Welcome to the vast majority. I'm Jackman, Deputy Editor Michael Utrich, joined by several

Jackman contributors for a really solemn podcast about our friend and comrade Michael Brooks.

We're recording this on Tuesday afternoon just about 24 hours or so after most of us got the news that he had a very

untimely death yesterday as folks who have paid any attention to the outpouring of grief and appreciation for Michael that has really flooded

social media in the last 24 hours.

I mean, this was a person who was a really special human being a special

You know political thinker and interviewer and I think that I mean those were not two things about him that were separate I mean they were very much

Entwined in who he was and what his politics were which we will get into in some death here.

So I'm joined by Ben Burgess, who is a columnist for Jacobin,

Megan Day, and Luke Savage, who are both staff writers for Jackman. So thanks everybody for coming on for this.

Thank you, Micah.

Thanks, Micah. Then let's start with you. You wrote something on social media yesterday about your really

close you know personal and professional political ties with Michael can you just

talk about your your relationship with him and what that meant to you?

Yeah, I met Michael a couple of years ago at a conference in Idaho. We both had book contracts with the same publisher to

books and so our mutual editor was there and we met through him.

You know, the three of us kind of went out to a bar together

on the first day.

And, you know, we had a good political conversation at the bar and he was talking about having me on the show and everything, you know, kind of on the way back to the conference, you know, I tipsyly made a joke at his expense that I'm not going to repeat on a family-friendly

podcast such as this one and you know he could have gone either way but he reacted very well

he thought is hilarious and you know by the end of the weekend he'd

worked up an impression of that editor Doug that that he that he later shared a version of with me, made to the background music of the Zero Books videos.

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