Parables of Sowing and Talents Ft. Andrew

Andrew takes the lead once again to discuss Octavia Butler's masterpieces Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Oh all right, well Joe started, I like these interests
of getting shorter every time we've bend it onto one syllable,
So there's not much we can go fee there. You
know what, an honest and honest man only needs one syllable,
sometimes less, sometimes half a syllable. We'll eventually get this
down to just grunts. That's really what I'm moving towards

(00:28):
is an entirely shouldn't we be moving towards like telepathy? Yeah, telepathy.
We don't even record a podcast where we just like
put up transmit the information instantaneously, just a blank audio
file that says, now, think about farming. I sa that
that sounds very Um, that sounds very sci fi. And

(00:49):
that's my way of doing a slick segue here, because
today we will be talking and I'm very excited to
talk about this. Um. She's one of my favorite authors. Um.
You know, I really enjoyed discussing The idea is present
in Huxley's work, but this one has a special place

(01:09):
in my heart. Today we'll be taking a look at
Octavia Butler's parable of the sewer and parable of the talents,
and the idea is present within. Yes, back at you
again with another podcast banger. But first of all, UM, Hi,
I'm Andrew UM sometimes known as st Andrew. I'm kind

(01:33):
of trying to rebrand as something else, still figuring that out, UM,
and you can find me on YouTube at st Andrewism.
But this episode is not about me and my branding.
This episode is about Octavia Butler bo and growing up

(01:54):
in segregation y America. She became an award winning sci
fi water UM with a lot of influences and a
lot of themes and ideas being covered in her work.
Considering the very white, male dominated scene that is sci fi,
the fact that she was able to not only break
into it but also presents some things that I haven't

(02:18):
been explored before, with angles that haven't really been explored before. UM. Really,
U has touched a lot of people. She was somewhat
after a futurist, but she was also very much UM.
A lot of her stories really blended UM. A lot

(02:38):
of people have a lot of different backgrounds and and
and histories, and she always managed to work aspects of
herself into her main characters. UM. She was a big
critic of hierarchies, which really draws me to her and UM.
She also relatively has at times struggled with writer's block

(03:01):
and depression. She rode over two dozen essays, speeches, short stories,
and novels and her time on this earth. But unfortunately
she had a stroke and died in two thousand and six.
One of the or other two of the books that
have had the most of whos that have had the
most impact on me. And of course I haven't read

(03:22):
her entire bibliography yet, but I hope to get to it.
Um is part of the sewer right, and you know,
I think a lot of people have heard about it again,
a lot more relevance UM after you know, as kind
of patash. We continue to accelerate as you know, we
drew closer to the year that the book is set in,

(03:46):
and regard to the second book, as we had you know,
Trump come into office. Um. And I'll get into why
that's relevant in a bit. In the first book, just
to give a brief synopsis, global climate change and economic
crisis has let's a whole set of social crisis and

(04:08):
chaos in the early twenties. Um. The book is set
in California and they are struggling with pervasive water shortages
and masses of poor people will do basically anything to
live to see another day. Everybody is struggling, so basically today,
in this setting, fifteen year old Lauren Lamina lives inside

(04:31):
a gated community with her preacher father, family and neighbors,
sheltered somewhat from the surrounding chaos. However, when we hear
gated community, now we think of, you know, like really
rich people, but in this case, gated community is just
like a regular community that had to put up a

(04:51):
bunch of walls to prevent like pyramid acts from like reading,
it's like it's a suburb that used to be like
a well off suburb, but as things got worse, it
just turned into people hiding behind their walls because they
were scared of poor folks, right, Like it's there's an
element of it that almost reads like a slasher movie

(05:12):
in the opening of the book, which is one of
the things that's really compelling about it. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
they really Um. She really gets you invested in the setting,
in the character early on, and part of what really
gets you invested in Lauren as a protagonist is the
fact that she suffers from a unique vulnerability or strength,

(05:35):
depending on how you look at it. Um oftentimes vulnerability,
and that is hyper empathy syndrome, which is basically but
she's able to feel others emotions, others pains. So when
others are very very sad, she feels very very sad.

(05:55):
When others are in pe and she feels that seame
excruciating pin um hm and so on and so forth.
And so she has to find sort of navigate this
chaosk food while dealing with this UM, with this um
disorder that she's struggling with. At the same time, though,

(06:16):
she's also navigating faith and the ideal of faith and
philosophy because her father is like a preacher and he
is the preacher of their little gated community, and so
she has grown up in the church, but she also
has found issues in UM, the religion that she grew
up in places where she thinks it is sort of

(06:40):
lead people a straight And that's kind of also what
is drawn me to Lauren as a character, because I too,
you know, have had to negotiate to navigate that whole
religious realm. And so that's basically the setting she's in
this community UM. It's chaos on the outside. She's not

(07:00):
gating her high per empathy syndrome, and she's also dealing
with the ideas of religion and change and so and
so forth. So as she's there um sort of thinking internally,
she's keeping this Juno and she's developing this new system
of thought which he calls earth Seed, and we're gonna
get into good Seed. But it basically shapes uh the

(07:26):
decisions that she makes and the outcome of both books,
and as well as how they progress throughout. The second
book places her in and really trying not to spoil,
which is difficult to do because the second book Lea
is directly after the first book and so and so forth.
But I'll try to speak in broad brushes because I

(07:48):
really think people should go and read it as blind
as possible. Um Lauren. Of course, eventually we will get
into spoilers, by the way, so I'll try to let
folks know when we get into that. But in the
second book, um Lauren is working on a community um

(08:08):
founded on her faith earth Seed, and they begin to
face persecution. I'll see after the election of this ultra
conservative president who vows to quote make America great again.
Being you know, a young black woman in a minority

(08:29):
religious faction in the United States of America. UM. Her
colony becomes a target of President Jared's reign of terror. UM.
And at the same time, Lauren's future daughter is navigating
the discovery of the mother that she didn't knew, that

(08:51):
she didn't know through the journals that her mother kept
through the years. And I think I'll leave it at that.
There are a lot of themes that you know, Butler
covers in these texts, UM, and in fact, I've seen
them described as but Lerian, which I would agree with,

(09:13):
because she covers them in other books of Who's as
well in different ways. UM. She talks about poverty and
slavery and freedom, just what perseverance. She navigates the this
idea of community and what community means, what how community
is both a balance of inclusion and exclusion at the

(09:34):
same time, and also the whole cycle of creation, destruction,
and rebirth that really defines human history right now, Well,
in that books, in the setting of that book, UM,

(09:55):
slavery has made a comeback more than it already has.
You know, you have these extreme forms of death slavery
and marital slavery, and probably even plantation slavery. UM. I
believe plantation slavery is mentioned in the second book. Um,
and of course the slavery is inflicted upon the poor,

(10:16):
particular a lot of company town style slavery right, where
people are like bonded, bound to a specific location because
of their employer, who protects them in this increasingly dangerous,
banded filled world. Yeah, exactly. And in this world, you know,
race remains a factor. Even though these books are written

(10:37):
in the eighties and nineties. I believe Parabolos overs three
and people right again like He's got or Butler has
a character using the same phrase. Trump would win the
president say, on, um, what is it twenty four years

(10:59):
before the start of his campaign. Um. Hard to overstate
the degree to which she was ahead of the curve
on a lot of things, because I mean, to be fair,
she knew America. You know, she grew up in segregation,
your America. She had to deal with her mother was
a domestic liberal, and so she had to go in

(11:23):
with her mother in these rich white families places through
the back door. Um. And you know, obviously that would
have shaped how she saw herself and herself in relation
to the wider world through to America as an idea,
and so I think that as she's writing of this

(11:47):
you know, sort of horrific future, she's drawing a lot
from the horrific past, or rather America's horrific past, of
which her history is of heart. So Lauren, who is
in some ways Octavia but herself inside Um, spends a

(12:08):
lot of time in the book. In both books, allying
with people who are also minorities, who come from mixed backgrounds,
people who tend to be overlooked by the dominant Christian
religious right white um order, because I believe she finds

(12:31):
some sense of safety and strength in people who have
been so aligned slavery. Also ends up affecting Lawrence community too,
Um in many ways that I don't want to spoil.
But despite it all, the theme of perseverance is really

(12:52):
what carries the story alone. Lauren ultimately is the archetype
of the persevera. You know, she preaches a sermon and
the importance of perseverance. She tries to get others to
see the importance of hard work, and she sticks to
her goals no matter what happens, and a lot happens

(13:14):
that would quite honestly discourage a lot of people, to
put it lightly, and yet she perseveres, and so let's
tie that in as well to American history. Particularly in
the first book, she ends up having to make a
journey north um to northern California, and throughout that journey,

(13:38):
you know, she meets with other people and interacts with
the people, She makes allies and avoids enemies, and you
can honestly draw some parallels to the underground real Road.
Of course it's not an exact one to one, but
in the sense of having to work with people along
the way to progress out of a terrible situation, a

(14:02):
hellish situation for the hoop, not the guarantee, but the
hoop of some form of salvation when you get to
the end of the journey. She doesn't do it to Lune.
She does it with others um and that's kind of
what keeps her hoop alive. But it's not just externals.
She has a lot of intrinsic motivation to persevere, which

(14:24):
is driven by her philosophy. I mean, I think one
of the things, because there's there's a lot of meaning
and why she picks the parable of the sower in
the parable of the talents for and it's it's pretty

(14:44):
obvious and necessary next of the books, it's She's not
like hiding it under layers or anything. But one of
the things that in particular the second book deals with, um,
I mean in the first book to do a degree
is kind of the the pointlessness of responding to dystopian
change in society by just like hunkering down in a

(15:05):
bunker and trying to hide from it and protect your
family like that. One of the reoccurring themes is the
degree to which that doesn't work. And one of the
things that's really interesting about this is a dystopian novel.
Um this is a novel that is, both of these
novels are kind of imagining the collapse of a lot
of aspects of American society, but it is not. At

(15:26):
no point does the United States really collapse in these books.
And and even like as much as authoritarianism is present,
at no point is the government completely taken over and
completely under the control of like a unified fascist regime
or anything. Like. Elections are still happen in company elections
going on the piece, but you know, you said have

(15:46):
to pay them to, you know, And and the the
like Christian death squad type things that are roaming around
are distinctly non state actors they have backing to as
an extent from the state. They're not really opposed by it,
but it's it's it's again, it's this thing that we
we are actually dealing with where collapse doesn't look like okay,

(16:09):
everything's fallen apart, and now it's whoever's got the strongest
group of buddies, who can who can you know, do
their best in the waste land. It's like no, no, no.
It is about groups of people trying to navigate in
an increasingly dysfunctional state. And the only way to actually
survive that is um Survival is complicated, and it's never

(16:29):
as simple as just like picking a good farm to
hide on. You know that that's that's not going to
work out for you exactly. I just want to point
out as well, that's as just functional as things. People
are still going to work, not just the people who
are you know, in company talent or in debt bondage,
but even Lawrence father, you know, he takes his bike
every d and rides out into that chaos to go

(16:51):
on work for a weege to come back and to
try to support his family. And of course in this
kid community, we see that the attempts to see gated.
You know, it's also a few tile like the rich
have their high security communities and be able to escape
in helicopters when anything happens, but they have no security

(17:14):
even in this illusion of security and not huntering down
strategy they were taken wasn't working. In the first half
of the book really shows why. Yeah, it's um, it's
it's a it's a book about collapse by somebody who's
uh who, who grew up in a situation where her

(17:38):
her childhood had a lot of elements of the collapse
that many particularly like many folks are concerned about now,
Like that's what she grew up in was there's no
there's no protection, violence can come from all sides, and
it's random. Um, and you have no there are no
guarantees in this like world that you've come into, Which

(18:01):
is this thing that like people are freaking out about
now as we encounter kind of aspects of the the
world order that we had grown up with that we
feel like are falling apart. And I think the thing
that's so compelling about Butler is her books kind of
are coming from the perspective of someone for whom that
order and that world were never real. Yeah. Yeah, And

(18:26):
that's why her contributions to sci fi is so valuable,
you know, because all of these sci fi writes it's
just like regular privileged white Kays and you know, and
and they just come with that experience. And this isn't
often um repeated critique of sci fi. UM you see,
didn't tweet to themselves sometimes, where like a lot of
it is just like particularly like a literally did sci

(18:47):
fi is like whoa, what if the things that white
people did other people happen to white people? You know,
like this whole idea that these alien invasion um fears
an alien invasion story to just like what if clualism
but too white people to rich countries, you know. M hm.

(19:09):
Another part of the reason that the attempt to hunker
down and stuff and basically exclude others from their community
failed is because and Lauren rights this in her diary,
exclusion breeds resentment among the excluded. So even though Lawrence neighborhood,

(19:31):
while you know, gated and wall and stuff, was not
particularly rich, just the mere fact that they had those
walls up basically signaled to the outside world that they
had something to hide some sort of resources they wanted
to safeguard, even if the only thing they had to

(19:52):
safeguard with themselves because a lot of the members of
the community were you know, unemployed and extremely poor, that
alone sort of symbolized, uh sort of. It was sort
of a beacon um drawing people to eventually UM attack.
And that's a slight spoiler, but yeah, and you know,

(20:15):
despite the problems that exclusion and are causing, UM, Lauren
as she realizes that her community could not handle that approach.
Even then, as she's progressing your authors stuff and she's
to beating with herself, you know, who to bring into

(20:37):
her fold Exclusion and inclusion. They play a role, you know, Um,
she has to find form bonds and you know, stay safe.
But at the same time, the bonds that she forms
could put her in danger if she's betrayed or if

(20:58):
the people that she invests and end up being harmed
in some way, because the harm that they experience will
ultimately affect her as well. So, as Lauren is making

(21:22):
her way up Noah, she is continuing to wrestle with
this idea of inclusion and exclusion because as she's progressing
north in hopes of you know, building a community of
some kind, creating, joining, forming community or some kind. She's
also forming and establishing her religion. Like I mentioned before,

(21:46):
it played a major role in the community that she
came from, and in fact, novel points so that one
of the reasons people are attracted to, you know, religion,
to Christianity in this chaotic time and in general, really
it's because it provides hope and hope in the form
of an afterlife, and hope is what people really really

(22:08):
need in these hellish twenties that they are dealing with.
The Lauren comes to realize that the hope and hope
and the afterlife ultimately isn't enough for the people that
have invested so much into it. Um one of the
people in the community, Um ends up despite being a

(22:34):
staunch believer that UM trigger warning by the way for suicide. Um,
despite being a strong believer that you know, suicide is
a sin and I was sending straight to hell. She
is so lost hope and can no longer trust in,

(22:55):
has been dealing with so much pain that she ends
up taking her own life. Yeah, and she takes her
own life, And as Lauren remarks, she takes her own
life knowing Um, or at least believing the pain hereafter,
and yet she finds it more of a reprieve than
the pain she was experiencing here now. And so as

(23:20):
Lauren is witnessing these things happening around her, Um is
dealing with, you know, loss and her baptism and her
father's commitment to the church, she is continuing to develop
the idea of earth Seed, and she begainst the contrast

(23:42):
earth Seed from christian with Christianity Um, and particularly in
the sense of how the two religions address hope and change.
In Christianity, you know, they have the hope Um of
the afterlife against this brutal life life now a life,

(24:03):
whereas earth Seed simply presents the central principle. God has changed.
That's the first principle of earth Seed. Second is that
shape God. So first you have to recognize and accept
that change is inevitable, often destructive, but you could also
recognize your poet to shape it Um. And so from

(24:26):
that comes the third principle, which has to to um
pursue the destiny, the destiny being the establishment of humanity
and other worlds. And to be quite honest, I am

(24:52):
as this is one aspect of the philosophy of hearths
see that I think I diverge from Um Laura and
of course has a lot of focus on the heavens,
as in the cosmic heavens and scattering seed, which is,
you know, humanity across you know, all these different planets,

(25:15):
establishing ourselves in different worlds. But I feel as though
the destiny is in a way once the destruction, I
think it's it's a misplaced um, a misplaced who I guess.
I mean, there's that's kind of one of the points

(25:36):
of the book, right, because there's, especially in the second book,
there's a lot from the perspective of her daughter that
kind of shows how as as much her philosophy is
a really understandable and in some ways admirable adaptation to
the completely fucked up times she was born into, it's
also in the same way that a lot of other

(25:59):
people's philosophy has become, you know, and that her parents
and stuff are earlier in the first book, it's a
way for her to kind of justify not paying attention
to the people in her life and not not taking
proper care of them, because she's got this thing that's
bigger than them, she works, and you really by the

(26:19):
by the end of the second book, you really have
to sort of contend with the fact that you know,
you sort after grapple with how things with her daughter
would handle India. I guess I'll leave it at that. Um. Yeah, Yeah,
that's part of it. I mean, she's so dedicated to

(26:41):
this cause, so this new religion of who um and
you know she's recruiting people into it. You know, she's
selling people leavest this hoop. You know that following its
believe in the Destiny, eventually you know, space is going
to become the real life heaven. We could actually get
out there and can you start for herself for ourselves?
And that's part of it as well, part of the

(27:02):
what idea of the Destiny is, you know, a fresh
stock for humanity, a sort of a maturation of humanity,
This idea that you know, once humanity establishes itself in
other wounds, that it would have grown up as a species. Yeah.

(27:22):
And it's It's one of the things that I really
respect about these books that I think a lesser writer
wouldn't have been able to pull off, is that the
degree without beating you in the head with it. You
see her as first failed by the philosophies and ideologies
of her parents generation and by the systems that people

(27:48):
had gotten stuck in. She's very much a character who
grows up in a world where all the adults are
stuck UM essentially like a system that has become a
death cult, and she has to figure out a way
out of it. What she comes to believe in so
much that in her own way, she becomes stuck in
that new thing, and it renders her unable to see

(28:09):
certain things that are important. And the book never portrays
her as completely right or completely wrong, because that's just
not how civilization works. Things just change over time. And
you know, the the ideology that her parents and the
adults are all stuck in in the beginning of the
book is an ideology that worked to a degree at

(28:30):
some point in the past. Um, which is just it,
It's it's It does a really good job of of
showing a number of things, which is kind of what
it's like to be a kid realizing that the adults
have fucked you, what it's like to become radicalized UM
and realize that the world doesn't have to be the
way that it is, and what it's like to let

(28:52):
that radicalization lead you somewhere to where you miss important things,
Like there's so much going on in the evolution of
what the characters believe in this book that is is
just masterful from a storytelling standpoint. Yeah, I mean the
second book really does a good job showing her sort

(29:12):
of blindness as well when it comes to things going on,
because what ends up happening one of the worst incidents
in that second book is something that's of course not
a victim blame, but it is something they could have
prepared for a bit more, a lot more. Actually, Yeah,

(29:38):
it's it's they're good books. There are books that you
will if you're like me, you will start reading them
and you will get really into the first book, and
then you'll take a ten minute break to like check
the news, and something will send you into a panic spiral,
and you'll read the next two books getting increasingly depressed.
It's good because the third book never released. Yeah, she

(30:02):
never quite got to make it. Yeah, and I'll get
into that as well in a bit, and how it
ties into the destiny, right, but just a realtory, you know,
who is principle? God has changed, God is not a person.
It doesn't love or hate or watch over us or
no worse. It just is second principle shape God. God
is maalable. God is power, infinite, irresistible and exorable, indifferent,

(30:27):
and yet God is pliable. Tricks to teacher CHIOSK Clay
and truly emphasizes the change is neither good nor bad,
but it is potential. And we could and we have
a choice to either be a victim of change, the
victim of God, or we can become a partner of God,

(30:48):
or we can become a shape of God, or we
could just stay as God's plaything as changes prey. It's unavoidable,
but all actions can shapest direction and speed, and the
end change prevails. And there's a comfort in that because

(31:11):
once we can understand that, you can return that efforts,
the inevitability of change can be what thrust us forward.
And I think, Um, I think people who are invested
in in activism, in organizing and just revolutionary work, I

(31:36):
think their aspects of we see that I think be
very motivating, very impactful, very energizing because despite you know
how circumstances play out, Um, there's a recognition that we
are never entirely disempowered, you know, And so like just

(31:58):
the last point, I want to get into a the destiny.
I think that's what it would make me if I
were to be in this world. I think that's where
I would diverge from the earth Seed orthodoxy, because, I mean,
Lauren talks about how, you know, history is just this

(32:18):
repetitive thing. We have all these wars and kill a
bunch of people and impoverish others and spread disease and hunger,
and the whole thing is just because that's how it's
always been, just me, and we have to accept that
we can choose to do more, make something more of ourselves,
and to who making something more of ourselves is establishing

(32:40):
ourselves another planet. So if she is earted orthodoxy, I
suppose I'm a earth Seed Protestant. You see Martin Luther
nailing your thesis to I don't know the door of
her house in Seattle exactly. I would be a reformer
of the of the destiny in the sense that I

(33:02):
seek the destiny could be creating a heaven here on
Earth like rather than pursuing it cosmic heaven. And I
don't think it's even something that Lauren at least I
don't recall Lauran ever grappling with the possibility because she
really is fixated on this cosmic um idea. I think
she grabbed the possibility that humanity can mature quote quote

(33:24):
here on Earth. You know. Um, she doesn't really draw
munch attention or has so much time thinking about things
like ecosystem restoration or you know, changing the pushing back
against the government or the economic system that is impoverishing
and inflicting violence upon people. She's just really fixated on

(33:46):
the destiny. And so that's when I get into the
Fluid Book and things I learned about the third book
when I was researching for this episode. But actually planned
on exploring the fulfillment of the destiny in the third book,
um parable of the trick. Still. In fact, she intended
to have a seven part series, so the third book
would have been near the middle, as the story would

(34:09):
have focused on another woman named Imara who is living
on it called me in the future, on a planet
called Boom, far away from Earth. Cold. It is not
the heaven that was hoped for, but gray, dank and
utterly miserable. Everybody is homesick, um homesick, not just in
like oh, I haven't been home in a while kind

(34:31):
of thing. Homesick in the sense of like you know
when someone is like an amputee and they have this
sort of phantom limb sensation. Yeah, this homesickness is like
a phantom limb pain, a neurological debilitation. It's like trying
to graft humanity answer a new planet, and it's it's

(34:57):
it's like if humanity were a branch and this new
planet as a tree, and like both the tree and
the branch are kind of rejecting each other. Um. And
so she never really got very far into writing Parable
of the Tricksters. In fact, she had a lot of
different um ways of approaching it, a lot of different

(35:19):
manuscripts that she got, you know, a couple of pages
into and then discarded. You know. So in some versions
the colonist end up having like creeping blindness. In others
they get this telepathy um. In other versions, she has
to solve a murder. Another version, she becomes a ghost.

(35:39):
Sometimes she's an earth an earth Seed skeptic. Sometimes she's
a true believer. Sometimes she's a hyper rampath. Sometimes she's
cured of it um. Sometimes the planet itself is filled
with giant dinosaurs, other times small animals, other times intelligent
aliens um. And there's also this idea, this I would say,

(35:59):
very Twilight Zone esque idea that the aliens that they
do encounter tokens of their escalating collective madness. And so
the whole idea of power of the tricks to and
would have been the subsequent books was, you know, the
continuation of the concept of choice choosing to either you know,

(36:21):
live together, we'll together, struggle together, or you know, fight
and scheme and lose their minds, break down, die and
murder alone. In her speech to the u N in
two thousand one, that would be like five years before
she passed away, I think she did. In like I
said two thousand and six, she speaks about how before

(36:44):
she even like started working on the first Parable novel,
she wanted to write a novel about a utopian civilization
where everybody had a kind of hyper empathy. But then
actually figured it would be a utopian society because everyone
would be inclined to, you know, behave in a more

(37:06):
pro social way, because any anti social activity they would have,
you know, inflicts upon others, would be inflixed upon themselves. Immediately,
but then she realized it wouldn't work because sharing pain,
the threat of shared pain, doesn't necessarily make people behave

(37:26):
better towards another. She points to be the popular painful
supports of you know, like boxing and American football, you know.
And so she recognizes that this idea of everyone being
a hyper em path because a lot of trouble. I mean,
if everyone feels each other's pain, who wants to be
a dentist, you know, who wants to be a newse um?

(37:46):
And so she discards that idea, and then she basically
created Lauren, who was a lone hyper and path in
the would that is empathy deficient ultimately, I think, But
I guess the heart of you know, a lot of
the issues that we're dealing with, um, she grapp us

(38:10):
with a lot of questions that should still be explored,
the idea of inclusion and exclusion, that balance when you know,
developing community, concept of perseverance, UM, concept of hope, the
creation and destruction and re booth of really life and

(38:33):
just what makes life life. I guess I'll wrap things
up with the code this tolerance have a chance only
if we wanted to tolerance like any aspect of peace
is forever a wek in progress, never completed, and if

(38:54):
we are as intelligent as we'd like to think, we
are never abandoned. That's it us change cheap guarded peace. Well,
I think that's about as good a line as any
to end on. Go read Octavia Butler. If you haven't
check her out, go to the library. Her ships all

(39:17):
over the library. Libraries are filthy with Octavia Butler books.
You'll find it or steal it off the internet. She's
not gonna mind. It could Happen here as a production
of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources

(39:39):
for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone
Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.