Brandi Scalache (24:20)

Good trouble.

Alison Gill (24:20)

For today's Good Trouble segment after this break, we have some good news. But first my interview with author Brandi Scalace about her new book, the Intermediaries. You really don't want to miss it. Stick around. We'll be right back. We'll derive at the end. Hey everybody, it's ag. If you're tired of eating the same thing every day, every night of the week, Home Chef is the upgrade your kitchen needs. With over 35 meal options and 18 extras every week, there's always something new to try. Whether you're feeding yourself or a full house, Home Chef makes it easy to break the food rut. You get fresh ingredients, simple recipes delivered right to your door. No more last minute takeout or grocery store burnout. Plus, you'll likely save money while eating better. Home Chef gets it. Life is busy and dinnertime doesn't have to be another choreography. Users of leading meal kits have rated Home Chef number one in quality, convenience, value, taste and recipe ease. I can confirm that. And for a limited time, Home Chef is offering you 50% off and free shipping on your first box. Plus free dessert for life. Just go to homechef.com dailybeans busy weeks call for smart dinner solutions and Home Chef makes it easy. With a wide variety of weekly options, including microwave meals and dedicated family menus, you always have something delicious ready to go. The ingredients are fresh, recipes are easy to follow, and the time saving is real. Plus, home chef customers save around 86 bucks a month on groceries, making it a smart choice for your taste buds and your wallet. Fresh, creamy, very satisfying. Their lemon creme tortellini hit all the right notes for me. Very comforting and delicious. I tried this the other day. It was so, so good. The chives and lemon brightened the dish while the tortellini and cream sauce made it feel kind of indulgent. I love the balance of textures from the asparagus and the peasant. Quick to make and impressive on the plate. It's a keeper for me. I've. I've favorited it. I will have it again. So for a limited time, Home Chef is offering you 50 off and free shipping on your first box. Plus free dessert for life. Just go to homechef.com dailybeans that's homechef.com dailybeans for 50 off your first box and free dessert for life. Must be an active subscriber to receive free dessert. Hey everybody. Welcome back. I am truly, truly honored to be joined today by author, historian, journalist and expert in medical history. And not like medical history, like what your doctor does when you sit down in the office and they ask, what's in your family? Like, historical medical stuff. And she has a new book coming out May 13th called the Intermediaries. It's a story of hope. You know how I feel about hope in the darkest places. It's a history of science and gender resistance. It's nonfiction. And, you know, they say history repeats, but this, you know, the fascinating history of a, like, a daring team of sexologists who built the first trans clinic during the Third Reich, you know, and we always talk about here on the show that they always, the. The fascists and the dictators, the authoritarians, the oligarchs, always target LGBTQ plus transgender people. And it's a way to get in to also target women. And so please welcome the author of the book, Intermediaries, Brandi Scalace. Hi, Brandi. How are you?

Brandi Scalache (27:25)

I'm great. Thank you so much for having me on the show.

Alison Gill (27:27)

I am really, really excited to talk to you because, like, this book is so prescient. It's so important. Right now we talk, Dana and I talk all the time on this show about history repeats, history rhymes, and talk a little bit about, first of all, the serendipitous, I guess, timing of the release of this book.

Brandi Scalache (27:47)

Yeah, I really thought this book was going to come out and we'd all be like, look, we dodged a bullet. Not like, oh, but I spent three years working on this book, and it felt so strange to watch the news and be writing up to the point where the Nazis take over, because a lot of this book is. It doesn't pick up in 1933. It goes all the way back to the late 19th century. To say, how did that happen? How did we let that happen? And then to watch us sort of speedrun the Weimar era and land in this exact same place was deeply upsetting and uncanny and also accidentally prescient. So, you know, the book is literally coming out in the middle of all of it happening. So you're reading the book, it's going to feel like you're reading the news, and so it's history that doesn't feel like history. I think it's. It wasn't Mark Twain who says, history doesn't repeat. It rhymes. But this time, it's like they didn't even bother with some, like, variation. They just. They just. They just. I feel like the GOP just took the playbook and just went with it.

Alison Gill (28:49)

Right. It's not an interpreter. They're tracing it. They're just. They've got. They've got the tracing paper on it. And they're just actually, it's not rhyming. It's just repeating. And it's. And it's truly fascinating to get into the, The. The nuts and bolts of, of what happened during that time period to, to become historically aware of all this. And it. And it wasn't an easy feat either.

Brandi Scalache (29:13)

Right.

Alison Gill (29:14)

Because this isn't just like going and talking to somebody now who happens to know everything. I mean, you really got to dig into the past. So let's. First of all, let's just overview this, because this is the story of. And it's about like, like, just generally talk about that.

Brandi Scalache (29:30)

Sure. Well, so it's all. It's basically. It's three different stories kind of braided together. And the. In one, on one hand is a history of science, because that's history of science and medicine is what I do. And it looks at the beginning of understanding hormones and genes. So what's really interesting is the hormone and the gene were discovered almost at the same time, really close together. Named at the same time, close together. But hormone science told people, wait a minute. You know, all this time we thought it was the brain did everything. Brain, top down. It was a very like, Judeo Christian idea, like, God, brain, kind of everything. And that meant morals were attached to anything that you did. So sexuality. They were like, oh, that's your brain doing that. You've, you know, you, you. Therefore, it's a sin if you're not straight or if you're not whatever. And all of a sudden, hormones come along and it's like, oh, these tiny little things that you can't see all over your body control all sorts of things. And, you know, welcome to the proletariat. This is no longer a God developed, top down kind of thing. Then the gene comes along. And similarly, it's a science of small things. It's really fascinating. But hormone science goes in one direction where people go, wait, maybe. Maybe it's actually completely natural to have, you know, variations of sex and gender. And gene science goes into eugenics. So you have this split. So one of the things it's about, it's a history of science and how science is not apolitical. Like, it's very much. Who's going to use the science for what ends? There's that story. Then there's the story of the clinic that decided, I should say clinic. It's a center, the Institute for Sexology, which did surgeries, which did hormone replacement therapy, counseling, sex counseling, supportive group therapy, all kinds of wonderful things to support the LGBTQ Community and women, because they teamed up with women who were fighting to get votes, fighting for abortion rights, reproductive rights. So they were doing that, and they were the ones kind of on the hormone side going, okay, hormones tell us that this is natural. If it's natural, it can't be sin. And finally, it's a story of Dora Richter. Dora Richter was the first person to undergo what we consider modern transgender affirmation surgery. That doesn't mean that it hasn't happened previously in the past, but the way we think of it today, she had a vagina plastic. She had an orchidectomy, and she had a vagina plasty, and she took hormones. I mean, she really did the things that we think of. And nobody knows who she is, because Lily Elba tends to be the one that people think of because she's quite glamorous. But Dora's just an everyday character. Like, she's just somebody, you know? And I love. I love that she's this unsinkable, amazing character who is full of joy and has decided to live her life authentically, despite all of the dangers, despite all of the frustrations.

Alison Gill (32:19)

And it just feels so unapologetic, you know?

Brandi Scalache (32:21)

Yeah, yeah. She's. I am in awe of this person because she was just being herself. But that is such an act of resistance and such an act of power in a time like. Well, like now.

Alison Gill (32:33)

Right. We are so much different. We've got. We've got hormones in one lane, and we've got genealogy, Elon Musk and eugenics. And in another, like, who would have thunk, like, eight years ago that we would be like, nobody was holding up science saying, bring back eugenics.

Brandi Scalache (32:51)

Oh, my God. I know. Well, yeah, or. They were so. They were very small signs, perhaps. But what I think is fascinating is that, you know, people don't know this story. They don't know this story. This story was hard for me to pull out of the fringes and ashes and edges. And yet almost everyone has seen pictures of the Nazis burning books, right? We've seen that. Yeah. We've seen footage they were burning the institute's library in those photos, in that footage. Everyone has seen it. No one knows what they were burning, because the Nazis themselves were trying to utterly eradicate and erase that history. They didn't want you to remember what they were, who they were burning. And so to find that history and to bring it back, we see the damage, but we don't know what we've lost. That was very hard. I mean, years. I spent so much time in archives, I literally wrote a secondary article about trying to get Dora's story out of Berlin. I felt like a spy. Like, at one point, I thought I was going to have to, like, naturally national treasure it and, like, steal it. I mean, it was crazy. But it is a very, very complex thing. And I want to say, despite the work I've done, I relied on a small army of LGBTQ people who also did this work. Clara Hartman, Heike Bauer. I'm going to forget names, but there's all of these people mentioned in my acknowledgments who went out there to dig up information to the Hirschfeld archives in Berlin. So it was out there, but so far, it was like just, you know, I had to kind of vacuum all up all these pieces and then rebuild it.

Alison Gill (34:22)

Yeah. And let's. Let's talk about the historic analog with trying to split the LGBTQ+ community, trying to pull the tq out, trying to. I remember when J.D. vance said, we're gonna get the normal gay guy vote.

Brandi Scalache (34:40)

Oh, God.

Alison Gill (34:41)

You know, and what that has to do with just gender in general, because, you know, you and I talked offline for a little bit. First chapter. How do we first begin to hate? And I find that those parallels that build the foundation, the underpinning of the threads that connect these histories together or the history and now are kind of. That's the building block on which we come to understand, sort of the. The. I guess, the entire point, if that makes sense.

Brandi Scalache (35:14)

Yeah. Well, speaking of J.D. vance, so I actually grew up in Appalachia, and I know where he lives, and he is not from Appalachia. I always thought that was quite confusing. I mentioned this to him at a speech that he gave, in which I maybe kind of sort of laughed him out of a room. I. I wrote an article about that, too, called the day I made J.D. vance sad. But. But, yeah, they. In this history.

Alison Gill (35:38)

Well, you didn't have an account on Grindr, so that made him really sad.

Brandi Scalache (35:41)

Well, I didn't have a sofa. I mean.

Alison Gill (35:44)

Yep. Yeah, you're not a couch.

Brandi Scalache (35:47)

But what was amazing to me is, like, I decided, okay, we did. We can't start with Nazis. You have to figure out how you got Nazis. Right? Like, how did that even. How did that become a thing? How did you get a Trump? Like, how did. How did we allow this to happen? So I went backwards all the way to the 19th century, late 19th century, to look at what was happening. And what I found, unsurprisingly, was a whole shit ton of misogyny. And all of this, you know, this deep seated hatred and mistrust of women who were trying to enter the workforce, who. These things were changing. So some of it is misogyny, and some of it is white guy fear of change. You know, it's like, no, but this is the way it's always been. My grandfather and my great grandfather and my. And all of their ancestors.

Alison Gill (36:30)

Oh, you mean the entire cause of January 6, 2021.

Brandi Scalache (36:33)

Right. You know, so, you know, we didn't want. They didn't want change. And you had women pressing boundaries, and you had some other people kind of starting to go, wait a minute. These, you know, these structures don't make sense. And then science, because science was starting to shed, you know, shed light on these things going, well, you know, it's not quite as, I guess, world shifting as Copernican. Right. It's going from we go around the sun instead of the sun going around us. But it kind of was that because there was this sense that morals and. And God and all of these things shape everything. So therefore, if you are a woman and you don't want to marry a man and have lots of babies and stay home taking care of those babies and basically have babies until you die, then you're sinning. And if you're a. If you're a man who doesn't want to wear, marry a woman and have a similar kind of, you know, situation, then, then you're sinning. So this wasn't. It wasn't just against homosexuals and transgender people. It was also like, if you don't fit in this extremely narrow box that we have approved, which is exactly what we see today, you know, they. They try to position it as well. It's really the trans people. It's really that. No, it's. It's really. We're against anyone who doesn't look exactly like us. But we want to make sure that those. That there's divisions out there, because we certainly don't want people teaming up against us. There's more of them than us. That. That's basically what the white guy problem is, is there's more of us than them. And they don't want us getting along for fear that we will overthrow their power. And so, you know, as this movement was going on, women and homosexuals and then as transgender people began to be more understood and recognized as part of this group, and there's a whole lot of terminology shifting around here, they began banding together, and the institute was part of this huge community. Hirschfeld was like, let's pull all of this together. And he had to learn, too. So originally he wasn't, like, into feminism. And then he, you know, met women and they were like, hi. No one else is going to support you, but we'll support you. Let's get together, let's do this. Let's argue for reproductive rights. Let's do all the. I was shocked to discover that there was an argument for reproductive rights way back then, when we keep being told all these things are new. So they teamed up and that was why.

Alison Gill (38:55)

Oh, yeah. Brand new. Brand new. Transgender people didn't show up until 2017.

Brandi Scalache (38:59)

Box. Fresh, man. Like, right, yeah.

Alison Gill (39:01)

I'm doing my unboxing moment. Just super new. We've never seen this before, not in.

Brandi Scalache (39:07)

You know, like, ancient cultures, all the way back to the dawn of humanity.

Alison Gill (39:10)

Makes me wonder why it was so hard to get the story out of Berlin. Like, was that by design?

Brandi Scalache (39:16)

You know what?

Alison Gill (39:17)

It.

Brandi Scalache (39:17)

Honestly, I think it's hard to get things out of Germany because there's a real German bureaucracy that I just did not completely understand at the time. It's like, wasn't really malice. It was just, you know, like, endless hurdles of paperwork. But what I think is fascinating is Hitler literally says, magnus Hirschfeld is the number one enemy. He's like the most dangerous Jew in Germany. He says. And you might think, how. How could this. He's a gay German doctor who runs an institute. How in the world could he be so dangerous? Because he was helping to create a community where people were not divided, but were together, and the other side knew that was bad news for them.

Alison Gill (39:59)

Yeah, yeah. And. And again, we see it today. We see members of our own party throwing members of the trans community under the bus. It must have been wild, you know, in the middle of this project or toward the end of this project to see the advertisements that were coming out in the last election cycle.

Brandi Scalache (40:19)

Oh, yeah, it just. I mean, even some of the iconography is the same. I just thought someone found a German Nazi book. That's what they did. Like, someone. It was so close. But why is it so close? Because how we first begin to hate is often the same. I. I don't want change. I don't want difference. I and I, this, this deep seated patriarchal need to. To have a master slave relationship with any gender that isn't theirs and some that are theirs. Right. If they're not the right color, like, they just. This master slave dynamic. And you had people going, maybe it's a spectrum. Maybe there's nothing special about you being a man, like, maybe that's not special. Maybe in fact, there's all kinds of divisions and multiple ways that you can exist in the world as a sex, as a gender, as a confluence of cells and hormones. And people were like, oh, my God, no. You know, and it's. It's like today. And it happened back then, too. They had one hand tried to say that the binary of gender is so strong and viable that it, you know, it conquers everything. And on the other hand, that it's so weak that if you, I don't know, listen to a story by a drag queen, it'll somehow turn you into a gay person. So it's like they want it both ways. They want us to be both incredibly strong and incredibly weak. They want their ideas of the binary to be both incredibly strong and yet also completely under threat all the time. And it's like, it doesn't make any sense logically. That's why they go for pathos. That's why they attack with these emotional attacks, that they're trying to get people scared, because that's how they can do it.

Alison Gill (41:55)

And what other sort of parallels did you find? I mean, you know, you were just talking about Hitler saying the most dangerous person in. In Germany. Kind of can equate that to certain things that Donald Trump says. But, like when we look at the executive order declaring that there were only two sexes, not even the word gender, right? Or when we talk about the fact that we have not just Trump, but a million little minions that are willing to help spread propaganda, or we have the actual criminalization of others and othering. You know, we talk about sending all the lawsuits right now that we see with transgender women trying to stay in women's prisons or transgender troops trying to be able to continue to serve in the military, all these attacks. So it's never just like the one top person. It's. It's like a. A full on, like, sort of multifaceted attack. And. And how many. Was it like a build from the late 19th century up to. To the Third Reich, where the attacks just started getting more and more. And the propaganda started coming from all sorts of different places. Was it kind of similar to.

Brandi Scalache (43:05)

It was. And it's very strange. Like, I have. It's such a. Unusual. I keep saying strange. Strange is not probably the right word because it keeps happening.

Alison Gill (43:17)

So.

Brandi Scalache (43:17)

So it's not. It's perhaps common. It was. It was a belief that there. So this idea that masculinity was under threat, particularly white Aryan masculinity, was under threat.

Alison Gill (43:29)

Right, Like Tucker Carlson tanning his balls.

Brandi Scalache (43:32)

Exactly.

Alison Gill (43:32)

Yeah. And talking about alpha males, which, by the way, a. If you're conceding that there are alpha and beta males, you are conceding that gender exists on a spectrum, but. On a spectrum.

Brandi Scalache (43:44)

Exactly. Yes. And it. Oh, it's this.

Alison Gill (43:47)

This.

Brandi Scalache (43:48)

My book is everywhere. My book is life. Now, guys, like, if you read the book that you're just absorbing all the things, but it is an attempt to explain how some of these things do occur. And, and one of the things that they did is say, okay, masculine is under threat. How can we fix that? Well, we need to create Uber mails, right? We need, we need to create. We need more masculinity. And how do we do that?

Alison Gill (44:09)

Well, we'll get a.

Brandi Scalache (44:09)

We'll. We'll create boys clubs and we'll put a bunch of boys of the same sex together and send them into the woods together. You know, nothing, nothing, nothing homosexual about that. And, you know, we'll build these uber males who will be super masculine and super, you know, aggressive and all this kind of stuff. And what they actually created were a lot of. They indoctrinated both straight and homosexual males to hate women. And you ended up having. So this was one of the ways they seeded division as they were attempting to create a rift between these. And early on, the uber masculine gay men sided with, you know, the Nazis and then were like, it's that leopard eating faces party. They were like, oh, they're coming after me. But I thought we were on the same team. So they started off by saying, let's create Ubermen. Then once they had the Uberman, they started splitting that off too. Like, okay, Uberman, but also you can't be gay Uberman, but also you can't be non white Ubermen. But also you can't be poor and you can't be from this region and you can't be.

Alison Gill (45:07)

So this sounds like the Proud Boy is manual. Like you can't masturbate and you, you know, like all the weird rules, like to make like you a proud boy.

Brandi Scalache (45:16)

Right? Which sounds like a gay band anyway. Like, still to me, you know, like, I hear Proud Boy. I literally was like, oh, new gay band, right? Like, it sounds like they should do dance numbers. But they. So that's how they started. And they, as they created these groups, they were indoctrinating young men to hate women and anything that looked feminine. And then they started adding things going, okay, so in addition to women being feminine immigrants. Immigrants are not masculine enough. So they're, they're ladylike and you should hate them too. And, and then they went after Jews and they said. And part of the reason was that anti Semitism was already in the mix. And, you know, Hitler was expedient more than he. He just kind of looked at that and went, that's already there. You know, let's. Let's hang more hatred on that.

Alison Gill (46:07)

So, but how do we connect these exactly?

Brandi Scalache (46:10)

And the other thing that's true is that there was a real sense that the, the masculinity in the Jewish community was different. I mean, you, you see a different sort of. A different kind of respect for women, a different understanding of things. And they were like, oh, too much, too womany, too womany. Got to get rid of that. And there were other groups too, that they went after as well. Then what they just keep adding right then, oh, well, certain disabilities. That makes you not very like, you can't be disabled either. And you can't be this and you can't be that. You can't be autistic and you can't. You know, people don't realize that the gas chambers were built to get to, to kill disabled people. They already existed before they started being using them in the Holocaust because of this idea. So again, this is why. This is why I say the gene and the horm hormone coming at the same time and yet going in really opposite directions because it was this eugenic. We must cleanse Germany, right. And get to the best Germans. And this is the whole make America great again could literally just be a slogan. I mean, that you could have used it like, make Germany Nazi again. Right? Make Germany white again or make it Aryan again. That. It's a very similar idea of how do we other everyone else, but also keep them all divided and then that way we have power.

Alison Gill (47:23)

Yeah. And that's the trick, right? If you're gonna other everyone, you have to prevent them from hanging out together. Hence the, the why everyone who sees Nazi book burning. It is that clinic. It is that center.

Brandi Scalache (47:35)

Is that center.

Alison Gill (47:37)

Because people were starting to talk a little bit and oh, no, no, no, we can't. We can't possibly have that.

Brandi Scalache (47:44)

Right? And they thought that they were going to erase it. They really did. They thought they were going to stamp it out. And I just want to say the book is not about them winning, actually, because they don't stamp it out. They try really hard. They made it harder for us to find it and to do it, but they don't actually eradicate it. This book is A book about surviving the flames. And the COVID literally looks like a book that has been pulled from the flames. It does.

Alison Gill (48:06)

It does. And before I let you go, I can't imagine, as you're researching this and coming across things in history, like, the amount of light bulbs going up over your head, like, oh, whoa. What? Huh? Like, and just being able to plug it right into.

Brandi Scalache (48:24)

Today.

Alison Gill (48:25)

But what was one of the most surprising things in your research or one of the most. Like, the biggest aha moment where you were like, whoa.

Brandi Scalache (48:33)

Oddly enough, the biggest aha moment. And the thing that I think carried me through writing it, because there's a lot of difficult stuff, you know, you have to get through in. In when you're reading, writing a book like this was the amount of queer joy that was in these people. They were in, like, it. I feel like times are pretty damn dark, but they were in what we often consider to be the darkest time, the darkest timeline.

Alison Gill (48:58)

Right.

Brandi Scalache (48:58)

And everyone talks about the Holocaust, all these things, and yet the people who were transgender, who were homosexual, who are women trying to. To, you know, fight for rights, and they had this joy of authenticity and of self and of hope that I think I am in awe of and I am trying to emulate because I think too often I'm ready to just kind of. I'm so shocked by what's happening. It's hard not to feel like you don't deserve joy. You know, it's like, oh, no, I can't be happy. But they. They did all of this with joy and community and love and relish and, you know, and Dora lived. Dora escaped the Nazis. She did. And she also escaped, like, Soviet Russia later. And she, you know, lived a long and full and healthy life as a woman, as her authentic self. That was the most surprising thing. So it was. It was less. I. I was already aghast at the uncanny nature of the evils and how much they looked alike. But I think I was most surprised by the love, joy, and the power of that joy coming from the LGBTQ + community itself, including intersex. People were being recognized. Non binary people were being recognized as well. I just want to get that out there, because it was. That's another one that everyone says is brand new, and it's definitely not.

Alison Gill (50:11)

No, no. That's incredible. That's really incredible. I instantly thought of today's analog Dan Savage, you know, saying, you know, during the darkest days of aids, we buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced all night.

Brandi Scalache (50:26)

Yeah.

Alison Gill (50:27)

And it was the dance that kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for. And like, that joy is, you know, I mean, how many memes have we seen? Like, the only thing that can battle darkness is light. The only, you know, et cetera. And we see those messages over and over again for a reason. Because the indelible power and force of joy is how you win, right?

Brandi Scalache (50:55)

It is how you win, and it's why you win. Because it's the one thing they do not have. They don't have joy or love or support. You know, they don't. They're held together by a greed for power and a fear of others and each other. So, you know, that cannot ultimately stand. But this, this book is, is. I want people to know that this book is about. It's like the rebel alliance fighting the Empire. Like, you know, you're going to read it and go, oh, my God, we're fighting. Yeah, yeah, we're fighting. And I think that's important because there's enough that's bad. But this, this shows us that it can be good.

Alison Gill (51:29)

Wow. I really, really appreciate your time today and everybody who listens, you know, you know what to do when this book, you can pre order it now, comes out May 13. You can pre order it everywhere. This is one of those books that you need to get a ton of copies of and go put them out in the little libraries around your neighborhood and donate them and give them to people as gifts. It's called the intermediaries. It's absolutely brilliant. You can feel all of the work and joy and everything that went into it. So I really appreciate your time today. Tell everyone where they can find and follow you.

Brandi Scalache (52:05)

Oh, yes. So Brandy Sculace, if you can spell it, you can find me.

Alison Gill (52:10)

Too bad. Otherwise let's.

Brandi Scalache (52:13)

Luckily I'm the only one. So there aren't that many people named after French alcohol and have an Italian last name. But if you look me up, brandishquilace.com and also on bluesky and Instagram, lots of other places I just put up. I actually commissioned a song which is about Dora by Maya Byrne, who's a transgender singer songwriter, who's amazing. Susan Huang and I did the stop motion animation video for it. And so it shows you sort of. I'm tempting to show you the joy that is Dora Richter in that video, which is on my YouTube as well. So find me everywhere.

Alison Gill (52:45)

It is wonderful. And we are going to include a link to that in the show notes today so people can watch that. Thank you so much. Brandy Scalache.

Brandi Scalache (52:54)

Thank you.

Alison Gill (52:54)

It's been really, truly an honor to speak to you. All right, everybody, stick around. We'll be right back with the good news. Everybody. Welcome back. It's time for the good news. Who likes good news? Everyone? Then good news everyone. And if you have any good news confessions corrections, especially pronunciation corrections, you want to give a shout out to a loved one or yourself or a small business in your area or your small business or a government program that's helped you or a loved one. Whether it's Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Affordable Care act, subsidies, student debt forgiveness, SNAP, WIC, Head Start, anything like that. Great VA healthcare you've received. Send it all to us@dailymeanspod.com and click on Contact to get your good news right on the air. All you have to do is pay your POD pet tariffs, which means attach a photo of your pet. We're happy to try to guess the breeds of your pet as well. We're not very good at it, but it's fun. If you don't have a pet, send an adoptable pet in your area. We'll see if we can find them a forever home. If you don't have that, any animal photo will do. We love all animals. We're doing a lot of bird watching recently, which can be either a photo of an actual bird or you and your family and friends flying, flipping the bird to Trump and Musk Properties. Those are always great photos to see as well. If you don't have any of that, you can send your baby photos. You should just send your baby photos. Anyway, Dana will be back in tomorrow, so let's flutter with the baby photos that are hers. It's her favorite thing. So anyway, send it all to us dailybeanspod.com click on contact first up from KT pronouns she and her Greetings to the Fabulous Beans Queens. I just wanted to share how I'm surviving the onslaught of executive actions affecting our citizens. I do not say the name of the head of the Republican regime, but refer to him as thm that horrible man man. I refer to a sidekick or handler, depending on how you see the relationship, as Evil man. Every time another executive order is announced, I have to announce another villainous. That's awesome kt. Thank you for your news, especially your good news. It helps me survive not being overwhelmed by villainous. For my podbet tax, I submit photos of my cats, Ariel and Bella. Great names, Katie. They are sisters we adopted shortly after the election and they've given us comfort, joy and laughs. Oh my God, they're so cute. Beautiful tabby. Beautiful calico or tortie? Excuse me. Just absolutely gorgeous. Thank you so much for sharing your babies with us. Next up, Tony pronouns he and him. My dear friends, I'm grieved to share with you the news that after dancing on this earth for nearly 18 years, Ellie the dachshund has joined her ancestors. In her youth, she was a fierce huntress, and she could out sprint a rabbit, chase a squirrel partway up a tree, and even took out a couple of rats that invaded our basement one winter. As ferocious as she was defending her domain, she was even more of a sweetheart with her people. If any one of us were sick, she would climb up on the couch and stretch out full length on us and look us in the eye with concern. No virus would last long when faced with her deep brown eyes. She particularly liked the holidays when we spent all day in the kitchen cooking because she knew she was going to get her own special plate of food. Allie was so particular. First she would devour the gravy, then the turkey, followed by the Brussels sprouts and yams. She would completely finish one before she started the next. In her later years, her favorite place was on the couch between me and my wife, politely sharing popcorn and watching tv. I built her a nice coffin last winter. I knew she was nearing the end, and I also knew I would be such a wreck that I wouldn't be safe near power tools if I waited until she crossed the Rainbow Bridge. We buried her on her napping spot in the backyard beside her favorite rose bush. I then planted another rose on the side and put some daisies directly over her, so now she has her own little memorial garden. As she became increasingly frail, I would carry her out and back in, carry her to her food dish, to the couch, and up to bed. I put my hand under her chest and squeezed her hips between my elbow and side. I could always feel her relax and just melt into my grass. I became so accustomed to carrying her these last few years that now that she's gone, my arm feels empty. As Ellie became increasingly frail, my greatest fear was that she would die alone while we were at work or while she was out out in the yard in the dark for one last pee before bed. When I got her up Friday morning to go out, she was having a seizure and I held her while it passed. But when a second one started, we knew she had to go visit the vet. The vet told us it was likely a brain bleed or a tumor, and we knew immediately it was the end they took us to a room with a couch and some nice paintings of cats and dogs and brought Ellie out to us. She'd been sedated a bit to calm the seizures and we helped her while she woke up for a little we got to tell her what a good and beautiful little dog she was and thank her for all the joy she'd given us. She drew her last breath on my lap with her head in my hand and my wife stroking her paws. She blessed us with her life and we're so thankful we were able to ease her passing in our loving arms. She had a good life and good a good death. With all that's going on, the passing of one small old dog seems like a tiny thing. But I believe that by fiercely, fiercely loving the small things, we learn to love all the big things and we gain the strength to hold on to our humanity for the struggles we're facing. So friends, please pour out a libation for Ellie, hold each other tightly and go forward in love. Here are pics of Ellie at rest with her roses. Oh boy, this one got me now. I miss my booba. Thank you so much for that. Much love to Ellie. Next up from Ruth pronouns she and her dear Allison and Dana, thanks so much for all your hard work. I just listened to the May 9 show highlighting Rachel Feldman's movie Lily and I want to give a shout out to my mother in law, Margaret Fenn. After earning a BS and serving as a lieutenant in the Navy, she earned an MBA from the University of Washington and in 1963 became the first woman in the University of Washington College of Business to earn a PhD. She was well regarded, a well regarded professor there at the college and was an early and very avid supporter of equality for women in management, particularly as executives. Over the years she often traveled to lecture on the topic, giving voice to the many women struggling for success in a changing environment. She passed away in 2011, but I'm so grateful for her pioneering efforts and miss her encouraging words and loving spirit. I wish I could see a Lily with her for my POD pet tariff. I have a picture of my dog Click. She was a retired sled dog who ran the Iditarod three times before aging out to younger runners and becoming eligible for adoption. She's an Alaskan Husky, not recognized for standard appearance, but rather their performance as a sled dog. Sadly, I lost her a bit ago, but she was a loyal, quirky, beautiful dog and she really loved her walks. One quick story about her I was walking with her on a snowy hillside around sunset, she was having a wonderful time running hither and thither in the snow. So I went a bit further than I should, losing the light to safely see my way back. I told Click I was unsure, being a path follower by nature as well as a devoted friend. She walked right next to me to show me the way, slow enough so I could make it safely down the steep slope.

Brandi Scalache (60:23)

What a good dog.

Alison Gill (60:25)

Oh, thank you for that. Okay, all these pets are so amazing. Here's another one from Gabe. Pronouns. He and him. I live in South Nashville, which has been under siege by ICE and Tennessee Highway Patrol traffic stops for the last week. I've read about this, Gabe. This is the immigrant corridor of Nashville, and they're stopping and disappearing people without regard for anything other than the color of their skin or the sound of their name. The main thoroughfares are empty because people are afraid to leave their homes. There are now reports of kids being targeted at bus stops on their way to school. That's not the good news. The good news is that I woke up this morning to my neighbors, my nice but not particularly activist neighbors, sharing information about how they can help defend our neighbors, including standing guard at the bus stops and reporting ICE activity and more. It was encouraging to see how far the anger about these traffic stops is penetrating to even the apolitical types. For a what the mutt tariff. I have adopted a dog, Loki, who is a sweet lady dog who was in crisis. Foster care with the nonprofit poster P A W S T R after her owner lost housing. Oh. Unfortunately her owner was unable to reclaim her, so she's now ready to find her new home so everyone can go to paws. Let's see, what is it? Pawster P A W s t r pausedernashville.org adoptable and here is this Baby Lab yellow Lab mix with a pity. Maybe. I'm not sure, but it's a sweet, sweet baby. Gabe, thank you so much for the adoptable pet. And finally. Oh my God, these photos from Lucinda. She her. Hi there Team Beans. Last weekend I decided to do something a bit different and went to hang out with some alpacas. I sat with them for a couple hours, read my book, drank some coffee and laughed at how goofy they are. It was just the most lovely, chilled out way to spend the morning sharing a couple of photos of a curious alpacas. They'd only recently been clipped, so they look really silly. Cinda, I want to know where you can just go hang out with alpacas. Oh my God, they're so great. Look. Oh, I want to pet them. Yeah. And so when you shear an alpaca, everything but their head. Their head is this big puffy thing and then their bodies are. They're long, skinny. Oh, my God, this is so funny. Thank you, Lucinda. I needed that. Everybody, thank you so much for your amazing good news. Sending out love to all the pets. Please send your good news to us dailybeanspod.com and click on contact. Like I said, Dana will be back tomorrow. Thank you so much. Brandy Scalache really changed my life speaking to her, so I hope you enjoyed that interview. And as promised, you know, barring any mitigating circumstances, Dana will be back with me tomorrow. Thank you for hanging in with me solo. Until then, please take care of yourselves, take care of each other, take care of the planet, take care of your mental health, and take care of your family. I've been ag and them's the Beans. The Daily Beans is written in executive produced by Allison Gill with additional research and reporting by Dana Goldberg. Sound design and editing is by Desiree McFarlane with art and web design by Joelle Reader with Moxie Design Studios. Music for the Daily Beans is written and performed by they Might Be Giants and the show is a proud member of the MSW Media Network, a collection of creator owned podcasts dedicated to news, politics and justice. For more information Please visit msw media.com msw media.