It Could Happen Here Weekly 133
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Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here. This is Shireen, and today is part one of a two-part series where we talk to someone who was on the ground in Palestine, in both Gaza and the West Bank. I'm going to say Gaza because that's how you say it in Arabic, but that means Gaza for those who are unfamiliar. Ever since Israel began bombing the people of Gaza in October of last year, it has been virtually impossible for aid to get into Gaza.

Both the Israeli government and its citizens acting on their own initiative have blocked aid convoys, destroyed life-saving medical and food aid, and harassed people for supplying aid. Aid workers who even can get into Gaza have been bombed, shot at, and killed. And it's not just aid that can't get into Gaza. It's extraordinarily hard for information to even get out.

Cellphone signal is scarce, and understandably people there use it to contact their families, not foreign journalists. So, to get a good sense of what life is like on the ground in the Rafah, we spoke to Ava, one of the mutual aid volunteers who, at great risk to her own life, traveled into Gaza to help the people there. My name is Ava. I am a nurse and street medic.

I'm Jewish of European ancestry and was raised in the Pacific Northwest on the traditional lands of the Chinook, Tualatin, Clackamas, and many other First Nations, what is commonly called Portland, Oregon. Ava was able to send us some voice notes describing her day-to-day back in April. She told us what she saw, what she experienced, what she heard. Understandably, there is some background noise in some of this audio, but I personally think it helps ground us in the moment that she's experiencing.

So here I am, the morning of Friday, April 19th. This is the start of my second day in Gaza. I spent a full day yesterday at Al-Najjar Hospital in the emergency department. Getting introduced to the staff there, the work, the equipment, the patterns of illness and injury, the shortages, the struggles, the pain, the happiness. It was really quite beautiful and hard.

and a mashup of everything I've experienced in occupation, things I've experienced as a new nurse to a floor, and things I haven't experienced before, which is being at the site of an active war zone and genocide. On the Shahr Hospital is located very close to

the Rafah border crossing. It's also, I guess, one of the areas more heavily impacted by violence right now in Rafah, which is still much less so than areas to the north like Khan Yunis, etc. We asked Ava to explain the situation in the Rafah at the time of this recording and where she was within it. The following conversation with Ava took place on April 29th. I mean, I will first locate myself in Rafah.

which is the only part of Gaza that I have ever seen. And I have only been in Gaza during the last two weeks. I've been in Palestine twice. This is my first time in this area. And I haven't seen Alina Gaza. I haven't seen Khan Yunus. I haven't, you know, seen the destruction up there. And I think that that is from the people who I've met who are refugees from those areas, health care workers, members of the public.

There's really... Uh-oh. No, that's just a motor. Sorry. There's a lot of rumblings and things that happen periodically. And a lot of them are explosions. That I think is just a motor. But yeah, I mean, it's really interesting because I arrived at a moment when food stuff had just started to cross in a little bit more regularly.

And I was told that basically in the week before like street markets had reoccurred, which hadn't been a thing for months. And that's like a big part of my experience in the West Bank. And so it was really great to see people even if it was just like a little bit of food, selling food on the street, starting to see bread being baked and distributed, seeing people out and about was exciting. There is rampant signs of destruction everywhere.

There are lots of standing buildings, but there are lots of piles of rubble in streets, the sites of former buildings. People have done a remarkable job clearing space, but there's signs of destruction everywhere. And I think in some ways the most painful sites are where buildings aren't completely destroyed. And you can see into people's bedrooms, kitchens, bathrooms, things like that, see artwork still hanging everywhere.

seek fragments of their homes and lives. There are tent cities everywhere. I am currently speaking to from within a house that is one of the houses that are rented by NGOs in the area. Generally people who have managed to escape Gaza and who are renting their homes for a bit of income and to decrease the likelihood their house will be bombed.

And in this particular house, we're in the neighborhood of Tal al-Sultan and there are tent cities all around us. So it's one of those weird situations of staying in a somewhat palatial home and

there are people sleeping in very rudimentary tents and structures sometimes completely uncovered in 100 plus degree weather I think the highest temperatures we've seen were a couple days where it was about 40 degrees centigrade which is about 107 Fahrenheit there are a lot of

Sick people, a lot of struggling people. Longtime listeners of the podcast will remember our interview with Tarek Lobani, one of the inventors of the 3D printed tourniquet, as well as the founder of Glia, a medical aid charity. Eva, who was also a medical professional, is working with them in Gaza.

I've been working with an organization called Glia that works with primary care clinics and with maternity and neonatal clinics. And it's also been starting to work with at least one emergency department. And I've been working at the hospital Al-Najjar, which used to basically be a community tertiary hospital with basically an urgent care clinic that has basically become the only remaining hospital

general public emergency department in the raw. There are other there's like a maternity emergency department, hospital department, there's an emergency department run by MSF and like these other ones, but like this is the only like general public one. And I've been there just, you know, for two weeks, most every day, I took a day off when I was sick and took off day to day to see some different parts of some other clinics, which is really good comparison.

We asked Ava what kind of injuries she sees and what the medical situation is like in Razeh. But I will say that it's wild, the variety of, you know, injuries and illnesses that you'll see in that space. That is true of any emergency department, but depending on the hours I have found her in the day, most of the illnesses and injuries are normal.

more usual, except exacerbated by the lack of resources, lack of primary care resources, exacerbated by the lack of medications, exacerbated by the lack of clean water and sanitation. Occasionally,

injuries, like from bombings or shootings. At night, when I have not been there, I have heard of many missile strikes wiping out entire families, large numbers of people murdered. I've seen, you know, several people killed in that way coming to the emergency department, but in no way representative of what's been happening.

And it's been, by all accounts, better these weeks than it has been before, though the number of missile strikes and things are kind of increasing. There has been word given that there is likely going to be evacuation orders starting in the next in this like next few days to a week from the Israelis, but no signs of an immediate incursion. That said, yes.

We don't know. Most people are pretty hopeful that I've talked to that a ceasefire will be reached, although it's unclear what that would mean. But I can say from my time working in these hospitals and just being in the community that most people are hanging on by a thread, whether they have just gotten something very loosely resembling

a hint of stability of like having a place where they are having access to food there are children playing there are you know some some of the signs of life that i'm used to seeing in palestine there are emergency departments um that are somewhat functional they're like my colleague is working at a NICU where it's always full but they are able to care for the babies that are there

Even not as well as they would like to, but they are able to. If this population is displaced again, which is what the Israelis are suggesting, in this case towards Han Yunis, which they've leveled, and they are trying to get the international community to set up tent cities there, that will kill a lot of people. That will tear apart a lot of what little people have left. So very...

very difficult in that way. That said, it's also more alive than I expected. There's more signs of daily life, of children playing, of people making and serving coffee in the street, of...

A couple of bakeries are producing, you know, all those pieces like falafel sands, like those things exist. Cost of food are atrocious. We don't buy food here, but I'm aware of some of the prices and they are much higher than they would be in the West Bank where food is, you know, on embargo.

For those who aren't super familiar, the West Bank refers to the West Bank of Jordan. It stretches across the eastern border of Israel along the west banks of the Jordan River and most of the Dead Sea. It was designated as its own region when Israel established itself and ethnically cleansed Palestine in 1948, but it has been eaten away to a massive amount.

In 1967, it was occupied during the Six-Day War, and during the 1970s and 80s, Israel began establishing settlements there, which was and is still illegal under international law. And even with protests from the international community, Israel continues, still today, to establish settlements on Palestinian land.

The first major Arab uprising, aka the First Intifada, also referred to as the Stone Intifada, began in 1987 in the Gaza Strip and spread to the West Bank. It ended in 1993 with the signing of the first Oslo Accords. The second intifada, also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada, was

was another major Arab uprising by Palestinians against the Israeli occupation. During the 2010s, the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority worked toward establishing itself as an independent government in the urban Palestinian areas of the West Bank. At the same time, Israel expanded its settlement activity in the territory. Fatah, formerly the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, is a Palestinian nationalist and social democratic political party.

It is the largest faction of the confederated multi-party Palestine Liberation Organization and the second largest party in the Palestinian Legislative Council. Fatah has been closely identified with the leadership of its founder and chairman, Yasser Arafat, who was elected chairman of the PLO in Cairo in February 1969 until his death in 2004.

In May 2021, Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah, a neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem, began protesting against Israel's plan to forcibly evict them from their homes to make way for Jewish settlers. Many of the families were refugees who had settled in Sheikh Jarrah after being forcibly displaced around the time of Israel's establishment as a state in 1948.

Since Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank in 1967, Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah had been continuously targeted by Israeli authorities, who used discriminatory laws to systematically dispossess Palestinians of their land and homes for the benefit of Jewish Israelis. The events of May 2021 were emblematic of the oppression which Palestinians have faced every day for decades.

The discrimination, the dispossession, and the repression of dissent, the killings and injuries, they are all a part of a system which is designed to privilege Jewish Israelis at the expense of Palestinians. This is apartheid, which is, as you should know, prohibited in international law.

In 2021, Amnesty International reported that Israel imposes a system of oppression and domination against Palestinians across all areas under its control, in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, and against Palestinian refugees, in order to benefit Israelis.

Laws, policies, and practices which are intended to maintain a violent system of control over Palestinians have left them fragmented geographically and politically, frequently impoverished, and in a constant state of fear and insecurity, with no freedom of movement or freedoms, period.

And then there's Israel's apartheid wall, which began as a fence along the border between the West Bank and what is called Israel. It was first constructed by Israel in 1971 as a security barrier, and it has been rebuilt and upgraded since. It was constructed by Israel to control the movement of the Palestinian population, as well as goods between the Gaza Strip and Israel. So, that's some history on the West Bank.

And just for some context, 2023 was the deadliest year for Palestinians since the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, aka OCHA, began recording casualties in 2005. Since the Gaza Genocide began, Israel has stepped up military raids in the West Bank, where violence had already been surging for over a year.

UN records show that Israeli forces or settlers have killed hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7th. In 2023, at least 507 Palestinians were killed, including at least 81 children. Between October 7th and December 31st, 2023,

299 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank, marking a 50% increase compared to the first nine months of the year. According to the World Health Organization, since October 7th, 474 Palestinians, including 116 children, have been killed in the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, and about 5,000 were injured.

There are many days where Israeli forces killed Palestinians, but I'm going to refer to a couple just to give you a general idea of the violence that Palestinians experience. On March 21st, there was a day when Israeli forces killed three Palestinians in separate incidents in the occupied West Bank, resulting in 10 Palestinians killed in the territory over a 24-hour period. This was reported by the Palestinian news agency Wafaa. On April 20th,

Israeli forces killed 14 Palestinians during a raid in the occupied West Bank, including an ambulance driver, who was killed as he went to pick up wounded Palestinians from a separate attack by violent Israeli settlers.

Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty International's Director of Global Research, Advocacy and Policy, said, "...under the cover of the relentless bombardment and atrocity crimes in Gaza, Israeli forces have unleashed unlawful, lethal force against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, carrying out unlawful killings and displaying a chilling disregard for Palestinian lives."

These unlawful killings are in blatant violation of international human rights law and are committed with impunity in the context of maintaining Israel's institutionalized regime, the systematic oppression and domination over Palestinians. Because Ava has experience in both Gaza and the West Bank, I wanted to ask what she witnessed while in the West Bank. Here's Ava telling us about her experience. Specifically, I was working with the International Solidarity Movement, which is the same group I worked with.

when I was in Palestine 12 years ago, and that's basically exactly what it sounds like. It's a vaguely anarchist, inter-socialist, inter-communist informed assembly of mostly internationals with a smattering of Palestinians and a couple Israeli activists. I was in the West Bank this round from the end of January until I came to Gaza, which was halfway through April, so basically two and a half months.

Most people who volunteer there, it's anywhere from like two or three weeks to two or three months because a tourist visa lasts that long.

and that's usually the most you can expect. During the time I was there, ISM and other solidarity organizations got to be a topic of much discussion in the Israeli Knesset as they got very excited about the dangerous anarchists in the south. There's a lot of interesting comparisons between the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinian people are divided by the state of Israel into two areas with two separate governments and two different experiences of occupation.

We asked Ava what people in Gaza had to say about the situation for those living in the West Bank, where settler colonialism spreads every single day. Maybe I'll start by saying when I rolled into Gaza and met members from the health ministry, and they were like, oh, you speak some Arabic, or did you learn Arabic? And I was like, in the West Bank? And they're like, oh, it's so hard there. And I was like...

Really? And they were like, yeah, you know, I mean, obviously, like, the war, which is what they call the genocide, you usually hear too, has been very hard. But like, before that, like, they have to live under a different version of occupation or direct version of occupation every day. And I thought that just like touched something intense in me and like was really like a big, I don't know, it just affected me a lot. But as far as like comparisons, there are parts of the West Bank that are

feel independent that you feel like oh i'm in an area that is you know where i ostensibly are not supposed to see israelis and if they are there they're like my friend who just lives in you know lives with her husband who's palestinian they hang out there and are fine most of the time but a lot of these areas that i spent most of my time are areas where there's more direct

contact constantly between settlers soldiers and the palestinian community who are often in those areas like poor and rural and it's like a very different scale of genocide i often talk about that as like a slower genocide and this is a faster genocide here in gaza but it's like no less

horrible it ends up being like a person a person and like parcel of land a parcel of land palestinian herd of sheep israeli herd of sheep settler herd of sheep and it sounds like very parallel except that the palestinians have been shepherding there for generations or hundreds of years and settlers there are some of them many most of them are like teenagers who are dropouts and like get in trouble all the time and then they're brought up there as community service

and some of them know how to shopper and some of them don't, but they use it as an opportunity to like graze their animals on like Palestinian wheat fields. Settler colonialism isn't just a vague concept or a way of looking at the past in Palestine. It's something that happens almost every single day. The

The violent displacement of Palestinian people, which began with the Nekba, has never really stopped, and the families in the West Bank experience their own Nekbas every time their land is stolen. That's why volunteers like Ava go there, to be in solidarity with the Palestinian people. We asked Ava what the process of appropriation looks like on the ground. They stand somewhere, get confrontational with...

the Palestinians with the international and Israeli solidarity activists. They get the police to, and soldiers who arrest people and harass people. They occasionally fire at and sometimes kill or severely injure Palestinians, less commonly at Agena or Israeli activists.

After the seventh, all across the West Bank, initially, a lot of the settlers, as I understand it, responded by kind of clamping down security concerns and then very quickly turned it into an opportunity for attack and turned up at villages like the village of Zenuta and just were like, which had like about 100 families and was like, you don't leave, we're going to kill you all. And so people left.

and it was a credible threat and they did kill a lot of people i think that's the largest village i've heard of recently they disappeared other places people ran away and their homes were destroyed their animals were taken people come back and their cars get torched they get arrested on no charges and held for longer than ever and in many cases are tortured to death

I have a friend and comrade that I organized with a little bit who was in Janine at the start of, or right after October 7th.

And she witnessed truly horrific, you know, targeted killings by drone strikes and other things and basically fled south. So she would be okay. And physically. So that's some of what has happened. Most of the villages that historically have had the like nonviolent weekly protests, which a lot of people who in the past have volunteered, like as, you know, internationals will have experience with. And like, there's a lot of the popular images of like,

youth in keffiyehs throwing stones or at some of those sites. Since October 7th, almost all of the villages stopped, as far as I know, because it was too dangerous. When I arrived, I was told all of the villages had stopped, but then we found out partway that there was a village that was having protests, Kufr Qatum, in the northern half of the West Bank.

And it turns out when we went there, they never stopped. They protested each week. They did scale back what their goals were because whereas in the past, many of them had been shot with live ammunition, like .22 caliber rifles, since the 7th, it basically became all live ammunition and only by the grace of God or luck were none of them murdered in that time because...

The soldiers were not shooting at ankles as is the conventional guidance. I saw videos of them shooting into buildings, into homes, shooting at head height, things like that. And like the week before I went, a guy was shot in the face and he only survived because it deflected down through his jaw instead of into his skull.

So they've experienced a lot of severe oppression there. There's been hundreds killed in the West Bank just since October 7th. There is active fighting in parts of the North, like kind of Jenine and

I think in Tulkerem and some other places between some armed resistance and Israeli soldiers, but it's definitely not at the same scale as in Gaza and there aren't like active bombs falling on people. But it's, you know, still murderous, it's still driving people out, it's still squeezing people till they either lash out or leave.

I mean, it honestly sounds like just a repeat in some way of the Nakba. You know, like that's just what happened. It is. Maybe a little slower, like you said, like a slower genocide. Right. Yeah, it never really stopped. It's been a slow genocide for like 76 years. In addition to ongoing colonization, the economic conditions in the West Bank make life hard for people there. But this does not stop people in the West Bank from being in solidarity with the people of Gaza.

When I was in the West Bank, I will also say like, and I've shared this with many people here in Gaza, like I would be in a tiny one bedroom house, very poor, like people's incomes disappeared after the 7th. That's another thing. Like a lot of people made their money by traveling to cities to work, by working at settlements, things like that. After the 7th, roads were shut down. People couldn't move. Palestinian workers were not allowed in settlements, not allowed to cross into 48 settlements.

so everybody's struggling but like people are spending 24 7 with like al-jazeera or like other palestinian or palestinian coverage of what's happening in gaza like people are right there when ramadan started i was there during the month of ramadan like people were like i'm so looking forward to feeling hunger along with gaza and like that was another aspect of hearing hearing from the first cousins crossing into uh gaza like saying like oh it's so hard over there we're with them like

I think there's a lot of attempts from the Israelis, from...

uh, liberal Zionists in the U S from the state and everything to be like good Palestinian, bad Palestinian. And like all the Palestinians are, you know, like they met not all agree politically. Like there's many different positions on everything, just as there are many positions and everything in every community, there's a lot of empathy between them. And that was another reason I was really excited to come from the West bank and bring like some olive oil and other like gifts on behalf of the community. Cause yeah,

People need to know how much they're loved and thought of on the other side.

I find it sad and beautiful how united of a people are the Palestinians across the tremendous distance of, and also incredibly short distance of apartheid and occupation. They can't see each other or visit each other, but they feel for each other and are with each other in their hearts. And it just kind of wrecks me a little bit. It's also nice to be near the sea. I haven't yet seen the sea, but my friend was here very close and could see it from their house. I just...

feel being close to the sea and like see the sunsets and that's so incredibly beautiful and sad too because most Palestinians don't get to see the sea. And that's going to be the end of part one. In part two, Ava tells us what the process was like traveling from the West Bank into Gaza and she details her experience being on the ground in the Rafah. So please tune in to tomorrow's episode to hear more from Ava. Until then, Free Palestine.

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. The best things in life, they come in twos. Two scoops of ice cream, two tacos. And now for a limited time, get our best deal of the year. Buy any phone when you switch to consumer cellular and get two months of service free. That's right, the same fast, reliable nationwide coverage as big wireless, now with two months free. Proof of the world.

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We're back for part two in our conversation with Ava.

When we left off, Ava was describing her experience in the West Bank. I wanted to know what it was like traveling into Gaza, Rafah in particular, from the West Bank. So now we are going to jump back into that conversation. What was that process of even entering like from the West Bank? So there is no direct way for the West Bank. I mean, it's hilarious because like,

You know, like the conventional wisdom is like, oh, the entire land of Palestine is like smaller than New Jersey. But you don't really notice it until you're like, I am in Jaffa. I'm in Tel Aviv. I am like 30 kilometers or something from Gaza. I am in the West Bank. I am so close. But you have to go a long way over a long distance.

There are a lot of logistical hurdles to get there, just kind of like any kind of travel in the West Bank or any kind of occupied space. But basically, my journey looked like leaving Masafaryata, the area villages in the South Harbour and Hills or Southern West Bank, going north to Ramallah, crossing into Al-Quds.

And then hanging out and then taking, and I got to be in like Goods for Eid, which was amazing to see that. But then hopping on a bus and riding all the way down to Elatz, like a kind of a horrible tourist town at the southern end of 48th.

Then caught a bus into Taba, the Egyptian side in Sinai. Crossing took forever. So I spent basically 12 hours overnight circling the Sinai, which wasn't my original plan, but it's what happened. And then I went to Cairo and I spent some time in Cairo. I got there a little bit early. Our entry was delayed. So I ended up having some days in Cairo to do compress, which was fine and good.

And then went in with a UN convoy, which is really the only way that you can go in, crossing the northern Sinai. There's a lot of checks with Egyptian officials throughout. Then you get to the border, go through a bunch of checks with Egyptian officials.

then you cross over, have a comparatively fewer but still plenty checks with Gazan officials. I also almost cried like looking at a Palestinian seal crossing in because I was like, and getting a stamp in my passport, the like Palestinian authority in Gaza, because I was like, I've never, like it's always every port of entry into Palestine is otherwise controlled by the Israelis. This is like the only one that is under Palestinian control.

Even if it's like Palestinian control in a giant open-air prison, it's like still something. And then we were inside. And I had been working and, you know, driving in cars. And movement is pretty limited for security reasons. The murdering of the, like, World Central Kitchen workers had happened not long before I came when, like, basically a targeted drone strike took out three vehicles and six people.

four or seven people still very unclear reasons but it was not an accident maybe not directed from the top but very scary so um there's a lot of controlled movements so basically you have to kind of have a pre-approved plan for where you're going to go what you're going to do when you're going to move but yeah there's a lot of there's a fair number of international aid workers here right now and i'm really privileged to work with mostly the palestinian ones but a few good internationals too

I wanted to get Ava's perspective about social media and the actions of college protesters. How much coverage of the protests actually gets to Palestinians? I was watching coverage with one of the doctors here of campus protests and other international protests just this afternoon. People are talking about it. People are talking about global resistance and support.

I don't know how representative that is outside of that space. Like I interact with a lot of

members of the public who are not healthcare workers, but most of my conversations are with healthcare workers. I do speak a little bit of Arabic, but not at like a deep conversational level, like enough to do some basic assessment and pleasantries and, you know, meet my needs. A lot of people are aware and are feeling hopeful in this moment with the negotiations in part because of the international pressure. It's interesting. A lot,

I feel like there's a lot more hopefulness in Gaza than I've experienced just talking with people than I experienced in the West Bank. And I think that partly that might be the moment, but also I think it's partly sometimes, and in fact I noticed in the West Bank too, where it's like, it's horrible and horrifying and terrifying to be in the eye of the storm or to be in the storm, but it's like you're in it and you don't have to imagine it elsewhere, if that makes sense.

When that all started, like I tried to plug in as best as I could with, you know, protest movements around the States. And as I'm sure a lot of people, maybe you and a lot of people might be listening, could like resonate with it felt very like exciting to have that much motivation or that many people caring about Palestine, but also really inadequate and really hopeless. Just feel like you're throwing yourself against a wall and nothing's going to change.

and feels really hopeless. And in the West Bank, I had Palestinian activists say, I think this has proven that no protest movements do anything. But like in this moment and in this location, I don't hear that. And I don't believe that that's the case. Like I think that protest movements have a limited capacity to change those people, like the policies and interests of those people in power. That said, it's

so little, so late as far as any kind of political change in the West and in the US and in Europe. Today I visited a cemetery that was built by a guy and his volunteers he works with since October 7th and visited the site of the remains of his family, what remains were recovered and of another person's remains of her family and

Just like a field of some quality and a lot of just like pavers, stones just thrown down with names written on them in the sand. Surrounded by tent encampments with children fighting to water the plants in order to get a couple shekels donation. Like it also really, really sucks. And the fact that it's gotten to this point is unimaginably horrific.

Eva had been on the ground in Raze and helping in what little remains of Raze's hospitals. This is what she had to say about that experience. There is no space. Most of the sickest and most seriously injured patients are treated on the floor because there's no space and they were brought in screaming, bleeding, dying, or dead. First few days, I saw several people die on the floor, you know, saw several bodies on the floor.

It's incredibly hard space. Most of the difficulty that I have seen, like I said before, has not been direct violence from the genocide, such as a missile falling, such as shrapnel, such as concussive force, such as gunshots. I've seen all of those, but that has not been the majority of what I have seen. The majority of what I have seen is children who do not have access to their anti-seizure medications.

So the child comes in and what's called status epilepticus, which is a seizure that lasts longer than 30 minutes. And it's gotten to a point where it's self-reinforcing and can't be stopped easily. And it can be easily fatal, even with critical care resources.

I have seen children whose parents had to switch to a different form of a medication and with a different dosing and things. And that got confusing because they were either like find someone who's bringing in medication or like find it from another place. And it's not written in Arabic and it's not clear. And so they end up getting a wrong dose. It's like...

that Amrishar is now the only provider of dialysis in Rafah. There's another hospital that provides, but everywhere is so overly, there's way too many people drawing on those resources that they're having to run people shorter periods of time, more spread out schedule, so people get critically sick.

It's like a lack of clean water because of destruction of infrastructure, because of mass displacement, because of a extended period when the Israelis and the Egyptians were preventing flow of clean water resources into Gaza. So children and adults are getting hepatitis A.

turning yellow with jaundice, having persistent diarrhea, dehydration, incredibly high rates of septic shock and like severe systemic infection due to all kinds of untreated conditions.

Because it's so much work and so dangerous for people to access care, let alone just live, that people put things off till they're literally dying. It's not a stable situation, but it's like a tenuously, like I said, hanging on by a thread situation. And again, I just, I am terrified of what will happen if everybody has to relocate again. Because it's going to be like...

People not going back to square one, it'll be going, you know, backward into whole new depths of pain and suffering. Because like if they're pushed out of Rafah to Han Yunis, it'll be to an already devastated city with now tent cities and people trying to rebuild a hospital where there is no water infrastructure. Despite the terrible suffering, Ava was able to find time to connect with her faith and her heritage while she was in Gaza.

I am also Jewish. That is not the reason I am here, but it is not a reason that I am here. And during like the first few months since the 7th of October, Jews took up a lot of space in protest movements. And I think for good reason, because frankly, white supremacy and anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian bias is

and people not knowing what to think or do about Palestine. And so...

Having voices of Jewish Americans saying, like, no, actually, this is bad. Like, you can all see that and just go ahead and acknowledge it's bad and we can move forward, I think is important. That said, I think that the voices of Jewish people, the voices of white people, not all Jews are white, of course, but many Jews experience whiteness and do not generally experience Islamophobia or anti-Arab bias, although some do. Here's a voice note Ava shared with us after a long day at the hospital in the Rafah.

Back at our house, I made some soup with noodles and some beans or phul. I lit Shabbos candles for the first time in a long time. I find myself, interestingly, less estranged from my practice than I have been. It feels very in line with my faith practice and my ethics to be here.

And that feels good. And it's been the first time in a long time that I've felt like lighting. There's been several times that people have asked me my faith and I've answered in Jewish. And some of them were interested or excited. Some of them were surprised or confused. Most were like, yeah, no problem. And obviously nobody has said anything negative about me for that or for being American for that matter.

My experience of Palestinians continues to be of the most understanding, welcoming, and people, hospitable people, and people most capable of holding complexity. People here obviously are not fans of the U.S., not fans of the State of Israel, not fans of most of their experience of Jews, but have no problem with people from the U.S. or people who are Jewish. And that much is my experience in the West Bank. So there's that.

I've been offered people's food so many times and I consistently decline except for when I've just fed them and I eat something and then I'm like, that's enough, thank you. I don't know. It's a really magical place and a really hard place to be. And I'm grateful I get to be here. It's obvious how much help there is for Eva to give the people of Gazet with their hospitals bombed and their doctors killed. They desperately need medical help. But, she says, they have given her help as well.

And I think it's really important, like you say, to be focused on the people who are experiencing the genocide and are resisting the genocide, because truly, in no small part, I came to Palestine hoping to be, you know, to do something to help and also to be re-inspired because Palestinians are experts in resisting colonialism, experts in resisting genocide, experts in maintaining the

whatever can be considered hopefulness towards a future beyond occupation and colonialism. It is not fair that Palestinians have to bear that burden of maintaining that kind of optimism and Brazilians and all that kind of stuff in the face of all the horrors that they've experienced. Like nobody should have to experience that. We then asked Ava what the impact of solidarity actions around the world have on the people of Palestine.

I think it is important to talk. I think it's really unsatisfying kind of activism as many kinds of activism are because it's hard to convince people who are already decided they're against you. And it's also painful and exhausting and usually not helpful. And also it doesn't feel particularly helpful just to like rev up people that do agree with you. But I think that people continuing to show up and not letting it rest is

Not letting that energy die. Not letting this administration feel like anyone's forgotten about the ways that they failed.

Also, BDS, please learn about boycott, divestment and sanction. The Israeli government also really is scared of that. They view it as terrorism. So do more of it. Not saying that people should do terrorism, but do BDS, which is not terrorism decidedly. No, I'm glad you brought that up because that's what the students are protesting. They want their universities to divest. I do think that people should learn more about BDS because a lot of the public knowledge and information promoted about BDS stuff

is different from it. And that's fine. I think that Starbucks and McDonald's and all these other companies that are actually not BDS targets being scared to be associated with Israeli occupation state is also good. Don't get so much on a high horse about colonialism. Also learn about like the colonial history and reality of North America and try to work towards like supporting anti-colonial struggle there because it to me feels like the utmost of like hypocrisy to be like

you know, end the last ongoing occupation in the world and ignore the occupation that you might be living on and benefit from personally. I think that it insulates...

I think it does important work towards building international solidarity and building anti-colonial resistance around the world. Let's talk about the interconnection between different kinds of settler colonialism and anti-colonial struggle. And it also insulates our movements against claims of anti-Semitism and other things. Be like, no, it's nothing special about the Israeli state. The Israeli state is a really bad example of settler colonialism, as is the United States, as is Canada. And be able to, like,

talk about all of those things as different sides of the same kinds of genocidal systems. In addition to sharing her impressions of Palestine with us, Ava also shared some moments of her day-to-day life there. These small moments of joy are something that war, genocide, and violence try to take from Palestinian people. And so the experience of joy is a form of resistance in itself. I am here in a tiny courtyard room

There are birds chirping. I can see some sounds of the street. I can see some flowers and beautiful plants next to an incredibly fancy house that a family fled from and is now renting to the organization I'm working with and in turn housing also another family of one of the doctors here. And so it feels so strangely peaceful, very confusing to the senses.

Anyway, that's enough for now. I'm signing off. Bye. If there's anything that you want people to know that we haven't seen or like that hasn't been being shown, like I know the actual atrocity is far, far greater than the snippets we're seeing, but I guess having been on the ground, what is something that maybe you want people to know that we aren't getting across on our phones? I guess the best way I can answer that is like,

It's not particularly original, but remembering that Gazans are just people and they're living their lives and trying to exist. They're just people. And everyone and everything that they've known has been irrevocably altered, whether they've been murdered, seriously injured, had their entire family taken from them and never recovered, all the landmarks they grew up around.

All the trees that they hung out under, all the places that they prayed and ate and got into trouble. Everything is gone. And 30-some thousand murdered, 60-some thousand injured.

does not represent any part of anywhere near the majority of the horror that people are experiencing. But I think it's worthwhile remembering that and also that like numbers are not at all representative. And also just that like some people are political here, some people aren't political. Most of them don't give a damn and just want to live.

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.

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It could happen here. That's the podcast that you're listening to. I'm your host, Mia Wong. It's a podcast about things falling apart and putting them back together again. This is a very, very immediate falling apart and then trying to put it back together again episode. Today we are talking about something we haven't really talked about on this show very much, which is the music industry and the absolute fiasco that is streaming services within it.

And here to talk with me today are two people who are trying to fix some of those problems.

Those two people are Simon and Alex, who are co-founders and worker owners of a new platform project initiative, many such words, called Mirlo. Yeah, both of you two, welcome to the show. Thanks so much. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, excited to be on here. Yeah, so I'm excited to talk with you both first about the issues with the existing sort of

market for music distribution because there's been over the last really 20 years there's been a sort of seismic shift in how music distribution has functioned from a model that was previously largely built on things like record sales to the sort of streaming platform so yeah can you talk about what the issues you see with the sort of current model are and how that kind of led you to do something different

Sure. For me, this is the story of me growing up with music. I was born in the 1980s. My first connection to music was through playing in my elementary school band, learning the trumpet and then the trombone, but also beginning to buy CDs. I remember it might have been Will Smith's Big Willie style or whatever that in the early '90s, I think was the first CD that I bought.

But, you know, that was how I, you know, music came into my world. There were also some cassette tapes, too. I think like when I was younger, it was cassette tapes. Then by the time I was the one like, you know, spending my allowance money, it was CDs. But then, you know, by the end of the decade, by the time I'm in high school, you know, Napster happens. I was, I think, in middle school when that happened. So we should explain what Napster is, because I think we've now reached the point where it's faded into legend. Yeah.

Napster was a big deal because all of a sudden I can speak from my memory of it as a 12 year old or whatever. I was probably 14 maybe when Napster was a thing. I remember going over to my neighbor's house who I hung out with after school a lot. And he had this program on his computer where he could download any song that he wanted. And it was just like this incredible, mind blowing new thing. Of course, that's just from childhood.

the end point of the distribution, right? That's from that perspective. It was this absolutely transformative experience. But of course, all of the steps that got into getting the music there

was putting some carts before some horses, you know, and a lot of it was, you know, getting there via unauthorized leaks or other ways that because it was all of a sudden so simple to share the physical sounds through the new kinds of media channels that were available through the internet, obviously, and through software,

The folks at Napster were able to really jump ahead of that and in classic Silicon Valley fashion, you know, disrupt the industry. And all of that was really happening with musicians early on, right? This was even before the dot-com bubble burst, you know, Napster was riding that wave and a big part of it.

that sort of first arrival of Silicon Valley startup technology really arriving in millions of living rooms and home office computers and all that. And so

I think historically, with technology, this really does play out that oftentimes musicians are the ones that get disrupted first. For decades, you can look at the history of the 20th century and the history of media in the 20th century as this tension between musicians doing what they do and

technologists doing what they do and capitalists using the technology to extract value from the musicians you know and and then there have of course been lots of ways that musicians have organized and fought back and you know wrote their own chapters in the story and i think that we're just just starting to get to the point where that is happening in this latest episode napster is you know 25 years old at this point in terms of when that that moment happened and of course

the reaction to Napster from the entrenched music industry, which were all consolidating under these massive media conglomerates at that time, they fought back.

kind of old school. And I remember I was in college when they were suing college kids for downloading stuff on Napster, for having files on your computer that weren't authorized or whatever. Those were my peers. I didn't actually know anybody personally that this was happening to, but this was something that we were all aware of and we were all kind of figuring out together.

There's a really good Cory Doctorow book that's like a fictionalized account of what this period was like called Pirate Cinema. That is great. So if you ever want to, yeah, people want to read that. It is very good. It's about the sort of film version of the same fight that was happening.

Exactly. And they were, I mean, no holds barred. Like they had massive budgets for expensive lawyers and they just sent them after whoever they could, thinking that that would stem the tide. And obviously that wasn't going to stop anything because what Napster signaled was this massive technologically catalyzed crisis.

paradigm shift where the way that people listen to music was just radically transforming before everyone's eyes. And it took the music industry side of it a little while to catch up to that reality. But once they did, they started trying to figure out, okay, what are the ways that we can

Obviously, if everyone's just doing this illegally and, you know, this is just if everybody is doing something illegal at the same time, even we can't send enough lawyers to sue everybody out of existence. So so we need to figure out how to make this work. And that's when, you know, there started to be experiments with other big corporate platforms.

players in the technology industry. I remember from my perspective, it was the iTunes store. I remember ripping all of my CDs that I bought in high school, like spending a whole weekend, just ripping them all into my iTunes library and kind of curating it and having my, you know, all of my MP3s in iTunes. And I had an iPod and that was where I'd listen to things. And I

I didn't even really purchase a lot of the like, because they had 99 cent tracks. That was kind of the thing was like you could pay a dollar and you can get what you wanted. I didn't buy that much music by that point because mostly it was transferring files that I had burned from CDs. But that was how the industry was kind of making its peace with this disruption was to partner with Apple. And then later, Spotify comes onto the scene with this promise of the universal jukebox, right? Like we're going to build music

the tool that is going to allow for any listener to just pay a subscription and they can listen to anything they want on the internet because you can pirate anything on the internet. We're going to make the legal way to do it. And so we're going to let people pay and we're going to design all of

back end. We're going to centralize it in our technological systems. And we're going to build this tool that can allow anybody to listen to music anytime without having to, in the back of their mind, be worried about if they're stealing from a musician or if they're going to get sued by their record label or whatever. And of course, the record companies were all in on that bet.

And that is where, you know, there I haven't seen all of the books or whatnot, but it's very clear that, you know, the major labels were big, you know, equity owners in Spotify. So they're basically making big bets on Spotify and, you

then the tension that has been navigated is, okay, how do they maintain the value of the catalog, the back catalog, the intellectual property rights of all of the recordings that throughout the history of recorded music, they have consolidated into these catalog portfolios of sounds and songs.

So that's valuable and they need to get their piece from that. But then they also need to get their piece from Spotify, the business, you know, continuing to exist and that subscriber revenue from people who are paying for the privilege to be able to listen to any song that they want at the click of a button.

And that has, yeah, it's created some weird incentives, particularly the group of people at the end of the day that really gets left out of that are the musicians. Because throughout history, you know, the partnerships with people who distribute music have been very exploitative, right? It's like, okay, I'll give you an advance to go record your music, give you all this creative control.

you know, set up the studio time, do all the legwork to make it so you can do whatever you want as a musician. But then we're keeping the master recordings, you know, we're keeping a percentage of every sale that you make. So it does become this kind of

where the labels over the longer term benefit much, much more than the musicians. And then the deal with Spotify really amplified that because the labels are making sure they get their cut, but they're not always making sure that the musicians get their cut. And even the musicians getting their cut has to go through the labels first. And so the labels have this relationship with the technology company that's distributing the files themselves. And

That's kind of the bargain where it stayed, right? And then most recently, that became even more amplified. It sort of turned up the volume on the disparity in this dynamic when Spotify made the decision to demonetize many of the songs that are on the platform. So it used to be that you would get some...

fraction of a cent for every time that someone streamed your song. And Spotify had this complex algorithm for determining how you got paid out. And they recently tweaked that algorithm so that if you don't meet a certain threshold of plays, you don't get anything. So you could have your music on Spotify. It could be music that you worked really hard and even invested your own time and money and resources into putting out there.

And you don't get a penny of it and you don't get to say and why. And that's the starting point from a musician's perspective about where things are at. I think it's also interesting to think about how the way those technology systems and the way that the music distribution has changed has also changed the way that music gets made. So you see a lot more, you know, very big name bands

musicians releasing single tracks to big acclaim because now the incentive and with the tweaking of the incentive is that you want individual tracks that are making millions and millions of plays. So it really becomes about that rather than, and you know, that can be fairly value neutral, you know,

album versus track or whatever, but it is really influencing the way that, you know, the first 20 seconds or so of a song are the most important. So the structure of songs are changing to suit, you know, what, what actual music gets made because people skip the song.

then it doesn't make any money. And yeah, so the way that the technology and capital and the incentives of capital have changed to actually shape the culture that we're consuming, I think it's very interesting. Yeah. And speaking of the way that capital and capital incentives changes the structure of what you're consuming, we need to take an ad break. And we are back. So

I think one of the kind of bleak things about this kind of era of media distribution has been how kind of staggeringly impossible it's felt to resist any of these forces, largely because, you know, now you have the power effectively of these massive tech companies and then also the power of the sort of existing sort of studio monopolies on the same side, sort of wielding a giant hammer and like hammering everyone else into line.

And this is the point where I want to ask, yeah, start talking about what Merlot is. So can we talk a little bit about, I guess, first, how it got started, and then we can get more into what is it and how it's attempting to change all of this? So about two years ago now, wow, I was doing a lot of...

volunteering with a project called Resonate, which is a little bit of a precursor to Mirlo in a way. Resonate is trying to be an alternative to Spotify. They want to be a streaming service where you can basically just create playlists, listen to music. And what was novel about Resonate was that they had a payout structure where every time you played a stream,

you paid a little bit more. So if you pay once, you pay a cent. If you play twice, you pay two cents. And then it would increase to paying around a dollar. And once you paid a dollar for a track, so you played it like nine times, you owned the track. And then it was yours to pay for indefinitely. That was cool. I did some work there. But what became apparent quickly was, again, these incentive structures where if you want to do a streaming platform,

you want it to be a universal jukebox. People will use it for the music that's on it and they want to hear the music that they know. And if you want to be a universal jukebox, you have to wade into the realm of royalties. And one of the things that we didn't mention earlier is that

As far as I know, maybe this changed in the past year or so, Spotify is still not profitable. Despite massive payouts to the CEO, Spotify doesn't actually turn a profit. It's just investment driven. And that is in large part because of the way that royalties work on songs. It's just really hard to actually make money on top of all the costs of the infrastructure.

Which was a little bit of a clue for us for it not working for a bootstrapped, non-VC funded worker co-op with absolutely no money. It was unlikely that that would succeed. Yeah.

We started also looking at projects that are kind of in the same space and were a little bit more successful. That's how we got into contact with Alex. And Alex, I don't know if you want to talk a little bit about Ampled. Sure. Yeah. So Sai mentioned that he was coming out of Resonate. At the same time, I was coming out of Ampled, which was a platform cooperative initiative that was started in the

later part of the last decade, 2018, 2019, I forgot exactly when, but I joined towards the end of 2021. And the idea behind Ampled was that it was going to create essentially a...

monthly patronage kind of platform for musicians. So you, you know, release exclusive stuff on the platform that's yours and that you have the intellectual property rights to, and you, um,

have supporters who pay a monthly contribution to have access to that content. And so they had a little, I guess it was kind of like a blog post kind of format that you could embed audio, you could embed videos, and it would go out in an email to your supporters every month. And they could log into the platform to listen to whatever you're releasing there. I joined Ampled because I was actually...

At the time, coming out of some other work that I had been doing and building democratic workplaces, I had been involved in starting another project that was trying to organize itself that way and was also working with my partner, who's a therapist, to start a mental health worker cooperative at the same time. So I was deep in the worker cooperative space.

nerd zone at that point. But I had not been playing very much music. I'm a trombonist and do jazz and improvise music. And I had taken a couple of years off really from playing and was starting to get cranky. There's just a part of me that needs to make music. That's just the part of who I am. And

It was just becoming really clear to me that that needed to happen. So I was starting to look for what are some ways that I can start putting some stuff out into the world again. And ideally doing that work in the spirit of cooperation, you know, and finding other people who shared my enthusiasm for the idea that doing the work together and learning how to actually run things cooperatively without, you know, a management structure on top of it, siphoning energy away from it.

And so I found Ample on the internet and saw what the proposition was. And part of their structure at the time was that you could actually become a co-owner of the platform by being an artist that was using the platform. And once you got to a certain number of supporters on the platform, then you got to be, well, the governance rights involved being able to

a third of the board members. It was a nine person board with three artists representatives that run for the board. And there was also sort of an extra space in their discord that was sort of artists owner, you know, only kind of space to connect around that. And so, yeah, once I got the number of people following my project, this was in 2022, got an email saying, congratulations, you're an artist owner. And yeah,

At the same time, I realized that the party was kind of over. When I arrived into the space, I was like, hey, everybody, what's up? And it was just kind of crickets, you know. And there were a couple of the workers who were working on it at the time who I'm pretty sure were still volunteering their time, who I'd had some conversations with and gotten to know a little bit. But it was sort of a ghost ship by that point.

And it turns out I was the last artist owner to join Ample. Oh, no. Yeah. Dubious distinction. Exactly. The platform wound down entirely at the end of 2023. And so, yeah, it was maybe a few months after I had joined and started using it. I kind of had a monthly flow where I would...

do something, send an update, write something about what I was working on, record some trombone sounds, you know, link to something else that was on the internet, you know. And so after a few months of doing that, yeah, I got an email saying we're winding down. Sorry. And

That was kind of that. But by that point, I had met Sai and we were both kind of starting to compare notes about these respective projects that had similar goals, similar ideals, similar interest in cooperating and realizing that

Neither of them was going to be a place where we could continue the work that we wanted to do. We started talking about, well, if we were going to start from scratch, what would that look like? Sai brought some other friends he'd been working with at Resonate.

And these conversations, we just started as conversations like similar to the one we're having right now, where we're starting to kind of develop an analysis together about what's going on in the music industry, what might be able to be done differently. And after a few months, those conversations started turning into, wait, yeah, we could actually do some of this ourselves. And that was when the idea of Mirolo really started to hit the ground.

Yeah, we will talk more about how all of this sort of came together and what the structure looks like and what it will look like after more of these ads. We are back. So, all right, let's get into the sort of meat of what Merlot is. So can you talk about what is sort of different about Merlot than the other sort of platforms in the market? How is the cooperative structure work? Yeah, so when we were looking at ways to...

actually make a profitable business, which is unfortunately a thing that you have to do if you want to, or at least a revenue making business, if you want to be able to pay people. We were looking at other platforms and spaces that exist out there that do actually make money. So Patreon and Bandcamp have been profitable. Bandcamp for a long time actually posted their earnings as a report. Then Bandcamp got sold and

And then it got sold again. And then Bandcamp laid off half of their staff, including everyone who was part of the union organizing committee. And we were already like, we already had a basically a prototype at that point. But that was also a moment where we realized it was like, oh, we got to go. We got to press go on this thing.

And so what we have, what the product is right now is basically, it is, I would say, a lightweight clone of Bandcamp. It doesn't have all the functionality with the added features of more Patreon-style subscription-based things. So...

Musicians can go on to Mirolo, they upload their albums, they can sell their albums as digital copies for whatever they want, for free or for money. And then they can also set subscription tiers, use it as a mailing list, basically to send out updates to subscribers, have specific tiers that receive specific content. For example, you could have a tier that if someone subscribes, they automatically get a new release that you put on the platform.

And yeah, that's basically the product. It allows music playing, but it's not a streaming service. You can't make playlists. It doesn't do infinite streaming. The plays are basically promotional plays. So we've had 250 artists, which includes some people who work under several names, who

but so 250 entities, artists who have uploaded 500 albums to Irlo, which I don't know. I haven't done the math on what that is like listening time wise, but it's probably already more music that I could consume. And we have people buying music. Um, it's really exciting. You know, like it's not, we're not, we're not making enough money to, to bankroll anything, but,

It's exciting that I think we've got about $400 moving through the platform every month at this point. So that's really cool. We need more, obviously, but that goes a long way to, you know, I guess confirming the ideas that we've had so far. And there was a second part of that question. Yeah. How does the sort of cooperative structure work now? And then we could move on to what is it going to look like when the platform is sort of more developed, more mature? Yeah.

Yeah, I can speak to that a little bit. So we also, in our thinking about this, took a lot of lessons from our experiences in Amplified and Resonate, also the other experiences I've had in cooperative organizing structures and

One of the things that we wanted to make sure we did was we had kind of a phase one. And then during that phase one, also kind of figure out the vision for what we want to see moving forward and how we can grow into something that's more like what we ultimately want. In other words, we didn't want to put the cart before the horse and saying like, okay, let's draw out like this really spiffy multi-stakeholder cooperative thing where the artists have these things and the, you know, listeners have these things and the coders have, you know, you know,

For starters, we just figured out who among us is ready to put our government name on a piece of paper and open an LLC. And that ended up being three of us who are based in the United States, me, Sai, and one other work on our Jody.

Then from there, the three of us were the core team that is going to build things out from here. We're still very early stages. The soft launch, the platform was the beginning of this year, just a couple of months ago. We incorporated last year in November. All of this is totally brand new and we're figuring out as we go. But the idea with the current group is that we start to practice a culture of decision-making by consent.

And that's this idea that particularly anything high level about, you know, what the business is or how it runs is consented to by everybody in the group.

And so if there's anything that any of us are a no to, you know, we're like, hold up, this isn't going to work for me. That actually is the way that we steer the ship forward. So that's been something that we've been working on building together. We're working with a legal team to codify this into sort of worker cooperative style LLC operating agreement.

We're members of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives. We've been learning from the ecosystem of ways that worker cooperative policies and procedures can be built into the nucleus of this at the beginning. Also, the three of us each come from different places, and so we each bring really different perspectives to where things need to go.

And so that's also been a part of, you know, where we're starting from is if we can get enough unique perspectives into the space, build the core, practice this culture of consent, where even a minority of no is a no for the whole group and start to build that in, then that is kind of the seed.

for where things go from here. In terms of where things go from here, one of the things that you talk about a lot is the exit to community. And yeah, I wanted to ask, can you explain what that is and what it sort of means for what this platform is going to be going forward? Yeah. So this idea of exit to community comes from conversations that have been happening in the solidarity economy world about what would it look like

to support essentially startup businesses, right? That the founders are aiming for a different kind of exit than how we traditionally think about, you know, startup businesses that are aiming for an exit to either get bought by a bigger company or get listed publicly on a stock market and become essentially instruments of financial speculation. And that's really the only

kind of pathway out. We even saw this with Bandcamp that, you know, this company that was

internally profitable and doing things the way that regular old business is supposed to operate, you know, and releasing their financials every year and, you know, really doing it by the book, so to speak there, the end point, you know, 10 ish years down the road was getting bought by a bigger company because what they had built was valuable to Epic games. And, you know, there's been speculation about why Epic bought Bandcamp, but, you know, whatever the reason was, you

It wasn't because they were ticking all the boxes as a profitable business every step of the way. That might have been part of it. But the idea was that Bandcamp had become something more valuable and that they could cash out. You know, I think it was 280 something million dollars, which is a big chunk of change. And that, you know, the decision was,

to cash out was made by the founder. There was likely other people who had input into the decision, but there certainly wasn't a team that was having a deliberation and making a consent-based decision about how to do that. It was one guy and he signed the paperwork and that was it. So the idea of exit to community has essentially been an invitation to explore alternatives.

alternatives that are more in alignment with building a world that we're actually trying to see. So for us, that means, you know, first of all, creating something that is financially viable, you know, that can actually support the work that it takes to both maintain the platform and maintain accountability to the people who are using the platform, particularly the musicians, so that those relationships need to get built. There needs to be enough trust in order to

feel like this is actually a thing worth continuing to do together. And then there's also the work of having it be essentially used enough that the math works out, that the work that it takes to sustain the platform can be supported and the work that it takes to make music can be supported. Because ultimately, this is a platform that is trying to move money into musicians' pockets.

So if we can pull that off, then the next step is the exit to community step, which the way I see it would be essentially co-designing a set of agreements about how the system will continue to be tended to moving forward in ways that are directly accountable to the people who are

involved in making it go themselves. In this case, we see the community as broadly comprised of three different groups, not like groups of people that all hang out together and do stuff together, but there's three kinds of contributions that are getting made.

One is the people who are working on developing the software. This is an open source software project. So there's been a lot of inputs from a lot of different people that, of course, the work of maintaining an open source software project requires resourcing. But that's one of the groups.

Another group is the musicians, the people who are making stuff that they put on the platform. And another is the people who are listening and the people who are supporting with patronage, with money. And some people might be in all three of those categories. So it's not like you're one or the other.

But those three things all have really important, an important stake in the sustainability of the overall operations. So the exit to community step would be essentially designing standards, protocols, agreements, whatever you want to call it for how we do this work moving forward. And then we can get out of the way if we want, you know, so that's the other part of it. The other part of it too, of an exit is how do you make sure that the founders are whole, you know, so that it's not like,

We've put all this work into making something possible and then it's working. And then everyone's like, oh, yeah, screw you. Get out of here. We're ready to take this on our own. We're hoping that doesn't happen either. So figuring out that is also part of what's before us. My aspiration and my vision for this is that culture of consent that we're baking into the worker stage of this right now can be something that continues to thrive.

be a core aspect of how we move forward. In other words, once we really see who all the stakeholders are, let's come up with a creative way to figure out how this is going to work that everybody can consent to. I think that's a good place to transition to the last thing I wanted to ask, which is, you know, you've both came from

projects that kind of fizzled and this is the thing that happens a lot of time with projects like this so what what is the sort of plan to make sure that this is not like the next in a pile of of people who tried to do this that didn't work

We've been having a lot of conversations around that because there have been public reflections happening about the final years of Ampled. So there's some reflections around those things that you can find those on the Internet. Well, so the things I'm thinking about is you really have to think about what it means to be successful. And it's possible to claim that success is...

You know, we go toe to toe with Bandcamp or Patreon and we beat them at the game of being a VC funded startup. But we do it with volunteer and, you know, grassroots money support. And I guess that is a way of thinking of success. It's not my personal way of thinking of success. So a way of thinking of success for me is more.

What's the end result? What are we hoping to do? What are we hoping to prefigure? Is it a more resilient community of people who are willing to go into a next step together? And in that way, I feel like you could say that Resonate and Ampled, they fizzled, but they both created spaces where people found each other and tried to do the next thing.

And I feel like that is very much the project of organizing prior to, you know, global socialism or whatever is looking at what we did and learning from it and moving forward and trying again because we have to try again. And I feel like that is kind of the big picture question, right?

We have some stuff in place that we're doing to make our project a bit more resilient. The consent stuff is part of that, that Alex just described. Other parts of that is that we, from the get-go, decided to do things publicly and bring in people as quickly as possible.

I was the original programmer for the platform, but in the past month, I have been honestly one of the smallest contributors to the platform. We've just had people stepping up in really incredible ways. Truly appreciate it. We've had people stepping in during this campaign. They've been making videos. They've been making...

Art. Yeah, just the way that the community is stepping in and like wanting to be a success, I think is this great opportunity.

example of what it is we can achieve if we're willing to let people into the process of doing that. There are a lot of questions there about who and what is doing that supporting. So that is something that we're constantly checking in on. And I think also a metric of success is who is interacting with the platform, especially at Resonate. They did a really good job of bringing in

The folks from Black Socialists of America were involved. There were people who had experience with Cooperation Jackson who were involved. They did a really good job of diversifying the crowd of people who were not the standard, I don't know, like open source tech people, which is a very white, you know, cishet male situation.

And we were trying to take from those and learn from those and thinking about what spaces we present ourselves in, like very intentional outreach to people to open up through cultural work, through

through conversations that are very local focused to create space where we're talking about these things. Yeah. And I think for me, the idea of success too has to do with our needs getting met, you know, because Spotify is not meeting people's needs. Sorry. It's just not, I mean, I guess it's meeting some people's needs, not meeting very many people. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, they just fired like not literally their entire podcasting division, but an unbelievably large number of extremely talented people got fired. Oh, really? And it, yeah, it really sucks. That's really interesting. Yeah. You know, not operating at the same scale that Spotify is actually making it work. No.

You know, and my hope is that that first of all, the individual artists start to see this as a place that, you know, they can kind of get their crew around them and that this can be a really a nice, reliable source of additional income in their careers, help them pay rent. Like when I was on Ampled, you know, I was bringing in like one hundred dollars a month or something like that, which is.

isn't that much because I was doing it on a very small scale, but it made a big difference in my everyday life in terms of making space to make music a part of it. I know had I leaned into that a little bit more, there could be a significant chunk of

change coming through something like this to support just the ongoing paying rent while making art, which is the thing. On that note, another thing that I think is worth celebrating is that in the end, Ample basically made $250,000 available to musicians and did do what it was trying to do in a successful way.

This is the other thing that I want to aspire to or, you know, define success as is our local scenes starting to work Merlot into the way that they operate. You know, can this be something that small independent labels, artist collectives, you

niche genres in different places, you know, DIY spaces, whatever, that this can actually be a useful tool to make the local space go and to make it easier for musicians to do what they do in community in real life, you know, at the level of local. And we'll see how that goes. We're just getting started, but I'm really optimistic and

Looking forward to continuing to pour energy into that. Yeah. So where can people go to find the platform and support it if they're interested or get involved? Yeah. So we're at merlot.space. That's the website. If you go to merlot.space, you'll see at the very top right now, just for a

couple more days we've got a kickstarter going to kind of keep the lights on for the rest of the year would be tremendously grateful for any support from anyone who's listening today to get us it's where i need to go there and also at the front page if you scroll down to the bottom there's links to email us find us on github find our discord there's plenty of ways to plug in and connect yeah

Yeah. So I'm hoping this all works for the best and hoping that there's a way for artists to create music in ways that are sustainable and not unbelievably exploitative. Yeah. Thanks so much for having us, man. It's been truly a pleasure. Yeah. Thank you so much. Maybe so. Yeah. Yeah. And this has been, it could happen here and find us in the usual places. Yeah. Go, I don't know, go make trouble for the people who exploit museums. Yeah.

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.

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Hi everyone, it's me, James, and I'm joined by Shireen today. And in a rare instance, we are not discussing something terrible and sad. It seems like most of the things Shireen and I talk about. It's a fun episode today, isn't it, Shireen? Yeah, I'm in a good mood, which is crazy to say these days, but I'm happy to be here. I love to be the podcast dummy. I love to have things talked to me at, and I listen.

Yeah. Exactly. That's an intro. You've crushed it. No, we won't be taking that again. Let's go from there. I don't want everyone to think Shireen is dummy. Shireen is very intelligent. But we are making a podcast today about touching grass, a thing that some people need to do. It's become apparent. I've been on the internet. I think some people need to go outside. Yeah. And...

Even if you're not saying the stupidest shit imaginable on Twitter, I still think it's actually really good for you to go outside. Like, I know this seems to be an episode I do every couple of months, but every single time I have to go and do something traumatic or scary or upsetting for work, I just book a few days afterwards to be by myself in the mountains and camp and sort of just not particularly like trying to do massive miles on a trail, just being outside. And I find it's the most healing experience.

I think for me, it's how I process all the things that I have to see and hear about for work. And I want you to do that too, podcast listeners. Yeah. And Shireen, I want Shireen to do it. Nature is healing. It is. And that makes sense that that's where you go. It makes total sense. Yeah.

I think you have to be comfortable. Like, you know, if you're scared sleeping alone outside in a tent by yourself, it's not going to be healing for you. And I can see that I'm a white dude, right? And I go through the outdoors just like I go through everywhere else who's a white dude. You know, that means that something's going to scare me. We have different experiences, yes.

Yes. Yeah. That's why sociology is a thing. Anyway, I want to talk today just about hiking or walking or rambling or hill walking, or, uh, you know, you could call it any of the things that you want, just because I think it's probably the most accessible way to get outside for most people, right? Like,

I could talk about cycling. It's been a lot of my life cycling. It's expensive and confusing for people. So you need equipment, you know, hiking, you just need to get outside. Yeah, exactly. Like you probably, if you're able to move under your own power now, then you can probably go for a walk. I'm going to talk about equipment in the back half, but I think if you're, a lot of people seem to have a lot of questions about backpacking equipment. So we'll cover that. But yeah, I think for most people, just like setting the intention of going for a walk would be a massively beneficial thing.

I think so. I want to encourage you to do that start of summer. If you're in the Northern hemisphere, if you're in the Southern hemisphere, it's a start of winter, but you know, you can still get out there. And so to start off with, I wanted to talk about finding a route, finding a place, picking a route to go hiking. Did you go hiking very much? I actually do. I do like a hike. I like a hike. I've gone backpacking once and I really liked it. Where did you go backpacking? In Ojai.

Oh, yeah. Wow. Yeah, it was a cute little place, but it was so hot and I almost passed out. I should have done it a different day. We should have done a different day. But I do love to hike. I like to be outside. I'm not like the most outdoorsy person. I wish I knew how to make a fire or something or like I wish I was like a scout or

There's lots of shit that you don't want to be involved with in the scouting movement, Shireen. Oh, really? Okay, I take that back. Yeah, I probably do some behind-the-bastard searches for the scouts. Oh, no. Okay, I will do that. I did not know this. But what I mean is I really like being outside and I have the bare minimum of equipment that I need for that kind of stuff. I used to get really intimidated that I didn't know as much as I thought other people did, but I don't think anyone knows as much as they think they do. Absolutely not. Yeah, so that made me feel better.

And like the outdoors are super humbling in that sense, right? Like if you think you know it all, you don't. And at some point you'll get humbled or hurt. So it's good to always have a bit of respect for the outdoors and mother nature. I've seen some people who do not.

Yeah, it can end messily. I've seen some people who learn to climb on YouTube really get to grips with YouTube not being the same as going outside. I guess if I'm starting off, if you're picking a route, I think probably the best way to do it is, I discovered this recently. Lots of these modern smartphones have a step counter in them.

Even if you don't have a fancy watch that counts your steps, your phone does it for you. I think that's a really good way of ascertaining how far you walk in a regular day. I was thinking about how far do most people walk? I don't know. I know a fun fact about me.

I would love to, Shireen. I purposely have never ever opened that app or activated it to know how many steps I walk because I know myself and I know I would get like hyper fixated on it. And I did not want to be confronted with the days that I just sit on my ass all day, you know? And so I have never ever activated the app. That's great, Shireen. I'm proud of you for knowing that that would be good for you. I mean, I just know myself. It wouldn't be a good thing for me. I think it's a good thing for a lot of people to like,

get them motivated and stuff but sometimes it's also like a negative to being too focused on the numbers and yeah totally especially like if you're someone who's had like a relationship with exercise that wasn't healthy for you before yeah i guess that's also part of it too that was my experience i'm sorry why are you why it's not something sad it just happened yeah okay yeah i'm glad that you have a good relationship with it now thanks

But yeah, for people who, you know, if that's not for you, that's not for you. I'll say that. But I just think it's a fun fact. I don't know anyone else that has not, like, I'm terrified of the app. I have not even opened it. When you go to my health app, it says welcome. Like it doesn't even, you know what I mean? Like it's not. Yeah, it thinks you've got a brand new phone. I was going to suggest AllTrails because A, it's got a very complete list of trails and B, I noticed it had a wheelchair friendly filter, which I thought was cool. Oh, I didn't realize that. That's cool.

Yeah, I was looking for wheelchair accessible trails for someone the other day. You can just filter on all trails. Like you can find the ones that don't have steps or excessive rocks or something. So like if that's something you're looking for, I think that could be really handy.

Other little tips for picking your route. If you try and set off early, A, you're gonna not deal with big crowds of people. B, animals are almost always more active at dawn and dusk. I've been trail running a lot recently and I love to trail run right when the sun's coming up. It just feels like it's nice and I see little animals. I don't see as many snakes. I like to see a snake. The weather is probably like the best it's going to be that day.

yeah yeah exactly especially as it gets hotter right like uh if you're not necessarily doing a lot of exercise right now and then you go for you know even a short hike in the middle of the day on a hot day you can put yourself in the box and like i think i've heard before that like the vast majority of trail rescues are like on front country trails well like five or ten miles i believe that yeah and people get confident i guess with that in mind if you're heading out on a little front country hike

I would say some things to bring would be, we'll go over like equipment, boots, stuff like that if you're like getting more into it. But if you're heading out on a little first hike, if as long as you have a bag with some water and a phone and some shoes that you like to wear that are comfortable for you, I think you'll be fine. And I think maybe bring a snack. A snack is always a good thing to have. It's nice to have a little trail snack. Look at the view and have a snack. Yeah, I love a good rectangular food.

But yeah, if you don't have water, that's like 4th of July last year, someone didn't bring water for their dog. And I remember the dog was in like severe distress. Yeah, no, it was one of the stupider things. But I can't think of a year here where I haven't been running or riding on trails and seen someone forget to bring water for their dog. Terrible. I hate that. Yeah, don't do that. In LA, I see like sometimes there's like communal stops for pets, but you can't count on those, you know?

Yeah, totally. I don't really count on any of those things working, you know, like water fountains. Like don't be reliant upon a water fountain. Take a little water bottle. You'll be so much happier. And if you want to find people to hike with, I've had pretty good luck with a meetup app. I used to climb with some people from meetup here in San Diego and like climbing is fairly like fun.

high trust endeavor if someone's belaying you right i definitely met some people there who were very capable and we had a great time climbing outside meetup seems to be pretty good for that kind of stuff rei also often has free like they'll just take you out for a hike oh really hiking sessions and i know they have like yeah yeah you can uh yeah they um they seem nice they have like femme ones that are women trans femme

people can go and cis dudes can't go, which is fine. That's probably a nice thing for some people. They feel a little safer and more comfortable there. They have one, so they're just open for everyone. I don't think that's a dudes-only hike, which is also fine. So those are some places to meet people. I think it's always nice to go with someone, especially if you don't feel confident or you don't feel like...

the outdoors are a place where you're like comfortable it's nice to go with even if it's someone who has the same degree of knowledge and background in it as you like they can help you rationalize your fears yeah when you're alone and like you get lost or you feel panic it's so much worse uh than if you had like a friend with you it only happened to me once and i was on shrooms so but i don't get into that but it was scary um

Yeah, then maybe leave those at home if you're going out for your first hike. Maybe... Yeah, no, you don't need those, if you're by yourself especially. Just take it from me. Please don't go on a mountain, take too many things and panic the whole way home. I want to hear this story afterwards. It was my 30th birthday in 2020, so everything was closed.

I tried to go and touch grass, James, and I had a spiral. You nearly touched it with your face as you fell down the mountain on your shroom trip. Your 30th birthday is an existential crisis, I suppose. Anyway, sorry. I'm derailing. Yeah, that's okay. You know, Shereen, do you know what will not make you have an existential crisis on top of the mountain on your own in the middle of a pandemic? Please tell me.

It is the products and services that support this show. Unless we get a Shroom's ad. Ooh, I would love that. Sign me up. Shroom will read your Shroom's ad if you're in the industry. Please reach out. Her Twitter is at I write okay. All right, we're back. That was an advert for psilocybin. Maybe. It's still illegal. I don't think they are yet. In Oregon, they are.

Yeah, well, there you go. All right, so I'm interested to know what questions you had before you decided to embark on your hiking lifestyle. Or is it something you've always done? I mean, my family and I, we never really did outdoorsy stuff. So it was something I did when I was like finishing high school. I started to be like, wow, I live in a place where I can go hiking and I've never done this before. So it was a learning curve. But I started when I was like 17 and I got my entire family to go hiking with me for the first time. Yeah, my mom and my sister. That's really sweet.

It was also when I was introducing my mom to like Zumba. That was the vibe back then. So I was trying to get active. I think the most important things are, I mean, I'm a big skincare person. I think sun protection cannot be understated, especially...

If you are hiking in the middle of the day, like when the sun is at its highest point, you need sunscreen and a hat. There is like some protective clothing even that could come in handy. But at the bare minimum, you need a good hat. Yes. Not even a cap. I like those those fishermen looking hats. You got to get the whole circumference. But a cap is fine. A cap will do.

I think that's the most important little accessory for me. It's a hat. I have one of those like felted wool hats. Nice. Don't they get hot? No, not really. The wool breathes pretty well. Like it was what I was out at the border yesterday helping out and it was like a 90 and I was wearing it and it was fine. And it's wool so you can like dip in the water and it gets wet. I like one of those. Yeah. I actually have a little list of equipment or clothing stuff which maybe I could go over. It seems like

The vast majority of the questions I get, people like to DM me their questions, which is great, by the way. I do like it when people ask me for like, how can I do this outside thing? There are no bad questions. No, there aren't. And like a lot of my career as a journalist, like earlier on was doing outdoor media and like, yeah, the outdoor media has gone to complete shit. And you know, you can't write anything that isn't advertorial now. Just actually like, just to, if you are looking to buy something,

And it is basically any product review you read on the Internet. Understand that the vast majority of those will only be products that pay a certain percentage back to the website that refers you to them. And so that inherently causes a bias against products. Don't do that. An editor at a big men's magazine suggested that I write reviews about stuff that I'd never seen. They weren't going to even send them to you?

well the company would have done but the editor wanted the piece in like 15 minutes which like i know i used to do lots of reviews of bikes and stuff and i take it pretty seriously and because it's a lot of someone's reviews all the time i have to weed out the ones i think are like sponsored but i really i really like reviews i go on reddit a lot to see what people think like their own experience reddit's a great place i've said that like universally but i do mean with

with respect to yeah it's a place where you can find more anecdotal experience with stuff versus I don't know Amazon review yeah there are some whoppers on Reddit who in any aspect who overestimate their insight into things but you'll find anyone using it

And so yeah, I'm going to go through some different clothing items, stuff I like and stuff that I think you can probably find cheap. And hopefully that will help people kind of, especially if you're thinking of backpacking, it can be very intimidating and expensive, I think. I'm at the start of the PCT almost once a week, right? Helping out at the border. That's one of the areas where people cross and I see people with thousands of dollars of gear that is all brand new.

And I know it can be pretty intimidating, but like you don't have to start there. So there's always stuff you have at home. Maybe we'll do one on camping later in the summer. So yeah, get a hat. Any particular hat preferences, Shireen? I don't know the brands, honestly. I don't know. Unless like someone recommended this brand, use this. Like my shoes are, I think we talked about this before. Yeah.

Solomon. No. Yes. Is that a. Yeah. Yeah. It's a branch. I was going to say salmon. And I was like, that's not it. That's not it. Yeah. Yeah. I think you can find really cheap hats that are protective. You know, I don't think you need a big brand for a hat as long as it like covers your head and your face. Yeah.

Yeah, totally. I trail run all the time in a hat that I got free like five years ago. If anything, I think it's better to have things you don't care about getting dirty or ruined, you know, because you're in nature. I've noticed a lot of outdoor stuff really kind of moving towards streetwear. There's this thing that I learned about recently called Gorp Core, which is my nemesis. I love Gorp Core. Okay. I fucking detest Gorp Core. I think it's cute. Yeah.

Okay. This is going to be the point of disagreement. People like it when the hosts disagree on podcasts. How do you define corp core? It's people wearing hiking stuff to go around town, which is fine. I do that all the time. I dress like a man in an REI catalog. But why are you making it fashion? And then why have you stolen my brands who used to make reliable outdoor gear and now it costs three times as much as shit? I agree with that assessment. I will say...

I don't think wearing hiking stuff is necessary, but I do like to look like I'm going on a safari. You know, I like that character for me. Do you have like a pith helmet? No, it's just more just like shorts that are meant to be hiked in are longer usually. And I just think they look better than other shorts. And you can just wear that and like a button down shirt with some leaves on it. I look like I'm going on a safari, but I'm just walking around town.

I have this vision of 1920s Shireen in a carriage going on a safari seeing a lion. But yeah, Gorp Core is becoming more and more trendy. And I will say that you're right about things being more expensive because of it. Because it shouldn't be so expensive to be prepared to go on a hike.

Yeah. And like, so like for most of the stuff I look for when I'm hiking, a lot of brands I go to are like outdoor research, mountain hardware. I'll list some other stuff as we go through, but like,

Arcteryx and Patagonia seem to have taken off in price and decoupled from other stuff which literally uses the same materials, right? One of the things I would suggest if you're trying to buy outdoor gear is look at the materials used because you might find the same material used in another piece somewhere else and it might cost less if it doesn't have that gulpcore appeal.

If I just go through some stuff I like really quickly, I like to wear button-up shirts when I hike. Wow. I've written a whole piece about this. It's like 2,000 words. So what's the reason? A very shortened version of the reason. They're nice. They cover your neck a bit better.

They have buttons so you can vent your chest if you need to. Ventilation. Get some extra ventilation. Yeah. You can roll up the sleeves. You can roll down the sleeves. They're also very practical. When I met the president of the Marshall Islands, I had one of my little hiking button-up shirts because I hadn't been expected to be formal. And I put on a little tie that they gave me. And I went. I will say I have worn my button-down hiking shirts out and about town because I think they look...

Cute. So, oops. Yeah. I agree with you, Shreen. I think they look cute. You can look cute in them. If you're looking to buy some shirts, Outdoor Research has one called the Astro Man, which is amazing. Like it feels like you're not wearing a shirt, which is always the goal with shirts.

Kuyu, the hunting brand, has one called the Tiburon. Are these going to be listed somewhere? Yes. Like I did last time, I will make a 2,000-word show description with links in it for people. I also like those t-shirts, like running shirts. I don't really buy hiking t-shirts. I think often they're just cotton t-shirts with a picture of a river on. But running shirts are nice. Gore wear. So the people who make Gore-Tex also make their own clothing. Oh, I love that.

There's also really good value stuff, actually. It's worth looking at. Obviously, they're in-house, so they have all Gore-Tex waterproof stuff. But they have a shirt called The Contest, which I was trail running this morning. It's a pretty nice shirt. It gets hot here in San Diego and like...

I don't want to be the guy running with his shirt off. And also, I'm British, so me and the sun are in a constant state of disagreement. I'm not a skinwear person like Shireen. I didn't believe in sunscreen until my early 30s. You cannot say that to me. No, I do now. I do now. I do now. Until my early 30s, I thought that it was stopping my skin breathing and affecting my performance as a bike racer. I'm glad you've changed. I'm glad you've changed. Yeah, I never had skin on my nose. Wow.

Most of my life. And you thought sunscreen was bad?

You have to understand that everything about pro cycling is like lies that older people tell you. So like when I was coming up in cycling, it was like the very end of the like people who had trained in East Germany, like before the fall of the Berlin Wall, right? And they had all these bullshit things. Like I had a team director who would make us eat fast animals because he thought that would turn us into fast animals. Wow, that's a good one. No, I mean, the,

even now there is a little subculture of like don't wear sunscreen the sun is good for you you should just like vitamin d but y'all know wear sunscreen reapply the sunscreen i should make a skincare episode i'm obsessed with this stuff and sunscreen is so important it is you get much better sunscreen outside the u.s yeah i do i use korean sunscreen korean sunscreen is great okay great

Okay, I get European sunscreen when I'm in the airport. But also, both European sunscreens and Asian sunscreens, they're formulated so much differently than the ones in the US. I feel like there are certain things that are different. I don't know. America's fucking up.

It's because the active ingredients haven't... The FDA. Okay, yeah. All right. Sunscreen conspiracy diversion over. Shireen, maybe we should take an advertising break here in case we land the Korean sunscreen advertising. Yeah, let's do it. I want to get shrooms and Korean sunscreen under my advertising belt. That would be great. That's my entire personality. Shireen...

All right, we're back. We hope you enjoyed that advert for sunscreen. I want to talk about trousers just in general, but also with reference to hiking. Sometimes I go out and I drop water for people so that they don't die in the desert. And that's something that I think is one of the coolest fucking things that you can do if you live near the border. And everyone who does it is a massive legend, in my opinion. And even if you just come out once, you could save someone's life. And that's pretty fucking cool.

And I want you, if you live near here, to feel like you can do that. And if what's holding you back is you don't know what to wear or what backpack to get, just DM me on Twitter. But sometimes folks come out in jeans.

I would not suggest hiking in jeans. I would make jeans are great. I love jeans. I like to climb in jeans. I know Ian, the producer of this show has some opinions. Oh, I would love to hear Ian's take. You haven't seen this. Yeah, because Ian doesn't tweet very much. So I only found his Twitter like six months ago. One of his tweets was about why do people work out in jeans? That's a good point.

Because it's cool, Ian. No, no, no, it's not. Because you have to climb in jeans because you have to remind people that you were climbing before the fucking Alex Honnold film came out. And the way to do that is to be a dirtbag. And the way to do that is to go to a secondhand shop and buy the ladies jeans that are stretchy. The ones that are worn in. Because new jeans seem so uncomfortable to do anything in, in my opinion. No? No.

Yeah, you want the stretchy fabric jeans, you know, the ones. It's okay if they're normal jeans. Yeah, they've got to be worn in and then you cut them off a couple of inches above the ankle so you can see your feet and you go climbing in those and a cut-off t-shirt and you keep climbing grungy because that's important.

You can't be letting all the have you seen this film free solo people change it. So yeah. Oh gosh. Yeah. That's one of the things that I will never back down. Someone asked you that run. The easiest route in my climbing gym for years was called Hey dude, have you seen this film? It's called free solo, which I thought was great.

Wow. Yeah. You can go climbing in jeans, but don't go hiking in jeans. They don't breathe very well. They don't move very well. They do chafe very well. And if they get wet, they suck. So you can get good...

like, Nyko or Polyester or like even some with like spandex or like green so they stretch trousers pretty quickly. I really like Prana trousers. They're like the yoga brand. I'm wearing some right now. They have a one called the Stretch Zion. They have a men's model and a women's model, I think. And they're really cheap. They're always on sale.

I really like those for like a cheap go-to trouser for hiking. Also, there's a brand called True Work who make like technical work clothes, which I like to wear if I'm like, when we were constructing shelters a lot in Hukumba before the border patrol tore them down, it's nice to have the little like extra pockets for your tools and for your pencil and your tape measure and stuff like that. I wear those for hiking as well. And they're kind of dual purpose. Generally, if you have trousers that are lightweight, that breathe well and have good flexibility, you're good to go.

The next thing I have here is socks. People really fuck up with socks. And it seems like socks and footwear are areas where people really get themselves into trouble. Tried this out recently in the interest of journalism, actually. There are a couple of brands. The things that I do just on a whim. Darn Tough. You know Darn Tough socks, Shireen? No. Okay. Now you do. They're a company in Vermont who make good socks. Wool socks. I do want, I need new hiking socks. Oh,

Okay, good. I want a list, yeah. Sit down. Okay, two brands that I'd recommend are Features and Darn Tough. I like them because they fit well. They're wool, so wool still insulates when it's wet. Yeah. And they breathe well.

It doesn't burn, but it's not a big concern for most of us hiking here. Unless you're in a forest fire, I guess, but they'll find your feet. That'll be great. They also have lifetime warranties, which I think is really cool. For a sock? For socks, yeah. That's cool. Yeah, so I tested these out in the interest of journalism and features. And science. And science, yeah. I did a...

Did a little double blind test and I contacted Features and Dan Turf and said, hi, I've worn holes through the front of my socks. And they said, no problem, send them back. And I sent them back and Features got me the socks. So what they do is they send you a coupon and you go on their website and you order whatever socks you want. And it took me about a week and I had new socks.

Well, down tough took a little bit longer, but I had new socks. So like, if you're a person who doesn't want to spend a lot of money, you can spend your money once and have socks for life, which I thought was pretty cool. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, it's cool. I heard that they had a good warranty, but then I was like, you know what? Lots of brands say lots of bullshit, so let me test it. And tested I did. It turned out to be...

True, in both cases. I will say, for the inexperienced person, I think when you hear wool socks, you're like, okay, I'll wear those when it's cold. But no, you have to wear them for temperature regulation, right? Yeah, you want to let your foot breathe, right? So you don't get blisters, your feet doesn't swell up. You wear them any weather, is my point. I feel like when I hear wool...

as someone that grew up in SoCal, I'm like, okay, it's going to be cold. No, it's not. Just put them on your feet and your shoe will be more comfy. Also a comfortable shoe, essential. Yeah. I'm sure you're going to get there. But yeah, there are different thicknesses. You have wool socks for cold weather, but I also have wool socks for hot weather, right? But they're all wool, you know? They're all wool. Yeah, they're just thin. Actually, I wore a wool shirt when I did a couple of years ago. There was a heat advisory.

So I figured that would be a good time to go backpacking on the PCT because no one else would be there. Yeah, good idea. It's great. I had a wonderful time. It was not molested by people. You saw some snakes. It was nice. Rescued a dude. Did you wear sunscreen? Yeah, I did in that instance. And a hat, actually. Yeah. This was after my sunscreen awakening. Oh, great. I'm so glad.

Don't go out without water. This dude was out looking for Kitchen Creek Falls, which if you're not familiar is a seasonal waterfall in East County, San Diego. And he was probably about three or four months late or early, depending on how you look at it. And so had gone out without water, which don't be relying on that kind of stuff. If it says water on the map, that's cool. Still bring water, especially if you're in the desert. Yeah, let's talk about shoes. I think people want to go hiking in boots because that's what like...

you think of when you think of like rambling or hiking. But like, if you don't wear boots for work or habitually, you know, for just like,

cross-punk reasons then you might be really uncomfortable in boots like you're not used to hard things rubbing your ankles so it would not suggest and unless you're putting on load like i wear boots if i'm backpacking certainly if i'm like pack rafting or something where i've got like the raft and everything else and i'm gonna do a long hike in right so i've got all my camping stuff and the raft i'm gonna wear boots or if i'm off trails when we drop water we're not going on trails right we're just sort of out and about climbing up mountains so i'll wear boots for that

that but for almost everyone especially if you're hiking on trails you're going to be just fine with shoes i think the big thing boots give you more stability right they stop your ankle from twisting that's what i wear them i have weak ankles yeah it's genetic i wear boots yeah you can work on their little ankle strength stuff you can do but uh that's not happening i will i'll just wear the boots boots maximalist uh for me like um finding shoes that are stable that like

you know, like inherently stabilize my foot without clamping my ankle has been really good. I feel more stable in a boot though. You don't think so? Yeah. But then you're just sort of transferring to me. Like sometimes I like to have the like ability to move my ankles, especially like I like to trail run as well. If I'm, to be honest, I'm just going out. I'm probably running at the minute. And like even overnight, it's really fun to just run until it gets dark and then sleep and then run again. Um,

That's a fun thing to do. Well, I'd be curious about your hiking shoe recommendations versus boot. So I got three. They're all like, they have little kind of your foot's like sitting in the insole, not on the insole, if that makes sense. So it's like cupped a little bit and that keeps the inmost ability. One is the Salomon Genesis. It's the cheapest one they make in that line. I think it's a really good shoe.

I try running them all the time too. The other one is Sockany Exodus Ultra 2, which is really cool. It has like a softer foam in the middle and then a stiffer foam around the outside of your heel. I could talk about this shit for hours, but it feels very comfortable and soft, but also you're very stable and they're about to be phased out so you can find them really cheap. Why are they about to be phased out?

Running shoe companies make a new shoe every year because they feel like they need to... But a human foot has been the same, I would argue, for a while. Yeah, it's not changed much. Technology advances, right? Like shoe foams have come up even in the past five or six years. Like if you haven't bought running shoes in the past five or six years and you have the means to, buy some more running shoes. Piba foams and things like that, like these high energy return foams, make running a lot more pleasant. But often it's just like a different color scheme or, you know, slightly different upper. Yeah.

I think in that case, you're just fine. The other ones that Merrill kind of had a reputation for making like old man hiking boots for a while, but their trail running shoes are really great. That's cool. Yeah. My friend has Merrill shoes and they're cute. See, they didn't used to be cute. They used to be very like dad coded. Yeah, I think they've turned a corner. Yeah, they have. I'm a big fan now. I'm wearing some right now, actually. I like to wear Merrill. The agility peak one is good. The long sky is one I like when I'm trail running in.

burlier terrain. If you're going to buy boots or shoes, please try them on or at least order them from a website that lets you send them back. Yeah, I really think that's essential. I messed up the first time I really invested in expensive boots. I got them after reading all these reviews and I hated them. I walked around my house and I was like, these are terrible.

But I was able to return them to my REI that was local. And I tried on the other shoe I wanted to try on that they had. And that was great. I walked around REI and I was like, this is the one. You have to try them on. Yeah. Take the socks you're going to wear when you're hiking as well. Don't just take socks that don't feel the same. And then walk around. And the next thing I had was backpacks, actually. And I'm going to say the same thing. Like,

The most important thing for a backpack is that it fits your body and that it is fitted to your body. REI will do that for free, which is great. Lots of other outdoor shops, right? San Diego used to have Adventure 16. It's sadly closed, RIP. But anyone who's trying to sell you a backpack in person and won't fit it to you is probably someone you shouldn't buy a backpack from. So if you Google around enough and you have enough Google for you, you will find a video of me teaching you how to wear your backpack.

Someone will find that, James. Yes, I know. I've got a broken arm in that video, which you can't tell. I haven't sought medical attention at the time of the video. I got hit by a car and then I knew I had to do the video the next day. So I went to do the video. It was your life, dude. I had to make money. I was broke. I will say that

As someone who isn't the most knowledgeable about this stuff, but I like it and I would consider myself like a, I don't know, intermediate, not advanced. But going to REI and getting a backpack fitted, that's what I did. Don't shy away from asking questions. They're there to help. And I think as soon as you get over that, you'll be fine. I feel like as soon as you just like accept that these people are there to help you and not to shame you, hopefully, that's great.

And like, yeah, they're trying to sell you things, but I don't know, just go in with a smart head on your shoulders. Yeah. Expect people to be well-meaning. Like we all just want you to be happy and enjoying the outdoors with us. It's not a competition.

With backpacks, real quickly, you've got basically three distinct types. You have ultralight backpacks, which don't have a frame at all. Imagine a bucket made of fabric with two straps attached to your back. I wouldn't suggest starting there. You have external frame. That's where the frame is external and the bag is clipped onto the frame. And you have internal frame, where the frame is integral to the bag, right?

Most of the bags you're probably going to look at are internal frame to start with. The heavier the bag gets, the more structure you get and the more little pockets and organization you get. Those can seem super tempting, especially when you're looking online and you're seeing like different specs and trying to compare them. If you're a person who has access to Ziploc bags, you don't need all the pockets, right? Like what I do every single time I go backpacking is I put a bin bag in it that waterproofs it, right? Yeah, it's cool if your bag says it's waterproof. I don't trust it to be waterproof and...

It doesn't need to be because I'm going to put a bin bag in there anyway. And I put everything in stuff sacks or Ziploc bags in there. Likewise, you'll find lots of bags with like 75 ways to access the main pocket. Most of the time, you're going to have your stuff inside a waterproof bag anyway. It's not such a big deal. I think the most important aspect of a bag that you should look at first is just the weight. Yeah, you can fuck yourself up with a heavy bag. Although that said, like...

One of the bags that I use the most for water drop stuff is a Mystery Ranch Blackjack. It's a military bag. It's heavy. I think it's 5.7 pounds for the bag. Wow.

I'm not trying to be light. What I'm trying to do is fill it with gallons of water. Right. And then haul them up and down about it. So I might as well make the bag comfortable because it's a negligible percentage of the overall weight of shit I'm carrying. That's fair. There's a bag called the Radix, the Mystery Ranch make that I've been using a lot recently. And it's made of like very lightweight material, like an ultralight bag. But I like their frames. They have like a yoke that kind of wraps around your body as opposed to a frame that sits on top of your body. And that works really well for me.

Their warranty is good. Their products are good. I've used their bags in like every continent apart from the Antarctic and never had anything break. Especially like if you're a person who gets anxious about your ship breaking, then you can't go wrong with them. They also have incredible discount. If you want one, but you think it's too expensive, take your time and you'll find them way cheaper.

That's a good bag to get. I like Gregory bags. Osprey are a good brand. Osprey bags can tend to be like... That's the one I have. My backpacking backpack is an Osprey. Yeah, they're very comfortable. They have a lot going on sometimes. And they have that mesh. Do you have the one with the mesh? Yeah. They are very comfortable. I have an Osprey bag that I really like. I took it packrafting in Alaska and it was great. It was a bummer. If you're just going on a day hike, you don't need very much backpack, right? 20 litres or whatever is fine. Even 10.

I really like those running vest style backpacks where you have like pockets on the front. Have you seen those? You don't have to take it off. No, I haven't seen that. Oh, it's cool. Yeah. Do I have one?

I'll send you a picture later, Shereen. Great, thanks. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. When I run, I like to have a little water flask down there and then... That makes sense, yeah. And then I was like, why do I have this on my normal backpack? Why am I having to reach around for my snacks? I'm all about efficiency, so running vest-style backpacks are cool. Camelback has some good ones. They have one called the Octane that I use a lot. Mm-hmm.

And then when you're buying a backpack, you'll want to buy a little water reservoir to go in it. One of the reasons you're going to waterproof everything in your bag is because every single water reservoir that you put in your backpack will break at some point. And when it does, it will send its contents into your bag and it will be a bad day unless you've waterproofed everything. This will happen to you, especially if you like sit down and lean back and then you crush it.

So that's where you're going to wash with everything. But I think Hydra Pak make the best ones. I really like their insulated ones. Even if you don't get an insulated bladder, get an insulated sucky... That's the word, Shireen. Thank you. Last podcast of the day here, guys. Yeah, get an insulated straw because when it's really cold, otherwise your straw...

will freeze because it's like a small amount of water right wait it freezes more quickly i never thought of that i've only backpacked and hiked in really hot weather yeah when it's below freezing like even like i was out on palomar in october after i returned from kurdistan it said it was you know below freezing top of the mountain and you know my water froze you can blow your water back out again but you're just going to forget to do that realistically and then yeah the last thing i had was hiking poles hiking poles great i've never had a pole

You never had a pole? You ever had a stick? I mean, if I find one. I guess I don't hike on the things I might need a pole for, I guess. I don't know. Yeah, they're great. If you're someone who maybe has some injuries or you're worried about your knees just because they hurt in general life, they're a great way to take the strain off your knees. I'm trying to convince my mom to get a pair of poles because I think she would really benefit from them because she wants to go on all these hikes and...

just needs help so there's no shame in getting a poll or two i will donate your mum some polls shireen oh that's my gift it's my gift to your mom shireen's mom helped me translate for some migrants the other day my mom's the best big fan i'll send your mom some polls don't be afraid of using them don't be thinking that like anyone's going to judge you for using them like if that makes you feel more stable and comfortable go for it

Don't buy the ones that telescope. You know what I mean by telescoping? Yeah, because they collapse. And I remember I was up in the Sierras.

six or seven years ago now and it was fucking snowier than I'd expected then my stupid hiking pole collapsed into itself and like it just just made the day like less fun yeah I could imagine that but otherwise a stick is great right find a nice stick find one with a nice notch for your thumb get it go from a nice type of wood I used to love making sticks when I was little

You can get a stick topper, you can order them online. You know, it's got like a head of a dog or a pheasant or a deer. Oh, it's like a cane. It's like a fancy little cane. Yeah, we had crooks. You know a crook? No. For like when you're catching your sheep. James, why? You mean like just the hook looking thing?

Yes. Yeah, it's called a crook. I did not know that. I know what you're talking about. Now that you mentioned sheep, I know what that is, but I've never known the name. Yeah, because you're sheep eggs. But yeah, it's called a crook. Those are great for walking. I can see that. Yeah. Yeah. We used to use those a lot when I was a kid. But yeah, having one is great. And I think especially like...

If you're nervous about falling, you know, you're a person who worries about their knees. If you're picking your first route, keep it pretty flat. If you're going up and down a lot of elevation and you're worried about how that's going to feel, the poles are a good way to mitigate someone worried that I'm going to fall on my knees. But yeah, don't feel afraid of using that stuff. Oh, I forgot to say one thing in my shoes thing. Chacos are the best sandals. Fuck all other sandals. That's what I have to say about that. You know when you're cool because you have the Z from the chacos burned onto your feet. Wow.

unless you practice foot skincare which i've not upgraded to that level yet i was thinking about getting those i remember i was deciding between those and something else and i got the something else but now i have to go back and get those a couple of years ago i rafted with some people who listen to the podcast they invited me and i went and we did a week on the colorado that's so cool you're so trusting a little irl i like to go outside it was cool i like people um

So some of them reached out and I said, yeah, let's go for a rafting trip. So we went on a rafting trip on the Colorado River. And I wore my Chacos the whole time. Wore sun cream. None of the time. Feet were just roasted. Just red. But with a little Z from the Chaco. For the whole summer. Anyways, they are very comfortable sandals. One of my friends, another podcast listener, is hugging the PCT in his Chacos right now. From Mexico to Canada. So yeah, I hope you're doing well. They know who they are.

Surprisingly enough, I've gone long talking about outdoor things. But no, I'm glad you...

took the time to make this little list. I realized I don't have to be as big of a dummy as I thought. I thought I was going to come in here and be a huge dummy. I know more than I think I do, you know? And I know what to do outside most of the time. Yeah, Shireen, yes, you do. Thank you for listening to me talking about going outside. If you have any questions, you can DM me on Twitter. That's the only way I communicate with anyone now. Don't have a DM me and I'll send you my email. But really, like, I just want people...

to feel that the outdoors is for them and feel safe and feel comfortable and feel like they know all the things they need to know and to not feel

buy stuff because someone's getting 3% back on it even though they've never touched it in their whole lives. Also, I know that we're all fucking poor and spending your money is hard so I've tried to suggest stuff that's not crazy expensive or that you can find on sale but if you have questions... Oh, one more thing. There's a company called Outdoor Vitals which has a subscription. You can be a member and then you can get a lot of their stuff cheap for backpacking. Nice.

It's a good company and they make some good stuff and they do some good stuff for the outdoors as well. But yeah, if you have questions, you can message me. We will do one about what to put in your bag when you go backpacking. Eventually, yeah, go outside, send us your photos of you going outside. If they're not weird, we would like that.

It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone Media.

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