Love in a F*cked Up World

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Prisons are designed to isolate, break social ties, and destroy communities. Yet, people fight hard to keep relationships going across prison walls, and through all the crises that prisons manufacture. Episode 30 is Part Two of a multi-episode series on relating across prison walls. The series features conversations with friends inside prison, people who have been released, and people who have been doing direct support to prisoners for decades, about the barriers to connection that prisons create and the ways people stay connected despite them. This episode focuses on building and maintaining new relationships between people inside and outside.

Share this Episode with Friends Inside
Interested in sharing this episode with friends inside? Some people might be able to find our podcast on their Kiosk system, but for those who can’t we suggest printing the transcript and mailing it in. Here it is in a format that takes up less pages to make printing cheaper and get through page limits:
8 page (smaller font) .pdf / 12-page (larger font) .pdf

Share the transcript of the first episode of “Love and Relationships Across Prison Walls,” too.

Watch the Videos
You can watch the videos of Part 1 and Part 2 on my Youtube channel. They’re kind of like mini-documentaries for you to use at community events: screen them and get people together to write letters after. This can be a great way to build community around abolitionism and liberation on your campus or in your local community.

Free Copies of Love in a F*cked Up World for People Inside Prisons
Anyone on the outside can request a free copy of Love in a F*cked Up World (the book) for someone inside prison by filling out this form or submitting a request via the contact form on my website. Anyone inside can request a free copy by writing to 1977 Books, 1468 Woodley Road, Montgomery, AL 36106.

Become a Penpal
One of our hopes for making this episode is that more people will become penpals to prisoners. If you’re interested in becoming a penpal, find a chapter of Black and Pink near you, or check out other penpal programs:

• Black & Pink
• Power Blossoms
• Abolitionist Mail Project
• Trans Pride Initiative
• Critical Resistance Prisoner Mail Program
• Flying Over Walls
• ARC Gender Justice
• Letters for Liberation
• Prisoner Correspondence Project

Links and Resources for this Episode

• Read and support Daughters Magazine.
• Watch this full-length interview with Corey about feminist relationships across walls and more.
• Listen to a full-length conversation with Amber and her friends M and S on Patreon (link will be available here by 10/30).
• Buy and read Eric King’s books, A Clean Hell andRattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners.
• Read more about Eric’s releasehere.
• Read more about Amber’s casehere.

Support the Podcast
If you're enjoying Love in a F*cked Up World, check out our Patreon to dive deeper into this conversation and others, recommend future guests, and meet other people working through these ideas. You can join for free.

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Sex educator and Nasty Work author Ericka Hart joins Dean for a conversation about youth liberation, bodily autonomy, and finding pleasure and joy in our bodies as they change and age. Together, they explore queer parenting, the complexities of parasocial relationships, and imagining a sexually free world.

Learn more about Ericka's work on her website, check out her book Nasty Work and her podcast, Hoodrat to Headwrap.

You can read the draft of the training document that Dean mentions in the intro, about sex and romance within groups, on Patreon here. Please check it out and add your feedback.

If you're enjoying Love in a F*cked Up World, check out our Patreon to dive deeper into this conversation and others, recommend future guests, and meet other people working through these ideas. You can join for free.

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What is accountability? In a society where so much harm is minimized and ignored, many of us long to hold others accountable. At the same time, most of us are pretty defensive when people bring up concerns about our behavior, fearing that if we admit mistakes we’ll be rejected, abandoned, or permanently stigmatized.

In this episode, Morgan Bassichis returns to talk with Dean about some of the places we can get stuck when we are trying to be right in a conflict, or when we’re trying to avoid finding out about the impact of our actions because it brings up shame. They discuss things that friends can do in conversation to help each other feel heard and understood and to support each other when blame and shame are coming up.

If you're enjoying Love in a F*cked Up World, check out our Patreon to dive deeper into this conversation and others, recommend future guests, and meet other people working through these ideas. You can join for free.

Morgan's will be performing "In Concert with Amy Winehouse" at Joe's Pub in January 2027. Follow @morgankindof for info and tickets.

For more resources on accountability, check out the Building Accountable Communities video series.

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To kick off Season 2, Jessica Lanyadoo is back to answer more listener questions with Dean. In this episode, they respond to questions about confidentiality, self care, and building and maintaining community when friends couple off or make choices that don't align with your values.

If you're enjoying Love in a F*cked Up World, check out our Patreon where you can find videos, conversations, and message boards where people are talking about the ideas. We pay for all the podcast expenses through listener support, so if you’re up for becoming a paid member of our Patreon, we really appreciate it. We also would love to see you there as a free member.

Jessica Lanyadoo is host of Ghost of a Podcast, out twice weekly and available everywhere podcasts are heard. Find out more about her work athttp://lovelanyadoo.com and join her on Patreon athttp://patreon.com/jessicalanyadoo

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Prisons are designed to isolate, break social ties, and destroy communities. Yet, people fight hard to keep relationships going across prison walls, and through all the crises that prisons manufacture. Episode 26 is Part One of a multi-episode series on relating across prison walls. This episode features conversations with friends inside prison, people who have been released, and people who have been doing direct support to prisoners for decades, about the barriers to connection that prisons create and the ways people stay connected despite them. Topics include the way prison strains or distorts relationships, how to strengthen and repair relationships being stressed in these ways, dealing with unequal power dynamics in relationships, and adjusting to new relationship dynamics as someone comes out of prison.

Watch this episode on YouTube
Support the podcast on Patreon

Become a Penpal
One of our hopes for making this episode is that more people will become penpals to prisoners. If you’re interested in becoming a penpal, find a chapter of Black and Pink near you, or check out other penpal programs:

• Black & Pink
• Power Blossoms
• Abolitionist Mail Project
• Trans Pride Initiative
• Critical Resistance Prisoner Mail Program
• Flying Over Walls
• ARC Gender Justice

Links and Resources for this Episode

• Watch this full-length interviewwith Corey about feminist relationships across walls and more.
• If you want to reach out to Endjah, message Dean on Instagram, Patreon, or his website.
• Write to Donald Antonio Scott, 16317-067 USP Terre Haute, PO Box 33, Terre Haute, IN 47808
• Buy and read Eric King’s books, A Clean Hell and Rattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners.
• Read more about Eric’s release here.
• Read Endjah’s writing here.
• Read more about Amber’s case here.
• Read and support Daughters Magazine.

Share this Episode with Friends Inside
Interested in sharing this episode with friends inside? Some people might be able to find our podcast on their Kiosk system, but for those who can’t we suggest printing the transcript and mailing it in. Here it is in a format that takes up less pages to make printing cheaper and get through page limits:
8 page (smaller font) .docx / 10-page (larger font) .docx

Send us a message

Morgan Bassichis is back talking gossip with Dean. Why is it so hard to tell people things directly? Why is it so hard to keep things confidential? How can we tell whether we’re sharing information because it is useful for caring, or because we want to seem important or get social credit? How can we help each other practice direct communication? How can we bring greater care to how we talk about each other, so that we can resist disorganizing patterns in our communities and groups?

All this in less than 20 minutes?

If you're enjoying Love in a F*cked Up World, check out our Patreon where you can find videos, conversations, and message boards where people are talking about the ideas. We pay for all the podcast expenses through listener support, so if you’re up for becoming a paid member of our Patreon, we really appreciate it. We also would love to see you there as a free member.

Send us a message

Tea kettle studies non-expert Morgan Bassichis is back with Dean to talk about resentment—how it can poison our enjoyment of the things we want and need to do, how it can be toxic for groups, how it is a reasonable response to the intense conditions we live under, and what it looks like to try to work through it so we can stay connected to the people, groups, and activities we care about. They talk through some of the tools Dean has been using in recent workshops about resentment and explore how we can work with this difficult mental and emotional tangle.

If you're enjoying Love in a F*cked Up World, check out our Patreon where you can find more videos and cute message boards where people are talking about the ideas. We pay for all the podcast expenses through listener support, so if you’re up for becoming a paid member of our Patreon, we really appreciate it. We also would love to see you there as a free member.

Resources for episode:

Dean Spade: Resentment video for ASA Roundtable
Mutual Aid 101: Navigating Conflict When Building Power with Dean Spade

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Vicky Osterweil, author of In Defense of Looting, joins Dean for a Trans Day of Visibility event organized by CLAGS (The Center for LGBTQ Studies at CUNY). Dean and Vicky talk about the gorgeous threat that trans people constitute to fascism, the power of holding multiple contradictory truths, and how to keep trying things and experimenting to create revolution.

Vicky's new book, The Extended Universe: How Disney Killed the Movies and Took Over the World, is out now from Haymarket Books. Also check out more from Vicky at CAW (Collective of Anarchist Writers).

Video of this episode is available on YouTube. We will add the link to the full event including ASL interpretation on the CLAGS YouTube channel here when it becomes available.

If you're enjoying Love in a F*cked Up World, check out our Patreon where you can find more videos and cute message boards where people are talking about the ideas. We pay for all the podcast expenses through listener support, so if you’re up for becoming a paid member of our Patreon, we really appreciate it. We also would love to see you there as a free member.

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Dean chats with his friend, the brilliant writer and activist Eli Clare, about his newest book, Unfurl, which Eli describes as a queer disabled love song. Dean and Eli talk about grief and what it means to live with a broken heart, dealing with feelings of betrayal and disappointment in longtime movement work, and the persistence of internalized shame. They also talk about the importance of different types of connections across the long arc of Eli's exquisite work shaping trans politics and disability justice over the last many decades.

Learn more about Eli's work.

It's publication week for the new edition of Mutual Aid! Join us on Patreon for excerpts and videos about the new edition. You can also order it directly from us on Patreon to support the podcast.

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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 Worldwide

Book chapter: "An Experiment in Addressing Intraorganizational Violence" in Constellations of Care, edited by Cindy Barukh Milstein

Check out Benji's Patreon

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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!

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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 https://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 Criminalization

Beyond Do No Harm Network

Practicing New Worlds

No More Police

Invisible No More

Queer (In)Justice

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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.

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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.

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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 State

The Solutions are Already Here

Anarchy Works

They Will Beat the Memory Out of Us

It’s Revolution or Death: A 3-Part Video Series from subMedia and Peter Gelderloos

The Final Straw Radio: Peter Gelderloos on Memory, Community, Organization, and Struggle

Last Born in The Wilderness: How Nonviolence Protects the State / Peter Gelderloos

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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 Podcast

Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Society Obsessed with Alcohol

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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.

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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

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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.

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Jessica Lanyadoo is back with Dean for part two of this AMA, where they tackle more listener questions. They dive into everything from negotiating relationship terms — like how to open a relationship, set boundaries, and talk about safer sex — to conversations about porn, casual sex, gender envy, and parasocial relationships.

Listen to Part 1 of this episode on Apple here, Spotify here, or Dean's website here.

Support this podcast by joining the Love in a F*cked Up World community on Patreon for conversations about the themes of the show and to submit your questions for future AMA episodes.

Jessica Lanyadoo is host of Ghost of a Podcast, out twice weekly and available everywhere podcasts are heard. Find out more about her work athttp://lovelanyadoo.com and join her on Patreon athttp://patreon.com/jessicalanyadoo