It Could Happen Here - CZM Book Club: Discussing Two Stories by Ursula K. Le Guin

Episode Date: May 3, 2026

Margaret discusses your reactions to Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" and "The Day Before the Revolution" with Hazel Acacia and Steven MonacelliSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. On the Look Back at it podcast. From 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84 was big to me. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a year, unpack what went down,

and try to make sense of how we survived it. With our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors. Like Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s. 84 was a wild year. It was a wild year. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Listen to look back at it on the Outer. My Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hardway with your favorite therapist and host, Kear Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor. It signals to the world that you not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to, Listen to learn the hard way on the AHA radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice in so much, correct? I doctored the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg, a lesbian, Michael Mancini. My mind was blown.

I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter. And on my podcast, 2%. I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange model.

and worry. Put yourself through some hardships and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWA percent on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Media. Book club. Book club. Book club. Book club. Book club. Book club. Book club. Book club. Book club. Book club. Book club. book club. Hello and welcome to Cool Zone Media Book Club.

The only book club were actually this week you had to have done the reading for you yourself because I didn't do it for you. This is actually the way that every book club works. So now we're more like a traditional book club. But I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy. As you may have noticed, incapable of synchronizing their chance with me,

are my guests who have not failed at anything else, including Stephen Monticelli, whose occasional host of it could happen here. and also Hazel Acacia, who helps out with the book club. How are you all? I'm doing all right, Margaret. How are you? There's a cat.

I am happy. He's a really cute, really sweet recording cat. It's a good recording cat. I also have my Ursula Laguin cat mug with me, my commemorative LaGuin mug that I'm going to now sit down on the counter and make too much noise. Steve, how are you? I'm doing all right. The reason I had you on today,

that you're already aware of, but I'm going to let the audience know. Dear audience, this is not a regular episode of Cool Zone Media Book Club, because I am not reading you a story. Instead, we are going to talk about stories that you may have already read or you may go out and read now, in which case it'll be a little confusing. We're going to talk about the work of an author that means a lot to me. We're going to talk about two stories by the perpetual anarchist matriarch herself, who would hate being called a matriarch, Ursula K. Le Guin. If you haven't read those who walked away from Omelos

and the day before the revolution, or haven't read them recently, you might want to pause here and go take a look. They are very short and they are on the internet for free. Or you can resign yourself to spoilers and forever holds your peace about it. I don't make your choices for you. Because, as LaGuin herself once said,

An anarchist is one who choosing accepts the responsibility of choice. You, listener, are accepting the responsibility of your choice to listen without having read the story that that quote comes from. Anyway, what do you all think of the stories? I think they are excellent examples of what the short story form can do. and they really get to the heart of, I think, what Ursula Le Guin was interested in in terms of politics and ideology. And they're just beautifully done. They're fun to read.

Yeah, these are really gorgeous stories. There's some really excellent prose. She uses, like, description really, really well, effectively in these stories to build out a world that you don't need to know the name of the city that Laya Odo lives in. But you can really feel what it's like to work to liberate a city for your whole life and how that changes how you interact with it as you walk through. We're going to get more into the themes of it as we start reading Reddit comments from you all, dear listeners from the It Could Happen Here Reddit.

And so I'm sure we'll have an awful lot more to say. But yeah, I just, I love, I feel back as I'm just like, I just like Le Guin. Everything is good. these stories are amazing. In particular, the day before the revolution is one of my favorite stories ever written, and it's probably my favorite LaGuin story. And it just gets at so many things so beautifully. It is both an amazing piece just on aging and aging within a movement, but also like one of the more interesting microanalysesies of anarchism that I've ever read. And, you know, it means different things to me. I've read it.

twice. I read it once a long time ago, and then I've read it just recently, and I love how I get different things out of it at different times, and I know I'm going to get more out of it soon. To recap these two stories for the audience, here is just the raw spoilers so that people have a chance of any idea of what we're talking about. The ones who walked away from Omelas, aka the story that I always try and call those who walked away from Omelas, but that's not that's title. Its title is the ones who walked away from Omelas is a story about a perfect society. And it is critiquing the very idea of there being a perfect society. And it's like basically being like, all right, imagine a perfect society. Oh, you imagine different society than I do. Then imagine

than the one that you want to imagine. But there's a kid in the Omelaz hole. That's not what's called in this story, but that's what history has decided it is called. There's a kid who is being tortured by neglect in just a horrible fashion, just absolute atrocity. And that's what allows the entire society to exist. And then some people are like, I'm willing to accept this. And other people are like, fuck all this. And they walk away, whether metaphorically or physically. That a decent, missing any key points from that one?

Yeah. One of the main things that Ursula is playing with in the first half of the story where she's describing this beautiful, perfect society is like sort of pushing the reader on how much they're willing to accept a utopia. And she says, you know, like, do you accept O'Malas? Do you accept how beautiful it is? Do you accept the children running around? Do you accept the kites in the sky? And specifically, that's why she introduces the child in the hole is to play with, like, how much utopia readers are willing to believe in. Like, there has to always be a catch. And that's, you know, one of the interpretations of what it means to walk away from Omalas is to believe that there doesn't have to be a catch. that you can just, that a perfect utopia could exist out there. And you don't have to hang the joy and the mirth on suffering. Yeah.

Yeah. And I really loved the way she sort of ends it. It's not just the walking away, but this idea that, you know, they're walking away to something that's perhaps even harder to imagine. Yeah. And specifically, like, I'm not going to tell you what happens to the people who walk away. You know, even though they are the titular, I think that word is pronounced funny, characters, those who walk away from Omelas.

All right. And so the second story, the day before the revolution, is not literally set in the world because Omelas is set in kind of a no place, right? A utopia, meaning no place, I swear I know things. But in the introduction to the day before the revolution, at least in the zine version that we have been linking people to. to. LaGuin offers a couple paragraphs of introduction and describes the main character, who is one of the primary theorists of anarchism within the revolutionary society that she is in.

It's a prequel to the book The Dispossessed, which is the 1970s heterogeneous atopia. Oh, I can't remember what she called it. Anyway, she's like, it's a utopia. It's not a utopia when she describes anarchism in that book. But you don't have to read The Dispossessed to read an end. enjoy this story. I would argue actually this story is easier to read and easier to enjoy than the dispossessed, which is one of my favorite books, but is not as short and delicious as this particular story. Anyway, at the end of the introduction, describes our main character, Leia, do you think? How are you all pronouncing this name? I'm saying Laia. Laia. Let's go with Laia. Laya is one of those who walked away from Omelas.

and I love, to me, this is the key of all of my understandings of both stories, is that one sentence that she writes. Because, all right, well, okay, I'll get to that. This story is about Laya Odo, who is the Kropaken of their world in some ways, right? But is specifically, by the time the story starts, a 72-year-old woman who is very aware of her age, has recently survived a stroke whose husband and love of her life is dead and she is watching the revolution begin to unfold taken on by young people all around her and she's thinking about her own role within that revolution what she has left to offer how she kind of just wants to be

herself and go for walks but instead she's like well i guess i accept the responsibility of the choices that i've made and instead i'm this figure who has to write letters and be a little bit of figurehead, even though our whole goddamn point is we don't do that shit. Here I am doing it. And also, along the way, a nice, young, sweet, 30-year-old man

comes and fucks her and then does her transcription for her. And is good shit. I don't know. Yeah, and that story specifically ends with, they know that the revolution is coming. There is, like, one of the outland provinces is seceding,

and they're planning a big rally, a big general strike. for the next day. And she's at the meeting and, you know, people are like, can you speak? And she's, you know, again, going through this journey, you know, and it's kind of like a main theme of the story is that she is not a very good anarchist. You know, they all grew up in a movement. Like, they are all so free of shame and they love their long hair. And she's like, I don't, I just kind of miss my husband. I just had all of these things, but you guys are the ones who have taken it and run with it. Yeah. And she specifically says, like, I won't be here tomorrow.

Yeah. And at the end, she walks up the stairs to her bedroom, which is always a thing that she's dreading throughout the story and kind of walks into a field of these flowers that she never had the time to learn the name for. And it's really peacefully surrenders to her death. I mean, it's up for interpretation. You might interpret that differently. I interpret it as surrendering to death, but also surrendering to the new world. And it's also like kind of deeply a story about how the difference between. revolutionaries and the people who grew up in the worlds that they've created and the things that

will sort of never be able to be bridged. The new world is birth, but it's not a world for her. She is at her heart a rebel. She is throughout the story, like, rebelling against her aging body and, you know, telling herself, no, I can't drown in self-pity. I can't succumb to my age. She's always been that person and, you know, is ushering along the revolution, but won't be there tomorrow. Yeah. Something I found really charming about her rebellion is that it even extended to her position in the movement and the responsibility of that choice that she made long ago that carried forward. And now she's resisting the image of being this matriarch of the revolution and is exhausted by these young people who want to just come and look at her, even though she feels

like she has nothing more to teach them than what she's already written in her books. So it was, like, a beautiful character study, really, that helps bridge the allegorical mode that O'Males is written through. Yeah. And the reason that I find so interesting, the line, something like, you know, Laya is one of the people who has walked away from O'Malas, is that a lot of interpretations of Omalas and a lot of critiques of O'Malas come down to the idea of like, well, why don't you stay in fight instead? Right. And I think the fact that Omelas is written, as you said, in an allegorical style is such an important part of this because Laya is specifically called someone who walked away from Omelas. Laya has not walked away. And it's really funny because Legwin is a pacifist anarchist or was or I don't know, whatever, death is just going in another direction. So I'm going to use is as a pacifist anarchist, right? And there's sort of an implicit like these characters are like, you know, not necessarily like violent revolutionaries. But she's describing her actions and she mined a, like, shipyard, and she's, like, kicked police officers. She's, like, pissing on statues.

Like, she's not walking away to go set up a society somewhere else. Obviously, Anores, in The Dispossessed, is essentially the anarchists have kind of had to flee and set up their own thing. But there is this, like, stay and fight. And so I actually think that in the allegorical style of omelos, to walk away from omelos is to walk away from the acceptance, is to walk away from the like social peace that is undergirded by all of this horrible shit. And so I think that actually in a LaGuin style,

you can stay and fight is walking away from Omelas. Okay, and another part I love about the day before the revolution is she's like, Oh, when I was like 22, I came into the cities with my head full of really boring ideas, like better wages and vote for women. You know, like, oh, what we cared about was money and power. That's not what matters. Like, I love this idea of anarchism as this transcendent idea that goes sort of not just like

capturing these things, but going beyond these things. That's my big takeaway. and what you can't walk away from because it's too sweet and is probably undergirded by suffering. I mean, it probably isn't undergird. Whatever I'm allowed to say legally. There's ads. They're here. Here they are.

Media and women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey.

So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on I Heart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tap little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do with Little Kim? Well, you can find out on the Look Back at it podcast. I'm Sam Jett.

And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick it here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill, waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 is big to me, not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack on day, but just so you all know. I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack.

So I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table. right now. Thank you finishing that sentence. Yes. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really? Yeah.

For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hard Way with me, your host, and your favorite therapist, Kear Games. And in recognition of mental health awareness month,

I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking. Trip Fontaine, Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing.

And we're still chasing it. And we don't know when we've done enough. Because people scoreboard watch. Life becomes about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross. Because you find it important to be a good person while you hear on earth. Are you a good person because you're afraid?

Because that's two different. intentions, bro. Absolutely. And that's two different levels of trust. I want you to just really be a good person. Join me, Kear Gaines, as we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure,

and purpose on my new podcast, learn the hard way. Open your free iHeartRadio app. Search, learn the hard way and listen now. In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed

revealed glaring, inconsistent in her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctored this particular test twice in so-ins, correct? I doctored the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.

They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg, a lesbian, Michael Marincini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. this is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues,

Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And we're back. Yeah, and I think this is a good time to maybe start transitioning into some of the Reddit discussion. I want to bring in a comment from Reddit user GTS-84. This is the great thing about doing a Reddit thing is I have these wonderful, thoughtful answers from people with names. GTS-84? Yeah, GTS-84.

There's Peg-Leghippie on my notes doc. Y'all are so great. I'm so grateful for all of the wise words that you've shared. Thank you for making this what it is. So we're talking about walking away and we're talking about staying and fighting. So GCS 84 says, one thing I will always find fascinating are the people who think that, quote, walking away is literally leaving and insist that they would rescue the child and fight. Yet when you interrogate these people about their own actions when it comes to things like smartphone use or chocolate consumption

as to examples of products utterly dependent on child exploitation, their own actions don't line up with their insistencies that they're would rescue the child. This is not to judge them for those choices, but to point out that Omelas is less fiction than they supposed, and that they have been making a choice to stay for a long time. Of course, there is a discussion about what, quote, walking away actually entails, and to what extent it might include fighting. Are people who flee the state to live in the woods, thinking back to cool people episodes about the great dismal swamp, those who walked away? Would you include people in prison for fighting back against state oppression? People who lived in the trees? to try and stop Cop City.

Yeah, and I think that this, again, just building on this contradiction around what it means to walk away, what Liguin is setting up with this metaphor, is walking away fighting, or is that a third choice? One of the things that I have enjoyed about this story is that it always seemed to me like the right answer

was to stay and fight. You know, like, we're given this assumption that all of the joy and beauty of this world is built on the torture of this child, but it seems to me that people willing to torture a child might not be reliable narrators. Yeah, that's true. So, you know, and Le Guin is setting you up this dichotomy, this binary choice, and it seems so clearly the option is to break out of that binary and have a revolution. And I wonder if that is part of what she is doing is she is like trying to intentionally get people to flex that muscle and to think about where else they could flex

that muscle, you know. I mean, I think, you know, the pairing of the stories answers one of those questions pretty clearly with the bridge being the Gwynne's own words and a couple paragraphs we mentioned earlier. You know, I think it's in at least Leuwen's mind that someone like Laya is someone who walked away, but also you could view what she's done as fighting. as being imprisoned and resisting the oppression that she's faced. So in that sense, I think it takes many forms, but that's why I think of it as an allegory, right? I mean, it's less about the actual act of walking away.

It's more about what that represents. Because within, you know, the boundaries of this allegorical frame, like we have the choice to either, you know, accept the social peace and all those nice things that rely on that suffering. or to refuse it as the basic assumption. That doesn't necessarily mean actually removing yourself from the world because that's not possible within the context of actually doing anything in the world. And it's interesting because LeGuin has explored a lot the ideas of can you just literally walk away in other pieces

where you have a book, it's been a couple years since I read it, I think it's called The Eye of the Heron, and it's a book about there's some people living, on an alien planet and one group of people is being oppressed by the other people, but they don't want to fight back literally because they're pacifists. I hope I'm getting this right again. It's been a couple of years. And they just literally walk away.

And they're like, fuck off into the wilderness in kind of a way that's a little bit reminiscent of like what the not actually oppressed Puritans thought they were doing when they came over to colonize North America. But like, you know, this sort of like walking into Terra Nullis kind of idea is explored in that book, right? But you have other books that, you know, the word for world is forest, which is a anti-colonial militant struggle allegory about the Vietnam, that Star Wars stole the name Endor from, and the entire third book in the original trilogy of Star Wars movies is just a weird, let's call it an homage. But it's written by a pacifist, but it is describing using violence

to defend your homeland. And so it's interesting to me. me because also she's also obsessed in her work about the idea of coming home, right? And she talks about it in the day before the revolution, you know, the real journey is the return home is something that she is very interested in. And so how does that relate to walking away, right, if the real journey is to return home? And so I think she's kind of doing both. I think sometimes she means literally like, I don't know, man, just walk out of there, you know, like hit the bricks, cool share zone style. with the skeleton, you know, security guard.

Descher zone. Desire zone. That's it. Yeah. I can also see this in the late of heaven, which is not in the Hanish cycle. It's sort of a one-off book. It's about a guy whose dreams come true

and has, like, fucked up psychiatrist, which is a kind of different exploration of the unintended consequences that happen when you try to make the world better. Yeah. And, I mean, in the dispossessed, which is the technical sequel to the day before the revolution, there's the image of the circular wall they have for the landing pad where the ship from the planet comes and lands.

And kind of the fundamental question around that wall, is it to actually keep out this ship which could land anywhere or is it really to keep the society that they have on this moon from this symbolic way to get back to, Earth, or not with Earth, but this Earth-like planet. And the relationship with that Earth-like planet and the political factions that are there, it's like still entangled. They're not fully separated. They didn't actually fully walk away from, you know, this bigger system that they're operating within. Oh, that's true. And like one of the whole points, it's been a couple years since I read that book,

but one of the whole points is we need to coordinate our science across national borders, even though we have like wildly different ideological positions. Correct. I want to bring in a Reddit post here as well from Words, Words, Woods, Dogs to kind of, I don't know, bring us back a little bit into what does it mean to walk away? I think it does a disservice to the story to interpret walking away as one big solitary act. My takeaway is the big question. Do you try to ignore what you can't unknow? we can ask ourselves this a million different ways in everyday life.

We all know that cell phones are awful for labor exploitation, environmental extraction, enabling a big tech. But what do we do when we feel like we need a cell phone? Do we buy the new one that our provider will give us a good deal or a big payment plan on? Or do we spend time looking for a used one that could last us as long as possible? Living our values isn't just something that happens in big, seemingly consequential moments. It happens every single day in all of those little ways. You can insert that question into everything.

What kind of housing we choose? Transportation, our food choices, the kind of job we work. Making ethical choices often means taking a vow of poverty, working more and often harder, and being looked at as a weirdo by many around you. To me, that's what walking away is. It's choosing the path that often feels lonely when everyone else around you is literally buying into it all.

there's a lot of truth to what they're saying. You know, the idea of walking away in my mind when I consider the pairing of these stories is it's that it's not just this single monumental act. It's like a beginning of a change in the way that you live your life. And what happens after that is kind of, you know, up to you and the responsibility of your choice. And then we see that later, you know, with Lyia. And, you know, she's grappling with all of her choices and is kind of criticizing herself for being a bad anarchist, quote, unquote, and the imperfectness of her choices. But she's still leaning into the responsibility of those choices, whether they're all perfectly ethical or not or constrained by other things that are larger than her. She's striving to move at least towards something that's better.

And so I think, yeah, that, you know, it's an individual choice. I think also it's, you know, I think that's why it's depicted as lone people walking away. Sure, you can, you know, learn something in the context of the society you're in, but it is really about the choices that you make as a person. If you, you know, at all believe that individuality or, you know, singular consciousness is a phenomenon that's not some sort of illusion. But let's not talk about science. Okay.

So I love this idea because, okay, I love the idea that walking away is a solitary action because only you as an individual can do that breaking. You can break from Omelas and walk away, but coming home as a collective action, right? And that's even something that Laya is almost a little bit struggling with. I mean, Laya was absolutely part of a whole crew of revolutionaries in her day. But she's like watching the fact that this is like spread. it is such a collective thing now, right? Whereas, like, she, a lot of her work, you know,

the writing of words is more solitary than the average job. It's not truly solitary. That's nonsense. And I don't think anyone worth listening to truly believes it's a totally solitary action. But it is a more solitary art than most. And that's what Laya was getting up to, right? It was like, alone in a fucking cell, you know? And, yeah, I really like this idea that walking away is the individual

like, you know, you got to take the pill from the... This is a metaphor that no one's done anything bad with. There's this movie that not a lot of people have seen and that two trans women wrote this an allegory about being trans. It was called the network or the... Like for the Matrix? Yeah, that's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The weave, the tapestry?

Yeah, yeah, something. One of these things. But yeah, this idea that like in order to break out of this thing, that is something you do solitary, but then coming back, collective action. I'm into it. Hazel and I were talking a little bit earlier about the sort of intentionality of writing

where like one of the points of writing in an allegorical style is like I don't think Le Guin thought about like all of this shit before she wrote this. She wrote a thing and then her words were exposed to millions of people and you know, and that's one of the beauties of writing. Yeah, good

stories are smarter than their authors and I think this story is really fucking smart and I think that Le Guin is really fucking smart and I think that it takes a smart author to make a really smart, really smart story. But I want to bring in another red comment. Yeah, let's do it. This is from Count Pickman, who says,

I don't think I'd have the strength, willpower, whateverness that is necessary to make that choice. But I think that part of that is because walking away and the story is a solitary choice. Those people in the trees in Cop City and in prison for fighting the state, they make those choices with other people. Follow my closest friends would walk away from Omelas with me.

Could I do it then? I think then what I was incapable of doing alone, I would do in a heartbeat. That makes me wonder, why does everyone who walks away in the story do it alone? Le Guin writes, each one goes alone. Youth or girl, man, or woman, do they have to go alone? Or do they all individually choose to? It makes me sad that they are alone. I have always felt that the only way we can do anything at all,

especially when we create new ways to be, is together. I will have to think more about what it means to walk away. And I want to say I a little bit cheated all of my thoughts that I'm coming up with now. I have read the Reddit. You all absolutely influenced the shit out of all my thinking around this stuff. Yeah, you guys fucking killed it. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I don't mean to be too critical of the commenter who, you know, read the story and, you know, gave us their great thoughts.

But it's like, it's not so literal. I think to even be contemplating this is, you know, signifies that you've kind of already made that choice. And it dovetails with what you were saying, Margaret. It's about, you know, quote, returning home is that collective action. Because it's not like, you know, the people in the story, it's not like they don't see these people walking away either. And so if you saw your friends doing it, I'm sure you would, you know, also make that choice. But I do think ultimately, yeah, it's just kind of, it's a representation of that rupture that has to happen internally within one person. And that it's something that you have to choose.

And I think, you know, the decision to leave is one that you could make on your own. But the leaving doesn't have to... The leaving does not necessarily have to be individual. Yeah. And I think, I don't know, I'm interested in that, in the tension between those things. All right. I have another Reddit comment I want to read. From Available Rise 669.

I have heard this story summarized as a torture of a child to maintain happy. for a town before, and I know neglect is a type of torture. I just have always personally found intentional neglect is so much harsher than cruelty of actions or violence. Like when I got told about that case of a girl who was isolated by her parents and grew up unable to speak or become independent after her rescue. She got saved. People tried to give her a second lease on life, but it failed because of her neglect. She became a case study and an oddity. It was in psychology class in high school, and it felt like the worst thing ever. Maybe because violent actions seems quicker and at least ends so you can heal or if you die you don't have to feel pain

anymore. The citizens who leave because they can't stand being there choose more neglect. They can't stand the foundation so instead of taking responsibility or fixing it, they leave. I hate that narrative too. I hate that when your home is broken, you leave it, you don't reclaim it, you don't change it, you just abandon it, neglect it and neglect your responsibilities to it. I believe we can fix things or try at least. I am also a small actions ripples kind of person. So a deep cut for me is the line about the child not receiving a kind word ever. So many times a kind word has helped me through a bad day. The child also knew kindness once, but they were taken and put there to be neglected. I also know this isn't the point. But was there a lottery system for when the neglected child dies?

Do they just grab a kid off the street? Is it an honor that here to give your child to everyone else's happiness? And then do you just leave because you feel guilty and pain? that you neglected your parental responsibilities to your kid? Is there a bunch of shitty parents suffering out in the world for their choices? That would be cool.

But they probably live in Omelas thinking they're in the right, like most shitty parents are in reality. I don't have a lot specifically to say to that one. I just think it's an interesting idea, this idea of like neglecting your responsibility

to fix things by just walking away. It's an interesting challenge. And it obviously only works if you take walking away in one literal way versus this other way. whatever, you know, like, like, you know, what does it mean? We are like, all right, fuck it, I'm not using a cell phone.

Or like, fuck it, I'm not eating meat, right? And then you're like, oh, but you're not fixing the problems. And then you're like, I don't know. I just find this an interesting concept. It's also interesting to me because I often think about the state as a way to avoid responsibility and to avoid engaging with the consequences of our actions. You know, like if some fuck shit's happening and I call the cops,

the cops are then going to have to do the violence to mend that instead of me. Or, you know, taking on the de-escalation. You know, I'm not explaining this very well right now, but. No, you're passing the buck on to, yeah, being like, I don't do violence. I just call a guy with a gun to come do my violence and put people into cages. Exactly. Or, you know, like, and I kind of like, and I kind of love.

less fucked up way, like I'm calling a poorly trained social worker to like come and de-escalate a situation instead of me taking on the, you know, the onus to de-escalate that. And I don't know, I feel, I think of that as like a deep disservice to ourselves to like not build skills and talking to people and also as a passing the skills and also passing the violence. Yeah. I mean, I think this comment has legitimacy if you know you don't kind of take away from the story, this idea that this thing is unreformable. And I think that's one of the fundamental points of an allegory like this is that she's framing this as a thing that cannot actually be fixed.

So any attempt at amelioration of this particular thing isn't really going to do what people want to happen. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I think a lot of people who are frustrated with capitalism or nation states or what have you, you know, they probably think something along similar lines. And then, you know, you get into the whole reformism debate, which I think she's trying to sidestep here. But you know what we can't sidestep?

Is it the products and services that support this podcast? Certainly we can't side step our obligation to running their content. Here's ads. Canadian women are looking for more. more out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are at them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark.

And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on IHart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tap Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do with Little Kim?

Well, you can find out on the Look Back at it podcast. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill, waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84's big two. me, not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack on day, but just so y'all know.

I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now. Thank you finishing that sentence. Yes. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really? Yeah.

For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you You get your podcasts. Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hardway with me, your host, and your favorite therapist, Keer Games. And in recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking, Tripp Fontaine, Ryan Clark.

Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing. And we're still chasing it. and we don't know when we've done enough. Because people scoreboard watch. Life becomes about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross, because you find it important to be a good person

while you hear on earth? Are you a good person because you're afraid? Because that's two different intentions, bro. Absolutely. And that's two different levels of trust. I want you to just really be a good person. Join me, Kear Gaines, as we have real conversations about healing,

growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose on my new podcast, learn the hard way. Open your free. iHeartRadio app search Learn the Hard Way and listen now. In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.

The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctored this particular test twice in so much, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives

to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfected. They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Gillespie and Michael Marantini. My mind was blown.

I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over.

until justice is served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trapped Podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. And to kind of build on that last comment, Stephen, that's one of the things that's really interesting to me about the allegory is that it means so many things to so many different people. And so we can draw all of these different kinds of conclusions from it. And that's one of the things that's really powerful about fiction is because it means so many different things to different things to different. people, you can get a really wide range of experiences from the story that's like 1,700 words. Like, it's really quite short.

Most of what we try to run on the show is like between 3 and 5,000. Yeah. All right. I'll read one now. So this is from Express Tangerine 42. They wrote, This story reminds me of a dark cartoon where people celebrate turning off a baby killing machine.

But they only turned it off and never destroyed it or asked who made it and why. It bothered me that the story is based on the lie that everyone is in unity, much like justice for all. This is a fantastic story. And I would love to know whether if enough people left, would the greater good no longer be considered worth it? Or if it was a cute animal, how that would change that line? I mean, I think they're just trying to, I think this commenter is just trying to get at this idea of like, when is enough enough, how many people, you know, have to leave? And how would it change if it wasn't a child? And I mean, I think, you know, these are all interesting thoughts.

And, you know, I think we kind of get to that a little bit with the paired story later on. Or it's like it seemed like it was just a few people and then it starts to build and build. And suddenly there's this whole movement that spans a nation. And so, you know, everybody has their breaking point. And, you know, a child being tortured through neglect seemed like a pretty vivid one that, you know, would trigger most people, given that not everybody feels the same about animals or something else. But it triggers most readers, but it doesn't trigger most people, right? Like readers are people.

But it doesn't trigger most people to actually walk away. Are they? You know, like, because most people accept this. And that's something that I think most readers understand that most people do accept it. I think that's one of the most brilliant parts about the story. It's like, oh, you aren't even going to believe me about the society until I say there's a kid being tortured, and now you believe me. Because we all kind of know that there is darkness in the center that everything is built on,

you know? And we all know that, especially in the colonizing nations, the colonial core, people are fully aware of that now, and it's still, you know, it changes people's behavior, but it doesn't fundamentally break it. Okay. I want to read a piece that made me think a lot. I don't even know if I have any specific responses to it. Prune Tracy wrote,

I work as a music therapist and researcher and aged in disability care, and this story really made me think about the assumptions we make about suffering and joy. I find it interesting that the story starts by challenging the reader to subvert the bad habit of thinking, only pain is interesting. I think there is a really dark tendency

to pedestal pain slash suffering, to the point where people can't envision that life could be working. living with pain slash suffering, rather than accepting that it is part of life that can be beautiful and worthy of joy. Suffering in many stories slash narratives is like a vicarious catharsis for the audience. True crime? Looking at you. I see this in the way that the reactions to the suffering of the child are described. The people of omelous are conscious of suffering, but most can't envision that life without the absence of suffering could be worth living for themselves. This really got me thinking

about how people who haven't experienced particular types of suffering can be so spooked by the thought of it that they would sooner choose death than to live with it. This comes up a lot in voluntary assisted dying and disability discourse. I see this a lot working with and caring for people who have dementia. It is a fucking brutal disease, but the thing I'm constantly reminded by people with an actual diagnosis is that it is not all doom and gloom. Many people have extraordinary moments of joy, connection, love, and personal growth amongst the challenges. And many of the challenges are related to systemic issues rather than the disease itself. Similarly, the way that the people of Omelas rationalize the cost-benefit analysis of keeping the child and suffering

too degraded to know any real joy. Recalled for me many ablest assumptions about the value of disabled lives and capacity of disabled people to live rich and wonderful lives. Assumptions that stem from the inability to imagine disability as anything other than suffering and the inability to imagine suffering is anything other than that which should be avoided at all costs. This also made me think about how many people reacted to pandemic lockdowns when they were asked to temporarily give up some freedoms to protect others. People were really quick to minimize the impacts of COVID on disabled people and older people. Their suffering was okay because they already suffered. I'll never forget how quickly non-consensual DNRs were quietly rolled out for disabled group homes in some places.

I was also really struck by the passage, but to praise despair is to condemn delight. We can no longer describe happy man, nor any sense. celebration of joy. In my research work, the focus is almost always on how to reduce suffering or deficit. This is what gets grants and funding. Yet the outcomes that people with lived experience is consistently report is that most meaningful to them are joy and fun. For them, the aim isn't to eliminate their suffering because it cannot be eliminated, but to live with joy and meaning. So I really like that the story simultaneously critiques our inability to imagine or value happiness without suffering while critiquing our need to minimize the suffering and others in order to cope with

the knowledge that it exists. And I know that's a lot. But one of my main things that I think about this is, again, but comparing these two stories is Omalas is like, I guess we're going to try and do a perfect thing. So we got to put a kid in a hole. And the day before the revolution is like, nah, people want to do drugs and live in the sewers. We can't tell them not to. We're just like, maybe you shouldn't, you know? Like maybe that's a maybe I shouldn't, but whatever. We're not telling people they can't do that. And like, I know that's not about disability specifically,

although talks about addiction a little bit, but this like very specific thing in the day before the revolution where like we are not building a society without suffering. We are not building a society without pain. And she's also aging and accepting her own disability as she ages in it. And she's like, I've been stripped down to the foundation. That's all that's left of me. But she's still okay, you know?

And she's not okay because, like, it's great. Everything's going to get healed. It's just, like, okay because it is what it is. I think that comment also reminds me, or it brings up a feeling of the Mark Fisher quote, like it's easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. And there's so much of that in Omelas and also in the David, before the revolution. But, you know, Liguin is explicitly asking, like, what are you capable of imagining? What are you capable of believing could be real? And, you know, it's, we can't imagine

the utopia without, you know, without there being the dark side. And also, again, the tension with Laya Odo in second one the day before the revolution of how she is a good revolutionary, but she's not a good Odonian. Yeah. All right, here's one about Day Before the Revolution from Peg Leg Hippie. They wrote, Odo, the thought leader of the anarchists in this world, seems tired and weary in the day before the revolution. At one point she thinks, quote, why the hell did she have to be a good Odenian? I think the allegory from before is present here, too, between Odo and Le Guin. There's an enormous amount of anarchist ideas in the dispossessed, and it must have been a lot of work for Le Guin to put together such a

coherent package, all while placing the events of a novel into that world. The weariness of Odo is a reflection of the weariness of the author. I think the day before the revolution is Le Guin telling her readers that she isn't Odo or that even if she is, then why the hell does Le Guin have to be a good anarchist? Yeah. I mean, you know, great, great comment. Kind of hits the nail on the head. One of the key themes of the story is, you know, this tension between people.

who play these significant roles in movements, which every movement has them and, you know, can teach other people based on what they've learned. And the tendency to put these people up on a pedestal and treat them less as people and more as like symbols or figures. And so her resistance to that is really strong in the story. And you mentioned it at the top of the show. Like I'm sure Le Guin would similarly bristle at, you know, this idea that she's some sort of, sort of matriarchical figure of, you know, lefty sci-fi, even if she is, you know, a giant. And so I think it's like, you know, an interesting exploration of the reality of, you know, this tension within anybody who is interested in anarchism.

It's like there are these people who kind of are giants in movements, but there's this really strong principle that we shouldn't, you know, exceptionalize them in these ways that we've seen the downsides of that time and time again throughout history. And so yeah, I mean, it's just a masterfully you know, well done exploration of that principle through this, you know, character study that really humanizes what that tension could look like. When I was about a wee traveling anarchist who was interested in writing fiction, I interviewed LaGuin about anarchism and fiction. And in it, I asked her, I was like, are you an anarchist? And she was like, oh, I don't, I don't know that I like deserve to be.

she was like, I don't know that I do enough of the work, you know? And I was like, well, can we claim you? And she was like, yeah, I'd be honored. And I'm paraphrasing here, but not by a lot. And I think it's that, like, you know, she's like not an Odonian because she's like still just kind of trying to live her life, you know? And the her as Laya is real strong. Like, I know that the whole point is that she's not Laya, but like there's so many,

interesting things. Like, I think about when LaGuin died, a bunch of anarchist science fiction writers, we all, like, messaged each other, and we were like, what the fuck do we do now? You know? And then, like, the slow consensus we reached was like, oh, well, like, we got to do it now. And rereading this story, like, hit me really hard of thinking about that moment where it was, like, the shoes are too big to fill with one person, we're just going to cram a lot of us into there as best as we can, you know? Anyway, that was my self-indulgent response to that. And when I first read the day before the Revolution, before I did that interview with her, and I felt more like the, it was just kind of funny to be like, I've read this story twice,

and I read it once as a young man and now I read it as an old woman, you know, and I get to like be both. And I am, again, I am way closer to 30 than I am to 72. too. But like, you know, it still was just like really interesting to realize I read it the first time as this just like, I was just a front-line anarchist who wrote some zines, you know? And now a lot more of my work is words. And so it's just fascinating to look at this at two different points of my life. And like, I think one of the reasons LaGuin is such a masterful writer is that both are presented so well. like all writers, we have to write the other, and she is not Lyia, right? I'm willing to accept that. But both characters feel very real. I want to share a comment from Count Pimkin again. The section that talks about how Odo felt anarchism before she learned about it and elaborated on it,

how she felt, quote, at the bottom of something. I grew up in a mostly stable middle-class household in the U.S. I did not grow up experiencing the bottom of society. only by reading the perspectives of those at the bottom, and then being a poor adult that I start to understand. Stupidly, I feel envious of those who grew up with that inherent understanding. I was never rebellious, always a quote, good kid, meaning I was obedient out of fear.

I've had to build my own capacity to rebel into myself by surrounding myself with friends who can rebel. Part of my inherent nature seems to be that I am someone who wants to follow a good set of rules, where if everyone followed them, everything would turn out okay. Lawful good, I guess. Or maybe it's related to my autism. But that desire to run up against the limits of the law and process has unraveled until what I am left with is mostly kindness and support for those around me,

mainly for other queers. I'm thinking a lot about this, like, reflection on what it means to feel anarchism before you learn it. I think I identify a lot with growing up as like the good kid and needing to learn how to rebel. But the quote that you said at the beginning, Margaret, that an anarchist is one who choosing accepts the responsibility of choice. I think a lot of people kind of instinctually sort of know that. And I think that's like, can be an easy thread to start to pull on. And it's definitely the thread that kind of pulled me into being here. I mean, I think, you know, what attracted me to the idea earlier on, you know, when I

first started reading more actual political philosophy and reading things like Le Guin was that, you know, at the core of, you know, anarchist ideas, as she says, it's not like the bomb-throwing, you know, sort of labeled as terroristic motif. It's about cooperation and choice and responsibility. And I think a lot of people who might consider themselves rule followers are actually people who like cooperation. Yeah. And wish that we lived in a society. were more people actually cooperated instead of competed or, you know, were at odds with each other in some way. And so I think that can be a helpful mindset shift for some people, given that, you know, this desire of like, oh, if more people could just follow the right rules, we would all get along. It's more of like if we knew how to cooperate, then things would be better.

Yeah. Margaret, you and I often talk about, like blueprint anarchism of like a lot of people think that leftism or anarchism or you know idealism any kind of way is about like finding the right blueprint for society finding the right way to structure everything having everything laid out ahead of time but that actually anarchism is the process of learning carpentry yeah it's it's about learning how to how to build the joints and understand what makes a house work. It's what you're saying. It's learning about cooperation and coming to a better understanding of oneself and how to relate to other people, building skills. You know, we're not all headed to the same place. We're not all building the same blueprint for the

same house. But if we can all start to learn carpentry, if we can practice skills of mutual aid and consensus decision making and conflict resolution, de-escalation. conflict resolution, capacity to deal with risk. Like, that's what gets us there, not having everything figured out. Yeah. I think that the open-endedness of anarchism helped Luke Gwynn, you know, think of it as an imaginative possibility, something that isn't set as this, like, future perfect ideal state. It's more of like an approach to living and working.

towards that state where more people are working in cooperation. And that doesn't have this crystallized, you know, perfect design to it. It's something that would probably be in flux. No, I think we need to just take it all literally. I think that very specifically we need to all grow our hair long, call ourselves Odonians and buy a bank and start a commune in a bank. I actually think that the blueprint has been laid out for us. I think that's why the dispossess—this is sarcasm for anyone who's not really good at discerning that.

Because Le Guin wrote The Dispossessed a description of an anarchist society and wrote it in the most anarchistic way. Le Guin's a better anarchist than me. When I wrote an anarchist society in my book of country, it goes, it's a little bit more like, oh, it's going to kind of kind of work out. And Le Guin was like, here's all the fucked up shit with the anarchist society. Isn't that stuff messed up? Isn't it still better than the alternatives? which still makes it a hard book to hand to people who are interested in anarchism because you can't really hand them to dispossess and be like,

this is what we're doing, you know, because people will be like, well, one, we don't have a moon and two, I don't want to be named by a computer. And the whole like famine train car sequence in the book that was bit jarring. So, yeah, that was, you know, certainly not the utopian depiction that most people are used to. Yeah. And yet what a way to still do something that works within the idea of writing utopian fiction and just trying to do it as an anarchist would always be impressed by that. If she's emphasizing that it's about choice and it's about tradeoffs and there's no perfect,

there's no world without, you know, some struggle or suffering. Yeah. But perhaps it need not be concentrated into the body of a child. But hear me out. No, no, I think you're right. No, don't make that joke. Okay, fine. Well, do we want to start wrapping up?

I'd love to hear what people are reading currently, and if you have a Liguin book that you'd like to recommend. I'm finishing this book of short stories that are sci-fi, actually. I picked it up on a recent vacation by Ted Chang as the author who wrote the story that inspired Arrival, which, you know, whatever, it's a movie. but it's, you know, fun stuff. It's not super really explicitly political, but, you know, very philosophical and kind of in the vein of Le Guin. It's like sci-fi that's actually really just about today.

So it's been a breezy read. And then in terms of Le Guin books, I mean, left hand of darkness, you've got to read that. And you've already named a couple of the other favorites of mine. Margaret's pointing at me, so I'll go, I am a freak, and I have been reading this doorstopper 90s epic fantasy called Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb. I haven't finished the trilogy, so don't come for me if it gets problematic, but it is extremely fucking good. And my stupid nerdy brain loves it.

If you like bizarre, feudal fantasy told from the point of view of a teenager bastard son of the king in waiting, that one might be for you. But in terms of Liguin, my favorite Liguin to recommend is the first one that I start. with. It's called the telling. It's one that I would describe as off the beaten path of Ligwin books, but it is the last entry in the Hainer cycle that she wrote before her passing. And it tells the story of a cultural observer who is sent to a planet that in the time that it takes her ship to arrive, they have a cultural revolution. And so the culture that she's come to study is being brutally repressed.

And it's a really beautiful and moving story about the power of folklore as resistance and folk culture and, you know, as rebellion. It's got queer protagonists if you're into that. Yeah. Really moving piece and really approachable entryway into the Hainters cycle, which is kind of the series of books that. includes left hand of darkness and the dispossessed and a lot of other big ones. That would be my liquid wreck. I just finished reading a book called Avalon Rise by Madeline Fitch. And Fitch is spelled

with two Fs, just like a bonus F in there. And which is a totally polite way to describe someone's spelling of their surname. I feel really good about myself. It's a amazing book. I read an advanced reader's copy. I think it still isn't out yet. But you all should be excited about Avalon Rise by Madeline Fitch, it is a story about anti-fascists in a small town in Appalachia who don't want the fascists to start organizing there, but it is written. It's just like a brutally honest. It's another like anarchist writing anarchists and being willing to actually write it by being like, hey, you know who's kind of shitty? All the anti-fascists. You know who's even shittier? The fascists. And just really well done. As for a Ligwin book to recommend, I'd say the

Word for World is Forrest is maybe my favorite Le Guin book. I say this now. I had an English teacher when I was in high school who had one Shakespeare play that he never read because he always needed something to look forward to in his life. And so he was never going to read all of Shakespeare. So he'd always have one remaining. I have a lot of Le Guin remaining, but it's why I haven't just eaten them all. But I've read a ton of Le Guin books, but there's a ton more to go. And it's because I I'm pacing myself. But the word for world is forest. That's the one I'll go with.

You'll read it and you'll never look at Ewoks the same again. All right. Well, thank you all the dear listeners for joining us in this experiment. And thanks everyone who commented on Reddit. We did not get to all of your comments. You're probably aware of that if you're one of the people who made a comment. We ran out of time. We actually were like, we're going to somehow do all of that.

And we did not. But we really appreciate all of you. And thanks so much. Next week we'll probably be back with something that I read to you because that's usually what happens. But if this experiment seems to be working, then maybe we'll do this again. Keep the discussion going on Reddit. Oh, yeah. That's true. Yeah, you can also keep the discussion going.

And let us know if you like this or if you hated it if you were like, I actually just want you to read things to me. I don't want to think about stuff. Yeah. All right. You all got anything you want to plug? I'll always be writing stories. You can find all the investigative journals that I do. at my website,

Steven Monticelli.com. And then I've got some more stuff coming out for, it could happen here in the coming months. We've got a re-up of the miniseries I did last year,

Anti-Vax America, which will be really uplifting, informative stuff that will make you feel good about public health for years to come. Yay.

Yay. We love to feel good about the state of public health. My name is Hazel, Akisha. You can find the zine that I wrote about self-managing

and abortion. at tangled wilderness.org. And I hope out here behind the scenes. So stay tuned for more, mostly speck-fick, but sometimes we get freaky. I'm Margaret. I wrote an anarchist utopia book a while ago called A Country of Ghosts.

You might like it. It's about anarchists at war defending their non-country against imperialist invaders. Bye, everyone. Bye. It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone,

media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for it could happen here updated monthly at coolzone media.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. On the look back at it podcast. From 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84's big to me. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it with our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors. Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s. Before it was a wild year. It was a wild year. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's good, y'all?

You're listening to Learn the Hard Way with your favorite therapist and host, Kear Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor. It signals to the world that you not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to, listen to learn the hard way on the AHA radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.

You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Ellen, correct? I doctored the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Gillespie and Michael Ranchini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped.

Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs. when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter. I'm on my podcast, 2%.

I break down the signs of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWO%.

On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart, Podcasts. Guaranteed human.