POPULARITY
A son retour au manoir maternel, Perceval découvre la tombe de sa mère. Sa tante, en colère contre lui, l'accable de reproches. Se sentant coupable, il va se confesser auprès d'un prêtre qui le blâme durement et le condamne aux basses besognes. Après une nuit passée dans la grange, Perceval se réveille comme endiablé, attaquant le prêtre et terrorisant les habitants…***Cet épisode est précédé d'une introduction d'Isabelle Fauvel - Voix off et mixage : Quentin Geffroy - Prise de son : Vincent Dupuis - Musique(s) : Universal Production Music France - Cheffe de projet : Laetitia Fourmond - Assistante cheffe de projet : Anouk Valverde - Responsable éditoriale : Zoé Macheret - Ina Podcasts.***Fiction radiophonique diffusée dans l'émission "Le Grand Livre des aventures de Bretagne ou le Livre de maitre Blaise" d'après la "Légende des Chevaliers de la Table Ronde" - Réalisation : Georges Godebert - Adaptation : Romain Weingarten - Musique originale : Georges Delerue - Première diffusion : 09/10/1978 sur France Culture - Avec : Paul Emile Deiber, Yves Pignot, Eric Legrand, Gilles Guillot, Reine Courtois, Danielle Coffet, Ginette Franck, René Clermont, Yves Brainville, Pierre Pernet, Bernard Valdeneige et Emmanuel Dechartre - Un podcast INA
Gornemant de Gorhaut accepte de faire du jeune Perceval un chevalier. Durant six mois, il lui apprend l'art de la chevalerie et la courtoisie. Une fois devenu chevalier, Perceval prend congés pour aller revoir sa mère. En chemin, il trouve refuge dans un château où il fait la connaissance de la jeune et belle princesse Blanchefleur.***Cet épisode est précédé d'une introduction d'Isabelle Fauvel - Voix off et mixage : Quentin Geffroy - Prise de son : Vincent Dupuis - Musique(s) : Universal Production Music France - Cheffe de projet : Laetitia Fourmond - Assistante cheffe de projet : Anouk Valverde - Responsable éditoriale : Zoé Macheret - Ina Podcasts.***Fiction radiophonique diffusée dans l'émission "Le Grand Livre des aventures de Bretagne ou le Livre de maitre Blaise" d'après la "Légende des Chevaliers de la Table Ronde" - Réalisation : Georges Godebert - Adaptation : Romain Weingarten - Musique originale : Georges Delerue - Première diffusion : 06/10/1978 sur France Culture - Avec : Paul-Emile Deiber, Yves Pignot, Gilles Guillot, Reine Courtois, Françoise Beliard, Hubert Buthion, Yves Brainville, Maurice Bourbon, André Cassan, Jean-Roger Caussimon et Didier Londurat - Un podcast INA
Un matin de printemps, Gauvain et ses frères, Agravain et Gaheris, allant à l'aventure au pays de Galles, croisent dans la forêt le jeune et innocent Perceval. Perceval se prosterne naïvement devant les chevaliers, qu'il prend pour des dieux. Malgré les avertissements de sa mère qui l'a tenu jusque-là, à l'écart du monde et des chevaliers, Perceval décide de partir trouver le roi Arthur. Il souhaite plus que tout devenir chevalier.***Fiction radiophonique diffusée dans l'émission "Le Grand Livre des aventures de Bretagne ou le Livre de maitre Blaise" d'après la "Légende des Chevaliers de la Table Ronde" - Réalisation : Georges Godebert - Adaptation : Romain Weingarten - Musique originale : Georges Delerue - Première diffusion : 05/10/1978 sur France Culture - Avec : Paul-Emile Deiber, Yves Pignot, Gilles Guillot, Bernard Valdeneige, Luc Ponette, Sylvain Clément, Catherine Laborde, Pascale de Boysson et Pierre Pernet - Un podcast INACet épisode est précédé d'une introduction d'Isabelle Fauvel - Voix off et mixage : Quentin Geffroy - Prise de son : Vincent Dupuis - Musique(s) : Universal Production Music France - Cheffe de projet : Laetitia Fourmond - Assistante cheffe de projet : Anouk Valverde - Responsable éditoriale : Zoé Macheret - Ina Podcasts.
Depuis des siècles, les aventures du Roi Arthur et des personnages qui forment son univers - Merlin, Lancelot, Perceval ou encore Guenièvre - ne cessent de nous passionner. Dessins animés, films, série, bien des productions artistiques y puisent leur inspiration.Mais la légende du Roi Arthur est avant tout un élément central de la culture occidentale. L'écriture des aventures des chevaliers de la Table Ronde, étalées sur plusieurs siècles, est un témoignage fantastique des évolutions des sociétés médiévales européennes. A condition, déjà, de démêler la vérité de la légende !C'est ce que vous allez découvrir dans cet entretien avec Martin Aurell, historien médiéviste et auteur de "La légende du roi Arthur" paru aux éditions Perrin. (rediffusion)Au Cœur de l'Histoire est un podcast Europe 1.- Présentation : Virginie Girod - Production : Caroline Garnier - Réalisation : Clément Ibrahim- Composition de la musique originale : Julien Tharaud et Sébastien Guidis- Visuel : Sidonie ManginHébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
Aujourd'hui je vous conte la suite de l'histoire de Perceval et de la quête du Graal.Pour entrer dans les faveurs du roi Arthur, le jeune Perceval est parti à l'aventure pour affronter son premier ennemi. Sorti victorieux de son combat mais épuisé, il trouve refuge chez le seigneur Gornemant de Goort, qui lui propose un bon repas et un bon lit pour y passer la nuit…Bonne écoute !
Aujourd'hui, on se plonge dans la littérature arthurienne à la découverte de Perceval et de la quête du Graal.Au pays de Galles, le printemps éclot gaiement dans les prairies et les sous-bois. C'est dans une forêt calme à la faune abondante que vivent Perceval et sa mère. La veuve chérit son fils plus que tout au monde et maintenant qu'il est en âge d'être un homme, elle n'a de cesse de l'avertir sur les dangers du monde extérieur. Perceval aime par-dessus tout sa mère qui est si bonne et lui promet à chaque fois qu'il part chasser, qu'il sera le plus sage et le plus prudent des fils…Bonne écoute !
En l'an 500 quelque part dans une Angleterre encore brumeuse, un jeune écuyer parvient à retirer l'épée Excalibur plantée dans son rocher. Il s'appelle Arthur et le voilà propulsé au centre d'une saga où l'on croise Merlin l'enchanteur, la fée Morgane, Guenièvre, Lancelot ou encore Perceval. Mais derrière ces héros de légende, quelle est la vérité historique ? Avant de choisir entre l'histoire et la légende, redécouvrez la fabuleuse épopée du roi Arthur. Crédits : Lorànt Deutsch, Éric Lange.Hébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
En l'an 500 quelque part dans une Angleterre encore brumeuse, un jeune écuyer parvient à retirer l'épée Excalibur plantée dans son rocher. Il s'appelle Arthur et le voilà propulsé au centre d'une saga où l'on croise Merlin l'enchanteur, la fée Morgane, Guenièvre, Lancelot ou encore Perceval. Mais derrière ces héros de légende, quelle est la vérité historique ? Avant de choisir entre l'histoire et la légende, redécouvrez la fabuleuse épopée du roi Arthur. Crédits : Lorànt Deutsch, Éric Lange.Hébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
This week on The Beat, CTSNet Editor-in-Chief Joel Dunning spoke with Dr. Laurens Ceulemans, thoracic surgeon at the University Hospitals Leuven in Belgium, about lung volume reduction. Chapters 00:00 Intro 02:41 Right to Repair, Robotics Re-Use 04:53 REPEAT Trial 06:30 JANS 1, PCI After CABG Randomized Trial 08:01 JANS 2, No-Touch vs Conventional Saph Veins 11:04 JANS 3, Sir Terence English & Keyvyn Mohagissi 12:09 CTSNet Recruitment Guide 12:54 Video 1, JCOG0802 Bombshell & Webinar 16:33 Video 2, Endoscopic Cardiac Foreign Body Extraction 17:56 Video 3, First Europe Robotic AVR Perceval Valve 18:42 Video 4, Bilateral VATS Sympathectomy 20:10 Laurens Ceulemans Interview 34:15 Upcoming Events 34:48 Closing They highlighted key takeaways from the procedure and addressed the issue of air leaks. They also discussed bilateral lung volume reduction and emphasized the importance of a team approach. Additionally, they focused on why surgeons should be selecting the healthiest patients for this operation rather than the most critically ill, as well as the future of lung volume reduction. Joel also highlights recent JANS articles on a multicenter, randomized trial on the PCI of native coronary artery vs saphenous vein graft after prior bypass surgery, a meta-analysis of randomized trials on the outcomes of no-touch vs conventionally harvested saphenous veins for coronary artery bypass surgery, and the death of transplant pioneer Sir Terence English at 93. In addition, Joel explores bombshell 10-year JCOG0802 results showing lobectomy is superior to segmentectomy for lung cancer, endoscopic extraction of a cardiac foreign body, the first robotic aortic valve replacement in Europe using a Perceval valve, and bilateral VATS sympathectomy for ventricular tachycardia electrical storm. Before closing, Joel highlights upcoming events in CT surgery. JANS Items Mentioned 1.) PCI of Native Coronary Artery vs Saphenous Vein Graft After Prior Bypass Surgery: A Multicenter, Randomized Trial 2.) Outcomes of No-Touch Vs Conventionally Harvested Saphenous Veins for Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Trials 3.) Transplant Pioneer Sir Terence English Dies at 93 CTSNet Content Mentioned 1.) Bombshell 10-Year JCOG0802 Results Show Lobectomy Is Superior to Segmentectomy for Lung Cancer 2.) Military Heart Trauma: Endoscopic Extraction of a Cardiac Foreign Body 3.) First Robotic Aortic Valve Replacement in Europe Using a Perceval Valve 4.) Bilateral VATS Sympathectomy for Ventricular Tachycardia Electrical Storm Other Items Mentioned 1.) Restore Robotics 2.) 2025 Endoscopic Cardiac Surgeons Club Video Competition 3.) 2025 CTSNet Recruitment Guide 4.) Career Center 5.) CTSNet Events Calendar Disclaimer The information and views presented on CTSNet.org represent the views of the authors and contributors of the material and not of CTSNet. Please review our full disclaimer page here.
Today's show tackles the uncomfortable truth: not every "spiritual helper" is on your side. We break down a series of short but potent dreams—canaries, scrambled eggs, a gorgeous man with an ugly mouth, contact-papered windows, a locker-room monster, plastic "foghorns," an airplane intercom—and show how they warn about masked influence, scrambled gifts, and hidden energetic connections. Then we pivot to two follow-up dreams ("Trevor Loses His Wand" and "I'm Always Precise on Timing") that model exactly how to detect, remove, and re-check those connections. You'll learn: • How dreams flag scrambled gifts (canary + scrambled eggs) and masked guides (beauty with a "bad mouth"). • Why "contact paper" across windows signals blocked visibility into your field. • How an autistic boy in a dream (and waking life) validates perception of evil ("Perceval" pun) and confirms the warning. • What the locker-room creature reveals about who's really behind the mask. • The case for foghorns and airplane intercoms—when your dreams say "you must warn others." • A practical connection sweep: checking for incoming/outgoing links (especially from chakras) and clearing the outgoing ones you own. • Why not to "clear" others unless it's your lane—and how to build your own defense routines. Want the truth? Check your dreams. They show what's really happening—and who's doing it. ⸻ Chapters • 00:00 Smiles can be deceiving: the opener & why dreams tell the truth • 00:23 Welcome & setup • 01:16 Canary + scrambled eggs: "scrambled gifts" warning • 03:11 The gorgeous man with the ugly mouth: spotting a mask • 06:03 "Perceval" (perceived evil): autistic radar & the real tell • 08:01 Contact paper over windows: hiding the work • 09:02 Locker-room creature: what's behind the glamour • 12:09 Plastic plants → foghorns: when your dream says "warn people" • 12:40 Airplane intercom: you're handed the mic—use it • 13:26 Waking-life sync: autistic boy flags the same source • 15:13 Lightworkers get duped—how it becomes a lesson • 16:43 Building your "defense against the dark arts" toolkit • 18:58 Don't clear others unless it's your gift • 19:43 "Trevor Loses His Wand": connection created → severed • 22:00 How to run a connection sweep (incoming/outgoing; chakras) • 24:10 "I'm Always Precise on Timing": airport connections & "voodoo" clue • 25:38 Takeaways: trust the dream, follow its instructions • 26:16 Outro & quick reminder to audit your connections regularly
Alex & Alexandre font le rewind de la Week 12 de NFL avec les performances historiques de Jahmyr Gibbs, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, mais aussi des remontées au classement, des chokes monumentales, et un petit passage du côté de Las Vegas parce que dans les mots de Karadoc et Perceval, Alexandre, il a en a gros!Le traditionnel 2 min warning ainsi que le Power Rankings sont abordés avec du changement après le Top 2. Bonne écoute et vive le football ! Discord : https://discord.gg/zqmNQWMzYb Twitter : https://bit.ly/42TnURs Instagram : https://bit.ly/3o29n7h YouTube : https://bit.ly/3M85LsK Twitch : https://bit.ly/3MogL6q Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/lefrontofficepodcast (00:00:00) introduction de l'épisode (00:03:43) L'employé de la semaine (00:11:41) Le gros dossier (00:24:54) L'évaluation (00:45:20) Two Minute warning (00:55:34) Overtime & Power Rankings
Un podcast de divertissement où Fred partage ses passions : bandes dessinées, vintage, livres, brocante, histoires sorties de son imagination… et tente parfois de vous faire sourire avec un brin d'humour. Épisode 7, 8 et 9 de mon émission radio Le Grenier Pop. Aussi, entrevue avec Perceval. Je jase aussi de 2 bonnes séries d'Anime.
Les élèves de 4èmeH du collège Les Francs Bourgeois - La Salle ont écrit et réalisé 5 émissions dans nos studios : LES FAITS DIVERS Dans cette émission présentée par Sixtine, retour sur d'anciens faits divers ! Margaux évoque une mystérieuse volatilisation d'œuvre d'art, Lou et Almane reviennent sur la disparition du vol MH370 et la journaliste Anahera demande son avis à Garance sur les faits divers. L'émission a été réalisée par Léa. Musique : Ravyn Lenae - Love me not *** RADIO F1 Dans cette émission présentée par Mateo, il sera question du GP Explorer. Les chroniqueurs Gaspard et Leopold expliquent ce qu'est le GP Explorer, la course des streamers, et présentent les pilotes. La journaliste Nina reçoit Charles Leclerc et Squeezie (Stefano et Oscar) L'émission a été réalisée par Louise. Musique : Theodora - Dis-moi je t'aime *** INFO MONDE Dans cette émission présentée par Oscar, il est question de l'industrie des frites en Amérique. Le journaliste Emeran interroge l'invité Mathias, et Jules présente sa chronique sur le danger des frites. L'émission a été réalisée par Keanu. Musique : Sean Paul - She doesn't mind *** LA PRESSE DES COLLEGIENS Dans cette émission présentée par Auguste, il est question des merveilles du monde moderne. Le journaliste Perceval accueille Sibylle et Razine, puis Lou présente sa chronique sur les merveilles du monde. Arthur et Thémis clôturent l'émission avec leurs chroniques sur la Tour Eiffel et sur le Christ Rédempteur. L'émission a été réalisée par Hugo. Musique : DaBaby - Rockstar *** LES SECRETS DE LA SEINE Dans cette émission présentée par Manon, retour sur de ténébreux secrets de la Seine. Adèle y présente une chronique sur les activités à faire sur la Seine. Jeanne fait une chronique sur la pollution dans le fond du fleuve. Elsie et Kim évoquent les bactéries présentes dans l'eau, et les maladies liées. Romane et Manon clôturent l'émission en parlant des quatre corps retrouvés dans la Seine en 2025. L'émission a été réalisée par Jasmine. *** L'atelier a été animé par Rosalie Berne et Pierre-Yves Lerayer le 14 octobre dans les studios de Radio Campus Paris.
Les élèves de 4e H du collège parisien Les Francs Bourgeois - La Salle ont écrit et réalisé leurs émissions de radio. LES FAITS DIVERS Dans cette émission présentée par Sixtine, retour sur d'anciens faits divers ! Margaux évoque une mystérieuse volatilisation d'œuvre d'art, Lou et Almane reviennent sur la disparition du vol MH370 et la journaliste Anahera demande son avis à Garance sur les faits divers. L'émission a été réalisée par Léa. Musique : Ravyn Lenae - Love me not RADIO F1 Dans cette émission présentée par Mateo, il sera question du GP Explorer. Les chroniqueurs Gaspard et Leopold expliquent ce qu'est le GP Explorer, la course des streamers, et présentent les pilotes. La journaliste Nina reçoit Charles Leclerc et Squeezie (Stefano et Oscar) L'émission a été réalisée par Louise. Musique : Theodora - Dis-moi je t'aime INFO MONDE Dans cette émission présentée par Oscar, il est question de l'industrie des frites en Amérique. Le journaliste Emeran interroge l'invité Mathias, et Jules présente sa chronique sur le danger des frites. L'émission a été réalisée par Keanu. Musique : Sean Paul - She doesn't mind LA PRESSE DES COLLEGIENS Dans cette émission présentée par Auguste, il est question des merveilles du monde moderne. Le journaliste Perceval accueille Sibylle et Razine, puis Lou présente sa chronique sur les merveilles du monde. Arthur et Thémis clôturent l'émission avec leurs chroniques sur la Tour Eiffel et sur le Christ Rédempteur. L'émission a été réalisée par Hugo. Musique : DaBaby - Rockstar LES SECRETS DE LA SEINE Dans cette émission présentée par Manon, retour sur de ténébreux secrets de la Seine. Adèle y présente une chronique sur les activités à faire sur la Seine. Jeanne fait une chronique sur la pollution dans le fond du fleuve. Elsie et Kim évoquent les bactéries présentes dans l'eau, et les maladies liées. Romane et Manon clôturent l'émission en parlant des quatre corps retrouvés dans la Seine en 2025. L'émission a été réalisée par Jasmine. L'atelier a été animé par Rosalie Berne et Pierre-Yves Lerayer le 14 octobre dans les locaux de Radio Campus Paris.
Le deuxième film de la saga Kaamelott est sorti au cinéma ce mercredi 22 octobre. Alexandre Astier incarne toujours le personnage du Roi Arthur, accompagné par sa galerie de personnages habituels. Le public les a découverts il y a 20 ans à la télévision et l'engouement ne faiblit pas. Deux décennies après le début de la série, comment expliquer le succès de Kaamelott? On pose la question à Estelle Aubin, journaliste culture à BFMTV.COM.
durée : 00:03:36 - Le Fil histoire - Héros mythiques inventés au Moyen Âge, les Chevaliers de la Table ronde ont façonné les imaginaires aux côtés du légendaire roi Arthur. Lancelot et Perceval en sont des figures emblématiques, mais il y eut aussi Ségurant, le chevalier au Dragon, dont l'histoire est longtemps restée oubliée. - réalisation : Sam Baquiast - invités : Emanuele Arioli Archiviste paléographe et docteur d'études médiévales, chroniqueur du "Fil histoire" sur France Culture.
Sojitrawalla, Shirin www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de, Fazit
Chrétien de Troyes è il padre del romanzo cortese. Esploriamo la sua vita e le sue opere, tra cui Lancelot, Yvain e Perceval, capolavori medievali.
Arthur est d'abord un guerrier qui devient roi grâce à l'imagination des auteurs et aux usages qui en sont faits. Initialement solitaire, il dirige sa cour et son royaume, s'entourant de chevaliers comme Lancelot, Perceval et Gauvain. Camelot représente un gouvernement idéal avec ses règles, ses grandes valeurs, mais aussi ses péripéties, ses conflits et ses trahisons, le tout autour de la Table Ronde. Emanuele Arioli, historien, a étudié les multiples versions médiévales de la Table Ronde à travers l'Europe. Avec : Emanuele Arioli (acteur, auteur et médiéviste), Alban Gautier (historien, spécialiste de l'histoire médiévale), Estelle Doudet (chercheuse en sciences humaines), William Blanc (historien), Alain Corbellari (professeur associé de littérature française médiévale)
Le personnage d'Arthur, avec ses chevaliers et son épée flamboyante, traverse les siècles sans perdre de sa vigueur et se retrouve dans des centaines de films, romans et bandes dessinées. Les aventures d'Arthur, de Gauvain, de Lancelot, de la fée Vivianne, de Morgane, de Merlin et de Perceval sont un miroir de chaque époque. Histoire Vivante explore les raisons du succès inaltérable d'Arthur et de la légende de la Table Ronde. Tout commence avec ce roi et son épée arrachée à un rocher. Même en son absence, tout tourne autour d'Arthur. Les romans de la Table Ronde racontent la formation patiente d'un mythe toujours utile. L'Occident a créé d'autres figures mythiques, comme celles des mythes grecs et romains, des vies de saints, d'Alexandre Le Grand ou de Robin des Bois, mais Arthur et sa bande font un carton. Bien que l'origine précise de la figure d'Arthur soit incertaine, peut-être inspirée par un certain Ambrosius, il devient une référence de vaillance et de courage guerrier dès la fin du VIe siècle. Anatomie d'une légende à succès avec Alban Gautier qui s'intéresse au tout début de la saga d'Arthur, il est historien et professeur d'histoire médiévale à l'Université de Caen Normandie. Avec : Alban Gautier (historien, spécialiste de l'histoire médiévale), Martin Aurell (historien médiéviste), Alain Corbellari (professeur associé de littérature française médiévale), William Blanc (historien)
Parmi les chevaliers du roi Arthur, l'un des plus connus est Perceval le Gallois. C'est que Chrétien de Troyes lui consacra tout un roman ! Et s'il ne l'a jamais achevé, bien d'autres poursuivirent après lui la légende du Gallois. Dans un autre épisode, nous avons raconté comment Perceval devint chevalier. Mais ses aventures bien sûr, ne faisaient que commencer ! Découvrons ensemble la suite de ses exploits… Conte-moi l'aventure est un podcast original Chérie FM. Ecriture : Marion Lemoine Interprétation : Léa des Garets Enregistrement : Cédric le Doré Réalisation : Cédric le Doré et Adrien le Blond Edition : Anaïs Koopman Production : Anne-Cécile Kirry Direction des contenus : Sarah ConanDistribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
Nous avons raconté dans ce podcast comment les aventures du roi Arthur et des chevaliers de Bretagne ont inspiré les premiers romans au Moyen-Âge. Mais nous n'avons pas encore évoqué l'un des plus grands d'entre eux, dont l'histoire fut racontée par le grand Chrétien de Troyes : il s'agit de Perceval le Gallois. Pourtant, Perceval faillit bien ne jamais devenir chevalier. Écoute donc… Conte-moi l'aventure est un podcast original Chérie FM. Ecriture : Marion Lemoine Interprétation : Léa des Garets Enregistrement : Cédric le Doré Réalisation : Cédric le Doré et Adrien le Blond Edition : Anaïs Koopman Production : Anne-Cécile Kirry Direction des contenus : Sarah ConanDistribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
En los ciclos artúricos, la búsqueda del Santo Grial representa el ideal supremo de pureza, profetizado por Merlín. Aunque Lancelot se acerca, su falta de pureza le impide verlo. Solo Galahad y Perceval logran alcanzar la visión del Grial, cumpliendo así el destino de la Mesa Redonda.
Bienvenue dans les Fabuleux Destins, le podcast pour découvrir des histoires vraies et fascinantes. Cette saison vous emmène sur les traces de quatre quêtes mythiques, entre faits historiques, récits fantastiques et mystères non résolus. Du trésor des Templiers aux secrets de l'Atlantide, des ruées vers l'El Dorado aux énigmes du Saint Graal, chaque épisode explore la frontière entre mythe et réalité. Un voyage fascinant au cœur des plus grandes légendes de l'humanité. Le Saint Graal et la vie éternelle Perceval grandit reclus dans une forêt galloise, jusqu'au jour où des chevaliers bouleversent son destin. Fasciné, il quitte tout pour devenir l'un d'eux, et entame une quête initiatique qui le mènera jusqu'au mystérieux roi pêcheur. Là, il assiste, sans poser de questions, à une étrange procession autour d'un objet légendaire : le Graal. Cette erreur le condamne… et lance sa quête. Des récits celtiques à l'Allemagne nazie, ce mythe traverse les siècles, entre mysticisme, pouvoir et énigmes. Pour découvrir d'autres récits passionnants, cliquez ci-dessous : [Les oubliées de l'histoire] Valentina Terechkova, la première femme dans l'espace [Les oubliées de l'histoire] Madame de Staël, la femme qui défia Napoléon [Les oubliées de l'histoire] Sophie Scholl, l'héroïne de la Résistance allemande [Les oubliées de l'histoire] Joséphine Baker, du ghetto américain au Panthéon Un podcast Bababam Originals Ecriture : Mary-Lou Oeconomou Production : Bababam Voix : Florian Bayoux Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Next round of Horrorhound Spring Filmfest 2025 interviews goes to Mark Perceval-Maxwell and his short film "Archaic" which made its film festival debut Horrorhound Weekend. If you're a fan of "Jacob's Ladder," "Midsommar" or any other film that fits in the psychedelic, transcendental horror category, this one is for you. "Archaic" explores elements of shadow work in Magick as it relates to healing past traumas. We hope you guys enjoy listening as much as we did interviewing! Follow Mark on Instagram and catch "Archaic" at film festivals coming this year near you. 'Salem's Secret' by Peter Gundry Merchandise: https://dfwtopodcast.creator-spring.com/ Sponsored by: Dietsmoke.com - use promo code DFWTO for 50% off your purchase Betterhelp: Visit betterhelp.com/dfwto to get 10% off when you sign up for your first month.
[308] In this episode, Terra Harvell (@theterraharvell) shares her entrepreneurial journey and the crucial role mindset, determination, and having the right people around you play in turning aspirations into reality. Co-hosted by Phorest Founder & CEO Ronan Perceval, this conversation dives into the lucrative world of hair extensions, why having a clear vision is essential for business growth, and how grit and bold goal-setting can help beauty professionals create opportunities for themselves and others, build wealth and create a lasting legacy. Terra is an 8-figure entrepreneur — CEO/Founder of Harper Ellis Hair Co. and Harper Ellis Salon — with a 7-figure real estate portfolio, and a business mentor to thousands of stylists worldwide. You can find out more about Harper Ellis Hair Co. and their education offerings here. Enjoyed the episode? Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! Click here to subscribe to the PhorestFM email newsletter or here to learn more about Phorest Salon Software. This episode was edited and mixed by Audio Z: Montreal's cutting-edge post-production studio for creative minds looking to have their vision professionally produced and mixed. Great music makes great moments.
In this episode, I get to spend time contemplating the essence of my service, my craft, and my devotions, which I feel run through the Chiron and Perceval stories. The first 30 minutes are a traditional “dark moon download,” and then we pivot to a conversation with TMT alums Tara, Mariele, and Laurence. Bios below. Remember that doors open THIS THURSDAY! You must be on the waitlist to get access to the application link this weekend. This one is deep and weepy and sweet and sincere. Classic Moon to Moon for this one. Enjoy! And happy dark moon in Aquarius and new moon in Pisces! +++ Tara is a Libra Moon and Rising with a Pisces Sun, Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury. She is a word smith and musician who's rooted deeply in the belief that we were all made to spec by loving cosmos who wanted us this way. Her work with others is devoted to reflecting the miracles that they are back to them Tara is a wordsmith, musician, cat fosterer, and healer with massive Lunar, Venusian, and Jupiterian signatures. She specializes in healing wounds around the voice, as our voices bear the unique energetic burdens of acoustically putting our authenticity out into the world. She feels called to assist others in healing from the shaming that can follow expression, and to help restore the birthright that is connection to one's own voice. Her work is devoted to reflecting the miracle that we each are back to us. Tara's Instagram: @VoiceAsThePortal +++ Mariele Kaiser-Kadiogullari is a 12th house Taurus Sun with Chiron and Venus right on her Gemini AC. She has more than recovered from a decade of intense depression and anxiety disorder - an experience that cracked her open to now share all that she learned/remembered on that journey in her work with clients. She considers herself an explorer of consciousness who loves to hold space for deep feeling. Her work supports people in reconnecting with their soul's true uniqueness beyond societal and personal conditioning and wounding. Translating deep spiritual transmissions into applicable and life-supporting practices, she inspires multidimensional self-responsibility and invites others to explore new perspectives beyond binaries. With a background in intercultural education, she weaves modalities such as Vedic philosophy, Astrology, Tarot, Human Design, and energy healing into interactive and personalized 1:1 and breathwork sessions. Her SACRED SELF GRAVITY framework helps transform the fullness of the Human experience into a pathway from victimhood to self-empowered freedom. +++ My name is Laurence, and I am a creatrix of bridges between worlds. My life is deeply rooted in devotion—devotion to the Earth, to my ancestors, to the planets, to Love, and to myself. My path leads me toward full aliveness, dancing with tension and befriending the unknown. In my practice, I weave together astrology, tarot, creative divination, and dream exploration to explore how the mystical languages of the subtle realms can deepen our trust in the unknown and support us in allowing the force of nature to move through us, fully expressing itself in our existence. I guide others in forging their own path, through a co-creative and individualized approach, involving their spirit teams and mine, knowing that magic arises from the interconnection of our worlds. French website: www.tonpourquoi.com English website: www.tonpourquoi.com/en Laurence's Instagram: @tonpourquoi +++ LEARN ABOUT THE MAGICIAN'S TABLE 2025 HERE! See who this year's three 13th Readers are and what the frequency and structure will be like for this year's iteration. Now in its 5th year - our Hierophant Year! The discounted Early Bird pricing this year is ONLY AVAILABLE THROUGH THE TMT 2025 WAITLIST. Only those on that list will receive the link to apply on Feb 27. Applications will be taken Feb 27-March 2. Only applications received that weekend will be eligible for the EB discounted tuition. All scholarship requests must move through this process, so be sure you're on the waitlist. It's highly possible that most cohorts will fill from applications submitted Feb 27-March 2. Joining the waitlist is not an application to apply. Applying is not enrolling. If you want to give yourself options, join the waitlist, then apply. Then decide upon receiving your acceptance. The only applications I decline are those where it's very clear the applicant hasn't read the course page and doesn't understand the structure and intensity of this offering, or when the applicant reveals that they do not have the emotional or somatic capacity to hold the energy of this transformation right now. Questions? Please read through the course page carefully, stay tuned for more podcasts and emails on this offering, and/or reach out to my team at info@brittenlarue.com. +++ Join Burning Through the Freeze: A Magician's Table Mini-Workshop HERE. Grab it for $25 or for free if you are on the TMT 2025 waitlist. This workshop will expire on March 3, 2025, so be sure to watch it or download it before then! +++ E M E R G E N C E A S T R O L O G Y https://brittenlarue.com/ Instagram: @brittenlarue Order Living Astrology Join my newsletter here Check out my new podcast CRYSTAL BALLERS on Spotify, Podbean, and Apple. +++ Podcast art: Angela George. Podcast music: Jonathan Koe.
durée : 00:51:56 - Les Nuits de France Culture - par : Mathilde Wagman - Eric Rohmer raconte la genèse de son film "Perceval le Gallois", au micro de Claude-Jean Philippe, dans l'émission "Le Cinéma des cinéastes" de février 1979. - réalisation : Virginie Mourthé - invités : Eric Rohmer Réalisateur français de cinéma; Caroline Champetier Directrice de la photographie; Pierre Donnadieu
Le personnage d'Arthur, avec ses chevaliers et son épée flamboyante, traverse les siècles sans perdre de sa vigueur et se retrouve dans des centaines de films, romans et bandes dessinées. Les aventures d'Arthur, de Gauvain, de Lancelot, de la fée Vivianne, de Morgane, de Merlin et de Perceval sont un miroir de chaque époque. Histoire Vivante explore les raisons du succès inaltérable d'Arthur et de la légende de la Table Ronde. Tout commence avec ce roi et son épée arrachée à un rocher. Même en son absence, tout tourne autour d'Arthur. Les romans de la Table Ronde racontent la formation patiente d'un mythe toujours utile. L'Occident a créé d'autres figures mythiques, comme celles des mythes grecs et romains, des vies de saints, d'Alexandre Le Grand ou de Robin des Bois, mais Arthur et sa bande font un carton. Bien que l'origine précise de la figure d'Arthur soit incertaine, peut-être inspirée par un certain Ambrosius, il devient une référence de vaillance et de courage guerrier dès la fin du VIe siècle. Anatomie d'une légende à succès avec Alban Gautier qui s'intéresse au tout début de la saga d'Arthur, il est historien et professeur d'histoire médiévale à l'Université de Caen Normandie. Avec : Alban Gautier (historien, spécialiste de l'histoire médiévale), Martin Aurell (historien médiéviste), Alain Corbellari (professeur associé de littérature française médiévale), William Blanc (historien)
Arthur est d'abord un guerrier qui devient roi grâce à l'imagination des auteurs et aux usages qui en sont faits. Initialement solitaire, il dirige sa cour et son royaume, s'entourant de chevaliers comme Lancelot, Perceval et Gauvain. Camelot représente un gouvernement idéal avec ses règles, ses grandes valeurs, mais aussi ses péripéties, ses conflits et ses trahisons, le tout autour de la Table Ronde. Emanuele Arioli, historien, a étudié les multiples versions médiévales de la Table Ronde à travers l'Europe. Avec : Emanuele Arioli (acteur, auteur et médiéviste), Alban Gautier (historien, spécialiste de l'histoire médiévale), Estelle Doudet (chercheuse en sciences humaines), William Blanc (historien), Alain Corbellari (professeur associé de littérature française médiévale)
Europe 1 Nuit revient sur la tragédie qui frappe Mayotte après le passage du cyclone Shiro. Avec un bilan provisoire de 22 morts et plus de 1 300 blessés, la situation reste critique. Alors que le président Macron prévoit une visite jeudi, le Premier ministre François Bayrou provoque une polémique en qualifiant Mayotte de « territoire étranger », suscitant l'indignation. Le député Perceval Gaillard appelle à une réponse urgente de l'État pour l'accès à l'eau potable et les soins. Notre équipe a utilisé un outil d'Intelligence artificielle via les technologies d'Audiomeans© pour accompagner la création de ce contenu écrit.
Tous les soirs, Pierre de Vilno reçoit un invité qui fait l'actualité politique. Ce soir, le député LFI de La Réunion, Perceval Gaillard qui reviendra notamment sur le déplacement controversé de François Bayrou à Pau plutôt que du côté de Mayotte complétement ravagé par le cyclone Chido.
Vous écoutez le podcast "Les interviews Histoire", notre émission hebdomadaire gratuite pour tous. Abonnez-vous à "Timeline 5.000 ans d'Histoire" et accédez à environ 350 podcasts d'1 heure pour seulement 2€ par mois sans Pub ! Avec une nouvelle émission chaque semaine : https://m.audiomeans.fr/s/S-tavkjvmo Emanuele Arioli, auteur d'Alexandre l'Orphelin de la Table ronde, et du superbe Les chevaliers de la Table ronde, nous raconte ses ouvrages.Lancelot, Perceval, Yvain, ces noms de chevaliers de la Table Ronde ont passé les siècles. Mais tant d'autres, imaginés au Moyen Âge, ont été oubliés. Qui se souvient en effet que l'on a pu en compter plus de 150 ?Un manuscrit du xve siècle, unique en son genre, a entrepris de les rassembler et de fixer pour la postérité leurs destins, leurs portraits, ainsi que leurs blasons.Magnifiquement illustré, il condense tout l'univers du roi Arthur et du Graal, en présentant ses valeurs et ses lois. On y lit également les serments qui commandaient l'action des chevaliers aussi bien que les règles des tournois arthuriens.Car les aventures de ces figures romanesques n'ont pas seulement nourri les imaginaires : elles inspiraient la noblesse médiévale qui arborait fièrement les écus de l'angélique Galaad ou du beau Tristan.Cette « encyclopédie arthurienne », inédite jusqu'à ce jour, retrouve enfin la lumière grâce au travail du chercheur Emanuele Arioli, artisan de la résurrection du chevalier Ségurant.Il s'agit là d'une formidable porte d'entrée pour découvrir la légende du roi Arthur et le monde des chevaliers de la Table Ronde. Le Brun sans Joie, Radouin le Perse, Solinan du Bois, Lupin des Croix et tous les autres retrouvent ici une identité et surtout un nom.
Nous sommes probablement entre 1490 et 1500. C'est à cette époque qu'est rédigé un manuscrit unique en son genre. Son auteur, anonyme, a entrepris de rassembler l'ensemble des connaissances concernant ceux que l'on a désigné comme étant les Chevaliers de la Table Ronde. Lancelot, Perceval, Yvain, les plus connus, mais aussi tous les autres, car il faut en compter plus de 150, la plupart, jusque-là, oubliés. Il s'agit de fixer pour la postérité leurs destins , leurs portraits ainsi que leurs blasons. Le résultat est une véritable encyclopédie, richement illustrée, qui condense tout l'univers du roi Arthur avec ses valeurs et ses lois qui encadrent la quête du Graal. On peut y lire les serments qui commandaient l'action des preux chevaliers ainsi que les règles des tournois qui captivaient les foules. Toutes choses qui ont inspiré la noblesse médiévale et nourri son imaginaire. Partons sur les traces de Solinan du bois, Ségurant le brun, Radouin le Perse, Guiron le courtois ou bien encore Alexandre l'orphelin. Entrons dans un monde aux portes de la légende… Avec Emanuele Arioli, archiviste-paléographe, maître de conférences en langues et littératures médiévales à l'université Polytechnique des Hauts-de-France. A établit les éditions de : « Les Chevaliers de la Table Ronde », Seuil. « Alexandre – L'orphelin de la Table Ronde » ; Les Belles Lettres. Sujets traités : Chevaliers, table,ronde,Lancelot,Perceval, Yvain, légende, Arthur,roi, Graal, Solinan du bois, Ségurant le brun, Radouin le Perse, Guiron le courtois Merci pour votre écoute Un Jour dans l'Histoire, c'est également en direct tous les jours de la semaine de 13h15 à 14h30 sur www.rtbf.be/lapremiere Retrouvez tous les épisodes d'Un Jour dans l'Histoire sur notre plateforme Auvio.be :https://auvio.rtbf.be/emission/5936 Intéressés par l'histoire ? Vous pourriez également aimer nos autres podcasts : L'Histoire Continue: https://audmns.com/kSbpELwL'heure H : https://audmns.com/YagLLiKEt sa version à écouter en famille : La Mini Heure H https://audmns.com/YagLLiKAinsi que nos séries historiques :Chili, le Pays de mes Histoires : https://audmns.com/XHbnevhD-Day : https://audmns.com/JWRdPYIJoséphine Baker : https://audmns.com/wCfhoEwLa folle histoire de l'aviation : https://audmns.com/xAWjyWCLes Jeux Olympiques, l'étonnant miroir de notre Histoire : https://audmns.com/ZEIihzZMarguerite, la Voix d'une Résistante : https://audmns.com/zFDehnENapoléon, le crépuscule de l'Aigle : https://audmns.com/DcdnIUnUn Jour dans le Sport : https://audmns.com/xXlkHMHSous le sable des Pyramides : https://audmns.com/rXfVppvN'oubliez pas de vous y abonner pour ne rien manquer.Et si vous avez apprécié ce podcast, n'hésitez pas à nous donner des étoiles ou des commentaires, cela nous aide à le faire connaître plus largement.
Sync Book Radio presents a 42 Minutes/Always Record crossover for the 42 Minutes Summer Book Club. Always Record is the second portion of the conversation, continuing from 42 Minutes episode 393.
Sync Book Radio presents a 42 Minutes/Always Record crossover for the 42 Minutes Summer Book Club. Always Record is the second portion of the conversation, continuing from 42 Minutes episode 393.
Sync Book Radio presents a 42 Minutes/Always Record crossover for the 42 Minutes Summer Book Club. Always Record is the second portion of the conversation, continuing from 42 Minutes episode 393.
Ocurre en la mina, como en otros sectores masculinizados. A pesar de haber estado desde el principio allí, las mineras del carbón han sido invisibilizadas. No están en el imaginario colectivo y su mera mención provoca incredulidad. Pero lo cierto es que, sin las mujeres las comunidades mineras no hubieran podido existir.Trabajaron en el exterior y en el interior de la mina. Realizaron labores peligrosas y mal pagadas. Se enfrentaron a la propia dureza del trabajo, al abuso, al estigma, a la discriminación. Y siguieron adelante.La determinación de las mujeres fue fundamental en las huelgas mineras durante el franquismo. Y en democracia, cuando prescindieron de ellas, amparándose en la Carta Social de la OIT, que prohibía a las mujeres realizar labores subterráneas, lucharon por volver. Lo lograron. Una lucha que culminó cuando en 1993, el Tribunal Constitucional reconoció el derecho de las mujeres a trabajar dentro de la mina.Este documental, con la firma de Libertad Martínez, se adentra en la historia de las mineras del carbón. Nos lleva hasta El Bierzo y Asturias para conocer a nueve mineras de distintas generaciones: Libertad Aurora, Isabel García, Lucita Prieto, Bernarda Álvarez, Conchi Rodríguez Valencia (quien presentó la demanda ante el TC), Carolina Aysslyn, Tamara Espeso y Rocío Antela. Y cuenta con expertos que nos ayudan a entender y contextualizar: Miguel Pérez de Perceval, catedrático de la Universidad de Murcia e investigador del legado minero y la minería durante el franquismo; Alejandro Martínez, historiador y docente; Montserrat Garnacho Escayo, escritora, profesora, e investigadora de la antropología asturiana y de las cuencas mineras; Rubén Vega, historiador, profesor de la Universidad de Oviedo, y director del Archivo de Fuentes Orales para la Historia Social de Asturias; y Noemí Sabugal, periodista, escritora, y autora del libro Hijos del carbón. "Mural en honor a las mineras. Almagarinos (León). Foto Emma López".Escuchar audio
Depuis des siècles, les aventures du Roi Arthur et des personnages qui forment son univers - Merlin, Lancelot, Perceval ou encore Guenièvre - ne cessent de nous passionner. Dessins animés, films, série, bien des productions artistiques y puisent leur inspiration. Mais la légende du Roi Arthur est avant tout un élément central de la culture occidentale. L'écriture des aventures des chevaliers de la Table Ronde, étalées sur plusieurs siècles, est un témoignage fantastique des évolutions des sociétés médiévales européennes. A condition, déjà, de démêler la vérité de la légende ! C'est ce que vous allez découvrir dans cet entretien avec Martin Aurell, historien médiéviste et auteur de "La légende du roi Arthur" paru aux éditions Perrin. Thèmes abordés : Roi Arthur, Table Ronde, Moyen Age, légende "Au cœur de l'histoire" est un podcast Europe 1 Studio- Présentatrice : Virginie Girod - Production : Caroline Garnier - Réalisation : Clément Ibrahim- Composition de la musique originale : Julien Tharaud et Sébastien Guidis- Promotion et Coordination des partenariats : Marie Corpet- Visuel : Sidonie Mangin Découvrez l'abonnement "Au Coeur de l'Histoire +" et accédez à des heures de programmes, des archives inédites, des épisodes en avant-première et une sélection d'épisodes sur des grandes thématiques. Profitez de cette offre sur Apple Podcasts dès aujourd'hui !
Depuis des siècles, les aventures du Roi Arthur et des personnages qui forment son univers - Merlin, Lancelot, Perceval ou encore Guenièvre - ne cessent de nous passionner. Dessins animés, films, série, bien des productions artistiques y puisent leur inspiration. Mais la légende du Roi Arthur est avant tout un élément central de la culture occidentale. L'écriture des aventures des chevaliers de la Table Ronde, étalées sur plusieurs siècles, est un témoignage fantastique des évolutions des sociétés médiévales européennes. A condition, déjà, de démêler la vérité de la légende ! La semaine prochaine, découvrez tous les secrets des chevaliers de la Table ronde avec Martin Aurell, historien médiéviste. Thèmes abordés : roi Arthur, légende, Table ronde, pays celtiques "Au cœur de l'histoire" est un podcast Europe 1 Studio- Auteure et Présentatrice : Virginie Girod - Production : Caroline Garnier- Réalisation : Nicolas Gaspard- Composition de la musique originale : Julien Tharaud et Sébastien Guidis- Promotion et Coordination des partenariats : Marie Corpet- Visuel : Sidonie Mangin Découvrez l'abonnement "Au Coeur de l'Histoire +" et accédez à des heures de programmes, des archives inédites, des épisodes en avant-première et une sélection d'épisodes sur des grandes thématiques. Profitez de cette offre sur Apple Podcasts dès aujourd'hui !
In the darkness of a Mediterranean night, the _Osiris_ slices through the waves, carrying with it a passenger burdened by a haunting tale. Alastair Colvin, a man with a shadowed past, reluctantly shares his story of Thurnley Abbey, a Gothic estate nestled in the heart of rural England. Whispered to be cursed and haunted, the abbey's notoriety has spread far and wide, striking fear into the hearts of locals and curiosity in the minds of the brave. As Colvin's narrative unfolds, his listener is drawn into a world where the line between the living and the dead blurs, and the abbey's dark secrets threaten to consume all who dare to uncover them. Discussion of the story (with spoilers) here https://tonywalker.craft.me/Sbfh2neVPiYdE7 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
John Bellingham fired a single shot from a pistol, fatally wounding prime minister Spencer Perceval in the chest. Perceval collapsed immediately, and despite efforts to save him, he died shortly ...
Episode Summary This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Colin talks to Brooke about how to asses damage to structures after disasters, what you can do when you're stuck in a building after a disaster, and ways to make your situation easier and safer. Guest Info Colin (he/him) is a carpenter, industrial electrician, and backpacker. Host Info Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke. Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Transcript Live Like the World is Dying: Colin on Structural Triage After a Disaster **Brooke ** 00:15 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for it feels like the end times. I'm Brooke Jackson, your host for this episode. Today I'll be talking with Colin, an experienced construction and trade worker, about how to prepare for and perform structural triage after disasters. But first we'd like to celebrate being a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts by playing a little jingle from one of the other podcasts on the network. Doo doo doo, doo doo. **Brooke ** 00:48 And we're back. Colin, thank you for joining us today to talk about structural triage after disasters. Would you introduce yourself? Let us know your pronouns, where you're from if you want, maybe some of your background in the construction industry. **Colin ** 01:19 Yeah, I'm Colin, he/him. Lived in around Western Pennsylvania pretty much my entire life—mostly in the Pittsburgh area. I picked up carpentry right after college just as a way to earn some money. Been in and out that for a while. I worked as an industrial electrician in the power industry for about seven years, and then decided I'd had enough of that and went back to doing carpentry. **Brooke ** 02:10 Okay, so is your—is your background in those trades the reason that you're interested in this topic, or was there something else that sparked you or made you kind of get into learning about it? **Colin ** 02:23 Actually, the impetus for this was a little over—actually, seems like ages ago, but actually less than a year ago, a friend had an apartment fire right after Christmas last year. And it's still that big cold snap. And fortunately, we managed to get them recovered from that, but it was only due to the fairly heroic efforts of a lot of friends. And after that I started thinking about, you know, like, what are the ways that, you know, if you don't have people looking out for you and willing to come bail you out, what can you do if you're stuck in a damaged building for a few days while you're waiting for utilities to come back online, first responders to work through a backlog? Just, how can you make things easier in the immediate few days after disaster? **Brooke ** 03:14 Nice. So is this something that you then have you had to put into practice, or other people around you have put into practice? Or are we mostly theoretical at this point and haven't tested all these things—not that we don't trust your experience here. **Colin ** 03:31 Yeah, no, I have done some of these things more in the context of camping and backpacking, just like, there are things you can do that will make the situation easier and safer. Also, a lot of my background in working in power plants involved constant safety trainings about how do you do things safely? What do you have to look out for? What are, you know, things that you just need to be aware of when you're in dangerous situations? And I'm continually surprised at how many of those applied to everyday life, and how much of that stuff we just don't have to think about when we're living in a house that has already been designed to be safe. But when you have a disaster, obviously things break. And suddenly, things that are—things that normally have the engineering and safety built into them no longer work the way they're supposed to, and suddenly, you have to take care of all of that on your own. It's not that hard to do, or even that expensive. You just have to do the planning and preparation before it happens. Because once you find yourself in that situation, it's too late. **Brooke ** 04:46 Yeah, that makes sense. And we're gonna get into those details in a second. But for the listener, I just wanted to share that Colin had reached out to us with this really great list of different things we could explore on this topic. And as I said to him, the the part that stood out most to me was he was talking about how to shelter in place in a compromised building and how to do structural triage and first aid that can make the eventual recovery easier. So we may get into a lot more than that today, we may have a second episode at some point to talk about other things because Colin has a lot of great info to share. But that was the part that really struck me and the areas that I wanted to focus on. And so right before we get into the details, another question I wanted to ask you was, how broadly is this applicable? Like, you know, there's all kinds of different disaster situations, right? We've got floods, fires, earthquakes, tornadoes, unnatural disasters. Do you have different tips for different scenarios that we're going to talk about, or is a lot of this like works across multiple possibilities? **Colin ** 05:50 It's some of both. A lot of the things you need to be concerned with sheltering in place, or just being aware of what are the things that change when systems go offline. So when you don't have power anymore and you're relying on batteries or a generator, or you lose your gas, now, suddenly, you're relying on kerosene heaters or lamps. All of these things change how you have to think about your safety in a house. Obviously, people have been living with fireplaces and wood stoves and oil lamps for a very, very long time. It's not that hard to do. But if you're used to being able to flip a switch and have the lights come on, you're going to have to make some changes. And if you don't do those things, you can cause yourself serious problems. **Brooke ** 06:38 Okay, so let's talk about the first part of that where work. Let's say we're in a situation where we've just had a disaster, we're in a compromised building—whether it be like—I guess mostly we're talking about homes, or maybe your apartment complex too, not necessarily, like, work structures. So let's say we're in that in that situation, we're in this compromised building right after a disaster, what's one of the first things that we need to do? **Colin ** 07:01 So the very first thing is always keep yourself safe, because there's no disaster that you can't make worse by getting injured. And this is especially true— **Brooke ** 07:12 [Laughing] That's a good line, yeah! **Colin ** 07:12 That's especially true when you have, you know, something like the ERCOT disaster down in Texas and 2021, and you have an entire city that is struggling, and your first responders are overwhelmed. **Brooke ** 07:28 Was that when they lost power? **Colin ** 07:30 Yeah, they lost power for I want to say a week or two? I don't think it was continuous. I think it went off, and then it came back on, and then it went off again. The estimated death toll from that was like somewhere between 250 and 700 people, which is—that's like 10 times the number of people that die from an average hurricane season. And most of it was due to things like hyperthermia and carbon monoxide poisoning. Just because people were trying to stay warm and making bad decisions either because they didn't know any better, or they didn't have the tools they needed. Most of it could have been avoided. But obviously that was a terrible situation, and Texas is still recovering from that. So yeah, you've got to keep yourself safe. Couple parts of that. The easiest thing is the personal protective equipment side. Because that's just a matter of throwing a little bit of money at the problem, and it doesn't even take very much money. This is stuff like have worked gloves around so that you can protect your hands. Keep safety glasses around, because getting an eye injury will make life real bad and real tough right now. Earplugs. Disasters are often loud, and even if they're not, things are going to sound different. So having earplugs can help you sleep better. These are, like, not—things that do not cost a whole lot of money. But the most important thing is just to look at the situation and take a beat and figure out what has changed and what you need to do to stop the problem from getting worse. So the first part of this is anything that is broken or not working the way it is supposed to needs to be shut down. So like, do you need to get the power turned off? Do you need to get the gas turned off? Do you need to get the water turned off so your pipes don't freeze and burst? These are things that the average homeowner can do: turning off the power, as long as you have access to the circuit breaker, it's a matter of flipping a switch. Water should just be a matter of closing a valve. The problem is a lot of times the shutoff valves for water don't work the way they're supposed to because they haven't been maintained. I have run into that a few times. And— **Brooke ** 09:42 I know I know at my own house, shutting off the water is a much bigger deal than it should be. **Colin ** 09:48 Right and most of the time that's fine, until you have pipes that are actively spraying water, and suddenly it's not fine. Getting the gas shut off. Usually, again, just matter of going outside with a wrench and turning the valve at the meter. But you have to have the right size wrench and you have to know where that valve is. **Brooke ** 10:09 Okay, so here's a neat—sorry to interrupt you. But I've had—for a long time I've had—I don't know if this is good, so you tell me. I got a wrench that's like specifically for shutting off your gas, it's this bright red one, and you zip tie it next to your gas main. And then if there's a disaster, you should have to go cut the zip tie and use that wrench. **Colin ** 10:32 Yeah, that is a fantastic idea. **Brooke ** 10:34 Okay. **Colin ** 10:35 I would suggest maybe string or something that you can just yank to break it loose, because having zip tie on there that you have to cut, that's one more tool you have to find before you can get to the wrench. Zipties are fantastic because they are very secure. Sometimes so secure that you can't get them off. **Brooke ** 10:50 So I might have to replace the string once in a while, but string would be better. **Colin ** 10:53 Or, the meters normally magnetic, you can put it on a magnet, you can just have it— **Brooke ** 10:58 Oh, yeah! **Colin ** 10:59 —duct taped to the side of it. Something you can get off without tools. And it's always there. And then periodically, every six months, just check and make sure it's there. And, you know, a raccoon hasn't stolen it. But no, that's a fantastic idea. **Brooke ** 11:13 Okay, so that's a good planning ahead. But if you haven't planned ahead, then, you know trying to find a wrench is generally the tool you're going to need, right, to shut that off if you have gas? **Colin ** 11:22 Yeah yeah. Then if you live in an apartment building, usually you will have access to your electrical panel, but not always. You may not have access to the main water shut offs for your apartment. You can probably find out where in the building those are. You're not going to be able to tell if they're working the way they're supposed to before something happens. But have a plan for how to get into whatever room the shut offs are in. If you have to go through a door, this may mean keeping a sledge hammer or pry bar around so that you can get through to the shut offs in the case of an emergency. And yeah, your landlord is probably going to be unhappy and you may lose your security deposit, but it's better than having your apartment burn down. **Brooke ** 12:12 Yeah, seems like it. **Colin ** 12:13 Yeah. **Brooke ** 12:14 Okay, so step one is, like right after the disaster, donning some protective gear and then going around to shut off compromised utilities. **Colin ** 12:24 Right, anything's not working, get it turned off so that the situation stops getting worse. Once everything's shut down, then you can take your time and figure out how to make things livable until systems start to come back online. The other thing to do with preparation is make sure all your smoke alarms are working, and make sure you have fire extinguishers. Because, again, fire when you don't have first responders available is very, very bad. So hopefully everyone has these things to begin with. But if you don't, I highly recommend going out and getting some as soon as possible. **Brooke ** 13:01 Okay. **Colin ** 13:02 So you now have everything turned off, you have your fire extinguishers, you've dealt with the immediate problem. Now you're faced with, how do I make the structure minimally safe for the next few days? If you have broken windows, damaged roof from storms, things like that. **Brooke ** 13:25 Okay, so it's assuming your residence is still some amount of livable and/or you just don't have anywhere else to go and you kind of have to stay. **Colin ** 13:35 Yeah, as long as you have a roof and three walls, you're gonna be fine most of the time. **Brooke ** 13:44 What about—what about the fourth wall? Why don't we get a fourth wall here, Collin? **Colin ** 13:48 I mean, four walls is great. Three walls is enough to keep the roof up. **Brooke ** 13:55 That's a really good point though, no, genuinely. **Colin ** 13:58 If a tree comes through the front of your house, you can still deal with that. It's gonna suck, but it's not the end of the world. And the things that you need to make the situation better than it would be? Not that complicated. It basically boils down a lot of times to having some plastic sheeting or tarps and a staple gun. If you can get something over your openings to keep the wind and the water from entering the house, that's going to buy you a lot of time. If you've ever been driving through, you know, the back roads and rural counties and you see the houses that have the plastic tarps over their roofs that have obviously been there for many years, those houses are still functional. They're still standing. A lot of times people are still living quite comfortably inside those houses. Doesn't look very good, but it's gonna work for a while. And oftentimes, that's all you need. **Brooke ** 14:50 Yeah, that's one of the reasons you see tarps up there for so long is that they're doing what they need to do and they don't need to do more than that. For folks that don't have that kind of stuff sitting around, I imagined that maybe grabbing some sheets or blankets or something and throwing those over the opening would still be better than just leaving it open? **Colin ** 15:10 Yeah, even the bed sheet over the window is going to stop rain from blowing in and my dogs barking in the background. I apologize. **Brooke ** 15:19 That's okay. We are a puppy-friendly podcast. **Colin ** 15:25 A staple gun is something that you should definitely own if you don't, because that's the easiest and fastest way of getting any kind of sheet, whether it's cloth, or a tarp, or trash bags with plastic sheeting attached to walls really fast. A staple gun will set you back maybe $20 tops, and makes life a whole lot easier when it comes to covering openings. If you don't, if you don't have that, duct tape will also work. However, it doesn't work as well as you would expect, especially when the weather is cold or if surfaces are wet. **Brooke ** 16:01 Sure. Yeah. Thumb tacks if you have those sitting around. **Colin ** 16:06 Thumb tacks. Hammer and nails. **Brooke ** 16:08 Yeah. **Colin ** 16:09 Anything to do to secure a sheet. At that point, you're not really worried about damaging the house because the damage has already been done, and fixing a few nail holes is peanuts compared to trying to fix, you know, several hundred gallons of water that have been blown in by high winds. **Brooke ** 16:25 Okay, so we close our openings to protect from water, from cold temperatures, probably from other elements too, right, if—blocking the sun? **Colin ** 16:36 Yeah, sun. If you're in a hot area—this is a totally different topic on its own. But trying to keep the sun out of your house, if you're in a hot situation is just as important as trying to keep the heat inside the house if you're in a cold situation. If you lose power and you're relying on air conditioning to keep your house livable, the best thing you can do is get all of your windows covered as soon as you possibly can. Because solar gain through glass will drive up the interior temperature really quickly. Doesn't matter what you have. Again, plastic bags will work. Anything, just block the amount of light that's coming through the glass. Cardboard, sheets, blinds, you name it? **Brooke ** 17:24 All right. So we've covered up our holes. What do we need to do next? **Colin ** 17:30 Covered up the holes. Things are shut down, turned off. Now you have to start worrying about how am I going to actually get back to living inside this damaged structure for as long as I need to until help can arrive and start doing major repairs that need to happen? And a couple of things you want to look at, the—obviously we're coming up on winter. So the first thing to talk about is how do you stay warm? Hopefully you have blankets and sleeping bags and things that will keep you warm overnight. But you can also look at how you can take a single room and the house and make that one room more pleasant for the duration. So like, if you are struggling to keep your house warm because either you've totally lost power or your furnace can't keep up with the temperatures, shut everything down except for one room—preferably a room that has water and power in it. So you have all of your basic necessities in one spot. If you have a bathroom basement—or a bathroom in the basement is ideal because it's usually going to be interior walls, you've got water, you've got power, and if you throw, you know, a pad down the floor you can even sleep in there. You've got all your necessities in one spot. **Brooke ** 18:56 Now are basements fairly safe places in the face of most natural disasters? Are there times when you wouldn't want to hang out in the basement? **Colin ** 19:03 It depends on the disaster. **Brooke ** 19:04 Okay. **Colin ** 19:06 Obviously if you're dealing with a flood, the basements not where you want to be. **Brooke ** 19:10 [Laughs] Sure. What about if there's been fire damage to like the upstairs of your house? **Colin ** 19:20 That depends on how stable the structure is. If there's fire damage, usually you don't want to be directly over or directly under the damaged section. **Brooke ** 19:31 Hm. Okay. **Colin ** 19:32 So that if it collapses, it doesn't land on you and you don't go through the floor. **Brooke ** 19:37 Okay. Makes sense. **Colin ** 19:38 So fire—like talking about a fire damaged structure is probably beyond the scope of what I'm qualified to do, and beyond the scope of most of the people listening to the podcast because it requires you to be able to look at the damaged structural members and evaluate, you know, how compromised are these? Is this floor burned but otherwise stable, or is this going to collapse in the next five minutes? And that's a skill set entirely on its own. **Brooke ** 20:11 That's a good point. **Colin ** 20:12 If something looks burned and unsafe, just don't go near it. **Brooke ** 20:18 Yeah, and of course, you know, burned structures and objects can be very carcinogenic too. **Colin ** 20:26 That's also true. **Brooke ** 20:27 They can really impact your health. So that's a really good point that a lot of this maybe is really not applicable to the situation of having been in a fire. **Colin ** 20:35 Now, that said, if you've lost half of your house to fire, and you have a few rooms that are still relatively untouched on one side of the house, and you can seal off the burned section of the house, again, using plastic, just so you don't have the smell of the burned material getting into the living area as much as possible, you're still better off inside the house in that situation overall, if you don't have anywhere else to go, then you are trying to, say, camp out in the backyard. Because solid walls and a solid roof offer you more protection and better insulation, even when they're damaged. **Brooke ** 21:16 Okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. If you have a really bad kitchen fire and lose your kitchen, that doesn't mean you have to move out of the whole house necessarily. Okay. **Colin ** 21:24 Correct. Yeah. And obviously, the best thing to do is leave and go someplace else if you can. But this is: your stocking place because the roads are impassable, or you literally have nowhere else to go. **Brooke ** 21:37 Yeah. Okay. All right. So moving into the basement, a good idea if you can, but in general is secluding yourself in part of the house. And to throw in a personal anecdote, we had this ice storm here in Kalapuya territory in Oregon—it was almost three years ago now. And most of the town lost power. And it was one, two, three days, a week, seven days, ten days for some folks—long time. And, I kind of without knowing any of this, just sort of instinctively moved us into the living room where a fireplace was because we had lost power and we lost it for a week. And we all just camped out, you know, slept, ate, played in the living room, because the only source of heat was the fireplace. So that's what we gravitated to. Anyway. **Colin ** 22:27 Yeah. And if you have a fireplace, if you have a room that's already set up for that kind of thing, like a living room, that's fantastic. I mean, there's no reason to hide out in the bathroom, if you have a place with a working fireplace. Yeah, good, go for the fireplace room. **Brooke ** 22:42 Yeah. On the downside, we had to pass into the, you know, 40 degree, 30 degree weather in the rest of the house to get to the bathroom. One in the back of the house. But, you know, for everything else, we were cozied up and warm in our one little room. Which, you know, we drove each other crazy. I will say that too being trapped in the one room together. But it was the only place that we be worn for that week. **Colin ** 23:06 Yeah, like having just a contained place that you can keep as warm and comfortable or as cool and comfortable as possible is your best option. Don't worry about trying to keep your entire house up to temperature, whether that be warm or cold. Because that takes a lot of energy to do and it's just probably not gonna be possible in most situations. **Brooke ** 23:28 Okay, here's a scenario question for you: Let's say same set of circumstances, like, that I went through, but something crashed through my big living room window, and we have to tarp over it. Is it? Is it? Is it better? Like, if I have to stay in my house at that point, is it better to still be in the living room with the fire in the tarped up window, or should I try and move to a different room and figure out some other heating source? **Colin ** 23:54 I would probably still stay in the living room. If your concern is keeping yourself warm and you have a fireplace, that's going to be your best option. **Brooke ** 24:06 Okay. **Colin ** 24:06 The issue of the window being broken and the tarp—the one problem with tarps is in high winds, they tend to flap a lot and they're just kind of annoying. The easy solution to that is back it up with cardboard. Cardboard does not like to get wet, but as long as it stays dry, it's a fairly good insulator and it's solid. And it's cheap. You can—everybody has a pile of cardboard boxes and their front hall from Amazon waiting to go out in the recycling. So take some of those boxes— **Brooke ** 24:37 I'm just gonna close this door behind me... **Colin ** 24:41 Take some of these boxes, break them down, put a few layers of cardboard on the inside just as a backup to the tarp so that your plastic is keeping the water out, but your cardboard is blocking more of the wind and keeping the plastic from flapping quite so much. **Brooke ** 24:57 Okay got it. So staying close to that the best heat source is still the way to go. **Colin ** 25:03 Yeah, it's always gonna be a judgment call as to what that is. But if you have a fire, and you are comfortable using it, and you have a good wood supply, that's almost always going to be your best bet. **Brooke ** 25:16 Okay? Makes sense. All right, so let's see, where are we even at not in our to do list here? **Colin ** 25:24 Okay, so we have a warm place to stay. And, assuming you have a fireplace, we've got that taken care of. The trickier situation is when you lose power and suddenly you'd have no heat at all. And even if you're relying—if you use natural gas for your heat, pretty much every furnace these days has an electric blower unless you have one of the, like, direct vent wall mounted furnace units that are basically just a gas flame that's passively heating. But if you're using forced air, it's using gas for the heat source, but you need electricity to move that warm air through the house. So if you lose your electricity, you lose your heat, even though you still have a fuel source. And that's something that a lot of people don't think about, especially in winter, they're like, oh, it's not a problem. If you lose electricity, big deal, I have gas. Well, that's not going to help you. **Brooke ** 26:25 That was my circumstance. Gas furnace, but needed the electricity and we didn't have that. **Colin ** 26:30 Yeah. So if you can get yourself down to a fairly small room, a bathroom, a small bedroom, even a large walk-,in closet, it doesn't take a whole lot of energy to keep one of those spaces warm. You can get the small, portable, like, propane heaters, little buddy heaters. They don't cost a whole lot, but then you have the issue of combustion in a confined space, which is a good way to end up with carbon monoxide poisoning or asphyxiation or, yeah. It can be a very bad scene. So if you're going to do that, be sure you have a portable carbon dioxide alarm. Just go to Home Depot or wherever, pick up another one of the nine volt battery powered smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, and keep that in whatever space you're running that portable heater. It doesn't matter if you have smoke alarms and carbon monoxide heaters or detectors throughout the house. Those aren't going to help you if you have sealed yourself off from those alarms so that you can try to keep the space warm. **Brooke ** 26:41 Makes sense. **Colin ** 27:22 And actually, my recommendation, even more than one of the small portable heaters, is a kerosene lamp or propane lamp of some kind. A lot of the old ice fishers for heating their ice fishing huts in the winter just used Coleman lanterns. One of the propane Coleman lanterns will put out almost the same amount of heat as a 1500 watt electric space heater. **Brooke ** 28:11 Oh wow! **Colin ** 28:12 They are very, very warm. Now also, it's still combustion. So you have to be aware of that. And they do get very hot. So you need to have a place to hang it to keep it away from fabric and other things that can catch on fire. But they will make a room surprisingly warm on their own. And then that also gives you light source, which is another thing that you're going to need if your power is off. **Brooke ** 28:39 Now, what if—what if it's a reverse circumstance. You've lost power and it's very warm climate. You're in, you know, hot temperatures. Are you still trying to stay in one room? What tools do you have to get cold? **Colin ** 28:55 That is a much more difficult situation. There are some things you can do, but it's going to require more tools and more planning. If you've ever seen the giant black tubes coming out of pit toilets, usually like a national parks, what those are doing is pulling a draft on the underground part of the toilet by using a thermal chimney. That black tube gets hot in the sun and hot air rises, you're pulling the hot stinky air up from out of your bathroom, and pulling fresh air in. So you can do the exact same thing with a house by having some kind of large black chimney. You can do this out of pipe or even black cardboard if you live in a very dry area. But this is something you're going to have to know how to build and plan for in advance. It can be done, but it's probably going to be on—be beyond the scope of what most people can do in an emergency. So really, in the situation where hat is issue, the best thing you can do is stay out of the sun and try to move as little as possible. Outside if you can, like wherever you can get fresh air, any kind of breeze, air movement, is going to keep you cooler than sitting inside. **Brooke ** 30:24 Yeah. If you know how to make like a swamp cooler kind of thing—let's say your water, you can still get coolish water coming out and you've got—well I guess you need electricity for the fan. Damn. **Colin ** 30:36 You can use the swamp cooler, you can build a passive swamp cooler. Again, it relies on that thermal chimney to create the draft. But those do work, assuming that you're in an area that is dry enough that you have evaporation. I live in western Pennsylvania, and usually in the summer if it's hot enough to need air conditioning, it's also about 95% humidity and swamp coolers do not work. **Brooke ** 31:02 And I think they can even be dangerous, right? Making it—because they can make it too humid—unsafely humid? **Colin ** 31:09 Yes. **Brooke ** 31:12 Sorry, you're getting outside your realm. **Colin ** 31:17 No, no. So the swamp cooler, you know, for listeners who are not aware of what this is, it's a—basically the same thing as a wet rag that the moisture on the—in the cooler evaporates and evaporation requires energy. So you're pulling heat out of the air and using that to evaporate water. And what you end up with is air that is cooler than it was before, but also more humid. So obviously, before that can work, you need to have air that is dry enough that it can absorb some amount of moisture. If you already have close to as much moisture in the air as it can possibly handle, you're not going to change the temperature significantly by evaporation. **Brooke ** 32:03 Okay. Make sense. All right, so we we've gotten ourselves down to one room, we figured out a way to heat ourselves, and we're hunkered in and it's gonna be a few days that we're in this situation. So what now and what next? **Colin ** 32:22 So now you have to think about, you know, the basics of survival. You need food and water. Food, hopefully you have some stores around. If not, you know, at least in the United States, getting food is not that difficult most of the time, it may not be good. But you're probably not going to starve if you're in your house. **Brooke ** 32:52 Even if you're iced in and can't—can't literally get out of your house, you probably have something in your pantry, it might not be what you want to eat, but there is calories available. **Colin ** 33:02 Yeah. You have calories. They're maybe not the best calories, but their calories. Water is trickier. Hopefully, you have at least a little bit of a stockpile, but not always. And if you have lost your water supply, or if there is damage to the mains—like again, using Texas as an example. Once your water mains freeze and the pressure in those pipes drop, you start having issues with groundwater making its way into the water mains, and that results in a boil order. So it's entirely possible to be in a situation where your taps still work, water comes out, but you can't drink it. And now you're faced with a problem of, like, how do you make this water supply drinkable again? And if you have a small water filter like the Sawyer Mini, it's popular with a lot of backpackers, a LifeStraw, anything like that, those are great. If you don't have one of those, the reason it's called a boil order is because you can always boil the water. Again, assuming that you have a heat source with which you can get the water hot. If you have a gas stove, most of the time natural gas is not disrupted by natural disasters with the exception of earthquakes. But if you're relying on electricity, if you're cooking like a lot of people do and you lose electricity, now you're kind of out of luck. So you need to have some kind of way of boiling water. If you have that Coleman lantern or a kerosene lantern, a lot of those get hot enough that you actually can boil water in a small container over one of those lanterns. It's not ideal. My recommendation is actually just one of the old school Coleman propane two burner backpacking stoves. They are absolute workhorses, indestructible. My brother just inherited the one of my parents, which I think is pushing 50 years old and still works just fine. You cannot kill those things, and you can pick one up off eBay for somewhere between $20 and $50, depending on what kind of condition it's in. And the other great thing about propane is that it has an indefinite shelf life. So if you have one of those stoves sitting around and you have one of the green one pound cylinders of propane, that you inherited from your grandparents, plug that in. It doesn't matter if it is twice as old as you are, it's still going to work just fine. Same is not true of gasoline and a lot of the other fuels. They're hard to store, they smell, they have other issues. But propane is fantastic. So you can buy it, you can stash in your basement, you can forget about it, and it'll be there when you need it. **Brooke ** 36:01 Now a complicating factor to be aware of ahead of time, of course, is that you can have a big propane tank like you might use for your barbecue, and then you can have those little green ones. And they're not—they don't necessarily all hook up into the same canisters, you know, the camp stoves versus barbecues, right, so you might not have the right size of—like if you're—if you have a camp stove and you're like, I can hook my barbecue propane tank up to it, that's not going to work with what you normally have, right? **Colin ** 36:31 With what you normally have. There are adaptor hoses that are designed to do exactly that. And a lot of times if you have outdoor events, they will use those two burner stoves but they will hook them up to the barbecue tanks because the little one pound cylinders get expensive if you're relying on those for a large amount of propane. You also can't refill them like you can with a barbecue tanks. **Brooke ** 36:54 Right. So it's so frustrating. **Colin ** 36:55 Yeah. So if you have a bar—if you have a barbecue grill already, then, you know, there's your heat source. You have to go outside to use it, but you can put a pot of water on your barbeque grill and bring it to a boil, it'll work just fine. Or if you have one of the little two burner backpacking/camping stoves, they make the hoses to go from the barbecue tank to that kind of stove. And now you can bring your propane tank inside as you need. Again, under normal circumstances don't do this. But in a disaster you can. And run the propane inside. **Brooke ** 37:35 Check your venting, check your C02 levels... **Colin ** 37:38 Again, there's a very good reason that they tell you not to do this. And if you're cooking inside with a stove that has not been designed to do this, you need to have your fire extinguisher, you need to have your carbon monoxide alarm, and as soon as you're done with it, get that fuel back out of the house, because obviously propane is flammable. **Brooke ** 38:00 Alright, so we've got a way to get some water, hopefully, and to warm up some food or cook some food if we need to. So we've got those basic elements that we can survive and subsist for however long we're gonna be stuck in this compromised building in this disaster. **Colin ** 38:18 Yeah, so the next part is, don't get sick. This means how to have a way to keep yourself clean. [Everyone dissolves into a fit of giggles] Hot tip! Don't get sick. Life is better when you're not sick. **Brooke ** 38:21 [Laughing] Yes. **Colin ** 38:40 Keeping up with sanitation when you don't have running water, especially when you don't have hot running water, is hard. If you don't have water, you also probably don't have a functioning toilet anymore. And that's going to be a problem sooner than—real quick. Takes about 24 hours, possibly less, and suddenly it's unpleasant. So have a way of dealing with all that when you don't have running water. The easiest solution is a five gallon bucket and something for urine. You want to try to keep those things separate because you're in, you know, you can take it outside, you can dump it in the grass, it'll be fine. The same is not true of feces. You need to at the very least compost that. You can get fancy composting toilets that will set you back several thousand dollars. **Brooke ** 39:41 Yeah **Colin ** 39:42 They worked really well. They have fans and tumblers and everything else. But for the van that I use for camping, my solution is a five gallon bucket with a gasketed lid and plastic bag full of chopped straw, and it works just fine. It doesn't smell that great when you open it. But honestly, it's not terrible. As long as you keep the feces covered with a layer of either chopped straw or peat moss or something else that will absorb all the excess nitrogen is really what you're after. You're fine. **Brooke ** 40:21 A brief segue as we talk to Colin's husband/wife/romantic partner. How do they feel about the shit bucket? **Colin ** 40:30 Not a fan. On the other hand, given a choice between the shit bucket, and going outside, when it's pouring down rain in the middle of the winter, and we're camping? [Laughing] The bucket is better. It's not ideal, but when you need it, you're really glad that you have it. And it's something that you can keep around, it'll set—it'll cost you maybe $10, and throw it in the basement. Hopefully you never need it. But if you do, it's there, and it will get you out of a bad situation. And it doesn't require you to put a whole lot of thought or effort into dealing with it. And then once everything is back online, and you have trash collection, again, if nothing else, seal the bucket up, put it in the trash can, and let the whole thing go to the landfill. Composting it is great, that's what I do. But if you just don't want to deal with it, put the entire bucket in the trash. **Brooke ** 41:28 Or an even poor man's version of this, you can put a plastic bag in a trash can and put your business in there and then tie up your plastic bag, set it outside. And repeat, if you forgot to get a bucket ahead of time. **Colin ** 41:43 Yes, that also works just fine. The nice thing about the bucket is then you have a sealed lid so it keeps the odor inside, and you can keep it in the house where it's warm and dry. Because there's nothing worse than having to poop in the middle of the night when it is sleeping and five degrees outside. **Brooke ** 42:03 Yeah, that's pretty awful. **Colin ** 42:05 Food waste and trash are two other big things. Trash collection, we take for granted. But if you've ever had a couple bags of trash sitting in your garage for a week because you forgot to put them out on trash day, they get real unpleasant real fast. So again, if you're in a situation where you know you're going to have to be living with this stuff for an extended period of time, try to keep your food waste separate from your trash that doesn't stink. So plastic bags, solid stuff that will be dry and relatively odorless in one bag. Food waste, again, can go in a sealed bucket, or in a smaller bag, you can keep further away from the house. If you're familiar with Bokashi, I think that came up on one of the episodes about composting. It's not, it's not composting in and of itself, it's a bit more like fermenting—kind of like making sauerkraut, but with food scraps—and basically does the same thing. You just get a bucket with a sealed lid, put your food in there, let it sit and it will slowly ferment on its own. And it can take pretty much anything. Even things that normal compost can't. So it can handle small amounts of meat and protein, cooked food, things like that. We have a bucket of that just under our sink that all the food scraps go into. And it probably gets emptied maybe once every two weeks, so that we don't have to have any food going into the trash. And yeah, it's—it's funny, like I will occasionally go to people's houses now that are just using trash cans the way people do where everything goes in the trash can. And I walk into the kitchen. I'm like, why am I smelling, like, food waste? Like I smell rotten food. What's wrong? It's like oh, right, it's because you're putting in the trash can where it sits and rots. So if you can just keep those two things separate. It will make the situation a lot more pleasant. That's a great tip. And yeah, just, you know, as much as you can, wash your hands and do all the things you are supposed to do. Brush your teeth, floss, things like that nature. Just take care of yourself and try to keep yourself together for as long as you possibly can. The situation will improve if you can just avoid making it worse. Human body is amazingly tough. All you have to do is sit and wait and most situations disaster-wise will improve on their own because the pressure on first response yours and utilities will ease up and things will start to come back online, as long as you can make it through that first critical period. **Brooke ** 45:08 Okay, do you mind now if we shift to talking about structural triage and things that we do to our actual residences, dwellings, things to look out for and know in disasters, and sort of that aspect of it? **Colin ** 45:28 Yeah, definitely. Did you have anything in mind in particular, where you wanted to start, or? **Brooke ** 45:32 Well, we talked about, you know, turning things off, of course. And then closing up holes. There's lots of other things in the house that can get damaged, in, you know, different scenarios, earthquakes and tornadoes and floods. So I'm curious, like, if there are other structural indicators or things to look for, you know, that, you know, from sort of your construction perspective that, like, oh, that's a sign of this thing is unstable, that you might not know just as a normal person. **Colin ** 46:09 Yes, generally when you get into questions of structural stability, like is this house going to fall down? If you have any doubt, the best thing to do is vacate the structure. Because actually looking at structures from an engineering standpoint, and determining when something is safe and when it's not, is beyond the scope of most people, myself included. I know what structures are supposed to look like and I can tell you when something is damaged, but I can't necessarily tell you how close it is to falling down. But the big things to look for are just like, do you see cracks in the foundation that weren't there yesterday? **Brooke ** 46:54 Okay, **Colin ** 46:55 You're probably familiar with, with how your house looks. If you see something that looks unfamiliar. investigate further, as much as you possibly can. This is kind of the best advice that I can give. **Brooke ** 47:08 Okay, what about things like crack new cracks in the wall? Like, is that is the wall crack itself a sign? Or was that—would that be like, okay, now and go look at the foundation and see. **Colin ** 47:18 If you're talking about cracks in interior plaster walls, those are not necessarily an issue by themselves. Because buildings can have a fair amount of flex to them before they fall down. Like you look at the number of houses that have an alarming lean to them and have been standing for two hundred years. Like, structures are remarkably resilient until they're not. **Brooke ** 47:45 Okay. **Colin ** 47:45 But if you have any doubt, the best thing is, get yourself out of the structure. **Brooke ** 47:50 Okay. I guess I'm also thinking about it from, like, the opposite perspective of something you might see and worry about and think you need to leave, but then actually it's okay and you could stay. So that's, you know, like the wall cracks, that might not actually be a big issue if you've suddenly had a crack on the wall. **Colin ** 48:10 Yeah, so the best thing you can do is try to get yourself into part of the house where you have as little as possible above you and as little as possible below you. So if you have a three story house, you don't necessarily want to be on that second floor for any reason. Because that's kind of the worst of both worlds, because you could go through the floor or the roof could come down on you. The best thing you can do, again, is get yourself into a small space where the only thing above you is the roof and maybe some insulation, and the only thing below you is concrete slab. Still not a guarantee that you're safe. **Brooke ** 48:54 Sure, yeah. **Colin ** 48:55 But you're gonna be better off there than in a multistory structure. **Brooke ** 48:59 Right. Yeah. We talked about how, you know, things might come through the windows or the walls, but as long as you've got your three walls in your roof, you're okay. What if you have four walls and a hole in the roof? Like things come through the roof. **Colin ** 49:13 Yeah, if you have a damaged roof, the best thing to do is get up on the roof and patch it from the outside. But that's not always possible. Especially if you have a multistory house and you don't have an extension ladder that can get you up to the roof, which is true for a lot of people. So then you're stuck with, how do I deal with this hole in my roof from the inside? Sometimes, assuming you have access to the attic, you can get into the attic and if you have, you know, a gaping hole where say a meteor came through your roof and punched a big hole in it. [Laughing] You can feed things in from the outside and then pull them back down against the roof. So you can build your patch and feed it through and pieces. Reach up from the inside, lay it down on the outside. And it's not gonna be a perfect seal, but it will keep at least some of the water and weather from getting into the house. Usually when you have that big of a hole, if you can't patch it from the outside, things are going to end up leaking and you're gonna be faced with situation where you have to try to catch the water once it comes into the house and get it back outside the house where it belongs. Again, the key for this is a staple gun, and some plastic sheet. So just, if you can hang plastic underneath the area that is leaking, or tarp to catch the drips, and then divert that water to a collection point, whether that is a bucket if it's a very slow leak, or a improvised funnel if it's a faster leak. It's not hard to make a funnel, if you have a garden hose and a two liter bottle, the garden hose thread is close enough to the spread on two liter bottles, that you can literally just screw the bottle onto the garden hose. And if you cut at an angle, cut the bottle at an angle, you can make something that is big enough that you can make a channel in your tarp, they will direct that into your two liter bottle funnel into your garden hose which you can then, you know, run down out of your attic and out of window. **Brooke ** 51:35 That's really cool, I might need to do something like that—not for disaster reasons, but just for gardening stuff this summer. **Colin ** 51:44 The two liter bottle to the hose connection will probably leak a little bit. **Brooke ** 51:49 Shhhhhh, kill my dreams. **Colin ** 51:51 Duct tape will fix that. Or if you have any of that self-fusing silicone tape they sell for emergency plumbing repairs, that works too. But honestly, as long as the water that's flowing through the bottle and into the hose is not under any pressure, the leak is probably going to be slow enough that it's not gonna be an issue. **Brooke ** 52:14 So roof damage is not necessarily something to run away from. **Colin ** 52:19 Roof damage is not the end of the world. It's bad, especially if you can't get up on the roof to fix it. But there are things you can do to keep it from totally destroying the house, the first thing to do is just figure out how you're going to keep the water from getting in. And if you can't do that, figure out how you're gonna get the water that's inside the house, back outside the house. **Brooke ** 52:44 And is that one of the biggest risks in the in any kind of natural disasters is water damage? **Colin ** 52:49 Water Damage is the hardest and the most insidious, because once water gets into the house and things get wet, now you have issues of mold to deal with. Once you have mold that can render a structure uninhabitable in a matter of days. As long as things are dry, they can last a very, very long time. But once they get wet, you're in trouble. **Brooke ** 53:15 Okay, what about the opposite side? Fire damage. We talked about that a little bit. But you know, let's say you had a kitchen fire destroyed the kitchen. Is there anything you can do in the aftermath of a fire that's going to do anything to help you save structures or objects and make the recovery easier? **Colin ** 53:36 Assuming that the fire was put out with water, you've got the same issue. **Brooke ** 53:41 That's a really good point! [Laughing] No, I didn't think about that. That's a really good point. **Colin ** 53:45 Dried back out. If you put the fire out yourself, you probably use a dry chemical fire extinguisher. So you have a giant mess to clean up, but it's not soaking wet. If the Fire Company had to come and put it out with hoses, not only do you have the fire damage, everything you own in that immediate area is now soaking wet and covered with soot and just generally filthy. That was the situation that we had with the friend that I talked about earlier with having the apartment fire, that it was kind of a blessing that it happened in the middle of winter because we were able to just go over there and get everything out of the apartment and throw it in our backyard and it just stayed frozen for a week until we were ready to deal with it. **Brooke ** 54:32 Ah, right. Because your winters are snowy and icy, not rainy, like here. **Colin ** 54:35 Yeah, it is generally rainy her. But it just happened to be in the middle of cold snap. So it was in the 20s for the most part, dropping down to single digits for about that entire week. So we just had bags and bags of wet clothing, wet furniture, sitting in the backyard under plastic so they stayed frozen and didn't grow mold. Because once things are wet, you're in trouble. So if it's not frozen, the best thing you can do is get fans on it, keep that air moving, and try to get it dried back out as soon as you can. **Brooke ** 55:11 That makes sense. I guess I've never thought about this, but it makes sense. The fire department, if they come in and they take a host of things, they don't come back and dry it out for you. Right, you're left to handle that part on your own. **Colin ** 55:24 You'll have to handle that part. And usually, they have broken windows in the process, because that's how they get the hoses in and that's how they control the flow of the smoke and the fire through the structure, is making holes in walls. Generally, once you have a fire, you also have other structural damage to deal with. **Brooke ** 55:43 Yeah. Okay. We're kind of get down to our last few minutes. I know there's a lot more that we could talk about and go over with all of this. But I want to make some space here for any other sort of critical things that you really want to talk about, teach and share with this episode. **Colin ** 56:01 I think we've covered most of the critical things. Again, the biggest one is just keep yourself safe and don't make the situation worse. No matter how bad it seems, take a minute, breathe, look at it, and think. I know, again, other episodes of the podcast, they've talked about the, like the threat onion from the military, which is the same basic idea as the layers of safety that they talk about in industrial design. And all these things say step one is your design and your engineering controls that make it safe. So the good analogy for that is things like antilock brakes in the car. You don't have to do anything for those to work. They're just there. They don't require any thought. Seatbelts and airbags are also great. Seatbelts, you have to remember to use them, and they only help—they only help after the accident has already occurred. **Brooke ** 57:06 Right. **Colin ** 57:07 A seatbelt does not prevent an accident. So when you're in a bad situation, look at what you're about to do, think about the situation, figure out which of those engineering safety controls have gone out the window as a result of the disaster. So you had a fire in the kitchen, you've lost your stove, you're gonna have to rely on your little tiny Coleman backpacking stove. That's great, it'll work. But you no longer have that automatic ignition, you're going to have to use lighter to light the stove. You don't have the combustion controls to make sure that the flame has a pilot light, that the pilot light turns off when the gas goes out. So you can have the gas from one of their stoves leaking if you fail to turn the valve off all the way when you're done with it. All these things that are part of normal everyday life that you just don't think about, no longer work the way they're supposed to in a disaster. So just look at what you're doing, and see what you've lost, and figure out how you can get that safety back on your own. **Brooke ** 58:22 Okay, that is really great. And I am wishing we had more time because I just feel like there's so much more that we could say and get into. But I think this has been a really, really great, you know, just kind of primer and information that would help people get through, you know, the first two or three days after a disaster for sure. So, I really appreciate that you joined us today on the podcast and share this info with us. Is there anything else that you want to plug or promote or share? **Colin ** 58:56 No, I think that was pretty much it. **Brooke ** 58:58 Okay, well, thanks again for being here. **Colin ** 59:00 Thank you very much. **Brooke ** 59:05 To our listeners. Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoy our podcast, please give it a like, drop a comment, or review. Subscribe to us if you haven't already. These things make the algorithms that rule our world offer our show to more people. This podcast is produced by the anarchist publishing collective, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. You can connect with us on Twitter @tangledwild and also on Instagram. Or check out our website at tangledwilderness.org where you can find our extensive lists of projects and publications. This podcast and much of the work of Strangers is made possible by our Patreon supporters. If you want to become a supporter, check out our Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. They are cool benefits various support tiers on Patreon. For instance, if you support the collective at just $5 a month, then we will mail you a monthly zine. Those contain essays, stories, poems, art, all kinds of great stuff. We'd like to give a specific shout out to some of our most supportive Patreon supporters. Thanks to Aly, Paige, Jenipher, Eric, David, Staro, Patoli, Chris, theo, Kirk, Princess Miranda, Milica, Marm, Catgut, Janice & O'Dell, Dana, Carson, Buck, Lord Harken, Nicole, paparouna, Funder, Perceval, BenBen, Mic Aiah, anonymous, S.J., Trixter, Hunter, Chelsea, Julia, Boise Mutual Aid, and as always, Hoss the dog. Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Episode Summary This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Ben and Brooke talk about communication systems during a disaster. They cover basic communication infrastructure and equipment as well as what kind of information is vital to be able to communicate when cell phone towers go down. They also cover just how awesome amateur radio is. Guest Info Ben Kuo (he/him) is an amateur radio operator. Ben can be found on Mastodon @ai6yrr@m.ai6yr.org Host Info Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke. Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Transcript Live Like the World is Dying: Ben on Communicating After a Disaster **Brooke ** 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm Brooke Jackson, your host for this episode. Today I'll be talking with Ben about communication and sharing information after disasters. But first, we'd like to celebrate being a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts by playing a little jingle from one of the other podcasts on the network. Jingle, Jingle jingle goes here. **The Ex-Worker Podcast ** 00:45 The border is not just a wall. It's not just a line on a map. It's a power structure, a system of control. The border does not divide one world from another. There is only one world and the border is tearing it apart. The Ex-Worker Podcast presents "No Wall They Can Build: a guide to borders and migration across North America" A serialized audio book in 11 chapters released every Wednesday. tune in at crimethinc.com/podcast. **Brooke ** 01:29 And we're back. Ben, thank you so much for joining us today to talk about communication and information sharing after a disaster. We'd love to know a little bit more about you if you're willing to share your pronouns and where you hail from and anything else that you want to say to introduce yourself? **Ben ** 01:49 Sure. My name is Ben Kuo, and I am in Ventura County, California. My pronouns are he and him. And my background in disasters is I have been very involved in responding to disasters, providing information on social media, and making sure that people, you know, get the information they need to stay safe and stay healthy and help other people. **Brooke ** 02:17 Nice. Was this something that you got into because of a disaster that happened? Or was it something you were interested in before...before it became useful in this context? If that makes sense? **Ben ** 02:28 It's interesting. I really got involved in this in 20--I believe it's 2018--when Hurricane Maria hit, and hurricane Maria was a category five hurricane, and I am...one of my hobbies--and I have many hobbies-- but one of them is amateur radio. And for folks who have never heard of amateur radio, what it is, is a hobby where you learn how to use the radio and to communicate with people. And that is locally, you know, with people in your area, that is internationally. And you can talk to people all across the globe using just a radio, a power supply, a battery, and an antenna without any of the world being up. So that's no internet, no telephone, no power supply, no power grid. And you can communicate with people all over the world. And it's fun. And I started because it was a lot of fun. But it ends up being very, very, very useful nowadays with the increasing pace of disasters. And so I became an amateur radio operator partially because of the emergency aspect of it. There's a big community around it. But also just because it's a lot of fun for the technology and playing with the technology. So the big story of how I got into the disaster is Hurricane Maria was bearing down on the Caribbean. And it is...I don't know if you've seen the trend in recent years but hurricanes have been spinning up much faster and much more intensely. And it's called rapid intensification. And because of that you don't have quite the warning that you used to with hurricanes. And so people go, "Oh, we can watch this. And we can react." or "Oh, it's gonna be coming in a week." And that's not happening as much anymore. So what happens is someone says, "Hey, it's a tropical storm. We don't have to worry too much." And all of a sudden, it goes from a tropical storm to category five hurricane. This actually happened only a few months ago in Mexico. A tropical storm, everyone says, "Oh, it's just going to be a tropical storm." Even the expert of the National Weather Service said, "Oh, it's just gonna be a tropical storm." And it went from a tropical storm to category five hurricane. And it totally decimated a resort area in Mexico. **Brooke ** 05:16 I had no idea. And it's interesting because I feel like I seem to hear about them going the other direction so often. Like, oh, there's a hurricane off the coast and it, you know--especially on our coast here on the West Coast--and then it dissipates into, you know, just a tropical storm or what have you. So I wasn't aware that we're seeing an increase of them going from tropical storm to hurricane. That's really interesting. **Ben ** 05:40 Yeah, I think the scientists say, you know, it's an outgrowth of warmer oceans and with the climate crisis and all that, you have more energy. So it hits a warm spot in the ocean and all sudden, you know, it becomes quite crazy. So how I got involved is--I was not involved very much with emergencies and disasters, until hurricane Maria--and I was, you know, monitoring things here and there. And I learned that amateur radio was the only way to get to the...there's a little island nation called Dominica, it's not affiliated with any large country. It's kind of its own country. And they were cut off from the world by hurricane Maria. So they had, I guess they lost 90% of the roofs. They lost...they had no power system. They lost their telephones. And interestingly enough, everyone thought they were okay, because they didn't hear any messages from Dominica. They were like, "Oh, category five, it should be fine." And no one called for help. [Brooke exclaims incredulity] I got on--the amateur radio operators had already been active. There's an active Amateur Radio Group on the island. And I stumbled upon them and discovered they were in big trouble. And they were just begging for help. And so I stumbled in here--I'm all the way in California--and using the magic of amateur radio was actually talking to these folks in the Caribbean. And actually also using the internet kind of to bridge some of the parts of it. It's interesting, all the technology aspects. But the important thing ended up being that they were in a lot of trouble. There's no one to help, and they just needed to get information about what was going on. And I started relaying information to the amateur radio operators there in the region on what was going on, what help was on the way or not on the way. In the meantime, they actually had...the amatory operators actually arranged a rescue of the Prime Minister of the country. And that's like, you know, rescuing the President of the United States. Yeah, they rescued the president of Dominica, the Prime Minister. And they had...they were laying information back and forth like, "Oh, we need this. There's a problem here. People here need dialysis. How can we get help from these people? These people are trapped." At one point, I relayed information from them about someone who had been...who was able to--I guess there's limited cell phone coverage within the country--where they were able to tell somebody else that they were stuck underneath the house. And that got relayed by amateur radio operators out of the country, and I got it and it went back into the country elsewhere. And I rescued somebody. And in fact, I ended up relaying information from the US Embassy. And they actually were sending in...they actually sent in an entire warship, the USS Wasp. It's an amphibious carrier. And they were airlifting US citizens out of the country. And they would actually go in and, you know, drop people off and pull them out of the, you know, whatever vacation villa they're staying at and have them evacuate. It was a big operation. No one...no one really heard about it here. But that was kind of my introduction to the fact that amateur radio was very, very useful in really, you know, like a worst case scenario. And I learned a lot of lessons there, for sure, about how to deal with it. And eventually after Hurricane Maria hit Dominica, it actually hit Puerto Rico. **Brooke ** 09:37 What year was this by the way? **Ben ** 09:39 It was September of 2017. And it first hit Dominica, but then the hurricane curved up and it hit Puerto Rico. And I was involved in that. There's a huge...Puerto Rico also had no communications. And the only communications was amateur radio for a good two days I believe. And I was really relaying information back and forth there. And how this ties into social media is I was collecting all this information, relaying it back and forth. And I said, "Hey, I'm listening to all this, I can see what's going on and I might as well post it up on Twitter." And I did that. And I also put up a YouTube stream of all the radio communications that were happening.... **Brooke ** 10:25 Back when Twitter was good and useful and we loved it. **Ben ** 10:29 Yeah, back when it was a cause for good as opposed to what it is now. **Brooke ** 10:33 Sorry, go on. Mourning the loss of Twitter. **Ben ** 10:38 Yeah, exactly. It's actually quite a thing. So interesting...that would have been it for me. I was going to delete my account. But shortly after that, there was a fire in my own county. And it's actually between Ventura and Santa Barbara County, the Thomas fire. And I said, "Oh, I've got a social media account." And one of the things about amateur radio is you learn how to listen to what's on the radio. And not...this is not broadcast radio. But this is police and fire channels, official agencies, people talking back and forth about what's going on the ground on the scanners. And I was relaying what I heard there. And my followers went from, I think, you know, a few thousand to, you know, 50,000 people because information was so useful to know. So, you know, if you think about what you see on network TV, you'll see the same, you know, Hillside burning the whole newscast, no context. Where is it? What's going on? And when you listen to the Police and Fire Radio, you can say, "Hey, I know that that is in this neighborhood. The fire is moving in this direction. We need to get people out and to safety." And, "Oh, hey, we heard that there's an evacuation here." And it takes...it takes, you know, a couple hours sometimes for the firefighters on the ground to say, "We need to evacuate this neighborhood," to actually, you know, you getting that on your phone or the press picking up on it. So that's kind of how I got into the disasters. And, you know, it kind of has kept on going because, as I mentioned, you know, I think the pace of disasters has increased. I think they just saw...there's just a report this week that said we had the largest amount of billion dollar disasters in the US in 2023 on record. **Brooke ** 12:40 Wow. Like the largest total dollar value amount or like the largest number of disasters? **Ben ** 12:48 Yes. Total dollar amount.Yeah, and so, you know, it's just an ongoing, increasing need in the world. **Brooke ** 12:55 Alright, interesting. So I want to talk about what we can do to prepare before a disaster but I think it would help if we talk about, really quickly, what you lose communication wise in the beginning of a disaster because I think that's going to help make it clear why you need to prepare, if that makes sense. **Ben ** 13:16 Yeah, you know, I mentioned, you know, we are so used to having a smartphone with us. We have a phone with us all the time. It is our way of getting information. It's our way of communicating with people. We text people back and forth. We may use Snapchat or Instagram or whatever your social media is. And people don't realize how much we rely on that today. And what happens during a disaster is the first thing that goes down is the cell phone network, right? Your cell phone network goes down. The cell towers only have so much battery before they fail. And then all of a sudden you don't have a way to say "Hey, is my you know Aunt Marge, okay or not?" right? It's, "What's going on? Where should I go? What should I do? Where can I go?" This was brought home really.... A really terrible example of how we are depending on this and what goes wrong when it fails is Lahaina Hawaii. **Brooke ** 14:22 And I don't know if you listened to it, we released, just a couple weeks ago as we're recording this, I did an episode about Lahaina and kind of reviewing what happened and where they are right now. **Ben ** 14:39 Yeah, and so you're familiar with the fact that, you know, the warnings went out too late. And then the cell towers went down. So no one knew what was going on. And so you were down to, I believe there's a video of some guy without a shirt, you know, bicycling down the street yelling at people to get out. You know, that is your early warning system because your phones don't work. And, you know, if the cell phone network goes down, you know, that cell phone that you're holding is, you know, as good as a rock. You could throw it at something I guess, but it's not going to do much good. **Brooke ** 15:20 Yep. Yep. That's right. **Ben ** 15:22 Yeah. And, you know, I don't think most people think about how much we depend on communications for all the things we do, especially in a safety situation, you know. Should I be evacuating? Where's the disaster? Where's help? Where should I not be going? That is all information that when you lose communications, you've lost, and it can be fatal. So that's why, you know, as much as people often say, "Hey, well, you know why are you doing this amateur radio stuff? You know, we have cell phones now. We have the internet. Why do we need this, you know, old fashioned stuff?" It's not really old fashioned. But, you know, that is the struggle that I often have with people thinking about disasters. And the other problem that we have is--and not obviously listeners of your podcast--but we live in a world where everyone thinks that it will never happen to them. And people don't want to prepare. They say, "Hey, I, you know, this is never going to happen to me. I don't want to think about bad things." And if you don't do that, then you're in a much worse spot when it does happen. **Brooke ** 16:33 For sure, for sure. Okay, so when it happens, you know, we lose...we lose our phones. That's one of the biggest things and basically all of the ways that we're used to communicating. So what do we do before a disaster to get ready for that scenario? What kind of things do we need to have on hand or need to know how to do? Please teach me? **Ben ** 16:57 Yeah, so. So some basic things you should do is have an alternate communication plan, or at very least someplace you can meet people. So say you don't have, you know, a radio or anything like that, you say "Hey, if we have a disaster, here's the plan," right? "This is where we go if there's a fire or a flood or whatever it is. What are we going to do?" Okay, and that doesn't require you to have communications. It just means you have to pre-plan what you're doing. But, you know, the first level up--and this, you know, there's kind of levels of how much you want to invest in communications--but, you know, you can buy off the shelf radios at sporting goods stores, which, you know, they're called FRS radios or GMRS radios. **Brooke ** 17:47 Is that a special radio then? Or is it like the old school radios we grew up with? **Ben ** 17:50 Yeah, so it's different. So, a lot of people are familiar with CB radio. And that's an old technology. And people still use it. But it's not really used a lot for this kind of thing, mainly because it doesn't have very long range. You can't go very far. But FRS and GMRS radios do have a little bit of range. And in radio, the key is something called line of sight, which is how far you can see. So if you are standing on top of a mountain, you can talk a very long distance. If you are in the bottom of the valley then you're not going to get very far. And so most of those handheld radios that you can buy don't require a license, you just have to pay your money and get them. You know, their range is probably--they say 20 miles--but really, practically, it's about two--five miles. And those are great for your family group. Or if you've got a group of folks that are in your neighborhood and you want to communicate then that is kind of the first step and you have now.... Now, you can say instead of all of sudden everyone's lost their phones, no one knows what's going on, everyone can turn their radio on--as long as it keeps it charged and knows how to use it--they can go "Hey, Jill, you're down the street. How are you? You know, are you okay?" "Oh, yeah, we're okay. You know, there's an earthquake. Oh, yeah. Everyone's okay. We're outside, right." So, you know, that's something that's very easy to do. It's off the shelf there. They're actually sold in blister packs at the sporting goods store. And it's a level one. It's like, oh, do you have a plan to at least communicate with your family and people in your neighborhood? **Brooke ** 19:40 Okay, that sounds so much like walkie talkies that we had as a kid but like a higher end farther distance thing. **Ben ** 19:48 Essentially, it is a walkie talkie. And that is what they are and, you know, they sell them as kids toys, but it's a first level of basic communications that you may want to consider, especially for your family. It's like, even if you look at some of the...if you see people fleeing from fires and from disasters, you know, see these videos of people, they can't talk to someone else in another car when your cell phone network goes down. And you can with a little walkie talkie. So that's, you know, you may have two people, one person in one car, another person in another car, and you can at least talk and say, "Hey, you know, this is what we're doing. This is where we're going." **Brooke ** 20:26 Do those--I'm getting into the weeds here but I'm just so curious to those--like, if you buy a set from the store and somebody else buys a set from the store, I'm assuming those must like cross traffic with each other? **Ben ** 20:41 Yeah, as long as you buy the ones that are licensed in the US. It's called FRS and GMRS. radios. GMRS actually requires a license, which is I think it's $25 for 10 years. But no one's checking on those. It's kind of the Wild West. I would advise getting a license, but they saw them everywhere. And a lot of people don't. **Brooke ** 21:04 Okay, so if you get those planning to use them to communicate with loved ones and neighbors you may have other people using theirs that you'll have cross cross talk. **Ben ** 21:16 Yeah, for sure. For sure. And those are the same frequencies that, you know, the kids down the street. So you'll turn it on and go, "Oh, there's little kids playing cops and robbers." They are shared frequencies. Yeah, so your next level up is--and I advocate for this because I am an amateur radio operator--is to actually get a license. And in all the countries around the world, you can get an entry level, amateur radio license and you can use a lot more frequencies and much better gear even at a very basic level. And in the US, there's, I think it's a 25-30 question test. And all the answers are pre published. So you can actually go and, you know, cram for this thing and get it in a week if you're...if you so desire. And so that actually can get you much, much farther. And so in the US it's called a technician license and you can actually.... With those, I've talked to someone 50 miles away direct. So that is, you know, nothing in between. And there's also things that are called repeaters that sit on top of hills, and you can talk to people hundreds and hundreds of miles away because they're all linked together. And there's actually...and there's an interesting tradition among the amateur radio community, which is they have groups that work on doing communications and they focus on, you know, those kind of bands on VHF, UHF, those things are all local. So you have a group of people.... In our area, they actually have people, you know, you're on a list, and they say, "Hey, who's on the list?" They're all licensed. And this is licensing in the US by the FCC. And they actually check to say, "Who's here? Who's not?" And it's a practice, right, to see whether or not. So it's a good thing to do, at least in our area. And I'm in California. It is, you know, men and women and kids and that sort of...anyone who can get a license, and, um, it's definitely something to think about. **Brooke ** 23:46 Okay, so anything else kind of on that part of things you can do before the disaster to help get ready with communication and information sharing? **Ben ** 23:58 Yeah, so the, you know, the other thing to do is I found that you need to know who is out there in the community that you are going to communicate with. And I think too many people do not think about it. You need to know who you're talking to and whether you trust them or not, and have your resources lined up. And I saw this in hurricane Maria where people were asking for help, but no one had ever met the folks, didn't know them, didn't trust them. And so, it was a very different thing, right? You're.... When you're talking to someone, communicating with someone, you need to have a pre-existing relationship with them. And, you know, I think in this world, you know, you're asking for some kind of mutual aid but you kind of want to have an idea of who it is or what group it is or do you trust them or not? And it's good to have that stuff kind of thought of, to, you know, think of think of that stuff beforehand, right? Who are the resources In our area if we had a disaster? Hey, you know, the folks in the next city, we've got to...you know, we're okay here. Do we need to bring some of them in? Do they have, you know, the resources? And would they help us if there's a problem? There's a lot of stuff that needs to be, you know, thought about, which is beyond the communication but more the organization. **Brooke ** 25:20 Yeah. Is it devastating if you haven't built out those networks yet prior to? **Ben ** 25:26 It's not. It's just hard. I think it's just harder. **Brooke ** 25:29 Yeah. Makes sense. Alright. Other things to prepare before your disaster hits? **Ben ** 25:38 Yeah, the other piece of it that I run across is because the communications folks tend to be very good at communications if they don't cover the basics, right? So you need to think about all the basic disaster stuff first, before the communications, which is, "Hey, do I have the basic food and water kind of things? Have I got, you know, all the safety stuff for myself, my family. And, you know, for yourself first, before you even think about, "Oh, do I even have a way to communicate?" **Brooke ** 26:10 Yeah, okay. That makes sense. **Ben ** 26:13 You're not useful in that role of communicating if you, yourself are no longer able to help. You know what I mean. **Brooke ** 26:25 Alright, okay. Alright, shall we move into talking about, you know, you're in the aftermath of a disaster and you need to communicate and share information? **Ben ** 26:36 Yeah, yeah. So, you know, the things that happen after a disaster is people are looking for ways to get information to family and friends. And the number one thing I find is people either have to ask for help, because there's a medical issue or they need to be rescued or something like that, or the other big thing is people...I don't think people understand how much people miss knowing what's going on. Right? So if there's a disaster, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of people who go all sudden, "Hey, is my grandmother okay? Is my grandfather okay? Is my friend okay? What's going on?" right? And it is.... A lot of times people say, "Hey, if I call somebody in such and such an area, maybe they can go find, you know, whoever is missing, or whatever, or something like that, right? So this...we saw this during the Lahaina, right? There's people, you know, thousands of relatives going, "Oh no, I know somebody in Lahaina. Are they okay?" And the lessons I've learned from so many disasters is there's no way to get information into a disaster zone. Not very efficiently. **Brooke ** 27:55 That's a really good point. **Ben ** 27:56 Yeah, so information can come out of a disaster zone, but it doesn't go into a disaster. And so, if you...so for example, if you're an amateur radio operator, generally, you could get a message out saying, you know, "Help me. I've got a problem." Or you can say, "Hey, I'm okay. Let someone know that I'm okay." If you are just someone with a smartphone, and no communications, you are just out of luck, unless you can find someone who can lay that information. And there's a lot of these systems, and I hate to...I hate to criticize some of the nonprofits that exist in the world for these things, but they have "Oh, hey, check in safety." It's like, they say, "Yo, check in on Facebook that you're okay." It's like, well, you have no way to get on Facebook. There's no internet, there's no power. How are you supposed to do that, right? Yeah, and even even the case, there's a system by a big aid organization that has a red symbol and it says, "Oh, it's a safe and well if you need to know someone's okay." And two things. One is, if you try to ask for someone's information, they say, 'What was their phone number and their last address?" And you go, "Well, how am I supposed to know that? You know, I just know that they're in this town," and whatever. There's a lot of stuff like that that's like, "Oh, do you have their social security numbers?" It's like "No, I don't have their social security." So there's a lot of stuff in the way of that. And it's a lot easier, and I found all these disasters, if someone's able to get out themselves. So like I said, the amateur radio operators can relay information to other people. So if you've got a neighbor who's an amateur radio operator, they can go "Oh, hey, I'm gonna call somebody up." This happened actually after--famously after Katrina--Katrina. Hurricane Katrina took down took down communications and there was a lot of communication out by people relaying information to other amateur radio operators they knew. So they said, "Hey, you know, this is where the Smith family is. We're at this street. Can you let somebody know at our family that we're okay." And they would pass on a phone number to call or someone to text or something like that. I did that a lot in Puerto Rico. So a lot of people who are in Puerto Rico, they have family somewhere else, they have no way to tell them that they're okay and they really don't need anything, but people are worried, right? Imagine your family is in the middle of a hurricane or something like that, or wildfire, and how do you let people know you're okay. **Brooke ** 30:45 Yeah, that makes sense. With the amateur radio networks and whatnot, you know, I know you just mentioned a few times about how you can relay information through those. And I'm curious if they're sort of existing networks of communication at all. I mean, obviously, there are folks that know each other. But do you guys have any kind of, I don't know, pre existing.... Like, do you already know where some of your people that you talk to live? Like if you had to get information to, I don't know, Montana--random example. **Ben ** 31:27 Yeah, there's an established network to do that. I have my own opinions on how effective it is or not, but they do have a.... It's actually one of the reasons amateur radio exists in the US. It was very early in the 1900s when there were disasters, radio was the only way to get out information. And so they actually started doing that back in the days of Morse code, believe it or not, when they were relaying it. And that's part of the reason why the hobby has such a strong tradition in the communications and emergency area. And so, you know, I mentioned I was doing a lot of stuff online about, you know, wildfires and hurricanes on Twitter and what's going on. And a lot of what I do and have done is stuff that the hobby, as a whole, has been doing since its beginnings. **Brooke ** 32:22 I didn't think about how deep those roots are. But that's kind of cool to think about going all the way back to, you know, using Morse code to relay the information. **Ben ** 32:32 Yeah, well, in fact, you know, if you think about it, you know, everyone knows SOS in Morse code, right? Did, did, did. Dot, dot, dot [making noises like someone speaking in Morse code] All that came from--an amateur radio started around the same time as all that kind of communication was going on, you know, like the Titanic or whatever else like that. So, that is, you know, a long standing tradition. And before the internet, before we had phone networks, we had radio networks. So that's kind of the long tradition there. **Brooke ** 33:06 Yeah, that makes sense. So you said you have some opinions about the efficacy of the system of relay that they have now and it sounds like maybe you're not entirely happy with the way that works. I'm curious to know what you think there are and why? So, you know, if there's a limitation that we need to understand. **Ben ** 33:29 Yeah. So they have a very regimented way of sending messages. And they try to pass messages...they try to do it the old fashioned way, which is you get a message, you know, here and then you pass it. Say I want to send something to Boston. Well, they may send it to somewhere in between. And then it goes through the neighborhood and then eventually, at some point, it gets there. And nowadays, I think it's more effective to just get out of your disaster zone and get the message there. And so, you know, for me, what happens is during the hurricane issues that I had, trying to use that network didn't work because I said, "Hey, I just need...I have a real disaster here. This is not pretend. This is not a simulation. I have people who need to know that their family's okay." I had a text on my phone from people--it was actually relayed from a boat after a hurricane--saying, you know, "We're docked here. We are okay. We just want to let someone know. And so this is the boat name. This is our location. And here's the neighborhood. Here's our relative. We need to let them know that we're okay. They don't need to send the Coast Guard." and trying to send that through a network which is used to passing it by hand, it's like can someone just call them? Like, we don't need to do this. It's great practice. But when it comes to a real disaster, why are we doing all this stuff when we can just call them up? The first person who's on a cell phone network can call them up and say, "Your relatives are okay." **Brooke ** 35:04 That's a good point. And, you know, the children's game of telephone that you're practically doing with passing it from one place to the next place to the next, you know, is not ideal, as we all know, for many reasons. **Ben ** 35:22 And I think that's their legacy is they don't use it as much as they ought to. And maybe they're using it more now with the disasters we have. But there's a lot of experts in the world who've never applied their knowledge. I find that also the case in just disaster preparedness in general. You have a lot of people who are disaster preparedness experts and they've never had to deal with a disaster. And the worst is that people sometimes they'll say, "Hey, you're a prepper. Blah, blah, blah," and I go, "No, the preppers don't have any concept of actually reacting to a real problem." The pandemic was the big one that I saw. All these folks who said, "Hey, watch out for the zombie apocalypse, we need to, you know, stock our homes with guns and MREs." And then when there's an actual, you know, pandemic, they go, "We're not wearing masks. We aren't gonna get vaccinated." You're going, "Oh, my gosh," you know? So there's, you know, there was a miss, a complete miss, because they're just not...you know, they call themselves one thing, but they don't have...they didn't have the experience or the right mindset going into it. **Brooke ** 36:40 So I'm curious about the types of information that we need to share. You know, we talked about after a disaster, you know, being able to relay that, you know, this person is okay, you know, finding so-called missing or unknown people and figuring out what's going on with them. But what else...like what other kinds of things do people need to relay that this network could be useful for after a disaster? **Ben ** 37:08 Yeah, help. Help is number one. So life threatening information. So if somebody is trapped or needs help, medical help. And, obviously, you have to know where to get it to. But in most cases, if you can get that information to the authorities, somebody is going to come and help you. And they just need to know it, right? So your local fire department, right? Or, maybe it's a search and rescue team or something like that. You need to be able to get that information to them. And so that's definitely a big one with communications. I don't know if you've ever seen that 911 systems go down in the US all too often. **Brooke ** 37:53 I have heard. **Ben ** 37:54 And if you don't have 911, you have to be able to call for help, right? And so we haven't seen that a ton where people have used radio to do that. But it is one thing. So if our 911 system here goes down, I know that I can call somebody else who can get to, you know, fire and rescue or whatever it is. So, help for sure. And the other part of it, the communications, is for your community, is helping out in the community, is knowing more situational--it's something called situational awareness--what's going on? Where are the issues? What's happening? And, you know, that's not just for you to communicate. It's another thing to listen. So, you know, the nice thing about radio is you can both listen and also communicate. And being able to listen to know what's going on is a huge piece of it. So you'll find that even if you're not somebody who's on the air communicating after a disaster, you can at least listen and hear what's going on and know what to watch out for. Like, hey the freeways shut down, so don't go that way. Or, you know, the fire is in this area. Or, you know, in hurricanes, hey, you know, this is where the aid center is, or whatever it is, or this is where someone's distributing food, you know? So there's all that information. It is really helpful as a part of a disaster plan is how do you know what's going on and where things are happening. In the amateur radio community, which is something that everyone should do, you know, they actually share information. So there's people all around town and they go, "Hey, no one said this on the news. There's no information about this. But you guys can't go there. The bridge is down." **Brooke ** 39:42 That makes sense. So, escape route, maybe for lack of a better word, but just like, you know, communicating infrastructure issues. That's really interesting. Other things that you can think of that are, you know, types of information that people need that can be useful in sharing, if any? If not, that's okay. **Ben ** 40:09 Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I think it's the general awareness. And this is a tool, you know, the radio stuff I talk about is just a tool for what's going on. And, what I'm sharing on social media, it's not just the radio stuff, although it's a big part of it, but it's things like, you know, where do you get information about evacuation zones, right? Where is--during fires we can see maps of where the fires are. You can look up... You can look up evacuation centers. You can get maps of flooded areas. There's a lot of information sources. And I think on the communication side, even if you're not cut off, there's a lot of things that just letting people know about--and that's what I do--is what is this situation? Where are the issues? What's going on? I mean, today, I've been sending out messages about flooding. And I don't know if you know, but there's huge waves off the coast of California right now. And they're parts of Santa Cruz, there's parts of the Pacific Coast Highway that are underwater because of these big waves. And just knowing about that stuff is useful in that general awareness. And this whole area of communications, you know, the situational awareness is something that in disasters, you know, it really does make a difference. And I've had people say, "Hey, you know, we knew, because you were paying attention to what's going on with the fire, that we needed to get...we needed to take our horses and get them evacuated," And it takes a while to evacuate horses, right? And, "Oh, our house, we knew that our house was in a threat area. We needed to get...we needed to get our aunt, you know, to safety." And it's just that time, that information, you know, you don't want to be the last person to know that something's happening in your neighborhood. And this whole part of the aspect of listening to the radio helps with that in just the general situational awareness. **Brooke ** 42:11 There's, you know, kind of a component after the radio, because not everyone's going to have the radio, you know, if then, you know, if you are the one who gets the information via the radio, then how you go out and disseminate it. But that's maybe kind of another topic, unless you want to get into it. But, you know, do you put up posters? Like, you know, letting other people know, "Oh, I found out that such and such bridge is down. How do I communicate that to folks that don't have a radio? How do we spread that wider? **Ben ** 42:41 Yeah. And that...I don't think we've solved that problem in general, you know, just how do you get the information faster. I, you know, I talk about the rate just because that puts you on the knowing side of things versus the not-knowing side of things. And it's just...it's just one of those things in disasters, having that awareness--even if you can't communicate out--knowing what's going on gives you an advantage to you know, safety and health and all that. It is really helpful. **Brooke ** 43:12 Yeah, okay, I've got one last question for you, I think. I think, unless something sparks in my brain here. But is this useful in all types of disasters, natural disasters, emergencies, whatnot? Or are there ones that this tool would not be useful or effective for? **Ben ** 43:34 Yeah, that's a good question. Um, I think it's actually useful in most cases. It's very used during hurricanes. It's used a lot during wildfires. It is used a lot in earthquakes. Most of the folks that I know who are licensed here in my area, who are older than me, are, were licensed because of the Northridge earthquake. They all said, "Hey, we..." you know, the typical problem was, "Oh, I was at work. And my wife was one place and my kids were somewhere else and we could not communicate." And they said, "How do we fix that problem?" And so they said, "We're gonna get licensed as an amateur radio operator." And so earthquakes are a huge driver in California. But I think in general, I found it useful in all sorts of situations, whether it's an emergency. So yeah, and even interesting enough--and maybe it's more of a social thing, because there's a social group built in--but even with the pandemic, we we had a group who started out on the radio. And it's...maybe you could have done this on Zoom or on the phone, but there's a bunch of folks on radio who started talking every day. And you knew what's going on and you were able to trade information. Even today, now I go, "Oh, hey, there's a big outbreak of COVID," because, you know, three of the people on the net--we call them net like, it's like a round table or networ and people check in--and someone goes, "Oh, you know what, our whole family just caught COVID." And you go, "Oh, you know, I haven't heard that for a while. So maybe something's going on." You know? It is interesting. It's just another way of getting information about what's going on. And it gives you a little bit of a network. And that network also operates.... You know, the nice thing about what we do is that operates when all the power goes. In California, they've been shutting down power during high-wind events. And that often takes down cell towers. They're supposed to.... They've got some laws in now and they're supposed to put them back up, but it's not there yet. And so they shut things down. No one knows what's going on. They hop on the radio, they go, "Hey, I got a blackout here. What's going on?" Somebody who's outside of the blackout looks it up and says, "Hey, they shut down your whole part of town because of the wind danger," or whatever it is. So, it is useful. **Brooke ** 45:57 Yeah. And going back to our Lahaina example, that's a thing that would have been helpful in preventing some of those fires, if they had shut down power lines with what was coming in. And that is, unfortunately, because of the age of our power system and the lack of maintenance we've done on a lot of our infrastructure. Shutting off the power is one of the things that power companies are doing more often as a safety measure. **Ben ** 46:29 Yeah. And you know, some of that is...is liability, because of the number of fires that have happened and all that. And some of it, interestingly enough--and this is a climate issue--is some of that damage is just happening much more often than it used to. And, you know, some of the things I didn't talk about, but, you know, part of what we do as amateur operators is you don't just have the radio, but you also have to consider how am I going to charge it? How am I going to do that? Do I have a battery bank that works? Do I have a solar panel? There's a lot that goes into that, you know? It's kind of a general resiliency thing, which is...is very relevant in that case, right? Your power goes out and your cell phone tower is now down, how do you know what's going on? Most likely, somebody who's an amateur radio operator has a battery-backed up radio and knows what's going on. Because you know, and it doesn't matter. I can talk to Brazil when none of my neighborhood has power just for fun because it's there and running. **Brooke ** 47:42 Yeah. And before anybody asks me about it, I am not trying to say that the power company shutting down the power is a good thing or a bad thing, only observing that it is a thing that is happening and it has benefits and costs to it. **Ben ** 47:59 Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And it makes sense. I mean, most of the...many wildfires here have been caused by power lines. So, you know, the converse thing is when they shut down the power the, you know, like I said, the cell phone tower doesn't work anymore. And that's what happened in Lahaina, the power stopped working and you lost the cell phone towers and then all of a sudden you're in trouble. **Brooke ** 48:21 Yep, yep. Alright, I think that brings us to a conclusion on this topic for today. So Ben, I want to thank you so much for reaching out and offering to have this conversation with us and making the time to sit with me and talk about it. I have learned some things today and I'm excited about that. Is there anything else that you would like to say? Anything that you would like to plug, social medias, charity groups, anything like that? **Ben ** 48:51 Yep. So um, I am nowadays on Mastodon. So if you want to follow my disaster emergencies and random musings on life, I am ai6yrr@m.ai6yr.org. So that's my...that's actually my callsign, my radio callsign, ai6yrr@m.ai6yrr.org. And, you know, as much as I talked about the disaster part of the hobby is there's a lot of fun stuff too. We can talk to astronauts in space. We have our own satellites. There's all sorts of science stuff you can do. And it is really quite a...it's not just for disasters and emergencies. It just happens to be a useful part of it. **Brooke ** 49:43 Well, thanks for putting that in. I appreciate it. You can also find me on Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke, that's Brooke with an E. And Ben again, I just really want to thank you for coming on today and talking with us. Yeah, **Ben ** 50:00 Hopefully someone learned something. So thanks a lot. **Brooke ** 50:06 And to our listeners, thanks so much for listening. If you enjoy our podcast, please give it a like, drop a comment, or review. Subscribe to us if you haven't already. These things make the algorithms that rule our world offer a show to more people. This podcast is produced by the anarchist publishing collective Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. You can connect with us on Twitter @Tangled_Wild and also on Instagram. Or check out our website at tangledwilderness.org where you can find our extensive list of projects and publications. This podcast and much of the work of Strangers is made possible by our Patreon supporters. If you want to become a supporter, check out patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. There are cool benefits at various support tiers on Patreon. For instance, if you support the collective at just $10 a month, we will mail you a monthly zine. We'd like to give a specific shout out to some of our most supportive Patreon supporters. Thanks to Aly, anonymous BenBen, Boise Mutual Aid, Buck, Carson, Catgut, Chelsea, Chris, Dana, David, Eric, Funder, Hunter, Janice & O'dell, Jenipher, Julia, Kirk, Lord Harken, Marm, Mic Aiah, Milica, Nicole, Paige, paparouna, Patoli, Perceval, Princess Miranda, S.J., Staro, theo, Trixter, and Hoss the Dog. Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co
Daniel does a wild set of facial exercises to get ready for the show. Also, he can no longer tolerate granola for a personal reason that needs to be discussed. I want to know what items you can never have too many of and we take some calls on this topic. Muscle confusion seems to be a myth and apparently I look miserable while I sleep. I want to know if anyone doesn't look back on their early 20s and feel they were entitled and also we discuss The Fisher King and Perceval. And more! Get yourself some new ARIYNBF merch here: https://alison-rosen-shop.fourthwall.com/ Subscribe to my newsletter: http://alisonrosen.substack.com Products I Use/Recommend/Love: http://amazon.com/shop/alisonrosen Check us out on Patreon: http://patreon.com/alisonrosen Buy Alison's Fifth Anniversary Edition Book (with new material): Tropical Attire Encouraged (and Other Phrases That Scare Me) https://amzn.to/2JuOqcd You probably need to buy the HGFY ringtone! https://www.alisonrosen.com/store/
Episode Summary This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn is joined by two humanitarian-aid workers who have been providing care to asylum seekers along the Mexico-Arizona border near Sasabe where Prevention Through Deterrence policies are playing out in realtime as thousands of asylum seekers are left out in the winter desert by Border Patrol. Guest Info Groups like the ones these volunteers work with can be found at nomoredeaths.org/, www.tucsonsamaritans.org, and www.gvs-samaritans.org. Groups in California like borderkindness.org are doing similar work. Host Info Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Transcript Live Like the World is Dying: Crisis on the Arizona Border **Inmn ** 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today Inmn Neruin and today we're gonna be talking about some pretty horrible things going on in the world which, you know, of course, we never talk about horrible things on this podcast. It's always really good and wonderful things. But yeah, we're going to be talking about a crisis that has been going on on the Arizona border near the town of Sasabe. And it's gonna tie in a lot of things that we've talked about on the show before, especially from the No More Deaths interviews. So, if you haven't listened to the No More Deaths interviews, they're not...it's certainly not required. But if you do not have a...like a broad understanding of the history of border militarization or fucking dumb things that Border Patrol does, it might be helpful to go back and listen to those episodes first. But yeah, but before we get to all of that, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts and here is a jingle from another show on that network. Doo doo doo doo doo. [Singing a simple melody] **Inmn ** 02:54 And we're back. Thanks you all so much for coming on the show today. Would y'all Introduce yourself with your names, pronouns, and I guess a little bit about like what you do in the world that relates to what we're going to be talking about? **Bryce ** 03:24 Yeah, Bryce, he/him. I've been working with various desert aid organizations over the past couple of years, Tucson Samaritans, No More Deaths and some search and rescue search and recovery groups. **Ember ** 03:42 I'm Ember, he/him, and have been working with No More Deaths around Arivaca, Arizona for the last year and a half. **Inmn ** 03:53 Cool. So there's been a lot of stuff happening at the wall recently, which, you know, is what we're here to talk about and, yeah, I don't know, do y'all want to just tell us about what's what's going on at the wall? Ember04:18 Yeah, I'll just preface it by saying, you know, we're very much just speaking as individuals who've been involved with wall stuff around Sasabe, Arizona, which is about an hour south of Tucson and we'll talk more about it but to just step back, this is a crisis that's happening all over the border and we're really going to be speaking primarily to the situation that's been unfolding around Sasabe in the last months and weeks and not speaking on behalf of No More Deaths or any other groups. **Inmn ** 04:58 Cool. Cool. Yeah. Yeah, it seems like a huge, huge, huge, sprawling crisis of horrible things. Bryce05:07 But yeah, so I think there's been a lot more media about what's happening in Jacumba or in Lukesville, where hundreds or thousands of people have been coming through the wall, not a port of entry, to seek asylum, and have been left out there in sort of makeshift camps for days or weeks at a time waiting to be apprehended by Border Patrol. And something similar has been happening east of Sasabe, which is this tiny, tiny, tiny little town, as Ember said, about an hour south of Tucson. For the past couple years, people have been doing a similar thing of coming through gaps in the border wall to seek asylum because they're blocked from presenting themselves at ports of entry. So over the past couple of years, it's mostly been like the Tucson Samaritans and Green Valley Samaritans that have been helping these people out, because pretty much the situation was that if you don't call Border Patrol to come apprehend them then Border Patrol will just never come. It's a super remote area of the desert. There's a road that goes along the border wall that you can easily drive to get to these people, but Border Patrol just won't do it because it's not really worth their time. And so at times, there would be people stuck out there for like three or four days. I ran into one group that had written SOS in rocks and had built a fire just trying to get Border Patrol's attention. And this is like two years ago before any of this was even in the news. And just...it's kind of just slowly escalated until the beginning of November. A lot of violence broke out south of Sasabe on the Mexican side. And it's just.... Between that and just other dynamics happening, it just shifted things so that we suddenly started seeing just hundreds of people there on the border wall seeking asylum. And where usually there were gaps closer to Sasabe where they could present so that Border Patrol could just show up in buses or vans and pick people up, now people were showing up much further east in more remote areas that are much more difficult to get to because of Biden's new border wall construction that blocked off access to some of these closer areas. So now the situation quickly became that Border Patrol would take a very long time to pick anybody up. And because of the high volume of people, they're now 20 kilometers, or 30 kilometers away from the actual port of entry. People are having to hike are left overnight just in the middle of nowhere, just building fires or doing whatever they can to survive the night. And, yeah, it's been about a couple of months of that now. Ember08:20 I'm going to just reiterate that, you know, a big call of a lot of groups is to open ports of entry because this is stemming from the point that people can't claim asylum at a port of entry, people are being forced to use this bullshit CBP app and wait for insane amounts of time, if ever, to be allowed to present for asylum. And so as we kind of hear the mainstream propaganda about what's going on, there's very little emphasis on the fact that the reason people are coming through gaps in the wall in really remote areas is fundamentally because they can't claim asylum at a port of entry and because the gaps are being closed nearby and that's just really important to ground it because there's just so much misinformation about that. **Inmn ** 09:10 For folks who don't know, why can't people claim...apply for asylum at a port of entry? Bryce09:17 I think there's a lot of confusion and misinformation about this. A lot of people I think thought that that was going to change when Title 42 was repealed or thinking it had something to do with the MPP, the Remain in Mexico Policy, but this actually was, it was a separate policy decision that at first got some media exposure. It started with metering back in like 2017 or something--sometimes during--where they would where they would just let in a certain amount of people and then CBP agents would actually block people before they got to the port of entry and say "We can't take any more people. You have to show us your passport," all this stuff. And then that turned into during COVID, "We're just not going to take anybody." And then now with Biden, it has continued, where if you don't have a CBP One app, CBP agents will just turn you away at the port of entry. And there's been a lot of legal stuff about it. Like, I think in San Diego there were a couple big court cases where they said, "You can't continue doing this," but the Biden administration has come out saying, like, "We don't actually turn people away at the port of entry. We don't do turn-backs." But clearly on the ground, that is what's happening. And so I think people think of it as like that there's some big law that needs to be changed or that, you know, people are trying to do something sketchy by coming between ports of entry, or at the port of entry, or that there is a legal pathway through the CBP One app and people just aren't doing it. But really, the CBP One app forces people.... It's essentially the remain in Mexico Policy but without the Remain in Mexico Policy. And then if people try to present themselves at the port of entry, which they should be allowed to do, they're just turned away. And there's not some...there's not some big thing causing this to happen. It's just pure policy that could be changed very, very soon if they actually had the desire to do it. **Inmn ** 10:29 Yeah. So it's like with this app, people are being asked to download an app to apply for asylum through and then they just wait for a notification? Bryce11:48 Yeah. And then once the.... This should all be.... Nobody should take my word for this because I'm not like a fucking asylum lawyer or something. This is just from talking to people, my understanding of it. So definitely don't.... Don't take it too seriously. But from what I understand, people are...people download the app and once they get the notification that they have an appointment then they have to get to the port of entry where that appointment is within 24 hours or something. And then just get to it. But there's no like.... The people will wait, you know, a couple months, six months, a year, and they just are sort of in limbo until they get their appointment. **Inmn ** 12:35 Golly, it sounds like.... This sounds like a sick joke of like people like.... Wait, I'm not even gonna make the comparison. This sounds like a sick fucking joke. But um...and so this has been happening for quite some time. But very recently, things kind of got a lot worse in Arizona, or like around Sasabe. Bryce13:05 Yeah, I mean, and it definitely seems like a big part of it is...whatever fighting between rival factions of the cartel south of the border. It's hard to really say exactly, but at the same time, that.... People started coming in higher numbers in the last two months. People also started coming through the San Miguel gate on the Tohono O'odham Nation in even higher numbers than here. And over there, there's not nearly as much.... Border Patrol was promising to, you know, set up structures and give water and all that stuff, but in the end, there's just really not a lot of support over there like, you know, what we have here. There's been a lot of community committee support and donations coming in, which has been great, but over at San Miguel, there's not even that which is already inadequate. **Inmn ** 14:08 Yeah, yeah. And maybe this is sort of me asking a question that I've had about all of this: I've heard that the town of Sasabe is like.... I've heard it referred to as a ghost town right now? Bryce14:27 Yeah, I mean, I think there's like 20 residents left or something like that. I have...a couple of friends of mine went down there recently to visit a friend who's still living there and she runs a migrant outreach center in the town, which hasn't really had people in it, but it's doing fine. The garden is still going. [Inmn "Hell yeahs"] I do know people are definitely interested in coming back if and when things calm down. **Inmn ** 15:00 Do...I guess do you want to talk about what y'all have been experiencing in kind of like the last week, I guess? Ember15:08 Yeah, I mean, pretty much as Bryce was saying, there's been folks responding to this, primarily the Samaritans as a formal group from Tucson and Green Valley, who have been responding to this for much longer. But folks involved with No More Deaths really got involved more significantly about a month ago because of the massive increase in the numbers of people out there and people being pushed further out into the desert. And that response has grown quite a bit. It kind of started with a few people from No More Deaths who were getting involved and then has exponentially increased in the last week. It was a situation that was really, really challenging in terms of the amount of resources and supplies needed for stuff. Like, basically hundreds of people, primarily a lot of children and babies and families and elders, stuck out in the increasingly becoming winter temperatures with completely inadequate supplies, most people who expected to be picked up immediately and we're instead waiting for up to three or four days in the winter conditions in very remote areas of the desert. The border wall outside of this area goes just right through very, very mountainous terrain. And so the border wall, you know, there's a road on the border wall, but it's basically, as you get far out, just being completely out in the middle of the desert. It's an insane road. It just goes straight up and down mountains. And so people are stuck out there for, at times, up to multiple days and may have been waiting on the other side for some days before they crossed. And so a lot of the original response as our group started to get involved was just primarily supply distro and medical care and medical triage. And I mean, just to give a context of how many people were out there, I think we originally had an emergency request for $10,000 and we used that money in about a week. **Inmn ** 17:41 Oh my god. Ember17:42 So that's primarily for food, water, blankets, you know, over the counter meds, and gas for the trucks, and things like that. Things really came to a head. I mean, it was a very untenable situation or unsustainable situation in terms of people going out there regularly and being like, "People are going to die out here. This is a really fucked up situation." People tried to pressure and call Border Patrol to pick people up, which they were slow to do. So sometimes they would do it regularly. Sometimes they would take a lot longer. But last Friday, there was a massive rainstorm. And we had...those of us who had been involved in organizing support around it had already started to put out larger calls for support, realizing this was way out of the depths of just what our group could respond to. And so we were putting out larger calls for support from the Tucson community, from Arivaca, which is a town about 15 miles from Sasabe, and we were preparing a little bit for the rain in terms of...the day before we set up some tarp structures at some of the places people were waiting. But what happened on Friday, I think really expanded the calls to mobilize and got way more people involved. And yeah, I'll leave it to Bryce if you want to talk a little bit about what happened on Friday. Bryce19:25 Sure. Yeah. I mean, I guess some other context would be that, increasingly, we had to do a lot of advocacy for emergency situations because, like Ember said, it was really just, you know, kids, infants, people that were not prepared to be out, you know, 30 mile...30 kilometers from a road, coming just with the clothes on their backs or maybe a little day pack or something but really kind of expecting to be picked up by Border Patrol immediately. And there's a lot of people that had started out with very serious medical conditions even. There's at least a few cases that I was personally involved in of people coming to the United States specifically to seek medical care for their children. So, it'd be like a kid with kidney disease or, you know, needing some kind of medicine daily that hadn't had it for multiple days are really serious things, you know, or some woman who is nine months pregnant and having medical issues. I mean, really serious things where somebody should just not be out in the middle of the desert. And the kind of advocacy we had to do for on 911 [calls] was just really obscene. Like, we call 911, say, there's somebody out here with some particular medical emergency, they'd ask the nationality of the person, whether they were entering the United States illegally, things like that, and then transfer us to Border Patrol. And Border Patrol would either drop the call or say, "Okay, we're sending somebody." and then we sit there for six hours and, of course, nobody comes. There were times when Border Patrol would actually come out. They'd check out like two or three 911 calls, say, "Okay, this person is not going to die today," and then leave. And then we eventually were able to convince some ambulances to occasionally come out for very, very serious cases. But even then, they started getting upset with us for, quote-unquote, "Crying wolf." And just the amount of advocacy that we had to do even to get that response was just...I mean, it was...it would just be hours of calling everybody we knew with connections to be able to get an ambulance down there. And then, even then, we would get threatened with arrest by Border Patrol for transporting people to the highway to rendezvous with an ambulance, even with permission of the ambulance. And so when the rainstorm came, it was this sort of perfect storm where we had a system in place where we were sort of prepared to medivac the most serious patients out of there and just sort of keep everybody else alive until Border Patrol came to pick people up because.... And then we would advocate for, "Okay, these people really need to be taken first. You need to take these people first." Which in itself is a really compromising position to be in just because we're acting as an intermediary between people and their physical safety and the asylum process. It's like this weird.... Like, we're not the government, but we're fulfilling this weird government role. And, yeah, it's a very weird thing. But when the rain storm happened, we were not prepared for the reality of Border Patrol just not showing up at all. They had been pretty consistently, even if we don't see them all day, they eventually show up at like five or six, especially if we call a million times and advocate and call 911, and all that. And so, the roads were muddy, but we were doing it in our janky little trucks, we were driving back and forth just fine. And somewhere around like two or three, it started...we started to realize that just nobody was coming. And they were.... Like, I don't know why, after everything we've all been through, that anybody would have had any faith in Border Patrol to avoid, to want to avoid a mass casualty incident. But here they were, seemingly, just like willingly causing one. Just to give an example of what the scene looked like, we showed up, things were already pretty bad. Like people were in good spirits, just because, you know, they've been traveling so long, they're glad to finally be there. And having a good sense of humor about things is kind of the only way to survive something horrible like that. People were still kind of in that space when we showed up. We handed out food and water. Most people, even though we had built some really rudimentary tarps structures, people generally opted to just keep walking because they didn't want to just be stuck out there in the cold and rain. And every time we drove back and forth along the wall, we just noticed people getting increasingly more desperate as they realized that they're just stuck out in the middle of the desert in this rain. And to the point where there was just no way to properly triage. There would just be.... We were just sort of bouncing.... Or, instead of actually helping people out, we were just bouncing around from emergency to emergency Yeah, we would be on our way to an emergency and then just see somebody laying in a puddle of water, just in agonizing pain--because even, you know, somebody gets a muscle cramp and can't stand anymore and then they're just laying in the cold and rain. And they don't have warm gear, they don't have anything waterproof. They're just laying there and it becomes a medical emergency just because they're stuck out in the elements in this rainstorm. And so we'd be on our way to some medical emergency and have to drop two people off to go deal with another one and then just hope that another of our trucks would come back to get people. And yeah, we started just having to treat it as--I mean, Ember could speak more to the medical stuff as an EMT--but there were...we had nurses with us and other medical people who essentially just started treating the triage as if it was...as if it was going to be a mass casualty incident. Ember25:55 Yeah, I mean, Friday set historic rainfall records. In Tucson, there was an inch of rain. And there was probably almost that much where we were and we're talking about, you know, winter desert rain. So you know, 4000', almost 4000', elevation, like freezing...almost freezing temperatures and dumping, dumping rain, including large amounts of thunder and lightning. And with the lightning, keep in mind that everybody who's there is against this 30' metal border wall. And so, just a really, really scary situation. And it very quickly became obvious, as Bryce said, that we were...it was going to be way overwhelming for the capacity of the amount of people who are out there to respond to. It kind of started in the morning, there were a few Samaritans', a group out of Tucson and Green Valley, a few Samaritans' vehicles out there and then a few No More Deaths trucks came out. But one of the first things we did when we really understood the scope of the situation was just put out a massive call for more support, which was really inspiring to see really come out that night. But obviously, it takes time for people to mobilize. So we really tried, those of us who were on the ground there really realized, "Okay, this really has the potential to be a really horrific mass casualty situation." And I want to say, I have no illusions about Border Patrol, no illusions about the State giving a shit about people seeking asylum dying in the desert, but I was surprised, based on my experiences in the few weeks prior, I was genuinely surprised that Border Patrol completely refused to come out at all. And once that became clear, I think our plans really changed, because those of us who were responding that day, our plans for the rain were really to try to build, you know, to have some some shelters but fundamentally to keep people okay until they can get picked up by Border Patrol and brought to an actual place to be warm and dry. And as it became clear that Border Patrol was absolutely not going to come that day--and we had Border Patrol liaisons on the phone with them--and they were being pretty explicit about, "Yeah, we can't come. It's raining." Obviously, they can. They have trucks way better than our trucks. And they chose not to at all. And once that became clear, I think our mission really changed quite drastically too, to where, "Okay, we need to get as many people to these shelters and we need to build more shelters, but, fundamentally, we need to get people off the wall, just from a medical perspective." I mean, I was rolling out in the morning with my friend who's a nurse who has been in a lot of disaster contexts and situations and he was like, "Holy shit, this is one of the worst things I've ever seen." **Bryce ** 29:01 I think he said, "This is [emphasis on "is"] the worst thing I've seen." Ember29:03 He said, "This is the worst thing I've seen," and equated it to when he was in Haiti after the earthquake. It was where I think those of us out there were.... Once we realized the extent of the situation and thought that we are going to see a lot of children die today. A lot. You know? It was--and I will preface this by saying that, as we know of, nobody did die that day. And I think that was because of generally just choices of people responding on the ground, people taking care of each other who were out there on the wall, and pure luck of breaks in the rain are the reasons for that. I think it was a situation that could have.... A lot of people absolutely could have and would have died. But, you know, before the rain storm, there had been a lot of conversations about, you know, "Should we be driving people to the substation?" which is, you know, where people can be processed by Border Patrol--that has a certain capacity limit--in the town of Sasabe. And there were a lot of these conversations about the legal risks of that and the potential dangers to people seeking asylum because, to keep in mind, like most people, when we've been out there for the time any of us had been out of the wall, most people wanted rides to the substation. That was, you know, a big thing people wanted and needed. That's where they were trying to get to. And there were all these conversations about the potential dangers of that legal risk. And what we encountered on Friday in the rainstorm was a situation where there was simply no choice. I mean, we were able to have some janky makeshift shelters at two camps along the wall that people, some people, did stay in, and we're trying to treat and warm and dry and triage those people, but there were about 150 people--there was over 300 people out in the wall that day and there was about 150 people who were walking past the last camp the 12 to 15 miles between the camp. And by camp, I mean a very shitty janky tarp structure setup. I don't mean a real camp. But there are about 150 people walking between the town of Sasabe that like 12 to 15 miles from the camp. Those people were out in the rain with no protection whatsoever. And so after we did some triage and made sure that, you know, the people further back on the wall were at one of these makeshift camps, we made the decision--that was not even really a choice--but just fundamentally that like people are going to die if we don't drive everyone to the substation. So we made a choice to evacuate everyone on the road in multiple caravans of trucks and shuttles to the substation while calling Border Patrol, telling them what we were doing, making it clear that it wasn't really a choice, that people people are going to die if they don't get to get to the station. And we weren't really sure how they would react to that. They, Border Patrol, did process everybody that was brought to the station. They got buses down from Tucson. And at the same time, they were being pretty hostile with volunteers that were evacuating people there, including a lot of threats of arrest, that people would be arrested and to "Not be doing this." But no volunteers were arrested. And everybody who was evacuated to the substation was processed within the next chunk of hours. And so, yeah, that kind of changes the whole dynamic in a sense. And the other thing that changed the dynamic is just this massive call for mobilization and support. So a lot of people from Tucson and Arivaca came down to support that evening and we were really in a triage situation all day and night of evacuating the most vulnerable and medically unwell people to the Border Patrol station and trying to do our best to make the makeshift camps slightly safer. But fundamentally, they were extremely inadequate shelters for people in the conditions that we were in. **Inmn ** 33:34 Dang, yeah, that sounds harrowing and just fucking terrible. I I don't have a real emotional response to it because it's just...it's just fucked. But I don't know, it's like this thing where it feels like things we've talked about on the show before with Sophie and Parker from No More Deaths talking to us about Border Patrol's kind of...their tendency to create a humanitarian crisis that they then refuse to respond to. But they, at the same time, you know, they claim to...like, they claim all the time to rescue people from the desert. Or, like, framing themselves as these humanitarian actors when they're the ones who are creating these crises and then completely not responding to them or like.... I don't know, like, hearing more confirmation of discrimination of medical dispatchers and stuff to respond to calls or to pass that off to Border Patrol who then just doesn't respond. I don't know. It's just terrible. And it's like... Like Border Patrol's perfectly capable of responding to these crises, right? **Bryce ** 35:24 Oh, totally and even in this case with the same.... Because eventually they do get everybody. So if they just...they're basically making the choice, in addition to like border wall, asylum, all that stuff, even with the current situation as it is, they're making the choice to leave people out there versus if they just went and got everybody. They say their issue is capacity for processing people. But why not have them wait in Sasabe or near the station or somewhere where they're not in the middle of the desert? They could just go get everybody, bring them to the station, and have them wait where an ambulance can arrive, where people can easily show up and give them help, where they're not just.... I mean, there's vigilantes along the wall, there's like gun battles. For many days, we were hearing automatic gunfire just south of where people were waiting for asylum. Like it's very much even outside of the danger of the desert itself. It is not a good place to be waiting. These people are freaking terrified. But the benefit of them being there for Border Patrol is that they're totally invisible. So they're just sort of hiding what...a thing that should be happening in public view in front of the Border Patrol station, in the middle of the desert where there's just extreme danger. If they wanted to, they could bring everybody to a safer place. It would be bad for PR, because then we'd have a bunch of news articles about like, "All these people are like being kept in an open air detention facility," or whatever. But they're essentially doing the same thing. But because it's far enough away from the public eye and from their own facilities, it just becomes invisible in a way, the same as, you know, Border Patrol's nonsense that they get up to with other kinds of people crossing the border with Prevention Through Deterrence, all of that policy; the suffering really is the point. I think they're hoping that people will tell stories back home that they, "Showed up and things were really bad and we almost died and there was this rainstorm," or whatever, "Don't do it this way." And the same way that their narratives kind of push things on the quote-unquote "smugglers" as being these predatory people that--which they are--but as being like, "It's them that's doing this. They're the ones that are causing this," and just really outsourcing any blame of anything on to on to other people. **Inmn ** 38:05 This situation makes me wonder if Border Patrol is making this conscious choice to, where with open air detention facilities they're--in Arizona at least--are just like, "Oh, we don't want to deal with that." or, "We don't want to deal with the PR. We just don't want to deal with it so we're gonna do this other thing to push people further out or to really invisiblize it," like you're talking about? I mean, that seems like a very Border Patrol thing to do. Which is horrible to laugh about but.... I guess you talked a little bit about Border Patrol's responses to what's going on, or to interventions that people are taking, and I'm just wondering if there's any more, anything more to say about how Border Patrol is reacting to how people are intervening in the situation? **Ember ** 39:09 There's been significant threats of arrest to people as we've continued to evacuate people to the substation, and to people that are just walking to the makeshift camps. There have been continual threats of arrest. Some volunteers had their IDs taken and said they were coming back for them to arrest them. Fundamentally, we feel extremely strongly that, obviously, we would be doing it even if it wasn't legal because it's the right thing to do, because we're not going to...we're going to do what we can to keep people from dying. But fundamentally, we feel very strongly that it is completely legal what we're doing and we will not back down from threats from Border Patrol and have been pretty explicit with them about that, **Bryce ** 40:00 Yeah. Also, after one of those threats of arrest, they did go up to the further camp, which usually is a lot of women and children, and they picked up just a few people. They could have picked up way more. They just picked up a few people and said, "Wait in three lines. We're coming back for the rest." The people all--it was, I think, like, maybe 100 people or so--they all waited in lines. Border Patrol left and then just never came back. And so people ended up standing in lines for hours, thinking that they were going to miss their place in line or mess up if they left the lines. And [it was] just this really cruel display of--and this is right after we got some media attention for the thing that happened during the rain, so maybe [Border Patrol was] punishing them for what we were up to or, you know, who knows how those people think? But that was one thing that we saw. Another thing is, we've actually been caught by Border Patrol while transporting people. And they stopped and essentially thanked us. So there's, in addition to threats of arrest, we've also gotten that, because, I mean, if you're a Border Patrol agent, and you have an...you believe your own bullshit about like, "You're a humanitarian," and all these things, or whatever, then by those standards, hypothetically, we were actually doing your job and you should be thankful for what we're up to by moving people. And this one agent that we've run into a few different times has definitely had that attitude, which is.... Yeah, I don't know whether.... I don't even know how to think about that. But it's made it so that it's given us a little bit more confidence in what we're doing, but also has set up a weird thought of like, "Oh shit. At what point are they going to stop picking people up because they think we're gonna do it? At what point are we really just unpaid fucking Border Patrol agents?" And so I think there's a big.... And even just our role in the camps and all this stuff, like, how much of what we're actually doing to save lives is playing into the wants and needs of the Border Patrol? And so trying to figure out ways to--we have been talking a lot internally about ways to ways to push back on that and sort of change tactics of what we're doing in order to...in order to pressure them to be doing the right thing, rather than this unsustainable thing in which we're clothing, feeding, housing, and triaging hundreds of people a day, which is just like wildly unsustainable. **Inmn ** 43:01 I mean, it seems like this thing that's become very wildly unsustainable. And I know that y'all have recently put out this big call for like, what? For like things needing to be different? Pr like, just like broader kind of community support? Just wondering if y'all wanted to talk about that a little bit? **Ember ** 43:28 Yeah. The calls for support really started to come out of, you know, conversations after a few weeks of folks in our group responding really heavily to the situation and realizing that we needed way more support. And also, I mean, for one, supportive people autonomously responding to the situation outside of our organization, and also more like visiblization what's going on because it was very invisible. There's a few news stories about things going on in other parts of the Borderlands, similar situations, or even worse situations, but really not the attention that the extent of the situation demanded. So those calls for support went out before the rain, but the rain day really amplified it. A lot of people from larger networks in the area came out that night. And it led to huge...way more numbers of people getting involved. And part of it is us really trying to encourage a non--outside of our organization--an autonomous response from more people regionally to the situation that can obviously look a lot of different ways and I don't think any of us presume to know what the best strategy or way to go about this is, but that, you know, making it more visible and having more people being involved is is an important and good thing. And I will add to that, this is obviously a situation going on throughout the Borderlands. But I think we're in a unique position because of where we are, because of our proximity to Tucson because of networks of mutual aid and support that exists in these areas, because of the proliferation of aid groups that exist in these areas, and just generally, yeah, large networks of individuals that are down to support with something like this. I think there's a potential for us to really build a lot of mobilization and support here that hopefully can also help spread and support other places where people are trying to respond to the crisis in their areas, some of which, as Bryce was talking about are, are significantly worse than what's happening here. But it obviously also breeds enormous questions about like, what are we actually doing? What is our role here? And, yeah, and what are we doing? And I don't think, you know, anyone presumes to know the answers to all questions. **Inmn ** 46:06 Yeah, I think in terms of what the role of aid groups is.... Just just wanting to bring up this like, kind of weird, maybe complexity of like, I don't know, it sounds, it sounds really, it sounds really weird to have to put yourself in the position of helping people get to Border Patrol or like helping people get to situations that are a potential open air detention facility or a detention facility that's as hellish as it is out in the desert. But like, I don't know, that.... It seems like a real...it seems a real mindfuck. And I don't know, this isn't really a question, just a thought. **Bryce ** 46:58 It's fucked up. **Inmn ** 47:01 Yeah. Yeah. I was...we talked a little off air about this, but so there has been a little bit of media attention and I know that y'all have not been exactly happy about the media, like what large media sources are saying about what's happening? I was wondering if y'all wanted to talk about what kind of media myths or narratives you see going around that don't reflect what's happening? **Ember ** 47:44 Yeah, and I think on a personal level, just those of us that were out Friday that had been out for weeks before, you know, there have been a lot of conversations about the role of media and our general hesitation with media with most of our other work. But it just became clear that there had to be a significant push for a lot more media outrage about what was going on and about what happened that rainy day, because it was just a question of that this is just going to continue to happen and we need to visibilize this more. There was a journalist, a local journalist, who was out, who came out during the rainstorm and wrote a solid story about what was happening, but the larger mainstream media attention to it has been pretty horrific. I'll say the New York Times came out here a few days ago and wrote a disgusting propaganda piece that basically...it was a piece about how, you know, hordes of people are coming into the country and Border Patrol is overwhelmed and doing everything they can and trying to rescue as many people as they can. But they're so overwhelmed. It felt very much like the liberal media version of like an "invasion of the country," and Border Patrol being overwhelmed. I mean, I think it's really scary that those are the...are the stories that are taking shape in the more kind of centrist or liberal mainstream media with no context of why people are coming here, no context of why people are being pushed out into the remote areas of the desert, no context about how much money Border Patrol has, and their absolute refusal to do their job in this case, which is to process people that are seeking asylum. None of that context. And instead, a story that literally is about, you know, Border Patrol just like trying to do everything they can to save these people being manipulated by smugglers. And it was also in the New York Times, was next to an article about the--kind of fear mongering--about a large migrant caravan that's coming up through Mexico right now. And it just felt very much part of this media narrative that is really just playing into the worst fascist impulses. So, yeah, it was a pretty horrific article. **Bryce ** 50:20 Yeah. And in addition to that, I mean, the New York Times article, in addition to other articles that ended up talking about the rainstorm and some of what we've been dealing with, we're really tucked into a different story about the record number of migrant apprehensions. It seems like all these news media outlets were just sort of waiting for those numbers to get released and then they kind of had these pre-written articles and anything about the humanitarian disaster was just sort of tucked into that, which that narrative is always like, "There's too many people at the border. Border Patrol is overwhelmed," or they're not really interested in any other narrative whatsoever. And, which is just really bizarre, because, I mean, when a journalist comes out and we talk to them, the first thing we explain is [that narrative] is so much the opposite to what we actually see on the ground. Like, the migrant apprehension data is inflated because there's now, rather than people seeking asylum at a port of entry, they're coming through irregularly where that gets put in as a Border Patrol migrant apprehension. So it seems like numbers-wise that there's some huge surge of, you know, the numbers are just off the charts and they've "never seen anything like this before." But these people actually should be under an entirely different system altogether, coming through a port of entry and, in which case, the migrant apprehensions would probably not change that much at all. And so there's this narrative that gets pushed forth where you look at this increase in numbers, which is totally fake, and then you get to show Border Patrol in a place where we've been going out and just seeing...dealing with the most horrific medical emergencies every single day and watching Border Patrol do nothing to stop it and also [Border Patrol is] causing the situation in the first place, and it shows them, like...rescuing people. I think the New York Times article specifically said like, you know, under the caption for one of the pictures, it was like, "Border Patrol's leaves with a group of people and rushes off to go rescue some more people," or something like that, which as you're saying before, it's like, they cause a problem and then give themselves credit for rescues, which is just not...is just upsetting and false and just like, insulting on a human level, you know? **Inmn ** 52:57 Yeah. Yeah, they're really...they're quite...they're quite adept at what they do, which is creating humanitarian crises that they then pretend to respond to so that everyone thinks that they're humanitarian actors. Meanwhile, they're sitting on their asses doing nothing. **Ember ** 53:25 Well, I mean, literally. When we were evacuating people to the station that day, they were sitting on their asses doing nothing, not wanting to get up. "Well, there was a massive rainstorm," and asking us, you know, like, "How do you know these people are cold?" as a question. **Bryce ** 53:42 Yeah, literally. **Ember ** 53:43 That was a question. I was literally asked. And this was with a group of like, mostly children who had been out in the freezing rain and were in severe danger of hypothermia, and they [Border Patrol] literally were like, "How do you know these people are cold?" **Bryce ** 54:00 And then since we started building shelters, they would ask, "Oh, do they have shelter?" using our little like, half-assed, last-ditch effort to fucking have people not die against us or as an excuse to not go pick people up because they have, quote-unquote, "shelter?" You know, I mean, it's just horrific. And Ember, do we have permission to say that correction thing? **Ember ** 54:26 Oh, yeah, I think we should say it. I mean, yeah. **Inmn ** 54:31 I'm so curious about what's going to be said. **Bryce ** 54:32 So, the New York Times, their original article that they published, so we all sat together and read it together and we're like, "Oh!" we're all yelling like, "What the fuck? That's bullshit. Like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like, that's totally..." and we get to the end and see that they have a paragraph saying, "Last friday, Border Patrol had to evacuate 300 people during this rainstorm that almost caused all these deaths," or whatever. And we were just like...I almost threw the computer across the room. It was like, you know, we expected an awful narrative but to have not just a lie but the literal opposite of what happened, like the people that caused the problem.... You know, because it would have been messed up no matter what it was on that day, but we expected, stupidly, Border Patrol to show up in the same way that they had been. And so by not showing up, they actually caused a potential mass casualty incident. So to give them credit for averting something that just outside of anything, any context, just was going to happen, and Border Patrol "rescued" people...and not that some random scrappy punks from Tucson wandered down into the desert and under threat of arrests drove a bunch of people to the Border Patrol station was just like...like, I don't even have words for.... Like, what do you even fucking do with that? Like? Yeah, it's...it was, so we...one of our media people forced them to make a correction. And they quickly did. They didn't fix the rest of the heinous fucking article, but they at least changed that, which they also seem to credit it to Border Patrol. But our person was there during their [NYT's] interview with Border Patrol, and at no point did Border Patrol claim to have rescued anybody on that day. So this was just New York Times on their own just coming up with some bullshit out of thin fucking air. **Ember ** 56:37 And then when they corrected it, they never...there's no note in the article that says a previous version was...had this lie in it and it was corrected. But I will also add that the article on the website was also next to an ad for Exxon Mobil and the other articles next to it were defending the genocide of Palestinian kids because IDF spokesperson says "It's justified." So we also obviously shouldn't be, you know, shouldn't be surprised. **Inmn ** 57:06 Yeah. I mean, you know, it's like, we see the same thing over and over and over again, of governments causing horrifying things to happen and then blaming it on some shadowy thing and then taking credit for fixing it. Or making it worse. Wow, yeah, that's fucked up. Like fucking shame. Shame on the New York Times. I know this is not a new thing for anyone to hear, but fucking shame on y'all. Yeah, it's upsetting. It's beyond upsetting. Well, I, you know, I want to end on a positive note. What's some like...what's some inspiring shit? Because also, this is...this is like, I don't know, it's...I feel like it's easy to get wrapped into this, the horrifying reality of like, "Oh, we're just doing Border Patrol's job for them." Or, like, "How sustainable is this?" But y'all I've been doing...like, people have been doing some truly inspiring shit and I think that's like really worth reflecting on and y'all will continue to do really amazing things to respond to these horrifying things. **Bryce ** 58:42 But also, just right afterwards, the huge community mobilization that happened and continues to happen has just been not surprising but just really amazing like knowing that in some situations like this people can just…the Tucson community will just throw down so hard and so quickly for some shit is just… like I think brought us all to tears the next day when we went down to collect donations and stuff. **Inmn ** 1:00:13 Yeah, the supply drives have been wild. Like that's... Yeah, I don't know. Ember, you got any inspiring shit to go out on? **Ember ** 1:00:25 I mean, everything Bryce said. And just like, I mean, the night with the rainstorm, where it's like, what we really realized we needed at a point is just like, people are building tarp structures, people are taking care of each other, but what we really needed at a certain point was just more trucks to drive people and evacuate people to the substation. And we would just get, kind of, convoy after convoy, late in the evening and at night of friends or people we don't even know, through our networks, coming down. And it was really fucked up because it wasn't Border Patrol, who we needed to fucking pick people up. But to just see so many people come out on really last minute notice and be able to help with evacuating lots of people, what we needed was those vehicles and more and more people. And people really showed up and continue to show up. And it's the same thing people are doing all over the country in response to this, you know, from cities where people are mobilizing to support asylum seekers that are, you know, just being dropped off in random cities, and to just like other places along the border where people are responding to this at its inception point at the wall. Like, it's really.... Yeah, the amount of mobilization is pretty awesome, just people like trying to take care of each other on all levels. **Inmn ** 1:01:52 Are there any things you want to say before we...before we break? Any, you know, broader call things people who are listening hundreds or thousands of miles away can do? **Ember ** 1:02:12 I think, you know, on a small scale people are gonna do what they can in the places they are, but on a larger scale, it's like...a lot of these media narratives, a lot of the right-wing push, all of that is really going to continue to grow and push for harsher, gnarlier border policies. And I think that really the thing that can push back against that is people mobilizing together and organizing against it. And I do think there is power for...or potential for, with enough, you know, people, power for things to actually not get gnarlier but, you know, go in the other direction. And I think we really have to keep that in mind that we can't just submit to the idea that, you know, the right-wing and the mainstream news outlets are just gonna push this narrative and policies are gonna get stricter and stricter. Like, we have power to push back against that as people everywhere, mobilizing and organizing together. **Inmn ** 1:03:18 Great. Well, I mean, you know, not great, but...shit. Great that people are doing great things in response. I'm a little emotionally dead end right now because this...because everything's just really fucked. Thanks, you all so much for coming on today and talking about what's going on. And, you know, if anyone in the Arizona area wants to donate 4x4 trucks, donate your 4x4 truck. **Ember ** 1:03:58 It will die a glorious death. **Bryce ** 1:04:03 Yeah, a couple of trucks have already died on the border wall roads. So, trucks are very needed. **Ember ** 1:04:11 I will add too, obviously, we preface it that we're just talking about this one area, but maybe we could link in the show notes to just some of the other struggles of other groups and communities, you know, pushing back and mobilizing for similar shit. **Inmn ** 1:04:28 Yeah. **Bryce ** 1:04:30 I mean, yeah, it's all over too. I mean, the stuff in California has gotten a lot of coverage. But also in Texas this stuff is happening just as much. So it's really like border wide. And it's somehow managed to be pretty invisible or co-opted into other narratives. But yeah, pushing...pushing back on that I think is super important. **Inmn ** 1:04:52 Cool. Well, thanks y'all for coming on today. Hope you get some rest. **Bryce ** 1:05:02 Yeah, thank you. **Inmn ** 1:05:07 Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this show, then do what you can to fight border militarization and do what you can to support asylum seekers in your city. Or go out and respond. If you're near a place where similar things like what's happening in Arizona and Sasabe are happening, then go out and get involved, see what you can do to help. And also, if you like the show, you can support it. You can support the show by liking, subscribing, following, and whatever.... These words are.... I'm clearly actually detached from how the algorithm works. And you can also just tell people about the show. It's one of the better ways to support it and one of, just one of the best ways that people hear about the show. You can also support Live Like the World is Dying by supporting our publisher, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness is a radical publishing collective. We put out books, zines, and other podcasts, obviously. And you can support Strangers by buying books. You can support Strangers by listening to our other podcasts, like my other podcast, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, or our other podcast, The Spectacle, which was formerly the Anarcho Geek Power Hour. You can also support Strangers by supporting us on Patreon. If you support us on Patreon, for $10 a month, then we'll mail you a cool zine every month, anywhere in the world. And you can subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. And if you support us at $20 a month, then we will give you a really awesome thank you at the end of all of our podcasts, which are the names that you usually hear. And what I think is really cool about the acknowledgments tier of our Patreon is that you can put whatever! You know you can put whatever name you want there and we will thank and acknowledge it. So, you know, come up with a cool name or a cool organization that you want people to about like six times a month and we'll thank it. We will thank those things. And speaking of which, we would like to thank Patolli, Eric, Perceval, Buck, Julia, Catgut, Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, BenBen, Anonymous, Funder, Janice & O'dell, Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, Theo, Hunter, S.J., Paige, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Staro, Jenipher, Kirk, Chris, Michaiah, and Hoss the Dog. Thanks y'all so much for all of your support and making this show and so many other shows possible. And you know, to let people know, our Patreon goes to support, you know, broader things that Strangers does, but it also goes to support people who helped create the show. We pay our audio editor and our transcriptionist and maybe one day we'll be able to pay guests or hosts. But currently...currently, we can't do that. But yeah, anyways, I hope that everyone's doing as well as they can with everything that's going on. And we will see you next time. Bye. Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co