Writer, musician, and educator Celia Eydeland @kartoshkayearnsforaday joins us to talk about mutant family, secular Jewish movements and leftism, reckoning with parents’ fascism, and 1957 Soviet war drama The Cranes Are Flying, among several tangents such as being a Slow Dive absolutist. 

What is secularism and what is secular Judaism?; the hollowing out of spiritual meaning; the need for meaningful ritual; “There is no God but God gave us the land”; High School as state religion; Skins as socializing text; the myth of and desire for american rootedness; non-Jewish zionism; Starship Troopers and the will to go to war despite one’s family’s wishes; the arbitrariness of family; politics by way of personal honesty; the failures of America’s hippie communes

Works Cited and Further Reading: 

“On the Nose”: Religion, Secularism, and the Jewish Left

Skins Seasons 1 and 2

Wild Relatives (2018)

Starship Troopers (1997)

The Cranes are Flying (1957)

Father and Sons (1862)

Drop the ADL from Schools https://droptheadlfromschools.org/

Intro by Nadoyel, other music by Mark Bernes, Dasychira, Ilya Beshevli, and Slowdive

Sometimes it feels like something went wrong and that’s why we’re here, that we’re in some kind of cosmic cage or simulated psy-op. 

We become in the face of simulations and psy-ops, and from wrongness spring. syncratism is for the honorable and dishonorable alike.

In thought and in body, no one, not two, in sky and seed sewn, we dream up shadows to love through and hold their calloused hands, shaping change in the nether pool from breath to breath and coming up again and again seeking vistas 

of freedom.

Learn from the labyrinths in breathing mountains. 

How do you look and where are you looking?

Note when you’re stuck, put sugar on your tradition pills, and record before breaking.

How’s that feel to rot with glee?