Brutal South

My guest is Aaron Carey of the West Virginia black metal band Nechochwen. Aaron is a true Appalachian hesher who's also trained as a classical guitarist, and he's been using his musical project to retell and reinterpret indigenous history in his part of the world. He learned growing up that he was descended from some prominent members of the Shawnee and Lenape tribes, and he frequently talks about the history of those tribes, both in his lyrics and also in what he describes as non-lyrical tone poems.The latest Nechochwen album is called Kanawha Black, which you can stream or download or buy on a vinyl record via Bandcamp. If you're interested in learning more about the band, the music journalist Brad Sanders had an excellent profile earlier this year in Bandcamp Daily.The Brutal South podcast is an extension of the weekly newsletter of the same name, which you can read and sign up for at brutalsouth.substack.com. The theme music is by The Camellias. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

My guests today are Amber Campbell-Moore and Dr. Matt Cressler with the Charleston Area Justice Ministry, a good, radically inclusive organization working for social and economic justice in Charleston, S.C., and the greater Charleston area. As we speak today, the ministry is gearing up for its biggest public-facing event of the year, the Nehemiah Action.Every year at the Nehemiah Action, members of religious communities bring their protests and demands to local politicians. It’s exciting, it’s strange, it’s genuinely a lot of fun to be part of — and it gets the goods. Year after year I’ve seen the group behind it, the Charleston Area Justice Ministry, push for successful changes in our city, county, and school district governments. They make some enemies along the way — including the mayor of North Charleston, who threw a hissy fit one year — but when they get in trouble, it’s always good trouble, as the saying goes.The 2022 Nehemiah Action will take place on Monday, April 4th from 7-9 p.m. at the Charleston County School District 4 Regional Stadium (3659 West Montague Ave., North Charleston, SC). Here is the link to register and add it to your calendar: https://charlestonareajusticeministry.org/event/2022-nehemiah-action/ This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

I have a new piece of short fiction out today in the Charleston City Paper Lit Issue. It’s called “Possum Island,” and you can read it online or pick up a paper if you’re in the area.I thought it would be fun to make an audio version, so that’s what I did. Enjoy!If you’re looking for more stuff to listen to, check out the Brutal South podcast on Apple or Spotify or wherever you get podcasts.If you’re a possum aficionado, you might enjoy this thinkpiece I wrote about possum memes last year with the help of the novelist George Singleton:That’s all for this week. The possum drawing is by my daughter. The music in the episode is by The Camellias. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

We're gathered here today to speak of the ivory-billed woodpecker, a tremendous beautiful bird that is gone forever ... or so some people think.Hey. Welcome to Episode 29 of the Brutal South Podcast. The ivory-billed woodpecker has been on my mind again since late September when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed moving it and 22 other species from the endangered species list forever, effectively declaring the bird extinct.It's been called the Lord God Bird, supposedly because of the things people would exclaim when they encountered this big, elusive bird in the American wild. The last universally accepted sighting was in 1944 in northeast Louisiana. Hobbyists and professionals alike kept searching, though, keeping the faith that it was out there, but hiding, like a cryptid. This bird has been the subject of songs, novels, endless speculation, and long expeditions in the swamps and forests of the Southeastern United States.My guest this week is Matt Drury, who's currently working as a resource management coordinator for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. In the course of his career he's done all kinds of fascinating and vital work in the woods in this part of the country, including a stint leading the search for the ivory-billed woodpecker in old-growth swamplands across South Carolina. I don't want to give too much away, but I learned so much from him. There's a lot to mourn, but a lot we can still save, too.To learn more and support Matt’s work, visit appalachiantrail.org and southernspruce.org.If you liked the podcast, please leave a nice review wherever you do that or just share it with your friends. Also, if haven't yet, check out the Brutal South newsletter at brutalsouth.substack.com. I've been publishing at least one interesting thing a week for more than 2 years on labor, ecology, parenting, art, and just about everything else from my little perch here in South Carolina. I think you might find something you like. One piece you might appreciate is this one from June 23 on camping in fragile places with young children during the Anthropocene:The episode art is an engraving of ivory-billed woodpeckers, Campephilus principalis, by John J. Audubon. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

My guest on the pod is Michael Smallwood (@mikeluvsgushers), an actor, director, podcaster, and screenwriter from Charleston. He recently appeared in the biggest movie role of his career as the character Marcus in Halloween Kills, the latest installment of the Michael Myers saga. If you've seen it, you'll recognize him as the guy in the doctor costume from the first 20 or so minutes of the movie. He was great. I screamed when I saw him.Michael and I have crossed paths a few times over the years here in South Carolina, but we'd never gotten to sit down and talk at length. As cool as it was to see him in a big Hollywood production, I was even more excited to talk to him about his original short film What a Beautiful Wedding, which deals with the underlying current of horror in weddings that take place on former slave plantations. We'll get into that in the second half of the show.If you want to see Halloween Kills, I don't need to tell you how to find it; it's the No. 1 movie in America. If you want to see What a Beautiful Wedding, it's currently only available to stream via the Octopunk Media Patreon page at patreon.com/octopunkmedia. Worth it.Over on the newsletter at brutalsouth.substack.com, my latest piece is about the state of the death penalty in Missouri, Alabama, and Oklahoma. Coming soon, I've got some juicy details on former UN Ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley's weird, bespoke, neo-McCarthyite think tank and how it's blowing millions of dollars on Facebook ads.If you’d like to support my work and get access to some exclusive content, subscriptions are $5/month at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe.Exciting stuff on the way, y'all. Have a lovely spooky season. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome back to the Brutal South podcast, Episode 27.I guess this was inevitable: We're going to talk about critical race theory, both as an actual framework for understanding the world and as a mostly unrelated buzzword that conservatives have been screeching about nonstop since this summer.It's been more than 3 months since I put out an episode, and customarily this is where I as a podcast host would apologize or make some retroactive announcement that this is actually season 2 or whatever. Honestly I was just busy and tired. But I'm glad to be back at it, and this was a banger of a topic to jump back in on. I wrapped up recording with my guests the other night and I remembered what a joy this was — learning, talking to people, expanding my horizons.My guests today are AJ Davis (@Anjene1976) and Dr. Davíd G. Martínez (@FromFireToTable). AJ is an educator and community education advocate here in Charleston County, and Davíd is an assistant professor in the College of Education at my alma mater, the University of South Carolina, where he studies education funding and policy. I brought them on because they each had a unique perspective on this latest right-wing freakout from their vantage points in K-12 and higher education, respectively. I also knew them a little bit from my previous work as an education reporter in South Carolina, and they're the kind of people I would interview and think, "Man, I wish everybody could hear this entire conversation."One piece of reporting I did during my podcast hiatus was an August 25 piece in the newsletter called “Blueprint for a race panic." Basically, I was trying to figure out why and how South Carolina's superintendent of education, Molly Spearman, put out a blanket condemnation of "critical race theory" earlier this year, so I put in a Freedom of Information request for her emails on the subject, fought back against some petty price gouging for public records, raised the money to pay for the records, and put them all out there for anyone to read. Here's one of the truly unhinged constituent emails she received on May 22:Critical race theory is already in our schools. It is absurd that it even exist … It’s time to stand and do what we are paying you to do. LETS DO IT TOGETHER AND RALLY PARENTS UP TO BACK US ON IT!!!!!! FIRE ALL PRINCIPALS AND TEACHERS THAT BELIEVE IN ALL THIS CRAP!! FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE THEM ALL FIRE THEM ALL NOW MAKE THEM WORK IN A BLUE STATE FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE THEM ALL!!!!!  NOW!!!!!!So, these are the kind of philosopher kings we're dealing with right now, and that's the tenor of the public debate we are trying to intervene in today.One bill I'll be keeping an eye on come January 2022 is South Carolina House Bill 4325, which states that public schools may not "direct or otherwise compel students to personally affirm, adopt, or adhere to the tenets of critical race theory." This slapdash reactionary bill was introduced this May and is sitting in the Education and Public Works Committee right now waiting for the General Assembly to come back. Its sponsors include Rep. Rita Allison, the chairwoman of the Education and Public Works Committee.Folks, I don't love it, and I'd love it if you joined me in raising holy hell about this obvious attempted censorship.***The episode art is “Three Woman Figures” (1930) by Kazimir Malevich. The theme music for the podcast is “Crooked Cross” from the album Words Are Fragile Vessels by my band, The Camellias, which you can stream or purchase at camellias.bandcamp.com.Brutal South is an independent podcast and newsletter recorded, written, and produced by me, Paul Bowers, at home in lovely North Charleston, South Carolina. If you would like to support this work and get access to some exclusive content as well as some cool vinyl stickers that I'll send you in the mail, subscriptions are $5 a month at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

My guest is Shane Claiborne, a Christian activist fighting against war, gun violence, and the death penalty. I got to meet him recently at a death penalty abolitionists' meeting in Columbia, S.C., and he graciously set aside a little time to talk about the struggle to end state-enforced killing in my state and across the country.On a personal note, Shane's writing has meant the world to me. His first couple of books, The Irresistible Revolution and Jesus for President, helped me understand the teachings of Jesus as radical, countercultural "good news for the poor" as the Good Book tells us. His more recent books include Executing Grace and Beating Guns.Talking with Shane was a breath of fresh air after my previous interview with Fred A. Leuchter Jr., the man who earned the nickname "Mr. Death" because he sold so much death chamber equipment to states in the '80s. I published that interview in Luke O'Neil's Welcome to Hell World newsletter (there's also an excerpt up at brutalsouth.substack.com if you want to check that out).Here's a clip from the interview when I asked Leuchter for his opinion on firing squads, which South Carolina just authorized for executions this year:“I’d rather be electrocuted, if you really want to know. But one of the things I found out, and I didn’t know this when I started, but I found out after being involved in it for over 30 years, is that the human body as I told you earlier is designed to protect itself and not allow you to kill it. And because of that, and everybody’s body is different, we can design a system that is completely flawless and works all of the time and does everything exactly right, but you’re gonna get, 20% of the time, you’re gonna get somebody who’s not gonna fit the mold, and he’s gonna be an issue. So even when we do everything right, we have a problem that we shouldn’t have had, and it’s because of an unknown physiological condition in the person that we’re executing. My feeling is that if we’re gonna execute people, we need to do it right and humanely. Other than that, we shouldn’t be doing it. If I can’t do the execution right 100% of the time, maybe we shouldn’t be doing it. So I’m not a proponent of capital punishment.”I'm skeptical of Fred Leuchter's claim that he's not a proponent of the death penalty. He may have done more singlehandedly to aid and abet the execution of imprisoned people in the U.S. than any other person in the second half of the 20th century, and he went out of his way to do so without a medical license or formal training in electrical engineering.The Leuchter interview was difficult and strange for me. I didn't want to lend credence to what he was saying, but I felt it was important to highlight his central role in the making of the modern death penalty regime in the U.S.My interview with Shane, on the other hand, was a great relief. I went from talking about the practical and mechanical issues of killing another person to the life-giving work of loving our neighbors. Shane stands with an executed savior, and so do I.While I've got you here, please go rate and subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen, or just tell a friend about an episode you liked. You can also subscribe to the newsletter at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe. It's free every Wednesday, or you can sign up as a paid subscriber at $5 a month to help support this work and get access to some exclusive issues as well as some sweet vinyl stickers I will send you in the mail.In other news, I have a Freedom of Information Act request awaiting a response from the South Carolina Department of Corrections. I’m seeking information on the purchase, inspection, and maintenance of electrocution equipment in the state's death chamber. If and when they send me some information, I’ll keep you updated via the newsletter.The episode art is “The Magpie on the Gallows” by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1568).Twitter // Bookshop // Bandcamp // Apple Podcasts // Spotify Podcasts This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

Quick note in case you missed it: I’m trying to decide on a T-shirt design for Brutal South, and my friend CJ Bones came up with three metal-inspired logos to choose from. Click here to check them out and let me know which one you like the best.***Brood X is upon us. I'm talking about a brood of cicadas that emerges mature from the earth just once every 17 years. They scream, they mate, and they die in a matter of weeks, leaving the next generation to arise from the earth in another 17 years. You may have heard them from your porch.My guest on the podcast is Eddie Newman, whose one-man black metal project Prosperity Gospel put out a compelling album earlier this year featuring field recordings of cicadas. You can see cicadas in the logo, too, which is just a classic, gnarly, root-inspired metal logo by the artist Vojtech Doubek.There is something distinctly metal about cicadas. I was reading about Brood X this week and I found this early description of the same 17-year brood written in 1766 by the Quaker naturalist Moses Bartram:“Viewed through a microscope the moment they are hatched, they appear in every respect as perfect as at the time of their last transformation, when they rise out of the earth, put off their scaly covering, expand their wings, display their gaudy colours, dart forth their eggs, and after a few days existence, to fulfil the wise purposes of their maker, close the period of their lives by an early death. How astonishing therefore and inscrutable is the design of providence in the production of this insect, that is brought into life, according to our apprehension, only to sink into the depths of the earth, there to remain in darkness, till the appointed time comes when it ascends again into light by a wonderful resurrection!"Eddie doesn't use such religious language to describe his awe and horror at a swarm of cicadas, but he has an appreciation like I do, and I think it comes through on this album.The album is called "Violently Pulled from Bliss," and it feels like summer does here in South Carolina: oppressively hot and murky with the occasional breeze that feels like a triumph. I listen to it often while I'm writing or running or doing chores. It rips.You can find his album on streaming platforms or buy it on Bandcamp. You'll also hear clips from the album throughout this episode.We are all shedding our exoskeletons in a way this summer, emerging from the earth after a deadly pandemic. We all feel like screaming about it sometimes. This album is a perfect catharsis for me, and I loved talking to Eddie about how and why he made it.If you haven't already, go to brutalsouth.substack.com to subscribe to the newsletter. It's free every Wednesday, or you can chip in 5 bucks a month to get some exclusive newsletter issues and podcast episodes and some sweet Brutal South stickers that I'll send you in the mail.Twitter // Apple Podcasts // Spotify Podcasts // Bookshop // Bandcamp This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

My guest is Amethyst Ganaway, a chef and writer from North Charleston, South Carolina.Amethyst has been working in the restaurant industry for about 12 years, and during the past year she got deep into researching the history of food from our part of the country. She has published a few great pieces on what she's learned.The articles we'll be discussing are "Black Communities Have Always Used Food as Protest," from Food & Wine magazine; and a tribute to the late culinary giant Martha Lou Gadsden of Charleston, which ran on Today. The New York Times recently published her recipe for Lowcountry Okra Soup, which I'll be trying out as soon as okra season hits.One word you'll hear a few times in this episode is Gullah. If you aren't familiar, Gullah people are the descendants of formerly enslaved West African people who developed a unique language, culture, and cuisine on and around the sea islands of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. The longer I've lived in South Carolina, the more I've realized how central Gullah culture is to the way of life here. I'm glad I learned a few new things from Amethyst.Amethyst and I have some friends in common, and we grew up in the same area and even went to the same college and had stories to share about a professor we both had in the religious studies department — but we hadn't actually met somehow. I admired her work from afar, so I'm glad she accepted the invitation to talk.Follow Amethyst on Twitter at @ExcuseMyFly or on Instagram at @Thizzg. Her website is waterwhippin.com.This podcast is an offshoot of the Brutal South newsletter, which you can get for free every Wednesday at brutalsouth.substack.com. For $5 a month, you can get access to some exclusive newsletter issues and podcast episodes as well as some sweet Brutal South logo stickers while I've still got them. If you can subscribe, that's great, but if not, please just spread the word. I depend on word of mouth, so if you enjoy my work, please tell your friends.The episode art is a picture of an okra cross-section by Prathyush Thomas, published under a GNU Free Documentation License. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

My guest is Gardnsound, an Atlanta-based electronic music composer who is also one of my oldest and truest friends.I know him as Gardner. As long as I’ve known him, he has been a restless experimenter, from his classical training on the bass to his hard-partying dubstep phase to that time he wrote a song a day for an entire year.Along the way, he taught me a few things about music theory and kept the rhythm in a string band we started called The Camellias. We played shows at our neighborhood bar and recorded a few albums together.While we were playing straightforward Americana at our weekly living-room jam sessions, he was delving into trap music production and avant-garde modernist composition techniques. In the last two years, in the basement studio he built from scratch, he has gone all-in on ambient electronic music, composed and recorded the hard way with a jumble of synthesizers and patch cables.I’ve watched him pull off live electronic performances on YouTube and Twitch this past year and come away stunned by the preparation and focus required. It’s a far cry from a dude in a nightclub hitting the play button on a Macbook and then waving his hands in the air (not that there’s anything wrong with that! he can do that move too).Today on the podcast we’re discussing his new ambient electronic album Atmospheres, out April 20 on all major streaming platforms. It’s a followup to his 2019 album Ambiences, which has become one of my go-to writing jams. That last album referenced Philip Glass, John Adams, Brain Eno, and Tim Hecker in the liner notes, and you can hear those influences again on Atmospheres, with some new boundary-pushing experiments thrown in.I’ve included samples from the new album throughout this episode, along with a short clip from Iannis Xenakis’ “La Legende d'Eer,” which Gardner cites as a major influence on his development as a musician. I encourage you to listen to Gardnsound’s whole album on Spotify, Bandcamp, or wherever you get music.Thanks for listening. If you haven’t yet, please consider buying a subscription to the Brutal South newsletter at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe. $5 a month gets you access to exclusive newsletter issues and podcasts, and it helps me keep writing and making podcasts.The episode art is from a page of Iannis Xenakis’ notebook from 1951. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

My guests are Bristow Marchant (@BristowatHome) and David Travis Bland (@dtravisbland), reporters at The State newspaper in Columbia, S.C. They and their colleagues went public with the formation of The State News Guild this week, seeking voluntary union recognition from management.On this episode we talk organizing strategy, debunk some common myths about “right-to-work” laws, and obsess over their absolute banger of a union logo, courtesy of Dre Lopez.You can follow the guild at @thestateguild on Twitter and Instagram, read the guild’s statement at thestateguild.org, and cop some of that sweet sweet union merchandise at shop.spreadshirt.com/thestateguild. For more information about organizing your newsroom, visit newsguild.org.I previously interviewed two members of the Packet/Gazette Guild, the first successful local newsroom union in South Carolina. Check out Episode 9: Good news for people who love local news. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

My guest is Pastor Jim Conrad of Towne View Baptist Church in Kennesaw, Georgia. His church was, until recently, one of the only Southern Baptist churches that openly accepted and affirmed lesbian, gay, and transgender people. His church has been in the news since February because the Southern Baptist Convention, or SBC, voted to remove his church and another from Louisville, Kentucky, for taking their stand.I read about the convention’s decision in a New York Times story by Ruth Graham last month, and it struck me that on the same day, the convention also disfellowshipped two churches for hiring pastors with a history of sexual assault. These four churches were all lumped in together and given equal weight in a statement by J.D. Greear, president of the convention, who bemoaned “fissures and failures and fleshly idolatries.”This is grotesque and heartbreaking and completely unsurprising behavior by the Southern Baptist Convention, which was founded to defend human slavery and has been on the wrong side of nearly every battle since. What did surprise me was the testimony of Pastor Conrad.I grew up in a Southern Baptist Church in South Carolina. I led Vacation Bible School groups, went on mission trips, and played electric guitar in the youth group praise band. I met some of my best friends and role models there.But it’s also a place I had to leave behind as an adult because I found some of its teachings abhorrent. I still live in South Carolina, so I am always in the shadow of some Southern Baptist Church or another. The church is a community center, a cultural anchor, and it’s caused a lot of suffering for a lot of my friends over the years.I’m part of a church that marches in the Pride Parade now. Growing up, I never thought I’d see this day. I never imagined I’d meet someone like Pastor Conrad either. As we’ll discuss in the interview, he didn’t think this was a fight he’d have to fight, until one day late in his career when he did. He made me think of that old hymn that goes, “If you tarry ‘til you’re better, you will never come at all.”***The episode art is “Baptism of Christ” (1931) by Vimos Aba-Novak.Twitter // Bookshop // Bandcamp // Apple Podcasts // Spotify Podcasts This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

My guests on today’s podcast are Cary Ann Hearst and Michael Trent of the band Shovels & Rope.Most of the songs featured in this episode are from their latest album, Busted Jukebox Vol. 3, which you can buy at your local record store or download on Bandcamp.I was thinking back to 2012, when I interviewed them for a profile in the Charleston City Paper. They were hugely popular in Charleston at the time, and after years of relentless touring they were finally breaking into the national scene for folk and Americana music. They were a little self-conscious about the first taste of success, which seemed like a good indicator that they wouldn’t let it go to their heads.I got to see one of their last hometown shows before they really blew up, and it still ranks as one of my favorite concerts ever. It was a scorching August night at the Pour House, a James Island bar, and people were sweating and screaming and dancing their asses off in the crowd.Onstage, Cary Ann and Michael were sweaty and delirious as the rest of us, stripped down to their undershirts and singing their guts out. They took turns keeping rhythm on a drumset that looked like it had been salvaged from the side of the road. It was bandaged together with duct tape, and they pounded away on the snare and floor tom with a plastic maraca.They still play hometown shows, but they need a little bit more space now. They host the annual High Water Festival at a riverfront park in my neighborhood, a fact that brings me no small amount of civic pride. It’s been a vicarious thrill to watch them scrap their way into a successful career, and it was a pleasure to catch up with them about their art, their view of the world, and their adventures in parenting.Twitter // Bookshop // Bandcamp // Apple Podcasts // Spotify Podcasts This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

My podcast guest is Chuck Johnson, a musician who composes meditative songs on the pedal steel guitar.Chuck grew up in North Carolina, where he heard pedal steel in the context of country music. After building a career playing fingerpicked acoustic guitar in the style of Elizabeth Cotten and John Fahey, he picked up the pedal steel and took it in a new direction, using its vocal quality and unlimited sustain to create mournful soundscapes.On his new album The Cinder Grove, Chuck recreates lost performance spaces through a technique called convolution reverb. We spent some time discussing the sensory memory of places that have either been destroyed or become inaccessible, and I thought that theme dovetailed nicely with what I’ve been reading about the architect Paul Rudolph’s “psychology of space.”Here’s something beautiful he said during our conversation:“I think that when a space is lost and exists only in memory, it’s sort of like what happens when people are lost. I guess depending on how they’re lost and how you’re able to process the loss, they can linger in our memory like ghosts. With the spaces that I’m working with or thinking about in The Cinder Grove — which are these urban community spaces but also forests and wild areas that have been lost in fires — just because I’m a musician and I have sonic experiences of places … it’s useful for me to try to work with my memories of these places and process the loss that way, using sound.”I used a few snippets from The Cinder Grove in the episode, but I would encourage you to spend some time with the entire album if you get the chance. You can stream and buy Chuck’s music at chuckjohnson.bandcamp.com.Friend-of-the-newsletter Eddie Newman had Chuck as a guest on his own podcast last year, and he graciously introduced us. You can check out Comfort Monk Episode 46 if you want to hear more of the story.Grayson Haver Currin also wrote a moving profile that ran in the New York Times on Feb. 10 titled “Chuck Johnson’s Ode to What’s Been Lost in California’s Fires.”The episode art is “Fire evening” (1929) by Paul Klee. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

My guest is Kate Wagner (@mcmansionhell), architecture critic at The New Republic and proprietor of the McMansion Hell blog. Like me, Kate grew up in the South, and like me, she is a defender of brutalist architecture. Unlike me, Kate really knows what she's talking about.Brutalism is a style that grew out of 20th-century modernism, and it usually features hulking geometric forms and a lot of exposed, unfinished concrete. The British architects Alison and Peter Smithson coined the term, not to evoke brutality, but as a play on the French béton brut, meaning raw concrete.Anyway some people love brutalism, a lot of people hate it, and we're going to talk about it this week, of all weeks in world history. I hope you stick around even if that doesn't tickle your fancy. Kate is a brilliant thinker, and I've enjoyed her work for years.As we’ll discuss some in the episode, I’m working on a book about the history of brutalist architecture in the American South. I recently received funding from the Lowcountry Quarterly Arts Grant Program to pursue the project. Stay tuned for updates!Show notes are below.***“This Brutal World: Public opinion has softened its views on Brutalism. That isn’t enough to stay the wrecking ball.” (The Architect’s Newspaper)“Duncing About Architecture: The ignorance and racism behind the right-wing push for ‘classical’ federal buildings” (The New Republic)“Underground, Part 1” (McMansion Hell) Celebration, Florida (Wikipedia)“The Legacy of Sea Ranch, a Utopian Community in Northern California” (Dwell)A Softer WorldThe Pruitt-Igoe MythGruen transfer (Wikipedia)Orange County Government Center (Paul Rudolph, Goshen, N.Y., 1967) - photo by Kerry O’Connor via SOS BrutalismBurroughs Wellcome Company Headquarters (Paul Rudolph, Durham, N.C., 1972)Pinecrest High School (Southern Pines, N.C., 1969)Moore County Superior Court (Carthage, N.C.)Pruitt-Igoe (Minoru Yamasaki, St. Louis, Missouri, 1956)***If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to sign up for the newsletter at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe. You can get the newsletter in your inbox for free every Wednesday, or for $5 a month you can get access to a bunch of exclusive stuff including an audio novella I released last month.Twitter // Bookshop // Bandcamp // Apple Podcasts // Spotify Podcasts This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

Halfway through John Warner’s new book about higher education, it dawned on me that I was reading a manifesto.The book is called Sustainable. Resilient. Free. The Future of Public Higher Education (2020, Belt Publishing). It’s a sweeping diagnosis of what ails higher education in the United States, written from a place of deep frustration.John spent 20 years teaching in colleges and universities, including Clemson and the College of Charleston. He’s a talented educator and an incisive writer, and I’ve admired his work for years. I jumped at the opportunity to bring him on the podcast.In the book, he argues for canceling student debt and making all public colleges free for students. He rails against student surveillance and the insipid utopianism of the edu-tech TED Talk circuit. John worked as an adjunct, not a tenure-track professor, so he writes from experience about the ways the industry grinds down its frontline workers.One concept that I connected with was the idea of “vocational awe,” originally coined by the librarian Fobazi Ettarh to describe “the set of ideas, values, and assumptions librarians have about themselves and the profession that result in notions that libraries as institutions are inherently good, sacred notions, and therefore beyond critique.” While the term originally applied to librarians, it could just as easily describe the mindset of college instructors, K-12 teachers, nurses, and journalists.“To the person operating with a sense of vocational awe, the institution is so important that self-immiseration is a worthwhile tradeoff,” Warner writes.Like any good manifesto, Sustainable. Resilient. Free. opens the imagination. It’s a book for disenchanted voters, workers saddled with lifelong college loan debt, and professors on the verge of burnout. I read it in two sittings, growing angrier and more hopeful with every page.If you enjoyed today’s podcast and want to hear more from John, you can order a copy of his book from your local independent bookstore or via the Brutal South Bookshop page. He’s on Twitter (@biblioracle), and you can find links to his writing at johnwarnerwriter.com.***For $5 a month, paying Brutal South subscribers get access to exclusive newsletter issues and podcasts episodes, plus some rad vinyl stickers. To sign up, visit brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe.Twitter // Bookshop // Bandcamp // Apple Podcasts // Spotify Podcasts This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

Michael Baumann (@MichaelBaumann), staff writer for The Ringer, joins me for the second annual Wikipedia Holiday Special.Mike and I met at the University of South Carolina, and one of the ways we’ve stayed in touch since graduating is by sending each other articles we find on Wikipedia. You could say it’s our love language.If you’re following along at home, here are the Wikipedia pages we’re discussing today.Mine:Quadro TrackerMethods of divinationAttacus atlasOK SodaElisha OtisBaumann’s:List of eponymous lawsWojtek (bear)Louis SlotinDoping at the Tour de FranceGilles de RaisIf I get a minute later on, I’ll send out a subscriber-only list of the ones that didn’t make the cut. You can also check out last year’s Wikipedia year in review by clicking here.Don’t forget to subscribe and rate the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and sign up for the newsletter at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe if you haven’t already. Paying newsletter subscribers ($5/month) get access to extra podcasts and exclusive content, including a new piece of short fiction that I adapted into an audiobook earlier this month.Episode image: “Wojtek sits in front of a soldier,” 1942, Imperial War Museum. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

I convened this emergency podcast shortly after the release of Taylor Swift’s evermore, the out-of-nowhere follow-up to folklore. Joining me on the panel are my colleagues Michael Majchrowicz (@mjmajchrowicz) and Ari Pérez-Mejía.Subjects of interest for this episode include Myspace, parasocial relationships, Shakespeare, Cats, Zardulu the Mythmaker, eucatastrophe, Noah Baumbach divorce movies, depression, cognitive behavioral therapy, Sufjan Stevens, and Bravo reality TV. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

I’m publishing a new piece of fiction today. The title is “Charity,” and I’m releasing it in three parts. You can read Part 1 via the Wednesday morning newsletter edition, or listen to the audio version here.Part 2, Part 3, and the full audio edition are available to paying subscribers only. Subscriptions are $5 a month and get you access to exclusive content and subscriber-only podcast episodes.To sign up, go to brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribeIf you’re a paying subscriber, check your inbox! This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

My guest is the Rev. Dr. Jeremy Rutledge, the minister at Circular Congregational Church in Charleston, South Carolina.Jeremy and I have crossed paths several times over the years. He’s involved with social justice work in Charleston, we have a lot of friends in common, and I’m pretty sure I interviewed him a few times when I worked at the newspaper. I always loved talking with him, and recording this podcast was just an excuse to talk to him again — mostly about dad stuff, actually.I want to give a quick word of warning: We discuss death and disease and the loss of a child on this episode. If those topics are triggering for you, you might want to skip it.Also, I’ve got a little song I recorded for the advent season, and I’ve tacked it onto the end of the show just because I can.The Eugene Debs biography we mentioned at the top of the show is The Bending Cross by Ray Ginger, and it’s available to order via the Brutal South Bookshop page along with a lot of other radical, strange, and beautiful books I’ve mentioned in the newsletter and on the podcast this year. If you want to do some holiday shopping and throw a portion of your purchase my way while supporting independent bookstores and sticking it to Jeff Bezos, check it out at bookshop.org/shop/BrutalSouth. The episode art is “Winter Landscape” (1909) by Wassily Kandinsky.Apple Podcasts // Spotify Podcasts // Twitter // Bookshop // Bandcamp This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

My guest is Marvin Pendarvis, my state House representative here in South Carolina. He's about my age, one of a handful of millennials in the legislature, and he's been one of the loudest voices in the state capital on the issues of housing insecurity and evictions. I wanted to have him on the show because, 1, he's fighting an uphill battle that I think more people should know about, and 2, his hallmark issue is suddenly more important than ever. (And 3, he’s a new dad, so I wanted to talk dad stuff with him.)Marvin and I live in North Charleston, which had the highest eviction rate of any city in the United States according to a 2018 study by the Princeton University Eviction Lab. This year during the pandemic, we had the tenuous protection of a state eviction moratorium, but that already expired. Now we have a federal eviction moratorium that's set to expire at the end of the calendar year. Just before I got on the call with Marvin, I was in a Zoom meeting with my local DSA chapter talking about what we can do to fight back against the wave of evictions that's about to hit our community.I hope you enjoy this conversation. If you're looking for a good fight to pursue with your city council or state legislature, housing security is a good choice.South Carolina State Rep. Marvin Pendarvis, D-North CharlestonThe episode art is “The Blue House” (1917) by Marc Chagall. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

This one’s a subscriber-only episode. Paying subscribers to the Brutal South newsletter get today’s full episode and access to all of the archives at brutalsouth.substack.com/archive. It’s $5 a month. Think about it.My guest is Ian Nix, lead vocalist and songwriter for the South Carolina metal band WVRM.If you follow heavy music, WVRM probably falls into genre labels like grindcore and death metal. If you don't follow heavy metal, well, it's extreme. It's guttural music played over blast beats. I'll be using clips throughout the show from their latest album Colony Collapse, which came out earlier this year.Ian is a native of the South Carolina Upstate, which is probably the most culturally conservative part of the state, and he brought a fresh perspective on the history and culture of this place we call home. Also, the album just rips. I'm a fan, y'all. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

I wrote in the newsletter a few weeks ago about this thing I saw with my kids when we were camping in the South Carolina Upstate. It was long and yellow and it moved like a slug, but it was shaped like a snake and it had a flattened sort of hammer head. It was horrifying. When we got home I wrote in to Rudy Mancke, who is sort of a legendary naturalist with a show on South Carolina Public Radio, and he informed it was a land planarian, an invasive species that probably got here on plants imported from Malaysia. I kept reading about this thing online, and every new detail was disturbing. Its mouth is its anus, it eats worms, and if you chop it in half it just becomes two planarians. Really gross stuff.Anyway it got me thinking about horror and beauty in the natural world, and how there is so much going on out there and there are so many creatures who probably never think about us either unless we happen to cross paths. And it prompted me to send an out-of-the-blue inquiry to Dr. Melissa Hughes, a professor in the biology department at the College of Charleston.She doesn't study land planarians. She mainly studies song sparrows and snapping shrimp, and she was very gracious with her time explaining these weird animals to an absolute layman. Her research focuses on animal behavior, communication, territorial aggression, and deception. I'm not a scientist, but I love talking to researchers like Dr. Hughes. I learned a lot, I came away with a new appreciation for animals I never thought much about, and I hope you enjoy this too. Let's talk about birds and shrimp for a little bit.If you would like to read some of Dr. Hughes’ writing, here are the two pieces we discussed from Scientific American:The Not-So-Simple Secret World of Song SparrowsHopeful Monsters and the Snapping ShrimpYou can find a list of her publications on Google Scholar.The field recordings in this episode were graciously provided by Dr. Hughes. All of the birdsongs came from a single male song sparrow.The episode art is a photo of a song sparrow (Melospiza melodia) in Battery Park, Newcastle, Delaware. It was uploaded by Flickr user Keith (Pheanix) with a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

My guest on this podcast episode is Kelley Tyler, a trauma nurse working in Asheville, North Carolina. On Sept. 17, Kelley and her fellow nurses at Mission Hospital won a tremendous victory for organized labor when they voted in a landslide to be represented by a union.It was the largest union victory at a nonunion hospital in the American South since 1975, and it was the first ever private-sector hospital union win in North Carolina history.I don't want to understate this: That union victory was a big damn deal.If you want to read some more about the Asheville nurses' landmark victory, here’s a summary from The Intercept and an insightful interview with several of the nurses that was published by Jacobin shortly before the vote. I know there's a lot to despair about right now, but this is cause for rejoicing in my book.Up the nurses. Up the workers. Solidarity forever, y'all.If you enjoyed the show, be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Regular episodes are free, but for $5 a month you can help support my work and get access to some subscriber-only podcast episodes and newsletter issues.Right now I've got a big box of 3”x3” vinyl stickers on my desk with the podcast logo on them, and I'd love to mail you a couple. If you're a paying subscriber, you can just reply to this email with your mailing address and I'll send them your way ASAP. They were printed at a union print shop, Dr. Don's in Glendale, Arizona, and they are sure to be the envy of your coworkers and/or housemates.***Photos courtesy of National Nurses United. Kelley is the one at the top speaking into a megaphone. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

Today on the podcast I've got two guests, Lucas Smolcic Larson and Stephen Fastenau. They're both reporters at the Beaufort Gazette and Hilton Head Island Packet, two newspapers in the South Carolina Lowcountry that share a newsroom. Just last week more than 80% of the reporters, photographers, and producers down there signed cards authorizing union representation by the NewsGuild labor union, which is affiliated with the Communication Workers of America.I don't know how to express how happy this makes me. Local news reporters are some of my favorite people on earth, and, by and large, they deserve much better pay and working conditions than they're getting. I don't know of any other newsrooms in South Carolina that have taken this step toward unionizing, but seeing one notch a decisive victory like this makes me so, so glad. I hope it catches on.I hope you enjoy this episode of the podcast, and I hope you find it as inspiring as I did. What they did takes a lot of courage.If you're a working journalist interested in learning more about the unionization effort down in Beaufort, their website, again, is packetguild.org. The national union's website is newsguild.org.If you enjoyed today's podcast, please say something nice in the Apple Podcast review section. If you haven't already, you can also sign up for the Brutal South newsletter by clicking the Subscribe now button below. The weekly Wednesday newsletter is free, but you can also get access to some subscriber-only newsletters and podcasts as well as the complete archive for just $5 a month.Apple Podcasts // Spotify Podcasts // Bookshop // Twitter // Bandcamp This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

He’s a frumpy old fart wearing too much bronzer, scowling into the middle distance. He sports a gold lamé robe and wears a gold crown with an ass’s ears. Someone told him this outfit would make him look handsome, or happy, or dignified, but it only took him one glimpse in the mirror to realize they were full of it.Nevermind the dead worshippers falling from his lap; nevermind the skulls on the back of his throne: Lord Mammon looks like hot garbage. He looks like he never sleeps.In Christian theology, Mammon means the idol of wealth. Mammon has been personified in texts and paintings since at least the middle ages, and the depictions are never flattering. Here’s John Milton ragging on Mammon in Paradise Lost:Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fellFrom Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and thoughtsWere always downward bent, admiring moreThe riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold,Than aught divine or holy else enjoyedIn vision beatific.The big guy never looks healthy, but he looks just wretched in George Frederic Watts’ 1885 oil painting Mammon. He appears dead-eyed, gaudy, and glum with sacks of money piled uselessly in his lap.Watts saw global capitalism in its infancy in 19th-century England. I keep imagining how he would depict Mammon today, striding continents and gobbling up vulnerable workers with help from a worldwide plague.I’ve been thinking about Mammon because I downloaded a free plugin for my internet browser that swaps out every instance of the phrase “the economy” with the words “Lord Mammon.”The Lord Mammon plugin for Google Chrome is the creation of an Episcopal priest from Scottsdale, Arizona, the Rev. Robert M. Berra. I emailed Rev. Berra to see if he’d talk about his motivations on the podcast, and he said yes.The headlines have been especially grotesque this week, and I see the figure of Mammon hovering over the news now. I can only imagine this is what people mean when they say we should have a Christian worldview: The world looks mighty ugly when we see it for what it really is.Enjoy the podcast. Stay safe.***I’ll be releasing a podcast for paying subscribers only at the end of the week. It’s an interview with an avant-garde metal guitarist about becoming a dad. Sign up now for $5 a month to get access to that episode as well as other subscriber-only content in the full archives.If you are going to be in Columbia, South Carolina, this weekend, I encourage you to join some teachers who are staging a motor protest in front of the Statehouse at noon on Saturday, August 15. They’re demanding virtual schooling for all students until the risk for COVID-19 transmission is low. To read more details about the protest and the teachers’ specific demands, check out the event registration page and follow SC Teachers United on Facebook. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

It’s been almost 5 months since my daughters went to preschool, and they’ve started getting nostalgic. One of them told me today about a time when a kid hit her with a bike on the playground. I had never heard that before. They’ve both started vividly describing the flavors of popsicles they used to eat in the cafeteria. I got conned into making paper snowflakes this morning because they remembered making winter crafts one time. It’s August. We live in South Carolina, a state that has done a monumentally bad job containing the COVID-19 pandemic, so I have no idea when it will be safe to send my children back into their school. I don’t know what to tell them, but they miss their friends. They miss their teachers. Most days I feel powerless to do much other than hug my kids and shake my fist at the indifference and incompetence of our state and federal government. One ray of hope has been watching the activism of public school teachers in my state. They’ve been organized for a few years now, pushing back against decades of defunding, declining pay relative to inflation, and abandonment of poor, rural, and majority-black schools. Now they’re setting their sights on the state’s inept handling of the pandemic, and they’re raising their voices to protect all of us as the governor pushes for the reopening of schools. It’s inspiring to see. My guests this week are two accomplished teachers from South Carolina who have been on the frontlines pushing for change while working to protect us all. Chanda Jefferson (@TheRealChandaJ on Twitter and Instagram) is the science department chair at Fairfield Central High School in Winnsboro, and she is the 2020 South Carolina Teacher of the Year. On July 15, after Gov. Henry McMaster publicly pressed schools to reopen during a spike in infections, she captured the frustration of a lot of teachers with a statement titled “Issa No for Me.” You can read it by clicking here.Steve Nuzum (@Mr_Nuzum on Twitter) is an English teacher at Ridge View High School in Columbia, and he serves as legislative director for the teacher advocacy group SC for Ed.This is another very South Carolina episode, but I think there are important takeaways for solidarity movements in other states. If you’re interested in learning more about teacher activism, particularly as it plays out in Republican-dominated states like Arizona, West Virginia, and Oklahoma, I highly recommend picking up Eric Blanc’s 2019 book Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics. You can order it via the nonfiction section of the Brutal South storefront on bookshop.org. *** You can sign up for free to receive this email newsletter fresh-baked in your inbox every Wednesday, or if you pitch in $5 a month for a paid subscription, you can get access to subscriber-only content. This week I did a review of alternate designs for the Mississippi flag, and recently I put out an extended podcast episode on the topic of hard seltzer, internet memes, and the violent right-wing boogaloo movement. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

My guest this week is Dave Infante, a reporter in Charleston, South Carolina, who recently wrote a piece for Mel Magazine about the curious intersection of White Claw drinking culture and the right-wing militant boogaloo movement. If that sounds bewildering and niche, then strap in. You might want to hear more from Dave after listening to this episode, in which case I recommend you sign up for Dave's newsletter at fingers.substack.com. This is a condensed version of Episode 6. Paying subscribers to the Brutal South newsletter get access to the full uncut interview and other subscriber-only content going forward. Hit the Subscribe Now button below to sign up for $5 a month, or click here to read a quick Q&A about how Substack subscriptions work. The image at the top is Wagtail and Hibiscus (c. 1747 - 1797) by Kano Toshun. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to Episode 5 of the Brutal South Podcast. My guest this week is Dr. James N. Gilmore, assistant professor of media and technology studies at Clemson University.I met Jimmy at the University of South Carolina in the freshman Honors College dorm, which was an old building full of lovable weirdos. He had a film criticism blog going at the time that I really loved, and when I became an editor at the Daily Gamecock student newspaper, I convinced him to start writing reviews for us. I considered it a coup.Jimmy went to grad school, then he went to more grad school, and he became an expert in subjects like wearable technology, digital infrastructure, and Southern cultural studies. Every few months now, it seems like, he announces the title of a new paper he's just published, and each one is a certified club banger.I invited him onto the podcast to talk about wearable tracking devices, parenting, protest, and policing, all of which have surprising common threads. As a bonus, he sent me a recent article he had published about a Google data center that was built right in my backyard, and we talked about that too.You can follow Dr. Gilmore on Twitter at @JamesNGilmore or visit his website at JamesNGilmore.com. One book he recommended during the podcast is The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop Per Child by Morgan G. Ames, which you can find at your local bookstore or via the Brutal South Bookshop page.Here are the articles and papers we discussed in this episode:Sen, Ari. “UNC Campus Police Used Geofencing Tech to Monitor Antiracism Protestors.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 21 Dec. 2019, www.nbcnews.com/news/education/unc-campus-police-used-geofencing-tech-monitor-antiracism-protestors-n1105746.Gilmore, J. N. (2019). Securing the kids: Geofencing and child wearables. Convergence. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856519882317Gilmore, J. N., & Troutman, B. (2020). Articulating infrastructure to water: Agri-culture and Google’s South Carolina data center. International Journal of Cultural Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877920913044The image at the top of the page is Colonial Policy by Pavel Filonov, c. 1926. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

This week’s podcast episode is a very Charleston episode. Sorry, not sorry.While the police killing of George Floyd has set off protests and uprisings across the globe, we are seeing activism take root differently in different communities. In Charleston, South Carolina, it’s dredging up some recent history of police abuse and white supremacist terrorism.My guest this week is Mika Gadsden, founder of the Charleston Activist Network. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram at @mikagadsden, and follow the Charleston Activist Network on Instagram at @charlestonactivistnetwork. Her podcast Mic’d Up on Ohm Radio is essential listening for Charlestonians, and I recommend subscribing via iTunes or listening on Soundcloud.Stay safe. Take care of each other. Talk to you next week. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

For the third episode of the Brutal South Podcast, my guest is the man behind the popular Twitter account @YesYoureRacist.Twitter, for the uninitiated, is an open-air insane asylum where celebrities, world leaders, and everyday people log on to air their grievances. Logan Smith is a political communications worker from North Carolina who has been dunking on racists on the website since 2012.Themes for this episode include white fragility, ongoing beefs between North and South Carolina, and the time Logan’s Twitter account went from idle entertainment to anti-racist information clearinghouse.We also spend some time on the subject of digital duality, or the idea that our online selves and our “real” selves are separate. I’ve written about this before in a newsletter about Instagram and parenting, which borrowed some ideas from Nathan Jurgenson’s book The Social Photo: On Photography and Social Media (Verso, 2019). That book, like the others I mention in the newsletter, is available to order via the Brutal South Bookshop.If you haven’t already, you can check out the previous episodes of the podcast here and here. You can subscribe to the podcast for free via iTunes or Spotify.As always, if you’d like to receive something interesting in your inbox every Wednesday, subscribe to the free Brutal South newsletter at the link below. For an optional $5 a month, you can support my work now and get access to exclusive content later on down the road.The image at the top is Coccothraustes rubra (now Cardinalis cardinalis) from Mark Catesby’s The natural history of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands: containing the figures of birds, beasts, fishes, serpents, insects, and plants, Vol I. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

One bright morning in May 1953, Aldous Huxley dissolved four-tenths of a gram of mescaline in a glass of water, drank it, and waited to see what happened.It wasn’t idle curiosity that drove the author of Brave New World to try the psychedelic alkaloid of the peyote cactus. Late in life, he had questions that remained unanswered. Chief among them were questions about perception, self-knowledge, and human connection.“We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves,” Huxley wrote in The Doors of Perception, the 1954 account of his mescaline experiment. “The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude.”For the second episode of the Brutal South Podcast, I brought on a guest who shared his experience with another psychedelic drug, the psilocybin mushroom, which has been compared to mescaline for its hallucinogenic and therapeutic qualities.Adam F. Naughton spent much of his 20s working for Republican politicians in South Carolina before undertaking some radical changes in his life and worldview. He now considers himself a socialist, and he has gotten involved with disability activism. While no single experience pushed him over the edge, he says taking psilocybin while undergoing integration therapy helped him see the world in a different light.I’m no drug evangelist, and I’ve never tried psychedelics, but I am fascinated by their potential. If you are interested in learning more, John Semley has an excellent piece on the state of psychedelic therapy in the May issue of The New Republic (currently it’s for subscribers only; sorry). I am also pretty pleased with this feature I wrote for the Charleston City Paper in 2014 about an Iraq War veteran who found relief from PTSD in a clinical therapy trial involving MDMA, also known as ecstasy.Adam’s website is notyourinspiration.org. You can follow him on Twitter at @adamfnaughton.The Brutal South Podcast is available via the Apple Podcasts library and most podcast player apps. Subscribe if you like it, and don’t forget to leave a nice review.The image at the top is “Encounter” (1908) by the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe

I’m broadly skeptical about consumer activism. The first time I set foot in a Whole Foods, I saw a laminated sign beside the coffee grinder indicating that the machine might have been contaminated by non-organic coffee and that eco-conscious consumers might want to grind their beans at home. My eyes rolled all the way back in their sockets. I just wanted to go back to Food Lion.Whole Foods is, of course, a union-busting grocery chain owned by Amazon, a monopolistic company helmed by richest-man-on-earth Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos makes something in the ballpark of $9 million per hour via an empire that specializes in online retail, web services for enormous swaths of the internet, and tax dodging. Amazon owns Audible, Goodreads, IMDb, Twitch, and The Washington Post. Amazon is helping ICE break up migrant families and local police departments set up a panopticon of Ring-brand doorbell cameras, all while exploiting its own warehouse employees and slandering workers who dare to speak out about unsafe conditions during a pandemic.My point is that individual consumer choices are not going to affect Amazon’s bottom line in any meaningful way. I’m also wary of the classist overtones in shop-local jingoism. I buy a lot of groceries at Walmart and Food Lion, for example, because it’s how we can afford to eat. Lots of families do the same.All of these caveats notwithstanding, I think there’s a case to be made for buying books without Amazon, if you can afford it. Since its debut in 1994 as an online bookseller (how quaint!), Amazon has wreaked havoc on the market for authors, publishers, and booksellers by selling books as a loss-leader. Amazon can afford to slash prices on books because it’s recouping the money elsewhere.In this week’s newsletter, I’m debuting the Brutal South Podcast. Episode 1 is an interview with Christen Thompson, co-owner of Itinerant Literate Books right here in North Charleston, South Carolina, who has some thoughts on how we can push back against Amazon’s dominance in the book industry.I’m a big fan of Christen’s store, which started out as a mobile bookshop in an Airstream-style trailer before moving into a renovated house in my neighborhood. I’ve taken my children there for story time, participated in open-mic poetry events, attended book signings for my friends, and spoken there during Banned Books Week about my favorite dangerous books. If you are in the neighborhood, you should check them out — they’re even doing curbside pickup during the pandemic.One topic we spent some time on in the interview is an alternative home-shopping platform called Bookshop that gives a portion of its proceeds to independent bookstores and to affiliates like (ahem) myself. If you are interested in reading more about the business model, Christen had a great explanatory piece in Publishers Weekly earlier this year. The Itinerant Literate Bookshop storefront is here, and mine, if you are interested, is here.OK. Stay safe. Let me know what you think about the podcast. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at brutalsouth.substack.com/subscribe