Broadcast on July 14, 2022

Velina Brown, director of the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s new live musical, Back To The Way Things Were, playing free in San Francisco parks through Labor Day: In a country where we can finally stop wearing masks to get pizza and go to the movies, and where we again have a president who isn’t dumb as a two dollar ham, hard-working, middle-aged liberals Ralph and Alice wistfully yearn for The before Times, when things seemed normal. But for Zoe - their twenty-something daughter who grew up in a world of climate change, housing crashes, student debt, the rise of dictatorships and the fall of democracies - there is no “better” to go back to. For her the purgatory of the last two years was just a pause from life in Hell. So what’s the point? Isn’t it easier to just give up?

Produced by Chris Garlock; engineered by Michael Nassella.