Hey everybody. I just wanted to pop on here really quick and let you know about

something that I think is is really cool and really exciting. My friend and co-host of our other

podcast Shoolist in South Dakota, Dave has just released his first ever book of poetry to the public.

Not only did he release this book of poetry called At Least the Pain is Cheap, but I wrote the

forward to it. So I wrote a very short but you know concise little forward to

this book of poetry that is centered on the themes of working class and of

working class and poor life in America. The lower classes in American society dealing

with addiction, the health care system, living paycheck to paycheck, the

immiseration of the day-to-day life of struggling people. And it's not

something he's writing about abstractly or from an academic point of view this is

something that he is and always has been immersed in himself for listeners of

Schulis and South Dakota you'll know that he struggled with addiction and

alcoholism for the last 15 or so years if not

longer and is on his recovery journey as bumpy as that ride may be and we talk about

that in the show all the time.

But he's lived this life and writing has always been something that him and I have connected

on since we met each other at age 15 in high school, but something that he's really carried forward

throughout his life despite the difficulties that he's faced with his addiction and all the things

that cascade from addiction including poverty, you know, bouts of

homelessness, you know, rehab recovery, relapse. So this is written from a place of experience and it speaks to the

experiences of lower-class poor and working people in the belly of the beast of this brutal empire that

robs its own people and plunders the world. So it's not a it's not as as

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