00:00:00 Craig Bot : Now Recording.
00:00:02 Ki : Oh, that's– that's terrifying. I don't like that.
00:00:06 Andy : Did I do that? Or did matt do –
00:00:07 Ki : No, I think– I think Matthew did that. Do you hear that?
00:00:11 Andy : Yeah, that was a– that was a thing that happened. [chuckles]
00:00:15 Ki : I- I kind of hate that. Oh my gosh! We’re gonna have to do that every time, I might just like actually–
00:00:21 Andy : Now Recording [mimicking Craig bot].
00:00:23 Ki : I'm gonna recant it. I don't want to do this anymore. [giggles] Craig scares me.
00:00:33 Andy : Oh gosh. Craig's gonna be, we need our show, like our listeners, to be able to hear Craig sound somehow.
00:00:44 Ki : Okay, well okay. Editing note for Matthew: make sure the little “now recording” of the craig bot is heard, so they could just experience that with us. And instead of like a podcast theme song, a little jingle, it's just going to be like, really loud, like ear splitting at 100%. “Now Recording.”
00:01:06 Andy : Okay, so here we are. This is the 1st episode.
00:01:09 Ki : Yeah, sure is, yeah.
00:01:10 Andy : And our tentative name, our name so far, and obviously we could change this if we want is: The Rotten Core.
00:01:24 Ki : Yeah. Well, do you want to talk about the reason we came up with the name ‘rotten core’?
00:01:29 Andy : Yeah, so my thinking was well, first of all, have you ever heard of core and periphery like terminology in like what's it called, sociology?
00:01:44 Ki : Uhm no, but I can with the context clues like I know what periphery means. So like yeah, no definitely, yeah.
00:01:53 Andy : Yeah, so this guy named Immanuel Wallerstein came up with– you've heard First World, Second World and Third world? Yeah, and so first the First World was like the U.S., Europe and the westernized nations, and Second World was like Russia and its eastern european allies. And Third World was just like everyone else, right? It was all lumped together. And then, whenever the USSR, like Russia and its European allies, when the USSR collapsed, people stopped using this word second world right, but they were still using first and third world. So then eventually what happened is they started associating ‘core’ with like developed nations, right? Obviously it's not complicated. The periphery was the– what's called underdeveloped nations. By saying The Rotten Core, what I think we're referring to somewhat is, you know, the imperial core, the core of developed capitalism and developed nations. Kind of like the rot that's present there. . . does that make sense?
00:03:12 Ki : Yeah it does, it does. Especially when we talk about where we live. Like I don't know. When I think of something rotting, I usually think about it rotting from the inside out, and I think that's a kind of important symbolism too. I realize that we have just started talking and no one knows who we are or what our names are, so we should probably do that.
00:03:40 Andy : That's a good point, yeah? You wanna go first?
00:03:45 Ki : Yeah, for sure. So my name is Ki. It's ‘K’ ‘I’, and it's Ki like you know the car keys, annoying little things that you leave behind all the time, that's me. I am a nonbinary femme, and a 26 year old, from Georgia, born and raised. From Atlanta, actually. I would just say, politically speaking, Leftist- Anarchist and I don't know what else to say about me. I guess you'll find out more about us and like our experiences and just different things you know throughout the podcast.
00:04:23 Andy : Uh, yeah I guess I'll introduce myself. I'm Andy. Andrew is my name, I go by Andy. Uhm, I'm agender. They/them He/him. We're actually recording this from Augusta.Originally I’m from Texas from the Houston area, but I moved over here because this is my wife's hometown. Um Ki is definitely not my wife. Ki is my wife’s friend. [laughing]
00:04:53 Ki : Yeah, so yeah we need to make this very very– I was about to say queer. Well, I mean we already have, right? We’re both “they/them”s. But um to make it very clear–
00:05:05 Andy : Instead of clear your saying queer [laughing]
00:05:07 Ki: [laughing]
00:05:09 Andy : 'Cause we're already there. We're already super queer.
00:05:12 Ki : We've already made ourselves crystal queer, but to make ourselves like more distinct because I think this is a confusion that happens with some of my friends who I talked to who don't live in Augusta area. They get confused. So, or actually, whenever I've gone out with Andy in person, I always worry about this. Because you know, I'm a black femme presenting black woman, you know whatever. Yeah, Andy is married to a black woman and I'm married to someone who's a white man presenting person. And so yes, Andy is not my husband and he's like a big brother to me, bestie. The person editing his podcast, actually, Matthew is the guy. But yeah. That probably shouldn't have really come up too much, so we fine, but just making some some you know distinctions here. So if we're talking about something, we're literally talking about other people. If we're talking about relationships or something like that.
00:06:10 Andy : Yeah, yeah and I guess to finish my little intro bio, whatever. I am, uh, I sometimes half jokingly call myself an Anarcho-Marxist. I’m influenced by Marx. I'm influenced by the anarchist tradition, definitely libertarian-socialists of some flavor. I really am into if you care about my like, particular labels I'm into Platformism, i'm into Left Communism, that sort of stuff. So. uhm, that's me politically and obviously this show is gonna be a uh two radicals. Would you call yourself a radical? I would call you radical.
00:06:55 Ki : I think it depends on the sense 'cause I am both the skateboard kind of radical, you know. Like surfer radical. I would totally consider myself radical. Yes, no. Yeah, I'd consider myself radical. Radical Leftist yeah, yeah.
00:07:08 Andy : Well, when you're 2 radicals, I'm only one radical here. Together with three of them.
00:07:13 Ki : [laughs] I am too radial. Oh yeah.
00:07:20 Andy : Yeah, but yeah, that's what it's going to be about. Uh, about imperialism, about imperial rot really. 'Cause like a lot of times I think it gets kinda overlooked that within developed nations there is like, there's sectors that are almost like third world. you know there's impoverished sectors.
00:07:53 Ki : At least in my opinion, in my experience in the South, having lived in three of the biggest and most major cities in Georgia, which is Atlanta, Savannah and Augusta, and seeing lots of times a big, diverse group of people interact. But also a lot of people disconnected from communities. Uhm, uh, because of you know, I don't know how to word this, but I guess like, I specifically see a lot of disparities involving class and just like anything, whether it's economical or social. Just like the separation of communities and I think it's highlighted here more, at least from my lived experience. Now I know that throughout the country there's, you know, situations similar to where it is in Augusta, like throughout the country. But I do think other parts of the States have the benefit of having, sometimes, more senses of community. Also sometimes like being in a generally more liberal place is sometimes better for people and like getting more things done and so with the South being not only perceived as and sometimes on the whole like, a more conservative area, you know. I think it's, I don't know. It's just a big stark contrast when you see something like a glaring problem, does that? Am I making sense?
00:09:19 Andy : No, yeah, I totally feel you 100%. Also, uh, i think you mentioned that you would be interested in doing maybe pop culture commentary or kind of arts and entertainment stuff as well, which I'm down for that myself. Is that fair to say?
00:09:45 Ki : Yeah, that's definitely still true, and I think I've mentioned this before. What I mentioned before we were talking about starting the podcast is that, or maybe I haven't mentioned it, it just stuck in my head and I thought I said it to you. But since we're both interested in animation, I think it could be really interesting to look at some things that are animated, that may have seemingly nothing to do with, you know, like american imperialism and kind of like dissect it and see how it applies to things. Or look at themes in animation because that's a big passion of mine. And also just looking into animation would be cool, especially because we're both interested in love animation and then also arts, music, culture, all of that is really interesting because I think finding parallels or messages or themes in media are really important tools, to like I guess, extend stuff, like, to the everyday person, and I mean I'm not saying this as above or a scholar. I am the everyday person and so that's how I learn a lot about things, whether that be sometimes from a Youtube video essay or you know, books or a tv show that mentions something or a movie that covers a topic. And I think all of that's really valuable to kind of make stuff a little bit more relatable and also a little bit more like current. Like if we're gonna talk about, you know if we're going to talk about something that just happened on tv or a big tv moment. It would be like, probably helpful because people, everyone’s watched that and they kind of know that, if that makes sense. I was gonna make an um, I was gonna make a Will Smith Oscars joke but i can't find it so i'm just gonna leave that.
00:11:27 Andy : Implied Will Smith joke. Uhm, I actually have one. The first little little arts and media tidbit to bring onto the podcast. Since it's probably not a huge discussion, it probably is appropriate for the introductory episode. You know, you know who George Michael is? For the listeners it's the Careless Whisper guy.
00:11:54 Ki : And he gotta have faith.
00:11:55 Andy: Yeah yeah, yeah.
00:11:57 Andy : Well, he apparently is a communist.
00:12:02 Ki : George???
00:12:04 Andy : Yes, I just found this out like an hour ago so, this is news to me too.
00:12:09 Ki : Whoa so, I don't even know what you're about to– If that was a starting point for something else, but I will tell you. That changes everything about how much I love his music. 'Cause I already loved his music, you know what i'm saying now, it's like
00:12:20 Andy : I see.
00:12:21 Ki : Okay, comrade george! Come on! I'm gonna be singing Careless Whisper with more emotion.
00:12:27 Andy : Yeah, apparently he fought for coal miners rights and stuff like that. So he did like legit activism.
00:12:34 Ki : Oh sweet. He did an activism and it wasn't even just like a Twitter activism either.
00:12:39 Andy : Yeah, and honestly maybe I'm probably doing him injustice by using that word, 'cause activism is like I don't know. It's almost cringey to even say. He helped fight for working class power. That's really what he did, yeah.
00:12:53 Ki : Yeah, I mean yeah it is true and I guess we might have to get into that. Like throughout the podcast, there's a lot of words that have just kind of become buzzwords, and I think buzzwords used to be like a thing. It's like, oh, it's kind of annoying, but everyone knows what this means. Like, you know, the word woke or something. But now I think with the oversaturation of like, people wanting to perform activism or like help out, a lot of these words become buzzwords, and then they're just like, completely devoid of meaning because people are just using it every which way and it kind of doesn't mean anything. But I do hear what you're saying. You're saying the singer of Careless Whisper and Gotta Have Faith, is it Faith or Gotta Have Faith? I don't know. He helped with coal miners, and that's like a big thing. We're talking about, like workers rights, and like the history of organizing workers. That is huge.
00:13:44 Andy : Yeah, it's pretty cool. I don't have anything else to talk about this episode. I didn't, I didn't do any research for anything. So is that? Is that a good introduction? Do we have anything else that we want to introduce to the audience to let them know, like kind of get a feel for what we're going to be doing?
00:14:01 Ki : Yeah I would say that another thing we're going to be doing here, other than just kind of like, I would say, we’ll kind of loosely outline a topic and we'll just kind of freeform talk about it. We're going to have– we're going to interview people here. So you know, might be our friends. It would be really cool to interview people we know who are in communities who organize, like, however far the way they are. You know that would be super cool too. And something I need to get your opinion on is if you would want to, I mean if more than three people listen to this, if more than three people listen, it's like taking questions from people, and I think that could be something maybe interesting.
00:14:43 Andy : Yeah, that would definitely be very interesting. We encourage any of our listeners to, whether it's questions that you might come up with whatever topics we discuss in the course of a podcast, or if you have just like questions for us in general, it doesn't matter. We're you know, definitely open to any kind of, what would you say like fan engagement?
00:15:11 Ki : Oh yeah, yeah, I don't like, see, I know some people say like fans or followers. We can just say listeners 'cause there's going to be listeners so you know our listeners, our audience.
00:15:18 Andy : Yeah, yeah.
00:15:22 Ki : And yeah, I am. I think I'll say this and have this rule. It's the same rule that's on my twitch channel which is ask me anything you want, but like, don't be getting all crazy and asking, you know, personal questions now. Like I already told you, the name, the first name of my husband. That should be good enough for you. You know, don't don't ask too many details, but I’m a very chatty person. I like to talk and I like to, I don't know, have a community that's just very important to me and I know Andy likes to talk too. We both like to talk. So obviously, you know, if something comes up, we'll have a little boundaries list, but for the most part, ask anything you want and we will try to get it answered for you.
00:16:05 Andy : Okay, uh, with that I don't actually have to rush out, right now, but I don't know what else to put into this intro.
00:16:17 Ki : I think we can leave this intro here and then do an after show that it's not going to be on the podcast and talk about what to do next.
00:16:24 Andy : Sounds fine. Allright, let's figure out how to turn off this recorder?
00:16:29 Ki : Yeah, tech support! Turn off my recording.
00:00:02 Ki : Oh, that's– that's terrifying. I don't like that.
00:00:06 Andy : Did I do that? Or did matt do –
00:00:07 Ki : No, I think– I think Matthew did that. Do you hear that?
00:00:11 Andy : Yeah, that was a– that was a thing that happened. [chuckles]
00:00:15 Ki : I- I kind of hate that. Oh my gosh! We’re gonna have to do that every time, I might just like actually–
00:00:21 Andy : Now Recording [mimicking Craig bot].
00:00:23 Ki : I'm gonna recant it. I don't want to do this anymore. [giggles] Craig scares me.
00:00:33 Andy : Oh gosh. Craig's gonna be, we need our show, like our listeners, to be able to hear Craig sound somehow.
00:00:44 Ki : Okay, well okay. Editing note for Matthew: make sure the little “now recording” of the craig bot is heard, so they could just experience that with us. And instead of like a podcast theme song, a little jingle, it's just going to be like, really loud, like ear splitting at 100%. “Now Recording.”
00:01:06 Andy : Okay, so here we are. This is the 1st episode.
00:01:09 Ki : Yeah, sure is, yeah.
00:01:10 Andy : And our tentative name, our name so far, and obviously we could change this if we want is: The Rotten Core.
00:01:24 Ki : Yeah. Well, do you want to talk about the reason we came up with the name ‘rotten core’?
00:01:29 Andy : Yeah, so my thinking was well, first of all, have you ever heard of core and periphery like terminology in like what's it called, sociology?
00:01:44 Ki : Uhm no, but I can with the context clues like I know what periphery means. So like yeah, no definitely, yeah.
00:01:53 Andy : Yeah, so this guy named Immanuel Wallerstein came up with– you've heard First World, Second World and Third world? Yeah, and so first the First World was like the U.S., Europe and the westernized nations, and Second World was like Russia and its eastern european allies. And Third World was just like everyone else, right? It was all lumped together. And then, whenever the USSR, like Russia and its European allies, when the USSR collapsed, people stopped using this word second world right, but they were still using first and third world. So then eventually what happened is they started associating ‘core’ with like developed nations, right? Obviously it's not complicated. The periphery was the– what's called underdeveloped nations. By saying The Rotten Core, what I think we're referring to somewhat is, you know, the imperial core, the core of developed capitalism and developed nations. Kind of like the rot that's present there. . . does that make sense?
00:03:12 Ki : Yeah it does, it does. Especially when we talk about where we live. Like I don't know. When I think of something rotting, I usually think about it rotting from the inside out, and I think that's a kind of important symbolism too. I realize that we have just started talking and no one knows who we are or what our names are, so we should probably do that.
00:03:40 Andy : That's a good point, yeah? You wanna go first?
00:03:45 Ki : Yeah, for sure. So my name is Ki. It's ‘K’ ‘I’, and it's Ki like you know the car keys, annoying little things that you leave behind all the time, that's me. I am a nonbinary femme, and a 26 year old, from Georgia, born and raised. From Atlanta, actually. I would just say, politically speaking, Leftist- Anarchist and I don't know what else to say about me. I guess you'll find out more about us and like our experiences and just different things you know throughout the podcast.
00:04:23 Andy : Uh, yeah I guess I'll introduce myself. I'm Andy. Andrew is my name, I go by Andy. Uhm, I'm agender. They/them He/him. We're actually recording this from Augusta.Originally I’m from Texas from the Houston area, but I moved over here because this is my wife's hometown. Um Ki is definitely not my wife. Ki is my wife’s friend. [laughing]
00:04:53 Ki : Yeah, so yeah we need to make this very very– I was about to say queer. Well, I mean we already have, right? We’re both “they/them”s. But um to make it very clear–
00:05:05 Andy : Instead of clear your saying queer [laughing]
00:05:07 Ki: [laughing]
00:05:09 Andy : 'Cause we're already there. We're already super queer.
00:05:12 Ki : We've already made ourselves crystal queer, but to make ourselves like more distinct because I think this is a confusion that happens with some of my friends who I talked to who don't live in Augusta area. They get confused. So, or actually, whenever I've gone out with Andy in person, I always worry about this. Because you know, I'm a black femme presenting black woman, you know whatever. Yeah, Andy is married to a black woman and I'm married to someone who's a white man presenting person. And so yes, Andy is not my husband and he's like a big brother to me, bestie. The person editing his podcast, actually, Matthew is the guy. But yeah. That probably shouldn't have really come up too much, so we fine, but just making some some you know distinctions here. So if we're talking about something, we're literally talking about other people. If we're talking about relationships or something like that.
00:06:10 Andy : Yeah, yeah and I guess to finish my little intro bio, whatever. I am, uh, I sometimes half jokingly call myself an Anarcho-Marxist. I’m influenced by Marx. I'm influenced by the anarchist tradition, definitely libertarian-socialists of some flavor. I really am into if you care about my like, particular labels I'm into Platformism, i'm into Left Communism, that sort of stuff. So. uhm, that's me politically and obviously this show is gonna be a uh two radicals. Would you call yourself a radical? I would call you radical.
00:06:55 Ki : I think it depends on the sense 'cause I am both the skateboard kind of radical, you know. Like surfer radical. I would totally consider myself radical. Yes, no. Yeah, I'd consider myself radical. Radical Leftist yeah, yeah.
00:07:08 Andy : Well, when you're 2 radicals, I'm only one radical here. Together with three of them.
00:07:13 Ki : [laughs] I am too radial. Oh yeah.
00:07:20 Andy : Yeah, but yeah, that's what it's going to be about. Uh, about imperialism, about imperial rot really. 'Cause like a lot of times I think it gets kinda overlooked that within developed nations there is like, there's sectors that are almost like third world. you know there's impoverished sectors.
00:07:53 Ki : At least in my opinion, in my experience in the South, having lived in three of the biggest and most major cities in Georgia, which is Atlanta, Savannah and Augusta, and seeing lots of times a big, diverse group of people interact. But also a lot of people disconnected from communities. Uhm, uh, because of you know, I don't know how to word this, but I guess like, I specifically see a lot of disparities involving class and just like anything, whether it's economical or social. Just like the separation of communities and I think it's highlighted here more, at least from my lived experience. Now I know that throughout the country there's, you know, situations similar to where it is in Augusta, like throughout the country. But I do think other parts of the States have the benefit of having, sometimes, more senses of community. Also sometimes like being in a generally more liberal place is sometimes better for people and like getting more things done and so with the South being not only perceived as and sometimes on the whole like, a more conservative area, you know. I think it's, I don't know. It's just a big stark contrast when you see something like a glaring problem, does that? Am I making sense?
00:09:19 Andy : No, yeah, I totally feel you 100%. Also, uh, i think you mentioned that you would be interested in doing maybe pop culture commentary or kind of arts and entertainment stuff as well, which I'm down for that myself. Is that fair to say?
00:09:45 Ki : Yeah, that's definitely still true, and I think I've mentioned this before. What I mentioned before we were talking about starting the podcast is that, or maybe I haven't mentioned it, it just stuck in my head and I thought I said it to you. But since we're both interested in animation, I think it could be really interesting to look at some things that are animated, that may have seemingly nothing to do with, you know, like american imperialism and kind of like dissect it and see how it applies to things. Or look at themes in animation because that's a big passion of mine. And also just looking into animation would be cool, especially because we're both interested in love animation and then also arts, music, culture, all of that is really interesting because I think finding parallels or messages or themes in media are really important tools, to like I guess, extend stuff, like, to the everyday person, and I mean I'm not saying this as above or a scholar. I am the everyday person and so that's how I learn a lot about things, whether that be sometimes from a Youtube video essay or you know, books or a tv show that mentions something or a movie that covers a topic. And I think all of that's really valuable to kind of make stuff a little bit more relatable and also a little bit more like current. Like if we're gonna talk about, you know if we're going to talk about something that just happened on tv or a big tv moment. It would be like, probably helpful because people, everyone’s watched that and they kind of know that, if that makes sense. I was gonna make an um, I was gonna make a Will Smith Oscars joke but i can't find it so i'm just gonna leave that.
00:11:27 Andy : Implied Will Smith joke. Uhm, I actually have one. The first little little arts and media tidbit to bring onto the podcast. Since it's probably not a huge discussion, it probably is appropriate for the introductory episode. You know, you know who George Michael is? For the listeners it's the Careless Whisper guy.
00:11:54 Ki : And he gotta have faith.
00:11:55 Andy: Yeah yeah, yeah.
00:11:57 Andy : Well, he apparently is a communist.
00:12:02 Ki : George???
00:12:04 Andy : Yes, I just found this out like an hour ago so, this is news to me too.
00:12:09 Ki : Whoa so, I don't even know what you're about to– If that was a starting point for something else, but I will tell you. That changes everything about how much I love his music. 'Cause I already loved his music, you know what i'm saying now, it's like
00:12:20 Andy : I see.
00:12:21 Ki : Okay, comrade george! Come on! I'm gonna be singing Careless Whisper with more emotion.
00:12:27 Andy : Yeah, apparently he fought for coal miners rights and stuff like that. So he did like legit activism.
00:12:34 Ki : Oh sweet. He did an activism and it wasn't even just like a Twitter activism either.
00:12:39 Andy : Yeah, and honestly maybe I'm probably doing him injustice by using that word, 'cause activism is like I don't know. It's almost cringey to even say. He helped fight for working class power. That's really what he did, yeah.
00:12:53 Ki : Yeah, I mean yeah it is true and I guess we might have to get into that. Like throughout the podcast, there's a lot of words that have just kind of become buzzwords, and I think buzzwords used to be like a thing. It's like, oh, it's kind of annoying, but everyone knows what this means. Like, you know, the word woke or something. But now I think with the oversaturation of like, people wanting to perform activism or like help out, a lot of these words become buzzwords, and then they're just like, completely devoid of meaning because people are just using it every which way and it kind of doesn't mean anything. But I do hear what you're saying. You're saying the singer of Careless Whisper and Gotta Have Faith, is it Faith or Gotta Have Faith? I don't know. He helped with coal miners, and that's like a big thing. We're talking about, like workers rights, and like the history of organizing workers. That is huge.
00:13:44 Andy : Yeah, it's pretty cool. I don't have anything else to talk about this episode. I didn't, I didn't do any research for anything. So is that? Is that a good introduction? Do we have anything else that we want to introduce to the audience to let them know, like kind of get a feel for what we're going to be doing?
00:14:01 Ki : Yeah I would say that another thing we're going to be doing here, other than just kind of like, I would say, we’ll kind of loosely outline a topic and we'll just kind of freeform talk about it. We're going to have– we're going to interview people here. So you know, might be our friends. It would be really cool to interview people we know who are in communities who organize, like, however far the way they are. You know that would be super cool too. And something I need to get your opinion on is if you would want to, I mean if more than three people listen to this, if more than three people listen, it's like taking questions from people, and I think that could be something maybe interesting.
00:14:43 Andy : Yeah, that would definitely be very interesting. We encourage any of our listeners to, whether it's questions that you might come up with whatever topics we discuss in the course of a podcast, or if you have just like questions for us in general, it doesn't matter. We're you know, definitely open to any kind of, what would you say like fan engagement?
00:15:11 Ki : Oh yeah, yeah, I don't like, see, I know some people say like fans or followers. We can just say listeners 'cause there's going to be listeners so you know our listeners, our audience.
00:15:18 Andy : Yeah, yeah.
00:15:22 Ki : And yeah, I am. I think I'll say this and have this rule. It's the same rule that's on my twitch channel which is ask me anything you want, but like, don't be getting all crazy and asking, you know, personal questions now. Like I already told you, the name, the first name of my husband. That should be good enough for you. You know, don't don't ask too many details, but I’m a very chatty person. I like to talk and I like to, I don't know, have a community that's just very important to me and I know Andy likes to talk too. We both like to talk. So obviously, you know, if something comes up, we'll have a little boundaries list, but for the most part, ask anything you want and we will try to get it answered for you.
00:16:05 Andy : Okay, uh, with that I don't actually have to rush out, right now, but I don't know what else to put into this intro.
00:16:17 Ki : I think we can leave this intro here and then do an after show that it's not going to be on the podcast and talk about what to do next.
00:16:24 Andy : Sounds fine. Allright, let's figure out how to turn off this recorder?
00:16:29 Ki : Yeah, tech support! Turn off my recording.
