I pulled every book that came up on Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff over the first six months of the year. Fiction ran heavier than you might expect for a history show, and Ursula K. Le Guin basically had her own recurring segment.

The ones flagged as favorites:

• Alien Virus Love Disaster by Abbey Mei Otis, a 2018 collection Margaret called entrancing, with more humanity than a lot of actual humans.
• Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, called a must-read.
• The Day Before the Revolution by Le Guin, described as a favorite story ever written.
• Gaza Writes Back, an anthology of short stories by young writers in Gaza, framed as storytelling as resistance.

More Le Guin got recommended too: The Left Hand of Darkness, The Telling, The Word for World Is Forest, and The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.

The rest, grouped:

• Anarchist and political: Mutual Aid by Kropotkin, Against the State by James Stout, A Country of Ghosts by Margaret Killjoy, Fighting for Space, Live Through This
• Queer history (all Hugh Ryan): When Brooklyn Was Queer, The Women's House of Detention, My Bad
• WWII resistance: Three Ordinary Girls by Tim Brady
• Big-name fiction: Beloved, A Song of Ice and Fire, The Lord of the Rings

Full list is here: https://podshelf.io/podcasts/cool-people-who-did-cool-stuff. Free, no signup.

Also, Joe forgot to mention, but he also did an episode on him on Lions Led By Donkeys: https://soundcloud.com/llbdpodcast/episode-101-soghomon-tehlirian-the-luger-of-justice

For the African Americans who served in the Second World War, segregation didn’t end when they put on a uniform. Barracks and living quarters were still segregated, they were given worse equipment, assigned to grunt work and brutality from other soldiers and commanders. What many people don’t know is that these soldiers didn’t take it lying around. Most of these mutinies were covered up and not written about for years. The Battle of Bamber Bridge memorial in the photo references one of the largest one where military police in Lancashire England tried to arrest the 1511th quartermaster truck regiment for being out of uniform. The military police were known for racially targeted harassment and violence against troops. When a fight broke out, military police shot and killed William Crossland. The 1511th fell back to base and armed themselves. A fire fight broke out between the military police and 1511th hit no further deaths occurred. An investigation determined military police instigated the fight and the longest sentence a 1511th soldier faced was 13 months.

In 1942, the 96th battalion was stationed in Townsville Australia. After abuse by white officers, the 96th took control of machine guns in the middle of the night and opened fire on their officers tents killing at least one. A night long siege against the 96th occurred, though it’s unclear if anyone was killed or how it ended. This incident was covered up and the 96th traveled to New Guinea. It wasn’t fully written about by journalists until years later.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-10/historian-reveals-details-on-townsville-mutiny/3821906

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/deadly-world-war-ii-explosion-sparked-black-soldiers-fight-equal-treatment-180980545/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bamber_Bridge

like especially with regard to something like labour history. It was a purpose built settlement for specifically skilled craftspeople Who worked on tombs. The people in Deir el-Medina needed state provided grain because they were too busy building tombs to focus on agriculture, and the state provided said grain because they wanted tombs built. That specific dynamic is what led to the strike and led to it succeeding.

regular Egyptian settlements would have been way more self sufficient in terms of food production. They also Were much less valued by the state individually. Basically there have been much less need for them to strike for more food, and the government probably wouldn't have cared if they did.

Went to the last night of previews, and it was honestly pretty good. The music, choreography, and stage talent were all solid. The stage design was really clever given the constraints of an Off-Broadway theater. Because details about Giulia Tofana (if she actually existed) are scant, Jennifer Nettles had to fill in a lot of gaps and create a story about an apothecary in Palermo, the women in her life, and the men who sought to maintain the power dynamics that favored them. If anyone goes to see it, let us know what you thought.

Cool People Nomination: FC St. Pauli

On the most recent Live Like the World is Dieing the Margaret brought up that the guest was wearing a St Pauli logo. I think FC St Pauli would be a great subject for Cool People.

They've got it all. Punks. Anti fascism. Squatters. Internationalism.

In the US we tend to act as if sports and politics don't mix. St Pauli is a bright shining counter example to that mindset. They prove that we don't have to leave our beliefs at the door when our teams take the field.

Margret wrote a short story in 2015 I believe called One Star, that later was in her book We Won’t Be Here Tomorrow.

Having not done any fact checking myself, it is still deeply concerning that the speculative fiction of just a decade ago could be reality today. Stay safe out there

June leaned into Ottoman and Arab history, with a Palestine focus. Tracked them all.

Top pick:

• Gaza Writes Back, the short-story collection edited by Refaat Alareer, who was killed in December 2023. A memorial edition is out now.

The history stack: Albert Hourani's A History of the Arab Peoples, Edward Said's Orientalism, and Lord Kinross's The Ottoman Centuries, plus Ottoman Lyric Poetry.

Travis Lupick's Fighting for Space (on harm reduction) came up twice, and Margaret's own The Immortal Choir Holds Every Voice got a mention. Foucault's Discipline and Punish snuck in too.

https://podshelf.io/podcasts/cool-people-who-did-cool-stuff/2026/06 has the full list, free, no signup.

Where should someone start with Ottoman history?

Magpie talking about the Lomaxes and Leadbelly going around to prisons to record songs made me think of something I’d read years ago. This song was used in O Brother Where Art Thou. Because of the age and nature of the recording, tracking down the artists was no small feat. But they managed to find the lead singer working as a shipping clerk to get him his royalty check.

I went to read about it again and it was Alan Lomax who’d recorded it! Even more, his daughter led the effort to get Mr. Carter paid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Carter_and_the_Prisoners

Just listened to this weeks episodes together. At the end of the first, Prop in his plugs says he’s going to “the fringe festival” and then clarifies it’s in Edinburgh, Scotland

I guess if you don’t hang in theater circles, you may not know just what a huge deal Edinburgh Fringe is! It’s truly one of the most prestigious and well known Fringe Festivals in the world! I’ve never been able to go but know so many people who have and they all loved it!

Have fun Prop!

Every time Margaret mispronounces the name I cringe. This is a Robert Evens level mispronunciation..

like what do you mean the organization you call when a cop gets mad and arrests your friend for yelling at them at a protest also helped plan the Nuremberg trials?!!! that’s so fucking cool! they’re so cool! major props to movement lawyers for being so awesome and working so hard to save the rest of our collective asses

my Minnesotan ass has absolutely thought about getting the NLG number tattooed on my arm. the only thing that prevents me from doing that is the possibility that they could change the number

I'm listening to this one "Part Two: The Gay Ottomans: Homosexuality in the Medieval Ottoman Empire"

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/part-two-the-gay-ottomans-homosexuality-in-the/id1620562792?i=1000773984242

Dr. Ho​use Of Pod is confused by the name of the NZ soccer team "The All Whites"? I expect it's derived from the rugby team name "The All Blacks".

It's not racist! It's a play on the fact that the NZ rugby team is called the All Blacks and play in black shirts. The football team plays in white shirts so picked up the nickname All Whites.

A little bit into today’s episode and couldn’t help remembering Herodotus and noticing the similarity between the dreams of Osman and Astyages. Both involve a tree growing which symbolizes the birth of an empire (from a navel in Osman’s case, and in Astyages’, his daughter’s vagina). I wonder if anyone knows of other instances of this imagery, especially in the myths of Asia Minor, but anywhere really. I plan to dig later but thought I’d drop this here just for funsies.

I mean I think there's a lot of people who when you tell them the science shows spanking a kid won't improve behavior they think something like "well if a kid is fundamentally good they will respond to punishment in the moral and rational way of behaving well. Kids that don't respond that way are just bad kids who can't be helped". same thing with regard to drug laws. If an addict doesn't respond to having their supply threatened by trying to recover, maybe they just don't deserve to be helped.

I'm only at the 10-12 minute point, but I gotta say, I love the music! It's very Peter and the Wolf sounding, behind Margaret's musings.

The CZM Book Club episodes did most of the lifting this month, so it's heavy on sci-fi and Le Guin. Tracked them all.

Top picks:

• Alien Virus Love Disaster by Abbey Mei Otis (came up twice), the short story collection they dug into.
• A full Ursula K. Le Guin run: The Left Hand of Darkness, The Word for World Is Forest (the one Star Wars lifted "Endor" from), The Telling (Margaret's recommended entry point), and The Day Before the Revolution.

More from the month: The Dispossessed and The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (more Le Guin), Parable of the Sower (Octavia Butler), Starship Troopers (Heinlein), and Margaret's own A Country of Ghosts and The Immortal Choir Holds Every Voice.

Nonfiction in there too: Three Ordinary Girls (Dutch resistance) and Everything for Everyone (the NYC oral-history novel).

I track every book mentioned on the show at https://podshelf.io. It is free, no signup.

Where should a Le Guin first-timer actually start?