This Week in the Apocalypse: October 12th, 2026

Hello and welcome to Live Like the World Is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm Miriam, your host for today, speaking to Brooke about the economy for This Week in the Apocalypse, your weekly update on how the end of the world is going. I'm awake and Brooke is awake. But before I hear more about that, let us all hear a jingle from one of the other podcasts on the Channel Zero network of anarchist podcasts.

After the 2016 election, a lot of us woke up to some harsh realities. In the aftermath of dark events, I came back to political work with a new sense of urgency. But after a few months of showing up to protest every weekend, I started to burn out. It didn't feel like anything was changing. In fact, maybe things were even getting worse. And it got me thinking, what comes next? Rebel Steps is a podcast about what comes next. You'll hear episodes on letter writing to political prisoners, practicing mutual aid, and creating political art. You'll hear the voices and stories of my community in New York City, spotlighting a range of organizers from the Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council, NYC Books Through Bars, Anarchist Black Cross, Lower Manhattan Food Not Bombs, Brandworkers, and more. I'll walk you through what you can do to start plugging into movements and learning organizing skills step by step. If you've been to a march or two and you're looking to jump in, this podcast is for you. Or if you have friends looking for more, pass it on. Listen at rebelsteps.com, on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Cool. So Brooke.

Yo.

Besides us both being extremely alert and awake and not in any way asleep, What's going on? How you doing?

I'm, I'm, I'm alive, awake, alert, and enthusiastic this morning.

Oh, that's great.

The trifecta of—

I'm so glad.

That I'm definitely feeling. It's, it's the second week of the month. We, we're going to be talking about— I've got economic stuff to share with you when we're ready for it, because that's what we do on the second week of the month.

I'm excited to hear I'm excited to hear about that. I'm excited to hear about how the numbers are doing, what the numbers are thinking, what the numbers are feeling, and how that will impact all of our lives. Real quick, I have one headline I would like to share from my neck of the woods here in New York City, which is that on Thursday the 8th, ICE shot someone here.

Oh!

as ICE is wont to do. A few notable things about this. The man they shot, 28-year-old Oscar Belgal, had his 5-year-old son in the backseat of the vehicle that he was in when ICE shot him. So ICE not only shot this man, they also fired into a vehicle that had a toddler in it.

Oh my gosh.

The toddler is unharmed. physically, um, and in the care of family members. Um, meanwhile, Belgal is in ICE custody and according to his lawyer still has a bullet in his body, uh, and has not received adequate medical care. Uh, this took place in Marble Hill, uh, which is a neighborhood that I don't want to hear any goddamn pedants argue about which borough it's in. Um, Look, not to like get way into New York City history in an irrelevant way, but Marble Hill physically was part of Manhattan, and then due to the construction of the changing of waterways and building of new land, became physically part of the Bronx. So in some legal ways it remains part of Manhattan, and in others part of the Bronx. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear anyone— basically, if somebody says it happened in Manhattan, that's fine. And if someone says it happened in the Bronx, that's fine. And I don't want to hear anyone correct anyone else about it. I realize this is not the issue. The issue is that this man is still in ICE custody and still has a bullet in his goddamn body. That is the issue. He is being held in Brooklyn in ICE custody. And there is ongoing sort of posturing by the city government here in New York as to ICE's presence in the city. Mayor Mondani has called for ICE to leave the city. There has been no actual movement to make that happen. There have been massive protests against ICE in response to what has happened. But this is very much a developing story as both the status of the shooting victim and the status of ongoing protests and ICE's presence in the city are all very much in flux. So we will hopefully continue to update. Hopefully this man is able to return to his family. Hopefully he's able to get medical care. One thing I want to Highlight about this story is that yet again, after having shot someone, Ice immediately claimed baselessly that he had been using his vehicle as a weapon.

Of course.

That is what they always claim, and it is always not true. He was attempting to drive away.

He—

I mean, it's just very obvious that that is what was happening.

Yeah, I can tell you as a parent that like, uh, when you have your small child in the car You know, I can't speak for every parent everywhere, but the likelihood that you're going to be using your vehicle as a weapon against agents of the government while your small child is in the backseat is, I'm going to say, extremely low. Yeah.

No, of course. It's every time a person is shot by ICE driving away from ICE, ICE will say that they were attempting to use their vehicle as a weapon. That is just a given. They will say that every time, and we don't need to listen, and we frankly don't even really need to debate it. It's, you know, they were using their vehicle as a weapon is just ICE's equivalent of, I thought his wallet was a gun. They're just going to say it, and we just have to not let them get away with it.

Yeah.

That's it. So let's keep eyes on this story, please. But that is What I can tell you at this point. Um, Brooke?

Yo.

You want to tell me about some other stuff?

I suppose that I do. I suppose that I do want to talk about some other things, although it's always hard to pivot away from this conversation. Like, there's not more to say about it right now, but, um, yeah, I feel like we haven't really even dealt with the other people who were shot, uh, almost a year ago now in Minneapolis. that's not really resolved either. And they're not the only people who have been shot. Other people have been shot in between Alex and Renee and this one in Manhattan. And it feels like none of that has been dealt with. It was in the headlines and then disappeared, and it's just ongoing.

Yeah. And it's almost— it is going to continue to happen, and we just have to stop them. That's what it comes down to. They are going to They are going to keep doing it. Their, their goal is genocidal violence, um, and we need to stop them from doing it. And, you know, that's that. More broadly, like, beyond the individuals who have been shot, that, that is where we're— that is where we're at.

Indeed. Hey, can I ask you a quick medical question related to this?

Uh, sure.

Is it normal for bullets to be left in people? And I'm not being like facetious here.

I mean, this is very much not my, you know, street medicking area of expertise. But I do know that it varies wildly whether it is safer to leave a bullet in somebody's body versus remove it. Sometimes the decision is made that it would be more difficult to, you know, more difficult and more harmful to the person to try and remove it. And the person and their care team may opt to not have surgery to remove the bullet or fragments of the bullet. Other times it is important to remove it. So I think that varies a lot person to person and shooting to shooting.

Yeah. Okay, good. I saw one set of commentary on there like, well, maybe they left it in on purpose because that's the better move. I thought, how often does that really happen, that that's the better move? And also, it doesn't seem like that's what's happening in this case.

Yeah, I mean, according to his lawyer, the medical care he has received has been inadequate. So whether this is a situation where after consultation with a surgeon, they would have decided, yeah, let's leave the bullet where it is, or they would have said, hey, we need to get it out, His attorney says that his doc— oh, actually, sorry, I'm looking this up now. His doctors reported he is in urgent need of surgery to remove the bullet.

Oh, wow.

This is per Gothamist, a local news service, and they are getting that from the Legal Aid Society and Make the Road New York, which is an immigrants' rights group. So per people advocating for this man, his doctors want to do surgery. His doctors feel he needs surgery and he has not gotten it. His attorneys also say he has not been adequately fed, that he has lost feeling on the left side of his face.

Oh, God.

So yeah, he has been kept in solitary confinement and has not been seen by specialists. This is a situation where he has been told he needs further medical care that he is not getting and is showing concerning symptoms. Yeah, this is not a situation where the doctors made the considered decision to leave the bullet in place. This is a situation where he is not receiving adequate medical care.

Wow. Okay.

Something else I want to bring up actually before we move on. Please.

Yeah.

That this is— that as is often the case with ICE, the person who shot him was not in uniform or visibly identifiable as ICE in any way.

Yeah.

Which is just significant because I think if a person is firing into a car and that person is identifiable as law enforcement, people respond differently than they do if the person is not identifiable as law enforcement. And I'm not saying they should respond differently, but I'm saying that I think people would respond differently. And if somebody seeing this scene had responded as somebody might by taking action against the person who is shooting, which is a reasonable thing to do if you see a person.

Absolutely.

I think that person would have gotten themselves into a really awful situation in regards to law enforcement now. And it is important to consider what kind of situations ICE is creating when they send ununiformed, unidentifiable people to shoot people on the streets of a major city, what kind of situation that is. One thing that the mayor here, Mamdani, pointed out is that the guy looked like a mass shooter.

Okay.

Which I think, not to agree with an elected official, but I think that that is potentially accurate. And I think that That is something else to consider here, right? Like, what are the potential responses that a person might have to seeing what they have every reason to believe is a potentially ongoing mass shooting, right? And also, I would like to sort of push Mamdani on that statement. In what way is this functionally different, right? Like—

Oh, okay.

From like, the guy didn't shoot anybody else. He easily could have. Right? He didn't just look like a rando shooting random people and shooting near a 5-year-old child, he was a rando shooting people near a 5-year-old child. So, yeah, sorry. As we said, we're both highly awake and articulate today.

No, I appreciate the additional thoughts and especially your perspective as someone in New York and someone who's done lots of street medical work on that and, you know, stays more abreast of some of these things. Some of that can be a little, a little too much for me at times with the shootings and the gun violence that really, that hits a difficult place that I sometimes can't process and deal with. So thank you for being my friend and telling me about this in ways that don't trigger awful things for me.

Thank you. And thank you for explaining numbers to me, a thing that I struggle with.

There's not a lot of exciting or interesting new number things going on at the moment. This episode will be released as usual on Tuesdays, so that'll be October 13th at this point. And the inflation numbers for the month will come out the day after this episode does on the 13th, and that will give us the first indication of whether or not the Federal Reserve's raising of interest rates had much of an effect. You may remember from last month, the Federal Reserve met and decided to raise their rate. That's kind of the internal— the simple way to explain it is the internal lending rate for banks. It's more complicated than that, but we'll just call it for that. That's the one interest rate that the Fed has control over, and then that kind of trickles through and influences other interest rates. So, they chose to adjust that rate a little bit in hopes to tamp down inflation. And so we'll have some inflation numbers, unfortunately, after this episode to come out that may indicate some changes. Unfortunately, it does take a little time for all of that to kind of work its way through the economy. It doesn't happen instantly. So the Fed is set to meet again, I believe it's next week, it's very soon. And they will, as they always do, discuss the interest rate and whether to change it. And the general consensus of economists is that they probably won't make any more changes to the interest rate right now, just because their last change hasn't quite had enough time to work its way through the economy. But we'll see with the inflation numbers if, you know, perhaps those do reveal anything telling that may change the way the Federal Reserve is thinking about it. But very, very unlikely that it'll have had that effect so quickly on on the data and on inflation, and especially because oil prices remain high, very high, even despite the US releasing some of its oil reserves, still exceptionally high globally, which is keeping inflationary pressures on the price of goods generally. So we will see what happens with that. And in next month, we'll be able to talk about both the inflation number and if the Fed did anything about it, but generally expected, you know, inflation's Probably going to be looking about the same as it was last month, and the Fed's probably not going to make any more changes. And perhaps we'll then start to see a little decline in inflation after not this month's report but next month's report. Alive, awake, alert, enthusiastic.

All right. So okay. So the the numbers aren't in yet for the main the main numbers. That's that's fine. We can we can wait for some numbers. Do you have any any information perhaps about? the effect of— look, I'm barely awake and I've been barely following the numbers news outside of talking to you, but something happened with Trump and Russia and gas. We can cut this if I'm talking pure nonsense.

Yeah, this is news that just came out. You must be keeping your ear to the grindstone. That's how that works, right? To catch new news.

Oh my ear.

Ear to the something, to the pipeline. Yeah, the announcement was made the end of last week, but it's just kind of hitting the news cycles now that Trump made a deal with Putin and Russia to temporarily lift sanctions on Russian diesel. on exports of Russian diesel out of the country so that we could hopefully bring down gas prices and specifically diesel prices a little bit more. So—

Gotcha. So the goal here is most likely, on Trump's part, is most likely to try to lower gas prices before the midterms and also fund the bombing of Ukraine.

Yeah, perhaps. I think—

Got it.

Yeah. The biggest pressure, because That dump truck does not care really about funding and balancing books and stuff, as seen by all of his business enterprises ever, but that's a separate note. Really, it's about—

The man who bankrupted casinos. The easy— casinos are just a license to print money and he managed to go bankrupt. And I don't think we make fun of him enough for that because that's really fucking funny actually.

It is. We don't make fun of him enough for that at all. We'll make sure we'll add that to our weekly segments here. This podcast brought to you by— no, not really. That's probably a terrible idea. And our podcast editor might even choose to cut some of that. I don't know. We'll let them decide if it's funny because they are also very awake.

Cut it all. This episode can be 4 minutes long.

No, but you brought in a great point. Yeah, it's exactly because they're trying to bring down the price of diesel because the price of diesel across the nation is averaging more than $6 a gallon. And that's Very high. And really, we use diesel to ship so much stuff, move so much stuff across this country. And that's keeping pressures high on inflation and really pissing people off, especially probably from Trump's perception. And this may be accurate. I don't, I don't really know. But the perception of people who use diesel also being more likely to be Trump supporters.

Yeah, I mean, one thing that I have heard, and I don't know how well-sourced this is or how accurate it is, but basically people— I mean, I think we already know people don't really change their mind about Trump, right? It is 2020 goddamn 6. You're not going to change your opinion on him, except oddly enough, Trump supporters do seem to change their opinion on him based on his failure to make gas cheaper. And that's actually fucking funny to me. It's very much— you know the meme like, I can excuse racism, but I draw the line at animal cruelty?

Oh my God, yeah.

You can excuse racism?

Yep.

I think it's very much like, I can excuse, and then a 2-hour list of things. But I draw the line at gas prices being high, is kind of like where some Trump supporters seem to be at. So that is something that I think he is pretty focused on for that reason, especially like I said, with the midterms coming up and just the fact that like when the economy is doing bad, people don't like the current government. And that's like pretty consistent.

Yeah.

The US, of course, is not the only place experiencing high inflation. in the world. Generally, the global economy is experiencing inflation, and we've talked about this plenty, but it's just important really to note that this stupid thing that the United States has done, which has fucked up oil shipments for everyone, has also affected everyone's oil prices and inflation. And inflationary pressures are high globally. One place where they're particularly high right now is actually in India, which is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. And it's had historically high inflation for quite a while now, looking at like 5% inflation year over year for the last couple of years. So if you can imagine the price of stuff that you buy rising 5% every year, so if you spend $100 on groceries— no one does— last year, then you now have to spend $105 to make the same amount of groceries. And probably what you're earning is not keeping up with that level of inflation. So you probably didn't increase your wages 5% over the last year. You should have. We all should have, but—

Somehow the price of everything seems to go up except labor.

Yeah, exactly. And there was a new analysis out analyzing wealth distribution in the US and As we all have suspected, the top 1% has amassed more of the wealth. They hold a larger share of the wealth. We've known this to be true for a while, but latest data indicates that that is in fact still happening and is largely coming out of the middle class, is where they're taking that extra wealth from. So the rich are getting richer. It's a saying we've had forever, but data backs that up. The rich are getting richer. They are taking a larger portion of the wealth in the country.

See, this is why I actually think that, like, you know, for people like me who are like the non-numbers understanders, it is important to hear from people like you, the numbers understanders, because I think it's like really easy to walk around feeling like, man, sure seems like the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer and the middle class isn't a thing anymore. And That is true, but it does help to have the actual data to back that up in the same way that you walk around going, damn, seems like our summers are getting a lot hotter and our winters are getting a lot less wintry and the storms are getting a lot worse. And just sort of walking around with that sense like weather ain't weathering like it used to. To then look at the climate change numbers and have it verified that Yeah, no, it's real. And in both cases, there are people with a lot of power and a lot of money who benefit from us not acknowledging those things.

Right.

And who want to say, what? No, this is what summer is like. You know, summer. And also, what? No, you just need to work harder. And so it can be really, I think, helpful to have the hard data To like make yourself not feel fucking crazy.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's like you look at the stock market side of it, which we talk about, you know, plenty when we do our economic episodes here, like the stock market continues to do really well. And even in spite of oil prices are super high and inflation is high, and actually hiring is a little bit weak right now. We didn't talk about that, but like the jobs numbers came out and hiring was much weaker than it was expected to be. Thankfully not in negative territory, but just not as many job gains in the last month as would be expected right now.

Are we starting to get into when we should be expecting to see seasonal rise in jobs, or are we not there yet?

Yes, we are absolutely there, and I'm talking about the numbers adjusted for seasonality.

I see, okay.

Yeah, whenever you talk about the jobs numbers, it's really important to know there's 2 ways to look at it. There's There's the unadjusted number of job gains, which can be very volatile. So it's important to know what would be normal for whatever time of year it is. So if you see a massive job gain right now, knowing that seasonal hiring ramps up at this time of year. But then it's also important to look at the number if they sort of adjust for the seasonality and sort of take out that seasonal variation to kind of know what the raw underlying economy is doing, if it's gaining or losing or whatever.

Right. So to not be, for example, fooled by somebody presenting the fact that, wow, look at all these new jobs! And it's like, well, yes, but it is the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. In the same way that you would not listen to somebody responding to talk of climate change by saying, but it's cold outside in January.

Exactly. That is— that's a perfect analogy for, for how we talk about the job numbers.

Thank you. I am, I am somebody who can come up with perfect analogies when I'm extremely awake and alert.

I'll give you one last piece of economic news here that is, uh, technically news and technically related to economics, although I really don't give a shit and Neither should anyone, but here we are, is that the, um, the Nobel Committee recently announced their winners for the Nobel Prizes, and the ones in economics went to a pair of American professors for their studies of the boom and bust cycle of the economy and the mechanisms that can be used to help soften some of the, the highs and lows to smooth out the economic cycle.

Is, is the method abolishing capitalism?

No.

Hmm, okay.

Yeah.

Then I'm gonna take your earlier advice and not care about it.

Exactly. But it was like, if you, if you were to, to search the term economic news, 70% of your headlines are gonna be, 2 Americans win the Nobel Prize!

Well, we— yeah, I think we all have a, a pretty healthy sense of, of the, um, importance of Nobel Prize at this point.

But it wasn't the FIFA Peace Prize, so who really cares that they won a Nobel?

Okay, wait, the, um, this is the Nobel Prize in what? In economics?

In economics. Yeah, went to a pair of Americans, and so we're super excited because it was Americans that won it this time.

Okay. You're not all morons. Got it. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think, um, the credibility of the Nobel Prize has, has been, uh, somewhat undermined by people winning the Peace Prize when they are, for example, Henry Kissinger.

Yeah, exactly.

But yeah, that is interesting. And I think we can assume that that work by those American professors will influence how people think about the economy because it's getting a lot of attention. So whether we care about it or not, it's probably something that we should be aware of because it's probably going to be a factor in how people talk and act about the economy in the near future. Right.

And has and does, and maybe to a larger degree now that they've won an award, influence the economic policy and the tools that governments use that will actually have an influence on that.

Cool. So that's the news on numbers. Unless you've got any more numbers to tell me about?

There are plenty of other things I could say, but that is enough numbers for one cold October morning for 2 very awake people, I think.

Yeah, thank you. A number I could bring up would be 6, which is the average number of hours of sleep I've been getting. So that's a number.

That is a number.

It doesn't feel like a number.

It sounds small. Is number small?

That number feels small to me.

Yeah.

So let us say farewell to numbers for now, and perhaps we will both go take a nap. But before we go, let me tell you about one last number. Actually, it's the same number I mentioned earlier, 6.

6?

6 is the number of dollars that you could give us, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, to preorder one of our latest publications. This will ship around October 31st, around Halloween, and what it is is an absolutely gorgeous zine. It's one of our fancy zines.

Fancy.

And it is written by your friend and mine, Margaret Killjoy. Perhaps people have heard of her. And it is called The Folktales of Lowland Sycan, and these are folktales written by Margaret Killjoy set in the world of The Sapling Cage. So the idea is, most of you have probably read The Sapling Cage, and if you haven't, get on that. It's a wonderful novel about a trans woman witch's coming of age, and these are stories that she may have heard growing up. These are stories in that world and they are lovely. And the illustrations in this are fucking beautiful. I'm looking at them right now and I'm trying to decide if I can do a mural of one of these on my wall. They are so beautiful. People really need to look at this. And people also need to preorder it because then they'll get it.

If they want to look at it and preorder it, Is there a place for that?

You can look at it without pre-ordering it, and you can pre-order it without looking at it. Up to you. Either way, you want to go to tangledwilderness.org and click on shop, and it will come up for you right there at the top. And then you give us $6, and then we send you a zine, and then you look at it, and it is beautiful. That's, that's how it works. You're gonna like it. That's what I think.

I love this.

Yeah, I'm just looking at it again.

Wow. Yeah, I've got a copy in my hot little hands. I was the first one of us strangers to get to hold it, the little baby, because I went to get it from our beautiful printer, Eberhardt, who is excellent and who we adore. And it was just— it's striking. It really is. The beauty of the gold on that dark green. I mean, I love that color pairing anytime.

It's so lovely. And I have not physically held it yet. I'm really looking forward to it. I should add, because we've been rhapsodizing about how beautiful it is, that it is illustrated by Robin Savage, another member of our collective, and designed by Cassandra Johns, another member of our collective. So this is something that we did in-house, besides the printing, which was by Eberhardt Press. This was something that we did. And we are very proud of it, and we are very obsessed with it, and we would like you to preorder it. Thank you.

Could be a great stocking stuffer, just saying.

And now I would like to thank the people who support us at the $20 a month level or higher on Patreon. Thank you to everybody who supports us on Patreon. And thank you especially, specifically to: We Will Remember Flora Tristan. The Chattanooga Freeze Store. Santa Fe Food Not Bombs.

Glenn.

Please Fight Anti-Fatness.

Arizona Sunsets. Bunny Bionics.

Patrick Harnett Marshall. All Wiener Dogs Everywhere.

Joseph.

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