Asher Miller: 00:00

Hi, I'm Asher Miller.

Rob Dietz: 00:02

I'm Rob Dietz.

Jason Bradford: 00:03

And I'm Jason Bradford. Welcome to Crazy Town where the Fraternal Order of the Chupacabra is the only organization keeping you out of desperate poverty.

Asher Miller: 00:13

There's the book club, the Rotary Club, the Mickey Mouse Club, and the club sandwich. wWhatever your preference, you might want to think about joining a club. Social clubs, fraternal orders, and the like have had a storied and critical role in public life. That is, until government programs and technology gave us an out from having to deal with each other. But with modernity failing, will clubs and community organizations make a huge comeback? In this episode we explore club life, past, present, and future, if there is one.

Jason Bradford: 00:48

Hey guys, I'm happy to see you,

Asher Miller: 00:52

Liar, liar.

Rob Dietz: 00:53

It's good, good to be here.

Jason Bradford: 00:55

And I'm really excited about this episode. And it kind of it came out of this day -- I had this day in the fall. It was probably in September, early October. I'm not actually sure when, but there was this day when I was... You know these days where you're super-scheduled?

Asher Miller: 01:10

Yes, every day of my life.

Jason Bradford: 01:11

Okay, basically not for me, but some days I have -- it's like, I go from one thing to another, and I have to fit stuff in. And this day I realized I was basically bouncing from one club to another.

Rob Dietz: 01:24

You're talking like you're going dancing.

Asher Miller: 01:29

Nightclub? Golf club?

Jason Bradford: 01:30

I was not on Miami Beach or something like that. No, I was here in Corvallis, and I was club hopping.

Asher Miller: 01:36

Oh, I see. So you're going from the Freemasons to the Bilderbergs.

Jason Bradford: 01:43

What's the one in the redwoods?

Asher Miller: 01:48

Bohemian Grove?

Jason Bradford: 01:50

Actually, I was going from tennis club where I actually teach and play.

Rob Dietz: 01:57

I wasn't aware of this.

Jason Bradford: 01:59

I know. I talk about it a lot. I'm a teaching pro, not a touring pro.

Rob Dietz: 02:04

There's a big bag of rackets that's actually right behind your seat right now that I can see.

Jason Bradford: 02:08

Oh yeah, look at that. I'm sponsored by Babolat, a French company, anyhow. And then I have this buddy, Craig, and I'm in this wine club, and so he wanted me to come help...

Asher Miller: 02:19

Well, la-di-da!

Rob Dietz: 02:20

Tennis, wine...

Jason Bradford: 02:22

And we had to do some prep.

Asher Miller: 02:24

Is there a croquet club as well?

Rob Dietz: 02:25

I bet you're -- are you in the money club, like the Future Business Leaders of America or something?

Jason Bradford: 02:30

These are pretty frugal clubs, to be honest with you. That's part of what we'll talk about. And then the last was the farming club, okay? And so anyway, my day was just clubbed out, you know? Yeah, very wholesome.

Jason Bradford: 02:31

Did you have a club sandwich?

Jason Bradford: 02:37

No.

Rob Dietz: 02:38

Well, it's pretty clear we're going to be talking about clubs, so maybe for the listener, we could just define club. And we're batting pretty high on dad jokes.

Asher Miller: 02:59

Clubbing.

Rob Dietz: 02:59

We're clubbing a high average. Anyway, we're not talking about that -- a heavy tapering-off, made-of-wood bat. That's not it. We're not talking about the night club where you could find me in the club, bottle full of bub. Hey, I got the X if you're into taking drugs. Not that. We're not even talking about that little black clover on the playing cards. I think we're here to talk about gathering with people regularly, maybe a periodic schedule for a particular activity or interest, right? So you've got these very informal groups, like a book club, or a knitting club, something like that, but you could also have very formal ones, right? Something with legal status even, like a Rotary Club.

Jason Bradford: 03:45

501c7, I think that is, in the IRS parlance.

Rob Dietz: 03:45

I know one of your clubs -- you didn't mention it -- but one of yours is the Young Republicans Club that you're a member of.

Jason Bradford: 03:55

Correct. I'm not that young anymore, though, so they kicked me out. Yeah, right.

Asher Miller: 03:59

But you are a Republican.

Jason Bradford: 04:00

Oh, big time. Do you hear that? Do you hear that, government? Listeners? Continue.

Rob Dietz: 04:07

I'm interested to hear about the history of clubs. I am not much of an expert, but Jason, I understand you've been reading up on this.

Jason Bradford: 04:15

Well, I read this book a long time ago, probably about 20 years ago, Bowling Alone. It kind of made the rounds, was pretty famous.

Rob Dietz: 04:22

Yeah, I remember that.

Jason Bradford: 04:23

Robert Putman, sociologist

Rob Dietz: 04:25

Putnam, right?

Jason Bradford: 04:26

Putnam, yeah. So Robert Putnam had been studying the decline in these social organizations and how much time people spend, sort of by themselves or in their own homes versus with other people in groups, in these regular meetings and things like that. And he talked about how these had been on decline for the past 50 years, and by now, that's the past 75 years. And one of the things he said was important about clubs is that they bonded people together, you know, sort of in the club. But then also there was this idea of bridging social capital. In that sense, you have, like... I'm in three clubs, right? And there's people that are in my tennis club ore in the in the wine club, who happen to be good at something and happen to maybe be part of another association. And sometimes I can figure that out and get the benefits of their bridge to this other world, right?

Rob Dietz: 05:12

That may even be how you ended up in the wine club, you know, all those tennis wine drinkers.

Jason Bradford: 05:25

In fact, my wine club buddies are also in the farming and the tennis club.

Asher Miller: 05:29

So they have one club, and it's basically the Jason Bradford club.

Jason Bradford: 05:34

I think there's only one that's in all three, you know. But there's a lot of two out of threes, sure.

Asher Miller: 05:39

So Robert Putnam was talking about the decline in these organizations, but I think it's important to talk about the role that some of these organizations have played in public life, going way back, right? There was a time when fraternal orders were really instrumental as they weren't just a way of people bonding together socially or building connections and ties within a community. They provided really serious and critical resources for people. So if you go back and you look at the ways that they were integrated, at least in American public life, if you look back at the early 20th century, it's estimated that there were over 10 million Americans who were part of hundreds and hundreds of different fraternal organizations or lodges. There's one historian who estimated that a third of all men in the United States belonged to one.

Jason Bradford: 06:39

Like in the like the early 20th century, a third of men, okay.

Asher Miller: 06:42

But the number is probably larger, because that's just men, right? There were also clubs and orders for women. There were ones that existed for African Americans, Jews, others who were often excluded from the other clubs, right? So they formed their own clubs. It was a major, major part of American public life that we're not even aware of anymore, I think.

Rob Dietz: 07:05

And they really key part of what they did is provide service. A lot of things that you think should be provided by government, these clubs and lodges would provide. So one example that we know of is that lodges would pool their membership dues, so each member pays in a little bit, and then they would hire a doctor that would take care of everybody that that's a member. And you know, if they had enough members, enough dues, they would hire a staff of nurses as well. And so, this is them taking care of their own health care needs. Let's say the doctor didn't work out, not so good, like the doctor on The Simpsons or whatnot. They could just fire them, right? And they would also take care of some other services too. Like if somebody died and you'd need to pay for for their funeral, a burial. You could do that. You could also provide education for children. So I mean real services that you, today... I would never think, "Oh yeah, that's going to be provided by the club," right?

Jason Bradford: 08:05

And so, you know, this is before the New Deal we're talking about. So that's the key point. And essentially, you have sort of insurance programs being developed. But it's not in these giant nationwide pools, it's all these local pools. It'd be like somebody coming up every week and just giving 20 bucks to that club as part of their dues, really regular amount, and then that pool would be available when there was a crisis for people.

Asher Miller: 08:30

After the New Deal, I think you probably can't point to one single cause of the decline of these clubs or these fraternal orders or whatever, but certainly, I think when we developed government, social welfare programs, Social Security, other other benefits that the federal government or state governments provided, which were hard won victories... And I think a lot of people look at as signs of progress, one of the maybe inadvertent impacts of that is that the role of some of these clubs and fraternal organizations and communities wasn't the same anymore. People weren't turning towards the club to provide that kind of safety net for them or their families. And then when you couple that with advances in technology, people having cars and you have television, you have other forms...

Jason Bradford: 09:21

You had radio before television that led to some of this.

Asher Miller: 09:24

So the people maybe didn't have quite the same drive for that sort of social connection or that entertainment.

Jason Bradford: 09:32

You didn't have to go to the club to listen to a band when you get it on the radio anymore.

Rob Dietz: 09:36

It's bizarre, because, you know, I watched a lot of television as a kid, which preempted my joining a club.

Asher Miller: 09:45

Mickey Mouse Club.

Rob Dietz: 09:48

My only experience of clubs is watching TV shows that were old at the time I was a kid, like The Flintstones. Fred Flintstone was a member of the Loyal Order of Water Buffalo. And on Happy Days, the dad would wear this leopard hat with a tassel or something. That's the only experience I had.

Asher Miller: 10:11

I mean, really, these clubs have gone into terminal decline. There's like, hardly anything left. You know, I don't know if we talked about the Granges on this podcast, but they were a central pillar, especially in rural American life. And there's still some left, you know. But they're often moribund. And it's interesting, because the ones that maybe you could look at and say they're a bit more thriving, like the Rotary Clubs, for example. I think all of us have given presentations there.

Rob Dietz: 10:39

And you see it when you enter the town, right on the billboard. It'll name the town, and it'll have the R symbol for the Rotary Club.

Asher Miller: 10:47

But a lot of what their focus is when it's about their members working together on something, it's about actually not providing needs for their membership. It's actually meeting the needs of people in other parts of the world. And that's a testament, not that there aren't, obviously, many, many Americans in real need, but for those members, the ones who are part of the Rotary Club, it's like they're not looking for the club itself to help them meet their own needs.

Jason Bradford: 11:16

And that's why it survived, because its purpose didn't have to change.

Rob Dietz: 11:21

So when I understood that we were going to be talking about clubs and looking at the positives, I fell in a little bit of this rabbit hole of, you know, there's some potential bad things that we need to clear out of the way. So I wanted to go through three finer points about clubs with you guys and see if we can put these things aside. The first one is that there's plenty of clubs out there that maybe do provide a positive social scene, like the ones you're in Jason, but often clubs have pretty nefarious purposes, right? Like if you were thinking of a motorcycle club, right? It could be good, they just ride around. But you could also have the Hells Angels, right, sort of violent and drug dealing. We have the Proud Boys around here, which has a far-right, neofascist, racist, militant way. Political violence from them has occurred in our part of the country here, and so when we're suggesting clubs, you know, you got to look at this dividing line between ones that are...

Jason Bradford: 12:29

Read their mission statement!

Rob Dietz: 12:30

folks, yeah, kind of, kind of, oh yeah.

Asher Miller: 12:33

I'm sure they're often transparent.

Rob Dietz: 12:34

But you also have to be careful of the shitty clubs, because people join them because of the camaraderie that they get out of them, right? So, yeah, I don't know how you steer people away from that.

Jason Bradford: 12:48

Also, we're not talking about online clubs, because this is what's happening as a lot of people are finding social connection online, right? They get on Reddit, they get on Twitch, which I think is a gaming thing.

Rob Dietz: 13:00

Well, it's so I can watch you play video games.

Jason Bradford: 13:02

Okay, great, great, I'm not that interested in that, in this perspective, and we'll get into probably why, why that is.

Rob Dietz: 13:10

If you're in a multiplayer, first person shooter game, does that count as being in a club? It's kind of interactive, right?

Asher Miller: 13:17

I actually do think that there are a lot of people who find community online, through, through some of these things. And you can call them clubs on some level, but you're talking about in person clubs. You were saying though, Rob, I just want to make sure we get this right. You're talking about, like, three different issues, right? So you talked about some clubs are actually bad news, right? And then I think you just brought up one, Jason.

Rob Dietz: 13:39

That was, that was one of mine too, the difference between online and in real life. The other one that I thought about is that a lot of clubs start to veer into this territory of cults, right? You may be going to join somebody...

Asher Miller: 13:54

They share a lot of letters together, clubs and cults.

Rob Dietz: 13:58

Well, think about it, man, like you're going into some nice club, they've invited you in, and suddenly they're passing out the Kool Aid. And then all of a sudden, half the people are dying.

Asher Miller: 14:08

It's not that quick. They start with stopping you from talking to your family. Yeah, give us all your money. Yeah, that kind of thing.

Rob Dietz: 14:16

Well, I used to have a bunch of friends named David, so I joined the Branch Davidians, people who like David. But you know, then the FBI came and burned our building down.

Jason Bradford: 14:27

Look, I'm gonna build a tree house, okay, and we'll have a password on the door.

Asher Miller: 14:33

Are girls allowed in our club?

Jason Bradford: 14:34

Yeah, cuz we're big boys now.

Jason Bradford: 14:41

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Jason Bradford: 15:57

So guys, naturally, we all think about the Great Unraveling, the fact that modernity seems to be waning, sputtering, and so how are we feeling about the ability of these New Deal institutions that have been around for, you know, 100 years, almost to be viable going forward? Is there a way to compensate for their demise? Maybe, can we look to clubs and their historic roles going forward?

Rob Dietz: 16:27

Well, can I first poke a little hole in the premise of modernity waning? The consequences from modernity are growing, but I don't see a lot of evidence of modernity waning right now. You know what I'm saying? Like, there's a lot of unraveling stuff, but there's more cars, there's more concrete, there's more trade. Well, maybe right now there's not more trade with a government shutdown.

Asher Miller: 16:52

OK maybe it's progress that's waning, or maybe there are elements of modernity that, while we're doubling down on it, especially you look at AI, for example, and you could say, like, "That's not waning." They're just pouring fuel on the fire.

Jason Bradford: 17:06

How are our vaccination rates, though?

Asher Miller: 17:09

I think your key point is, let's put aside terminology. The question is, can we rely on some of the institutions that have come about as a result of this quote, unquote march of progress, which we've talked about before? We talked about it when we did our phalse prophets episode on Steven Pinker, right? We talked about all these signs of progress, you know, that he's pointed to that have been, in our view, only possible because of complexity and the pouring of fossil fuels on every fucking thing, industrialization,

Jason Bradford: 17:43

Refining industrialization, getting a little bit better about eking out more and more from machines.

Asher Miller: 17:50

We created these institutions, like New Deal programs, for example. And right now, as we're recording this, we're seeing government shutdown. We're seeing people, 42 million Americans, losing SNAP benefits, and health insurance costs skyrocketing. Many people are uninsured already, so I think that's why you bring this up.

Rob Dietz: 18:13

That part I definitely get: the breakdown of government in the complexity era and the breakdown of the social scene.

Asher Miller: 18:22

These are institutions that have replaced, in some ways, and probably and for good reasons, have replaced the role that some of these clubs and local organizations provided.

Rob Dietz: 18:34

Well, you know, you asked, "How do we feel about this going forward?" I mean, the fact that here in the United States, people who are in power are conjuring up new congressional districts so that they can stay in power -- that kind of stuff is a real breakdown. The trust in an institution -- it's like you can't even agree that we're going to have a republic, a representative democracy. How are we supposed to believe that you're going to provide health care?

Jason Bradford: 18:59

I totally think about it. I can completely envision, like, say, five or ten years from now, am I going to be paying taxes to a federal government who will be providing services in return at any kind of scale that's going on now?

Asher Miller: 19:16

I think yes, you will, because the last thing that they're going to... they're going to hold onto for as long as possible getting those revenues from you. I think we've already seen that the system goes to any lengths it can to perpetuate itself for as long as possible. So I don't see this stuff going away overnight. I would say the benefits of some of these, we're already seeing a decline in those things, right? The thing that I wonder about is it's almost like a point of bifurcation that we have right now, because you could say, looking at the situation we're in right now, where people are feeling like the things that we've counted on in terms of a social fabric, and these institutions are no longer meeting our needs. So we have to meet those needs in other ways. And that might be returning to some of these models of having these local organizations or clubs meet them. The other way you can go about it is be like, well, actually, let's not debate over whether or not we renew federal subsidies for Obamacare, for example. Let's actually have universal healthcare. And what we should be doing is doubling down on actually bolstering those institutions and those programs even more. And I'm torn about that frankly, because, you know, with a lot of these clubs or whatever, more loosely organized ways of communities having their own needs met, a lot of people fall through the cracks in that situation and don't get the care. They can't contribute dues, so they're not going to get the benefits of a health care system. They're already the ones who aren't getting health care right now. I'm frankly torn about it, but it might not be a bad sort of backup plan to be thinking about.

Rob Dietz: 21:07

Yeah, that's how I was thinking, as you're saying you're torn. I mean, I'm not really torn. I would love it if we had universal healthcare. I mean, I know you would too. But the reality of, "Hey, these institutions are freaking falling apart," makes it pretty hard to place trust that that's going to happen. So what I think you're suggesting, Jason, is we start flexing the club muscle.

Jason Bradford: 21:30

Well, it's the idea what Naomi Klein called the shock doctrine. We've got to get these ideas out there at least. So if really things start unraveling, people have notions of what and how to respond more quickly, more effectively, than kind of a chaos and shock, you know, of, "Oh my gosh, what do we do now?"

Asher Miller: 21:52

The person we should really talk to, Jason, is not you. It's your wife.

Jason Bradford: 21:57

Ok, I'll shut up.

Asher Miller: 21:57

Because your wife is a medical professional, and she has worked in service of people in real need in this community. So I do wonder, like the few doctors I know, are not happy with the medical system as it currently exists. My son wants to be a doctor. He's going to school right now, and he's on a pre-med track. And I think about how much of his life, if we continue to follow the path that we're currently on, would be spent dealing with bureaucratic bullshit and health insurance and all that stuff, and you can't really spend enough time with your patients. And so I actually wonder about that model of, like, some of these organizations hiring their own doctor.

Jason Bradford: 22:48

They have what's called concierge medicine.

Asher Miller: 22:50

Yeah, that's only for rich people,

Jason Bradford: 22:52

But actually, that's how it used to be.

Asher Miller: 22:55

But what I'm getting at is I actually wonder if there are people who would actually be really interested in pursuing some of those models and getting out of this system.

Jason Bradford: 23:05

There already are examples of physicians who don't take insurance, do entirely fee for service.

Asher Miller: 23:12

Would they do it for chickens or eggs?

Jason Bradford: 23:14

And actually, in small towns, I've heard stories of this. There are doctors in Maine or wherever who will do trades. If you cut out all that bureaucracy, you save so much money. The average physicians group, say a small family practice office, spends the cost of one physician just to deal with insurance, like a full time set of staff. It's like that extra burden. There might only be eight physicians, but one other staff member is just dealing with complexity, and if that goes away, there's actually tremendous savings.

Rob Dietz: 23:52

Well, you know where the bartering is actually really happening in the medical field, is in prisons. Doctors are providing services for cigarettes.

Asher Miller: 23:52

Drug trades!

Rob Dietz: 23:53

Can you imagine paying a doctor in cigarettes?

Asher Miller: 24:02

Just wait a decade or two.

Jason Bradford: 24:08

There used to be ads with doctors smoking cigarettes about the health benefits of cigarettes.

Asher Miller: 24:13

I want to do a slight little pivot on this thing, which is: we were talking about healthcare and medicine. Let's talk about climate-related mitigation and resilience stuff. Look at insurance, right? You have a home and you're in a fire-prone area. They're not gonna insure you anymore. We're already seeing insurance costs go way up. And then some insurance companies are like, "We're not insuring anymore." And so now we're in a situation where you're looking at some states who are trying to develop insurance programs. Some states like Florida who deny -- basically their leadership -- deny that climate's even a problem. But so is this a situation where the government needs to use the revenues that they get from state taxes or federal taxes...

Jason Bradford: 25:01

The lottery.

Asher Miller: 25:06

...to pay for these needs and do it in a broad swath. But it's basically, in a sense, paying these health insurance companies to stay in business, to keep serving these populations. Or is there a way of thinking about this differently? When you think about the needs of a community that is in a fire-prone area, there might be pools of funding that community members pull together that helps if somebody loses a home, or something like that. And it might be that this is actually much more difficult, because it's not going to be an isolated home. Like an isolated person got cancer, instead as you come into their age, it's like everyone got cancer.

Jason Bradford: 25:47

Like in Paradise, California.

Asher Miller: 25:49

It might not work to think about this, but if you think about pooling some resources, not to necessarily buy insurance policies, but to cover... maybe it's actually even more the costs of fireproofing your home, right? Or thinking about other ways of building the resilience capacity within a community. And maybe there's even these additional economic benefits where you're pulling these resources, you're hiring local contractors to do this work. So you're actually, you're talking about the middle man, you know, fuck these big insurance companies. Is there a way that you could actually do this on a more community scale where the economic benefits stay there? I don't know, but I certainly think it's worth thinking about in a way that we haven't been thinking about very much.

Rob Dietz: 26:35

Yeah, well, I also think if you are in your community clubs, and it doesn't even have to be these kind of formal technical ones, say, with a goal of insuring. But even if you were just in the wine club with a bunch of people, and Jason's house gets busted up, and all these drunk winos can come over and help him rebuild.

Asher Miller: 27:00

When they're drunk?

Rob Dietz: 27:01

Well, maybe, maybe you wait till you sober up.

Asher Miller: 27:03

A lot of injuries. Things are not great.

Rob Dietz: 27:06

The point is a serious one. Like, if you are an upstanding member of a group of people that share interests and do things together and like one another, when bad times happen, you're gonna prop each other up. That's how that stuff works.

Jason Bradford: 27:22

That's why I still pay my wine club dues.

Asher Miller: 27:25

I think that's a really good point, which is maybe we don't, right now, have to be thinking about an either/or situation when it comes to some of these services that underpin, that provide insurance. We don't have to give up on those institutions that exist. Maybe we don't have to say, "Forget it. The New Deal is over." You know, all these programs go away. There is no social security, there is no whatever. Maybe we should keep fighting to preserve those things and at the same time, invest in ways of building, through clubs, through informal or more and more formal organizations, a community, to look at how to provide some of the needs that are not being met, but also just through the process of doing that. And maybe some of it's social. Is you have the social ties and that social connection that you're talking about, Rob, because we're going to need those. Even if there is a FEMA still in existence, we're still going to need the community connection to get through things. And there's great work being done by people like Daniel Aldrich, who've looked at the strength of social ties within the community across three different types. You know, there's there's your bonding and your bridging. Ones, for example, that if you look at and you can assess the strength of communities ties, you could see a correlation to how well they either prepare for disasters or recover after a disaster. The stronger their ties, the better off they are. So it's like there's a benefit to actually starting clubs or joining clubs, if they're ones that already exist for that reason alone.

Jason Bradford: 29:02

I know people in our space sometimes complain that they can't talk about what we talk about to other people. And part of what I've learned is to sort of shut up about that and just get along with other people and talk about stupid stuff sometimes. But, you know, I can talk about tennis. I can talk about wine and like,

Asher Miller: 29:20

Mmmm, it's just a hint of cherry in this wine.

Jason Bradford: 29:23

Exactly, I can get super snooty, you know? I can talk about how to hit a kick serve and all that kind of stuff.

Asher Miller: 29:30

At the wine club, they might be confused.

Jason Bradford: 29:32

They might, but anyhow, you don't have to necessarily... like, you can be a regular person in our world and get these social connections. And maybe you're going to find someone, when they're sloppy drunk, who wants to talk about the civil war that's coming. And then, you know, that's my special friend.

Asher Miller: 29:51

Or the other alternative is start a new club, the Wet Blanket Society. You know, Rob, has talked about that before.

Rob Dietz: 29:57

Yeah, we'll take turns chairing the Wet Blanket Club here in town.

Rob Dietz: 30:10

Here in Crazy Town, we like to shine a spotlight on what a particular listener is thinking or doing. Maybe it can provide some inspiration or generate some ideas for you. In this listener spotlight, I want to share a comment we received on Apple Podcasts that's especially relevant for this episode about clubs and dealing with isolation. The comment is from Little Brook Farm, and it says: "It's hard to overstate how isolating it can be to feel like you're sitting in an audience at a play production, and everyone but you thinks it's real. You've seen behind the curtain, but nobody will believe you if you tell them that it's just a performance. The folks at Crazy Town podcast get it, and their show brings a little bit of sanity and humor to this world of make believe that we're all spectators to and active participants in." They go on to say, "Thank you Asher, Rob, and Jason for sitting beside me in the theater and laughing at the tragic play that unfolds before us." So I see that this is a member of the Crazy Town club.

Jason Bradford: 31:16

Yeah, yeah. I get it, yeah.

Asher Miller: 31:18

I mean, sometimes we laugh, sometimes we cry. Sometimes I want to throw poop on the stage, I mean, but I'm not going to yell fire. That's the one thing I won't do.

Rob Dietz: 31:29

It is good to know, though, that you can do whatever, say, whatever you need to say, with us, and we're gonna at least, if we're not exactly in lockstep with you, we're somewhere on the same page, right?

Asher Miller: 31:41

I mean, and the truth is, I appreciate getting the this feedback. The truth is, the separation between reality and how people are perceiving things is just growing. I mean, it is hard not to feel like you're, you're losing it.

Jason Bradford: 31:58

I'm an AI in this show, actually, people. We're testing this out now. So sorry about that. I wasn't supposed to tell people. I wasn't supposed to tell. You can cut this out in editing.

Jason Bradford: 32:14

Okay, now we get to do sharing time. This is cool, and it might be nostalgic. There might be some pride, you know, sense of fun here, kind of leave on a high note. So this section, I want to first start by asking you guys, what are the best clubs that you've been part of?

Rob Dietz: 32:36

Well, I know what I want to say, because it's sort of following up the discussion you had, Asher, where you're talking about, "Do we need clubs to provide these services?" And I think that's like, high stakes clubs, right, like if you need to have a club that gives you medical insurance. But it got me thinking, how about a club that's more like preventative care? And then it led me to something I used to do. I used to be pretty engaged in martial arts as a club thing to do, not as a professional MMA fighter. But the the idea was, you go and you hang out and you learn techniques and you learn how to defend yourself, but it's also a sport, so you're getting lots of good, vigorous activity for your mind, body, and spirit. And I love that, like, it's really fun to kick your friends in the head.

Asher Miller: 33:25

Do you do it like Dwight Schrute in The Office? Like you were doing it with little kids?

Rob Dietz: 33:31

First of all, I do everything like Dwight Schrute in the office. I'm wearing yellow with a brown tie and some some golden-rimmed glasses.

Asher Miller: 33:38

You're talking about a club that you look fondly back on, just because you were kicking the shit out of seven-year-old kids.

Jason Bradford: 33:39

Yeah, exactly. I was in a taekwondo club, and so what was yours?

Rob Dietz: 33:49

Mine was kung fu.

Jason Bradford: 33:50

Oh, we should have gone at it.

Asher Miller: 33:52

I just want to see you guys fight each other.

Rob Dietz: 33:54

We may do it.

Asher Miller: 33:55

We'll be back, listeners.

Rob Dietz: 33:56

You're gonna have to train as a MMA ref or a professional wrestling ref.

Asher Miller: 34:01

The truth of the matter is we're all so old. We're likely to throw out our backs, just climbing into the ring.

Jason Bradford: 34:05

I quit my taekwondo because I'm like, "Ah, that hurt. I bruised my ribs. Did I break that little toe?" So, yeah, I decided, "Nah, not for me anymore."

Asher Miller: 34:16

I'm actually gonna be a little nostalgic and sincere for a minute. I know this is hard to believe, okay, but I was part of a youth group when I was in middle school, and then primarily in high school, that I would say probably saved my life. I was a very unhappy adolescent. I basically dropped out of high school for a couple years, kind of didn't go. I was angry, rebellious, sort of a loner.

Jason Bradford: 34:43

Were you listening to Dead music backwards?

Asher Miller: 34:45

I had U2. I was big Smiths fan for a while.

Rob Dietz: 34:53

No wonder you were upset.

Jason Bradford: 34:57

Exactly, everything is terrible.

Asher Miller: 34:59

It's sort of the other way around. It was comforting for me to listen to the Smiths. Any case, I joined a Jewish youth group, and I found my leadership skills. I found there my public speaking. I found there my ability to talk to girls. I found there my comradeship with people, my ability to travel around. When I was involved in it here in Portland, I had a girlfriend in Vancouver, British Columbia for a while.

Jason Bradford: 35:30

You had to figure out how to get there and meet her and stuff.

Asher Miller: 35:33

Yeah, a big deal. It really was my social outlet. A lot of the focus that we had -- this was called the B'nai Brith Youth Organization, and I wound up becoming the Regional President down in California. And a lot of it was focused on service. There was the intentionality to it. There were a lot of rules for how we ran meetings. I had a gavel that I used, and all that. And it really was, if I didn't have that, I honestly think I would have been depressed, perhaps even suicidal. And so, it was a huge part of my life, formative experience for me.

Rob Dietz: 36:14

That's pretty awesome that you found that. Obviously it also brings up the point. We talked earlier about how clubs have been in decline in public life, but the one place where I don't think that's necessarily true is that in the high school or college, there's a lot of clubs for for young people. And it's weird, because I think a lot of people, maybe they don't get quite as awesome a life-saving experience as you had, but it really is formative, and we just drop it in adulthood, like so many other stupid things that we do as adults.

Asher Miller: 36:50

Yeah, we get busy. What about you, Jason?

Jason Bradford: 36:52

Well, I mean, I've talked about the tennis club. I think it's just incredible. I joined probably a little over 10 years ago, and I've been working there for a couple of years now. So I went from a member to an employee, teaching. And what's amazing about is there's little kids I teach that are as young as four, and then I taught this guy who was 93. And so the range of age...

Rob Dietz: 37:20

Who would win? The 93 year old or the four year old? It would be like you and me in a kung fu battle.

Jason Bradford: 37:27

That would have been a battle. I got the ball over the net. You didn't get it back. Okay? Now you try anyhow. And then watching people in middle age, like retirees, get better at something over a couple years, show up saying, "I've just retired. Now I can spend time doing this." And then to just take that on and watch their physicality improve and the social bonds they make. And then these kids I'm seeing really go through fast developmental changes and gain confidence and be so happy. I always, I keep asking, "Are you having fun?" You know, because you push them. And, yeah, it's really hard, but yeah, it's fun. Anyway, that's just been really heartwarming to see people from all different ages and stages in life. And you see people show up who are grumpy and upset, obviously, and like, six months later, like they're in a good mood. And you don't know why -- was it the tennis? Was it something else?

Asher Miller: 38:27

Using your body - just that is, is something.

Jason Bradford: 38:31

I mean, some of these people, obviously, it's weird to be in their body right now, 13 year olds or whatever.

Rob Dietz: 38:37

I still keep wondering when it's gonna get better.

Jason Bradford: 38:39

But the fact that it's a member-owned nonprofit too. It's not snooty, and it tries to welcome people from all over town, whoever wants to show up. And it's relatively affordable. That to me, I think is just a great place.

Rob Dietz: 38:53

Well, I actually -- this is sincere too, which, again, you already had to say that's weird coming from you Asher -- I have to say it's even weirder coming from me, but it's very heartwarming. It was heartwarming to listen to your two stories of those clubs, their ability to say, help the two of you navigate the times that we're in, the Great Unraveling, as we've referred to it. But I was wondering if we could expand this idea and talk a little bit about clubs that we've been part of, or maybe even ones that we haven't, or maybe ones that don't even exist yet, that would be good for navigating the difficult, turbulent times that are here now.

Jason Bradford: 39:41

Hitting a fuzzy yellow ball with a graphite racket and strings isn't going to be useful?

Asher Miller: 39:48

Connected to an app that tells you the speed of your racket?

Jason Bradford: 39:51

I don't have that anymore.

Rob Dietz: 39:52

I tried to say that I think your your club is valid. But I'm just wondering, right, if there's something outside of the fuzzy ball?

Asher Miller: 40:03

I think the routine of swinging a racket - does that help you with a scythe, with scything?

Jason Bradford: 40:09

Probably, I'm probably getting in the shape, the core strength, the shoulders.

Rob Dietz: 40:12

Yeah, you're doing Mr. Miyagi stuff. You have, like, some other activity that trains you in the other activity that needs to happen.

Asher Miller: 40:20

Like "wax on - wax off."

Jason Bradford: 40:21

The physicality is good to be transferable, I think, to the end times. But, yeah, let's, let's think about that.

Asher Miller: 40:27

I mean, I'm gonna toot your horn Jason for having created the farming club that I'm a part of. And for folks who haven't heard us talk about it before, Jason has farmland here and has opened it up to a group of families to come together. There's 12 households in it right now, who farm together. And we were working on our process of trying to figure out our systems. We've gotten a lot better this year, getting ahead on the weeding, and also trying to figure out what roles we have, different roles people play, in terms of distribution and all that stuff. And there's community aspects to it. We get together, I think once a quarter. Right now, we're going to look at maybe doing that a little bit differently. And so we're moving our bodies, we're learning real skills, we're growing food for our own families, we're having some social component to it. You know, I get to bring my dog. I think not everyone has a situation where they could do that, although there are urban gardens that people can be a part of, and I think there's oftentimes people who have a real community feel to some of those as well. So you could look around. It doesn't have to be that you have to find a farmer, but you might be able to find a farmer to work with. So I think that that one's a great one for lots of reasons.

Rob Dietz: 41:50

I've come out to a couple of days where you all are doing that. I'm not an official member, but if I'm here, I like to help. And I think you're underplaying some of the social aspect. Like, you guys always have an awesome meal together, or at least often do when I've been here. Maybe I'm just here on the good times. But the sharing of food is huge in building community.

Asher Miller: 42:13

I mean, the only way I get through is I wear these VR glasses, so I'm out there weeding, but what I actually feel like I'm doing is playing a shoot up game, and then I don't have to talk to anybody.

Jason Bradford: 42:27

From my perspective of watching people for a couple of years, it's kind of like the tennis situation, where I'm seeing these skills develop. It's really fascinating to watch people's bodies learn these tasks, and Asher has gotten a lot better.

Asher Miller: 42:40

I know the difference between eggplant now and garlic. Well, yeah, I couldn't tell before.

Rob Dietz: 42:46

In year one, you just hoed out all the plants that you were trying to grow.

Asher Miller: 42:50

Anything that was green, I just cut down.

Jason Bradford: 42:52

It drove me crazy, because it was like, "Hey, Jason, is this a weed? Hey, Jason, is this a weed?" And people were so slow because they're like, they couldn't recognize spinach versus lambs quarters or whatever. You know, that could be kind of tough.

Rob Dietz: 43:01

You needed to go drill sergeant on them, you know, like, "This is a weed!" Smack. This is...

Asher Miller: 43:07

You're gonna have to eat it.

Jason Bradford: 43:09

So get the farming club going now, because it takes a while for this.

Asher Miller: 43:14

I'm, like, barely, you know, I'm barely, it's like a toddler, just, just barely on my feet, you know, with this.

Rob Dietz: 43:20

Well, for me, you know one of the reasons I ended up in Corvallis in the first place was to join the CoHo Ecovillage, which is a sustainability-oriented, intentional community. I lived there for a dozen years, and including raising kids there, and the whole idea of that thing is kind of a reaction to the loneliness, the individual culture that's cropped up in this society. And with the sustainability set of values that we had there, it was also about, "Yeah, can we live lighter on the land?" And there's a lot of the kind of -- it certainly doesn't go as far as what you're doing with farming club -- but there was a lot of community gardens, a lot of orchard, a lot of shared tools.

Asher Miller: 44:08

And we might as well be honest -- there are downsides to some of this club life and and to the living in the ecovillage that I think we just have to be aware of. Like the farming club -- weeding is not everyone's favorite thing, right? But it's part of growing food. You got to weed, right? And there were things that you had, right, being part of the ecovillage?

Rob Dietz: 44:31

It's funny, because you can turn some of the negatives into positives. Like, I learned a fair amount about conflict resolution. Well, why is that? Because there were conflicts, you know, and mediation becomes an important skill. Leadership and meeting coordination and stuff like that. But I think there is no utopia, obviously. And even this episode, which is about, "Hey, there are a lot of positive reasons to join clubs," we've looked at some of the negatives. But something that also happens in this sort of broader club, this intentional community, which does veer into culthood, or can...

Asher Miller: 45:06

Were you the cult leader?

Rob Dietz: 45:08

No, I don't have the...

Jason Bradford: 45:11

Hair for it.

Rob Dietz: 45:12

I don't have the charisma. But there were all sorts of offshoots that would happen, right? Like, I had a guitar club. The people would meet at my house.

Asher Miller: 45:21

He was trying to be the cult leader.

Rob Dietz: 45:25

Wrong. I just was trying to have fun.

Asher Miller: 45:28

You could wear medallions.

Rob Dietz: 45:32

You could have called that club the beer club just as easily. And actually, that was something we did. We had a club that would brew beer together.

Jason Bradford: 45:40

You had mead.

Rob Dietz: 45:42

There was dance club, there's gardening, there's book clubs.

Asher Miller: 45:46

Was there a gun club?

Rob Dietz: 45:47

No, not surprisingly, for our hippie commune utopia, but I guarantee you, there are plenty of intentional communities that have regular times at the shooting range.

Jason Bradford: 45:58

Totally, I'm going to go back a little bit to my time in Willits, California, and there was a Grange there called the Little Lake Grange, and it was almost gone. There was like six members left. This happened quite a bit around the country, and there's been this sort of revival in Granges, where younger people have gotten into these Granges and rebuilt the membership and then turned them into more like what they need for present time. And of course, that can be kind of awkward for the old guard. But it was amazing to see this building that you know is historic in town, and hardly anyone had been inside of it. And then we kind of got in, opened it up, and started filling it again with a pancake breakfasts on Sunday mornings. And these dances, we would have dances, and people would throw birthday parties there where they hired a band, and I went through an initiation ceremony that was freaking awesome. I can't say anything about it.

Asher Miller: 47:04

Did it involve padding, paddling your bottom?

Jason Bradford: 47:08

But there was a wonderful sort of agrarian, kind of mythological stuff that went on that was really kind of fun and appropriate. But anyhow, I know that there's Granges around us now where that kind of stuff is going on. So I guess what's interesting is this ties into the farming club, in a sense -- that's a great place to meet people if you want to get connected to the rural community where you live. Find out if there's a Grange, and if so, maybe go and see what's going on. Like you're saying, Asher, not everyone has a farm. But I tell you what, there's a way maybe you can find someone who has a farm, and that could be just by getting out and and interacting with an organization like this.

Asher Miller: 47:59

Or a community garden, honestly. Or maybe it doesn't have to be a farm. And the other thing you know, John Michael Greer wrote this great piece that we actually published at Resilience.org We'll share it in the show notes. God, it was probably 15 years ago, actually talking about these old societies and the roles that they played in community life. And he made, I thought, a really good point, which is, for our listeners, you might feel like you have no time to think about going and trying to suss out if there are existing clubs or groups that you could belong to. Or, God forbid, you go to meetings and deal with all that shit, and some of it's bureaucratic or boring, or some of the traditions seem really hokey to you. But as he pointed out, you know, 100 plus years ago, people worked harder than we work now. They found time. And there is something I think that's fulfilling in some ways, both about taking the time to be in relationship with people you come across, people that you don't typically interact with, and even doing some of the traditions. I had that as a teenager, doing some of the things that I was doing in BBYO felt really hokey, but there are things that went back to my dad. He was part of that club when he was a teenager, and my son is actually part of that club now. There is something nice about maintaining those traditions and maybe adapting them a little bit. So I would definitely encourage our listeners to just see what's out there and just experiment with seeing what these things are like.

Rob Dietz: 49:27

Yeah, and I would say too, we've thrown some pretty specialized types of organizations out there. Not everybody's ready to go join an intentional community, or maybe for somebody who's living in a city, the Grange isn't really something that they have access to. But there's tons of stuff like, where I live in Portland, I've been lurking on the neighborhood emergency team. These neighborhood emergency teams, they're Portland residents in each designated section of town where people get trained by professional fire and rescue and emergency preparedness people, and then they meet up regularly and do skills building and figure out, "How are we going to respond in emergency?" I know I've talked a ton about when I was working on Adopt-One-Block, where you go pick up garbage around your neighborhood, like these sorts of things. There's thousands of those. You guys have been involved in stuff like that too, right?

Jason Bradford: 50:26

Yeah, I don't think I picked up trash in my neighborhood yet.

Asher Miller: 50:28

Well, we could bring some trash over.

Jason Bradford: 50:31

Well, you know, when the mylar balloons that are released from town, they come over here. They get blown and then they deflate and they land on the farm.

Asher Miller: 50:39

I think that we should really do this community thing. You know, Rob, we should go get some trash and bring it out here to Jason.

Rob Dietz: 50:48

I love it. We will have a club, and we will watch Jason grow, like one of his young tennis players, into a mylar picking guru.

Jason Bradford: 50:58

I can't wait to do that. And I'm gonna have the little wagon that you have, and those little tongs that you have, so you don't have to bend over -- you can sort of squeeze and pick up stuff with them.

Rob Dietz: 51:10

And think about it, your tennis grip will get stronger.

Asher Miller: 51:13

Oh my God, the win, win, win here is incredible.

Jason Bradford: 51:15

I'm gonna double up. I'm gonna go left and right hand.

Melody Allison: 51:22

That's our show. Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard, and you want others to consider these issues, then please share Crazy Town with your friends. Hit that share button in your podcast app, or just tell them face to face. Maybe you can start some much-needed conversations and do some things together to get us out of Crazy Town. Thanks again for listening and sharing.