The opening audio is from XTC’s song “That Wave.”
Paul jokes that he is being overwhelmed by the sudden wave of antisemitism we’ve been reading so much about, but really, it’s always been here, and so have the schisms in Judaism; there’s a state that seems to be really good at causing antisemitism, because it’s a great opportunity for fundraising and for the state of Israel to gain support for pursuing its goals; the maelstrom of politics surounding criticism of the state of Israel; linking the safety of Jews worldwide and the state of Israel; the larger historical context of the Ashkenazi diaspora and the narrative of their historical persecution; Sephardic and Misrahi Jews and their lived experience; Israel is not majority Ashkenazi, but you wouldn’t know it, because of the voices you hear in the media; the marginalization of Jews who do not support the Occupation of Palestine; the generational divide between American Ashkenazi Jews; the Ashkenazi embrace of whiteness and white privilege, and the performance of white supremacy; the identity of persecution and the protection of whiteness; Israel’s posthumous sperm retrieval program; Noam Chomsky’s The Fateful Triangle and the lessons to be learned from reading Hebrew-language newspapers; these weren’t two people; the imaginary claim that things were going fine before October 7th; the wildly overstated claims about what happened on October 7th; Hellfire R9X missile with blades instead of explosives; natalism and the questions around sperm and egg retrieval; don’t pretend Ashkenazi Jews performing white supremacy doesn’t harm Jews everywhere; the long-term white supremacist roots of the settler-colonial project; how the history is very complex over thousands of years, but considerably simpler over the last hundred years; Israel’s river of lies and the shift in mainstream media coverage since the Al-Shifa hospital siege; the question of who this propaganda is for and why it is so poorly executed; this isn’t working anymore, and it isn’t making Jews safer; stoking antisemitism will lead to Israel’s demise; a second Holocaust; do you denounce Hamas?
The closing audio is from Babylon 5, season 2, episode 20, “The Long, Twilight Struggle.” In this scene, the Narn have surrendered to the Centauri. Narn Ambassador G’kar (played by Andreas Katsulas) is stripped of his ambassadorship by Centauri Londo Mollari (played by Peter Jurasik), and ordered out of the council chamber. As he leaves, he speaks these words of heartbroken, but unyielding, defiance on behalf of his now-occupied people.
Here is a direct link to the MP3 file, which should work with most browsers.
The Podcast feed is here.
This episode is also on YouTube here. It is audio-only. Note that because I often use brief clips of copyrighted music, YouTube may insert ads or block viewing in some locations (for example, some episodes can’t be viewed in Cuba). Even if a video can be played now, there is no guarantee YouTube won’t change these permissions in the future.
The Podcast episodes playlist on YouTube, which should show all available episodes, is here.
The Grace and Paul Pottscast Archive Index
Airheads Extremes Rainbow Berry Strips are simply wrong; movie night snacks; our fish taco hack; wasting away again in mosquitoville; food security and how to diversify our food sources; our pantry; our garden as a food source; a local produce source; the density of mosquitoes inside the car compared to outside the car; food resilience; Calder dairy; finding local meats; attempts to find resilient, local food sources; the shit-hits-the-fan pantry; planning for exponential change; Bamboozled: a Spike Lee joint.
Here is a direct link to the MP3 file, which should work with most browsers.
The Podcast feed is here.
This episode is also on YouTube here. It is audio-only. Note that because I often use brief clips of copyrighted music, YouTube may insert ads or block viewing in some locations (for example, some episodes can’t be viewed in Cuba). Even if a video can be played now, there is no guarantee YouTube won’t change these permissions in the future.
The Podcast episodes playlist on YouTube, which should show all available episodes, is here.
The Grace and Paul Pottscast Archive Index
Grace and I discuss a conversation I had on the Xitter, started by my Xeet recommending that people give up on the mRNA vaccines and go forward getting Novavax instead. We immediately digress into talking about how Malachi got some kind of a sting or bite on his lip and went around looking like one of the Simpsons. But we bring it back around to the subject of soft minimizers, self-proclaimed vaccine realists, as opposed to those they call novids or zero-COVID extremists. If there is such a thing as a zero-COVID extremist, then I am one; I just want to minimize the actual risks of the disease, not people’s concerns about the disease.
The Xitter conversation immediately went off the rails as my interlocutor wanted to bicker about definitions and accuse me of demanding an unrealistic degree of perfection, when actual measured efficacy of vaccines against infection and transmission is actually far lower than people realize. He also insisted that I could not predict efficacy against future variants, which is of course trivially true, although there is a great deal of data that suggests that Novavax has had better durability against known variants so far, as has the Soberana 2 vaccine in Cuba, and even the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. In fact there is a lot of data; I read as many papers as I can and follow some smart people who live by the precautionary principle, rather than minimizing the risks. But I don’t think it’s my job to Xeet out summaries of every source I read; that’s why I repost the Xeets of many other people who are far better-qualified than I am to explain the science as it develops.
My interlocutor then went on about how nobody was stopping other companies from developing better vaccines, a breathtakingly wrong statement which ignores every single aspect of the way vaccines are approved, purchased, distributed, and promoted.
Grace and I also discuss the way in which the vaccines ought to be the very last line of defense, not the first and only line of defense, and why it was never reasonable to expect that the first versions of any vaccine would be both very safe and very effective, and how quickly everyone forgets the actual statements that authorities made about the aims and successes of the vaccine program. We further discuss what interventions could have made a meaningful difference. Ultimately, my interlocutor would not even agree that it would have been a good idea to promote hand sanitizer and social distancing for an airborne virus, and made the risible claim that at the start of the pandemic, nobody knew anything about how to lower the risk of spreading an airborne SARS virus. If you take nothing else away from this podcast episode, take away the idea that the practice of public health is a process of building trust, and misleading the public, or outright lying to the public, undermines every aspect of that effort.
Winding up, we talk about how there is community on social media, althought it is weird, broken, siloed, and filled with trolls, and what we hope to achieve, and occasionally do achieve, when using these platforms.
Here is a direct link to the MP3 file, which should work with most browsers.
The Podcast feed is here.
This episode is also on YouTube here. It is audio-only. Note that because I often use brief clips of copyrighted music, YouTube may insert ads or block viewing in some locations (for example, some episodes can’t be viewed in Cuba). Even if a video can be played now, there is no guarantee YouTube won’t change these permissions in the future.
The Podcast episodes playlist on YouTube, which should show all available episodes, is here.
The Grace and Paul Pottscast Archive Index
In a long discussion, Grace and I discuss movies: just how long it’s been since we’ve seen movies in a theater, and the movies we’ve been sharing with the kids at home. Some of our recent movie choices include A.I.: Artificial Intelligence; Be Kind, Rewind; and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Grace recently arranged to rent an entire theater during off-peak hours so a COVID-conscious group could have a safer experience watching the new Barbie movie.
Here is a direct link to the MP3 file, which should work with most browsers.
The Podcast feed is here.
This episode is also on YouTube here. It is audio-only. Note that because I often use brief clips of copyrighted music, YouTube may insert ads or block viewing in some locations (for example, some episodes can’t be viewed in Cuba). Even if a video can be played now, there is no guarantee YouTube won’t change these permissions in the future.
The Podcast episodes playlist on YouTube, which should show all available episodes, is here.
The Grace and Paul Pottscast Archive Index
In this recording, which Grace and I made in our car while running errands, we discuss the reasons we sought out Novavax and our experience receiving this vaccine as an alternative to the more widely available and promoted mRNA vaccines.
Note that during this conversation, I stated that had gotten an mRNA booster in December 2021, although I had tried to arrange to get the Johnson and Johnson vaccine instead, because my employer required it. I mis-remembered events. My employer had, earlier in 2021, asked employees to disclose their COVID-19 vaccination status and provide a scan of their vaccine cards, but employees were allowed to opt out if they chose. I decided to get a booster in December 2021 because in the fall, I had needed to spend time in the office to complete work, around unmasked co-workers and occasional groups of visitors, and I wanted to be better-protected going into 2022.
Here is a direct link to the MP3 file, which should work with most browsers.
The Podcast feed is here.
This episode is also on YouTube here. It is audio-only. Note that because I often use brief clips of copyrighted music, YouTube may insert ads or block viewing in some locations (for example, some episodes can’t be viewed in Cuba). Even if a video can be played now, there is no guarantee YouTube won’t change these permissions in the future.
The Podcast episodes playlist on YouTube, which should show all available episodes, is here.
The Grace and Paul Pottscast Archive Index
COVID-19 is the third-leading cause of death in the United States. We’re doing nothing to stop it, but be sure to follow the CDC’s recommendation to never eat raw cookie dough! We’re not even stopping COVID transmission in health care settings, leading to ever more health care-acquired infections, as our COVID-damaged immune systems are exposed to infections again and again.
The infections may get milder, but milder infections are more likely to lead to long COVID. We’re learning more about the constellation of related illnesses, and the news isn’t good; many survivors of the 1918 influenza pandemic suffered similar long-term sequelae, but this is not widely understood.
Meanwhile, our pharmaceutical interventions are more and more limited to a vaccine technology that has failed to remain effective. It usually takes years to get a vaccine right, so we shouldn’t be surprised by this. But letting COVID-19 rip allows it to mutate rapidly, almost guaranteeing that vaccine development won’t keep up.
Grace and I talk about the shift to our contemporary culture in which sick children going to school, and sick parents going to work, has been completely normalized. But it wasn’t always like this, and doesn’t need to be in the future. This is personal to us, as Grace recounts the story of our son with asthma, and his old-school pediatrician who knew that constant respiratory illnesses didn’t actually help kids with asthma, and that the immune system isn’t a muscle.
We wander off-topic and talk about various other things going on in our home and garden, including how we feed our family of nine and how Paul makes chili. We cover the status of our fried appliances.
Finally, after many digressions, we discuss the challenge of exercise and long COVID — why the fatigue and exercise intolerance associated with the condition aren’t simply due to deconditioning, and why exercise often hinders, not helps, recovery.
Here is a direct link to the MP3 file, which should work with most browsers.
The Podcast feed is here.
This episode is also on YouTube here. It is audio-only. Note that because I often use brief clips of copyrighted music, YouTube may insert ads or block viewing in some locations (for example, some episodes can’t be viewed in Cuba). Even if a video can be played now, there is no guarantee YouTube won’t change these permissions in the future.
The Podcast episodes playlist on YouTube, which should show all available episodes, is here.