Speaker A:
Hello and welcome to Live Like the World Is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I’m one of your hosts today, Brooke Jackson, and with me is— It’s me, Miriam. Yay, Miriam! And we have a very wonderful episode. Ooh, wonderful is the wrong word. We have an interesting, educational episode.
Speaker B:
I think it is possible that this episode may inspire feelings of wonder.
Speaker A:
Like, what the fuck kind of wonder? Yeah. Okay, there we go. Perfect. We’ll get into that shortly for This Week in the Apocalypse. But first, we are going to celebrate being a member of the Channel Zero network of anarchist podcasts by playing a jingle from one of the other podcasts on our network. And the jingle, it will go right here.
Speaker C:
Welcome to Propaganda by the Seed, a podcast about plants and the nerds that love them. We alternate between hour-long interview episodes that usually focus on a single species or crop, and shorter episodes that focus on topics related to plants like grafting, composting, and the rest. You can find Propaganda by the Seed on the Channel Zero network of anarchist podcasts, at propagandabytheseed.com, or most podcast platforms. I’ll see you deep in the weeds.
Speaker D:
Hell! Oh, this is an ad for The Spectacle. It’s kind of a cultural analysis podcast, but also an anarchist podcast, but it’s listed in the comedy section of Apple Podcasts, so everything we say counts as parody. Nice try, J. Edgar Hoover. It’s for people who like low art and hate cops. Just a bunch of nasty freaks talking movies and shit, ’cause it’s a really grim time to be a radical. We just wanted to make something stupid. I’m on that Arm Joy shit. If I can’t do bits, it’s not my revolution. It’s fun! So come on by every so often and listen to The Spectacle, the only podcast that— it’s the— it’s the only podcast. There’s none left. There’s none left. There was an accident and this is the only one now. The Spectacle, from Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness.
Speaker A:
And we’re back. What a great jingle, as always. So you have reached your favorite thing that happens on Tuesdays, I’m sure, of This Week in the Apocalypse from Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. And Miriam, I have a truth to confess. Oh, no. I did follow the news this last week, as is my job.
Speaker B:
As you do.
Speaker A:
And looked at headlines, and it was pretty much all elections stuff.
Speaker B:
Yeah, I’ve— ’tis the season, as they say.
Speaker A:
And my confession is that I don’t really give a flying fig about most of that, especially what they think is headline-worthy. So I’m not bringing a bunch of news headlines for us this week because I don’t want to talk about elections stuff. Everyone already is.
Speaker B:
That was a fun bait and switch. You’re like, here’s what the news is about.
Speaker A:
Yeah, I know.
Speaker B:
Just go ahead and wonder.
Speaker A:
Yeah. There are elections happening in other places and they matter too. Like Brazil just finished their elections and Serbia had elections. So this is not a uniquely United States thing that elections are happening. And it’s not the only thing happening in the world, but it seems to be the only thing the news wants to tell us about right now, and I don’t want to.
Speaker B:
All right. Did you want to tell us about anything else, or do you want me to just take it away from there?
Speaker A:
I wanted to tell you that I’m actually really excited about this episode. Listeners, Miriam has been talking about this for weeks now and has been a topic of great interest to them, and they are very smart in many, many ways, and I feel like I’m about to learn some stuff. So I like learning things, and I’m genuinely excited to chat with you.
Speaker B:
Well, thank you. I hope I can live up to that. That’s right, folks. Today we are focused on your favorite of the Horsemen, It’s Pestilence. Woo-hoo! Yay!
Speaker A:
Does anybody remember what color that horseman is?
Speaker B:
I don’t. I just know Death is on a pale horse and I don’t know what the other ones are, but—
Speaker A:
War is red.
Speaker B:
Okay. Pestilence is probably on a gross-looking horse, would be my guess. Yeah, right?
Speaker A:
Maybe gray or a sickly yellow. Maybe it’s— well, no, it’s not black because— well, no, Death is on a pale horse, you said. So maybe it is black. Maybe Pestilence is black. What’s the 4th one?
Speaker B:
Famine.
Speaker A:
Famine. Okay.
Speaker B:
We’ll talk about that another week. It’s time for pestilence, and it’s time for horses also because my topic for today is zoonotic diseases and the impact of climate change on zoonotic diseases. So exciting times. Zoonotic disease is a disease that is routinely transmitted from a non-human animal to a human. It includes all categories of illness, so bacteria, viruses, Parasites, fungal infections. Common examples would be rabies, most commonly spread by a bite or scratch from an infected animal. Malaria.
Speaker A:
I’ve heard of that one. I’m familiar with it.
Speaker B:
From mosquitoes, sure. They’re out there, as well as an array of tick-borne illnesses you may have been hearing about.
Speaker A:
Oh, okay, yeah.
Speaker B:
As well as historical pandemics like the Black Death, primarily spread by flea bites. We’re distinguishing here between zoonotic diseases, so ones spread primarily from animals to humans, and ones that start out in non-human populations before jumping to humans and then being transmitted human to human. An example—
Speaker A:
Those are different things?
Speaker B:
Well, I want to make the distinction between them because that moment where a disease makes that transition to be something that is spread human to human, is a real crisis point in talking about any kind of epidemic. So an example of an illness that made that transition from animal to person and then person to person would be HIV. Okay. Which is a mutated form of a virus found in non-human primates, which was most likely transmitted to a human through hunting before mutating into a virus that primarily affects humans and is transmitted from person to person. So, you know, if you were thinking of the virus early on as something that would be transmitted from person— from an animal to a person, then, you know, you would be most concerned if you were a human who interacted a lot with non-human primates, which is a small number of people globally, right? Right, yeah. But then once it becomes something that is transmitted person to person, it becomes a much greater concern.
Speaker A:
Makes sense.
Speaker B:
The risk of that happening exists with these diseases, so that’s something that we’re always looking at. We’ll kind of touch on that as we go. But we’re in a situation right now where climate change and environmental factors are having a huge impact on the rate at which humans encounter and are affected by zoonotic illnesses.
Speaker A:
Okay.
Speaker B:
So humans are acting on the environment, those actions affect animals, particularly insects, and that alters the disease landscape for human populations. And the climate is also a huge part of that. So we’ll get into some of that as we go. Starting out researching this, a statistic that I had heard, and tell me if you have heard this too. Have you ever heard somebody say that malaria has killed half of all humans who ever lived?
Speaker A:
No, I don’t think I’ve ever heard it be that extreme. I mean, I’ve certainly heard some extreme numbers, but I don’t think half.
Speaker B:
That’s fine because that number probably isn’t true. I’ve heard it many times and it’s a shocking number.
Speaker A:
Right.
Speaker B:
And basically it is A number that somebody said one time and then a bunch of other people said it, but it doesn’t seem to stand up. It dates to a 2002 article. More reasonable estimates do, however, suggest that 4 to 5% of all deaths in human history have been caused by malaria, which is a fuck ton.
Speaker A:
Yeah, that’s a big number in all of human history.
Speaker B:
Exactly. And that is one zoonotic disease. So one disease primarily spread from mosquitoes to people that may have killed up to 1 in 20 of all the people. Currently, it is responsible for 600,000 deaths annually. So that’s just the one zoonotic illness.
Speaker A:
Okay.
Speaker B:
And currently, zoonotic illness in general accounts for 2.7 million deaths annually worldwide. So it is a substantial problem and something that is going to be getting worse, is already getting worse, and will be getting worse.
Speaker A:
So it sounds like malaria makes up about 1/5 of all the deaths from zoonotic diseases. Do you know what some of the other major players are, so to speak, of zoonotic diseases in that 2.7 million?
Speaker B:
I don’t have at my fingertips all of those numbers, but definitely diseases like West Nile virus, Lyme disease, as well as dengue fever. There are other diseases like rabies, which affect humans less often but are almost always caused by animal bites. So there are actually a lot of these. We could also talk about Zika, avian flu. There are many of them. But yeah, malaria does seem to be one of the ones that we’re going to be hitting on the most because that one is a major problem and one that is actively getting worse.
Speaker A:
Okay.
Speaker B:
So there are 2 primary ways that human activity increases zoonotic transmission of disease. And The first is through agriculture. The second is through altering the environment. So we’ll talk about the second one in a bit. That’s sort of where we’re going to hit on climate change as well as some other stuff. But I want to talk about agriculture because this is a big issue. And I think when people hear zoonotic diseases, they think about bugs. Right. But it’s not all bugs. Animal domestication has always been one of the ways that humans encounter zoonotic diseases. On the most basic level, increased contact with animals is always going to increase the possibility of animal-to-human disease transmission, right? Even if you are, say, a shepherd with a small flock of sheep, you are more likely to get an illness that is transmitted from sheep to human than if you are a non-shepherd with zero sheep, right?
Speaker A:
Sure, yeah.
Speaker B:
Once agriculture, especially animal agriculture, gets to an industrial scale, the danger increases exponentially. Not just because there are more animals, but because factory farms are really also pathogen farms, right? You have sick animals crammed in near healthy animals in unsanitary conditions. And of course, there is also the fact that animals are sometimes fed material from other animals. People my age may remember mad cow disease. Do you remember mad cow disease?
Speaker A:
Oh yeah, we’re the same age, girl. Yeah, I do remember that. I remember being a punchline a lot of the time because it doesn’t feel like it became as big of a deal in the US, but it was a bigger deal in Europe. And I actually happened to be in— the one time I’ve been to Europe was also kind of just post some of the mad cow when hamburger was still very sketchy and hard to come by.
Speaker B:
Yeah, so I’m glad you brought that up that it was kind of a punchline in the US because 178 people died This— so just to— New York City. For people who are not our age, this was an outbreak in the ’80s and ’90s when cattle in the UK were found to be infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, which causes Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. There were nearly 200,000 known cattle infections and 178 human deaths, as I mentioned, as a result. And in response, 4 million cattle were culled to spread to prevent the spread of this disease. Yeah, massive. So that is huge and awful. And of course had a, you know, in addition to just that being a lot of dead people and animals, there was a 10-year ban on beef exports from the UK, so it had a huge economic impact. People probably still remember, even people who are not our age, that for years if you went to give blood, you were asked if you had spent time in the UK. Out of concern for this. And this was an illness that was first transmitted to these domestic cattle through the practice of feeding cattle meat and bone meal made from other animals, including other cattle, which is fucked.
Speaker A:
Yeah. You’re telling me that something went wrong with feeding an animal to itself?
Speaker B:
Yeah, weirdly enough. And then, yes, as was mentioned, was then transmitted to humans. So that’s an example of a way that animal agriculture, and especially factory farming animal agriculture and industrial-scale animal agriculture, can lead to this zoonotic disease transmission. You know, and I think it’s easy to see how an animal that people are eating could give them an illness, but it’s not just animals that humans eat. We have all been hearing about bird flu for years, but so far the main reason that it makes the news has had to do with the impact on egg prices.
Speaker A:
You’re not wrong. You’re really not wrong.
Speaker B:
It’s apparently the biggest story in the news always is egg prices. By the way, I have just been handed a note that I mispronounced the disease that mad cow disease causes in humans. It’s Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Thank you, anonymous person who handed me a note correcting my pronunciation. We love when pronunciation is corrected by anonymous notes handed directly to us and not by people messaging us after they hear our podcasts.
Speaker A:
But we do love—
Speaker B:
We appreciate—
Speaker A:
Getting corrections and setting the record straight. So we do appreciate the notes that come to us if you hear it on the pods.
Speaker B:
Yes, we do.
Speaker A:
And need to let us know.
Speaker B:
But we even more appreciate notes.
Speaker A:
Especially ones that come with kisses.
Speaker B:
Oh, yeah. Sorry, viewers at home are not viewing, so they didn’t know that.
Speaker A:
Sorry, was it a secret? It was not a secret. We
Speaker B:
didn’t have to— So back to avian flu, which I’ve been pronouncing correctly, unlike Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which I pronounced incorrectly and now know how to pronounce correctly. So avian flu can and does transmit to humans, but it often mutates in another non-human mammal first. Pigs are believed to be a major source of that danger, but right now it is a major unaddressed risk in fur farming. Uh-huh. Uh, recently there has been a major epidemic in a Utah mink farm where minks are kept in factory farm conditions in order to be killed for fur. Unlike with poultry, we don’t have an approved avian flu vaccine for minks, so There’s not really much to do about this one except not do fur farming, Jesus Christ.
Speaker A:
Yeah.
Speaker B:
Workers in the fur farm are at a high risk of exposure, obviously, because in addition to droplet spread through sneezing and coughing, which I’ve never seen a mink sneeze. That sounds cute as shit, but bad if they have avian flu.
Speaker A:
Right.
Speaker B:
Mink are also aggressive and known to bite and scratch humans whose job is to keep them in cages.
Speaker A:
Right.
Speaker B:
And currently, the state of Utah is not doing anything to monitor the health of those workers or shut down the farm where thousands of mink are known to be infected. The state will only really get involved if there’s a clear case of human-to-human infection.
Speaker A:
Yeah, this is my surprised face about the state of Utah not getting involved.
Speaker B:
Yeah, the state of Utah, great, great at health. The state of Utah, not remotely a pyramid scheme For essential oils and dietary supplements. All of this apathy from the state is to protect the fur industry, which has an interest in remaining unregulated despite the very real risk of this situation leading to transmission of avian flu from a mammal vector to humans. And once an illness can jump from mammal to mammal, it is, of course, closer to being able to jump from human to human, which is the point where things get that much more dangerous. So those are some examples of how factory farming by humans increases the risk. But as I kind of alluded to at the start, that’s not necessarily the biggest issue. The biggest issue is almost certainly climate change. You thought we forgot about climate change, but it’s back.
Speaker A:
We never forget about climate change on this podcast.
Speaker B:
Never. So the most obvious problem with climate change and zoonotic disease has to do with the changing ranges of different insects, especially mosquitoes.
Speaker A:
Right. They can travel farther or different— to different areas.
Speaker B:
They increase their range. Yeah. So as it gets warmer, mosquitoes that carry diseases to mammals like humans expand their range to areas where they haven’t been before. Malaria, for instance, has traditionally been a disease that doesn’t really hit mountainous areas. But that’s increasingly not the case as higher altitudes get warmer. It’s more complicated than warmer equals more mosquitoes equals more disease, because while that’s broadly true, it varies from disease to disease.
Speaker A:
Okay.
Speaker B:
In particular, dengue fever is— it’s very true for dengue fever. Increased heat leads to increased mosquitoes leads to increased dengue. And dengue, while usually mild, Does lead to about 5,000 deaths a year currently, and that’s with it limited to the areas where it’s currently endemic. And if that area gets larger, so too, of course, will the number of deaths. Real back-of-the-map math suggests 1 in 1,000 people infected with dengue fever die, but that’s like— don’t quote me on that because mild cases of dengue fever are often asymptomatic, so it’s hard to get good numbers on this. People can and do die of it, and its range is expanding. Now, it’s also not just increased temperature. Climate catastrophes like flooding and drought are also a factor. And ironically, both flooding and drought can increase mosquito populations because flooding— Okay,
Speaker A:
yeah.
Speaker B:
Wait. Oh, sorry, go ahead.
Speaker A:
Sorry, I was nodding along with you like, uh-huh, and then I went, wait, I think of mosquitoes as going with water always, so I’m confused that drought is a thing. So please continue teaching me.
Speaker B:
Yeah, so obviously flooding can lead to increased mosquito populations because, as I think a lot of people know, mosquitoes breed in, or lay eggs in standing water. When you have floods, you have standing water in places where you did not used to have standing water. But when you have droughts, things that were once running water become pools of stagnant water.
Speaker A:
Oh, okay.
Speaker B:
Right? A small stream cut off from its source becomes multiple pools of standing water, and because it’s not running anymore, now it is a place where mosquitoes will breed. So both extremes create breeding grounds for mosquitoes. There’s also factors related to humidity that gets a little complicated because mosquitoes do need humidity. Drought can lead to drier air, so there is a— and there is an upper limit too to like how— how much heat is good for mosquitoes, but overall, it is absolutely true that climate change leads to more mosquitoes overall because of all these factors. Now, what this means is that malaria and other mosquito-borne illnesses have already been showing up in places where they were once rarer or not seen at all, and I think we can assume that that’s going to increase. Now, interestingly, malaria has spread already through colonialism spread to the Americas where it was not previously endemic. But it has also— there’s sort of— there’s actually some mystery around this. Malaria used to be endemic to England and was found around the River Thames until about the 19th century, and we’re really not sure why it went away.
Speaker A:
Okay.
Speaker B:
Probably a lot of factors, you know, having to do with like swamp drainage and like a bunch of other stuff, but like ultimately we don’t actually have a solid answer. on why there is not currently malaria in London, but it should be back by 2050. So, you know, maybe we don’t need to figure that out because it won’t be true anymore. You know, whatever happened before, hopefully they can make it happen again, but we can expect a lot more malaria. A lot of this stuff that I’ve been talking about, these mosquito-borne illnesses, can be mitigated by the same strategies that people have been using for years to prevent mosquito-borne infections in places where those are endemic. And the problem is we’ve already been— like, that is already a struggle that people are doing. And also, some of these strategies get more difficult as the climate gets warmer. So for example, 2 really effective ways to avoid mosquito bites are to wear longer clothes and sleep under mosquito nets, which both become very unappealing in very high temperatures.
Speaker A:
Exactly.
Speaker B:
It is harder to sleep under a mosquito net. when the temperatures are just unlivable, right? Total, total side note, do you know about this whole thing with the effective altruism movement and mosquito nets?
Speaker A:
This doesn’t ring a bell, no.
Speaker B:
Okay, great. It makes me want to die. Just—
Speaker A:
Die or kill? Because usually things make you want to kill.
Speaker B:
Well, only one of those is an actionable crime to talk about on a podcast. So let’s say die. It makes me want to fling myself and perhaps other people into the sun. Basically, there’s this— you know what? I don’t want to tell you about it. It’s going to bum you out.
Speaker A:
Okay.
Speaker B:
There are some people very focused on mosquito nets, and mosquito nets are great, but they’re not a solution in and of themselves. Right. They present their own problems, and they are great, but also the conversation about mosquito-borne illness does not end with get everyone mosquito nets. Other attempts to mitigate this problem involve pesticides and other attempts to control the mosquito population. Obviously, there are issues with that as well, right? Because pesticide use is going to have an impact on other insects and affect the larger environment. There are also programs where they use infertile mosquitoes that are released in various— Right. But again, reducing the mosquito population in general can have impacts on the environment that can be unforeseen. So again, complicated.
Speaker A:
Right.
Speaker B:
There’s also other strategies including— well, dang, I had it written down as the Wolbachia program, but now I’m like, is my invisible pronunciation guide going to tell me that it’s Wolbachia? Let’s just say both, Wolbachia slash Wolbachia.
Speaker A:
If you mispronounce things on purpose, you might get another kiss along with the note. So if I had someone in the room for that, I would be mispronouncing the shit out of things.
Speaker B:
Well, however it’s pronounced, it is a program where a bacteria is released that infects mosquitoes that does not kill them, but appears to prevent them from hosting pathogens, including dengue and Zika.
Speaker A:
Oh, okay.
Speaker B:
So it has shown some really good results in some places, but it is controversial. It has not been endorsed by the WHO, but they’re actually reviewing their policy on that soon. We can expect an update in 2027. So that is a program for mosquito-borne illness mitigation that may see wider use if the WHO endorses it. Another insect that is a common disease vector is— are ticks.
Speaker A:
Yeah.
Speaker B:
I think we’ve— yeah.
Speaker A:
You know, it’s interesting. I was just talking about ticks this last week with a friend of mine who’s from East Coast, North Carolina, Virginia area, and we don’t really— we have ticks out west, but where I live, they’re really not a big deal and not a thing that we think about very much, and he was talking about the contrast of his childhood and how if you want to go play in the woods, there’s a whole set of preparations, and of course those of you who live around ticks already know these things, so I don’t need to repeat them, But it was very interesting from a perspective of someone who’s really never been taught or had to learn how to check for ticks or be safe from ticks.
Speaker B:
Yeah, no, it is a really changing landscape around here, like in the Northeast, and the range of disease-carrying ticks is expanding. So while you are not needing to worry about it for now, I hope that situation lasts for you. May it last for as many people as possible. But yeah, it really does change kind of your relationship to being in nature when you’re scared of ticks, and it makes sense to be scared of ticks.
Speaker A:
Yeah.
Speaker B:
So Lyme disease is probably the main one people have been hearing about for the longest, and the increase in Lyme disease is a good example of multiple factors at work. So as the temperatures get overall warmer, the seasons of tick viability get longer, which promotes the spread of tick-borne illness to humans. But there’s also the fact that humans have in many places eliminated predator species, which means that—
Speaker A:
Oh.
Speaker B:
Many of the other animals that ticks feed on and acquire diseases from, such as deer, become overpopulated. Those species are then increasingly forced into contact with humans due to habitat loss. So as with mosquitoes, it’s not just the fact that the world is literally warmer, it’s also more sort of direct impact on a local level, right? Mitigating tick-borne illness is similar to mitigating mosquito-borne illness in that it can be done on this like really individual level where you use a lot of bug repellent, you wear clothing with a lot of coverage, as well as using bigger picture strategies which do include deer culls in some areas. And this is— Oh,
Speaker A:
very controversial, of course.
Speaker B:
Controversial.
Speaker A:
Yeah.
Speaker B:
And it’s like this situation where it’s like, well, if the goddamn wolves and mountain lions were around, we wouldn’t be in this problem. So it’s not— it’s like humans are killing off the animals that were keeping deer populations in balance and then killing a bunch of deer about it. Mm-hmm. So just one of those things that could make you angry, I suppose. But in addition to being controversial because people have feelings about killing animals, and animals probably have feelings about that too. These strategies are also problematic because sometimes scientists argue that deer are not actually the main issue, but that actually smaller animals like rodents, particularly mice, are carrying these ticks, and that they are thriving primarily because of a lack of predators and because they thrive best in small, broken-up forests. forests, which is what you get as a result of suburban development and urban sprawl, right?
Speaker A:
Right. Yep.
Speaker B:
When you break up a large forest into 20 tiny little forests isolated by roads, that’s when these rodents really thrive.
Speaker A:
Interesting.
Speaker B:
Because the predators aren’t as able to get to them. The predators that do exist aren’t as able to get to them. So this is another huge problem for Lyme disease. It would be nice If we had a vaccine for Lyme disease, but we currently do not have one that is approved for human use, although there are some available for dogs, which is nice. Have you been hearing about the Lone Star tick as well?
Speaker A:
I have not.
Speaker B:
So the Lone Star tick, this one is— I almost didn’t include this. And the reason I almost did not include this is that it is not a zoonotic disease. But it is an illness that a person gets after being bitten by a tick. So what? That sounds like— Right.
Speaker A:
That’s why I’m giving you the face that says that.
Speaker B:
Yeah, sounds fake, right? Okay, so the Lone Star tick is a tick with a white spot on its back. And it has been— it is indigenous to the Southeast primarily and is spreading north. pretty quickly. And the thing about this tick is that after being bitten by it, people develop an allergy—
Speaker A:
Okay.
Speaker B:
—called alpha-gal syndrome. It’s a series of allergies that can be fatal, as many allergies can. I won’t get too into the weeds of alpha-gal syndrome. It’s weird. But this is— while it is not a zoonotic illness, it is a condition that you get after being bitten by An insect that can kill you or severely alter your life through allergies. And this tick is expanding its range. So this is another thing that we need to pay attention to, and it’s just also another example of the way that climate change is making people sicker.
Speaker A:
Great. So Lone Star ticks soon to be available everywhere that you find ticks thanks to climate change.
Speaker B:
Yes, Lone Star ticks, coming soon to a patch of tall grass near you. And it’s unfortunate too because alpha-gal syndrome sounds like a cool superhero, but it’s not. It is an allergy.
Speaker A:
I was going to say that too. And then I was like, nope, I can’t. I can’t say that. I want it to be something cooler.
Speaker B:
Yeah, I know. Unfortunately, that is the least of its problems. But yeah, the conclusion here is that zoonotic disease is a huge problem and likely to get worse. And each individual illness and each individual disease vector is going to need its own response globally as well as locally. And overall, just an increased focus on attempting to mitigate the worst results of climate change because with all of these, like, every little bit worse climate change gets makes this that much worse. Mm-hmm. It sucks. And as with all the effects of climate change, it is going to be the people who are already the most vulnerable who are the most impacted. And that is also going to include people who become climate refugees, or really any kind of refugees lacking access to the medications and other mitigation strategies to help with these illnesses. So that’s what I got.
Speaker A:
All right, so don’t go outside, stay indoors.
Speaker B:
If James hears you saying that, he’s going to get mad. Do go outside, do wear long pants, tuck them into your socks like a real forest nerd if you’re in a tick
Speaker A:
And if you’re not in a ticky area, maybe do it anyway to start practicing because I guess they’re coming for us.
Speaker B:
Yeah, and to start that fashion trend off before we need it.
Speaker A:
There we go.
Speaker B:
But yeah, just I guess one of those climate topics that always bears a closer look, and a closer look than we have been able to give it today, but these episodes are supposed to be short.
Speaker A:
I feel like that was, you know, I mean, we did a deep dive here on one single topic-ish, so I feel like we did really get into A lot of it, unfortunately, I wish there was, you know, we try and leave with some kind of advice or positive news or something we can do to affect things. And I don’t know if there is.
Speaker B:
I did give advice. I said tuck your pants into your socks like a forest nerd.
Speaker A:
That’s right. That’s right. All right. That’s your positive from this is that no one will look at you funny if you start doing that because you are just being prepared. And we do support many forms of preparedness.
Speaker B:
And don’t listen to us about ticks. Listen to James about ticks. I’m sure James has a better
Speaker A:
All right, you heard it here first. Don’t listen
Speaker B:
to
Speaker A:
us.
Speaker B:
Should have said that right at the top. No, you can listen to us, but, um, I’m going to be checking in with James about what I should be doing about ticks anyway.
Speaker A:
Yeah, there we go. We’ll do a follow-up with, with our dear friend James. And you have been listening to us. We appreciate you listening to this podcast, Live Like the World Is Dying. It is brought to you by our publisher, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, which is a Radical Publishing Collective, of which Miriam and I both get to be members, as well as your other hosts that come on and share these episodes with you. We put out many forms of radical media, including 2 other podcasts. We also publish books. We have a line of very beautiful fancy zines. And we also do skill zines, which we are continuing to expand, and we are open to ideas for those. If you want to interact with us, we do genuinely like talking to all of you and hearing from you. We’ve got some social media like Instagram @tangledwilderness or Bluesky @tangledwilderness.bluesky.social. You can also go straight to our website tangledwilderness.org where you can check out all of the cool merch and things that we make. And our most important component is our Patreon, at least for the sake of the ongoing survival of this podcast, which is made possible by the Patreon supporters. And that includes all of you at all of the levels, support tiers, even those of you who joined the Patreon At the free level and just follow along with what we do and listen to this podcast. It means so much to us that you give that support and make it possible and have made possible our growth as well. If you support us at the $20 a month or more tier, we give you a shout-out at the end of our podcasts. That shout-out can go to you, it can go to your pets, it can go to your best friend, it can be in memoriam, it can be to a group that you care about or a book that you loved, or just about anything really. We haven’t had any crazy ones, but I really welcome someone to throw something out there that makes us wonder if we can say it on air. Probably shouldn’t have said that. Oh well, someone might ask the lawyer if that was a bad idea. But you know, for now, I want to say thanks to all these lovely people, ideas, things, books, pets, causes, uh, and so forth. They include Sarah, Chuchali Defending Tikano, We will remember Flora Tristan, the Chattanooga Free Store, Santa Fe Food Not Bombs, Glenn, Please Fight Anti-Fatness, Arizona Sunsets, Bunny Bionics, Patrick Harnett Marshall, all wiener dogs everywhere, Joseph, the first 2 chapters of The Eden Project by James Hollis, Kiwanis Socialists, the Athens People’s Assembly of Athens, Georgia, Mr. Kraft, your Canadian friend Mark, Tiny Nonsense, A Future for Abby, the Canadian Socialist Rifle Association. Max, Lancaster County Chooses Love. A Story of Food Pantry, Enchanted Rats of Turtle Island, Feral and WV, Blink Cat, the Massachusetts chapter of the Socialist Rifle Association. Jenny and Phoebe the Cats, Jason, Aiden, and Yuki the Dog, Alexander Gopal, Sunshine, Opticuna, Portland’s Pedron— Pedron, y’all? No, Portland’s Hedron Hackerspace. Appalachian Liberation Library, Lord Harken, Baby Acab and Her Three Great Pups, Ephemeral, Princess Miranda, Janice and Odell, Boldfield, Ali, Papa Runa, Milicia, Theo, SJ, Paige, Pocono Pink Pistols, Nicole and Tick for the Dog, David, Towser’s Love of Bumblebees, Carson, Dana, Chelsea, Amber, Marjorie, The Truth That We Will Outlive Them, Kirk, Mikaya, Chris, the incredible Wren Arai, Micah, and the immortal, inevitable, beloved Hosuh the dog. Thanks so much for listening. We’ll see you next time. Bye.
