People have organized in hard times before. There's almost always something that can be done.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/going-to-roanoke

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This episode looks at what regular people can do when a government aims to actively oppress those it’s meant to serve. Andrea Pitzer discusses ways individuals have come together in the face of repressive measures to build community and protect the most vulnerable. Looking at examples from Myanmar to Soviet Russia and Chile, she finds commonalities in very different settings. Then turning toward America, she shows how simple yet extraordinary resistance has a history going back to before the end of the Revolutionary War. Taking a trip this month to Roanoke, Virginia, to be part of one woman’s attempt to organize her city, Andrea outlines the community’s strong response and offers an adaptable blueprint for anyone who wants to do the same in their hometown.

Humor as a weapon in oppressive states. Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/laughter-in-the-dark    Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe    This episode looks at how humor works in resisting strongmen and the ways comedy might be a useful tool against the next administration. Andrea Pitzer considers why dictators (and wannabes) are vulnerable to mockery and explores examples from Syria to Serbia--including some from America's own past. In a political universe that's been repeatedly infiltrated by entertainers (Reagan, Ventura, Trump, and more!), it's worth asking whether satire works differently these days. Andrea finds success stories and cautionary tales as she sketches the limits, risks, and untapped potential of jokes. Outlining the ways the temptations of cynical humor might divide us from the very people whose help we need to make real change, she asks questions about who gets to be in on the joke in a democracy.

Why propaganda works and how we fight it

This episode looks at evil in the world and how the stories people hear shape their political thinking. Andrea Pitzer considers the horrors of governments running concentration camps, and her encounters with people who insist that one group of perpetrators is supremely evil in ways other humans could never be. From Germans to Russians, Palestinians to Israelis, and even Americans, she asks listeners to consider the power of narrative in shaping hatred.

Using the viral is-it-blue-and-black-or-is-it-white-and-gold debates about The Dress a decade ago, Andrea talks about the persuasive worldviews that lead people to abandon reality and her own experience growing up immersed in a delusional perspective. She addresses the commitment that moneyed, powerful interests have in building these narratives as a distraction—one that further isolates and divides the public, the better to fleece it. She closes with why this process isn’t inevitable and how you can shore up the country and the world to resist it.

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In our second episode, we consider where we're headed with a rogue president in charge of a rogue state. We take a look back at how people stood up against torture after 9/11 and show how everyday Americans are already defying Trump allies this week.

Andrea Pitzer returns to a longtime source, Mark Fallon, who was at one time NCIS chief of counterintelligence for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. In the months after 9/11, Fallon worked to stop the torture program at Guantanamo in its early development, later going public to denounce the U.S. embrace of illegal methods.

When she first talked to him almost a decade ago, Fallon told her that the torture program had turned the U.S. into a rogue state, and that accountability would be required to return the country to democracy. In light of Trump's willingness to ignore the rule of law both domestically and abroad in ways far beyond most U.S. presidents, Andrea considers what it means to have a shameless executive in charge of a rogue state and how we might follow Fallon's example by standing up in the face of unethical or illegal activities. She offers a heartening early example from Oklahoma of people doing just that.

From the moment election results started rolling in, people have been wondering how bad life will get during a second Trump Administration.

A decade ago, Andrea Pitzer went around the world to talk to people who had survived authoritarian rule, in order to write the first comprehensive history of concentration camps, ONE LONG NIGHT. 

In this first episode of Next Comes What, recorded three days after the election, she talks about different ways that authoritarians have come to power, how Trump's rise relates to them, the real danger we're now in, some good news about why it won't all go the way Trump is planning, four areas where we'll likely see aggressive measures in January 2025, and a long list of ways (large and small!) for you to use the next two months to protect yourself and help preserve democracy.