September 23, 2021 • 38 mins
We sit down with Bea and Elaine to discuss do-it-yourself skills and how to get started building up an emergency skill set.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
What spicy Pumpkins? From Robert Kevins. No, it was where
it's not clipping. You just don't like me saying, what's
spicy my pumpkins? But I said it and it can't
be unsaid. It was because this is it could happen
here a daily podcast about the end of some things
and the beginning of other things. And right now it's
(00:26):
an episode about the beginning of fall. Because it's officially
fall and I'm drinking a pumpkin spice black coffee. It's
also not officially fall yet, it may it may be
officially fall by the time that podcast. It is legally fall.
When I have my first pumpkin spice black coffee of
the year and it's cool outside. That's because you're a monster.
That's because I'm a happy man who is enjoying a
(00:46):
fault beverage. On this episode today, we have, of course
Garrison Garrison. Hello, I Garrison, are you doing I'm doing
fine great. We also have my friends be in a
Lane b E Lane you you you are on the
show recently to talk about terrorism a year ago. Yeah,
(01:06):
everything before yesterday is a year ago. And uh and
now you're on to talk about surviving yeah, yeah, like
crafty surviving punk. Yeah, I know, we we brought made
it this far. You on because you were like two
of the most useful skill filled people that I know.
You're both wilderness survival instructors primitive skill instructors for a while,
(01:29):
and you have a small farm in a town that
I won't name, and you do all sorts of cool
ship like storing food and making arrows and other things
that are alleged. And what I like about that is that,
you know, we talk about like collapse and things falling apart,
there's this kind of like I don't know, almost like
mimetic obsession with like I want to get out into
the woods and away from the city, and that's the
(01:50):
only way to survive, and like the reality of the situations,
that's a terrible way to survive. There's nobody in the wood.
There's nobody in the woods, and it's you know, there's
there are there are a small chunk of the human
race that is capable with with just themselves of like
surviving in the middle of nowhere with nobody. But there's
(02:11):
even among that population, there's a small fraction who are
capable of doing that and not shooting themselves after a
long enough period of time, and you wouldn't want to
meet that person generally. Well, and I think the other
the other thing about that is like the sort of
fetishization of of you know, individualists. Survival skills is based
on this idea that what people when people were like
(02:33):
living off the land, that they were doing it by
themselves alone, which is community. There's very few people that
survived alone for a long time, and even of the
people that had the skills, like even I she wandered
out of the woods after I think eight years of
being by himself and was finally like fuck it. He
(02:57):
was the last of a indigenous group in California, where
everyone else in his tribe had been basically withen genocided
and him and like the last like five people went
off and hid for very good reason um. And then
after disease and stuff, then it was just him and
he spent I forget how many years by himself, and
(03:20):
after a while he finally was like fuck it, being
by myself is not worth it, and he came out.
And it was just after the turn of the century,
and so he ended up being adopted by a bunch
of anthropologists and spending the rest of his time in
San Francisco. It's actually where we get most of a
lot of like the anthropological knowledge of how to make arrows,
because he was very much like, I'm the last of
(03:42):
my group, so I will actually show people how to
do flint napping and how I make arrows and how
I hunt and yeah, and that's but I mean, and
that's there's kind of the point there that like, with
all of those skills, being one of that very small
number of people who could you dropped that guy alone
with nothing in the woods and he'll figure it out.
He didn't want to do that because it's miserable. Yeah. Uh.
(04:04):
He in fact went into San Francisco and was like, well,
white people wiped out my entire I go make friends
with these anthropologists that live with them and teach them
what I know. Yeah. Again, a lot of the folks
who are kind of reaching out online being like, hey,
I don't have a lot in the way of money.
I'm never gonna be able to move to the woods
and buy a farm or something, well you don't, you
(04:25):
don't really need to. And like if shi it really
does hit the fan where you live, there's probably parks
unless it's Detroit UM, in which case there's abandoned Walmart's
like you can make it work like there's it's so
so this is an episode about kind of the skills
that you can acquire and build for not a lot
of money, more or less wherever you live that will
help you build resiliency UM, but also build resiliency is
(04:49):
part of a community, as opposed to living in the
woods with a knife, sleeping under mud. There's a great
short story that y'all turned me onto by Cory Doctor
in a book of short stories called Radicalize that was
was it just called The Mask of the Red Death?
I mean that's that's yeah. The original Mask of the
Red Death is set obviously during UM. I'm sure everybody
read it in high school, like right. It's is set
(05:11):
during the Bubonic plague with these rich people who like
decided to just hold up in party to escape the
plague and they all die of the plague. And Doctors
is a bunch of like libertarians, survivalist crypto bros who
build a fortress in the desert in order to survive
the end of days. And it turns out that like
a bunch of bad stuff happens like there's disease in
(05:31):
in in civil conflict, but like people figure it out
and all of the crypto bros die shooting themselves to
death because the water system. It's obvious from the start
what's going on, and everybody who comes along to help them,
they start shooting at you will just wait until you're
dead because you're shooting yourself because your water is bad.
(05:51):
I think we all have, we all have elements of
some libertarian tendencies in US, which you know, it's not
bad to learn self reliance, and it's certainly not not
even bad to want to like live outside of the city.
But in a lot of ways living in a living
in an urban environment surrounded by a community, depending on
the situation, can be even more resilient because like, yeah,
(06:11):
an isolated farmstead there's benefits to but also it's really
easy to surround and just shoot people who were living
on their farm in the middle of nowhere. If ship
really does hit the fan, it happens all the time.
It happened in like Al Salvador and ship when they
had their economic crash. So I don't know, where do
you want to Where do you guys want to start?
I know you had a couple of different things that
you want that I want to talk about, Like preserving
(06:33):
food is a big one, and then I mean making
stuff and doing things is kind of they're sort of different.
Where would you like to actually start with that? I
think we can start with kind of the d I
Y element, branching off of our original discussion on primitive skills,
and then in like parts two, we can go born
to like food and like like like foraging, um and
preservation and stuff. Cool. I mean, so d I why um?
(06:58):
I guess now there's a lot of stuff about like
there's I don't know, there's all this stuff of like
survival skills and all this stuff, and both of us
kind of came into the idea of making stuff and
doing things by being punks, um, and it's kind of yeah,
having no money, but also just their d I Y
(07:20):
like do it yourself was a very like kind of
nineties punk thing that came into the mainstream. Like I
actually was pulling out some of my old books and
I think it's funny to see the like progression because
I have you know, the really lovely like food not
lawns that goes into a whole pile of really fantastic
things that came out that I don't know, the first
(07:43):
food not lawns House I saw at the town as
in was in like two thousand five or six, but
this book came out in two thousand and six. But
this was this entire movement of like making community and
doing and like how to do stuff yourself on your
front lawn. Yeah, and then of from eleven the bus
d i Y Guide to Life that includes everything from
(08:05):
like how to do worm composting to how to make
your own makeup and like finance House and that's that's
like the magazine. Yes, So it's kind of interesting because
it definitely like was the thing that I watched come
into the mainstream. But you know, it started as a
lot of punks trying to figure out how to do
(08:25):
things because they had no money. And but also different
from a lot of you know, like woodworking or craft
books that really are you know by these seven thousand
dollars worth of tools and now you too can learn, Yes,
And there's also there's also an ethos behind it, right
that like before I was, I came at it first
(08:47):
and foremost through being like a bike punk in the
in the late nineties, early two thousands being a bike
punk and the idea of like the d I y
ethos was less about the grid is going to collapse
and like everything is going to fall apart and you're
gonna need to survive by the skin of your teeth.
And it was a lot more you know, at the
(09:08):
tail end of the nineties and like the sort of
golden era of neoliberal capitalism and office space and that
whole cultural moment, the idea that life was alienated and
shitty and it felt better to know how to do
things that you needed in your day to day life
for yourself, using stuff you had made yourself or gotten
(09:30):
from your community members. Um. Yeah, resiliency is less about
knowing you have a pile of dried food in the
house and know more about looking at fresh food and knowing,
I know how to make that last the winter. Yeah.
And it's been interesting to see the way that like
as that has gotten kind of mainstreamed into like, you know,
the the what is it primitive. There's a bunch of
(09:52):
different like Primitive x y Z YouTube channels that get
lots of show and ship and as that all gets mainstreamed,
there's this idea of like expert teath that creeps back
into it, and d I Y was like firmly committed
to the idea that everybody could learn stuff and listening
to somebody who said they were an expert was a trap.
(10:12):
And a lot of that was coming out of like
the seventies when there was all of the like you know,
CULTI lifestyle ship that was like, hey, look we're going
to teach you how to change your life, and yeah,
we're gonna we're gonna buy up all this land and Antelope, Oregon,
and so d I Y was emphatically not that. It
was like, there's skills, and you can learn skills, and
the internet doesn't really exist yet or not really, so
(10:35):
you can read books about it and you can have
skill share because there wasn't Twitter. We also all had
a lot more time on our hands and like each
other more. But there's also expertise was something that was
handy to have, you know, like if I needed to
rebuild my wheel on my bike and respoke, it wanted
(10:57):
someone who knew how to do it. And so it's
good to have a people who had really intense, deep
knowledge of skills. But the idea that you would ask
someone like I need to change my bike tire two
because I popped it with everyone would have been kind
of like really really like everyone should know how to
do basic stuff and it's and it's okay. Like the
whole you know, Jack of All Trades was is as
(11:21):
a desirable goal, like it's okay to dabble in a
million little things and be kind of mediocre but have
a sort of baseline understanding of a bunch of stuff. Now,
you know, there's places that I kind of think that
we went too far, but also, you know, before the
American Healthcare Act, we all definitely did a lot of
(11:42):
at home medcare that we should not have. But there's
also a lot of low stakes places that I think
people have gotten away from just practicing and trying all
sorts of crafty stuff as an ethos that is actually
really good and there's no harm to learning things like that.
You're not going to afford anything, and the only thing
that's going to happen is you will have more skills
(12:02):
and more to offer the people around. There's this idea
under capitalism that we should all specialize because that is
like the most profit generating thing to do is just
(12:22):
specialize anything that makes you the most money, but it's like,
not only is it like not the best in a
dangerous situation to only know how to do one thing
that makes you money, but it's like it's not particularly
good for your soul either. And there's also lots of
different behavioral psychology, like group analysis of if you present
(12:44):
people with a situation that they feel unprepared for and
there's a person that they identify as an expert in
a group who they can defer to pretty much every time,
the group that's like, oh, we'll defer to this one
expert because they know everything and we'll just do whatever
they say ends up making worse decisions. Then if you
(13:05):
have a group where everybody feels like, oh, well, I
like I can at least get a handle on what's
going on and we can all talk through it and
like make make calls, deferring to experts doesn't necessarily help you.
Know that, there's obviously cases we've mentioned medical care already
where like there's actually knowledge is very important. Skill sets
(13:28):
are very important, But the idea that there's people who
are just like yeah, inherently more knowledgeable of things that
you couldn't possibly understand is so where where do you
recommend Like people start with like, like, you've got a
bunch of books right now, and obviously, if you can
afford books, that's a good call or libraries. A lot
(13:49):
of these books on a preserving food and like growing
stuff on your law, and but even if you don't
have a law and you can still like there's certain
like one thing that strikes me because we've been canning
and pickling a bunch lately, is you know, different vegetables
and fruits and whatnot are cheaper at different points in
the year. And even if you live in an apartment
in the inner city and will never have more than
(14:11):
a garden box at best, you can buy food when
it's cheap and preserve it um and not only save
yourself a little bit of money, but you can like also, uh,
you'll you'll understand every time you encounter preserved food, and
like a grocery store, you'll be looking at a thing
that you know where it comes from. It's not just
like a mystery jar of preserved food that was made
(14:32):
by some process of science. So I don't know, I'm
interested in Like where you guys someone coming in having
only uh specialized in whatever it is allowed them to
pay the rent. Where where where's your where's your recommended
start point for people? UM, I think it's picking something
that is low stakes that you enjoy. Like, honestly, one
(14:57):
of my friends, UM, her entry in to doing d
I Y stuff was, you know, she had lots of
makeup and everything, and she was like, I'm going to
make body scrubs? How do I do that? And you know,
looked up how to make body scrubs, how to make
you know, a lot of it is, oh, getting salt
and grinding up rosemary that she found in someone's front
(15:18):
yard and putting it together, you know, But just something
simple that you enjoy, that you would love to be
able to, you know, have a little bit more say
over because it's most basic. A lot of the d
I Y stuff is you can make something very specific
to what you like. So for myself, actually, one of
(15:38):
the first things I ever started doing was in high
school just altering clothing. I had an old I had
an old thirty dollar junk practice uh like kids sewing
machine and just the cheapest one that Sears used to sell,
and could definitely just take that and start putting scenes
(16:02):
in an altar clothing and like this shirt is now
a T shirt. It was long sleep before and that
also ties in with you know, d I I just
to sound like old punks for a minute. That d
I I definitely also came out of things like the
riot girl scene in a big way, and like the
attention to like body awareness and like moving away from
(16:22):
body negativity and the recognition that as a general rule,
off the rack clothes are not and certainly twenty years
ago were extra not actually designed to fit most people's bodies,
and it was hard to find clothes that fit you right.
And yeah, so like sewing was a big one. Um
(16:43):
bikes because we were broke and didn't have cars, so
figuring out how to fix bikes and you know, everything
that mechanically happens on a bike is right there and
you can see it happen, and it maybe requires a
screwdriver and then eventually maybe some other tools. But there's
lots of free resources. A lot most cities I've spent
any amount of time and you can find like you
can find like a community bike shop where if you
(17:05):
have to pay anything, it's very minimal, and a lot
of cases are just sort of like show up and
you know there's space to use. Yeah, when um, like,
I know in Santa Cruz there was the bike Church.
In Portland there's the bike Farm, and yeah, in Philly
there was also a bike church because it turns out
the basements of churches are There were a couple of
spots like that in Dallas, and it's uh yeah, And
(17:28):
I think it is like this mix of, like with
the body script stuff, like what is something that appeals
to you that you you're interested in, and also what
is with the bike stuff, what is something that's like
just doggedly practical, Like you get a bike, you need
a bike to get around, you should probably know how
to fix it on it. I think the reason I
say you should pick saying that appeals to you especially
is because a big thing with d I Y was
(17:53):
that you're doing it yourself. And there are so many
skills that are valuable to learn from other people. It
is wonderful to craft in community. It is wonderful to
work with other people in community. It's wonderful to teach
skills and gain them. But also I've seen this growing
idea with the as specialization for so many things, especially
(18:15):
services comes in that people are always like, oh wow, knitting.
I've always wanted to learn I need to take a
class in that, or I need to And it's really important,
I think, for people to realize that you can learn things.
We are very good at learning things, and you don't
necessarily need a teacher for more complex things you do.
But starting with something that you really like and that
(18:38):
you find really interesting, you've already thought about it. So
when you start with you know, for my friends, starting
with making bath salts and face masks and stuff, it
was something she had already been thinking about quite a
bit and thinking about stuff. So when she started looking
at recipes to mix and looking on the internet and
looking at ingredients, it was saying she already cared about.
So it's easier to learn something that you are interested in,
(19:02):
and it's easier to learn something that you want to do.
But we are all capable of learning for ourselves, not
every single thing, but especially just for craft projects. And
so starting with that so that you can pick up
a book, or you can read an article, or you
can watch a YouTube video and you don't need to
take some like hundred and fifty dollar a weekend class
(19:24):
before you can. It's you know, a big part of
the resiliency building like something you may scoff like when
you're thinking about survivalism and talking about like making bath scrubs,
But a lot of the skills you would learn putting
that together are useful in making like a salve or
making like a soap, making soap things that you actually need.
(19:45):
Like when I was traveling, I lived on the road,
like out of a car and out of backpacks for
off and on all over the world for years, and
I would make my own medicated because we would get
would get cuts and scrapes and rashes, and we were
poor as ship and often there weren't doctors where we were.
So I learned how to use things like plantain and
comfrey and yarrow and like bees wax and stuff in
order to make medicated sabs and it it was something
(20:06):
that interested me. But like there's also a lot of
like there's there's a number of roots into learning that
sort of thing. And if you're learning how to make
again something as simple as like a face scrub, learning
where to find that information for free learning some of
the basic techniques in order to do that. That learning
how to learn is is applicable in a wider variety
(20:28):
of skill sets, and it I think it's so important
to focus on what are you what are you interested
in first, as as opposed to just being like okay
at first. Now I have to learn how to like
splint a broken arm, because like ship is gonna hit
the fans, like, well, maybe focus on something that's more
exciting to you first, and and and and build time
in your life to learn things. That's an enjoyable process.
(20:50):
One of the first things I did, like years ago,
was I learned to so specifically to make a cause
play because you know, so I would just I would
make me and my whole family to an outfits for
comic Con. So every year I would, I would sew
us whole whole new things. But then not only taught
me sewing, it taught me how to do like like
vacuum forming, to molding, how to use like a heat gun,
(21:10):
how to use like all these other types of tools. Um,
how do you like molding and castings, Like all of
these types of things. I learned just wanting to make
silly costumes. But now they're like, you know, useful in
a lot a lot a lot of other ways. And
that can be that can be expensive at the high
end when you're like vacuum forming and stuff your storm
trooper armor. But the cheapest side of that thing again,
(21:33):
you can get a basic hand sewing kit for like
five dollars from a Walmart. And there's also maker to
your Ship, and there's maker spaces and like YouTube will
do the teaching. You don't have to pay for a teacher.
The Taliban learned how to fly helicopters on YouTube. You
can learn how to fix your pants. And then I
think also you mentioned specialization before. It's come up a
couple of times um, and there is you know, the
(21:55):
idea of specialization. The rationale behind specialization is, oh, well,
you'll be better at it because that's what you do
all the time. But that cuts both ways because if
you only do one thing all the time, then as
you know, whatever the maximum threshold of your abilities is
that's required of you, that becomes your baseline, like whatever
(22:15):
in your day to day life, whatever it is that
you're being asked to do, that's what you feel capable of.
And on the flip side, there's with with the d
I Y approach, with like teaching yourself ship learning interesting ship.
It's also practical and important and useful to be like
this is a thing that I'm gonna do on a
regular basis so I'll get better at it. But also
(22:36):
it's not you know, there was you know, the whole
idea of there's what you do and then there's your job,
and that these need not be the same thing because
you want to be able to think think through things
in a way that's not the way you're supposed to
process things to make your boss happy. That it is
not just what you do when you clock in. You
are more than your career. More than your career and
(22:59):
in your skill set need not be purely extracted, as
you know, not just like Okay, I have to go
do the thing in order to make money and then
everything else's consumption. Like you can you can transition, like
we're but and this is not a societal level solution
because we talk a lot about like, well, yeah, you're
not gonna you're not gonna make small personal changes to
(23:19):
fix climate change, but changing your own particular attitude on
how you approach the world from one that is I
I produce and that I consume to to when we're
you're thinking more about resiliency and what do I know
how to do and what can I learn how to do?
UM is helpful in a variety of ways on the
(23:51):
note of you know, the transferability of skills and recognizing
that you already do things on a day to day
basis that requires specialized knowledge and require skill sets. UM.
One of the things that I try and trot out
at every possible opportunity. I worked with somebody in one
of those volunteer bike shop spaces down New Orleans years ago, UM,
(24:12):
and the whole purpose of that particular space was to
make the skill set of bike repair more accessible to
a population that relied on likes to get places. And
one of the folks I worked there with was like
a very fami lady and was great because we would
have young girls come into the shop and be like,
(24:32):
my bike doesn't work. Somebody fixed my bike. My bike
doesn't work. I don't know how to fix a bike.
And she was the one who would just be like,
your tires flat and they're like, yeah, I don't know
how to fix it. Can you fix it? And she'd
be like, well, you're wearing press on nails, right, And
I'd be like yeah, I'm like cool, how do you
put on your press on nails, and they'd walked through
the steps of like, well, you stand your nails, and
then you put the glue on your nails, and then
(24:54):
you hold the press on nails on your fingernails for
a little while and let them set, and then you're
good to go. And it's like, great, you've just described
exactly how you patch a bike inner two. So now
we just need to get the bike inner two out,
and here's the part that corresponds to your nail, and
here's the part of the corresponse, like here's the glue
and here's the you know, it's the same process. We
just have to get the bike inner two out and
(25:15):
then back in again. But you already know how to
do the part where you make the bike to work again,
and that does hit on another important like you know,
apocalypse or whatever survival point where again all of our
like fiction and movies focuses on like knowing how to
use a gun or like being a woodsman. One of
the most useful skills, maybe the most useful skill you
can have in any disaster situation, is being able to
(25:36):
teach people, like like knowing how to understand figure out
what people know and how to get them the additional
information they need in order to be more resilient and competent,
because you're always better in a community of people who
know to handle their ship than alone. And it builds
on itself too. You know, we both come from different backgrounds,
but as we've been together and with the different trainings
(25:58):
that we've had in just light, the projects that we
take on have become more and more complex. So you know,
where I used to like to practice gardening and stuff
and doing a little bit of woodworking and things, and
now you know, we're doing various construction projects that we're
kind of self taught, and we have some various home
(26:19):
depot books on how to do them. But it's it
doesn't feel nearly as intimidating because we've done steps to
go to it, and because it's not an all or nothing,
you don't have to suddenly be like I'm going to
d I why my entire life. Like I definitely get
that way sometimes where I'm like, I want to one
day have everything in my house be made by someone
that I know or myself. And it's really lovely to
(26:40):
know crafts people or to you know, make do sit
down at a pottery wheel and make your own bowls
or whatever. But a lot of it is about practicing
stuff when it's not an emergency so that when you
later on have need or you have the ability, you
have the time, like you can do a bunch of
different things. So you know, we refloored. The room that
(27:03):
we're in right now a process, but we didn't get
there from nothing, And we've both done lots of different
construction and measuring and other things in little bits just
for fun, for work for other stuff beforehand, And a
lot of these projects are things that are fun to
do as a one off as a project. I've done,
(27:25):
you know, embroidery with my kids just for fun, not
because they need to suddenly embroider all of their clothing
or they have to sew everything, but it's because it's
a fun thing to do on a rainy day. Or
you know, try fixing a book, not because there's no
ability to go on Amazon and order another book. But hey, look,
(27:47):
I just we didn't add one thing to the landfill
ways and we don't have to fix all of the
stuff we have. It's a one time craft. But then
later on when stuff's falling apart or when we have
supply chain issues, or when stuff's not there, it's handy
to know, like, oh, you know what, Like we're having
water rationing right now, because during the one of the
droughts I grew up in California, we had water rationing
(28:09):
and it was my mom hauled out of the basement
my grandmother's old ringer machine and we were doing the
laundry and that because it could conserved a hell of
a lot of water and you could use the same
water for load after load. It's good to just have
those things just kind of on hand that you've tried,
because when an emergency hits, you don't want to be
trying to search the internet are looking for something because
(28:31):
you've never done it before and now it's necessary. And
it's it's again to the point of like how the
how collapse really looks versus how it's often pictured. You're
not trying to replicate when you're when you're doing your
own laundry that way, you're not trying to replace civilization.
You're patching a hole, like and and that's a lot
of building resiliency is knowing that you have. It's like
(28:52):
it's being able to fix a bike tire, it's patching
a hole and I do want to acknowledge that like
this is a little bit more outside of the dead
center of mainstream in you know, the United States and
some other like wealthy industrialized countries, and it's not like
it has never stopped being the way most people in
(29:14):
the world. Kind of one story to tell from these people.
I was billeted with an Iraq. These these guys were
like pulling people out of air strike craters every day,
and we wanted to watch TV one nine. We were
in like a bombed out mosque that isis had been
using and they had a refrigerator that worked in a
TV that isis had cut the chords with. And this
guy just started pulling chords out of the fridge in
(29:37):
about five minutes, had the TV working, had like hooked it,
lashed everything together. It was like he wasn't a TV
repairment or refridge. He just knew how electricity and ship
worked and was able to figure out like, Okay, I
can just put all this ship together. We're good to go.
And and just also to loop background to the whole,
like survival mentality a little bit. One of the things
that like people that we've worked with, people who like
(29:59):
have been in emergency situations that require you know, complex
skill sets and things of One of the big things
is to have a role that you are competent in
that you are ready to fulfill, so you don't have
to figure out your first step. You can get moving.
(30:21):
You can figure out your first step. So, for example,
in the you know, the supply chain issues that hit
at the start of COVID and are recurring. Um the
idea of like oh there's no way to like there's
no laundry stap. Say okay, well we've got borax and
these others and some making soda borax, right, we can
(30:46):
we can make our own laundry detergent in a pinch
and it'll work well enough. Cool. Don't have to have
that be the thing that stresses us out and like
adds to our like paralysis. Yeah, and get A huge
part of is even how you approach to the problem.
It's not freaking out like oh my god, there's no
laundry soap. Hell am I going to clean the clothes.
It's being like, oh, there's no laundry soap, I'm gonna
(31:07):
go online because we still have that and try to
figure out either other things that can make laundry soap
that there are and like it's it's accepting. Like you
talk about like wanting to be competent in a role,
you don't have to know what that is from the start,
as long as like the starting point isn't I'm going
to be the medic I'm going to be this, I'm
gonna be the food or it's like no, I'm going
to start learning how to do things I don't know
(31:29):
how to do, and over a period of time, if
I am dedicated that I will figure out the thing
that I want to get most competent at. Yeah, because
I mean none of none of what we've been talking
about in terms of the various crafts and projects that
we've undertaken are things that are like our primary function
in the world. It's just like, well, at some point
(31:52):
it seemed like it was worth doing, and so we
did some of it, and then we kept doing it
now and there's always pretty good at literally if anything
we've talked about, there's the you're, I don't know, bougie
hipster version of like doing it expensively. Even with like woodworking,
there could be a dirt cheap I built a table
for almost nothing when I was younger, because it was like, well,
(32:12):
I found this would that the city chopped down, and
I bought sand paper and stain for fifteen dollars and
then I got like a fucking base for my Ikea
and I had a functional table and I figured it
out using YouTube. And it's you know, not as good
a table as I could have made if I had
ten or thousands of dollars in woodworking tools, but I
had a table for years because of it um And
(32:34):
it's it's accepting the because I think people do get
freaked out. There's such an emphasis on like having the gear,
getting the equipment, stockpiling things, and like, really stockpiling competency
is better because yeah, and I think the Amazon wish
list ability to just be like, oh I want this
specific thing, I can in three seconds look it up
(32:54):
online and find the exact thing that I want definitely
pushes in the opposite direction and makes people, well, a
little less resilient in that capacity because there's less of
that idea that you can just have stuff. And I
would just say, if people want to get started with it,
it's really pick something low stakes, pick something simple, because
you build the abilities, you build the ability to learn
(33:19):
and um I had to explained to me once that
it's like a hangar. Every skill you get X as
a hangar, and having really basic simple things is actually
super necessary because even even the like hardcore primitive skills.
I have some amazing books that I bought when I
was eighteen, and I remember I had them and I
(33:41):
looked through and I read it and I was like,
this is like reading magic. I understand absolutely none of it.
And after a few years of doing things, not even
necessarily traditional skills, but just things practicing stuff, picking stuff,
there was so much more framework that I had that
(34:02):
I looked through it and suddenly there was stuff concepts
that I could hang all of these incredible skills on.
And we're like, oh, that never made sense to me.
I understand it now because I've done simpler things and
starting with thing that doesn't seem like overwhelming to learn
something simple and something something low stakes, something that if
(34:23):
you utterly mess it up, if you have ah, what
are the like like the regrets the like craft epiccraft
fails that it's okay, it's not a big deal because
failing is part of learning, and so pick things that
it's okay to fail at as your as your projects
and and don't as many of us did in the
(34:43):
late nineties and early two thousand's when we didn't have
health insurance of any description, you know, experiment on ourselves
and our friends with herbs because we didn't have healthcare,
access to doctors. Avoid doing that is not low stakes. Yeah,
and I'm about to go do and surgery on my
own infected wound now that you've told me this, and
I'm really excited. Excited I got I got an exact deal.
(35:07):
I got some vodka. At least we're good to go. No,
the key is really hot glue same as surgical stitches.
I have similar not hot, because then it sterilizes the
wound doesn't stick to anything. This is how I know
you are not a crafter. Is hot glue does not anything.
(35:30):
You just you squirt it in there, You get it
in there real good, and then you cover it with
with superglue. I do have a grand that has plug
in the world. I would put superglue in first. I
do have a grandpa that has used superglue so many
times to glue his body back together. It's actually what
it was made for. Ye, that's very funny. It's effective
at that anyway, here's armatical advice. Yeah, don't do any
(35:53):
of the things that were just said. But if you
do want to learn how to do suits, you you
can find guides where people do it on chicken and
which is how if you're an e m T you
learn how to do it. And it's that's a that
is a skill you can build for very little money.
That's useful and you don't have to start on your
friends bodies. And I will put in a plug for like,
wilderness first aid courses are not cheap and there are
(36:16):
some real good ones out there, and as a as
like a baseline that is a real handy and helps
you think about things creatively because wilderness first aid unlike
an ambulance driver. An ambulance driver is driving in a
box with all the tools they need, and wilderness first
aid the assumption is don't have a box. You don't
have and so you have to work it out probably
(36:37):
you know, uh, some plantain or something or some the
right fucking kind of SAP. There's like ship you can
use and which we will not proceed to attempt to
lift off here and provide medical advice. Don't go to
a doctor, no use pine needles, make your own needle
t don't cure your COVID. Find a bee hive and
(37:01):
start sucking. Any other sources are any other sources making
stuff and doing things from way back in the day.
Definitely recommend that one UM country know how like there's
some a lot of old craft books actually, UM the
(37:22):
entire back collection of the Mother Earth magazine skills stuff
like I have definitely made any studying magazine, not Emma
Goldman's Anarchists newspaper, but I've definitely made solar powered dehydrators
out of cardboard boxes and saran rap from the from
Mother Earth magazine stuff And it's absolutely fantastic. The just
(37:44):
old school guide books UM, and but also anything that's
listened as like d I Y guides that have stuff
that you would like to make and like to do
are great. The library is great. Use the library. Research
librarians at the library are great. And if you're like,
I'm trying to learn how to do this thing, can
you help me find books on it? Research librarians at
(38:05):
the library they have doctorates in how to help you
do that, and that's they just sit at desks all
day waiting for me and that's that. And what you'll
learn from them about how to answer those questions for
yourself is also useful in their long run. Well, go
out and make a reflux. Still is that legal? Well no,
not in most places, but it's easy. You just need
(38:27):
a box inside of a box, and you pour old
beer in the center box and that's like saran wrap.
On topic,
What spicy Pumpkins? From Robert Kevins. No, it was where
it's not clipping. You just don't like me saying, what's
spicy my pumpkins? But I said it and it can't
be unsaid. It was because this is it could happen
here a daily podcast about the end of some things
and the beginning of other things. And right now it's
(00:26):
an episode about the beginning of fall. Because it's officially
fall and I'm drinking a pumpkin spice black coffee. It's
also not officially fall yet, it may it may be
officially fall by the time that podcast. It is legally fall.
When I have my first pumpkin spice black coffee of
the year and it's cool outside. That's because you're a monster.
That's because I'm a happy man who is enjoying a
(00:46):
fault beverage. On this episode today, we have, of course
Garrison Garrison. Hello, I Garrison, are you doing I'm doing
fine great. We also have my friends be in a
Lane b E Lane you you you are on the
show recently to talk about terrorism a year ago. Yeah,
(01:06):
everything before yesterday is a year ago. And uh and
now you're on to talk about surviving yeah, yeah, like
crafty surviving punk. Yeah, I know, we we brought made
it this far. You on because you were like two
of the most useful skill filled people that I know.
You're both wilderness survival instructors primitive skill instructors for a while,
(01:29):
and you have a small farm in a town that
I won't name, and you do all sorts of cool
ship like storing food and making arrows and other things
that are alleged. And what I like about that is that,
you know, we talk about like collapse and things falling apart,
there's this kind of like I don't know, almost like
mimetic obsession with like I want to get out into
the woods and away from the city, and that's the
(01:50):
only way to survive, and like the reality of the situations,
that's a terrible way to survive. There's nobody in the wood.
There's nobody in the woods, and it's you know, there's
there are there are a small chunk of the human
race that is capable with with just themselves of like
surviving in the middle of nowhere with nobody. But there's
(02:11):
even among that population, there's a small fraction who are
capable of doing that and not shooting themselves after a
long enough period of time, and you wouldn't want to
meet that person generally. Well, and I think the other
the other thing about that is like the sort of
fetishization of of you know, individualists. Survival skills is based
on this idea that what people when people were like
(02:33):
living off the land, that they were doing it by
themselves alone, which is community. There's very few people that
survived alone for a long time, and even of the
people that had the skills, like even I she wandered
out of the woods after I think eight years of
being by himself and was finally like fuck it. He
(02:57):
was the last of a indigenous group in California, where
everyone else in his tribe had been basically withen genocided
and him and like the last like five people went
off and hid for very good reason um. And then
after disease and stuff, then it was just him and
he spent I forget how many years by himself, and
(03:20):
after a while he finally was like fuck it, being
by myself is not worth it, and he came out.
And it was just after the turn of the century,
and so he ended up being adopted by a bunch
of anthropologists and spending the rest of his time in
San Francisco. It's actually where we get most of a
lot of like the anthropological knowledge of how to make arrows,
because he was very much like, I'm the last of
(03:42):
my group, so I will actually show people how to
do flint napping and how I make arrows and how
I hunt and yeah, and that's but I mean, and
that's there's kind of the point there that like, with
all of those skills, being one of that very small
number of people who could you dropped that guy alone
with nothing in the woods and he'll figure it out.
He didn't want to do that because it's miserable. Yeah. Uh.
(04:04):
He in fact went into San Francisco and was like, well,
white people wiped out my entire I go make friends
with these anthropologists that live with them and teach them
what I know. Yeah. Again, a lot of the folks
who are kind of reaching out online being like, hey,
I don't have a lot in the way of money.
I'm never gonna be able to move to the woods
and buy a farm or something, well you don't, you
(04:25):
don't really need to. And like if shi it really
does hit the fan where you live, there's probably parks
unless it's Detroit UM, in which case there's abandoned Walmart's
like you can make it work like there's it's so
so this is an episode about kind of the skills
that you can acquire and build for not a lot
of money, more or less wherever you live that will
help you build resiliency UM, but also build resiliency is
(04:49):
part of a community, as opposed to living in the
woods with a knife, sleeping under mud. There's a great
short story that y'all turned me onto by Cory Doctor
in a book of short stories called Radicalize that was
was it just called The Mask of the Red Death?
I mean that's that's yeah. The original Mask of the
Red Death is set obviously during UM. I'm sure everybody
read it in high school, like right. It's is set
(05:11):
during the Bubonic plague with these rich people who like
decided to just hold up in party to escape the
plague and they all die of the plague. And Doctors
is a bunch of like libertarians, survivalist crypto bros who
build a fortress in the desert in order to survive
the end of days. And it turns out that like
a bunch of bad stuff happens like there's disease in
(05:31):
in in civil conflict, but like people figure it out
and all of the crypto bros die shooting themselves to
death because the water system. It's obvious from the start
what's going on, and everybody who comes along to help them,
they start shooting at you will just wait until you're
dead because you're shooting yourself because your water is bad.
(05:51):
I think we all have, we all have elements of
some libertarian tendencies in US, which you know, it's not
bad to learn self reliance, and it's certainly not not
even bad to want to like live outside of the city.
But in a lot of ways living in a living
in an urban environment surrounded by a community, depending on
the situation, can be even more resilient because like, yeah,
(06:11):
an isolated farmstead there's benefits to but also it's really
easy to surround and just shoot people who were living
on their farm in the middle of nowhere. If ship
really does hit the fan, it happens all the time.
It happened in like Al Salvador and ship when they
had their economic crash. So I don't know, where do
you want to Where do you guys want to start?
I know you had a couple of different things that
you want that I want to talk about, Like preserving
(06:33):
food is a big one, and then I mean making
stuff and doing things is kind of they're sort of different.
Where would you like to actually start with that? I
think we can start with kind of the d I
Y element, branching off of our original discussion on primitive skills,
and then in like parts two, we can go born
to like food and like like like foraging, um and
preservation and stuff. Cool. I mean, so d I why um?
(06:58):
I guess now there's a lot of stuff about like
there's I don't know, there's all this stuff of like
survival skills and all this stuff, and both of us
kind of came into the idea of making stuff and
doing things by being punks, um, and it's kind of yeah,
having no money, but also just their d I Y
(07:20):
like do it yourself was a very like kind of
nineties punk thing that came into the mainstream. Like I
actually was pulling out some of my old books and
I think it's funny to see the like progression because
I have you know, the really lovely like food not
lawns that goes into a whole pile of really fantastic
things that came out that I don't know, the first
(07:43):
food not lawns House I saw at the town as
in was in like two thousand five or six, but
this book came out in two thousand and six. But
this was this entire movement of like making community and
doing and like how to do stuff yourself on your
front lawn. Yeah, and then of from eleven the bus
d i Y Guide to Life that includes everything from
(08:05):
like how to do worm composting to how to make
your own makeup and like finance House and that's that's
like the magazine. Yes, So it's kind of interesting because
it definitely like was the thing that I watched come
into the mainstream. But you know, it started as a
lot of punks trying to figure out how to do
(08:25):
things because they had no money. And but also different
from a lot of you know, like woodworking or craft
books that really are you know by these seven thousand
dollars worth of tools and now you too can learn, Yes,
And there's also there's also an ethos behind it, right
that like before I was, I came at it first
(08:47):
and foremost through being like a bike punk in the
in the late nineties, early two thousands being a bike
punk and the idea of like the d I y
ethos was less about the grid is going to collapse
and like everything is going to fall apart and you're
gonna need to survive by the skin of your teeth.
And it was a lot more you know, at the
(09:08):
tail end of the nineties and like the sort of
golden era of neoliberal capitalism and office space and that
whole cultural moment, the idea that life was alienated and
shitty and it felt better to know how to do
things that you needed in your day to day life
for yourself, using stuff you had made yourself or gotten
(09:30):
from your community members. Um. Yeah, resiliency is less about
knowing you have a pile of dried food in the
house and know more about looking at fresh food and knowing,
I know how to make that last the winter. Yeah.
And it's been interesting to see the way that like
as that has gotten kind of mainstreamed into like, you know,
the the what is it primitive. There's a bunch of
(09:52):
different like Primitive x y Z YouTube channels that get
lots of show and ship and as that all gets mainstreamed,
there's this idea of like expert teath that creeps back
into it, and d I Y was like firmly committed
to the idea that everybody could learn stuff and listening
to somebody who said they were an expert was a trap.
(10:12):
And a lot of that was coming out of like
the seventies when there was all of the like you know,
CULTI lifestyle ship that was like, hey, look we're going
to teach you how to change your life, and yeah,
we're gonna we're gonna buy up all this land and Antelope, Oregon,
and so d I Y was emphatically not that. It
was like, there's skills, and you can learn skills, and
the internet doesn't really exist yet or not really, so
(10:35):
you can read books about it and you can have
skill share because there wasn't Twitter. We also all had
a lot more time on our hands and like each
other more. But there's also expertise was something that was
handy to have, you know, like if I needed to
rebuild my wheel on my bike and respoke, it wanted
(10:57):
someone who knew how to do it. And so it's
good to have a people who had really intense, deep
knowledge of skills. But the idea that you would ask
someone like I need to change my bike tire two
because I popped it with everyone would have been kind
of like really really like everyone should know how to
do basic stuff and it's and it's okay. Like the
whole you know, Jack of All Trades was is as
(11:21):
a desirable goal, like it's okay to dabble in a
million little things and be kind of mediocre but have
a sort of baseline understanding of a bunch of stuff. Now,
you know, there's places that I kind of think that
we went too far, but also, you know, before the
American Healthcare Act, we all definitely did a lot of
(11:42):
at home medcare that we should not have. But there's
also a lot of low stakes places that I think
people have gotten away from just practicing and trying all
sorts of crafty stuff as an ethos that is actually
really good and there's no harm to learning things like that.
You're not going to afford anything, and the only thing
that's going to happen is you will have more skills
(12:02):
and more to offer the people around. There's this idea
under capitalism that we should all specialize because that is
like the most profit generating thing to do is just
(12:22):
specialize anything that makes you the most money, but it's like,
not only is it like not the best in a
dangerous situation to only know how to do one thing
that makes you money, but it's like it's not particularly
good for your soul either. And there's also lots of
different behavioral psychology, like group analysis of if you present
(12:44):
people with a situation that they feel unprepared for and
there's a person that they identify as an expert in
a group who they can defer to pretty much every time,
the group that's like, oh, we'll defer to this one
expert because they know everything and we'll just do whatever
they say ends up making worse decisions. Then if you
(13:05):
have a group where everybody feels like, oh, well, I
like I can at least get a handle on what's
going on and we can all talk through it and
like make make calls, deferring to experts doesn't necessarily help you.
Know that, there's obviously cases we've mentioned medical care already
where like there's actually knowledge is very important. Skill sets
(13:28):
are very important, But the idea that there's people who
are just like yeah, inherently more knowledgeable of things that
you couldn't possibly understand is so where where do you
recommend Like people start with like, like, you've got a
bunch of books right now, and obviously, if you can
afford books, that's a good call or libraries. A lot
(13:49):
of these books on a preserving food and like growing
stuff on your law, and but even if you don't
have a law and you can still like there's certain
like one thing that strikes me because we've been canning
and pickling a bunch lately, is you know, different vegetables
and fruits and whatnot are cheaper at different points in
the year. And even if you live in an apartment
in the inner city and will never have more than
(14:11):
a garden box at best, you can buy food when
it's cheap and preserve it um and not only save
yourself a little bit of money, but you can like also, uh,
you'll you'll understand every time you encounter preserved food, and
like a grocery store, you'll be looking at a thing
that you know where it comes from. It's not just
like a mystery jar of preserved food that was made
(14:32):
by some process of science. So I don't know, I'm
interested in Like where you guys someone coming in having
only uh specialized in whatever it is allowed them to
pay the rent. Where where where's your where's your recommended
start point for people? UM, I think it's picking something
that is low stakes that you enjoy. Like, honestly, one
(14:57):
of my friends, UM, her entry in to doing d
I Y stuff was, you know, she had lots of
makeup and everything, and she was like, I'm going to
make body scrubs? How do I do that? And you know,
looked up how to make body scrubs, how to make
you know, a lot of it is, oh, getting salt
and grinding up rosemary that she found in someone's front
(15:18):
yard and putting it together, you know, But just something
simple that you enjoy, that you would love to be
able to, you know, have a little bit more say
over because it's most basic. A lot of the d
I Y stuff is you can make something very specific
to what you like. So for myself, actually, one of
(15:38):
the first things I ever started doing was in high
school just altering clothing. I had an old I had
an old thirty dollar junk practice uh like kids sewing
machine and just the cheapest one that Sears used to sell,
and could definitely just take that and start putting scenes
(16:02):
in an altar clothing and like this shirt is now
a T shirt. It was long sleep before and that
also ties in with you know, d I I just
to sound like old punks for a minute. That d
I I definitely also came out of things like the
riot girl scene in a big way, and like the
attention to like body awareness and like moving away from
(16:22):
body negativity and the recognition that as a general rule,
off the rack clothes are not and certainly twenty years
ago were extra not actually designed to fit most people's bodies,
and it was hard to find clothes that fit you right.
And yeah, so like sewing was a big one. Um
(16:43):
bikes because we were broke and didn't have cars, so
figuring out how to fix bikes and you know, everything
that mechanically happens on a bike is right there and
you can see it happen, and it maybe requires a
screwdriver and then eventually maybe some other tools. But there's
lots of free resources. A lot most cities I've spent
any amount of time and you can find like you
can find like a community bike shop where if you
(17:05):
have to pay anything, it's very minimal, and a lot
of cases are just sort of like show up and
you know there's space to use. Yeah, when um, like,
I know in Santa Cruz there was the bike Church.
In Portland there's the bike Farm, and yeah, in Philly
there was also a bike church because it turns out
the basements of churches are There were a couple of
spots like that in Dallas, and it's uh yeah, And
(17:28):
I think it is like this mix of, like with
the body script stuff, like what is something that appeals
to you that you you're interested in, and also what
is with the bike stuff, what is something that's like
just doggedly practical, Like you get a bike, you need
a bike to get around, you should probably know how
to fix it on it. I think the reason I
say you should pick saying that appeals to you especially
is because a big thing with d I Y was
(17:53):
that you're doing it yourself. And there are so many
skills that are valuable to learn from other people. It
is wonderful to craft in community. It is wonderful to
work with other people in community. It's wonderful to teach
skills and gain them. But also I've seen this growing
idea with the as specialization for so many things, especially
(18:15):
services comes in that people are always like, oh wow, knitting.
I've always wanted to learn I need to take a
class in that, or I need to And it's really important,
I think, for people to realize that you can learn things.
We are very good at learning things, and you don't
necessarily need a teacher for more complex things you do.
But starting with something that you really like and that
(18:38):
you find really interesting, you've already thought about it. So
when you start with you know, for my friends, starting
with making bath salts and face masks and stuff, it
was something she had already been thinking about quite a
bit and thinking about stuff. So when she started looking
at recipes to mix and looking on the internet and
looking at ingredients, it was saying she already cared about.
So it's easier to learn something that you are interested in,
(19:02):
and it's easier to learn something that you want to do.
But we are all capable of learning for ourselves, not
every single thing, but especially just for craft projects. And
so starting with that so that you can pick up
a book, or you can read an article, or you
can watch a YouTube video and you don't need to
take some like hundred and fifty dollar a weekend class
(19:24):
before you can. It's you know, a big part of
the resiliency building like something you may scoff like when
you're thinking about survivalism and talking about like making bath scrubs,
But a lot of the skills you would learn putting
that together are useful in making like a salve or
making like a soap, making soap things that you actually need.
(19:45):
Like when I was traveling, I lived on the road,
like out of a car and out of backpacks for
off and on all over the world for years, and
I would make my own medicated because we would get
would get cuts and scrapes and rashes, and we were
poor as ship and often there weren't doctors where we were.
So I learned how to use things like plantain and
comfrey and yarrow and like bees wax and stuff in
order to make medicated sabs and it it was something
(20:06):
that interested me. But like there's also a lot of
like there's there's a number of roots into learning that
sort of thing. And if you're learning how to make
again something as simple as like a face scrub, learning
where to find that information for free learning some of
the basic techniques in order to do that. That learning
how to learn is is applicable in a wider variety
(20:28):
of skill sets, and it I think it's so important
to focus on what are you what are you interested
in first, as as opposed to just being like okay
at first. Now I have to learn how to like
splint a broken arm, because like ship is gonna hit
the fans, like, well, maybe focus on something that's more
exciting to you first, and and and and build time
in your life to learn things. That's an enjoyable process.
(20:50):
One of the first things I did, like years ago,
was I learned to so specifically to make a cause
play because you know, so I would just I would
make me and my whole family to an outfits for
comic Con. So every year I would, I would sew
us whole whole new things. But then not only taught
me sewing, it taught me how to do like like
vacuum forming, to molding, how to use like a heat gun,
(21:10):
how to use like all these other types of tools. Um,
how do you like molding and castings, Like all of
these types of things. I learned just wanting to make
silly costumes. But now they're like, you know, useful in
a lot a lot a lot of other ways. And
that can be that can be expensive at the high
end when you're like vacuum forming and stuff your storm
trooper armor. But the cheapest side of that thing again,
(21:33):
you can get a basic hand sewing kit for like
five dollars from a Walmart. And there's also maker to
your Ship, and there's maker spaces and like YouTube will
do the teaching. You don't have to pay for a teacher.
The Taliban learned how to fly helicopters on YouTube. You
can learn how to fix your pants. And then I
think also you mentioned specialization before. It's come up a
couple of times um, and there is you know, the
(21:55):
idea of specialization. The rationale behind specialization is, oh, well,
you'll be better at it because that's what you do
all the time. But that cuts both ways because if
you only do one thing all the time, then as
you know, whatever the maximum threshold of your abilities is
that's required of you, that becomes your baseline, like whatever
(22:15):
in your day to day life, whatever it is that
you're being asked to do, that's what you feel capable of.
And on the flip side, there's with with the d
I Y approach, with like teaching yourself ship learning interesting ship.
It's also practical and important and useful to be like
this is a thing that I'm gonna do on a
regular basis so I'll get better at it. But also
(22:36):
it's not you know, there was you know, the whole
idea of there's what you do and then there's your job,
and that these need not be the same thing because
you want to be able to think think through things
in a way that's not the way you're supposed to
process things to make your boss happy. That it is
not just what you do when you clock in. You
are more than your career. More than your career and
(22:59):
in your skill set need not be purely extracted, as
you know, not just like Okay, I have to go
do the thing in order to make money and then
everything else's consumption. Like you can you can transition, like
we're but and this is not a societal level solution
because we talk a lot about like, well, yeah, you're
not gonna you're not gonna make small personal changes to
(23:19):
fix climate change, but changing your own particular attitude on
how you approach the world from one that is I
I produce and that I consume to to when we're
you're thinking more about resiliency and what do I know
how to do and what can I learn how to do?
UM is helpful in a variety of ways on the
(23:51):
note of you know, the transferability of skills and recognizing
that you already do things on a day to day
basis that requires specialized knowledge and require skill sets. UM.
One of the things that I try and trot out
at every possible opportunity. I worked with somebody in one
of those volunteer bike shop spaces down New Orleans years ago, UM,
(24:12):
and the whole purpose of that particular space was to
make the skill set of bike repair more accessible to
a population that relied on likes to get places. And
one of the folks I worked there with was like
a very fami lady and was great because we would
have young girls come into the shop and be like,
(24:32):
my bike doesn't work. Somebody fixed my bike. My bike
doesn't work. I don't know how to fix a bike.
And she was the one who would just be like,
your tires flat and they're like, yeah, I don't know
how to fix it. Can you fix it? And she'd
be like, well, you're wearing press on nails, right, And
I'd be like yeah, I'm like cool, how do you
put on your press on nails, and they'd walked through
the steps of like, well, you stand your nails, and
then you put the glue on your nails, and then
(24:54):
you hold the press on nails on your fingernails for
a little while and let them set, and then you're
good to go. And it's like, great, you've just described
exactly how you patch a bike inner two. So now
we just need to get the bike inner two out,
and here's the part that corresponds to your nail, and
here's the part of the corresponse, like here's the glue
and here's the you know, it's the same process. We
just have to get the bike inner two out and
(25:15):
then back in again. But you already know how to
do the part where you make the bike to work again,
and that does hit on another important like you know,
apocalypse or whatever survival point where again all of our
like fiction and movies focuses on like knowing how to
use a gun or like being a woodsman. One of
the most useful skills, maybe the most useful skill you
can have in any disaster situation, is being able to
(25:36):
teach people, like like knowing how to understand figure out
what people know and how to get them the additional
information they need in order to be more resilient and competent,
because you're always better in a community of people who
know to handle their ship than alone. And it builds
on itself too. You know, we both come from different backgrounds,
but as we've been together and with the different trainings
(25:58):
that we've had in just light, the projects that we
take on have become more and more complex. So you know,
where I used to like to practice gardening and stuff
and doing a little bit of woodworking and things, and
now you know, we're doing various construction projects that we're
kind of self taught, and we have some various home
(26:19):
depot books on how to do them. But it's it
doesn't feel nearly as intimidating because we've done steps to
go to it, and because it's not an all or nothing,
you don't have to suddenly be like I'm going to
d I why my entire life. Like I definitely get
that way sometimes where I'm like, I want to one
day have everything in my house be made by someone
that I know or myself. And it's really lovely to
(26:40):
know crafts people or to you know, make do sit
down at a pottery wheel and make your own bowls
or whatever. But a lot of it is about practicing
stuff when it's not an emergency so that when you
later on have need or you have the ability, you
have the time, like you can do a bunch of
different things. So you know, we refloored. The room that
(27:03):
we're in right now a process, but we didn't get
there from nothing, And we've both done lots of different
construction and measuring and other things in little bits just
for fun, for work for other stuff beforehand, And a
lot of these projects are things that are fun to
do as a one off as a project. I've done,
(27:25):
you know, embroidery with my kids just for fun, not
because they need to suddenly embroider all of their clothing
or they have to sew everything, but it's because it's
a fun thing to do on a rainy day. Or
you know, try fixing a book, not because there's no
ability to go on Amazon and order another book. But hey, look,
(27:47):
I just we didn't add one thing to the landfill
ways and we don't have to fix all of the
stuff we have. It's a one time craft. But then
later on when stuff's falling apart or when we have
supply chain issues, or when stuff's not there, it's handy
to know, like, oh, you know what, Like we're having
water rationing right now, because during the one of the
droughts I grew up in California, we had water rationing
(28:09):
and it was my mom hauled out of the basement
my grandmother's old ringer machine and we were doing the
laundry and that because it could conserved a hell of
a lot of water and you could use the same
water for load after load. It's good to just have
those things just kind of on hand that you've tried,
because when an emergency hits, you don't want to be
trying to search the internet are looking for something because
(28:31):
you've never done it before and now it's necessary. And
it's it's again to the point of like how the
how collapse really looks versus how it's often pictured. You're
not trying to replicate when you're when you're doing your
own laundry that way, you're not trying to replace civilization.
You're patching a hole, like and and that's a lot
of building resiliency is knowing that you have. It's like
(28:52):
it's being able to fix a bike tire, it's patching
a hole and I do want to acknowledge that like
this is a little bit more outside of the dead
center of mainstream in you know, the United States and
some other like wealthy industrialized countries, and it's not like
it has never stopped being the way most people in
(29:14):
the world. Kind of one story to tell from these people.
I was billeted with an Iraq. These these guys were
like pulling people out of air strike craters every day,
and we wanted to watch TV one nine. We were
in like a bombed out mosque that isis had been
using and they had a refrigerator that worked in a
TV that isis had cut the chords with. And this
guy just started pulling chords out of the fridge in
(29:37):
about five minutes, had the TV working, had like hooked it,
lashed everything together. It was like he wasn't a TV
repairment or refridge. He just knew how electricity and ship
worked and was able to figure out like, Okay, I
can just put all this ship together. We're good to go.
And and just also to loop background to the whole,
like survival mentality a little bit. One of the things
that like people that we've worked with, people who like
(29:59):
have been in emergency situations that require you know, complex
skill sets and things of One of the big things
is to have a role that you are competent in
that you are ready to fulfill, so you don't have
to figure out your first step. You can get moving.
(30:21):
You can figure out your first step. So, for example,
in the you know, the supply chain issues that hit
at the start of COVID and are recurring. Um the
idea of like oh there's no way to like there's
no laundry stap. Say okay, well we've got borax and
these others and some making soda borax, right, we can
(30:46):
we can make our own laundry detergent in a pinch
and it'll work well enough. Cool. Don't have to have
that be the thing that stresses us out and like
adds to our like paralysis. Yeah, and get A huge
part of is even how you approach to the problem.
It's not freaking out like oh my god, there's no
laundry soap. Hell am I going to clean the clothes.
It's being like, oh, there's no laundry soap, I'm gonna
(31:07):
go online because we still have that and try to
figure out either other things that can make laundry soap
that there are and like it's it's accepting. Like you
talk about like wanting to be competent in a role,
you don't have to know what that is from the start,
as long as like the starting point isn't I'm going
to be the medic I'm going to be this, I'm
gonna be the food or it's like no, I'm going
to start learning how to do things I don't know
(31:29):
how to do, and over a period of time, if
I am dedicated that I will figure out the thing
that I want to get most competent at. Yeah, because
I mean none of none of what we've been talking
about in terms of the various crafts and projects that
we've undertaken are things that are like our primary function
in the world. It's just like, well, at some point
(31:52):
it seemed like it was worth doing, and so we
did some of it, and then we kept doing it
now and there's always pretty good at literally if anything
we've talked about, there's the you're, I don't know, bougie
hipster version of like doing it expensively. Even with like woodworking,
there could be a dirt cheap I built a table
for almost nothing when I was younger, because it was like, well,
(32:12):
I found this would that the city chopped down, and
I bought sand paper and stain for fifteen dollars and
then I got like a fucking base for my Ikea
and I had a functional table and I figured it
out using YouTube. And it's you know, not as good
a table as I could have made if I had
ten or thousands of dollars in woodworking tools, but I
had a table for years because of it um And
(32:34):
it's it's accepting the because I think people do get
freaked out. There's such an emphasis on like having the gear,
getting the equipment, stockpiling things, and like, really stockpiling competency
is better because yeah, and I think the Amazon wish
list ability to just be like, oh I want this
specific thing, I can in three seconds look it up
(32:54):
online and find the exact thing that I want definitely
pushes in the opposite direction and makes people, well, a
little less resilient in that capacity because there's less of
that idea that you can just have stuff. And I
would just say, if people want to get started with it,
it's really pick something low stakes, pick something simple, because
you build the abilities, you build the ability to learn
(33:19):
and um I had to explained to me once that
it's like a hangar. Every skill you get X as
a hangar, and having really basic simple things is actually
super necessary because even even the like hardcore primitive skills.
I have some amazing books that I bought when I
was eighteen, and I remember I had them and I
(33:41):
looked through and I read it and I was like,
this is like reading magic. I understand absolutely none of it.
And after a few years of doing things, not even
necessarily traditional skills, but just things practicing stuff, picking stuff,
there was so much more framework that I had that
(34:02):
I looked through it and suddenly there was stuff concepts
that I could hang all of these incredible skills on.
And we're like, oh, that never made sense to me.
I understand it now because I've done simpler things and
starting with thing that doesn't seem like overwhelming to learn
something simple and something something low stakes, something that if
(34:23):
you utterly mess it up, if you have ah, what
are the like like the regrets the like craft epiccraft
fails that it's okay, it's not a big deal because
failing is part of learning, and so pick things that
it's okay to fail at as your as your projects
and and don't as many of us did in the
(34:43):
late nineties and early two thousand's when we didn't have
health insurance of any description, you know, experiment on ourselves
and our friends with herbs because we didn't have healthcare,
access to doctors. Avoid doing that is not low stakes. Yeah,
and I'm about to go do and surgery on my
own infected wound now that you've told me this, and
I'm really excited. Excited I got I got an exact deal.
(35:07):
I got some vodka. At least we're good to go. No,
the key is really hot glue same as surgical stitches.
I have similar not hot, because then it sterilizes the
wound doesn't stick to anything. This is how I know
you are not a crafter. Is hot glue does not anything.
(35:30):
You just you squirt it in there, You get it
in there real good, and then you cover it with
with superglue. I do have a grand that has plug
in the world. I would put superglue in first. I
do have a grandpa that has used superglue so many
times to glue his body back together. It's actually what
it was made for. Ye, that's very funny. It's effective
at that anyway, here's armatical advice. Yeah, don't do any
(35:53):
of the things that were just said. But if you
do want to learn how to do suits, you you
can find guides where people do it on chicken and
which is how if you're an e m T you
learn how to do it. And it's that's a that
is a skill you can build for very little money.
That's useful and you don't have to start on your
friends bodies. And I will put in a plug for like,
wilderness first aid courses are not cheap and there are
(36:16):
some real good ones out there, and as a as
like a baseline that is a real handy and helps
you think about things creatively because wilderness first aid unlike
an ambulance driver. An ambulance driver is driving in a
box with all the tools they need, and wilderness first
aid the assumption is don't have a box. You don't
have and so you have to work it out probably
(36:37):
you know, uh, some plantain or something or some the
right fucking kind of SAP. There's like ship you can
use and which we will not proceed to attempt to
lift off here and provide medical advice. Don't go to
a doctor, no use pine needles, make your own needle
t don't cure your COVID. Find a bee hive and
(37:01):
start sucking. Any other sources are any other sources making
stuff and doing things from way back in the day.
Definitely recommend that one UM country know how like there's
some a lot of old craft books actually, UM the
(37:22):
entire back collection of the Mother Earth magazine skills stuff
like I have definitely made any studying magazine, not Emma
Goldman's Anarchists newspaper, but I've definitely made solar powered dehydrators
out of cardboard boxes and saran rap from the from
Mother Earth magazine stuff And it's absolutely fantastic. The just
(37:44):
old school guide books UM, and but also anything that's
listened as like d I Y guides that have stuff
that you would like to make and like to do
are great. The library is great. Use the library. Research
librarians at the library are great. And if you're like,
I'm trying to learn how to do this thing, can
you help me find books on it? Research librarians at
(38:05):
the library they have doctorates in how to help you
do that, and that's they just sit at desks all
day waiting for me and that's that. And what you'll
learn from them about how to answer those questions for
yourself is also useful in their long run. Well, go
out and make a reflux. Still is that legal? Well no,
not in most places, but it's easy. You just need
(38:27):
a box inside of a box, and you pour old
beer in the center box and that's like saran wrap.
On topic,
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
Show Links
AboutPopular Podcasts
True Crime Tonight
If you eat, sleep, and breathe true crime, TRUE CRIME TONIGHT is serving up your nightly fix. Five nights a week, KT STUDIOS & iHEART RADIO invite listeners to pull up a seat for an unfiltered look at the biggest cases making headlines, celebrity scandals, and the trials everyone is watching. With a mix of expert analysis, hot takes, and listener call-ins, TRUE CRIME TONIGHT goes beyond the headlines to uncover the twists, turns, and unanswered questions that keep us all obsessed—because, at TRUE CRIME TONIGHT, there’s a seat for everyone. Whether breaking down crime scene forensics, scrutinizing serial killers, or debating the most binge-worthy true crime docs, True Crime Tonight is the fresh, fast-paced, and slightly addictive home for true crime lovers.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.