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Hi there, I'm Dr. John White, WebMD's Chief Medical Officer, and host of the Spotlight On Series from the Health Discovered Podcast. In this special episode, we dive into plaque psoriasis, the difficulties, the misconceptions, and the treatment options available. What does it take to get patients to clear skin? Well, if you have a relatively limited case of psoriasis, for example, scalp psoriasis, and you put the Chlobetis all solution on your scalp, twice a day, in three days, you see dramatic improvement in the psoriasis. Now, if you're covered with psoriasis, top of the therapy is not reasonable, with an injection once every two or three months. You have like a 50% chance of being completely clear, and probably a 90% chance of being nearly completely clear. Listen to Health Discovered on the iHeart Radio app, for wherever you get your podcasts. 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Go to MyLASICOffer.com for details. When you arrive in the all new Toyota Crown, every entrance becomes a grand one. With an available hybrid max power train that says, you always arrive fashionably on time. A style that says, emphasis on the fashionably. And presence that says, you speak softly and everyone listens. Introducing the Toyota Crown. The car that says so much. Toyota, let's go places. 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. The sun never sets on the British Empire because God doesn't trust the British in the dark. Welcome to Kadappan here, a podcast that holds at the only good American tradition is rebellion against the British. I'm your host, Mia Wong and today we're going to be talking about the happenings in the prophetious Al-Bionne. Joining me live from one of the most accursed states, currently in existence is Sophie from Mars, the co-host of Red Planet a week. You left us round table who does many other wonderful things that involve anarchism and organizing and stuff. Sophie, how are you hanging in there in the sort of increasingly failed state in the past? That was a very good introduction. I do think that Britain is largely out of God's sight and by consequence, outside of his love. I think you summed it up pretty well. I'm okay. I had an experience to mind a hate crime today, so it's another normal day of being a trans person in the UK. Some guy tried to film me on his phone and I was like, I can see that you're filming me and he didn't like argue and be like, no, I wasn't. So I know that he was. It was very cool. Yeah. It's like, turf island continues to be incredibly normal and by incredibly normal, I need to hide this look. Look, at the end of World War II, lots of states were divided into pieces. The UK should have been one of them. I hold it now. Oh, that might be, I mean trans people. We are working on destroying the union. Yeah, this is, this is, oh, man. It created incredible stuff. I really thought it was going to be Brexit that finally destroyed. It had a kick to the window. No, it was hatred of trans people that finally did it. Truly incredible stuff. So you asked me what it's like to be British. You know, okay. So on, I mean, so we both do like accents for this one. Should we both be like, oh, Gavna, let's have side to the mic. So what a ill pie and some mashed peas. Oh, okay. I spent some time looking at like sort of British export charts and like, as much stuff in the British economy. And none of them at any point had Britain's chief export, which is jokes about Britain. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm wondering what you're talking about. British export is like white supremacist war crimes. That's true, but the thing is like, the UK's ability to export white supremacist war crimes is at an all time low. It's kind of like, like, really funny. I was in Armenia like fairly recently for surgery and I went to a talk by someone who like used to work in DC and I worked with the Armenian government and they were talking about like how what kind of external support they could expect for like the conflict with Azerbaijan and someone brought up Britain and he was just like, Britain's not really a player on the international stage anymore. It's not that funny, but it's kind of like a sign of what the UK actually is now. Which is, if you also know that in 11th of the British were like one of the first people who decided they were going to bomb Gaddafi, but the problem is the British, the British like Air Force was capable of dropping of doing like maybe like three or four bombing runs before they just straight up ran out of fuel. And the whole thing was like, they like, they had to draw the US in because the British no longer had like actual build to locate abilities to do imperialism anymore. So things are, things are not great in the sort of white supremacy factory. We have reached like a really bizarre point where our ruling class is divided. The whole story of like the Delis brothers and the creation of the CIA is like, we are going through that in reverse at this point. But we've had one of the most interventionist histories of any country ever. And now our ruling class is divided between we should carry on doing interventionism because it benefits us to be the worst, most ghoulish, vampiric country conceivable. And we shouldn't do that because it costs money and why are we spending money on brown people? Yeah. Which is two terrible possessions back in the air. Yeah, it's, it's fun. It's, it's, it's, it's a good time in the UK. I, so, you know, speaking of speaking of it being a good time in the UK. So I, I, I solved, I, I see this before and I didn't like, I didn't quite believe it. And I look at the numbers and we were talking about this a bit before we got on. But it, it looks like the UK right now is projected economic performance is worse than Russia's, which is incredible because that is a country that is like under just unbelievably debilitating sanctions and is also like losing a war. And UK's economy is more fucked than a country that is being shot with missiles. Like, how? I mean, we're, we're, we are also losing a war, but it's a, it's a war of ideas. That's true. So yeah, I think, I think we should probably, we're, we're, we're, when, when, when we last left, I, the United Kingdom on this show, I, I, I, I, I, I think it was, I think Liz Truss had just been overthrown and we went out on a, I, the UK is no wonder what they're second consecutive unelected Prime Minister. So no. Mea, mea, mea, mea. Second consecutive. Oh, no right. Cause they never, no, no, no, no, they elected Boris Johnson, right? So this is a good place to stop. This is a really good place to stop. Three. Since Tony Blair, we haven't had a Prime Minister who we elected to get into power. Like no, sorry, since David Cameron, we did actually elect David Cameron, but kind, but only kind of like kind of maybe. So like we had, we had Blair, who is terrible and is worth getting into for a whole, discussion in a minute. And then we had Brown, who was his, uh, chancellor. So kind of out of like vice president, uh, who stepped in and then he lost to, to, to Cameron out on the Cameron, like how to coalesce. And that's why I say it's like it's kind of, oh yeah, yeah, he had the lib them thing and the lib Dems, I decided to literally go back and everything that ever done and the main, so the main thing that was happening with the lib Dems was they promised to protect student loan prices from going up and like they got massive support from young people and anyone who can see why it's good to be able to offer young people an education, um, especially because like Blair had this big famous speech where he was like education, education, education with my excellent Tony Blair impression. Um, he, um, and, and that's also worth getting into is it, it's, it's, it's a very multifaceted level of parasitic fuckery, his whole education thing, but because he had focused on education, loads of people were really passionate about it and then the lib Dems were like, we're gonna stop them from making, uh, university fees 9,000 pounds a year. And that was what got the lib Dems an enormous amount of the vote and then they made a coalition with the Tories and then immediately went back on it and made, and that's why my, my student loans are ridiculous, even though I dropped out. Um, my student loans are higher than my partners and I dropped out my second year and she dropped out after doing like six years of the same degree because she had the low of fee. Um, but I, um, so then there was Cameron again, but without the lib Dems because everyone's sick of them and no one will have a vote them ever again. The lib Dems are just a funny side story. There are, there are lots of like funny and cringe side stories in British electoral politics where like, it doesn't matter that much because they'll never get into power. But like the, the succession of absolute like clowns who've been in charge of this party or that party just is really funny. Like the lib Dems have had a homo foe, but they had Nick Clegg, then they had a homo foe who said that being gay was a sin. And then they had someone called Joe, what was she called, Swanson? Yeah, I think that's Swanson, something like that. That's right. And she started talking this incredible like neoliberal, like if you've ever seen, um, the thick of it, like she sounded, she sounded like a character from the thick of it. She was talking about like people having skills wallets and shit like this. Oh my god. She also, I think, killed a squirrel. There was a whole thing about that. What? Um, oh boy. Then, you know, analogously there's like the, um, the Communist Party of Great Britain, which I hope to get into. Oh god. Because that is a fascinating story. Yeah. But anyway, the Tory party is the one that matters the most for now. So we had Cameron. Then who do we have? Theresa May because Cameron, that big on us not voting for Brexit. And then Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson, etc. came in and were like, save the NHS, migrants, blah, blah, blah. And then we voted for Brexit. So then we had Theresa May by default because Cameron had left. So this is what I mean, that like the Tory party has this ongoing strategy of just like swapping someone in and then like calling a general election really soon afterwards. And the incumbent's going to win. Hmm. So it's like, I don't consider that to be like someone winning an election if they're already in through rap poverty. Although I feel like it's still slow. At least there was an election for them, which is more than what's happening now. Yeah. No, it's definitely devolved. It's definitely gotten worse. But I think we're on like the seventh on the Prime Minister by my count. But like, yeah, it was like Cameron, then then May, then Boris Johnson, and then sorry, yes, Boris Johnson, and then Liz Truss. And now it's a soonak because like, did I get them the wrong way around? Anyway, I think it's right order. Soonak literally didn't have any opposition in the Tory party leadership election. Like he won by default. It's that that's how dire it's gotten. Like they wanted Boris Johnson to come back and try again. And he decided he wasn't going to bother. And because of that, there was no one to run against soonak. So he just won by default. Really incredible stuff. Yeah. And soonak's a fascinating character as well because like he is incredibly green. And I don't mean environmentalists. I mean, like he knows fucking nothing. And he's currently going through this like there's there was a measurable phenomenon with David Cameron where he was really naive and he went through the neoliberal thing of being like, I'm going to cut the red tape. Oh no, that's not working. I need massively authoritarian policies. Oh no, that's not working. Maybe this is a flawed ideology. And just like just to at the end of his term, he was like, maybe this isn't working. And then they get rid of him. Soonak is currently like very firmly in the stage of like trying to do as much libertarianism as possible and realizing that the state can only do libertarianism if they are also as authoritarian as possible. Yeah. And I think, you know, I was going to get this to a bit. But I think that there's a couple of things that have been happening simultaneously. One is that like, okay, so we had there was the incredibly brief phenomenon of trust dynamics of like, the British is attempt to like, like actually really sort of, I don't even know how to get like, because British politics is always neoliberal. But like, do you do what kind of neoliberalism that like, nobody has seen since like, I saw people describing it as like trying to do Reaganomics about the dollar. But I think it's actually stupider than that because like, there are places where you could conceivably pull off Reaganomics about the dollar, right? But like, you have to have like, kind of in economy, which is the thing the UK no longer has after they shot themselves in the foot like 1000 times it Brexit. Yeah. Um, let's trust publish like a plan for what she was going to do in terms of economic reforms. And it crashed the pound unbelievably. Yeah. Just like people, not even the plan, like not even the policies being implemented. Yeah. And the plan and the pound like, hogged in value overnight. Yeah. And like, I, there is stuff that I have seen like in the wake of trust dynamics and in the wake of like sort of, Rishi Sudak attempting to piece together like, even sort of functional government that like, I never thought I would see like, I mean, I guess I had seen the IMF saying, hold on, you have to stop doing the austerity before. But like, I didn't think I'd see that for the UK. No, it's pretty impressive. Yeah. Like the other thing that I've seen that's, I just, Jenny, I can't believe is, I've seen mainstream newspaper outlets print things about the economy that you were just not allowed to say. Like I, I, I, I have seen mainstream newspapers admit that economic growth was actually better in the inflation, right? In class, class, we're torn 70s and it is now, which is like, that is like the single thing you were not allowed to say in all of the economics because if you, if you actually pull out the growth rate chart and point out that economic growth was actually better in the 70s and it wasn't any successive decade, I, everyone immediately shoots you because that, because you can prove in what you can prove in one chart that, yeah, it doesn't work. If you're in the media class in the UK and you point out that like the 70s was by any metric better than now, you are no longer invited to the eyes wide shot parties where you can like suck and fuck the first Johnson. That is like the highest privilege in British society. So you obviously want that. Yeah, you can, you can, you can, you can no longer fuck the pig. I think things of this nature because bad room quickly. The internet cash on the was interviewed and he was like front page care, Stama saying I would cast a Tory and I just shared it being like, look, we already know David Cameron fuck the pig. Yeah. Oh god. Stama saying he would cast a Tory is just, yeah, that's just a cherry on top. Yeah. So, okay, I want to ask a little bit about what is going on in the in the British economy because I have spent some time attempting to figure out what the fuck even is the British economy. And as best as best I've been able to determine it produces, okay, it produces financial quote unquote financial services, which seems to be the UK sort of polite euphemism for doing money laundering for like both the regular bourgeoisie and for this enormous class of like kleptocrats and petrol oligarchs who like get their money by extracting it directly from the state. Yeah. It seems like you have that layer, you have the layer below them who were just like somehow more landlords per capita than exist in like any other place that has ever existed. And then below that, there's this quote unquote service economy thing. Yeah. I think you're getting it. I think you're pretty much getting it. I think, okay, there are two sides to British politics. There's this economic one that you're pointing out, which is like, let me put a pen in the economics, right? That the economy of the UK is unbelievable. And if we'll get to it in a second. And then there's the like the the electoral politics that they try to like that is just a fast to try to like keep people from ever looking too closely at the economics, like ever looking with a sensible lens of the economics. The electoral politics is just like eternal war on a set of marginalized communities. Young people, immigrants refugees and asylum seekers, sex workers, trans people, black and minority ethnic Britons, the the GIT community travelers enormously. Like that was something that like a lot of people thought that like new labor under Blair was like so progressive and was like ending races. It was a big like Obama adjacent moment for us and like, but they were horribly racist to travelers. And that's like escalated in recent years to like if people are familiar with the police crimes sentencing in courts bill like that got somewhat defanged, but like one of the worst parts of the book, the bill still got through was just like ending the right to Rome, which is effectively just a genocide against travelers. When I mentioned sex workers, like a lot of British sex workers are pushing for any kind of legal reform that would be better, but like our most progressive politicians like Jeremy Corbin literally like still supports the the Nordic model. Like it's it's a nightmare. Socially the political side of the social side of the politics in the UK is just war on as I say, like dividing up the entire population into marginalized groups forever eternally like saving this idea of like the blue collar working class white man who also earns like 80,000 pounds a year. And that's the ideal voter, even though that's no one. And then there's the economics. Okay, so the and all of that is a smokescreen for the economics. So like you said, lowest level, there's the service economy because we like the rest of the imperial core exported all our industrial stuff to the imperial periphery when our industrial sectors got unionized. We are now service economy. So practically all jobs in the UK are poor people providing some kind of service for rich people. Then like you say, there's the landlords above that we have we have a wild time with landlords and that there is there is a plus side to that, which is that like our tenants unions are fantastic like we have we have such a boom in tenant unions. I've been interviewing activists and organizers for a couple of years now and in the US you guys are doing okay with tenants unions. You've got a bigger challenge because like the pop show with guns to evict people. So that is like that is a crazy time. But like we have such bigger, stronger tenants unions and like I think the possibility of something like a full scale rent strike happening in the UK is actually pretty like pretty feasible. The US and that just don't like get that shit. Like I had back back back back back when back when I was an incredibly naive youth and was in the DSA. We had an entire like massive battle in my chapter about whether we should do tenants organizing. And I was on the side of the board. Yeah, obviously we should do. Yeah. Like I had one of the fucking Chicago DSA leadership people like in this meeting said to my face and I quote, how does building tenants unions build working class power? What? These people are clowns. Absolute clowns. Like every time they walk down the street the giant noses go hog. Like the clown she's like, I'm not going to be in. I'm not going to engage in anti-clowns land here. I do not, I think it's very unfair on clowns to get back them to the DSA. That's true. That's true. I got. There's a lot of things going paradise where she says like I don't want to be the head of the local DSA chapter, I just want to be on the Digimon the movie soundtrack. I'm like, yes. Yeah. Okay, speaking of the Digimon the movie soundtrack. Very nice. Very nice. Very nice. Maybe maybe maybe maybe we'll get sponsored by Digimon the movie. Yeah, maybe he has an ad for Digimon the movie. Yeah, yeah, I hope. It's going to be fucking gold again. We're like, we're going to be. Please. And once again, we have talked about this on multiple shows now. Please stop DMing other Sophie about about the super gold ads. We know they're there, which way to dop by gold. Yeah. And we're back. I hope you I hope you I hope you're now into Digimon. I think they got they got little monsters that turn into things with giant guns. I hope that you being as hot as bombed with Digimon the movie ads has reshaped your brain into a higher consciousness Digimon consciousness. Let's talk about financial services. You mentioned this very briefly, but this is actually so like, okay, most people in the UK working in like fucking Uber or like Deliveroo or some other nightmarish service sector job. Then there's the Petit bourgeois who are so overwhelmingly landlords now. And then there are mega landlords. We have a ton of like mega landlords who something really insidious about that, by the way, is that we have a lot of like housing associations that claim to be like for the good of the tenant and claim to be like socially progressive trying to help people out. And they actually own like thousands of properties and like there are people with like, through the tenants union, my partner knows someone who hurt, it was like raining in her flat because the leaks were so bad. It was like rain indoors and she had like black mold and none of her lights were working. And that was like a, that was a housing association. They are some of the worst landlords. And then above them, the UK is running one of the biggest money laundering operations in the world. Maybe the biggest. I think it's, I don't know. Like maybe I don't even, I don't even think like the Cayman Islands or like with Bahamas have like that kind of like, or Panama has that kind of throughput. No, we're really familiar with like Switzerland and like you say Panama and the Cayman Islands. And some people are somewhat familiar with Ireland as being like tax havens. Yeah. But like none of these actually compare to Britain because Britain like forged all of these relationships with the entire world because it invaded them. And now it has those like the British Empire ended in name and legal function but did not end in terms of financial services. Like that is our, that is our grip on power is like that we, we, yeah, we just low under a bunch of rich people's money. There's a great documentary called The Spiders Web which talks about this and like the head of her majesty is right. Oh, I guess it's his majesty now. Oh. Just taking this opportunity to say fuck the king. Um, HMRC anyway, the head of HMRC like literally just works for the money launders like the people who are just trying to bring through like billions of dollars to, to Londar. Um, yeah, like when I say about like the rest of our politics being a smoke screen, it's because like this is everything for the British ruling class. Like it's all about them trying to to Londar money. And like I think that like the, the recent rise in like far right populism or attempt at that in the UK, which by the way, I don't think it's going as well as they wish it was anymore. But like, well, because they did, because they did Brexit it turns out Brexit was really bad idea. Yeah. Yeah. I remember there was something for a while ago, I was in some forum thread where they were just posting like Trump supporters realized they're going to die because of Trump. Um, it's a very similar phenomenon in the UK like you, there's a lot of, and I don't really delight in it because it's just, it was, it's just like looking a lot of working class, working class people suffering. Um, but there is a very like very obvious and noticeable trend of like people who voted for Brexit, realizing that it's completely fucked everything about their life. Um, but when there was this attempt at like raising far right, um, like false class consciousness in a very Trumpian way, um, that was all like a very big attempt at the smoke screen. Because like, if there's, have you ever seen Johnny English? There's this, what is Johnny English? There's this fucking Rowan at Kinson film where he like is a, he, he, he winds up being like a spy and the villain in that film is French, of course, because you know, the, the French so evil compared to Britain, etc. Uh, I guess, and so on. And, uh, that guy who's played by John Malfa Vitch wants to, uh, get the British throne and then sell Britain to, um, private investors to turn the entire island into a prison. So, and he's created modern Britain. Yeah, he, he's just outlining modern British politics. Yeah. So, um, so like, he, um, in terms of social policy, like, it would suit the ruling class of Britain very, very nicely if Britain was just one big jail because like, they, they are only inconvenienced by having to cater to any kind of population. Like if the British population just all died, the Tories would be having such a good time. Like they would fucking love it if there was absolutely no one to govern over. And Britain could just like, on paper, have a population of 60 million. And then they could use that for the money laundering. Yeah. Actually, you go here and it's just a complete like ghost island. Like everyone is gone. Yeah, I mean, it is that. It's just, it is just for money laundering. Um, like, I think the London stock exchange is the oldest stock exchange, I think, um, I'm not sure. But like, obviously it's had a long time to develop and like, it's, yeah, the, the, um, there is more fiscal capital or a Oxford of called, uh, fictitious capital in the world now than there is like real capital or financial capital. And, and yeah, a huge amount of it goes through the London stock exchange, um, and through like, yeah, through, through the services of, of HMSC and through like, uh, the various schemes that it's really funny. I had to, um, I had to, this, I don't think this is like, as in city, as it sounds, but I was filling up my tax return recently. And there was, there was a question that HMSC, like, just straight face, it'll be asked, like, have you participated in one or more tax avoidance schemes? And I was like, this is a normal country. This is a, this is a really normal normal country. Uh, like they just asked me. I mean, and I, and like, when, when my partner saw this because she was filling out hers, she was like, is this just a trick question to get you to like, dog yourself into the cops? And I was like, no, no, this is a, this is a normal question in case you are a very, very rich person who has engaged in a tax avoidance scheme. And you want to just report that and then the HMSC will be like, cool, good job avoiding paying taxes. You know, when I, we're always sort of like running through my research for this. I, I, I, I remember the David Graber quote about the British economy where he said something to the effect of the United Kingdom's chief product is, is the decility of its working class, which is what allows oligarchs to just like put their money in it because they know that they're going to have a butler or no one's ever going to steal it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, the, the sort of other side of, of the Graber in the UK arc is, you know, Taurus the end of his life, like he starts writing a lot about the revolt of the caring classes and about the sort of like, and he, he was talking about, he was talking about stuff that was happening like, she doesn't 18, she doesn't 19. Yeah. Yeah. A lot about like, I, but the Gila shot actually too because there's a lot of, yeah. Sort of ambulance. And he was directly involved in some organizing to try and stop the IMF. Yeah. Yeah. And, but you know, it wasn't just interesting to me about this. It's like, oh, I don't want to let it go by without saying the IMF must be destroyed at all costs. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I have about mentioned that IMF. The, like, yeah. The, the, the, actually demonic real demons exist and they're called the International Monetary Fund. Yeah. I talked about this in my neoliberalist's episode. Well, this is another sort of Graberism thing, right? Is the, the sort of, if being attuned to the fact that all of this sort of like red tape cutting bullshit is actually just a smoke screen for an incredibly sort of unbelievably violent or oppressive bureaucracy and the sort of the global wing of the violent or oppressive bureaucracy is the IMF. Yeah. And well, it's a really weird, what I was saying before about like Cameron realizing that neoliberalism doesn't work towards the end of the time that he was in office. Like, what I'm referring to is that he wrote a letter to his constituency to his local council that he's supposed to represent. And he said that like they had been complaining that they didn't have the money to, to, to, to do the things they needed to do. And he was like, well, you should just cut out the red tape. Like you should just clear out the back room bureaucracy. That's the thing that's costing you all the money. And I think what some time to reflect on this where I think he gets that idea from is he's seen how well it works for the, for the ruling class. He's like, the more red tape we cut, the more we get rid of regulations, the more money we make. And so he's like, that is simple then. Minus red tape equals more money. And they replied to him like, what the fuck are you talking about? That is no back room bureaucracy. You cut our budget with austerity policies. That's why there's no money. And he was like, oh, fuck. Like, yeah. Yeah. Well, it, it, it, it, you know, this, this, this seems to have like escalated to levels in the UK that are like sort of genuine catastrophic. I mean, you know, one thing that's sort of been quietly going on is like the sort of quiet privatization of the NHS. Yeah. Which is, yeah, the NHS is a national health service or is trans people called the no health care service. I haven't had that one before. That's very good. Yeah. But you know, okay. But I currently, a good demonstration of that actually. I am currently trying to get onto the pilot scheme trans plus, which basically gets you to the end of the waiting list. And if the, if the pilot scheme goes well, hopefully we'll, we'll be getting rid of the, hopefully, like this is the good alternative, right? And to get onto it, I need to get my referral, which my GP told me they did, but didn't do. So to do that, I need to get my current GP to write their referral to the GIC and include a note that says this was meant to be done in August 2020. And to do that, I called up the, the GP office the other day and they said, I was on the phone with the GP and I said, go to the GIC's website, click on it. The section that says, you know, you're a GP and you're looking to refer a patient. And she was like, Oh, I can't do that because of our computer systems. So what I'm going to need you to do is go to the website yourself and click on the thing that says you're a GP, even though you're not, and download that form and then email it to our office and then call the office and then get them to make the referral. This is the good alternative. This is the good alternative compared to just waiting for like 15 years and then killing myself. This is the good option for healthcare on the trans people in the UK right now. Yeah, it's a, yeah. Like as, as, as, as, as like shitty as a American trans healthcare is a lot of the time. It is somehow, well, okay, unless you're in a place that has made it illegal now, which is fun. It's, it's a lot less fucked than the UK's first. She's kind of incredible. I really thought we were, we were like outdoing the GOP states. Like for, for just a second, though, we were like inching ahead in how much our country hates trans people. And then like all these bands came out that were just like taking trans kids away from their parents or whatever. Yeah, that's like, okay, no, they, they play one. Yeah, it's now anyway. We'll see, we'll see whether, you know, whether like the rowling bill comes in in 2024 or something that like, it's just like execute transgenders on site. I, what would not surprise me at all the, it, oh god. It's fun being just the scapegoat for everything that's ever gone wrong ever. Hi, this is Mia in post. This episode was recorded just days before Brianna Jai, a 16 year old trans girl, was stabbed to death at a town near Liverpool. We haven't talked about it really on the show over the last few weeks because very little of what I and what I think rest of the crew have had to say about Brianna Jai's murder between sort of the racking sobs that he had another trans person taken from us is even remotely publishable. What I can say is that some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in institutions in the world are trying to exterminate us. And the BBC, the New York Times, Jai Kai rolling in every major British political party and the American ones too have blood on their fucking hands and should be treated accordingly. And on that plate, no, yeah, we can go back to the rest of the episode. Yeah, it is while being a country that like supposedly, like what the thing we probably have to be the proudest of in our entire history is creating a system for socialised medicine where people have free point of use, healthcare. And since it was created, the ruling class have tried as hard as possible to destroy it. And they're finally succeeding. I'm actually having friends are telling me recently that they're going to like hospitals and the hospitals are telling them that they're, you know, they're privatised and they can't, they'll have to charge them because they're not like contracted to do a NHS work anymore. So that's, you know, they're succeeding at that. I, we've probably wandered away from the point of what we're trying to say. Yeah, I have very resentful feelings to do with healthcare in the UK. I'm currently playing with my comfort knife. Yeah. I mean, I think I think this is sort of circling around the thing I wanted to talk about next, which is that like, you know, on the one hand, we have this sort of like, just, just the sort of body mental collapse of anything that could like conceivably make the UK a society. But on the other hand, I love people share the joke of me and why they're like, we love a society. And I'm like, if you're in the UK sharing this, you are wrong. Yeah, I know it's an economy. Yeah, it's, it's a living an economy. It's, it's pretty bleep. It would be fucking great to live in a society. I wish. But you know, on the other hand, David, David Graber's final prediction has like now come true, which is that we are now actually like the UK is now sort of starting to see the full scale revolted the carrying classes. Yes. And that has come in the form of, okay, I have no idea what this episode is going to come out. Sorry, everything's chaos right now. But as of time of recording, I guess tomorrow that something like half a million people are going on strike and lo and behold, who was going on strike last week? Oh, was it last week? Yeah, yeah. Am I, have I? Okay, I'm a dumbass. Is it more tomorrow or am I getting my stress? The episode comes out on the 1st of February, over half a million people went on strike and there were massive demonstrations in marches across the country. It's the biggest strike and biggest marches that we've seen in like over a decade. We haven't seen much as the size since protests against the Iraq war. Yeah. Yeah. And well, okay, so in Shiloh, there'll be more effective than the Iraq war protests. But I, yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting. If you look at the people who are striking, it is, it is people who do care labor. It's teachers, it's nurses, it's ambulance drivers, people who serve like train and bus drivers who are like still on strike in various capacities. A point to pull you up on that, but it agrees with the point even more in terms of the rebellion of the carrying classes. The current drive of the strikes from the RMT, that's rail maritime and transport workers, big up the RMT. My boys are incredible. Nick Lynch, shout out, love you to pieces. The current strikes are actually driven by the janitorial staff who are like some of the worst treated and worst paid among all of the train and transport staff. Like bus drivers and train drivers and so on have joined in on it. And that, as you're saying, is like, is still part of the like rebellion of the carrying classes. But it's even more so because it's literally like the cleaners who were like, yeah, this is fucked. We need better wages. Yeah. And there's been one, I think like, like, postal workers are also on strike. This other, I'm pretty sure other people are also on strike too that I'm leaving out here. Let's see. So I'm Dylan Stryvers, civil servants, teachers, nurses, training workers. Yeah, like that. Yeah, university workers. Yeah, university workers. Yeah, university workers. They're all, but I do not care about this. I have to assault an RIT for them. Border agents on strike. I stay on strike, baby. You fucking never come back to work. You're just keep fucking striking. We are starting the abolition of work with you. Congratulations, you are now, you have now finally become the Vanguard of the working class. It's what you fucking cops have always wanted. Yeah, you get to do it now. Yeah. Well, cops is an interesting thing as well because like on red planet every Sunday, 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. UK time, check it out. We have a running prediction to do with the police that like as their job, as class warfare becomes more naked, the police's job is more and more obviously just what it's always been to put down the working class. But as your job just becomes like smashing like bottle water stands that people put up in a heat wave to help homeless people and like trying to evict people and trying to like stop people who are striking for better pay. And also everyone around you constantly calls you a pig and like degrades you and is like, are you enjoying what you're doing? Do you have a good life? Are you liking this job? We'll see like lots of police quitting. But actually this month, the telegraph who can't really be trusted, but this does fit into a larger pattern. The telegraph reported that more cops had quit than had been recruited in the last month. Do you think it's one of the overall pattern that has been going on for a while? To be fair, that, I don't know. In the US, every single newspaper says that every week and it's never true. So I don't know. I mean, I wish I would feel like the actual figure is like does look like the, I mean, cops quitting in the UK has been on the rise since like early last year and enormously as well. And you can tell because like the met has been putting out loads of recruitment ads, which like is really second. No, I'm a little sorry about this. Actually, they have this ad in, wait, is it nearly time for ads? Because I can ad pivot. Oh yeah, we have, yeah, this is incredible. I was in, so I was in Peckhamplex cinema, which is Peckham is like a cheap community cinema. It's like, yeah, it's, it's, it's, they deliberately keep it cheap so that people can enjoy it as an event space and whatever. And we were about to watch a movie. I forget what now, but like there was this ad for the, for joining the met police. Oh, she's like this black guy talking about how he was really worried about his sister joining the police because she's a black woman and she's a Muslim and he was worried she's going to face all this discrimination. But actually, she's having a great time and everyone loves her. So it was totally okay the whole time. And now I have this personal policy, which is if there is an ad for crypto and ad for joining the, the met, the army, whatever, and no one else. And, and, and if no one is yelling at the screen because they are being subjected to fascist propaganda, that, then, then it's going to be me who's yelling. So I just started yelling because like, because like two weeks earlier when I was watching this ad, like Chris Carboh had been, had been shot dead by met police officers in South London, a black man, right? And they have a black man here telling us that actually the met's really cool and doesn't do any racism. And I was just yelling and yelling about it. And I was yelling about like fucking, if people aren't familiar with the case of like Sarah Everard, who was kidnapped and, and, and assaulted and murdered by Wayne Cousins, a met police officer. Like, you know, I'm just, I was just going off about all this stuff because I'm just like, I, like, I was just responding directly to the ad. Like, how are they running this shit as if we don't know all of this and just lift, lifting off everything that came to mind? Because again, it's my, it's my personal policy. I'm not going to get any trouble for it. And someone should be yelling when you're subjected to propaganda. Yeah. Anyway, speaking of propaganda, here's an ad for joining the Washington State Highway Patrol. Ah. And we're back from your, I, I, I had fascist propaganda session. I hope you didn't enjoy it. I hope you yelled the whole time. Yeah. And I, I guess I guess the thing that is genuinely sort of different between the American and British police is that the British police like, the American police is like every single American city is like at least, well, okay. So it's, they're, they're technically only about 40% police budget by volume. But that doesn't count. You can check it out. You can check it out. You can check it out. You're googling 40% police. Well, you will, you will see a variety of things here. But like, you know, technically, it's, it's, it's technically only about 40% of the city's budget by volume. But that's because that doesn't count the amount of money the police just steal. But in the UK, they actually kind of like, they, they, they were kind of stupid and they, they seem to actually have kind of done neoliberalism to the cops, which is very funny because it means that you get Jeremy Corbyn like running on higher and more cops and it's like, yeah, sir, like, what, no, it's, yeah, like, like, like, like, like, you've been, you've been protesting like apartheid and the legal wars and all of this. Yeah. So, like, I've been watching you for five years and you're like, we should have more cops. What the fuck are you talking about? Man, I, I remember what, I was, I was watching people who like, used to be like autonomous to like, fucking 2011 being like, no, when you were, like, they were literally beating you up. What the fuck is wrong with you? Oh my God. That guy infractured my skull. I need more of that. Yeah. No, it's pretty fucked. There is like an enormous amount of British brain going on where even I, I was like, most progressive politicians will support, support shit like that. Like I said earlier, like the Nordic model, right? Like, we, yeah. Yeah. There are, there are limits to the British imagination. Yeah. Because we've been doing this shit a long time. We've really perfected the brainworms. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I, I have, okay. So my, my, my, my, my, my, my least progressive theory is that there, there's, there's, there's something called large population island brain, which affects, it affects the UK and Japan or the two sort of models of this where you like being, being on an island and then also running an empire drives you, makes you like absolutely psychotic in like very, very specific ways that are like both the same. It's like you, you have a massive non-s culture like the way you appear in a similar or public nonsense is, is thriving. Yeah. Obviously, Gary Glitter recently got out of prison and then immediately went on to far right TV network, GB news and said that woke cancel, woke cancel culture is the biggest problem. Yeah. Like, yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it is a very grim state of affairs. Yeah. Is, is what I will say about both the UK and Japan. Although I guess to be fair, to be fair to Japan, they did just assassinate their ex prime minister and probably the most, like a story, like probably the most successful historical assassination not done by the CIA and like a hundred years or something, like really incredible work on the part of the man with electric blunder bus. The UK, however, not, not there yet. Yeah. I mean, where's that, wait, you know, where's our, where's our homemade blender buses? Come on. Come on, got, step it up, got this is not a call for leftist terrorism. I am not, no, please, please ignore what I just said. I was saying this thing with the British too. Like, what, what, what, what, what are the sort of British psychoses that I think about a lot is like the specter of knife crime. Because it's like, like, like, like, you say, like, on the one hand, like, yeah, like, okay, so like, people get stabbed and it sucks. On the other hand, like, like, having, having, having grown up in the US in a country where like, all of our kindergartners are basically being trained to like, storm, like, do you like, you and wave attacks and mass shooters? It's like, how, how are you guys, like, how are you guys like, like, how is this the thing that you guys are like, like, you have police brain about is knife crime? Like, I think that, no, I think that like the knife crime thing is a very American perspective on British politics. Like, we don't actually talk about it that much. Oh, thank God. Okay. It's really like an American conservative talking point. Like, if you get rid of the guns, they'll just stab each other. So look at the UK. They don't have guns. And they're just stabbing each other. Like, some conservatives still care about knife crime here. There was a big wave of caring about it when, again, a few years ago, you labor were like, doing their racist, like, their, their, their, their hush, hush racist policies to try and, like, brutalize the working class, especially in black neighborhoods. But like, no, I mean, the, the cop brain is like in everything. It's not, it's not like, it's every, I think British brain is just an evolved form of cop brain. It's like when cop brain affects everything in life, then you, then you are British. Yeah. I, I guess also it's like, it's you have cop brain and also landlord brain at the same time, it's just like a, a, a, a truly sort of dastardly come. What is the landlord but a cop for housing? That's true. I say it was my fucking, well, I guess, okay, I, I, I, I think I have, I am, no, that's not sure. I haven't gotten it yet, but I am vast approaching the, the, the two weeks since my apartment was last flooded by sewage mark. Oh, my god. And I'm very excited about this. Love, love, love, love, love, love landlords, love renting. It's, we hear on this podcast love landlords. It's just, it's still falling on me. At least not up to God. Oh, oh, boy, that's in you. Oh, fun. Okay. I, this has been, this has been the, the me as apartment is falling apart update. Well, should we talk more about the rebellion of the car and car? Yeah, yeah. I think that's a really bad. I think that's a really pointed and worthwhile, grabber prediction. I'm a big, grabe head. I have a friend who I just get onto discord chat with and we, as we put it, grabe out. I, I like to say I'm getting the grabe from beyond the grave 24, 7, but the, but the, the rebellion of the car in classes is a really poignant thing to talk about because neoliberalism does not care about reproductive labor in the slightest and where like, where all the forms of capitalism had, had that covered because women were basically fucking slaves. They now, the, now like reproductive labor has to be done by professionals because everything must be marketized and of course being the most essential labor, it's the, gonna be the one with the shitiest working conditions and the lowest pay. That's, that's neoliberalism for you. If, if it, if it must happen, it must be dog shit. And so like this is where we see the rebellion of the car in classes now, especially with the, with the set, the service sector economy. So like within the imperial court, everyone's being put into some kind of care job essentially and that treated like shit and now they're starting to actually form unions and fight back, which is really fucking cool. Yeah. I, what, I, what I want to briefly interject here with a thing everyone gets wrong about Margaret Thatcher, which is that every, every, everyone in their mom will, will say that fucking quote about, I, there, there is no society, there's only the individual except they never, they never leave out the next part of that sentence, which they always leave out. The part of it that they always leave out at the end is that the, the, the actual line goes and it, it's slightly weird because it was, it was, it was, it was in response to a question. But basically the line is there's no such thing as society, there are only individuals and the family. There are men and women and there are families as well. Yeah. Yeah. And what also, yeah, yeah, to, to, to be clear, to be clear, I, Margaret Thatcher, not a friend of the trans is. Shocking, wow, look at it, yes, but, but I, but I, I think, I think this family part's also very important because, yeah, definitely, you know, like, like Neil Leroyalism has these, it has these two conflicting tendencies, right? It has this one tendency that is like, what it, it's, it's, it's trying, it's trying to use the, the family to create labor in two different ways at the same time. One is it's, it's treating, it's treating each person in a family as an individual who can go produce value for people. But then secondarily, right, like, you know, Neil Leroyalism is an, is an ideology of incredible alienation and incredible sort of atomization. And also it's, it's, it's, it's an economy based on, it's, you know, it, it, it, it, it, it, but simultaneously, it has to be able to do reproductive labor. And the, the way that it sort of like bridges the gap of this contradiction is with this sort of alliance it has with the religious right and with sort of like religious conservatism in general because it can, it can put up this false, and this is, this is where all the trade calf shit comes from. This is where all of the sort of like, trade wife like, oh, hey, you can, you can, you know, when she's saying there are individual men and women and there are families, there's an implicit thing there where she's saying families, like she, she is leaving out children as people because children are properties of family. I think the longer to the parents and also like whatever reproductive labor is done to brought to make those children into a, into individual men and women, that doesn't, that's just part of the family. Like she's, there's a lot of heavy lifting happening in there are families, right? Yeah. And, and I, and I think the other part about this right is like this is, this is the sort of like the, the sort of like, neoliberalism has this pseudo populism that it generates. That's about sort of like the family and like the church's like this, this, this, the sites of sort of like, like this is how you resist sort of social alienation as you do these things. But like, both of these places have like a huge focus on consensus politics where they, they say these are the resources that are available and you will get a say in how they're distributed in, in your community, you can come together and engage in the electoral process and consensus politics. And we all agreed on what, and that's, this is all just process to manufacture consent because actually there are infinite resources available because we learned money for the rest of the entire fucking world. And if this were like any other country that would have any kind of like, uh, uh, trickle down to get into the Reaganomics effect for the rest of the population. But being Britain, uh, you know, the, the country that invented concentration camps in the workhouses, no, absolutely not, not a, not a red cent is going to be touched by the, uh, by the pause. Yeah. And I mean, that, that kind of like, I don't know, that, that, that, I think that, that also sort of goes back to just like the containment of the working class, the British working class, like a political force. And that's starting to come under. But even then, like, you know, this is my, what, what, what, what, what if I, what, what are the things that I say that gets people to most mad at me? Is that like, there's like, okay, one in two day strikes are kind of like, like, you know, every, every single year India has the largest general strike in human history. And it's one day. And it does nothing. And the only times it hasn't done nothing, other times when people have actually like kept going on strike or like, you know, bar, bar, bar, bar, stapharmers protest to one two day strikes are a good practice to show that we could hold out for as long as possible. They shouldn't be like the whole thing. And you know, okay. And like, I talked about this before when, when I've sort of like interviewed nurses on the show. And like, like, there are absolutely times, especially, especially in while I actually, I don't know if this is, if this works the same way in the British nursing sector, but like, there's, there's absolutely like, the, they're absolutely tactical reasons why you want to do a limited duration strike, especially in the nursing sector that have to do with how, like, how the contracts work are bringing in scabs. But like one in two day strikes are kind of like, they're more symbolic than they are sort of like, yeah, an actual instrument of class war. And I, and I think part of something that you have to engage with in the British process. And this is, this is also true in the US, but our unions are like, there's like two of them. And they represent about seven people. So it winds up being less of a deal unless you're like a UC grad student on strike. But it is also that like, in Britain, the trade unions are just like actively directly sort of like feeding into this incredibly dog shit, like, yeah, political machine, which is, okay. Yeah. This is an interesting question. This is an interesting like thing to think through because so if people are familiar, we had FATHA bringing in the way of neoliberalism, you know, along with everyone's favorite guy, Ronald Mommie Reagan. And she waged war on the miners especially, but the unions in general across the UK and crushed the unions. And for this, she is forever remembered as a saint by the ruling class and by the conservatives. But this was, as I said earlier, like this was a part of a trend in the imperial core where the most strongly unionized sectors, which were manufacturing and industrial and like mining were those unions had to be crushed. So that label and then that label was outsourced to the imperial periphery. Right? And you know, and then there are no unions. And there are these huge corporate unions in the UK, like a unison, that like basically claimed to be able to represent any worker, which, you know, if you're a fan of the IWW, you shout out to the wobbly, it's like, you know, that sounds pretty cool. But then no, it's a massive yellow union. If people aren't familiar with the yellow unions, we should hopefully be having an episode of a red planet soon about just like making the distinction so that people can tell them the part really quickly. But like yellow unions first came into existence in France, I think. And it was this pointed change from red unions who were actually fighting class warfare and actually trying to like stop the capitalist notion of work to a yellow union, which was like a corporate union. And generally speaking, it would originally be like the corporation who was having their unions, like their workers were rebelling, they would form a union that was employed by the corporation. And then be like, look, it's a union, guys, you can join that and you'll get better conditions. And it was a trap. But now we have with the miracle of neoliberalism, we have those that that just are their own corporate entity. And they're like, we can represent any worker because we are a massive union with an entrenched corporate structure who have like direct ties and constant political deals with the like political establishment, which like, you know, our labor party should rename itself at this point. Like it is actively anti-union, especially the unions that are fighting for the actual working class. Like the today, like as of recording this like an hour and a half ago, the there is a Tory MP who used to be a labor MP until 2018 has just been made like the vice chair of the Tory party. And he's like obviously a dog shit guy, but it's a really good demonstration of how like the labor is now just the red Tories. Tory now comes in red. They, these massive unions by point is like, it is again a neoliberalization of everything. And it's a neoliberalization of unions where they get to just be a massive corporate structure competing in like a free market of unions. They're trying to like compete to offer workers the best thing and like, oh, we're most likely to succeed at it, because we have the most workers behind us. But like practically everyone knows that what they're actually going to get for the workers who are with them is dog shit. Like my friend was talking to a nurse at one of these marches on the first of fab. And she was just saying like she was with Unison. And then they said that what they were like actually pushing for was was still like under inflation and still like it just wouldn't be worthwhile at all. So she's changing to be with the Royal College of Nursing instead. Yeah, we had enormous yellow unions in the UK. So really issue facing British labor organizing. We're going to talk more about that in the future of organizing in the UK in the next episode. For now, this has been Nick had happened here. You can find us in the usual places on Twitter and Instagram. That's the British Empire. Born in the Midwest, raised in the South, charge ahead with black buffaloes to back of alternative long-cutting pouches. Therefore, time award winning products are everything you love about. 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customers named Catherine that depends wait how do you spell Catherine K-A-T-A just kidding it's for every customer get every rebate and discount available and say big on your next car with roto download the roto app or check out roto.com it's a good app in here podcast where I think turf island is legitimately my only remaining British show car I think I've gone to basically every other one so yeah welcome welcome to us talking about turf islands this is part two of our interview with Sophie from Mars and yeah we're gonna talk about how to make the UK less shit yay the US has gotten to a point like a level of unionization that decreases every year to the point where like it's people think of just like being in any union as like a socialist position and it's like guys I I I have really bad these things about yeah like it's really not that yeah and yeah but but I I think there's this there's also this sort of like I don't know like one one one of the things you you have to deal with when when you're dealing with the like really very large unions I don't do anything like this is the thing in China that happens constantly is like China technically is one of the world's largest unions it like the last time that union did anything was actually weirdly the last time that you did anything was in was during Tiananmen and then ever since then they have done literally jack shit like like I was like oh my fucking god hold on I oh no but like yeah you you you have these things are like technically unions but you know they don't do anything they cooperate with bosses they also and this is something you also see in the US well you don't really see this in China you don't see this in China because there's they have one you trade you didn't fed like they have they have a state trade union federation you see this in the US a lot where you get these really shitty things were like so someone will be organizing union campaign and like another union will come will like swoop in and be like ah hey look at these people like what will give you like a better cut and then they're doing this like basically because like the the okay they're there are there are unions that are like actually there are unions that are actually unions which is to say like there are you there are unions that are sort of instruments of the working class and the sort of organizational tools and then there are unions that are like we're forming a union so we can increase our member roles so we can like you know like we could be in so far as we're interested in expanding we're interested in expanding because if we expand where people will pay money into our bureaucracy and that's a real like that that's a real issue and I don't know like it's interesting it's interesting to me to see whether the sort of one day strikes that have been happening in the UK kind of like I don't know escalation of the right word but well if we're going to if we're discussing what should happen what's going to happen next and I mean again you don't know when this podcast is going to come out so like it could be the windows it could be like I have my office and predictions here and you might be able to like just look at the UK news and directly be like so if he was full of shit but like also we should talk about young people in a minute because that's like pretty crucial to understanding UK politics but but the the government right now like I said before about Sunak like he's trying to put in these massively authoritarian policies because he's realizing that like without them you can't do neoliberalism effectively and one of them is like like I said about the PCSC bell which was already in the works before Sunak came in but like now it's come you know now it's come through and they're doing like a second wave of trying to do it they have the online safety bill which is not for anyone to be safe online it's trying to like control freedom of the press basically like it's it's it's it's most extreme proposal is basically that like people who are anti-capitalist and who are reporting on the news should be arrested normal British moment and but one of these ones is he's trying to just ban strikes like he's effectively trying to ban strikes the the technical mechanism of it is that they are bringing in a bill that will demand a minimum level of service for certain industries if the like and it doesn't say what those minimum levels would be but the MPs can decide on it later if they want like said it to be whatever they want and obviously they could set at minimum to just be complete normal service yeah but but even if they don't like setting a minimum service defeats the point of a strike and I think that if we're talking about what will happen next we have this enough as enough movement right now I'm not I have mixed feelings about it I have some some suspicions I am not the biggest fan of electoral politics and I do feel like it it it it has the whole not because of something that could like launch a political party yet any minute and then it'll it'll it'll completely recuperate all energy that it has and every other bit of energy that you like we'll we'll die off um but I think that the response to legislation trying to ban strikes is probably going to be an escalation from these one and two day strikes into like yeah holding out for as long as they possibly can to demand concessions from the government and then like once you're in that territory you're actually talking about you know do a worst for you you're actually like it's it's it's it's as the as flow bots would say compassion as fast as you can go time um where uh I I think that the movement of union of unions and class consciousness that's currently what rising in the UK is uh not going to respond by like lying down and taking it when the government tries to ban strikes I think that it's going to escalate and speaking of escalation is it time for ads yeah cool yeah they're gonna like the the the Washington State Highway Patrol is going to escalate things right into your school very quickly so here's a here's an ad for an escalating worsening uh crisis of cryptocurrency and by Sophie coin the uh the only currency which supports the working class and we're back on this this is reminding me of the the the the the the the lip-com oxidizable currency uh David Harvey NFT thing oh he was so bad incredibly funny not not my fault that you're so uh okay because that that is complete that is a completely unrelated aside uh yeah so uh uh uh uh uh let's get back to yeah can I talk like young people for a man because I do yeah I think this is a really important thing that is probably going to be me just like info dumping at you for a little bit because I feel very passionately about I also think it's very important to understanding UK politics it's that Britain hates young people so much like it's inconceivable to people who live in other countries how much the the media class the political class like the ruling class like hates the young so fucking much like if only under 35s could have voted in any of our recent elections every borough in the UK would have been labor that's less true now because our labor is uh run by the fucking head of the crown prosecution service but like when it was Corbin it would have all been labor and then if people over I think like 60 could vote it's like all conservative um like there it the they hate young people because they know that like social revolution will come from young people and they know that young people have like just a vastly different understanding of the world this is another um uh graber graberism right if we're gonna if we're gonna grave out like graber said that like the that you could probably see that a revolution has taken place if one generation and the next generation effectively speak a different language like if their understanding of the world is so is completely irreconcilable and I think that one one interesting thing about turf island is that like trans rights are a really clear manifestation of that where people under 35 are entirely in support of trans rights they're entirely in support of like self-ident you know self determination of gender and like uh improving the healthcare situation and like informed consent healthcare and everything and then people above that like practically entirely against it and it's it's just like we have this we have this absolutely wild generational divide in the UK and they've been trying to rein that like bring that under control with various policies for a long time so Tony Blair um must be destroyed at all costs no that's the IMF Tony Blair multiple things at the same time should go to jail in a world where no one else goes to jail no yeah that one that one works um Tony Blair Margaret thatch's greatest achievement um had this speech where he was like education education education and he was basically like we are going to make it so everyone goes to university and he also did a lot of other reforms to do with getting people into schools it was very it was it was it was it was contemporary with and very comparable to like bushes no child left behind kind of stuff oh god um so he did a lot of stuff to try to like clamp down on youth and also create a pipeline for for young people to get through high school and then go to university um he also like when I speak about clamping down on youth uh do you uh Mia are you familiar with the asbo oh is that is that the for the fucking sonic gun things we're I think one of different we're think one of different like Dureen's British think this is this is a policy measure it's just it's not it's not a weapon it's um I mean it is a weapon of class law fair but it's um it's the anti social behavior order and basically like this is part of the the UK system of exclusions right like we have a system setup where young people can be excluded from a career path and then like a path to just like being a functional human being in society uh at at basically any moment right if a teacher takes against you they think you're rude they think you're misbehaving they can exclude you then that goes on to your educational record and then you know you might get a permanent exclusion which is what we call being expelled from school now right and then that is like statistically it sets people on a massive path towards winding up in like juvenile offense centers like uh because they've been kicked out of a school and other schools don't want to take a kid who's been kicked out of a school right and then then what are they doing with that time like there are no fucking youth centers there are no community centers like they've been all been completely destroyed by new neoliberalism um uh so like we have the system of exclusions and and and asbo's are a big part of that it's a asbo sense for anti social behavior order and basically it's like it's not just like a warning it's like it it it it comes from it's like in again it's something that's going on to your permanent record and if you then commit crimes you're going to be punished more severely because you've been warned already um it's like it's it's it was it was it was introduced and then like cheered on by the ghouls who are on our country like because it was going to deal with chaps which was our term for young working class people um which was just our pejorative for being young and poor um but it obviously also was there to target like uh young uh young black kids young brown kids young traveler kids um and like and and that was you know that was black like clumping down on any kind of existence outside of the pipeline that he was setting up for just being in school there was also this massive focus on like attendance came in around the same time that like schools would punish people for for for having missed any time at all like when i was going to to high school we had like uh school assemblies where they would tell us about the importance of attendance like over and over and over again like probably a hundred times a term they would tell people that like they would tell the kids that like uh attendance is the most important thing and like the difference in your grades will be enormous if you miss like a single lesson or a single week of school and they would like give awards to kids who had perfect attendance that yeah yeah i thought it's less and deranged against and then like um so that was black and it's continued to to kind of intensify that same thing for a long time but like very recently this is again soon after authoritarian policies we've brought in something called prevent now prevent is a multi faceted um civilian surveillance program where basically people can be referred to prevent which is capitalist white supremacist western centric uh reeducation it's a it's a reeducation program it's it's if people are considered to be uh holding extremist views expressing extremist opinions then they can be referred to prevent now like a lot of the people in my kind of social circle uh will like meme about prevent because like all the language is about like making extremist content or whatever and obviously that's what i do for a living um but like but people would you know make a tweet about how they they think that like the prime minister's a dickhead and then be like oh i'm gonna get referred to prevent and then it was noticeable that like actually no none of us are being referred to prevent right so like this isn't this isn't for us it's actually been put in place for two specific purposes i do know someone who's been i do know someone who knows someone who's been referred to prevent and the person they know who's been referred to prevent is a uh is a child right is a is a teenager because she works with trans youth and like being referred to prevent is really there as a system to control uh muslin populations and young people like that's what it's really there to target and trying to clamp down on young people expressing any you know the the the the the muslim side of that it's it's it has its own entire discussion you could have to do with Islamophobia and like terror and like there's a whole thing like you know the the the the the complete unwillingness of the US and UK and all the other states from to acknowledge that like uh extremist Islamic terror is right wing terror so then if you merge those categories you would see that actually the far right is the biggest threat to everyone all the time whatever this is a whole other thing young people in the UK are under constant like barrage under this constant barrage of like media pressure shaming stigmatism and it's because they they are expected to either get a degree and succeed and get your hundred k a year salary job and whatever or you're a piece of shit and you will go to jail and obviously the reality for most people is you're going to get your degree uh or drop out and then you're going to wind up working in some kind of service sector job actually right or if you're lucky a fairly easy like office job where you can quiet quit and just toss off all day right but like the the the attacks on young people serves a very specific function and it's because they're aware of that rebellion of the caring classes and that they're they're aware of the social revolutionary potential of young people and they're trying to stop it like trying as hard as they can to stop it and then mechanism for doing that is that there's this pipeline from birth until the end of your university degree and then hope and then allegedly you get a job but you don't really um or else as I say you probably wind up in jail um the the university thing is also really really interesting because Greber again fucking everyone take a shot Greber pointed out that like revolution often comes out of cases where the population isn't looking at like uh someone else get some like the the population doesn't look at the ruling class getting everything and then getting nothing and think that's unjust we should overthrow them right this is how kid monarchy and and kingdoms are was able to perpetuate for such a long time it's when they think that someone else who they consider comparable is getting something and they're not getting it that's when they feel the injustice and like I think this education education education speech and this moment and this policy set the neoliberalism and and Blair and everyone since then has tried to kick into like kick into action is going to turn out to be probably the biggest shooting themselves in the foot historically that we could measure because they've basically made it that every person like every young person in the UK must try to go to university not wanting to go to university is considered socially like backwards and like then people go to university and then we all find that there are not jobs in the UK for everyone who's gotten a degree because they've basically set up the whole country to be a diploma mill like the whole entire country has this pipeline of everyone's going to get a degree and then and then what because they're on fucking jobs and that's going to create that sense that like we are not getting what we deserve um yeah I think that the the the the the marketization and the like opening up all these universities to be like profit driven diploma mills is is has radicalized an enormous number of young people yeah which I think is really interesting because a lot of Tory policy and like you know like what one of the one of the things that Tories did right right after they came to power like right after 2008 was immediately went to war against sort of higher education right and immediately it started to do increase increasing fees and this is you know this is what produces the like 2010 like student movement and it's really interesting to me that like it really kind of seems like I don't know if for them the cure was worse than the disease because like you know they they they they they survived 2008 right and there was a real moment where it looked like globally that the ruling class was not going to survive 2008 and that like they were they were all about to come down and okay so they survived that but like yeah it really it really feels like they've sort of this is a similar thing that's happened in the US right which is like it turns out if if if if you turn it entire class of your population into just like basic like ba ba ba ba basically basically to debt p-ons those people get really really really pissed off yeah it's like you know okay so you don't have a bunch of highly educated people who are very very very angry at the people who forced the but take it all these guys because that is always pointing out have been through university which is a culture where they're going to be exposed to way more leftist ideas yeah I mean like like I like this is only I think about a lot which is like I I think I knew any one openly gay person in high school like there were zero trans people and I got I got to like the first time that was the least one well you know look I had no idea and the part of his night no idea like like the the first time I like met someone who was like openly trans was like literally the first time I walked onto campus yeah like like the first people I meet was like a trans guy who fucking ribs yeah I hope so I'm having a good day yeah and like like that like you know and I I think there's this tendency in the US particularly there's this tendency to look at the university and look at like yeah like I'll be obviously if if if if if if you're going to school in the US and also if you're going to school in the UK you you are going to run into a most professor who tries to break your strikes right like that's a that that's a thing that's true like there are a bunch of right wingers on campus like I went to university of Chicago I have seen my own fucking econ department how how a movement of that is largely toughs like a how Kathleen Stockholm whoever if you familiar like yep yep yeah how right wing professors are almost always toughs yeah but like but you know and there's there's this real tendency to sort of like completely disregard the university is like a thing that can produce anything remotely left and I and I think that's just wrong like there's there's there's like there there there was a reason a whole bunch of the universities in the US for redesign after 68 like there's there's there's a reason why like one of the if you're doing a military coup in a Latin American country one of the first things you do is roll tanks onto college campuses yeah yeah if you don't go tanks onto the college campuses those students are going to fight you until like all of Marfayette dead like yeah that's it you know like that that's like as as as as as much as you know you can even you know the hippies and hard hats thing right yeah the the the media image the conservatives created I think it was Nixon like the hippies and the blue collar working class are incompatible and cannot work together and and the hippies are all university educated effect liberals and working class people are conservative reactionaries and that's like largely stuck until you get actual class consciousness building like this is something we're seeing massively in the UK right now is like the the the union the growing union movement like has so many university educated people involved in it because like as soon as you start developing class consciousness that that notion you're talking about like that the university is can't produce something left is just like flies out the window massively yeah and I think that's why the US there's like this massive effort to sort of like I mean I'm just going to call it a fucking side up because it is like there's this massive side up to get people to like not think that like being a barista is like I think it produces value and it's like I'm going to beat you to death with a copy of the side up is one of these things it's like it's like with serial killer wait wait wait if you're like if you're like well what's the difference between a serial killer and a cop who kills a bunch of people the differences that the couple never be found guilty right like once you start like once you start looking at what what you could call a side up you're like oh the whole of capitalist media is a side up like yeah but you know I think that the very specific thing here is like okay if if if if you look at who was in the UAW right now right the UAW is composed of two kinds of people it is composed of people the remaining people who work in the auto industry and it is composed of grad student unions right yeah and I think I I saw a statistic recently that I think it's true although I wasn't able to verify it which is that like 30% by volume of the UAW total membership right now are from are from workers in the University of California system like the you know the the the actual class configuration that that is happening right now it is this very weird sort of alliance of industrial workers and then people and then people who've been like people who are highly educated who've been like kicked into really shitty service jobs and that's a real like and that that's the reason I I genuine like I think the reason you see so much of this sort of like like the like the right wing populism around some like the productive like working class thing specifically because this is this is a genuine the very powerful political alliance even people like Lula who like Lula like fucking hate it like you can you can go back and read like a million hilarious Lula quotes about like how much he hates fucking student radicals from like 1973 he was just like a football fan guy right like he was just like yeah but like even even after becomes a lay related like he he has he has he spends a whole bunch of time like kicking all the student Maoist out of his part out of his like strikes and stuff and like like he has this great line that was like that this guy walks into the door I looked at his hands and they were perfectly smooth and I said to myself this man is a trotsky I like he's like even you know Lula who was like he was like the like like I just left around the world there's the it's very like other trotsky it's in the room with you right now yeah to me to me to me to be fair to be fair there was actually actually there was the fronts actually yeah in the UK it's much more like all the Maoists in the room with you right now like like you know but like like even even Lula like basically had to abandon that completely because you know like the it turns out that like you can't actually like you know as as as the sort of unions decayed in Brazil as they did have where else I mean Brazil also has fairly large unions but like Brazil Brazil the kind of industrial stuff that like existed in Brazil when like the 80s is gone right yeah and you know it's like well okay even even now like yeah his his base has a bunch of like it has has it has a bunch of just like university educated people working service jobs right and you know you like there's no there's no actual like there's no version of a functional leftist political coalition that doesn't have that and it's obviously significant that two of the most prominent leftist theorists of the last like 20 years David Graber and Mark Fischer both worked in education yeah and I wish it was pointing out the whole like second shift stuff kind of like we were talking about before with like reproductive labor and he was talking about how like exhausted people are because they do their job and then that you know and it's not it's it's not just women anymore like this this this labor is expected of everyone I mean still disproportionately women and this unfortunately women of color but like you know he he was telling a story about like his colleagues working in a high school that they the the the only time they could find to organize or first complain about their working conditions and then organize was like when they went to the pub after work together right yeah well I think it's also like I'm pretty sure it's true for sure I know it's really good but like though like those those were both people from working class families who went into academia which is a very sort of like I don't know it's it's it's a very like I guess potent combination for how how you get people into radical politics and I think this is yeah yeah again going back to sort of like totally blazing himself in the foot which is like okay so you you're now you're you're now forcing a bunch of working class people into universities yeah and then settling the West student debt and it's like I wonder what I wonder what the things get understanding of the world around you at the cost of becoming a debt beyond which will make your understanding of the world around you a very radical one very quickly yeah and it's like okay like I like the there there is a certain extent to which millennials get sort of less radical over time but like if you look at the less radical over time it's like they go from autonomous to Corbinites no I know that's still not great like if you're like yes but like yeah it's a far as it's like coming back right as the age is like largely not affecting millennials and Gen Z and like I think that I mean one of the most obvious things to point to is the climate crisis right like yeah previous generations were not growing up being like the world will not be here when I reach retirement age unless we act I don't think it's impossible for people to sell out like there there are still a limited number of sellout jobs you could take right the problem is there's just there's there's not enough of them in order to like actually buy people off on mass and like anything particularly was like you know the thing I'm supposed to make you look as everybody's property ownership like who the fuck is good to buy a house like well yeah what like wonder under one circumstance yeah yeah I am past the age when my parents bought a house I am past the age when my grandparents bought a house and I know like one person who's bought a house my age who's like working for like a privatized rail company and who's who's partner like works for the police like no one's getting houses yeah I mean like my I was I was basically my friends like who was a house like I have a friend you bought a condo yeah like but that's the thing like that that that that that that that was another thing that was like they they got help for their parents and it's like helpful your parents doesn't even get you a fucking house anymore like no that should get you a condo I got like I got like a little bit of money after my dad died and it was enough to partially help for my my my surgery and then like fight off like rent debt for a few months and that was all and it just disappeared right it's like yeah and you know I mean I think I think like like Britain's inflation to some extent is worse with way worse than the US's which is truly stunning and makes me like want to cry because oh my god like yeah yeah yeah it's it's something else it's truly so economically the UK is again we have to just keep on coming back to the fact that it Britain is just a smoke screen like the whole of British society barely barely exists and is just like a collection of reactionary buzzwords and then like a ton of people who are increasingly angry or an angrier about it I don't know I had a really good conversation a little while ago with like an old woman who lives in my like neighborhood we met through some like community project stuff and she just came by while we were hanging out on the stoop and yeah we were just talking about Boris Johnson it was right after Boris Johnson had come in and she was in like she was basically getting revolution pill like she like she was not a total political person for as long as I've known her and then like it was just yet another of the like revolving door like like the Tory party is currently running the boss rush strategy that they just like keep on swapping out Tory prime ministers as fast as they can and like and and and and I I said to her like when people realize that by definition no one will ever hold the office who respects what the office is allegedly for like serves the people or whatever when people realize that like it's not just that like coincidentally all of our prime ministers went to eaten and all of those like when they were in when they were then in Oxford they were in like the Bullington boys club it's not a coincidence it's like that's the pipeline is how you get there like when people realize that and they realize that no one will ever hold the office of prime minister who is there to to serve the country they're gonna realize that they have to take care of each other instead and we have to build something that that we have to we have to build society from the ground up and she was like yeah she was like yeah I think that's what's literally happening in our community right now yeah and I think I sort of encourage him because like I don't know like just the absolute wreckage that was Corbinism just like the complete shit show of how that entire project runs yeah like I I know it's caused some people to sort of like basically like you know every every every every every successor generation of politics has like the person who used to be a trotsky egg who is now like a labor minister or is now like a fucking Tory minister you're a peep boot to judge and Kamala Harris who are both raised by market months and secondennings yeah well I mean even like like I Google I I want my like Google who build a blasio's wife is okay she she was she was she was one of the founding members of the Gohimi River Collective oh wow yeah like there's a lot of shit like that I yeah but like yeah you know but like as much as this is a thing I don't know it and so far as it seems like the UK has the potential to be something that it's not this it seems like it's going it genuinely something that's going to be through labor and it's going to be through sort of street actions and organizing that's that's not taking place as I do labor party and I know I think like practically everyone I know who was invested in Corbin is now like no party could possibly solve the problems of the UK because they watched like a guy oh here's a great movie recommendation a very British coup if people haven't seen this and it's it's pretty obscure so you probably haven't but like it's it's just about a guy who is on the side of the working class becoming Prime Minister and then how the media like as like character assassinate him and have him removed from power and like it's almost beat for beat what happened to Corbin and it was made in like the 90s but like you know a guy comes along and floats like very mild social Democrat policies and the entire media class says that he's going to like drag the country back to the 70s and like there's there's like like soldier like they're like units in the army doing target practice on pictures of him and like people openly declaring that they will assassinate him if he comes into power and shit like this and it's just like and and then like people within the party work to sabotage his election the election in 2017 was lost by like 2000 votes you know and then it's pushed out and replaced by the worst imaginable neoliberal top top cop ghoul kiosdharma and like that spectacle has radicalized people so hard like I don't know yeah I don't think I know anyone who who who who supported Corbin who now thinks that our problems can be solved without mass uprising or at least like without union power bit basically like kicking the shit out of the government I don't I don't like yeah I don't really the the UK is we are we are don't vote killed I think yeah which which I think is yeah I don't know like it strikes me in my sort of like I don't know my my cursory knowledge of British history that like the most effective sort of British left wing political movements in a long time was the pull tack stuff in the 90s which was defeated like into almost entirely by a creation of street movements and like non-party organizing yeah and you know I don't know the UK is in a very weird position where it's like I don't know if there's a way it could have been different but it's like it very much look like the like the like the sort of the just like the incredibly furthest right like just like absolute most shit parts of British society were going like far right parts of British society were going to be in power forever but then some somehow they managed to do the thing that social democratic governments always do which is like they they they they managed to produce a series of like changes in the in the UK's class structure such that like they produced an entire like they they they they like they you know well I mean they they they they got their worst nightmare which is that they actually got into power and got to do all their policies it turns out if you actually do all of their policies the entire world implodes yeah and with that with that with that with without some kind of functional opposition to make sure if they don't literally like yeah press press the destroy the economy button they will be able to do that cool it was like soon act is going to raise uh energy bills like 40% in April and it's just like I shared it just being like they're just daring the working class to overthrow them at this point like yeah it's not that but like I've seen the same take um the leftist journalist Owen Jones said a little like when list trust was in he was like I'm pretty sure she's actually an undercover trot skater trying to initiate revolution by doing the worst policies possible like it really feels like that sometimes but it is just like as you say the nightmare of their politics that like they can't they are just um incapable of conceiving of the harm that they're doing and speaking of being incapable of conceiving of the harm that they're doing here's an ad for um ratio or something so when I said before about like the generational divide and how reactionary like all the people in the UK are that applies to some of our like our older leftists as well so there is this like offshoot of the of CPGB the Communist Party of Great Britain called CPGBML the Communist Party of Great Britain Marxist Lannanist they are fascinating so basically so basically there was uh let me just let me just let me just refresh my memory but like there was um there was a split from the uh from from CPGB uh a couple decades ago I think uh where people were just like the where where basic it was it was to do with the politics of like supporting North Korea and like there was some Maoists involved and shit like this um there are some people who involved who have done some like wild stuff in leftist terms like there were there was someone who uh was involved with the Spanish Civil War and then like move to China and took like positions in Mao's government during the cultural revolution like who is like now I think the honorary president of CPGBML that's um is Bell Crook but basically what happened was um when the CP when CPGB kind of split apart in the 60s one of the splinter groups was called the revolutionary Marxist Lannanist League and then and then that immediately splintered as well and they and then they had a thing called the Association of Communist Workers and that was found it's by Harpal Bra. Now this is the bear in mind the Bra is for a second BIA because this is really interesting um so basically Harpal Bra um yeah he's he's he's oldest now he's still kicking around he does some like um uh like Vod chats with like uh everyone's favorite real jed jed definitely real communist Caleb Morpon um and the bras because of their role in this like splinter group and then the founding of CPGBML that it's kind of like a dynastic family of communists like so Harpal Bra is the father of Jotie Bra who's like a notorious turf communist and and like she isn't officially uh in charge of CPGBML but like apparently nothing nothing is allowed that goes against her so it's like they've they've actually put a dynasty in in place oh boy yeah um but as I say that's all that's all part of the fact that like the um the the older people in the UK are just like shockingly reactionary um it's good stuff it's good stuff like they're trying to do like uh working class organizing around how much they hate trans people uh it's really good oh yeah I mean that that's the one thing I'll say about the US which is that like like we don't have as many like there are lib turfs but like the lib turfs don't really sort of like like the the they're kind of walled off from like tough isn't this a very British thing I don't like I yeah like I see Americans worry about it a lot I don't think it's gonna take off with you guys because we have a politics of British exceptionalism which is directly contrasted to US politics like it's very similar to like how can like Canadian liberals work where like everything every place where we can be progressive we try to pride ourselves on not being as bad as the US and so like the the the specter of the GOP not only like does not only detour literally receive money from far right evangelical Christian groups from the US but like the fact that the GOP the the GOP is there gives like supposed feminists in the UK this cover to pretend they're still progressives because like this they support abortion until a candidate comes along who hates trans people uh who also wants to you know uh to to make abortion illegal um I don't think that I don't know I could be proven wrong about this but I don't think that like uh TERFs get a get a foothold in the US in the same way because you you're like reactionaries just function a bit a bit differently and like the trainer like um divide the progressive left with TERFs is a very conscious strategy that's kind of like been designed and constructed for the UK like it's it's yeah it's liberals who are like we're so progressive because we're not the US who are then amenable to tough talking points in the UK uh who are really really out of touch and again there's like the generational thing but like I think that I think that TERF Island will continue to be notoriously TERF Island like I think that TERFism will continue to be a very very very British phenomenon um I have seen what you're talking about with like swaths in the US because like yeah I mean I will say like the other question I think is particularly really bad with this in Mexico has an enormous TERF problem like in ways that are incredibly dangerous for what I found out this on this podcast but yeah it's very bleak um yeah I don't know the US yeah the US the thing is mostly from the far right and also from people like who who are like labs but who are like really like like I don't know like New York Times collaborator types yeah yeah yeah I mean it's the same thing here uh we have like um I'm not sure if you know the comedian Rob Delaney um he's American but he moved to the UK and he's been you know fighting for a long time alongside like union movements I don't I think he's like mostly a liberal like he calls himself a socialist but I don't think he's I don't think he would call himself a communist or anything like this um but like he said that when he moved to the UK he was like you're always uh pointing to American media by being like look how bad Fox News is but truly every outlet of the UK media is Fox News yeah yeah the UK media is like somehow more fucked to the American media which is really amazing that has to do with like that that that that ties in really strongly with our without tradition of uh I was gonna say lovable public nonsense again no that's not it are the bad thing are the evil thing Tony Black there where it is um yeah yeah Tony Blair was so close with Rupert Murdoch that he literally fucked Rupert Murdoch's wife he's literally like he's the godfather of Rupert Murdoch's kids or the other way around I remember like he is he is like that with Rupert Murdoch there's a famous picture of like Blair reading the sun and a fuck the sun um reading the sun newspaper and like the the headline is like we love Blair or whatever um side sidebar briefly my uncle died in the Hillsborough disaster if people are familiar with that I'm quite explain the whole thing but like the passion with which I want the the sun newspaper destroyed in the most literal sense possible yeah fucking come and arrest me I will I will stand up in court and say this is on behalf of my god damn family uh I am allowed to have this opinion um but like but like the the the way that like new labor was able to tie it all together is this like the progressive newspapers and the reactionary newspapers it's all working for the ruling class and then like neoliberalism you know benefits them enormously so like we have yeah where before we had the the kind of faintest illusion of there being like a left wing media and a right wing media now it's like there's the ruling class media and then there are like tiny tiny tiny independent leftist media sources right there's like yeah youtubers like me there's like Navarro media there's own Jones libs by the way yeah they're like they're like trotsky it's like making newspapers to fund their like well mostly to fund making one use papers to be honest but like you know um you know and they're just these tiny little crumbs and the rest of the media is just fucking dog shit to the point where like it's actually quite funny like it's gone to the point where they're complacent because they're so not used to dealing with anything that represents working class that they like they recently had make Lynch the head of the RMT union on a bunch of different like UK talk shows where they were they were expecting to be able to like gotcha him with with the most transparent bullshit um yeah Richard Maidley said to him like what about the spirit of Christmas your strikes are like people's ability to go home and see their family and he was like what about work is getting paid better dickhead and it was just like it was just like game over immediately like they are so not used to talking to anyone who cares about the working class that when someone like it just not even an especially radical just like a union leader comes on to their show he he just owns them like he just butters their goddamn biscuits like it's it's amazing yeah we we had this with the rail strike we're like I remember how was it business insider it was was one of the business press guys had had someone they were like they were talking to like a real worker yeah and you can see on air this guy realizing that these people have zero days off a year and going what the fuck yeah yeah it's a sort of like like even the like business class guys were like wait hold on like what do you mean you have zero days off a year like what yeah there's like a human empathy that like that they are not expecting to be a problem for them because like they're all parasitic fucking ghouls and then like they come into contact but they've been lied to about the the lives that the working class have to live yeah and then a working class person comes on and just tells them like oh no it's like this and they're like oh shit we should do something about that yeah it's like yeah and that sort of like I don't know that that's that's sort of the sort of shield like it's kind of the kind of insulation yeah it gets built up just right yeah do you have anything else you want to say I'm gonna put some fun stuff fuck the police listen to a red planet yeah okay I'm plugging stuff I'm gonna say I'm Sophie from ours I make video essays on YouTube about politics philosophy sometimes about media I did a little bit of about yay going on info wars and all his anti-Semitism and stuff pretty recently I'm doing something about climate doom orism and how I believe that the world is not ending it's just the collapse of the imperial core and people are projecting the inability to get Starbucks and deliveroo as a apocalypse that should be out sometime soonish but what I really want you it could happen here listener to check out is red planet because I think you'll really like it it's a it's a weekly leftist roundtable where we talk about how to make the world a better place um it's every Sunday 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. UK time please google to figure out what that is for you it's on twitch.tv slash red planet live and we also have a podcast feed if you want to catch up on all the archive episodes should be available wherever podcasts are sold um it's called red planet and it's a good time and we also you I mean we have a lot of we we have some some some solid overlap with it could happen here actually we recently interviewed Maya crime you as well I guess so you know if you want to have a good time we had a good chat with that and I can't imagine you don't because she's delightful wonder wonderful person wonderful wonderful little kitty cat ah yeah this is a bit of an app in here you can find us in the places you can wage a eternal war against a british imperialist ruling class and you can do this from your home yep I've uh cool I've been Sophie I've been playing with a browning 364 switchblade uh only in my house where it is legal to have it um and I apologize again to Daniel for all the clicking noises born in the midwest raised in the south charge ahead with black buffaloes to back of alternative long cut and pouches therefore time award winning products are everything you love about dip in without the tobacco leaf the only credible smoke list tobacco alternative that dips like the real thing backed by MMA legend cowboy soroni barstool sports big cat nascars Ryan Blaney in country music star Larry fleet authentic texture badass branding bold flavors and rich dark color available in winter green straight mint peach and blood orange black buffalo proudly manufactures their products in the us head over to black buffalo dot com and use promo code dip for 20% off your first order and check their store locator to buy in person near you keep the ritual charge ahead with black buffalo visit black buffalo dot com warning this product contains nicotine nicotine is an addictive chemical black buffalo is strictly intended for 21 plus current consumers of comparable products underage sale prohibited when you woke up this morning before you knocked over your water feeling around for your glasses or stumbled to the bathroom to put in your contacts stepping on every small toy along the way what did you see a world that was dull and fuzzy instead what if when you woke up you saw a world that was bright and clear it's a possibility with lacic at lacic plus lacic only takes minutes with most patients back to normal activities the next day so don't wait make your mornings brighter with the help of lacic plus right now lacic plus is offering $1,000 off their wave light laser when treated in march that's $500 off per eye with guaranteed financing so book your free consultation visit mylacicoffer.com that's mylacicoffer.com the patient's choice for lacic must mention this promotion and be treated in march of 2023 to qualify $1,000 off for both eyes on standard wave light price $500 off for one eye cannot be combined with any other offers go to mylacicoffer.com for details so instead of selling my car using the roto app on my phone I posted an ad online now it's non-stop phone calls and people at my door I'm Larry I'm here about the sedan not now Larry see roto will buy your car or even buy you out of a lease without the hassle hey I'm not a hassle yes are Larry use roto to buy a new car or sell your existing car or lease and just minutes download the roto app or check out roto.com now hello everyone and welcome to it could happen here once again hosted by myself Andrew along with the rest of the crew the me and James all right and today I want to take a minute to talk about Ubuntu and not the Linux software but the African philosophy Ubuntu is a philosophical concept for those who don't know derived from some of the diverse and dispersed indigenous traditions of the roughly 360 million bantus beacon peoples of Africa bantu coming from the zooli word for people is allowed with family spoken by approximately 400 distinct ethnic groups and split into approximately 440 and 6080 distinct languages slash dialects born as a result of the great band to migrations that occurred in two major waves about 3,000 and 2,000 years ago across central east and south Africa contrary to the maximum I think therefore I am Ubuntu roughly translated from the guñiban to languages like osu and zulu means humanity and more specifically humanity towards others I am because you are there are of course various names with the concept from language to language and ethnic group to ethnic group including Boto, Ubuntu, Ubuntu, Batu, Utu etc but Ubuntu is definitely the most prominent and internationally recognized according to the African Journal of Social Work Ubuntu is a collection of values and practices that people of Africa or of African origin view as making people authentic human beings rather nuances of these values and practices vary across different ethnic groups they all point to one thing an authentic individual human being is part of a larger and more significant relational communal societal environmental and spiritual world this of course is not unique to Africa what's any specific culture or any specific ethnic group I think we'll find these sort of mirroring ideas in a variety of contexts because I think it really is something that's fundamentally human but I think it is good to look at how these ideas have manifested in those more specific contexts I mean in the oral literature of South Africa Ubuntu has been in existence from as early as the mid 19th century the reported translations for the team have covered the field of human nature, humanist, humanity, virtue, goodness and kindness and so it's meant to be a sort of a parallel to the abstract idea of humanity as a philosophy or as a worldview Ubuntu really was popularized to be in the 1950s most notably in the writings of Jordan Kushner-Gumbane published in the African drum magazine from then into the 1970s Ubuntu began to be used as a specific form of African humanism because of course in the 1960s and 70s period you had a lot of Afrocentric and Pan-African and Black Power ideas coming to prominence around the world this of course also coincided with the period of decolonization or rather formal particular independence was taken place in 1960s and this desire for these newly independent countries to pursue Africanization to sort of let go of some of the symbolic aspects of colonial rule of course that process has not really been complete and in many ways the post-Colonial status is equivalent to the colonial status but in some ways some leaders were trying to pursue sort of a new African-specific humanism as a philosophy for the Bushning countries at the time this is a part of the episode where we tell everyone to read Fanon again of course read Fanon reads his air but I found interesting as I this this Tim Ubuntu is idea of Ubuntu particularly found it's it was basically picked up in Zimbabwe and in South Africa in a very specific context where there was a transition to majority rule in 1980 Ubuntu ism or Hunhu ism was presented as the political ideology of newly independent Zimbabwe a guy named Stan Larké WT Sam Kangé published a treatise basically on Hunhu ism Ubuntu ism was Zimbabwe indigenous political philosophy and he was basically trying to outline what the three major maxims that she this philosophy should be of course I would note that his interpretation being a statesman was notably hierarchical but for the reasons I will go into a bit later I don't believe that makes the core of Ubuntu necessarily hierarchical but the three maxims that he had in mind for Ubuntu ism or Hunhu ism was that to be human is to affirm one's humanity by recognizing humanity of others and on that basis establish respectful human relations with them the second maxim means that if and when one is faced with a decisive choice between wealth and the preservation of life of another human being then one should opt for the preservation of life and the third maxim says that the king would his status including all the powers associated with it to the will of the people under him as I think that's where you get most prominently the sense of hierarchy that would provide sitting interpretations of Ubuntu this idea of a sort of a benevolent rulership the knees benevolent statesmen and kings and well prime ministers of presidents that they would they were just exercised in the will of the people and of course this is a mythology that is intubitent reinterpreted across various different regimes in sulta africa in the 1990s Ubuntu as a concept was used as sort of a guidance idea for the transition from a part tied to majority rule and I think around this time is when the international community started to hear more about the tim Ubuntu particularly as it appears in the epilogue of the interim constitution of sulta africa published 1993 there's a need for understanding but not for vengeance a need for reparation but not for retaliation a need for Ubuntu but not for victimization end quote of course as we see in sulta africa today that didn't play out very well the understanding has not reached that point reparations has not fully been achieved and there's a i would say distinct lack of Ubuntu yeah they kind of brought in bank of america instead which didn't go great all right yeah they do it's very um it's very big oh it's in kina rwanda it's ubuntu I think um but like you'll see the phrase or that that word a lot around rwanda and like if you go to the kigali jianna saib memorial museum you'll see it a lot there and like that is a country that has with some authoritarian issues like has put aside the differences which had previously allowed the genocide to happen I guess and that's fair to say yes yes that's what the um tutsi and the hudu yeah yeah and the toa who often get missed out um that there's yeah but uh they yeah that's actually yeah terrible terrible thing if people ever go to rwanda would highly recommend going to rwanda like the kigali jianna saib and more in museum is an important thing to it's a very very well curated museum of yet like you said a terrible terrible thing that happened in sulta africa the transition to democracy and now swim that was presidency in 1994 um like i said really brought the team to more well known outside use um and one of the people who was a main main proponent of that was desmond tutu was the chairman of the sulta africa and truth and reconciliation commission and also um um a preacher he sort of advocated uh an ubuntu theology that was really formative in the development of the truth and reconciliation commission um he sort of moved the idea of ubuntu from simply an african philosophy based on african values of community and kinship to christian values and identity with the creator god um it was a sort of a strategy in an attempt to recover from the pians and brokenness of a part side um you know angkren ubuntu into these into the christian ideals of forgiveness and reconciliation as gifts from god for peaceful communal coexistence um um and i hope not being too offensive when i say this um to me that's a quintessential example of how christian pacification hampers t colonization efforts because i've seen often that christian notion of forgiveness and reconciliation to ins the blame onto the victims for not forgiven and expects little to nothing from the offender except maybe an apology often not even a new restitution or reparations and so for the talk of ubuntu a theological ubuntu and otherwise um situation in salafka still very much work and i think that that idea that oh well this is it's in the past it's over get over it kind of thing is problematic and it's so then it needs to resolve the thing sort of decolonization is going to take place right so put in a side the theological applications there someone problematic theological applications the ubuntu will view is echoed in some senses worldwide you know social ecology when vivier mutual aid all these concepts points to our interconnectedness as people uh and really point to the interconnectedness that we have as people that our systems are most certainly not built to support we say that we see that in capitalism you know capitalism doesn't embrace the interconnectedness of what people it places us in opposition with another it atomizes us it individualizes us it elinates us from people from ourselves and from others so we must compete on stuff for the sake of survival alienation of course in a capitalist context referring to our separation of our abilities from ourselves making us into mere tools for the use and benefit of our bosses and you know the work places definitely not something that we have is that is based on mutual aid or ubuntu you know rather than working together we can harmoniously having access means of production and sharing in an equally um a place in situation of a feud of competition of struggling constantly uh being squeezed and wrung out for whatever uh all bosses can get from us yeah it's when you said like earlier that uh one of the key tenets was right like recognizing humanity and other people affirms your own humanity and i might be paraphrasing that but like that's exactly what capitalism doesn't do it just sees people as a like a tool to create more capital to create more more income like it doesn't recognize humanity it it sees you as a means not an answer right exactly and i mean unlike in a communal system where you're serviced others you know it's mutual it's reciprocal it's voluntary we find ourselves in situation where we must give away our labor our time and really our whole lives just to survive but that giving is not done uh out to the goodness of our hearts or as part of a system a sort of a network of supports of safety nets or anything it's just clawing towards survival you know disconnected from the well being of the cool yeah very much yeah everything around us has been you know manufactured it's been transported it's been assembled and sold by other people right people just like us workers just like us those people have lives just like ours they have all the same struggles that we do um but instead of relating to these people instead of freely sharing the fruit to our labor we relate into the things that we have to buy or we don't see the working people behind them yeah i think another aspect of it is that which i find particularly strange about you know the who is a more Ubuntu is um that um some kang he was trying to uh advocate that i don't believe that Ubuntu or mutual aid or any other principles that Ubuntu exposes is something that the state is compatible with um i don't think the state is compatible with the acknowledgement of one responsibility to their fellow humans and the world around them you know the state has built an exclusion on domination on deprivation and the hierarchical division of the state generating the sort of inequality in decision making power and influenza over and over when our fears it's about depriving certain people and elevating others whereas Ubuntu is supposed to be about the importance of the humanity of both the individual and the community and about how all people are connected in a way that is meant to support and add to and contribute and clean and service one another if that makes sense you don't like the idea of this sort of community where everyone is giving and sharing and taking and everybody has something to contribute to this human whole i feel like there's something that's lost when that who is disrupted by certain people being elevated to a status of having more power uh over others i mean part of that humanity has to entail freedom to self-organize freedom to associate freedom to disassociate decision making power autonomy you know otherwise what kind of humanity is that really how can people access their full humanity themselves if they're being deprived by others on how can those others were deprived in certain people have access to their full humanity when they're deprived in others if you get what i'm saying yeah yeah i think that's perfectly right yeah and i mean pretty much the same thing with um the system i mean with the capitalism with the state i mean with this has to repeat the hierarchy which also elevates some people above others and denies those marginalized others for access to the humanity um all of us are restricted in some ways from understanding ourselves uh in ourselves and through others by the ideology and system of patriarchy and of course the schools are insane but what could be more incompatible with the Ubuntu than chlorine in itself you know it doesn't simply deny the humanity or those that exploit it also strips the humanity the exploiters i mean i'm a sazer my reference to earlier grew it in discourse and clean this um colonization works to de-severalize the colonizer to brutalize him in the sense of the in the true sense of the wood to degrade him and to awaken him to buried extinct to cover business violence race hatred and moral relativism i do must show that each time a head is cut off or an eye put out in vietnam and in france they accept the fact each time a little girl is assaulted and in france they accept the fact each time a marigasca is tortured and in france they accept the fact civilization acquires another dead weight a universal regression takes place a gangrene sets in a center of infection begins to spread and that at the end of all these treaties treaties that have been violated while these lies have been propagated or these punitive expeditions have been tolerated all these prisoners who have been tied up and interrogated all these patriots who have been tortured at the end of all the racial pride that has been encouraged all the boastfulness that has been displayed a poison has been instilled into the veins of europe and slowly but surely the continent proceeds towards savagery powerful words as usual from sezeh that was great yeah that's very good yeah so i mean i think there's a lot of potential in the interpretation of abu into right which is both a flaw and a strength and when i get into the criticism a bit more you'll see why but regardless of course there is value to be gleaned from it there's understandings there's power in finding our roots to secure future and whether in a partnership in a fantasy group and organization a community or beyond this basic principle of recognizing the authentic individual human being as part of a larger and more significant relational communal societal environmental and spiritual world is vital process of social evolution of confronting the powerful through protests and occupations and reclamations and expropriations in refusing to cooperate with the powers of be through strikes and boycotts and mutinies and other forms of interaction and then building new institutions like cooperatives and popular assemblies and libraries of things all of those things all those aspects of social revolution allow us to assert ourselves to recognize the mutual and egalitarian connection of all people you know a person with a boom too is open and available to others is to fliming to others some few threatened that others are able and good and so by recognizing with a boom to recognize and a part of a greater whole that whole is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished when others are tortured or oppressed and so someone with a boom to someone who recognizes the integrity of all humanity is someone who has to be engaged in some form of social revolution who has to engage in trying to free people help people free themselves so that they can engage in their own humanity and so add to your own humanity in turn I want to come to the comments common ownership you know the reversal of the enclosure movement socialization whatever you want to call it that is also something that ultimately is about the bonds between people about the distribution of the means of production and of the fruits of all of our labor so that all can enjoy so that all can have a vested interest in our collective prosperity when it comes to you know community work you know everyone too is about this idea that we can work together you know incurring our food and distributing what we need this idea that being a mother or being a father being a parent is not just about being that to your own biological children but rather in recognizing that we are all connected in that way it's like a it's like an understanding that there should not be this idea of war funds right this idea that's we're all meant to look out for each other that no person is meant to be cut off from the sort of care that is necessary for Korean to fully realize person I mean even in the realm of education you see potential applications have a good to in recognizing that everyone has different skills and strengths that people are isolated and at through mutual support they can help each other to complete themselves as Audrey Tang argues I mean I think they need to be an education that recognizes the importance of communities societal and environmental well-being one that emphasizes the connection between all those things one that involves interaction participation recognition respect and inclusion as core tenants of the learning process of students learning from facilitators and the facilitators learning from students of recognizing that we hold both positions and that those positions are held from the moment we're born to the moment to eventually pass on as rich as the potential of Ubuntu maybe I don't want to put it out as if it's some sort of like flawless and perfect philosophy right it's not above critique it's not immune as I mentioned before to hierarchical interpretations and applications it's very much ripe for liberal sensibilities as we've seen departments of state speaking of Ubuntu diplomacy and Ubuntu foreign policy and that sort of thing some Kanga's idea that you know part of Ubuntu is that the king always has started us including all the powers associated with it to do with other people unto him I mean right now and for a while now Ubuntu has not had a single solid framework of what exactly it entails what it makes up what it doesn't there's still a lot of fuzziness and inconsistency within different people's interpretations of the definition of Ubuntu as one scholar Nyesha Mboti has noted there's an interpretation I said an interpretation of Ubuntu that sees Africans as you know naturally interdependent and how many seeking that humanity is given to a person by and through the person but there's a sort of a trap in that because humanity is also pretty messy the relationships between between people can also be very messy it's not all sunshine and rainbows you know a broken relationship is as authentically human as a harmonious relationship you know a broken relationship can also be more ethical than a harmonious relationship um Boti points to for example the freedom that follows from a break from oppression that follows from a break from a relationship of domination to want a freedom and of course this idea that harmonious relationships are incapable of being oppressive is false you know a harmonious relationship can be quite oppressive um in the dynamics teen people that are hidden under that veil of hunky-dory you know so I mean there's a lot of there's a lot to Ubuntu there's a lot of good to be cleaned a lot of potential pitfalls to be avoided um so you know take what's a value leave what's not engaged critically what's your plans and have a good night born in the Midwest raised in the south charge ahead with black buffaloes to back of alternative long-cutting pouches therefore time award winning products are everything you love about dip in without the tobacco leaf the only credible smoke list of back of alternative that dips like the real thing backed by MMA legend cowboy soroni barstool sports big cat NASCAR's Ryan Blaney in country music star Larry fleet authentic texture badass branding bold flavors and rich dark color available in winter green straight mint peach and blood orange black buffalo proudly manufactures their products in the us head over to black buffalo dot com and use promo code dip for 20% off your first order and check their store located a buy-in person near you keep the ritual charge ahead with black buffalo visit black buffalo dot com warning this product contains nicotine nicotine is an addictive chemical black buffalo is strictly intended for 21 plus current consumers of comparable products underage sale prohibited at lasick plus we've performed over two million lasick procedures nationwide and have more five star reviews than anyone else i am extremely happy with my experience at lasick plus i definitely would not have gone anywhere else waking up in the morning is absolutely liberating now you don't have to reach for the glasses you don't 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see roto will buy your car or even buy you out of a lease without the hassle hey i'm not a hassle yes are Larry use roto to buy a new car or sell your existing car or lease in just minutes download the roto app or check out roto.com now hi everyone and welcome to it could happen here a podcast which by popular demand today is about livestock as we will be going forward it's me it's garrison and we're talking about species of sheep yeah don't not really we're not talking about species of sheep much to my disappointment not yet but that will be coming we're going to be getting into cleaned textiles meals i can't that kind of thing big sheep stuff but no today we're actually joined by john and john has been subjected to my weight introduction but we're not we're not talking about sheep today we're talking about active transport infrastructure and we're talking about how cities tend to build that in certain communities and knowing others so welcome to the show john yeah thanks for having me i'll say that my partner would have been overjoyed if the podcast was actually about species of sheep so i guess she's tired of hearing me talk about bikes and shirts so but here we are yeah thanks for having me i'm john stalen i'm a assistant professor at university in north Carolina at Greensboro great yeah so i think to start off with if if you could kind of outline uh what sort of like i guess i guess people might not be familiar at all with bike infrastructure certainly if they live in some parts of the u.s or like more rural areas sort of what it looks like and what cities have been doing in the last few years building bike infrastructure and then how that relates to the i guess the income disparities within cities yeah i mean that's a that's a big question uh it's something that i tackled in my book um which came out in 2019 but then i haven't i haven't kept up with it quite as much i've been trying to start working on other projects but you know i keep i keep tabs on things a little bit um i mean basically for talking about the the standard rundown of infrastructure the the i would say the most common thing that people think about and probably the most common thing that's built in part because it's quite cheap uh especially over they say the last 20 years is the the bike lane uh you know a bike lane is usually about three to five feet wide uh and it's in it's to the far right of the roadway if you're in the united states or you know if you're driving on the right um it tends to be where glass collects tends to be where car doors are um it and so that nevertheless was you know very common uh in places that were building bicycle infrastructure the that's what was being built um in i would say the last 10 to 15 years there's been a push to do more what people might call Dutch style uh protected bike lanes um either they're protected by a buffer of uh kind of plastic posts that don't prevent an emergency vehicle from kind of getting where it needs to go but also don't prevent drivers from just driving into the bike lane really um so you'll see those and then you know parking protected bike lanes so the protected bike lanes started became the big demand from uh bicycle infrastructure planning practitioners especially in cities like portlands you know san francisco oklins, chicago, new york city etc etc something that was actually protected by a curb um usually really usually it's still like a some kind of a plastic curb right or cars right and you're not seeing a lot of um you know concrete or brick curb work like you'll see in in the Netherlands or something like that and then interestingly enough another piece of infrastructure that there was a funny kind of mea culpa or not mea culpa but um a re-evaluation of it was the share row uh which is just a sort of a chevron symbol in the middle of a car lane intended to remind drivers that cyclists are allowed to be there uh but sort of put cyclists in the location where they would sort of garner the most hatred and there was a recent recent editorial from Dave Snyder of san francisco bicycle coalition it was a big big pioneer just in general bicycle infrastructure i interviewed him for my dissertation and he uh he talked about how the they don't work that that was a mistake it was mistake kind of um splitting the difference making it seem like you didn't have to take any space away from cars in order to fit bikes into the roadway so i don't know if that's kind of more than you wanted from that no no that's great because i think a lot of folks might not have seen all these different things certainly like uh if you're like me and you rode your bike every day you notice each of these different things and some of them make you feel safe for some of them don't and some of them are just kind of tokenistic i think a lot of this kind of gets to a bigger discussion which which is one maybe we can touch on which is like who the city is for when we're building cities in this country certainly it seems like we built them around cars with with a few exceptions like older cities and stuff and increasingly like if you ask for space that and you are not a car uh then you know to include people wanting to live on the streets right like cars have free places to go at night but people don't and so like this reallocation of space i think gets to a bigger question which is yeah maybe something you could speak to yeah so i mean the question of i think you can think of who both in terms of the mode of transport right it's very car dominant uh society right um and car car driving is even on the rise in places like Copenhagen right there's kind of a lot of fretting among by squad because in in Copenhagen about um the rise of car usage um so there's the quite the sort of the mode of transport but you know cars aren't people right as you sort of point it out just then and then so there's another layer to it that intersects with it which is cities being increasingly sort of oriented towards attracting higher income residents right kind of creating an attractive urban environment there's a there's a kind of an intersection with the interest in attracting um kind of high tech or creative or knowledge intensive types of jobs right your software programmers you know i think it was um Chicago mayor ramen manual i use this in lectures all the time and he said something like um you can't be for a high tech a creative city economy and not be pro bike right so there's this there's this idea that you know may be a little bit spurious or it might be kind of um loose causality but there's this idea that the kinds of workers that you want in your city that are either going to take high paying jobs and increase the property tax base or themselves create new startups underpreneurial energy arts culture and uh and things like that right that they are they're attracted by bicycle infrastructure or bicycling or bicycle culture in in in some respects um so there's that that kind of the the the irony of course is that those workers you know guilty i have a car right typically bring cars with them right and so yes maybe they don't want to use them on a daily basis like i don't use my car on a daily basis i don't use my car to get to work right um but they you know are often kind of having it both ways right in a lot of ways in terms of you know buildings will be built with garages right and that's only recently starting to be eroded right as just a you know a one-to-one parking ratio in a transit connected uh building yeah and so when we're talking about it the combination of these two things right like affluent areas or cities trying to try to affluent people and cities trying to build bike infrastructure and something that i've observed at where i live which is San Diego is that we've built a lot of bike lanes but only connecting privileged communities to places where people do high-income work and it seems like increasingly like riding your bike safely is a privilege that's there's only a falling to a certain group of people is that something that's broad of ingested in my town i'd say so i mean i think you see this in in where i did a lot of my research the San Francisco Bay Area also did research in in Philadelphia and and Detroit and Austin as well that's not in the book but yeah that's it's common and there's a few different there's kind of a there's a degree of uh cumulative causality as we would say in economic geography right you have it going back to say the 1990s you had bicycle advocates primarily recreational primarily middle class largely white recreational cyclists or and you start to see um participants in bicycle advocacy organizations also being kind of bicycle commuters um the kinds of jobs that were growing in urban centers in the 1990s and 2000s or you know the the first decade of this millennium right um are the kinds of you know if not high tech uh the sort of professional technical type of employment right growing in urban centers um and and there's relatively affordable housing in gentrifying neighborhoods that makes it feasible and and desirable actually that you could you could um you know find a fairly affordable house and be able to bike to work right two to three miles right rather than the commute in from the suburbs or the commute out from the urban center to jobs at the suburbs right um so the I think that you get a lot of the initial energy around the bicycle movement if you look at critical mass if you look at the San Francisco bicycle coalition in its early days again these are things I'm familiar with a lot of the sort of the political mobilization is around making those types of journeys easier uh more doable right you also have the phenomenon where the neighborhoods that are getting gentrified in this time are your sort of classic innermost street car suburbs developed around a hundred years ago um fairly walkable themselves they have a mix of commercial and residential they aren't by and large industrial neighborhoods right the industrial neighborhoods where you still have a lot of truck traffic where in industry begat more industry or de-industrialization really hollowed out the economic base where you have you know large roadways you have you know disinvestment and uh kind of a mix of small retail etc etc um lower income population uh those were not um those were not areas where there were there were attracting the kinds of people who would be listened to when they're demanding bicycle infrastructure right there are still lots of cyclists in those neighborhoods um in a place like East Oakland or um north Philadelphia or something like that right where there are a lot of people who ride bicycles but they don't they're not organized politically uh under the sort of the block of of cyclists um and so there's this sort of paradox or in the the way that I came around to this project was I was working in a bike shop in Philadelphia and I was sort of one of those uh white hipsters on Fixies right at the same time I spent a lot of my day speaking Spanish uh talking with and helping people fix their bikes mostly Latin American immigrants who were working as dishwasher or delivering food buying bikes at Walmart because it's what they could afford even though they knew that they were crap they just couldn't afford anything better trying to get the most out of those bikes um and so there's this funny dichotomy on the one hand it's like you have the cool bike already creative scene that is sort of trying to be encouraged maybe and on the other hand a lot of the people were actually making do um on bicycles are not sort of part of that vision I guess for for the city right um when I think about things in spatial terms as well right you imagine going back to the journeys to work from a sort of close-in residential neighborhood that is in experiencing a lot of turnover a lot of middle class you know mostly white but not necessarily exclusively white in migrants um the types of journeys that a lot of you know I'll I'll take Durham for example where I live now which is um not there's not a lot of good bicycle infrastructure there's a little there's not a lot of good bicycle infrastructure but there's some job growth in the downtown area there's certainly a lot of job growth in the sort of the the suburbs um yeah but in terms of the kinds of jobs that um you know like work in class jobs that are being created at Amazon fulfillment centers those are at the urban periphery right they're not places that even in a kind of a gentrifying neighborhood even if bicycle infrastructure were created the sort of the directionality of the the feasible commute kind of runs against the feasible bicycle commute sort of runs against the very kind of spread out and scattered um commutes in the sort of retail wholesale warehousing manufacturing etc etc the the sectors that are experiencing job sprawl rather than a sort of a concentrated um concentrated job growth in in the sort of the urban center right so that's another aspect to it as well bike advocacy is very interesting to me right like I was a bike messenger uh I was a bike racer like these I've made my living riding a bike I've also just ridden my bike to get to work and bike advocacy really hasn't reflected a broad swath of cyclists for a very long time do you think that's why we don't see like better infrastructure in some some of these like de-industrializing areas for instance and does that lead directly to it being more dangerous like you would be the person to ask other statistics to show that like it's more dangerous to ride your bike so I'll say a couple things um the uh the the the directionality or the causality is a little bit complicated I would say certainly there was some evidence that bicycle advocates weren't in in the early days and there was a big sort of cultural shift in bicycle advocacy in the 1990s part of the 1990s you have a lot of cyclists who are actually opposed to bicycle infrastructure we still have with the they are still a loud uh boomerich voice in San Diego yeah exactly the vehicular cyclists right yeah yeah can you explain that sure so vehicular cyclists um it was a philosophy expounded by uh John Forester might have his book right here yeah uh in the book and it's not in the book effective cycling um where it was the idea was that cyclists should be riding like cars right which means riding fast center of the lane um behaving exactly like a car uh and they were very opposed to any infrastructure that would sort of create be created especially for bicyclists on the basis uh which there was maybe some slight truth to this that that cyclist would be banned from roads that didn't have dedicated bicycle infrastructure okay there was a little bit of concern that was there was I think I remember reading about a little bit of actual talk among legislators and planners that bicyclists would be kept off of main roads and I think to their to their credit they saw the creation of bicycle infrastructure at that time as basically designed to get cyclists out of the way of motorists right and so it was mainly to advance the interests of motorists right but they were very hostile to um they're very hostile to a sort of a Dutch style model which like you know these were guys who liked to ride fast and like you don't you can't ride fast in the Netherlands yeah not not everyone's physically able normally wants to go 40 miles an hour on a road next to cars exactly right so so it was very much around a strong fit confident cyclist who knew all the laws of the road road really fast was very assertive um it obviously lent itself towards a sort of a boomer type right a sort of adventurous type um and it was very much that we that bicycle advocates should advance the interests of cyclists not try to grow the number of people cyclists right and so the shift towards that maybe the critical mass moment is not the only thing but this is that's sort of a good moment to kind of tag it to the 1992 first critical mass era but you know birthday vehicle for a small planet all this sort of growing interest in bicycling um the shift towards more people should be doing yeah can you explain critical mass to people who haven't like participated because I think it's quite unique and interesting phenomena sure yeah absolutely so I'm critical mass began in San Francisco in I think the first critical mass was 1992 um and it was began sort of as like a group of people working you know broadly working office jobs who were sort of kind of culturally anarchistic or you know um had these sort of anarchist or situation as kind of ideas um and who were um kind of organizing months of selves to ride home as a group right and they started getting this idea of sort of having these monthly ride together um happenings right the they call they they didn't call them protests and they weren't organized rides they were um uh sort of rolling festivals was the idea I think the first the first name that they came up with which mercifully didn't stick was like the commute clot right so it was also about kind of jamming up the the regularity of the friday evening commute so it would be like the first friday of every month at commute time right um some some of these I think still happen in portland oh yeah yeah it's it's critical mass still happens um there's a you know one of the chapters in my book I sort of traced this arc of critical mass through to the more kind of bike party oriented exactly exactly the slow roll type of model which I think is interesting because it's a little bit it's consciously less confrontational it's not held at a time that would clog up um sure clog up your being traffic uh it's designed to attract kind of families people aren't trying to have confrontations with drivers or police right one of the things that sort of really put um put bicycle infrastructure on the agenda in san francisco was this mass arrest of critical mass in 1997 um supposedly because the mayor of san francisco will brown at the time got stuck in one in his limo and was like furious and so asked the police to crack down next time was a huge uh it was it backfired massively politically but it also created this opening for the the san francisco bicycle coalition which actually wasn't organization san franc uh critical mass was not an organization right it gave them this opportunity to say well what cyclist want is you know to actually build out the bike plan that supposedly exists but nobody's been doing anything about right um so i mean that's probably maybe more than you wanted to know but the sort of that that arc of critical mass as this sort of countercultural moment that created this opening for a more formal bicycle planning uh an advocacy organization there's set of organizations to emerge right um and maybe it's unfair i think i'd probably do it in the book it's a little bit unfair probably to call it a kind of depolarization but there was certainly a degree of kind of like explicit politics of sort of reclaiming the city more broadly from a kind of left perspective that does disappear somewhat in the sort of the rhetoric of the bike movement yeah it's definitely lost some of that like radical edge where these types of these types of you know when when when like a hundred or two hundred people on bikes take over streets and portland everyone's new i'll it is way more in the form of like a big party it's like it's like it's like it's like a it's like a roving block party it does not have that same level of like yeah almost like situationist creating a happening or creating a situation that that affects the regular politics and affects the regular way that the city functions yeah i mean you that being said the the the successors like bike party in san jose was a huge one and this that bike party model kind of spread throughout california were often much bigger than critical maps right sure a lot of times more diverse as well right so there's there's a really interesting kind of politics around is the is the politics in the sort of explicit slogans or is the politics in sort of like showing people that there is a kind of collectivity that they might be part of simply by virtue of like moving through urban space in a different way and for a lot of people it was their first time riding a bike in the city because they were so afraid of cars otherwise right yeah the safety and numbers yeah yeah yeah definitely um i'd know for a lot of people about wc case like i've done some critical masses i mean the uk we had reclaimed the streets as well uh which is like a similar vibe i remember in the early i guess the first decade of this century like um there would be critical mass rides before anti g8 protest like i remember uh in auktor rada in scolana the things or not in auktor rada before that and like before other g8 protests have been mass rides and it it's a very different scene too like bike advocacy now right yeah yeah and you saw this a little bit with like the occupy movement uh the at least my experience of the the sort of early wave of the black lives matter movement in 2014 with the killing of trave on martin um there were a lot the the bicycles seemed like an intuitive protest mode for many people and that's probably sort of some of the cultural political tools of critical mass that sort of surface here and there um but i i think for the 20th anniversary uh chris karlson who was one of the early organizers called it uh talked about critical mass all over the world and that san francisco felt kind of like the hole in the middle of the donut right like it sort of created this reverberation but then it had actually withered to a degree in in the center and often the narrative is well you're you're getting like you're winning right so critical mass is no longer necessary because you're getting bike lanes you're getting um you know you're getting investment you're getting attention from planners etc etc right obviously yeah the the gains whatever they are are pretty kind of geographically circumscribed and that kind of relates back to how we kind of started by talking about how you know some cities are putting more development into bike infrastructure but how it's being developed is not actually serving people who like like have to use a bike to commute because they don't own a car and they can't afford a car like it's it's getting used to people who actually already have a lot of resources and like an interesting case in point in this is the belt line in Atlanta which like started off at it can the you know as an idea in 1999 with wanting to create like a giant loop using like public transit having having rail going around the city having bike having bike paths going all around the city um be able to like connect to the city with these with these like spaces uh for like green space and affordable housing and instead the project kind of manifested as this like like is this project that was head up by real estate companies to replace a whole bunch of low-income neighborhoods with the massive amounts of like expensive restaurants and luxury condos and you know putting putting the belt line and as a path to to create these like expensive gentrifying like gentrifying areas around the city and it's how like these these ideas can start off so good and that when they get like you know actually done it's manifested in a way that is actually like not helpful to people who need this type of thing at all yeah yeah I mean the the belt line I don't know enough about it I've read I've read a little bit of this sort of academic literature and I've been there um and it is really kind of interesting how it is this it it is this huge investment in the reconversion of infrastructure right to sort of restore the value of the land surrounding it right sort of old rail old industrial infrastructure and that's something that I don't think that you can you're ever you know people there are studies here and there that try to demonstrate the kind of the economic value of bicycle infrastructure the contribution to tax tax receipts etc etc but it gets pretty hard to parse the causality um especially when you're you know especially when compared to something that is really sort of overhauling the space right I don't it you know the belt belt line is it's I think probably it's success from a sort of a financial perspective has to do with it being a multi-use path right yeah yeah rather than it being bicycle infrastructure um and sort of it being being framed as this much broader type of thing right rather than um a bike lane on a street right yeah yeah yeah yeah it's not great to write down it like at least on the weekend because you'll just be slow no this is full of full of people it's full of like like this I when I when I when I was visiting last year during the start of summer I went with a friend to the area by Ponce city market which is kind of a great example of the gentrifying force of yeah of the belt line but also like yeah there's people who's trying people who are trying to ride bikes around but there's like kids on roller skates everywhere there's yeah it's it's it's pretty packed it's getting it's getting pretty pretty warm um but there's other parts that are like you know that are that are more isolated where it is much more of like a like a commute path right it's interesting it's just like like weaves in and out of these like retail and luxury apartment um you know pop-ups for the totally totally longer exactly and then all that stuff is is is is like relatively new for all the stuff that is like specifically surrounding that surrounding like the construction of the belt line yeah and I mean the um I think that you maybe see this just a little bit with like you know the direction that I've taken this the thinking about it is more the sort of the types of urban strategies that have begun to incorporate bicycle infrastructure right yeah active transportation more generally as the kind of big driving forces rather than like is this bike lane here causing gentrification it's usually it's often the other way around right bicycle infrastructure sort of emerges as a result of gentrification right or there as a result of the in migration of people who are going to be listened to right because of their status because of their income uh because they have kind of existing um capacities and in organizing for these types of things right um it's I think what's interesting is one of the one of the positions that I've sort of come around to right is thinking more about um not like should we do bicycle infrastructure because it might kind of create the perception of gentrification caused gentrification or something like that and instead like you know what one of the things that gentrification results from when you're thinking about amenities that sort of lead to the re-vowlerization of urban space is that they are in some way special right and so if the question is this specialness of this particular place you know garrison as you said what makes say um you know the kinds of places where you can safely ride a bike are fairly unique right they're not well distributed right and so from my perspective it's sort of the more routine they become as uh as as you know including them into urban space the less special the places where they are built become right and it's and so routine that it wouldn't be worth mentioning right it's like mentioning that there is a sewer line right like it's like mentioning that it has connection to city water which okay yeah and you know at the at the urban edge where I live um I don't live at the urban edge but in at the urban edge in the southeast um you know there isn't always connection to city water um yeah like trying to get it normalized to the point where it's like obvious that it's something that is like a part of the city it's like yeah like right of course it's it's just normal as like a sidewalk or a road or like a power line yeah when I fare I don't have any sidewalks on my street and most of the streets around me have a sidewalk on on one side on me Portland also has very has very few sidewalks yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I lived in Belgium for a while when I was racing at like I lived in town that was very much just like a lots of Belgium is shitty grey coal mining towns uh I love Belgium but this is the thing and like yeah they would never have beat you know the bike infrastructure was unremarkable it was just a thing that everyone used to go to the shops or go to school it wasn't yeah it was like selling point for a brain trust run yeah and I think it's this kind of thing where it's bigger than just the infrastructure right a lot of the places where bicycle infrastructure has been really successful right it are these sort of dense relatively dense areas actually not the densest areas right where everything was in is in walking distance but the areas kind of just beyond there right where where there are you know shops places of employment services etc etc all sort of within reasonable biking distance or maybe long walking distance right um but too short to really merit a a trip on a bus or a train right and you know short enough that maybe some of us would feel a little bit silly getting in the car to go do it right so that that kind of zone is also not terribly common in the United States right a lot of those places got destroyed to build highways right or got destroyed to build kind of suburban style shopping malls um and so that's part of their part of their specialness but going back to the idea of um you know people in in the places where people were really relying on bicycles right that there isn't necessarily infrastructure it's partially a data issue going back to your data question right the way that we collect data on bicycling is people people bicycling to work right um if people aren't in the workforce or they happen to not have a job um that is not counted in the census right even if you bicycle to the train like I do like if I get to fill out the census I'm going to fill out train right because that's the bulk of my journey when I commute um and so it skews your perception of where infrastructure might be needed if you're using data toward places that where people are commuting by bicycle right um rather than you know commuting is only a quarter to a third of all trips right rather than all the other trips that we we don't know about right and sometimes we measure them with passive measurement like pressure sensors in the streets sometimes active measurement like people doing bicycle counts on particular days right there's a whole history of that now we're using Strava but then we're getting a small like we're getting a very rich data set about a small subset of cyclists and hoping that that extends to most if not all cyclists um and then to your question sorry then and I'll call pause right to your question about the um the the the the data question right how how deadly or how dangerous are various streets that don't have uh bike lanes there is a big problem of the the missing denominator right we don't know how many people cycle so we don't know the rates of injury on these particular roadways in the way in the same way that we do know car volumes and can have a better sense of the rates of injury uh in based on collisions right but you you do see clusters of collisions in places where um you know where there are large roads meeting where basically no very few if any traffic engineers would sign off on taking away some of that car capacity to to create more safety for cyclists and of course those those kind of compound those factors kind of compound right you maybe have an industrial area it's a big interface with a large urban arterial or an an off ramp to a highway right these kind of all go together with um with potentially sort of lower um lower income area or sort of a lower um less pressure to improve that uh that area yeah so I'm thinking I do what I think about like how the bike movement missed uh an opportunity to be better I always think about like this moment in 2020 when this man called Dijon Kizzi was killed by police in LA and the the the incident which which led to the cops shooting him began because the cops tried to pull him over for running a stop sign on a bike right which is a thing that 10th of thousands of white dudes in spandex do every single day in this country and not a not a word was was spoken by the bike movement at least that I saw um by bike folks you know in sort of solidarity or opposition to what what had happened right it just it was just another thing that that went we're mourned by thousands of people and ignored by others so like it maybe think about like how we build maybe it's wrong to think about how we put a better bike movement and and maybe it's better to think about how we make it unremarkable that you bike right you we make it like an odd and identity thing but how do we make cities where people are safe riding bikes I guess regardless of whether they're wearing spandex or they're just trying to get to the show ups yeah I mean that's a really kind of an important question and in in my research a lot of people were grappling with that there was an incident that mercifully didn't result in someone being killed or seriously injured but you know a guy was pulled off of his bike by a police beaten up in San Francisco and there was a big march afterwards and some of the some bicep advocates did show up but it was not framed as this is something that you know is affecting us as cyclists right this is or that affecting some of us as cyclists right and an injury to one is an injury all right that's not yeah that's not was not the kind of the frame that that people were were using to model from what I could tell right um and you had bicycle you know black bicycle advocates in east Oakland who didn't really frame themselves as bicycle advocates necessarily in the traditional um or the mold that is sort of determined by the sort of the hegemonically kind of white middle class advocacy organizations right but they were very much bicycle advocates who you know um a lot of a lot of a lot of what they did was sort of like teaching people to ride correctly so that they would have fewer interactions with police right or um kind of managing interactions with with police and you know hopefully becoming well enough known as cyclists that they weren't kind of subject to the kinds of interactions that you know where people he sent up killing somebody right um now that I live in a place where very few people bicycle to work or for much of anything right I'm thinking a bit more holistically about uh you know it's now kind of a buzz word but you know a kind of a more car optional um city right where you don't need to have a car to do various things you know I'm I'm involved with bicycle advocates here but like when I when I look around I see like a bus stop that is a stick in a median right there's no bench there's no sidewalks to get to it there's no crosswalks or anything like that and I mean I think that one is a bigger one of the bigger questions is to make a place that's safe for cyclists safe for people walking safe for people walking their bikes or safe for people walking to transit right um is reducing the kind of the space and the the way that space and speed go together right that are devoted to cars and and a lot of that is like um um reducing the the the distances that people need to travel right for various things right this gets into the sort of the 15-minute city stuff which is that it's been really wild to see it being turned into this like QAnon type you know agenda 21 UN Black helicopters type of conspiracy theory right because I think of it as a very kind of milk toast uh type of policy framework that's honored in the breach right sort of like complete streets there's a carve out for unless a traffic engineer says it's not really feasible and then we won't really question that judgment we just won't do it right so um I mean I do think it's bigger than modes of transport are really bigger than people's individual decisions or even like what the sort of once you are in your mode of transport what the sort of behavioral matrix is right it's sort of like what what is your life consist of right um what what do you do to like preserve your dignity with your co-workers right all of these kinds of things that feed people towards towards driving except in you know very specific places that you know have become special in the United States I mean there's a lot there's a lot to say right it is really it's much bigger than than bicycling um it's the sort of the built environment and I think one of the things that what I land on in the book maybe belatedly right because these these these things take years is um is this the way that bicycling is still kind of this interstitial um solution right it's sort of like kind of picking up scraps here and there in the built environment right it's like picking up some of the loose ends right in how cities are organized that makes them frustrating difficult to navigate right um and you know I think a lot of the energy not exclusively certainly and bicycle advocacy has become much more diverse in part through like listening to a lot of the voices of advocates of color and and uh women advocates and you know um kind of thinking beyond that sort of stereotypical you know not just the the middle-aged man in likero but like the the sort of middle-aged guy on a surly right you know that that maybe successor to the middle-aged man in likero right and certainly calling myself out um but the I'd still very kind of an interstitial thing right um it's and the thing about the the urban transportation systems in the United States is that they leave a lot of interstices right there's a lot of areas that are poorly served by anything but cars and obviously poorly served by cars you know in in Oakland you had people a lot of this sort of the maybe not anger but certainly annoyance at bicycle advocacy and bicycle infrastructure um would be and I think you see this in Portland too where it's like we've been asking for sidewalks we've been asking the city to to like fill these potholes and instead there's these bike lanes that people who just got here are asking for right and so maybe that's a failure of solidarity on people coming you know people moving to a neighborhood they're they're like why is it so torturous to get somewhere by bike rather than kind of maybe stopping and saying all right what what what have people been demanding here before I got here right um and how can I sort of contribute to that as well and sort of kind of merge our agendas potentially um but it is this sort of it's a it's an interstitial solution right and so from for me you know the bigger the bigger questions are sort of what what role will bicycles play when we start to really take seriously the the kind of broader urban structure so you don't have these sort of islands of bike ability inside a sea of automobility right um do you have a situation where it actually becomes more practical to walk and take transit than it is to bike right I would call that a so that a win right and I think you know there's a there's a there's a degree to which we can get fixated on on the particular mode of transport I think because we all kind of like fell in love with bicycles and that was the sort of the the the gateway drug into thinking about like transport in cities and how people move around and and the sort of the history of urban planning right so um I mean these are all I don't know if I really kind of offered anything that sort of puts it all together nicely right um but the idea that it really does need to become normalized and if it actually sort of disappears in the process of being normalized and it stops being a signifier of environmental rectitude or something like that and you know if I could walk to a grocery store instead of having to bike to a grocery store I would prefer that honestly and where I am right now right even though I love cycling right and it's something that I'll I'll never stop doing right so I think kind of thinking more holistically about what kinds of cities we need to have to move beyond uh move beyond automobility both from a climate perspective and a social justice perspective um and just a almost like a thermodynamic perspective um so I mean that maybe that's the moving up to the level of physics is where one one kind of place to end yeah no I think that's very good yeah is there anything you'd uh you'd like to plug maybe people have people providing a book where people can follow you online and I think like that any sort of projects you're interested in sure yeah so um my you can find me on twitter I'm at jos t-e-h-l-i-n um my book is now it's four years old it's 2019 with University of Minnesota Press it's all it's called uh cycle scapes of the unequal city um and my latest work I'm actually looking at um the politics of highway removal uh so maybe scaling up in terms of infrastructure thinking about sort of bigger the kind of the great clanking gears of of urbanism rather than you know this little tiny uh stretch of pavement on the side that's that's full of glass and car doors and stuff like that so but of course they all kind of fit together the sort of what are the what's how does the the fabric of the built environment have to change in order to grapple with climate change in a quality um and sort of making us sort of a more human type of city yeah I think it's great it's a wonderful place to end thank you so much for giving us some of your often angel yeah thank you I really appreciate you taking the time and it was a really fun conversation hi podcast fans it's me it's Jones and it's just a tiny little pickup that I wanted to add to the end of this episode because I neglected to mention that cyclister zine did call out the police killing of dejon kizzi very explicitly and had an excellent piece on it as they do and lots of other things they are incredibly wonderful and you can find them at cyclister zine cysl is t a z i n e dot com they are not representative of the rest of the bike media so well worth looking at if you like bikes and uh not the police murdering people they're wonderful publication okay thanks bye born in the midwest raised in the south charge ahead with black buffaloes tobacco alternative long-cutting pouches therefore time award winning products are everything you love about diphen without the tobacco leaf the only credible smoke list tobacco alternative that dips like the real thing backed by mma legend cowboy soroni barstool sports big cat nascars ryan 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dropped my phone download the rhodo app or check out rhodo.com when you're not playing a sport the easiest way to buy or sell a car right from your phone welcome to it could happen here a podcast about things falling apart um and sometimes putting things back together and uh you know today we're doing an episode that's kind of more in the the intellectual and emotional end of of a very specific set of things falling apart and rather than uh clumsily try to introduce it myself i'm going to bring on the person who uh who i think some the the thoughts that have kind of been going through my head i know them going through the heads of a lot of the folks that we have here at cool zone for for quite some time now thoughts line you are a uh youtuber um and a good youtuber uh who does a number of videos some of your recent ones are thoughts on a i art um a timeline of Elon's twitter mistakes she did a really fun video on um the q and on queen of canada um who is a pretty problematic character um welcome to the show thanks for having me happy to be here yeah do you want to just kind of start by reading us that thread you put because you posted this on twitter the other day and i i started chatting with it and then we we moved over to dms and and decided we should kind of do a little more formal thing yeah so basically uh i said that i'm constantly considering making a why i left the left video about how my views have not changed one iota but i've become completely disillusioned about my role in communicating them uh part of the reason i shifted my focus to trying to be just entertaining is because deep down i don't really see a lot of value in getting people on my side anymore i don't think it does anything or means anything but the best i can do is give you information and hopefully a laugh i used to feel like i was participating in something bigger than i think a lot then i think i really am that i was helping in some small in some small way towards a sort of shift towards a more revolutionary mass consciousness i think that was a bit of a childish fantasy and retrospect sometimes people will say you made me an anarchist and like buddy i don't even think it matters that i myself am an anarchist and i regret that that sort of we're fighting the good fight mentality has allowed some of the worst grifters on the platform to flourish by manipulating people's passions for their own weird petty reasons i think what i do has a lot of value but i'm just saying that i think i perceive that value to be is a lot different than what i thought it was a few years ago is basically what i had to say yeah that i think does such a good job of nailing the problem that i've been kind of of dealing with emotionally as well which is it's not it'd be easy to sum it up as like i no longer believe in you know trying to transmit you know leftist ideas or or political analysis or that i i don't believe in the value of like trying to uh uh uh inform people about the world because that's not how i feel but there is there has been this shift and i think probably the high point for the version of me that was optimistic about the ability to use mass media to build power and the ability to take effective action on the left i think that kind of crescendoed i'm an i'm going to say June of 2020 um and it had a pretty sharp drop after that point and i i i both think it's it's valuable to still acknowledge kind of how remarkable what happened in 2020 was for all of its flaws and all of the really messy uh fallout from it we saw an unpress an uprising of unprecedented scale and part of why the crackdown and response has been so gnarly is that it scared the hell out of a lot of really un un unpleasant people um and uh the media had a a significant role to play in that both in the fact that there were a lot of people who were who were kind of already organizing and radicalized when the shit started to hit the fan and that as things happened um you know the the what was happening in the streets what the police were doing the different kind of marches and and and different campaigns that were being started got spread to people and i i do think that you know folks you know like you and me were a part of that although it never is far from my mind that the most influential piece of media that was that was recorded and disseminated during 2020 was the video of George Floyd being murdered which was filmed by you know someone who just happened to be nearby and had the courage to film it uh not a professional journalist not a not an influencer not a uh not somebody who was a professional political thinker and everything else combined didn't have the influence of that video yeah i think that that kind of gets to the heart of it right is that like we we express support four ideas and thus people tend to treat us as though we are the uh progenitors of those ideas or the the guardians of those ideas or the leaders of of a kind of decentralized proxy party of some kind yeah it's it's it's both because i i think thankfully there's that i mean there's there's always going to be every everyone who makes popular media gets forms a little cult and so there's always going to be a number of people who you know take any given person in the media more seriously than they deserve and that that includes uh the both of us and that's that's not attempting to be that's not attempting to be like humbler anything that is simply a fact of how mass media works um i do think we've seen i think there's been a mix of a healthy pushback against looking at people who are doing creating popular media as more than what they are and more than what that media is capable of being i think there has been a pushback against that in the last couple years it's been healthy and i think there's been a pushback that's been unhealthy um i think people have forgotten some of the lessons uh of like what one i think a good example would be there was a very justified backlash against um and when i say streamers here i'm referring to people who are actually in the street streaming during riots and protests and whatnot right and that and the justified part of that backlash was due to the fact that past a certain point uh particularly those video those streams were primarily being used by law enforcement um both to to get charges on people and to um just to know where folks were as an intelligence gathering method and i think that the backlash which was understandable and there was a lot of ugly behavior including people who kind of got in after the early portions of that in order to make shit loads of money by you know streaming people getting the shit beat out of them by the cops and and that was i i think very justified a pretty aggressive social response to that um but i think it's also caused a lot of people to forget that a huge part of why things kicked off in 2020 and why so many people got involved was nico from uniform corn riot on the ground every night and many appleists doing one of the most impressive pieces of citizen journalism that i think we've seen in this country um and so i i do think that some of what's frustrating here is that it's difficult for people it's difficult for us as a community to take some of the proper lessons from these these things that are happening from the push and pull of the conflict that we all find ourselves in and part because the nature of the way people express their understanding of these lessons via social media um is is very geared towards flattening them and making it a very simple matter of this is bad or this is good and not well in this period of time this worked and then it didn't you know there's there's no real sense of proportionality in these discussions it isn't just a matter of like hey uh you fucked up you should probably take this down or this could be dangerous if you leave this up or if you continue to do this it's more so like what are you a cop what are you some kind of cop doing this yeah you know let's let's spread that rumor around and it i mean yeah we the the cop jacketing thing is is kind of one part of the problem but i i want to focus a little bit on on what you were talking about in terms of what do you think as you're kind of looking at you know and and we're all kind of staring 2024 as it approaches what do you think is useful from media that that attempts to to analyze and share perspectives um that are that are left wing that are anarchist inclined what do you think is actually the value that that can be added to attempts to to um achieve greater justice in our society well i think the answer is twofold i think firstly anything that drives people to like real life organizing and taking action outside of online spaces is obviously useful um beyond that though like i think there there is some value to just exposing people to ideas that they might not have found otherwise but i think that um that a lot of that has been accomplished now i feel like a lot of people are more familiar with with kind of the leftist the leftist ideology one-on-one type of content that uh uh people might expect in that way so yeah i would say those are the two value propositions i i wonder if you think a lot about because one thing that concerns me obviously um any community develops a language that is to some extent its own um and that's that's a that's part of of politics you know political analysis if you're looking at things with a Marxist analysis or if you're analyzing things you know based on your understanding of generations of anarchist political philosophy there's terms that you're going to use that that other thinkers have created that are the terms that people use to discuss those ideas um but it is sometimes kind of a thin line between that and the thing that cults do where they come up with a bunch of specific terms that no one else uses in order to to separate a community from the the rest from everyone else and obviously i don't think there's any intentionality there i don't think people who are talking about um you know the dialectic or whatever are attempting to separate their listeners from the mass of humanity but i do think that happens sometimes and i i when i listen sometimes the conversations on the left about um justice in particular about social justice i wonder like well how is somebody who isn't like reading all this shit going to um interpret this is it just going to like sound like nonsense to them and i think maybe like part of the the purpose the positive purpose of mass media that looks at things from the left is trying to communicate with folks who are not going to sit down or at least who have not yet sat down and done a whole bunch of reading on the history and the politics but whose hearts are in the right place and who i would like to be able to engage in conversations with folks who maybe kind of get their heads a little bit too full of of of specific terminology sometimes i think it's it's a specific balancing act um because on the other hand like you also have to give your audience a little credit that that that they're completely absolutely but i think that like you have to be able to to meet people where they're at but at the same time like if someone has expressed this idea in a way that's already sufficient like it's it's uh why do the work of like trying to re-explain it you know but that being said i think there is a tendency to just assume people already are on our side or understand uh ideas to the level of complexity that we might like and that people are on board with like what even something as simple as what capitalism means you know all the time you you see people online who will say that like a musician will post their bandcampage and people will be like oh i thought you were anti-capitalist you know yeah it's it's like you know but like you also can't get caught up in the the kind of um well weaponized ignorance that the people you know like you can't make someone understand something if they have a particular reason not to want to so i absolutely agree that like there's the danger of that that group in speak uh but it's it's a it's a difficult problem to solve i think the kind of approach i take to it most of the time is that i tend to write my scripts uh as though as though i am uh just the like like a child like i try to write uh as though i'm speaking to a five-year-old you know yeah i mean and i i think i also i think a lot about and this is something you know here at Coolzone i've brought we brought on a couple of years ago um people who you know are are now making podcast for the team who when we brought them on had a lot less experience um writing scripts and and making media for mass consumption and one of the things that i i found it was kind of like my job to to do repeatedly was to point out like okay stop go actually go back to that term because you you just you know said some a term that i think means a specific or you just referenced a thing from history that i i think that people are interested in and should know about but you do have to like go in and explain it and and walk people through it um and that's kind of part of that's really one of the challenges i find particularly with um with behind the bastards right where we're we're talking sometimes about these complicated social movements and moments in history and it's this kind of tug of war between you want to respect the intelligence of the audience and you want to give them enough detail that they have context and that they can maybe understand multiple sides of it but also you can't get bogged down in every detail otherwise you're never going to finish the damn thing and we we can't all be Dan Carlin making 10 hour long podcasts unfortunately i do like i i there's a degree to which i'm quite jealous of his work uh his the way he set up his workload but um i would just never be able to think of that many boxing analogies yeah i don't i don't know very much about boxing um i would probably just like throw in a whole lot of balls mahani analogies a lot of for me it would be a lot of super punch out references like hell yes Stanley would always say to comic book writers that every comic is somebody's first comic and so you kind of have to consider that like every piece of messaging you do might this might be like the first time someone is stepping out of a completely different ideological bubble then you might expect and so you know it kind of has the messaging kind of has to stand on its own but i think that's also like a unique problem to mass media because it it also means that in a sense it's much harder to like build on previous work it's harder to like go from your 101 content and then get to the more advanced subjects because someone could just start at the more advanced part and get lost i think that's a really apt way of describing what what i also find is one of the the central problems because a ton of the episodes of bastards especially the stuff when we focus on fascists builds on itself right yeah you're you you're understanding of fascism in romania will be influenced and is to some degree you don't really you can't understand fascism in romania without understanding fascism and vimar fascism in italy fascism in the united states during the same period and and vice versa uh and so my hope is that the people who catch all of the episodes are building a really complex and durable understanding of the problem through it but it's also this struggle of like well a lot of people are just going to be like oh shit i know Hitler uh but i maybe i'm not interested in hearing about romania you know and i i'm not going to click on those episodes and there's nothing against people like when i listen to podcasts i find myself doing the same thing where it's like there's a million episodes of this show i'm not going to listen i don't have the time to listen to all of them sure yeah and and and that touches on another problem which is that you know the subjects that people like us tend to cover are biased towards what we think people will find interesting yeah you know and beyond that like what we ourselves find interesting to research yeah and what in what you can and this is a thing that i try to point out on on my subreddit sometimes when people are like i can't believe you haven't done this guy or that guy and it's like well that doing the that research is going to fuck me up and like so i'm not going to do it yet i'm going to do this thing that's funny i'm going to read about the liver king this week i need i need a break so the liver king is who we're talking about yeah uh everybody needs a liver king in their life at some point yeah it's like uh i i um i read the Turner diaries for one video yeah and i i've been constant people have been constantly like oh you should read uh camp of the saints you should read siege and i'm like oh i don't know if i want to uh first of all i don't even know if i want those things on my hard drive yeah camp of the saints is a little easier but yeah maybe maybe one of those a year and no more that's like the most i would recommend from like a and um and mental health standpoint it's also like you don't need to read the full text of all of those i mean that's part of the thing is that like you can get a lot by checking in some excerpts and reading scholarly papers analyzing this stuff and there there always will be that um and i think to to a significant standpoint like it's more important to understand you know and this isn't true for everybody because there's some people who you know are scholars of this stuff and you do need to do the deep reading but if you want to understand the degree to which siege and the Turner diaries diaries influence the mass shootings that we see in the United States day that are carried out by the far right you don't need to read those books to do that right there's plenty of really good scholarly analysis and that's part of what what you and i try to do for people um and what what other you know folks who are creating this kind of media other journalists do for folks yeah i i will i would say that i i strongly balk at the uh i i don't consider myself a journalist um yeah i mean i don't consider i that's something people talk about as well on the subreddit that i get a lot of like comments on people appreciating the journalism in the series and we do and some of our shows like you know we did we went to the border me and marla's jir garrison just got back from cop city but like bastards isn't journalism you know sometimes it's like celebrating journalism but it's it's it's entertainment that i hope has like an educational quality to it yeah i don't i don't say this to belittle myself i just don't see that as as the function of my job i think like jir like i have i have in the in the course of my work occasionally done journalism by accident i did a along interview where i had like uh about the chaz and kind of the misconceptions that people had and i had some you know talks with people within and like that is technically on its face a piece of journalism for sure you know absolutely it's it's not what i consider my uh straight or role to be well and i honestly this goes back to what we're talking about with the the young woman who filmed the the video of uh of George Floyd um journalism is a profession but it's also just like a set of tools and you know sometimes you will use those tools in order to do other things you know that that's that's certainly true i'm curious you and i you and i both kind of uh like make our our our work work uh differently um mines ad supported obviously so my conversation with fans you know outside of like when i'm doing a live show is primarily through we have a subreddit and we have twitter um and that's uh you know there's some difficulty there for one thing like in every single guest we have there are people who will be like this is the best guest you've ever had and this person is the worst guest you've ever had and there's absolutely no way to make decisions based on that right it's just a bunch of straight um you you're you've got a different relationship or at least a different method of i think communicating i imagine it's different um because because you're your patreon supported i'm interested in how have if if at all have you seen kind of the conversations about what people want from you and you know the the way in which you've been talking with your fans how have you seen that change since 2020 well um i think one of the major ways is since i've kind of taken a step back from this uh explicitly political content it's a lot of people have kind of encouraged me to go more in that direction uh and i have seen like a big drop in my support as a result uh i i think that it's it's a tricky balance to strike again many of these things are like uh uh uh such a balancing act because i always am careful to remind people that like hey so you can support me on patreon if you like what i'm doing and want there to be more of it but please don't operate under the assumption that doing so is activism or contributes to activism because it is not you are not like making the the revolution more than exactly you know you are getting a little drawing that i'm going to put at the end of my video like that's that's the value proposition here yeah and i think that you know it's it's of um i don't the reason i don't accept ad ad reads on thoughts line i do unscaredy cats is because i don't want the perception that my views are going to be limited or held back by you know the desire to seek out advertisers which whether or not i would have the the integrity to withstand like it it would create the illusion but that creates the problem of well now i kind of have to do what i think that my audience will want and that's its own kettle of fish like am i am i pushing people to donate more than they might be comfortable with and so that's you know i don't i don't really know like the the ethics of it to be perfectly frank there have been times when um people have made big donations and i've had to message them and say like hey i think you should you should probably take this money back you probably weren't thinking straight when you sent me this money i think you should probably have it back yeah that's such an interesting thing for me because it also you know i i've thought about that myself quite a lot you know i had a decision to make when we first started doing these shows about how it was going to be done and i i took the ad supported corporate route and i've been very happy with that so far there's a lot of things that's let us do there's certainly downsides to it um you know including occasionally advertising for the Washington state highway patrol yeah um but um you know it's one of those things i made a comment and this is part one of the one of the frustrating things about making media for a large audience is there's always going to be people who will like read into what you've said something you never meant i made a comment once about like you know because we get people asking well why don't you do a patreon or whatever uh why do you do it this way and then i just made a comment like expressing what you had just expressed like well you know i i feel weird sometimes asking for money and if i can just like get money from a big company and you know hire my friends and and do my work i feel okay doing that it's how most of my career is worked so that's what i'm most comfortable doing and yes there were people who took from that like well robert doesn't think it's ethical to have a patreon it's like half of my friends make their living sub patreon i do not have an ethical problem with supporting yourself that way um i will say that when i i heard you mention that in an episode and it did send a chill down my spine briefly no i mean i think like kody kody johnston who i've worked with for all but 15 years now has a massive patreon uh tom and david lived with some of my best friends you know yeah i like it's i i think it's perfectly it's it's certainly no less ethical and you can make a case people do that it's more ethical than being ad supported it's just like i mean some of it just comes down to like what kind of stuff are you making and what kind of like person are you and what's going to work best with you as like a a creative method in a way of interacting with fans and they have downsides and they have positives you know it's also like a matter of of uh what what you're able to do to certain extent because like i don't know how to get advertisers like any advertisers that i've ever gotten on my my horror channel have just reached out to me and like i don't know if i'm getting as much money out of them as they should be i have no idea i just i just kind of wing it you know but like if you have that background in in radio or broadcasting or or what have you like it can you know that it's it's a much more viable option for some people than it is for others yeah yeah i mean a lot of why it works for me the way that it does is because i've had a 15 year career in not in broadcast but you know in in comedy writing and whatnot um and so i mean that's how i got the i got my podcast hosted on iHart in the first place and and that's like a thing and this is actually one of the things that concerns me most about the shit that's happening with a i right now because you know there's this uh the the folks that kind of i came into making media for all of us started as fairly a political comedy i mean that's Cody Johnston right some more news Cody was making videos about like chat roulette and penises uh when we when we all started working together um very funny videos but like we were making silly things um and everyone has kind of uh moved into making like you know pretty pretty serious fact-based media um you know Cody does a very popular very political kind of current event show and um we were able to get good at making the kind of media that we made and build the connections that we built and build the audiences that we built because we had years of time where you could make a decent living writing stuff for the internet and i i see the kind of shit that i'm afraid AI is going to do um to these jobs where people would get their start as writers and whatnot maybe it wasn't the best you know it's not that you're not doing the best writing you're ever going to do the jobs that get replaced by AI but it's a foot in the door and i keep feel i feel like i keep seeing the room for people to put their foot in the door get smaller and smaller every year and that's that worries me a lot i definitely know what you mean i also feel that like there there's a fear among some some people that like you get crowded out of these spaces the more people there are doing this sort of thing and i i kind of feel like that's not the case uh i like the AI stuff i definitely share your concerns but yeah the the institutional barriers and people's way like i think that like to be frank like i started doing this on a shitty two hundred dollar computer and uh uh um completely legal uh video editing software uh i love legal video editing software i found it in a dumpster and i used that so uh you know and then like through that i was able to like be able to afford a fancy camera and some lights and you know but like i didn't know what i was working doing like it was all self-taught and i think there there has to be that kind of DIY attitude yeah uh for people and it is something i try to encourage and people is that like just just do it like i did it you can do it yeah you know i think that's a great point because i am coming at this from the the old man doomerist perspective of somebody who like the world has changed from the way it was when i'm young when i was young and people don't get their career started that way anymore um and your point is very valid that that while changes in the industry have closed specific doors they've also created some um and i think probably in the long run it is better for people to get their foot in the door doing what you did then rewriting a bunch of press releases about tech gadgets for a shady website that takes advantage of the google algorithm which is how i started my career uh i think that's actually a really valid point yeah i don't i don't i don't think that's uh it depends on your end goal too right but i think like the thing that becomes incumbent on on people like me is to like help people you know like uh i've experienced a certain amount of success and so and i attribute that largely to the fact that like when i was just starting out like i had no idea how to make people see my shit i like i did not know what i was doing yeah and uh a bigger creator just reached out and was like hey can i share your video i think it's really good and it kind of snowballed from there so my philosophy has always been like you take these uh uh you know you you make space for to lift people up with you and yeah doing so it's not an entirely selfless gesture either because in doing so if if there's an extremely talented person who succeeds partially because you help them now you have a connection to an extremely talented person you know yeah like that's that's a sense of uh for lack of a better term mutual aid in a very yeah loose sense i suppose i uh that reminds me of something a good friend of mine at a colleague at crack who who now uh helps run the small beans podcast network uh said to me years and years ago when he was directing a video which is um i want to spend the rest of my career getting hired and fired by my friends which uh is is i think a nice way of looking at it and there's a degree to which it's very old Hollywood way of looking at it but it doesn't it also works very well in this it can work very well in this new this new kind of ecosystem that is still being put together um and i do think that it's because i i see a lot and i i don't i i'm not someone who does a lot of time like i like to watch i watch like the stuff that you put together the stuff h bomber guy puts together where it's actual like um videos on topics and i'm learning some stuff right um the stuff that the dan Olson puts together you know um i'm not so much into and this is not i'm not attacking anybody i'm not like trying to shit on the field but personally i don't watch like the just kind of like stream stuff a lot and i it does seem like there's a lot of conflicts between people in that and i'm wondering you know i my hope is that there's more people building connections to create resiliency between the people who are are trying to make good shit um and trying to make stuff that that people enjoy and that has an impact on people and that even changes people in positive ways um and it sounds like from what from what you're talking about and you know i honestly from what i experienced too i do think that's more the case than like the drama that that goes viral on twitter from time to time yeah i think you know i hope so too i think that that uh it's it's very easy to piss people off yes it's much harder to get people's attention by being kind but you know i like look you know i how many nice comments do i get in a day can't count but like the one shitty comment will always stick out is the same way like if if i have a thousand pleasant interactions with someone else uh nobody notices but if i you know get it if i pick a fight with somebody you know it's people are gonna remember forever i think that's the thing that unsettles me most and this isn't actually even just like this isn't about streaming media or left-wing media or whatever this is a problem of social media that you're right it's the it's the fights that always get most of the attention as opposed to the um i mean not not entirely because some of like the big moments is particularly in recent left-wing media things like um you know people doing these giant streams that raise huge amounts of money for a cause so that that certainly is a a thing that happens and does get a lot of attention when it does happen but you are fighting against and i think we have to be consciously fighting against this system that does want to engender conflict yes it's also kind of difficult and i and you know keep in mind this is this is perhaps coming from a virus perspective when there are individuals and i'm not gonna name names who do you see that as an easy source of of generating attention uh it's it's very easy to the same way that like if i'm going to make a video on a subject i will frame it as like i'm disagreeing with Ben Shapiro or i'm disagreeing with Jordan Peterson it's very easy to go uh look at thoughts like this big piece of shit uh because he thought this when when actually this is the truth it's more attention grabbing than just you know a kind of neutrally positioned argument yeah so it's a it's a it's a it's a tricky problem yeah yeah i think one of the ones that um that i think on quite a lot well um i think that's most of what i wanted to talk about today did you want to like throw in anything else um or or if not we can go to plugs yeah i mean i'm good that's pretty much it i will say that one of the things that tends to bother me the most is people will occasionally say to me that uh they'll they'll send a message thing you seem like a really good person and i will say thank you but please don't feel that way about content creators because why would i make a work that portrayed myself as a bad person and while i in my mind think i am a good person i think it sets the dangerous precedent that you could allow yourself to be emotionally manipulated by someone else who might not be well the name of the game with when you are creating media particularly when you're creating media that's meant to make people feel things part of that is manipulation right yeah manipulate is not an inherently negative term you know stanley Kubrick is trying to manipulate you when he makes a movie um i'm trying to persuade you yeah you do it does it is incumbent upon the audience for their own protection to keep that in mind and it's incumbent upon ethical people who make stuff uh to not create cults at least not create too many cults yeah that's much as you can afford it for sure yeah all right you want to plug your pluggables sure uh you can find my work at youtube.com slash thoughts line or thoughtsline.com you also find my horror content at youtube.com slash scardy cats tv scardy cats was taken that's me that's what i do i make videos about farts and or butts well thank you so much for coming on the show that is going to be it for us today um we will be back probably tomorrow. Hey we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It could happen here is a production of coolzone media for more podcast from coolzone media visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeart radio app apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts you can find sources for it could happen here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources thanks for listening. I'm Malcolm Grabble I don't know if you notice about me but i'm a car nut and i will do anything to keep my cars happy to make sure they stay running smoothly. I look for those things at ebay motors with ebay guaranteed fit when you see the green check you know that part will fit get the right parts at the right prices ebay motors.com let's ride eligible items only exclusions apply at lacic plus we've performed over two million lacic procedures nationwide and have more five star reviews than anyone else. 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