It Could Happen Here - DIY Skills

Episode Date: September 23, 2021

We sit down with Bea and Elaine to discuss do-it-yourself skills and how to get started building up an emergency skill set. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech

brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit.

The podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audio books while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect podcast network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T. Connecting changes everything. What's spicy, my pumpkins? I'm Robert Evans. Let's try that again. I was too loud.

No, no. It was clipping. It's not clipping. You just don't like me saying what's spicy, my pumpkins. I'm Robert. Let's try that again. No, no, it was, it was clipping where it's not clipping. You just don't like me saying what's spicy, my pumpkins, but I said it and it can't be unsaid. It was because this is, it could happen here. A daily podcast about the end of some things and the beginning of other

things. And right now it's an episode about the beginning of fall because it's officially fall. And I'm drinking a pumpkin spice, black coffee. It's also not officially fall yet it may it may be officially fall by the time this podcast comes it is legally fall when i have my first pumpkin spice black coffee of the year and it's cool outside that's because you're a monster that's because i'm a happy man who is enjoying a fall beverage um on this episode today we have of course garrison garrison hello

hi garrison how are you doing i'm doing fine great we also have uh my friends uh b and elaine b elaine you you you were on the show recently to talk about terrorism a year ago recently recently everything before yesterday is a year ago and And and now you're on to talk about surviving. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like crafty surviving punk shit. Yeah.

I know we made it this far. You on because you were like two of the most useful skill filled people that I know. You were both wilderness survival instructors, primitive skill instructors for a while. And you have a small farm in a town that i won't name and you do all sorts of cool shit like storing food and making arrows and other things that are alleged and what i like about that is that you know when we talk about like collapse and things falling apart there's this kind of like i don't know almost like memetic obsession with like i want to get out into the woods and away from the city. And that's the only way to survive.

And like the reality of the situation is that's a terrible way to survive. Yeah. It's awful. There's nobody in the woods. There's nobody in the woods. Yeah. And it's, you know,

there's, there are, there are a small chunk of the human race that is capable with, with just themselves of like surviving in the middle of nowhere with nobody. But there's even among that population there's a small fraction who are capable of doing that and not shooting themselves after a long enough period of time and you wouldn't want to meet that person generally well and i think the other the other thing about that is like the sort of fetishization of of you know individualist

survival skills is based on this idea that what people when people were like living off the land that they were doing it by themselves alone no it was communities there's very few people that survived alone for a long time and even of the people that had the skills like even ishii wandered out of the woods after i think eight years of being by himself and was finally like fuck it i was lonely he was the last of a indigenous group in california where everyone else in his tribe had been basically had been genocided and him in like the last like five people went off and hid for very good reason um and then after disease and stuff then it was just him and he spent i forget how many years by himself and after

a while he finally was like fuck it being by myself is not worth it and he came out and it was just after the turn of the century and so he ended up being adopted by a bunch of anthropologists and spending the rest of his time in san francisco it's actually where we get most of a lot of like the anthropological knowledge of how to make arrows because he was very much like i'm the last of my group so i will actually show people how to do flint knapping and how i make arrows and how i hunt and yeah and that's but i mean and that's there's kind of the point there that like with all of those skills being one of that very small number of people who could you you drop that guy alone with nothing in the woods and he'll figure it out he didn't want to do that

because it's miserable yeah he in fact went into san francisco and was like well white people wiped out my entire civilization but i'm lonely i guess i'll go make friends with these anthropologists and live with them and teach them what i know yeah again a lot of the folks who are kind of reaching out online being like hey i don't have a lot in the way of money i'm never going to be able to move to the woods and buy a farm or something well you don't you don't really need to and like if shit really does hit the fan wherever you live there's probably parks unless it's Detroit. Um, in which case there's abandoned Walmarts, like you can make it work. Like there's it's so, so this is an episode about kind of the skills that you can acquire and build

for not a lot of money, more or less wherever you live, that will help you build resiliency. Um, but also build resiliency as part of a community as opposed to living in the woods with a knife sleeping under mud. There's a great short story that y'all turned me on to by Cory Doctorow in a book of short stories called Radicalize. That was was it just called The Mask of the Red Death? I mean, that's that's another story. And the original Mask of the Red Death is set, obviously, during I'm sure everybody read it in high school. the red death is set obviously during um i'm sure everybody read it in high school like right it's set during the the bubonic plague with these rich people who like decide to just hole up and party to escape the plague and they all die of the plague and doctoros is a bunch of like libertarian

survivalist crypto bros who build a fortress in the desert in order to survive the end of days and it turns out that like a bunch of bad stuff happens like there's disease and and and civil conflict but like people figure it out and all of the crypto bros die shitting themselves to death because their water system it's obvious from the start what's going on everybody who comes along to help them they start shooting yeah so they're like well fuck you we'll just wait until you're dead because you're shitting yourself because your water's bad. I think we all have we all have elements of some libertarian tendencies in us, which, you know, it's not bad to learn self-reliance. And it's certainly not not even bad to want to, like, live outside of the city. But in a lot of ways, living in a living in an urban environment surrounded by a community, depending on the the situation can be even more resilient because like yeah an isolated farmstead there's benefits too but also it's really easy to surround and just

shoot people who are living on their farm in the middle of nowhere if shit really does hit the fan it happens all the time it happened in like el salvador and shit when they had their economic crash so i don't know where do you want to where do you guys want to start i know you had a couple of different things that you want that i want talk about, like preserving food is a big one. Yeah. And then, I mean, making stuff and doing things is kind of, they're sort of different. Where would you like to actually start with that? I think we could start with kind of the DIY element branching off of our original discussion on primitive skills.

And then in like part two, we can go more into like food and like skin like in like foraging um and preservation and stuff right cool i mean so diy um i guess now there's a lot of stuff about like there's i don't know there's all this stuff about like survival skills and all this stuff and both of us kind of came into the idea of making stuff and doing things by being punks um and it's kind of funny no money yeah having no money but also just their diy like do it yourself was a very like kind of 90s punk thing that came into the mainstream like i actually was pulling out some of my old books and i think it's funny to see the like progression because i have you know the really lovely like food not lawns that goes into a whole pile of really fantastic things that came out that i don't know the first food not lawns house i saw the town i was in was in like 2005 or 6 but this book came out in 2006 but this was this entire movement of like

making community and doing and like how to do stuff yourself the hoa grow corn on your front lawn yeah and then i have from 2011 the bus diy guide to life that includes everything from like how to do worm composting to how to make your own makeup and like finance a house and that's like the magazine yes yeah so it's kind of interesting because it definitely like was a thing that i watched come into the mainstream but you know it started as a lot of punks trying to figure out how to do things because they had no money and but also different from a lot of you know like woodworking or craft books that really are you know buy these seven thousand dollars worth of tools and now you too

can learn you too can make a table yes and there's also there's also an ethos behind it right that like before i i was i came at it first and foremost through being like a bike punk in the in the late 90s early 2000s being a bike punk and the idea of like the diy ethos was less about the grid is going to collapse and like everything is going to fall apart and you're going to need to survive by the skin of your teeth and it was a lot more you know at the tail end of the 90s and like the sort of golden era of neoliberal capitalism and office space and that whole cultural moment. The idea that life was alienated and shitty and it felt better to know how to do things that you needed in your day to day life for yourself using stuff you had made yourself or gotten from your community members um yeah resiliency is less about knowing you have a pile of dried food in the house and know more about looking at fresh food and knowing i know how to make that last the winter yeah and

it's been interesting to see the way that like as that has gotten kind of mainstreamed into like you know uh the the what is it, primitive? There's a bunch of different, like, primitive XYZ YouTube channels that get lots of traffic and shit. And as that all gets mainstreamed, there's this idea of, like, expertise that creeps back into it. And DIY was, like, firmly committed

to the idea that everybody could learn stuff and listening to somebody who said they were an expert was a trap. And a lot of that was coming out of like the 70s when there was all of the like, you know, culty lifestyle shit that was like, hey, look, we're going to teach you how to change your life. And yeah, we're going to we're going to buy up all this land in Antelope, Oregon. And then we're going to poison a buffet. And so DIY was emphatically not that it It was like, there's skills and you can learn skills.

And the internet doesn't really exist yet or not really. So you can read books about it and you can have skill shares. And because there wasn't Twitter, we also all had a lot more time on our hands. And liked each other more. But there's also like, expertise was something that was handy to have. expertise was something that was handy to have you know like if i needed to rebuild my uh wheel on my bike and re-spoke it you wanted someone who knew how to do it and so it's good to have a couple of people who had really intense deep knowledge of skills but the idea that you would ask someone like i need to change my bike tire tube because i popped it with everyone would have

been kind of like really really like everyone should know how to do basic stuff. And it's and it's OK. Like the whole, you know, jack of all trades was is as a desirable goal. Like it's OK to dabble in a million little things and be kind of mediocre, but have a sort of baseline understanding of a bunch of stuff. Now, you know, there's places that I kind of think that we went too far, but also, you know, before the American Health Care Act, we all definitely did a lot of at-home med care that we should not have. But there's also a lot of low stakes places that I think people have gotten away from just practicing and trying all sorts of crafty stuff as an ethos that is actually really good. And there's no harm to learning

things like that. You're not going to hurt anything. And the only thing that's going to happen is you will have more skills and more to offer the people around you. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you.

Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature.

I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me in a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks Thank you. Explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished

and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to god things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry

and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again. The podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities,

artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories.

Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's this idea under capitalism that we should all specialize because that is like the most profit generating thing to do is just specialize in anything that makes you the most money but it's like not only is it like not the best in a in a dangerous situation to only know how to do one thing that makes you money but it's like it's not particularly good for your soul either. And there's also lots of different behavioral psychology, like group analysis of if you present people with a situation that they feel unprepared for and there's a person that they identify as an expert in a group who they can defer to pretty much every time the group that's like, oh, we'll defer to this one expert because they know everything and we'll just do whatever they say ends up making worse decisions than if you have a group where everybody feels like, oh, well, I like I can at least get a handle on what's going on and we can all talk through it and like make make calls.

and like make make calls deferring to experts doesn't necessarily help you now that there's obviously cases we've mentioned medical care already we're like there's actually knowledge is very important skill sets are very important but the idea that there's people who are just like yeah inherently more knowledgeable of things that you couldn't possibly understand is so where where do you recommend like people start with like like you've got a bunch of books right now and obviously if you can afford books that's a good call or libraries libraries have a lot of these books yeah on a preserving food and like growing stuff on your lawn but even if you don't have a lawn you can still like there's certain, like one thing that strikes me because we've been canning and pickling a bunch lately is,

you know, different vegetables and fruits and whatnot are cheaper at different points in the year. And even if you live in an apartment in the inner city and will never have more than a garden box at best, you can buy food when it's cheap

and preserve it. And not only save yourself a little bit of money, but you can like also you'll you'll understand every time you encounter preserved food in like a grocery store, you'll be looking at a thing that you know where it comes from. It's not just like a mystery jar of preserved food that was made by some. process of science so i don't know i'm interested in like where you guys someone coming in having only uh specialized in whatever it is allowed them to pay the rent uh where's your where's your recommended start point for people um i think it's picking something that is low stakes that you enjoy like yeah honestly one of my friends um her entry into doing diy stuff was you know she had lots of makeup and everything and she was like i'm gonna make body scrubs how do i do that and you know looked up how to make body scrubs how to make you know a lot of it is oh getting salt and

grinding up a rosemary that she found in someone's front yard and putting it together. But just something simple that you enjoy, that you would love to be able to, you know, have a little bit more say over. Because it's most basic. A lot of the DIY stuff is you can make something very specific to what you like. So for myself, actually, one of the first things I ever started doing was in high school, just altering clothing. I had an old... Yes, learning how to sew is huge.

I had an old $30 junk practice, like kids sewing machine and just the cheapest one that Sears used to sell and could definitely just take that and start putting seams in and alter clothing and be like, this shirt is now a t-shirt. It was long sleeve before. And that also ties in with, you know, DIY just to sound like old punks for a minute, the DIY definitely also came out of things like the riot girl scene in a big way and like the attention to like body awareness and like moving away from body negativity and the recognition that as a general rule off the rack clothes are not and certainly 20 years ago were extra not actually designed to

fit most people's bodies and it was like hard to find clothes that fit you right. And yeah, so like sewing was a big one. Bikes, because we were broke and didn't have cars. So figuring out how to fix bikes and, you know, everything that mechanically happens on a bike is right there and you can see it happen. And it maybe requires a screwdriver and then eventually maybe some other tools. But there's lots of and there's free resources a lot most cities i've spent any amount of time and you can find like you can find like a community bike shop where if you have to pay anything it's very minimal

and a lot of cases are just sort of like show up and you know there's space to use yeah when um like i know in santa cruz there was the church. In Portland, there's the bike farm. And then, yeah, in Philly, there was also a bike church because it turns out the basements of churches are. Yeah, there were a couple of spots like that in Dallas. And it's, yeah. And I think it is like this mix of like with the body scrub stuff. Like, what is something that appeals to you that you're interested in? And also what is with the bike stuff?

What is something that's like just doggedly practical? Like you get a bike you you need a bike to get around you should probably know how to fix shit on it i think the reason i say you should pick something that appeals to you especially is because a big thing with diy was that you're doing it yourself and there are so many skills that are valuable to learn from other people. It is wonderful to craft in community. It is wonderful to work with other people in community. It's wonderful to teach skills and gain them. But also I've seen this growing idea

with the, as specialization for so many things, especially services comes in, that people are always like, oh, wow, knitting. I've always wanted to learn. I need to take a class in that or I need to. And it's really important, I think, for people to realize that. You can learn things. Yeah, we are very good at learning things and you don't necessarily need a teacher for more complex things you do, but starting with something that you really like and that you find really interesting, you've already thought about it. So when you start with, you know, for my friends starting with making bath salts and face masks and stuff, it was

something she had already been thinking about quite a bit and thinking about stuff. So when she started looking up recipes to mix and looking on the internet and looking at ingredients, it was things she already cared about. So it's easier to learn something that you are interested in and it's easier to learn something that you want to do but we are all capable of learning for ourselves not every single thing but especially just for craft projects and so starting with that so that you can pick up a book or you can read an article or you can watch a YouTube video and you don't need to take some like $150 weekend class before you can. It's, you know, a big part of the resiliency building, like something you may scoff like when you're thinking about survivalism and talking about like making bath scrubs. But a lot

of the skills you would learn putting that together are useful in making like a salve or making like a poultice. Soap. Making soap, things that you actually need. Like when I was traveling, I lived on the road like out of a car and out of backpacks for off and on all over the world for years.

And I would make my own medicated, because we would get cuts and scrapes and rashes and we were poor as shit. And often there weren't doctors where we were. So I learned how to use things like plantain and comfrey and yarrow and like beeswax and stuff in order to, to make medicated salves. And it, it was something that interested me, but like, there's also a lot of like, there's a, there's a number of roots into learning that sort of thing.

And if you're learning how to make, again, something as simple as like a face scrub, learning where to find that information for free, learning some of like the basic techniques in order to do that, learning have to learn how to like splint a broken arm because like shit's gonna hit the fans like well maybe focus on something that's more exciting to you first and and and build time in your life to learn things that's an enjoyable process one of the first things i did like years ago was i i learned to sew specifically to make a cosplay uh which is you know so so i would just i would make me and my whole family different outfits for comic-con so every year i would i would sew us whole whole new

things but that not only taught me sewing it taught me how to do like uh like vacuum forming to molding how to use like a heat gun how to use like all these other types of tools um how to do like molding and castings like all of these types of things i learned just wanting to make silly costumes but now they're like you know useful in a lot a lot of other ways yeah and that can be that can be expensive at the high end when you're like vacuum forming and stuff like your stormtrooper armor but the the cheapest side of that thing again you can get a basic hand sewing kit for like five fucking dollars from a walmart and there's also makers fix your shit and there's maker spaces and like youtube will do the teaching you don't have to pay for a teacher the taliban learned how to fly helicopters on youtube you can learn how to

fix your pants and i i think also you mentioned specialization before it's come up a couple of times um and there is you know the idea with specialization the rationale behind specialization is oh well you'll be better at it because that's what you do all the time but that cuts both ways because if you only do one thing all the time then as you know whatever the maximum threshold of your abilities is that's required of you that becomes your baseline like whatever in your day-to-day life whatever it is that you're being asked to do, that's what you feel capable of. And on the flip side, there's with with the DIY approach with like teaching yourself shit, learning interesting shit. It's also practical and important and useful to be like, this is a thing that I'm going to do on a regular basis.

So I'll get better at it. But also it's not, you know, there was, you know, the whole idea of there's what you do and then there's your job and that these need not be the same thing because you want to be able to think, think through things in a way that's not the way you're supposed to process things to make your boss happy. That is not what you do when you clock in. You are more than your career you're more than your career and and and your skill set need not be purely extractive yes as a you know not just like okay i have to go do the thing in order to make money and then everything else is consumption like you can you can transition like we're and this is not a societal level solution

because we talk a lot about like well yeah you yeah, you're not going to make small personal changes to fix climate change. But changing your own particular attitude on how you approach the world from one that is I produce and then I consume to one where you're thinking more about resiliency and what do I know how to do and what can I learn how to do is helpful in a variety of ways. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.

I know you. with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a

vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Black Lit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola, mi gente.

It's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes.

You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zetron, host of the Better Offline podcast. Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse

and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts.

Check out betteroffline.com. On the note of, you know, the transferability of skills and recognizing that you already do things on a day-to-day basis that require specialized knowledge and require skill sets. One of the things that I try and trot out at every possible opportunity, I worked with

somebody in one of those volunteer bike shop spaces down in New Orleans years ago. And the whole purpose of that particular space was to make the skill set of bike repair more accessible to a population that relied on bikes to get places. a population that relied on bikes to get places. And one of the folks I worked there with was like a very femmy lady and was great because we would have young girls come into the shop and be like, my bike doesn't work. Somebody fixed my bike. My bike doesn't work. I don't know how to fix a bike. And she was the one who would just be like, uh, your tire's flat. And they'd be like, yeah, I don't know how to fix it. Can you fix it? And she'd be like, well, you're wearing press on nails, right? And I'd be like, yeah. I'm like, cool. How'd you put on your press on nails? And they'd walk through the steps of like,

well, you sand your nails and then you put the glue on your nails and then you hold the press on nails on your fingernails for a little while and let them set. And then you're good to go. And she's like, great. You've just described exactly how you patch a bike inner tube. So now we just need to get the bike inner tube out. And here's the part that corresponds to your nail. And here's the part that corresponds, like here's the glue and here's the, you know, it's the same process. We just have to get the bike inner tube out and then back in again, but you already know how to do the part where you make the bike tube work again. And that does hit on another important, like, you know, apocalypse or whatever survival point,

where again, all of our like fiction and movies focuses on like knowing how to use a gun or like being a woodsman. One of the most useful skills, maybe the most useful skill you can have in any disaster situation is being able to teach people like like knowing how to understand, figure out what people know and how to get them the additional information they need in order to be more resilient and competent, because you're always better in a community of people who know how to handle their shit than alone. And it builds on itself, too. You know, we both come from different backgrounds, but as we've been together and with the different trainings that we've had in just life, the projects that we take on have become more and more complex so you know where

i used to like to practice gardening and stuff and doing a little bit of woodworking and things and now you know we're doing various construction projects that we're kind of self-taught and we have some various home depot books on how to do them but it's it doesn't feel nearly as intimidating because we've done steps to go to it. And cause it's not an all or nothing. You don't have to suddenly be like, I'm going to DIY my entire life. Like I definitely get that way sometimes where I'm like, I want to one day have everything in my house be made by someone that I know or myself. And it's really lovely to know craftspeople or to, you know, make, do sit down at a pottery wheel and make your own bowls or whatever.

But a lot of it is about practicing stuff when it's not an emergency so that when you later on have need or you have the ability, you have the time, like you can do a bunch of different things. So, you know, we refloored the room that we're in right now. Yeah, you did. It was quite a process. But we didn't get there from nothing. And we'd both done lots of different construction and measuring and other things in little bits just for fun, for work, for other stuff beforehand.

And a lot of these projects are things that are fun to do as a one-off, as a project. to do as a one-off, as a project. I've done, you know, embroidery with my kids just for fun, not because they need to suddenly embroider all of their clothing or they have to sew everything, but it's because it's a fun thing to do on a rainy day or, you know, try fixing a book, not because there's no ability to go on Amazon and order another book, but hey, look, I just we didn't add one thing to the landfill waste and we don't have to fix all of the stuff we have. It's a one time craft. But then later on, when stuff's falling apart or when we have supply chain issues or when

stuff's not there, it's handy to know like, oh, you know what? Like we're having water rationing right now because during the one of the droughts i grew up in california we had water rationing and it was my mom hauled out of the basement my grandmother's old ringer machine and we were doing the laundry in that because it could it conserved a hell of a lot of water and you could use the same water for load after load it's good to just have those things just kind of on hand that you've tried, because when an emergency hits, you don't want to be trying to search the internet or looking for something because you've never done it before. And now it's necessary. And it's, it's again,

to the point of like how the, how collapse really looks versus how it's often pictured. You're not trying to replicate when you're, when you're doing your own laundry that way pictured you're not trying to replicate when you're when you're doing your own laundry that way you're not trying to replace civilization you're patching a hole like and and that's a lot of building resiliency is knowing that you have it's like it's being able to fix a bike tire it's patching a hole and i do want to acknowledge that like this is a little bit more outside of the the dead center of mainstream in, you know, the United States and some other like wealthy industrialized countries. And it's not like it has never stopped being the way most people in the world kind of. I have a story I like to tell from these people I was billeted with in Iraq. These these guys were like pulling people out of airstrike craters every day.

And we wanted to watch TV one night. We were in like a out of airstrike craters every day. And we wanted to watch TV one night. We were in like a bombed out mosque that ISIS had been using. And they had a refrigerator that worked in a TV that ISIS had cut the cords with. And this guy just started pulling cords out of the fridge. And in about five minutes, had the TV working, had like hooked it, lashed everything together. It was like he wasn't a TV repairman or a fridge. He just knew how electricity and shit worked and was able to figure out like okay i can just put all this shit together we're good to go and and just also to loop back around to the whole like survival mentality a little bit one of the things that like people that we've worked with people who like

have been in emergency situations that require, you know, complex skill sets and things like that. One of the big things is to have a role that you are competent in, that you are ready to fulfill. So you don't have to figure out your first step. You can get moving. You can figure out your first step. So for example, in the, you know, the supply chain issues that hit at the start of COVID and are hitting still and are recurring, the idea of like, oh, there's no way to like there's no laundry soap. Say, OK, well, we've got borax and these other baking soda borax.

got borax and these other various baking soda borax right we can we can make our own laundry detergent in a pinch and it'll work well enough cool don't have to have that be the thing that stresses us out and like adds to our our like paralysis yeah and again a huge part of is even how you approach the problem it's not freaking out like oh my god there's no laundry soap how am i going to clean my clothes it's being like, there's no laundry soap. How am I going to clean my clothes? It's being like, oh, there's no laundry soap. I'm going to go online because we still have that and try to figure out, are there other things that can make laundry soap that there are? And like, it's, it's accepting like a big, you talk about like wanting to be competent in a role. You don't have to know what that is from the start. As long as like the starting point isn't, I'm going to be the medic. I'm going to be the this. I'm going to be the food girl.

It's like, no, I'm going to start learning how to do things I don't know how to do. And over a period of time, if I am dedicated to that, I will figure out the thing that I want to get most competent at. about in terms of the various crafts and projects that we've undertaken are things that are like our primary function in the world it's just like well at some point it seemed like it was worth doing and so we did some of it and then we kept doing it and now and there's always pretty good at some of it for literally everything we've talked about there's the you're a i don't know a bougie hipster version of like doing it expensively even with like woodworking there can be a dirt cheap i built the table for almost nothing when i was younger because it was like well i found this wood that the city chopped down

and i bought sandpaper and stain for 15 and then i got like a fucking base from ikea and i had a functional table and i figured it out using youtube and it's you know not as good a table as i could have made if i had 10 or thousands of dollars of woodworking tools but i had a table for years because of it um and it's it's accepting the because i think people do get freaked out there's such an emphasis on like having the gear getting the equipment stockpiling things and like really stockpiling competency is better because yeah. And I think the Amazon wishlist ability to just be like, oh, I want this specific thing. I can in three seconds, look it up online and find the exact thing that I want. Definitely pushes in the opposite direction and makes people a little less resilient in that

capacity because there's less of that idea that you can just have stuff and i would just say if people want to get started with it it's really pick something low stakes pick something simple because you build the abilities you build the ability to learn and um i had it explained to me once that's like a hanger every skill you get acts as a hanger and having really basic simple things is actually super necessary because even even the like hardcore primitive skills i have some amazing books that i bought when i was 18 and i remember i had them and i looked through and i read it and I was like, this is like reading magic. I understand absolutely none of it. And after a few years of doing things, not even necessarily traditional skills, but just things, practicing stuff, picking stuff.

so much more framework that I had that I looked through it. And suddenly there was stuff, concepts that I could hang all of these incredible skills on. And we're like, oh, that never made sense to me. I understand it now because I've done simpler things. And starting with something that doesn't seem like overwhelming to learn, something simple and something, something low stakes, something that if you utterly mess it up, if you have a, uh, Oh, what are the, like the regrets, the like craft epic craft fails that it's okay. It's not a big deal because failing is part of learning. And so pick things that it's okay to fail at as your, as your projects. And, and don't as many of us did in the late nineties and early twos, when we didn't

have health insurance of any description, you know, experiment on ourselves and our friends with herbs, because we didn't have healthcare or access to doctors. Avoid doing that. That is not low stakes. Yeah. I'm about to go do open surgery on my own infected wound, now

that you've told me this. Don't do that, Garrison. Garrison, stop. I got an X-Acto, I'm real excited. Don't do that, Garrison. Garrison, stop. I got an X-Acto. I got some vodka. At least let us get the hacks. We're good to go. The key is, really, hot glue. Same as surgical stitches. I have super glue.

Same as surgical stitches. No, you want it to be hot because then it sterilizes the wound. Hot glue doesn't stick to anything. This is how I know you are not a crafter, i hot glue doesn't stick to anything this is how i know you are not a crafter is hot glue does not stick to anything you just you squirt it in there you get it in there real good and then you cover it with uh with super glue i do have a grandpa that has plug in the room i would put super glue in first i do have a grandpa that has used super glue so many times to glue his body back together. It is astounding.

That's what it was made for, yeah. That's very funny. It's effective at that. Anyway, here's our medical advice. Don't do any of the things that were just said. But if you do want to learn how to do sutures, you can find guides where people do it on chicken, which is how, if you're an EMT, you learn how to do it. And that is a skill you can build for very little money that's useful and you don't have to start on your friend's bodies.

And I will put in a plug for like wilderness first aid courses are not cheap. And there are some real good ones out there. And as like a baseline that is a real handy and helps you think about things creatively, because wilderness first aid unlike an ambulance driver an ambulance driver is driving in a box with all the tools they need and wilderness first aid the assumption is no you don't have a box yeah you don't have a box tools and so you have to work it out probably you know uh some plantain or something or some the right fucking kind of sap there's like shit you can use sure and we will

not proceed to attempt to lift up here and provide medical advice about plants don't go to a doctor nope no use pine needles make your own needle teeth it'll cure your covid find a beehive and start sucking any other sources are like open your mouth start sucking. Any other sources are playing? You gotta open your mouth real wide. Any other sources are playing? The more bees you get in you, the less COVID you have. There's a great book called Making Stuff and Doing Things from way back in the day. Definitely recommend that one.

Country Know How. Like, there's some, a lot of old craft books. Actually, the entire back collection of the Mother Earth magazine skills stuff, like I have definitely made a home setting magazine, not Emma Goldman's anarchist newspaper. But I've definitely made solar powered dehydrators out of cardboard boxes and saran wrap from the from Mother Earth magazine stuff. And it's absolutely fantastic. Mother Earth magazine stuff. And it's absolutely fantastic. They're just old school guidebooks.

But also anything that's listed as like DIY guides that have stuff that you would like to make and like to do are great. The library is great. Use the library. Research librarians at the library are great. And if you're like, I'm trying to learn how to do this thing, can you help me find books on it?

Research librarians at the library, they have doctorates in how to help you do that. And that's they just sit at desks all day waiting for me. And that's that. And what you'll learn from them about how to answer those questions for yourself is also useful in the long run. Well, go out and make a reflux still. Is that legal? Well, no, not in most most places but it's easy you just need a box inside of a box and you pour old beer in the center box and you put like saran wrap on top we did it

you you should probably keep your lights on for nocturnal tales from the shadow join me danny trails and step into the flames of right an anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturno on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search,

Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami?

Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while running errands or at the end of a busy day.

From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything.