Foreign.

Hello and welcome to Live like the World Is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. We are recording our this Month in the Apocalypse episode, talking about the happenings of October 2025. I'm one of your hosts today, Brooke, and with me and Min and Miriam. Yay. Before we get into all the fun stuff happening in the world, let's talk about fun people who do other fun things on our fun network of anarchist podcasts.

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And we're back. The first fun and wonderful thing we're gonna be talking about today is the federal government shutdown. And I have to talk about it first in case it's over by the time you're done listening to this podcast.

But isn't the shutdown good? Don't we want the government to shut down forever?

I mean, maybe.

I think it's a monkey's paw situation, you know, where we're like down with the government. And the government is like, we have shut down, but only the part of us that is food stamps and park rangers.

Yeah, exactly. This is not quite the government shutdown that we want to see in the world somehow.

ICE still active despite the government being shut down.

What's that?

Because they don't do.

They don't do it for the money, they do it for the wolves. I love to run my discussion topics past my kid because they usually have some question or observation that comes from a place of having seen headlines about the issue but not having much background or context. And that kind of helps me figure out, like, what I need to summarize when I'm sharing the news to others who might not be like, swimming in the shit soup of everyday news like I sometimes do. So when I told them that I was going to be talking about the federal government shutdown, their question was, didn't the government already figure out the budget stuff when they were doing Trump's Big Beautiful butthole or whatever that thing was called, which, first of all, my kid is hilarious. Very much a stand up comic in the making. Good job them. But second of all, great question, because yeah, we did hear about the big beautiful bill. I just called the big bill that was passed by Congress that was back and forth and that's done. So what we're talking about now is something that's related, but it's not the same. And it's actually a little bit hard to explain how they're different. Basically, the big bill was about budget reconciliation, which is more of a high level look at the federal government's finances. I actually called my mom this morning to get her thoughts on how to explain the fucking weirdness that is reconciliation, because she's brilliant and understands government accounting. Like, if you think accounting is complicated or confusing, government accounting is a whole nother beast. So I gave her this example to see if it was like the right fit for how budgeting and reconciliation are different. I said, so let's say a parent has 20 bucks to give out to their two kids for allowance and the parent is deciding how to divide the money up between the kids. That's reconciliation. And then each kid deciding what they want to do with their money. That's like budgeting. My mom said, yeah, that's part of it. But like, the parent is also thinking about how much income they can get from different sources. So like, if the federal government, they're thinking about like, how much are we going to get in taxes and how much, you know, debt financing we're going to do and that kind of stuff. In fact, she texted me a little while later after we got off the phone and had a more refined version of our allegory, which is kind of accurate for how the federal government is behaving, which I'm going to read to you verbatim because my mom is also awesome. And she said this reconciliation is like when a family decides they don't want dad to have to work overtime, but they still want to eat out for dinner five nights a week. So the family scraps all charitable contributions and decides to run up credit cards to the max. And then they ask grandma and grandpa to pay for a vacation to Disneyland. Okay, so there you go. My mom's kind of pissed off at Congress and also hilarious. And I don't know if that analogy is particularly helpful at all. So really just what to keep in mind is that the big bill was about reconciliation and that's the high level look at finances. And now what they're doing is budgeting, which is more specifically looking at how to spend the money. And there's an important kind of third pillar to mention because it's tied to all of this. And that's the debt ceiling. And that's like the self imposed limit that Congress puts on itself for how much debt they can accumulate. And it's important to mention that because the debt ceiling is another thing that comes up and can lead to government shutdowns in addition to budgeting. So they're actually different things. But when we hear about government shutdowns, it's usually one or the other that's about to cause a shutdown. And in this case, again, it's budgeting. As of the day we're recording, we're on day 27 of the current federal government shutdown. So as of this recording, we are on day 27 of the current federal government shutdown. And it's the second longest shutdown in US history. It's surpassed only by the 35 day shutdown that happened during Trump's first term as president. If we are still shut down come Friday, which is when this episode is going to be released, it will be day 31 of the shutdown. And I would say that it's very likely that the federal government is still going to be shut down when this comes out. And here's a little background as to why that is so Democrats, specifically the Democrats in the Senate, are refusing to agree to the Republicans budget. They're claiming it's because the federal subsidies for the Affordable Care act are expiring and they're demanding that Republicans agree to restore the subsidies before the Democrats will vote in favor of the budget. So basically, Affordable Care Act, AKA Obamacare, created the federal government hosts a marketplace where you can buy insurance. So if you don't qualify for health insurance through like a state program or if you don't have an employer that offers it, there's still a way you can go out and get health insurance and not have to pay a gazillion dollars because it's sort of like a massive, the idea behind it was like it's a national group plan for health insurance, right? And that's kind of been stripped away and pecked at and screwed up a little bit over time. But the federal government has been subsidizing that program, especially for lower income people where either maybe you fall, you're above the threshold to receive the. I always get Medicare and Medicaid fixed up because I'm not a healthcare person, I'm a numbers person. But anyway, you don't qualify for the super poor health insurance, but you don't have enough money to actually like buy insurance. So it's to help fill in the gap there and for some other reasons. So federal government was subsidizing it. They decided in the stupid big bill, in the reconciliation process, they're not going to do any subsidies anymore. And now Democrats are saying, hey, we're not going to pass the budget unless you agree to restore those subsidies. And it's, it is a good and worthwhile thing to fight for the, the subsidies for the health insurance. But it's also a bit of political theater, right, Because Democratic voters are pissed off. They have been pissed off at the representatives for being ineffectual against the whole sort of steamroller presidency that we've seen from Trump this last year. And the voters are screaming for their representatives to do something, to do anything. And so this is Democrats finally doing something. Right? The timing that they've done with this is really strategic, very deliberate, because the open enrollment for affordable care starts November 1st. And so that's when people will be going online to renew their plans or shop for plans for health insurance, and they're going to see that huge spike in the cost of it because the subsidies are gone. So the Dems are holding this shut down. They're keeping it going long enough that people will be signing, trying to sign up for health insurance and actually seeing the cost of the higher cost. When they started picking the fight, though, in late September, and they chose this issue, the federal subsidies, there were a lot of, like, talking heads out there that thought it was kind of a weird place to draw the line. They're like, I don't know why you care about this all of a sudden, but now that they're, like, seeing that, oh, renewal time's about to come, they understand, like, this was the strategic play that they were trying to make. So I'm not voicing an opinion on whether that's good, bad, or other. But there was definitely a purpose behind it. And the reason that it's gone on this long, a lot of stuff getting fucked up by the federal government shutdown. Of course, the biggest headlines often have mentioned traveling flights, right, and stuff going wrong there. So TSA agents, you know, whatever you, whatever your opinion is of the agents or the work they do or the agency, and whether or not it's useful or anything, they are currently a requirement. You have to go through the security lines at airports, and if there's less people showing up for work to do that, those security lines are going to take longer. So travel is taking longer. So people showing up to the airport for flights, you know, whatever your usual TSA wait time was 30 minutes to an hour. Now, you know, facing an hour to two hours or more, which is a pain in the ass. And so people are not planning flights that canceling flights that they were going to do. And then airlines in response are canceling planned flights. So we've got all that fuck up ipness. And it's going to get worse now that we're getting into November. So they get paid like most federal government workers. Most government workers, period, they usually get paid once a month. So TSA workers got paid in the, you know, first of October for work that they did in September. Now we're coming up on the 1st of November. They've been working all month. There's no paycheck coming because the federal government is shut down. So they're not, they're forcing them to work still, but they're not able to process paychecks and pay them. So what you're going to see is, you know, people who need money for things like, you know, most people do, are going to be calling out sick more or no showing or just straight up quitting their jobs, having to do things like grabbing side gigs, you know, doing an Uber or doordash or whatever to get actual cash coming in to, to be able to, you know, pay their bills and whatnot. And so that's going to get even worse than it is now. The thing that's really surprising that's getting fucked up, though, is SNAP benefits. And that's really not normal for them to get fucked up like this. So SNAP is funded ahead of time a little bit. Right. Like the government sends out funds, you know, two weeks to a month in advance for states to then distribute to SNAP recipients. Right. Federal government funds it, but states, like, run the program and send the money and stuff. So, you know, October went out fine because that money was already allocated and sent out in September before the shutdown started. Now we're facing November. They're, they're out of the funds that they had gotten for the month. And the United States Department of Agriculture, which is the one that distributes the funds, says, sorry, wells dry, we have no more money to send you. And that's sort of true, but also not. They do have discretionary funds and emergency funds that they can use. They do. The USDA has money that they could send out to states to cover the cost of distributing SNAP benefits. And the current, the current head of the USDA is, you know, a far right asshat who's just refusing to use those discretionary funds. That's how they got through the last government shutdown, Trump's first term, those 35 days they used those discretionary funds and then refilled that coffer when government got back up and running. This time they're Saying, sorry, no money, can't do it. And there are many state governments that can't do anything to help. If they don't get the money from the feds, they can't send out benefits periods. And there are some states that have, in fact, stopped sending out funds already, even though we're not into November yet. But there are some other states that have emergency funds or other kinds of discretionary or spare funds that they can use and are choosing to use to pay from state funds for the federal program, and they just expect to get reimbursed for that whenever the government shutdown ends. But for a lot of people, SNAP benefits are not going to be paid in November. The food insecurity that, you know, often gets worse as we get into winter is going to be multiplied. There's a lot of federal funding that went to various food programs that was cut by the big bill. So there's, there's. I can think of one, you know, specifically here in my hometown that provides food support to people that got cut and closed its programs over the summer because of the reconciliation budget process, cutting funding. So already actually a really difficult food insecurity time, and now it's going to be much, much worse. So that's the one that I highlight the most. Because if you're, you know, if you're in a position where you can help support a food bank or a food share program or, you know, someone that's having food insecurity, like, this is actually a very genuinely critical time. And that's, that's a, one of the best ways you can help people right now going into this time. So we don't know how long the shutdown is going to last. It could be. I don't think this is me speculating now, but I don't think that it's going to end very early in November. I think the Democrats want to make sure that people really feel the pain of the loss of the subsidies and really see the impact of that and then potentially also feel more of the pain of the travel problems going into the holidays and the loss of food benefits. And there's lots of other government workers, government payments that aren't happening. I think they want people to get a whole lot more pissed off and assuming they can, you know, push the public sentiment against the Republicans.

Have we not reached our capacity to be pissed off? Like, I feel like I am as pissed off as it is possible to be and retain human form. And I feel like most people are also there.

Yeah. Is ICE getting paid?

Yeah, they're considered an essential service. So here's interesting. I don't know if that's going to continue because military, enlisted military personnel are considered essential and they have continued and they're not getting paid, but they're about to not get paid. They may be able to scramble some funds, blah, blah, blah, come up with payments, but even they're at risk, which is really unusual. But again, the way they cut things with the Big Bill really fucked up their ability to like do some, some gap funding and stuff during a shutdown. So ICE has been paid, but probably if this continues on long enough, won't be paid. That'll be really interesting to see what ICE chooses to do and how they operate when no one's getting paid.

I mean, yeah, I don't know.

I, I do think they do it for love of the game. I think that these, these people, a lot of them would, would pay to do it. In. In my trying very hard to see all humans as having the potential to.

Do better than they are currently doing.

I can try to convince myself that people are, you know, just doing it because they need to make a living. But like, honestly, fuck like off. Like you can't. Like there's a limit to how much you can excuse with that. So. And I have been reduced to incoherence because I'm as mad as I can possibly be.

Yeah, cool. I hear, Miriam, that there are other people that are also out there and very mad and perhaps, I don't know, protesting and stuff about it.

There are other people, they are also mad. One of them has a horse.

What?

What?

Wait, what?

I Sorry, I misspoke. One of them has so many horses.

Is this a. More.

Please.

Okay, so Portland we go. We go now to Portland.

Your Portland. My Portland.

A.

A Portlander Portland resident named Matteo Garcia showed up at a ICE facility recently riding a gray and white Andalusian horse named Principe. I am not a horse knower, but I. But an Andalusian horse sounds fancy to me. He showed up at another protest with a different horse carrying a giant Mexican flag. He was born in the US but both of his parents are immigrants and says that he is here to represent his people. He has been riding horses at anti ICE demonstrations and speaking directly to federal agent. He said and I quote every week I'm going to be down here with a different horse. He is my new favorite person on the planet.

But will this culminate in the battle of the Pelennor?

I can't see how it wouldn't. Anyway, I think this man has access to more horses than the average Portlander. I believe he is the owner of a ranch.

How many horses does the average Portlander have access to?

That would be math. We would need to get back into math.

Yeah, I did my math already. No more math for today.

But I think we can assume less than two. And this man clearly has access to more than two. I love it. I love what he's doing. I want to use this horse guy as, as a lead into kind of the, the diversity of tactics that we have seen in anti ice demonstrations. Portland is kind of the, a hotbed of whimsy around anti ice demonstrations. But it's not just whimsy, right? It is costume people. It is like inflatable costumes. It is frogs. I am very pro frog. But it is also people doing more, perhaps you could say militant, less whimsical protest and direct action. I have also seen, and this is, this is where this section is going to become a little bit opinion versus news y. I hope, I hope that's okay for me to do a little editorial here. You know, we're seeing the inflatable costumes and the whimsy carry over into protests and in other cities. And something that I've been seeing on the sort of radical discourse corners of the Internet is a lot of criticism of that is basically a lot of saying like, oh, this is silly, it's ineffective, it's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And look, that all might even be true. It might not be super effective. I actually think it's, I think it has some value, which I can talk about in a second.

But it's like, what is, what is, what is effective? What is effective?

I'll tell you what isn't effective is going on the goddamn Internet and complaining about other people's street tactics. Like, if that is your action, it's not. It's doing less than nothing. And I get it. Like, I frequently text my friends to complain about shit that I think is annoying. But as our dear friend Margaret says, we should de escalate all conflict that is not with the enemy. And even if you think a person in a frog suit protesting ice is silly or ineffective, they are not the enemy. And you should not be trying to get into conflict with them because you don't think their action is effective enough. If you have a better idea, that might be a better idea for you. It is up to everybody to decide what tactic makes sense for them. And if you have something that is not frog related that you think would be effective, that you would like to talk to your friends about, go ahead and do that. No one is stopping you. Certainly no one in a frog costume is stopping you. But the reason that I do think the frog costumes are effective is, number one, people actually have to want to go out to protests. People need to do that in large numbers. And making it clear to people seeing protests from afar that these are spaces where there is a role for people who maybe don't see their themselves. In protests that might consist of people like, with bandanas over their faces, people are more likely to show up. Right. If they see people doing things that they're like, oh, that's fun. I could kind of do that. Look, the revolution's not going to be all fun, right? But there needs to be an entry point for people. And I think that, like, a little bit of whimsy makes for an entry point. That does not mean I think everyone should be in frog costumes all the time. Although, would I be mad if I showed up at a protest and everyone there was in a frog costume? Absolutely I would not.

But what if they were all on horses?

What if they were on giant frogs? I mean, again, the possibilities truly limitless. But I think the other big value to the whimsy is, you know, there is a propaganda value to it. There is like a value to what this looks like, which is you got Trump and other fascist pieces of shit going on TV and the Internet and saying things like war torn Portland, you know, talking about how you can't. Can't walk down the streets of Chicago without getting murdered 18 times or whatever. And if that's the lie that they are trying to perpetuate, having people frolicking around in frog costumes is a pretty apt demonstration that they're lying. Again, I don't think that it's on us to like, prove that they're lying. They are simply lying. But I don't think it's nothing. I don't think the whimsy is nothing. I also don't think it's everything. But I do think going on the Internet and talking about how the thing you're seeing isn't radical enough and you would be doing something so much cooler if you weren't sitting here on the Internet talking about how the whimsy isn't the thing. Like, stop. Just stop. The best way to prove that your way is effective is by making your way effective. And nobody becomes more radical by being nitpicked by people on social media.

Yeah. And it's like there's this. Sorry, can I intrude on your editorial, please. It's like this. The concept is called like, or a concept that people use to talk about. This is joyful resistance. Is that what it's called?

Yeah, I've seen that. I've also seen tactical frivolity.

Tactical frivolity? Yeah, that's the one I was trying to think of. Tactical frivolity. I just think this is not a new thing. People have been building weird puppets, having joyful parades and acts of everyday resistance for a very, very long time. It's nothing new. And it's like this is not to discredit the fine people of Portland for trying to keep it weird, you know, but it's like people have been trying to keep it weird and freaky for a very, very, very, very, very long time. And it's like the more, I don't know, it's like the more learning about queer scenes in historical queer scenes and being like, yeah, sorry to say, but I don't think anything we're doing is all that new, actually.

Absolutely not.

Doesn't make it less good. It just makes it actually more connected to these historical lineages of resistance which include frivolity. And I don't know, it's like the. I have seen so many people radicalized by going to see a fucking puppet show. And I think that's really great. I don't know, it's like the people. People talk a lot about how dumb or ineffective the culture war stuff is. And I think something that I've seen in the last decade is a lot of people because of really beautiful cultural things, which I'm claiming that people in frog costumes and horse girls, non gendered horse girls are part of that, is that people have been. People have been deeply growing and engaging and like flocking to these kinds of like, like weird freak or like whatever, like cultural aspects and to like build resistance into that that isn't like commercial or capitalized. We cannot cede freakness to the techie burners is what I'm trying to say.

Truly. And I mean, the other aspect of this is, you know, we talked about how ICE agents maybe, what if they didn't get paid? Another thing is like, what if they couldn't fantasize about what like cool, big, strong, tough men they are because, you know, they, they have this image that they try to project that they put in all of their recruitment ads and their, you know, terrifyingly fascist media that they are going up against drug traffickers, human traffickers, drug lord cartels. And if you build that up as like, this is what you're doing, but then you're actually going out there and you're tear gassing people dressed like fucking cartoon characters. Like that is a blow to morale. You look fucking silly, you look stupid. And your ability to think of yourself as a hero is going to take a hit. And that's good. It's good for their morale to suffer. My favorite thing that I've ever seen in the world, tactical whimsy. Not the naked bike ride. Although I do like the naked bike ride.

Go Portland.

No, this was actually something I saw in, in New York City lo, these many years ago, probably like well over a decade ago. But there was a protest that had some clown, some clowns at it, some people who were dressed as clowns and doing clown stuff. But one of the things that these clowns did while they were also doing clown stu was they were like moving police barricades and, and getting in the street when the police didn't want them to and, you know, doing things that the police didn't like. And then the police started to chase them. And what these clowns did was they ran from the police.

Did they throw banana peels?

God, I wish. But what they actually did do is they ran, but they ran clown style with like knees as, you know, knees coming up to their chins and feet kicking out and arms flailing around. And if you, a NYPD officer, chase a clown who is clown running, you're a clown. You're part of the clown sketch. You are become clown. And everyone there could see that the police were clowns and that was the clowns taken one for the team to enclownify the cops. And like, that's goddamn beautiful. And I kind of think that that's what happens when protesters use whimsy is you can't fight people doing whimsy without your seriousness taking a hit.

Yeah, there's this. I want to, you know, I always want to talk about this historical clowning or fools, historical fools or court gestures or stuff like that occupied a really funny and fun place in society where they really got to poke a lot of fun at the aristocracy and at kings and shit like that. Like relatively, relatively consequence free, you know, And I don't know, because you can't.

Get mad at what a clown says, right?

Yeah, you can't get mad at what the fool says.

If you do, you reveal yourself to be a deeply unserious person.

Yeah. And it's mirrored in kind of how they dressed as well, which is that they dressed in ostensibly court fashions, but also peasant Fashions. And it was this kind of weird mashup of these two worlds that made fun of both of them, but more so the aristocracy. I want to do an episode about fools one day. Yeah, it's fun. They're funny, they're weird. I wrote a play about it.

I love you.

So, yeah, this is. This is all to say, I don't think everybody out there in the streets is doing, like, I. I'm not trying to, like, go around giving them all, like, Yelp reviews. Everyone's doing what feels right to them. Every. The only thing that I think everyone should be doing is more right. We should all be doing more and more. When I say more, I mean not. Not more critique on the Internet. Just do the thing. And, like, there is value in all of these tactics. And when we say no one way works, this is what we mean. We mean, if you don't like the way you see people taking action, unless it's impacting you or other people, you care. Like, unless it's hurting somebody, like, it's not. It's not important for you to say, hey, you're doing it wrong. It's important for you to do what you think is right. And that's my opinion, my strongly held opinion on the more horses and also more horses.

As long as the horses are safe. Can I just put the safe horse caveat in there? Don't take a horse into a war zone.

You know, it sounds to me like Matteo Garcia cares very much about horses, and I think he will do his utmost to keep his horses safe. But, yes, we. We are going to be seeing more ICE raids. We are going to be seeing more horrific human rights abuses from ice. I will not do a, like, full rundown of what those are. I think anybody who is listening to this podcast probably has access to enough news that they. They have a pretty good sense of. Of what ICE has been doing. But most recently, there have been ICE raids in Manhattan on Canal Street. When that happened, people responded very quickly. Like, people. That included activists who were prepared for this kind of thing. That included local community members. It included people who saw what was going on while they were going home from work, you know, and we just. We just need more. We need more of all the forms of resistance. So that's. That's where I'm at with that. And then I also promised to talk about climate, and I don't have a smart transition. Brooke, what you got? You had a really good transition a second ago. Can you get me from anti ICE protests to climate?

Damn it. One of the ways that you can.

Wait, wait, wait, I thought of one.

I thought of one.

And you know what else is heating up the planet? So this is, I actually have sort of a good news, bad news situation. The bad news is the world is going to add 57 on average of what we call super hot days a year. Most of those will be happening in countries already disproportionately affected by climate change, which is to say disproportionately poorer places where people of color live. That's the bad news part. That's very, very bad and terrible. The part of this that I would tentatively frame as slightly good news is that earlier projections saw the world adding 114 annual super hot days in this space of time. And the reason it is 57, which is half of 114. I can do math too, is because of the changes that have been made since those projections were made. That is primarily due to things like the Paris climate agreement, which of course the US entered into and then pulled out of during the first Trump turn and then got back into and then pulled out of again more recently. So this does not mean, look at this, these climate agreements made by these capitalist governments, you know, with a eye towards maintaining the economic advantage of already economically advantaged countries, fixed everything. That's not what I'm saying. But what I am saying is that human action to mitigate climate change is real and is effective. We're not there, we haven't fixed everything, but we have very good evidence that some of the things that we're doing to try to stop and reverse and even reverse climate change can be effective and can work if we do them harder. So, you know, are you sure?

Because I hear that Alaska is melting.

Yeah, so Alaska is flooded. Inman, what you got?

I think it just hits. I think it just hits weird. I always try to be joyful and funny about Segways and coastal flooding in Alaska is really, it's really, it's really bad for a lot of like not super obvious and complex reasons. So on October 11, the a remnant of Typhoon Ha Long like reached the coast of the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta, home to the Yupik people. And this is an area that's like, it's, it's a pretty huge area. It's like an area like the size of Oregon. I think there's like about 36,000 people spread throughout the area and like dozens and dozens of villages. And it is places that are like hundreds of miles away from the US road system. And so they're like pretty remote and disconnected from a lot of kind of like larger infrastructural systems. The typhoon remnant amounted to there being tidal surges of 6ft. So tides in general 6ft higher than normal with 48 foot tall waves and winds as high as 107 miles an hour. The storm originally was projected to move north and then took a kind of like sudden shift towards the YK delta. And during that time it gave people on the coast about like a day and a half notice that they were about to be affected by this, this huge storm surge. It displaced thousands of people and destroyed about like in Kipnuk, a village, it destroyed 90% of the homes, including boardwalks that people said snapped like twigs and downing most of the power lines in the area. People reported seeing homes not just like destroyed by the tidal surges, but picked up and carried up to three miles from where they originally stood.

That's a lot like I've seen flooding cause houses to like, you know, shimmy into the ocean or to like get carried into a river but like to be traveled three miles. Three miles, that's an extraordinary distance.

Yeah, it struck in.

I was also seeing that some of those houses still had people in them when they were being carried away.

Yeah. So the storm surge happened in the middle of the night and one person who took there was this, I think there's many videos of it, but one person is like in the middle of the night has this video clip of him in his flooded home and like he opens the door and is just like in a sea of water like moving along.

Holy shit.

One person reported like in the middle of the night noticing that the house was filling with water and getting his family to like go upstairs basically because that was the only option at that point. And then the home was subsequently like carried away. Flood so far has caused one death. 67 year old Ella Ma Kashatok was found dead in her home, which was one of the homes that was kind of picked up and moved in the flood and her brother and son are still missing. A lot of people in. So like a lot of. Amongst the thousands of people who have been displaced, people kind of initially were sheltering in the region in schools and stuff like that. And a lot of those shelters have had to be evacuated since due to a lot of just infrastructural systems that are already strained due to the storm and not providing safety to the people that are sheltering there. A lot of people are being evacuated as far as Anchorage, but a lot of people Are also there's a small number of people who are refusing to leave. This is an area where people actually have a lot of kind of self sufficiency in regards to food. And it's because they practice a lot of subsistence hunting throughout the year and actually I think provide for food needs through subsistence hunting and food gathering throughout the area. And so there's people who are like, I can't leave. We're in the middle of getting food and if we leave, it puts all of that in jeopardy. And so there's a lot of people who are like refusing to leave and living in their fucked up homes because they are worried about having to leave and then come back.

Yikes.

Another very kind of grim effect of the flood was that some people in Quiggallingoc said that they at the airport Runway there were like many, many, many coffins that had been washed up and that a lot of kind of ancestral graves were destroyed by the storms.

Wow.

This is an area that so kind of some of the climate stuff that's related to, it's like, why was this storm so bad? Part of it is that there's sort of these compounding effects of climate change happening where there are warming seas are melting a lot of barrier ice in the area. And these are ice formations that you might think like, well, what's the problem with some ice melting in front of the shore? Well, these ice formations block a lot of large waves from coming to the coastal area. And so with the melting of a lot of this sea ice, more seawater is coming inland and infiltrating further. So whenever there are these big waves, whether from a typhoon or whether from other kinds of storm surge, the salt water is coming inland, it's killing tundra plants. The tundra plants insulate the ground or the permafrost. And so a lot more seawater coming ashore means more quickly eroding permafrost, which also threatens all of the wildlife. All of these freshwater ecosystems are getting destroyed with saltwater. And a lot of the seals are really threatened and birds are really threatened and changing their migratory habits. They're like eons old migratory practices are getting disrupted by this changing climate.

If I remember correctly, the melting of those glaciers also releases a shit ton of carbon that has been trapped in the earth.

That's the kind of permafrost feedback loop.

Yeah, yeah.

The area is absolutely stuck in this feedback loop. And so there is kind of this like there is a big question about recovery and the future for the Yupik people. Right now. Some people feel complicated about it, feeling that the area might become unlivable. And Mike Williams Sr. A Yupic leader, says he remembers listening to elders 50 years ago talk about big changes that were going to come in regards to worsening storms and warming climates. And a lot of those predictions by elders 50 years ago are big surprise coming true. Climate change studies point to a lot of worsening effects from stronger storms, rising sea levels, destruction of freshwater habitats, and disruption of a lot of food resources for people who already rely on subsidence hunting. And at least 10 villages because of the flood are likely going to have to be permanently relocated, which is complicated. So Tory Jorgensen, a climate researcher at the University of Alaska, talks a little bit about the kind of permafrost feedback. So this is an area where on the YK Delta, it's at or below sea level in some places. And so six foot tidal surges are a huge fucking deal because a lot of the area is relatively flat and at sea level. But the permafrost as it currently stands, or historically as it has historically stood, sits about a meter or 2 above sea level. And so that's where a lot of villages have been built, is on top of these permafrost kind of elevations, because that puts them above sea level. And so as the permafrost melts, the ground moves down as water is moving up. And researchers think that the permafrost could be almost entirely gone within the next two to three decades. And this general effect of permafrost erosion causes this phenomenon that in Ipik they call ustec, which is a word for catastrophic land collapse, which is when permafrost especially melts in more localized or specific areas, and it causes the land to quite literally collapse, kind of like sinkhole effects. For example, in 2024 in Shavak, there are places that had lost over 7ft of ground, which is like wrought a ton of havoc on all of the structures. There's all of these pictures of culverts and pipes just being broken and out of line with each other because the ground sunk underneath them or sinking right underneath house foundations and stuff like that. And so it makes it incredibly difficult to build and plan for the future or maintain existing structures in the area. Some villages, to deal with the kind of melting permafrost and being more at risk because they're at sea level or below sea level, have moved inland. Like there was a village of about 350 people that moved pretty far inland to a higher elevation. But it's an effort that took multiple decades and still faces a lot of infrastructural challenges. And so with a huge amount of people being relocated as far as Anchorage, which is like, 400 miles by flight, a lot of people are worried about what the future of places like Kipnuk are, which is one of the villages that was the most affected by the storm, whether whether Kipnuk will be able to be rebuilt and who will stay, who will go back, who will be permanently relocated. It's like, I don't know. It seems to be a very existential crisis for people living there right now who are wondering if the area that they've lived in for an unknowable amount of time will continue to be able to be inhabited by them. Yeah, it's really sad and fucked up, and I think it points to this kind of, like. So, like, some also, like, crazy government money stuff. So Trump immediately signed, like, a $25 million disaster relief, a fund grant for, or I don't know what the actual designation is. It's some amount of money being allocated to disaster relief. Interestingly, though, the Trump administration has previously canceled grants that were in place to do disaster prevention work, which includes a lot of, like, work into preventing erosion and things like that. A lot of what is really causing villages a lot of disaster is erosion. And so they cancelled previously awarded grants, and these cuts were defended by the EPA being labeled as unnecessary projects. And I think it follows this larger trend that we're seeing. We were talking about this in, I think, text this, like, last year with some floods, is that the government is completely uninterested in doing disaster prevention, but will usually, in a very complicated way, throw money at relief, because I think it has good optics. It's like the government's doing disaster relief that's good. But I think for this area, it has this other strange and insidious effect, which is that by refusing to put money into prevention or rebuilding places that have been destroyed and instead putting money into literally removing people from the area because it's unsafe is a really existential blow to indigenous people living in the area who are seeing no money go into prevention or actual recovery. But a lot of money going into literally physically moving people out of these areas where they've lived for, to me, unknowable amount of time. Right.

It seems like it just becomes a part of the continued project of America dispossessing native people of their land.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It's really hard. Yeah. It's this thing that I think has, like a. When you look on the surface of it, it's like it's a bad disaster, A really bad disaster happened. In terms of what it destroyed or how many people it displaced, Is it like the biggest? No. But the larger psychological and existential and cultural impacts of it are utterly devastating. And I don't know, learning more about it, really, I didn't realize what I was digging into until I started to see a lot of these connections, larger connections, and I was like, oh, this is utterly fucked up. I mean, it was fucked before, but it was even more. I'm rambling now. Interestingly, one thing people are pointing to is earlier this year, western Maryland had a pretty large flood situation and the Trump administration refused to give them FEMA funding. And following this trend of giving red states, FEMA and disaster relief funding and denying it to blue states in what a lot of people are criticizing as this deeply politicizing disaster relief. So while I'm glad Alaska is getting relief funding, what I wish they'd gotten was prevention funding. Some person in the EPA has some crazy quote or some lawmaker, I forget fucking who, because who fucking cares, really? But they like, they're like, yeah, the millions of dollars that we cut from this project is now safely in the treasury instead of like at the bottom of quotes, the wrong river.

Good Lord Jesus.

Yeah, I don't know. That's what I have to say about all of that. I wish I had a hopeful thing to go out on, but.

No, we don't. You know, I tried to shoehorn in the hope in the middle there, but I did.

You know, actually, guys, you know, you know what is hopeful? Can I give you a hopeful thing?

It's a hopeful thing.

There is. Our. Our publishing collective is putting out a new book called Uprising. And that is. It is. It is hopeful. It's stories of. Of resistance from mental health. I'm gonna fucking say it wrong, I'm sorry, but it's. I got to read it. And it's great and it's hopeful and it's interesting and it's full of resistance and resilience. And it's available for pre order now. I don't think either of you have. Well, I don't know, Inman, you have physical copies in your hot hands. Have you read one yet? If not, maybe, maybe follow up with a poem from that book. Cleanse your palate a little.

I read a couple stories from it, or pieces. They're not. It's not all stories. And we're doing a fun interview that hasn't been recorded yet. But we're recording later this week with one of the authors and one of the editors of the anthology, and we'll have an audio feature for the piece that will be out on the Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness podcast. Yeah.

If you're a Patreon supporter and you've signed up at the $10 a month or more tier, you get our monthly mailers. And your November feature is going to be the first piece from that new book, which I really, really enjoyed. There's. There's some things to be hopeful and uplifting about. Resistance in the face of. Of mental health crisis. Mental health issues, challenges. I don't know how to say it the right way.

Yeah. I think this episode airs on Friday, November 1st.

Nope.

The October 31st. 31st. Yeah.

Halloween.

We forgot to be spooky.

We forgot to be.

I think that was all pretty fucking spooky.

Yeah. I don't know. I think, like a weirdly, I think, hopeful thing that I would suggest that everyone can do. If you're listening today or, you know, whenever it's like right now, we're in a time that some people refer to as Samhain and where a lot of people in general, like, celebrate and revel in the company of the dead. Whether that's people that we've loved, that have been lost, been taken from us, whether that's ancestors, whether that's strange creatures beyond explication. Take a moment to set out a plate of food for the dead so that we can hopefully deal more with all of the grief that we're experiencing right now and find ways to continue to live even though the world is dying.

The world is dying. So are we all.

It's.

Let's just.

Let's just keep on doing this.

Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, then engage in tactical frivolity, whatever that could mean to you, and take a moment to talk to the dead more. I think they have a lot to say. Also, if you enjoyed this podcast, you can support us and you can support us by supporting our publisher, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. And you can support strangers by checking out our website and finding lots of cool books and merch. We have a lot of merch right now. We have. We have Live like the World is Dying T shirts again, finally, that you can go out and get right now. We also have strangers shirts and Strangers zip up hoodies, which are really cozy.

Oh, my gosh, they're so good.

Yeah. So winter is coming. Get yourself a cool sweater with strangers. We also have our new book out for pre order right now up in Anthology of Mad Voices. And that's not its official subtitle, but that's the subtitle that I've given it right now. You can also support us on [email protected] Strangersinatangled wilderness, where for a variety of tiers of support, you can get a lot of cool things. You can get free digital copies of every work that we put out, as well as discounts on our really cool merch and books. And generally stay updated about a lot of our goings on. You can also sign up for our Patreon Acknowledgments tier, where we will thank or acknowledge a thing of your choosing. And we would like to thank these wonderful people. First, I would like to thank the backers of the New Friends and Strangers tier on the Immortal Choir Holds Every Voice, Kickstarter, which is a really good book to read on Samhain. So get a copy. You can read it online or get a print version, but you can't read the print version today unless you go to a store and get. I forgot that stores exist. You can go to a store and get it today. But we would like to thank these people or concepts or animals. We would like to thank the concept of Be Kind and Talk to strangers, Na Ulixi and Alder Tikva's favorite stick, the Waterfront Project, Niko the KO Initiative, Groot the Dog, the Black Trowel Collective, Dolly Parton and Edgar Mialyn Poe, who are cats. But I would like to thank the human version of Dolly Parton. Who, you know. If you didn't know, now you know. Did you know Dolly Parton was a secret producer on Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Yes, I did.

Yes.

Love it.

And I would love for people to start the rumor that she is a secret producer of Live like the World Is Dying, which. Which she isn't. But wouldn't it be fun if she was? You know?

How would we know?

How would we know?

She could be one of our Patreon patrons.

She could be na.

She could be mma.

She could be Dolly Parton.

She could be Dolly Parton. And Edgar Meowlen Poe. We wouldn't know. We would also like to thank Accordions, the experimental farm network arguing about what to Shout Out Tenebris Press Potatoes, Staying Hydrated, brought to you by Hannah and Simone Weil. Normally, if people send their last names, I don't really like to do people's last names because it feels weird to say people's places where they can be found. But I didn't know that Simone Weil was an author, and so I was just saying Simone for a while. But Simone Weil is some important person in literature or theory, I think. I don't really know anything about them. Anyways, we would also like to thank the People's assembly of Athens, Georgia Opticuna, TSNB baby Acab and her three great pups Sarah Mr. Craft, your Canadian friend Mark tiny nonsense the Golden Gate 26 Jonathan the Goose the Ko Initiative the incredible Ren Arai Alexander Gopal A Future for Abby Hyun Hee Max the Enchanted Rats of Turtle Island Lancaster Chooses Love Karen the Canadian Socialist Rifle association the Massachusetts Chapter of the Socialist Rifle Association Farrell in West Virginia Blink Cat Shulva, Jason, Jenny and Phoebe the Cats Aiden and Yuki the Dog Sunshine Amber Ephemeral Appalachian Liberation Library Portland's Hedron Hackerspace Boldfield, Violet the People's University of Palestine Julia Carson Lord Harken Community Books of Stone Mountain, Georgia Princess Miranda, Janice and Odell, Allie, Paparuna, Millica, Theo, sj, Paige, David, Dana, Micah, Kirk, Chris, Micaiah, Nicole and Tikva the Dog of Tikva's Favorite Stick and the immortal Hoss the Dog. Thanks so much for all your support and we hope everyone's doing as well as they can with everything that's going on in the world and will talk to you next month.

Yay.