Hello and welcome to Live like the World Is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm Miriam, I am your host today, and I will be interviewing Inman about some stuff that Inman wants to talk about. But before that happens, here is a jingle from another proud member of the Channel Zero network of Anarchist Podcast. We PE pe. You're listening to Dissident island radio live.

Every first and third Friday of the month at 9pm GMT.

Check out www.dissidentisland.org for downloads and more.

Hey everyone, it's Inman from Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, and we have a really exciting new book to tell you about. Uprising is an unapologetic chorus of mad voices that refuse to conform or cower in the shadows. It was born from a collaboration between two organizations rooted in community. Workman Arts, a multidisciplinary arts organization supporting artists with lived experience of mental health and or addictions, and Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, a collectively run publisher of radical culture grounded in anarchist ideals. We invited writers with lived experience of mental health and or addiction issues from across Canada to send us their stories, poems, daydreams, imaginings and manifestos around all the things it can mean to rebel. What we received exceeded our expectations. While some pieces whisper rebellion through the quiet acts of survival, others rage loudly against psychiatric incarceration, systemic violence, and various forms of injustice. Many of the pieces stare you defiantly in the eye while rupturing sanist stereotypes. They subvert genre. They challenge traditional literary structures. They dare to crip time and space to be nonlinear. Some pieces queer what healing means and turn the notion of recovery on its head until it's too dizzy to stand. None of these works follow a straight path. They all twist and tangle into a messy but bold collection of rebellious imaginings. This collection isn't about overcoming madness. It's about thriving with our madness fully and fiercely on our own terms. You can pre order Uprising right [email protected] or at Ratty and Cantatty if you are ordering from Canada.

Okay, Inman, Inman, I have all these questions prepared. I'm going to interview you by asking you questions that you can answer.

No, you're not. I'm co opting this interview. It's actually turned into a rant and that is then I want to hear your reactions to it.

I'm so glad you said that because I actually don't have any questions prepared because you texted me that you just wanted to rant.

Hey listeners, it's Inman and I'm I'm here to do a little bit of a rant today. Or it's not really a rant. It's more of like a. It's a rant with some questions that I have for you as the listeners and also Miriam here. So, Miriam, I hope that you've prepared for the quiz because there will be questions.

Yeah, I'm also here. I still don't know what you're ranting about.

I'm rant. So, okay, I'm here to rant about gatherings. So we talked in a previous episode, maybe the one last week. Who knows? I should know this because I create the schedule, but none of that has happened yet. In a previous episode, we talked about kind of like how to host a large outdoor gathering. And now we're going to kind of talk about, like, what you can do at those gatherings. And as we said in that episode, you can do a lot of things at those gatherings, including, but not limited to hosting a regional art gathering. Maybe you're just burners. And that's cool. I'm not being sarcastic. That could be cool. It could also not be cool.

There's a possibility of it being cool.

There's a possibility of it being cool, like anything. But what I'm kind of specifically talking about is today is some regional gatherings. And I've attended a fair amount of regional gatherings lately, and I kind of want to break down what that means. So what I mean when I say regional gathering is a meetup of people who you probably have, like, minds with to do anything from. Just hang out to talk about things like community preparedness and stuff like that. Something we've never talked about on the show before. And I think it's like the question that I kind of have for people is if. If something happens, whatever that is, just question mark, disaster of some kind, who are you trying to. Who are you going to be organizing with? Who are you going to be figuring stuff out with? And I think that there's kind of, like circles here. There's, like, people in your immediate sphere, like your roommates, your best friends, your, like, local signal thread or whatever. And then there's kind of a larger thing or sphere of people in your neighborhood or even larger sphere than that of people in the city that you live in or the town that you live in. And then there's people who are in that general geographic region who might be in other cities but are still kind of geographically close to you. And the reason that I want to talk about kind of like regional stuff is because we might Be faced with situations where it becomes increasingly harder to travel or to move about in the ways that we're used to being able to do right now. And this could be for a variety of reasons, you know, anywhere from natural disaster to economic collapse or just unfortunately looking more realistic, overt fascism, which is ramping up more and more every day. So it's like the people in our region might be the people that we are organizing with in the future. Does that make sense, Miriam?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

We can't count on having access to people and places beyond our immediate sphere.

Yeah. And it's like something I think about is like I'm really in touch with my smaller community where I live and I feel a general in touchness with people in kind of like the larger city that I live in and there's a nearby city where I don't know a single person. And that really bothers me. Yeah, it bothers me that there are all of these networks that I know about where I live and there's probably similar people doing similar things in this neighboring city and we don't really talk to each other in this kind of larger sense. I'm sure people I know have friends in those cities, you know, but it bothers me that I'm not actually participating in this larger network. And it's then the same is true for other parts of the state or the bioregion that I live in where I'm actually a little bit out of touch with what's going on in the larger world around me. And the thing that is, I think important about these gatherings is that you host a regional gathering. You get your friends and all of their friends to talk to each other and you decide to host a regional gathering of like minded folks who are going to do anything from like you can do anything from just hang out. I've been to some little like regional meetups where it's like, it's just like a weekend of camping and like kind of like building friendship and camaraderie, which I think is really cool and really useful on. It's like I work best with people that I'm friendly with and it's like it's easy to kind of like build from friendship for me at least.

Yeah, I wondered when you said gathering of like minded people, could you elaborate on that a little bit? Could you talk a little bit more about like minded. Are we talking about people with whom we have perfect political agreement? Are we talking about people we like to hang out with?

I think that, I think how you structure the gathering, you Know, is, like, up to you. It could be people that you are. It could be people that you're just friends with, you know, and. But what I think is more important is kind of like, building these larger networks of, like, people that you might not know. You know, people that you might not have familiarity with, but it's like, hopefully people that have, like, similar goals. And it's like, the goals. The goals that we're talking about here, like, primarily for myself, are, like, finding ways to keep living and surviving together. Does that. Sorry. These are broad designations, but I'm.

Yeah, no, I gotcha.

Yeah. And, yeah, so I've seen gatherings where it's like. It's just people hanging out. There's some light conversation. Maybe there's workshops. And then I've seen other gatherings where it's kind of a intense, structured thing where I went to one, and it was like. There was, like, three days of, like, like, focused conversation. And, you know, there was, like, a lot of fun and, like, whatever, but, like, there were these, like, pretty focused conversations. And the focused conversations were around, like, building networks of resiliency within the region. And so, like, you know, like, they were kind of broke. Like, the days were kind of, like, broken up into, like, a regional breakout. Like, everyone from your small area go talk and have this list of questions that you're looking for answers to. And the questions are mostly around building resiliency and figuring out what you as a community have a lot of and what you're lacking. And what was an interesting thing to see about this was it was, like. It might be, like, everyone from one town or whatever, who's there together. And I saw people who had never talked to each other before but live in the same town suddenly having these deep conversations about how to build networks of resiliency. And that was really cool. And it's like, I can think of people in the town where I live that, like, I'm aware of, and I've never had, like, a conversation with these things about, you know. Yeah, like, I'm sure. I'm sure. Art, do you feel like where you live, there's, like, people you would probably feel an affinity with but, like, have maybe never talked to?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I do live in a large city, but, yeah, I mean, you. You know, and sometimes you pass somebody on the street and, you know, just based on their. Their presentation and maybe messaging on their T shirts or choice of keffiyeh, you know, maybe just based on their keffiyeh, and, you know, the whole general vibe, you think, like, oh, that person is friend shaped, you know, that is like a person who seems cool. That is a person who I bet I could talk to. But I'm in a city of millions of people and, like, I'm on my way somewhere. I'm never going to see that person again. And you just don't, you know, there's. There's all these people around that you don't know that you would probably get along great with. And, like, also, not everybody who you would get along great with is going to, like, fall into that category of, like, oh, this person gives me an outward sign that I would get along with them, you know, so, like, you are surrounded by, like, an untapped resource of many, many people that you would get along great with in a large city. And that is going to be true in smaller communities, too. There's just not as many people in general.

Yeah, yeah. I don't know. So it's like, yeah, the first conversation that was had about this was like, people who are in the same area talking kind of about what their region is kind of doing. Well, you know, it's like talking about things like what resources. It's like the end. These are just good conversations about preparedness in general to have. Like, I want to have these conversations with, like, my immediate circles of friends and people that I organize with, and I want to have them with, like, the larger. Like the larger, smaller unit of, like, the town where I live in.

Yeah.

And it's like, things like, what resources do we have a lot of? What knowledge bases do we have, like, really fucking thoroughly covered? You know? And it's like, where I live, do you know what the. Like, I don't actually have this statistic, but, like, I think it's a hilariously skewed statistic. Do you know how many. How many nurses I know?

How many nurses do you know?

More than I can count. That is how many nurses I know. So I'm like, where I live, like, we've really got nurses fucking covered.

Somebody did once, once remark.

If you're.

In your mid-30s and you're not a nurse, a lawyer, or in jail, are you even still an anarchist?

And, like, I don't 100% believe that that's true. But, like, statistically does seem to be. Those are common. Those three are common career paths.

I throw social worker in there as well.

What about podcaster?

Podcaster? God damn it, we're podcasters. We'll add that to the list.

Another thing is, what infrastructures do you already have in place that are working out really well, what networks do you have that are already in place and kind of what coordinating capacity do you have that's already kind of in place? And I don't know. Thinking about these things, I think really gets people to think about what they're doing well and identify things as resources that they may have never identified as resources before. Like for a while, like I once lived somewhere where there was like, you know what people had a lot of there huge trucks. Mm. Everyone had huge trucks. And I don't know what you need a bunch of huge trucks for yet, but I'm sure they'll be useful someday, you know, or like living somewhere where like everyone had a sailboat, you know, and like thinking about like what you could do with that many boats if you had to or needed to, you know, it's like these moments for thinking creatively about like, things that we already have and how we can, like, put them to use for building community resiliency.

Yeah.

And so then the obvious next step is for people to then talk about like, what things you lack and what threats you might face on a more, I guess, local level. And this could be. We very typically think of this immediately as natural disasters. It's like if you live in a place with a lot of floods or earthquakes, it's like a lot of your frames for these conversations might be around mutual disaster relief. If you live somewhere where there's a high propensity for natural disasters, it could be really specific repression that your local community is facing. It could be. And that includes local policies. It could be local chapters of alt right groups. Maybe you live near some. The Proud Boys or whatever, whatever scary alt right fash group is in your locality, then one of the things might also be fractured communities. I think this is a really big one and it's kind of like one of the. I think one of the purposes to have these gatherings is like, have you ever seen a community that is like, there's a lot of really cool things going on in it and they're all separate. And maybe you hear about a cool project and you tell your friends about it and they're like, yeah, I don't know, I don't really fuck with those people. Because this thing. And you're like, dang, that's unfortunate. Because the thing we're doing and the thing they're doing could sync up really well together. This is not me minimizing any specific conflict that people have. Conflict is incredibly complicated. And I personally think that especially amongst people that you probably share 90% of the same affinities with that. It's a really good time right now to try to work through some of these larger conflicts and fractures in communities, because I think we're going to be at points where it's like, I don't know, we can't be fighting each other if we have all of these other big things to contend with, and people can define those things as they will. If you feel like something is your enemy, then it's your enemy. And that doesn't mean you have to make peace with it, but encouraging the unfracturing of communities when you can and when it's viable. And I think that doing gatherings like this really help to do that, because it's like, there's also the thing where you're like, I don't know if you've ever experienced this, where you. You're like, oh, I don't know. Yeah, I don't really fuck with those people. And then you organically meet one of them and you become friends, and then you find out that they're with this group and you're like, oh, yes, I told myself that I didn't really fuck with that, but I'm really enjoying my interactions with you. And now I have this personal connection. And now maybe some of the. Some of this stuff seems, like, not, like, silly, but, like, it's a little complicated now, you know?

Yeah.

And like, maybe we were. Maybe, like, when you don't actually know people, it is. It is easier to put sort of an ideological purity thing at the top of the list of priorities because, like, you don't really know that person. So, like, what else are you judging based on, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, again, like, I'm not trying to tell people to erase, like, real conflict and shit like that. If. If people suck, they suck.

That is very true.

And some people suck, and some people suck.

But they can suck even if they are, you know, part of. Even if they are not part of a group you don't fuck with. Like, that's. That's kind of the thing. You actually do have to, like, look at individual people sometimes.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, you can. Another good topic for these gatherings is this kind of got complicated in our list in my tangents. But any other threats or limitations that you feel like your community has, this is a really good place to talk about them and figure out how you can respond to them and how you can strengthen your relationships with those things.

Great.

Yeah. And so sorry, listeners kind of getting lost in the sauce. I did Say this was a rant.

You did say that. And you've been pretty sedate and reasonable throughout. And like, I've been saying only totally normal and reasonable stuff.

So I'm a little disappointed so far. If you could become more unhinged, I would appreciate it.

I will. I'll try.

Thank you.

My most unhinged thing that I said might be that we should try to deal with our fractured communities in whatever ways, feel reasonable.

Well, and I do think it is important that you're talking about our fractured communities. Right. Not people who are trying to harm and destroy our communities. So, like, whoever is going to listen to this and be like, Inman said we should hang out with MAGA people, it's like, come on.

Yeah, I'm not saying that.

They literally did not say that. Stop that. You know they didn't say that.

Yeah, you know. You know, I was talking about this kind of like, in this structure of like you. This is. This is your regional breakout, you know, And I've kind of. I've kind of moved on from essentially responding to the gathering that I did go to. And these are more my thoughts on it and a framework that I think could be cool regardless of that. And then I've kind of extrapolated on a little bit. All right, But a second part of this conversation could be, so you've done your kind of regional thing, or, sorry, you've done your local thing. This is a local breakout, not a regional breakout. I've misspoken. This was your local breakout. You've talked about the local level.

What's the difference between local and regional? Just in case our listeners. Or maybe I don't know the difference.

You know, I would say local is like people that you live in the same town as. You know, the same locale and region would be people in the larger area around that might be several. Made up of several locales, you know, for sure. And we have these convenient and inconvenient and arbitrary fucking things of lines on maps. Sometimes that gets broken up into terms of states or whatever. But I think you all know that I think that this is very silly. There's better ways for us to think about our regions. So now that you're, you know, it's like, maybe your gathering is just people in your locale, and maybe it just includes like a couple other locales, you know, neighboring cities, towns, et cetera. But you've had your little local breakouts, and then the next step is to kind of come together and do little. The one that I went to There were these little report backs where each locale kind of gave a report back about what they talked about. And from there, the third part was then kind of doing these other breakouts where it was like, okay, in the larger regional breakout, people. A lot of things people identified were things like third spaces, as an example.

Of which there are vanishingly few.

Yes, vanishingly few. Um, shout out to fucking bluestockings. Oh, there's RIP.

Yeah, they will be missed. The circumstances of the demise of bluestockings are an ongoing process of discovery for those of us in the region. We will. I think it's too soon to say what happened there, but it was bad.

Dang. Yeah. I don't know much about it, but I do remember going there as like a 20 year old and being very enamored.

Spaces like bluestockings are super important. It will be really missed, man. Red Emma's in Baltimore. That's like the nearest cool place now.

Yeah. And so it's like at this specific thing that I went to, it's like one thing people talked about a lot were third spaces. So it's like there was this whole group of people who were like very interested in third spaces. And so it's like the third, or I guess the second breakout was then people from those different kind of interests or knowledge bases then meeting up to share their problems, strengths, etc. And build community with people doing similar things in other places. And I just think it's all. I think it's all really cool. I think it's really cool to have conversations about this stuff. And I think it's really important that we start to have these conversations now and kind of like building these bridges and networks because we don't know what's coming.

Right.

Other kinds of conversations that I think that can happen at gatherings like this is I led this little how to talk about community preparedness to smaller groups of people. Talk once. And it's mostly a series of guided questions that I think can be really helpful for people to think about on an individual level. And then just on a bigger level. What things do you wish when you think about preparedness? What things? What disasters or circumstances do you feel particularly afraid of? Are there things on a theoretical level that would quell this anxiety or make you feel more prepared on a realistic level? What are small steps that you as an individual or you as a community can take to. To work on this as a large communal anxiety or threat? And then how can you continue to kind of check in with each other about responding to this threat or Anxiety in an ongoing way. And it's always surprising what I hear people identify. You know, a lot of times it's like really simple things. Like, I'm worried about being able to feed myself if this happens, or I'm worried about watching my friends get hauled off to jail because they dislike fascism.

I think a lot of us are worried about that.

Yeah. And so, yeah, my question for you, Miriam, is like, what. What do you worry about? Like, what is, what is the thing that you're like? I. This is, this is my primary, like, thing that I worry about.

Well, I'm an anxious person, so I.

Worry about a lot of things in terms of. Yeah. Specific, like, things that I think are actually, like, things that might happen. And like, in the foreseeable future. I do worry about. I mean, I worry about people that I care about being targeted based on their. Their politics. I worry about people that I care about being targeted based on their, their gender or immigration status. So, yeah, I think right now law enforcement would be the biggest umbrella fear.

Yeah. And what are things that you think would make you or your community feel more prepared to respond to that?

A robust infrastructure of attorneys and court support and bail funding, which, honestly, we kind of have.

Hell yeah.

Which, like, is good to remind myself of that. There is, like a pretty strong community network of that in existence and there are people continuing to work to build that. So not to say there, there isn't anything more to be done, but that, like, yeah, that is something that exists and if I want to help with it, I can because there's people working on it and I know who some of those people are.

Yeah. Hell yeah. That's great.

How about you? What are you scared of?

I think kind of the same thing.

Do you have any additional wisdom on how we can be less scared?

This is a little bit of a cop out answer, but by having these conversations with each other and it's like, I think. And that's another reason that I really want to plug for people to have these conversations and to have these little gatherings, whether it's just people in your immediate circle or people in your larger town or people in your larger region. Is that talking about this stuff and just having the conversations, I think alleviates a lot of anxiety, and it does for me at least. It's like, it's. It's like I spend a lot of time spiraling, thinking about my friends getting hauled off to jail because they disagree with fascism. The thing that would help alleviate that anxiety is to just talk to people about it and to Come up with little strategies for dealing with it. So it's like, yeah, I'm worried about the actual mechanisms of legal repression and responding to them, but I think I'm more worried about the just utter kind of despair that can really leach into a community or to an individual person's mind. Yeah. I would say that's my primary worry is watching communities and projects fall apart simply from despair.

Yeah. Which I mean, that's sort of part of what we have to prepare. Or is to not, you know, is to. Is to not fall into despair. Which is like, boy, that, that really sounds like we're already losing. To say, hey guys, we gotta be really careful about despair.

Yeah. Which is another fun aspect of gatherings is like, I think one of the most fun ways to build affinity with people is by like participating in joy together. Like, yeah, it's having the hard conversations. It's experiencing like, it's experiencing conflict together and responding to things together. It's doing hard things. But I think it's also experiencing and maintaining joy with each other and figuring out ways to connect in joy. That's my suggestion for people. Yeah.

No, that is very real. That is very real. And honestly, I think that like despair happens most when people are feeling alone. So when we think about things like our friends being hauled off to jail, for example, we feel very alone when we think about that. But when we organize around that, we don't feel alone because we're organizing. And that is both more practically helpful and also just feels better. Can't feel that sense of isolation when you're in a group working together on something.

Yeah. And so it's like, I don't know. And again, that's why I'm plugging for people to do these little gatherings. Even if it's just you and your second removed friend group getting together and going camping together. And as we talked about in the logistics of hosting a gathering, thing is, these gatherings can serve as really good kind of preparedness for preparedness or preparing for preparedness exercises because it forces you to kind of build infrastructure and try things out. I fucking love larping. I love larping inactivity. And that's how I'm going to refer to preparedness from now on. It's really just larping. You're larping about things that are likely to happen instead of fantasy things.

So next time your workplace is like time for a fire drill, you can be like, you mean a fire larp?

You mean a fire larp? Exactly. I want to have a fire larp.

Well, and I mean literal larping. Also kind of preparedness, because, like, you know, you're talking about. You know, we were talking about, like, practicing, doing things like setting up the infrastructure for people to survive in the context of, you know, hosting an outdoor gathering. This is what we were talking about.

Whenever we recorded that episode. And, like, when people go and larp.

In the woods, that's what they do. You know, they might also hit each other with foam swords, but, like, they're. If they're doing it in the woods, they are by necessity setting up that infrastructure, you know, and that means that.

When it's needed for a non larp, they know how to do it. And also they have foam swords, which are fun.

Foam swords are really fun. And I think it's like this larping or this practicing preparedness or practicing setting up these little structures or gatherings that exist. I just really think of anything that happens in the woods as existing outside of capitalism, which is not exactly true, but it's like, what is the antagonistic force in so many fairy tales? The dark forest. And this is my real advice. Go fuck around in the forest.

Yeah, fuck around in the woods.

And I think it's building these little temporary gatherings, towns, whatever, villages, is a really good practice in the idea of, I think, prefiguration. It's practice in building the worlds that we want to see now and practice and setting those things up and seeing how they work. This is obviously a little bit different. Doing a regional gathering is obviously a little bit different than setting up, like, a free state, for example. But they're not that dissimilar.

Yeah. I mean, it's still about taking care of people, right?

Yeah.

There's, like, you know, people are still gonna be people in either situation.

Yeah. And I think, like, another good conversation for having at gatherings like this. To ask your immediate circle and to ask your larger region is like thinking about the worst things and thinking about. I think these are hard questions because we're so intrinsically tied to the capitalist structures that are all around us. But questions that I have for people at these gatherings in this larger sense are, if it was only you, how would you. And this doesn't have to be y' all in the woods. This can be like, y', all, like in the places where you live, you know, but it's like, how would you, as a region, feed yourselves, house yourselves, defend yourselves, find affinity with others who are not part of your group, already take care of medical needs, move people and stuff. Move, communicate, learn and learn new Things and maintain access to joy. And how would you do these things for a week? How would you do them for a month? And how would you do them for a year? And I don't have answers to almost any of those questions.

Oh, I was waiting for you to tell us.

I think a week. I think I got like a week. Okay, maybe a month, but like a year. I don't know how these questions change for a year, but I think they're important questions that we should all be thinking about for building resilient communities that are autonomous and fueled by solidarity. I don't fucking know. That's my rant.

I like your rant.

It wasn't that ranty.

It was fairly hinged.

Um, you know, I think, I think that was you.

You can, you could go a little further in terms of just, you know, sheer wild eyed fervor if you want. If you want to go rant. But I appreciate a thoughtful and what it was, a mindful and demure rant. So here we are. Thank you for that rant. Yeah, thanks.

Oh, I do have one more thing actually. The rant continues, correct? Maybe, yeah.

Give me more, give me more rant.

I think this is kind of a crux of especially the title of this podcast is like, what does it mean to live like the world is dying? And it can mean a lot of things. It can mean living the like our worlds are dying. And it can also mean living like the world. The world being like all of the things that suck are also dying. Like, you know, I think I'm getting really into some like, apocalypse drive stuff in like a good way where it's like, yeah, I don't know, this is a fucked up world. It should probably end, you know?

Yeah.

I mean, the cause if it ends, then something else gets to happen, you know, and there's so many reasons to feel constrained by anxiety, despair and turmoil. But by having these gatherings, we get to learn how to invest in each other. And then also another beautiful part of living like the world is dying means that we get to build the world that we want to live in now. And then, even if it's all just doomspeak and nothing happens, then if we've spent all of our time doing this work, then we still get to just have more resilient and beautiful communities, even if nothing happens. But I think something's going to happen.

But what if we spend all this time spending time together as a community and building skills and then nothing bad ever happens? It'll be terrible. We'll have community and skills and friendship. What if the real apocalypse was the friends we made along the way?

Perhaps. Can I end this with a nerd, Nerd, Nerd moment. Nerd pool.

I don't. You did not submit that for pre approval. We're going to have to check up on whether we are allowed to be nerds on this podcast. I think it'll be okay, though.

Yeah. You know who was a prepper and no one talks about it?

Am I can. I guess?

Yeah. Yeah.

Tolkien.

Tolkien. I have no idea. Shakespeare.

Oh, okay. Say more.

Yeah. And by that. My only piece of evidence for this claim is I don't think Shakespeare was actually a prepper. But he has this really hard quote in Hamlet, and Hamlet sucks. Hamlet sucks. But he has a lot of really good lines. And one of my favorite parts about getting to rewrite an adaption of Hamlet was giving all of Hamlet's lines to better people than Hamlet. But Hamlet does say, in terms of preparedness, if it be now, tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. When is never to us known. So the readiness is all.

Hell, yeah.

And that is clear evidence that Shakespeare was a prepper.

Advice that Hamlet does not follow, by the way.

No. Which is the real tragedy of Hamlet is that Hamlet knows everything that's going to happen and somehow still makes the worst decisions possible.

I think that maybe Hamlet, as the most obviously depressed Shakespeare character, maybe just has terrible executive function. Like, you know how some days it's so hard to get out of bed or do your dishes or stab your uncle? You know, like everyone. Everyone has had those days, I'm sure.

Totally.

But it is good advice.

It is.

It is true. The readiness is all.

Yeah. And, like, okay. Even his, like, sorry, now we're just on a tam. I did this to myself. Hamlet's to be or not to be speech. It's incredible. And it's all about. It's not about preparedness. It's about doing what you know, needs to be done, even if it might end in despair. And I think that's, like, a weird moment that we're in right now is like, kind of like. Like doing what we know we need to do, but being afraid because the world has made us afraid to, for instance, disagree with fascism.

Yeah.

But again, Hamlet. We should do a spectacle on Hamlet. I would love to do a spectacle episode on Hamlet.

Yeah, I would be into that. Let's talk.

Let's talk.

Weird for us to pick one of the Shakespeare plays with no Cross dressing.

I know, we'll talk.

It is a really scary time. It, I think also, maybe, maybe has always been a really scary time. But I mean, one of the things that I really value about this podcast and the conversations that we have here is that we can both have the conversations about, like, hey, everything is fucking terrifying. How do we go on in the face of that terror? How do we work to lessen the feeling of terror? And then also at the same time, what practical things can we do that actually help the situation? And what kind of future can we imagine and what kind of future can we build and how do we work towards that? And like, I think it is very important to have all of that conversation together sometimes to. To be like, hey, we gotta figure something out. And also we have to exist. And both of those things are hard. So thank you for having that conversation.

Yeah. And I would encourage everyone who's listening to go out and have these conversations with people that you care about and people that you might not know, but could and could be friends with.

Yeah. Thank you. And. Thank you also to our patreon patrons. Last time I tried to say all their names in one breath. I failed real bad.

So today I won't do that. I will simply say thank you to nicole and tick for the dog micaiah, chris, kirk, micah, dana, david paige, sj, theo, millica, paparuna, allie, janice and odell princess miranda community books of stone mountain, georgia lord harken carson julia people's university of palestine violet boldfield portland's hedron hackerspace appalachian liberation library ephemeral amber, sunshine, aidan and yuki the dog jenny and phoebe the cats jason shulva, blink cat farrell in west virginia, the massachusetts chapter of the socialist rifle association, the canadian socialist rifle association. Karen lancaster chooses love enchanted rats of turtle island max hyunhi a future for abby alexander gopal the incredible ren arai the ko initiative jonathan the goose, the golden gate 26 tiny nonsense mark vale phyro, your canadian friend, Mr. Crafty sarah baby acab and her three great pups tsnb upta kuna the athens.

People'S assembly of athens, ga. A bi weekly potluck simone staying hydrated brought to you by hannah potatoes tenebrous press arguing about what to shout out experimental farm network accordions dolly parton and edgar miaolin po who we are working under the assumption are cats. The black trowel collective groot the dog, the ko initiative again nico the waterfront project, tikva's favorite stick, ulikse and alder na and the immortal hoss the dog thanks, y'.

All.

Thank you.