Q&A 2023

The gang all got together before the holidays to answer listener questions.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Sacred twenty three, extremely extremely exciting. It's finally, finally, two
thousand twenty three. That means only funny things can happen
this year. That's right, selfie. Welcome to Welcome to Christy.
I wouldn't hear any criticism. Welcome to Well. I don't

(00:30):
know if I'm gonna say they're welcome, but it is good,
good work. Enjoy your year of discord um as if
any year of the last, like ten, has not been
a year every every year previously was totally normal and
not chaotic. Downhill from here. First off, welcome, welcome back.

(00:54):
We we love some of you. Probably presumably I haven't
met you, any of the ones that I love, but
I assume that you're out there. How's everybody doing, how's
everyone's new year? Absolute slap in the face to anyone
you've met on any of your live events, that's a fairy.
So nice to meet you. Thank you for coming in person. Also,

(01:18):
fuck you. That's what this whole episode is a series
of slaps to the face, because it's not for us.
We're lying. We're all lying to them. Who knows if
we make it that far today we're recording this on
December two, and what is it? What has happened today? Friends? Also,
who are you? Who is on this episode? Garrison's here?

(01:42):
As I've already spoken into the microphone, you know who
else has spoken into the microphone? Serene? Question work? Now
you have Sophie, Sophie, ye, James? Oh? Miss any one left? Oh? No, Mia,
I don't. I don't think I've actually spoken into this

(02:02):
episode yet. So now I have. You've started the day? Didn't?
So that's how you introduced a PODCT so incredibly awkward.
It was perfect, magnificent, as if we had never done
a podcast. But before we get to this, to some
of the q days of what has happened today when

(02:22):
we're recording it? Oh, well, today is the day? Is
the one day anniversary of me showing Garrison the movie
Strange Days, written by James Cameron um a New Year's classic.
Such a good movie. Not seen it? Oh you gotta
you gotta watch it? It is Robert got an alert
on his phone that was just like Memories one year,

(02:46):
a lot of one day, one day, a lot of
violence against the l a p D in that film. Today,
that's what's happened has happened? Yeah, definitely not a pro
l a p D movie. Um. Also you you get
to repeatedly see a couple of now prominent actors oh

(03:07):
faces um, which is which is great in a slightly
problematic context, deeply problematic context, but a good movie. What
actors are in this movie? What's his? What's his? Ralph Find? Yeah,
Ralph find is the main character, and he looks exactly
like ten years ago Bradley Cooper. Bradley Cooper in this movie.

(03:32):
So don't insult Ralph. Don't do that. They that's what
I mean. Okay, well, that's cool. Um, he's great and
Angela Bassett is fucking incredible in it. Queen. Yeah. Tom
Sizemore is present in the movie. Alright, Well my favorite

(03:54):
is Vincent din Afrio looks exactly like Tim Heidecker's character,
and that I think you should leave sketch where they're
at the UFO themed restaurant. It's it's uncanny, um that
you're still doing. Uh. I think you should leave references
in the Lord's I showed my family before before they

(04:15):
left to go see other family for Christmas. I sat
I sat my family down to watch the second half
of season two and magnificent. Yeah, it's defined, and that
that leads into my only prediction for the next year,
which is this is, oh God, come on all right,

(04:35):
who's what's the first question? Then? Well, want to know, um,
in an alternate universe where it could happen here, has
a corporate office, does the staff get a Robert Evans
book for holiday presence or a gift card? And we
can we can actually answer this because despite not having
a corporate office, there's still there still was a holiday

(04:58):
gift which I have not actually with mine yet, so
I can't say what line is, but I know other
people have received theirs. I don't know, Sophie, I ordered
yours for well, well, Sophie, you know sometimes it would
be like that tracking it's probably gonna be yes. So
if you're about to ruin some ups drives day, But

(05:19):
what did what did everyone else received for their Scarrison?
Will be delivered PM today out for today? There there
you go. It's okay, Garrison. I didn't get shipped either.
Oh oh, did buy you something that hasn't come yet? Devastatingly,
what did what did what did everyone else get for
for their holiday gift? Was it a Robert Evans book? No,

(05:41):
it wasn't God would be Oh my god, imagine you're
that fucked up, that unchanged that you're like, you should
do that ar gift. The second job I ever had,
which was our third job, I guess, which was working
for this accountant guy that's like like he was like right,

(06:04):
he was a retirement like an advisor guy. He would
help old people get their money in order to retire.
It was mostly like helping him host events at like
a Texas roadhouse where we would try to get old
people to buy annuities. But um, so I worked for
this guy. In the day I started the job, he
gave me a copy of his self published novel Operation
night Watch, which was about a group of Navy seals

(06:27):
going rogue to stop drug dealers and is one of
the worst things I've ever read. I mean I attempted
to someone when I mentioned it once on the show.
Somebody found and bought a copy and give that money
to someone else. Oh, he can't be alive anymore. There's

(06:49):
no way he said it was. It was probably all
the eBay or something. Yeah, yeah, that that man has
been dead for years. I'm sure we still we still
have an we still have, we got time. He can's
mace to to a little personal maces on the left
hand one for your right hand. I really like it.
It's very compact. New pepper spray has been on my

(07:10):
tables for like months because mine was expired like a
year ago. But I've never actually bought in one, and
so it was perfect and I was just so tiny.
I can put it in like my Fannie pack and
just continue on my day. How do you know it
won't work if it's expired. I just poked it up.
I looked it up, and I was just like, I
don't want to like, I don't know. I just it
was on my tables. I obviously didn't buy it yet.
It wasn't like you don't want to hurt somebody with

(07:31):
expired pepper spray. It's a propellant that expires. Yeah, the
kid itself gets like yourself. Yeah I got it. Yeah Yeah,
well there you go, there you go. Um let's see,
so we're going to be going through some of the
questions that we got for the previous Sorry my cats
are making Also. I do like that that, but that

(07:53):
person really thought that Robert was that person that was like, hey,
happy holidays, here's my book. I do get the royalties.
You're welcome. We should, we should. We should use the
corporate cards to buy more copies of my book. That's
a good idea. So we can just ship them to

(08:14):
the sea, though it doesn't matter where they go. For
the next question, and we're using the questions from the previous,
it could happen in your livestream for this, by the way,
So if we didn't get to your question, we're getting
to some more of them right now. Unless your questions sucked. Yeah, yeah,
very personal. Yes, that's that's that's what I meant by sucked. Um.

(08:39):
So do you know of a way to get involved
in mutual aid without using social media? I don't really
use it for mental health reasons. Good decision there to
not use social media. Continue using social media. Yeah, Um,
A lot of mutual aid organizing or you know, like
requests happen on social media. Um, but I mean there's

(09:00):
I guess it depends on how you use social media.
I suppose like it might be useful to have a
friend that follows some of the some of the social
media stuff in your local area, whether that be on
Twitter or mastered on or Instagram. Um, and then can
like relay relay to you if there's local events um,

(09:21):
or you can just like section off like once a
week you check on just a few of those things
and then you then you delete the app from from
your phone again. Um. Because once you are like plugged
into a local community, then people can just like directly
send you flyers and stuff. Um. But you have to
have those connections there in the first place. And those
connections are really best made by going to things on

(09:42):
the ground, whether it be you know, a food not
bombs type thing, whether it be you know, like a
clothing swap. Um. Lots of local events do happen in
in in people's cities, and once you actually go there
in person, that's where real community actually gets built. So
it's it's just it's just it's kind of just breaking
the ice to actually get to act go to a
few in person things and then and then people can

(10:03):
send you, you know, direct fires and stuff. If you
don't want to be doom scrolling well looking for things,
you don't have to even have an account if you
don't decide not to. You can like view profiles on
Twitter and Instagram without an account that you can't like
see the comments or whatever. But if you just want
to see their profile every once in a while and
check in on what they're doing. You can do that

(10:24):
online with no account. Yeah, often as well, like and
well we're doing mutual aid things here. It tends to
focus on the border a lot or on house people,
and like in both cases you can just show up
and you'll meet someone who's helping in most instances, and
then they can direct you and they can text you
or signal you whatever. Like there were tons of people

(10:46):
when the migrant caravan arrived who were much older and
not on social media, often with church groups, and they
didn't hugely like have UM I would say a lot
of experience in that kind of area, but they deeply
wanted to help and they showed up and people were like, hey,
can you go to us, go and get base and
they want to ga absolute and yeah, and we use
what's happened? It was fine, and like check around. Another

(11:06):
option to be obviously if if you if you have
like like a radical meeting space in your city, you
can check their um If you don't have those, you
can even check see if there's any like radical coffee
shops or cafes that maybe have like a bulletin board
people will often put up flyers for stuff there. Um,
just you really have to do start to start trying

(11:26):
to be like plugged into your actual like I r
L local community and that's generally how that goes. Um,
you have to be more proactive than if you had
social media is the main thing. You still have to
show up either way, right, Like, Yeah, and do you
know who else wants you to show up online? Evans?

(11:47):
I don't these products and services that want you to.
We're now exclusively only sponsored by Robert's books. Yes, and
here's an excerpt. All right, and we're back speaking of

(12:11):
the Internet. Robert or anyone I suppose, do you think
there's a way to get back to fulfilling the promise
of the early Internet? Uh? No, Um, I don't. I
think the early Internet was a thing that happened that
in part was the way that it was because our
brains did not have any kind of tolerance or or

(12:33):
or like we're not like prepared for it. Um, And
it it kind of grew up as we became capable
of like I don't know, like the the the Internet
grew more social as we got used to it. And
I don't think that can ever happen again, like those

(12:54):
those weird little moments where I don't know ye that
my answer is no, I don't think it will ever
happen again, in the same way that like you're never
going to get those weird little moments that you you had,
like the birth of you know, the printing press or whatever.
Like you know, it was a unique moment in history
and it's never going to come again. Which doesn't mean

(13:18):
that something else won't happen. Um, but the Internet is
not Like the fact that we've all lived through the
social media era means even once all these companies go bust,
our brains have still been changed by them too much
to ever go back to posting the way we once did. No,
we're too far gone, I think. On a kind of
similar note, in a few days, we have an episode

(13:41):
from Andrew on digital commons and this that kind of
involves around this same kind of question. So in a
few days we'll have we'll have an episode kind of
about this topic ran by Andrew. Um, but James, you
had you had something, Yeah, Sometimes like obviously like the
Internet is terrible in many ways, but like when we
talk about like what happened in myanma that series of

(14:02):
Robert and I did. Like that seems to me like
it's delivering on some of the promises of the early Internet,
Like it's it's mad that you know, a young person
like who is facing a coup and wants democracy in
this part of Asia can go online speak to some
dude in these aren't real places, like people are spoken

(14:23):
to about like some some guy in his garage in
Ohio who's threely printing guns, and that person can help
the other person on themselves and defend their right to
choose who governs them or if they're governed at all,
Like that is really fucking cool, and that doesn't happen
without the Internet, and so yeah, there's also yeah, it's
it's not that there's not going to be good things

(14:44):
done with the Internet, or that it can't be made better,
but it's never going to be what it was because
we simply know too much. Um, let's see what are
some inspiring recent examples of cooperation increasing survival odds to
know the type that thinks they just need AMMO to survive.
Another good touchstone with for this would be the movie

(15:07):
trimmers Um which which shows unfortunately actually he's survival player
nobody lives with that community. Unfortunately, unfortunately, I think Rabbit
actually is correct here. More broadly, this person is like
and coned sleep paraphrasing Kurparkian, right, but like we have

(15:28):
all just lived through a pandemic, and they are stilling
through a pandemic. I guess which has changed the world
killed hundreds of thousands, millions of people, and like, the
reason a lot of people got through that, A lot
of people who didn't weren't able to work or were
immuno compromised. You can't go out as much is because
other people helped them, Like no one shot COVID and

(15:49):
no one fed themselves in the lockdown because they had
tons of five or five six stocked away, like a
ton of mutual aid happened. A lot of terrible ship
happened as well, But that's a bigger example. I think, mm, yeah,
what genres of music have each of you been listening
to lately? M I'm a big classical head. I don't

(16:10):
care if it's like I also listened to a lot
of classical the best. When you're driving, everything becomes like
cinematic and it's calming, and sometimes words distract me, so
my go too is classical to what I would consider
classical music, which is second and third wave SCAA basically

(16:32):
the only classical music in my opinion. I listened to
the Clash Suade and the manicx Ree Preacher is more
or less exclusively. Yeah, they're the only bands that matter. Yeah,
I think if it's not classical, I'm trying to like
be I don't know, I'm like dancing around. So it's
either like it's like two extremes for me, either classical

(16:53):
and I'm like chill, going to sleep, or I'm getting
ready and I want to feel something. M what if
I man, I have the most absolutely dogship music, but
the music that I listened to it, I think it's
legitimately good. That's not like hower metal or like weird
ship is I've I've been going back to like my

(17:17):
Youth and my Youth is a combination of like surf rock.
I was like, this is a safe space like what okay,
like Pat Pat Benatar sort of like that that there's
a sort of era of like I don't know what

(17:38):
you call it, like lesbian glam rock. I don't know yourself.
This is the safe space you keep saying that I
don't think we ever agreed to this. I usually listened
to a lot of music, well, writing and researching. I
just finished up to two pretty big writing projects. I've
been listening to a lot of music. Um, most of

(18:01):
it's like ambient electronica. Uh, some classicals thrown in there
if I need to get a little bit more like energy.
But listening to some Trent Resiner kind of ambient stuff um,
and like a lot of I also listened to a
lot of remixes of the Mario Galaxy soundtrack. Okay, I

(18:25):
like that. Wait, okay, okay, okay, all right, I need
to I need I need to plug a truly awful song. No, no, no, no,
we got it. Okay, look Donkey Kong has to slam
this way. It has to be this way, X space
Jam x d k Rap. I need, I need to
know that this exists, is there's there's it is incredible.

(18:49):
It is another worldly experience. That's also a version of it.
That's the k but also what do we mean angel? Okay,
I think this said. Do you listen to Max Richter?
I think he would like Max Richter. He's like he
had a lot of soundtracks for shows. So stuff is
kind of like melancholic and piano ee, but I think

(19:09):
you might like it. I will look him up. Good name, Yeah,
it's spelled Richer. Yeah, okay, great. Yeah. You should also
listen to the Mighty Mighty Boss Towns, who did a
wonderful album. No No, don't don't speak out the album

(19:34):
That George Floyd song is incredibly appropriate, deeply appropriate. Yet,
speaking of listening to things, speaking speaking of things that
are problems, what is what is the most troubling thing
that isn't being reported on or isn't taken seriously by
the wider public. The fact that none of you said
you listened to any rap music or any type of

(19:57):
music that wasn't just I thought Tupac was a give okay, okay,
trachical questions I listened to. I listened to a little
bit of Biggie every now and again, and I got
my most deaf always loaded up, especially around the New Year.
I love listening to Life and Marvelous Times, both sides

(20:18):
as a hell of an album. I've always been more Biggie.
There's a guy Code and Christian Parish takes a gun.
He rapped by Superman. He's like from the coronation. I
think his stuff is cool. The most troubling thing that
isn't that isn't being reported on are taken seriously enough
by the wide republic besides our musical tastes. Well, I'm

(20:38):
going to be and always say like Atal East your
news and Palestine and like air and balance reporting and
even like Syria and uh Yemen and all of that stuff.
I think none of that gets enough attention. Absolutely, I'm
gonna say, fucking scams um, Like just on a daily basis,

(20:58):
I feel like my phone gets uh, six to eight
scam calls scam calls at least, and like it's uh
and someone making a note of this earlier because like
a bunch of scam stories have been people have been
sharing them this year. But like there's all sorts of
fucked up things like if a relative gets arrested, as
soon as the police post um the like the they're

(21:23):
the fact that like like publicly posted they've been arrested,
Like the family if they have numbers that scammers can find,
will start getting auto dialed by like accounts claiming to
be the police saying that like you need to put
money in their account now where they're going into general population.
And it's all these are all like low hanging fruit
things like they're they're they're not they're targeting people who

(21:44):
are not very savvy UM often people who have some
sort of like mental disability. Right, So folks who are
kind of living a marginal existence in a lot of
ways as it is, UM and they are like it
it's making it incredibly difficult for and and folks who
have like are cognitively impaired for whatever reason, including the

(22:07):
fact that they're they're elderly. There's just like this. It's
never been like this before, the sheer density of scams
that people have to wade through. And again, most of you,
we've all kind of noticed it getting more common, but
you may not have noticed how kind of brutal it's
gotten because you're not the target demographic for this stuff, right.
That's why they all have like filters in them to

(22:27):
try and weed out the people who are savvy enough
to know that they're being scammed. But it's there's a
number of things. This is the result of decisions that
the the FTC made um like like in order to
like make it a lot easier for people to use
ship like auto dialers and to carry out like phone
based scams. But it's it's just been punted on by

(22:49):
every presidential administration in our lifetime. Is the Internet has
made it easier to automate this stuff, and the the
explosion of machine learning tools that are widely available, these
kind of AI s that people are joking about right now,
like it's all going to create the capacity to more
effectively automate scams. I had one that could have gotten

(23:09):
me the other day where I got a call from
my bank that was listed as from my bank is
and like on it like it was my bank's phone number,
like it was. It came up as them on the
and they were like, hey, you know someone has there's
some some charges. Can we run them by you? We
want to make sure And they were like charge things
I had not bought. They were like wire transfers and

(23:29):
ship and they're like, oh, it looks like you know,
somebody's gotten access to your account. And the call dropped
before I could finish it, so I called them back,
and when I called my bank back, they were like, oh, yeah,
that was someone spoofing our number. They were trying to
get personal information out of you. Um, this ship is
so fucking endemic, and no one is doing a goddamn
thing about it. There's like one anemic attempt in Congress

(23:52):
to slightly address it, primarily through like education, but it
is a massive problem. It's part of what's breaking society,
the fact that like everyone is constantly flooded by this
low level cloud of people trying to destroy their financial lives. Um,
It's it's real bad. Do you know what else is

(24:13):
trying to destroy your financial lives? Of the products and
services that support this podcast, Garrison and Robert's books, and
we are back for one final time for this episode.

(24:34):
This is This is actually a question that I feel
is pretty important that I wish people thought about a
bit more, at least within like, you know, our our
general sphere. Where do you draw the line between fascist
politics and non fascist conservative politics. Well, at the moment
in the United States, I don't think there's a line

(24:55):
to be drawn, because the mainstream of the Republican Party
completely thrown themselves in behind one of or both of
two fascists. Um. In terms of like personally, I guess
it depends on whether or not people support their being
like things like penalties on on on it. Do people

(25:20):
like does somebody's support banning books, to somebody's support arresting
folks for expressing political opinions that differ from there's does
somebody support, um, you know, expanding the penalties for petty
crimes to include like violence, Like those are all things
that can suggest that somebody is a fascist. But at
the end of the day, anybody who supports the Republican

(25:42):
Party right now is supporting a fascist movement. So I
don't feel there's any sort of I don't draw a
line in my head anymore, to be entirely honest, because
they they alighted the line. I try to be very
specific when I say fastist versus just like a regular conservative.
In my reporting, like when we were inside Colorado, we

(26:04):
talked to people who were Conservatives, who were who were
against fascists and against local fascists in their community and
actually doing things to help stop fascists from gaining power
within their local community. UM. I think if you look
at a lot of the rhetoric around queer people right now,
whether it be like drag shows or trans people, that's

(26:25):
a specific style of rhetoric that is like innately fascist. UM,
like talking about like there was there was there was
a tweet from um is his name, like lindsay James,
what's that? What's what's that? Guy? Yeah, he put out
he put out this little like meme being like, don't
call them drag queens, call them um like like it

(26:48):
was some some bullshit groomer thing, Like I forget the
exact thing, but like that that specific style of rhetorical
framing is is is like a pretext to ex termination
and genocide, Like that is that is what that is
what they're doing, and I think that is right now.
Is what it crosses the line is when when they're
creating these scapegoat groups that that are going to be

(27:12):
targeted and posing these groups as like a threat to civilization. Um,
that's where I kind of use that word like fascists
like that that is generally in in my research where
I start employing that versus you know, some random guy
who I'm talking to who you know wants there to

(27:32):
be lower taxes and less regulation. Because yeah, that that position,
as we've seen now, can eventually lead to the type
of fascist policies. But I think that there is when
it comes to like people in your personal life, and
when it comes to like regular people who are not politicians.
I think having a little bit more discretion is useful

(27:53):
because I think there's still a chance that some people
who are currently conservative can not become fascist. Yeah, I
would agree. I think in the US context one sort
of useful litmus test for people on the right. It's like,
are the rules of the game more important than the
outcome of the game. Like, so when you look at
like the sort of fascism we saw around Donald Trump, right,

(28:15):
like there was a point where the outcome of the game,
the maintenance of power right became more important than the
rules of the game. I like basic human rights, and
I think that that's a useful definitely a useful sort
of it's this person dangerous, it might like I like
Paxton's definition of fascism. Generally it's not great, but it's

(28:36):
which has elements useful. Yeah, it's useful. And I think
your scapegoat group group one is really key when people
a scapegrowing people and they don't really give a funk
about how they eliminate those people stop quote unquote, right,
when when people are seeking to use the machinery of
state to eliminate people and ideas that they find uncomfortable

(28:56):
by using the force of law against them, Um, they're fascists.
And when people are supportive of ending democratic like ending
the democratic transfer of power in order to support an
individual that they think embodies their conception of like what
their country is, those people are fascists. Um. And I

(29:17):
think that it's one thing, And I don't think it's
usually useful if you're having a conversation with an individual
to call them a fascist, even if they're behaving in
ways that are kind of fashy. If you think that
a productive conversation can be had, Um, that might move
them in one direction or the other. But at the
end of the day, if somebody is supportive, for example,

(29:39):
of a third term for Donald Trump, um, that person
is supporting a fascist movement. And I don't think that
there's a I don't think I don't think it matters that,
like their individual reasons for doing it maybe less fascy
than someone else's, Like, at the end of the day,
they are supporting that, and that's that's kind of what
matters to me. I think. I think it's also worth

(30:02):
taking a little bit of a look at what happened
to your conservatism in order to sort of understand what's
going on here, because I think there was an important
sort of fracture a in terms of the fact that
George Bush like basically orchestrated like yeah, like bait bait,
Like he didn't technically at a coupe, but he like
he he he rigged an elections such as to put

(30:23):
it it's like, so as to put him in power, right,
Like that's what the Brookes Brothers riot was. That's what
that's that's sort of the process that gets us the
Bush wouldn't shoot in two thousands and there you know
that this is this is an interesting moment because if
you look at what happens to conservatism over the sort
of like the I don't know, the last twenty five

(30:44):
years of the twentieth century, there's this interesting pivot where
they they make where in order to you know, if
you look at like what what is the conservative response
to communism in nineteen like thirty nine, right, it's just
like we're going to be fascists, right, It's like literally
we are going to be the Nazis. But you know,
by by by the time you get to like post
world wortching, by time it gets really to like the

(31:06):
seventies and eighties, they start realizing that like people don't
generally like fascism that much, and so the form of
anti communism that they take starts to be this sort
of like rights based like weird support like like freedom
and human rights and like free markets and democracy. And
there there there's this point where that stuff meets with

(31:28):
like another kind of fascist politics, which is sort of
like the two one era of state of exception stuff
that happened after nine where you know, like people are
talking about the gloves coming off, and this is this
is this is getting into your sort of like like
looking at like multa Benjaminans like conceptution of what fascism
is or am I blanking on the guy's name like

(31:49):
Carl Schmidt's stuff right where it's like here was a
part of the state that can just like destroy like
they had to have sovereign power and can just sort
of trample over the entire legal order in order to
serfatuate it. Right, So this is like okay, suddenly after
two thousand one, like after nine eleven, they were just
like people disappearing into torture dungeons, right, and you get
this moment where, on the one hand, yeah, like because

(32:10):
George w. Bush is one of these people who's like
the sort of like freedom democracy people, but then beneath
him is you know, it collapses very quickly into this
we are the torture dungeons stuff and this willingess literally
to rig elections. And I think that's the sort of
important because because like there are sort of normal conservatives

(32:30):
right who still have that kind of like freedom and
liberal democracy whatever thing, and they're not really that fascist
kind of but in some sense it doesn't it doesn't
matter that much institutionally because the part of the Republican
Party that survived was a combination of the torture dungeon,
which is like Gina Hospital like and then Trump, who

(32:50):
is this the sort of emblem of this like like
the sort of sort of like we're gonna we're gonna
take the election, We're gonna take power. We're gonna use
the power of the state to just like murder everyone
we like. And I don't know, like I think, I
I think like you can find individual people who are
conservatives who I guess like art Nazis, but the the

(33:13):
way that neo conservatives and fragmented and the way that
that kind of state of exception politics and that politics
have sort of just like mass torture, and then also
the willingness to just steal elections like that. I don't
know that stuff I think forms is this another sort
of core fascism, that's they're alongside the sort of queer

(33:35):
extermination of stuff And there I don't know, these things
fused together in ways. And yeah, I've rambled for long enough.
We're gonna do one more question. And I think we
cover a lot of upsetting things on the show, some
things that maybe are not you know, super fun to
think about. Um, but we also cover some like hopeful
stuff as well. But what's what's one thing that the

(33:58):
crew who works in the show due to decompress and
clear our minds after you know, wading through the trenches
of the digital hellscape. Uh pass. I feel like we
might have answered something similar to this on the line.
I saw Robert playing cyberpunk last night, so I know

(34:20):
there's at least at least one thing. It does allow
me to pretend that Keanu Reeves is my friend, which
is nice to meet him first. I like to go camping.
I like to go outside like I like to swim
in the ocean and raban bike and hiking, camping. Yeah, yeah,
I second that I need to go outside and just

(34:42):
even like a simple walk with trees and hiking. I
think it really helps me just decompressed and be present again,
hanging out with queer people's not and intentionally not talking
about Twitter bullshit, just like going and do doing something,
just like varying around in the grass, just like talking

(35:06):
about gay ship. It rules. It's the self that heals
the heart. Absolutely. Well, uh, thank thank you everybody. Me.
Oh see, I was gonna try to just like nope,
just just just like that, wrap up the episode in
a nice little bow. Um. I don't know. I've I've

(35:27):
been trying to get back into doing more kind of
art stuff with my camera and whether that be photography
or filmmaking, um in like short form stuff. Uh what
else I've been doing Yeah, I don't know. Taking drugs. Sure,
there it is. Shrooms are healing, shocking, shocking, incredible on

(35:50):
the podcast. Now now you can wrap it up if
you want to. Well, thank you everyone for listening to
our episode. That's what I do to thank you. See,
that's the thing to do. That's actually actually actually there's
one person who has tried to skirt past this this question, Sophie. Yes, Sophie,

(36:10):
what the hell she looks? What do you want, Sophie,
You not only have to deal with, you know, all
of the bed stuff that we talked about, but you
also have to also have to deal with us. Um,
So what what do you do to compress? And clear
and clear clear, comprest Each and every one of you
are the best. So let's let's start there. Uh. I

(36:34):
really like uh making food for my friends, and uh
like meeting a friend for coffee and just like walking
outside or like finding like a little place that's like
a local place and just when and when you go in,
there's like barely anyone in there, but then you get
to talk to the people that work there and then

(36:54):
order a nice little dessert or something. It's that kind
of thing that I'm like, I'm like, I have friends.
That's literally what I read it. I said it and
sounded horrible. Um. And then like as obviously like having
pets and being around animals is really solid, but um,
it's also just like having a healthy balance of you know,

(37:17):
focusing on a lot of the negative stuff but really
also putting your energy into a lot of the positive stories.
I know that a lot of people feel like it
could Happen Here is tends to lean towards the negative.
But I really feel like we're a hopeful show, and
I feel like as as a network cools, the media
tries to to to lean lean towards the hope and find,
you know, the good and the bad. And you know,

(37:37):
that's what we have shows like cool People did Cool Stuff,
which is with Margaret Killjoy that that really helps balance
out a lot of the other things. So yeah, I
think finding the good in the bad, uh, eating yummy
food with your friends and petting all the you can.
You know. I also think a huge thing for all
of us is taking plenty of alpha brain supplement. Um,

(38:00):
all right, thank you, thank you for listening to It
could Happen Here. If you have have have a have
a good year of discord. It could Happen Here is
a production of cool Zone Media and more podcasts from
cool Zone Media. Visit our website cool zone media dot com,

(38:21):
or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at
cool Zone Media dot com. Slash sources. Thanks for listening,