In the Meanwhile

Ep 52: Your Labor is Your Power with Mark Paschal

This week on In The Meanwhile, Nora and Marcus sit down with worker-owner Mark Paschal of Seattle co-ops Jude's Old Town and Rosette for a conversation about what happens when workers stop asking capitalism for dignity and start building alternatives themselves. Between billionaire slush funds, Jeff Bezos embarrassment, and the slow collapse of the "customer is always right" economy, Mark lays out a radically practical vision of worker power, mutual aid, and community-owned futures: one shared meal, one workplace, and one neighborhood at a time. Mentioned in the episode: Jude's [https://www.judesoldtown.com/] | Rosette [https://www.rosetterainier.com/] | REI Union [https://www.ourrei.com/rei-union-news] | Dean Spade episode [https://youtu.be/-NQmLNXnkzM] | The Boys [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1190634/] | NAACP Boycott [https://apnews.com/article/black-athletes-ncaa-boycott-voting-rights-67fdb6561b7fb3dfd3c2a804047a68e5] | Support the pod: Donate here [https://venmo.com/u/inthemeanwhilepodcast] to support In The Meanwhile Follow us: Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/inthemeanwhilepodcast] | BlueSky [https://bsky.app/profile/inthemeanwhile.bsky.social] | Website [https://www.inthe-meanwhile.com/] Read Nora and Marcus's Books: Crowded Out: [https://bookshop.org/a/113982/9780262548038] The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare | Readying to Rise [https://bookshop.org/a/113982/9781609441432] Music: No Tears for a Wolf · Ahamefule J. Oluo · Okanomodé. Used with permission. Logo by Nikki Barron. Transcripts are machine-generated and imperfect. Nora and Marcus's work on the podcast is separate from their professional roles and does not represent the views of their employers. Links to bookshop.org [http://bookshop.org] are affiliate links.

Ep 51: Still Here: A Year in the Meanwhile

Fifty-one episodes. Countless headlines. Several existential spirals. At least one national meltdown per week. And somehow, against all odds and several algorithms designed to emotionally flatten us into paste, we're still here. A year ago, Nora and Marcus started asking a deceptively simple question: what does it mean to live through this, and still remain human? Fifty-one episodes later, they're still asking. Because somewhere between the ICE raids and the mutual aid networks, the authoritarian absurdity and the small, stubborn acts of civic courage, In The Meanwhile accidentally became less of a podcast and more of a survival guide for people trying not to lose themselves in history's group chat from hell. In this retrospective, Marcus and Nora return to the conversations, guests, grief, jokes, and stubborn flashes of joy that shaped the show's first year: the voices that cracked them open, and the ones that quietly stitched them back together. The everyday people who reminded them that survival and surrender are not the same thing, and that the difference between them is often the people you choose to stay present with. This isn't just a look back. It's a reckoning with what it means to remain emotionally awake in a world that rewards numbness, commodifies despair, and teaches people to survive by disconnecting from one another. This episode is for anyone still trying to find their footing in the meanwhile. Because maybe the real point of all of this is that in the face of everything urging us to retreat into fear, cynicism, or isolation, we kept reaching for each other anyway. Even here. Even now. Especially now. Mentioned in the episode: Marketplace: impact of gas shortage still to come [https://www.marketplace.org/story/2026/05/04/the-jet-fuel-crisis-could-impact-summer-travel-even-if-you-drive] | Gina Baskin [https://youtu.be/vjQoQogabNA] | Minneapolis episode [https://youtu.be/SH9r5tclxFM] | Civic Bravery [https://youtu.be/xKLurpTVxFI] | Nilu Jenks [https://youtu.be/UmOCCXDlU04] | Gabriel Teodros [https://youtu.be/W7W1S4GRKuE] | Douglas Rushkoff [https://youtu.be/THMeWSlpJQ4] | Ijeoma Oluo [https://youtu.be/SPyLHuTwMVM] | South Seattle Emerald [https://southseattleemerald.org/] | Amelia Maris Bonow [https://www.instagram.com/ameliamaris/] | Daudi Abe [https://youtu.be/04v5wjnCNZg] | Maggie Humphreys [https://youtu.be/XCYLrei0CRQ] | A People's History of the United States [https://bookshop.org/a/113982/9780062397348] | Howard Zinn on hope [https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/2229-to-be-hopeful-in-bad-times-is-not-just-foolishly] | Chelsea Handler roast [https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/chelsea-handler-tears-into-maga-comedian-tony-hinchcliffe-at-netflixs-roast-of-kevin-hart/] | Support the pod: Donate here [https://venmo.com/u/inthemeanwhilepodcast] to support In The Meanwhile Follow us: Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/inthemeanwhilepodcast] | BlueSky [https://bsky.app/profile/inthemeanwhile.bsky.social] | Website [https://www.inthe-meanwhile.com/] Read Nora and Marcus's Books: Crowded Out: [https://bookshop.org/a/113982/9780262548038] The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare | Readying to Rise [https://bookshop.org/a/113982/9781609441432] Music: No Tears for a Wolf · Ahamefule J. Oluo · Okanomodé. Used with permission. Logo by Nikki Barron. Transcripts are machine-generated and imperfect. Nora and Marcus's work on the podcast is separate from their professional roles and does not represent the views of their employers. Links to bookshop.org [http://bookshop.org] are affiliate links.

Ep 50: Billionaires Get Galas, Moms Get Burnout - with Maggie Humphreys

This week on In The Meanwhile, Nora and Marcus sit down with policy powerhouse Maggie Humphreys for a conversation about motherhood, caregiving, misogyny, and why American families are forced to hold themselves together with duct tape and unpaid labor. From childcare that costs more than college tuition to the fight for paid family leave, Maggie breaks down why the U.S. doesn't actually have "family values" so much as a habit of expecting women to absorb societal collapse with a smile. It's a sharp, funny, deeply human episode about care work, policy victories, billionaire absurdity, and why Norway decided "zero maternal deaths" was, in fact, achievable. Plus: the Met Gala gets dragged, Jeff Bezos gets projected on, and Spirit Airlines becomes a co-op meme. Mentioned in the episode: Met Gala pranks [https://www.instagram.com/everyonehateselon_/] | Insta message from Mary Hil [https://www.instagram.com/reel/DX6qK-5IyjG/]l | Tax dollars on ballroom [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/05/us/politics/republicans-immigration-bill-trump-ballroom.html] | Seattle Children's helicopters [https://www.thestranger.com/news/laurelhurst-community-council-isnt-sure-helicopters-needed-to-land-sick-kids-at-the-hospital/] | Brianna Thomas episode [https://youtu.be/alb8WkOzLQ4] | US is last for maternal mortality [https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/jun/05/maternal-mortality-rate] | Zero maternal deaths in Norway in 2022 [https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2024/jun/insights-us-maternal-mortality-crisis-international-comparison] | Washington's PFMLA [https://paidleave.wa.gov/] | Jess Calarco [https://annehelen.substack.com/p/other-countries-have-social-safety] | Mifepristone [https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/05/they-came-for-mifepristone-the-abortion-rights-movement-is-ready/] | Mary Hill on BlueSky [https://bsky.app/profile/radicalgraffiti.bsky.social/post/3ml2bjpxl7s25] | Support the pod: Donate here [https://venmo.com/u/inthemeanwhilepodcast] to support In The Meanwhile Follow us: Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/inthemeanwhilepodcast] | BlueSky [https://bsky.app/profile/inthemeanwhile.bsky.social] | Website [https://www.inthe-meanwhile.com/] Read Nora and Marcus's Books: Crowded Out: [https://bookshop.org/a/113982/9780262548038] The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare | Readying to Rise [https://bookshop.org/a/113982/9781609441432] Music: No Tears for a Wolf · Ahamefule J. Oluo · Okanomodé. Used with permission. Logo by Nikki Barron. Transcripts are machine-generated and imperfect. Nora and Marcus's work on the podcast is separate from their professional roles and does not represent the views of their employers. Links to bookshop.org [http://bookshop.org] are affiliate links.

Ep 49: How We Justify the Unjustifiable with Peter Beinart

This week on In The Meanwhile, Marcus and Nora sit down with Peter Beinart for a searching conversation about identity, power, and moral reckoning in the wake of Gaza. Drawing from his book Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, Beinart challenges the narratives that bind community to state, and asks what it means to confront complicity: honestly, publicly, and at personal cost. From apartheid South Africa to the American South, he traces how systems of supremacy justify themselves, and how they can be undone. This isn't just a conversation about Israel and Palestine. It's about the stories we inherit, the ones we tell ourselves, and what it takes to change them. Mentioned in the episode: Voting Rights Act decision [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/30/supreme-court-voting-rights-ruling-explainer] | Shelby County v. Holder, 2013 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelby_County_v._Holder] | Rusho v. Common Cause [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rucho_v._Common_Cause] | Hannah Fried episode [https://youtu.be/vUb86t0_E4A] | Power Coalition for Equality and Justice in Louisiana [https://powercoalition.org/] | Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza [https://bookshop.org/a/113982/9780593803899] | Peter Beinart at Town Hall Seattle May 18 [https://townhallseattle.org/event/peter-beinart/] | Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor [https://aas.princeton.edu/people/keeanga-yamahtta-taylor] | Support the pod: Donate here [https://venmo.com/u/inthemeanwhilepodcast] to support In The Meanwhile Follow us: Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/inthemeanwhilepodcast] | BlueSky [https://bsky.app/profile/inthemeanwhile.bsky.social] | Website [https://www.inthe-meanwhile.com/] Read Nora and Marcus's Books: Crowded Out: [https://bookshop.org/a/113982/9780262548038] The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare | Readying to Rise [https://bookshop.org/a/113982/9781609441432] Music: No Tears for a Wolf · Ahamefule J. Oluo · Okanomodé. Used with permission. Logo by Nikki Barron. Transcripts are machine-generated and imperfect. Nora and Marcus's work on the podcast is separate from their professional roles and does not represent the views of their employers. Links to bookshop.org [http://bookshop.org] are affiliate links.

Ep 48: The AI Hype Industrial Complex with Emily M. Bender

This week on In The Meanwhile, Nora and Marcus sit down with Professor Emily M. Bender for a reality check that cuts through the Silicon Valley fever dream. Because apparently we're all supposed to believe "AI" is either our robot overlord or our climate-saving bestie, and Bender's like: absolutely not, please log off. She dismantles the doomers and the boosters in one clean sweep, exposing how both camps are basically running PR for the same hype machine. The truth? These systems don't understand you. They're not your friend. They're not your therapist. They're a mirror with a marketing budget. From "stochastic parrots" to the deeply cursed illusion of machine empathy, this conversation drags the tech narrative out of its TED Talk haze and into the real world, where power, profit, and some very human decisions are shaping what comes next. It's a reminder that if we're going to fight for the future, we should probably start by understanding what's actually in front of us. Mentioned in the episode: Atlantic: the FBI DIrector is MIA [https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/04/kash-patel-fbi-director-drinking-absences/686839/] | TMZ Gets Political [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-lede/tmz-gets-political] | Idiocracy (2006) [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/] | Palantir Manifesto [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/21/palantir-manifesto-uk-contract-fears-mps] | Time AI 100 (2023) [https://time.com/collections/time100-ai/6308275/emily-m-bender/] | The AI Con [https://bookshop.org/a/113982/9780063418561] | Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mystery-ai-hype-theater-3000/id1690426042] | Sparks of AGI paper [https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.12712] | Octopus Thought Experiment Paper [https://aclanthology.org/2020.acl-main.463.pdf] | Using Language by Herb Clark [https://bookshop.org/p/books/using-language/17bf4a125fe51fbd?ean=9780521567459&next=t&next=t&source=IndieBound] | The Conduit Metaphor by Michael J. Reddy [https://spot.colorado.edu/~michaeli/courses/LAM5430/5430e_reserves/Conduit_Metaphor.pdf] | De-anthropomorphizing AI paper [https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/14366] | Abeba Berhane - inherently conservative machine learning [https://arxiv.org/pdf/2106.15590] | Sam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted? [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/sam-altman-may-control-our-future-can-he-be-trusted] | The 'Stochastic Parrots Paper' [https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922] | Emma Strubell [https://strubell.github.io/] | William Agnew [https://sites.google.com/view/williamagnew?usp=sharing] | Five New Data Centers Eyed for Seattle [https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/climate-lab/five-large-data-centers-eyed-for-seattle/] | Sonya Drimmer Essay [https://www.publicbooks.org/four-frictions-or-how-to-resist-ai-in-education/] | Empire of AI [https://bookshop.org/a/113982/9780593657508] | Emily Bender's Katz Lecture [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7Lc6QNxolQ] | Chris Gilliard [https://just-tech.ssrc.org/our-network/chris-gilliard/] | MJ Crockett [https://psychology.princeton.edu/people/molly-crockett] | Carmen Maria Machado [https://carmenmariamachado.com/] | Near- Life Experiences: The Pillow Writers Anthology, Issue 2 [https://www.meaction.net/post/now-available-near-life-experiences-the-pillow-writers-anthology-issue-2] | The Power of the River [https://bookshop.org/a/113982/9781609441708] Support the pod: Donate here [https://venmo.com/u/inthemeanwhilepodcast] to support In The Meanwhile Follow us: Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/inthemeanwhilepodcast] | BlueSky [https://bsky.app/profile/inthemeanwhile.bsky.social] | Website [https://www.inthe-meanwhile.com/] Read Nora and Marcus's Books: Crowded Out: [https://bookshop.org/a/113982/9780262548038] The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare | Readying to Rise [https://bookshop.org/a/113982/9781609441432] Music: No Tears for a Wolf · Ahamefule J. Oluo · Okanomodé. Used with permission. Logo by Nikki Barron. Transcripts are machine-generated and imperfect. Nora and Marcus's work on the podcast is separate from their professional roles and does not represent the views of their employers. Links to bookshop.org [http://bookshop.org] are affiliate links.