Part One: The Diggers, the Levelers, the Ranters, and John Darnielle

Margaret talks with Mountain Goats singer John Darnielle about the wild-eyed radicals of the English Civil War.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to cool people who did cool stuff.
I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and every week I bring
new stories about revolution and revolt and weird folks and
basically whoever I think it's cool. And this week I'm
very excited because I have someone we're all to talk
to you as a guest. John Darielle is a novelist
and a musician, probably most famous for his work as

(00:21):
a songwriter and singer in The Mountain Goods. John, how
are you doing today? I am decent. Also, I'm tired.
We were on the U in a different time zone
earlier this week, so so yeah, I'm good. Getting ready
for tour. We we leave for tour on Saturday. We
just came back from tour. It's I don't know what

(00:41):
it's like in your business, but in the out there
on stages business, this is a subject of conversation for
everybody right now that like, yeah, we're all hitting it
so hard it's really unhealthy. Um. But but I I
know TV people are doing the same things, theater people
of music people like everybody. Because we lost a year,
right and it's like I didn't you know, I went

(01:02):
from a reliable paycheck to pretty much nothing for so.
I mean, I was lucky that we did some livestream
concerts that helped. But I had three shows in January
that I was glad I did. But but other than that,
I like now, like, yeah, we don't get to rest
for their decades. So yeah, I guess that makes sense. Um.
I did my first reader like author event um last

(01:26):
week for the first time since the pandemic started. Congratulations.
It's very nice to get back to it, although it
I don't know, I don't know, it's just weird to
go out in front of people after a while, you know, Yeah,
I know, it's it's an adjustment. It's we went out
during the Delta Surges when we finally got back, and
it was a very uh rich emotional experience to be back.

(01:49):
I mean, so great to be back on stage. But
also you know, it was it was getting more and
more unsafe by the day. Yeah. Yeah. And and then
you know, obviously the political environment that we've been living
with it's very bad. So what I's just so bad.
It's like among Mountain ghost people, the amount of blowback

(02:10):
we got for asking for vaccines and stuff was almost
nothing compared to like if a country artist asks, you know,
somebody with a with a broader base and perhaps more
you know, I don't like the word traditional, but you
know people who might lean more conservative. I think among
Mountain Gohoes fans lean lean pretty left of center for
the most part. You know, there's one or two people

(02:31):
who were mad. It's like, hey, man, you can be mad.
I don't really feel any any any desire to like,
you know, it's funny these people get on you with
this sort of like you know, hey, you're gonna lose
a fan. You know what. That's fine. If your your
fanhood is contingent on me not stating, you know, a

(02:56):
simple matter of conviction about public health. I'm nurse, right,
then then that's fine. It's not like I'm not really
worried about an exodus of like, you know, I can
lose all these fans because you asked for masks, masks
of vaccines. No, I'm not worried about that. Have fun,
go listen to somebody else. But but it was that
sort of environment, you know, it's like you get it.

(03:17):
So it's been complicated. Yeah, I mean I can imagine
they didn't pay a lot of attention to the lyrics.
I feel like your songs are about let's all take
care of each other, you know, you know, so, I
mean the thing is but that's interesting to me. I
don't know if you play Magic, um, but one of
the things that people who play Magic will say who've
been playing, is like there's a lot of reasons to

(03:37):
be into it, right, Like, it's not just people who
want to win. That's a style of play. Maybe you
care the most about winning, but maybe you care more
about the social aspect in the gameplay is fun, but
it's a style of gameplay that allows for a certain
type of interaction, like or maybe it's the aesthetics of it,
the the the art and so forth. It's like it's
a place to gameplay where the art is more immersive

(03:57):
than if you're playing D and D where all the
arts inside you're head. I mean, you have obviously books,
but there's there's so many reasons you might want to
play Magic. And it's the same with music and honestly
with books. Is like, you know, people might be into
your stuff for a bunch of reasons, right, So I've
learned that over the years that like, and it's fine
if somebody, you know, if somebody has you know, I'm

(04:19):
fifty five and so like, I'm not so hard line
that I say you have to be left wing to
like my stuff. There's some basic stuff, you know, it's
like the real bedrock stuff that that people on left say. Look,
if you know, if you can't be decent to people,
then fuck you. If you can't accept people's like right

(04:39):
to self determination, then suck you. Right. But but but again,
we're living in a more polarizing time right now. It's
a it's a it's a different sort of thing. But
but yeah, but that I would think that people who
would be and myself would understand. Of course I'm going
to be asking for masks and vaccines, of course I am.
So yeah, No, it doesn't surprise me at all. Um.

(04:59):
I I don't play magic, but I did get to
complete a bucket list item that I didn't know I had,
and I wrote an official Magic the Gathering short fiction
for like a for one of the cards. I wonder
if I read it with a short fiction piece, Yeah,
it was like it's published. It's so it's I didn't
write the teaser text at the bottom of a card,
the flavor text you yeah, sorry, Yeah, it shows that

(05:20):
I haven't played in a long time. I played when
I was in middle school and and I haven't played since.
But I was really excited to impress middle school me
by getting to write official Magic the guy that's cool.
That's super cool. Okay, So I want to get the
one fan girl thing out of the way before we
start on this story, which is that, um, some of
your songs about desperate hope are the reason that some

(05:42):
of my friends are alive. So I have a ship,
well my pleasure, but I have a stick about that
that I usually have to deliver individually, and I'm happy
to broadcast it a little further. I like, I wrote
stuff that's useful, right, But I really strongly resist the
notion that that then I get any credit for doing

(06:04):
anything besides something I was gonna do anyway. Right. I
didn't reach out and touch anybody, right, I just did
a thing that I hope was useful and that I
have a desire to be useful. That's maybe commendable. I
don't go further than commendable, right. Uh. The notion that
I'm special in any way for doing that absolutely not right,
I think right now, and people, those of us who

(06:26):
are weirder I think started doing a sort of mock
uh celebrity fetishization about three years ago that now has
has absolutely blossomed into any person I like is expected
to be perfect, and I think they are perfect because
they did work that I like. I think all that's toxic, right,
I should be understood as a person with the same
terrible body smells as everybody else, uh you know, and

(06:50):
and the same flaws as anybody else. So so I
didn't save anybody, but I'm extraordinarily grateful that the stuff
I did was useful to them, because the fact of
the matter is, if a piece of art saved your life,
no it didn't. You used it for that function, right,
And he's a super important distinction. The piece of art
can't do anything by itself, is useless, right, It's only

(07:12):
useful when a person cracks it open, like a person
breaking an egg. And egg isn't nutritious until you break it.
And I mean you can eat it raw, but break
it and do something with it, right, Otherwise it's just
sitting there. It can't be praised as anything. And so
so that's a stick that I go into it like.
I'm very grateful for the news, but I always want
people to know you did that. I didn't really do

(07:33):
any I mean I did something. I'm glad I made
a thing that's cool and useful, But like, I never
I have been saved from freezing to death by being
inside the house that I'm in. But I'm never going
to look at the architect and tell him, hey, and
you know, you saved my life. I was going to
freeze otherwise. It's like, you know, but but I'm super
glad that they built a house. So that's that sounds

(07:54):
very defensive, but it's because it's important to me, because
I think that when we idolize, we do ourselves and
our politics and incredible disservice right that we should we
should understand that that every step toward idolization is to
be heavily interrogated. It's one of my big things. So no, no,
that makes sense. And it's like, but we can be
grateful that architects built houses because we need houses to

(08:17):
stay warm and and like so in some ways, it's
just like I I use that as this is one
of the reasons that art matters, you know, Yeah, oh absolutely,
I don't look my darkest hour in recent memory anyway.
A decade or so ago, I spent listening to the
same Aimy Grant song over and over again, and it
was always Rich mull And song that she sang. And

(08:39):
when I saw her live, just the sight of her,
you know, then that's iconic. That's literally, you know, that's
what iconography is. That like a person comes to represent
a series of experiences and values and moments for you.
But it's important for us to remember that the icon
doesn't actually have the power. You put the power into
the Yeah, totally, totally. I think about this all the time.

(09:03):
I can tell and I'm glad though, you know, it's
like that's why I can tell. I feel safe and
telling you that. Then someone's like, oh, yes, I am
the savior, you know, Um well, I mean the thing is,
I think it's something anybody who makes anything, including podcasts,
reckons with. Eventually it's like, what do you say to
somebody who, I mean, who thinks you know you saved
my life? I did not. If I gave you CPR,

(09:25):
then I saved your fucking life, absolutely, And you can
say that to me. But songs aren't CPR. They are
they are pieces of work that the listener then elects
or does not elect to find what's already inside themselves, right,
And I think that's so important to say that I'm
willing to do ten minutes the subject every time, every
time somebody tells me that my stulf was useful to them,

(09:46):
because because I do think the way that we contextualize
art and artists remains profoundly unhealthy and bad. No that
that makes a lot of sense to me, even though
I benefit from that in every way. It's like people people,
you know, I mean is understandable because your viewers can't
your listeners can't see, but like my hair is genuinely
iconic at this point, and like you would actually probably

(10:07):
save people's lives. Just I mean, it's so it's astonishing,
it's really good. Everyone should go out and see this tour,
just just see. The thing is I actually have to
have it trimmed on Friday or Thursday. I'm really hoping
it's not too so it's what's so thick, It's just
I mean, oh my god, that's what I thought this
podcast was about. For growing out my hair. So yeah, um, well,

(10:34):
I don't know about the hair length of today's heroes unfortunately,
because there wasn't a lot of photography around and the
Civil War era England. But that's right, Well years are
we talking about here? So today we're going to be
talking about some of the many groups in history who
have used religion as their impetus to do cool things
like three People's equals fight against the formation of capitalism

(10:55):
as we understand it today, because we're going to talk
about the English Civil War of the sixteen forties and fifties,
but not in a battle to battle, blow to blow
kind of way, which if people are into they can
go find that content. That's great, um. But instead I
want to talk about all of the weird religious and
social movements that popped up during that time. Okay, they

(11:16):
there are the forebearers of everything from Western style democratic
republics to anarchism and socialism, to environmentalism to free love.
And so we're going to talk about the Levelers, the Diggers,
and the ranters. All right, have you heard of these folks?
I have. I'm not I'm not super conversant. I wouldn't
be able to give you any introductory remarks on them,

(11:38):
but I've heard it. Especially the Diggers are known. I think,
don't the Diggers uh prefigure the Wobblies at some point
with the Wobblies look back to the Diggers. You know,
it wouldn't surprise me at all, because they're doing fairly
similar stuff in a lot of ways. But I don't
specifically know of the connection, although they do have similarly
funny names. And and one of the things that I

(12:00):
learned by doing this is that, well, we'll get into this,
but no one gets to name themselves in this time period.
Everyone gets names they don't want. But you know, I'm
kind of for it. Yeah, okay. So so when I
was a kid and I was learning U S history,
I always learned about the Puritans, right, this poor oppressed
minority that fled to England, presumably fearing for their lives

(12:21):
or some ship and then or at least we're searching
for religious freedom. But what one of the things that
I didn't learn was that one of the main religious
freedoms that a lot of the Puritans wanted was the
freedom to not let other people practice their own religions. Yes,
and one of their biggest problems with the English king
was that the English king was too religiously tolerant. Yeah, no,

(12:44):
isn't so like when we think about the Puritans. It's
interesting because you know, I think the image of the
bay Flower and the early colonies. You were all smart
enough to know that these were people just placing Native
Americans violently and so forth. But but beyond that, aren't
the aren't the witch hunters? Aren't they Puritans? Yeah? Yeah, totally, yeah,
I mean, I mean also Catholics and but yeah, extraordinarily

(13:06):
violent people. Catholic still were pretty marginal. This is still
in England. Well yeah, actually, yeah, they weren't in Scotland.
I think that I actually don't know as much about
the Catholic part of the witch hunting on the British Isles,
but I think in Scotland they were up to it,
but I'm not sure. Yeah, no, the Puritans. They also
I actually cut this whole part of the script out
because it was too long, but they the first thing

(13:27):
they did when they came to power in England. Oh
that's the other thing is they don't tell us that
the Puritans actually came to power. That's how oppressed they were,
is that they very quickly after deposed the king. This
is the whole English Civil War is about, is the
Puritan's overthrowing the king and creating a Puritan society and
outlawing Christmas. Oh well yeah, well, I mean Christmas. Christmas
is a weird anyway, right, Yeah, I'm not I'm not

(13:50):
that mad at people at Christians going look, you know,
this is this is not actually what it's about. And
I enjoy Christmas. But I get where they're coming from. Yeah, okay,
fair enough, Okay, So the in the midst of all
this uppeople right, um, you've got genuinely cool people did
some genuinely cool stuff, which is the name of the podcast.
So that's focus on um. And but before I can

(14:12):
talk about today's here is too much, I have to
introduce the English Civil War, or what's properly more properly
known as the War of Three Kingdoms, since it drags
Ireland and Scotland down with it too. There's three of them,
they're really close together, three different English Civil Wars, and
then all of these other wars that happened, and and
they ended up fascinating, not in any of the ways

(14:33):
that I expected them to be fascinating when I first
started researching this. No one who's listening to this will
be surprised to know that I'm not personally a big
fan of monarchy. Um so I my initial assumption anytime
I hear about people overthrowing a king is that, while
I'm on that side, the side it's overthrowing the king.
And the shortest way to describe the English Civil Wars

(14:54):
are England didn't want a king anymore, so they got
rid of their king by killing them. And it sounds
good me right so far, but it ends up way
messier than that. So in the mid seventeenth century England
had a king, Charles the First, and he was supposed
to have a parliament that let other people have a

(15:14):
say in decision making, that he could call up every
now and then to call them up and have them
pass taxes and things like that. Parliament had been around
for since the thirteenth century. But Charles the First didn't
like other people telling what to do, so he just
dissolved parliament. He just didn't call it for eleven years
from sixteen forty, we had no way to call for attacks,

(15:37):
so he started doing all of these other tricky things
to try and get money, which just ended up pissing
everyone off. He would do things like he would find
everyone who missed his coronation in order to get money
from them. I mean I I do that too. Yeah okay, Well, um,
I shouldn't tell you about missing your coronation then, uh
speaking empling artists', Um, if you don't show up for

(15:59):
the coronation, I can't really be held responsible for my behavior. Yeah. Yeah,
Like everyone has to buy a Mountain Goats ticket whether
or not they're coming. I think that isn't the way
that it's to be. It's fair. Yeah okay, But the
other thing that you should do is that you should
charge people money for not building boats. Um, because I

(16:19):
believe everyone is obliged to build boats and give them
to you, even if they live in landlocked areas. And
so that was the other thing he did is he
would charge people weird. He basically found every single loophole
to try and make people have to give him money.
He sold monopolies to various people, and which of course,
like jacked up the prices for different commodities, pisces everyone off.

(16:40):
He claims a ton of land as royal forest and
then turns around and sells it off or finds people
for using it, and he just he's not so good, right,
And then Scotland invades England over some religious ship. Our
king didn't have enough money for war to be caves in.
He calls a parliament. Parliament is like, what we want
more power. Kings like I don't want to give you power.

(17:02):
So they go to war, Parliament and the king against
each other. The first Civil War was sixty two is
sixteen forty six. Most of England wanted to stay the
funk out of this war, Like most of the people
in England wanted to stay the funk out of this
war because it was a war basically between the nobility
supporting the king and then the rich who were supporting Parliament,

(17:23):
and most people weren't nobility or rich. One of my
favorite groups that came out of this that I want
to know more about, there's this group called the club Men,
and they formed all over England to try and protect
themselves and protect their communities from the rape and pillage
and slaughter and all the terrible stuff that armies do.
And so these people basically formed to like protect their

(17:45):
communities while they tried to stay out the hell out
of this war. Thousands of them fought tooth and nail
with like cudgels and sides against professional soldiers and I
I want to know more about them in one day
to an episode about them, but that's all I know
about them to say overall, the king is more populist
than the rural areas supported him, while the middle classes

(18:05):
in the city supported Parliament. The king loses, he gets
and thrown in jail. That's civil war one. But that's
not enough civil wars for them. So the king from captivity,
he talks the Scots into invading England again to put
him back on the throne. He loses again, and this
time Parliament is like, look, we tried throwing you in
jail and you still managed to invade us, so we're

(18:28):
gonna kill you. So they killed the king and this
is a very big deal. Later, all of these people
get in a lot of trouble for regicide. His kid
literally impossible to hear the word regicide without remembering a
Simpson's bit you know this one? No, please tell it
to me. You don't know this. Where they're calling like
nine one one, and they get a and they get

(18:49):
a they get a voice menu like to if you
if you know the to him, but the crime being committed,
please press right, and then mashing buttons like they need
to get through this emergency. They hit a button and
the voices you have selected regicide if you know the
name of the king or queen being reposed press one.
I can never hear regicide without thinking of that. Now,

(19:10):
I'm just imagining Homer or whatever being like Charles the first,
Charles the First, I feel it might be the episode.
It probably hasn't aged, will or Homer gains too much
weight to to go to the office. He's working from home, right, Yeah,
that that yep, that wouldn't age. Well, okay, So so
after Homer reports that Charles the First has been killed

(19:34):
Charles the Second, who I guess might be Bart in
this particular story, he says, well, I guess I'm the
king now, right, And so back to war we go. English.
I think this is yes Civil War three, and the
Scots and the Irish are on the King's side because
overall he's a little bit more sympathetic to the Catholics
and stuff. Um, and the Scots are a little bit

(19:54):
more split religiously the Highland. The Highland Scots are more Catholic,
the Littland Scots are more Protestant. And there's all kinds
of stuff I do not understand about what's going on
in Scotland at this time. I've spent Yeah, the stuff
is incredibly complicated. I know, whenever historical novels that have
this as a background, just getting the basics into your skull,
the stuff that you sort of have to have, you

(20:15):
know that you have to have at the ready, it's
really hard. So yeah, I've spent so much time listening
and reading about this part of it, and I'm just
kind of in the end, I was like, got it.
The Highland Scots are Catholic and the Lowland Scots are Protestant,
and that's as far as I can. Well. The other
thing is funny. It's like, so if you read fantasy

(20:36):
novels or anything like that, you know it's clearly people
who are into this kind of thing. Oh yeah, okay, look,
you must want to have to memorize a bunch of
a bunch of habit the ready details before any story happens.
You're gonna want to you must be a person who
likes that. And then when I when I write fantasy,
I try to actually be able to drop the writer
the reader directly in instead of the like five pages

(21:01):
of context before we get into it. And so that's
how I ended up with this script where I'm like, look,
I don't know, Scotland's a fucking mess, you know. So
since the Irish are fighting for the king, the Parliamentary
Army invades and genocides Ireland, one of to at least
two genocides of England, Poles and Ireland over the centuries.

(21:22):
And because Ireland had gotten kind of independent during the
Civil Wars, the Catholics were in charge. Oliver Cromwell, he's
in charge of the Parliamentarians. He invades with his army
called the New Model Army, which makes me really sad
because I don't know if you know this band New
Model Army, remember New Model Army there from back in
the Yeah, you're still around though, I think still the

(21:44):
guys still doing the thing, So yeah they are. And
there there's some of my favorite musicians and I always
figured they were named after something really cool, and uh,
there were parts of the New Model Army that were
really cool, especially from an English point of view, but
from an Irish point of view, they if they killed
somewhere between the Irish population's at Yeah. Um, but some

(22:08):
of the what we'll talk about the good New Model
army people in this episode, so to try and reclaim
maybe like if mountain goats came and killed everyone, you know,
it's just it's no good. So Cromwell just he storms
around Ireland and he murders whole towns in order to
restore Protestant and therefore directly colonial rule um of Ireland.
And he does it to try and stop Ireland from

(22:30):
supporting the Royalists. But he's also doing it because he
just hates Catholics. And also he has to rob all
the Catholic landowners in order to pay everyone in the
army and like support his whole war. He basically has
to go rob Ireland. I don't know, not my favorite guy.
And anyone who has supported an independent Ireland had the
property sold off. Catholic, even Catholic landowners who tried to

(22:52):
stay neutral, they wanted to side with their class interests
instead of their national interests or or whatever the religion
and cultural interests, they get the property sold off literally
just for being Catholics. Catholics were forced to go live
only in Western Ireland and bounties were put on priest's head,
they were executed. And this post you're saying, right, this

(23:15):
mid This is way before the Potato genocide sixteen four
day is yeah, this is during the English Civil War. Yeah.
And one of the things that I found that kind
of confused me or I kind of so after Cromwell wins,
about thirty thousand Irish people keep fighting as guerilla fighters
against the English, and the name of this group are

(23:36):
the Tories, because it's an it's an Irish word that
means outlaw or pursuer. And then of course later this
gets turned into the word for right wing English people, um,
because they were softer and Catholicism, and I think basically
people were like and insulting them by basically being like

(23:57):
Europe you know, Irish bog dweller, you best or whatever.
You know. It's so, it's just it's so interesting that like,
well we I mean loosely, UK British Isles politics are
so they feel so much more complex to me than
than ours, which are also they have their own complexities,
but like the amount of stuff you have to keep

(24:17):
track of is pretty intense. Yeah, and that's why I'm
trying to like run through context. This is the Yeah,
the which side is, you know, and a lot of
it doesn't even map to right and left very well, right,
because again you have this like pro democracy movement who
then turns around and you know, cements the colonization and
tries to genocide Ireland and shipped. So yeah, the English

(24:40):
they start destroying all the civilian food supplies and the
burning crops in order to get rid of these guerilla fighters.
They kill everyone who's suspected of helping them. Famine spread,
the bubonic plague breaks out again. The whole sections of
Ireland get declared free fire zones by the British, where
literally anyone they see they're allowed to kill. And and

(25:00):
in the end, Charles the second loses the Third English
Civil War, so he fox off to France, which is
a classic I'm a king and lost move in history,
um and something like this. And these wars are incredibly
destructive in England, right, like something like four percent of
the total population of England dies in this war, which
is proportionately twice as many as English folks died in

(25:24):
World War One, which in turn was about twice as
many as World War Two proportionately. But Ireland, of course
are the actual big losers of this civil war because
at the time people said it was forty of the
Irish population. Later historians have figured out that it was

(25:45):
probably only of the Irish population that was killed. Yeah,
this is a bonkers amount of death. People can't really
conceive of that, you know. It's it's uh, yeah, there's
a lot of moments in histories are like that. There.
It's very sober ring to name them that, like, you know,
seventy nine in Cambodia times when incredible numbers of the

(26:07):
population died. Yeah, yeah, it really is. It's it's hard
for me to wrap my head around because it's just
it's too big a it's too big a percent. I
just can't imagine it, you know. But but England wins,
you know, the parliament wins. They get a republic for
a little while, which is very quickly followed by a

(26:28):
protectorate because Cromwell ends up the Lord protector, which is
I I swear I'm not a king role even though
he basically serves as a monarch. His main accountability is
to the army in a classic kind of right wing
coup kind of way, and he divides England into military
districts who are ruled by generals who are answerable only

(26:48):
to him. The one good things sort of that he did, right,
He un banishes the Jews from England, because the Jewish
people have been banned from England for a couple hundred
years at this point. Yeah, but he did it so
that he could convert them to Christianity in order to
bring on the end times, according to some biblical prophecy
about making Jews into Christians to bring on the end times,

(27:11):
which I don't know reminds me of like I didn't
pay enough of attention to it, but like I think
it was like Bush Jr. Was like into doing a
lot of Middle East politics in order to bring on
the end times. I don't know if that was a
rumor I heard, I'm not sure. But so that's the
thing that people say about I think that's dispensationalism. That's

(27:31):
the thing that people say about about these guys. Certainly
a lot of them preach it, uh, that sort of thing.
I am not persuaded that that many of them really
actually believe it, I think, and some do. There's true
believers around there, but but uh, but yeah, whether whether
people actually believe that or whether it's a good tool

(27:51):
for raising a lot of money, right and for sort
of yeah, totally for sort of yeah, forgetting forgetting people
to be engaged who don't know any better. Yeah, yeah,
that that makes a lot of sense. I think of
sometimes the people at the top do things very cynically
in order to you know, uh, motivate religious fervor or whatever.

(28:14):
But speaking of raising a lot of money, this show
is supported by ads, and I'm trying to push for
all of our shows to be sponsored only by wholesome concepts,
and so we haven't totally succeeded yet, but I'm really
excited about, for example, this podcast being supported by the
concept of Potatoes. Just not not an individual brand, not
not anything like that. The show is supported by the

(28:37):
concept of Yeah, that's my plan. Yeah, I'm trying to
work on getting Potato mine this concept because I'm very
into this. Okay, So I'm wondering if you have any
additional suggestions about sponsors that are entirely wholesome and are
not actual existent products that you would like to be
sponsored by. I mean, I think about this sort of
thing a lot. Is I used to you know, sponsored

(28:57):
by goodness or sponsored by books. Books is good. So
we can be sponsored by books. Of course, we can
be sponsored by books. Who wouldn't want to be sponsored
by books? Yeah? I like it all right, Well, this
podcast is proudly supported by the concept of books. It
doesn't matter whether they're audio books or e books, or
books that someone else reads to you or books you

(29:20):
read by yourself. Books as well as these other products
and services. Okay, and we are back and we are
talking about a whole bunch of bakery in England. What
is your discipline? What is this your day job? Or
do you? Are you a professor? What do you do

(29:40):
me personally? You personally? I am this is I work
at a nonprofit that has nothing to do with any
of this, and I do this professionally. And I have
no background in history. I'm a fiction writer. Basically, you
do fiction. So I'm just curious, like, like, um, did
you you have a b A? Did you could do
you go to undergrad? Now? I went to art school

(30:02):
for two years and dropped out art school. Okay, Yeah,
It's like I feel like you have a passion for history, right,
It's like it's very clear. It's like, I also don't
think you have to be an academic to be that,
but I'm actually more interested by that because you're you're American, right,
you're from her here, right. Yeah. I mean, as you
probably have noticed, most Americans, myself included, are really incredibly
ignorant as far as history goes. You know, you get

(30:25):
a little further. I mean, Americans will believe almost anything
about it. Whereas if you read French literature, uh, you know,
and of course you have to solve for okay, well
you're reading novelists there, right, and so that that's that's
a subsets not every French person obviously, you know, but
but the the stuff that it is assumed you would

(30:45):
know if you're bothering to read the book right on.
Practically any French book you grab it is considerably broader
than you know, pretty much any English language book you'd
buy written by an Americans. It's a who like, well,
if I will explain the history to you if you
need to know it, right, whereas if you read a
bunch of French novels, if you already know the stuff,

(31:08):
they're not going to throw you an or you know,
it's all right. Yeah, So I'm interested by that that.
I think it's I think it's good for late people, right,
for non academics to say doing history is is cool
and fun, right, So well, yeah, that was actually kind
of I mean, I didn't care about history when I
was a kid, right, And I didn't care about history
until I kind of got more politically engaged, because then

(31:28):
I suddenly had a aside I'm rooting for. And it's
usually like whatever populist revolt or whatever the anarchists are doing,
or whatever the the people trying to make people more
free and oppress each other less. Right, I suddenly was like, oh,
now I see history as this like the grandest story
ever told, with like all of these inter weaving pieces,

(31:50):
you know, like it it makes Game of Thrones look
like nothing, right, you know, And and so now I
really care about it. And then I kind of also
have this, maybe almost more than I should. I kind
of have this like wire history books boring that the
stuff in them is really interesting. And I think it's
because I don't have this academic background where I, like,

(32:10):
I don't necessarily know how to engage. You know. It's
history books didn't always engage me. Some of them do.
Some of them are incredibly well written and engaging, but sure, no,
but many of them are hard to follow. I It's
one of those things It's like it's like with any
any harder science sort of discipline, is like it's actually
really good and important if you learn about it so

(32:31):
and you will get a lot of pleasure. But but
it also doesn't give you the pleasure initially unless you're
already hard wired that way. Right, Yeah, totally. I think
I think Margaret's ability to like right fiction in such
a beautiful way has made her nonfiction history podcast have
a little bit of like that magic in it, a
little bit of that sparkle. And I think that's why

(32:55):
this show works so well is because of Margaret's like
writing is just so like you feel like you're there.
Oh yeah, I appreciate that Margaret got a compliment and
didn't know how to know. It was like, whoa, that's
probably on that we're joking that there's like a cool

(33:15):
people did cool stuff Bengo card for the ship that
comes up over and Brea and yeah, Margaret a complimented
and freezing should definitely be a spot. Yeah. Also me
not getting any pop culture references that that's a really
big one. So John, if you ever want to make
pop culture references that go over my head, feel free
you get the wrong guy. I was, I got I

(33:37):
got a what from a friend of mine just said, well,
you're talking about Jaws. Is like, no, I haven't seen it.
You know. Okay, I think I've seen Jaws. I think
I've at least seen excerpts from Jaws. Um. But but
I think the fact that I would come up with
when I would think of pop culture, I would also
think about movies from decades ago. So but yeah, I

(34:00):
mean I haven't seen any of them. I haven't. The
only Star Wars I've seen is the first one. Oh no, wait,
then my gaming group took me to see Rogue one,
so I also saw that one. Okay, it was fun. Yeah,
that's kind of okay, enjoying them. But what I wish

(34:21):
there was I want to build you know, why isn't
there a fan culture around the levelers? That's what I
want to get to. So, well, there is, but it's not.
So that's what we're talking about earlier. There there is
such a fan culture, but it doesn't it doesn't generally
feature people who are going to be doing this sort
of standing right, the sort of elevating figures into the usio.

(34:42):
Like when you're a teenager and you say, oh so
and so David Bowie is literally perfect human being. You
say things like that, right, Yeah, these are are certain
things to say about anyone, right, But the people who
get into the diggers, the wobblies whoever, right, uh, tend
not to be the people who are goes through into history.
They know better than to over elevate. Now, I think

(35:04):
it's also the case that I sort of feel like
that's not true of all. There's certainly a lot of
political standhood and I'm not gonna I'm gonna step anything here,
but like, you know, you know people who are who
are apologists for figures who may have meant very well,
who may have actually done a lot of good, but
who may have also done a number of monstrous things.
And I you know, those of us who lean very

(35:25):
far to the left, like myself, often have a lot
of friends who will say so and so on balance
is good, and you go, well, I don't know if
on balance as good as a good way of just
so and so on balancing a lot of good. That's
as far as I'm generally willing to go with anybody. So, uh,
you know, but there's so there's so much sort of
uh stand culture stuff done about saying, you know, about

(35:48):
putting people's faces on T shirts and so forth. And
I think the movements that you're talking about don't lend
themselves well to that, in part because the people right
really we're kind of grubby love you know, it's really good.
So yeah, no, totally, I I agree with you. That's
what I got. So okay. So, and one of the

(36:08):
things I like about the English Civil War is okay.
So when I first heard about it, killing kings good,
I'm happy. I like the Parliament. Then I learned more
about it, and then I said, genocide in the Irish
where my family comes from. Bad. I don't like them anymore.
But it doesn't mean I like the king either. And
so what I've learned, and one of the things I
get really excited about is realizing that even within these
two sides of a war, there's actually cultures and people

(36:32):
on both sides were actually kind of interesting. I'm not
trying to both well, actually, I guess I'm trying to
both sides of stupid war. You know, both sides of
it sucked. This is where I'm at on the English
Civil War. But I don't think I want to say
the fact that dumb dudes. Uh, and and people with
a real political agenda about it have given a bad
name to try and see both sides of something, right, Yeah, uh,

(36:56):
but they do so in bad faith, right, They both
sides things in order to to distract you and take
it away from your point. When we're doing history, you
have to look at all all angles. It's not about sides,
because the notion that there are sides, I mean, there
are sides eventually, I guess, but like, uh, you know,
I would I would hope that a lot of the

(37:16):
work we're doing right now on thinking about gender and
sex would help us to also divest ourselves of all
our binary assumptions, right, insisting that on sides instead of angles. Right,
Because because there's a lot of angles, People have a
lot of interests. People act for a lot of different reasons,
and how we describe that is how we do history, right,

(37:37):
if we describe things in terms of Tolstoy talks a
lot about this in the Inter War and Peace about
great man theory verse. According to Tolstoy, there is no
no great man ever did a goddamn thing. It's all
just the people down in the trenches doing stuff. According
to how hungry they were that day. And uh, and
the Great Man is sort of the guy who happens
to be there at the time, right, And he's ruthless

(37:58):
about this. He spends a hundred pages on this. Uh.
But but that's one way of thinking about There's other people,
fascists who who think no, no, it's a powerful man
always right who um, who whose will is able to
impose on the people. And this is Machiavelli, right, these
kinds of people. Um. I don't know what my jumping
off point was here. I can never remember where I
started talking about stuff. No, no, no, but this is okay.

(38:20):
This is interesting for a couple of reasons. One is
that Tolstoy is also in the Bengo card because it
comes up constantly because it's a really important figure in
that entire century. So yeah, and it's just like whenever
you talk. And the other one is Quakers and this
episode was only gonna have Quakers and no Tolstoy, but
now it has told Spy, so I appreciate you bringing
that in it. I will. The thing is, I only
finished War in Piece a month ago, and I'm happy

(38:41):
to drag Tolstoy anywhere and everywhere always rely on me
as the Tolstoy guy. All right, um, okay, So the
side that I find interesting in well, there's a punch
of sides I find interesting on the parliamentary and side,
and then the main one are the levelers. The levelers
are this huge chunk of the revolutionary army, and they're
goal is not to create this authoritarian dictatorship under Cromwell.

(39:05):
Their goal is to have a full on democratic republic.
That is what they're for. Why why are they called
the levelers? So they are called the levelers. Miss it's
a misnaming. It's an insult name that they get given
because the one thing that they don't want to do,
which is why they're not as cool as the diggers
who will get too later The diggers actually do want
to get called the levelers. Anyway, no one gets called

(39:26):
what they want in England. Yeah no, I actually even
yesterday was like chatting with my English friend being like
is this true? Is it anyway? Um? So the levelers
get called the levelers because theoretically God is the great
leveler who will bring up the poor and bring down
the rich. And but the levelers that people get called
the Levelers did not actually want to create economic equality,

(39:50):
only political equality, and so they wanted a political revolution,
not social revolution. Basically, Um, they wanted to get called
the agitators, but they got named after some people that
I'm going to get to in a moment wh I'm
really excited to tell you about. Who are the original Levelers? Okay?
So uh and then one of the things that I
think is really interesting about learning about this time period

(40:12):
is that I'm looking at it with this very political
lens looking back, and I think of things very secularly, right, Like,
I'm not a I'm not an atheist. Um. Somewhere in
the agnostic I contain multitudes about all this stuff, right,
But but these people are absolutely coming at all of
this theologically right. Everything is rooted in theology, all of

(40:32):
the different sides in these battles, um. And you know,
so instead of just focusing on how property should be distributed,
who should rule whatever, it all has this religious back background.
And I I can't necessarily do service to that because
I not incredibly theologically versed, but I just I always
feel like it's worth pointing out whenever we talk about

(40:53):
medieval European stuff, is he it's about theology even when
you wouldn't realize it. Um so, I mean I would,
I would actually argue that that's still true. Uh, even
even in the post Dover Beach. You know this poem
Dover Beach. Oh, well, I'm going to I'm going to
take over for a second here, Uh, the super important

(41:16):
poem for the modern era, for where we're at. It's
by Matthew Arnold, who's who's good generally. But but but
this is sort of the the signal Matthew Arnold poem.
As far as I'm concerned, dover Dover Beach. The sea
is calm tonight, the tide is full, The moon lies

(41:38):
fair upon the straits on the French coast. The light
gleams and is gone. The cliffs of England stand glimmering
and vast out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window.
Sweet is the night air only from the long line
of spray, where the sea meets the moon blanched land.
Listen you hear the grating roar of pebbles which the

(42:03):
waves draw back and fling at their return up the
high strand begin and cease, and then again begin with
tremulous cadence. Slow and bring the eternal note of sadness
in Sophocles long ago heard it on the Aegean, and

(42:25):
it brought into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
of human misery. We find also in the sound of thought,
hearing it by this distant northern sea. The sea of
faith was once two at the full, and round Earth's
shore lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

(42:47):
But now I only hear it's melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
retreating to the breath of the night, wind down the
vast edge's drear and naked shingles of the world. Ah, Love,
let us be true to one another, For the world

(43:08):
which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams,
so various, so beautiful, so new. Hath really neither joy
nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace nor help
for pain? And we are here as on a darkling plane,
swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant

(43:33):
armies clash by night. Yeah, so that's overbeach, right, and
over beach is specifically about the vacuum left by by
the receding of of ecclesiastical authority. Right, of faith. Right,
faith is not being described the way we as Americans,
we all think of my individual faith. Right, But that's

(43:54):
a very very very modern way of having faith. Right, faith,
faith is communal. And I have a big long stick
about this if you ever want to get about how
the notion of individual salvation and Christianity is nonsense, right,
and that Jesus would tell you so uh, it's not
about you having a personal savior. It's about all of
us getting saved. Um, and that this is this is

(44:17):
not a radical reading. This is like it's how it's
how the disciples would have thought of it. They weren't
looking for a personal savior. But but yeah, so when
the sea of faith recedes, as as Matthew Arnold notices
in the nineteenth century, right, that's an old poem. When
the sea of faith recedes, there's not a lot left
to take its place, right now, this is what fascists

(44:37):
also say, is like, well, in the absence of religious authority, right,
people act badly. But it's not that it is that
they don't have much to believe in, right, it's that
you don't. It's hard to and you do you think
Poison said it best? We need something to believe it, right,
It's like, it's true. If you haven't got any faith
in anything, uh, then then you become cynical at best, yeah,

(45:00):
and nihilistic at worst, even though you know, I can
respect a good nihilist at the end of the day.
But but again, I forget why jumping off point was.
But I always I'm looking for an opening for Dover Beach. No, no, no,
And actually, for anyone who's listening, this is this is
literally why I had John come on for this episode.
Is I was like, I'm going to talk about absolutely
some of my favorite like religious radicals. You know, actually

(45:24):
there's a lot of really cool religious radicals. But I
was like, I don't know that. This is this is
why I picked John for this episode. Thank you. No,
I do have I do have signal texts on any
subject about growing of faith or loss of faith or
destruction of communities of faith and reach books all day. Okay. So,
so I have another question though, is so when I
whenever I read about a story about and someone in

(45:46):
history named Margaret, I get very excited. Do you have
any of the same built in solidarity towards John's or
is it too common of a name. No, I don't care.
I uh you know, no, I yeah, yeah, yeah, that
was always John. It doesn't doesn't really affect me that much.
The one story I do remember is once my father

(46:08):
who had been he was a sailor, you know, he
was in the merchant Marines and the not not during
I think maybe during the Second World where I was
loose track of it, but but he at one point,
once it was a little bit, it was it was
eight or nine, he said he had to go use
the John. I was old enough and quick enough to
interrupt him mid word and go bathroom. Right, funny moment

(46:30):
between father and son. Yeah, okay, well I'm gonna talking
about a John, not a bathroom, but a person. Yeah.
Because the people who get called the Levelers, they they
at that point they actually already existed. They start getting
called the levelers in the King is opposed and so
they they don't get called the levelers right away. Originally

(46:53):
they're called either the London Agents or John little Burns supporters.
Legend Asians a very good band name, that's true. Yeah,
there's a lot of good band names hanging around because
there's also level Yeah, a new model army. Yeah. So
the people will get called the levelers. They want a republic.
I watched one interview or a historian who I'm not

(47:13):
going to name. He said the levelers wanted universal suffrage.
And the interviewer was like, so, so voting voting rights
for women and he was like, well, no, they wouldn't
have It wouldn't have occurred to them. And so universal
suffrage for all men. And so they're like voting rights
for Catholic men and they're like, well, well no, you see,
so so this is but this introduces for me the

(47:35):
question of historical slack, right, because I do not ask
why radicals in the to suddenly show up on the
scene demanding things that to us seems self evident. It's
like every everybody who pushes the needle I give a
little credit to Yeah, and this is why they're in
the story, as I like them. But it's worth pointing
out these these these blind spots for that. Yeah, and

(47:59):
so so Catholics suffrage. And then the other one that
servants don't get to vote. Well, I mean, coming out,
what kind of radicals are we? You kid? The servants? Yeah,
and so they got called so wild, right, that's the
stuff you can't get your head around, right, Is that

(48:19):
how it's And that's where you know you have to
you have to do that math. It's like you're asking
people from the past two to do all these righteous
things and you and you want to say it seems
self evident to all these people that servants shouldn't vote, right,
Like that's the bedrock if you have that as a
communal assumption. It's almost like you have a bunch of

(48:40):
people who believe that there's a monster living in the hills,
and they and they base all of their actions on
the fact that the monster has to be appeased. Right. Well,
now you would say, look, I know I've seen those hills,
there's no monster there, right. But but we would say, look,
if if they all believe that and act according accordingly, right,
then you can't judge their actions based on your knowledge

(49:02):
that there's no monster, right. Uh. And And in the
same way, it's like, you know, it's very hard to
even understand it all where anither they're coming from because
it's so many other it is or not just foreign
to us, but utterly alien, right, like alien in a
in a profound sense. It's just it's I mean, look,
having servants is a is a hard notion for me

(49:22):
to get my head around. It's one reason I can't
read um. A lot of nineteent century British fiction is like,
I just don't relate, like I can't. I struggle with
Jane Austin. It worships Jane Austin. Right. But here's another
my things. Nobody ever speaks their mind, right. I think
people fetishize this in nineteenth century British stuff. They go, oh,
it's beautiful the way they're not allowed to speak. No,
I can't deal with it. You know, is if you

(49:44):
read eighteenth century British fiction, people are actually pretty blunt.
At some point in the nineteenth century they decide they
never want to speak directly. And you know, and also
sexuality of any expression at all, it's completely submerged in
a way that I cannot relate to in any way. Uh,
and and all this stuff is so so alien. But
but when I read like, uh, Ivy Compton Burnett, right,

(50:06):
she's really aware, she's right in the twentieth century. And
her people have servants, but they don't really they can't
really actually afford servants, right. The servants are often staying
on to preserve an old order that has actually passed
and it's very interesting. Um, but yeah, it's like that's
that's the that's the past. Stuff that's very hard to
It's always good to remind ourselves that when we're talking

(50:27):
about these people. One way of teaching history is to say, well,
they were more or less like us, they had different customs,
And I would say, no, they weren't. I mean, the
thing is they were not. They were not like us,
except I also argue esthetically, generally speaking, they were much
more innovative than we give them credit for. Like like
like Americans think that the novel was born in the

(50:47):
twentieth century instead of the second century. A d uh,
you know. And they think that the that the modern novel,
the radical novel was born with Ulysses, when actually that
was born in the eighteenth century. Defoe's novels are sane, right, Okay,
So so in those things, I've always wanted to give
the past more credit. But other ways, obviously know, they
weren't like us at all. It's a completely foreign country,

(51:09):
like foreign planet. Yeah. Yeah, And and even just like
when you see the medieval maps of the world and
you're like, oh, that doesn't make any sense. You're like, well,
it actually does make sense because it's cosmological, because you
have to include the cosmology. Otherwise the whole map doesn't
make any sense. It begins with a totally different set
of assumptions, and so and so the leveler is definitely
coming from a different set of assumptions, right They They

(51:31):
get called the levelers derogatorially because it had been used
fifty years earlier. Derogatorially at some of my favorite people
in history, who are these original levelers who are tearing
down land enclosures. See so England has this long history
of the commons or common land, which can be used
by all kinds of different people. Right, you could, you

(51:52):
could fish, you could take firewood, you can take sod
for fuel, you could graze your livestock. You could even
mind for minerals on some of the public lands. And
they've been doing this for entries. The entire society was
built around it. The word commoner, I think comes from
someone who relies on the commons, right, and owners of
manners were expected to maintain enough commons on their property

(52:12):
for the commoners to make use of them, and slowly
they started in closing them. They fence off the lands,
they hold them in private by the owner of the manner.
They cut people off of the resources that they relied on,
and it it helps the rich maximize their profit fun
everyone else. And a lot of people have pointed to
this as kind of the start of capitalism, and which

(52:32):
is not by name, right, but it was about what
would happened later. And this is actually where the word
landlord comes from, the lord of the manor who owns
all the land. Um. And then I looked it up
because I was kind of curious. The word capitalism shows
up much later. It's coined by by socialists like Blanchie
and it's a way of it's a way of describing history. Yeah, totally.

(52:52):
And and before capitalism was a word, it was actually
a job title capitalist. Well it's kind of an opposite
job to it was no actual job, you know, but
it was like, what do you do for your living? Oh,
I'm a capitalist. I own stuff that other people use.
So anyway, a lot of popular revolt in England is
driven by the enclosure of the commons. And one of
my favorite ones was a man named Captain Pouch Yeah

(53:18):
in in six seven. Oh, actually, I think it might
be time for an ad break before I tell you
about Captain Pouch. So read a book during the ads
instead of listening to them. And here's some ads. Okay,

(53:38):
we're back. So in seven you have the Midlands Revolt,
which starts in April and Northamptonshire Shire. I don't know
it spreads from there the Leader by all accounts. And again,
whenever you read this stuff about like the leader in history,
you're like, was he who knows? So there's a tinker
named Captain Pouch, and he claims that he has a

(54:00):
authority from the King and God to tear down the
enclosures non violently, and said that the contents of his pouch,
which is a magic pouch, would keep everyone who followed
him safe from harm. More than a thousand people men
and women. I think children also uh participate in this.
And these are probably the original levelers. There might have
been people getting called this before they literally level the

(54:22):
hedges that enclosed the comments in the name of God,
who is the great leveler. Of course, Captain Pouch was
was lying on at least one count. He was lying
about having the King's permission. He may or may not
have been lying about the pouch he certainly. I don't
know whether he believed the Pouch, but the Pouch did
not succeed at keeping them all safe. And I can't

(54:43):
tell you one way or the other about whether God
gave him permission or not. This does sound like a
science fiction book. Oh yeah, no, totally or superhero. So yeah,
Captain Pouch the original superhero. He's tearing down hedges and
ship rich landowners. They have actual mission from the king.
They send their servants to fight the crowd. They kill

(55:03):
about fifty of them. The landowners have to use their
servants to fight the crowd because the local militias and
all the gangs and ship wouldn't do it because they
were participating in the revolts by and large, and the
uprising leader the leaders of the Uprising, including Captain Pouch,
get hung, drawn and quartered. And I didn't really know
what this meant. And I try not to go into

(55:25):
the super graphic stuff very often on this show, but
I'm gonna describe hung drawn and quartered because it was
worse than I thought it was. They they drag you
behind a horse, They hang you till you're almost dead,
They disembow you alive. They make you watch as they
burn your entrails. Then they behead you. Then they cut
your body into four pieces, and then they send the

(55:45):
pieces of your body to the far corners of the country. Yeah,
it's super brutal. It's a I means fast. You think. Well,
people were real assholes, and they would and there's these
are public things. People were watching. The children are this
all the time? You know? It's yeah, I guess the
landowners really like their hedges, you know, don't pock my

(56:06):
headge or well again, who among us? Yeah? You know, right.
So after this execution, they opened his pouch and it
contains a small bit of green cheese, so which probably
didn't keep him safe except maybe in the like you know,
remembered in history version of safe. I don't know, but

(56:26):
it might have given him the courage it took to
go do these things. I don't know whatever and my
hearing and this is entirely based on me not understanding
pop cultures. That green lantern might be descended from the
green cheese people. But I don't know, because I don't
actually know anything about green lantern. But I don think
it's a lantern. A green lantern has to say a
poem to invoke his powers. Which is very cool. Oh

(56:47):
really okay, Yeah, Captain Pouches has to say it, but
he has a poem anyway, which is great. Yeah, okay,
then this is definitely Captain Pouches the ancestor of Green Lantern.
It's cannon um because that's a property that I own. Okay,
And so the the over the top executions do not
make people happy, right, public pressure mounts. King James the

(57:09):
first issues this royal proclamation in June, saying he's gonna
look into reforms. Um. I couldn't actually find any information
about whether he actually did any of the reforms he
said he would do because he was too busy. King
King James got up to a lot. He created Great Britain,
He started the English colonization of North America. He was
an openly gay king who spent all of his time

(57:31):
burning witches and writing books about demons. And it's his
translation of the Bible that the King James that correct
me if I'm wrong. But I'm under the impression this
is the one that's used the most often by anti
LGBT bigots. Yeah, I mean King James is it's fetishized
and uh, it's it's not considered it's just the thing

(57:54):
is that it's beautiful. It's some of the most beautiful
writing in in the English language. However, much of the
translation is there because King James likes the way it sounds.
There's a lot of a lot of bad translation, like
in terms of the h in terms of the meaning,
there's like there's a lot especially the stuff about servants

(58:14):
having to be good and stuff like that. Um well,
that stuff there's a lot of ways you can treat
that stuff in both the Hebrew and the septuagient um. Uh.
But but the King James style is to is to
preserve the rights of the king and so forth. So
King James is like, it's not it's not the translation
you should read if you want to know what the
Bible is about. It is, however, one of the most

(58:35):
beautiful uh texts ever written. So now that this is good,
that's exactly the like, yeah, because I'm just like, oh,
this seems to be the one that my friends tell
me is not very accurate. So um So these revolts,
this is again before the main levels in the English
Civil War. These revolts make their way into Shakespeare, who

(58:55):
was against land enclosure. He alluded to it unsubtly at
LEAs to his audience at the time. And Henry the
Sixth Part two, which I have definitely not read. Um,
I read Shakespeare, but I've not read this one. Henry
the Sixth Part two. Yeah, wow, No I didn't. I'm
pretty versed in Shakespeare, but I don't know that one.
It's a it's a deep cut. So my theory is

(59:16):
that it's actually about um, a lantern full of green cheese.
So these are the original Levelers, rowdy commoners who are
upset that about being told that they would have to
starve rather than let the rich maximize their profit or whatever.
Fifty years later you have the new Levelers. They got
given the name as an insult. John Lilleburne is one

(59:36):
of the leaders, and he preferred the term agitators, which
makes sense because they weren't leveling, right. But John Lilleburne
was not the sole leader of the Levelers. People call
him that now because of the great Man theory nonsense.
But the the movement seemed to coalesce around one of
the many campaigns to get him out of jail because
he kept getting thrown in jail because he was an

(59:57):
obstinate bastard, who was actually really cool in many ways,
not in other wise. He was the second son of gentry,
which is a whole thing. He wasn't expecting inheritance. So
there's these second sons were a big source of social unrest. Uh,
their nobility with nothing to lose since primogeniture, which is

(01:00:18):
the system of inheritance that basically says everything goes to
the oldest son. This system came over in the eleventh
century with the Norman conquest because in it because of
this system, you didn't have this sort of built in
economic equalizing force where large estates were broken up every
time someone died, right, And so it kind of allows
feudalism to really take off. This system of inheritance. On

(01:00:40):
the other hand, gavel kind secession, which is the kind
before it, which is when all hairs usually sons, get
a piece of the estate. You have all these wars
as everyone tries to like recreate the largest states and ship.
So it kind of seems fucked either way, honestly. Yeah.
But but John, this is the thing the line I
keep like, I keep looking at. It's not hopeful, is

(01:01:05):
this Samuel Beckett line, Uh, you're on Earth, there's no
cure for that. It's like, I guess sort of feel like,
you know, a lot of a lot of collectivists stuff
that that that we assume everybody at core shares, and
then we still teach you have to sort of behave
as if they did. Been asking myself a lot of
questions about that lately, whether actually, actually there's a small

(01:01:28):
bunch of us who who sort of believe in injustice,
and then a whole bunch of people who do not
give a shit. It's a good who just use the
language of it to get whatever they want. Yeah, yeah,
I mean, like a large number of them. It's very
you know, And I'm mr you know, I'm a Christian,
like I want to believe. I do believe that in

(01:01:48):
everybody God's inside there. But I sort of feel like
the and and this is where you know, I think
obviously to wave your hand and say late capitalism is
sort of very vogue ish now, but you know, but
the ongoing march of capitalism. And I would argue and
and industrialization generally speaking, which like that's a different argument
because but also industrialization is the reason that fewer people

(01:02:11):
starved than used to. Is like, if you think hunger
is bad. Now, you should try some hunger in the
twelfth century, because I think there's you know, it's an
Industrialization has helped a lot of people, and a lot
of good Communists understood this right, that right, it could
be used for the good of the people. But on
the other hand, the march of industrialization has resulted in
the world that we have, and I don't know how
it Yeah, yeah, no, totally, yeah, yeah, exactly. So John Lilleburn,

(01:02:35):
he's not gonna inherit ship. He goes off to London
apprentices as a cloth merchant. His first arrest was he
was trying to smuggle some band religious pamphlets into the
country that claimed bishops were doing the work of the devil.
He refused to acknowledge the court, which also might be
a space on this Bengo card. The same patterns come
up over and over again, jump in again, all the

(01:02:56):
anti Catholic stuff, the anti bishop stuff. Like they were
good at at then, like there was it was a
there was a really good whereas now like one thing
that's a source of great frustration for the American right
is that they don't own the Catholic Church right, and
that they can't seem to get the Catholic Church because
the Catholic Church is a lot browner than they like, right,
the Catholic Church the global South, the Catholic Church through

(01:03:17):
ill through horrible means, mind you. But they did they
got that right. They they established churches down there and
now and then they became radical. Right, there's a lot
of radical Catholic priests in the history of the last
fifty seventy five years. They know when I say radical,
are the approach choice, like me, No, they're not, right.
I have to sort of accept that, you know, but
because that's the church. But um, but they're but they

(01:03:37):
also are kind of communist, a lot of them, and
said so uh, And it drives the American right absolutely
bonkers that they can't have the Catholic Church, and they
keep thinking there's gonna be a schism. This is one
of the things to see Bannon likes to think about
a lot, because they really would love to have the
amount of power and clout that Catholics have. Right, so
they sort of try and stoke fires of Catholic suspicion,

(01:03:58):
but at the same time, like they don't actually want
to go full anti Catholic because there's too much power
there that they thirst for, right, and if they do
too much damage to the brand, then when they get
their imagined takeover, which is never gonna happen, uh, there
would be nothing left to it. It's it's all. I'm
an ex Catholic. So the sims really, as soon as
I hear about their coming from the bishops, I go, yeah, yeah,
it's I don't you know the anti Catholic. As we know,

(01:04:21):
humans just seem to want to be dicks to other people,
to groups of people, and they have to figure out
what groups are gonna be dicks to today on a
given eon or whatever. And and the anti Catholic stuff
is so fascinating. It's like, you know, so the things
of all people, why are you mad at the Catholic student?
I know, I know, And like how much of it
is in this time period? How much of it is
like literally just like when we like oppressing in the

(01:04:42):
Irish and how much of it is like that we're
afraid Rome's gonna invade and we're trying to do our
like Church of England thing and yeah, and then of
course the pure Yeah, well I think some of it.
I think that's a lot of it is like the
notion that the Romans, uh, you know, they had a
history of conquest, and and maybe the Church, well, the
Church also has a history of conquest, so maybe the Church,
after it finishes colonized in the West might come for that.

(01:05:05):
So yeah, so he gets put in front of court.
He refuses to acknowledge the court, and he's just like
and he says, I'm a a freeborn no freeborn Englishman
should be treated that way, And he didn't actually mean it,
like I'm freeborn like the people who aren't. He meant
it kind of in this like we're all freeborn, right,
And so the court doesn't like him very much because

(01:05:26):
he won't acknowledge them. So he gets tied to the
back of a cart and dragged through the street and
lashed five times with a knotted leather whip and throwing
stacks and but he he remains defiant the whole time.
The crowd what if what if? Like what if? I
was like, can you tell me more about the whips?
Like he can, you can get some more detail, and

(01:05:46):
like it was emerging over the course of the conversation
like that was something I really needed. Torture that'd be
very cathtic of you. Yes, but yeah and so and
so the crowd loves him, right because he's like the
whole time, he's like being defiant and yelling and giving speeches,
and he gets thrown in prison for the indefinite sentence

(01:06:08):
of until you obey. And then eventually yeah, talking about
the fetishism there, Yeah, totally. Um. Eventually Parliament forms in
eighteen forty and frees him. As soon as he's out,
he's back in the streets fighting and protesting and rioting
against the king. He's helping lead the London unrest that
sends Charles the First fleeing London. At one point, him

(01:06:30):
and a bunch of armed civilians like stare down royalist officers.
All this stuff that kind of kicks off the First
Civil War. And and one of the things that I
think about with this person, because he's a little bit
all over the map ideologically when you try to map
him from current right. He has a little bit of
the like almost right wing Founding fathers in him, but
he's also very you know, progressive in other ways and
all this different stuff is that he has no political

(01:06:51):
intellectual history to draw from, uh that represents these ideas
This is from a from an English point of view,
this is the birthplace of a lot of the ideas,
at least as I was able to find. And so
he he basically goes to the Bible and he finds
every single Gallitarian source in the Bible he can to
justify his actions, and he then enlists to overthrow the king.

(01:07:12):
They overthrow the king. He fought a bunch of battles.
He fights in the infantry. Later he's a dragoon, which
is mounted infantry. You got a musket and an axe
and a sword and one of the shittiest horses, and
you're like sent to go like ride off and then
get off your horse and then shoot people. And eventually
gets captured while he's trying to rally retreating troops to
stand their ground. He's it's a big war hero, right,

(01:07:33):
and the royalists are going to probably kill him. They're
gonna try him and probably kill him. But his wife, Elizabeth,
who is like I think like eight months pregnant at
the time, she petitioned to the people in charge of
the rebellion to intervene on his behalf and then she
crosses enemy lines by herself, I believe, or at least.
I don't know. Maybe she was by hersel. Maybe shoot
people with there, but it implies that she was by herself.

(01:07:54):
She goes through military checkpoints. She shows up and she's like, hey,
if you execute my husband, the rebels are going to
kill a bunch of the prisoners. So he's freed. His
wife saves his life, um, and he gets free in
the prisoner exchange. He goes right back to fighting. He
gets shot through the arm. This has no impact on

(01:08:14):
his desire to keep fighting. He will fight through any
of this. He makes friends with Oliver Cromwell in a
made for movie friendship that is destined to become a rivalry.
And at one point he asks permission to storm a
Royalist holding and they're like He's like, hey, if we attack,
they'll just surrender, and his commanders are like, no, no, no,
you can't attack. So he attacks anyway and the holding

(01:08:36):
surrenders without a shot fired. But then he finally quits
fighting before the war is over, before it's won, because
the parliamentarians, all of the people in the army were
asked to sign a covenant denying freedom of religion, and
you know they're Puritans, so nothing else should be allowed,
and this is too much for him, even though if

(01:08:57):
I think he was a Puritan, but he he was
at least very Protestant, right, and he won't do it,
So he refuses to sign his contract and he gets
kicked out of the military, even though he's this big
war hero and friends with the leader and all that ship.
So I like him for this. And then he gets
thrown in prison because he denounces the fact that the
members of parliament were rich despite the fact that the

(01:09:18):
commoners were poor. He like. Later he gets thrown in
prison again for denouncing his former commander for being an asshole. Um.
He basically it seemed like he was only happy when
he was either like fighting in a war or in prison. Um.
His friends make fun of him for being so oppositional
that his friends joked if there were none living but himself,

(01:09:38):
John would be against Lilburn and Lilburn would be against John.
But I actually think he was releasably consistent. He just
hated all the hypocrites around him, and that's why he's
so oppositional. He didn't lead the levelers alone, nor was
he particularly in charge. He was up, but he was
and he was a team player, even though he's very
oppositional right. The crew of leaders of the Levelers was

(01:09:59):
referred to at the time as a collective, and it
was not about his ego. Most of the other writer
other leaders were good writers, but John Lieburn was not.
Apparently he he did a lot of it, but this
was not his calling. His calling was fighting and theology
and stuff. And there's one big downside from my point
of view, John have even heard the terms brochialist or

(01:10:22):
manarchist before I've run across them. I haven't engaged them
deeply enough to to tell you much more about them
than that. Yeah, fair enough. This is the energy that
John Lieburn brings up. His big blind spot is how
he treats his wife. Um. Every time he's thrown in prison,
Elizabeth Lieburn is there fighting for his release and supporting him,

(01:10:42):
and at one point, while he's an exile, later Elizabeth
writes to him and says, look, if you could just
make friends, if you could just make peace with Cromwell,
you could come home, like, stop being so obstinate, please
come home, and he writes back. Instead of writing her back,
he writes a public letter calling out his coward wife,
who was like the father of like I think nine

(01:11:03):
of his kids or whatever ship, and I want to
loude in a time when public letters matter, I want
to I want that to actually be something. Yeah, well,
now we just have the like endless see of Twitter
call outs, you know. And so he he writes this
letter that's basically like, no one would be worthy of

(01:11:24):
the name of a man indeed man indeed isn't all caps,
who's not morally honest in just in his ways, and
would therefore, you know, etcetera, etcetera, he would never give
in uh, but thou art but a woman, and in
that respect, but the weaker vessel. And therefore I must
rationally allow you more grains of imperfection and weakness, imperfection

(01:11:45):
and weakness or in all caps, and especially since you're pregnant.
So that's his public letter to his wife or saying,
please just stopping obson to come home. And he might
even been right about he should stay obstinate and not
come home, right it It doesn't doesn't seem like a
nice way to treat the woman who saved your life.

(01:12:07):
So and but the women of the Leveler movement actually
did do a lot within the kind of context they
are withins who were sort of talking about earlier. They
ran printing presses, they wrote petitions, they organized amongst themselves,
not just like appendageous to their husbands. They went to jail.
They even occasionally demanded equal rights. They would write petitions,
but then they weren't allowed to deliver them, so like

(01:12:28):
their husbands would go and deliver the petitions on behalf
of their wives, which is actually kind of cool. And
and their religious beliefs believed in equality between women and men,
equal before God, so much so that even the Quakers,
who were like some of the most egalitarian on the
gender lines at the time, actually wrote they would like
complain about the prominence of women, and the Levelers mhm,

(01:12:52):
but they you know, they challenged but didn't over with
their gender hierarchy. And after the First War the Levelers
really stand out. They had their um. They basically they
lay out this agreement of the people. It's their idea
of a democratic republic. They get a third of all
of London to sign on to this, and they delivered
to Parliament being like, we won, we have this thing,

(01:13:12):
let's do this democratic republic now, And Parliament was like no, no, no,
we have power now. So fuck you go home, and
so they get a military dictatorship instead. So he then
John Lilburn goes on this, like he starts writing all
these pamphlets England's new chains discovered any you know, basically
is like, look we again, who among us? You know?

(01:13:33):
We we you go through a big thing. You want
to write some pamphlets? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. The point
of doing actions is the right manifestos, I think, Um, yeah, agreed.
And so they so all of their demands all well,
all of their like hey, let's have a democratic republic.
These are denied, right, but they're all in the military,

(01:13:55):
and they just fought to depose a king, so they're
not going to stop now and accept a new king.
So revolt and there's mutinies all over the New Model
Army actually, and this is why I think that there's
some good stuff in the New Modelarming. Entire regiments refused
to fill refused orders until a democratic republic would be
in stated, and most notably, one of the orders that
all the levelers refused was go invade Ireland. Um so

(01:14:18):
I like those ones. I find that I find that
interesting because Ireland is one of the there's a lot
of countries like this. Ireland's one, Poland is another, Vietnam
is another, that have been under the state of occupation
for so long. I mean, I can't even name how
many African countries are like this, but but places that
just sort of seemed to be the target of invasion

(01:14:41):
of of larger regimes neighboring or not, like Poland. You
can't even name the number of times Poland was just
like occupied by somebody from the east or the west
saying well, no, Poland is actually part of our country,
with no sound claim on it at all. And the
same Vietnam has spent most of the twentieth century with
either the French or whoever saying, don't know, this is

(01:15:01):
our spot. And Ireland has sort of got that that
like it's in his continual state of people telling Ireland
that you don't get to be Ireland. It's so you know,
it's messed up. Yeah, yeah. And actually, at one point
I was running across in a different episode as researching,
I was like, there's all of these Polish generals and
officers who are fighting in all these revolutions in other countries.

(01:15:21):
And my friend explained it to me and was like, well,
the thing is is that you'd have a Polish army
and then some fucking country would come suck it up
and like and so all of the all of the
Polish officers having to flee. So if you need an
officer that really experienced and they got nowhere else to go,
you grab a Polish officer and you get really good
officers out of that the asper of the Polish. And

(01:15:43):
the other thing is like what what what kind of
effect does that have on the country. I say, well,
Ireland actually very you know, it's a pretty cool place
generally speaking. But you know, like in Poland, the problem
of nationalism has been on the rise severely, and you know,
you think, well, that sort of feels like a and
that's a consequence of people constantly telling you that you
don't get you to define your own borders. Is at

(01:16:04):
some point, you know, you say no, no, I'm defining
my borders and I'm going to define them in very
harsh terms. You know, it's like it's not it's not
a good or a reasonable response. There's understandable one, you know, Yeah,
and I get most excited by, like, you know, folks
like say there's appatistas or um I would say, huge
chunks of the Kurds in Northern Syria and stuff, who

(01:16:25):
are like, we are an oppressed nationality, but we're going
to approach this internationally, right, Um. But I still also
I'm like, no, I I get why the Irish or whatever,
we're like, we're Irish nationalists like this, you know whatever,
And I guess, real messy. I'm not trying to defend
especially given if if if your your main experience of
these other nations is they're not going to keep their words,

(01:16:47):
you know, they're not good for it. And so how
about if I have nothing to do with you, it's yeah, exactly. Yeah.
So the Levelers refuse to invade Ireland, and because they
don't get a democratic republic, so they were use orders
and some of them get court martialed, someone get executed.
I believe that sometimes they would like they would make
the soldiers draw lots and then the person who draws

(01:17:08):
the short lock gets executed as a way to like
punish the whole union unit or whatever. And every time
a Leveler died during this, the mourners would line up
and they would wear black and sea green ribbons and
bundles of rosemary, and at one funeral for an executed soldiers.
Coffin was adorned and rosemary dipped in blood, which apparently

(01:17:29):
the association of rosemary and remembering the dead goes back
a long way. But there was also a symbol of
the levelers was wearing rosemary in your hats, and I
always think it's classy when a movement has like this
is the flower we wear. So so finally Cromwell's like
just sucking sick of them, attacks on crushes it, and
they're defeated. The leaders are imprisoned. Lilburn goes back on

(01:17:52):
trial for like the fifth time or something, this time
for high treason. Like every classic revolutionary with the consciousness,
he spent time on trial both under the botic government
he then helped overthrow, and then I supposed the revolutionary
government that replaced it. Yeah, this is where I think
your politics in my intersect is like, and this is
evidence that like the people we think are going to
be good, once they get some power, they're usually that

(01:18:13):
very good. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's like kind of the
subtitle of the show. In some ways, this revolution as
a lateral move Yeah, I mean, the thing is like
I want to believe in the revolution who doesn't want
to believe in the revolution as a liberating force. But
you know, but you look at a lot of revolutions
and then you have to start explaining what went wrong,
And like the thing is that it's very convenient I

(01:18:34):
think for our side of things these days that often
we can say what went wrong with US interventionism, right,
went wrong? It was a program of fucking with him,
right and so, and that's fair to say. It's like,
I'm not I'm not discrediting that. However, I think I
don't think that if you take the US invations about
I don't think we wind up with the workers paradise either.
You know, I suspect that your on earth. There's no

(01:18:56):
cure for that. Yeah. Yeah, there's the quote, Um, I
think it's baccoonan as a quote that you take the
most ardent revolutionary and invest them in absolute power and
will be worse than this are overnight, you know, I
mean it's just power. I mean there's the bacon in like,
like all revolutions, wants to overstate his case always do.
So you remember what he said. I don't think they'll

(01:19:16):
be worse than this are, but I think they'll be
there yeah, it's like, you know, and the thing is,
you know, this is where my you know, this is
one of the worst Christian uh impulses that I have.
Is like I kind of get it, you know, I
understand how like, right now, if I'm in a state
of profound discomfort backstage, I'm gonna start to complain about

(01:19:37):
it because I have gotten used to a level of
comfort and I'm a middle aged person and I can't.
I can no longer be the guy at a squat,
happy to play the show at the squad, you know.
And uh, and and I think you know, once a
person gets power, they understand things about power that that
we can't understand from this side of it apprehensible until
you have it. And then and then the presidents find

(01:19:58):
this out all the time they run for PRESI do.
They say I'm gonna do this and that, and they
get into the seat and they go, oh, I can't
actually do anything right unless I e O it. If
an executive order will then I'm not going to get
a second term. I mean, the bad guys are willing
to roll the dice on that, and they're doing, you know,
an effective job for themselves right now. But but but yeah,
it's like he's one of the things is like I

(01:20:18):
do think absolutely when people get power they behave abominably.
I also suspect that from that side of things there's
more to know that aren't explainable until you're on that
side of things. Told so I actually tries to do this,
but yeah, so you know, so Lilla Burn he's back
on trial. He has a really good way of words though.
He convinces the jury that he has the jury has

(01:20:39):
a better right to decide the law than the government
or judges. So he gets found not guilty and then
he lives kind of quietly in London and he gets
banished to the Netherlands for some other nonsense. Two years later,
he comes back illegally immediately gets arrested once again. He
talks the jury out of a death sentence. He's very
good at doing this, and he gets imprisoned on the
Isle of Jersey. In sixty five, he converts to a

(01:21:00):
new religion from the same era. You like me? Are
you like me? Will you hear somebody has been imprisoned
on an island? Do you think how come I can't
get improved? You right? It sounds really go out write
my alright, poetry on my island. It will be great. Yeah,
like the I think it's I think it's Norway. I
can't remember as like the famous like here's the prison
island where you just you get a house and you
live on the prison or Napoleon right way, Napoleon tries

(01:21:23):
to conquer the entirety of Europe and then he gets
to go to Corsica right now, totally yeah, well, and
then while he's imprisoned on this island he converts to Quakerism.
And because na, no, not Napoleon, although that would be
an interesting story on it, a good good red conning,
a good good sort of that steampunk, but what do

(01:21:43):
you call steampunk where it's just with religion, just imagining
other rulers as belonging to different faiths. Um. And since
the Quakers are noted pacifists, he's able to write Cromwell
and be like, hey, I'm I'm a pacifist now, and
the Cromwell's like, fine, you're a pastist. I'll like you
go because he can't lead a rebellion because he's Quaker.
So and then okay, this is so ignorant. What your

(01:22:06):
pacifist for? Now? If I'm Cromwell. I'm saying, you know,
it's great to even doctor to some new notion. I
don't if I'm ahead of state, I don't really trust
you to maintain your position much longer, especially if you've
ever been to your power. It's like, so, yeah, well,
fortunately for Cromwell and unfortunately for John Loeburn. Uh, he
dies the way that everyone dies, which is randomly of

(01:22:28):
a fever. Yeah, he's forty two years old in the
seventeenth century, so he just dies and then Elizabeth dies
like three years later. Um. I started researching this guy
expecting not to like him, because I've always known the
Levelers is like the slightly more moderate, unlike the you know,
at some point we gonna talk about the Diggers and
and all the rest. But I just I actually really

(01:22:49):
liked him. I really liked that he just said what
he said, believed what he believed, and was just like,
I'm just gonna do this. I'm obstinate. I'm just gonna
always follow my moral compass, uh wherever it leads me.
So that's the Levelers, or at least John Loeburn's part
of the Levelers, And that's the first part of what
I wanted to talk with you about cool. Yeah, I'm

(01:23:13):
intrigued by your um, your desire to have a horse
in the race, to have a guy right there, whether
I whether I like him or don't like him, because
it's something I'm always trying not to do with history.
Is like I don't want to like anybody or dislike anybody.
I want to see what they're about, but I want
to try not to be picking heroes, right, Uh, I
mean again, you know I uh, I think you know

(01:23:37):
crass Uk anarchist Ben had a no God's no master's slogan. Yeah,
and I extend that to heroes and idols. Is like
I don't think you know, we can't help but but
but be impressed by people. But I think that the
desire to go, oh, this guy's my friend. We don't
have any friends in history. Well that's like that's kind

(01:23:58):
of part of why I and it sounds a little
bit backwards, but that's part of what I'm trying to do,
is just be like, I want awards in all some
of these people who are heroes, right, and like you
know a lot of people are like, oh the levelers,
these are amazing people. And I'm like one other people,
and I like some of what they did, and I
can strongly agree with that. And I think we can
use inspiration from seeing people who like did what they

(01:24:20):
believed in, you know, come hell or high water and
h without yeah, without being like, I don't want to,
I don't want to pedestal people, right, you know, it's
kind of yeah, And I'm still I'm still trying to
learn exactly how to express that in these scripts and stuff.
But that's my hope. It's part of the ongoing process
of doing histories is figuring out how to deal with

(01:24:41):
the problem of individuals. I mean, you can, you can
have done with them and just talk about about movement
of history, right, and and not not worry too much
about individuals because they're in reliable quantities. But I mean,
I mean, part of why we do is because of
where we are at in the post Enlightenment and especially
post twentieth century, we think a lot about individuals. You know.

(01:25:01):
It's one of the things that I, you know, that
I that I like best about my communist friends is that,
like you know, and and a lot of uh, sort
of post Christian Christians, it's like obsessing about the individual
is missing the point, we can't. The individual doesn't get
the best that they can get unless unless they're sort

(01:25:23):
of be raised, unless you start thinking just about the whole, right. Uh.
And well, one way you can practice that is also
in doing history, to try and not be telling stories
of individuals. Right now, it's almost impossible because I'm an individual, right,
so I like to hear stories about a person, right, Uh,
you know, and that's natural, that's fine, you know, there
is no there's a binary way of saying, well, then

(01:25:44):
you should do it this way and not do it
this way. But I think it's always important when we're
telling about stories about people to like be thinking also
again Tolstoy, about the currents that caused them to do
the things they did, about how in some sense they
weren't making any choices at all, you know. Uh. And
and the thing is like we often will then put
our own values, like, look, if you decide to hit me,
that's your choice, right, and you own that choice, no

(01:26:06):
matter what caused you to do it. Yes, that's true
in interpersonal relations, right, but there's another historical way you're
thinking it was like you were going to do that
no matter what it's like. And uh, and that's that's
that's also stuff always worth having on hand when we're
talking about this stuff. Total pleasure talking with you, ye,
talking to and well, do you have any anything you'd

(01:26:27):
like to plug, any anything that people should go out
and listen to or read or what have you been
working on? Uh, you know, trying to struggle with the
rise of an incipient fashion state. Uh, it's really it's
all my mind right now. It's like it's really bad.
It's always you know, I have a lot of radical
friends who you know, it's always been bad. Well, yes,

(01:26:47):
it has always been bad. But right now we're in
a really rough moment and it makes it feel vain
for you to go. We'll go buy my new record.
Of course you should buy a new record. I hope
you do. I'm very proud of it. Come see us
on tour. We will have a good time. We'll you know,
age against the you know, we'll try and try and
make some you know, some diversion at best, you know,
try and find some ecstasy. But but but the main

(01:27:07):
thing I want to plug is that we collectively have
to figure something out. You know, we have to be
somehow looking past a number of differences to to find
our collective strength and to express it. And the thing is,
I hate to I don't want to be that means
get out and vote. Well, those people are so tiresome, right,
But it's like, I don't know what else we're gonna do.
I don't think we actually have the numbers to be,

(01:27:29):
you know, to be storming the capital or anything like that.
I don't think that's gonna happens. I also have a
whole stick about how that's not going to happen because
of of of mass media and entertainment. That like, when
we're talking about revolutions, these are people who also didn't
have TVs and computers, you know, and uh and so
it's a different world. But but yeah, but I mean collectively,
that's what I want to plug is let's all collectively

(01:27:52):
figure out how we're going to stem the very bad
tide that that is quite obviously uh in uh in
flow right now. Yeah, with fucking Middler posting turf stuff. God,
oh I haven't even seen it. Oh no, oh don't.
It's terrible because because she played she played it really
important bathhouses and stuff. I mean, she's a genuine icon.

(01:28:15):
It's very sad. Oh God, Alright, yeah, I'm sorry. I'm
used to it. You know, I'll get used to I know, right,
It's rough, YEA, A pleasure talking to you. Really, what
you're doing is fun. This is really cool. Thanks. Okay,

(01:28:35):
but cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production
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