2020: Podcasts
I’m not much of a podcast guy, so this isn’t much of a wrap-up post. But Robert Evans and his work has been an important part of my year and I wanted to write about that.
Robert Evans
This summer I watched a lot of coverage of the uprisings in Minneapolis, Portland, and elsewhere. Mainstream media was usually not very effective, but amateur journalists are amateurs. The best coverage I found was by small independent groups like Unicorn Riot in Minneapolis.
I watched a lot of Woke.net which aggregates streams from the the uprisings so you can watch a dozen or more streams at once. Made me feel like Mr. Universe in Firefly.
Whenever Robert Evans would stream from Portland, commenters on Woke would take notice, so I started watching his streams directly. He got his start on Cracked.com of all places, and covered wars internationally for Bellingcat. This summer in Portland, his coverage stood out for both its professionalism and his wry sense of humor. He was the first one I heard refer to the police fence as the “Sacred Fence” and would say things like “police here are just waiting for us to touch the Sacred Fence so they can begin to unleash terrible violence on us.” Not only was Robert usually near the front lines, but he kept enough presence of mind to provide commentary in the midst of getting gassed by the cops, pointing out how the protesters were using Hong Kong techniques to nullify the gas, or how the police were firing gas recklessly into intersections, gassing motorists in their vehicles.
I went looking for other things Robert had done and quickly came across It Could Happen Here, a podcast from 2019 laying out how a new American civil war might happen and what that would look like. I found this nine-part series to be captivating and persuasive, much more so in 2020 than I expect it would have been in 2019. Robert Evans feels like the right person to make this series to me because he’s coming from an explicitly left-wing point of view, but he grew up in Texas, is a gun owner, and demonstrates more understanding and sympathy for rural Americans than I usually hear on the left (and much more than I have myself).
I really recommend this podcast if you have any interest in thinking through a scary scenario like an American Civil War with someone who doesn’t sugar-coat anything but also isn’t giving in to fearful hysteria or a longing for righteous partisan violence. Two of the nine episodes are also given over to more hopeful (but still realistic) discussions of what can be done.
I also listened to Evans’ The War on Everyone which he bills as an audiobook (not sure what the difference is between a limited run podcast and an audiobook) about 20th and 21st century American fasicism and white supremacy. In both The War on Everyone and It Could Happen Here, Robert cites lots of sources and recommends many things to read which warms my librarian heart.
Robert Evans has some other ongoing podcasts including the historical Behind the Bastards and more topical Worst Year Ever (I wonder if that will continue under the same name with the assumption that things are going to keep getting worse?). I have listened to those irregularly, and one nice thing is that you get to hear Robert in a less formal voice and get more of his sense of humor. You can also follow him on Twitter as @IwriteOK.
Doomer vs. Bloomer
The only other podcast I listened to regularly was Doomer vs. Bloomer where two young anarchists in Olympia discuss politics and culture. Kami is the doomer, taking the more negative and cynical point of view, while Franz is the bloomer and the more hopeful voice.
Really though, the dynamic is that Kami is the regular guy and Franz is the “I actually have a degree in political economy” figure who keeps the podcast more intellectual and informative. I really like these two and their dynamic, but they haven’t recorded much in the last 6 months or so.