Episode 156: “Bread Santa – A People’s History of Christmas” ft. Liz of Rebel Steps

Did you know that “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” is secretly a song about stealing from the rich? Did you know the “Lord of Misrule” was the original holiday party animal? Did you know solidarity and justice are the real reason for the season? “Bread Santa” is a holiday special, a people’s history of Christmas. Liz, of Rebel Steps, joins us to discuss the pagan origins of Christmas in Yule and Winter Solstice, the Roman Empire’s hegemonic institution of Christianity, the Puritans’ reactionary conservatism, Fox News’ war on Christmas, and so much more. So, pour yourself some eggnog and enjoy! Notes: Check out Rebel Steps wherever you get your favorite podcasts! Follow them on Twitter and TikTok and support their work on Patreon. Support Coffee with Comrades on Patreon, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and visit our website. Pick up a Coffee with Comrades shirt or coffee mug at our official merch store.  Coffee with Comrades is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network. Coffee with Comrades is an affiliate of the Firestorm Books & Café. Check out our reading recommendations! Our logo was designed by Nathanael Whale. References: Focus on the Family’s reactionary dipshittery  From Saint Nicholas to Santa Claus: the surprising origins of Kris Kringle  Christmas in 19th century America  Christmas Trees: A Forgotten History  The Christmas Truce  What’s the real history of Black Friday? How the “War on Christmas” controversy was created  An anarchist guide to Christmas  Why do we have Christmas trees? The surprising history behind this holiday tradition. Mother Jones: Santa Gets Busted in Copenhagen The Danish Anarchists Who Inspired SantaCon Could Not Have Imagined Its Bro-Hell Future Julemandshæren 1974 video Rebel Steps’ Cancel Rent Gingerbread House

Episode 155: “Benign Anarchy”

This week, I had a chance to hang out with my pal, Amy, and talk about the benign anarchy of Alcoholics Anonymous. We talk about the beauty and allure of voluntary association, why coercion doesn’t help addicts recover, why seeing addiction as an “individual failing” rather than a systemic healthcare issue is facile and vacuous, and levy a whole bunch of critiques at the organization for its regressive attitudes and white supremacy. Follow Amy on Twitter! Need someone to watch your pets while you’re away for rehab? Check out the Pink Cloud Foundation! Support Coffee with Comrades on Patreon, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and visit our website. Pick up a Coffee with Comrades shirt or coffee mug at our official merch store. Coffee with Comrades is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network. Coffee with Comrades is an affiliate of the Firestorm Books & Café. Check out our reading recommendations! Our logo was designed by Nathanael Whale.

Episode 154: “Mind Made Manifest” ft. Petroglyph Studios

Recently, I had the chance to read a wonderful graphic novel put together by my friends nicole and Hugh called Wonder Drug: LSD in the Land of Living Skies. I sat down with the two of ‘em to discuss the history of LSD research, psychedelics, hippies, capitalism, therapy, and a whole bunch more. I think the comic is lovely and I hope you’ll pick up a copy if you enjoy this dialogue between the three of us. Pick up a copy of nicole and Hugh’s graphic novel, Wonder Drug. Follow them on Twitter! Black Out Black Friday Support Coffee with Comrades on Patreon, follow us on Twitterand Instagram, and visit our website. Pick up a Coffee with Comrades shirt or coffee mug at our official merch store. Coffee with Comrades is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network. Coffee with Comrades is an affiliate of the Firestorm Books & Café. Check out our reading recommendations! Our logo was designed by Nathanael Whale.

BONUS: Merch & Yuletide Celebration

This week, we don’t have a new interview for you but we do have a bunch of rad announcements, some of which are time-sensitive. If you’re a Coffee with Comrades Patron (or you’ve ever considered becoming one,) this is definitely a 13 min. episode you don’t wanna miss! · Support Coffee with Comrades on Patreon, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and visit our website. · Pick up a Coffee with Comrades shirt or coffee mug at our official merch store. · Coffee with Comrades is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network. · Coffee with Comrades is an affiliate of the Firestorm Books & Café. Check out our reading recommendations! · Our logo was designed by Nathanael Whale. Transcript: Hey there, comrades! I hope this episode of Coffee with Comrades finds you better than me. I’ll admit, it may be a touch dramatic to say this past week I’ve felt like Death itself, but that’s not far from the mark. Earlier this week, we had a COVID-19 scare at our house and we went and got everyone tested. There was good news and bad news. The good news? We didn’t have COVID. The bad news? We were all still sick as hell. If I still sound hoarse and sick, that’s because I’m still recovering. Fortunately, I am on the mend! Anyway, to make a long story short, I ended up postponing a scheduled interview and, as a result, don’t have a full-fledged episode for you today. That said, there are a few exciting announcements that I wanted to make—some of which are time-sensitive—so I didn’t want to wait until next week. So, let’s dive right in. As always, longtime listeners of Coffee with Comrades are well aware by now, we are a proud part of the Channel Zero Network. Check out this jingle to find out a little more about the network… …Alright, first big announcement: it brings me great pleasure to announce that we finally have merch! We’ve got t-shirts. We’ve got crewnecks. And, by popular demand, we’ve got coffee mugs. You can find it all by visiting the hyperlink in our show-notes. We’re so psyched to finally see this stuff out in the wild. If you ordered something, be sure to tag us in it on social media. Now that spoopy season is officially behind us, it’s time to celebrate the winter solstice. To mark the occasion, we are doing our first Coffee with Comrades Yule Tide Gift Exchange! I know, I know. I can hear it already. “Exchanging gifts!? That’s capitalist.” Settle down, y’all. Quite the opposite, gifts have a long, treasured history of being about community, ways of binding us closer to one another. What makes the holidays a capitalist nightmare is the commodification and profit motive, not the euphoric joy of seeing someone’s face light up when you exchange gifts. To quote the indigenous scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer, “Gifts from the earth or from each other establish a particular relationship, an obligation of sorts to give, to receive, and to reciprocate…It’s funny how the nature of an object is so changed by the way it comes into your hands—as a gift or as a commodity.” Gifts spark kinship. They cultivate relationality. The Marxist theory of alienation suggests that commodities, on the other hand, alienate us from one another and from the larger biome we all inhabit together. So, here’s how it’s all gonna work: 1) Over the next two weeks, we’re gonna collect names. In order to sign-up for the Yule Tide Gift Exchange, you’ll need to be a Coffee with Comrades Patreon subscriber. That’s not to be exclusionary, it’s just that it’s one of the only ways to really facilitate this sorta process safely. We’ll finish the sign-up process November 16th, so be sure to sign-up before then! To sign up, just private message me on Discord and I will put you name on a list for my eyes only! 2) On November 16th, we’ll draw names in the Coffee with Comrades Discord sever. We’re gonna be using a random generator appropriately called “Draw Names,” which I’ll enter everyone’s names into beforehand. 3) Once names have been drawn, I will privately message you the name and address of the person whose name you drew. This will mean that the only people who will ever have your address are me and the person who’s going to be giving you a gift! Of course, I already have your address on Patreon. But, if you haven’t put your address on there yet and want to participate in the Gift Exchange, be sure to put one down ASAP! 4) Finally, the goal is to mail out gifts for each other. I’d encourage everyone to try to make something by-hand. Write a poem, draw a painting, take a polaroid photograph of something pretty and design a cute frame. I dunno, go wild! If you’d prefer to pick something up, try to stay under a $20 limit. 5) Let’s aim to have our gifts in the mail by Dec. 16th so that folks will have a full month to create and/or shop for the secret gifts! The goal here is to use this opportunity to build up community. Even if we are disconnected from one another, my hope is that through a gift exchange like this and our ongoing monthly book club we can continue to cultivate meaningful friendships and genuine camaraderie. I know a lot of folks have hang-ups around Operational Security and the good news is if you don’t feel comfortable, you certainly don’t have to participate! But we’d love to have you and, hopefully, maybe make this an annual tradition. Making this program is a labor of love, but it’s a ton of hard work. Coffee with Comrades is a show made by a worker for workers. If you dig this program, it would mean the world if you chose to support us by going to www.patreon.com/coffeewithcomrades. Starting at just a $1/month, you can unlock awesome perks like access to our Patreon only Discord server, you can come hang out at our book club, and enjoy exclusive first access to new episodes of the show and behind-the-scenes looks at the making of this podcast. Any monthly contribution is enormously appreciated, no matter the amount you choose to give. Our Patrons are incredible folks who help keep radical, independent media alive and we are stupendously grateful for their ongoing support. If you don’t have a dollar a month handy but still wanna support Coffee with Comrades, the good news is there are a bunch of ways you can help our show continue to grow! If you fuck with this program, follow us on Twitter and Instagram. Like, RT, and share new episodes every Tuesday when they go live. If you listen to shows on Apple Podcasts, you can review our episodes. Be sure to smash that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. But, most importantly, if you enjoy Coffee with Comrades, tell your friends about this program today. Alright, I think that’s pretty much all I’ve got for y’all today. Like I said, no new interview this week. But, if you’re keen on horror, you can check out the latest edition of Macabre Media podcast, the other show I do with my friends Kaleb and Jorge. The three of us are celebrating our 50th episode by talking about 2001’s Jason X, arguably the greatest motion picture of all time. Although…I’m not entirely sure who would actually argue that. Peace!

Episode 153: “(Capitalism is) Capital Murder” ft. JJ Demon

This week, we share an interview with communist rapper JJ Demon. We touch on a whole host of topics: the prison industrial complex, capitalism as capital murder, solidarity, intersectionality, class war, and JJ’s new LP, ghost gun Red Menace.  Follow JJ Demon on Twitter and stream ghost gun Red Menace wherever you get your favorite music.  Support Coffee with Comrades on Patreon, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and visit our website. Coffee with Comrades is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network. Coffee with Comrades is an affiliate of the Firestorm Books & Café. Check out our reading recommendations! Our logo was designed by Nathanael Whale.

Episode 152: “Outlaw, Robin Hood, Revolutionary: Buenaventura Durruti” ft. Brenton Lengel

Recently, all of anarchist Twitter lit up like the Minneapolis Third Precinct when AK Press shouted out the forthcoming comic book, Durruti: Shadow of the People. I had the good fortune to sit down with Brenton and chat about the graphic novel, as well as the life and times of Beunaventura Durruti, the struggles of the anarchists and socialists against the fascists in Revolutionary Spain, and why a comic book is a great option for telling Durruti’s story (at least, that is, until it can get optioned as a prestige TV mini-series or serialized as an anime!) Check out the Durruti: Shadow of the People Kickstarter page to pre-order a copy today! Follow Brenton on Twitter and visit his website. Support Coffee with Comrades on Patreon, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and visit our website. Coffee with Comrades is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network. Coffee with Comrades is an affiliate of the Firestorm Books & Café. Check out our reading recommendations! Our logo was designed by Nathanael Whale.

Episode 151: “A Tiny Dinosaur Version of a Cat” ft. Poor Proles’ Almanac

I recently sat down with Andy from The Poor Proles Almanac to discuss, well, a whole bunch of shit. We talked about firearms, guerilla gardening, permaculture, and raising chickens. Andy even had the audacity to defend the Pumpkin Spice Latte on a podcast called Coffee with Comrades. Truly, the nerve… Support Poor Proles’ Almanac on Patreon, follow them on Twitter and Instagram! Support Coffee with Comrades on Patreon, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and visit our website. Coffee with Comrades is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network. Coffee with Comrades is an affiliate of the Firestorm Books & Café. Check out our reading recommendations! Our logo was designed by Nathanael Whale.

Episode 150: “A Game of 20(ish) Questions”

Holy shit, y’all, we fucking did it! 150 episodes of this silly, radical, wholesome podcast. 150 conversations, discussions, dialogues, interviews, chit-chats, back-and-forths. Wow wow wow wow wow wow. To celebrate, we do a bit of house-keeping and have a Q&A to mark the occasion. If you’d like, you can read the transcript for this episode. We also have a poll going for t-shirt designs. Let us know which you like the best! Be sure to stick around ’til the very end for some wild-ass bloopers. Support Coffee with Comrades on Patreon, follow us on Twitterand Instagram, and visit our website. Coffee with Comrades is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network. Coffee with Comrades is an affiliate of the Firestorm Books & Café. Check out our reading recommendations! Our logo was designed by Nathanael Whale.

Episode 149: “What’s the Point if We Can’t Have Fun?” ft. Works in Theory

“The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make and could just as easily make differently.” David Graeber, The Utopia of Rules Dedicated to the memory of David Graeber. Rest in power.  Recently, I sat down with Nate and Tom, two of the co-hosts of Works in Theory podcast, to commemorate the passing of David Graeber. Together, we read through my favorite Graeber essay, “What’s the Point if We Can’t Have Fun?” and discussed everything from anthropocentrism to economics to joy and the jubilee of play.  Read “What’s the point if we can’t have fun?” by David Graeber. Follow Works in Theory on Twitter and Instagram and visit their website.  Support Coffee with Comrades on Patreon, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and visit our website. Coffee with Comrades is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network. Coffee with Comrades is an affiliate of the Firestorm Books & Café. Check out our reading recommendations! Our logo was designed by Sydney Landis. Support her work, buy some art.

Episode 148: “A Simple Country Lawyer Fighting Fascism and Baking Cookies”

I recently sat down with the folks behind the forthcoming documentary East of Town to talk about immigration, justice, and borders in the Deep South town of Lumpkin, GA. Our sprawling conversation touched on a whole lot–from the depressing constancy of immigration policy in the so-called U.S. to fortress Europe and the global regime of border violence enforced across the planet. Support East of Town’s GoFundMe. Follow East of Town on Twitter. Support Coffee with Comrades on Patreon, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and visit our website. Coffee with Comrades is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network. Coffee with Comrades is an affiliate of the Firestorm Books & Café. Check out our reading recommendations! Our logo was designed by Sydney Landis. Support her work, buy some art.