, just mobilizing your actual peers versus like, trying to trust anyone with power to get anything done. Because maybe I'm a pessimist, maybe I'm just a pessimist. But what you said earlier about the person she was running against, what I heard is that that person. Was still running and people like he was still the number 2, you know? And I think on the other side, they are their side is also going to rally against stuff like, didn't Oklahoma just passed? Like, yeah, the most restrictive bans ever were, like, just yesterday at time of recording. Yep. Yeah. So in this law, women can be punished up to 10 years in prison for getting an abortion and like, in pair, like, just for some perspective, rapists in Oklahoma get five years. So it's like stuff like that is happening in all these states. And because these states, people with with less resources maybe don't have the ability to travel so far, I think really mobilizing communities a little bit more, maybe just more effective in my opinion. Yeah, I mean we have to mobilize communities, but you also can't like it, can't just end at. We're going to try to like provide these people with an option to get out of the state or get access where they are like clandestinely if it's limited to that, they're going to push to make all this more illegal. Literally. And they're just going to keep throwing people in, in prison and using the police as the enforcement arm of this stuff. There does have to be, there has to be a broader counter. You know, I'm thinking back to like, and I'm not talking about, like, picking a dude to vote for. I'm talking about like in in Mexico, right when they were talking about making abortion illegal, activists attempted to light the Capitol building on fire. And like that that that kind of like there has to be, there has to be a broader 2/3 of the country thinks this is ********. There has to be a way of getting those people organized in a way beyond dealing with the acute problems caused by this. Like, yeah, and I don't entirely know what that looks like, but that makes sense now that you're right. It makes sense. Well, and I think, I think that there have been signs that it's like, so I mean there's, there's obviously like there were protests like. There have been protests, like literally since the thing came out there, especially in DC there's been. Yeah. Also, I mean, I think, I think part of like LA see this sort of like, yeah. What did you see when you can see this sort of like. I don't know. You can see the way that people haven't, I guess, fully internalized the fact that the state is just trying to do this to them. And that, like, you know, if you look at the barricades that were put up, right, like you could just push those over. Like you had a bunch of people who are extremely angry and they sort of just sat there and did nothing, right. And like, this is this is the kind of thing that, like, you know, if you look at what happened in LA there, there was a lot of protests in LA. And like, the department, like Homeland Security was on the street beating people. And I think if if if there's. Like, OK, so one thing that's important to keep in mind is that this still again this, this, the ruling, the draft of the ruling is not the actual ruling, right. There is still time right now. In between when this in between this leak and when this is actually decided there is still time to literally force the court to not do this. So start greasing those stairwells people. Yes well I think here's a few notes. So one I think there's it's going to be used to encourage action on all sides there's it's this is going to be seen as a victory for the right and they're going to use this momentum to mobilize further to to put more further anti abortion stuff into law. And to encourage people to take vigilante justice out on health care providers, the second thing is direct action for. Of trying to alter the ruling before it happens. Like there is a chance to do mass mobilization. There is a chance if we if frame, if things are framed correctly, you can bring a lot of liberals out and convince them and suggest to them that they can, that they could do things that they ordinarily maybe wouldn't do. There is that is an that is an entirely, entirely possible scenario. Just in my in my episodes about the Atlanta Forest from a few days ago I discussed. But the shack method of protest now this, this isn't, this isn't, this doesn't carry over 1 to one, because that is pretty focused on doing economic targeting. But the whole idea of targeting people outside of like, the political space is a key to that. Like people, people don't just do work in the Supreme Court. They have actual everyday lives. And if you can surround them in their everyday lives, that type of personal pressure is way more affecting. Then just yelling at a government building sometimes, because if we can dissolve this, like safe political, like space that people think that think they operated in, right, they assume that, oh, I'm, I'm, I'm a Court Justice, I'm a judge. Everything that I do happens in the courtroom, right? I'm safe, I'm contained. Everything is just in the confines of the courtroom. I don't get to experience consequences for my actions outside the courtroom, which isn't true because obviously the people, all of us do experience that, those consequences in the real world all the time. Just the people in power don't have to. So instead, if we can put pressure on people when they're going about their everyday lives in their hanging banners, in their backyard, doing other things, horse loop. Again, very useful. That is a that is a way to do a types of protests that we have not seen as much, but I think is now is probably the time to start doing that, right. Yeah, I mean we we saw, we saw stuff after the murder of George Floyd with people surrounding the House of Derek Chauvin which police were very angry about. It did not like that there is an indication that hey this the state doesn't like it when this happens. It's not, it's not specifically more illegal to stand in the street of a residential neighborhood. So no, and it's, you know, a lot of protests so far has focused on court buildings, many of which are federal. And those provide a lot of benefits to, shall we say, the defender, including the fact that they are already well set up for surveillance. They're generally fortified. They have a pretty short logistic tale to where the state is keeping its weaponry and its troops as opposed to just kind of ******* with people in their lives, which is a lot harder for those kind of militarized responses that lead to large groups of your friends. Being arrested or beat up by Feds, I think also like, yeah, the tendency to go after like legal buildings is missing the point of where the actual power is like this is the thing which January 6th too is like, yeah, even like, yeah, they took over the capital and nothing happened. And the reason that like nothing could happen is because it's just a building, right? Like the, the, the, the, the actual political system exists dependently of it. You can essentially like. Like you, you can, you can blackmail them into into doing the thing that they should be doing you. You can apply targeted pressure economically and personally, yeah, and that's the type of protest that I think. It would be interesting to see where that leads us. They need to not. They like. The consequence for both the political actors who are carrying this out and the people who support them needs to be that they don't get to live a normal life that they are, that they suffer consequences for hurting people. And that means a lot of things. But among other things, it means that certain people shouldn't be going to the ******* grocery store without feeling the hatred. You know, I think, I think I should be able to order. Delivery and feel secure that what they're gonna eat isn't gonna hurt them. But I think also like if one of the things that I'm remembering from. That was actually really effective initially from the beginning of the Trump administration was the airport protests. And that's a place that like, you wouldn't think you'd be able to really occupy because again, the amount of security there is enormous, but like. If you have a lot of libs. You can like, I I remember like I was, I was like standing in an in an in an airport terminal and there was a line of riot cops attacking like, everyone is like, oh, we're gonna get attacked. But like, there was just enough, like everybody just sat down and there was enough libs with like their kids that the cops didn't attack and that's that. That's a kind of thing that like. Potentially could be replicated and also could be useful given the fact that, like, sometimes cops have like an aversion to would like stuff that looks really, really bad on TV. Not not always, but like, yeah, this is, this is the thing that can happen, is a thing that like has happened in our like pretty recently. Yeah, we could do again. I don't really trust footage of police brutality to change things anymore. I feel like we reached the peak of that in 2020 and at this point, I think moving on to targeted pressure towards individuals that hold positions of power and targeted pressure to the economy. But Speaking of that, Speaking of targeted pressure, the economy, a large protest at an airport that the police break up with tear gas does, damage to the economy that the police are the ones causing. And like, it's it's it's one of those things, as we've stated, a courthouse or whatever is just a building. People can not go into work and do all of the ****** ** **** that they're doing on zoom. An airport is not just a building, you know, and so a protest. At an airport has some teeth that a protest at a courthouse doesn't necessarily. I do have one like quick other thing that I want to throw out as sort of a means of. Uh, resistance or action is something that I was trained to do growing up. Part of the forest birth movement is coopting the language that the left uses. And I think something that we should do and something that we can all be doing right now is Co opting the language back. So when force birth advocates say they're pro-life, come back with how can you be pro-life if you want someone to die by having a pregnancy. And like just sort of taking words and rhetoric that has traditionally been used to. Oppress us to reframe it and be like, no, actually you're the one who's telling on yourself here, and you're the one who is forcing people literally to die in multiple ways. You cannot be pro-life if you support people who already exist dying, and just sort of thinking about that a little bit if you don't necessarily have the energy to go stage protest at an airport. Yep, that is a great line to end on, end on everybody go out. And again, you know, our sponsors are the Klein and Stubal hip Surgery Center in Washington DC so please do keep greasing those stairways, everybody. Football is back and better. MGM is inviting new customers to join the huddle and enjoy the action like never before. Sign up today using bonus code champion and your first wager is risk free up to $1000. You'll also have instant access to a variety of parlay selection features, player props, and boosted odd specials. Just download the bet MGM app today or go to bedmgm.com and enter a bonus code champion and place your first. Major risk free up to $1000 the bet MGM app is the perfect way to experience the excitement of wagering on live sports now in more markets than ever. Visitbetmgm.com for terms and conditions must be 21 years of age or older to wager Virginia only new customer offer. All promotions are subject to qualification and eligibility requirements. Rewards issued as non withdrawable free bets or site credit free bets expire 7 days from issuance. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem call 1-888-532-3500. So by now we imagine that you've seen the theories on tick tock. You maybe even heard the rumors, your friends and loved ones. But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade, we here at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions, sometimes their answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research with you for the first time ever in a book format, you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. For my small bookstore to thrive, I can't just sell books. So I created a radio ad@iheartaddbuilder.com to tell everyone about our author events, our story, hours for kids, and our amazing lattes. Now we're busier than ever. I'd call that a success story. A custom radio ad from iheart AD builder is the fast, affordable way to drive customers to your business. Put the power of radio to work for you. Get started now at iheart AD builder. Com. Ah, welcome to it could happen here. The podcast that's happening here right now, in your ears. It could happen. You hear? I'm Robert Evans. I'm. I'm not with any of my normal. Cohosts today, because. Because **** them. No, because I'm I'm elsewhere in the world right now, hanging out with someone you might remember from a special episode we recently did on Molotov cocktails. Journalist James stout. Hi, everyone. Yeah, I'm here with Robert in a tiny hotel room and we've just woken up ready to do some podcasting. Yeah, we're not we're not here for any specific purpose. We just decided, let's rent a hotel room, cast some pods, you know, hang out. James, how do you feel about the border? Negatively. Broadly speaking, I think the border is a tool that we use to harm and kill the most marginalized people in the world. And I think that's kind of borne out by stats as well. So yeah, not a big, not a big border guy. Yeah. And and you and I recently spent a decent amount of time on the Texas, Mexico chunk of the border, specifically near McAllen, TX, hanging out at a butterfly sanctuary that people can learn some things about, if they Google will be coming out, that those episodes will be dropping in the not too distant future. But you live. On the San Diego side of the border, which if people don't know San Diego, CA is basically in Mexico, you can, you can hop over across for like lunch and stuff if you really want to and don't mind dealing with CBP. And yeah, so I you've done a lot of reporting around the border and about kind of the the system of violence that it represents. I wanted to chat a little bit about that and I wanted to chat about some of the organizations that you've run into that are doing good work out there because there's a lot that needs to be done. Yeah, definitely. I think, I think it's really important to like conceptualize what's happening at the border in terms of like, the border is a tool for state violence, right, state violence against marginalized people. And like what the the good groups, groups helping people on the border represent is like ways of us helping each other, which are outside the networks of us having power over each other, right. So in the broader spectrum of like neutral aid of mutual support, like, I think they're really important to focus on rather than kind of so many people construct the border in their minds, like. You can see if you go back on my Twitter, some guy just being like that is not the border. The border does not look like that. The border is barren and it's desert and it's full of people with guns and it's really not right like, so the border exists is like this mental construct, a place where we can do, like, political theater, especially on the right. So people who are actually down there on the ground and understand it, I think it's it's it's vital to support them. Yeah. One of the more striking moments to me when we were in McAllen was hanging out near this trunk of border fence that had been constructed by law, unlike by volunteers. Effectively, and it's this, it's it's, it's what you would expect. Like the stereotype of the border, it's this huge military industrial looking thing. The wildlife has been cleared from around it so that you can have this towering steel edifice. But then 100 yards away, across the Rio is the Mexican side of the border and there's like a couple of goat farms and like a little restaurant with a a little dock so people can like, you know, take their little boats out and people are drinking and there's party music playing. Like, it's it's nice, it's pastoral and green. It was it looked like a lovely place. It looked much nicer than hanging out by the giant steel tower. Yeah, I found that all along the border, actually. Like, we'd our side of the border looks like something from, you know, like Blade Runner or something. Like it's just giant dystopian steel construct with with people, with guns, with watchtowers. And it's horrific, right? Like it cuts through some of the most beautiful and important landscapes we have right through the high desert, through this very fragile places and. And like, it's important, I think people understand is, well what the border wall looks like, right? Because you've probably seen a photograph of giant *** wall and that is part of it, but they call it the border wall ecosystem. And what that involves is the wall itself, sometimes a ditch, sometimes not a ditch and and then a road that's wide enough for two of the F-150 Raptors that Border Patrol like to drive to pass each other and then access Rd to that. And then generally there's also an access Rd cut that allows construction vehicles. Get to build all of that. So it's not just some spikes in the desert. It it's ******* destroying this, this beautiful part of of both Mexico and the United States right now before we get into some of these organizations. I'm wondering First off, when did you start reporting on the US Mexico border and is there any kind of specific events that that you can recall that really kind of ignited your your interest in, in this particular like? Part of the United States and this particular part of like our ongoing social conflict. Yeah, like, I've always been interested in Borderlands, like academically, uh, and as part of my pH. D But I guess I'd probably about 8:00 or nine years I've been reporting on the border the thing that really sort of took it from being like a the border is sometimes I think I write about. I did a lot of outdoor writing about the border, too, right? I was very interested in getting more people to go outside in Baja California. That's amazing. And and you should do it. But what really sort of, I guess, made me be like, I'll **** this is ******* horrible. Is the the 2018, quote UN quote, migrant caravan. Right. And so I'd been down just just enjoying a weekend in federal further S and further South of Tijuana and having there's a really good wine country there. So we've been checking out these, these wine places and and just enjoying ourselves and we come back and then these people are in what's called the Benito Juarez Sports Complex. It's just a baseball field and it's raining and it's November. And it looks like the ******* like battle of the song in there, you know, it's mud. They're little children. And like, I've been in these situations before. I've seen situations with displaced people before, but there was something that just broke my heart about, like, so obviously we're going to go in, I'm going to see what's going on. Are we going to see what we can do to help? And there are little kids. I remember there was this little girl, and this one still makes me really sad, right? But she would find me. There were thousands of people there. Every single time I came, she would find me, found me the first day. And she would like we talk for a little bit about what she was doing and then she was standing like halfway up her little shins in mud. And she didn't have anywhere to take shower, be clean. You know, she was living in a sort of TARP shelter and it just ******* broke my heart. So you said she said like plat my hair a lot so I carry her around. And that was just like this. Realization for me, like of how cruel this thing is. Shortly thereafter, of course, the police stood in the parking lot of the Tommy Hilfiger discount store in order to fire tear gas at some of the most marginalised and desperate people, certainly in that part of the world. Right. And just that it's it's a scene that, like, yeah, that would, if you put that in a movie, you would be like, this is a little bit heavy-handed, right? Having them shoot from the Tommy Hilfinger at the desperate migrants, that's a little bit heavy. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's it's just it's advanced ******* parody. Where we are as a society, but yeah the the DHS helicopter is taking off from the Tommy Hilfiger store to fire tear gas grenades at the at the children who just want a safe place to sleep. I had a moment like that in a protest where the Portland police we were in North Portland, which is like in a neighborhood that was like one of the the fairly few like black neighborhoods in Portland and the cops you know when *** **** and started firing impact munitions down Martin Luther King Blvd. And I I I didn't catch myself at 1st and I was like the cops are now shooting. When Martin Luther King. Yeah, yeah. You've been in and around like you. You live there, obviously. So who are like, who are some of the folks that you've come across that are doing the most to actually help there? And what kind of help like is necessary? Because I feel like one of the one of the things I think is the primary shortcoming of it could happen. Here is a show so far is that the way Garrison and I phrase it is like a lot of our episodes are here's a problem, goodbye. Right? We're like, here's the thing that's bad. Off we go. So what? I guess the two chief questions, I think that need to be answered because I'm, I'm hoping pretty much everyone here is on board with the border is a nightmare. Something's gotta be done. What are the kind of things that can actually materially improve people's lives, who are being affected by this border ecosystem? And then who are the ************* who are actually out there trying to ****** things that to the extent that ********* is doable here? Yeah. So I think like just to further, like, make people sad first, like if you look up. Colonial Atlas, Southern border you can find this map of where migrants die when they're coming to United States, right? And we, they're often it's constructed in the news media is like it's dangerous crossing Mexico. It is. It's it's dangerous. Coming across the Darien Gap, sure it is. But the vast bulk of people die within a few miles of our southern border, right? And that's because, especially now with the way we've constructed the border wall. Right before the 2020 election, Donald Trump, in a debate, made claims about how much border wall he built. Like everything else, he was full of ****. So they just tried to build as much as they could between them and the election. So they just skip the hard parts. They skip the mountains to skip the valleys. And that often forces people to cross in the most arduous terrain, right? So that that's increased the amount of people dying. So we can look broadly at like 2 categories of support, right, which are like, I guess, like direct aid and then legal aid. So on the legal aid side, the guys who guys and girls and other people who who have been really, really helpful. Alterado to the other side right there, their legal aid group, they they were very, very cool during the during the migrant caravan. Like they and I realized something of a loaded phrase, right. I'm trying to use a word that people understand and they were there constantly helping people with good cause letters. They were there filing legal briefs on their behalf. As a result of that, many of them were illegally surveilled by the Department of Homeland Security. Uh, we've had the phones, taken the communications trace, their movements, traced their network trace, etcetera. They are wonderful people, right? Like they do amazing things with helping people get legal aid. And then you've got the people who are helping people while they cross, right? And there are a number of these mutilated groups. If you're in a certain region there at the border, there is probably someone near you. I'm no expert on all of them, but you can look at like no mass huertes in Arizona lies. And that often forces people to cross in the most arduous terrain, right. So that that's increased the amount of people dying. So we can look broadly at like 2 categories of support, right, which are like, I guess, like. Direct aid and then legal aid. So on the legal aid side, the guys who guys and girls and other people who who have been really, really helpful. To the other side right there, they're legal aid group. They they were very, very cool during the uh, during the migrant caravan. Like they and I realized that something of a loaded phrase, right. I'm trying to use a word that people understand and they were there constantly helping people with good cause letters. They were there filing legal briefs on their behalf. And as a result of that, many of them were illegally surveilled by the Department of Homeland Security. Uh, we've had the phones taken uh, the communications trace, their movements traced their network trace, etcetera. They are wonderful people, right? Like they do amazing things with helping people get legal aid. And then you've got the people who are helping people while they cross, right? And there are a number of these mutilated groups. If you're in a certain region there at the border, there is probably someone near you. I'm no expert on all of them, but you can look at like no mass huertes in Arizona. Armadillos, I believe, I think they, I don't know, they operate also in Texas, but certainly in in that California, Arizona area, you can look at Border Angels, right? Border Angels are probably the biggest, most public facing one and they are fantastic, right? They're out there. Making sure that there are cashews of water for people who are crossing. Making sure that when it's cold at night, there are warm clothes. And when it's hot, there are clothes suitable for that weather. Right? Maybe in a new backpack, canned food. They're like doing the active stuff that stops people dying. And that's invaluable. Right. And it's also important in terms of showing that, like, they'll often write things I've seen, like, like, you're welcome, right. Welcome to this country or whatever. It's showing that most of us don't agree with this dehumanizing brutalization of migrants. That state is doing on our behalf, and so showing that welcome is very important. There are lots of indigenous groups. I did ask if I could name them, but they didn't get back to me, so I don't want to. But like there were groups within the Tohono determination, there are groups within the Kumeyaay nation. I'm sure there were groups within other tribes whom the border crossed right, who lived in in in this area long before it was a border, who are also out there helping people. And they're also individuals helping people out on their property. Right? And if you. If if you can't find how to donate to one of those groups, you can reach out to me. That's fine. But yeah, I think the work they're doing is invaluable, both in terms of like, showing people that they are welcome and in terms of saving lives, right? More and more people die at the border every year especially. With things like Title 42, which we can get into with MP, let's talk about what title. Sure. So Title 42, it's a public, it's part of a public health law. It's very antiquated. I think it was last used in the 1930s. The idea behind it was to stop people with tuberculosis coming into the United States and if they have a, if they have an infectious, transmissible disease, I think it's called, then they can be immediately sent back without processing. Right. And this was part of a whole suite of things that they used to do. To labourers coming N right. They would also spray them with all kinds of insecticides, which obviously is not good for the health. So title 42. The idea being, you know you like if you present to me at the border and I'm a Border Patrol guy and you're like coughing up a lung and obviously tuberculous. Tuberculous. I don't know. You have. Yeah. Tubercule. Yeah, tubercular. Astic. Then I will send you back and just be like, no, Robert, **** *** until you're healthy. You're going to infect everyone else here. Especially detained. Now, what is being used to do with COVID-19 is to not process migrants right? To do what's called catch and release, just bump himself and let them go. That means is that these so normally you could cross surrender to a CBP agent. That's another miss misunderstanding. A lot of people will want to surrender, right? That they they have no intention of not being processed for certain countries is something called a TPS, which I'll explain in a second. Which which there will be no reason for them not to be processed. So these people will cross and now they could just get dumped on the other side, right? It doesn't matter if they are a person who is pregnant, doesn't matter if they're elderly, doesn't matter if they're medically compromised all week, they can't just get dumped. What this has meant is that people who are helping them cross, right, people who may be charge a fee for helping them cross, are offering like crossings without limits. You know, we'll just try again, try again. And it means, like I said before, because of the combination of this and then this, this hostile infrastructure, that building, right, this border wall system that people will try crossing in more and more remote places, right. And that is when people die crossing, it's when they cry and cross in in places that are that are hotter. The more arduous, right? It requires days of walking, sometimes in like, and I've been in that terrain. I spend a lot of my time out there and like. For a long time it's been more or less my job to be outside out there and it is hard. So if I imagine crossing with everything I need to start my new life and carrying my child, it's very difficult for me and and I'm more accustomed to it than most. So it's it's very difficult and forcing people to just kind of bounce back because when we drop someone in Mexico, right, if they are Guatemalan, Honduran, they don't have any network there, right? It doesn't exactly help like. Into like, sometimes we like this construct that like, the the border fuels crime, right? Like crime is it like they they talk about like, like, sometimes cartels is far too broadly used, nearly always it's far too broadly used. But this idea that the border funds like drug running and organizations such as that, well, you don't ******* help by dumping someone where they have no other means of making a living right where they're going to be very poor and now they don't have any mate. Don't have anyone to go to, to ask for help, right? Like, I don't blame people for trying to find a way to do something. Understandably, like if and I don't think and I think it's largely a lie that that any significant number of people sort of running drugs across the border are migrants or you know I think that's that's largely a racist lie but leaving people dislocated there is a recipe for poverty and like I can't you know things like crime do happen more I guess when people are don't have any other options that make sense if we go back to TPS really quickly. I think that's important, too. Temporary protected status, right? You'll see people on Twitter talking about TPS. What that basically means is that they can't deport you back to a country. So it took Biden an obscenely long time to grant a TPS for the people from Ukraine, right? 500 and something. People went into the deportation system between the time in like November, December when Biden's administration started being like there is going to be. Or in Ukraine, the Russians are going to invade Ukraine. They were still actively in the process of sending people back to Ukraine at that time. It was until about a week into the shooting war that they said, OK, temporary protected status. We won't send you back. It exists for other countries, exist for Haiti, it exists for Myanmar. Burma, right? Don't know if it exists for Syria. I think it does. But these countries were basically like. We won't send you back there. And TPS is very important, right? Because it it stops people being deported to places where they will die. And it's important to understand that, like, you could have everything right in terms of your asylum application and still be sent back. It's a cruel and very impersonal system. So a TPS is important. And if you're into sort of advocating for laws, then it's an important thing to advocate for, I think. Yeah. In terms of more, and I think that's important because we we the kind of the electoral side of things is not, does not tend to be our focus here, but it's also not useless. Like, the border is one of the areas most clearly where you can see both how advocating in that realm can immediately improve people's lives and also how both sides of the political spectrum use the border as a weapon to hurt people. Yeah, exactly. The border is definitely a stage for both sides. Political theater, like, look at Joe Biden, right? He's coming in. He's signing this declaration on the first day. I remember the day he was inaugurated, I went out to the border wall. Sat there by myself and I like wept because it's just this horrible, ugly thing that's such a scar in a place that I love. And, uh, he's done ****. All right? He's in, he's deported more people than Trump and he's, he's building his own Biden barrier, which is the same thing with that an anticline plate. But yeah, like, even if you don't agree with the existence of laws and lawmakers, right? There's this concept that I like a lot called normative anarchism. I think it's wolf, the guy who wrote it. But like, we can move towards the state doing less cruelty and being a little more free, and that is a move in the right direction, even if it's not the end goal. And I think the border is a place where you can really make a difference like that, right? With some small changes in how things are done would reduce the cruelty to people who have done nothing wrong, massively so. I think it is an area where even those of us who might not be generally inclined to like electoral staff like you can. I think. I don't know if you can make a difference because like so many people in Milwaukee are watching Fox News and a ******* completely convinced that the border is just, I don't know, people with guns trying to smuggle children or whatever. But yeah, it's an area where small changes in policy. Like a huge, like Title 42, right? Not even a law. It's an executive or it's not even executive order. It's an interpretation. The wall, right? Most of that **** wasn't built by Congress, it was built by executive order. So like that stuff, I think is a place where you can you can affect positive change for people. Now, unfortunately, we got this giant ******* war and I don't think it's coming down anytime soon, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't actively try to make things kinder for people coming here now. On the direct action side of things, which I I think more of our audience tends to support, one of the most obvious things is just like setting out, as you said, like drops of water. Food, equipment. Now that's kind of depending on where you are, can be, shall we say, complex from a legal standpoint. Can you talk to that a little bit? Yeah, certainly. So like the obvious cases of 1 in Arizona, right, which eventually ended up the person was vindicated but vindicated their own work. But not didn't go to prison. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And what he was doing was right from the start. But yeah, it can be complex, I think, especially if you're in some of these states which are like doing culture. Right. Like Arizona and Texas, yeah. The, the, the cruelty is kind of the point. So if you are doing something to alleviate that cruelty, making an example, if you was very much in the interest of those cultural politicians and judges and and other people, which is why it's important to do it with a mutual aid group, right. Like these groups are not just like randos, they are extremely organized. I would also just caution that like. Going out into the desert on your own is extremely ******* dangerous. The desert can kill you with heat and day. It can kill you with the cold night, sometimes on the same day and night, right? This is a hard place. I'm not saying you should go out, you should. It's it's an amazing place. But you should be careful. You should go with the group. So if you're living somewhere along the border, there is a group of people who are doing this. They will understand what is legal and correct. Like for instance, if you are not a citizen, if you're a green card holder, you should probably not go down to the border with jugs of water. We should maybe do some fundraising. You should, you should maybe do something else. And that's fine, right. You're still part of a system which is helping people. But yes, there have been some prosecutions, I think in California. There haven't been any to my knowledge for a while. And there was also some interesting tech developments, one a few a long time ago now called the Transborder Migrant tool, which was mapping out like what at the time, we didn't have the border wall then, right, but like water cashiers, locations of CBP checkpoints and then. I guess it was using Google Maps to make routes, which it was created by a faculty member who at the time was at the University of California, who faced pretty terrible career repercussions for doing it. But there were things like that that people can do too, right? Which you can do from your bedroom if that's your preference, if that's how you prefer to help. But yeah, I would caution about just going out there. Always look for groups, right? There are people for whom this is their entire life of activism. You can also, I'm sure. I hope I'm not putting a bunch of, like, work on their plate, but talk dialogue to see what they suggest. Right? Talk to who? Allow trolard to the other side. Yeah, that's this legal aid group you can just call them. I'm sure that their group, they think they've been very helpful to me. When I've been, when I've needed help for people I'm working with, talk to them about what is, what is legal and and sensible and what is not. Whether it's better to give your money or give your time or or what you can do. Give them the resources available to you, I guess. And you can also just show kindness to refugees in your community. Do you think they're probably there? And whether or not they're visible is is a different question, but that's, you know, there are places where you can help people. Another one I should mention, actually, just for folks who are. Inclined to help in a different way I guess is as people just feeding people. Like I really don't think you can ever blame someone for feeding 100 persons. So food not bombs. Food not bombs are always cool, right? If you want to do kindness without state food not bombs, there is one in your area. Look them up. And World Central Kitchen, which is Jose Andres, the chef. And yeah, he's in Ukraine. And his guys just got shelled in Ukraine. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. A number of them got shelled in cocky. But I think those people, like, I do understand that he has some labor issues. Yeah. Although I think he's he recently, like, came out and said that he had been wrong on that. I'd have to double check. But yeah, that's impressive. Like I've said this before, this dude pivoted his whole life after seeing what happened in Haiti to feeding people who are hungry all over the world. So I do believe he's. People have change and hopefully he can change and treat his workers with decency and respect as well. But. Anywhere I am right where there is a humanitarian crisis, right inside the US, outside the US. Those people are there first. They're there before the Red Cross and MSF. They don't seem to get tied up in the bureaucratic **** that most large global NGO's do. Like, I've been in refugee camps where MSF and Red Cross are outside not doing anything. Yeah, if you are anywhere I have been, where there are large groups of refugees, refugee camps, people dealing with violence, the the most commonly cursed. Groups are often in geos, yes. Yeah, yeah, there there are, you know, people in, in Whiteland Rovers or people in fancy hotel lobbies, you know, like, and that makes me very angry and very sad, but I don't see that with WCK like I have consistently seen them in. It's just pretty dire situations, you know, like times that give me bad sleeps, you know, and that they're always there helping people. So then they're also church groups in lots of communities. Like, I'm not a religious person, but like, I really can't fault any of these church groups that I've seen coming down from San Diego to Tijuana to feed and help people. But I would probably stay clear of those giant NGO's with your giving. I've just seen them be considered bureaucratic and less effective. Yeah, I mean, one of the rules. This is harder when it's a conflict. Far from home. And, you know, you see some news that makes you wanna help, but you don't have any connections. But if you can ever talk to people on the ground there, it's always best to ask them, like, who's actually doing anything. Because sometimes it is MSF, you know, sometimes it is one of these larger organizations. But oftentimes they'll tell you, like, you know, the, the, the group when I was in Mosul that got the most consistent praise from people who were like, living there was the Free Burma Rangers, right? Like there were all these massive international organizations. But when it came right down to it, the people who were like. Running under gunfire to pull wounded civilians out where you know those folks. Yeah yeah those those guys do some do some very brave stuff, definitely. And yeah it is normally you can't find people on Facebook. Like, I've never been in a sort of situation with a lot of displaced people where people were not actively on Facebook and you can find people there. They just just like, you just want to have a chat. And again, it's nice to have a chat. That's such an important point too, because I think that number one, people are often and it it's easier, right? Like everyone has limited time, but you kind of leave it to. Whatever media you trust to connect you to people in these desperate circumstances. And, like, people tend to want to connect who are dealing with something like that, who are fleeing violence, who are. And they also are connected. Like, they're not separate from the rest of the world just because they've had to leave their home behind. And they're they're generally not excluded from the information networks that we all exist in. Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes that betrayed us. Like, we talk about them not to them far too often in the media. And that makes me mad, right? Like, I see that. All the time. I see that happening when I'm doing reporting, right? I'll see people hanging out on the peripheries of these camps. I understand some people are worried about COVID or whatever, but so are those people, right? Like to be safe and be sensible? And yeah, these people want to talk. I remember one thing that always sticks out, or they want the same things that we want. I remember so in this 2018 migrant caravan, they were moved from Benito Juarez Sports Complex to this old nightclub a bit further S further away from the border, right? It was a very weird scene. It was this big nightclub. It's like the mirrors and the the dancing poles and the disco balls. But it had been like mothballs like 10 years. It was all dusty and they had a special room for people who were pregnant, people who people who had had children and and the the the young children themselves, right? They were sort of just to keep them safe. And we would go in there, and it was weird because it was still like mirrors on the floor. But then I remember these kids. You talked to them, right? You know, what do you want? And like, first of all, one kid asked me for a teddy bear and it broke my heart. Like, I don't know why. It just leveled me. And then. They wanted to like, you know, that they'd enjoyed the same Disney films that kids here had. Right? So my buddy managed to acquire a projector. We went into the ceiling, rigged up this projector and just set up like, Beverly Hills Chihuahua playing on one wall at this nightclub. And these kids are like, **** yeah, it's Beverly Hills Chihuahua. Like, let's go. Like, you know, they would just kids watching a film, like, like, like, they can be anywhere else. And it's really easy to see them as, like, different or weak or, you know, the way they're portrayed in the media is like people without agency. And they're not. They've taken huge amounts of agency. To try and improve their lives. And it's also so much focus is on these things that aren't, you know, medicine, food that are necessary. But like having a normal moment where you're like a kid watching a cartoon or playing with a toy is also necessary. Yeah, like these children will be scarred by their experiences, right? By whatever's caused them to flee, by the flight itself, and by the process of coming to the into the country. But yeah, we should do everything we can to protect them from those traumatic experiences and just play. Like, I cannot count the amount of times I have been like **** housed in a game of football by 6 year olds trying to come to the United States, right? Like, so things like that. Remember someone donated a couple of football goals, like to come down and set them up. And then yeah, just having those moments of normalcy, those moments of fun, like little, little plastic ukuleles and stuff like, we're very important because it let kids be kids and and that's, you know, they have every right to do that. Well, James I think that's gonna make us sewed for us. You want to throw your plegables in before we roll out? Yeah. Uh, I want to plug like, like I said before, doing things to help people outside of networks that let people have power over people to do that first. And then, yeah, you can put my name James, start into Twitter and find me. I have a Patreon by the same thing. I write about the border a lot. You can see it in if I just plug one. Popular POP UCLA. I wrote about the 2018 migrant caravan. You can read my writing there. Feel free to message me if you want to find any of these groups and you can't. Yeah, it's a battle. All right, well, that's going to do it for us. Go do something good. 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Some recommendations on what new movies to watch next time you sit down in front of the TV? Well, I have the podcast for you. Hey, this is Mike D from movie Mike's movie podcast. Your go to source for all things movies and no matter the genre of what you're into, whether it be comedies, romance, action, sci-fi, horror, superhero movies, I cover it all. I'm no critic, I'm just a guy who loves movies. Each episode explores a different movie topic plus spoiler. Three reviews on the latest new movies in theaters and on streaming. And yes, they're always spoiler free so you don't have to worry about anything getting ruined for you. Plus interviews with actors, directors, and writers covering the behind the scenes of your favorite movies. I also keep you in the know with all the latest movie news and movie trailers. Listen to new episodes of movie Mikes Movie podcast Every Monday on the Nashville podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey y'all, this is Caroline Hobby, the host of get real with Caroline Hobby, honest women, honest talk. I love podcasting. It is so much fun because I have the most in depth, spiritual, soulful, real, honest conversations with women who are mothers, who are entrepreneurs, who have started their own businesses, who are married to celebrities, who are celebrities themselves. These women are juggling motherhood, being a career woman, starting their own businesses, taking leaps, knowing when to jump. These women are incredible and the conversations are so real it will hit every nerve in your body. As a woman, a little bit about myself, I was a country music artist and a trio. I traveled the country open for every celebrity you can imagine in country music. I also been on The Amazing Race twice, and I'm married to Michael Hobby, who is the lead singer of 1000 horses. And we have our precious daughter Sonny, who's two listen to new episodes of get Real with Caroline Hobby every Monday on the Nashville podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcast. Ah, yes. The podcast has started. Start this is this is it can happen here. This is it could happen here. That's right. And you're Robert Evans. We also have Shereen Lani Eunice and Christopher Wong with us. Christopher. Hi, yeah, I guess I'm sort of running the show today even though Robert has done the intro? Always with a question mark. That's how the pros do it. You can, you can tell. Allegedly. Professionals. Yeah, but. Speak. Speaking of professionals, we have, we have Karina Dominguez with us who is in fact actually a professional and has spent eight years working in reproductive health issues of Corina. Welcome to the show and thank you for joining us. Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's lovely to have you on, Karina. What's, uh, what's going on? How are things? I think things are OK. I think I can say that doesn't seem true. Yeah, but they're OK. Yeah, OK. Cool. I pulled the guy out of a crashed truck once, and as I was trying to, like, staunch the bleeding from a cut in his hand, I asked how he was and he said, OK, so I'm. I'm guessing it's that kind of OK. You nailed it. Yeah. Karina, do you want to tell us a little bit about your background and the work that you do? And you know why? Why? Why? We desperately wanted to have you on the show. Yeah, I would love to. So again, my name is Karina Dominguez. I am from Chicago, born and raised. I've worked in reproductive health for about 8 years, but really what I consider about 15 years or so, I have experience in working in the Community in different capacities. I love reproductive health. I consider myself a reproductive health nerd, and it all started when I was a teenager growing up in Chicago where just in the city life you see a lot of things that don't really sit well with you. I knew a lot of young girls who were getting pregnant at young ages, experiencing trauma and specifically sexual trauma. And not knowing who to go to or where to go. So these were mostly young girls of color who I cared for a lot, and I immediately knew that I wanted to do more activism and that I needed to do more activism. And the way my activism looks is through my education. So today I have a masters in public health and I also have a bachelors in public health. And with that education I've been able to provide sexual and reproductive health counseling. I practiced as a full spectrum doula. Where I have provided abortion care for people and also provided birthing care for people as well. I LED a pregnant parenting program at a nonprofit for youth experiencing homelessness, and right now I currently manage a sexual and reproductive health grant where we provide resources to treatment centers in the LA area to integrate sexual and reproductive health for patients and substance use disorder treatment. Wow, cool. So we are slacking. That was an impressive. Yeah. Yeah. I think the thank you that made us want to chat with you. We were, we were having a conversation. So when the news first dropped that the Supreme Court was yeeting Roe V Wade into the Sun. There were a couple of different news agencies that did like intern, you know, while talking about what options we're going to remain for people that would bring up crisis pregnancy centers, which are shady as hell as I'm sure we're about to talk about. But yeah, so that's that's kind of why we brought you into what we brought you on initially to talk about. I wonder, do you want to kind of introduce folks to what those are? Because the gist of it is if you like Google, how do I, like, find out if I'm pregnant or like, you know, I'm pregnant and I need help. There's a good chance old Google will take you to one of these places, and they are, shall we say, not what they seem to be. Yes, I think we can exactly say that and I am just going to say it in the most direct way I possibly could. A crisis pregnancy center is essentially a fake medical facility that preys on vulnerable people, specifically people who can become pregnant. So yeah, you know, we can use the term fake medical clinic I for the purpose just of using the most common term, crisis pregnancy Center, I'm going to stick to using that term. But yeah, there are a lot of concerns about this and I'm sure. Our friend Google will pop some up for us really quick. So crisis pregnancy centers usually have names like women's pregnancy center or Women's Health center, something Health Center and it's very misleading advertisement. So they are anti abortion facilities that manipulate people into having a full term pregnancy. So these places are usually religious oriented. They have a religious agenda and it's not patient lead. So some of these larger religious based organizations that fund these what we think are smaller tiny clinics are agencies or organizations like care net, Heartbeat International, National Institute of Family and Life, Birthright International and Rama. International. So a lot of times you might think you're going to this small little tiny clinic or maybe it's even like a community medical mobile unit. And it turns out they're backed by big money and bigger agencies, so they typically will implant themselves in communities of color. Near college campuses and low income neighborhoods. So what is that saying? That's saying that this is a woman's issue. This is a trans issue. This is an LGBTQIA issue. This is a bipac issue. Block indigenous people of color, and it's simply just an issue for everyone. Yeah. And it's. So one of the things that's kind of messy about these places is that if you look at, like, investigations into how they work, you'll run into a number of stories of of women who are like, hey, I actually like. Always intended to go through with my pregnancy. I just needed to like know that number one, know that I was pregnant, I needed to test or something and these people advertised they would provide that for free or they advertise that they were providing stuff like diapers, you know, basic kind of supplies, formula for free. And some of them do, most of them do to some extent. But nearly all of them have some sort of like, and this is outside of kind of the abortion aspect, access of it have some sort of ****** ** hoops you have to jump through in order to actually get access to any of that stuff. Really? Yeah. I'm really glad that you brought up like the diaper. Uh, point. I think that is a really essential thing because they don't not give out stuff. Right. But it's it's messier than they want to portray it as. Yeah, yeah, totally. And and it's a form of manipulation, right. And I think, too, it's a form of manipulation to to deem yourself a full functioning medical facility where they actually don't provide those comprehensive services. And sometimes, you know, they might even say on the outside, like HIV. Testing SCIV, STI testing, HIV testing. And they're simply not evidence based practices. So what I mean by an evidence, evidence based practice is something like condom use. We know very well at this day and age that condoms are essential to prevent STI's and HIV transmission. So a lot of these clinics, they might even say, like condoms don't decrease your chances of STI's, they don't really matter. They're not really doing anything. And that is a really big piece of information that we need to know as the average person because that means we have a lot of young people going to these clinics and having even their foundational sexual health education at these facilities. So this is a really, really important thing to take note of. And I would say that, you know, a lot of people even in my life that have gone to crisis pregnancy centers by accident. Are, you know, being told that they can do STI testing, HIV testing and even birth control and then as soon as you go there you realize that's not what's happening. Usually it's going to be a lot of pregnancy related services like ultrasounds and pregnancy tests, which we know if you're an actual clinic, that's those aren't the only things that someone would need for essential healthcare. But I would say even more like going into the manipulation and the gaslighting that they do within these facilities, which in my eyes. Is medical violence. They provide even mandatory ultrasounds make someone sit there to look at the ultrasound. They make fearful videos of misleading information about what abortions are, and sometimes even have someone who's not a medical provider showing what an abortion is in their eyes. And the video may be of a baby that's whose limbs are being ripped apart. Even giving information like abortions can lead to breast cancer or if you have abortion, you'll never be able to have a child. And this is your one and only opportunity and sometimes even going further. You know they are sneaky and what they do because they might even have programs that'll say parent program or youth sexual health program. And even with that, they're giving religious based agendas and they are telling people. This information about sexual health and Even so might even talk about very heterosexual sex, marriage, all of the above. So there is a very specific agenda that is going on here. And we know too that a lot of these agencies can be really sneaky with what they're doing because they may even deny that they are a crisis pregnancy center. And even further, if you go on to their website, they might not even have any language that they're religious based or that. They are not providing comprehensive services, so there are a lot of different tactics that are you know within the the manipulate manipulative strategies that they use. You know what one of the things I've heard a lot about is like? Basically like, not. Not literally physically forcing, but like. Terrorizing people into signing like fake legal documents saying they won't get an abortion. Which like really like. Every description I've heard about that is like, this is just terrorism. Like that's. Absolutely, yeah. And I I find that to be really interesting. I have never heard of that happening, but just because I haven't specifically heard about does not mean it's not happening. And I think that, you know, there are. They're not all made the same. They all function differently and I think that's also what is really confusing about them because they're not consistently all doing the same thing. There are still other facilities that they might do STI testing, they might do HIV testing. And so to hear that is not shocking to me and the manipulative tactics that they are using for people, and yeah, I mean HIPAA goes out the door, you know, and he legal backing goes out the door with these facilities because they are not. Based on providing patient lead services in the first place. Maybe this is an ignorant, ignorant train of thought. But if they're providing all of these like free ish services or like whatever to these people that are desperate, and it sounds like a lot of them are, like, privately funded by these organizations and the shadows like what? How do they benefit? Like where, what what is there other than like imposing religion on other people, but like. Like financially and like I'm I'm confused. Where? How they're still like able to function, yes? They function very well and without a problem. And as I mentioned, there's, you know, five larger organizations that are funding a lot of these CPC's, but they are also, this is to be noted, they are on the CDC website, they are on the CDC directory as places that provide essential services. So. I think that also goes to speak to. The confusion around CPC's. And I'm just gonna go out on the limb and say I'm going to give the CDC benefit of the doubt, although they do not deserve that and say that. They themselves may not recognize what it what these agencies are doing. And so I think that's where the awareness around the actual function of the CC's and how they even exist in the 1st place needs to be shut down and awareness needs to be brought about these places. And and we know really the 1st 20 minutes you're there doing ultrasound and especially knowing our healthcare system and the United States. You know, that might require referrals and another facility to get that done and and you know that depends on what your insurance is and what you can pay for and etcetera, etcetera. But I think it's a really big red flag to just have a facility that has pregnancy tests and ultrasounds. That to me is, you know, if I see on a website that those are the only two services that a healthcare clinic is claiming to provide, I'm running away. That I'm not going there because that's very odd and it's it's very manipulative because it's it's one of those things. One of the ways in which you can tell is something healthcare related, shady as **** is does it take advantage of the fact that very basic things that you need are extremely expensive. And like ultrasounds, pregnancy tests, this can all be like STD tests, you know, can all be really, really pricey. And it's just so like it's ****** ** that this is kind of how they're funneling. Religious dollars towards taking advantage of the fact that a lot of people like legitimately some people who use these facilities. I don't know what else to tell them because it's like, well. We don't provide people with a lot of options in this country everywhere, you know, for for some of these services. Yeah, totally. And I do want to go into some of the people doing the work, and I want to really highlight what they're doing. So I want to give the utmost credit to two people who I do not know personally, but would definitely love to Doctor Andreas Swartzendruber. And doctor Danielle Lambert, they're both associate professors. At the School of Public Health at University of Georgia and they're both Co founders of the CPC maps which originated in 2018. So yes, there is a brilliant map where you can search the CPC's that are close to you. And in my eyes this map is truly a piece of gold because I myself have found ones that are in my area and was very beneficial when I was working with clients myself directly and would refer people to different services. So this is a really great tool for healthcare professionals. And social service workers, et cetera to refer to. And I can't even explain how grateful I am to know that there's ongoing research about the distraught impact of these clinics and the distraught impact they have on our healthcare system and the ability to find an abortion provider. So again, I hope that every service provider can find these, this map and use this map and really spread awareness around this. So what I want to highlight. And what these two doctors have found is that just to give some more context. Every single state has multiple CPC's. Multiple, not just one, not 2 multiple. There are 2500 CPC's and throughout the United States. And that is obviously a much larger number than the health departments in the United States. And you know, as I mentioned, we know the CDC directory utilizes CPC's on their website. And again, 13 states are funded or are funding CPC's, so their advertisements are going far and wide. And to even go further, in the state of California, the California Women's Law Center says that there are 20% more CPC's than there are abortion clinics. So I think in this time. Yeah, yeah, we should be scared. That is really, that's a really concerning statistic and especially looking at how we are. Going to be and already are a haven state. We are going to be a haven state for all the states around us and for people throughout the United States. So what is that saying when we are a haven state, yet we are still competing with our local anti abortion strategies ourselves? We are still putting up a fight as a haven state and I think that is so concerning. And even further, just to give some more statistics, we know that 58%. Of the clinics that CPC's that did not offer STI testing also will not refer out. We know that only 8% offer HIV testing. And 92% that did not offer HIV testing also did not refer out. So just to summarize those numbers for you, what that data is telling me is that these clinics are not accounting for the health of the pregnant person, nor are they accounting for the health of the fetus if that pregnancy goes full term. And yeah, I mean, I I have even, you know, more stats as, you know, your reproductive health nerd of one of my favorite research institutes called the Guttmacher Institute, and they are phenomenal and have really great data. And if you haven't checked out their website, you definitely should. But since we're on the bandwagon of talking about religious based affiliations, we know that 17% of abortion patients. Are. Ohh sorry. OK, 17% of abortion patients identified themselves as mainline Protestant. 13% as evangelical Protestant and 24% as Catholic. 38% have no religious affiliation, and the remaining 8% reported a different religious affiliation. So let's summarize that. Religiously affiliated people are still seeking abortions too. Would you look at that? Ignorance is so bliss. We know that abortions are affecting. People who are living in poverty and who are low income, so, you know, 75% of people that are seeking abortions are either living in poverty or are low income. And fortunately, you know, throughout the past we know that Medicaid has been a really big funder of abortion care, and especially we can say that in California too. That about 24% of abortion patients are using Medicaid and that's throughout 15 different states. So I imagine in this time right now too, that number is probably going to decrease. So again, talking about a haven state that has these resources, we are probably going to be. Mixing up how that looks. And knowing that 53% of abortion patients pay out of pocket for their procedures is already a very concerning statistic. And so we are seeing how in our time right now, we have to be looking at different resources for people. We have to put on our activist hats, we have to be supporting our community and we have to be supporting abortion funds because already 53% of abortions are paid out of pocket. And just to to summarize one more .88% of people who are. Using abortion services are going to be using those within the 1st 12 weeks, so we are needing to see a lot of activism around. Abortion pill distribution and abortion pill education and what that looks like. No, the to like piggyback off of what Robert was mentioning earlier about how it's just feels like they're taking advantage of the fact that like things cost so much money. And I feel like if you this work is so important because I don't think a lot of people know. What they're getting into, if they're like, because we don't have a great education system in general, let alone about like, reproductive health or like, what happens when you get pregnant. So if you're a young person or, I mean any age and you are desperate or you're feeling shame, you don't have support from your community or something, and you see a institution that's like free ultrasound or like, whatever, it's like they're praying on this desperation. And I think one of the only things you can do to like combat that is like try to educate people as much as possible that like. I don't know people are as they don't have the goodwill and good faith that they present to be, to have. And I guess it just like ultimately you have to be distrusting of people. And maybe that's sad, but it's the truth. Yeah, definitely. And I will say I feel like I saw that as a service provider. So as I mentioned I worked in homeless services specifically with youth homeless services and you see that so much you see how there is you know, medical oppression for people of color, there is medical manipulation and violence for so many people in vulnerable situations and. As someone that has accompanied many people to abortions and births, I have observed that myself and I have seen how. So more people than not are going to experience some type of medical manipulation, and especially if you are living in poverty, especially if you're a person of color, especially if you're LGBTQIA. This, this issue does not just stop. You know, with CPC's, if we take out all the CPC's, we also have to address so much of the institutional institutionalized racism and all the things that exist around reproductive health, you know, starting at how to get contraceptives to when can you have children and how can you be a parent. And that never ends throughout the cycle, you know, and that parents, even after they have babies, even if they are. A person of color, even if they have are LGBTQA, you know, they are still told how, when, where they're going to parent and there's so much control over that rhetoric for people. So, you know, I mean, that even goes back to me thinking about the. Sterilization trials that happened against USC in the 70s and how women were forcibly sterilized and. You know that has nothing to do with CPCS, but instead we're seeing that institutions are finding this control and having these agendas and it is not serving our society, it is not serving our health and instead it is creating more trauma in our communities and it's it's. Crisis pregnancy centers are just one of many layers of medical oppression that we are witnessing in today's world. As a person who was working in homeless services, I was. Program planning for a lot of the resources that we were able to provide access to for my clients. So all of my clients at that time when I was running the pregnant parenting program at a nonprofit, they were either pregnant and or parenting while also experiencing their housing insecurities. So I strive to find what the proper resources were for them to support them in every trauma informed way I possibly could, and that we're youth friendly. So there was a local agency that was very, very close to where I worked and their services always kind of felt like limited to me. So I met with them specifically to inquire because they were always trying to find some type of partnership with us and would knock on our door or call me. So I finally. Was able to give them. Some of my time. And. So their services always felt limited and non comprehensive and I think that is the the biggest kind of like take away. They always gave me really weird reasoning why they didn't provide birth control or STI testing. And based on their answer, as I mentioned, I just did not allow the partnership to thrive. So when I did more research I actually confirmed from another service provider that they're from another agency that they were indeed CPC before it could spread the word they also. Already had several partnerships with other homeless service providers, so they wiggled their way in and these other homeless service providers were also working with young, vulnerable clients. So one day I was actually invited by another agency to come to this presentation where I didn't realize happened to be. The CPC. The CBC was presenting at this organization and it was one of their outreach workers explaining what their services were. So I took it upon myself to make sure that I sat in that meeting and I asked questions in the room with the other service providers. I think there are about 30 other service providers that were present. And I asked out loud, why doesn't your clinic provide birth control? And the woman from the CBC who was the outreach worker, said, we can't give Pap smears, so we're unable to provide birth control. If you know anything, side note, if you know I yeah, I already see the. The questioning. Which I'm glad I received that reaction, because that is the exact reaction you should be. Audience, those of us with uteruses went. Huh? Yeah, all of our heads tilted and our eyes were squinting. Exactly. He's explain how that math doesn't work. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Side note for all the listeners, if you know anything about healthcare, you know that a pap smear is not associated with being able to be prescribed birth control. So as someone that has background in healthcare, has a masters in public health, worked as a doula, I continue to push back during the presentation and it was a very, very clear that I was on to something. So this woman again, she would always try to like, come around, give me pamphlets, try to have us partner and say she really want to work with us and our youth. She stopped after that presentation, I can tell you that. But anyway, so I keep going. I reach out to the person who organized that presentation for the CPC outreach person to attend and speak at. So I was like, I need to get to the bottom of this, and I need to spread this word and tell people, hey, you're getting people from CPC's to come and speak to you, to advertise your services. Umm, so. I see seed a lot of the other service providers and I expressed my genuine concerns, the lack of evidence based comprehensive care they provided. But unfortunately the person who I emailed said clients need to make sure those decisions are their own so they can decide if they want to go or if they don't want to go. We can't force them to say yes or no to go to a healthcare facility. So I responded by asking, but what if you thought you were seeing a doctor for your healthcare needs and then it turns out the healthcare provider is providing misinformation and might not even be a healthcare provider. I never got a response from them, but I still continue to make sure that I was reaching out to everyone at that meeting and just raising awareness behind it. And then I wanted to take it to Umm. I wanted to take it a notch up, so I called both of this, both of the locations of the CPC. One is located in Westwood, sign note next to UCLA, the other one was in South LA side Note community of color. Both of my calls led me to the person on the phone telling me that they don't know where to send me for an abortion and that they didn't know where. What Planned Parenthood was, what they did or where they were located. When I worked as a doula, I continue to push back during the presentation and it was a very, very clear that I was on to something. So this woman again, she would always try to like come around, give me pamphlets, try to have us partner and say she really want to work with us and our youth. She stopped after that presentation, I can tell you that. But anyway, so I keep going. I reach out to the person who organized that presentation for this. BC outreach person to attend and speak at. So I was like, I need to get to the bottom of this and I need to spread this word and tell people, hey, you're getting people from CPC's to come and speak to you to advertise your services. So. I see seed a lot of the other service providers and I expressed my genuine concerns, the lack of evidence based comprehensive care they provided. But unfortunately the person who I emailed said clients need to make sure those decisions are their own so they can decide if they want to go or if they don't want to go. We can't force them to say yes or no to go to a healthcare facility. So I responded by asking, but what if you thought you were seeing a doctor for your healthcare needs and then it turns out the healthcare provider is providing misinformation and might not even be a healthcare provider. I never got a response from them, but I still continue to make sure that I was reaching out to everyone at that meeting and just raising awareness behind it. And then I wanted to take it to Umm. I wanted to take it a notch up, so I called both of this, both of the locations of the CPC. One is located in Westwood, sign note next to UCLA, the other one was in South LA side Note community of color. Both of my calls led me to the person on the phone telling me that they don't know where to send me for an abortion and that they didn't know where. What Planned Parenthood was, what they did or where they were located when I specifically asked. So they were obviously circumventing the ability to even talk about abortions and what it was. And that was all the concern that I genuinely needed. So in my present day, I'm still concerned with these clinics, this specific clinic that is local to me. I recently found out that in my present day work, there are currently three treatment centers that are using this crisis pregnancy center as a resource. So hopefully that means more to come because I will be working on this and in this scenario what I am doing as an activist and as a person who cares for my community. Is I will be educating these treatment centers about what crisis pregnancy centers are and how they can avoid them, and what comprehensive services actually look like. Have there been more sort of widespread like? Organizations who are working to. Like? A let people know what they are and then B also trying to get them like not to be funded. Absolutely there are and we need to shout them out. There are. There is an abortion fund in California called access. They are wonderful. They provide abortion advocacy and awareness and education, and they also provide direct services and fund. Different. They fund abortions in different capacities, so they might be funding the abortion services, the lodging, the transportation, and even a doula. And they partner with a lot of other agencies that are doing the work. The agency is called reproductive transparency now and they are a chicago-based nonprofit. They provide a lot of information, data awareness, research to raise awareness around what CPC's are and why we should be avoiding them. And I think I can say that I have the same goal as them in my personal life. To ensure that they do not exist and are all shut down. So they are wonderful. I would highly suggest looking into reproductive transparency now and also active, sorry, access reproductive justice who are doing a lot of really great work. And then I also do want to squeeze in other resources for people as well, yeah. And you know, as I mentioned, first and foremost, I think the number one thing we need to know is that crisis pregnancy centers should not exist in any capacity. But if you are a person who's providing resources, who is working with clients, who works in healthcare treatment centers, whatever it be, please utilize crisis pregnancy center map.com. Again, this is the the website that was created by two associate professors. The University of Georgia and I want to make sure that this spreads far and wide, because it will be the matter of providing referrals and circumventing CPC's. And I want to acknowledge that a lot of my data from this, from the information that I've been speaking on, is from the crisis pregnancy center map.com, and from reproductive transparency as well. So first and foremost, that map is a necessity. Another resource that I would like to share to be able to find your state's abortion fund is abortion funds.org. And you can search state by state. So you know I'm in California, so that's going to be access. Again, an organization that is an abortion fund, but they do more than than fund abortions. I also really encourage people to find their local evidence based. Doulas, midwives, Women's Health practitioners near them, and I know that there's a lot of fear existing right now due to the inappropriate politicians that are making disgusting decisions. But know that abortion pills can be accessed and there are people that can help guide you through. So I would say. Making sure that we are accessing the resources on a website, calledplancpill.com. It's a great resource where you can find where to purchase abortion pills and where to seek medical and legal support as well. So if you have a question about how to take medical abortion pills, or you need to understand the legality of your state and the area near you, you can. You can look on this website as a resource. I just also want to emphasize like what community care looks like right now. If you are a person who can get pregnant, this is truly a time to seek preventative care, and I know that that's a loaded can of worms for a lot of people, so I just. I really want to plug this in. If you would like to learn about pregnancy prevention, you can take a look at bedsider.org to assess your needs. I would highly recommend pairing that with talking to a provider who understands your lifestyle and can support you with finding one that works best for you, because every single contraceptive is going to look a little different. If you're a person who does not like birth control, I want you to know to please still seek preventative methods, whether that's a barrier method or whether that's more so of a holistic method like fertility awareness method. I encourage you to still speak to someone you can trust to ensure you're using that method correctly. And again, there are dualism midwives that can help guide you in the right direction for holistic practices. And to continue on to my community, my community kind of recognition, I hope that this is also time where if it's feasible for you to if you can't yourself find friends and family that you trust and people around you. Umm to either receive yourself or to get it from other people. Have pregnancy tests around you and make sure that if you feel like you might be pregnant. Whether you are using an actual method or if you're not using a method currently, make sure you at very least have pregnancy tests around you so that you know you can detect early on if you are pregnant. Normalized buying your friend's pregnancy test for their birthdays? I have. We just have to normalize that as a community and normalize. Buying abortion pills in case someone you know might need them in the future, or it might be someone that you don't know who could use them, and to have that accessible if that is feasible for you financially. And then yeah, I I think just to summarize like this is truly a time for community support and when the government doesn't support us, we we need to figure out unfortunately how. And. If you got. The ability to go get a go, get go, get snipped. You know, there's there's options out there. There's options. Yeah, I, I I provide vasectomies, by the way. If you can just find me in my house, I'm not good at it yet, but 1520 more people, I'm going to, I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to figure it out. Or that makes sense. I got one of those. I got one of those sharpening wheels, and my butter knives are pretty *******. They got a good edge. They got a good edge these days. Genuinely incredibly disappointed. Disappointed you're not using the machete for this. This is this feels like a betrayal. Well, there's other reproductive healthcare I used the machete for, but that that that does have to do with crisis pregnancy centers, actually. But, well, I'll have a bunch of referrals for you then. I know where to send them. Ah, that that kind of leans into another topic I'm covering today, unfortunately. Well, thank you so much for coming on and for talking to us. This has been very enlightening. I wish it wasn't such a bleak subject, but people need to know the ***** going on. People needed to know this a lot earlier, but. You know, I mean, broadly speaking, the thing I keep coming back to in this whole fight is the frustration of like. The rest of us, like, life's hard enough. There's like, so much going on. People are like busy trying to, trying to get by, trying to do their lives, trying to, like, find pieces of happiness in the world. And there's this ******* group of. The worst people in the country that have just made this made *******. Access to reproductive healthcare up for everyone, the focus of their entire life for 30 years and. Unfortunately, now we have to like. Do that make the opposite the focus of our lives, because we kind of just. Not all of us, obviously, like you've been in this fight for a while, but most of us kind of, we're not paying as much attention as needed to be paid like most people. In the end, I'm not trying to throw blame on folks, but like clearly the majority of people in the country who support access to reproductive healthcare weren't paying enough attention. You know, like that's the, that's the only way to frame it totally. And it's almost as if we are picking up the mess that others are are creating. Yeah, and and. You know, after experiencing COVID as a society, everyone's a public health professional now and a doctor. So it's. Clearly, yeah. I'm sending referrals to you. Thank you. Yeah, and people have a lot of things to say. And with that being said, I'm really glad that that these are conversations being had. I'm glad that friends around me now who I've never known to talk about reproductive health are going there and talking about it and also opening the door up for, you know, people like me to talk about evidence based practices and what the reality is and and who's doing the work and everything that. That focuses around reproductive health. So I appreciate this conversation. I appreciate that there are podcasts discussing this information. It's necessary and these issues are not going anywhere. And, you know, we're going a little backwards. So I I really appreciate your time on this. Thank you for coming on the show and all right, everybody, that's the ******* episode. Go do something else. Football is back, and bet MGM is inviting new customers to join the huddle and enjoy the action like never before. Sign up today using bonus code champion and your first wager is risk free up to $1000. You'll also have instant access to a variety of parlay selection features, player props, and boosted odd specials. Just download the bet MGM app today or go to bed. Gm.com and enter a bonus code champion and place your first wager risk free up to $1000. The bet MGM app is the perfect way to experience the excitement of wagering on live sports now in more markets than ever. Visitbetmgm.com for terms and conditions must be 21 years of age or older to wager Virginia only new customer offer. All promotions are subject to qualification and eligibility requirements. Rewards issued as non withdrawable free bets or site credit free bets expire 7 days from issuance. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem call 1888. 532-3500 you love movies or maybe just Anita? Some recommendations on what new movies to watch next time you sit down in front of the TV? Well I have the podcast for you. Hey, this is Mike D from movie Mikes movie podcast. Your go to source for all things movies and no matter the genre of what you're into, whether it be comedies, romance, action, sci-fi, horror, superhero movies, I cover it all. I'm no critic, I'm just a guy who loves movies. Each episode explores a different movie. Topic plus spoiler free reviews on the latest new movies in theaters and on streaming. And yes, they're always spoiler free so you don't have to worry about anything getting ruined for you. Plus interviews with actors, directors, and writers covering the behind the scenes of your favorite movies. I also keep you in the know with all the latest movie news and movie trailers. Listen to new episodes of movie Mikes Movie podcast Every Monday on the Nashville podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey y'all, this is Caroline Hobby, the host of get real with Caroline Hobby, honest women, honest talk. I love podcasting. It is so much fun because I have the most in depth, spiritual, soulful, real, honest conversations with women who are mothers, who are entrepreneurs, who have started their own businesses, who are married to celebrities, who are celebrities themselves. These women are juggling motherhood, being a career woman, starting their own businesses, taking leaps. Going one to jump these women are incredible and the conversations are so real, it will hit every nerve in your body. As a woman, a little bit about myself, I was a country music artist and a trio. I traveled the country, opened for every celebrity you can imagine in country music. I also been on The Amazing Race twice, and I'm married to Michael Hobby, who is the lead singer of 1000 horses. And we have our precious daughter Sonny, who's two listen to new episodes of get Real with Caroline Hobby every Monday on the Nashville podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to. Guest. Ohh. Alright, well. Just started. I like to these intros are getting shorter every every time. Yeah, we've gotten it down to one syllable, so there's not much room we can go from there. Look, you know what an honest and honest man only needs one syllable, sometimes less, sometimes half a syllable. We'll eventually get this down to just grunts. That's really what I'm moving towards, is an entirely shouldn't we be moving towards, like, telepathy? Yeah, telepathy. We don't even record a podcast where we just, like, put up with the information instantaneously. Just a blank audio. File that says now think about farming. And I must say that that sounds very, that sounds very sci-fi. And that's my way of doing a slick segue here. So good because today we will be talking and I'm very excited to talk about this. She's one of my favorite authors, you know, I really enjoyed. Discussing the idea is present in all Huxley's work, but. This one has a special place in my heart. Today we'll be taking a look at Octavia Butler's parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents and the themes and ideas present within. Yes, back at you again with another podcast banger. But first of all, hi, I'm Andrew, sometimes known as Saint Andrew. I'm kind of trying to rebrand as something else. Still figuring that out. And you can find me on YouTube at Saint Andrews home. But. This episode is not about me. And my branding this episode is board Octavia Butler. Born in 1947 and growing up in segregation era America, she became an award-winning sci-fi author with a lot of influences and a lot of themes and ideas being covered in her work. Considering the very white male dominated scene that is sci-fi, the fact that she was able to not only break into it, but also. Presents some things that haven't been explored before, with angles that haven't really been explored before. Really? Has touched a lot of people. She was somewhat afrofuturist, but she was also very much. A lot of her stories really blended. A lot of people have a lot of different backgrounds and and and histories, and she always managed to work aspects of herself into her main characters. She was a big critic of hierarchies, which really draws me to her, and she also wrote her relatively has at times struggled with writers block and depression. She wrote over two dozen essays, speeches, short stories and novels in her time on this Earth. But unfortunately she had a stroke and died in 2006. One of the OR other. Two of the books that have had the most of those that have had the most impact on me and of course I haven't read her entire bibliography yet, but hope to get to it is part of the sewer. Yeah, right. And you know I think a lot of people have heard about it. Again a lot more relevance after you know that's kind of touch we continue to accelerate as you know we drew closer to the year that the. Book is set in and. Regard to the second book as we had, you know, Trump come into office. And I'll get into why that's relevant in a bit in the first book, just to give a brief synopsis. Global climate change and economic crisis has led to a whole set of social crisis and chaos in the early twenty 20s. The book is set in California and they are struggling with pervasive water shortages and masses of poor people will do basically anything to live to see another day. Everybody is struggling, so basically today. In this setting, 15 year old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher. Father's family and neighbours sheltered somewhat from the surrounding kiosk. However, when we hear gated community now, we think of, you know, like really rich people. But. In this case, gated community is just like. A regular community that had to put up a bunch of walls to prevent, like. Pyromaniacs from like, really? Yeah, it's like a it's it's a suburb that used to be like a well off suburb, but as things got worse, it just turned into people hiding behind their walls because they were scared of poor folks, right? Like, it's there's an element of it that almost reads like a slasher movie and the opening of the book, which is one of the things that's really compelling about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They really, she really gets you invested in the setting and in the character early on. And part of what really gets you invested in Lauren as a protagonist is the fact that she suffers from a unique vulnerability or strength, depending on how you look at it. Oftentimes vulnerability. And that is hyper Empathy syndrome, which is basically. That she's able to feel. Others emotions, others pains so when others are. Very, very sad. She feels very, very sad. But others are in pee and she feels that same excruciating peeing. And so on and so forth. And so she has to sort of navigate this kiosk world while dealing with this. With this disorder that she's struggling with. At the same time, though, she's also navigating faith and the idea of faith and philosophy because her father is like a preacher, and he is the preacher of their little gated community. And so she has grown up in the church, but she also has found issues in the religion that she grew up in places where she thinks it is, sort of. Led people astray. And that's kind of also what has drawn me to Lauren as a character, because I too, you know, have had to negotiate and navigate that whole religious realm. And so that's basically the setting. She's in this community, it's chaos on the outside. She's navigating her hyper empathy syndrome, and she's also dealing with the ideas of religion and change and so on and so forth. So as she's there, sort of thinking internally, she's keeping this Juneau and she's developing this new system of thought, which she calls earthseed. And we're going to get into it's seed, but it basically. Sheeps. The decisions that she makes and the outcome of both books. And as well as how they progressed throughout. The second book places her in. I'm really trying not to spoil, which is difficult to do because the second book leads directly after the first book, and so on and so forth. But I'll try to speak in broad brushes because I really think people should go and read it as blind as possible. Lauren? Of course, eventually we will get into spoilers, by the way, so I'll try to let folks know when we get into that. But in the second book, Lauren is working on a community founded on her faith with seed. And. They begin to face persecution. We'll see after the election of this Ultra Conservative president who vows to quote Make America great again. Hmm, being, you know, a young black woman in a minority religious faction in the United States of America. Who colony becomes a target of President Jared's reign of terror. And at the same time, Lauren's future daughter. Is navigating. The discovery of the mother that she didn't knew, that she didn't know through the journals that her mother kept through the years. I think I'll leave it at that. There are a lot of themes that you know Butler covers in these texts. And in fact, I've seen them described as butlerian, which I would agree with because she covers them in other books of who's as well in different ways. She talks about poverty and slavery and freedom, just what perseverance she navigates the this idea of community and what community means what. Whole community is both a balance of inclusion and exclusion at the same time, and also the whole cycle of creation, destruction and rebirth that really. Defines. Human history. Right now, well in that. Books and the setting of that book, slavery has made a comeback more than. It already has. You know, you have these extreme forms of debt slavery and marital slavery and probably even plantation slavery. I believe plantation slavery is mentioned in the second book. And of course there's slavery is inflicted upon the poor, and particularly in a lot of company town style slavery. Yeah, right. Where people are like bonded, bound to a specific location because of their employer who protects them in this increasingly dangerous bandit filled world. Yeah. Exactly. And in this world, you know, race remains a factor even though these books are written in the 80s and 90s, I believe parable Thesaurus 93 and purple talents is 98, right? So again, like he's got or Butler has a character using the same phrase Trump would win the presidency on. What is it? Uh, 24 years before the start of his campaign? Hard to overstate the degree to which she was ahead of the curve on a lot of things. Because, I mean, to be fair, she knew America. Oh yeah. You know, she grew up in segregation, near America. Yeah, she. Had to deal with her mother was a domestically bro and so she had to go in with her mother in these rich white families places through the back door and you know obviously that would have shaped how she saw herself and herself in relation. To the wider world through to America as an idea. And so I think that. As she's writing of this, you know, sort of horrific future, she's drawing a lot from her horrific past, or rather America's horrific past. Of which the history is apart. So, Lauren, who is, in some ways, Octavia Butler, self in suit. Spends a lot of time in the book in both books. Allying with people who are also minorities who come from mixed backgrounds. People who tend to be overlooked. By the dominant. Christian religious right. White. Order. Because I believe she finds some sense of safety and strength in people who have been so maligned. Slavery also ends up affecting Lawrence community too, in many ways that I don't want to spoil, but despite it all. The theme of perseverance is really what carries the story along. Lauren ultimately is. The archetype of the poor Severa, you know. She preaches a summon and the importance of perseverance. She tries to get others to see the importance of hard work, and she sticks to her calls no matter what happens, and a lot happens, there would. Quite honestly, discourage a lot of people to put it lightly. And yet she perseveres. And so to tie that in as well to American history particularly. In the first book. She ends up having to make a journey N to Northern California, and throughout that journey she know she meets with other people and interacts other people. She makes allies and avoids enemies. And. You could honestly draw some parallels to the Underground Railroad. Of course, it's not an exact one to one. But in the sense of having to work with people along the way to progress out of. The terrible situation. The hellish situation. For the hope. Not the guarantee, but the hope of some form of salvation. When you get to the end of the journey, she doesn't do it alone, she does it with others, and that's kind of what keeps her hope alive. But it's not just external. She has a lot of intrinsic motivation to persevere, which is driven by her philosophy. I I mean, I think one of the things because there's there's a lot of meaning in why she picks the parable of the Sower in the parable of the talents for and it's it's pretty obvious in the service of the books it's that she's not like hiding it under layers or anything. But one of the things that in particular the second book deals with, I mean in the first book to do a degree, is kind of the the pointlessness of responding to dystopian change in society by just like hunkering down in a bunker and trying to hide from it. And protect your family like this. One of the reoccurring themes is the degree to which that doesn't work. And and one of the things that's really interesting about this is a dystopian novel. This is a novel that is. Both of these novels are kind of imagining the collapse of a lot of aspects of American Society. But it is not. At no point does the United States really collapse in these books and and even like as much as authoritarianism is present, at no point is the government completely taken over and completely. Under the control of like a unified fascist regime or anything? Yeah, like elections are still happening, campaigns are still going on, the police still exist, but you know, you still have to pay them to, you know, for them to pay attention to you. And and the the like Christian death squad type things that are roaming around are are distinctly non state actors. They have backing to us an extent from the state. They're not really opposed by it but it's it's it's again it's this thing that we we are actually dealing with where collapse doesn't look like OK everything's falling apart and now it's whoever's got the strongest group of buddies who can who can you know do their best in the wasteland. It's like no no no it is about groups of people trying to navigate in an increasingly dysfunctional. State and the the only way to actually survive that is survival is complicated. And it's never as simple as just like picking a good farm to hide on, you know that that's that's not gonna work out for you. Exactly. I just want to point out as well that as dysfunctional as things are, people are still going to work. Not just the people who are, you know, in company towns or in debt ******* but even Lawrence father, you know, he takes his bike every day and rides out into that chaos to go and work for a wedge. To come back and to try to support his family and of course in this gated community we see that there are attempts to stay gated. You know it's all 20 futile like the rich have their high security communities and they able to escape and helicopters when anything happens but. They have no security even in this illusion of security and that hunkering down strategy they were taken wasn't working in the first half of the book really shows what safeguarded, even if the only thing they had to safeguard with themselves because a lot of the members of the community were, you know, unemployed and extremely poor. That'll do and sort of symbolized. Uh, sort of. It was sort of a beacon, drawing people to eventually. Attack, and that's a slight spoiler, but yeah. And you know, despite. The problems that exclusion ends are causing Lauren as she realizes that her community could not handle. That approach. Even then, as she's progressing your offense stuff and she's debating with herself, you know who to bring into her fold? Exclusion and inclusion. They they play a role, you know? She has to find form bonds and you know stay safe. But at the same time. The bonds that she forms could put her in danger if she's betrayed or if the people that she invests in end up being harmed in some way because. The harm that they experience would ultimately affect too as well. So as Lauren is making her way up north. She is continuing to wrestle with this idea of inclusion and exclusion because as she's progressing north in hopes of, you know, building a community of some kind, creating, joining, forming community of some kind. She's also forming and establishing her religion. Like I mentioned before, it played a major role in the Community where she came from. And in fact, novel points. So that's one of the reasons people are attracted to, you know, religion, to Christianity in this chaotic time and in general, really. It's because it provides hope and hope in the form of an afterlife. And hope is what people really, really need in these hellish twenty 20s that they are dealing with. The Lord comes to realize that the hope and the hope and the afterlife. Ultimately isn't enough for the people that have invested so much into it. One of the people in. The community. Ends up, despite being a staunch believer that. Umm. Trigger warning, by the way, for suicide. Despite being a strong believer that you know suicide is a sin and a sending straight to hell, she is so lost hope and can no longer. Trust in the husband. You want so much pee and that she ends up taking her own life. And she takes her own life. And as Lauren remarks, she takes her own life, knowing, or at least believing the pain hereafter. And yet. She finds it more of a reprieve than the pain she was experiencing. He had no. And so as Lauren is witnessing these things happening around her. Is dealing with, you know, loss. And her baptism and. The father's commitment to the church. She is continuing to develop the idea of Earth seed and she begins to contrast earthseed from with Christianity. And particularly. In the sense of how the two religions address hope and change. In Christianity, you know, they have the hope of the afterlife against this brutal life, life now, a life whereas earthseed. Simply resents the central principle God is change. That's the first principle of luceed. 2nd is that shape God? So first you have to recognize and accept the changes. Inevitable, often destructive. But he could also recognise here the poet to sheep it. And so from that comes the third principle, which is to to. Pursue the destiny. The destiny being. The establishment of. Humanity and other worlds. And. To be quite honest. I am. That's this is 1 aspect of of the philosophy I've heard. See that? I think I I diverge from. Laura and of course has a lot of focus on. The heavens as in the cosmic heavens and. Scattering seed, which is, you know, humanity across, you know, all these different planets, establishing ourselves in different worlds. But. I feel as though the destiny is in a way. I wouldn't say destruction, but I think it's. It's the misplaced, misplaced hoop, I guess. I mean, there's that's kind of one of the points of the book, right? Because there's in, especially in the second book, there's a lot from the perspective of her daughter that kind of shows how as as much her philosophy is a really understandable and in some ways admirable adaptation to the completely ****** ** times she was born into. It's also in the same way. A lot of other people's philosophies become, you know, and that her parents and stuff are earlier in the first book. It's a way for her to kind of. Justify not paying attention to the people in her life and not, not taking proper care of them because she's got this thing that's bigger than them. Yeah, she works. Yeah. And you really, by the end of the second book, you really have to sort of contend with the fact that, you know. You should have to grapple with how things with her daughter will handle. And yeah, I guess I'll leave it at that. Umm. Yeah and yeah. That's part of it. I mean she's so dedicated to this cause to this new religion of who's and you know she's recruiting people into it you know she's telling people these this hope you know that follow itsy believe in a destiny eventually. You know, space is going to become the real life heaven. We could actually get out there and make a new start for ourselves, for ourselves. And that's part of it as well. Part of the whole idea of the destiny is, you know. A fresh start for humanity, a sort of a maturation of humanity. This idea that you know, once humanity establishes itself and other worlds, that it would have grown up as a species. Yeah. And it it's one of the things that I, I really respect about these books that I think a lesser writer wouldn't have been able to pull off, is that the degree to which that beating you in the head with it, you see? Her as first failed by the philosophies and ideologies of her parents generation and by the the systems that people had gotten stuck in. She's very much a character who grows up in a world where all the adults are stuck in, essentially like a system that has become a death cult. And she has to figure out a way out of it, what she comes to believe in so much that in her own way, she becomes stuck in that new thing, and it renders her unable to see certain things that are important. And the book never portrays her as completely right or completely wrong because that's just not how civilization works. Things just change over time. And, you know, the the ideology that her parents and the adults are all stuck in in the beginning of the book is an ideology. That worked to a degree at some point in the past, which is just it it it's it's it does a really good job of of showing a number of things, which is kind of what it's like to be a kid realizing that the adults have ****** you, what it's like to become radicalized and realize that the world doesn't have to be the way that it is and what it's like to let that radicalization lead you somewhere to where you miss important things like, there's so much going on. In the evolution of what the characters believe in this book, that is is just masterful from a storytelling standpoint. Yeah, and I mean the second book really does a good job showing her sort of blindness as well when it comes to things going on because. What ends up happening? One of the? Worst incidents in that second book. Is something that's. Of course. Well, part of the whole idea of the destiny is, you know. A fresh start for humanity, a sort of a maturation of humanity. This idea that you know, once humanity establishes itself and other worlds, that it would have grown up as a species. Yeah. And it it's one of the things that I, I really respect about these books that I think a lesser writer wouldn't have been able to pull off, is that the degree to which that beating you in the head with it, you see? Her as first failed by the philosophies and ideologies of her parents generation and by the the systems that people had gotten stuck in. She's very much a character who grows up in a world where all the adults are stuck in, essentially like a system that has become a death cult. And she has to figure out a way out of it, what she comes to believe in so much that in her own way she becomes stuck in that new thing, and it renders her unable to see certain things that are important. And the book never portrays her as completely right or completely wrong because that's just not how civilization works. Things just change over time. And you know the the ideology that her parents and the adults are all stuck in in the beginning of the book. An ideology that worked to a degree at some point in the past, which is just it it it's it's it does a really good job of of showing a number of things, which is kind of what it's like to be a kid realizing that the adults have ****** you. What it's like to become radicalized and realize that the world doesn't have to be the way that it is and what it's like to let that radicalization lead you somewhere to where you miss important things, like there's so much going on. In the evolution of what the characters believe in this book, that is is just masterful from a storytelling standpoint. Yeah, and I mean the second book really does a good job of showing her sort of blindness as well when it comes to things going on because. What ends up happening? One of the? Worst incidents in that second book. Is something that's. Of course, not to victim blame, but it is something they could have prepared for a bit more, yeah. A lot more, actually. Yeah, it's it's they're good books. They are books that you will, if you're like me, you will start reading them and you will get really into the first book. And then you'll take a 10 minute break to, like, check the news and something will send you into a panic spiral and you'll read the next two books getting increasingly depressed. It's good. It's good. The next book because, I mean, the food book never released. Yeah. She never quite got to make it. Yeah. And I'll get into that as well in a bit. And how it ties into the destiny. Right, yeah. But just to reiterate, you know who is principle? God has change it. God is not a person. It doesn't love or heat or watch over us or was it just is second principle shape God. God is malleable goddess power. Infinite, irresistible, inexorable, indifferent. And yet God is pliable, trickster, teacher, kiosk, clay. And truly emphasises the change is neither good or bad, but it is potential. And we could, and we have a choice to either be a victim of change or victim of God. Or we can become. Ex. Partner of God. Or we can become a shaper of God. Or we could just stay. As God's plea thing as changes pre. It's unavoidable, but. Our actions can shape its direction and speed. And the end? Change reviews. And there's a comfort in that. Because once we understand that. You can return that effort. The inevitability of change. Can be what thrusts us forward. And I think. I think people who are invested in. In activism, in organizing, and just revolutionary work. I think their aspects, if we could see that, I think would be very motivating, very impactful, very energizing. Because despite you know how circumstances play out. There's a recognition that we are never entirely. Disempowered. You know. And so, like, that's the last point I want to get into about the destiny. I think that's what it would make me if I were to be in this world. I think that's where I would diverge from the outside orthodoxy, because, I mean, Lauren talks about how you know. History is just as repetitive thing. We have all these wars and kill a bunch of people and impoverish others and spread disease and hunger. And. Whole thing is just because that's how it's always been. That's me, and we have to accept that we can choose to. Do more. Make something more of ourselves and to who? Making something more of ourselves is establishing ourselves and other planets. So if she is emptied Orthodoxy, I suppose I'm an earthseed Protestant. Yeah. You're affecting your seed, Martin Luther. Nailing your theses to, I don't know, the door of her house in Seattle. Exactly. I would be a reform of the of the destiny in the sense that actually the destiny could be creating. I have one here on Earth, like. Rather than pursuing a cosmic heaven. I don't think it's even something that Lauren. At least I don't recall Lauren ever grappling with the possibility because she really is fixated on this cosmic idea. I think she got with the possibility that humanity couldn't mature, quote UN quote, here on Earth. You know, she doesn't really draw much attention or spend much time thinking about things like ecosystem restoration or, you know, changing the. Pushing back against the the government or the economic system that is impoverishing and inflicting violence upon people. She's just really fixated on the destiny. And that's when I got into the food book and things I learned about the food book when I was researching for this episode. But they actually planned on exploring the fulfillment of the destiny in the third book, parable of the Trickster. In fact, she intended to have a seven part series, so the third book would have been near the middle. As the story would have focused on another woman named IMARO. Who is living on a Tootsie Colony in the future, on a planet called Boo, far away from Earth. Quote it is not the heaven there was hope for, but Gray, dank and utterly miserable. Everybody is homesick. Homesick? Not just in like or I haven't been home in a while kind of thing home sick in the sense of like. You know when someone is like an amputee? And they have this sort of phantom limb sensation. Yeah, this homesickness is like a phantom limb peeing a a neurological. Debilitation. It's like trying to graft. Humanity on send you plan it and it's, it's. It's like if you manage you were a branch and this new plant was a tree, and like both the tree and the branch are kind of rejecting each other. And so she never really got. Very far into writing part of the tricksters. In fact, she had a lot of different. Ways of approaching it, a lot of different manuscripts that she got, you know, a couple of pages into and then discarded, you know, so in some versions they call us end up having like a creeping blindness and others they got this telepathy. You know the visions she has to solve a murder. In other version, she but she becomes a ghost. Sometimes she's a risky underspeed skeptic, sometimes she's a true believer. Sometimes she's a hyper ampath. Sometimes she's cured of it. Sometimes the planet itself is filled with giant dinosaurs, other times small animals, other times intelligent aliens. And there's also this idea. This I would say very twilight zone esque idea, that. The aliens that they encounter are tokens of their escalating collective madness. And so the whole idea of power of the trickster and would have been the subsequent books was, you know. The continuation of the concept of choice, choosing to either, you know, live together, work together, struggle together, or you know. Fight and scheme and lose their minds. Breakdown, die and murder alone. In a speech to the UN in 2001, that would be like five years before she passed away. I think she didn't like I said 2006. She speaks about how, before she even, like, started working in the first parable novel, she wanted to write a novel about a utopian civilization where everybody had a kind of hyper empathy. But then. Actually figured it would be a utopian society because everyone would be inclined to, you know? Behave in the more pro social way because any anti social activity they would have you know inflicted upon others would be inflicted upon themselves immediately. But then she realized it wouldn't work because. Sharing in the threat of shared P and doesn't necessarily make people behave better towards another. She points to the the popular painful sports of, you know, like boxing and American football, you know. And so she recognizes that this idea of everyone being Hyper Empath could cause a lot of trouble. I mean, if everyone feels each other's pee and who wants to be a dentist, you know, who wants to be a noose? And so she discarded that idea and then she basically created Lauren was alone. Hyper Empath in a world that is empathy deficient. When they think Butler gets to the heart of, you know, a lot of the issues that we are dealing with. Umm. She grapples with all the questions that. Should still be explored the idea of inclusion and exclusion, that balance when you know developing Community, concept of perseverance, concept of hope. The creation and destruction and rebirth of. You know, really. Life and just what makes life life? I guess I'll I'll wrap things up. With the court. This tolerance have a chance. Only if he wanted to. Tolerance, like any aspect of peace, is forever a work in progress, never completed. And if we are as intelligent as we'd like to think we are? Never abandoned. That's it. Or just change, shape God's peace. Well, I think that's about as good a line as any to end on. Go read Octavia Butler if you haven't. Check her out. Go to the library. Her ***** all over the library. Libraries are filthy. With Octavia Butler books. You'll find it or steal it off the Internet. She's not going to mind. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It could happen here as a production of cool zone media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio App Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts you can find sources for. It could happen here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com/sources. Thanks for listening. Hey there. I'm Scott rank, host of the podcast history unplugged. Now. It really is a dream come true. Get paid to talk about history without all the stress while still being able to make a living. And I did it with Spreaker from iheart. Not only did they make it super easy to monetize my podcast, but ad revenue is 3 to four times higher with spreaker than with any other host I've worked with. So if you want to turn your passion into a podcast and give this a try visitspreaker.com that's spreaker.com get paid to talk about the things you love. Sisters of the Underground is a podcast about fearless. I'm Danny. Apiro host of family Secrets I hope you'll join me and my extraordinary guests for this new season of family secrets. With over 25 million downloads, the importance of both telling and hearing secrets is apparent, and I am so excited to share 10 astonishing news stories with you. This is our best season yet. Listen and subscribe to family secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.