Episode Summary

This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn is rejoined by Wōen and Roxanne from the Woven Ends Collective to talk about death, dying, and the work of death doulas.

Host Info

Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery.

Publisher Info

This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Transcript

Live Like the World is Dying: Woven Ends on Death & Dying pt. II

Inmn 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today again Inmn Neruin and I use they/them pronouns. We're back again this week to finish up our chat with Wōen and Roxy from the Woven Ends Collective to talk about death and dying. I'm not sure exactly where the episode got cut in half, but today we're probably going to hear a lot more about caring for people who are dying and the work of a death doula. Like last week, we're talking about some heavy stuff but in the spirit of building more resilient communities that can prepare for the end times together in all ways. And again, we hope that conversations like this can help shift how people talk about death and dying. And, we don't want to bring this stuff up to either romanticize death or to incite fear of death. It's just going to happen. And I know I would like for my circles to have all the resources that they need when I die. And oh please, god, don't embalm me. I really, really, really want to rot. Does this count as a power of attorney? As we learned last week, no, it does not. Content warning again. At some point we talked about the idea of choosing to die from the perspective of being terminally ill. But before we go into it, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts and here's a jingle from another show on that network. Doo doo doo doo doo [Singing the words like a melody]

Molotov Now 01:48 Yeah, welcome to Molotov Now, a podcast about taking action.

Molotov Now 01:59 In Molotov Now, we analyze and discuss news articles and stories of resistance from around the globe and connect them to our struggles here at home in Aberdeen, Washington.

Molotov Now 02:09 In the spirit of building solidarity between the rural and the urban, we hope to inspire direct action in the face of oppression and to light a fire to find each other in the darkness.

Inmn 02:29 So what is kind of the pathway from like, say that I die tomorrow--I die in a hospital--like what is the pathway between like, I die in a hospital and my friends bury me in our home cemetery? Like, how does the possession of my remains work? Like, in Little Miss Sunshine, are people gonna have to pay to get my corpse? Like, can they get my corpse? Like, how does that work?

Wōen 03:04 Yeah, so you don't...you know, whoever is the designated person, so either the next of kin legally or the legally designated healthcare power of attorney who was also your power of attorney over your disposition, they will have the rights to your body, and you do not have to...If you die at a hospital, you're not going to have to pay to have the body released to you. What normally happens is the hospital will give a family a list of funeral homes, and then from there you'd call the funeral home, then the funeral home will do all the transportation. And then, you often won't even see that exchange from the hospital to the funeral home. You'd go to the funeral home and make arrangements and go from there. But, as the person with the rights, you can do all of that yourself. You can go pick them up and drive them to where they need to be. It's--and this is where like educating around things like bodily care and home funerals is really important--because there are logistical things you need to think about with transportation and caring for the body at home. And so, it can be a little daunting to do on your own, but, you know, if there's a lot of people supporting you, it's actually not very hard. Like, the intimidation factor is the hardest part. And, you know, having a vehicle that can get you home and a space where you can do the burial, those are really the next parts. And we all kind of know inherently how to do these rituals. Like once you enter into that space, it's really beautiful like how people just like fall into these different roles that they feel really confident in. And, yeah. So I would say, you know, if you're not going on that normal mode from hospital to funeral home to cemetery, like having a lot of people involved to care for the process is...Yeah, it's very doable and beautiful.

Inmn 05:52 Cool. Will--this is a weird logistical question, but I feel like this is kind of, you know, what we're here for--like, say, if I die, and I die in a hospital and like, say my family, chosen family, support network, which, you know, whoever it is, and we're trying to do like a home burial and they're not ready to, you know, take possession of my body, like will the hospital hold on to it for a little while? In like a refrigerator? Like, what if they're not ready for it? What if they like...you know, obviously, I just died. Maybe they need a week to deal with it. But, they don't want me embalmed and want to take possession of my remains.

Wōen 06:54 I can't say the exact timeline, I think it's probably a different state by state, but there is a limit on how long a person can stay at a hospital morgue. So that's a good thing to know where you are. But, another good thing to know is that often you can work with funeral homes to just do transportation or cold storage to give you time. And so I think that would be the best pathway is like, "Okay, we're not ready. Let's call a funeral home and just get them to pick our person up and put them in cold storage. And that will give us time to breathe and figure out what we need to do. And then from there, like you can ask them to, you know, transport them to where they need to go or you can pick them up from the funeral home. You can chip away at what the funeral home is offering. And some, you know, sometimes it'll be met with a little resistance. But like, you can have people tasked with advocating, and having more people to negotiate with different parts of the process is really helpful.

Inmn 08:18 Yeah, cool. That is good to know. So I feel like we keep going back to this power of attorney. If I get a medical power of attorney, does that extend to my remains? Like does who has my medical power of attorney also have the rights to the...to my disposition, or?

Wōen 08:50 Yeah, the answer is yes. And, it's important to get a good Advanced Directive. Some Advanced Directives don't have a section for disposition and it's important to get one that does. Because if it doesn't, then that is a situation where there could be like...Yeah, where if it's contested on who has rights, the advance directive could fall short. So, knowing that your Advanced Directive has that part, that section, in it is really important. Not all do and it sucks. So, figuring out that you have the right kind of Advanced Directive, and a lot of them do, but some of the popular ones--like the Five Wishes, which is really popular--it doesn't have that section in there. You can write it in yourself. But, if you're doing it and don't have guidance and have never done it before, that part can be missed. And then yeah. And then you could lose that right if it gets contested or there's a situation. Yeah.

Inmn 10:18 It's so weird that I think that this is like so--and maybe this is part of it is that in my head all of these decisions are these weird legal red tape or I'm like...I'm surprised to hear and, you know, grateful to hear that my friends could just get my body and do whatever...like, do what--not whatever they want with it...Like, hopefully do what I want them to do. [Everyone laughing] But, it's dispelling this myth that I have died and the State owns me, that the State owns my body and the State determines what happens to it. Like, I had this question for y'all where I was like, "Okay, but how do I get my...like...How do I get the name that I go by, and that people know me in the world by, on my tombstone instead of my legal name?" And it's like...it's...because in my head the Social Security Administration is who sends the form to the stone carver to make that and I'm like, "Why do I have these these weird myths in my head about, like, who owns my body?"

Wōen 11:40 I mean, because we live in...Like, when we're, you know, quote unquote, "healthy," we're dealing with that every day. Like people owning our time. You know, the Capitalist...Yeah, the Capitalist greed has infected all parts of our body. Yeah, it's really easy to assume that it will affect us after death too. Yeah. And on your note about your stone, like a headstone, yeah, you can put whatever you want on it, honestly. Like, it's up to you and the stone carver and the cemetery. There's no law or regulation around that. It's whoever has the rights of disposition.

Inmn 12:35 Yeah, yeah. And I know, Wōen, that you have to go in a second, so I just have this one last question. And, you know, maybe this is more of a Roxy question or...I don't know. So, I can have a home burial. Can I? Can I die at home? Are there complications to me--like legal complications for my friends--to like...Say, I'm having some kind of medical emergency, and my friends know in my power of attorney that I don't

Episode Summary

This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn is joined by Wōen and Roxanne from the Woven Ends Collective to talk about death, dying, death work, and everything from how to determine who gets to make decisions about your end of life, to how to have your remains dealt with in the manor that you would like, to how to bring community collaboration into death. Next week, they continue the conversation, focusing mostly on the work of death doulas.

Host Info

Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery.

Publisher Info

This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Transcript

**Live Like the World is Dying: Woven Ends on Death & Dying Part I **

**Inmn ** 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host for today Inmn Neruin and I use they/them pronouns. Today we're talking about something that we sort of reference all the time on the show, and that is death, a thing that we should all live like is going to happen someday. Because it is. I wanted to have Wōen and Roxy on to talk about this because I found myself thinking about it more and more as things change evermore rapidly in our world. And, I think it's cool to talk about because it's just another form of community preparedness that we can all engage in to make our end of lives easier for ourselves and for the people that we care about, and in general, just demystify the topic as we figure out how to leave this world, whether that pertains to navigating funerary industries, medical industries, legal logistics, medical interventions, the choice to die at home, how to have home burials, how to care for the dying, and how to have these conversations as a community. A content warning, obviously, we're going to be talking about some heavy stuff, and we approach it with some amount of levity, but we do talk at some point about the idea of choosing to die from the perspective of terminal illness. But before we get into it, we are a proud member of Channel Zero network of anarchists podcasts, and here's a jingle from another show on that network. Doo doo doo doo doo. [saying these sounds like a song melody]

Wōen

**Inmn ** 02:43 And we're back. Thanks, y'all so much for coming on the show with us today, especially to talk about a subject that I feel like is like a little bit more grim than we usually talk about. Or, I guess we kind of always always talk about it, but we never actually talk about it. So yeah, would you like to introduce yourselves with your names, pronouns, and kind of like what you do in the world?

**Wōen ** 03:17 My name is Wōen. I use he/him pronouns. I work in grave care, so burial, and generally any rot-honoring practice that I can help with.

**Roxanne ** 03:41 And my name is Roxanne. I am a nurse and have been doing end of life, and death doula sort of work outside of that, for maybe 15 years or so. Yeah.

**Inmn ** 04:01 Cool. And y'all are part of a collective that kind of specializes in this kind of work. Would y'all want to introduce that now or we could talk about it later?

**Wōen ** 04:17 Yeah, no, we can introduce it now. Our collective is called Woven Ends. We're more recently becoming more outward facing. We're a collection of death care practitioners and community members who are interested in helping the community. We are focused on combating the domination and alienation in our world through making our death rites and the care for the dying more autonomous and a lot more intimate.

**Roxanne ** 05:08 And accessible.

**Inmn ** 05:12 Cool. Um yeah, it's weird how much the State is like intertwined in death. And that's like not...I feel like that's not something I ever realized until I realized it and then I was like, "Oh, like can you die without the State being involved?"

**Wōen ** 05:35 Like the bureaucratic storm is also guided by the industry and a lot of the rituals that we have now and the way that death operates is it's a contrived effort, the funeral industry, to deal with all aspects after death. So, it's a really troubling, difficult thing that families and loved ones navigate.

**Roxanne ** 05:35 No.

**Roxanne ** 06:14 Yeah, it's pretty devastating. It's like Capital will take hold and commodify any and every aspect of our life possible and not even our life but our afterlife as well. Like yeah, it's hard to believe in true freedom sometimes, but that's why we're here fighting for it.

**Inmn ** 06:38 Yeah, I feel like...Whatever, I'm gonna take like a pretty like light hearted and like whimsical tone today because we're talking about something grim, but I feel like we have these ideas that like, "You know, the State's got me in life, but at least when I die I'll be free," and it's like maybe? I mean, your body won't be.

**Roxanne ** 07:14 Sadly, no. Eventually Yes but initially, no.

**Inmn ** 07:22 Yeah, I feel like that is a literal nightmare of mine. Could y'all kind of break down like what is death work? Like what is a death doula? What is the Woven Ends collective kind of like do in like a material or emotional way?

**Roxanne ** 07:50 Well, I can speak towards death doula work. What a death doula is, is a little undefined. And there are powers that be that are trying to make it more defined and kind of like more commodified. But basically, a death doula is someone who helps a family or a loved one sort of like go through the process. So that could look like, before someone dies, helping come up with some like legacy project, some things that people want to leave behind, or how someone wants to be remembered. So, that could be like, you know, if a 40 year old who has three kids dies, kind of legacy work you could do with someone in that situation is like, you know, help them record videos for their kids' future birthdays, you know, stuff like that so that way when their kids get older, like hit those milestones, they can have this video from their parent that has been gone for a while. So yeah, just kind of like, you know, one aspect is focusing on legacy work. Another aspect is just kind of like emotionally helping people with the grieving process, whether that be the person who's actually passing away or the family sort of like talking through the process of all of that with them. And then, you know, other aspects could be more helping set up funerary services, trying to help work on community aspects of disposition. Yeah, death doula is...It's sort of that the individual does different things. And I think if someone's interested in having a death doula, I would really ask questions about what specific services they provide.

**Wōen ** 09:59 Yeah, And I can speak more to like our collective. We definitely, we try to connect the right people to help different community members. So, that could be a death doula or even a grave digger. So, a lot of what we do is like guidance around the whole process. And we definitely want to like expand our scope completely to be able to care for the whole process. But most of what we've been doing in the past, and currently, is helping folks with finding burial options that are accessible and hopefully free. And we've been able to create a network of free home burial grounds where we live. And it's been really awesome to be able to provide this for free. And it usually is in tandem with a lot more care going on with death doulas and generally the radial support that happens when you're trying to create a more autonomous situation.

**Roxanne ** 11:28 I would also say that a part of the sort of intentional death work thing is to really help communities and individuals kind of like shift narratives towards death. We live in a really deathphobic society. And it is a thing that I think...you know, like, even in our introduction, we're like, "Okay, so this is a really grim topic," but it's interesting, because it's one of, you know, aside from being alive, it's the only other thing that everyone is going to experience, like the one thing that even if you have nothing in common with somebody else, the fact that you're going to die is a thing that you have in common. And so I feel like there's a lot of room for connection there. And, a part of the sort of work is to try to like, you know, find connection, find community, and sort of shift the narrative around this very natural and inevitable thing that's going to happen, and open up room and space for there to be beauty and transition in that instead of just fear. Because I think oftentimes, people don't actually...They're not scared to die. They're scared of being in pain. And those are very different things. So I think, yeah, just like...death workers offer a space for us to really intentionally look at that and say, like, "Okay, you're feeling scared? What is it that you're scared of?" You know? And really helping shift that narrative and also hopefully providing a space where nobody has to die alone. You know, sometimes that's just going to happen, but if at all possible, making sure that we can provide space--unless someone wants to--but they don't have to die alone.

**Inmn ** 13:32 Yeah, we do live in a really deathphobic society. And I...you know, obviously it's a sad and hard and difficult thing, but I feel like I have always wished that there...that we as a culture did have different attitudes or different ways that we deal with it, or grieve, or like mourn, or whatever. I don't know, I've just had a couple kind of funny funerary experiences, where I was like, "Are we celebrating this person's life? Or are we mad at them because they didn't tell anyon

Episode Summary

This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Riley talks to Margaret about building DIY spaces, how to plan events, and how to build a culture around your events of inclusivity and solidarity.

Guest Info

The Pansy Collective can be found on Instagram @Pansy.Colletive.

Host Info

Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.

Publisher Info

This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Transcript

Live Like the World is Dying: Riley on DIY Spaces

**Margaret ** 00:15 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy. I have just found out that my co-host, Inmn, has a voice that's similar enough to mine that people don't know which one of us is hosting. So, you can tell it's me because I am charming and perfect...Shit, so is Inmn...Okay, so that's not really what matters here. What matters here is that today, we are going to be talking about--a lot of people have written in and been like, "But I don't have community. You talk about community preparedness all the time." And obviously, subculture isn't the only type of community, but it's one of them. And we're going to talk about subculture. And we're gonna talk about DIY subculture. And we're gonna talk about fucking doing shit yourself. And we're gonna talk to someone who has a lot of experience of doing that at the intersection of marginalizations and not just reproducing cis white hetero stuff. So, this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts and here's a jingle from another show on the network. Doo doo doo doo doo. Doo. [Singing a simple melody with words]

**Margaret ** 01:34 And we're back. Okay, so if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then why you think I've brought you on this podcast.

**Riley ** 02:06 Hey Y'all. Yeah, my name is Riley. He/him pronouns. You brought me on this podcast because we're friends. And also because we've played some shows together and done some things together. And I'd like to think that we have some shared affinity and maybe even that we are in community together. So yeah, yeah. I think that's kind of why I'm here.

**Margaret ** 02:36 Okay. Well, you have experience...When I was like, trying to think I was like, "Who do I know who has experience building DIY scenes and like punk scenes and musical "subgenric" scenes. That's definitely a word. Don't look it up. Do you have experience doing that? What's your experience doing that?

**Riley ** 03:00 Yeah, you know, I do have some experience doing it. You said "a lot." I would say "limited." But, I organize with a collective here in Asheville, North Carolina called Pansy Collective. We call ourselves the "benefit booking collective" because a lot of what we do is book DIY shows to raise money for either trans people's surgical, or medical, or just living expenses, and also for grassroots projects that don't get funding any other way. Yeah, so we book shows, we throw parties, we also organize popular education and workshops and kind of use the concept of DIY community in a punk way to push people further to the left.

**Margaret ** 03:56 I, I really liked that. I think...I don't know if it was the first time I met you, or just the first time I saw you play, was coming on 10 years ago now. And you were playing this playing this show. And the thing that just like really immediately struck me was how much it felt like...When I first got into when I was like a teenager, I didn't give a shit about punk because...I don't know, the punk on the radio was fine, but it just...Like I liked Sisters of Mercy instead. Well, at the time I probably like Marilyn Manson instead, but we'll pretend like I only ever listened to Sisters of Mercy. And then when I like fell into anarchism and I started going to these like basement shows in Baltimore and there was this shared sense of like urgency to change the world, and that this is a thing that we are doing collectively and a thing we're doing from direct action, even if it just meant that the five foot tall singer was screaming, "I'm going to break a 40 on the motherfucking Nazis face!" or whatever, right? You know, it's like, you like believed her, right? Cuz she was telling the truth. Like, she probably got arrested for that. Well, yeah. And like, a 17 year old from that scene caught 27 felonies for beating up Nazis like two months later...and beat all the charges. She beat all the charges. And so this is what struck me, is that when I went and saw you play, it was like one of the times I really felt that again. And it felt like there was like something there. And I'm wondering if you want to talk about like...well, I guess like punk and about what draws you to it, what keeps you there, and what you're excited about DIY scenes for? Or any of that shit.

**Riley ** 05:43 Yeah, I mean, I can't pretend like punk music wasn't a facet of what radicalized me, right? And, I think exposure to--I mean, I wasn't a punk when I was in high school. And I was into riot girl feminism, specifically, was like a really point--and I feel like almost embarrassed to talk about it now, but let's own that for a second, right?

**Margaret ** 06:10 Yeah, whatever.

**Riley ** 06:11 Or, what brought me into that was also another facet of radicalization, which was seeking resources for being sexually assaulted at a young age, right? So I'm like, getting politicized through finding feminism and having these kinds of first moments of...You know, I grew up in real rural North Carolina. There's not scenes where I'm from, right? There's not even punks where I'm from. And kind of ideas of resistance, even ideas of bodily autonomy, and that what may be happening to you isn't your fault, and that maybe it's okay to be queer, you know, like, these were like, really groundbreaking ideas as a teenager. And so I'm finding these bands that are kind of espousing these ideologies, and carrying energy that I had no outlet for--or maybe just had really unhealthy outlets for--before I started listening to punk heavily. And then, really moving to Asheville as soon as I turned 18 because in this area, the queer and trans people from rural spots are told, "If you want to go somewhere to find where the other gay people are, go to Asheville." And so I just listened to that and went where I could. And I mean, I had some really pivotal moments, both good and bad, you know, and I'm in really this kind of naive idea that like, "Oh, you know, I'm coming into this from a feminist lens, so punks must be not misogynists, right?" [Margaret laughs] And then I learned that that wasn't true really quickly because I started having shitty experiences in mosh pits and, you know, getting groped, and my friends getting groped, and, you know, just having, I mean, just unsafe experiences that also really, you know, pissed me off because it felt so not...like this is inherently against the ethos of what this genre is in my mind because, you know, I know this is what this is, like not even knowing that there's just a whole slew of apolitical [punks]--or people who, you know, who're here for different reasons--you know, but it really...I saw a space that was missing. And it wasn't just me, it was, you know, an entire group of young-really-fucking-pissed-off-with-a-lot-of-trauma-and-something-to-prove-about-it queers who enacted a little bit of a takeover in, I don't know, like the early 2010s. And so, the punk scene in Asheville shifted from really...I mean, dude centric, to suddenly there's like, it's just like, these young mad queers who are wearing pink pink studs. And this is like, a few years before G.L.O.S.S came out but I feel like that era just really, yeah, there was a takeover that we both participated in.

**Margaret ** 09:24 I kind of...I kind of watched it, but I really appreciated it and I...Yeah, okay. So I guess one of the things that people mention to me a lot when I, you know, when I talk about individual and community preparedness, right, all the time, and usually people are alienated by one of those two words. And either people are like individual community preparedness is just preppers doing nonsense. And then, or, community preparedness doesn't resonate with people literally because a lot of people don't have community. We live in this very isolated and isolating culture, right? And so one of the things that people say, you know, the reason that I...I was driving and I was like thinking about this problem, I was thinking about how people write this to me and I'm always just like, "I don't know, just fix it." And I'm like, that's not a useful answer to provide to people. And I was like, who do I know who perpetuates a subcultural space--that's funny. Usually, when we say "perpetuate," you mean something bad. But like, in this case, you know, "makes continue" is actually sometimes a very good word, if it's a good thing being perpetuated. [And I was like, who do I know who perpetuates a subcultural space and] Makes the subcultural space happen and happen on a DIY level. And so I was really excited to talk to you about it. But, so, the core of my question is like, you talked about how there's not really scenes where you're from? So what do you do? I mean, I guess in this case, the answer is you move to Asheville and then take over the scene, but that's not a bad...

**Riley ** 10:53 Yeah. If in places where there's not...I mean, there's a particular context here because it's a small town, but it has a long standing history of punk activity, right? But

Episode Summary

This time on This Month in the Apocalypse, Brooke, Margaret, and Inmn talk about everything that happened in August, from the apocalyptic weather, to the wild fires in Lahaina, to some recent and incredibly tragic queerphobic violence. But also there's some hope.

Host Info

Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke. Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.

Publisher Info

This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Transcript

We have a delay on the transcription for this episode. Check back soon!

Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co

Episode Summary

This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn is joined by author and activist, Michael Novick. They talk about just how horrible fascism really is. Thankfully, there's a simple solution, antifascism. Michael talks about their work with Anti-Racist Action Network, the Turning The Tide newspaper, and his newest book with Oso Blanco, The Blue Agave Revolution.

Host Info

Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery.

Guest Info

Michael (he/they) and The Blue Agave Revolution can be found at www.antiracist.org If you want to take over the Turning The Tide newspaper, find Michael at antiracistaction_ [email protected]

Publisher Info

This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Transcript

Live Like the World is Dying: Michael Novick on Antifascism

Inmn 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host Inmn Neruin and I use they/them pronouns. This week we are talking about something that is very scary and, in terms of things we think about being prepared for, something that is far more likely to impact our lives than say, a zombie apocalypse. Or I mean, we're already being impacted by this. It is actively killing us. But, if I had to choose between preparing for this and preparing for living in a bunker for 10 years, I would choose this. Oh, golly, I really hope preparing for this doesn't involve living in a bunker for 10 years, though. But the monster of this week is fascism. However, there's a really great solution to fascism...antifascism. And we have a guest today who has spent a lot of their life thinking about and participating in antifascism. But first, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And so here's a jingle from another show on that network. Doo doo doo doo doo. [Singing the words like a cheesy melody]

Inmn 02:00 And we're back. And I have with me today writer and organizer Michael Novick, co founder of the John Brown Anti Klan Committee, People Against Racist Terror, Anti-racist Action Network, the TORCH Antifa network and White People For Black Lives. Michael, would you like to introduce yourself with your name, pronouns and kind of...I guess like your history in anti-racist, antifascist struggles and a little bit about what you want to tell us about today?

Michael 02:34 Sure. Thanks, Inmn. So yeah, Michael Novick. Pronouns he or they. I've been doing anti-racist and antifascist organizing and educating and work for many many decades at this point. I'm in my 70s. I got involved in political activism in kind of anti-war, civil rights, student rights work in the 60s. I was an SDS at Brooklyn College. And I've been doing that work from an anti white supremacist, anticapitalist, anti-imperialist perspective. And I think that particularly trying to understand fascism in the US context, you have to look at questions of settler colonialism. And, you know, people sometimes use the term racial capitalism. I think that land theft, genocide, enslavement of people of African descent, especially is central to understanding the social formation of this country. I was struck by the name of the podcast in terms of "live like the world is ending," because for a long time, I had an analysis that said that the fear of the end of the world had to do with the projection of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie feels that its rule is coming to an end and therefore thinks the world is coming to an end, but the world will get on fire without the bourgeoisie and the rulers and the imperialists. Except that because of the lease on life that this empire has gotten repeatedly by the setbacks caused by white and male supremacy and the way it undermines people's movements, the bourgeoisie is actually in a position to bring the world to an end. I think that's what we're facing is a global crisis of the Earth's system based on imperialism, based on settler colonialism, and exploitation of the Earth itself. And so I think it's not just preparing for individual survival in those circumstances. We have to think about really how we can put an end to a system that's destroying the basis for life on the planet. And so I think that those are critical understandings. And the turn towards fascism that we're seeing across the...you know, Anti-Racist Action's analysis has always been that fascism is built from above and below and that there are forces within society. I think particularly because settler colonialism is a mass base for fascism in this country, as well as an elite preference for it under the kind of circumstances that we're looking at, in which, you know, as I said the basis for life itself has been damaged by imperialism, capitalism, and its manifestations. And so the need for extreme repressive measures, and for genocidal approaches, and exterminationist approaches are at hand. So, I think that, again, I think that the question of preparation is preparation for those kinds of circumstances. I think we're living in a kind of low intensity civil war situation already, in which you see the use of violence by the State, obviously, but also by non state forces that people have to deal with. So I think that that's the overall approach that I think we need to think about. And that comes out of, as I said, decades of doing work. I think that there are a few key things that we have to understand about this system, which is that it's not just issues that we face, but there is an enemy, there is a system that is trying to propagate and sustain itself that is inimical to life and inimical to freedom. And that if we want to protect our lives and the lives of other species and if we want to protect people's freedom going forward, we have to recognize that there's an irreconcilable contradiction between those things and between the system that we live in. So that's kind of a sobering perspective. But, I think it's an important one.

Inmn 06:20 Yeah, yeah, no, it is. And it's funny, something that you said, kind of made a gear turn in my head. So, you know, normally, yeah, we do talk about in preparing to live like the world is dying, we do usually come at it from this context of that being a bad thing that we need to prepare for bad things to happen. But, the way you were talking about like fascism and empire and stuff, I suddenly thought, "Wait, maybe we should live like that world is dying and like there is something better ahead." Because, you know, we do like to approach the show from...I feel like we like to talk about the bad things that are happening and could happen but also the hopefulness and like the brighter futures that we can imagine.

Michael 07:15 I think that's right. And I think it's really important to have both of those understandings. I think that, you know, people do not actually get well organized out of despair. I think they do, you know, you want to have...You know, there used to be a group called Love and Rage. And you have to have both those aspects. You have to have the rage against the machine and the rage against the system that's destroying people, but you have to have the love, you have to have that sense of solidarity and the idea of a culture of not just resistance but a culture of liberation and a culture of solidarity. And I think that, you know, there's a dialectic between the power of the State and the power of these oppressive forces and the power of the people and to the extent that the people can exert their power and to the extent that we can free ourselves from the, you know, the chains of mental slavery is...[Sings a sort of tune] you hear in reggae, you know, that actually weakens the power of the State and the power of the corporations. And they [the State] understand that sometimes better than we do. So there is, you know, there's some lessons I feel like I've learned and one of them is that every time there is a liberatory movement based out of people's experiences and the contradictions that are experienced in their lives, whether it's the gay liberation movement, women's liberation movement, or Black liberation and freedom struggle, there's always an attempt by the rulers to take that over and to reintegrate it into, you know, bourgeois ways of thinking. And, you know, people talk about hegemony and the idea that ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class, and I think that, you know, I've seen it happen over and over again with different movements. And so, you know, I was involved with the Bay Area gay liberation in the 80s and, you know, one of the things that happened there is that you saw very quickly a different language coming up and different issues coming up. And so suddenly the question of gays in the military was put forward, or we have to be concerned about the fact that gay people have to hide when they're in the military, and the question of normalizing gay relationships in the contract form of marriage came forward. And those were basically efforts to circumscribe and contain the struggle for gay liberation and to break down gender binaries and stuff within the confines of bourgeois conceptions of rights and bourgeois integration into militarism and contractual economic relationships. And you saw that over and over again in terms of the Women's Liberation Movement, and then all of a sudden you've got bourgeois feminism and white white feminism. And I think that that's really important to understand because it means that there's a struggle inside every movement to grasp the contradiction that...and to maintain

Episode Summary

This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Shane comes on to teach Margaret about distillation and all of the things that one could produce through distillation, like distilled water, hand sanitizer, fuel alcohol, essential oils, and alcohol for drinking. They talk through the science and dispel some myths around the process.

Host Info

Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.

Publisher Info

This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Transcript

Live Like the World is Dying: Shane on Distillation

Margaret Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times...and it especially feels like the end times at least as we record this. I don't know when this is gonna come out, but we just had the hottest month on record. Maybe we've just had the hottest month on record when you hear this in October. I don't fucking know. I'm your host. I'm one of your hosts. I'm your only host today, Margaret Killjoy, and this week we're gonna be talking about something that I've wanted to know more about for a long time, although I'm absolutely terrified to have anything to do with it besides on informational and when-the-apocalypse-comes level because this week we are talking about distillation, the thing that should not be anywhere near as illegal as it is...or complicated legally. It's not always illegal. It's complicated legally. And we're gonna be talking about distillation. We're gonna be talking about distillation of alcohol for like...Well I guess all of it's distillation of alcohol, but we're gonna be talking about it from a like medical point of view and like having a good time point of view. And...obviously...don't do any crimes that you can get caught for. And, this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts and here's a jingle from another show on the network. Ba buh bub bub. [Making noises like a song melody]

Margaret Okay, we're back. And if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then just a little bit of your background about what we're gonna be talking about about distillation.

Shane My name is Shane, pronouns are he/him. I'm a hobby distiller. I've been doing it not for that long, but I've been doing a ton of research. I've been learning a lot about it, and yeah...

Margaret What kind of....what kind of stuff....Let's point out that you live in Canada where the crime is a different one. Which isn't to say...I guess it's like...Well, obviously don't do any of the illegal stuff. But it seems like Canada has a very different attitude about this as the United States does. Wanna talk about that?

Shane Yeah. So where I am, it is illegal. It's mostly illegal under our tax laws because they don't want you making it and selling it out of your basement or whatever. It's not really enforced if you...Don't take my word for that. Like, this is always gonna be a risk, but it's not really enforced if you're just doing it for yourself.

Margaret Yeah. That makes sense. Is worth pointing out--I'm going to reiterate this way too many times on the show--that the ATF in the United States has a very different attitude about home distillation. And obviously, people still do it. And before we started recording, we looked it up and it looks like it is federally illegal, but not every state has it illegal and like some states that specifically illegal, I believe. Which, just gets into that weird thing in the United States where there's like some things that are federally illegal but are actually fine state to state.

Shane Well I believe the ATF is a federal organization. So you know, it's still a risk if you decide to do that.

Margaret Yeah, exactly. And I know for my sake, like, I'm literally not going to--usually, I'm like, like...I'm just, I'm not actually going to end up setting up a still. Even though I'm like very curious about the process, just because the cost-benefit analysis isn't going to work for me, but everyone's going to do their own cost-benefit analysis and it's information that I think is very practical and useful for situations in which you don't live under the United State's jurisdiction, whether because you live in a different country or because the United States has a collapse, which is one of the main things that we talk about on the show. So probably no one's gonna be surprised that I think that that's possible. So with that out of the way, what's distillation?

Shane Basically, it's taking everything that's not alcohol out of the alcohol and throwing it away. So, you're just usually heating it up, collecting the steam, cooling the steam down before it escapes your system, and turning it into liquid alcohol.

Margaret The steam is the liquid alcohol? Or the steam is that not liquid...is the everything else?

Shane The steam is the liquid alcohol. You want to...ideally you want to collect that as it comes off your still, run it through some sort of cooling sleeve or condenser of some kind, and then collect what comes out the other end.

Margaret Okay. I like...Whenever someone says like, "And then throw the other parts away." I'm like, "Wait, but tell me about the other parts." Is there like? Can you make like? If you make brandy out of wine, can you have like non alcoholic wine at the end too? Or like, is it just gross weird shit?

Shane It's kind of gross, weird shit. There is some uses for it. I believe you can--you may want to look this up, if you have animals before you do this--I think you can mix it with your animal feed to add some nutrition or some calories to that. I've heard of some people doing that. I think you can--well, I know one thing you can do with it--there are certain traditions around making rum that actually keep that and put it into the next batch. Sometimes they put it in a pit and let it rot to add flavor. So, be careful with that. [Margaret laughing] But that is something you can do with it.

Margaret So much like--this has come up on all the fermentation and brewing episodes--like there's so much stuff that's just weird magic-- [interrupted]

Shane Yeah.

Margaret --involved in food. Like, "Oh, yeah, you put it in the pit to rot. And that makes it taste better." And like, I remember once I was picking grapes for wine at a--like someone was just like paying me eight bucks an hour to pick grapes for wine or whatever at a vineyard--and they were...I was like, "Do I pick the moldy ones?" And they were like, "Yes, that's part of the flavor." And I'm like...I'm probably still gonna drink wine, but I'm going to think more about it as I do it.

Shane There's a lot of weird magic stuff in distilling to, actually. So like this...one thing that your fermentation episode, the the magic spoon thing reminded me--or that was not the bread episode, I can't remember--But...

Margaret I don't remember.

Shane This is just folklore, but there was a thing in Scotland where when a big distillery would get a new still, they didn't really know how the flavor worked, all the chemistry of it yet. They would get a new still, but they wanted everything that came out to taste like the old one. So, in an effort to coax the spirit out of the old still, they would beat dents into it to make it looks like the old one.

Margaret Hell yeah. [Laughing]

Shane And it...that...weirdly enough, that does work. It does, like the shape of the still does affect the flavor. They didn't know why. But that's what they told themselves.

Margaret It is so...I'm so glad I'm not a perfectionist. If I ever like am home brewing or whatever. I'm not going to be like, "I am going to recreate Guinness." I'm just going to be like, "Hell yeah, I made beer."

Shane I'm the same way.

Margaret Okay, so like um...what are some of the things...You know, when you when you pitched this episode to me--I was very happy to hear from you because this is something I've wanted to talk to someone about for a while--you talked about how there's a couple different things that one might want to make with a still. I mean, you're making alcohol, right, but for a lot of different purposes. Do you want to talk about what some of those purposes are?

Shane Yeah, well, first of all, even if you're not making alcohol--and this is part of the way that stills get sold in the States and why it's still usually state by state legal to own one--you can make essential oils with it. You can make purified water. That's actually a huge survival benefit of having a still is being able to make distilled water. The alcohol can be used to make fuel which I believe is legal in some states. But besides that, like I said, the fu

Episode Summary

This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Pat talks to Margaret about working outside for a living with the National Park Service. They talk about gear, preparedness while hiking, search and rescue, how to prevent needing to be sought for and rescued, and the unfortunate realities of climate change.

Guest Info

Find Pat on the trails. Do not find them on the internet. They cannot be found there.

Host Info

Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.

Publisher Info

This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Transcript

Live Like the World is Dying: Pat on Working Outside

Margaret 00:14 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today, Margaret Killjoy. And this week...Okay, so you know sometimes I have these shows and it's basically like I find people who talk to me about the things that I've decided I'm really interested in that week. Well, this is one of those examples! And so I'm really excited about it. I think you'll all be excited about it too because this week I am talking to Pat who works outside for a living and he gets to do search and rescue and help people access parks because he is a backwoods...person...at a national park. And yeah, I don't know, I think...I'm excited for the conversation. I can't tell you what's gonna be in it because I haven't done it yet because I record these before I do the interview instead of afterwards. But! This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts and here's a jingle from another show on the network. Baba Baba bu ba baa ba ba baaa. [Making noises like a song melody]

Margaret 01:51 Okay, and we're back. Pat, so if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then just like a little bit about the work you do?

Pat 02:02 Yeah. So I'm Pat. He/him. I am a back country ranger for the National Park Service and I've been doing it for about 10 years. So I basically just hike around to talk with people, help out with search and rescue, clean toilets, do whatever needs doing. Yeah.

Margaret 02:24 Hell yeah. Okay, I have one question up front.

Pat 02:26 Yes.

Margaret 02:27 Okay, once when I was doing this forest campaign in a national forest--so not the Park Service, but, you know, the National Forest Service--there was this pit toilet. And--because he brought up toilets--there was this pit toilet and it had a door. And we would prop the door open to avoid it smelling. But then the Ranger came by and yelled at us and says that it works better...The like ventilation system is built on the door being closed. But then other times, I feel like I've seen ones that say, "Leave the door open." What's the deal?

Pat 03:00 That is...I'm going to chalk it up to every toilet in the back country is different. So maybe one of them was like designed in such a way with specific ventilation systems, because they get pretty high tech. We have some that have like little solar powered computer fans that will like vent air out and bring fresh air in to try to dry them out. It's kind of neat. It's a huge part of the job.

Margaret 03:25 This was like 20 years ago I think...Probably didn't have a solar panel

Pat 03:27 Probably not solar powered then. [At the same time as Margaret says above

Margaret 03:28 I just couldn't figure out whether she was like fucking with us because she didn't like us or whether she was just like annoyed at these idiots who thought they knew about the woods but didn't.

Pat 03:41 Well, the reason they gave may have not been like 100% accurate. Like one thing that comes to mind is--it really sucks--but you know, critters find their way down into there. And so if the door's open like, you know, a raccoon or something may climb down there and like it really sucks because oftentimes they get down there and they can't get out. And you know, at my park, we shovel all of that waste out into buckets and hike it out. [Margaret makes a "pee-yew" noise of disgust] And sometimes you know little chipmunks and stuff are in there. It's really sad.

Margaret 04:12 Yeah, Is there like a back entrance where you can go down and access the pit? Or do you have to just literally like drop buckets and like it's a terrible well?

Pat 04:24 Oh, no, those structures are literally just...like you just you just like rock them and move the wooden structures off. They're not secured to the ground. and then you put a hole in the ground with just like posthole diggers.

Margaret 04:44 That's fun. I'm glad that this is the first question I asked you. [Laughing]

Pat 04:48 It's part of the job. Sorry, gonna turn all the listeners away.

Margaret 04:52 No, no, no, no, I asked. And I think that that's like....Okay, I mean, that even gets kind of...Um, when I would do any kind of forest defense or anything that involves living in the woods, I feel like one of the main signs of like a newbie in a bad way was people who didn't dig a hole before they took a shit.

Pat 04:53 Yes.

Margaret 04:54 You know? And so the stuff that when you're like in houses and stuff that you sort of take for granted, you can't take for granted when you're not. So it sort of makes sense that shit is the defining characteristic.

Pat 05:28 Yeah, it's kind of fun.

Margaret 05:29 But, speaking of shitty jobs...Hehe, I had to make the pun at least once. I'm very sorry. What got you deciding that you want to work outside?

Pat 05:41 I feel like I was kind of like destined for it. Kind of a weird way to put it. I was basically...my first backpacking trip was before I could walk. My dad put me on his shoulders. And I was out in the woods when I still in diapers. I grew up doing Boy Scouts so I was backpacking basically once a month. And so I just continuously did that essentially my whole life, and then, weirdly enough, in college kind of fell off for a bit. And then, you know, I graduated and decided to volunteer and have been doing it ever since.

Margaret 06:17 Okay, and you moved from volunteer to now this is what you do professionally, right?

Pat 06:20 Yeah, that's kind of the primary path to get in. If you're not coming from some sort of military background or something, you kind of have to volunteer or do an internship or something like that. It's a pretty small community. So getting your foot in the door and learning the lingo is kind of important. And having a name that a hiring manager can call for a reference check that's like in the system is kind of an important deal.

Margaret 06:49 That makes sense.

Pat 06:50 Yeah. Kind of a small community.

Margaret 06:53 What do you like about it? Like, I think that a lot of people listening...So the reason I wanted to had you on, part of it is about search and rescue stuff--which I want to talk to you about in a bit--But part of why I wanted to have you on is I think that a lot of the listeners, a lot of listeners do either work outside or spend...Like I actually work inside, but almost all of my hobbies--and I make it this way on purpose--take me outside. And then I often sort of live outside. I don't currently, but I have at various points. But I think that a lot of people are looking for ways to get outside and don't like their current work or don't have work at all or whatever. And so I guess I want to ask you about what you like and don't like about having a job that has you outside all the time?

Pat 07:43 Yeah. I mean, it's...I love that my job like requires me to be out there. It's like such a huge boost for mental health and everything. It's nice that I don't have to, like take time off for my family to go out and get those experiences. So that's really huge. Yeah, the outdoors is like a...I'm sure a lot of people that go out regularly have the experience where it's...even if you're not religious or anything but it's kind of got a spiritual element to it where you're just like out in it in the wilderness by yourself or even with a small group, and it's just refreshing, you know. It fills you up. So that's huge that I get to do that and I get paid for it and I get to--I think most of all--I get to help people get out to get into it, pointing out trails, conditions, things that. Yeah, it's really cool to have a job where I can, like materially help people on a day to day basis, you know? Like when I recommend a day hike and someone comes back like all sweaty but smiling and thanks you for it. You know, it's a good feeling.

Margaret 08:52 Yeah, yeah. So you're like the human Alltrails[.com]? Is that what you're saying?

Episode Summary

On This Month in the Apocalypse, Brooke, Margaret, and Inmn talk about a lot of really bad things that happened in July, from the intensifying heat, to floods, to medicine shortages, to Antarctica's ice melting, to grain shortages, to terrifying new laws. But also, there are some hopeful things that happened, and as always the group finds ways to stay positive and for communities to prepare for what's to come.

Host Info

Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke. Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.

Publisher Info

This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Transcript

This Month in the Apocalypse: July, 2023

Margaret 00:14 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm Margaret. Now one of you says, "Hi."

Brooke 00:22 Hi, Margaret.

Margaret 00:26 No, you say "Hi," like you say who you are.

Brooke 00:29 Oh, hi, who I am. Brooke.

Inmn 00:32 And I'm Inmn.

Brooke 00:34 Did I do good? Was that good? Alright,

Margaret 00:37 Y'all did great. I'm joined by Brooke and Inmn today for another episode of This Month in the Apocalypse. And this is an extra special extra apocalypsey month that we're going to be talking about because we're talking about July, 2023, the hottest month in the history of humans being alive. Unless you're listening to this in August, in which case maybe you're like, "July that was some fucking amateur hour shit." But for now, hear us at the end of July, hottest month ever. And you know what else is hot is the Channel Zero Network, the network of anarchists podcasts. There's nothing wrong with this comparison. We are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcast and here's a jingle from another show on the network. Da da da da duh daa [Humming a melody]

Inmn 02:12 And we're back. And to start off today, we're going to talk a little bit about global temperatures and the heatwave that we are in the middle of experiencing right now. So this July was quite possibly the hottest--or I mean, definitely the hottest month on record in, you know, a recorded historical way--and possibly one of the hottest months on the planet in a very long time. So I live in Arizona, and in Phoenix, the ground temperature...There were daily record breaks in the in the heat where the hottest day on record was...it was 117 degrees. And then the next day it was 118 degrees. And then the next day, it was 119 degrees.

Margaret 03:09 They won't even make it to that 20. Like come on. Just give us the round number.

Brooke 03:15 No, no, don't. Stay less.

Margaret 03:19 Oh, interesting. Okay. [dryly sarcastic]

Inmn 03:21 There is I learned, a really horrifying thing that happens at 120 degrees. So I really hope that it doesn't get to 120 degrees. Do y'all know what happens when the ground temperature reaches 120 degrees in the sun?

Margaret 03:35 Does Mothra break out of the cracked Earth and fight Godzilla?

Inmn 03:41 Sort of. Propane tanks spontaneously combust.

Margaret 03:49 That's bad.

Brooke 03:51 Oh my gosh,

Inmn 03:53 It's really bad. So in actuality, the temperature did reach 120 degrees because an enormous propane tank near the Sky Harbor International Airport exploded along with a bunch of like five gallon ones and it caused this huge fire. A bunch of cars were destroyed. And yeah, which you know, is by itself not like some huge world ending thing. But if you live anywhere where it might be 120 degrees on the ground, possibly in Arizona, take your propane tanks out of the sun because they might explode.

Margaret 04:35 Normally, I would say don't put them inside because in general that's a really bad idea. But, it's probably better than like popcorn kernels in your yard.

Inmn 04:46 Yeah, yeah. And I say this for people who like, you know, if you have a grill outside that just has the propane tank attached to it and it's not in the shade or anything. Um then, yeah, it could just explode and destroy your house.

Brooke 05:06 But only if it's 120 degrees. If you're at 119, you're perfectly safe. Leave those propane tanks just right out there in the middle of the sun on the asphalt, right? [sarcastically]

Inmn 05:16 No, don't do that. [laughing]

Margaret 05:18 Place them near the following people who run the following companies.

Brooke 05:29 Do you want to know about the the average overall temperatures in the month of July in Phoenix while we're talking about Phoenix?

Margaret 05:36 I mean, no, but tell us anyway.

Brooke 05:39 Okay, for the month of July, in Phoenix, the average high temperature, daily high temperature, was 114 degrees. And here's the really fun one, the average low temperature like the coldest it got was 90 degrees.

Margaret 05:56 There was also a new low warm record. There was a night in Phoenix where it didn't get below 97 degrees.

Inmn 06:04 Oh, golly.

Margaret 06:06 Which is too hot.

Inmn 06:08 It is too hot.

Margaret 06:09 And, I didn't write this number down because I forgot. Massive..Like there was also a record for the most electricity the city of Phoenix has ever drawn because everyone was running their air conditioners, for good reasons. This is not a "Don't run your air conditioners," this is more of a, "There is a limit to what the grid can handle."

Inmn 06:31 Yeah. And just to, since we're hyper focusing on Phoenix, in the last, I think--I don't think this was last month-- but in the last couple of months, the governor did halt a lot of new housing developments that were getting built due to concerns over the future of water in Phoenix.

Margaret 06:57 And it seems like there's two ways to read that. There is the like...I am notably on the record of feeling like people who are...That Arizona is in trouble. I am on the record for that. And I don't want to get into specifics. But the more kind way to read the lack of expansion is that it was less like these places are out of water and more that, I believe in Arizona, or in the Phoenix metro area or something, you have to be able to prove that there will be water access for the next 100 years in order to build. And so it is a little bit less like these places are out of water and more like, "We cannot guarantee this water." I think that's the kinder way...No, not the kinder...That is one way to read that. The other is that Arizona is in fucking trouble.

Inmn 07:55 Yeah, and you know, it stems from these like larger issues of the Colorado River having these like all time lows in water flow, and just due to Phoenix being this like huge, sprawling place that is like under constant development. Like I think it's where...Outside of Phoenix is where Bill Gates is trying to build some like new smart future city. Which is really confusing.

Margaret 08:27 Has fucking Elon Musk gotten into him or something?

Inmn 08:29 Yeah, like it's supposed to be this like huge self contained smart city that's outside of...it's in the larger Phoenix area, but like is separated from Phoenix. And my first thing that I thought was like, "Why? There's no...Where are you going to get water from?" Which I guess if you're really...If you're Bill Gates, you maybe have to worry less about where your water's coming from. But...

Margaret 08:57 I mean, eventually. Other heat stuff from this month, let's see, we had...I was looking at a bunch of maps of where all of this heatwave stuff hit right, and overall, the hardest hit places were the coastal south, the southwest, of course--Phoenix gets a lot of the attention and for good reason--the coastal South got an awful lot, and then actually in terms of it being way hotter than usual, it also affected the lower and middle Midwest. The Pacific Northwest and central Appalachia--aka the two best places in the country based on the general disbursement of the three people on this call--were the least affected. And last weekend--sorry last week--thousands of people across the US went to the hospital for heat related illnesses. Only six states have laws protecting workers that say things like "You actually can't make people work when it's too hot out or they'll die." Only six states actually have laws that are like, "You have to pr

Episode Summary

This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn is joined by Carrie and Korin from the Glia project to talk about some of their projects and specifically to talk about why 3D-printed medical devices are really cool and how they help get medical devices to places where they are not otherwise easily accessible. They talk about Glia's work on 3D-printed tourniquets, stethoscopes, otoscopes, and dialysis machines. Also, please give them $5 million. You won't regret it.

Host Info

Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery.

Guest Info

Glia can be found at www.glia.org or on Twitter @Glia_Intl

Publisher Info

This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Transcript

Glia on 3D Printing Medical Devices

Inmn 00:15 Hello, and welcome to live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host Inmn Neruin. And this week we're going to be talking with Glia, a rad organization that designs 3D printed medical devices so that no matter where you are, you can access basic and quality medical devices. But first, this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network. Doo doo doo doo doo. [Singing a simple melody]

Inmn 01:17 And we're back. Thanks so much, y'all, for coming on the podcast today. Would y'all like to introduce yourselves with your name, pronouns, nd what you what you're here to talk about or what your role is in Glia.

Carrie 01:45 Okay, I'll go first. My name is Carrie Wakem and she/her and my role at Glia is executive director. It sounds very flashy. It's not. We're all team players here at Glia.

Korin 02:00 My name is Korin, my pronouns are she and they. I'm a volunteer with the Glia project, particularly focused on the tourniquets, and specifically with regards to manufacturing instructions and quality control documentation.

Inmn 02:13 Cool. And would you want to kind of introduce what Glia is?

Carrie 02:20 Absolutely. So Glia is a medical device manufacturing company. We do lots of research and we build and research devices that are considered high quality, open source, and at cost. And that's sort of the stuff that we do.

Inmn 02:42 How did Glia come to get started? Also, does Glia stand for anything? Is it an acronym? Or is it just a fun word?

Carrie 02:50 Everybody asks that question about the acronym and how we became Glia or where the name came from and really there's no interesting story behind it. I think the original team on the Glia project just basically said, "What should we call this?" Somebody throw it the name Glia. And then it stuck as far as I know. But that was before my time. I can absolutely speak to a bit of the history of Glia and how it came to be. So, our founder Tarek Loubani is in emergency medicine physician in London, Ontario in Canada. And he works frequently in the Gaza Strip. And quite a few years ago he was there during the war and he was responding to a large amount of casualties. And he was in a room with a whole bunch of patients that needed to be seen. And when he looked around, he saw that there were only two stethoscopes being used in that room and one of them was around his own neck. And literally people had blood on their ears because they were putting their ear to the chest of patients to hear if there were heartbeats. And it occurred to him that some other places in the world don't have access to even basic medical tools like stethoscopes. And then after that trip, he was home and he was playing with one of his nephews and he was using the little toy plastic stethoscope doctor kit--I think Fisher Price used to make one when I was a kid. Anyway, that's who made one. I'm sure there's a lot of knock offs now. But, they have a little toy stethoscope. And he put it to his ears and he was listening and he was like, "This thing actually works. You can actually hear a heartbeat through this plastic toy." And he just had an interest in 3D printing at the time and he thought to himself, "I wonder if I could create a stethoscope using a 3d printer that would be more accessible, lower cost, and hopefully as high a quality as the Littmann cardiology iii, which is what our stethoscope now compares to. So Glia does have a 3D printed stethoscope today. It was our first product that was developed and it's based off of that experience of our founder.

Inmn 05:00 Cool. Is that is that...[incoherent starting and stopping and stuttering] That makes sense how that would prompt an organization like Glia. But it is...That's really grim that that is how these organizations start.

Carrie 05:15 Yeah. Unfortunately. Though, those are the stories that probably motivate people to do something about these scenarios, right? So, you see a problem and you want to solve it

Inmn 05:27 Is Glia, like, I guess....So from there, this person started 3D printing stethoscopes and then how did the larger structure of Glia kind of start from there? Was it like people just being like, "Oh, that's really cool. Could we also make this other thing?" or?

Carrie 05:43 Um, yeah, so a lot of what we've done...There's parts of it that's have been strategic and parts of our projects that have been organic. The first stethoscope, I believe, was developed in 2014. I didn't come into the project full time myself until 2017. So this is a little bit before my time. Stethoscopes were the thing that we were sort of working on, at the moment that I joined Glia myself. And we started with the stethoscope specifically because it's an iconic device, right? Like everybody recognizes it. So, there was some strategy into picking a device to get started on the topic of "How can an open source stethoscope really changed the world? How can that provide better access to quality health care?" It's a talking point and it still is to this day. From there, though, it was the experiences of the people that were working or associated with the project--collaborators, we've had a lot of collaborators, a lot of volunteers over the years--that sort of drove the direction of some of these projects. And the one that Korin mentioned at the beginning when she introduced herself was the tourniquet project. And that was actually originally developed by the engineers that were working for Glia back in 2017, a group there. And they saw a need for tourniquets in the Gaza Strip. They just couldn't access this type of device. And as we know in Gaza, there's constantly the threat of war. So, they needed to be able to come up with something that they could get access to. And so they designed this tourniquet--and we can probably get into that a little bit later--but that was something that organically happened from our remote office. Other projects like our otoscope. We have a 3d printed otoscope. This project was literally designed by a guy that was attending audiology school. So a gentleman that was in his early 20s had a fondness again for 3D printing and he was sitting in class going, "Why does an otoscope cost $400. I'm a student. I'm on a student budget. I can't access this general piece of equipment." And, and we're not talking about the Welch Allyn otoscopes that are attached in your doctor's office. We're talking about just you know, a plain handhold regular tool to look into somebody's ear. And so this guy, his name's Frankie Talarico, he actually sought us out and he was like, "I want to make this otoscope. And I want to just design it quickly on some software. And I want to make it open source so that anyone else can access that source code and copy it from anywhere else in the world." And he looked out to see who else was doing things like him. And it just so happened, we were in the same exact city, literally like a 10 minute drive from each other. And he reached out and he said, "I have this device that I've been working on. I want it perfected. You guys seem to be a little bit more ahead of of the game in terms of open source medical devices. How can we help each other?" And so he brought this idea, this concept, this design. We had it, you know, sort of perfected in a couple of different versions. And now what you see on our website is working a portable otoscope for...It's $100 for that device and we're hoping to improve our manufacturing process in the next year when we have people like Korin involved to help those processes get a little bit more efficient, we can lower the price even further. So its cost right now is 1/4 of what it does for the comparable gold standard model on the market.

Inmn 09:35 Wow. Yeah, that is...I mean, that's a significant difference. If someone downloaded it and printed it themselves, would it be cheaper for them to print it themselves then?

Carrie 09:49 Yeah, so yeah, in a sense it would be. So there's...So what Glia does is we take our designs that we make--all

Episode Summary

This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Burdock and Margaret talk about the overlap between Earth Skills and preparedness as well as going over the basics of how to preserve animal hides, how to process road kill for food, and why you probably don't want to eat roadkill. Trust your nose on that one

Guest Info

Burdock (she/they) can be found on Instagram @Scagetywocket

Host Info

Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.

Publisher Info

This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Transcript

• Live Like the World is Dying: Burdock on Earth Skills and Road Kills

Margaret 00:14 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm today's host, Margaret Killjoy. And I'm really excited to be talking about this stuff that we're gonna be talking about today because it's something I've been wanting to talk about since I first started the show. We're going to be talking about the primitive skills scene. And in specific, we're going to talk a bit about roadkill and we're going to talk about tanning hides of animals that have been destroyed by the mechanisms of industrial civilization. And I'm excited to get into that. But first, this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network da da duh duh da daa. [Singing a melody]

Margaret 01:38 Okay, we're back. Okay. So if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns. And then I guess a little bit about how you got into the stuff that we're going to be talking about today?

Burdock 01:48 Yes, Hi. I'm Burdock. And I use she/they pronouns interchangeably. No preference. And I got into this stuff about 10-11 years ago, living in a city my whole life and being like, "This is not working for me at all. And I want to live in a completely different way." And I went to crazy intense primitive skills school because that was like, the thing I found that resonated the most with me, and it was really traumatizing. But I also learned a lot. And since then, I've been continuing to explore communities and practice those things on my own largely.

Margaret 02:30 Okay. What's primitive skills? To start at the like, super basic, right? This the thing where YouTube influencers get money out of people to fake build things in the woods? [Said with dry sarcasm]

Burdock 02:45 [Laughing] Totally. That is definitely one of the things. That is one of the many ways that it manifests in the world. And also, like, a lot of people hate the term "primitive skills." I think it's not great. [Margaret makes an affirmative sound] But it is like, the most known term for this realm I'm talking about. And so I usually use it just so people understand what I'm talking about, that I don't have to be like, "Earth skills, ancestral skills, primitive skills," and I don't know, I think "earth skills," is like, the best in a way. But yeah, acknowledging right now that this whole thing is like rife with cultural appropriation. And there's definitely like conversations happening around that in parts of the primitive skill scene, earth skills scene.

Margaret 03:45 No, it's called Earth skills. [Said jokingly, but seriously]

Burdock 03:47 Yeah, I'm gonna go with Earth skills from here forward. It feels it feels better. Anyway. So, Earth skills broadly refers to all of the ways that humans lived for most of our time here on Earth. Like pre pretty much pre....I don't know there's even metal smithing included in a lot of like Earth skills gatherings and stuff...So, but like, usually very, still very, like, land-based, like wood forges and stuff, but pre-agriculture, pre industrial revolution. But, there is some agriculture stuff because like, I think it's a bit of a myth that like, agriculture equals industrial society equals capitalism equals bad, right?

Margaret 04:38 Yeah, no. Okay. So that is like, kind of my question is like, what skills are included in this kind of place? Like so Earth skills, I assume it's like hunting, gardening--I mean, in my mind, I'm so used to like survival stuff, so I'm like building emergency shelters filtering your water--but I assume it's also like, building more permanent structure and making your own clothes? Like like what? What kind of different stuff are people doing?

Burdock 05:07 Yeah, I'd say the standbys are fire by friction, like ways of making fire from only materials you're harvesting from the land, foraging for food and medicine and other useful plant materials, animal processing, so, you know, post post hunting, what do you do with the body of the animal that you killed? Hunting is definitely there. And weapon making as well, making weapons just from what's on the landscape around you, just from what you can find. Shelter building. And I think the theme, the theme that runs throughout all of these is "Just from the land around you and maybe you have a knife." But I teach friction fire with no knife, so that varies a lot. There's pottery with local wild clay and how to process that clay so you can actually make pots with it. Basket making--which is also something I do--with materials you're foraging and how to forage for those materials or how to propagate them, how to process them. Totally different from, you know, the materials being prepared for you and you're just going for it. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure I'm forgetting tons of stuff.

Margaret 06:38 Yeah, no, I'm, I'm sure, too. And I...it's been a while since I've been around people who are particularly into this, but I it's been interesting to be around. Okay, I have a bunch of questions about it, though. So one of them is, what role does this have in the modern world? Like, what? And I'm sure that's something that people talk about within this, you know, scene or community and stuff, but like, what...or like, sell me or the listener on getting into this kind of stuff? Like, what's it about?

Burdock 07:10 I think it's about different things to different people. And what it's about, to me is resilience and becoming a more resourceful kind of creative person, having more options of ways to live. I get to disengage from a lot of the kind of modern society stuff when I choose to engage in those skills, which for my life has been important because I have like sensory processing stuff. And so being able to, like, escape from the barrage has been really important. And I think different people have different reasons for needing to get away from that. Even just traveling, like it's making my traveling life easier. Even stuff, like being able to pee stealthily or find like spots in the woods to like, have an anxiety attack. Like, all of these skills are really practical in just surviving the modern world the way it is now. Like, even if things stay exactly how they are. And, you know, there is this idea of, "Oh, if stuff gets worse I'm going to be prepared in all these ways. And I can like, share these...I can teach the skills that I know to other people so that they can deal with whatever's happening." And, you know, including just stuff like blackouts that are short or natural disasters. Like that's definitely part of it, too. But a huge part of it for me is just the selfishness needed to protect my senses.

Margaret 09:01 That makes a lot of sense to me. And one of the things that's kind of come up more recently on this show as I interview different people is realizing there's all of these different means by which people engage in nature, right? And I know that...I kind of at some point, I don't know if I have the brainwidth to do it, the brain space to do it right now, I want to problematize the idea of nature, problematize the idea that nature is this separate thing that is distinct from humans, and even--if you want to piss off people--it's even a separate thing that it's not separate from industrial society, right? Like anything that humans make. But there's all of these different ways that people interact with nature. And it's like really interesting to see which ones are useful for people now in the world to learn how to disengage and which ones are useful for people in different kinds of collapse scenarios, different disasters and things and so it's like...You know, I haven't had on someone to talk specifically about bushcraft, but It seems like bushcraft is almost the like step more modern than like what you do, right? Like, because like bushcraft would be like, "Well, you have your saw on your axe and you can build your log cabin, right?" Which is in some ways, I think the least sustainable way for modern people to go interact with nature. But maybe I'm only saying that because I haven't interviewed a bushcraft person who's gonna sell me on it really well. An