It Could Happen Here - Stress and Capitalism ft. Andrew

Episode Date: July 28, 2022

Andrew talks with us about stress under capitalismSee 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. 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. Or whenever you get your podcasts. We'll be right back. everything. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Uh. It could happen. It could happen here. that was my Robert Evans

impression thank you very much hopefully that wasn't an assault on your eardrums but here we are I am Andrew and this is It Could Happen Here. And this is the podcast where we talk about stuff that happened in places. And I'll be guest hosting this episode. This is the Andrewism segment, where I talk about whatever comes to mind.

Crushed it. Talk about whatever comes to mind. Crushed it. So, I'd like to open up this episode with a question. Honestly, genuinely, how are you all doing? Well, there's a lot of stuff going on right now. You know, not the best time inside this country, or really around the world. So yeah, I would say not ideal

not ideal yeah everything bad is happening and also being compounded that I have been once again awoken at a genuinely egregiously early hour by someone pounding a hammer about 8 inches from my head which is

fun and good and cool without context without context that'll be a wild thing to say i am giving no context about this this is literally true so yeah basically it's like that but for everything yeah i respect that not ideal is the perfect explanation yeah yeah not ideal not ideal personally i feel like i'm you know constantly being pulled in a bunch of different directions and it's exhausting and i mean just to say up front i do have the privilege of having more control over my workday than a lot of other people do and that's not something i take lightly i'm very appreciative of that um shout out to my

patreon supporters but you know between all my online responsibilities and my offline responsibilities and obligations and demands on my time it really is not easy and that's not even getting into like the social and political state of the world right now to quote jayden smith you know that's that's something i think we can all relate to on some level yeah i mean some weeks are much harder than others but the through line has been stress and that is the subject of today's episode that's so stressful that we're gonna talk about stress let's do it yeah yeah a discussion about stress it really could happen here um stress is not something

that's new to me or really to most people me personally my personality is very much lending itself to that um sort of outcome because i'm constantly like spinning a bunch of plates at the same time and every time like i drop one or i put one down i pick up the next one and i'm not very good at relaxing usually i i've basically been going non-stop for a long long time and um i'm not alone because 43 of adults suffer from chronic stress and 75 to 90 of doctors visits are stress related and it's trash you know you feel it in your skin and your muscle and your bones i remember this one time when i was working at that same winery i was talking about in a recent episode i was in um and i was just sharing my

experience i really felt like my blood was running to water like i was barely eating, I wasn't getting enough water, I wasn't perfectly hydrated, and I was just going. We call that a reverse Jesus. I mean, I think when Jesus was stabbed, he did bleed water for some reason. Sure did.

Yeah. Tree rings, you know, they tell a story, and I think our bodies tell a sure did yeah tree rings you know they tell a story and I think our bodies tell a story as well and for a lot of us that story

is stress whether because of events or thoughts or circumstances that leads to frustration or anger or nervousness we deal with stress what would you guys say

is some of your like mean stress triggers I was gonna say family most of it's probably work related based on the type of things I surround myself with for over 12 hours a day yeah I think for me it's

work and then it's a lot of just sort of like personal life stuff I have to do stuff which is just like I'm trying to move right now and that's like incredibly stressful and yeah and also medical

stuff that's been a that's been a for sure holy hell yeah we are excited that chris is finally moving out of the hammer factory into this into the into the electric drill factory so the audio will still be a bit weird i mean look if if if it's if it's anything like college it'll be uh 12 hours a day of a guy with a jackhammer directly below my window, which you'll all get to hear an incredibly large amount of. It's going to be great. Yeah, that's fantastic. That is the goal. I think that's a perfect encapsulation of exactly the topic we're talking about.

It's like a jackhammer on your brain. Constantly. I mean, that's not the only form of stress I mean there's a stress that comes from like loss stress that comes from like social drift stress that comes from like this consumerist rat race you know mental illness

just general uncertainty and change and grief and guilt and trauma you know the 9 to 5 dictatorship that a lot of people are subject to and of course climate change good old climate change

I think more and more people need to realize that stress is a symptom of systemic violence. When we are dealing with these headaches and sleep problems and muscle pains and digestive problems and sex problems and blood pressure issues and moodiness and restlessness and demotivation and irritability and substance abuse and all these other responses and consequences it's just the outcome of daily

systemic violence of the way that this system deprives us of support and care that how it atomizes us how it controls us and really squeezes us forward with i mean it's not to say that like there's no stress outside of capitalism or that stress is a capitalist invention absolutely not i mean stress in small doses could be a good indicator in certain survival situations that you need to change your situation. Motivation to act, you know? But under capitalism, it's really pathological.

And yet, you got to keep playing normal. You have to keep on pretending that everything is okay i mean we all know how deeply unhealthy this society is how deeply unequal the society is how many people are dealing with stress-related illnesses how many people deal with like hyper vigilance how we are constantly scanning this urban jungle for threats for of insecurity and decimation of public life and of entire economies and sectors and it's like we're held in captivity i will say one thing and that is that while capitalism produces a lot of stress it also alleviates stress by producing an economy

organized around the production and circulation of addictive substances and practices of all these different vices that people pick up. I mean, if you look at the roots of capitalism and how capitalism really funded itself initially through the plantation economies in the Caribbean and the rest of the Americas, itself initially through the plantation economies in the Caribbean and the rest

of the Americas you know growing like sugar and tobacco and you know producing all these spirits and chocolate and coffee the thing that helped bring capitalism

to fruition and helped fund industrial capitalism is the thing that people are using to self-medicate in response to the effects of the now global capitalist dominance. And people love off their chocolate and their coffee. Personally, I'm not a big fan of coffee. I think it tastes disgusting.

Yeah, me too. Yeah, I tried it once and it was like it tastes like the sensation of burning you know i just wasn't having it i like the smell for some reason like the smell of coffee beans but the actual taste is like nah and surprisingly i actually used to not like chocolate as a child it's only when i matured my taste buds that i actually came around to it um ironically and of course we don't think of these things as you know vices or medications but they're like small pleasures that you know help us get through our day practically everybody is some level of alcoholic these days.

Of course, there's social media, which is algorithmically tailored and tuned to keep us on it. It basically, like a puppet master, controls the highs and lows of our emotions on a daily basis. It basically functions as an addictive drug just the drug is just is caused by chemical reactions in your own brain but it's manipulating your brain into causing that to happen um but it's it's a very similar addictive process that has like you know a reward system you know this that's why like around a decade ago a lot of social media companies changed their um loading style to be like you like scroll it down and it flicks back up which was specifically machine it was specifically copying a slot machine because it is it's it's

like an addictive pattern that's ingrained into what we find pleasurable so it's it's all like none of this is this probably isn't new information to a lot of people but like it's all obviously very intentional to why it's designed to be extremely addictive yeah and this is just like this is just like what like most of gaming is now too where it's like i mean okay like you're playing a video game right yeah but like yeah now it now literally like the the revenue model of the gaming industry is selling gambling to children. You know, that is my one complaint about casinos, is that eight-year-olds couldn't spend thousands of dollars of their parents' money on skins. But now, thanks to the wonders of gaming, eight-year-olds, too, can basically just live in a casino in their own bedroom all the time.

Ah, modern society. Okay, there's conflicting accounts about this, but there's a new free-to-play Diablo game. Oh, yes, I heard about that. The amount of money it would take to get a max-level character in this game i have seen okay i i i've i've the latest calculation i've seen is saying it would take over five hundred thousand dollars the the lowest range calculation of how much it would cost i've seen was about fifty thousand it's probably at least a hundred thousand dollars to literally get the highest level character in these games it is like like this is yeah i mean this problem

is exactly where why this problem is exactly why um the only mobile games i play are sudoku and minesweeper and even those have ads yeah i did have a brief foray into among us though but that um that period has ended. And plus, this is also why I tend to sail the high seas. If you know what I'm saying. Welcome. I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter

Nocturnum, 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. 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.

industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to the 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 Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez.

Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami.

Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey fam, I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the daily podcast from Hello Sunshine that is guaranteed to light up your day. Every weekday, we bring you conversations

with the culture makers who inspire us. Like our episode with actor, former Beverly Hills 90210 star, and host of the podcast, I Choose Me, Jenny Garth. There have been so many times when I've been really lost. I say that because I'm on the other side of it. And the only way to get to the other side of something is to go through it, not around it.

Allow your body to feel the pain. And then you have to dig in sometimes and look within to learn from it because that's what all these obstacles are for, I guess. Ultimately, what other choice do you have? Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. the funny thing is that we don't have to do this and i mean it's kind of obvious it's kind of like what's the phrase i'm looking for like it doesn't to be said, but it also kind of needs to be said. That we built, we built this society

and as people within it, we do have the power to change it. We don't have to work as much as we do. We don't have to, you know, structure and attend school the way that we do. I mean, even under capitalism, there are people who are starting to shift from that eight hour workday which we had to fight for a lot of people died for um till you

know three to six hours a day which or four hours per day it depends um i think so one experiment was like six hour days four days a week or something like that. But despite, you know, studies coming out and saying that humans can only be so productive in a certain period of time uninterrupted, it doesn't matter. You know, despite the fact that, you know, productivity decreases. It's not like productivity rises with the amount of hours you work. It doesn't matter.

I mean, I remember when I was working in an insurance company, I was a paper pusher, just like scanning documents and uploading documents and then scanning some more documents and then uploading those documents. And then every once in a while, got to print documents exciting um but i was dealing with like a backlog of documents and i was typically able to get like a decent chunk of the work done within like the first two to three hours as in like having it fully sorted scanned uploaded completed you know but unfortunately

i had to be there for eight hours and so i had to drag out my day, you know, typically by listening to like the Communist Manifesto in audiobook. Or the Conquest of Bread in audiobook. I had to find things to do to like make myself look busy. Or to like divvy up my tasks and extend them and artificially stretch them out. Because instead of doing this BS job, instead of not doing this BS job at all or instead of doing this BS job based on tasks completed rather than time spent I had to rely on the time spent and the contractual hours

and of course the pay was terrible but I mean that was expected at this point but the whole point is really to like squeeze all our time and energy so that we're stressed out, so we don't have any leisure, so that we look for convenience and convenience is profitable. I mean, who really has the energy to fight for their rights when they don't even have the energy to cook a meal when they get home you know and it wasn't always like this the social bond was broken by capitalism

and replaced with the bond to money and until we like sever that bond nothing's gonna to change. So the question is, how can we address stress? And so capitalism has an answer. And there's an actual, proper, real, systemic answer. Personally, I deal with stress by just not thinking about it. But, I mean, what do you guys do? not thinking about it um but I mean what do you guys do be really sad

I'm talking about like like mitigation strategies you know like I don't know like when it's nice I'll like I go take walks um walks are nice yeah I have a shark that i got from

somewhere that's like it's like the phone like the squishy foam material but it's a shark it rules do you have an ikea shark chris no no no no it's one of these it's one of these like it's like it's like a stress ball but it's a shark we're about to just like oh yeah that's very funny no i don't have a whatever i don't know what the lodge i don't know that i don't know how to say it either i don't know i i've been trying to get back into doing more parkour training when i'm stressed but honestly it's But honestly, it's... A lot of the time, I just do stuff that I know I'm capable of,

which oftentimes is the same things that kind of caused me to get stressed in the first place. Looking at nonsense propaganda, writing about it, writing about different philosophies around doomerism. Because those are things my brain can just do with little effort. It's almost peaceful in a way. Almost therapeutic. Yeah, it's bizarre. In some ways, you would think that these things are

what's causing me to have problems, but also, in a lot of ways, it kind of calms me down to look at a whole bunch of this type of thing or to write about it or to try to just do formatting inside a Google Doc about it. I don't know. It's like sorting out the stuff.

It's almost like there's this idea. This is a thing called a knowling. It's when you get a whole bunch of stuff out on the floor and you sort it into piles. It's done with Lego a lot. If you dump a giant box of stuff out on the floor and you sort it into piles. It's done with like Lego a lot. If you dump a giant like box of Lego, all these different Lego pieces, if you're going to know them,

you're going to take all the pieces that are like the same color or size and sort them into their little places. It's, it's, it's so it's, I kind of do that, but with like ideas and like, and like with writing projects, I dump out all the things I'm currently thinking about into a spreadsheet or a Google Doc and sort them into related topics.

Be like, okay, here's how this thing leads into this thing. It's like that kind of organizational thing. How organizing is kind of like a therapeutic thing. So it's like I can do that with all of the random stuff floating around in my brain. Sometimes I'll try to just sort it out. Even if it doesn't get turned into a work project, it's still an external way to sort out my thoughts.

Right. Sophie? I have a dog. Very good dog. I have a dog. We listen to music. We go outside. We like to go to the park and listen to music outside

you know that's the basic I work a lot but work is also like if I don't work I'm more stressed if that makes sense exactly

yeah I definitely relate to I relate to that which is which makes me sound like a lap dog for capitalism. I know, right? It's not something I'm proud of, but also I'm lucky enough to not

I think that's indicative of the problem, right? It's not that people don't necessarily like to work, don't necessarily like to labor. The issue is not having autonomy over it. Most of the things I do for work now

are things that I've been doing for years unpaid because I was just interested in them. If we're talking about theorizing about a post-work world, people are still going to do all kinds of shit. Obviously, there's questions around tasks which are not the most fun to do, as we've had discussions on anti-work stuff before. But for a lot of stuff, everyone has little interests and little skills that they find slightly therapeutic. And also, in terms of tasks

that no one wants to do, I fixed my own plumbing in my bathtub a few weeks ago because my landlord's not going to do that. So like, you know, people, when you have to do something, you kind of become capable of it. That's fair. I think one of the most popular responses like distresses capitalism imposes is like this concept of self-care, you know, this way of escaping

from the grind of it all and dealing with, you know, with issues by like getting to bed early and eating well and physical exercise which I've been doing a lot of lately Buff Andrew Rock and all that we're going to have to change

your little drawing into the Chad version well I actually did that recently oh that's great yeah it's lovely Well, I actually did that recently. Oh, that's great. Yeah, it's lovely. You know, there's also things like journaling and meditation and yoga and all that jazz. I mean, I've never really gotten into meditation because I tried it a couple of times.

And every time I do, I kind of fall asleep i i definitely do some meditation stuff um but that's what's kind of slightly part of my like metaphysics interest um and i mean also in like in terms of like self-care practices in that vein that can help you kind of relax there's obviously stuff like you know mushrooms or mdma which if done and you know proper you know it's spaced out, not, not doing them all the time, but doing them at certain intervals, um, can definitely be, be therapeutic, um, in their own way. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter

Nocturnum, 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. 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. 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 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 Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh.

And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba.

Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, fam.

I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the daily podcast from Hello Sunshine that is guaranteed to light up your day.

Every weekday, we bring you conversations with the culture makers who inspire us. Like our episode with actor, former Beverly Hills 90210 star,

and host of the podcast I Choose Me, Jenny Garth. There have been so many times when I've been really lost. I say that because I'm on the other side of it. And the only way to get to the other side of something is to go through it, not around it. Allow your body to feel the pain.

And then you have to dig in sometimes and look within to learn from it because that's what all these obstacles are for, I guess. Ultimately, what other choice do you have? Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. audrey lord one of the foremost black feminist scholars of our time one said and i return to this quote a lot um caring for myself is not an act of self-indulgence it is self-preservation and that is an act of political warfare self-care used to mean preserving yourself in a world hostile to your identity community way of life it meant not weakening yourself to an ugly grave you know practicing saying no and being mindful of your sensitivities and triggers and then you know as white corporate

feminism does white corporate feminism appropriated it and turned it into a industry now worth a star grand 11 billion dollars yeah i mean now self-care when people think of self-care it's all about intelligent cosmetics and luxurious parties and overpriced candles and going on expensive holidays. Subscriptions to social media apps that are about... It's turned into this own grifting industry almost, like the self-care industry. There's self-care influencers and self-care content creators.

And it's just like, ah, it just gets, it gets the same icky derealization feeling that everything else under capitalism is slowly getting. Yeah. I mean, they even have like their own self-care funds.

Like if you notice a lot of self-care content has a very specific visual style. Yeah. You know, I mean, hashtag self-care on Instagram, just like a bottomless scroll of graphics and product. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, hashtag self care on Instagram, just like a bottomless scroll of graphics and product. Yeah.

It just makes me feel kind of unsettled. It kind of has this like uncanny aspect to it. Yeah. Because it's almost as if self care is inaccessible to those who is created to help the most. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

there's, there's that, I mean, the fundamental part of the uncanny is that is that disconnect where the the gap between the phenomenon and the thing is really is really big and you can't really understand why it's uncanny but if you think about it it's because that gap between the thing what's supposed to be doing is so large so yeah this thing that's supposed to help all these people is now a white millennial like like up like middle upper class like aesthetic

now um and that sucks exactly i mean these days the people like it's mostly a salve for like white collar workers whose jobs also suck them out their time managing creativity but the people who actually you know the blue collar workers they often don't have the time or money to be able to invest in themselves in that way self-care and workaholism are basically two sides of the same coin right it's preserve yourself so you can produce more it's a solution to capitalism within capitalism the solution doesn't actually alleviate the conditions of stress but lines pockets and fuels the economic system that creates it in the first place i mean if you're selling self-care it helps that you've got a constant supply of customers living in perpetual anxiety and wellness.

Rather than a means of resistance to the system, it's been weaponized by the system. It's become this performative thing we put on this image of put-togetherness where you carefully curate your feed and your Instagram stories and your highlights, and it's an individualized solution to systemic issues. It's like the system telling you to calm down while it continues to denigrate and exploit you. None of these things address stress systematically.

I'm not saying that it's necessarily bad to address stress individually because everybody has their own personal conditions. But without dealing with the broader material conditions without addressing people's lack of free time lack of access to social connection lack of access to housing and healthy food and affordable medical care you know it it misses the point and i haven And I haven't read much in the field of, I believe there are some anarchists

who spend a lot of time writing and talking about it. But I haven't read much in the field of like psychotherapy and that sort of thing. But it's it's kind of a realization of me that therapy is basically focusing on fixing an individual to adjust to a sick society rather than healing the society itself, fixing the society itself.

I mean, so much about therapy is about addressing things that are impairing your functionality to complete your work. Your productivity. Yeah, like it's all, the base of mental healthness is, is it inhibiting you from doing your job? And that's when it becomes a problem. And the only way to solve it is through, like, what deems a success is if you're able to complete your job at a high level of functioning again. It's not actually about your mental state. It's about how much you can produce under the capitalist framework. Yeah. And I mean, not to say that medication doesn't have a tremendous benefit in people's lives and, you know, helping them get back on track and take control of their

circumstances. But, you you know when you have a society that has distress and misery and loneliness woven into it into its core trying to adjust people and adapt people to that is just responding to sickness

with more sickness and you know me I like to Just responding to sickness with more sickness. And you know me, I like to try and keep things on the practical, helpful, positive side. It could happen here. Genuinely, with a smiling face. Like it could happen here and so I just wanted to put forward some recommendations I guess I mean obviously

we can't afford to wait until capitalism has been abolished to be happy that's just ridiculous I mean that's a long term cure for a lot of the maladies and issues people are facing but in the meantime, understanding the roots of our stress in these systems

can make the personal political and drive us to act and connect with people who can support us. I think that in organizing spaces, there needs to be special attention put towards creating support groups that allow for solidarity to be special attention but towards creating support groups that have allowed for solidarity to be built you know allowing people to share their feelings and work through the challenges together self-care kind of frames things in a way that makes it seem as though healing is done on an individual level when healing is communal like you don't have to go through all this alone healing is an act of communion

and the world must be forced to change to reflect that we recognize that we have each other and recognize that self-care and community care are in extricably linked and once those facts are at the forefront once we put communal care at the forefront outside of the claws of the market accessible to all um i think we can find hope you know and it really it can start with something as simple as just reaching out you know um grabbing groceries or doing dishes or watching kids a lot of the care work that is swept to the side when we think about organizing what it means to organize but whether in your home or in your neighborhood or at work or at school because i i think in your neighborhood or at work or at school because i i think in especially neighborhood

settings developing that sense of neighborliness could certainly help even something like a community garden being able to connect with nature again or at all for the first time can really help life hard and we don't have to make it harder for each other. So you can follow me on Twitter, at Under the Score St. Drew, on YouTube.com slash Andrewism, Patreon.com slash St. Drew, and I have been your host of It Could Happen Here. Peace.

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. 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. 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.

Curious about queer sexuality, AT&T. Connecting changes everything. relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday.