So today I learned of the untimely passing of Michael Brooks.

He was 36 years old and he passed away from what is being described as a sudden medical condition.

There's really no more information than that.

I was taken aback and absolutely heartbroken, brought to tears.

After hearing his death, not because him and I were incredibly close personally.

We had this conversation which you're about to hear,

and we had a couple of communications online, you know, online, on social

media through email before this episode. And so I'm not, I wasn't somebody that was very close

to him in his life, but somebody that definitely came across him and somebody that worked in the

same general field of left wing media. And all of my interactions with Michael were just indicative of the sort of person he is,

and indicative of what everybody else online who had any interactions with him are saying

that he was, which is a genuinely kind, generous, loving, supportive human being who would lift up voices trying to find a foothold

in left wing media, who would go out of his way to give advice to young up-and-comers or people

who wanted to break on to the left media scene, and just somebody who treated everybody

with the respect and dignity and humanity that

really flowed through everything that he did. A lot of people are pointing out his hilarious

sense of humor and that was certainly an important aspect of him. He had a sort of brilliant taste

for comedy and for political satire specifically.

He was also somebody that was very engrossed in meditation, who went on silent retreats,

who studied the same sort of meditative practices that I study under the Vipasana meditative

tradition. And we talk about that in this episode. And he was also somebody that was on the Marxist left, somebody who I think represents the best

of the humanist Marxist tradition, somebody who never stopped emphasizing the international

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