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2:06

Club, book club,

2:09

book club, book

2:11

club, it's the

2:13

Cool Zone Media Book Club, your book

2:15

club where you don't have to do the reading because

2:17

I do it for you. And if

2:20

you listen to this show, you don't have to pay

2:22

taxes. Also true. That's what the government says. And

2:25

this month, if you're gay, in a very,

2:27

very broad umbrella of gay, you also don't

2:29

have to pay rent. Yeah, yeah.

2:31

This is all in the Constitution, you know?

2:33

Our founding fathers, they were wise men. They

2:35

thought of all this. They thought primarily

2:37

of this book club, you know? Yeah.

2:40

You did a whole Behind the Basterds episode about

2:42

how much they love Cool Zone Media Book Club.

2:45

Isn't that right? About how Thomas Jefferson knew

2:47

you, Margaret Killjoy, before you were born and

2:49

planned this whole country to facilitate

2:53

our book club. What

2:55

a terrible cost, you know? But the cost

2:57

has already been paid. So many people have

2:59

died to make this book club possible, Margaret.

3:02

And if I had had any say at the

3:04

time, I wouldn't have let it happen. But it

3:06

did happen. And now we have nothing to do

3:09

but use the time that has been given to

3:11

us by the immeasurable suffering of those who have

3:13

come before us. So, this

3:15

is Cool Zone Media Book Club. We're in

3:18

part two of Party Discipline by Cory Doctorow.

3:21

And I was thinking, no one's

3:24

coming in just on part two. So we'll just get

3:26

right into it. And we'll say that where we last

3:28

left our heroes, they were

3:30

planning a Communist Party at

3:33

a factory, which is when you take over

3:35

a factory and start using its machinery to

3:38

print stuff to give away, which is a type

3:41

of Communist Party I like more

3:44

than the other kind, if I have

3:46

to be honest. But

3:49

they just got pulled into the Vice Principal's office

3:52

by a cop. What's gonna

3:54

happen? Who's to know? You

3:56

can only find out by listening right now. The

4:00

cop pulled the Vice Principal's chair out from behind

4:02

the desk and sat down on it in front

4:04

of us. He didn't say anything.

4:07

He was young, I saw, not much older than

4:10

us, and still had some acne on one cheek.

4:13

White dude. Not my type, but good looking,

4:15

except that he was a cop and he was playing mind

4:17

games with us. Are

4:19

we being detained? Somewhere in

4:21

my bag was a Black Lives Matter bust card,

4:23

and while I'd forgotten almost everything written on it,

4:25

I remembered that this was the first question I

4:27

should ask. You

4:30

are here at the request of your school

4:32

administration. Oh. Even

4:35

when there wasn't a fresh lockdown, the administration

4:37

had plenty of powers to search us, ask

4:40

us all kinds of nosy questions. After

4:42

a lockdown? Forget it.

4:45

Are we entitled to lawyers? Charell's voice

4:48

was a squeak, but I was proud of her.

4:50

She remembered the second line from the bust card.

4:53

You are not. The cop looked

4:55

smackably smug. I didn't

4:58

say anything. That was definitely the third

5:00

line on the bust card. Keep your damn mouth shut.

5:03

He didn't say anything either. Well, I wasn't going

5:05

to be the first one to speak. The silence

5:07

went on so long I started to worry that

5:09

I was going to bust out laughing, because it

5:11

was damn silly, the three of us sitting there

5:13

in total silence playing foolish head games. I

5:16

could tell Charell was on the verge of giggling too. That

5:19

psychic thing you get with your best girlfriends. Don't

5:22

giggle, don't do it, I thought at her. I

5:25

was sure she was doing the same thing for me. And

5:28

you know what it's like when someone tells you not

5:30

to laugh when you're about to laugh. That makes it

5:32

a thousand times worse. I swear

5:34

we'd have burst something if the cop didn't finally

5:36

speak. What do

5:38

you know about Steelbridge, girls? At

5:41

first it was just the girls I noticed, because

5:43

seriously, who the hell was this kid to be

5:45

calling me a girl? Then

5:47

I tried to figure out what Steelbridge was, because

5:49

the name did ring a bell. My

5:53

cousin Antoine is a sheet metal worker there. Oh,

5:56

that's Steelbridge. I was

5:58

surprised at first, but Charell was telling them anything

6:00

they couldn't learn with one pass through her social

6:03

media. He did the

6:05

silence thing again. Someone needed

6:07

to teach that boy a second interrogation technique.

6:10

Now that we knew what this was about

6:12

and what he was trying for, the hardest

6:14

thing about these silences was fighting the giggles.

6:18

What else do you know about Steelbridge?

6:21

He was terrible at his job. Maybe

6:23

too terrible. Could he be trying to lawless

6:25

into a false sense of security about his

6:27

cluelessness? If so, he was

6:30

being pretty obvious about it. Maybe

6:32

it was a double bluff then, but nah, he didn't seem

6:34

smart enough for that. So maybe triple

6:37

bluff? Okay, maybe I

6:39

was getting nervous too. I

6:42

don't see what this has to do with school. Didn't

6:44

you say this came from the school administration? What

6:47

do they have to do with some company in Encino? Oops.

6:50

Well, it wasn't Encino, but the fact that I

6:52

knew it was was more than I wanted to

6:54

say. Lynne, you are not as smart as

6:56

you think you are. We

6:59

requested that they put us in touch with you two. He

7:02

was pretending he hadn't noticed me say

7:04

Encino badly. He jumped like I'd

7:06

stung him. We're

7:09

worried about you. He sucked

7:11

at being fatherly. More staring

7:13

games. We're worried about

7:15

you. You said that. We're

7:18

worried that there may be some illegal activities

7:20

coming up at this factory. Never

7:23

trouble. Felonies. Jail

7:25

time. I hear you two

7:27

are good students. I don't think you want

7:29

that kind of trouble. Not so close

7:31

to graduating. Was

7:34

that whole lockdown just so you could get a

7:36

look inside our backpacks? When

7:38

Charel said it, I stared at her in disbelief,

7:40

but the cop blushed like a stoplight. Shit.

7:44

That's crazy. How can that even be

7:46

legal? The cop actually rocked

7:48

back in his chair. You two

7:50

are too smart to be in this kind of trouble. I

7:53

wouldn't want to see you throwing away your lives. I

7:55

had a look at your grades. You could go

7:58

to a good university. us

8:00

what must have been his most significant look. It's

8:03

better than going to prison for twenty years."

8:06

The way he was talking and looking at us made

8:08

me think that he wasn't as confident as he should

8:10

be. I wondered why. How

8:13

long after a lockdown does the school have to allow students

8:15

to talk to their lawyers? He

8:18

squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed at them with his

8:20

forefinger and thumb. "'Everything

8:22

you do from now on will be logged. You're

8:25

in this investigation. Remember

8:27

that.'" He stood up and

8:29

left the office. I guess I knew

8:31

the answer about the lawyer thing. Tootaloo,

8:33

Shurell only mouths the words but it still nearly

8:35

set off my giggles and I glared at her.

8:38

It had been old and corny for almost as long

8:41

as by Felicia, but it was also

8:43

something both our mothers would smack us for saying and

8:45

that made it damn funny just then. Once

8:48

the door clicked shut behind Detective No Name,

8:50

Shurell jumped up and started throwing things in

8:52

her bag quick as she could and

8:54

I did the same after a second. I

8:56

took the hint of her not saying anything and

8:59

worked silently. But

9:01

you know else what doesn't do

9:03

good ad transition because tired is

9:05

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We're back and you know Margaret I am

11:35

kind of thinking Cory does a really good

11:37

job depicting the ways in which the legal

11:39

system can fuck you over. Having

11:41

a cop like this who will admit yes

11:44

everything is on the record right now that

11:46

you're talking about is a little optimistic even

11:48

for like how cops actually treat kids in

11:50

these situations. I know. Like at least he

11:53

did say yes everything is like you are

11:55

you know. I think he's trying to scare

11:57

them straight more than like entrap them. Yeah,

12:00

you know, that is a kind of guy in

12:02

this situation. Yeah. Yeah. Outside

12:06

the school, I let my feet autopilot me

12:08

to the Uber van stop, but

12:10

she dragged me away toward downtown.

12:12

There was a row of automats,

12:14

Korean tacos, pizza, poke bowls, all

12:17

serving scop, all places I never went. She

12:20

pulled me into a rice pudding place with 200 flavors

12:23

and no customers. She bought

12:25

a large one. And when the window opened with

12:27

the rice pudding steaming on its little tray, she

12:30

plopped her phone in it and snapped her fingers

12:32

at me. I passed her

12:34

my phone, not quite believing I was doing it,

12:36

and watched as she dropped it into the rice

12:38

pudding as well. Then closed the

12:40

door. All right. They're

12:42

safe now. They were the

12:44

first words either of us has spoken since the cop

12:46

had left. Shirell, why

12:49

is my phone in a bowl of rice pudding? She

12:52

eye rolled me. The vending machines

12:54

are shielded to keep identity thieves from putting

12:57

in skimmers. Once their phones were

12:59

inside it, they couldn't get any network service no

13:01

matter what. I shook my head. How

13:04

do you know that? I just do.

13:06

OK, I know people. I

13:08

snorted. She knew the same people I knew,

13:10

plus or minus five percent. My

13:12

guess was that she'd read this online somewhere.

13:15

One of those hashtag resistance sites. OK,

13:18

then why is my phone in the pudding? Because,

13:22

dummy, if the pudding is left

13:24

on the release bed, the machine thinks you forgot

13:26

it. And it chimes you a few times. See,

13:29

it was chiming us and flashing a light. But

13:31

if there's anything on the food bed, it starts

13:33

taking pictures and analyzing them and sending them to

13:35

the bomb squad just in case. So we put

13:37

the phones in the pudding and then we get

13:39

them back and wipe them down and we're done.

13:42

But Shirell, it's it's pudding. She

13:45

shrugged. Waterproof is pudding proof.

13:48

What if someone comes in for rice pudding?

13:51

She gave me a look. Girl, no one

13:53

eats rice pudding. That shit is gross. I

13:56

didn't tell her that was my favorite dessert. My stomach was. all

14:00

in knots anyway. How do you know

14:02

all this? She shrugged, looked it

14:04

up, back when you first started talking about

14:06

Communist parties. I started

14:08

talking about Communist parties. Maybe

14:10

I did. Maybe it was me that started

14:12

it. I'd always been fascinated by them.

14:15

That was for sure. Why?

14:19

Because, Lynne, for a smart girl, you

14:21

are sometimes hella dumb. If

14:23

you were going to go and get into trouble, I wanted

14:25

to know what kind and what I could do to take

14:27

the edge off of it. That

14:31

stole the words right out of my mouth.

14:33

Shurela had done that before, taking my crazy

14:35

plans and turned them into careful schemes. But

14:38

I hadn't been thinking of the Communist party as

14:40

my plan. Hadn't she told me about

14:42

Antoine and the factory? You

14:44

want to do this as much as I do. She

14:47

made a face and I knew I was right. That

14:49

cop, though. You think

14:51

he has anything? I

14:53

think he wants something. He pulled a phony lock

14:55

down just so he could search our bags. To

14:58

me, that says they're worried but don't have enough to

15:00

do something about it. Shurela,

15:03

since when are you a tactician? Since

15:06

I figured out that you were going to get us

15:08

both busted, if I didn't start paying attention. Lynne,

15:11

Communist parties are dumb. They only work when you

15:13

tell a lot of people about them. And

15:15

the more people you tell, the more likely it

15:17

is that you will get busted. It

15:20

was true. I shrugged. Everything

15:23

is like that, Shurela. Everything.

15:26

If it's good, it's scary. That's why we'd

15:28

do it. If there wasn't any risk from having

15:30

a Communist party, it wouldn't be exciting.

15:33

But you could still sneak in at night and make the

15:36

trolleys, give them to homeless people. Why do

15:38

you want to have a party? I

15:40

didn't know, but I felt like the answer was on the

15:42

tip of my tongue. I shrugged

15:44

again. I don't know, Shurel. I

15:47

didn't invent them. Nah, you didn't.

15:50

Sefil went to jail. Once

15:54

Tisha was snoring, I got out my burner, a

15:56

phone I'd made in shop class, following a recipe

15:58

I'd found on a darkneck. google. It

16:01

had been freshman year and all the kids were

16:03

doing it and I hadn't used mine and years.

16:06

He. Powered up and complained that it couldn't side

16:08

it's update server and warned that has been years

16:10

since his have patched that I shouldn't let it

16:12

near the net. That. Was good

16:14

advice but I couldn't take it. Instead.

16:17

I gave it a connection through my regular

16:19

phone using the app that cyril had side

16:21

loaded for me using her fingernails after we

16:23

cleaned off the rice pudding. That

16:26

app was designed to let you tunnel your

16:28

leaky, abandoned smart appliances through it to keep

16:30

them from being exposed to the public internet.

16:33

And Churchill said that no one to listen

16:35

in on connections. I hope she

16:37

was right. Appointed the burner

16:39

at a site the shrill said she'd researched

16:41

and we waited while the burner downloaded new

16:43

versions of all software. Once.

16:46

That rebooted, I was able to connected Straits

16:48

of the Net. My. Stomach fluttered when

16:50

I do that though. And central

16:53

a message on her old anonymous account.

16:55

Along garbage string like he saw on

16:57

the cards that drug dealers left in

16:59

public bathrooms. Throw had

17:01

explained to me. He. Was an address

17:03

in the block chain that had a public key in

17:05

it. Download the key encrypt with

17:08

it and post your message back. The block

17:10

said. Everyone could see it,

17:12

but only the private key holder to decrypt

17:14

it. Course. Those

17:17

messages lived in the blocks in forever. To

17:19

secret squirrel ever got sacked for a private

17:21

key? Every message sent this way would be

17:23

visible to everyone in the world for all

17:25

time. Like. This isn't the

17:27

crime shows Crypto give us and Crypto

17:29

take us away. I

17:33

figured it out. It's. It or less than

17:35

a minute to reply, she was waiting to hear from me.

17:38

That you. It's me. What?

17:41

Did you give me some as fifteenth birthday? I

17:44

rolled my eyes. She was this a secret squirrel?

17:47

Nothing. We had a fight. You didn't invite me.

17:50

Yeah. Okay, you ask me something.

17:52

Shut up. Com. Os good hygiene.

17:55

i thought about all these messages been encrypted and stashed

17:57

in the block chain which i didn't really under understand,

18:00

but always pictured as this huge anthill with

18:02

trillions of little bugs crawling around on it.

18:05

In 10,000 years, would someone figure out how to break

18:07

the code and read this? Who

18:10

did you crush on in freshman year? Fuck

18:13

you. Come on, it was your idea. Ale

18:16

Martinez, but he was fine in freshman year.

18:19

Alejandro had become a candybilly in junior year,

18:21

wearing these crazy outfits that looked like a

18:24

kindergartener dressed up like a cowboy, and he'd

18:26

started missing a lot of classes, showing up

18:28

late and hungover, still high and stupid. I

18:31

hadn't seen him in a year or more. I knew

18:33

Sorrell still crushed on him, though. She was 100%

18:36

smart woman, foolish choices. I

18:39

figured it out. What? Why

18:41

it has to be a party? This should be good.

18:44

I checked to make sure Tisha was still asleep. Because

18:47

it feels like there's no alternative. Like, no matter what

18:49

we do, the same thing's going to happen. We're going

18:51

to end up like a cuz, if we're lucky, get

18:54

a job that lasts a while before the company runs

18:56

off and takes our last paychecks too. It's

18:58

all so big, and we're so little. But

19:01

put us all together, and you can see it. There's

19:04

other people out there feel the same as you.

19:06

A connection, get it? You

19:09

woke me to tell me that? Shut up.

19:12

Okay, okay, yeah, I hear you. That's

19:14

the reason, maybe. Even a good one. But

19:17

it does make everything a zillion times more

19:19

dangerous. You wanna live forever? Shut

19:22

up. Tisha opened one

19:24

eye. Put down your phone already. I'm

19:26

trying to sleep here. Robert,

19:28

when I decided that I had to have you as

19:30

a guest, I have to admit that Candy Billy was

19:32

part of the reason for it. I

19:35

don't know. You describe post-apocalyptic radical hacker

19:37

party people pretty well in your book, After

19:39

the Revolution, which isn't me plugging that. It's

19:41

just true. That was one of the things

19:43

I really appreciated about Walkaway. I think Cordy

19:45

and I have communicated a bit with him

19:47

over the years, but I don't know him

19:50

personally very well. But I feel like we

19:52

came out of, or at least have experience

19:54

with similar parts of the Burner subculture, and

19:56

I think so too. I think it's influenced

19:58

how we both write a book. about the

20:00

post apocalypse in ways that are kind of

20:02

adjacent to each other. Yeah, I

20:05

think that that's true. And here's

20:07

dad for some reason. Baseball

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20:27

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audio campaign for free. Antoine

22:38

just happened to be at Charel's house the next

22:41

afternoon when we took our homework there and we

22:43

just happened to leave our phones inside and went

22:45

to the backyard to sit under the sunshade with

22:47

our notebooks and scratch paper. The

22:50

Wobblies say they can fool the cops into thinking the whole

22:52

thing scheduled for the next night. Charel

22:54

looked as skeptical as I felt. How are

22:57

they going to do that? He looked around. You

22:59

don't want to know. Charel

23:02

thumped your hand on the table. Yes,

23:04

we do. It's our asses on the line too. In

23:07

case you haven't noticed. He

23:09

sighed and looked around dramatically. He wasn't much of a

23:11

spy. Charel had a better poker face.

23:14

I can't talk about it seriously, but not everyone who

23:16

becomes a cop believes in the system. All right. Some

23:18

of them just need a job and also

23:20

a way to look themselves in the mirror. The

23:23

cops were infiltrated by Wobblies. That

23:25

would be pretty weird if it was true. Maybe

23:27

it was true. The world was pretty weird.

23:31

What happens when we tell everyone at school to show up

23:34

on the right date? It's not like they've got the tightest

23:36

game in the world. They're kids. Cops will

23:38

figure it out for sure. Charel

23:40

said it, but I was thinking it too. Antoine

23:43

made a face. Yeah. Thing is, we

23:45

got to be tight about this. We got the

23:47

same problem, but not with school kids, but all

23:49

the other people we want to show up. These

23:52

Wobblies, they said, maybe we don't just tell everyone

23:54

about it in advance. Instead, we invite them over

23:56

for dinner or whatnot out for drinks. And then

23:58

we just drag them along. Make sure they bag

24:01

their phones. Surprise! He made a face. Hell

24:04

of a surprise. Shurel side-eyed him.

24:07

I was surprised myself. What

24:10

if we pretended something else like a party at

24:12

someone's parents house? Everyone will come out with their

24:14

stuff offline because they don't want to get busted

24:16

for underage drinking. He made a face. Hell

24:19

of a surprise. Shurel side-eyed him.

24:23

I was surprised myself. What

24:25

if we pretended something else like a party at

24:27

someone's parents house? Everyone will come out with their

24:29

stuff offline because they don't want to get busted

24:31

for underage drinking and that and then we'll bring

24:33

them to the party. We just invite the

24:35

ones who we can trust to keep their mouths shut. Shurel

24:38

was about to jump in and say something but

24:40

held my hand up. No, wait. It could work.

24:43

Thing is, what if there was

24:45

a party at someone's house and we just

24:47

diverted some people from it, caught them before

24:49

they arrived, got them ready, drove them away?

24:52

We could say it was someone else's party, not us.

24:55

No one would know who was organizing it, so no

24:57

one could snitch on us afterwards. Shurel

25:00

had the biggest smile right then and she

25:02

made twinkle fingers at me, which meant I

25:04

agree and hell yeah. And when

25:06

I was done, she said, Who

25:08

do we get to have a party? That

25:12

was both harder and easier than it sounded. Easier

25:15

because there were only three kids whose parents were out of

25:18

town that night. Harder because

25:20

those kids sucked. Two

25:22

were junior chamber of commerce and couldn't

25:25

be trusted. One was

25:27

Ali Martinez, who it turned out Shurel had

25:29

been keeping tabs on the whole time he'd

25:31

been AWOL from school, messaging with him

25:34

late at night when I was in bed and shut

25:36

off to keep from waking up my nosy sister. Ali

25:39

says his dad's going to be in Mexico that weekend

25:41

visiting his mom. Ali's dad

25:43

was a US citizen and so was Ali, but

25:45

his mom had been undocumented and got deported when

25:48

he was little. Shurel had

25:50

on that defiant face of hers, daring me to make

25:52

a big deal out of the fact that she and

25:54

Ali had been sneaking around. Will

25:56

he have a party? She rolled her

25:58

eyes. Always as a party,

26:01

every single time his dad goes south. Him

26:03

and all his candy-billy friends. Headphone

26:05

parties so the neighbors don't phone it in. They

26:08

even make birium. I

26:10

made a face, then pictured Alejandro and

26:12

his buddies and their lame-ass girlfriends in

26:14

a huge cuddle puddle, sloppy drunk on

26:16

birium and giggling like babies. Ugh.

26:20

So ask him. Chirel's expression

26:23

was pure animal in a trap. Can't

26:25

you do it? I gave her a look. Shit,

26:28

she said, with feeling. The

26:31

way she said, Hi, Ale. When

26:33

she got him on the phone, was the most surprising

26:36

thing of all. She practically sang the

26:38

words. Listening to her end of the conversation

26:40

made me wonder if I knew her at

26:42

all. She even giggled at one point. Love

26:45

is blind and stupid. Really,

26:48

really stupid. When

26:50

she was done, she put the phone in her pocket. All

26:52

set. You gonna say anything? About

26:55

what? About that. Ale

26:58

Martinez. Chirel. She

27:00

snorted. Okay, so I like him.

27:02

Who cares? It's not like I don't know he's a

27:04

fool. She tapped her temple. But

27:07

you know, she tapped her heart. Doesn't

27:09

mean I'm not in control. I only take

27:11

him in small sips. Keeps him tolerable.

27:14

If you say so. Like

27:16

I said, it's a good thing I'm immune to Chirel's

27:18

looks. It

27:21

was a good thing we weren't trying to keep Ale's party

27:23

secret. There were a lot of kids at

27:25

Burbank High who remembered him as the fun dude who

27:27

used to throw those amazing parties before he disappeared. And

27:30

the news that he was still alive and still

27:32

throwing them went around like wildfire. So it was

27:34

only up to Chirel and me to put the

27:36

word out to the ones who weren't idiots that

27:38

we were going to meet in Stowe Canyon to

27:40

pregame, then arranged to meet them thereafter as they

27:42

puffed up the hill on their bikes or on

27:44

foot. There was supposed

27:46

to be 23 of them, and they arrived

27:48

in ones and twos and a foursome driven by

27:50

someone's cool older sister, and then five

27:53

more in an Uber, which was D-U-M

27:55

dumb because everyone knows that Uber logged

27:57

everything and that we're hella snitches. roll

28:00

over cops without a warrant, not that warrants were

28:02

heard to come by. They

28:05

came with flasks and six-packs and vapes, and

28:07

they found us by following the blaze marks

28:09

we chalked high up in the trees with

28:11

glow-in-the-dark caulk sticks, giggling and

28:13

stumbling through the night with the lights

28:15

from their airplane-mode phones bobbing towards us.

28:19

We made them turn them off and bag their

28:21

phones using the pouches we got off of Antoine,

28:23

who got them from the Wobblies. For

28:26

fifteen people, we were way too

28:28

noisy, and no amount of shushing would

28:31

keep it down. We'd get spotted

28:33

soon, but there was supposed to be

28:35

twenty-three, twenty-three people we knew and liked and

28:37

trusted, though maybe not to show up on

28:39

time. Didn't want to go without them. Should

28:43

we split into two, I asked Shirel, counting

28:45

up again for the thirtieth time. Maybe

28:48

they'd phoned us to say they'd be late, but of

28:50

course, our phones were off and bagged.

28:53

Shirel spit on the ground, she looked pale in the

28:55

moonlight. Don't want to get caught on my own

28:57

and don't want to turn on my phone to figure out where you

28:59

got to. We got one problem with

29:02

those fools late and missing, don't need two problems

29:04

with not knowing where we are. I

29:06

looked at her, eyes so wide you

29:09

could see white all around the pupils, neck

29:11

tense. I realized how scared

29:13

she was, and that made me scared, because

29:15

there was a damned good reason to be

29:18

scared. We were risking serious consequences, jail time

29:20

even, to throw a party. The

29:22

knowledge of that went from something in my head

29:24

to something in my guts in a second and

29:26

left me feeling like I'd been punched. I

29:29

wobbled. Why the actual fuck

29:31

was I doing this? Why

29:34

are we doing this, Shirel? Dun

29:37

dun dun, that's the end of part

29:39

two. Huzzah!

29:42

Well, I'm excited to see why they're doing this.

29:44

I mean, I kind of know in my

29:46

own heart, because I think

29:48

a lot actually about what this story seems

29:50

to be about in part, which is like

29:53

how much harder it's going to be

29:56

in the very near to immediate future

29:58

for kids to break the law. in

30:00

petty fun ways the way we broke the

30:02

law in petty fun ways. Which is why

30:04

I did it so much. I knew for

30:07

a long time, you know, like 19, the

30:09

kind of shit I was getting away with.

30:11

Kids would not always be able to get

30:13

away with. And I do feel like I

30:15

had a moral responsibility to break as many

30:17

laws as I did. Yeah,

30:19

as long as I was home by curfew,

30:21

that's all the information that my parents had,

30:24

you know? It

30:26

was an age undreamed of. Yeah. When

30:28

we tell stories about being like teens

30:31

and early 20s to kids like 30

30:33

years from now, it's gonna

30:35

sound like fucking Conan stories.

30:37

Like we're talking about hyperborea.

30:40

Yeah, totally.

30:44

And it's also a story about how like, they'll

30:46

still do it. It'll be harder,

30:48

right? You know, much

30:50

like love will find its way.

30:52

Teenage crime will find

30:55

its way. And I

30:58

believe in us. I believe in the youth. Although

31:02

there's also this thing where like, the older you

31:04

get, the more you just start looking at the youth being

31:06

like, they'll fix it. And you like point

31:08

to the mess that you didn't fix and

31:10

that your generation fix, you know? The societal

31:12

version of like what happens with my recycling

31:14

bin with me and my roommates

31:17

were like, well, it's pretty high

31:19

up there. But like, I don't really want to take it

31:21

out right now. I can fit one more can and then

31:23

my roommate has a can. He's like, yeah,

31:26

it's pretty high. But like, I feel like I

31:28

could get one more on there. We've

31:32

all just kind of done that

31:34

with the cops and government surveillance

31:36

and, you know, the corporate security

31:38

state and the way in which it

31:40

interfaces our carceral system.

31:42

Yeah. Just keep putting one more

31:45

can on there. Yeah. Like we don't need

31:47

a revolution that we can handle a little

31:49

bit more. We can take a little bit

31:51

more surveillance. Maybe it'll get better. Maybe it'll

31:53

take away the cameras. Yeah. Yeah. Who

31:55

knows? Yeah. No, we need to collectively

31:58

take the recycling out. and

32:01

restructure society. But,

32:04

well, this story we'll get at some of

32:06

it. But actually, I just wanna plug, if

32:09

people are enjoying this story or wanna like

32:12

kind of take it to its next level, the

32:14

book Walk Away by Doctor O

32:16

that both of us are fans of is,

32:20

okay, so he'd mostly written Young Adult before Walk

32:22

Away, at least that I was aware of. I'd

32:25

only read Young Adult books by him before Walk

32:27

Away. And then Walk Away took the

32:29

same ideas that he always talks about, which is

32:31

like people finding the cracks in the system by

32:33

being like cool teenage hackers, and then

32:36

puts it at

32:38

a grander scale. Just like this like, I don't

32:41

know, it's one of the best stories of

32:43

like grand revolution that I've read. Yeah,

32:46

I agree. But that's

32:50

me saying nice words about Cory Doctorow,

32:52

but Cory Doctorow had nice words to

32:54

say about my book that's being kick-started

32:56

right now, called The

32:58

Sapling Cage. And it's funny, because I'm recording this

33:01

before it's being kick-started, because we record some of

33:03

these things ahead of time. So

33:05

who knows how that's going, but

33:07

I wrote a Young Adult book, or actually technically

33:09

a crossover book. Have you ever heard of the

33:11

genre crossover? No, I

33:13

just knew about YA and then A,

33:16

fiction? Crossover is

33:19

Young Adult that knows that adults read

33:21

Young Adult. It's

33:23

like basically the Young

33:25

Adult genre became

33:28

more and more codified in very

33:30

specific ways that started kind of

33:32

reducing, I would honestly say creative

33:34

freedom, where like for example, good

33:37

luck selling a Young Adult book that doesn't

33:39

center around a romance, right? And

33:42

no matter what dystopian, whatever the

33:44

thing is, you know, there

33:47

is romance in my book, but it's not a teen

33:49

romance book, you know? It's

33:52

not even really at the end of the day, a

33:54

book about like being trans, even though it's a big

33:56

part of it. It's like a book about people finding

33:58

their way and saving the world from it. People

34:01

who are trying to consolidate power and all

34:03

the kind of shit I like writing about. So crossover is

34:05

basically a young adult, but you can kind of do whatever

34:07

you want. And I

34:10

like that more. So

34:12

that's why my book is crossover.

34:15

It's just an annoying genre because anyone

34:17

who's not specifically in like publishing, you have to

34:19

explain what the fuck it is. The protagonist is

34:21

16. That's what it means. Yeah.

34:26

Yeah, it's a good book. I also have nice things

34:28

to say about it, which you will see on the

34:30

cover, I think. Yeah, I think so. So

34:33

buy the sapling cage and that's all

34:35

I got to say. Yep. And

34:38

listen to the rest of Party Discipline by Cory

34:40

Doctorow over the next two weeks. And we'll talk

34:42

to you soon. Yeah.

34:45

Goodbye. It could happen

34:47

here as a production of Cool Zone Media.

34:49

For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit

34:52

our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on

34:54

the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever

34:56

you listen to podcasts. You

34:58

can find sources for it could

35:01

happen here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com/sources.

35:03

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