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Mi entrevistado en este episodio es Ernest Cañada. Es coordinador de Alba Sud y docente de la Universidad de Barcelona. Investiga en torno al trabajo, los conflictos socioecológicos y las alternativas en el desarrollo turístico. Ha publicado: Viajar a todo tren. Turismo, desarrollo y sostenibilidad (Icaria, 2005, con Jordi Gascón); Turismo en Centroamérica: un nuevo escenario de conflictividad social (Enlace Editorial, 2010); Turismo placebo. Nueva colonización turística: del Mediterráneo a Mesoamérica y El Caribe. Lógicas espaciales del capital turístico (Enlace Editorial, 2011, con Macià Blàzquez); El turismo en el inicio del milenio: una lectura crítica a tres voces (FTR, 2012, con Jordi Gascón y Joan Buades); Turismos en Centroamérica. Un diagnóstico para el debate (Enlace Editorial, 2013); Turismo comunitario en Centroamérica. Experiencias y aprendizajes (Enlace Editorial, 2014).Notas del Episodio* Alba Sud y su historia* El despojo en Nicaragua* El surgimiento de turismo en Costa Rica como una herramienta neoliberal*  El Malestar en la Turistificación: Pensamiento Crítico Para Una Transformación de Turismo* El fin de turismo barato y el policrisis de hoy* Postcapitalismo y terminos complementarios* Monstruos peores* Aprender poner limites* La pluralidad de posibilidades de turismos postcapitalistasTarea* El malestar en la turistificación. Pensamiento crítico para una transformación del turismo - Icaria Editorial* Alba Sud - Facebook - Instagram - Twitter* #TourismPostCOVID19. Turistificación confinada* Ernest Cañada - Facebook - Instagram - TwitterTranscripcion en espanol (English Below)Chris: [00:00:00] Bienvenido Ernest, al podcast del fin de turismo. Ernest: Muchas gracias. Muy encantado estar aquí. Chris: igual es un gran honor poder hablar finalmente contigo. Mi pregunto si, pues, para empezar, si podrías decirnos de este, dónde hablas hoy y cómo es el mundo allá por ti? Ernest: Yo habitualmente resido en Barcelona, entre Barcelona y Mallorca, porque estoy entre la universidad de las Islas Baleares y Alba Sud, y en estos momentos estoy en Buenos Aires que estoy trabajando en una investigación sobre experiencias de gestión distinta, fuera de las lógicas del capitalismo. Y esto nos llevo a identificar distintas experiencias. Y ahora estoy empezando una investigación con el Hotel Bauen, a lo que fue el Hotel Bauen y a cerrado y la cooperativa que lo gestionó durante 20 años, Es parte el proceso que estamos haciendo, identificación [00:01:00] de experiencias diversas plurales que tienen que ver con como pensar la posibilidad de organizar el turismo bajo otros modos y esto nos elevado por caminos distintos de América Latina, de España. Y ahora estoy aquí.Chris: Pues gracias Ernest. Y si vamos a estar hablando de ese tema pero más allá de las vision que que hay, que existe, que podemos imaginar sobre un turismo post-capitalista o algo alrededor, algo así. Pero antes de meternos en eso, pues tú y yo hemos estado en contacto durante los últimos dos años, en parte debido a tu trabajo en el ámbito de los estudios críticos de turismo y a tu proyecto Alba Sud que en algunos de nuestros invitados anteriores incluidos de Ivan Murray, Robert Fletcher y Macia Blasquez ha participado.Me encantaría que pudieras contarme un poco [00:02:00] sobre Alba Sud, Ernest, su misión, su historia y su situación actual Ernest: Con mucho gusto. Ah, mira, Alba Sud nace en 2008. Legalmente lo habíamos legalizado antes por si algún grupo de compañeros por si algún día nos hacía falta, pero formalmente empieza a funcionar el año 2008 y empieza a funcionar en Managua, Nicaragua, que era donde yo residía en ese momento.Y fundamentalmente fue un acuerdo de personas que nos dedicábamos a la investigación y a la comunicación para trabajar con análisis críticos y al mismo tiempo propositivos en torno al turismo. Esto fue algo que fue original desde el principio, esta doble preocupación, por cómo pensar los impactos, los efectos que tenía el desarrollo turístico bajo el capitalismo y que tipo de dinámicas de violencia estructural y directa generaban y al mismo tiempo, cómo pensar posibilidades de salir de ese [00:03:00] marco de esas lógicas. Y eso fue un sello que desde el principio empezamos. Con los años Alba Sud fue creciendo, integrándose como una red de investigadoras e investigadores en turismo. Ahora tenemos presencia en 10 países en España, en Francia, en Europa, y luego en América latina, en la República Dominicana, en México, en El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Brasil, Uruguay y Argentina.Entonces es una red que conformamos gentes que nos dedicamos a distintos ámbitos de la análisis turístico y que compartimos espacios de trabajo y análisis e intervención política. Para nosotros, Alba Sud es un centro de investigación, pero no es un centro académico si nos preocupa menos las dinámicas académicas, aunque hay una parte de nuestro equipo de personas que colaboran que están en la universidad, distintas universidades. Lo que nos preocupa es cómo generar [00:04:00] conocimiento que sea útil para las comunidades, para las organizaciones comunitarias, para las asociaciones civiles, para sindicatos, para cuando es posible la administración pública. Es decir, intentamos generar conocimiento, análisis sistematización, propuestas que de alguna manera contribuyen a hacer visible las cosas que funcionan mal, que son un desastre que generan dolor en este mundo en relación con el turismo y al mismo tiempo, a pensar horizontes de esperanza.Este es un poco el propósito. Para ello, nos dotamos de eso de un equipo amplio de personas que colaboran unas más estrechamente con el día a día, otras que puntualmente colaboran y montamos básicamente nuestros trabajos se articula en torno a una web, la www.AlbaSud.Org, y lo estructuramos en trabajos de investigación que salen después en un formato [00:05:00] escrito por distintas formas, que luego te cuento un trabajo, además de la forma de la investigación, vinculado a la formación a poner a generar procesos de diálogo que nos permitan escuchar, reflexionar conjuntamente, poniendo en el mismo nivel personas que vienen de la academia con personas que tienen experiencias concretas de trabajo. Y finalmente, un ámbito más de incidencia política, más de acompañamiento organizaciones y de acompañarles para incidir políticamente. En el ámbito de la investigación, luego lo expresamos, básicamente a través de unos artículos cortos que hacemos, publicamos alrededor de 100, 110, 120 al año, que son artículos cortos de 2000-2500 palabras, que sabemos que son muy usados en las universidades, como material de discusión. Y un poco del propósito es este que se hiervan como pequeñas artículos bien escritos o intentamos que estén bien [00:06:00] escritos, que estén en un lenguaje simple, que la complejidad no tiene que ver con las palabrotas académicas que usamos, sino la profundidad del pensamiento que incorporan, pero que tienen que estar poder ser leídas por mucha gente.Tenemos esto. Luego, pusimos en marcha un sello editorial propio que es Alba Sud Editorial, en el cual tenemos una colección de libros, una de informes y recientemente una de policy brief más dirigidos a recomendaciones de política. Y básicamente Alba Sud eso. Es un espacio de encuentro entre personas que no nos resignamos a pensar que el desarrollo turístico necesariamente tenga que comportar esto, que estamos acompañando las resistencias, las luchas de los muchos males y violencias que genera este desarrollo capitalista a través del turismo y que al mismo tiempo, intentamos construir lo que decía antes "horizontes de esperanza" que nos permitan estimular la lucha y la resistencia, [00:07:00] pensando en en futuros más deseables que es creo que en estos momentos también necesitamos.Chris: Gracias, Ernest. Sí. Pues por lo que he visto, lo que he leído, lo que he encontrado ahi en el sitio de Alba Sud. Pues es, es una organización y sitio único en el mundo. Y pues yo tengo mucho honor de estar contigo hoy hablando de estas cosas y especialmente contigo como el fundador, Y entonces, para agregar, para profundizar un poco más de la historia, de tu historia, la próxima pregunta viene de nuestro amigo mutuo compañero Macía Blasquez a quien entrevisté en la temporada cuatro. Europa. Y el pregunta, "afirma que tú has sido entre muchas otras cosas activista en Centroamérica, como nos dijiste, y entonces él quiere saber cómo han cambiado tus opiniones y tu carrera de este [00:08:00] entonces?" Ernest: Buena pregunta.Ah, yo empecé a trabajar en Centroamérica acompañando. Bueno, primero pasé seis años que iba y venía. Estaba medio año en Centroamérica más o menos a otro medio en España. Y finalmente me quedé a trabajar en Nicaragua con una organización que se le llamaba "Luciérnaga" ahora "Ilegalizada," dedicada a la comunicación.Y desde ahí empezamos a organizar campañas de comunicación en distintos temas que tenían que ver con las necesidades y los derechos de la mayoría de la gente y de como estaban sufriendo procesos de despojo de posesión. Y trabajamos en torno a temas que tenían que ver con la salud y los derechos sexuales o reproductivos o la soberanía alimentaria. Y en una de estas, organizamos una campaña que duró cuatro años de investigación y comunicación sobre turismo. En un contexto, estoy hablando del año [00:09:00] 2004-2008, en el cual Nicaragua se estaba abriendo al turismo en esos momentos. Y entonces identificábamos claramente los altos niveles de violencia que eso podía comportar con procesos de desplazamiento.Y había que acompañar a las comunidades en esas dinámicas, y que además eran compartidas en El Salvador, en Guatemala, en Honduras, en Costa Rica y al mismo tiempo, empezar a pensar posibilidades de "si era posible utilizar el turismo bajo el control de las propias comunidades." Esa fue mi mi inserción en el mundo fundamentalmente del turismo.Y a partir de ahí, después de trabajar unos cuatro años en Luciérnaga y pusimos en marcha Alba Sud y en parte recuperamos en Alba Sud esa especialización vinculado con el turismo. Pensábamos, y es algo que hemos reflectado muchas veces con Ivan Murray que también le entrevistaste que no nos estábamos dando cuenta desde el mundo de las [00:10:00] izquierdas de la importancia que tenía el turismo para el funcionamiento al capitalismo.Y a veces cuando decíamos que nos necesitábamos al turismo, la gente lo tomaba como algo como irrelevante, como algo superficial, incluso casi jocoso como te gusta viajar, verdad? Y entonces era como, como no darse cuenta de, por un lado, como sobre todo desde la aplicación de los programas neoliberales, cómo el el turismo estaba ayudando a expandir los procesos de desarrollo capitalista, pero al mismo tiempo, como tenía una segunda función muy importante que era, cómo ayudaba a a estabilizar los desórdenes que provocaba ese mismo programa neoliberal? Recuerdo que me impresionó mucho trabajando en Costa Rica cuando me di cuenta que el año 1985, cuando se aplican los programas de ajuste estructural, [00:11:00] una de las cosas que se hace es desmontar el CNP, que era el consejo nacional de producción, que era lo que permitía durante bastantes años, que el campesinado costarricense tuviera la seguridad de que los granos básicos, frijoles, arroz, maíz tenía donde venderlos con precios estables. Y esto le daba seguridad al campesinado. Esto el año en el marco de la aplicación de esas políticas neoliberales que eran de hecho un chantaje, decir bueno, en un contexto de crisis de la deuda o aplicas determinadas programas políticos para liberalizar el comercio o no tienes apoyo en ese contexto, la contrapartida de achicar el estado y reducirlo.Y uno de los ejes de disminución del gasto público fue, por ejemplo, desmontar el CNP, este consejo nacional de producción. Y a cambio, lo que se pedía al campesinado estimularlo en la producción [00:12:00] de cultivos que tuvieran supuestamente mejor inserción en el mercado internacional para atraer la llegada de divisas.Y ahí se promovía la vainilla, la curcuma, la pimienta, productos que al final no acabaron de funcionar. Pero al mismo tiempo se promovió el turismo rural como un mecanismo para que el campesinado, por una parte, aportara con esa desarrollo de servicios turísticos divisas, al mismo tiempo le permitiera estabilizarse y no comprometerse en una dinámica que tenía que ver con el sufrimiento que estaban viviendo, que estaban generando procesos migratorios muy grandes.Entonces, con Iván, una de las cosas que reflexionábamos es, esto del turismo empieza a ser muy importante para el capitalismo. Y después de la crisis de 2008 creo que tuvimos bastante conciencia de que la dinámica de solución que encuentre el capitalismo para su [00:13:00] reproducción en parte tiene que ver con la expansión del turismo.Y esto lo hemos visto después de la crisis de la COVID con la pandemia que tuvimos en la cual... recuerdo perfectamente una llamada que nos hicimos con Iván, decíamos no nos puede pasar en 2020 lo mismo que nos pasó en 2008, que no nos dimos cuenta hasta mucho después de lo que estaba ocurriendo. Y por tanto, dijimos "paremos todas las publicaciones que tenemos pendientes y pidamos a todo el equipo amplio que está en torno de Alba Sud, pongámonos a reflexionar y analizaron que nos equivoquemos, pero pongámonos a analizar que cambios supone esto." Y en ese memento, alguna gente se reía de nosotros. Decía que seamos futurologia, que si habíamos convertido Alba Sud en una bola de cristal y que pretendíamos invocar el futuro. Y de hecho, lo que intentábamos hacer era el análisis desde la economía política para entender qué es lo que nos venía encima y de alguna manera, respondiendo a la pregunta que nos hacía [00:14:00] Macia, yo creo que lo que ha cambiado mi pensamiento es la intuición.O sea lo que antes era una intuición de que debíamos trabajar, generando conocimiento fuera de las lógicas de la reproducción académica y teníamos que generar conocimiento vinculado a los problemas sentidos por la gente más desfavorecida, que esa institución estaba en lo cierto y que había un espacio para hacer eso y que era necesario hacerlo.Y que este era un espacio que debíamos construir en relación con el mundo de las universidades de la academia, pero independiente de él, pero también independiente de las empresas, que es lo que vimos que también les había ocurrido algunas ONGs que durante años trabajaron tratando de generar algún tipo de pensamiento en torno de turismo, pero que rápidamente habían caído en una cierta trampa de pensar que era posible incidir en las empresas, generar dinámicas de responsabilidad, etcétera. Y nosotros pensamos que la cosa no iba por ahí, que la cosa tenía que ver con cómo [00:15:00] fortalecíamos otros actores para que pudieran combatir, resistir y construir cosas fuera de los marcos del capitalismo. Entonces, yo creo que, no sé si cambiaron muchas las cosas en términos de pensamiento, pero si se consolidó una convicción de lo que empezamos a hacer de una forma un poco intuitiva, se acabó convirtiendo en un espacio de investigación, de colaboración, de acompañamiento, de formación, de ciencia política para para un montón de gente que está vinculado con el turismo.Chris: Yeah. Gracias, Ernest. Pues yo siento que esa intuicion ha abierto un montón en los últimos años. Y hay un montón de gente en muchos lados, normalmente los lugares turisteados o sobreturisteados dando cuenta y dando cuenta no solo de [00:16:00] las consecuencias, pero de los patrones y pues, a dónde vamos con los patrones o canales de turismo convencional, pero también, como dijiste, en el turismo, como un gran factor dentro de la expansión y destrucción del capitalismo en nuestro tiempo. Entonces, a través de Alba Sud y Icaria Editorial en España, ustedes han publicado recientemente una antología titulada El Malestar en la Turistificación: Pensamiento Crítico Para Una Transformación de Turismo. Hay toneladas de capítulos fascinantes, tengo que decir, de excelentes autores y investigadores, incluidos trabajos que hacen referencia Silvia Federici y David Harvey, Pierre Biourdeau, Donna Haraway, Foucault, Graeber, y Ursula Le Guin, entre otros. [00:17:00] Estoy curioso, Ernest, cuál fue el impulso detrás de la creación de este antología? Ernest: Muchas veces, buena parte de las cosas que hacemos o que impulsamos de que son más grandes, vienen de una llamada telefónica con Ivan Murray y nos llamamos decimos, "tenemos que hacer esto, tenemos que hacerlo otro."Y de estas llamadas, lo que acabamos, y luego es algunos elevándolas a cabo. En este caso concreto, recurrentemente, teníamos una reflexión que cada vez era menos interesante leer sobre el turismo o que nos interesaba menos leer sobre turismo y que para entender el turismo, necesitábamos leer otras cosas. Y incluso la gente que nos dedicamos a los análisis críticos del turismo, nos dábamos cuenta de que estábamos leyendo mucho solamente entre nosotros.Y que de alguna manera estábamos reproduciendo lo mismo que le pasaba la academia vinculada al turismo. Es una academia muy endogámica, [00:18:00] muy auto concentrada que discute los mismos temas que se cita unos a otros y nos dábamos cuenta que de alguna manera, los que nos dictábamos a la crítica y a la propuesta fuera de esos marcos, teníamos el riesgo de no estar captando parte de la complejidad que tenía el desarrollo turístico en la medida que este se estaba haciendo cada vez más grande y que estaba penetrando en más esferas de la vida. Y ahí la idea fue, necesitamos hacer cuando compartíamos con Iván y luego se sumó Clément Marie dit Chirot, que es un profesor de la Universidad de Angers, que colabora también con con Alba Sud.De ahí surgió la idea de decir bueno, nos compartíamos tú que estás leyendo, que te está interesando. Y ahí empezamos a compartir autores y autoras. Y nació la idea deberíamos hacer algo con esto. Hicimos un primer seminario en Barcelona sobre la obra de David Harvey y en Lefevbre de qué nos pueden aportar estos dos autores a la comprensión [00:19:00] actual del desarrollo turístico.Y fue un seminario por eso el libro en parte, a veces la gente dice, por qué tanto Harvey y tanto Lefevbre, porque el origen del libro tenía que ver con este primer seminario que fue una prueba, un ensayo, de cómo podemos hacer que autores que no necesariamente han hablado sobre turismo, cómo podemos hacer que dialogan con nuestro objeto de de análisis?Y ahí hicimos un poco el mismo llamado que habíamos hecho en 2020 en cuando empezamos a trabajar en torno de la pandemia, que eso se convirtió en dos libros. Uno que fue Turistificación Confinada y otro Turismos de Proximidad, que fue el mismo proceso de empezar a preguntar a nuestros colegas, amigos, compañeros y compañeras, en qué estaban trabajando, que estaban viendo que estaban...Pues hicimos lo mismo, empezar a preguntar en nuestro entorno del equipo de Alba Sud, personas que colaboran, qué autores estaban leyendo que les interesaba y que no hubieran hablado antes de turismo? Y como [00:20:00] podíamos hacer el ejercicio de llevarlos a los análisis turísticos con el fin de robustecerlos, de hacerlos más sólidos, de incorporar dimensiones que si solamente nos fijábamos en lo que veníamos leyendo y escribiendo sobre el turismo, a lo mejor se nos estaban escapando. Por supuesto, nos quedaron un montón de trabajos de referencias fuera de este marco, es decir nos salía un volumen con 25 capítulos y nos podía haber salido perfectamente un segundo volumen, que es algo que no descartamos, pero no en términos inmediatos por el cantidad de trabajo que también supone.Pero si logramos poner en diálogo una serie de personas que nos permitían, de alguna manera, enriquecer el análisis turístico y brindar a gente que se estaban metiendo en determinados temas desde el ámbito de la comprensión, de lo como funciona el turismo, encontrar referencias teóricas, críticas con el capitalismo que le pudieran ayudar a [00:21:00] como mínimo, abrir caminos, entender qué lecturas podríamos hacer a partir de ellas.Seguro que hay autoras o autores que podrían haber tenido otro tipo de lectura, pero es la que hicieron las personas que colaboran con nosotros y de alguna manera era una de las posibles lecturas. Y bueno, ese es el origen del libro y la motivación. Chris: Ajá. Y me gustaría preguntarte sobre, pues, tu capítulo sobre Eric Ollin Wright, pero antes de eso, me gustaría preguntarte qué tipo de reflexiones te sorprendiste más fuera de tus propios investigaciones? Ernest: Sí, Ivan, Clemente y yo no solo lemos, sino que editamos y discutimos todos los capítulos.Tuvimos que rechazar lamentablemente también algunos. En algunos casos, había gente que nos mandó escritos que eran más complejos que el propio autor. Elegimos necesitamos que se entienda o en otros casos, la lectura no nos interesaba mucho. [00:22:00] No fue que aceptáramos todo, en este proceso.Y para mí, uno de los descubrimientos fue Jason Moore y el trabajo que hizo Iván con él para pensar o plantear la hipótesis del fin del turismo barato. Esto ha dado lugar un proyecto de investigación en el que estamos en la Universidad de Las Islas Baleares, con el grupo CRIGUST en el que estoy trabajando, pensando decir, bueno, qué significa este escenario de emergencias crónicas, esta dinámica, la cual el capitalismo ha funcionado a partir de la lógica de disponer de naturalezas baratas... qué significa si esto empieza a acabarse? Y hasta qué punto este modelo de desarrollo turístico que hemos tenido las últimas décadas en realidad no está objeto a demasiadas tensiones? Está demasiado en crisis y habría que tal vez plantear la hipótesis del fin del turismo barato, pero la [00:23:00] apertura de nuevos escenarios y sobre esta hipótesis estamos estamos desarrollando un proyecto de investigación y de alguna manera también ha servido para nosotros desde Alba Sud para pensar los escenarios de esta dinámica de reactivación. Decir no, no todo es igual a lo que venía siendo antes. Yo creo que para entender el memento actual del desarrollo turístico a nivel global, hay que situarnos en dos crisis:ya antes mencionamos el programa neoliberal y como el neoliberalismo incorpora el turismo con un mecanismo de expansión por al mismo tiempo de estabilización. Pero las dos últimas crisis la de 2008 y 2020 generan un salto de escala en términos de turistificación, un proceso turistificación global como nunca habíamos vivido, siendo un salto exponencial, en parte porque después de la crisis de 2008 se produce una situación en la cual las vías que habían optado a través de los préstamos [00:24:00] bancarios, la construcción, hipotecas, etcétera, colapsa y no es posible seguir reproduciendo el capital a través de esas vías. Y esto necesita encontrar otros mecanismos a traves de los cuales el capital se puede reproducir. Ahí, david Harvey ha hablado muchas veces de la importancia que tiene la urbanización de China en este proceso de salida de la crisis de 2008. Nosotros entendemos que, además de esto, el papel del turismo es clave. No es casualidad que una empresa como Airbnb nazca en 2008, que se produzca esta expansión del turismo urbano. Es decir, tiene que ver con esta lógica. Y la pandemia de alguna manera lo que hace es detener, pero al mismo tiempo, una salida, una reacción de los capitales muy agresiva por recuperar lo que no han ganado en los años anteriores.Y por tanto, se produce como una vuelta de tuerca más en esta dinámica. En este punto, para eso no es útil el pensamiento de Jason Moore, que yo lo leo fundamentalmente [00:25:00] como aportación de Iván Murray en esta obra que hacemos, en el malestar de la turistificación. Esta hipótesis del fin del turismo barato que planteamos a partir de la relectura de Jason Moore, lo que nos permite pensar es, o interpretar más bien , la dinámica de redituación es igual que la anterior a la crisis o hay algo cualitativamente distinto? Y hay algo cualitativamente distinto, porque estamos ante un escenario de riesgo para este desarrollo capitalista vinculado a las naturalezas baratas.Y ahí es donde nos damos cuenta que, en parte hay un efecto champagne, que cerca las reactuaciones no has podido viajar durante dos años y cuando hay la apertura, la gente sale. Pero más allá de esto y que nos expresa en estos últimos años de una forma desmesurada de tenemos turismo en los destinos más purificados, turismo de todo tipo, desde lujo a despedidas de [00:26:00] soltero o de soltero, que no alquilan ni una habitación, que sencillamente pasan de noche el viernes y el sábado de fiesta y se va en el domingo y ya está. O sea, tenemos de todo.Y ahí es donde recupero a Jason Moore y la ideas del fin de las del turismo barato, este riesgo de fin de turismo barato, lo que nos empezamos a dar cuenta es que empieza a ver una mayor competencia entre territorios, entre ciudades, por atraer un turismo de mayor poder adquisitivo. Se dan cuenta que hemos salido de la crisis y hay una serie de emergencias crónicas o lo que algunos le llaman policrisis que siguen estando presentes, que tienen que ver con el cambio climático, con la crisis de combustibles o la crisis energética y la crisis de materiales con las interrupciones a las cadenas globales de suministros, con las tensiones geopolíticas. Y todo esto nos ponen alerta de los riesgos que tiene el [00:27:00] desarrollo turístico. Si estamos en un escenario muy vulnerable. Además, después de la salida, empezamos a ver que hay un nivel de destrucción de los ecosistemas enorme, que no decir, esta lógica de crecimiento constante es inviable, porque hemos superado con mucho la capacidad del planeta y en ese contexto también vemos otro naturaleza barata que empieza a ser cuestionada, que es el trabajo, es decir la idea de la renuncia, de la dimisión, y uno de los grandes problemas que tienen las empresas en estos momentos es la falta de personal, gente que no quiere trabajar ahí y que busca trabajo en otros sitios.Entonces, en ese contexto que llamamos de emergencias crónicas que además se retroalimentan unas con otras, lo que empezamos a ver es que los capitales, a través de las autoridades públicas en distintos territorios, empiezan a competir por atraer un turista de mayor poder adquisitivo. Buscan cómo concentrar esa franja de segmento [00:28:00] turístico que va a ser menos sensibles a situaciones de crisis, que va a seguir viajando y cómo traerlo.Y implica un programa de gasto público enorme en términos de infraestructuras para traerlos en términos de promoción internacional, términos de macro-eventos para consolidar esa atracción. El problema es que, por definición, los turistas de mayor poder adquisitivo son mucho menos que la clase media o las clases trabajadoras en las que se ha sentado el turismo en las últimas décadas.Y por tanto, esa competencia entre territorios, por atraer ese segmento turístico de mayor poder adquisitivo, se incrementan. Es una competencia feroz por atraer a ese tipo de turistas y yo creo que estamos en este en este contexto. Y yo creo que no nos hubiéramos dado cuenta si una de las hipótesis posibles que formulamos a partir del libro en Malestar en la Turistificación no fuera precisamente esta [00:29:00] idea que extraemos de Jason Moore sobre el fin de las naturalezas baratas.La otra hipótesis tiene que ver con el trabajo que desarrolla a partir de Erik Ollin Wright sobre las posibilidades y cómo de transformar el sistema capitalista, hablando también desde el turismo, que es algo que Erik Ollin Wright nunca hizo, pero no sé si querías que habláramos ahora de él o o como quieres que lo planteemos.Chris: Pues sí, sí, me encantaría si podrías platicar un poco sobre Erik Ollin Wright, porque escogiste el específicamente, pero también para empezar, porque el capítulo que escribiste está titulado como un Turismo Postcapitalista: Siguiendo Los Pasos de Erik Ollin Wright.Entonces, antes de meternos en sus obras y su trabajo me gustaría preguntarte, pues, cómo defines Postcapitalismo?Ernest: Yo parto un posicionamiento anticapitalista. Y no tengo ninguna duda. Si me [00:30:00] opongo a a este modelo de producción, creo que nos lleva el desastre tanto en términos humanos como planetarios. Desde esa posición de esa convicción anticapitalista, lo que plantea es la necesidad de encontrar salidas que nos lleven a otro escenario.Podríamos llamarle socialismo. Podríamos llamarle ecosocialismo. No lo sé. Me interesa más pensar la posibilidad de pensar horizontes que escapen del capitalismo. Este es el posicionamiento. A veces hay gente que duda, porque una cosa o la otra. No una cosa o la otra. Si partimos del anticapitalismo para intentar construir algo fuera del capitalismo, pero no es algo tampoco mecánico, es algo que construimos. No es una fase superior del capitalismo. Después del capitalismo podría ser formas de violencia y de explotación mucho mayores. Es algo que tenemos que construir. Entonces, la idea es no resistimos, confrontamos con las lógicas capitalistas y desde [00:31:00] intentamos construir algo distinto, algo que podemos llamarle metafóricamente del momento postcapitalismo, pero no es contradictorio una posición con la otra. A partir de ahí, yo, sinceramente, estoy en este camino de buscar como pensar las posibilidades de transformación. Esto lo tenía claro. Y cuando me acerco a distintos autores, Erik Ollin Wright no era un autor que me resultaba especialmente simpático. Venía de una tradición socialdemócrata. Venía del marxismo analítico, que era algo que no especialmente me seducía.Si me interesaba una cosa especialmente de su obra, que era el rigor metodológico en las formas de analizar la sociedad. Esto me a atrevía especialmente. Es decir, salir fuera de las metáforas y del lenguaje a veces tan obtuso del marxismo y empezar a construir utilizando las mejores herramientas de las que disponemos en un determinado memento desde las ciencias [00:32:00] sociales.Esto reconozco que era algo que sí que me atraía, pero no es necesariamente todo el pensamiento de Erik Ollin Wright y Erik Ollin Wright me interesa partir de leer Utopía Reales y después Como Ser Anticapitalista en el Siglo XXI, por la visión que tiene. El lo que hace es un intento de recuperar distintas tradiciones de la izquierda para pensar un programa de acción complementario.Y a mi, esta idea me seduce especialmente, cómo pensamos en términos complementarios. Es decir cómo la acción de uno es la que uno puede hacer, la que uno desea hacer o la que las condiciones le han marcado, pero no son mejores ni peores que las que hace el otro compañero que está desde otra trinchera y como dejamos de competir por cuál es la mejor idea y empezamos a reconocernos que unos están intentando transformaciones desde el ámbito, de la lucha política parlamentaria, otros lo hacen desde del mundo sindical, otros desde del mundo [00:33:00] ecologistas y otros de cooperativismo. Reintegrar, repensar conjuntamente esas distintas tradiciones de acción de la izquierda.Me parecía que era algo necesario. Discrepo en una posición de Erik Ollin Wright que no acabo compartir, que es esta idea de negar la posibilidad de la revolución. Y me explico, Erik Ollin Wright dice en parte como buen social demócrata, lo que viene a decir es, después de las experiencias históricas, es fácilmente reconocible que cuando hemos tomado el poder después de un proceso revolucionario, las dinámicas que hemos generado después casi han sido peores que contra lo que combatíamos. Y probablemente tenga razón.Y yo he vivido 11 años en Nicaragua y sé de lo que estoy hablando. Se de qué significa los supuestos nuestros cuando están en el poder. Entonces, cuidado con esta idea, la simple toma del poder en [00:34:00] nombre de una bandera, de una determinada cristalización ideológica es ya un futuro deseable y mejor. Cuidado porque efectivamente generamos monstruos peores.Pero lo que discrepo con Erik Ollin Wright es que, si bien, en sí misma la toma del poder no te garantiza una sociedad ni mucho más justa, ni mucho más equitativa, sino que al final, muchas veces lo que te encuentras son dinámicas de estabilización de nuevos grupos que ascienden al poder y desde ahí ejercen el control.Pero lo que sí, quiero que no podemos renunciar a la idea de la movilización social, incluso de la toma del poder político como un mecanismo defensivo, como un mecanismo de respuesta ante el desorden que genera el capitalismo. En estos contextos, aunque fuera para salvaguardar dinámicas democráticas, aunque fuera para salvaguardar, creo que no podemos renunciar a la herramienta [00:35:00] revolución, pensado probablemente en términos defensivos no ofensivos, si no pensando que vamos a cambiar y vamos a generar un mundo mejor a partir de la toma del poder inmediata. Pero sí, salvaguardarlo como un mecanismo defensivo ante la lógica del avance del desorden que genera el capitalismo, la posibilidad de restaurar ciertos equilibrios a través de procesos revolucionarios.Creo que esta es la idea que recuperamos de Walter Benjamin cuando dicen que a veces se marca como la revolución, como la locomotora de la historia y el dice más bien, es el freno de mano. Es decir, es ante el despeñadero pensar en esto. Bueno, esto mi distancia de esta posición tan categórica de Erik Ollin Wright, pero en cambio, me parece interesante cómo construir una posibilidad de un mundo post capitalista a partir de cuatro grandes estrategias o vías de lo que ella denomina erosión del [00:36:00] capitalismo. O sea si no es posible darle la vuelta de inmediato, probablemente habrá que pensar en un tránsito a largo plazo en el cual este orden capitalista he agujereado desde distintos ámbitos de intervención y fundamentalmente desde el estado y desde fuera del estado.Y él plantea esta idea del desmantelar, domesticar, huir y resistir como formas de intervención. Y yo lo que hago en el capítulo es subir, bueno, si el turismo es tan importante en el capitalismo, cómo podríamos pensar estas categorías, estas dinámicas de ejes de intervención que contribuyen a erosionar el capitalismo de ir agujereándolo, de ir creando nuevas lógicas, aunque sean frágiles, aunque sean temporales, pero como mostrar, y como de algún modo ir asentando y que iba creciendo áreas de funcionamiento social que no reproducen las lógicas del capitalismo, sino que [00:37:00] avancen en otras direcciones. Y esto en un largo proceso que nos vaya avanzando, que nos permite avanzar.Y yo lo que intento hacer es cómo podría ser esto desde el turismo? Y ahí implica, por una parte, la intervención desde el estado, es decir por un lado, desde el estado, entendiendo al estado cómo la cristalización de una determinada correlación de fuerzas en un determinado memento. Podríamos pensarlo en términos de, bueno, es la reproducción de, es el mecanismo que tienen las clases dominantes para reproducir bien. Yo quiero más bien siguiendo otros autores de la tradicion marxista, como Poblanzas y otros más bien entendiendo como una cristalización de una determinada correlación de fuerzas. Y esto puede cambiar. Bien, desde esa perspectiva, pensar como desde el estado, podemos intervenir abriendo dinámicas que funcionen fuera de las lógicas del capitalismo. Una de ellas que no significa que sean necesariamente anticapitalistas, que a veces ayudan a [00:38:00] estabilizar el mismo capitalismo, pero pueden ser leídas de múltiples maneras.Una de ellas tiene que ver con esta idea de ponerle límites al capital, introduciendo mecanismos de control, de regulación, de fiscalidad. Es decir desde la inspección del trabajo hasta la fiscalidad hasta las tonificaciones en determinadas ciudades de qué se puede hacer, si podemos permitir más hoteles o no podemos permitirlos, cierto?Todo esta dimensión de "desde el estado," cómo ponemos mecanismos de limitación y contención al desarrollo de capital turístico? Otra vía, otra estrategias, como desde el mismo estado, generamos igual que por ejemplo, hemos hecho en algunos países en el ámbito de la salud o en el ámbito de la educación, cómo establecemos programas públicos que garanticen el acceso a las vacaciones, al descanso, etc. de una parte de la población, con programas de turismo social, [00:39:00] con creación de infraestructuras, desde parques urbanos a mejora transporte público, acompañamiento los programas de la economía social y solidaria, el cooperativismo. Es decir cómo desde el estado generamos dinámicas que contribuían a garantizar el acceso de los sectores más desfavorecidos a vacaciones. La tercer eje de intervención de que plantea Erik Ollin Wright tiene que ver con la idea de resistir resistir fuera del estado, es decir, resistir en el combate a este desorden que genera el capitalismo, el capital turístico.Y esto implica resistir desde dentro de las empresas con las organizaciones sindicales, pero tremendas de fuera desde los movimientos comunitarios, ecologistas, vecinales, es decir, ponerle límites al capital, no solamente esperando lo que va a hacer el estado con políticas públicas, sino que hacemos de forma organizada colectivamente dentro y fuera de las empresas.[00:40:00] Y la cuarta dimensión de esta proceso de entender mecanismos de erosión del capitalismo y en este caso, del capitalismo de base turística, sería la idea de huir. Hay que salir ya hoy y aquí de este mundo capitalista. Y esto implica crear cooperativas, ensayar formas de organización distinta que nos permitan garantizar vacaciones, descanso, formas diversas de construir el ocio que pueden incluir el desplazamiento.Y esto podemos hacerlo fundamentalmente desde las organizaciones comunitarias, desde el ámbito de las cooperativas, pero también desde fuera del mercado. Es decir, si la tutela del estado y si la tutela del mercado. Es decir, reorganización del ocio popular sin pasar por el mercado. Esto que en algunos países llamamos domingueros, dominguiar, hacer uso del día del señor para [00:41:00] descansar o tocarnos las narices o leer debajo un árbol. Es esta idea de hacer lo que queramos de forma autoorganizada, en colectivo o individualmente. Es decir, abrir estos espacios. Entonces yo creo que estas cuatro dimensiones es lo que nos permite pensar la posibilidad de una transformación del turismo bajo otras lógicas. Y aquí creo que hay que introducir un matiz porque a veces siento que hay una cierta confusión, como si todo fuera un problema de palabras. Es decir que nos negamos a utilizar la palabra turismo porque es una palabra que es capital.Bueno, nosotros, lo que reivindicamos fundamentalmente es el tiempo libre, el tiempo liberado del trabajo. Esto es lo que nosotros reivindicamos. Y creo que eso es lo que tenemos derecho a el tiempo que liberamos del trabajo para poder hacer lo que necesitemos en términos de descanso, de alimento de nuestro pensamiento, de goce, de desarrollo, de posibilidades.[00:42:00] Esto es lo que nos interesa. Y esto se puede organizar en el propio lugar de residencia en tu espacio próximo de residencia en términos de ocio, de entretenimiento, de recreación. Pero si implica desplazamiento, es cuando empezamos a hablar de turismo y este turismo, podemos organizarlo que implica ocio más desplazamiento.Esto podemos organizarlo, que es como hemos hecho hasta ahora, bajo las lógicas del capitalismo para reproducir el capital o podemos organizar este ocio con desplazamiento para satisfacer necesidades humanas. Y ahí es donde creo que tenemos el centro de la propuesta. Es decir, cómo pensar que una práctica humana, una práctica social no pueda ser solamente definida por las lógicas de reproducción del capital, sino que tenemos que poder desarrollarla bajo otras lógicas. Y esta es la reivindicación. Es decir, no resignarnos a que solamente el [00:43:00] capital organice nuestras vidas. Hay una frase de David Harvey que tiene toda la razón cuando dice no hay ninguna idea moralmente buena que el capitalismo no pueda compartir en algo horroroso.Y tiene toda la razón. El capitalismo tiene la capacidad para hacer esto, pero nosotros también pensamos que al mismo tiempo, no hay ninguna práctica social que no podamos organizar bajo otras lógicas distintas a las del capitalismo, que un mundo socialista, un mundo ecosocialista, podría ser organizado bajo otras lógicas y eso tiene que empezar ya ahora y aquí. No esperar a que venga una revolución y no sabemos cómo saldremos de ésa, sino que tenemos que empezar a organizarlo ya ahora y aquí. Yo creo que esta es la segunda hipótesis con la que construimos a partir de este libro del Malestar en la Turistificacion, que creo que, como mínimo a mí, hay muchísimas más lecturas del libro.Pero a [00:44:00] mí esta idea que extraemos de Jason Moore en torno al fin del turismo barato y la disyuntiva entre elitizacion o empezamos a pensar propuestas de transformación que den respuesta a las necesidades de la mayoría social, esta segunda hipótesis es lo que creo que sale con más fuerza de este libro. O como mínimo es mi lectura.Estoy seguro que otras compañeras y otros compañeros han hecho otras lecturas del del libro y les está estimulando para hacer otras cosas. Y creo que esa es la potencia que tiene el libro, que es empezar a robustecer el pensamiento crítico en turismo con abriendo nosotros posibilidades. Chris: Mm-hmm. Wow,Gracias, Ernest. Este yo creo que para mucho de nosotros, más ustedes que tiene mucho más tiempo en las investigaciones, los límites o el límite es la palabra, es el concepto [00:45:00] central de cómo podemos pensar, distintamente cuando estabas hablando de esas cosas, yo pensé, casi no hay límites a los instituciones que tenemos en el mundo capitalista moderna, solo los límites que los instituciones ponen en uno mismo. Pero luego tenemos que invertir lo que está pasando en el sentido de poner límites en las instituciones y luego poner en pausa las límites que son impuestos a nuestras lógicas, nuestras capacidades o maneras de pensar el mundo, de entender al mundo, pero también de pensar de otros mundos.Y entonces, poner un límite en cuántas vuelos puede llegar en un lugar en un día o cuántos hoteles podemos construir, etcétera. Cuántos turistas podemos tener? Pero al final cuando yo pienso en eso, a veces pienso como los pueblos en México y Oaxaca en donde vivo que algunos son pueblos ecoturísticos y tienen economías relativamente cerradas o relativamente mucho más [00:46:00] cerradas que las ciudades y eso y que tienen la capacidad, que si se hacen, se ponen los límites y se dice vamos a aceptar toda x cantidad de gente en este año porque entendemos que Los recursos o la naturaleza alrededor va a sufrir sino. Pero también se este. Hay otras preguntas, eh, como de la influencia social, el intercambio de capital entre gente de culturas distintas que viene con expectativas.Pero entonces quizás empezamos con la la cuestión de resistencia, porque a México, como muchos otros países que dependen en gran medida de las economías turísticas, las formas de resistencia política, no todas, pero algunas sí, que se emprenden contra esas economías a menudo apuntan a los turistas como los principales beneficiarios o cupables. Parece haber una fuerte resistencia a nombrar a la población local como dependiente y defensora de estas [00:47:00] economías. Si vamos a construir una resistencia política que abarque las necesidades económicas de todas las personas dentro de un lugar, cómo podemos ir más allá de esta crítica, yo digo superficial, que tiene la capacidad de esencializar a los extranjeros y infantalizar a los locales. Ernest: Yo creo que, bueno, has dicho un montón de cosas que me sugieren en reacción. Ah, pero para empezar por el final, yo diría que muchas veces nos encontramos con formas des legitimación de las protestas diciendo bueno, todos somos turistas, como si tuviéramos que tener un comportamiento virtuoso, decir apelando una cierta coherencia individual en todos nuestros comportamientos.De hecho, lo que están haciendo con este tipo de críticas, es sencillamente negar la legitimidad de las reivindicaciones, decir, señalando la contradicción como si todo fuera un problema individual [00:48:00] de comportamientos individuales. Y cuando lo que nos estamos diciendo es esto es un problema político, no de una persona en concreto, sea turista o sea población local que resiste y luego hace turismo, si el problema dejémonos ya de moralismo y de buscar ciudadanos virtuosos moralmente. Y empecemos a plantear que ambas son las estructuras políticas que pongan límites a este capital turístico. Yo creo que el grueso de la pelea es salir de esta idea de la responsabilidad individual de quedar atrapados en estas ideas de responsabilidad que tampoco sin desmerecerla, es decir es otro campo de intervención, pero el centro no puede ser la decisión individual y la coherencia individual en relación a nuestros comportamientos. Tiene que ver con dinámicas estructurales y lo que hay que cambiar son dinámicas de conjunto y para eso se falta hacer política con mayúsculas, ,implica movilización, pero para [00:49:00] cambiar estructuras. Cuál es el problema que a veces en esta maraña de capitales, que haces más difícil de identificar quién es el responsable de estas políticas o de estas violencias? Si quienes al final del último, que toma decisiones detrás de estos fondos de inversión. En cambio, el turista lo tenemos cerca y puede ser efectivamente blanco del malestar, porque es el que tienes más cerca. Entonces, y yo creo que desde los medios de comunicación, se nos intenta situar en ese terreno, a cuando se pone en circulación la idea de turismofobia, que empieza sobre todo en Barcelona y que luego circula a nivel internacional.Es una campaña dirigida a quitar la legitimación al movimiento vecinal que está protestando. No hay turismofobia. Puede haber alguien que de un día te caiga mal a alguien, pero no es un problema contra una persona. Lo que pasa es que a veces al que tienes cerca, el que te molesta es el turista, [00:50:00] es la parte final de ese proceso y es mucho más difícil señalar a las autoridades públicas, locales, nacionales, internacionales que han diseñado esos marcos de representación, a las empresas escondidas en esas dinámicas financieras.Entonces yo creo que es un proceso contradictorio, pero que, al mismo tiempo, no debemos renunciar a él. Es decir, aquí la cuestión no tiene que ver con como eres más o menos coherente, más o menos responsable, siendo población local, receptora o siendo turista o siendo muchas cosas a la vez. No tiene tanto que ver con eso, sino como reorganizamos el sistema de organizar el sistema turístico.Esta es la clave. Aquí está el problema. Y esto implica ponerle límites. Y como bien decías en tu primera parte, la intervención, si yo creo que la palabra límites adquirido, una connotación política fundamental. Las últimas manifestaciones que se están organizando [00:51:00] en España, en la que tuvimos hace dos, dos fines de semana en Barcelona, o la que va a ver este domingo en Palma, especialmente pongámosle límites al turismo.Pero esta demanda de ponerle límites y al mismo tiempo que le ponemos límites, tenemos que saber que hay una parte de la población que en España es de un 30 porciento, pero que la Union Europea gira en torno también otro 30% con niveles también muy desiguales, pero que cuando lo miramos desde América Latina, es mucho más, más de la mitad de la población que no puede hacer vacaciones. Es decir que estamos en esa discusión pero por otra parte, tenemos una parte de la población que no tiene infraestructuras que le permiten hacer vacaciones, sea desde que legalmente, no le permiten tener esas vacaciones en buenas condiciones, que no hay infraestructuras para que puedan pagárselas, que faltan programas públicos de calidad de turismo social que le [00:52:00] permitan disponer de esas infraestructuras.Entonces, yo creo que la dinámica es doble, es por uno de que ponerle límites al capital. Y hay que hacerlo como parte de una reflexión y de una intervención política no individual en términos morales, pero que al mismo tiempo, hay que plantear un horizonte de deseo. Queremos algo, queremos disfrutar del tiempo libre.Queremos disfrutar de un tiempo libre de calidad. Una de las formas posibles, no la única puede ser el turismo, que implicar este ocio más desplazamiento. Y para hacer esto y poder gozar de conocer otros espacios, otros lugares fuera de mi realidad cotidiana. Para hacer esto, necesitamos infraestructuras sociales que nos permiten hacerlo.Y yo creo que ahí está la batalla, por un lado, ponerle límites al capital y por otro lado, expandirnos. Ofreciendo un mundo deseable. Queremos disponer de tiempo libre. [00:53:00] Queremos desarrollarnos en nuestro tiempo libre. Queremos que nuestro tiempo libre lo podamos organizar en la proximidad en nuestra casa, en nuestros alrededores, pero puntualmente también viajando.Y eso significa disponer de infraestructuras públicas y también de mecanismos porque el dinero y el mercado va a ser la única forma de decidir quien vuela y quien no vuela. Si tenemos que ir un mundo con muchos menos vuelos, serán los que puedan pagarlos o podemos organizarlo de otro modo. Cuántas veces puedes volar al año? Cuántas veces puedes hacer por cuánto tiempo? Como podemos, si le imp, implica un un ejercicio que a veces, cuando lo planteas, parece que esta gente no vive en el mundo, que la realidad es otra efectivamente. Ocurre esto, pero para avanzar en esta dirección, necesitamos horizontes de esperanza, horizontes que nos digan debemos ir para allá, no solamente como pérdida de privilegios, no [00:54:00] solamente por restringirnos porque el planeta se desmonta, sino porque queremos vivir mejor y queremos vivir mejor todos.Entonces, yo creo que esta conjunción, porque si no tenemos otro problema que tiene que ver con el crecimiento de la extrema derecha en un mundo de inseguridades en un mundo de amenazas, quién está ofreciendo seguridades, aunque sea con discursos racistas xenófobos de culpar al penúltimo, culpando al último. Es decir en este contexto, cómo podemos organizar dinámicas que a la vez que le ponemos límites a este desarrollo turístico capitalista, estemos ofreciendo seguridades, seguridades en términos de el control implica también mejores de condiciones de trabajo. Y el control sobre esto es también para poder organizar el turismo de otra manera que tú no pierdas tu trabajo, sino que podamos organizarlo de otra manera y que podamos satisfacer las necesidades [00:55:00] que tiene mucha más gente.Yo creo que la cosa va por ahí entre la resistencia y la propuesta de un mundo deseable también en el turismo. Chris: Ya ya igual subió mi mente como esa noción de el ocio, el tiempo de ocio son momentos también fuera de trabajo que en un análisis puede decir que el trabajo es un tipo de esclavitud moderna, a veces no, pero a veces sí, muchas veces creo y que tiempo de ocio o descanso es un tiempo también para organizarse.Organizar la comunidad. Organizar por otros mundos o contra lo que tienes, eh? Pero el turismo parece que también ha sido como un herramienta contra eso. O sea, ya tienes tu tiempo descanso. Pero mira, mira, mira las playas de Cuba... Ernest: No es exclusivo del turismo. Es decir, cuando hablamos de turismo, estamos hablando de ocio, más desplazamiento. [00:56:00] Si no nos desplazamos, resulta que este ocio que hacemos desde nuestra casa es el mas emancipatorio del mundo. Es decir, estar en casa viendo Netflix es lo mejor, estar yendo al centro comercial a pasear porque hubiese en un mundo de inseguridades de mierda.Es decir, en este contexto, esto no es algo exclusivo del turismo. También desde el ocio, tenemos estas dinámicas de alineación y de mercantilizacion. Entonces, necesitamos salir de las palabras para construir escenarios que nos permitan satisfacer necesidades y expandir posibilidades, capacidades de la gente de explorar y vivir mejor.Pero hay muchos ejemplos que te permiten de manera diversa y es parte de lo que decíamos al principio de la conversación de en lo que estamos trabajando en Alba Sud de intentarse sistematizar un montón de estas experiencias que han [00:57:00] probado aspectos distintos de transformación, de salir de estas lógicas y avanzar en otras direcciones.Y quiero que el problema es que muchas veces la academia no ha puesto atención en estas posibilidades. Y en cambio, en la vida, en la vida cotidiana, hay muchas más cosas que se están haciendo que no hace falta que nos pongamos a inventar que también, pero empecemos también por reconocer y recuperar muchas de las cosas que están en nuestra propia historia y también en nuestro alrededor, en en estos otros contextos que podemos encontrar experiencias ricas en estas otras formas y las encontraremos en el ocio y las encontraremos en el turismo. Pero a veces tengo la sensación de que cuando solamente identificábamos el turismo como un proceso de mercantilizacion, nos estamos pegando un tiro al pie. El turismo, igual que muchas otras cosas, puede ser eso y efectivamente es una dinámica de reproducción del capital que [00:58:00] genera violencia, violencia estructural y directa. Nos tenemos que resignar a que solamente pueda ser eso. Podríamos imaginar cómo construimos eso de otra manera y para imaginar, empecemos por reconocer lo que está en otro alrededor que ya está funcionando de otras maneras y que a lo mejor algunas de estas experiencias son frágiles, son limitadas, tienen contradicciones, fracasan, pero muestran que durante un tiempo ha sido posible organizar esto.La próxima fracasaremos mejor. Y a la siguiente, lo haremos perfecto. Es decir, es un proceso constante de tensión, de organización, de intento de generar cambios que nos permitan construir una vida digna, que también pasa por recuperar ese tiempo libre que lo podremos organizar de maneras distintas. Y ahí podríamos o no incluir el turismo en función de nuestras necesidades y posibilidades.Chris: Gracias, Ernest. Gracias por ofrecer eso y [00:59:00] clarificar. Entonces, si podemos imaginar otros mundos, otras formas de caminar y caminar juntos, podemos comenzar a dar pasos hacia esos caminos. Si pudieras imaginar un otro mundo de esa manera, libre de las limitaciones contemporáneas de las fronteras estatales, la hospitalidad industrial y las expectativas extractivas cómo sería para ti, Ernest?Ese viaje que tanto deseas hacer sería una peregrinación? Sería posible solo una vez en tu vida? Cómo sería ese viaje para ti? Ernest: Claro, yo diferenciaría y pensaría en que necesariamente sea plural. Es decir, que las opciones sean múltiples. No hay una respuesta, no hay una forma de organizar otro turismo. Hay o deben haber muchas formas. En función de las muchas necesidades que tenga la gente. El otro día, en una entrevista, a preguntar cómo hacías vacaciones tú cuando eras adolescente? Como pensando en [01:00:00] cómo encontrar ese anexo en lo que ahora me preocupa y yo digo, lo que hacía era pasarme en los veranos en la biblioteca. Y lo que deseaba era tener infraestructuras públicas de calidad en la que pudieras leer sin ruido, constantemente. Y quería infraestructuras públicas que me permitieran hacer eso. Y creo que una forma de organizar tu tiempo libre tiene que ver con que dispongamos de infraestructuras públicas que nos permitan organizarlo.Y ahí, no hay una sola forma, ni una sola necesidad. La mía tiene que ver con esto o ha tenido que ver con esto en un determinado momento de mi vida y para otros es otra y para otros es una distinta. Entonces yo me imagino no un camino, sino me imagino unos muchos caminos que pueden responder a formas y necesidades distintas.Si me imagino programas robustos potentes de calidad de turismo social en el que [01:01:00] la gente pueda acceder al mar, puede acceder a la montaña, puede acceder a espacios que en la cercanía y tomando en cuenta a los límites del planeta, podamos movilizarnos masivamente para dormir fuera de nuestra casa, viendo las experiencias, pero que no solamente en infraestructuras o espacios natural, sino que también implique un programa pedagógico pensado para cómo desarrollar potencialidades, como ver esas distintas apuestas.Pero veo esto y también veo con deseo, las apropiaciones que hace a la gente los parques públicos, como la gente se toma al parque y celebra fiestas y organiza actividades. Creo que necesitamos pensar en términos plurales. Es decir no hay unas vacaciones. A lo mejor en la vida, necesitaremos tener disponer de la posibilidad de organizar nuestros tiempos de trabajo de manera distinta, que nos permitan viajar más tiempo que en lugar de hacer lo que no tendría [01:02:00] sentido es pensar que podemos universalizar viajes de Alemania al Caribe por cuatro días.Eso no tiene ningún sentido, pero estamos seguros de que ya no podremos conocer otros territorios. A lo mejor será menos veces en la vida. Será por más tiempo. Será combinando trabajo con espacios de ocio con espacios. Es decir, creo que lo que debemos abrirnos es a la pluralidad de posibilidades de organizar esta parte de nuestro tiempo libre que hemos asociado con el desplazamiento.De alguna manera, yo creo que lo que necesitamos son horizontes por los que merezca la pena, no solamente resistir, sino movilizarse para avanzar hacia ellos. Queremos vivir mejor y tenemos derecho a vivir mejor. Tenemos que resistir todas las mierdas y todas las cabronadas que nos hace el capital. Pero al mismo tiempo, tenemos que poder aspirar a una [01:03:00] vida organizada bajo otras lógicas. Ahí es donde creo que que está la clave algo por lo que merezca la pena luchar.Chris: Gracias, Ernest por esas palabras muy importantes y tus reflexiones en el día dehoy, desde mí, mi parte y mi corazón y la parte de los oyentes también. Entonces, por último, Ernest, cómo podrían nuestros oyentes saber más sobre tu trabajo y Alba Sud y donde se pueden comprar el Malestar en la Turistificacion? Ernest: Al bas sud?Tenemos nuestra página web AlbaSud.Org. Ahí, todas nuestras publicaciones son de descarga gratuita. Tenemos una sección de formación en la que vamos recuperando todos los videos de los debates actividades que organizamos. Si la página web, la herramienta. Disponemos de un boletín que mandamos mensualmente.Estamos en redes [01:04:00] sociales varias, en Facebook, en Twitter, en Linkedin, disponemos de un canal en Telegram. Por ahí se pueden informar de lo que hacemos, de las actividades de las convocatorias y con Icaria que tenemos varios libros publicados, dependiendo del lugar en España, es posible en cualquier librería.Si no lo tienen, pedirlo y lo llevan. Y en muchos otros lugares, creo que hay que pedirlo directamente por la editorial. Es decir, en algunos países de América Latina, Icaria tiene distribución comercial normal. En otros es más difícil, pero en la página web de Icaria Editorial se pueden conseguir estos trabajos. Y si no lo encuentran, que nos escriban que algo resolveremos.Chris: Muy bien, pues voy a asegurar que todos esos enlaces están ya en el sitio de Fin de Turismo cuando lanza el episodio y una vez más Ernest, desee que tendríamos más tiempo para [01:05:00] platicar, pero seguramente en otra ocasión. Fue un gran honor, oportunidad de hablar contigo y espero que podemos hacerlo de nuevo en algún momento. Ernest: Con mucho gusto. Encantado de poder conversar contigo. Y estoy realmente seguro de que vamos a continuar caminando juntos. Muchas gracias. English Transcription Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome Ernest, to the end of tourism podcast.Ernest: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.Chris: It's a great honor to finally be able to talk to you. I wonder if, to start with, you could tell us about this, where you speak today and what the world is like there for you?Ernest: I usually live in Barcelona, between Barcelona and Mallorca, because I am between the University of the Balearic Islands and Alba Sud, and at the moment I am in Buenos Aires working on research into different management experiences, outside the logic of capitalism. And this led us to identify different experiences. And now I am starting a research with the Hotel Bauen, what was the now closed Hotel Bauen and the cooperative that managed it for 20 years,It is part of the process that we are doing, identifying [00:01:00] diverse plural experiences that have to do with how to think about the possibility of organizing tourism under other modes and this has taken us along different paths from Latin America, from Spain. And now I am here.Chris: Well, thank you Ernest. And yes, we are going to talk about this topic, but beyond the visions that exist, that we can imagine about post - capitalist tourism or something around it, something like that. But before we get into that, you and I have been in contact for the last two years, partly due to your work in the field of critical tourism studies and your Alba Sud project, in which some of our previous guests, including Ivan Murray, Robert Fletcher and Macia Blasquez, have participated.I would love for you to tell me a little bit [00:02:00] about Alba Sud, Ernest, its mission, its history and its current situation.Ernest: With pleasure. Oh, look, Alba Sud was founded in 2008. We had legalized it before in case some group of colleagues needed it one day, but it formally began to operate in 2008 and it began to operate in Managua, Nicaragua, which was where I lived at the time.And it was basically an agreement between people who were dedicated to research and communication to work with critical and at the same time propositional analysis around tourism. This was something that was original from the beginning, this double concern, about how to think about the impacts, the effects that tourism development had under capitalism and what kind of dynamics of structural and direct violence they generated and at the same time, how to think about possibilities of getting out of that [00:03:00] framework of those logics. And that was a hallmark that we started with from the beginning.Over the years, Alba Sud has grown, becoming a network of tourism researchers. We now have a presence in 10 countries in Spain, France, Europe, and then in Latin America, in the Dominican Republic, Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina.So it is a network made up of people who are dedicated to different areas of tourism analysis and who share work spaces and analysis and political intervention. For us, Alba Sud is a research centre, but it is not an academic centre and we are less concerned about academic dynamics, although there is a part of our team of people who collaborate who are at the university, different universities.What we are concerned about is how to generate [00:04:00] knowledge that is useful for communities, for community organizations, for civil associations, for unions, and for public administration when possible. That is, we try to generate knowledge, analysis, systematization, proposals that in some way contribute to making visible the things that do not work well, that are a disaster that generate pain in this world in relation to tourism and at the same time, to think of horizons of hope.This is the purpose. To do this, we have a large team of people who collaborate more closely on a day-to-day basis, others who collaborate occasionally, and we basically put together our work, which is organized around a website, www.AlbaSud.Org, and we structure it into research papers that are later published in a format [00:05:00] written in different ways, which I will then tell you about. In addition to the form of research, work is linked to training to generate dialogue processes that allow us to listen, to reflect together, putting people who come from the academy on the same level as people who have specific work experiences. And finally, a more political influence area, more of accompanying organizations and accompanying them to influence politically.In the field of research, we then express it, basically through short articles that we write, we publish around 100, 110, 120 a year, which are short articles of 2000-2500 words, which we know are widely used in universities, as discussion material.And a bit of the purpose is this, that they are boiled down as small, well-written articles, or we try to make them well [00:06:00] written, that they are in simple language, that the complexity has nothing to do with the academic swear words that we use, but the depth of t

We can only defeat CLIMATE CHANGE ON PURPOSE and RACIST-WARS-EVERYWHERE-ALL-THE-TIME - if we are a lot weirder than our current crop of criminal clowns. There's a good reason that Philip K. Dick, Octavia Butler, and Ursula Le Guin are so popular. Science fiction can glimpse a kind of moral life so strong it can overthrow the ethno-state. The nonfiction of Mussolini & Hitler & Stalin is sobering. But then you add the Sixth Extinction, and you have an update on government by Laugh-and-Cry-Out-Loud-Cruelty. Trump casts desperate people in their role as stateless migrants so he can demonize them and then kill them as they wander the Earth looking for livable, good weather. You and I are way over here on the horizon, pulling weeds from our little garden. We know we must get some serious personal wildness before the sun goes down.

Episode Topic: What Makes Work Meaningful (A Feminist Intervention) Why does care work feel fulfilling on some days, and infuriating on others? What could success look like if we divorce it from individualism and achievement? In this episode, listen in to a conversation with Paul Blaschko '19 Ph.D., Director of the Sheedy Family Program and assistant teaching professor in philosophy at Notre Dame, about how feminist thinkers are reworking western definitions of meaning and success. We'll consider Ursula Le Guin's 1982 New Yorker short story “Sur” to illustrate.Women's Work is sponsored on ThinkND by the Sheedy Family Program in Economy, Enterprise & Society at the University of Notre Dame and Notre Dame Women Connect.Featured Speakers:- Paul Blaschko '19 Ph.D., University of Notre DameRead this episode's recap over on the University of Notre Dame's open online learning community platform, ThinkND: https://go.nd.edu/87f25cThis podcast is a part of the ThinkND Series titled Women's Work. (https://go.nd.edu/154238)Thanks for listening! The ThinkND Podcast is brought to you by ThinkND, the University of Notre Dame's online learning community. We connect you with videos, podcasts, articles, courses, and other resources to inspire minds and spark conversations on topics that matter to you — everything from faith and politics, to science, technology, and your career. Learn more about ThinkND and register for upcoming live events at think.nd.edu. Join our LinkedIn community for updates, episode clips, and more.

Eden and Langdon both exist (maybe) and with this snippet of existence, they discuss the historiography of the Paris Commune on the left and suggest a proper position (empathy) towards its hopes and failures. Then, they discuss the beautiful and problematic "Five Ways to Forgiveness" by Ursula K. Le Guin, a short story suite about slavery, feminism, war and Hain. Music played: Object Unto Earth - Alas I Hop Along https://objectuntoearth.bandcamp.com/track/alas-i-hop-along Cave Sermon - Hopeless Magic https://cavesermon.bandcamp.com/track/hopeless-magic

Lords: * Mitch * https://www.youtube.com/@HBMmaster * Nathan * https://store.steampowered.com/app/2976260/ChainStaff/ Topics: * I wish someone told me all classic Star Trek was based on writer Ursula LeGuin * Ryu Numbers and Tom Scott Numbers * https://www.tumblr.com/tomscottnumber * How to get out of a chair * Have you seen the new show? by Orcboxer * https://www.tumblr.com/orcboxer/745859389762764801/poob-has-it-for-you * OUR DRAWINGS - PRINCESS MOVIE | Full Animation Film | Artist * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1LhdhQEKtg * https://www.tumblr.com/fullanimationfilmartist Microtopics: * Mitch from jan Misali. * The episode where we have beef. * The milk frother attachment to the chain staff. * The milk frother is DLC you pay extra for that milk frother. * Hearing about Ursula Leguin for the first time. * The Wind's Twelve Quarters. * The Clock Before Armageddon. * Solving sexism, here on Topic Lords. * Living long enough to discover a new favorite sci-fi author. * What's interesting about Sapphire for the PC Engine, other than the price? * Dreams of gutting the collectors market. * Spending $2,000 on a rare game and trying to convince itself it's good enough to justify the price. * A game that is not very rare but it's still expensive because it's so good that people want to keep it. * Deciding at the last minute to not use motion controls for your Wii rhythm game. * Erdos numbers preceding Bacon numbers because of course it was mathematicians who came up with that shit. * What counts as a Bacon Connection. * A character who has been in a lot of crossover games. * The de facto authority on Ryu numbers. * Whether the frog at the end of TXT World is the same as the game from Frog Fractions. * Whether Hatricia from the Hat DLC is the same as the cat the wedding dress in the photo at the end of TXT World. * The British buy who wears a red shirt. * The ever-shifting discourse for what counts as a connection for Scott Numbers. * Adding rules to make a trivial game into a non-trivial game. * White men who have had a long Youtube career. * Whether Ryu has a surname. * Stephen Hawking's Sabbath number. * Movies and plays tending to tell different stories whereas recorded and live music tends to be the same music. * The hypothetical guy whose favorite movie is just one where they pointed a camera at a stage play. * Why do people love squats? * Doing a 500 pound deadlift to get out of bed. * Doing one exercise to get better at a slightly related exercise. * Fucking up your knees by getting out of a chair repeatedly. * Doing the old heave-ho thing to get out of a chair. * The Inherently Beautiful Design of Everyday Objects, by Bonald Normag. * Watching the X-Files with your wife. * Aged Like Me. * Putting your knees under the chair and standing up, and unbending your knees pushes the chair backwards and it falls over, but you're upright, and then like the punching bags with sand at the bottom the chair bounces back up and hits you in the ass so you don't even need to work to start walking. * A wheelchair with an extremely gentle ejection seat. * Why obese people have worse COVID outcomes. * How to make a bed that fat people want to lie in face-down. * A.C. Slatering. * Why isn't Jim an industrial designer? * Applying for an industrial design job and putting sharks on your resume. * Poob has it for you. * Screenshotting a Tumblr post and cropping out the username to post it on Tiktok and claiming that it's something your therapist told you. * The ghost you're talking about waving its hands in your face being like "I'm right here!" * Tumblr eras. * The event that convinced the Tumblr community that Tumblr users should not ever be in charge of anything. * The people who left Tumblr when they banned porn and then came back when Elon Musk bought Twitter. * The Tumblr Funnymen. * The Tumblr CEO personally harassing trans women off of Tumblr. * Someone who looks like they've been deactivated. * The miracle of Tumblr still being online. * The Poster's Curse. * Bucket, where are you? * A jumble of keywords that someone might hypothetically search for. * Distinctly amateurish outsider art in a way that only a human could create. * Beatboxing puppy! * A contextless segue into a musical number. * An hour long trailer for a twenty minute movie. * A movie made by people who were figuring out 3D animation as they were making it. * Legally distinct Marios rapping. * Being anti-AI art because you are extremely pro copyright law. * The beatboxing puppy scene that everybody forgot about. * It's cool when people make art. * Four consecutive narrators all explaining the same concepts in slightly different ways that slightly contradict each other. * A movie asking you to watch it over and over to pump up its numbers. * Wanting to see a sequel to "OUR DRAWINGS - PRINCESS MOVIE | Full Animation Film | Artist" because you want to know what the title will be. * Complaining that Amazing Digital Circus is more important than your own movie.

En écho à la Journée internationale des droits des femmes ce 8 mars, on part à la découverte de mondes rêvés, d'utopies ou de dystopies féministes prophétiques et magnétiques. À l'année, on se fait régulièrement l'écho de parcours de femmes qui, hier comme aujourd'hui, ont pris la route et la tangente, défiant les conventions et les assignations pour exister, voyager et prendre le monde. Avec souvent le verbe, les mots comme armes…Une fois n'est pas coutume, cette fois, on va puiser dans la fiction, la science-fiction, pour une anthologie de poche, non exhaustive, de toute une littérature de l'imaginaire, féminine et féministe, explorant d'autres planètes, d'autres ailleurs, d'autres possibles…Terriblement prophétique, la science-fiction met en lumière les maux très contemporains de nos sociétés ; elle désille le regard en extrapolant le réel et en imaginant des mondes alternatifs, des futurs souhaitables ou, au contraire, rendus invivables. Utopie, dystopie… quels sont les mondes qui se dessinent sous la plume de femmes écrivaines, qui ont imaginé des cités exclusivement féminines ou des planètes sur lesquelles le genre est aboli ? Quels univers ont-elles justement inventé pour parler en creux de leur époque, dénoncer les inégalités et partager leurs rêves? À travers les écrits de la célèbre afro-futuriste Octavia Butler, de la suffragette Charlotte Perkins Gilman et son roman culte «Herland», de Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain, une pionnière bengalie du genre utopique, de Monique Wittig, Ursula Le Guin, Margaret Atwood, Becky Chambers ou de l'Américano-Nigériane Nnedi Okorafor.  Un voyage sonore et littéraire de Laure Allary et Celine Develay-Mazurelle. Sur une idée originale de Laure Allary. À lire: «La parabole du semeur» et la «La parabole des talents» d'Octavia Butler. Éditions Au Diable Vauvert 2020. Éd originale 93-94.  «Le monde glorieux» de Margaret Cavendish. Éditions Corti 2024. Éd originale 1666-1668.  «Les rêves de Sultana» de Begum Rokhaya Sakhawat Hussein. Éditions Caractères 2020. Éd originale 1905.  «Herland» de Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Éditions Robert Laffont Pavillons poche 2019. Éd originale 1915.  «La main gauche de la nuit. Le livre de Hain. Tome 4» de Ursula Le Guin. Éditions Le Livre de Poche 2006. Éd originale 1969. «Les Guérillères» de Monique Wittig. Éditions de Minuit 2019. Éd originale 1969. «La servante écarlate» de Margaret Atwood. Éditions Robert Laffont Pavillons Poche 2021. Nouvelle Traduction. Éd originale 1985. «Qui a peur de la mort ?» de Nnedi Okorafor. Éditions Le livre de Poche 2018. Éd originale 2010. «L'espace d'un an. Les Voyageurs. Tome 1» de Becky Chambers. Éditions Le livre de Poche 2020. Éd Originale 2014.

En écho à la Journée internationale des droits des femmes ce 8 mars, on part à la découverte de mondes rêvés, d'utopies ou de dystopies féministes prophétiques et magnétiques. À l'année, on se fait régulièrement l'écho de parcours de femmes qui, hier comme aujourd'hui, ont pris la route et la tangente, défiant les conventions et les assignations pour exister, voyager et prendre le monde. Avec souvent le verbe, les mots comme armes…Une fois n'est pas coutume, cette fois, on va puiser dans la fiction, la science-fiction, pour une anthologie de poche, non exhaustive, de toute une littérature de l'imaginaire, féminine et féministe, explorant d'autres planètes, d'autres ailleurs, d'autres possibles…Terriblement prophétique, la science-fiction met en lumière les maux très contemporains de nos sociétés ; elle désille le regard en extrapolant le réel et en imaginant des mondes alternatifs, des futurs souhaitables ou, au contraire, rendus invivables. Utopie, dystopie… quels sont les mondes qui se dessinent sous la plume de femmes écrivaines, qui ont imaginé des cités exclusivement féminines ou des planètes sur lesquelles le genre est aboli ? Quels univers ont-elles justement inventé pour parler en creux de leur époque, dénoncer les inégalités et partager leurs rêves? À travers les écrits de la célèbre afro-futuriste Octavia Butler, de la suffragette Charlotte Perkins Gilman et son roman culte «Herland», de Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain, une pionnière bengalie du genre utopique, de Monique Wittig, Ursula Le Guin, Margaret Atwood, Becky Chambers ou de l'Américano-Nigériane Nnedi Okorafor.  Un voyage sonore et littéraire de Laure Allary et Celine Develay-Mazurelle. Sur une idée originale de Laure Allary. À lire: «La parabole du semeur» et la «La parabole des talents» d'Octavia Butler. Éditions Au Diable Vauvert 2020. Éd originale 93-94.  «Le monde glorieux» de Margaret Cavendish. Éditions Corti 2024. Éd originale 1666-1668.  «Les rêves de Sultana» de Begum Rokhaya Sakhawat Hussein. Éditions Caractères 2020. Éd originale 1905.  «Herland» de Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Éditions Robert Laffont Pavillons poche 2019. Éd originale 1915.  «La main gauche de la nuit. Le livre de Hain. Tome 4» de Ursula Le Guin. Éditions Le Livre de Poche 2006. Éd originale 1969. «Les Guérillères» de Monique Wittig. Éditions de Minuit 2019. Éd originale 1969. «La servante écarlate» de Margaret Atwood. Éditions Robert Laffont Pavillons Poche 2021. Nouvelle Traduction. Éd originale 1985. «Qui a peur de la mort ?» de Nnedi Okorafor. Éditions Le livre de Poche 2018. Éd originale 2010. «L'espace d'un an. Les Voyageurs. Tome 1» de Becky Chambers. Éditions Le livre de Poche 2020. Éd Originale 2014.

This week's episode features a few news items, but as usual you have to listen closely to find them among our usual free-association digressions. Awards season is underway. Nominations/and or votging for the Nebulas, Locus Awards, and Hugo Awards (once again we are eligible in the Fancast category, and Jonathan in the Editor Short Form category) is underway, and just closed for the BSFA Awards. There's also, news from a major distributor in the US that may mark the beginning of the end of the mass-market paperback, while other publishing news involves the consolidation of three major print magazines—Asimov's, Analog, and F&SF—under a single new publisher. While at this point we don't know more than anyone else, this leads us into discussions of romantasy (and the growing SF or space opera equivalent), how the way readers have discover new writers has changed over time, the value (if any) of promotional letters and blurbs (which Gary is not very good at, it turns out), the growing popularity of premium and collectors' editions, and the difference between casual readers, fans, collectors, and simple accumulators of books. Other topics pop up as well: Jonathan's forthcoming anthology of stories in honor of Ursula Le Guin raises the question of which authors should be recognized with such anthologies, for example, and which have already been recognized and why. 

In America is in the Heart, Carlos Bulosan describes his good fortune at landing a job in a library where he could be close to books: “I was beginning to understand what was going on around me, and the darkness that had covered my present life was lifting.” Ursula Le Guin writes of a library's sacredness: “its accessibility, its publicness.” She calls the public library a public trust, and continues: “A great library is freedom,.” We're honored to be joined in conversation with Emily Drabinski, past president of the American Library Association, and a brilliant and intrepid defender of the public square.

Podcast: This week on The Mystical Positivist, hosts Stuart Goodnick and Rob Schmidt feature two episodes from the Western Baul Podcast Series recorded earlier this year. In the first hour we present the talk, Cultivating Transparency: Realizing the Emptiness of the Stories You Tell Yourself, and in the second hour we present the talk, Languaging Nonduality. The podcast descriptions are as follows: Cultivating Transparency: Realizing the Emptiness of the Stories You Tell Yourself We could say that all we know about ourselves cognitively are stories we tell ourselves. These are not necessarily obvious to us because they play so constantly. We respond to the universe through the stories that filter our experience. How do we work with this since we can't think ourselves out of this box? Transparency hints at a different way of relating to stories. Many stories we identify with are cultural views. Stories in and of themselves are not a problem; they are a feature of what it is to be human. It's when we hold onto stories that they capture our energy and attention so we don't come back to the present and to the next event gifted to us by the universe. Transparency involves listening, seeing, generosity of spirit to others and ourselves, without reactivity to a story. This is not trivial work and a tool we have is self-observation, which is an energetic and not an analytical act. One feature of mature practice is relaxation of the tense form of attention we compulsively hold. This can allow for humor and for different kinds of spaces or chambers to be created. Belief is an emotional relationship with a lie. When a story turns into a belief, we can't put it down. Resistance manifests differently in the three centers that are discussed in the Gurdjieff work. It is a rich vein to mine to reclaim energy of attention we've invested in story. Conscious suffering is the willingness to be present with resistance. Practice can be seen as an offering rather than as a story with an agenda to wake up. Creativity is an end in itself, the universe doing what it most wants to do. When not bound by our stories, we can accept the universe's invitations to engage in higher work.is a Western spiritual tradition founded by George Gurdjieff, a mystic of Greek and Armenian origin who taught in Russia, Europe, and America and died in 1949. The system he developed out of his own spiritual search, which is shrouded in mystery, is completely unique and geared toward working with a modern mindset of “waking sleep” in the West. The Fourth Way Tradition has been considered by some to be humorless and dogmatically committed to a rigid system of practices and ideas, but this ignores Gurdjieff's own flexibility ranging from playfulness to penetrating compassion. Today's speakers are dharma heirs of Tayu Meditation Center's founder Robert Daniel Ennis, whose teachings were anchored in the Fourth Way but ranged widely beyond that source material.  Languaging Nonduality Grounded practice gives us direct experience of the pervasiveness of the mechanical, identified mind. Before we have direct experience of something, linguistic representations are ineffective at transmitting what it is. There is a distinction between results and practice. A teaching can be the result of practice, such as loving our neighbor, but we may consider it as a practice that we are unable to embody without having cultivated the necessary quality of being. Seeing the world as non-dual is a result, not a practice. When nonduality is taken as an intellectual proposition, mind pastes over experience and co-opts the spiritual process, which is not realization. There are poets like Ursula Le Guin who use language to “point at the moon” or the sacred. There has to be some work with mind for the intuition and depth of nonduality to take root and inform all aspects of our lives. We may not be in a new paradigm of spiritual practice, but we are in a new paradigm of access to information and teachings. Nonduality is one way among others to talk about reality. Different spiritual approaches work for different people. For many, something has to be dislodged from its static position around the heart. There's truth to being non-dual and to being dual, which is paradoxical and indicative of a greater mystery. We can be grateful for language that brings our attention to something bigger than the small self. It's not words but the carrier wave, where someone is coming from, that transmits what words point to. It's helpful to hang out with people who share spiritual intention. Everyone doesn't need to be involved in formal spiritual practice; lives are equally valid. The Western Baul Podcast Series features talks by practitioners of the Western Baul path. Topics are intended to offer something of educational, inspirational, and practical value to anyone drawn to the spiritual path. For Western Bauls, practice is not a matter of philosophy but is expressed in everyday affairs, service to others, and music and song. There is the recognition that all spiritual traditions have examples of those who have realized that there is no separate self to substantiate—though one will always exist in form—and that “There is only God” or oneness with creation. Western Bauls, as named by Lee Lozowick (1943-2010), an American spiritual Master who taught in the US, Europe, and India and who was known for his radical dharma, humor, and integrity, are kin to the Bauls of Bengal, India, with whom he shared an essential resonance and friendship. Lee's spiritual lineage includes Yogi Ramsuratkumar and Swami Papa Ramdas. Rob Schmidt and Stuart Goodnick are the spiritual directors of Tayu Meditation Center. Rob has made contributions to the practice of anthropological archaeology and currently runs Tayu's spiritual bookstore in Sebastopol, California, Many Rivers Books & Tea. Stuart is an engineer in a Fortune 500 company and plays the shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) as a spiritual practice. More information about Tayu Meditation Center can be found at: Many Rivers Books and Tea Website: www.manyriversbooks.com, Western Baul Podcast Website: westernbaul.org.

The machines are coming. Scratch that—they're already here: AIs that propose new combinations of ideas; chatbots that help us summarize texts or write code; algorithms that tell us who to friend or follow, what to watch or read. For a while the reach of intelligent machines may have seemed somewhat limited. But not anymore—or, at least, not for much longer. The presence of AI is growing, accelerating, and, for better or worse, human culture may never be the same.    My guest today is Dr. Iyad Rahwan. Iyad directs the Center for Humans and Machines at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. Iyad is a bit hard to categorize. He's equal parts computer scientist and artist; one magazine profile described him as "the Anthropologist of AI." Labels aside, his work explores the emerging relationships between AI, human behavior, and society. In a recent paper, Iyad and colleagues introduced a framework for understanding what they call "machine culture." The framework offers a way of thinking about the different routes through which AI may transform—is transforming—human culture.    Here, Iyad and I talk about his work as a painter and how he brings AI into the artistic process. We discuss whether AIs can make art by themselves and whether they may eventually develop good taste. We talk about how AIphaGoZero upended the world of Go and about how LLMs might be changing how we speak. We consider what AIs might do to cultural diversity. We discuss the field of cultural evolution and how it provides tools for thinking about this brave new age of machine culture. Finally, we discuss whether any spheres of human endeavor will remain untouched by AI influence.    Before we get to it, a humble request: If you're enjoying the show—and it seems that many of you are—we would be ever grateful if you could let the world know. You might do this by leaving a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, or maybe a comment on Spotify. You might do this by giving us a shout out on the social media platform of your choice. Or, if you prefer less algorithmically mediated avenues, you might do this just by telling a friend about us face-to-face. We're hoping to grow the show and best way to do that is through listener endorsements and word of mouth. Thanks in advance, friends.   Alright, on to my conversation with Iyad Rahwan. Enjoy!   A transcript of this episode will be available soon.   Notes and links 3:00 – Images from Dr. Rahwan's ‘Faces of Machine' portrait series. One of the portraits from the series serves as our tile art for this episode. 11:30 – The “stochastic parrots” term comes from an influential paper by Emily Bender and colleagues. 18:30 – A popular article about DALL-E and the “avocado armchair.” 21:30 – Ted Chiang's essay, “Why A.I. isn't going to make art.” 24:00 – An interview with Boris Eldagsen, who won the Sony World Photography Awards in March 2023 with an image that was later revealed to be AI-generated.  28:30 – A description of the concept of “science fiction science.” 29:00 – Though widely attributed to different sources, Isaac Asimov appears to have developed the idea that good science fiction predicts not the automobile, but the traffic jam.  30:00 – The academic paper describing the Moral Machine experiment. You can judge the scenarios for yourself (or design your own scenarios) here. 30:30 – An article about the Nightmare Machine project; an article about the Deep Empathy project. 37:30 – An article by Cesar Hidalgo and colleagues about the relationship between television/radio and global celebrity. 41:30 – An article by Melanie Mitchell (former guest!) on AI and analogy. A popular piece about that work.   42:00 – A popular article describing the study of whether AIs can generate original research ideas. The preprint is here. 46:30 – For more on AlphaGo (and its successors, AlphaGo Zero and AlphaZero), see here. 48:30 – The study finding that the novel of human Go playing increased due to the influence of AlphaGo. 51:00 – A blogpost delving into the idea that ChatGPT overuses certain words, including “delve.” A recent preprint by Dr. Rahwan and colleagues, presenting evidence that “delve” (and other words overused by ChatGPT) are now being used more in human spoken communication.  55:00 – A paper using simulations to show how LLMs can “collapse” when trained on data that they themselves generated.  1:01:30 – A review of the literature on filter bubbles, echo chambers, and polarization. 1:02:00 – An influential study by Dr. Chris Bail and colleagues suggesting that exposure to opposing views might actually increase polarization.  1:04:30 – A book by Geoffrey Hodgson and Thorbjørn Knudsen, who are often credited with developing the idea of “generalized Darwinism” in the social sciences.  1:12:00 – An article about Google's NotebookLM podcast-like audio summaries. 1:17:3 0 – An essay by Ursula LeGuin on children's literature and the Jungian “shadow.”    Recommendations The Secret of Our Success, Joseph Henrich “Machine Behaviour,” Iyad Rahwan et al.   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala. Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com.  For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).

In his marvelous new book, When Animals Dream: The Hidden World of Animal Consciousness (Princeton UP, 2023), David Peña-Guzmán (SF State as well as the lovely philosophical podcast Overthink) offers up something new in animal studies--"a philosophical interpretation of biological subjectivity." Although we share no linguistic schema with animals there is lots more evidence than just YouTube (octopuses, dogs, signing chimpanzees, brain scans of dreaming birds etc) to suggest oneiric behaviors and underlying mental states occur all over the animal kingdom. So, David discusses with John his interest in using dreaming as a window into consciousness. Here is what it means that we are not alone in our dreams... David details the "flattening and impoverishing effect on the natural sciences" wrought by 20th century behaviorist paradigms. He also expresses skepticism about the likelihood of AI ever achieving more than a "zombie" state; it now and perhaps always will profoundly differ from animals' varied experiences of our shared world. The biological commonality that most strikes David is the idea it is logically inconceivable that there might be a dreamer devoid of consciousness or sentience. Dreaming, he argues may be the key to acknowledging animal's "moral considerability"--the right to have their consciousness, sentience and in the deepest sense their standing taken into account. . Finally David admits to a feeling of tragedy in writing this book: he has had to engage with experimentation that crosses boundaries in animal treatment in order to make the case for those boundaries. He understands his decision as tragic because either way--to engage or to ignore the science--would be to lose something. Mentioned in the episode: New Wave of "inner space" SF authors who focus on the alien nature of humanity itself: J. G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, and John's hero Ursula Le Guin. Recallable Books: Susana Monso, Playing Possum a newly translated book on the ways that animals mourn their beloveds. Charles Darwin, Descent of Man and The expression of the emotions in man and animals (both 1872) are two of the crucial 19th century texts begin to think of animals as complete subjects. Charles Darwin as an early theorist of biosemiosis who deserves, Jain and David agree, to be reactivated. Listen and Read here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In his marvelous new book, When Animals Dream: The Hidden World of Animal Consciousness (Princeton UP, 2023), David Peña-Guzmán (SF State as well as the lovely philosophical podcast Overthink) offers up something new in animal studies--"a philosophical interpretation of biological subjectivity." Although we share no linguistic schema with animals there is lots more evidence than just YouTube (octopuses, dogs, signing chimpanzees, brain scans of dreaming birds etc) to suggest oneiric behaviors and underlying mental states occur all over the animal kingdom. So, David discusses with John his interest in using dreaming as a window into consciousness. Here is what it means that we are not alone in our dreams... David details the "flattening and impoverishing effect on the natural sciences" wrought by 20th century behaviorist paradigms. He also expresses skepticism about the likelihood of AI ever achieving more than a "zombie" state; it now and perhaps always will profoundly differ from animals' varied experiences of our shared world. The biological commonality that most strikes David is the idea it is logically inconceivable that there might be a dreamer devoid of consciousness or sentience. Dreaming, he argues may be the key to acknowledging animal's "moral considerability"--the right to have their consciousness, sentience and in the deepest sense their standing taken into account. . Finally David admits to a feeling of tragedy in writing this book: he has had to engage with experimentation that crosses boundaries in animal treatment in order to make the case for those boundaries. He understands his decision as tragic because either way--to engage or to ignore the science--would be to lose something. Mentioned in the episode: New Wave of "inner space" SF authors who focus on the alien nature of humanity itself: J. G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, and John's hero Ursula Le Guin. Recallable Books: Susana Monso, Playing Possum a newly translated book on the ways that animals mourn their beloveds. Charles Darwin, Descent of Man and The expression of the emotions in man and animals (both 1872) are two of the crucial 19th century texts begin to think of animals as complete subjects. That makes Darwin an early theorist of biosemiosis. Listen and Read here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In his marvelous new book, When Animals Dream: The Hidden World of Animal Consciousness (Princeton UP, 2023), David Peña-Guzmán (SF State as well as the lovely philosophical podcast Overthink) offers up something new in animal studies--"a philosophical interpretation of biological subjectivity." Although we share no linguistic schema with animals there is lots more evidence than just YouTube (octopuses, dogs, signing chimpanzees, brain scans of dreaming birds etc) to suggest oneiric behaviors and underlying mental states occur all over the animal kingdom. So, David discusses with John his interest in using dreaming as a window into consciousness. Here is what it means that we are not alone in our dreams... David details the "flattening and impoverishing effect on the natural sciences" wrought by 20th century behaviorist paradigms. He also expresses skepticism about the likelihood of AI ever achieving more than a "zombie" state; it now and perhaps always will profoundly differ from animals' varied experiences of our shared world. The biological commonality that most strikes David is the idea it is logically inconceivable that there might be a dreamer devoid of consciousness or sentience. Dreaming, he argues may be the key to acknowledging animal's "moral considerability"--the right to have their consciousness, sentience and in the deepest sense their standing taken into account. . Finally David admits to a feeling of tragedy in writing this book: he has had to engage with experimentation that crosses boundaries in animal treatment in order to make the case for those boundaries. He understands his decision as tragic because either way--to engage or to ignore the science--would be to lose something. Mentioned in the episode: New Wave of "inner space" SF authors who focus on the alien nature of humanity itself: J. G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, and John's hero Ursula Le Guin. Recallable Books: Susana Monso, Playing Possum a newly translated book on the ways that animals mourn their beloveds. Charles Darwin, Descent of Man and The expression of the emotions in man and animals (both 1872) are two of the crucial 19th century texts begin to think of animals as complete subjects. Charles Darwin as an early theorist of biosemiosis who deserves, Jain and David agree, to be reactivated. Listen and Read here.

In his marvelous new book, When Animals Dream: The Hidden World of Animal Consciousness (Princeton UP, 2023), David Peña-Guzmán (SF State as well as the lovely philosophical podcast Overthink) offers up something new in animal studies--"a philosophical interpretation of biological subjectivity." Although we share no linguistic schema with animals there is lots more evidence than just YouTube (octopuses, dogs, signing chimpanzees, brain scans of dreaming birds etc) to suggest oneiric behaviors and underlying mental states occur all over the animal kingdom. So, David discusses with John his interest in using dreaming as a window into consciousness. Here is what it means that we are not alone in our dreams... David details the "flattening and impoverishing effect on the natural sciences" wrought by 20th century behaviorist paradigms. He also expresses skepticism about the likelihood of AI ever achieving more than a "zombie" state; it now and perhaps always will profoundly differ from animals' varied experiences of our shared world. The biological commonality that most strikes David is the idea it is logically inconceivable that there might be a dreamer devoid of consciousness or sentience. Dreaming, he argues may be the key to acknowledging animal's "moral considerability"--the right to have their consciousness, sentience and in the deepest sense their standing taken into account. . Finally David admits to a feeling of tragedy in writing this book: he has had to engage with experimentation that crosses boundaries in animal treatment in order to make the case for those boundaries. He understands his decision as tragic because either way--to engage or to ignore the science--would be to lose something. Mentioned in the episode: New Wave of "inner space" SF authors who focus on the alien nature of humanity itself: J. G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, and John's hero Ursula Le Guin. Recallable Books: Susana Monso, Playing Possum a newly translated book on the ways that animals mourn their beloveds. Charles Darwin, Descent of Man and The expression of the emotions in man and animals (both 1872) are two of the crucial 19th century texts begin to think of animals as complete subjects. Charles Darwin as an early theorist of biosemiosis who deserves, Jain and David agree, to be reactivated. Listen and Read here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/neuroscience

In his marvelous new book, When Animals Dream: The Hidden World of Animal Consciousness (Princeton UP, 2023), David Peña-Guzmán (SF State as well as the lovely philosophical podcast Overthink) offers up something new in animal studies--"a philosophical interpretation of biological subjectivity." Although we share no linguistic schema with animals there is lots more evidence than just YouTube (octopuses, dogs, signing chimpanzees, brain scans of dreaming birds etc) to suggest oneiric behaviors and underlying mental states occur all over the animal kingdom. So, David discusses with John his interest in using dreaming as a window into consciousness. Here is what it means that we are not alone in our dreams... David details the "flattening and impoverishing effect on the natural sciences" wrought by 20th century behaviorist paradigms. He also expresses skepticism about the likelihood of AI ever achieving more than a "zombie" state; it now and perhaps always will profoundly differ from animals' varied experiences of our shared world. The biological commonality that most strikes David is the idea it is logically inconceivable that there might be a dreamer devoid of consciousness or sentience. Dreaming, he argues may be the key to acknowledging animal's "moral considerability"--the right to have their consciousness, sentience and in the deepest sense their standing taken into account. . Finally David admits to a feeling of tragedy in writing this book: he has had to engage with experimentation that crosses boundaries in animal treatment in order to make the case for those boundaries. He understands his decision as tragic because either way--to engage or to ignore the science--would be to lose something. Mentioned in the episode: New Wave of "inner space" SF authors who focus on the alien nature of humanity itself: J. G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, and John's hero Ursula Le Guin. Recallable Books: Susana Monso, Playing Possum a newly translated book on the ways that animals mourn their beloveds. Charles Darwin, Descent of Man and The expression of the emotions in man and animals (both 1872) are two of the crucial 19th century texts begin to think of animals as complete subjects. Charles Darwin as an early theorist of biosemiosis who deserves, Jain and David agree, to be reactivated. Listen and Read here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For this haunted Wicked Problems – Climate Tech Conversations, Richard Delevan is joined by celebrated author Manda Scott, known for historical fiction, thrilling plots, and a gift for exploring deep-seated mythologies that shape human struggles.In this Halloween/Samhain episode, Scott takes us through her latest novel, Any Human Power, a genre-bending work that interweaves climate, technology, politics, and mythology to probe our existential crises. Halloween, or Samhain in Celtic tradition, is when the veil between worlds is at its thinnest—a fitting setting for a discussion blending the metaphysical with the political. We dive into how stories, myths, and beliefs profoundly shape our understanding of climate change—and our responses to it.Utopia, Dystopia… or Thrutopia?Scott argues that we face more than climate change; we're in a polycrisis—a web of interlinked existential threats that defy isolated solutions. Climate breakdown, economic disparity, and political polarization are all interwoven. Rather than focusing on dystopia, Scott introduces us to “Thrutopia,” stories that offer not only escape or survival but paths to reimagining governance, social structures, and our relationship with nature. In her view, we don't need heroes; we need collective transformation.The Role of Myth in Modern CrisesMythologies shape how we interpret reality and help us frame complex issues in ways that feel tangible. Scott's storytelling bridges the familiar with the visionary, drawing on Irish and Scottish influences that explore the liminal “between” spaces, echoing Samhain's themes. As she explains, this space “between” worlds encourages us to imagine beyond the typical bounds of existence—a lens through which we can more fully grasp the challenges before us.Changing Our Relationship with Power and TechnologyScott explores a key theme: the gap between technology's potential and its often-destructive application. Drawing on Taiwan's Audrey Tang's vision for tech as a unifying tool, Scott reimagines social media as something that builds communities, not conflict— essential for a sustainable future. Using insights from neuropsychology, she explains how power structures hijack our fears through “limbic system manipulation.” This, she argues, is not inevitable; it is simply a reflection of our system's structural failures. Her work calls us to confront these flaws and envision a fundamentally different world.Dive DeeperHer two podcasts, Accidental Gods and Dreaming Awake, explore regenerative futures, mythology, and spiritual aspects of climate action. Her courses offer ways to reconnect with the “web of life” and sustainable change.Among her influences are Ursula Le Guin's ideas on human power, Kim Stanley Robinson's climate fiction, and The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow, which reimagines human history and societal structures.Manda Scott's novel, Any Human PowerPodcasts: Accidental Gods and Dreaming AwakeCourses: Thrutopia - Writing Our Way to a Future Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We might see ourselves, as Ursula Le Guin writes, ‘one syllable of a word spoken slowly by the stars'. In this episode we wonder together what is maked possible when we reclaim and retell sacred narratives about being human, as an alternative to the mechanistic views of existence as meaning-free and humans as accidents in a cold unfeeling universe. How might these narratives help us step into a life in which we open to what is around us, and the life-giving qualities in one another? Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify. Here's our source for this week: One Word Spoken Slowly by the Stars “Aye,” Ged answered. “Light is a power. A great power, by which we exist, but which exists beyond our needs, in itself. Sunlight and starlight are time, and time is light. In the sunlight, in the days and years, life is. In a dark place life may call upon the light, naming it.” … There was a little pause; and Yarrow asked, “Tell me just this, if it is not a secret: what other great powers are there besides the light?” “It is no secret. All power is one in source and end, I think. Years and distances, stars and candles, water and wind and wizardry, the craft in a man's hand and the wisdom in a tree's root: they all arise together. My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power. No other name.” Staying his knife on the carved wood, Murre asked, “What of death?” [Yarrow] listened, her shining black head bent down. “For a word to be spoken,” Ged answered slowly, “there must be silence. Before, and after.”  Ursula K Le Guin, The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition (p. 157). Orion Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

Grounded practice gives us direct experience of the pervasiveness of the mechanical, identified mind. Before we have direct experience of something, linguistic representations are ineffective at transmitting what it is. There is a distinction between results and practice. A teaching can be the result of practice, such as loving our neighbor, but we may consider it as a practice that we are unable to embody without having cultivated the necessary quality of being. Seeing the world as nondual is a result, not a practice. When nonduality is taken as an intellectual proposition, mind pastes over experience and co-opts the spiritual process, which is not realization. There are poets like Ursula Le Guin who use language to “point at the moon” or the sacred. There has to be some work with mind for the intuition and depth of nonduality to take root and inform all aspects of our lives. We may not be in a new paradigm of spiritual practice, but we are in a new paradigm of access to information and teachings. Nonduality is one way among others to talk about reality. Different spiritual approaches work for different people. For many, something has to be dislodged from its static position around the heart. There's truth to being nondual and to being dual, which is paradoxical and indicative of a greater mystery. We can be grateful for language that brings our attention to something bigger than the small self. It's not words but the carrier wave, where someone is coming from, that transmits what words point to. It's helpful to hang out with people who share spiritual intention. Everyone doesn't need to be involved in formal spiritual practice; lives are equally valid. Rob Schmidt and Stuart Goodnick run Tayu Meditation Center and founded Many Rivers Books and Tea in Sebastopol, CA. They invite spiritual teachers, practitioners, and authors to articulate their stories on The Mystical Positivist podcast.

Here the many complex dimensions of home are explored including the human need to find a home in nature. Andrews says,” Once you find a home in nature, you are never lost.” She also shares insights on those caretaking family members and other loved ones to age in place including those who choose to die at home and many other aspects of home. Valerie Andrews is a writer, editor, and seminar leader specializing in Jungian psychology and the inner life of home. She's a graduate of the Guild for Spiritual Guidance and the editor of the digital magazine Reinventing Home: Culture, Creativity, Character. She's also a contributor to many journals and magazines and was the host of the PBS documentary featuring Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul. She is the author and editor of A Passion for This Earth (Harper Collins 1994) and Sanctuary: The Inner Life of Home (Editor) (Chiron Publications 2024)Interview Date: 7/19/2024. Tags: Valerie Andrews, Jungian psychology, Sisyphus, Kaiser ACE study, plus-one proton, Ursula Le Guin, aging at home, Peggy Fleming, In the Evening of Life, Grassland Woman, Mary Reynolds Thompson, Eckart Tolle, James Hollis, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, Gilda Frantz, storage lockers, Bayo Akomolafe, Starhawk, Community, Personal Transformation, Psychology

Welcome to The Fast and the Fictitious. In each episode, students in English 2410, a Dual Enrollment Fiction course, will deep dive a story, highlight key takeaways, and relate the themes of the story to their lives. In this episode, Aiden, Oliver, and Ali G talk about “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” by Ursula LeGuin.  The story asks how far a society is willing to go to sacrifice the rights of the individual for the good of the many. Reception is mixed from the students, but one thing they all agree on is McDonald's Sprite. We hope you enjoy.Email the show! carlilelcba@gmail.comMusic from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/bosnow/party-rock License code: 77JKG6ITA09KQZX0

Craig Murphy and Jonathan Rowson join us for a dialogue on global politics and the metacrisis, using as a springboard for this conversation the essay ‘Prefixing the World: Why the polycrisis is a permacrisis, which is actually a metacrisis, which is not really a crisis at all', published by Jonathan on his Substack blog in late 2023. Craig recently participated in a panel on Crisis in Global Governance at the International Studies Association annual meeting where he engaged with Jonathan's work in his remarks, seeing certain affinities between Jonathan's claim that all global problems of the moment are connected to a single source, a single metacrisis and Craig's own insights into the importance of grappling with the possible interconnections across global problems if problem solvers are going to develop the kind of complex solidarity that is likely to be essential to any adequate response to the daunting challenges of our times. We were honoured to be able to bring these two distinguished scholars and authors together for a far-reaching and deeply meaningful conversation. Craig Murphy is Betty Freyhof Johnson '44 Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Wellesley College and is a leading light in the fields of international relations and political science, known particularly for his pioneering research on global governance. Jonathan Rowson is Co-founder and Chief Executive of Perspectiva, which is a collective of scholars, artists and activists who produce and publish outputs concerned with understanding the relationship between systems, souls and society in theory and practice. He was previously Director of the Social Brain Centre at the RSA where he authored a range of influential research reports on behaviour change, climate change and spirituality, and curated and chaired a range of related events. Craig's official website profile can be found here: https://www1.wellesley.edu/politicalscience/faculty/murphy Jonathan's profile can be found on the Perspectiva website: https://systems-souls-society.com/origin/people/ He tweets @Jonathan_Rowson His essays can also be read at Substack: https://substack.com/@jonathanrowson We discussed: Ursula Le Guin, ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas', 1973: https://shsdavisapes.pbworks.com/f/Omelas.pdf Geoff Mann, ‘It Was Not Supposed to End This Way', August 2019: https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/geoff-mann-it-was-not-supposed-end-way/ See our podcast conversation Geoff Mann here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFmOtlbJPts Craig Murphy, ‘Leadership, Global Governance, and Peace', November 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ_nXvzcOEE Craig Murphy, ‘Engineering Rules', 2024: https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/11653/engineering-rules#:~:text=of%20the%20internet.-,In%20Engineering%20Rules%2C%20JoAnne%20Yates%20and%20Craig%20N.,on%20all%20of%20our%20lives. Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry of the Future: https://www.orbitbooks.net/orbit-excerpts/the-ministry-for-the-future/ Jonathan Rowson, ‘Prefixing the World,' September 2023: https://perspecteeva.substack.com/p/prefixing-the-world Jonathan Rowson, ‘Tasting the Pickle: ten flavours of meta-crisis and the appetite for a new civilisation', February 2021: https://systems-souls-society.com/tasting-the-pickle-ten-flavours-of-meta-crisis-and-the-appetite-for-a-new-civilisation/ Adam Tooze, ‘Welcome to the world of the polycrisis', Financial Times, 28 October 2022: https://www.ft.com/content/498398e7-11b1-494b-9cd3-6d669dc3de33

This is a recap of the top 10 posts on Hacker News on July 5th, 2024.This podcast was generated by wondercraft.ai(00:39): Put the DVD logo in the corner (2023)Original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40883277&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(01:59): I have no constructor, and I must initializeOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40880932&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(03:15): PostgreSQL and UUID as Primary KeyOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40884878&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(04:36): Ente Auth: open-source Authy alternative for 2FAOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40883839&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(05:51): Space Age release dateOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40882243&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(06:59): Let's stop counting centuriesOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40884356&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(08:06): Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997)Original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40886419&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(09:23): YouTube's eraser tool removes copyrighted music without impacting other audioOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40885155&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(10:31): Why Vivaldi won't follow the current AI trend?Original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40880322&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(11:44): The Software CrisisOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40882583&utm_source=wondercraft_aiThis is a third-party project, independent from HN and YC. Text and audio generated using AI, by wondercraft.ai. Create your own studio quality podcast with text as the only input in seconds at app.wondercraft.ai. Issues or feedback? We'd love to hear from you: team@wondercraft.ai

Send us a Text Message.In this episode of the Oldish Book Club co-hosts Dr. Janet Price and our dear friend Leslie Ross-Degnan discuss Tehanu, the fourth book in the Earthsea Series by Ursula K. LeGuin. Why was she as influential in the genre of Fantasy as Tolkien? What do dragons have to do with Oldishness?Get Tehanu and othe books by Ursula K. LeGuin here.Support the Show.Connect with Janet at https://drjanetprice.comYou can email Gregg at gregg@kannoncom.com Gregg wears Tyrol pickleball shoes, the only company that makes shoes just for pickleball. He has been wearing the same pair of Velocity V model shoes for almost a year, and he plays a lot! Click here to purchase Tyrol Pickleball shoes (note, if you purchase Tyrol pickleball shoes after clicking this link Oldish may receive a commission. Thanks for helping to support our podcast!)Comments, suggestion, requests: oldish@kannoncom.comThanks to Mye Kaloustian for the music.

Uzundur yeni bir kayıt paylaşmamıştık. Biz bu arada bit.ly/uykudanoncesesler linkinde her Pazartesi 22.00'de buluşup birlikte bir öykü okumaya devam ediyoruz. Şimdilerde bir yaz arası veriyoruz ama Eylül ayında tekrar toplanana kadar ilk kez orada okuduğumuz ve bir yaz boyu zihnimize dolanacak bir öyküyü buraya bırakalım istedik: Omelas'ı Terk Edenler. Ursula Le Guin yazdı, Ayşe Su Akaydın çevirdi, şimdi Ses Olsun'da!

【聊了什么The What】 这是“Wife三部曲"的最后一集，这个系列以我们最最熟悉的“妻子”这个社会职能为圆心，画一个谨慎的半径，这个半径包括我们的思考和恐惧，包括作为妻子意味着什么。 然而这期播客可能是我们四个在人生这个阶段录的最重要的一期播客之一 —— 这期播客让我们反思了作为一个有强烈创作欲望，但同时有妻子和母职需要履行的女性应该如何兼容这这些极端的角色。 为了准备这期播客，我们一起读了三本关于女性创作的书：讲述奥威尔妻子艾琳的Wifedom，讲述作家乔治·艾略特的The Marriage Question，和讲述“成为怪物的艺术家”的Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma。许多伟大的男性艺术家背后都有默默付出的妻子，而女性一旦成为母亲往往就被吸干注意力，失去创作的空间。这三本书中被抹去的女性、挣扎的女性、和小心翼翼担忧成为怪物母亲的女性们，都在试探着自我实现和作为妻子/母亲这两者的边界。 同时，我们也通过观察Ursula Le Guin等等女性作者的生命历程和创作历程拷问"伟大的母亲"的角色。当一个伟大的母亲需要为了自己的创作而"离开"，怎么办？在资本主义效率至上的逻辑下，母亲的付出被视为理所当然，价值也被剥夺，但我们是否应该反思和重估母职劳动的价值？ This is the final episode of the "Wife Trilogy," a series that takes the highly familiar social role of the "wife" as its central focus. This topic encompasses our contemplations on the profound implications of being a wife. However, this podcast episode may well be one of the most significant we have recorded at this stage of our lives. It prompts us to reflect on how an individual with a fervent creative drive can possibly reconcile with the rigid social demands of that of a wife. In preparation, we collectively delved into three books exploring women's creative pursuits: "Wifedom," chronicling the story of Eileen, the wife of George Orwell; "The Marriage Question," illuminating the private life of novelist George Eliot; and "Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma," examining the notion of the "monstrous female artist." Many great male artists have benefited from the silent sacrifices of their wives, while women, upon becoming mothers, often find their creative energies drained and mental space constricted. By observing the lives and creative trajectories of women authors such as Ursula Le Guin, among others, we interrogate the notion of the "great mother." Can a good mother just "leave" to pursue her artistic endeavors? Under the capitalist system of efficiency, a mother's contributions are taken for granted, their value stripped away. Should we not re-evaluate and reappraise the worth of maternal labor and how it is actually a fiercely and terrifyingly intellectual pursuit? 【时间轴 The When】 06:50 Wifedom：作家奥威尔的妻子艾琳为他创造写作条件，自己的才华却被埋没, 自己的存在被抹去 19:00 The Marriage Question：女性作家乔治·艾略特挑战传统，但也试图符合把自己塞入拧巴的”人妻“角色 30:50 Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma: 女性艺术家最大的"罪行"被视为忽视不好好做一个母亲 39:00 母职和创作是一个互不兼容的死结吗？ 51:30 Ursula Le Guin：重新审视持家和养育的意义，它是人类最古老、最伟大、最重要、也对智识要求最高的的劳作 06:50 Wifedom: Story of Eileen O‘Shaughnessy, how she created the conditions for George Orwell's writing while her own talents were buried 19:00 The Marriage Question: How George Eliot challenged societal traditions but also struggled to conform to society's expectations of a wife 30:50 Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma: The greatest crime of female artists is neglecting her children 39:00 Is balancing motherhood and creative work impossible? 51:30 Ursula Le Guin: Reexamining the meaning of homemaking and childrearing, which are among humanity's oldest and most important labors 【拓展链接 The Links】 Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell's Invisible Life The Marriage Question Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma Biography of X The Creative Act: A Way of Being Ursula Le Guinn: Words Are My Matter 【疲惫红书 CyberRed】 除了播客以外，疲惫娇娃的几个女的在小红书上开了官方账号，我们会不定期发布【疲惫在读】、【疲惫在看】、【疲惫旅行】、【疲惫Vlog】等等更加轻盈、好玩、实验性质的内容。如果你想知道除了播客以外我们在关注什么，快来小红书评论区和我们互动。 Apart from the podcast, we have set up an official account on Xiaohongshu. We will periodically post content such as “CyberPink Reading,” “CyberPink Watching,” “CyberPink Traveling,” “CyberPink Vlog,” and more. Those are lighter, more fun and more experimental stuff about our lives. Leave us some comments on Xiaohongshu! 【买咖啡 Please Support Us】 如果喜欢这期节目并愿意想要给我们买杯咖啡： 海外用户：https://www.patreon.com/cyberpinkfm 海内用户：https://afdian.net/@cyberpinkfm 商务合作邮箱：cyberpinkfm@gmail.com 商务合作微信：CyberPink2022

You have tens of thousands of thoughts per day. Most of them are not true. Today, the third in a series of looking at each of the Ten Commandments of Self-Brain Surgery in more detail. The third commandment is, "I must believe that most of my thoughts are untrue."Here are some tools to challenge bad thoughts, and how to manage them.Scripture: II Cor. 10:5, Psalm 34:8The Ten Commandments of Self-Brain Surgery (Updated 3/8/2024; corollaries coming soon)1. I must relentlessly refuse to participate in my own demise. 2. I must recognize that feelings are not facts, they are chemical events in my brain.  3. I must recognize that most of my thoughts are untrue. 4. I must love tomorrow more than I hate how I feel right now.  5. I must not treat bad feelings with bad operations. 6. I must stop making an operation out of everything. 7. I must not perpetuate generational thought or behavioral issues in my family or start any new ones.  8. I must love my brain and live in such a way as to improve it.  9. I must believe that what I'm doing I'm getting better at. 10. I must understand that thoughts become things.  Leave a voicemail with your question or comment!Five Ways You Can Support this show:Pray for us!Subscribe, like, and share it with your friends! (We even have a YouTube channel!)Leave reviews and comments wherever you listen to podcasts!You can become a paid partner of the podcast and get special bonus episodes and lots more content by clicking here. Visit one of our affiliate partners and consider using their products (we use them every day):Improve your gut health, immune system, and protect your brain with Pique!Other Helpful Links:Click here to access the Hope Is the First Dose playlist of hopeful, healing songs!Be sure to check out my new book, Hope Is the First Dose!Here's a free 5-day Bible study on YouVersion/BibleApp based on my new book!Sign up for my weekly Self-Brain Surgery Newsletter here!All recent episodes with transcripts are available here! (00:09) - Self-Brain Surgery Saturday (03:21) - Let's Get After It (05:43) - The Intersection of Science and Faith (10:37) - Ursula Le Guin's Three Writing Questions (16:40) - Examining Thought Biopsy Results (25:45) - Changing Your Mind, Changing Your Life

This week we're joined once again by Jarrett Walker to talk about the release of the revised edition of his influential book Human Transit.  We chat about Ursula Le Guin, expanding access to opportunity, how to think about transit riders, the free transit movement and thoughts on anger as a response to change. *** Follow us on twitter @theoverheadwire Follow us on Mastadon theoverheadwire@sfba.social Follow us on Threads or Instagram @theoverheadwire Support the show on Patreon http://patreon.com/theoverheadwire Buy books on our Bookshop.org Affiliate site!  And get our Cars are Cholesterol shirt at Tee-Public! And everything else at http://theoverheadwire.com

In her writing, it is Kate DiCamillo's gift to make bearable the fact that joy and sorrow live so close, side by side, in life as it is (if not as we wish it to be). In this conversation, along with good measures of raucous laughter and a few tears, Kate summons us to hearts "capacious enough to contain the complexities and mysteries of ourselves and each other" — qualities these years in the life of the world call forth from all of us, young and old, with ever greater poignancy and vigor.Kate DiCamillo has written many bestselling books, beloved by children and adults in touch with their inner eight-year-old, for two decades, including Because of Winn-Dixie, The Tale of Despereaux, The Magician's Elephant, Flora & Ulysses, and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. Some of these have been turned into operas and movies. Her new books in 2024 include the middle grade novel Ferris and Orris and Timble: The Beginning. She is a rare two-time winner of the Newbery Medal.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.This show originally aired in March 2022.______Sign up for The Pause — a Saturday morning companion newsletter to the On Being podcast season, and our mailing list for news and invitations all year round. Be the first to know as tickets go on sale for the On Being 2025 live national conversation tour.

“Fiction offers the best means of understanding people different from oneself, short of experience. Actually, fiction can be lots better than experience, because it's a manageable size, it's comprehensible, while experience just steamrollers over you and you understand what happened decades later, if ever. Fiction is terrific at giving factual, psychological and moral understanding.-Ursula K. Le Guin in Words Are My Matter: Writing on Life and BooksThis quote by the brilliant writer, Ursula Le Guin, beautifully highlights the power of fiction to nurture empathy and compassion. I have seen thousands of patients over my career as a psychiatrist, each one teaching me something new about the human condition, but my understanding would lack considerable depth if I hadn't also spent innumerable hours reading fiction.Time spent exploring the conversations and, wonderfully, the inner monologue of my favorite characters, not to mention those of the villains and monsters, has been as important, in my opinion, as the facts taught by my instructors during psychiatric residency.This is one reason why I'm so disturbed by the surge of book bans around the country, promoted by those who believe they are “protecting” our children by shielding them from topics they may find confusing or upsetting. Humanizing individuals different from ourselves, whether by race, culture, religion, sexual orientation or other beliefs, allows us to create a healthier future where we recognize all bodies deserve care. Hatred saps our energy through division and discord, while understanding and empathy supercharge our collective power, and allow us to grow in knowledge, particularly our important healers.The world would have seemed smaller, more confusing, and definitely lonelier if, as a child, I hadn't had the constant companionship and illumination of books. I am blessed with a loving family and have many wonderful people in my life, but reading is my oldest friend. Books have been there for me as I've faced uncertainty, grief, and anxiety. Stories of individuals living with courage and hope have propped me up through some of the darkest times, and continue to inspire me to keep going, even when our collective future seems to be veering off course. I would hate to think the young men and women seeking their own support network would be unable to find comfort in books.We must not prevent children from reading. There are no protective bubbles thick enough to shield them from the truth, and stumbling onto these topics on social media or from a poorly informed peer can cause true pain and confusion.I will continue to read banned books. My children are allowed to read banned books. I welcome their questions, and try to answer them honestly and without bias, or as close to this as I can manage. If I am preparing them to survive in the outside world, I hope they can learn to view books as dear friends, and try to face the unknown, whether people, places or ideas, with curiosity and compassion, and know they are never alone.Thank you for reading Our Reflective Minds. This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thereflectivemind.substack.com

In this week's episode, we take a look at seven popular movies about writing & writers and take a look at what they got wrong. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of DRAGONSKULL: CURSE OF THE ORCS (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: SPRINGORCS The coupon code is valid through May 20th, 2024. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello everyone. Welcome to Episode 198 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is April 26th, 2024 and today we were talking about seven of the most inaccurate movies about writers. Before we do that, we will have writing updates, Coupon of the Week, and a Question of the Week. So let's start with Coupon of the Week. First up, let's do Coupon of the Week. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Curse of the Orc (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. That coupon code is SPRINGORCS and that's SPRINGORCS. As always, that coupon code will be in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through May 20th, 2024. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, we have got you covered. Now an update on my current writing projects and audiobook projects. I'm currently on Chapter 16 of Cloak of Titans. I'm not sure how many chapters it's going to end up being. My number keeps changing, but I think right now it's 25. I am over halfway through the book and I'm hoping to be past the 70,000 word point by the end of the day, if all goes well. I'm hoping to still have that out before the end of May. I am also 5,000 words into Half-Orc Paladin, which should come out this summer. After Cloak of Titans is out, my next main project will be Shield of Darkness, which I know many people have been asking about, so hopefully it will not be too much longer until I start on Shield of Darkness. In audiobook news, Hollis McCarthy is almost done recording Ghost in the Veils, and we should hopefully have that available to listen to sometime in May. Brad Wills is currently recording the anthology Tales of the Shield Knight, which will contain over 15 of the Shield Knight short stories that I wrote for the Sevenfold Sword and Dragontiarna series, and that should also hopefully be out sometimes toward the end of May or possibly June. So that is where I'm at with my current writing and audiobook projects. 00:01:58 Question of the Week/Update on Starfield from Previous Question of the Week Next up is Question of the Week, which is designed to inspire interesting discussions of enjoyable topics. This week's question: what is the first fantasy novel you remember reading? After all, if you're hanging around the website of Jonathan Moeller, Pulp Writer, there's a non-zero chance that you enjoy fantasy books. So it seems like a reasonable question, and it was indeed a reasonable question because we got a lot of responses. Our first response is from Justin, who says: believe it or not, the first fantasy novel I read was The Hobbit. My older sisters had pooled their money to buy the paper version of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I saw them reading it, and since my sisters were for once not being nasty to each other and reading together, it had to be good. After they finished The Hobbit, I asked to borrow it. It was allowed to read it as long as I didn't leave the room and wash my hands first. I was eight. Our next response is from Mary, who says: I remember my first reading of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. It was by no stretch of the imagination my first fantasy novel. Our next comment is from Stuart, who says: Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings. When I was younger/preteens, I loved adventure books like Hardy Boys and The Three Investigators. I didn't really read much in the coming years, until one day it was raining outside and being bored, I made a nuisance of myself when my older brother was trying to watch TV. He finally snapped, told me to shut up, threw Pawn of Prophecy at me, and told me to read that. The rest, as they say, is history. I went from adding Eddings to Feist and Gemmel and then on to Jordan, etcetera. I will always have a soft spot for David Eddings books, though. So it seems the common themes here will be a sibling rivalry inspiring love of fantasy literature. Our next response is from Grace, who says: does the Magic Treehouse series count? If not, Chronicles of Narnia. Leanne says Dragonriders of Pern. Boy, did I want a dragon! Melinda says Piers Anthony's Night Mare. I was in 6th grade and my friend gave it to me for my birthday. Cheryl says: The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. From then on, it was full steam ahead, Feist, Eddings, Tolkien, Irvine, and now most of the fantasy/sci-fi authors that are currently publishing on Kindle. David says: probably The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. Kevin says: many, many moons ago it was the Earthsea trilogy by Ursula Le Guin. Then I wandered into TV and films in the sci-fi genre for a number of years, forsaking the written word. My imagination was recaptured more recently, about a decade ago, a decade ago, when a friend lent me a copy of Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind. Alan says: I've been through most of these mentioned so far though the years but my first introduction to once he was Edgar Rice Burroughs, like Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, Pellucidar, etcetera. Then on to Tolkien. Randy says: for me it was The Hobbit.  Went on a family vacation with my uncle and his family. I was introduced to The Hobbit. My uncle will read just about every night to my cousins, and as we're all sharing the same room, my sister and I began hearing the story. We got home. I asked my dad if I could read his copy. 50 some odd years later, I'm still devouring as many books as I can. Mike says: I am not sure which one it was, but I believe it was either The Hobbit or The Sword of Shannara. Diana says: The Gunslinger. I said what I said. Venus says: A Wrinkle in Time or Dragonsong. I know that the Pern books are actually science fiction, but I don't recall any of the science stuff that first time I read it. It was the first Pern book I read. The first epic fantasy I recall reading was Dragons of Autumn Twilight. Gary says: I couldn't give you a title or author, but I definitely remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books in the fantasy genre as a young reader. Tom said: Not 100% sure, but this is my best guess. It would be The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Ah, the Chronicles of Narnia. What a series. Juana says: I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Catriona says: The Hobbit after listening to the BBC Radio play adaptation in the ‘70s. Pippa says: Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. I've reread them lots too and I've never tired of them. Perry says: Do the Iliad, Odyssey, and Beowulf count? For modern fantasy, would be a toss-up between The Hobbit and The Belgariad. Joy says: the Thomas Covenant series. My boyfriend at the time was into sci-fi and fantasy novels, so I borrowed it and was hooked. A different Glenn says: either Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey or the Riddle-Master of Hed by Patricia A. McKillip. I love them both in the same summer while visiting my dad and cannot remember which one came first, but I got hooked on fantasy fiction that summer. Mandy says: The first time I remember reading the left an impression was the Dragonlance Legends series. My favorite fantasy series is Discworld. Gary (a different Gary) says: First one I remember is the Elfstones of Shannara. Also, the Dragonriders of Pern and Crystal Singer series. John says: Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander. I was nine years old. It created a lifelong love of fantasy for me. Darla says: A Wrinkle in Time, The Faraway Lurs, and The Runaway Robot were some of the books I read as a kid. Later it was Lord of the Rings and The Dragonriders of Pern and I continue reading to this day. Andy says first ever was the Deverry series by Katherine Kerr. It was a very intense read for 14 year old on an 8 hour drive on a family trip. Sue says David Eddings- all his series, and Anne McCaffrey, Dragonrider series. Brock says Lord of the Rings. Susan says: probably Lord of the Rings, but it's over 50 years ago. I can't really remember. Edward says The Legend of Huma by Richard A. Knaak. Michael says. Now there's a question! Probably The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe or one of the other Narnia books, all of which are obviously epic. And finally, Judy says the White Mountains by John Christopher or anything by Dr. Seuss. So I think we can see it's safe to say that if you have a small children between the ages of eight and 10 and you want to get them into fantasy literature, the best places to start would be either The Hobbit, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, or perhaps the Dragonriders of Pern. For myself, the very first fantasy novel I ever read was Magician Master by Raymond E. Feist. What got me into that book was The Betrayal at Krondor computer game, which of course was a classic. After I finished the game, I did some reading. Remember this was way before the Internet, so you couldn't find out anything you wanted whenever you wanted and I was astonished to realize that Krondor was in fact based off an actual novel series. So I got Magician Master and started reading it. Fun fact, years later I realized that Magician Master was in fact the sequel to Magician Apprentice and went back to read the first book. So that was this week's Question of the Week. You may remember that last week's Question of the Week was what new Xbox game I should try. Many people had excellent suggestions. I think I'm going to go with Starfield from all the suggestions last week. The reason for this is that Starfield reminds me a great deal of Wing Commander Privateer from the ‘90s. If you remember, the Wing Commander series of PC games, they're basically Top Gun but in space. Privateer took the basic flight gameplay mechanic but changed it so you're an independent privateer captain and you had to make your way through the Gemini sector as a mercenary, a merchant, a pirate, a bounty hunter, or some combination of them. You had to buy your own equipment and weapons and find a way to turn a profit in your jobs, since you had to pay for everything. If you played the main plots, you got involved in conspiracy involving a lost alien relic, but you don't have to do any main plot at all. You just fly around the galaxy making credits, fighting pirates, and trading. Starfield basically feels like someone took Wing Commander Privateer, and then added on a Skyrim-esque role-playing experience for when your character is on the ground. I know it got middling reviews, but I'm enjoying the game so far. Perhaps because, at least to my eye, it feels like a massively updated version of Wing Commander Privateer. 00:09:43 Main Topic: Seven of the Most Inaccurate Movies About Writers Now we're 10 minutes into the show and still haven't gotten to our main topic, so I think it's time we should finally do that, which is Seven of the Most Inaccurate Movies About Writers. I decided to do this because I noticed that whenever a novelist or a writer of fiction turns up in a movie, the depiction of it tends to be grossly inaccurate. That's hardly unique to writers. The joke among the military officers, former military officers, and law enforcement officers is that whenever the military or law enforcement turns up on TV, you can have a good drinking game by counting all the inaccuracies and things that they get wrong. So why should writing be any different? I think the difference might be that writing is kind of a more aspirational career, where it's the sort of career that people tend to daydream about, like going off and becoming a writer and so they tend to get a lot of things wrong about that. So with the help of my transcriptionist, we pulled together a list of seven of the most inaccurate movies about writing. There's actually a couple of Hallmark movies on here, and this isn't to bash on Hallmark movies. I think Hallmark movies tend to be about the fantasy of romance in the way that a show like Law and Order is about the fantasy of law enforcement and criminal justice, or a movie like John Wick is about the fantasy of violence or a game like SimCity is about the fantasy of managing a large city. The reality is of none of these things are nothing like the way they're portrayed in fiction, but instead, Law and Order is about the fantasy of what we would like the criminal justice system to be like and John Wick is kind of like, you know, a revenge fantasy of what we imagine we would do if someone actually shot our dog. So with that in mind, let's look at seven of the most inaccurate movies we found about writing. The first one is called Winter Love Story from Hallmark in 2019. It kind of deserves the 22% it got in the Rotten Tomatometer. The plot is a debut writer who wrote a memoir is appearing on a book tour of a famous fantasy author in order to boost her sales. They travel around visiting charming bed and breakfasts with plenty of time to talk about their feelings. The fantasy writer has a dog that he really loves a lot. The movie really revolves more around the dog more than the books. Now, why is this a bad movie about writing? For one thing, it has an unrealistic view of book tours, namely that a debut writer who is writing a memoir (which is a notoriously hard to sell genre) would be given such a lavish book tour paired with an author outside her genre. Cross-genre of sales promotions here in the real world tend not to work terribly well, because someone who wants to buy an 800 page fantasy novel about dragons is probably not going to be super interested in picking up a new writer's memoir are about her failed dating life. The movie also has an unrealistic view of book marketing and the involvement level and commitment of traditional publishing staff. If traditional publishing marketing staff is marketing 50 plus other writers, they're not going to follow your whimsical book tour and give tons of advice and coaching along the way. Book tours really don't sell very many books in general, to the point where Brandon Sanderson, who is probably the top selling fantasy author in the world right now, stopped doing book tours in 2020 when COVID came along (because you know, everyone had to stop doing book tours). But after all the various restrictions lifted, he found that he really wasn't interested in resuming it because of the physical drain of traveling and it turned out it had no impact on sales whatsoever. Finally, the movie touts the very false belief that the skill of giving heartfelt, heavily autobiographical speeches is the essential skill in marketing your work. Honestly, if you want to sell books, you would have better luck learning how to use Amazon ads or Facebook ads effectively, but I expect that would not make for a very good Hallmark movie. The second movie we're going to talk about is Lost City from 2022, which I actually saw shortly after it came out because it turned up on streaming (I think it was on Prime). I thought it was actually pretty funny, but it was not terribly accurate about the business of writing. The plot is that a romance author is struggling to finish her book. While she's on tour with her famous cover model, she gets kidnapped and the cover model must turn into an action hero and rescue her. The plot very heavily borrows from the 1980s movie Romancing the Stone, which is also about a writer. The scenery in the movie is fantastic and Daniel Radcliffe plays the villain, this insane billionaire who kidnapped Sandra Bullock's character to help find lost treasure and their reactions were pretty funny. It's not a great movie about writing. Even the romance and romantasy (which is a combination of romance and fantasy) authors topping the best seller list right now (as of April 2024) do not have press tours that are more like a fan convention with a budget for sparkly jumpsuits and lighting effects, etcetera. Cover models do not get a lot (or even any) of promotion, attention, or respect from publishers. The cover model is given top billing on the tour along with the author, which just doesn't happen. One side note, what is probably realistic is the publisher trying to discourage tangents in full academic jargon by the author on her history related research interests. You will often find if you're reading a book that involved a lot of research on the part of the author, that the author is going to put that research into the book (whether the reader likes it or not). Our third movie is called Alex and Emma, which came out in 2003. The plot of this movie is that an author with writer's block has debts to a loan shark he must pay in 30 days or else the loan shark is going to get nasty. He hires a stenographer to help him church out a book and since it's a romantic comedy, you can probably guess what happens next. This movie was apparently very loosely inspired by the story of Dostoyevsky writing The Gambler/meeting his wife but is also apparently heavily inspired by the movie Paris When it Sizzles. Even with multiple sources of inspiration, it still received terrible reviews for an incoherent, unsatisfying plot. And why is this a bad movie about writing? For one thing, it treats writing a book draft in 30 days as a near impossible feat. Not to toot my own horn, so to speak, but I'm going to write the rough draft of Cloak of Titans in under 30 days. If all goes well, it will be well over 100,000 words. There's also once again the cliche that writing already must be autobiographical and reflect what's currently happening in your life in order to be good. If that were true, all my books would be about the adventures of a middle-aged IT guy, which would be kind of boring compared to epic fantasy novels. And another thing that's unrealistic is that the struggling writer gets a $125,000 advance from the publisher, but the publisher won't help him replace a computer when it gets destroyed by a loan shark's posse. Computers were, of course, quite a bit more expensive in 2003 than they are now, but still they cost a lot less than $125,000. So that part definitely didn't make sense. Our 4th movie is Not Another Happy Ending, which came out in 2013. A writer becomes successful but has writer's block when she's happy. Her publisher has to figure out how to make her unhappy so she can write again but falls in love with her in the process. And why is this a bad movie about writing? If following around most the successful writers in order to inspire them was the actual job of publishers, a few certain well known fantasy series might have at least one more book by now than they actually do. So we'll just move on from there. The fifth one is a movie that gets made fun of a lot and rather deservedly so: Eat, Pray, Love, which came out in 2010. The plot of this, obviously, is that a reader gets divorced and goes on a journey to Italy, India, and Bali in order to “find herself” and gain writing inspiration. Why is this a bad movie about writing? So many reasons! First, there's a sort of a cliche in poor taste that writers can't be great unless they leave their spouses, that their marriage is preventing someone from devoting themselves to great writing. Although the one thing you say for Eat, Pray, Love is that it's a gender flip as opposed to the way these things usually are in movies where it's the male writer who is being held back by his wife. The reality is that people with stable home lives are more likely to be productive than people without them, and this is true across all fields of endeavor, and not just writing. Another bad cliche is the idea that you need to bankroll a year of travel to luxury destinations in order to find inspiration to write isn't realistic or accurate, and in truth very, very, very, very, very few writers can actually afford this luxury. This type of thinking leads people to believe they need to go on expensive retreats in order to be a “real writer”, when in reality many famous writers rarely traveled. Examples: Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, I think J.R.R. Tolkien spent most of his post-war life entirely in England, etcetera. For myself, I do most of my writing either on my couch or while sitting in a $40 office chair I bought off Amazon Basics. That is definitely a cliche that you do not need to travel in order to write. In fact, travel can get in the way of getting writing done, which was one of the Brandon Sanderson's stated reasons for why he doesn't go on book tours too often anymore. Our 6th movie is As Good as It Gets, which came out in 1997. The premise of this movie is that a crabby, ill-behaved writer with some mental health challenges has a series of unexpected interactions that inspire him to become a better person. And why is this an inaccurate move about writing? First, there's a cliche that writers need to use a typewriter because a computer isn't as artistic or special. I know there are writers who insist on writing things longhand and or insist on using the typewriter and they have their reasons, but it's my belief that that is in fact very inefficient, and you should probably write on whatever method is most efficient or easy for you. And if you are writing for publication and profit, that means writing on a computer. If you don't like to type, you can dictate. There's also the idea I don't like that the idea that the reading public/critics will forgive terrible behavior or prejudice because of how brilliant you are. This is a fallacy you see across many professions where a brilliant doctor, a brilliant scientist, a brilliant politician, a brilliant writer, or whatever feels they have a license to act like a total jerk because they're so good at what they do. In reality, that often causes a lot of problems and ends up destroying the person's career. So that is a bad cliche, and one that if you're listening to this, I urge you not to put into practice in your daily life. Our seventh and final movie is another Hallmark one called A Novel Romance, which came out in 2015. In this story, a male romance writer who uses a pen name meets a female book reviewer who is unaware of his true identity even as they grow closer. Will pressure from his publisher to reveal his true identity hurt their budding romance? What did this movie get wrong about writing? First, there's the idea that pen names are somehow deceptive or shocking, especially in the romance genre where it's very common for a single writer to have multiple pen names. A professional book critic would consider it a very strong possibility that someone is writing under a pen name, which makes you wonder how competent the book critic is as a book critic. Publishers do not send limos to the airport for writers traveling to their personal vacation homes. If a writer is rich enough to have a limo and a personal vacation home, the writer is probably paying for it him or herself. The publisher is not. Most writing is not done on a legal pad while staring out onto the water next to your very expensive boat. Your agent, even a very nice agent (if such a thing exists) will not fly across the country multiple times in order to give you romantic advice. And finally, an author's pen name reveal would not be front page tabloid news. So those are just some of the things that movie got wrong about writing. So there those are 7 movies that are very inaccurate about what being a writer is like, and the point of that was not to pick on those movies (with the possible exception of Eat, Pray, Love, which deserves to be picked on) but to point out that the way they referenced what being a writer was like was often quite inaccurate, even if the movies themselves may or may not have been enjoyable for their intended audience. So that's it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found it useful and a word of thanks to my transcriptionist help me to pull this list together because she's definitely seen more Hallmark movies than I have. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoy the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

For this week's DadChat, Nate and Francis discuss books they're reading, which leads to an examination of how Nate wound up giving the work of Ursula Le Guin and Phillip K. Dick a try, and why he strongly recommends both. We also discuss childhood insomnia and recommendations for easy-to-manage herb gardens. It's a DadChat package deal.   Like Hell of a Way? Check out our Patreon and get hundreds of hours of bonus content dating all the way back to 2017: www.patreon.com/hellofawaytodie   *SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT* We now have a storefront to sell the patches, buttons, and magnets that we also give out as flair for our $10 tier. Buy some sweet gear here:  https://www.hellofawaytodie.com/shop We have a YouTube channel now -- subscribe here and get sweet videos from us in which we yell in our cars like true veterans: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwlHZpNTz-h6aTeQiJrEDKw You can follow the show on Twitter here: @HellOfAWay Follow Nate here: @inthesedeserts Follow Francis here: @ArmyStrang  

In this final part of my interview with Joanne McNeill, author of Wrong Way (a novel set in the near future at a company that manages driverless cars) and Lurking (a non-fiction look at the history of the internet from a user's perspective), we peek at what's coming around the bend for her and I get her answers to my fast five questions. We talked about: The novel The Lodgers by Holly Pester, about the housing crisis, and how it hurts a little bit every time she has to put it down because it's so good Joanne's sci-fi inspirations, including Philip K. Dick, J.G. Ballard, Ursula Le Guin, and Octavia Butler, and what specifically about their work fuels her writing How avant garde sci fi novels used to sell hundreds of thousands of copies–and how this hunger for challenging work is still present, even if you're not a fancy city elite A tiny sneak peek at the new book she's working on. OK, not really, but she does share how she's trying to write this one differently and push back on the ideas she's created about how she writes best Joanne's answers to the fast 5 questions–a book she was stunned by, where she gets her coffee beans, the Kate Bush song she finds so meaningful that she only listens to it a couple of times a year so it doesn't lose its power, her favorite season, and the perfect wrap sandwich she would ask for if someone offered to make or buy absolutely anything she wanted. Joanne's website: https://www.joannemcneil.com/ For full show notes with links to everything we discuss, plus bonus photos!, visit katehanley.substack.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Elizabeth talks with Steven Gonzalez, anthropologist and author of speculative fiction under the pen name E.G. Condé. They discuss the entanglement of politics, Taíno animism, and weather events in the form of a hurricane named Teddy. Steve describes the suffusion of sound he has experienced in Puerto Rico and the soundlessness at the heart of hurricanes, and tells us about his academic work on data centers, and a collaborative speculative film that imagines a world without clouds. Steve and Elizabeth reflect on current shifts within anthropology that are opening the discipline to other modes of expression, including speculative fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction, in the tradition of Ursula K. Le Guin (the subject of a recent episode and of John's recent book Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea: My Reading) and of Arkady Martine, Byzantine historian and author of A Memory called Empire, and A Desolation Called Peace. As her Recallable Book, Elizabeth offers an anthropological space opera, The Expanse. Mentioned in the episode: "World without Clouds" by Jia Hui Lee, Luísa Reis Castro, Julianne Yip, Steven Gonzalez, and Gabrielle Robbins. Dreaming of Dry Land: Environmental Transformation in Colonial Mexico City by Vera S. Candiani. Haraway, Donna. "Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective 1." In Women, science, and technology, pp. 455-472. Routledge, 2013. Marcus, George E. "On the unbearable slowness of being an anthropologist now: Notes on a contemporary anxiety in the making of ethnography." Cross Cultural Poetics 12, no. 12 (2003): 7-20. Read the episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In this episode, Elizabeth talks with Steven Gonzalez, anthropologist and author of speculative fiction under the pen name E.G. Condé. They discuss the entanglement of politics, Taíno animism, and weather events in the form of a hurricane named Teddy. Steve describes the suffusion of sound he has experienced in Puerto Rico and the soundlessness at the heart of hurricanes, and tells us about his academic work on data centers, and a collaborative speculative film that imagines a world without clouds. Steve and Elizabeth reflect on current shifts within anthropology that are opening the discipline to other modes of expression, including speculative fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction, in the tradition of Ursula K. Le Guin (the subject of a recent episode and of John's recent book Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea: My Reading) and of Arkady Martine, Byzantine historian and author of A Memory called Empire, and A Desolation Called Peace. As her Recallable Book, Elizabeth offers an anthropological space opera, The Expanse. Mentioned in the episode: "World without Clouds" by Jia Hui Lee, Luísa Reis Castro, Julianne Yip, Steven Gonzalez, and Gabrielle Robbins. Dreaming of Dry Land: Environmental Transformation in Colonial Mexico City by Vera S. Candiani. Haraway, Donna. "Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective 1." In Women, science, and technology, pp. 455-472. Routledge, 2013. Marcus, George E. "On the unbearable slowness of being an anthropologist now: Notes on a contemporary anxiety in the making of ethnography." Cross Cultural Poetics 12, no. 12 (2003): 7-20. Read the episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Elizabeth talks with Steven Gonzalez, anthropologist and author of speculative fiction under the pen name E.G. Condé. They discuss the entanglement of politics, Taíno animism, and weather events in the form of a hurricane named Teddy. Steve describes the suffusion of sound he has experienced in Puerto Rico and the soundlessness at the heart of hurricanes, and tells us about his academic work on data centers, and a collaborative speculative film that imagines a world without clouds. Steve and Elizabeth reflect on current shifts within anthropology that are opening the discipline to other modes of expression, including speculative fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction, in the tradition of Ursula K. Le Guin (the subject of a recent episode and of John's recent book Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea: My Reading) and of Arkady Martine, Byzantine historian and author of A Memory called Empire, and A Desolation Called Peace. As her Recallable Book, Elizabeth offers an anthropological space opera, The Expanse. Mentioned in the episode: "World without Clouds" by Jia Hui Lee, Luísa Reis Castro, Julianne Yip, Steven Gonzalez, and Gabrielle Robbins. Dreaming of Dry Land: Environmental Transformation in Colonial Mexico City by Vera S. Candiani. Haraway, Donna. "Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective 1." In Women, science, and technology, pp. 455-472. Routledge, 2013. Marcus, George E. "On the unbearable slowness of being an anthropologist now: Notes on a contemporary anxiety in the making of ethnography." Cross Cultural Poetics 12, no. 12 (2003): 7-20. Read the episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

In this episode, Elizabeth talks with Steven Gonzalez, anthropologist and author of speculative fiction under the pen name E.G. Condé. They discuss the entanglement of politics, Taíno animism, and weather events in the form of a hurricane named Teddy. Steve describes the suffusion of sound he has experienced in Puerto Rico and the soundlessness at the heart of hurricanes, and tells us about his academic work on data centers, and a collaborative speculative film that imagines a world without clouds. Steve and Elizabeth reflect on current shifts within anthropology that are opening the discipline to other modes of expression, including speculative fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction, in the tradition of Ursula K. Le Guin (the subject of a recent episode and of John's recent book Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea: My Reading) and of Arkady Martine, Byzantine historian and author of A Memory called Empire, and A Desolation Called Peace. As her Recallable Book, Elizabeth offers an anthropological space opera, The Expanse. Mentioned in the episode: "World without Clouds" by Jia Hui Lee, Luísa Reis Castro, Julianne Yip, Steven Gonzalez, and Gabrielle Robbins. Dreaming of Dry Land: Environmental Transformation in Colonial Mexico City by Vera S. Candiani. Haraway, Donna. "Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective 1." In Women, science, and technology, pp. 455-472. Routledge, 2013. Marcus, George E. "On the unbearable slowness of being an anthropologist now: Notes on a contemporary anxiety in the making of ethnography." Cross Cultural Poetics 12, no. 12 (2003): 7-20. Read the episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/caribbean-studies

In this episode, Elizabeth talks with Steven Gonzalez, anthropologist and author of speculative fiction under the pen name E.G. Condé. They discuss the entanglement of politics, Taíno animism, and weather events in the form of a hurricane named Teddy. Steve describes the suffusion of sound he has experienced in Puerto Rico and the soundlessness at the heart of hurricanes, and tells us about his academic work on data centers, and a collaborative speculative film that imagines a world without clouds. Steve and Elizabeth reflect on current shifts within anthropology that are opening the discipline to other modes of expression, including speculative fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction, in the tradition of Ursula K. Le Guin (the subject of a recent episode and of John's recent book Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea: My Reading) and of Arkady Martine, Byzantine historian and author of A Memory called Empire, and A Desolation Called Peace. As her Recallable Book, Elizabeth offers an anthropological space opera, The Expanse. Mentioned in the episode: "World without Clouds" by Jia Hui Lee, Luísa Reis Castro, Julianne Yip, Steven Gonzalez, and Gabrielle Robbins. Dreaming of Dry Land: Environmental Transformation in Colonial Mexico City by Vera S. Candiani. Haraway, Donna. "Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective 1." In Women, science, and technology, pp. 455-472. Routledge, 2013. Marcus, George E. "On the unbearable slowness of being an anthropologist now: Notes on a contemporary anxiety in the making of ethnography." Cross Cultural Poetics 12, no. 12 (2003): 7-20. Read the episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

We're about to dive into an elective that combines Beowulf, The Hobbit, Ursula Leguin, graphic novels, and contemporary YA! What holds all these threads together? That's what repeat guest and creative teacher Caitlin Lore is about to tell you as we continue our series on creative electives across the country. Get ready for the big reveal in just a moment. Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram.  Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!   

Welcome to another LEGENDARY episode of Storybeast! Our Legendaries are special guests who are an expert within their area of storytelling. In this episode, Courtney Shack, Ghabiba Weston, and Nadine Flint have the pleasure of interviewing Julie Phillips, author of THE BABY ON THE FIRE ESCAPE; JAMES TIPTREE JR, THE DOUBLE LIFE OF ALICE B SHELDON; and the to-be-titled biography of Ursula le Guin. In this episode, you'll hear: About Julie's thoughts on writing while mothering What a dramatic line is in biography Ghabiba, Courtney, and Julie compare fiction to writing bigraphy About fairytales that feature mothers Julie's process for writing Ursula le Guin's biography Ursula le Guin's REAL writing advice and if her writing routine on the internet was something she actually did Find us on our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠website ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠and on Instagram at @storybeastpodcast. For more storytelling content to your inbox, subscribe ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.  Feel free to reach out if you want to talk story or snacks!  A warm thank you to Deore for our musical number. You can find more of her creative work on Spotify.  As ever, thank you for listening, Beasties! Please consider leaving a review to support this podcast.  Be brave, stay beastly! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/storybeastpodcast/message

Lords: * Mike * Jake Topics: * Cameras are peaking -- what's next? * Is the mysterious disappearing, or just mystery? * Preschool security practices * At the Feast in the Great Hall, by Ursula Leguin * https://files.fireside.fm/file/fireside-uploads/images/3/3597ddeb-e52e-4cda-a59c-c64600489fea/1-EFinaN.png * It's not boring to talk about dreams Microtopics: * The great state of Maine. * A project you've been working on for a long time. * Inventing a game developer community in Michigan. * Meaningful distinguishers on normal camera use. * A lukewarm decisionmaking process. * Computational photography. * Samsung's fake moon. * A camera that just guesses what you want to see so you don't even need to take the photo. * A massive endless feed of the same photo with different people in it. * Why people use cameras. * Whether photos exist. * Late stages of the product category. * People who need Photoshop to do their job. * Photo mode in real life. * A photo you can take later. * Adding a filter to make the guy in the background less likable. * Meals for the Ages * How to get from here to perfect ubiquitous service surveillance. * Theatrically pretending to be hit by a stationary car. * Going to the Gallagher movie and getting sprayed with watermelon. * There's just the one Bigfoot, it's the same Bigfoot every time. * Tomato sauces that are still delicious even if you learned the recipe from the Internet and not from a grandma. * Mysterious things backing into the shadows so they can remain mysterious. * Protecting mystery wherever you find it. * The Museum of Jurassic Technology. * Stepping inside someone else's very strange brain. * Dawn Wall. * An intensely detailed exploration of the surface of a cliff. * I wonder what it's like on the fucking moon? * Who painted the iconic cover of the Wrinkle in Time paperback. * The shoot-em-up cabinet you saw in the canteen at the US Embassy in Monrovia, Liberia before the first Liberian civil war and have never been able to find since. * A reaction to the lack of organic mystery in our lives. * The Case of the Missing Hit and Searching for Sugarman. * Wash over me, True Story. * Which phone checked the kid out of preschool. * Being on the list of services the insurance companies consider to have checked various boxes. * We got pins. We can do that. * The three bad four-digit pins. * Streamlining the process of rapidly accounting for all the children. * Developing a system that would deterministically move the needle in a useful way. * Blundering in the brightness. * Telling two events from the same perspective. * Ugly crying at your desk in a public workspace. * Spending way more time not alive than alive. * Something that we can experience on either side of our lives. * A Fire Take from Jake. * Waiter stress dreams. * A skill that you can hone. * One of the more fun channels in the discord. * Holding an increasingly large bag of stuff. * Waking up laughing until you realize your dream was not funny. * The consciousness wall between you and visualization. * Training yourself to let your mental imagery be visible. * Seeing clumps of color and interpreting them. * Doing an editing pass on your dreams before relating it to your friends. * Jay-Z's favorite bleu cheese Milkshakes. * Screwball horror. * A splash of furry content.

It's Self-Brain Surgery Saturday!Today, the third in a series of looking at each of the Ten Commandments of Self-Brain Surgery in more detail. The third commandment is, "I must believe that most of my thoughts are untrue."Here are some tools to challenge bad thoughts, and how to manage them. Scripture: II Cor. 10:5, Psalm 34:8The Ten Commandments of Self-Brain Surgery (Updated 3/8/2024; corollaries coming soon)1. I must relentlessly refuse to participate in my own demise. 2. I must recognize that feelings are not facts, they are chemical events in my brain.  3. I must recognize that most of my thoughts are untrue. 4. I must love tomorrow more than I hate how I feel right now.  5. I must not treat bad feelings with bad operations. 6. I must stop making an operation out of everything. 7. I must not perpetuate generational thought or behavioral issues in my family or start any new ones.  8. I must love my brain and live in such a way as to improve it.  9. I must believe that what I'm doing I'm getting better at. 10. I must understand that thoughts become things.  Leave a voicemail with your question or comment!Five Ways You Can Support this show:Pray for us!Subscribe, like, and share it with your friends! (We even have a YouTube channel!)Leave reviews and comments wherever you listen to podcasts!You can become a paid partner of the podcast and get special bonus episodes and lots more content by clicking here. Visit one of our affiliate partners and consider using their products (we use them every day):Improve your gut health, immune system, and protect your brain with Pique!Other Helpful Links:Click here to access the Hope Is the First Dose playlist of hopeful, healing songs!Be sure to check out my new book, Hope Is the First Dose!Here's a free 5-day Bible study on YouVersion/BibleApp based on my new book!Sign up for my weekly Self-Brain Surgery Newsletter here!All recent episodes with transcripts are available here! (00:09) - Self-Brain Surgery Saturday (03:21) - Let's Get After It (05:43) - The Intersection of Science and Faith (10:37) - Ursula Le Guin's Three Writing Questions (16:40) - Examining Thought Biopsy Results (25:45) - Changing Your Mind, Changing Your Life

"A hermit in the middle of Los Angeles" is one way she described herself - born in 1947, Butler became a writer who wanted to "tell stories filled with facts. Make people touch and taste and know." Since her death in 2006, her writing has been widely taken up and praised for its foresight in suggesting developments such as big pharma and for its critique of American history. Shahidha Bari is joined by the author Irenosen Okojie and the scholar Gerry Canavan and Nisi Shawl, writer, editor, journalist – and long time friend of Octavia Butler.Irenosen Okojie's latest collection of short stories is called Nudibranch and she was winner of the 2020 AKO Caine Prize for Fiction for her story Grace Jones. You can hear her discussing her own writing life alongside Nadifa Mohamed in a previous Free Thinking episode https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000k8sz Gerry Canavan is co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction. Nisi Shawl writes about books for The Seattle Times, and also contributes frequently to Ms. Magazine, The Cascadia Subduction Zone, The Washington Post.Producer: Luke MulhallYou might be interested in the Free Thinking episode Science fiction and ecological thinking https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000h6yw and on Ursula Le Guin's The Word for World is Forest https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b6yb37 and a playlist exploring Landmarks of Culture including Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks and the writing of Audre Lorde, and of Wole Soyinka https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01jwn44

What questions and explorations are most relevant to us in 2024, given its astrology and energetic flavors? How do we hold the complexity of liminal times? This year, I invited the brilliant and thoughtful Erin Tack Shipley to discuss the astrology of 2024. We ended up creating a rich two-part conversation that weaves our contemplations, delineations, and predictions of each month from the lens of astrology. This is Part 2 of our conversation, which covers the second half of 2024. Part 1 can be found here.Working with and alongside Erin, I'm consistently inspired by how the depth of her reflections often lead our conversations to surprising revelations. These conversations are no exception.Timestamps for our discussion: [02:04] Further thoughts on Jupiter in Gemini[11:11] July 2024[22:53] August 2024[47:08] September 2024[1:10:05] October 2024[1:22:04] November 2024[1:40:06] December 2024Resources & people mentioned: Zoë Schlanger's work for The Atlantic, specifically this articleUrsula K. LeGuin's The Tombs of AtuanHere's Erin's bio:Erin Tack Shipley is a professional consulting astrologer, writer, and teacher supporting folx in staying with the challenge of being in right relationship within and beyond oppressive systems. Working with astrology, ritual strategy and collective liberatory ideologies, Erin helps people reconcile the gap between how they are in the reality of their present conditions and who they perceive themselves to be in their ideal world. Erin lives, works and tends community on the traditional unceded and occupied lands of the Awaswas, Cotoni, Uypi, Sayanta and Aptos speaking Peoples.Connect with Erin through her newsletter, her website, and her Instagram. Read about her offerings here. If you enjoyed this offering, I encourage you to check out my 1:1 offerings. I offer single sessions and long term work.Listen to & purchase my new song Friends on Bandcamp. You can also listen to it on your favorite streaming platforms.Try the incredible breathwork and meditation app Open for 30 days free using this special link. This podcast is hosted, produced, and edited by Jonathan Koe. Theme music is also composed by me! Connect with me through my newsletter, my Instagram @nate_qi, and my music. For podcast-related inquiries, email me at healingthespiritpodcast@gmail.com.

Episode Summary This week on Live Like the World is Dying, we have a short story about prepping called "Blood, Soil, & Frozen TV Dinners" by Matthew Dougal. It's a parody about two right-wing preppers who are faced with a collapse in society. After the story, there's an interview with the author about prepping mentalities and writing. This episode was reposted from the Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness podcast. The story can be read at tangledwilderness.org. Host Info Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery Reader The Reader is Bea Flowers. If you would like to hear Bea narrate other things, or would like to get them to read things for you check them out at https://voicebea.wixsite.com/website 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. Theme music The theme song was written and performed by Margaret Killjoy. You can find her at http://birdsbeforethestorm.net or on twitter @magpiekilljoy Transcript Live Like the World is Dying: “Blood, Soil, & Frozen TV Dinners” with Matthew Dougal **Inmn ** 00:16  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 have something a little different. I host another podcast called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness where every month we take a zine that Strangers puts out and turn it into an audio feature and do an interview with the author. We had a two-part feature called Blood, Soil, and Frozen TV Dinners by Matthew Dougal, and it is a short story about prepping from a very strange perspective, that of two right-wing preppers facing a mysterious collapse of society. This short story is a parody and I promise that the two main pov characters are not the heroes of the tale. It's a fun story and I do an interview with Matthew afterward about prepping mentalities, fiction, and other neat stuff. If you like this episode, check out my other podcast that this is featured from. I did not re-record the outro, so you'll get a little taste of Margaret playing the piano, because she wrote the theme music for the Strangers podcast. You'll also get to hear our wonderful reader, Bea Flowers narrate the story. Follow along with the transcript or at Tangledwilderness.org where you can read all of our featured zines for free. But before all of that, we are a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts and here's a jingle from another show on that network.  [sings a simple melody] **Bea ** 02:49 “Blood, Soil, & Frozen TV Dinners” by Matthew Dougal. Read by Bea Flowers. Published by Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness.  Katie sat, wide-eyed, beneath the kitchen table and hugged her knees to her chest. She was shaking, vibrating visibly. Tanner put his finger to his lips and prayed that her silent tears would remain just that. There was no time to stop and calm her down. Not again. He moved slowly around the kitchen, fumbling through cupboards and pulling out pre-wrapped packages of food. Always be prepared. Tanner had practiced this before things went dark, but it was different doing it for real. His hands hadn't been so shaky, back then.  A noise, on the porch. His body froze before his mind registered the sound. Tanner dropped into a crouch and crossed the room to the window, willing every cell in his body to radiate confidence toward his baby girl. His hand found the Glock 17 at his belt and he brought it up in front of him, the familiar feel of the grip reassuring. He took a breath, steadied himself, and raised his eyes to the level of the windowsill. The muscles in his thighs steeled and he remained, unblinking, utterly still, staring out into the darkness.  After thirty or forty nerve-twanging seconds, Tanner drew breath and relaxed. His quads were burning, and they thanked him as he straightened. He could hear the specter of his ex-wife in his head, telling him to lose some weight, exercise more… Well she'd left, and that was 135 pounds gone right there. She'd probably say that was a good start.   An unbearably loud ringing pierced the silence and sent him diving to the floor, landing awkwardly on his gun and sounding a crash through the kitchen. A keening whine came from under the table, Katie shaken from her silence.  The doorbell.  Feeling foolish, Tanner twisted over his shoulder and hissed at his daughter to be quiet. Still prone, he crawled toward the hallway in the most reassuring manner he could manage and pointed his Glock at the front door.  Footsteps outside, then a shadow appeared at the window. Tanner's heart pounded in his ears—more violent pulses of silence than sound—and his vision blurred as panic flooded his body. He'd heard the early reports of armed groups in the streets, some sort of fighting downtown, but he hadn't really believed they would come here. His legs were weak, and he silently thanked God that he was already on the floor. The shape at the window didn't move, frozen in the gloom, silhouetted by flickering light coming from the street. As Tanner's head cleared he tried to take stock of what was happening.  The apparition was vaguely man-shaped but shorter and slighter, an ethereal grace evident even in its stillness. A voice called out, muffled through the door, the guttural singsong completely at odds with the sleek form at the window. Tanner couldn't understand everything, but he thought he caught the words “little girl.” A second shape mounted the porch alongside the first, similarly short but squat and stocky, and grunted something to its companion in an alien tongue. Fluorescent light flooded the yard and the voices momentarily disappeared beneath the growl of an angry engine. Tanner's breath caught. His trembling finger hovered over the trigger and he willed the barrel to still its swaying dance. Two shots exploded outside—loud shots, from a much bigger gun than his. The creatures spun to face this new threat, their chatter rising in pitch and speed. They sounded panicked.  “yalla! hawula' alnaas majnoon.” Tanner sensed his opportunity. He was forgotten. All those hours of training kicked in and muscle memory took over as he rose to one knee, took a two-handed grip, and unleashed a furious hail of fire at his front door.  “Keep your filthy hands off my daughter!” He fired until he felt the Glock stop kicking, the magazine spent. As the cacophony faded he realized he was screaming.  “Tanner! It's me, Blake. Stop shooting goddammit, they're gone.”  “Blake?” Tanner mechanically reloaded his gun. “Why…” His throat was raw, his voice barely audible even to him. He swallowed, fighting to control his breath, and cleared his throat. “What are you doing here?”  “Come to see if you were okay. Figured you and the kid might need a hand.”  A stocky, heavily muscled figure wearing fatigues and a plate carrier stepped up to the porch, visible through the splintered ruins that had been the front door. A halogen glow lanced through the holes, like the brilliant aura of some kind of avenging eagle.  “When this shit spread across the river from the city we locked down. It was touch-and-go for a while, but things quieted down eventually. When they did, I came straight over. Good thing I got here when I did. The quick little fuckers ran for it, but I think you hit one of ‘em.”  The figure stopped, pulled down the red, white and blue bandana covering its mouth, and spat. Tanner had never been more relieved to see his buddy's foul-mouthed face. Or his M1A SOCOM 16 rifle.  “We're alright.” Tanner's voice was exhausted, his body shivering as the adrenaline fled. “Thank God I was prepared. Still, it's good to see you.”  “Prepared, shit.” His buddy grinned. “I been telling you for years to get something heavy duty.” Blake kicked the splintered remains of the door and his grin faded. “You can't stay here. Those things'll be back. Grab your girl and jump in the truck. Let's head to mine, she'll be safe there.” The grin returned.“Prepared, shit.”  An hour later they were sitting in “the Hole,” as Blake affectionately called it. The Hole was both name and description, although it perhaps undersold the amount of effort that had gone into its construction. Attached to the garage by a short, downward-sloping corridor, The Hole was a full-blown bunker that spread underneath almost the entirety of Blake's backyard. Tanner was sitting in the main chamber eating Top Ramen, chicken flavor.  They had made the half-mile journey in silence—lights down on the Tacoma, Tanner jumpy, Blake grim, Katie in a state of shock. The streets had looked completely foreign, the usual calming glow of LEDs replaced by the orange flicker of scattered flames. The familiar hum of traffic had been gone. Instead, gunfire had cracked in the distance.  Blake's wife Lauren had buzzed them inside after Blake confirmed his identity via video feed—three times: at the gate, the door, and the entrance to the Hole. The security was impressive. Lauren had ushered them inside, AR-15 at the ready. “This is prepared,” Blake was saying, as Katie stared blankly at her untouched ramen. “Old owners, they had this backyard full of fruit trees, vegetables, fuckin' kale and kohlrabi. What good is that gonna do, I said, you gonna hide in the pumpkin patch with a slingshot? Idiots.  “Anyhow me and Lauren, we wanted to be ready, so I been building this the last two years. Ain't no one knows about it, not even the contractors…” Blake sliced a finger across his throat, then laughed, “I'm joking, but they were from one of them Mexican countries. Had no idea what they were building. Good workers, though, came here the right way. And I did the security all myself.”  Tanner laughed too, but at what he didn't quite know. “You took this all real serious.”  “Yessir. You never really believed, but we did. Earl Swanson was right, this here's been a long time coming. It's just like he said, and we listened. And here we are, while you was laying on the floor waving round that little waterpistol of yours.”  Tanner had listened too, but apparently not well enough. There was only so much time he could watch an angry man on TV shouting about the state of the nation, no matter how prophetic he was turning out to be. Tanner tried to put up a strong front and flex his knowledge. He had listened, dammit.  “Is this it, then? The invasion? Earl said they've been preparing it for years, brainwashing people. Recruiting sympathizers and traitors…”  “It's worse than that. The invasion started way back, we just didn't notice. Well, most of us didn't. Earl did. He tried to warn us, that the aliens'd started infiltrating, landing in remote parts of the country, blending in, looking just like us…” Blake spat. “Well, not quite like us. But close e-fucking-nough, hiding out and biding their time.” “And now it's out in the open…” Tanner looked from his friend's face to his daughter's, scared and staring, and trailed off. He may have been listening, but he sure as hell didn't understand.  “What's happening?” Tanner asked. “We've been laying low at home, locked down and trying to wait out whatever this is. We haven't heard a thing since the power cut out three days back.”  He could feel a surge of emotion building, pent-up adrenaline and stress and fear and loneliness rolling over him in a wave as they were released. His stoicism wobbled.  “We're… Katie's scared and confused, and tired and sick of hiding and we're all alone! What is all this? What's happening?” Tanner realized he was shouting and stopped, taking a deep breath and lowering his voice. “Blake, man, what the hell is going on?” Blake never flinched, just ran his tongue over his teeth in thought while he watched Tanner's outburst through hooded eyes. “Naw, we don't know nothing for sure. Swanson's been off-air for two days, since just after shit started going down. Said he was right, that it sure as shit seemed like those aliens he'd been warning us about were making a move, and the whole fuckin' lot of us did nothing. Well, seems like it blew up in our face. Last thing he said was he's heading somewhere safe to keep broadcasting, and he'd let us know when he found out more,” Blake paused, sucked his teeth, “We've had the TV and radio on non-stop since then, since we fired the generator up. Nothing.”  Lauren lent forward. “There was something, couple days back…”  “Nothing useful,” Blake cut in. He spat. “Same old fuckin' commie stations, same old crap. They took over the channels, emergency broadcasting. Said there was a ‘protest.' Stay inside, all under control, daddy government's here, blah blah,” he laughed “Hell of a protest. More like an insurrection. Doublespeak bullshit.”  “So what's the plan? We hide out? Lay low? Wait for the military?”  “The troops ain't coming, chief.” Blake grimaced, “Alien tentacles go deep. Probably strolling around in general's stars by now, the politicians just handing over the keys. This President'll have us kissing their feet before dinner.  “Nah, if we wanna fight back we can't rely on that fuckin' bunch of secretaries and scribes. We hole up here, wait for instructions.” He laughed again, “Huh, hole up in the Hole. That's funny.”  That grin was starting to get on Tanner's nerves. “Instructions from who? How long is that gonna take? Who's gonna fight back against… this?” “I know some people, from back in the old days. Good people. There's still patriots out there who won't give up this country without a fight.”   Tanner still bristled with questions, but he was starting to feel relieved. There were people in charge, and they had a plan. That was something he could work with. “What if it takes weeks? Months? Do we have food for that long?” Blake settled further into his chair, grinned that cocky grin. “I do, don't know about you.” Before the words were even out of his mouth he was already raising his palms, “Chill out, I'm joking. I'll put it on your tab. You're a lawyer, I know you're good for it. Show him, babe.”  Lauren got up and went over to a large yellow flag hanging on the concrete wall, pulling it aside to reveal a long, narrow room that ended abruptly at a large steel door. She flicked on the light.  “Dry storage,” she said, gesturing at the shelves lining both walls. Packets of ramen, boxes of cereal, rows of whiskey, and gleaming stacks of cans stared down at Tanner. “And cold storage,” Lauren continued as she stepped over to the door, kicking aside two enormous tubs of supplements and pulling it open to reveal a walk-in freezer. Tanner followed her inside as she happily chatted away, showing everything off like a house-proud hen.  “We've got everything we need. Steaks, hotdogs, chili, hamburgers, mac and cheese, chicken parmesan, mashed potatoes--whatever you want. There's a well, too, over the other side, we had that dug last summer. Tastes a bit funny, but it won't hurt you.” Tanner was hardly listening. He had never seen anything like it, never imagined anything on this scale. Blake really had taken preparing for the end of the world seriously. The freezer room was filled, wall to wall, with a treasure trove of gourmet excess; thousands upon thousands of frozen TV dinners.  Tanner stared at his microwaved salmon filet, fries drooping from his fork. Out of habit he was eating in front of the TV with Katie, though the display hadn't changed in… however many days it had been. Just the red, white and blue logo, a tile flipping between ads for pillows, brain pills, and frozen food, and the same scrolling red banner:  Breaking: The United States of America is under attack. Stand by for updates.  Katie was poking at her food silently, barely eating. Still no appetite. Tanner had told her they were safe, told her he wasn't going to let anyone hurt her, told her a hundred times in different ways that she was his precious little girl and he would make sure she was okay. It had made no difference. She had just looked up at him with big, frightened eyes that pulled at Tanner's heart. The only time she had spoken in the past 24 hours was to ask why he had tried to shoot people. Of course she didn't understand. Maybe he should ask Lauren to talk to her.  The TV display glitched, blipped, flicked to static and then to black. Tanner shoveled the fries into his mouth and rubbed his eyes. He'd been staring at a blank TV for too long. He chewed and stretched, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to straighten out his aching back.  Earl Swanson was on TV. Tanner blinked a few times to make sure he was seeing straight. Swanson's shirt was wrinkled, his hair a mess and his signature bowtie slightly crooked, but his face wore that familiar expression of righteously indignant bewilderment. It was him.  “Blake. Blake, get in here!”  Swanson was in what looked like a large living room rather than his usual studio. Bookshelves and a TV cabinet were visible behind him. There were shadows under his eyes and his wrinkles were clearly visible without his usual TV makeup, but his eyes were as sharp as ever. There was a strength to them, piercing the screen, full of faith and fire. It felt like he was in the room. He looked like he'd been in a fight, and won. He was back.  “Good evening America, and welcome to Earl Swanson Tonight.” “Blake!” Blake stuck his head through the door.  “What? I'm working out, give me a…. No shit.” Blake stepped into the room. He was topless, breathing heavily. His stomach was shiny with sweat, pooling and running down the chiseled channels between his well-defined muscles before disappearing behind the low-riding waistband of his camo pants. Tanner realized he was staring and felt his cheeks flush as he snapped his eyes back to his friend's.  “Blake, it's--” “Shut up, I'm trying to listen.” The rebuke slapped Tanner back to the present and back to the TV. He surreptitiously sat a little straighter and sucked in his gut, trying to ignore the heat rising in his face. “...cities up and down the west coast. From Seattle to San Diego, the alien invaders and the traitors from among our own citizens have taken control, sowing chaos and destruction. Order has broken down, and anarchy rules in the streets. Yet we hear nothing but silence from the White House. The elites in Washington won't do anything about this -- they encouraged it. They caused it! “No, it is up to patriotic Americans to stop this existential threat. It is up to us, to you and me and the other patriots out there. If you value the American way of life, if you respect the principles that built the greatest nation ever imagined, if you care about your family and the future of your children, then the time has come to stand up. Your country needs you.  “I have been warning about this day on this very program for years. If you have been listening, you will be prepared for this betrayal. You know what to do. Find other true Americans who are ready to fight for our civilization and our culture. Defend our Western values against this attack by anarchists and aliens who wish to destroy us. They tried to take our guns from us, to disarm us, and failed -- now is the time to use them. Seek out the prepared, the militias, the heroes. Fight back. Show them that we will not allow it. “I will be moving to an undisclosed safe location so I can keep you informed. You know your job. I am doing my part, will you do yours?” Swanson sat erect and defiant, no less commanding for his disheveled appearance. His willpower flowed from the screen in waves, washing over the watchers. It was compelling. It was urgent. It was the only option.  The screen went black.  Swanson's gaze bored into Tanner long after the TV went dark, burning with righteous fire, lip curling with fury. The heat in Tanner's cheeks sharpened, focused, began to spread into his chest and throughout his body. There was only one thought in his mind. “We gotta go.” It took him a second to realize that Blake had spoken the words out loud.  “We do. But where? I don't know anyone like that.” “You know me, and I know people. Don't worry about that. We gotta go to Baker City. I talked to one of my buddies from the marines this morning, he's headed to join one of the militias out east. They might not be big, but they're hard. They're something.” Tanner looked at Blake blankly, unable to quite comprehend what he was being told. Days of no news, no action, now everything all at once.  “But what's in Baker City? Don't you know anyone here? This is where we live, where we have the Hole, where we have a safe base.”  Blake was clearly agitated, shifting from foot to foot.  “It's not safe. Weren't you listening? It's fallen. The military ain't doing jack, like I fuckin' told you they wouldn't.” Blake stopped bouncing and steadied himself. “But my buddy said the boys in Baker held out. It was bloody, but they held strong. If we can get there in a hurry, we can join a caravan heading for Boise.”  “Baker… Boise? What the… Boise?! Surely it's safer in Texas, or… or…”  “Texas? And how far away is that? Look, I don't know nothing about nothing, but I know I ain't looking for safer. All I know is I got buddies in Baker, and they say Boise, and they are the fuckin' resistance. We got our orders, soldier. “The west had been invaded. Destroyed. Gone. You heard Swanson, same as me. Grids are down, water's down, TV's down--mostly, anyway. Sky's half full of fire and smoke, gangs roaming the streets, traitors and aliens taking or breaking whatever they can get their thieving hands on.” Tears came to Blake's eyes.  “It's a fucking mess out there, buddy. Anarchy. They've burned the lot.” It was a lot to chew on. Tanner put a piece of salmon in his mouth.  “I'm not gonna let some filthy aliens take my home, fuck my wife, invade my country, and steal the god damn US of A! The fight is right there, and I'm gonna fight it. Are you?”  Tanner's brain was spinning, but his blood was still hot from Swanson's speech. Blake's fire, delivered standing there half-naked like a Steven Seagal action figure, was rousing something inside him. His country needed him, and he felt the call in his bones. He put down his fork. He swallowed. He rose.  “Of course I'll fight. I'll put a bullet in every alien who steps foot on American soil. I'll put every collaborator in the dirt.” He saw himself, next to Blake, riding shotgun as they made a fighting escape through the streets. He saw a heroic journey to Baker City, filled with danger and righteous violence. He saw a triumphant return, at the head of an army, cleansing his city with purifying flame. And he saw Katie, small and fragile and beautiful. Perfect, and terrified. The flame wavered.  “But I'm fighting for her,” Tanner gestured, “I got my little girl, and I'm not so red-hot on riding out guns blazing to meet these savages with her hanging off my arm. She's the future of this country, and that's a future we have to protect.”  To Tanner's surprise, Blake took a half step back.  “Shit. I know, man. Katie and Lauren, the innocent and the pure. I'm thinking of them, too.” He dropped his shoulders, but held Tanner's gaze. “But it's not safe for them here neither. We're on our own, and all hell has broken loose up top. We fight for them, and they are the reason we have to fight.” Tanner paused, then nodded. He reached out and placed his hand on his friend's shoulder, fingers gripping the sweaty skin.  “Let's go pack the truck.”  As the sun set and twilight brought a low fog creeping across the city, they piled into the Tacoma with as many frozen dinners as they could carry.  Tanner rode in back. Lauren was up front, AR at the ready, while Blake drove, M1A by his side and his Glock taped to the dash. Katie was at Tanner's side, curled up below the window and hidden from view, and Tanner watched over her with his own Glock and a borrowed Remington 870. They were all a little jumpy. He and Lauren had wanted to maintain a shoot-on-sight policy. Blake had been more cautious. According to Swanson, there would be plenty of people collaborating with the aliens. Lights out, engine low, and hopefully they could slip right on by.  No one knew what to expect—Tanner suspected they were all terrified. He certainly was. Even Blake had swapped out his flag bandana for a more understated camo print. He had stashed the red, white and blue fabric in the bed of the truck with the rest of their gear.     They pulled out into streets Tanner knew, but didn't. He had driven them every day, on the way to work, to Katie's school, to church, to the mall. The streets were as familiar as a cold Coke, yet now, in some important way, they were… different. As they left the Hole and drove through the suburb he couldn't quite put his finger on it, but once Blake reached the main street and turned past the bars and shops and take-out joints, it hit him.  The streets were dead. The cars were gone. The steady flow of traffic, of people living their lives, had stopped. The parking lot in front of the drug store was empty; so was the one behind the bar. The convenience store, normally ticking over with a steady stream of customers buying cigarettes and beer, was dark behind its windows. Unintelligible graffiti in some alien script covered the ads for energy drinks, an expression of mindless violence across someone's hard work.  A light rain had started, misting around them and adding to the dreariness. A billboard loomed overhead, the lights that illuminated the Colgate-bright smiles of the models now permanently dark. Tanner was glad—the gloom obscured the flame-scarred destruction streaking the toothpaste company's perfect white message. “Disgusting,” Blake spat. He looked like he wanted to say more but pulled up short, shocked at the sudden sound of his own voice. His eyes focused back on the road and he fell into uneasy silence. The truck continued its crawl down the deserted street, barely clocking 20 miles an hour. Even at that speed, the low growl of the engine seemed unbearably loud as it reverberated among the carcasses of commerce and ricocheted down abandoned side streets.  They kept driving, and nothing kept happening. It was torturous. Every minute of unbroken inactivity twisted the crank on the tension in the car, until the unceasing hum of the engine began to seep into Tanner's brain. Every muscle in his arms and legs, primed and waiting and ready to spring, began to tremble, and his eyes focused and unfocused on nothing at all.  His frantic heartbeat messed with his breathing, a powerful panicked thud that matched the rumble of the pistons.  Overall, he was relieved when the road curved and they entered a strip of restaurants to see signs of life among the debris littered across the street in the distance.  It wasn't immediately clear through the gloom what was happening. Blake slowed the truck, now rolling along at barely more than walking pace, and they crept closer. The scene was illuminated by the flickering light of small fires and backlit by a pair of enormous floodlights, creating a glowing aura in the surrounding mist. Images began to resolve, ghostly figures flitting in and out of view and the harsh geometric shapes—not of debris, but of hastily manufactured barricades—throwing long shadows that lanced through the air around them as they approached.  All eyes were fixed on the barricades as they pulled within shouting distance, and Tanner nearly pissed himself when someone knocked on his window. He yelped, Blake swore, and Lauren's weapon x-rayed Tanner's head and pointed at the intruder. Tanner followed her lead and jerked his gun up to aim in the general direction of the window and for ten, twenty heartbeats nothing moved. Then another knock, and Blake hissed at them: “Put those things away you idiots, we're the good guys here. Whatever side that guy is on, so are we.”  Tanner slowly lowered the gun, then the window.  “Hey folks, no cars through here.” The man was clad head to toe in black—black jeans, black hoodie, black gloves, black bandana covering his face, black curly hair running with rainwater. No wonder they hadn't seen him. The stranger spotted their guns.  “Oh, nothing like that,” he added, catching the nervous energy in the truck, “You're a bit late to the party. No trouble ‘round here, this area's been cleaned out for days.” He chuckled, sending a shiver through Tanner.  “Some folks messed up the cop shop a while back, it was a bit of a fight. Streets were all blocked up anyway, so we set up a little kitchen here. Been feeding some folks. Symbolic, like, new world in the ruin of the old and all that.” The smile fell from his face as he took in the scene in the truck.  “Everything alright? Is she okay?”  He gestured at Katie, curled up and quivering silently beside Tanner. Tanner opened his mouth to respond, but Blake was quicker. “Sure, probably just spooked by that fucking mask. Look, we don't mean to bother you people. Just heading east, trying to cross the river. We'll go around you and your little kitchen.”  If the man took issue with Blake's tone, it didn't show.  “Bridge is a no-go, I'm afraid. Pigs blew the cables as they pulled out, some of it collapsed. It's way too unstable to cross.” He scratched at his temple. “What d'you want out that way, anyway? There's dangerous people out there, not exactly safe for… families.”  “We're heading for, uh, Hood River,” Tanner spoke up, “Taking supplies out to the girl's grandparents.”  “Indians,” Blake chimed in, “they need the help.” He winked at Tanner.  The stranger turned to Blake and met his eyes, holding his gaze for an unnerving moment. Then he seemed to resolve some internal discussion, relaxing his shoulders. “Well, you might be able to get across up St. Johns, last I heard the bridge was still intact. There's some folks in the park up there, you can ask them.”  “St. Johns? That's the wrong fucking way!”  “A bridge is a bridge. It's that or swim, champ.” “Can you at least call the, uh, your boss? Tell him you checked us out, ask if we can get across?”  The man smiled, but something hardened behind his eyes.  “My boss? Sure, sure. Look, I think it's time you moved on. Head on up there and tell ‘em what you told me, they'll let you out. There's a bunch of poor Indians waiting for their dinner.”  There was something strange about the way the man said “Indians,” but he patted the hood of the truck and turned away, waving them down a side street away from the barricade. As Blake slowly drove off, Tanner collapsed back into his seat and quickly rolled up the window. His underarms were cold with sweat, and he relaxed muscles he hadn't known were clenched.  Blake took the turn the stranger indicated, muttering that if he heard anyone say “folks” again he would hit them. Tanner stared out the window at the “little kitchen” as they passed. There must have been a couple hundred people, milling around a dozen or so small fires. They were all loosely centered around a large tent directly in front of the scorched skeleton of the precinct. Laughter and music drifted through the open window, and Tanner closed it. He didn't think he could see any aliens, but it was difficult to tell in the dark.  “Collaborators. Must be a ration station or something,” he muttered, mostly to himself.  Lauren heard him. “No, this has been going on much longer than that, it just wasn't so out in the open. Swanson warned us about it. He said they lure hungry people in with food.”  “Yeah,” cut in Blake, “this is how they recruit ‘em. Set up a kitchen, give ‘em food, homeless and crackheads and queers, mostly. Drugs too, probably, and spewing their propaganda. That guy was probably one of the junkies. Sure as shit looked like it, you see the way he stared at me?”  Tanner shuddered. A junkie. He had an overwhelming urge to wash his hands. He remembered the way the man had talked about the police station, his manic laugh in the face of such violence, and glanced back at the quickly fading light. And saw a small figure, tottering at the edge of the firelight. A child.  “Disgusting,” he said out loud.  “Yeah, disgusting. It's like Earl said,” Blake continued, “they been feeding people right under our fucking noses.”  They drove on toward the bridge. The streets were more cluttered here, both with people and the remnants of the riots, and they could only manage a slow pace as they picked their way through the destruction. Blake had to swerve to the wrong side of the road to avoid a group of people carrying trash bags, picking through the rubble.  “Looking for something to eat,” he grunted, and locked the doors.  Signs of violence were everywhere. Tanner's chest tightened as they drove past the law firm where he had started his career—the job that had brought him to the city after he finished college, working for his father's best friend and learning his profession. Inside the shattered windows it was nothing but a shell, the desks overturned and the computers gone. No one would be working there any more.  The destruction was completely random. Violence for its own sake. Beside the firm was a pawn shop, covered in graffiti and looted. Next to that, a Vietnamese restaurant, completely unharmed except for ‘Delicious, 5 stars' sprayed on the pavement outside. Across the road was an untouched convenience store and a bookshop with its doors wide open, light flooding out and people crowding the entrance. A donut shop and an Apple store destroyed, a mechanic and a bar looking like they had simply closed for the night. There was absolutely no pattern or reason to it.  They saw a Fred Meyers with every window broken, the front door jammed open with a twisted shopping cart. A movement caught Tanner's eye and he saw someone leaving from a side door, carrying a huge bag of stolen food. He hoped Blake didn't see—he might do something stupid, and Tanner didn't want to stop. It wasn't safe.  They made it a few more blocks when Lauren gasped and grabbed Blake's arm, making him brake. She gestured across the intersection to a KFC. Half the building had collapsed in what must have been an enormous fire; the half that still stood had been savagely attacked. She pointed to the entrance with a shaking finger. Someone—or something—had toppled the giant bucket sign and sent it crashing through the ceiling of the kitchen. Above the door, someone had scrawled a message in red spray paint:  FUCK YOU SANDERS OUR SECRET SPICES NOW There were more barricades set up near the bridge. Where the others had been makeshift, marking a boundary, these were more serious. They were to stop people getting through. Blake slowed before they got too close to the blockade, which they could now see was lined by shapes that very much suggested people. On both sides of the road the land fell away into darkness, sloping down to become a park that ran beneath the bridge.  The park itself, a rare green space normally dotted with dog walkers and children, was transformed. The once-quiet lawns were a mass of tents and makeshift structures, stages and bars and sound systems, the proud trees now decked out with effigies and lights. Fires burned everywhere, and the distant space was carpeted with a swarming mass of humanity, undulating to a throbbing cacophony of noise.  “This doesn't look good,” said Blake. He pulled over, a hundred yards or so short of the bridge.  “That guy said they would let us through,” said Tanner, “if we stick to our story.”  “He was a junkie,” scoffed Lauren.  “But he thought we were working with them,” said Tanner, “he had no reason to lie to us.”  “I guess it's worth a try. Anyway, they ain't gonna try anything against this much firepower.” Blake grunted. “Too late to change our minds now. They've seen us.”  He nodded at the barricade, where two shapes had detached from the mass. They moved toward the Tacoma, and Blake responded by flicking the lights to high beam and heading to meet them. As Blake swung back out into the road the beams cut through the darkness to illuminate the figures, throwing wild shadows from the two shapes until the truck steadied course and they coalesced into recognisable forms. One was a large man, white, with a nose ring and a loosely-tied blond ponytail. He was wearing a plaid shirt and carrying a large rifle. The other—Tanner's throat caught—the other looked like one of the aliens.  “Shit,” said Blake, as the headlights picked out at least half a dozen more shapes along the barricade, several with big guns visible. “Fuck.” He stopped the truck and rolled down the window, then cursed again and threw open the door.  “I'll be fucked if I'm gonna sit here and be pulled over like some criminal. Tanner, you're with me—let's go meet them man to man.” Tanner scrabbled for the door handle and chased after Blake, half-skipping to catch up. They pulled up a few paces before colliding with the approaching party. The blond man stepped forward.  “How's it going, dude?” he said.  “We need to get to Hood River,” said Blake, “we're trying—” “Yeah, we heard.” The man cut him off. “Bridge is closed to traffic, unfortunately. You wanna cross, you'll have to walk.”  Blake bristled. “Are you joking? We need to bring all this stuff. It's… important,” he objected. “You can't just keep people here!”  “We could,” said the blond man, calmly. He sounded confident in his assertion. Looking at the line of men—and women, Tanner realized—standing along the barricade, he agreed.  “But we're not,” the man continued. “You can go wherever you want. Take your shit, cross the bridge. Some folks have organized buses up the river, they'll take you. But the truck stays.”  “But that's my fucking truck!” Blake squealed. The man's eyebrows shot up and Tanner laid a hand on Blake's shoulder, squeezing it and hoping he got the message. The stranger paused, then sighed.  “Look, I'm sorry dude. I love my truck, too. But there was an attack at another camp last night by these so-called freedom fighters,” he grimaced. “Militia wackjobs, really. Word is they are gathering across the river, and we can't risk weapons and vehicles falling into the wrong hands. Especially not an arsenal like you folks got here.”  The alien stepped forward and, much to Tanner's surprise, spoke in perfect American English.  “Don't worry, it'll be here when you get back. We'll take real good care of it for you. They will appreciate the help guarding the buses and I'm sure they'll be more than happy to help you move these… important supplies.”  They signaled to the group at the barricade and two more figures made their way into the light of the truck's high beams. The first was a slim Black man in fatigues, wearing a red beret at a jaunty angle and carrying a AR-style rifle in one hand. The other was a woman, tall and imposing. She wore a leather jacket over a long black dress, which was slit to the thigh to reveal hints of slim, bare legs that stretched from the pavement to the heavens. Tanner blinked rapidly and swallowed. He had always had a soft spot for long legs in thigh-slit dresses.  As they came closer the man nodded at Tanner and Blake, but he was not what held their attention. The woman with the legs from God was also rocking a luxurious mustache that would have put Teddy Roosevelt to shame. As Tanner's eyes bulged, she caught his gaze and winked.  “Hello, boys. I'm Sunshine, they/them. I'll be with you on the bus.”  Tanner didn't know how to react. A fuzzy memory bounced around in the back of his head. “An investigation on college campuses found that increasing numbers of American citizens are using pronouns.” Earl's bewildered face frowned, then puckered. “These ‘theys' and ‘thems' are making a mockery of the American tradition, seeking to spread their insidious ideology among good, hard-working citizens, brainwashing young Americans into adopting these ‘pronouns.' What's next, people identifying a different age? A different race? We need to speak out against this perverse trend and most importantly, keep them away from our children.” _ That was it. These were the pronouns Swanson had warned them about. He gripped his gun and glanced at Blake, trying to get his mental footing.  Blake looked shocked, too, but quickly pulled himself together. He threw Tanner a sly look, one that hinted at an idea. “Give us a minute,” he snapped, and pulled away from Tanner, back to the truck. When they were both inside he turned on the occupants with a spark in his eyes.  “They must be talking about my boys, alive and kicking,” the old grin was back, his excitement barely contained. “Must have set up in the woods. We'll head over and find ‘em. Maybe they got word from Earl. If they're here, and they're fighting, maybe we don't have to go all the way to Boise after all.” “What's going on?” Lauren looked confused.  “We're leaving the truck. Grab the shit, cross the bridge, hijack their fucking commie-wagon and strike out east. Either we find them in Baker, or our boys find us first.”  Tanner was still coming to grips with the situation. “What about… them?” he said.  “Who?” “They… them. In the dress, with the pronouns!”  “And what are they going to do, stop us? You ever tried to fight wearing something like that? No. The four of us, across the bridge, grab the bus, easy.” “Katie's not hijacking any bus. She's eight, for God's sake. Maybe she and Lauren should stay here…”  “You stay here with Katie,” Lauren snapped, cutting Tanner off. “If you think it's safer, if you're looking for safer, you take her for a nice walk in the park down there. I'll be with my husband, taking my country back from these freaks.”  “I know you want to keep Katie safe,” Blake added, almost apologetically, “but you saw what it's like out there. You heard Swanson's warnings. These aren't people, they're animals, aliens. She's your baby fuckin' girl, man. You do what you're at peace with, but my wife sure as shit ain't staying here to get felt up by some dick in a dress.”  Tanner looked at Lauren. “But she's just a kid! What if she gets hurt.”  “What if she gets hurt _here? So you look after her. Be a man,” Lauren spat back.    Blake clapped Tanner on the shoulder and held his gaze. “It's do or die time, soldier. Let's get the fuck outta here, hook up with the resistance, then bring back the fury of God and freedom and the USA to take back this city and liberate my God damn truck!” Tanner looked at Katie, curled up in the footwell, and wanted to object. He wanted to take her somewhere safe, back to the Hole, where it was warm and they could hide from the aliens and the bad people and they had all the food they could need and they could wait for this all to be over.  But the fire in his belly wouldn't let him. He knew Blake was right, he knew that he should be ashamed of his moments of weakness. He saw Lauren gripping her rifle and staring at Blake with faith and devotion in her eyes and he knew that was the kind of man he wanted to be. Tanner breathed a silent promise to keep Katie safe, no matter the cost.  “Let's do it.” Blake pulled the truck up to the group of guards and they all piled out, Tanner standing straight and feeling tall, Blake's words ringing in his ears. It's do or die time. _ Two of the barricade guards came over to help them unload while the others stood around and watched, their mustachioed escort who made Tanner's skin crawl and the large blond man. Traitor. They stripped off the tray covering and began shifting gear, Blake and blondie up above handing packages down to everyone else. Tanner heard the guards muttering to each other.  “Holy shit, that's a lot of firepower.” The blond man snorted. “And a lot of nasty-ass TV dinners. Important supplies, my ass.”  Sunshine shrugged. “Folks eat what they eat. Not everyone lives in a Whole Foods and learned to make Tom Yum on their gap year,” they rebuked him. The man grimaced and scratched his jaw. “Yeah, right. That was unfair of me. Well, Thai cooking workshop tomorrow and I'll make a big pot, so at least folks here don't have to eat that frozen stuff… unless they want to.” They busied themselves unloading, bundling food and weapons into bags or tying them together for ease of carrying. Tanner was tying the straps of his backpack and settling it on his back when he heard a curse from the back of the truck. He glanced up, and, frozen in time, watched the next few seconds helplessly.  The blond man had pulled out one of the last few satchels, the one containing all their spare clothes. He was standing upright, arms held out, nose ring quivering in silent outrage. In his left hand he had Blake's flag bandana; in his right, Blake's spare jacket, rebel flag patch sitting proudly on the shoulder.  Blake reacted fastest. He dropped the food he was holding, raised his Glock, and with a vengeful crack the blond ponytail exploded in a spray of red.  The man in the beret raised his rifle and fired two shots into Blake's chest, sending him flying from the tray. A scream burst from Lauren as she reached for her gun, but the alien matched the sound and met her with a powerful tackle, sending both of them crashing into a pile of frozen hamburgers. Sunshine reached out and grabbed Tanner's arm. Time snapped back into motion for Tanner. He instinctively pulled away and shook his arm free of the grasping fingers. Stepping back, he spun and swung his fist in a wild roundhouse. It connected with Sunshine's jaw as they overbalanced toward him. Tanner watched them collapse in a heap. His gaze danced over the chaos unfolding around him, frantically searching for Katie. _There. Tanner picked her up and ran.  They plunged off the road and into the darkness. There was only one thought in his mind: get Katie across that bridge. She was sobbing, shaking in his grasp, and Tanner made what he hoped were comforting shushing noises as he ran. He knew this park—there was a staircase inside one of the support towers that rose from the park to the bridge overhead. That was his way out. Holding Katie tightly, breath ragged, he ran toward the orgy of light and noise pulsating below.  The two escapees burst into the mass of people. Tanner looked around, eyes darting, taking in the madness and trying to get his bearings. The sensory assault was overwhelming, but he slowly made out patterns in the polyrhythmic press. What had looked from above like a continuous swell of humanity was actually a hundred, a thousand separate groups and camps and parties. People flowed freely between them, groups forming and merging and coming apart in a chaotic, everchanging anarchy. A makeshift stage to his left throbbed with bass, colliding with the bone-jarring screams and guitars of a group of punks. Tanner found himself surrounded by ecstatic dancers, while a group almost under his feet sat staring into a campfire, oblivious to the rest of the world. He crashed through their doped-out reverie and bounced off two men, locked in a hungry embrace.  Tanner recoiled and turned away, shielding Katie with his body, searching desperately for the tower that would lead him out of this nightmare. Lights flashed, blinding, creating a sort of slideshow of horror as Tanner scanned the crowd. There. He found it. His escape from this festival of the damned. He soldiered on, caught up in a whirl of half-naked dancers, men, women, and everyone else, mindless of the frigid air as they span and writhed in rapture.  Tanner spotted an exit, an island of calm, and dove for it. He exploded from the throng, gasping for air, and breathed in the relative silence. Collecting himself, he was faced with rows of bodies, still, staring at something unseen up ahead, the very air trembling with collective anticipation.  A voice shattered his uneasy reprieve, loud and bombastic and dripping with drama.  “And now, my darlings, it is time for these fuckers to do what I do best—go down!” Tanner dashed through the crowd as they roared and surged into motion, and caught a glimpse of the scene ahead: two lines of people, straining on thick ropes, as a woman in lingerie and feathers pranced like a princess of hell before them. The ropes led upwards, where they were tied around the necks of two enormous metal figures. Lewis and Clark.  Tanner broke into a full sprint, shouldering bodies aside. He was almost there. Up ahead, rising from the chaos, was his stairway to the heavens. His legs trembled and his breath came in ragged sobs, but he couldn't slow down. Not when he was so close. He tore out of the crowd and into the comforting darkness of the spaces in between. His hysterical panic began to subside. One foot in front of the other. Keep running. They were going to make it. As he neared the tower a figure came into view at the base, looming from the shadows of the doorway, staring into the blackness beyond. A stocky, muscled figure wearing fatigues and a plate carrier. It couldn't be… “Blake! Blake, thank God.” Tears welled in Tanner's eyes as he reached his friend. Lauren was nowhere to be seen, but right now Tanner couldn't think about her. He had survived, and he had brought Katie through. His heartbeat was still frantic, but from exertion rather than fear. They were here. He, Katie, and Blake. Emotionally exhausted, physically spent, battered and terrified, but alive. They were going to be okay. He reached out to his friend. Blake turned—No, not Blake. A thick black beard engulfed the shadowy face, momentarily lit by the glowing ember of a huge cigar. The eyes were deep-set and dark, the skin weathered, wrinkled, brown. The face of an illegal alien.  Tanner's throat betrayed him. He squeaked, and nothing more would come out. His knees wobbled and threatened to give way, his feet froze in place. He wavered. He whimpered.  Puffing on the cigar, the alien took in his terrified face and the little girl slung over his shoulder. He gestured toward the doorway and blew out an enormous plume of smoke.  “Go, gringo.”  It was well past midnight when Katie ran into the side of a tent, fell on her bottom, and started crying. They had crossed the bridge, left the highway, and headed for the safety of the forest. Since then they had been wandering among the trees for hours, directionless, driven by fear, then by hope, then exhausted aimlessness. Tanner wasn't going anywhere except away from that park. He had briefly entertained the image of finding a group of militia, sitting around a fire, eating and laughing and, maybe, swapping stories with their old friend Blake. That was hours ago. Visions were fleeting in the fever dream of the forest. Since then, they had walked because they didn't know what else to do. Tanner stumbled over to Katie and collapsed beside her, holding her close and hushing her. He felt like crying too.  A flashlight clicked on inside the tent and a dreadlocked head poked out of the flap.  “Hey, there's someone here!” Rustling erupted from all around and more faces appeared. “Wasn't someone keeping watch?” “I thought you were.” “Doesn't matter, doesn't matter. Someone's crying.” “You folks okay?” Tanner and Katie were soon surrounded by a small group of people. He looked up at them. “Are you the militia?” “No, don't worry. You're safe here. We're friends.” “Although I guess we are a militia if you think about it. Sort of.”  “Shh, don't confuse the poor people. They're terrified.”  “Sorry. No, no militia. Someone get them a blanket and something to drink.” Minutes later, Tanner and Katie were wrapped in sleeping bags, sipping on hot cocoa. It was scalding and familiar and Tanner felt the tension of the past day fading, leaving bone-deep exhaustion in its place.  “Are you okay? What happened?” “Thank you. We were… we just need to sleep.”  “And you? What's your name? Are you alright?” Katie looked at her dad, then stared up from her tin mug. “I'm Katie. I'm scared.” “You're safe now. We'll help you. Look, we'll get you somewhere to sleep.” The first face they had seen rummaged around in a tent and brought out a bag. “Lucky we have a spare tent. I'll just put it up, won't be a second.” The tent was almost up by the time Tanner and Katie finished their drinks, and they got up and walked over, sleeping bags over their shoulders, holding hands. “Hey, thanks,” Tanner said. “I would have helped but I don't really know how. Never had much call for camping. I am, uh, was a lawyer,” he glanced around, “not criminal, uh… intellectual property. Copyright.”  “No problem, of course. Here, it's not hard. I'm just clipping the…” “This isn't the time for camping lessons, Jacob. Anyway, you'll scare the man, sharing information for free like that. They've been through enough already.”  “Sorry, yeah. Look, slide in. Take these sleeping mats. It'll do for tonight, I'll teach you tomorrow.”  Tanner and Katie squeezed into the tent, sleeping bags huddled together on the cold, hard ground, and slept. THE END **Inmn ** 1:03:01 Hello, and welcome to the show. Thank you so much for coming on today. Could you introduce yourself with your name, pronouns, and just a little bit about what you do in the world? **Matt ** 1:03:15 Yeah, hi, I'm Matt. He/him pronouns. And I'm a student again, after a really long time, actually, which is why I've just moved to where I'm living now. But I like to write, you know, mostly for me, and this is the first first thing I've published but I enjoy it. And yeah, I'm really grateful that you've taken an interest in it. **Inmn ** 1:03:37 Yeah, totally. I love the story. So we just listened to the second half of your story, Blood, Soil and Frozen TV Dinners and even though listeners just heard...just heard the whole story, I'm wondering if you could just kind of like walk us through the story in your--you know, from the mouth of the author--what is this story about? **Matt ** 1:04:01 So the story, for me, was about, to some extent, seeing yourself in some ways or, you know, people like you, through the eyes of...through the eyes of someone else, I guess, someone who's very different and might see things in a different way. So I always find it interesting to play with different perspectives or different characters instead of telling the story from a heroic perspective or something. And I wondered what a pathway to a better world might look like from someone who didn't necessarily want that to happen. So we have these, you know, preppers who--call them you want, right-wing conservatives, something like this--and what they might think, given the knowledge that they receive about the world, what they might think is happening when something happens that a lot of the rest of us might want. **Inmn ** 1:05:00 Yeah, totally. I really like how you put that. What was it, like, "a better world that they don't necessarily want?" [both laugh] Okay, well, how did this, how did this story kind of...like how did it come to be? What inspiration did you kind of draw from to craft this situation or these like personalities from Tanner and Blake or Earl Swanson? 1:05:35 Yeah, the story itself, there was a discussion last Halloween, I believe it was, on Coffee With Comrades, there was a interview with Pearson and Margaret Killjoy, talking about the discussion of the monster in literature, which is where I first took the idea that they were talking about seeing yourself as the monster in this idea and sometimes reveling in that or perhaps enjoying it. And that was where the first idea came from. And then the most specific layout of the story or main theme, I guess, was, I was doing something on the US Tax Office website. And there's this whole section for aliens, right, if you're an alien in the U.S., these are the tax rules you need to follow. And I just thought it was a funny word. You know, I'd seen it on Fox News or something before but it just struck me as really weird in such an official position. Yeah, and I just was playing with the ideas of this and, you know, I like thinking about utopias and things. And this is where the like the main shape of the story had come from, just the idea of seeing the monster, seeing the alien from there. And then specific characters, I mean, some of them are just kind of people that I've met, you know, Tanner and Blake, specifically, and I think Earl Swanson's character, I mean--I don't know it's possibly libelous--but we can probably figure out who that's meant to be, right? I think it's reasonably obvious. **Inmn ** 1:07:09 Totally, totally. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's super interesting. Yeah, it's funny, I was rereading the story today to prepare for this interview and I realized that the first time that I was reading it, because of this perspective of the.... I'm like, okay, I know, these are some, you know, at least center-right, far-right preppers and they're using the word "alien" and I don't actually know what they mean by this, which was, you know, maybe a purposeful being vague about it, but I was like, I don't know if they think that it's, you know, illegal aliens or undocumented  migrants or whatever or if they mean, like, literal from outer space aliens. And, yeah, I was like, I don't know what they mean by what they're talking about. And maybe they don't either.   1:08:20 This was part of the conceit, right, was setting it up like it's a pretend big reveal, I think, that it's a twist in the story that at some point gets revealed, but that's not really the point. It's not really meant to be a big trick or something like this, you know? I think in discussions in the editing, we talked about in the first page or so when they speaking Arabic, and it's reasonably obvious to anyone that knows Arabic who these people are, you know, it's not hidden, but this was the idea, that they may have meant illegal alien all along, was, you know, the way they we're using the term, but that they weren't necessarily drawing so much of a distinction between the two uses of the word alien, that in their minds a, sort of, invasion by one was the same as the invasion by the other to some extent. **Inmn ** 1:09:10 Yeah, which, you know, I actually really love that from the perspective of.... It's like maybe an interesting twist. I didn't listen to that interview with Pearson and Margaret, so I'm not sure what they talked about, but there's this kind of idea in a lot of spaces that I've been part of,you know, when people talk about things like assimilation or something, especially in queer spaces, of like, "We have to seem harmless to them. We have to seem innocent. We have to seem like we just want to be part of the group," you know, and then this other side that's like, "No, we want to be unknowable. We are claiming the monstrosity that they are putting on us," and I'm like, yeah, we're fucking.... I don't know, anarchists are kind of aliens, like, in an entirely other way of thinking, you know? 1:10:09 Yeah, and just considering some social norms is completely irrelevant or harmful or repressive and other things that other people would consider, perhaps, violent or something seem completely okay to other people. There is a complete sort of alienation of perspective from broader society, I think. And yeah, it is, there's a tension between sometimes wanting to go unnoticed, or, as you say, like assimilate, and even, for me, walking around, you know, sometimes you want to look like an anarchist and sometimes you don't. It's an interesting dynamic, I guess, that you can switch sometimes day-to-day. **Inmn ** 1:10:54 Yeah, yeah. Have you read much of--you know, love talking about this person on the show--have you read much of Ursula Le Guin's Hainish Cycle? 1:11:08 I've read only "The Dispossessed" and "The Left Hand of Darkness".  **Inmn ** 1:11:16 Great examples. I think "The Left Hand of Darkness," kind of brings out this idea of where the reader is going to maybe most identify with the alien, or whatever, in "The Left Hand of Darkness" being not the not the Gethens--or I don't remember what they're called. But then it's like, the more that we're reading the book... or there's some times where I'm this alien or, you know, our perspective person just doesn't understand this culture. And that's really painful. And then there are other times when I'm like, I don't know, maybe the alien's perspectives on the world are far more dissimilar to what a normal person on like our planet Earth would think, because they're advocating for a better world that is very alien to people on this planet. Does that make sense? **Matt ** 1:12:24 Yeah, I mean, in "The Dispossessed," I think it's the same dynamic with Shevak coming back to Earth and presenting the perspective, both ways that it seems incredibly alien to him and then the other way around to everyone else that's there, to the general culture there. Yeah. I think it's an interesting literary device to present the outsider point of view, I think, which I mean, is quite the opposite of what I did in this story, I presented the more mainstream point of view, I guess, but from the circles that we're in, it's funny to see from the outside what that looks like. **Inmn ** 1:13:02 Yeah, yeah, I had this very silly idea once for...I don't know if it was gonna be a short story or what but kind of, using that "alien" trope or like "Stranger in a Strange Land" trope as a way to talk to my parents about anarchism or about radical queer spheres. **Matt ** 1:13:27 Yeah, I mean, that's about as alien as it can get for a lot of people's parents, right. **Inmn ** 1:13:31 Totally. But just as some funny little zine that's like an introduction to the punk house, you know? **Matt ** 1:13:44 Yeah, viewed as some sort of interesting zoo creatures. **Inmn ** 1:13:46 Yeah. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the kind of political renderings of Tanner and Blake or ,rather, their differences in how they perceive or interact with either preparedness or this new world that they're encountering? **Matt ** 1:14:14 Yeah, I think that Blake's character is a lot.... He knows what he's doing, right? It's a lot more intentional and more--I guess educated is maybe not quite the right word--but a lot more of an actually constructed ideology, whereas for Tanner it's very much received. He's not so keen, not so entirely sold on the idea or doesn't necessarily know the idea. It feels like it's like lost and failing a lot of the time and I think that's why I found him a much more interesting character because that's how I feel a lot of people that I know and talk to and family members and friends and things or friends of people I know get pulled into a lot of these, you know, reactionary ideologies is kind of by accident a lot of the time, right? Because it's what's presented and what they're drawn into by someone who has a lot more investment in it than they do. And they just kind of bumble into it almost by accident. Yeah. **Inmn ** 1:15:20 Because it's what they're seeing on TV. People who are deeper into that philosophy are like.... It's like the people that they're around who are their own little echo chambers of, "Oh, okay, there's this thing happening. Not sure how I feel about it. But I'm being like, fed this perspective on it." **Matt ** 1:15:46 Yeah, and a lot of the social or interpersonal issues that draw people in as well, I think. I tried to make it seem relatively obvious that Tanner is envious of Blake in a lot of ways, right? He is, you know, hotter than him and he is cooler than him and he knows more than him and he's always trying to, like, live up to this ideal that he has just completely interpersonally with no politics or anything in it. And he just wants to live up to what he thinks Blake wants him to be, which it turns out, is a bad thing. I mean, I'm not trying to excuse Tanner's character too much here. But yeah, I think this is what's really dangerous a lot of the time actually, for people who don't necessarily have a fully formed belief in all of these philosophical systems or something that then puts them on the wrong side not by...not necessarily out of evil intention. **Inmn ** 1:16:54 Yeah. No, that's very true. And it's interesting talking about not excusing Tanner's character too much, but as I was reading the story I found myself like, not necessarily rooting for Tanner and Bl

UNLOCKED: Anarchist writer, musician, and podcaster Margaret Killjoy returns to the podcast to discuss the political act of writing fiction and imagining the “ambiguous utopia”—à la Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed and Killjoy's A Country of Ghosts. I ask Margaret to define what hope is or can be, and how her work communicating the stories of radical individuals and movements during pivotal moments throughout history on her podcast, Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, can help us (re-)frame contemporary struggles for liberation, justice, and peace in the world today. Listen to the full interview: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness

Paris Marx is joined by Joanne McNeil to discuss her new novel dealing with the human labor behind self-driving cars and the challenges of being a good tech critic.Joanne McNeil is the author of Wrong Way and has written for Dissent Magazine, New York Magazine, and The Nation.Tech Won't Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.Also mentioned in this episode:Joanne has written about the need for tech critics that aren't insiders and tech media warming back up to Facebook.Paris wrote about the recent scandal around GM's Cruise division.In 2014, Ursula Le Guin was awarded the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and gave a speech that skewered capitalism.Joanne's fictional tech founder was in part inspired by Holacracy and Dan Price.The fantasy of self-driving cars is highly reliant on remote drivers.Support the show

A miserable child and a summer festival are at the heart of the short work of philosophical fiction first published by Ursula Le Guin in 1973. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas was sparked by "forgetting Dostoyevsky and reading road signs backwards" was the answer given by the author when asked where she got the idea from. Matthew Sweet is joined by guests including the authors Una McCormack, Naomi Alderman, Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson and Kevan Manwaring, and political philosopher Sophie Scott-Brown. They discuss Le Guin's thought experiments and writing career and also the short story called The Ones Who Stayed and Fought which NK Jemisin wrote in response to Le Guin's vision of Omelas. Producer: Luke Mulhall Naomi Alderman's latest novel The Future is out now Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson publishes The Principle of Moments in January 2024 Dr Sophie Scott-Brown is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of East Anglia and is the author of The Histories of Raphael Samuel - A Portrait of A People's Historian Dr Kevan Manwaring is Programme Leader for MA Creative Writing (online) and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Arts University Bournemouth Dr Una McCormack's books include Star Trek: Picard novel The Last Best Hope You can find many other discussions about science fiction and imagining the future in collections on the Free Thinking programme website including episodes about Philip K Dick, John Rawls, Octavia Butler, Afro-futurism, AI and creativity

"we live in capitalism. it's powers seem inescapable. but then, so did the divine rights of kings." - Ursula Le Guinapocalyptic thinking is normal. it's entertaining + validating + it makes sense. but at a certain point, it can be harmful. especially if we don't have anything to contradict it with. so, today, I come to you with a case for optimism.GET AN OCCASIONAL PERSONAL EMAIL FROM ME: www.makeyourdamnbedpodcast.comTUNE IN ON INSTAGRAM FOR COOL CONTENT: www.instagram.com/mydbpodcastOR BE A REAL GEM + TUNE IN ON PATREON: www.patreon.com/MYDBpodcastOR WATCH ON YOUTUBE: www.youtube.com/juliemerica The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/make-your-damn-bed. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ursula Le Guin said, “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”READ THIS WITH ME? https://www.mikaelaloach.com/ OR https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Its-Not-That-Radical-by-Mikaela-Loach/9780241597538OR TRY FREE VIA PUBLIC LIBRARY? https://www.hoopladigital.com/ OR https://www.overdrive.com/apps/libbyRESOURCES:https://landback.org/ AND https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/10/cop27-why-climate-reparations-are-one-of-the-biggest-issues/GET AN OCCASIONAL PERSONAL EMAIL FROM ME: www.makeyourdamnbedpodcast.comTUNE IN ON INSTAGRAM FOR COOL CONTENT: www.instagram.com/mydbpodcastOR BE A REAL GEM + TUNE IN ON PATREON: www.patreon.com/MYDBpodcastOR WATCH ON YOUTUBE: www.youtube.com/juliemerica The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/make-your-damn-bed. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.