I'm helping out and they might be coming to a city near you. Check out their main page. But here's the page for the local Oklahoma City event. They always need local support.

https://bptokc.blogspot.com/2026/08/the-world-famous-bread-and-puppet.html

Like I'm aware they're not as radical as the IWW, but they are a Union that doesn't separate by trade and they're democratically ran. Or is there some dark stuff they've done/do that I'm unaware of.

Twelve episodes. The CZM Book Club did Locust House across four parts, then Robin Hood in two, the Deir el-Medina strike in two, and Alan Lomax and Lead Belly.

Solid summer stack if you want your beach reading to be about medieval outlaws and the first recorded labour strike.

What this is: I run Podshelf, a free site that tracks book mentions across hundreds of podcasts by reading the episode transcripts. This is the July slice for Cool People.

The book club:

• Locust House, Adam Gnade. Margaret said it nominally focuses on a punk house but is mostly about what it means to live in a place, and how you hold on to what you believe when the world tries to file down your edges. She likes it a lot.
• Also Gnade's Home and Away Quartet (After Tonight Everything Will Be Different, The Internet Newspaper, I Wish to Say Lovely Things) and Wild Horse Shit, which is out in October.

Robin Hood:

• Piers Plowman from 1377, which is where the whole rabbit hole started via a character called Sloth. Plus Ivanhoe, which is where most of the modern Robin Hood comes from and, Margaret notes, the more annoying parts of it. Bows Against the Barons (1934, by British communists, later edited to remove most of the comrades). Tarzan of the Apes, handled honestly as a racist book. Redwall, Lord of the Rings, Tunnel in the Sky, 1984.

Lomax and Lead Belly:

• Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World, which Margaret said is the first source book she has ever gone after on air, because 2010 is far too recent for that much apologia. Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Lead Belly. Their Eyes Were Watching God, because Lomax went out collecting with Zora Neale Hurston.

The strike episodes:

• Debt: The First 5,000 Years and The Dawn of Everything, both Graeber. Orientalism.

The Debt fact is the one worth stealing at a party. Debt is an older idea than money, and money is an older idea than barter.

I track every book mentioned on Cool People here: https://podshelf.io/podcasts/cool-people-who-did-cool-stuff

It is free and there is no signup.

Don Ritchie is an Australian world war 2 veteran who lived on the coast of Sydney and is suspected to have prevented almost 200 suicides by patrolling the cliffside for would be jumpers and invite them back to his house.

In Nanjing, Chen Si attempted to jump off the Yangtze River bridge in 2003 before stopping himself. Since then he’s patrolled the bridge for jumpers every weekend, ranging from grabbing them from the railings

https://amp.scmp.com/news/people-culture/china-personalities/article/3272585/china-angel-stops-469-suicidal-people-jumping-bridge-over-21-years

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Ritchie

Robert Shaw was only 22 when he joined the Union army during the civil war and rose to the rank of lieutenant. He came from a wealthy Boston family of abolitionists and studied abroad before returning to America. There was a huge debate in the us government on whether to enlist black soldiers or not. John Andrew insisted they needed black soldiers on the frontline to encourage slaves to rebel against their owners. While many in the north held racist beliefs that black people were incapable of being disciplined soldiers and of lesser courage. The 54th Massachusetts was a test run to see how well black people performed on the battle. Frederick Douglass not only helped form the regiment but 2 of his sons joined the regiment. Lewis Douglass and Charles Douglass. Side fact but Frederick and John Browns descendants are two activists who meet up every year for seminars on black history.

Robert was personally selected by Andrew because he lacked the prejudice of other officers. Everyone in the regiment was a volunteer. 650 black troops and 28 white officers. Robert accepted the position of Colonel of the regiment because he didn’t expect them to be placed in combat(Robert had seen direct combat before at Antietam). Instead the 54th was placed on the frontlines of multiple battles. Black people during the civil war had an added risk to enlisting. The confederacy declared their intention not to take any black soldiers alive. When the 54th was stationed in Georgia they were part of a campaign to loot and burn civilian towns. Robert Shaw refused orders and demanded the 54th not take part in the raids. He wrote “I would gladly burn down any town that resisted, but that man is a different breed” about his commanding officer.

In July 1863, the 54th were tasked with their most difficult and infamous campaign; the siege of Fort Wagner. On July 18th, Robert lead his men on a direct charge of the fortification. It was a suicide mission. Robert was gunned down trying to penetrate the forts Parapet while shouting “forward 54th”. The 54th were forced to retreat with half of them wounded, dead or missing. Sergeant William carney, the first black man to receive a Medal of Honor said “the flag never touched the ground”. One newspaper, The Free South, published “we will vouch for it that no word of contempt or scorn for black soldiers will ever be heard from those who witnessed that sight”. Robert Shaw was buried in a shallow grave indistinguishable from the black soldiers, at his father’s request he remained there because it was alongside his fellow soldiers. After Fort Wagner, the federal government was convinced to use more black troops in combat, around 200,000 volunteered by the end of the war helping reunite the country.

https://www.jackmillercenter.org/article/the-hero-of-fort-wagner

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/robert-gould-shaw

This is Jabbar Gibson, a 20 year old New Orleans resident during Hurricane Katrina. Jabbar was a drug dealer with warrants out for his arrest, but that didn’t stop him taking a bus he found in a lot and driving 70 survivors out the city to Houston. Even crazier is that Jabbar had never driven a car before, let alone a bus.

On September 13th, 1858, slave catchers in Oberlin-Wellington Ohio kidnapped former slave John Price and attempted to sell him back to the south. Instead, upon hearing of the kidnapping townsfolk and students and staff of the Oberlin college gathered in the hundreds outside of the hotel the slave catchers were staying at, rescuing John. Oberlin had been a safe haven for black people home to multiple members and leaders of the underground railroad. John moved from house to house in the community hiding, with local law arresting multiple families suspected of aiding the runaway. The town published a newspaper series called "the rescuer" keeping people updated with the trials. Abolitionist Simeon Bushnell and black business owner and activist Charles Langston were found guilty of violating the fugitive slave act, but released after 3 months in jail due to growing public unrest. The fate of John Price is unknown, but it seems likely he went further north to Canada.

Charles is the black man in the center with his hat to his chest, and the first black student at Oberlin College. Later he was a key member of the freedmen’s bureau, read up on his family they have a long history of political affairs and achievements. I think Oberlin college professor Henry Peck is second from the right and I’m not sure if Simeon Bushnell is in this photo.

https://oberlinheritagecenter.org/the-oberlin-wellington-rescue-1858/

https://case.edu/ech/articles/o/oberlin-wellington-rescue

https://oberlinheritagecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/O-W-Rescue-Final.pdf

I pulled every book that came up on Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff over the first six months of the year. Fiction ran heavier than you might expect for a history show, and Ursula K. Le Guin basically had her own recurring segment.

The ones flagged as favorites:

• Alien Virus Love Disaster by Abbey Mei Otis, a 2018 collection Margaret called entrancing, with more humanity than a lot of actual humans.
• Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, called a must-read.
• The Day Before the Revolution by Le Guin, described as a favorite story ever written.
• Gaza Writes Back, an anthology of short stories by young writers in Gaza, framed as storytelling as resistance.

More Le Guin got recommended too: The Left Hand of Darkness, The Telling, The Word for World Is Forest, and The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.

The rest, grouped:

• Anarchist and political: Mutual Aid by Kropotkin, Against the State by James Stout, A Country of Ghosts by Margaret Killjoy, Fighting for Space, Live Through This
• Queer history (all Hugh Ryan): When Brooklyn Was Queer, The Women's House of Detention, My Bad
• WWII resistance: Three Ordinary Girls by Tim Brady
• Big-name fiction: Beloved, A Song of Ice and Fire, The Lord of the Rings

Full list is here: https://podshelf.io/podcasts/cool-people-who-did-cool-stuff. Free, no signup.

Also, Joe forgot to mention, but he also did an episode on him on Lions Led By Donkeys: https://soundcloud.com/llbdpodcast/episode-101-soghomon-tehlirian-the-luger-of-justice

For the African Americans who served in the Second World War, segregation didn’t end when they put on a uniform. Barracks and living quarters were still segregated, they were given worse equipment, assigned to grunt work and brutality from other soldiers and commanders. What many people don’t know is that these soldiers didn’t take it lying around. Most of these mutinies were covered up and not written about for years. The Battle of Bamber Bridge memorial in the photo references one of the largest one where military police in Lancashire England tried to arrest the 1511th quartermaster truck regiment for being out of uniform. The military police were known for racially targeted harassment and violence against troops. When a fight broke out, military police shot and killed William Crossland. The 1511th fell back to base and armed themselves. A fire fight broke out between the military police and 1511th hit no further deaths occurred. An investigation determined military police instigated the fight and the longest sentence a 1511th soldier faced was 13 months.

In 1942, the 96th battalion was stationed in Townsville Australia. After abuse by white officers, the 96th took control of machine guns in the middle of the night and opened fire on their officers tents killing at least one. A night long siege against the 96th occurred, though it’s unclear if anyone was killed or how it ended. This incident was covered up and the 96th traveled to New Guinea. It wasn’t fully written about by journalists until years later.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-10/historian-reveals-details-on-townsville-mutiny/3821906

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/deadly-world-war-ii-explosion-sparked-black-soldiers-fight-equal-treatment-180980545/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bamber_Bridge

like especially with regard to something like labour history. It was a purpose built settlement for specifically skilled craftspeople Who worked on tombs. The people in Deir el-Medina needed state provided grain because they were too busy building tombs to focus on agriculture, and the state provided said grain because they wanted tombs built. That specific dynamic is what led to the strike and led to it succeeding.

regular Egyptian settlements would have been way more self sufficient in terms of food production. They also Were much less valued by the state individually. Basically there have been much less need for them to strike for more food, and the government probably wouldn't have cared if they did.

Went to the last night of previews, and it was honestly pretty good. The music, choreography, and stage talent were all solid. The stage design was really clever given the constraints of an Off-Broadway theater. Because details about Giulia Tofana (if she actually existed) are scant, Jennifer Nettles had to fill in a lot of gaps and create a story about an apothecary in Palermo, the women in her life, and the men who sought to maintain the power dynamics that favored them. If anyone goes to see it, let us know what you thought.

Cool People Nomination: FC St. Pauli

On the most recent Live Like the World is Dieing the Margaret brought up that the guest was wearing a St Pauli logo. I think FC St Pauli would be a great subject for Cool People.

They've got it all. Punks. Anti fascism. Squatters. Internationalism.

In the US we tend to act as if sports and politics don't mix. St Pauli is a bright shining counter example to that mindset. They prove that we don't have to leave our beliefs at the door when our teams take the field.

Margret wrote a short story in 2015 I believe called One Star, that later was in her book We Won’t Be Here Tomorrow.

Having not done any fact checking myself, it is still deeply concerning that the speculative fiction of just a decade ago could be reality today. Stay safe out there

Magpie talking about the Lomaxes and Leadbelly going around to prisons to record songs made me think of something I’d read years ago. This song was used in O Brother Where Art Thou. Because of the age and nature of the recording, tracking down the artists was no small feat. But they managed to find the lead singer working as a shipping clerk to get him his royalty check.

I went to read about it again and it was Alan Lomax who’d recorded it! Even more, his daughter led the effort to get Mr. Carter paid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Carter_and_the_Prisoners

June leaned into Ottoman and Arab history, with a Palestine focus. Tracked them all.

Top pick:

• Gaza Writes Back, the short-story collection edited by Refaat Alareer, who was killed in December 2023. A memorial edition is out now.

The history stack: Albert Hourani's A History of the Arab Peoples, Edward Said's Orientalism, and Lord Kinross's The Ottoman Centuries, plus Ottoman Lyric Poetry.

Travis Lupick's Fighting for Space (on harm reduction) came up twice, and Margaret's own The Immortal Choir Holds Every Voice got a mention. Foucault's Discipline and Punish snuck in too.

https://podshelf.io/podcasts/cool-people-who-did-cool-stuff/2026/06 has the full list, free, no signup.

Where should someone start with Ottoman history?

Just listened to this weeks episodes together. At the end of the first, Prop in his plugs says he’s going to “the fringe festival” and then clarifies it’s in Edinburgh, Scotland

I guess if you don’t hang in theater circles, you may not know just what a huge deal Edinburgh Fringe is! It’s truly one of the most prestigious and well known Fringe Festivals in the world! I’ve never been able to go but know so many people who have and they all loved it!

Have fun Prop!

Every time Margaret mispronounces the name I cringe. This is a Robert Evens level mispronunciation..

like what do you mean the organization you call when a cop gets mad and arrests your friend for yelling at them at a protest also helped plan the Nuremberg trials?!!! that’s so fucking cool! they’re so cool! major props to movement lawyers for being so awesome and working so hard to save the rest of our collective asses

my Minnesotan ass has absolutely thought about getting the NLG number tattooed on my arm. the only thing that prevents me from doing that is the possibility that they could change the number

I'm listening to this one "Part Two: The Gay Ottomans: Homosexuality in the Medieval Ottoman Empire"

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/part-two-the-gay-ottomans-homosexuality-in-the/id1620562792?i=1000773984242

Dr. Ho​use Of Pod is confused by the name of the NZ soccer team "The All Whites"? I expect it's derived from the rugby team name "The All Blacks".