It Could Happen Here - Q&A 2023

Episode Date: January 4, 2023

The gang all got together before the holidays to answer listener questions.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N. 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 Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sacred 23.

Extremely, extremely exciting. It's finally, finally 2023. That means only funny things can happen this year. That's your intro to the system. That's right, Sophie. It's perfect. You crushed it, buddy. I wouldn't hear any criticism.

That is magnificent. Welcome to It Could Happen Here 2023. Well, I don't know if I'm going to say they're welcome, but it is 2023. Nord. Good work. Enjoy your year of Discord. As if any year of the last, like, ten has not been a year of Discord.

Yeah, every year previously was totally normal and not chaotic. Let's go downhill from here. First off, welcome back. We love some of you, probably. Presumably. I haven't met you, any of the ones that I love, but I assume that you're out there. How's everybody doing? How's everyone's New Year?

Wow, just an absolute slap in the face to anyone you've met on any of your live events that's a fan. Yeah. Hey, so nice to meet you. Thank you for coming in person for my event. Also, fuck you. That's what you just said this whole episode is a series of slaps to the face because it's not 2023 for us we're lying we're all lying to them yeah who knows if we make it that far today we're recording this on december

19th 2022 and and what what is it what has happened today friends also? Also, who are you? Who is on this episode? Well, Garrison's here as I have already spoken into the microphone. Oh my God. Do you know who else has spoken into the microphone? Shireen? Question mark? I'm Shireen.

Now you have. Sophie? Sophie, yeah. James? Oh. Is anyone left? Oh, Mia. I don't think I've actually spoken into this episode yet.

Now you have. There she is. You've started the day. We did it. That's how you introduce a podcast, motherfuckers. That was so incredibly awkward. That was perfect. As if we had never done a podcast before.

But before we get to some of the Q&A stuff, what has happened today when we're recording it? Oh, well, today is the day, is the one day anniversary of me showing Garrison the movie Strange Days written by James Cameron. A New Year's classic. Oh, such a good movie. Not seen it.

Oh, you gotta watch it. I've not seen it. You gotta watch it. Robert got an alert on his phone that was just like memory is one year. One day. One day. A lot of violence against the LAPD in that film. Democracy has triumphed today. That's what's happened.

Democracy has happened. Yeah, definitely not a pro-LAPD movie. Also, you get to repeatedly see a couple of now prominent actors' O-faces, which is great. In a slightly problematic context. A deeply problematic context, but a good movie.

What actors are in this movie? What's his name? Ralph Fiennes? Ralph Fiennes is the main character, and he looks exactly like 10 years ago Bradley Cooper in this movie. Don't insult Ralph. Don't do that.

They both look good. That's what I mean. Okay, well, that's cruel. He's great, and then Angela Bassett is fucking incredible in it. That's what I mean. No. Okay. Well, that's cruel. He's great. And then Angela Bassett is fucking incredible in it. She's amazing. Queen. Yeah. Tom Sizemore is present in the movie.

We're just going to go through the entire cast and crew. That's the episode. Okay. For Robert. Yeah. All right. My favorite is Vincent D'Onofrio looks exactly like Tim Heidecker's character in that I think you should leave sketch where they're at the UFO themed restaurant. It's uncanny.

Great film. I'd like to know that you're still doing. I think you should leave references in the Lord's year 2023. Well, that actually leads into Mike. I showed my family it before they left to go see Other Family for Christmas. How did that go? I sat my family down to watch the second half of season two and magnificent.

Yeah. Yeah. It's divine. And that, that leads into my only prediction for the next year, which is, this is not a Q and a Robert. Get it together.

Oh God. Come on. All right. Who's what's the first question then? Well, what do you sons of bitches want to know? In an alternate universe where it could happen here as a corporate office, does the staff get a Robert Evans book for holiday presents or a gift card?

And we can actually answer this because despite not having a corporate office, there still was a holiday gift, which I have not actually received mine yet, so I can't say what mine is. But I know other people have received theirs. Why didn't you receive yours? I don't know, Sophie. I ordered yours first. Well, Sophie, you know, sometimes it'd be like that. Tracking.

It's probably going to be. Yeah, Sophie about to ruin some UPS driver's day. Yeah, chaos. But what did everyone else receive? Dearest Garrison will be delivered by 5.45pm today. Today, there you go. It's okay, Garrison. I didn't get shit either.

Oh. Boo fucking boo. I actually did buy you something, but it hasn't come yet, devastatingly. What did everyone else get for their holiday gift? Was it a Robert Evans book? No no it wasn't god no that would be oh my god imagine you're that fucked up imagine you're that unhinged that you're like i think you should do that to iheart the higher up to iheart send them your book as a gift my uh the second job i ever had which was or third job i guess which was working for

this accountant guy this like like that he was like not right he was a retirement like advisor guy he would help old people get their money in order to retire it was mostly like helping him host events at like a texas roadhouse where we would try to get old people to buy annuities but um so i worked for this guy and the day I started the job, he gave me a copy of his self-published novel operation night watch, which was about a group of Navy seals going rogue to stop drug dealers. And it's one of the worst things I've ever read. Oh,

I mean, I attempted to, I, someone, when I mentioned it once on the show, somebody found and bought a copy and posted it. That's unhinged.

Give that money to someone else. He can't be alive anymore. There's no way he's still alive. It was probably on eBay or something. That man has been dead for years, I'm sure. We still haven't answered the question. We've got Tiny Can's m uh two two little personal maces uh yeah one for the left hand one for the right hand so you can dual wield i really like it it's very compact a new pepper spray has been on my to buy list for like months because mine was expired like a year ago but i've

never actually bought one and so it was perfect and now it's just so tiny i can put it in like my fanny pack and just continue on my day that's right how do you know it won't work if it's expired i just looked it up i i looked it up and i was just like i don't want to like i don't know i just it was on my to buy list i obviously didn't buy it yet it wasn't like you don't want to like hurt somebody with expired pepper spray yeah it's the it's a propellant that expires. Yeah. The can itself gets like. Makes yourself. Yeah. Got it. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, there you go. There you go. Yeah. Let's see. So we're going to be going through some of the questions that we got for the previous. Sorry, my cats are making. Also, I do like that that person.

Mason. Mason. That person really thought that Robert was that person that was like, hey, happy holidays. Here's my book. I do get the royalties. You're welcome. You're right, though, Sophie. We should use the corporate cards to buy more copies of my book. That's a good idea.

We can just ship them to the sea, though. It doesn't matter where they go. For the next question, and we're we're using the the questions from the previous it could happen here live stream for this by the way so if we didn't get to your question we're getting to some more of them right now unless your questions sucked yeah yeah always very personal or was very yes that's that is that's what i meant by sucked um so do you know of a way to get involved in mutual aid without using social media i don't really use it for mental health reasons good

decision there to not use social media continue not using social media yeah a lot of mutual aid organizing or you know like requests happen on social media um but, I mean, there's... I guess it depends on how you use social media, I suppose. Like, it might be useful to have a friend that follows some of the social media stuff in your local area, whether that be on Twitter or Mastodon or Instagram, and then can, like, relay to you if there's local events um or you can just like section off like once a week you check on just a few of those things and then you then you

delete the app from your phone again um because once you are like plugged into a local community then people can just like directly send you flyers and stuff um but you you have to have those connections there in the first place. And those connections are really best made by going to things on the ground, whether it be, you know, a Food Not Bombs type thing, whether it be, you know, like a clothing swap. Lots of local events do happen in people's cities. And once you actually go there in person, that's where real community actually gets built. So it's just it's kind of just breaking the ice to actually get to actually go to a few in-person things and then and then people can send you you know direct flyers and stuff if

you don't want to be doom scrolling well looking for things you don't have to even have an account if you don't decide not to you can like view profiles on twitter and instagram without an account like you can't like see the comments or whatever, but if you just want to see their profile every once in a while and check in on what they're doing, you can do that online with no account. Yeah. Often as well, like we're doing mutual aid things here. It tends to focus on the border a lot

or unhoused people. And like in both cases, you can just show up and you'll meet someone who's helping in most instances, and then they can direct you, right? They can text you or signal you, whatever. Like, there were tons of people in 2018 when the migrant caravan arrived who were like much older, not on social media, often with church groups. And they didn't hugely like have, I would say, a lot of experience in that kind of area, but they deeply wanted to help. And they showed up and people were like, hey, can you go to help and they showed up and people were like,

Hey, can you go to Costco and get this? And they were like, yeah, absolutely. And yeah. And we use WhatsApp and it was fine. And like check around another option to be obviously if you,

if you have like a, like a radical meeting space in your city, you can check there. If you don't have those, you can even check, see if there's any like radical coffee shops or cafes that maybe have like a bulletin board. People will often put up flyers for stuff there. Just you really have to do start trying to be like plugged into your actual like IRL local community.

And that's generally how that goes. Yeah. You have to be more proactive than if you had social media is the main thing. Yeah. You still have to show up either way, right? Yeah. In the end. Do you know who else wants you to show up online?

Robert Evans. I don't. These products and services that want you to follow the link. We're now exclusively only sponsored by Robert's books. Yes, the literature of Robert Evans. And here's an excerpt. 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.

All right, and we're back. Speaking of the internet, Robert, or anyone, I suppose, do you think there's a way to get back to fulfilling the promise of the early internet? No, I don't. Do you think there's a way to get back to fulfilling the promise of the early internet? Uh, no. Um, I don't. I think the early internet was a thing that happened, that in part was the way that it was, because our brains did not have any kind of tolerance or, or, or, like, we're not, like, prepared for it. like we're not like prepared for it um and it it kind of grew up as we became capable of like i don't know like the the the internet grew more social as we got used to it and i don't think

that can ever happen again like those those weird little moments uh where i don't know yeah i my my answer is no, I don't know. My answer is no. I don't think it'll ever happen again in the same way that, like, you're never going to get those weird little moments that you had at, like, the birth of, you know, the printing press or whatever. Like, it was a unique moment in history, and it's never going to come again. Which doesn't mean that something else won't happen.

But the internet's not... The fact that we've all lived through the social media era means even once all these companies go bust, our brains have still been changed by them too much to ever go back to posting the way we once did. No, we're too far gone, I think. On a kind of similar note, in a few days we have an episode from andrew on digital commons and this that kind of revolves around this same kind of

question so in a few days we'll have we'll have an episode kind of about this topic ran by andrew um but uh james you you had something yeah sometimes like uh obviously like the internet is terrible in many ways but like when like, when we talk about, like, what happened in Myanmar, that series that Robert and I did, like, that seems to me like it's delivering on some of the promises of the early internet. Like, it's mad that, you know,

a young person, like, who is facing a coup and wants democracy in this part of Asia can go online, speak to some dude in i i'm these aren't real play like people i've spoken to but like some some guy in his garage in ohio who's really pretty guns and that person can help the other person on themselves and and defend their right to choose who governs them or if they governed at all like that is really fucking cool and that doesn't happen without the internet. So, you know. Yeah, there's also, yeah, it's not that there's not going to be good things done with the internet, or that it can't be made better, but it's never going to be what it was, because we simply know too much.

Let's see. What are some inspiring recent examples of cooperation increasing survival odds to show the type that thinks they just need ammo to survive? Another good touchstone for this would be the movie Tremors, which shows that while guns and ammo can be a critical part of a survival plan, nobody lives without community. Unfortunately, I think Robert actually is correct here. survival plan nobody lives without community unfortunately unfortunately i think robert actually is correct here uh more broadly this person's like consciously unconsciously paraphrasing kropotkin right um but like we have all just lived through a a pandemic and they are still living through a pandemic i guess which has changed the world killed hundreds of thousands millions of people uh and like the reason a lot of people got through that

a lot of people who didn't weren't able to work or were immunocompromised and couldn't go out as much is because other people helped them like no one shot covid uh and no one fed themselves in the lockdown because they had you know tons of 556 talked away like a ton of mutual aid happened a lot of terrible shit happened as well but but that's a bigger example, I think. Yeah. What genres of music have each of you been listening to lately? I'm a big classical head. I don't care if that is like nerdy.

I also listen to a lot of classical. When you're driving, everything becomes cinematic and it's calming and sometimes words distract me. So my go-to is classical. To what I would consider classical music, which is second and third wave ska. Oh. Bass. The only classical music in my opinion.

I am. I listen to The Clash, Suede, and The Manic Three Pre preachers more or less exclusively yeah they're the only bands that matter yeah i think if it's not classical i'm trying to like be i don't know i'm like dancing around so it's either like it's like two extremes for me it's either classical and i'm like chill going to sleep or i'm getting ready and i want to feel something what about you mia i have the most absolutely dog shit music taste brave brave but the music that i listen to that i think is legitimately good that's not like power metal or like weird shit is i've i've been going back to like my youth and my youth is a combination

of like surf rock and like 80s like Oh god, this is a safe space There could be some shame Like what, okay I support you Mia Pat Benatar sort of like there's a sort of era of like

I don't know what you call it like lesbian glam rock i don't know you shouldn't have to defend yourself this is a safe space this is my game you keep saying that i don't think we ever agreed to this um i i usually listen to a lot of music while writing and researching i just finished up two pretty big writing projects i've been listening to a lot of music. Most of it's like ambient electronica, some classicals thrown in there if I need to get a little bit more like energy.

But listening to some Trent Reznor kind of ambient stuff and like a lot of, I also listened to a lot of rem uh, remixes of the Mario Galaxy soundtrack. Wait, what? There you go. Okay. Send that over now.

No, I like that. Wait. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. I need to, I need to, I need to plug a truly awful song. What?

What do you mean? Like the worst song ever. Don't give them attention. No, no, no, no. We got it. Okay. Look, Donkey Kong has to okay look donkey kong has to slam this way it has to be this way x space jam x dk rap i need i need y'all to know that this

exists it is there's there's it is incredible it is an otherworldly experience there's also a version of it that's the dk ramp but also uh one winged angel it Oh, no. Okay, I think this... Wait, Garrison, do you listen to Max Richter? I think you would like Max Richter. He does a lot of soundtracks for shows, so his stuff is kind of melancholic and piano-y, but I think you might like it. I will look him up.

Good name. It's spelled Richard, I'm pretty sure. I got it. Yeah, okay, great. You should also listen to the Mighty Mighty Boss Tones, who did a wonderful album. Oh, no, that is the worst song ever. Oh, God.

Oh, God. Oh, God. No, don't, don't. So check out their 2020 album. Yeah, their George Floyd song is literally a crime. Incredibly appropriate. Deeply appropriate. Yeah. Speaking of listening to things. The George Floyd song is literally a crime. Incredibly appropriate. Deeply appropriate.

Speaking of listening to things. Speaking of things that are problems. What is the most troubling thing that isn't being reported on or isn't taken seriously by the wider public? The fact that none of you said you listened to any rap music or any type of music that wasn't just. I thought Tupac was a given. He did a level on his own. I've been listening to Trapcore Quest recently. I listen to a little bit of Biggie

every now and again. I got my Moe's Def always loaded up especially around the new year. I love listening to Life in Marvelous Times. Black on Both Sides is a hell of an album. I've always been more Biggie. There's a guy called Christian Parrish Takes a Gun.

He raps by Superman. He's from the Crow Nation. I think his stuff is cool. Most troubling thing that isn't being reported on or taken seriously enough by the wider public? Besides our musical tastes. I'm going to be biased and always say, like, Middle Eastern news and Palestine and, like,

hair and balance reporting. Even, like, Syria and Yemen and all of that stuff. I think none of that gets enough attention. Absolutely. I'm going to say fucking scams. Like, just on a daily basis, I feel like my phone gets uh six to eight spam calls scam calls at least and like it's uh and someone was making a note of this earlier because like a

bunch of scam stories have been people have been sharing them this year but like there's all sorts of fucked up things like if a relative gets arrested, as soon as the police post the like the fact that like publicly posted they've been arrested, like the family, if they have numbers that scammers can find, will start getting auto dialed by like accounts claiming to be the police saying that like you need to put money in their account now where they're going into general population. And it's all these are all like low hanging fruit things. Like they're, they're, they're not, they're targeting people who are not very savvy. Um, often people who have some sort of like mental disability, right? So folks who are kind of living a marginal existence in a lot of ways as it is. And they are like, it's making it incredibly difficult for, and folks who have like are cognitively impaired for whatever reason, including the fact that they're elderly. There's just like this, it's never been like this before, the sheer density of scams that people have to wade through. And again, most of you, we've all

kind of noticed it getting more common but you may not have noticed how kind of brutal it's gotten because you're not the target demographic for this stuff right that's why they all have like filters in them to try and weed out the people who are savvy enough to know that they're being scammed but it's there's a number of things this is the result of decisions that the um the ftc made um like like in in order to make it a lot easier for people to use shit like auto dialers and to carry out phone-based scams. But it's just been punted on by every presidential administration in our lifetime as the internet has made it easier to automate this stuff.

And the explosion of machine learning tools that are widely available, these kind of AIs that people are joking about right now, like it's all going to create the capacity to more effectively automate scams. I had one that could have gotten me the other day where I got a call from my bank that was listed as from my bank. It was my bank's phone number. It came up as them on the and they were like hey you know someone has there's some some charges can we run them by you we want to make sure and they were like chart things i had not bought they were like wire transfers and shit and they were like oh it looks like you know somebody's gotten access to your account and the call dropped before i could finish it so i called them back and when i called my bank

back they were like oh yeah that was someone spoofing our number they were trying to get personal information out of you um this shit is so fucking endemic and no one is doing a goddamn thing about it uh there's like one anemic attempt in congress to slightly address it primarily through like education but it is a massive problem it's part of what's breaking society. The fact that like everyone is constantly flooded by this low level cloud of people trying to destroy their financial lives. It's real bad.

Do you know what else is trying to destroy your financial lives? Oh, the products and services that support this podcast, Garrison. And Robert's book. Welcome. I'm Danny Threl. 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. 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. And we are back for one final time for this episode. This is actually a question that I feel is pretty important

that I wish people thought about a bit more, at least within our general sphere. Where do you draw the line between fascist politics and non-fascist conservative politics? think there's a line to be drawn because the the mainstream of the republican party has completely thrown themselves in behind one of or both of two fascists um in terms of like personally i guess it depends on whether or not people support there being like things like penalties on – do people – like does somebody support banning books? Does somebody support arresting folks for expressing political opinions that differ from theirs? Does somebody support expanding the penalties for petty crimes to include like violence? Like those are all things that can suggest that somebody is a fascist. But at the end of the day, anybody who supports the Republican Party right now is supporting

a fascist movement. So I don't feel there's any sort of I don't draw a line in my head anymore, to be entirely honest, because they they they alighted the line. I try to be very specific when I say fascist versus just like a regular conservative in my reporting. Like when we were inside Colorado, we talked to people who were conservatives, who were against fascists and against local fascists in their community and actually doing things to help stop fascists from gaining power within their local community. to help stop fascists from gaining power within their local community. I think if you look at a lot of the rhetoric around queer people right now,

whether it be like drag shows or trans people, that's a specific style of rhetoric that is like innately fascist. Like talking about, like there was a tweet from, is his name like Lindsay James? What's that guy? James,ual James.

Yeah. He put out this little meme being like, don't call them drag queens. Call them some bullshit groomer thing. I forget the exact thing, but that specific style of rhetorical framing

is a pretext to extermination and genocide like that escape that is what that is what they're doing and i think that is right now is what it crosses the line is when when they're creating these scapegoat uh groups that that are going to be targeted and posing these groups as like a threat to civilization um that's where i kind of use that uh word like fascist like that that is generally in in in my research where i start employing that versus you know some random guy who i'm talking to who you know wants there to be lower taxes and less regulation because yeah that that position as we've seen now can eventually lead

to the type of fascist policies but i think that there is when it comes to like people in your personal life and when it comes to like regular people who are not politicians i think having a little bit more discretion is useful because i think there's still a chance that some people who are currently conservative can not become fascists. Yeah, I would agree. I think in the US context, one sort of useful litmus test for people on the right is like, are the rules of the game more important than the outcome of the game? Like, so when you look at like the sort of fascism we saw around Donald Trump, right? Like there was a point where the outcome of the game, i.e. the maintenance of power, right,

became more important than the rules of the game, i.e. like basic human rights. And I think that's a useful sort of, is this person dangerous? I like Paxton's definition of fascism generally. It's not great, but it's useful. Yeah, it's useful. And I think your scapegoat group one is really key when people are scapegoating people and they don't

really give a fuck about how they eliminate those people or stop quote unquote right when when people are seeking to use the machinery of state to eliminate people and ideas that they find uncomfortable yeah by using the force of law against them. They're fascists. And when people are supportive of ending the democratic transfer of power in order to support an individual that they think embodies their conception of what their country is, those people are fascists. Absolutely. And I think that it's one thing, and I don't think it's usually useful if you're having a conversation with an individual to call them a fascist, even if they're behaving in ways that are kind of fashy.

If you think that a productive conversation can be had that might move them in one direction or the other. But at the end of the day, if somebody is supportive, for example, of a third term for Donald Trump, that person is supporting a fascist movement. And I don't think that there's a, I don't think, I don't think it matters that like their individual reasons

for doing it may be less fashy than someone else's. Like at the end of the day, they are supporting that. And that's kind of what matters to me i think i think it's also worth taking a little bit of a look at what happened in neoconservatism in order to sort of understand what's going on here because i think there was an important sort of fracture a in terms of the fact that george bush like basically orchestrated like yeah like bait like he didn't technically create a coup but he like he

he he rigged an election such as to put him it's like so as to put him in power right like that's what the brooks brothers riot was that's what that's that's sort of the process that gets us the bushwood in 2000s and there you know this is this is an interesting moment because if you look at what happens to conservatism over the sort of like the the i don't know the last 25 years of the 20th century there's this interesting pivot where they they make where in order to that you know if you look at like what what is the conservative response to communism in 19 like 39 right it's just like we're going to be fascists right it's like literally we're going to be fascists. It's like, literally, we are going to be the Nazis. But by the time you get to post-World War II,

by the time you get really to the 70s and 80s, they start realizing that people don't generally like fascism that much. And so the form of anti-communism that they take starts to be this sort of rights-based, weird sport like freedom and human rights and like free markets and democracy and there there's this point where that stuff meets with like another kind of fascist politics which is the sort of like the the 2001 era state of exception stuff that happened after 9-11 where you know like

people start talking about the gloves coming off and this is this is good this is getting into your sort of like like looking at like walter benjamin's like conceptual what fascism is or uh am i blanking on that guy's name uh like carl schmidt stuff right where it's like here is a part of the state that can just like destroy like the head that has sovereign power and can just sort of trample over the entire legal order in order to perpetuate it right so this is like okay suddenly after 2001 like after 9-11 there were just like people disappearing into torture dungeons right and you get this moment where on the one hand yeah like because george w bush is one of these people who's like the sort of like freedom democracy people but then beneath him is you know, it collapses very quickly into this.

We are the torture dungeon stuff. And this willing is literally to rig elections. And I think that's a sort of important one, because like there are sort of normal conservatives, right, who still have that kind of like freedom and liberal democracy, whatever thing. whatever thing and they're not really that fascist kind of but in some sense it doesn't doesn't matter that much institutionally because the part of the republican party that survived yeah was a combination of the torture dungeon which is like gina haspel like and then trump who is the the sort of emblem of this like like the sort of like we're gonna we're gonna take the election we're gonna take power we're gonna use the power of the state to just murder everyone we don't like. conservatism fragmented and the way that that kind of state of exception politics and that politics of sort of just like mass torture and then also the willingness to just steal elections like that

i don't know that stuff i think forms this this another sort of core of fascism that's there alongside the sort of queer extermination and stuff and there i don't know and then these things fuse together in ways and yeah i've rambled for long enough we're gonna do one more question and i think we cover a lot of upsetting things on the show some things that maybe are not you know super fun to think about um we also cover some like hopeful stuff as well but what's what's one thing that the crew who works in the show uh do to decompress and clear our minds after you know wading through the the trenches of the digital hellscape uh pass i feel like we might have answered something similar to this on the live i saw robert playing cyberpunk 2077 last night, so I know

there's at least one thing. It does allow me to pretend that Keanu Reeves is my friend, which is nice. He's your friend. You just gotta meet him first. He's a very nice guy. I like to go camping. I like to go outside. I like to swim in the ocean and ride my bike

and hike and camp and rock climb. Yeah, I second that. I need to go outside and even like a simple walk with trees and hiking, I think it really helps me just decompress and be present again. Hanging out with queer people

and like not, and intentionally not talking about Twitter bullshit, just like going and doing something. Just like playing around in the grass. And just like talking about gay shit. It rules. It's the self that heals the heart. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Well, thank you everybody for listening. What's your answer? Me? Oh, see, I was going to try to just like... Nope. Just like go right past that, wrap up the episode in a nice little bow. I don't know.

I've been trying to get back into doing more kind of art stuff with my camera, whether that be photography or filmmaking in like short form stuff. What else have I been doing? Yeah, I don't know. Taking drugs. Oh, yeah. Wow. There you go.

There it is. Shrooms are healing. Shocking. Shocking. Yeah, incredible to say that on the podcast. Now you can wrap it up if you want to. Well, thank you everyone for listening to our Q&A episode. That's what I do to relax.

Thank you. See, that's the thing to do. That's how you can relax. Actually, there is one person who has tried to skirt past this question. Sophie. Yeah, Sophie. Yeah, Sophie.

What the hell? She looks... What do you want? Sophie, you not only have to deal with all of the bad stuff that we talk about, but you also have to deal with us. So what do you do to compress and clear your mind? De-compress. Well, first of all, each and every one of you are the best.

So let's start there. really like uh making food for my friends and uh like meeting a friend for coffee and just like walking outside or like finding like a little place that's like a local place and just when and when you go in there's like barely anyone in there but then you get to talk to the people that work there and then order a nice little dessert or something. It's that kind of thing. I love that. I'm like, I have friends. That's literally what I read it. I said it and it sounded horrible.

And then obviously having pets and being around animals is really solid. But it's also just having a healthy balance of focusing on a lot of the negative stuff, but really also putting your energy into a lot of the positive stories. I know that a lot of people feel like it could happen here is tends to lean towards the negative, but I really feel like we're a hopeful show. And I feel like as a network, Cool Zone Media tries to lean towards the hope and find, you know, the good and the bad. and find the good and the bad. And that's why we have shows like Cool People Did Cool Stuff, which is with Margaret Kiljoy

that really helps balance out a lot of the other things. So yeah, I think finding the good and the bad, eating yummy food with your friends and petting all the pets you can. You know, I also think a huge thing for all of us is taking plenty of alpha brain supplements. I like to take them.

That doesn't for us today, Bruce. That doesn't for us today. Thank you for listening to It Could Happen Here. Have a good year of Discord. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com.

Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, 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.