Episode 158: Transcript
Transcription by Alexander
Charlie Jane: [00:00:00] Annalee, this is the first time we've ever done an advice episode if Our Opinions Are Correct. Are you excited?
Annalee: [00:00:06] Yeah, I actually am really excited. I mean, we've given writing advice, but we've never asked you, our beloved listeners, to write in with advice questions. And, you know, I used to read Dear Abby a lot when I was a kid, so I think I'm going to like channel her energy. So who's your advice icon?
Charlie Jane: [00:00:23] My advice icon is Miss Manners, because I just really like the idea of someone who just tells you how to be really polite. Annalee, I don't know if you could remember this, but 20 something years ago, when we were both working for the free weekly newspaper here in San Francisco, there was possibly going to be a new sex advice columnist. And I was seriously discussing pitching myself as like a sex etiquette columnist called Emily Post-Coital, which I actually came up with some fun ideas for that, but then I realized it would basically be two columns that I would run out. I'd just be like, okay, I'm done. I don't have any more sex etiquette wisdom to share.
Annalee: [00:01:01] I also think if you're at the Post-Coital point, like the etiquette question might be moot.
Charlie Jane: [00:01:06] I don’t know, because there’s still a lot of etiquette after…
Annalee: [00:01:09] It's true that aftercare and like, you know, what do you do the next time? So, well, I'm sad that we missed out on that in the San Francisco Bay Guardian.
Charlie Jane: [00:01:19] I was excited about that idea for like three days until I realized that it was not going to have legs. So you are listening to Our Opinions Are Correct. We're a podcast where our advice is just as correct as our opinions. I'm Charlie Jane Anders. I have a novel coming out next year called Lessons in Magic and Disaster.
Annalee: [00:01:38] And I'm Annalee Newitz. I'm a science journalist and a science fiction author. And my latest book, which just came out, is called Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind.
Charlie Jane: [00:01:49] Yeah. And on our next episode, we're just going to be talking about the best advice we ever received ourselves as writers.
Annalee: [00:01:56] And by the way, did you know that this podcast is entirely independent and funded by you, our listeners, through Patreon? That's correct. And if you become a patron, you're making this podcast happen. You're paying for our amazing producer, Naya. Plus you get audio extras with each episode. You get access to our Discord channel where we hang out. And currently we're talking about how to deal with all of our anxieties about current events. And we're really supporting each other. It's really nice to be there. And anything you give goes right back into making our opinions even more correct. So please consider supporting us. You can find us at patreon.com/ouropinionsarecorrect.
[00:02:35] [OOAC theme plays. Science fiction synth noises over an energetic, jazzy drum line.]
Annalee: [00:03:09] So y'all sent us some really fantastic emails asking us all kinds of things. And so we're sort of dividing this up into two sections. One is writing advice, which makes sense that you're asking us about that. But then we also got a lot of just general other advice questions. So we're going to do that next. So writing and then other.
Charlie Jane: [00:03:29] Yeah. I feel like that's how life goes. First you master writing and then you master life.
Annalee: [00:03:34] Yeah. First writing then other. Charlie, do you want to get started and read the first question?
Charlie Jane: [00:03:42] Yeah. So one of our listeners asks, basically how to get into freelance writing since you and I, Annalee, we've both done a lot of freelance writing and wondering if we have any tips. And, you know, I do have some tips. I also think it's: A) it's been a while since we broke in, like we broke into freelance writing, like over 20 years ago in both our cases. So…
Annalee: [00:04:03] At the turn of the century.
Charlie Jane: [00:04:04] It was a very different time back then. And also obviously journalism and the publishing industry have changed a lot. But I'm curious to hear your thoughts, Annalee.
Annalee: [00:04:12] Yeah. I mean, I feel like as a journalist, I've had to kind of break into the industry multiple times because there is so much turnover in publications. So for me, even going back to the earliest days, the issue has always been having a good roster of clips that you can show to editors. And when I started out, I self published, you know, I wrote a zine. Today, I would probably I mean, I do have a newsletter, but today if I were starting out, I would have a newsletter.
Charlie Jane: [00:04:40] Hell yeah.
Annalee: [00:04:41] And you just want to be able to show editors when you pitch them –“look, I know how to write. Like here's some stuff I've written.” And that's incredibly important. And whether you're someone who's really established and you can say, here's clips I have from fill in the mainstream publication here or here's clips from my blog. That's what's really going to get you in the door when you send those pitch emails.
Charlie Jane: [00:05:02] Yeah, I definitely want a second that I think starting a newsletter would be a good way to kind of show that you can do it because part of what people are going to want to know is can you write, first of all, can you write something that seems cogent and like not just like a weird chat GPT barf, but also can you produce stuff on deadline? Can you produce stuff regularly? And if they can look at a newsletter or something else where you've been producing lots of stuff, that's a huge plus.
[00:05:24] And I think finding opportunities where there are publications that, you know, just are looking for extra contributors. Like there always are some out there who, you know, just want extra contributors. And maybe the pay isn't great, but you get those clips that will then help you get your foot in the door at higher places. I think that's what you got to do. And now is a really tough time. I think we can't sugarcoat it. Like, a lot of really experienced, amazing journalists have been laid off in recent, like the last year. And also, you know, the culture industry in general is kind of having a time. It's a really weird time in a lot of areas of culture, including fiction and nonfiction. So it's a tough time to break in. But I think that if you build prominence in other platforms, like a newsletter that gets some pickup, like or even a podcast or, you know, whatever, people will start to know who you are. And that's one of the main barriers. And then, you know, just be really polite and respectful to editors. Don't be pushy. Don't, you know, don't bug them too much and just try to be like chill.
Annalee: [00:06:26] Yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:06:26] Because that's the other thing is they want you not to be a pain in the ass, kind of.
Annalee: [00:06:29] It's true. Yeah. Although also don't be afraid to gently nudge them. You know, my rule of thumb is if you pitch a story and you haven't heard back in a week, then you can send them a reminder email. “Just checking back. Are you interested in this?” And if you don't hear from them, then wait another week and bug them again. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten assignments after the second time bugging the editor. So it's not because you suck. It's because editors are busy.
Charlie Jane: [00:06:55] They are.
Annalee: [00:06:55] And as long as you're polite and you're just like, hey, I'm just reminding you, I pitched this. Nobody's going to be mad. They're not going to think you're pushy or a jerk. They're going to just be like, oh, yeah, they're just reminding me. The final thing I would say is that it's really important to be pragmatic because everything we're saying is acknowledging that this is a hard time. This is not an industry where you can make a ton of money. When I started out, I had a day job. I was teaching. It took me over a year to transition to being able to make a living as a writer. And there's definitely been times in my life when I've had to do other kinds of work. So if you're doing something like doing ad copy on the side or as your day job, or if you're able to do technical writing or, you know, anything like that, that's just practical ways of making money. The most important thing is for you to survive. Make sure you're doing that stuff. You're not a sellout for doing that. You're not being a bad person. In fact, the opposite. You're helping yourself survive so that you can write those things that you really care about that may not pay that much money at first or may never pay very much money ever. So that's the practical side. All right, let's move on to our next question. I will read this. This is a little bit more involved.
[00:08:08] So this listener says, “For the past couple of years, I’ve had a story I was really happy with, and it became a finalist in a pretty prominent contest, leading to one of my heroes reading it. So I’m feeling pretty good, right? But for the last two years, it’s been getting rejected like a Don Hertzfeldt cartoon. I’m not sure if I’m looking in the wrong markets or what, but I’m wondering if you have some advice for how to combat the inevitable imposter syndrome feelings and self doubt.”
Charlie Jane: [00:08:32] Yeah, I mean, that's a tough one. Imposter syndrome is always with us as writers, as creative people, like it never goes away. I'm a living witness to that. I feel like I know one or two people who claim they've never had imposter syndrome, but they're just weird mutants, I think. And you know, I'm just going to share my experience, which is that rejection was a huge part of my path. Somewhere in my big filing cabinet next to where I'm sitting right now, I have a folder with like hundreds of rejections that I got in the mail back when they would send rejections for fiction in the mail, and rejections from agents, rejections from publishers for like book material. And like I counted one time and I think I got like 700 rejections for my fiction alone.
Annalee: [00:09:14] Wow.
Charlie Jane: [00:09:15] And it's just, you know, that's what happens. And it is part of like what kind of what we were talking about in the previous answer about like freelancing, you know, becoming known to people, becoming a known quantity, but also just like just finding the right place to publish it. And I do actually think, you know, the imposter syndrome is garbage. It's not real. Rejections actually make you more of a real writer. I feel like rejections are a badge of honor. That's the side that you are actually doing it and that you are actually…
Annalee: [00:09:43] You’re putting in the work.
Charlie Jane: [00:09:44] You’re out there in it. You’re putting in the work. I would say, you know, write more stories. First of all, like the thing that makes me feel good about being a writer on my good days is just writing and feeling like, oh, gosh, I wrote something and like, oh, I'm excited about this thing I'm writing. I would just write as many more stories as you can because: A) that's more chances to sell those stories places. It's also just like your self-esteem can come from just knowing that you're continuing to produce new work and just read lots and lots of markets. So, you know what they're publishing and you can kind of just be thinking about like where you would like to see your work appear. And, you know, you can start building a relationship with a magazine before the editor even knows you exist by getting to know the magazine yourself. So at least you've got your part of the relationship already growing.
Annalee: [00:10:30] Yeah, I can't emphasize that enough. And I think that's key to freelancing too, is knowing those markets and keeping an eye out for new markets. I just discovered two new publications the other day that I didn't know existed. One of them is called Sequencer and I immediately subscribed because it's this really great publication devoted to science. It's a writer owned group. There's four writers who own it and they're publishing every day. And it's like everything from personal musings on their cats to like really incisive analysis of, you know, scientific racism and how it's affecting us today. And, you know, that's again, something that you have to keep your eye on.
[00:11:14] Like there's even as older markets are getting crusty. There's new markets that are opening up all the time and definitely, definitely keep writing. Don't just focus on that one story. Like that one story, it had a happy life and now it's time for new stories. And maybe in 10 years you'll publish that other story. Who knows? But like that story needs friends. So build some friends for it.
Charlie Jane: [00:11:36] Hell yeah. So we got another question, which actually kind of fits really well with the last one. Someone asks, “How do I get comfortable with self promotion? My art side hustle is getting a little momentum and I'd like to share it more widely, but it feels gross. Do you have any advice for promoting my work in a good way?”
[00:11:54] And you know, this really is another question about imposter syndrome, I think, because the thing that keeps you from tooting your own horn and just being like, look, I did this thing. It's awesome. Is the imposter syndrome and the feeling that like, oh, you know, maybe I'm just not enough of a real writer or maybe I'm not cool enough or whatever to like be able to toot my own horn. And you just, you have to really not listen to that voice that says that like I've written a lot about imposter syndrome and how it's nonsense. But I think that you just have to like kind of shut that out and just be comfortable with doing that and understand that like the way things work these days, especially with social media and a lot of other like online and even offline spaces is that the signal to noise ratio is terrible.
[00:12:36] And you know, I've had this thing where like, I feel like I'm just banging a drum all the time about like, “I've got a book, I've got a new book, I've got a new book.” And I'm like, “Oh, my God, I'm just like, people have got to be just like overwhelmed with me bagging my drum about this.” And then the book comes out three months later, someone who is like a huge fan of mine who follows me religiously and is like, really interested in my work is like, “I had no idea you had a book out.” Because even though they've been following me and all these things, they just didn't see it because the algorithm didn't show it to them. Or there was just 500 other things that like went past in their feed that washed it away. So you might even get one person who's like, “Oh, my gosh, you've posted so much about your book”, and just mute that person or block them because they're just they're being a hater. Honestly, if you do ever get that. But I really do think that like most of the time, when you think you're doing too much self promotion, you're probably not even doing enough.
Annalee: [00:13:26] Yeah, I want to say everything you said is perfect and wise. And I would also really recommend, you know, this basic therapeutic technique, which is think about yourself as if you were another person. And…
Charlie Jane: [00:13:40] Yes.
Annalee: [00:13:40] If you saw someone else promoting their work, like, how would you feel about it? You know, you'd be like, “Oh, great. Wow, they alerted me that they have like a new web comic. That's awesome. Wow, I never would have known about that unless they had told me”. And you know, be tender with yourself, you know, and realize that like, you don't look to other people the way that you look inside your head.
[00:14:01] And then the other piece of that, and I've been trying to say this more and more to people who are just starting out with writing or just starting out with like the sort of commercial side of self promotion. And that is that producing creative work is a public service. You are giving people something that will make them think, something that might help them escape, something that helps put their life in perspective, gives them joy, gives them a good cry. You are engaging in service. And so don't be ashamed about sharing that.
Charlie Jane: [00:14:35] Hell yeah.
Annalee: [00:14:36] Because you're, you're doing something good for the community. You're not trying to steal people's money. You're trying to share your work and like, yeah, you want to be compensated for it, but not in a way that's rapacious. You're not Elon Musk trying to like steal people's ideas and turn them into cyber trucks. I mean, I shouldn't say that. Maybe you are. Maybe this is secretly Elon Musk, but I don't think so. And so like I said, make sure that you remember that what you're doing is good and that people need it. And so letting them know about it is a benefit.
[00:15:08] All right. Next question. A listener writes in to ask, “If I wanted to write science fiction, what is the best ratio of hours to spend reading other author's work to the number of hours I spend writing my own stuff?” And they add, “I asked Bruce Sterling and he said 19 to one, which doesn't sound like it leaves much time for writing.”
Charlie Jane: [00:15:33] I mean, there's 24 hours in the day. So you spend 19 hours a day reading science fiction and then you get one hour of writing science fiction and then you get…
Annalee: [00:15:40] Four hours of sleep.
Charlie Jane: [00:15:42] …to sleep for four hours. Yeah, exactly.
Annalee: [00:15:43] I can believe that's what Bruce Sterling is doing.
Charlie Jane: [00:15:46] I mean, I think he might have been joking.
Annalee: [00:15:48] Pretty sure. Yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:15:50] I have a little bit of a rant that I want to uncork here.
Annalee: [00:15:52] I'm ready.
Charlie Jane: [00:15:53] When I started out writing science fiction, like back in the mists of time, I was like a fledgling science fiction writer and I was in some writing groups and I went to conventions and I heard over and over again people being like basically in a tone of like eat your vegetables of like, you can't write science fiction unless you've read all the classics. You can't write science fiction unless you've read this and this and this and this. If you haven't read…
Annalee: [00:16:15] Asimov. Heinlein.
Charlie Jane: [00:16:16] If you haven’t read all of Heinlein. If you haven't read all…
Annalee: [00:16:17] Clarke.
Charlie Jane: [00:16:17] And like, honestly, these people made me never want to read any of that stuff because it just like the way they were making it sound like, you know, a hazing ritual or like a barrier to entry. It just really annoyed me and I was like, screw you. And like I did read a fair amount of that stuff, but I wasn't approaching it from like, oh, I'm going to I'm really excited to read these things. It's going to be really fun and I'm going to enjoy it, but rather from like a sense of obligation. So don't get sucked into that.
[00:16:44] If you're ever reading something, you're not enjoying it, just toss it, even if it's a classic or whatever. What I find is that reading really good science fiction and fantasy, especially recent stuff, makes me happy. It kind of grounds me. It kind of helps me to kind of recharge my batteries as a writer. It really varies. Sometimes I'm spending like an hour or two reading every day versus like however many hours I spend writing. I'm a little bit of a workaholic, so I will sometimes spend like six, seven hours a day writing. But some of that is noodling and kind of staring into space and talking to my cat. So I don't know if that counts or not. But I really do think that it's good to read, especially what's being published right now, because then you'll know what what's happening in the field. But also it'll just kind of connect you to this community that you're trying to be a part of. So I'm a fan of reading, but I think I definitely spend the majority of my time writing and less time reading. And I try to read as much as I can for fun and enjoyment.
Annalee: [00:17:40] Yeah, I would second that reading should be for pleasure. And definitely for me in the years since I've gotten away from running io9 and having to pretty much read exclusively for work where I was, you know, going to be writing a review of a book or like somehow incorporating it into something I was writing. I've just been so happy to get back to like spending a couple of hours a day reading purely just for the love of it. And I think that you're absolutely right that you should focus on recent work. It’s really important to keep up with what's happening in the field.
[00:18:16] Of course, you should read the classics if you want to. And some of the classics are amazing, like Samuel Delaney, Ursula Le Guin. Like these people are incredible and they are part of that golden age or maybe their silver age. I don't know where the dividing line is, but the point is that they are at this point, you know, classic 20th century authors. But I think knowing what people are writing who are publishing now, it's just going to make your brain fizz in a happy way. And also reading is meditative. It's therapeutic. Like you should just be reading in general, especially reading something that's a narrative that really immerses you, like not reading, you know, posts online or reading, you know, short articles or whatever. I mean, I spend a lot of time reading short articles and scientific articles for my journalism. And that does not give me the same sense of serenity of reading, even a really difficult novel, you know, like, and when I say difficult, I mean, like, emotionally harrowing, like I still feel whole after reading in a way that I don't if I'm just kind of poking around online. So I would say read as much as gives you pleasure. Write as much as you need to. There's no rules. You know, often when I'm in like deep into writing, I can pretty much only write for four hours max before I need to go take a walk. And that's just my brain. And I think, you know, other people's brains work differently. So good luck with your read-write balance.
[00:19:45] All right, we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to give you other advice.
[00:19:51] OOAC session break music, a quick little synth bwoop bwoo.
Charlie Jane: [00:19:55] So our first question is from a listener who says that he’s a cis, white-passing gay male, and he writes, “I, a 52 year old man, am dating a really great guy who’s a 27 year old man, and age stuff aside, we’re doing pretty well. It’s the first long-term relationship I’ve been in with a guy in decades, and I’m really happy with him in ways that I’ve forgotten were possible. The only ‘issue’ we’re dealing with is that he’s trans-masc, and while that’s not a problem for me – it’s not the first time in my life I’ve been involved with gender non-conforming folk. It’s the first time I’ve been involved in a long-term relationship with someone that wasn’t cis and I’m only now coming to grips with the level of shit that trans-masc guys get handed by the cis queer community. It’s eye-opening and upsetting and embarrassing for me that it took me this long to really look at what goes on. I keep getting bullshit, bio-essentialist comments from ‘fam’ about whether or not we’re in a ‘real gay relationship’ and that sort of shit. I tend towards the rather confrontational in this sort of situation, whereas he – my boyfriend – is highly conflict-avoidant and I’m wrestling with figuring out how to react other than just ignoring/avoiding those people. I don’t want regressive attitudes normalized or validated in what should be a safe space. And I’m also not certain how to bring up issues that trans men face uniquely without sounding like I’m trying to minimize the very real crises and issues faced by trans women.”
[00:21:19] So, he ends with, “How can I respond these jerks without: A) punching them, B) letting them get away without any pushback, C) not upsetting my conflict-avoidant boyfriend?” Annalee, what do you think?
Annalee: [00:21:32] This is a lot.
Charlie Jane: [00:21:33] It is a lot.
Annalee: [00:21:34] This is a... I would say a classic example of a relationship with mixed privilege, right? Like, we see this all the time in relationships where it could be something as innocuous as, you know, one person makes more money than the other one. Or it could be something like this, where you have a cis person dating a trans person. You have a white person dating a person of color. And even, you know, a heterosexual relationship, of course, also involves, like, a huge power imbalance, usually, between a man and a woman. So, I think part of it is owning that and having some honest conversations with your partner about how this is an unequal power dynamic. And, you know, asking him, what would he like you to do in these situations?
[00:22:20] And I think it's gonna vary from situation to situation. I know that when I'm with my cis male partner, it's sometimes hard because his family doesn't always use my they-them pronouns that I have been using since 2019. And I actually like it when he sticks up for me and corrects them. In other situations, I wouldn't want him to do that. But with his family...I like it that he does that because he's showing his family that he's on my side.
[00:22:48] So, I think it's really important to have that conversation and also say, “Hello, there's different situations. How do I handle these four situations?” What do you think?
Charlie Jane: [00:23:00] Yeah, I mean, I agree with absolutely everything you just said. I thought that was brilliant. I would just say that if I was in that situation, if I was the trans person in that situation, I would be very uncomfortable with having a partner who was kind of doing a little bit of white knight stuff.
Annalee: [00:23:14] Yeah,
Charlie Jane: [00:23:15] I feel like I get a hint of that. The thing of like, I'm going to stick up for my partner. I'm going to protect my partner. I'm going to like, it just feels a little bit savior-y to me. And so obviously, it's uncomfortable for you to hear people saying this about your relationship and your partner. But it's much more, I think it comes down much more heavily on your partner. So I would echo what Annalee said about like, asking your partner how you should handle this. But also, when we were talking about this before we started recording, I was kept saying that, you know, I think that the way to handle this sort of thing is by modeling better behavior and like just making it clear to everybody who is around you through your actions and the words you use that this is a gay relationship. You are two men in a relationship together, you know, and just live your best life in this relationship.
Annalee: [00:23:58] Damn right.
Charlie Jane: [00:24:00] Like, you know, it's the kind of a best revenge is living well kind of situation where like the best way to answer these dumbasses is by just being yourself and just showing that this is a great relationship and that it is a gay relationship.
Annalee: [00:24:15] You know, it's just like when Louis and Armand like make out in front of Lestat in the important, non-fictional narrative: Interview with a Vampire.
Charlie Jane: [00:24:26] It's so true.
Annalee: [00:24:26] Because they have this great moment where, you know, they want to take revenge on Lestat, but instead of doing anything violent, Louis just kisses Armand and is like, by the way, while you're feeling shitty, I'm going to be with this beautiful man. Goodbye.
Charlie Jane: [00:24:41] Yeah.
Annalee: [00:24:42] Learn from vampires. That's the advice.
Charlie Jane: [00:24:45] Vampires know what they're doing, man. All right. Hit me with another question, Annalee.
Annalee: [00:24:50] So a listener writes in and says, “I found a magic scroll that can alter history so that one creature that would have gone extinct before humanity evolved will now have been with us all along. I already chose dragonflies and coelacanths, but I have two more uses left on the scroll, and now I’m short on ideas. Can you help me choose?”
[00:25:11] Okay, so I think we have to choose two creatures that will not have gone extinct.
Charlie Jane: [00:25:18] I think we get one each.
Annalee: [00:25:19] Yeah, we get one each. Okay, what are you gonna pick?
Charlie Jane: [00:25:21] Do I get to say Smilodon?
Annalee: [00:25:23] I mean, yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:25:24] Just because I think Smilodon has such a great name and it's just so cute. It's like Smilodon is a kind of a saber-toothed tiger, right? And it's kind of like just this big...
Annalee: [00:25:33] I believe they're called saber-toothed cats, darling.
Charlie Jane: [00:25:36] Saber-toothed cats. And like, I like cats. I would like to have like big kind of shaggy-toothed cats walking around, like chomping everything. That'd be awesome. I think that humans would probably have a lot more respect for our environment if they were big chompy cats kind of chomping everything and like we had to behave. What do you think?
Annalee: [00:25:56] I'm going to vote for creatures that are rapidly going extinct due to people, which is, oh, no, this is before humanity evolved.
Charlie Jane: [00:26:05] Yeah, you're cheating.
Annalee: [00:26:06] OK, never mind. I was going to say coral. I was going to say coral, but I think instead I'm going to have to go with Lystrosaurus, which was a dominant creature at the end of the Permian period. There was a mass extinction at the end of the Permian. This is about 250 million years ago. And then Lystrosaurus was one of the only creatures that really survived and thrived into the Triassic after that extinction. And they look kind of like... actually, they look a little bit like saber-toothed cats. They're sort of tiger-sized and they have big tusks. They look sort of like a cross between like a cute little rhinoceros and a tiger with a kind of a flat face. And they were burrowers. So that's part of how they survived this mass extinction was that they were underground when the environment became really terrible due to massive mega volcanoes. And they were what's known as synapsids. So they were kind of partially a mammal and partially a reptile. And I love that. I'm all about like pseudo mammals, semi-mammal, proto-mammal creatures. So, yeah, I wish they were still around. I would just I would love to hang out with them. I love the idea of a giant burrowing rhino tiger.
Charlie Jane: [00:27:34] They sound amazing. I want to meet them. Let's go back in time and meet them right now.
[00:27:38] All right. So I think this is our final question. And it's a heavy one. It's kind of representative of a few questions that we received. And it's basically like, what do you do about optimism? Do you need it? How to get it back when it's lost?
[00:27:54] “I used to be an optimist. Growing up in Moscow during Perestroika, I felt that things were going in a better direction. The 90s were bad, but hopeful. And then they were slowly moving in an okay direction as well. But now I have no optimism left. I live in California. I have a house, children, a dog, etc. But no optimism. Just pain, despair, bitterness and fear. The progress goes in the deathless words of Vladimir Lenin, ‘one step forward, two steps back’. I seek my daily drops of hope in everyday minutes, enjoying fuzzy brown hills surrounding me when I walk my dog, looking at the rosebush that produces flowers despite my lack of care, meeting friends, planning little projects, being silly in the fandom. But there is always a feeling that we are living on a precipice that anytime something horrible can happen and most likely will. I've been fascinated by the Bronze Age civilizations and their collapse. They were flourishing and then they were gone three thousand years ago, a huge time of period for one human life, a small moment in the history of Earth, a blink in the timeline of the universe. Maybe it is a good thing that we will all be gone and forgotten. Maybe the only solace is that we are all just stardust.”
[00:28:59] Wow. OK, there's a lot there. Annalee, take us away.
Annalee: [00:29:03] Very intense. And I think that this listener is capturing something that a lot of us feel, you know, that it seems like things are changing really fast and not in a great way. And even worse, that sense of not knowing what's coming next, you know, like we could be on the brink of some kind of progressive revolution or we could be on the brink of, you know, global totalitarian regimes, you know, crushing a bunch of marginalized groups. Probably both. And I guess what I wanted to speak to was the Bronze Age civilization piece of this, because, of course, I write a lot about archaeology. And several years ago, I wrote a piece about the Bronze Age collapse for The New York Times, which I'll link to in our show notes, about how that collapse really wasn't a collapse.
[00:29:53] And this is something that I'm really interested in reminding people about in my writing about ancient history, which is that things that appear to be collapses are also really transformations. And we don't always see how that transformation worked in the fossil record or in the archaeological record. And one of the things I learned while writing about the Bronze Age was that we now know that there were a lot of groups of people who survived and thrived after the fall of these city states that had really dominated the eastern Mediterranean. And, you know, these city states, a lot of them really sucked. Like a lot of them were super dictatorial. There was a huge gap between the haves and have-nots. A lot of people were enslaved. A lot of people were part of their lives enslaved. It wasn't always great. I mean, sure, there was Minos where it seems like women had like a ton of social power. And I'm super obsessed with that. And I'd love to know more. But even there, like, of course, there were these like wealthy elite women. But then most women were like most men in a really shitty circumstance.
[00:31:05] And in the wake of the cities collapsing or being abandoned is really a better way of thinking about it. You start to see these flourishing villages that are connected by trade, by roads that are connecting smaller kinds of settlements. And now there's all this evidence that people had very like rich cosmopolitan lives in smaller settlements that were interconnected with each other. So I think that when we imagine this precipice, we have to remember that we've been through this before.
[00:31:43] Sometimes what happens isn't so much that we all blow up like the dinosaurs did or the non-avian dinosaurs, but that in fact we reshuffle and we reorganize ourselves into different kinds of communities. And often those are communities that are better able to care for us and that provide all of the same like comforts and joys as like giant cities or giant internet companies. So I feel it. I think it's really important to acknowledge that we're all really scared and angry and feeling hopeless, but at the same time, you know, remember that the Bronze Age led to some beautiful stuff afterward, you know, like after the yoke of these dictators in these cities was broken.
Charlie Jane: [00:32:32] Yeah, I mean, I loved everything Annalee just said. And I just want to time in that there will be pockets of like kindness and joy and friendliness, no matter what. There will be communities that will come together. Like one thing that's been giving me comfort is just thinking about how even in the times in the past where there was huge repression, there were still artists who gathered. There were still people who found enclaves where they could kind of find community among themselves. And maybe they were kind of shunned by the mainstream, quote unquote, the like they were kind of not acceptable in polite society, but they always found ways to be together. And like queer people have always been able to find communities together.
[00:33:17] I've been struggling to find hope this past week in particular, because of reasons we're recording this back in like early July, when there was a just a string of really upsetting news. And you know, the thing I decided to write about for my newsletter that just came out the other day, but it'll be a month old by the time you hear this was talking about how to preserve all of the amazing culture from marginalized people that we've gotten in the past decade. Because there could be a time coming where a lot of that stuff might be forgotten, buried, erased, like attacked by like, you know, the quote unquote mainstream by the dominant culture. But we can keep it alive. And we, you know, it'll be there when we need it in the future when we are rebuilding, because we will, we'll always be here.
[00:34:01] They're never going to get rid of us. And, you know, I think that we just have to really make a bigger effort to be there for each other right now.
Annalee: [00:34:07] Man, I loved your newsletter so much. And I really agree that archiving is a radical act right now. And one of the things when I was researching my book Four Lost Cities about ancient abandoned cities, one of the things that really shocked me, I interviewed this classicist who was like, well, you know, Emperor Nero was really great for feminism, basically. She didn't say feminism, she said women. But what she meant was feminism, you know, women's power. And that under Nero, women achieved all kinds of social power that they hadn't before. And I was like, what? Nero? Isn't he like the bad guy? Like, who did everything, you know, fiddled while Rome burned? Like all this stuff? And she's like, yeah, you know, basically what remains of the histories written about Nero were all written by arch conservatives who were his political enemies.
[00:34:55] So we don't even fucking know, you know, like, I mean, obviously, Nero was a dictator and I'm anti that. And he ruled over a ruthlessly patriarchal empire that enslaved people. So I'm not saying Nero was a great guy, but it is true that under his reign, there were all kinds of liberal reforms. Including reforms of how enslaved people were treated and what their rights were.
[00:35:19] And so, you know, that's what freaks me out. Like, I wonder, like, you know, in 2000 years is like everything we know about, say, the Obama administration going to be written by basically MAGA people. And so they're going to be like, “Obama, he was the guy that fiddled while America burned and like he allowed like crime and blah, blah, blah.” And it's like, and again, not that Obama was perfect, but I just worry about that. This is why it's important to archive our perspective and make sure that it lasts so that people realize like, actually, all these groups of people who were demonized were doing amazing shit.
Charlie Jane: [00:35:56] Yes. I really do think, you know, keeping the memory alive is one way of ensuring that our culture will still be there and that we'll still be able to access it. So that's what's giving me hope right now. But I also just think community, community, community,
Annalee: [00:36:09] Yes.
Charlie Jane: [00:36:09] Like just find community and like, maybe don't worry as much about like what you know, people are saying on TV or on sub stack.
Annalee: [00:36:18] So true. All right. I want to leave it there. So thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for all of your advice questions. That was amazing.
Charlie Jane: [00:36:27] Yeah, they were so awesome.
Annalee: [00:36:29] You can always ask us for advice. You can always ask us questions and send us email at our opinions are correct at gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you. I mean, you can also talk to us other ways too, but, you know, email is kind of fun sometimes. You can also find us on Mastodon, on Instagram, and we're of course on Patreon at patreon.com/ouropinionsarecorrect. And thank you so much to our incredible producer and engineer, Naya Harmon. Thanks to Chris Palmer and Katya Lopez Nichols for the music. Thanks to you for supporting us. And we're going to talk to you later. If you're a patron, we'll see you on Discord. If not, we're just going to be in your ears in two weeks.
[00:37:06] Bye.
Charlie Jane: [00:37:07] Bye.
[00:37:08] [OOAC theme plays. Science fiction synth noises over an energetic, jazzy drum line.]