The Fire These Times is a weekly independent podcast by Joey Ayoub launched at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
How do we build the new in the shell of the old? How do we tackle global warming and its associated crises? How do we build bonds across nation states and groups? How do we make it easier to imagine the end of capitalism than the end of the world?
Every week, Ayoub and guests explore how to answer these questions and more. We get into everything from anti-fascism to Star Trek, degrowth to Solarpunk, genocide to mutual aid. From Syria to Taiwan, Ukraine to Bosnia, Ethiopia to Argentina, the UK to the US.
His goal is to use this platform to connect with activists, scholars, writers and other weird folks whose politics break and challenge binaries around the world to link our stories and interests up.
That’s it! Please don’t expect super high-quality BBC-style production because this is a one-nerd project. Ayoub is its researcher, host, producer and editor.
Where to Listen
It is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Anchor, Breaker, Amazon Music, Audible, Stitcher, Radio Public, Pocket Casts, Castro and RSS. It is also on YouTube.
How to Support
My goal is to make this project financially sustainable so that I can work on producing valuable content on a regular basis such as this podcast, the newsletter, my essays, various online resources and hopefully eventually video essays as well.
If you like what I do, please consider supporting this project with only 5$ a month (or 50$ a year) on Patreon or on BuyMeACoffee.com. You can also do so directly on PayPal if you prefer. Patreon is for monthly/yearly, PayPal is for one-offs and BuyMeACoffee has both options.
In addition to the labor required to produce the podcast and online resources, donations go towards research material, technical stuff, paying translators and artists, and other you-need-to-pay-to-get-things-done stuff. Patreon also takes a cut.
The title of this podcast and its visual identity reference my love for books: The Fire Next Time is a book by James Baldwin in which he warned that civilization is not destroyed by the wicked but by the spineless, and the fox is a nod to the fox in Le Petit Prince who winds up being the young character’s companion as he finds his way. He’s the one who says that “one sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye”.
I hope this podcast offers you a sense of companionship as we find our way together and make sense of this hyper-connected, information-saturated world.
Newsletter
If you like the content of this podcast you can also check out The Fire These Times newsletter. In that newsletter, which I release on a quasi-monthly basis, I reflect on some of the topics discussed on this podcast and try to take them a bit further. The newsletter is free and you can get it by simply subscribing directly here.
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Art by Wenyi Geng. Music by Ibrahim Youssef (2020-2022) and Rap And Revenge (2023 -)
A previous incarnation of the podcast was called Hummus For Thought, named after a blog I started in 2011. For an archive of my writings, please visit joeyayoub.com. I also have a carrd profile with a bunch of links.
Contact
You can reach me at contact@thefirethesetimes.com and I’ll try and respond within the week. If I haven’t responded within a week feel free to send a reminder please!