maria (0:2.761)
Welcome everyone to the Flaming Hydra Round Table podcast. I am so happy to be here. Yay. With Anna Merlin, Ben Ehrenreich, Kola Tubosun, Kate Harlow Shirley Wang, and our fabulous engineer, Joe McCloud. Hello everyone. Please feel free to jump in. Yeah, talk, interrupt.

Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún (0:28.021)
Hi, hello.

maria (0:32.337)
Say all the things. Everybody who is here published, hi, everybody who's here published a beautiful piece last week. And some other people may turn up or not, we'll see. But our goal here is to have a chat altogether and to discuss all the beautiful things that we published. So I'm just gonna randomly hop in.

kate harloe (0:32.446)
Hello.

Shirley (0:33.565)
Hello.

Ben (0:34.691)
Hello.

Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún (0:36.544)
It's good to be here.

maria (0:58.329)
and say hello to Shirley Wang, National Treasurer, who is also our managing editor, and who published a piece this week about leaving the city of Melbourne. How are you, Shirley?

Shirley (1:11.325)
I'm good, thank you.

maria (1:13.269)
Good. Okay, so where are you now?

Shirley (1:16.773)
I'm in Iowa City and I moved here. I moved back here like end of last year.

maria (1:24.417)
after having been in Melbourne for how long?

Shirley (1:26.885)
Yeah, I was in Melbourne for three years over the pandemic and my partner is in Australia. So we built a pretty nice little home over there. But then, you know, when Flaming Hydra started going, I wanted to move over to the US and be on this time zone with you lovely people.

maria (1:49.841)
And so you went on a food tour to say farewell to your adopted city.

Shirley (1:53.542)
Yes.
Yes, yeah, so my brother got me this gift. It was a foodie tour of Melbourne, and it kind of takes you around the iconic eats of Melbourne. And yeah, I think during I was thinking about, you know, my time there and all the things that I had really enjoyed, like, you know, sitting at these little cafes and the beautiful weather. But I was also thinking about how
hard I had tried to make bonds while living there as like someone who didn't know anyone except for my partner. And I realized that I no longer had to try so hard to make friends and I realized that on this tour and I kind of wanted to capture that shift and how I was approaching like social interaction.

maria (2:43.261)
Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I'm a person who has lived in different cities and I think like probably Pretty much everybody here has been transplanted into other cities And it's kind of like there's this interim moment. I'd love to hear what everybody thinks about this There's an in-between space where you belong to the place And you feel a certain sense of allegiance to it. But now you're going to leave And you're in this like sort of waiting room of your own soul
how you interrupt your life to change places and to interact with other people and how you're approaching and waiting for the new place. I know, Ana, you moved to LA, right, from the East Coast?

Anna Merlan (3:30.427)
Yeah, I did. I moved to LA from New York. I'd been in New York for, I guess, seven years continuously. Yeah. I moved because my partner had moved here and eventually prevailed upon me to join him. I had a super weird moment right before I moved because I was, you know, preparing for like six months. I had already put all my stuff in boxes and put them on the Greyhound, which is a thing you can do. I wouldn't recommend it if you want things to show up in one piece, but you can do it.
And I went to go buy like my last weekly Metro card and got an error message because I had already changed my address and I had the wrong zip code when I entered my credit card. And it was this weird moment of staring at the machine and trying to figure out what was wrong. And then I realized that I was already like halfway to the other place. Yeah, it was very strange. Yeah, and then of course I'm a terrible fit culturally for LA, so that's been weird.

maria (4:19.405)
in half in and half out. Do you feel?

maria (4:26.165)
Yeah, I was gonna say that must have been a bit of a wrench, but you're from Sanfe.

Anna Merlan (4:31.351)
I'm from New Mexico, yeah. I'm from Santa Fe. Yeah.

maria (4:33.521)
Yeah, which is like, I feel like Santa Fe is, like if you could be happy and comfortable in Santa Fe, which I know a little bit from having got to school there as a kid, it's more like LA than it is like New York, I would say. Right?

Anna Merlan (4:47.823)
I don't know about that. I would say that people in New Mexico are normal and people in LA are not normal. So there's that. I don't know. Depends. Depends on who you're talking about. But food-wise, weather-wise, in some ways, it is not as much of a translation. But New York felt. In New York, people.
And I don't know how everybody else feels about this, but in New York, people mostly leave you alone in mind their own business unless something is happening that is disrupting the flow of the universe, and then they will help you. Like, if you are on fire, like, they will help you. If your bag is stuck in the subway, they will help you. And New Mexico is like that too, where people are very private, but they will, they will help you. And then LA is this other weird set of things where I went and I bought a plant for my boyfriend.
And the cashier was like, how's the relationship going? And I nearly passed the fuck out because I was like, what? Who are you? Just nearly lost my fucking mind.

maria (5:49.829)
Oh, I have always said, yeah, wow, that's scary. I mean, I'm from there, but like, it is a really weird place, there's no question. There's something, part of it is to do with being in a car and part of it is to do with Hollywood. But like, you don't have to interact with people the same way they do in New York where everybody's all cheek by jowl and you're all talking with each other all the time. But I always tell people like, if I had to break my leg in any city I've ever been in, it would be New York. Because people would be screaming at you and saying, how can you be so fucking stupid? But they would be helping you.
You know, whereas in LA they would just be driving by and ignoring you with your broken leg, I think. Anyway, just a theory. Okay, I want to talk about your beautiful place. It was great. It was about a scrape with a cult. Please tell me more about that.

Anna Merlan (6:24.729)
Yes.

Anna Merlan (6:34.631)
Um, so this was my weird, uh, experience of having someone's. Yeah. Oh, can you hear me?

maria (6:39.253)
Can you hear me?

maria (6:43.793)
Okay, sorry. Yeah, no, I lost you for a sec. Sorry, go on.

Anna Merlan (6:46.195)
Okay, good. Yeah, this was my weird experience with someone suggesting that I join them for a self-improvement seminar that I later realized had to be the cult nexium, that there was no other thing that it could be. This was someone that I met in Santa Fe who's the class, the sibling of a classmate of mine. And so it's a small town. I ran into the classmate. I ran into the sibling.
we exchanged numbers because we were both journalists. And then a few weeks later, he called and said, you know, he told me that he ran a news outlet, that he was the editor in chief of a news outlet that ranked other media outlets for their fairness and impartiality on a numerical scale. And I said, that's not a thing. You can't do that. That's not how anything works ever. And he didn't agree with me.
But he was normal about it as a journalist. He was like, oh, well, I disagree. And I was like, OK, well, this is clearly an actual journalist, because I'm being very rude, and he's not put out by it. And then called me a few weeks later and said, I have all these things I'm working on that you might be interested in. And also, I'm attending a self-improvement seminar. And would you like to join me? And then paused and said, but you're probably not into self-improvement, are you? Which.
I took to be, as I wrote in the piece, a little bit of bait, right? A little bit of nagging to see if I was interested in being, you know, shamed into enjoying more self-improvement and visiting whatever this thing was that you wanted me to do.

Joe MacLeod (8:11.276)
Whoa.

maria (8:29.181)
I just think it's amazing. Like, what is going on through the mind, what is going through the mind of a person who would speak to you like this with an ulterior motive? How am I gonna make the ask? How am I going to pretend that this is a real question and actually care about self-improvement and actually lure you into this weird thing? It's like, and I could hear all the stuff, cause you know, like.
we were talking about in LA, like I've heard a million Scientology pitches, very similar, like this sort of pretense at friendliness or whatever, or like a human connection that sort of devolves into this sort of luring into a different sort of realm or environment or relationship. And it is like the way that you described it was so reminiscent of so many sort of cult approaches of what I imagine, you know,
political ones and all kinds of different attempts at sort of persuasion that are really different from how people in this room go about persuading people, which is like with facts or stuff. So I would love to hear your thoughts on that.

Anna Merlan (9:44.559)
I'm sorry, I'm freezing a little bit, so people might have trouble hearing me. Yeah, I don't know. It was interesting to me because I immediately knew that he was selling me something because I'm from New Mexico and I had so many acquaintances who were involved or whose parents were involved in things like Landmark Forum, which is another professional development. Does anybody know what I'm talking about? Is this the thing that anybody knows about or is this just like, you do, Maria, clearly.
Yeah.

maria (10:14.481)
My brother, my brother, he was Est, it was Est, and then it was landmark for him. Yeah, it was the same thing, it was the same people. Monsters, like cocaine-addled monster freak, miserable people, horrible. Oh, please, oh yeah, are you kidding? In like, in La Jolla, there were like these cocaine houses full of maniacs, like my brother was one of my, we won't get into that, but like, suffice it to say that my brother, like,

Anna Merlan (10:18.343)
asked. Yeah.

Anna Merlan (10:28.524)
Oh, were they? I didn't know that.

maria (10:44.453)
was an anti-vax guy and he died of fucking COVID. So like, I've got issues with this like whole cult type trip owing to this whole thing. And I hear all of that, right? It's like in your piece, it's sort of like, let's all persuade each other to believe stuff that's not true and like get all these people herded into a pen of weirdness.

Anna Merlan (11:9.271)
Yeah, I mean, also just, you know, if you think that your way of doing things is incredibly superior, then of course you're going to invite other people, right? But it can be a little bit unsettling to have social interactions where you don't know what is expected of you or what is being asked of you. Or that aren't social at all, as it turns out, that are something else, which is Jane Marie, who writes about multi-level marketing schemes, has a book out this week called Selling the Dream. That is about that. It's about the way the MLMs are...

maria (11:17.839)
Mm-hmm.

maria (11:25.085)
Yeah, so true.

Anna Merlan (11:38.775)
used to the way they cannibalize social systems and friendships. Yeah.

maria (11:42.849)
Hmm. I loved her stuff at the hairpin. I will look forward to that. All right, I've gotta like scoop from guy to guy so everybody, we get to talk about all these pieces. Ben, hello. Unmute, please.
You're mute! You're not mute. Nobody can mute Ben Aaron, right? I loved your piece. The work that you have done is so vital and significant to the current moment and I'm so, so grateful to be part of publishing it. I gotta tell you. So tell me, tell me about this last piece. Like, all I can do is weep, so just tell me about it.

Ben (12:3.598)
I'm not muted.

Ben (12:23.662)
Thank you, Maria. It's great.

Ben (12:31.374)
Oh, I mean, like anything else I've written in the last few months, I just thought I was going to lose my mind. And the only thing I have figured out over the years to do when I'm going to lose my mind is to write something and try and figure it out that way. And uh...

Ben (12:53.098)
You know, I think for a lot of people, one of the particularly strange and awful things about this genocide that is going on is that it's all covered in real time on social media. And

Ben (13:15.930)
I think, which means this is kind of a constant disjunction for those of us who are following it closely and have attachments to the place and people, that it's sort of always there. And you pick up your phone and your phone tells you about the latest massacre while you're reading a text about picking your kid up from school.

Ben (13:44.398)
a reminder to pick up the potatoes from the grocery store or whatever. And that is a...
makes for a state of constant grief and horror. And I was really blindsided, it's now a couple of weeks ago, by an image that came across my feed on the social media site that shall not be named of a little boy holding up a.
a sort of diorama of the solar system. It was a really beautiful diorama. And I'm ashamed to admit that when I see children's faces on social media, I often like scroll faster because I cannot let that information into my brain. But this was a beautiful diorama. And I stopped and looked at it. And the boy's last name was familiar. And the...
village he was from, because he had been killed in the West Bank in a village called Burin, not in Gaza, was a village that I knew fairly well and had spent some time in about 10 years ago, which was even stranger because the boy was 10 years old, which presumably means he was born around the time that I was there. And the circumstances of his death, where he was driving out of the one road of the village in
his dad's car, he was sitting in the car and a bullet fired by an Israeli soldier hit him in the head.

Ben (15:29.814)
sent me spinning even more because I had spent about, I think it was probably about a week, less than two weeks anyway in Boreen, and had to leave after an incident that I recall on the, in the piece in which the, I was riding in the back of a car with the guy who I was staying with in the town and somebody threw a huge rock at the car, directly at the windshield while we were driving out.
of what was presumably the same road out of the village. And actually, at the same time of day, the details were pretty spooky. And it didn't kill us. It was a big rock. It smashed the windshield. We were driving pretty slowly. But the car was pretty disabled. And the guy we were staying with and his friend jumped out and tried to find the people who'd thrown it and didn't. But in the aftermath of that, which was going to presumably
involve things that no one wanted written about. I had to leave, and the photographer I was with had to leave. And what really spun me was not just like the another kid was killed, because 20,000 kids have been killed since October 7, 20,000 kids. And yeah.

maria (16:50.389)
It's just impossible.

Ben (16:55.234)
And but it was this.

Ben (17:2.446)
trying to digest, because that's an impossible number and an impossible fact to digest, but trying to digest these bizarre echoes through time between this boy's death and something entirely insignificant that had happened while I was there.

Ben (17:26.366)
very limited consequences and was something which I had almost forgotten about. And because it felt like time had folded in some string.

maria (17:38.109)
Yeah, you have this amazing image of like, like a stone landing on water and moving in all directions and how everything is all happening at once as if we weren't time bound, as if everything were all had already happened, everything that is yet to happen has happened. And I just thought that was, it was so resonant because like how many times have we not read like you grew, I mean, I grew up, I'm old, like, you know, we grew up.
sort of, I don't know, watching Casablanca or something and thinking like, good thing that's over, you know? We don't have to deal with these atrocities anymore because people learn not to do that. Wow, good thing, you know? And now like that we're having to live through these, you know, the idea that people never learn is like the older you get, like the more it is.
ingrained in you. And this is one of the reasons that I'm so grateful to be here with you guys right now because we have the opportunity to bear witness to that, to like the long learning of how difficult it is to get things through to people and bear witness to history and say what can happen or what couldn't happen, like you know try and say we're reliving something that you should know about.
And anyway, that's why I'm really glad, Ben, to have published your piece. Um, and it kind of like to segue into Kola's poem, which I super loved. That is a hopeful vision of how people could unite. And I, it's like he found himself in a movie theater watching a film about Bob Marley, who is a pacifist. And anyway, you'll tell me about it, Kola. It is a beautiful poem and I loved it.

Ben (19:21.239)
I'm going to turn it over to you. So, I'm going to turn it over to you.

Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún (19:28.159)
It's a beautiful movie. Thank you, Maria. And thank you, Ben. I read your piece. I haven't finished it. It's quite beautiful and, you know, speaks to what's happening in the times. And as with most people, you know, when you feel so strongly about something and the world seems to be going crazy.
doesn't seem to acknowledge or see what you're saying. You feel like you're going crazy. And the only way you can do is to write about it and hope that somebody somewhere connects to it in some way. So I had gone to the theater to watch the Bob Marley movie with my son. And we sat there in the dark of the theater enjoying the movie, which was really beautiful, showing this guy who was a musician, just an artist, taking a stand for a country that was falling apart and a country where
people were attacking each other and he was shot himself just for even suggesting that he was going to play a public concert. And then he left the country for a bit and then came back and decided he was going to play the concert anyway in spite of everybody telling him that you know his life was at risk and even the guy who shot him came back to talk to him and he said I don't I don't hold anything against you know you're a victim of your own circumstance etc etc. So we're watching this movie. I mean I've been a fan of Bob Marley for a long time and
I'd noticed all through the cinema that there was this guy in the other row ahead of me with a daughter and he had a yarmulke on his head. And it was just quite interesting because you know it's... I had... I've always felt this way whenever I saw people with religious, you know, dressing in public. You know, like it must take some courage in any case to come out physically put a sign of religion publicly and there's this guy who in the middle of...
a lot of, you know, he had an important discussion about the role of Israel in this genocide that's happening, physically identifying with his faith, which I thought was very brave. But then we're also watching a movie where someone, in spite of what has been done to him, is choosing peace and forgiveness and a different and uniquely sublime way of dealing with the trauma.

Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún (21:49.115)
And all of these things kept coming to my mind while we were watching the show. And of course, we didn't talk. He was in his own way. I was in mine. And then eventually, I wrote this poem about it, just comparing what Bob Marley had stood for, what he said, to what I assumed in an alternate universe, a conversation we might have had, me and this gentleman who was doing his own thing. And who's religious? I mean, who's political?
stand I had no idea about and I couldn't project or, you know, as certain. And I didn't want to. But just assuming that, you know, this conversation between this pacifist who is trying to make the world better and somebody who is also bearing the weight of his religious identity in this kind of world that we live in. So that's basically what why I wrote the poem. In some way relieved me for a bit as to, you know, how to deal with I'm not Jewish. I'm not.
Physically, I'm not connected to the events happening there. But as a human being and as a journalist, as a writer, and somebody just witnessing like Ben does, the violence we see every day on the screens, how do you deal with it as a human being? And how do you respond to it? This was just my own way of at least entering the conversation as a writer.

maria (23:10.021)
I really love the idea that it's possible to transcend every sort of, I mean, you know, the idea that you're at a movie of a pacifist of a person who loves humanity, like you're all together like joining in this idea of like, this is a different way we could relate to each other. You can be a person of faith, you can, like, accept, you can be together. There could be another way.
and the movie is called One Love, and it just blew, it blew my mind, I loved it. And I wish it's just like, just the idea of envisioning egalitarianism and peace and joining hands and all of this. Like, I just love it so much. It is just like, oh my God, it's just like this huge relief. Thank you. Okay, okay, it's gonna get late. I'm gonna be wanting to talk to you guys all night. And it's such a pity that we can't go to the.

Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún (23:43.486)
Yeah.

maria (24:6.393)
a restaurant bar in LA where we used to go on a Wednesday all together. Anyway, Kate Harlow. Hello, my dear.

Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún (24:8.991)
I'm going to miss it.

kate harloe (24:16.914)
Ha ha ha.

maria (24:17.061)
I'm good. I'm like a little psycho because I'm running late on publishing, but whatever. We'll work it out. It's gonna happen. We have a beautiful issue today. It's actually like fucking awesome. So anyway, that's by the by. Anyway, beautiful piece. Loved it. Thank you. Kate is an activist and a huge champion for journalism and for the

kate harloe (24:23.397)
Mm-hmm.

kate harloe (24:27.718)
I'm excited.

kate harloe (24:31.402)
I'm sorry.

maria (24:46.146)
a new way of communicating for people. And anyway, tell me about the piece. I loved it. It was great.

kate harloe (24:50.607)
Mm-hmm.
Oh, thank you, Maria. I mean, thank you for always saving me with your edits as you did yesterday. I wrote about, you know, the continued breakdown of the media system, which all of us are experiencing, whether we're journalists or not. And it kind of grew out of that breakdown, which has been accelerating. I mean, it's been going on for years and years, but it's really been accelerating the past few years and especially the past few months.
watching the same kind of cycles of reactions repeat over and over of like, all right, like, all these layoffs, all these closures, everyone should subscribe and support independent media, not feeling like a really insufficient response. So I tried to do some thinking here in this piece a little bit. I did my, you know, made an effort to do some thinking about the sort of movement that I hope can be built to sort of support a new media system and how we might get there.
And yeah, point it tried my best to point to just the tons of people and collectives and organizations who have been building the groundwork for such a movement for a really long time. The media justice movement which Was, you know, kind of grew out of the 90s movement journalism, which has really been critical and developing this critique that journalism can never be neutral times of media unions which have been doing really important work.
and also tried to point to a lot of the folks that are engaged in right now trying to build something other than what we have, including North Country Public Radio. I visited their newsroom recently, so I was, they were on my mind. So I wrote a little bit about them.

maria (26:34.817)
It's really inspiring. Yeah, it's really great the idea that people are actually, I mean, I feel like we're doing this. Like whatever else happens, we're putting out this amazing thing every day. And a lot of people are responding to it. Like we have, you know, many thousands of subscribers who are enjoying this thing. It's only been going for a couple of months. And I feel like, you know, we've just barely like cracked the surface of this thing. And it's like, there's a real hunger.

kate harloe (26:47.215)
Yeah.
Yeah.

maria (27:5.553)
Um, for people who want to tell everyone what's going on, what they see happening and people who want to hear what, what people, you know, it's like, you hear all this stuff about AI is writing art. I don't want to read what AI is going to tell me. No, thank you. But if somebody was there in a place, please tell me, I want to hear about it. And that was kind of what I took from your piece that you go to the NPR station and there's a bunch of radio guys and they're all there playing music and talking about things. And.

kate harloe (27:33.134)
Yeah.

maria (27:35.201)
That's fun and that's how I feel working with all y'all. We're talking about the real things that are actually happening. But the other part of it that I thought was really important and inspiring is this. We talk about like, everybody, independent media, subscribe to our thing and that's fine. But it's connected to so many larger struggles. The struggle for equality in education, the struggle for equality representation.

kate harloe (27:58.854)
Yeah.

maria (28:3.797)
political representation, the end of gerrymandering, like all this kind of stuff, like where each person gets to have a stake in their own place where they live. And I feel like, you know, we don't ordinarily focus on the bigger picture when we, you know, write media stories. It's like, oh my God, Vice is closing. You know, that's bad, and it is bad. And there's plenty to say about that, but like that's...

kate harloe (28:5.470)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah.

kate harloe (28:23.815)
Yeah.

kate harloe (28:28.304)
Yeah.

maria (28:31.289)
part of a larger breakdown that can be addressed in a more effective way. And that's what I got from your piece, which is really good.

kate harloe (28:41.054)
Thanks, Marie. I really appreciate that got through. I feel like, as you know, from my many years of ranting and raving about the media and everything that's wrong with it, one of my goals really is to kind of get people to see things in the way you just described. You know, the media system is a system that theoretically should be delivering a public good, much like the education system or any other number of systems that should be democratically run. And yet...
even in broader movement spaces, you know, there isn't as much of a conversation about kind of the media system and the organizing that needs to happen to change it. So I really appreciate that takeaway.

maria (29:22.181)
One thing that I will add to that is this, like media spaces ordinarily try to entertain. Part of what we try to do is to make it fun and make it fun to read and make it fun to experience. A lot of times activism isn't fun and organizing is not fun. It's really dry and...

kate harloe (29:30.277)
Mm-hmm.

kate harloe (29:39.255)
Yeah.
Very true. It's hard.

maria (29:42.869)
Boring, you gotta like read through these policy documents. They're incredibly dull. You actually have to go and sit in a room for a thousand years and listen to somebody drone on forever. Like everything that we can do to connect these things and make it fun and interesting for people to understand how it affects their lives. It doesn't have to be boring because it will be really cool if something works. I really feel like that's a big part of what we're trying to do at Flaming Hydra. So.

kate harloe (29:50.641)
Yeah.

kate harloe (29:56.477)
Yes.

kate harloe (30:4.366)
Yes.

kate harloe (30:11.747)
Agreed. Well said.

maria (30:12.365)
If like if any, yeah, somebody like whoever wants to like, you know contribute and add to that effort I will welcome anyway, okay, so we have talked to everybody and we will spare joe Because joe has to edit this

Joe MacLeod (30:28.599)
Hey, hey, no, very good, very good. Not a lot to edit. Everybody was concise.

maria (30:32.321)
Good. Concise and succinct in their incredible upper sue. Is that what you're trying to say to me? Yeah. All right. Okay. Everybody on the count of five say, thank you. Good night. Okay. Five, four, three, two, one. Thank you. Good night. Ha ha ha. Thanks everyone.

Joe MacLeod (30:40.896)
Indeed.

Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún (30:46.924)
Okay.

Anna Merlan (30:51.611)
Thank you, good night.

Shirley (30:51.773)
Thank you. Good night. Bye.

Joe MacLeod (30:51.836)
Thank you. Good night.

Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún (30:51.879)
Thank you. Goodbye. Bye.

kate harloe (30:51.890)
Thank you. Good night.

Joe MacLeod (30:55.887)
Okay, now I'm gonna stop, I'm gonna stop recording.