Love in a F*cked Up World

Dean sits down with friend and collaborator Benji Hart, a facilitator, educator, writer, and artist with years of experience in multiracial abolitionist organizing. Together, they discuss their anti-militarism work with the group Dissenters and explore the deep connections between transformative justice and artistic practice. Benji shares insights from their experience facilitating transformative justice processes, emphasizing the importance of treating the work as planting seeds, understanding that change takes time and finding meaning in the process itself.Join us on Patreon for unique content, live events, and conversations to go deep on themes from the podcast. You can order the new edition of Mutual Aid or buy cute things like hats and hoodies to keep the podcast going, and submit your questions for future episodes!More from Benji:Article: No Abolition Without Demilitarization: Black and Muslim Solidarity for Ending Police WorldwideBook chapter: "An Experiment in Addressing Intraorganizational Violence" in Constellations of Care, edited by Cindy Barukh MilsteinCheck out Benji's Patreon

Morgan Bassichis is back with Dean to talk through a listener question about when self-improvement work is too rigorous and/or driven by shame. Morgan and Dean go deep, thinking together about the really painful beliefs about ourselves that sometimes come up and how to move through them. How can we hold ourselves with humility, recognizing our growth edges and taking actions we want to take, but also accept ourselves and each other as we are with gentleness?Join us on Patreon for unique content, live events, and conversations to go deep on themes from the podcast. You can order the new edition of Mutual Aid or buy cute things like hats and hoodies to keep the podcast going, and submit your questions for future episodes!

Dean is joined by longtime collaborator and dear friend Andrea Ritchie, author of Practicing New Worlds, Invisible No More, No More Police, and other essential books and toolkits that you can find linked below and on the Interrupting Criminalization website. Andrea has been documenting, organizing, advocating, litigating, and agitating around policing and criminalization of Black women, girls, trans, and gender nonconforming people for the past three decades. She talks with Dean about the gorgeous community defense work happening in Minneapolis, her work to organize with health care workers against criminalization, what kinds of relationships we need to build in these harrowing times, what has helped them to maintain a supportive friendship with each other over almost 20 years, and much more.If you want to dig deeper, go to patreon.com/deanspade where we have posted much more free content, in addition to ways to support the podcast, and check out our message boards where you can meet other people thinking about these ideas together.Check out Andrea’s amazing work:Interrupting CriminalizationBeyond Do No Harm NetworkPracticing New WorldsNo More PoliceInvisible No MoreQueer (In)Justice

Chani Nicholas, queer feminist astrologer and author of You Were Born for This, joins Dean to talk about how she got politicized, how we hold fear and choose purposeful action in these difficult times, what it takes to stand up for what we believe in when were are under pressure, and what it means to worship time. Visit Chani’s website for access to her app and to listen to both of her podcasts: Astrology of the Week Ahead and Down to Astro. You can watch her 2026 Astrology Forecast for the Year Ahead video on YouTube here. And read her book You Were Born for This.Join us on Patreon for additional content, live events, and conversations to go deep on themes from the podcast. You can order the new edition of Mutual Aid or buy cute things like hats and hoodies to keep the podcast going.

Dean is excited to share an episode of the podcast Green Dreamer, hosted by kaméa chayne. Green Dreamer features thoughtful, engaging interviews with organizers, writers, artists, and thinkers working towards transformative change. You can listen to a recent episode featuring Dean here.This episode features an interview with adrienne maree brown and addresses questions including: How do we navigate friendships in the context of social change and increasing political divides? What does it mean to ground ourselves in concepts that are much older than us — collectively nurturing our “garden of ideas”? And how do we move away from cancel culture to lovingly call one another in — to return and remember our shared values.Listen to more episodes of Green Dreamer, support the show on Patreon, and visit them on Instagram.

Dean speaks (in person!) with Peter Gelderloos, whose work has profoundly shaped Dean’s political development since he first encountered How Nonviolence Protects the State in the early 2000s. Together, they discuss revolutionary tactics, the criminalization of resistance, and how to challenge dominant narratives of pacifism. Peter also describes an “ecosystem of revolt” and shares an image that helped Dean conceptualize the new introduction to the recently released second edition of his book, Mutual Aid. Video of this episode is available on YouTube.Check our Peter's books at the links below, along with three recent short videos he made with subMedia, “It’s Revolution or Death,” and some additional interviews.Join us on Patreon for additional content, live events, and conversations. You can order the new edition of Mutual Aid (OUT NOW!) or buy cute things like hats and hoodies to keep the podcast going.More from Peter:How Nonviolence Protects the StateThe Solutions are Already HereAnarchy WorksThey Will Beat the Memory Out of UsIt’s Revolution or Death: A 3-Part Video Series from subMedia and Peter GelderloosThe Final Straw Radio: Peter Gelderloos on Memory, Community, Organization, and StruggleLast Born in The Wilderness: How Nonviolence Protects the State / Peter Gelderloos

Dean sits down with Holly Whitaker, author of Quit Like a Woman and host of the Co-Regulation podcast to talk about Holly’s critical feminist analysis of how the alcohol industry and the ubiquity of 12-step impact how we perceive drinking and sobriety. We recommend pairing this episode with our previous episode with Shira Hassan, as well as the bonus interview with Shira that you can find for free on Patreon. Shira is the author of Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction, and her discussions with Dean also dug into addiction, sobriety, and 12-step.Join us on Patreon for additional content, live events, and conversations. You can also pre-order the new edition of Mutual Aid or buy cute things like hats and hoodies to keep the podcast going.More from Holly:Co-regulation: A PodcastQuit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Society Obsessed with Alcohol

In societies where we throw people away regularly, where carcerality is woven into the emotional fabric of all of our psyches and relationships, it can be VERY hard to give and receive direct feedback. Often we don’t tell people when they hurt us and then we blow up at them or ghost after saving up a pile of hurts. Or we build resentments that are toxic for us and for relationships or groups. And most of us are very defensive when people offer feedback because we’re afraid of being thrown away if we admit mistakes or listen to criticism to find out what might be useful for learning. Morgan Bassichis is back for a conversation with Dean about giving and receiving feedback directly as a way to build and strengthen relationships, and to prevent conflict from escalating to destructive and disorganizing levels.Support this podcast by joining the Love in a F*cked Up World community on Patreon for conversations about the themes of the show, unique content, and to submit your questions for future AMA episodes.Mentioned in this episode:The new edition of Mutual Aid is coming out March 31, 2026. You can pre-order it here to have proceeds go to support the podcast. You can read an excerpt on fame and parasocial relationships here.

Shira Hassan brings her brilliance and decades of experience in harm reduction, transformative justice, and self-help to this deep-dive conversation. With thoughtful questions for Dean about Love in a F*cked Up World, she opens a nuanced exploration of the relationship between dissociation and numbness, rebellious awareness and radical acceptance, the role of softness in the midst of hard work, and setting boundaries as an abolitionist and harm reductionist.Join us on Patreon for additional content, live events, and conversations. You can also pre-order the new edition of Mutual Aid or buy cute things like hats and hoodies to keep the podcast going.More from Shira:Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm ReductionFumbling Towards Repair: A Workbook for Community Accountability FacilitatorsTransformative Justice Help Desk

Crushes can be fun and enlivening, but sometimes they are ill-timed or ill-suited, and it can be hard to shake them off. Morgan Bassichis is back to discuss one of the most popular tools from Dean's book Love in a F*cked Up World: 7 Steps for De-escalating a Crush. This tool can help you to turn down the intensity of the interest or obsession when you're feeling crushed out.Support this podcast by joining the Love in a F*cked Up World community on Patreon for conversations about the themes of the show, unique content, and to submit your questions for future AMA episodes.