Everything for Everyone Part 2: A Chance to Be Sad and a Chance to Tell Stories with M.E. O'Brien

It's part 2 of my first two-episode week, celebrating my new favorite book, Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072. M.E. O'Brien is the book's other co-writer (along with Eman Abdelhadi), and our conversation stems from an email in which she told me her practice of a religion with "a very elaborate idea of the afterlife" might make for a less interesting podcast. Suffice it to say, she was wrong!

Content warning: suicide, Tibetan Buddhism, the lack of kindness in leftist spaces, absolutely refusing to Relive 1 Memory.

Show your love for This Is Your Afterlife at patreon.com/davemaher. Here are reasons it is good:

Subscribers get extended episodes, aftershows, and shoutouts in future episodes.It's the same cost as a nice coffee or a cheap meal.You're part of making independent art outside of corporate backing.I need literal insulin.

Read Everything for Everyone (and buy it from the publisher, Common Notions, here). Then let's talk about it!

Follow M.E. O'Brien on Twitter: @genderhorizon

Support her on Patreon: patreon.com/meobrien

Leave me a voicemail to play on the show: (313) MIST-URA (647-8872).

Subscribe to my newsletter, Definitive Answers, for weekly personal and culture essays, plus music recs! And follow me @thisisdavemaher on Twitter and Instagram.

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Transcript: This Is Your Afterlife on Podscribe

Music = Future: "Use Me" / James Blackshaw: "The Cloud of Unknowing" / Johnnie Frierson: "Miracles"