Amy is delivering a special form of torture to Lance this week and we're discussing all things Bravo. Bravo, Bravo, f'ing Bravo! Amy shares how the 'wives have helped her cope with the challenges of chronic illness and we consider the impact and possibilities of reality TV more broadly - all while enjoying some pink bubbly, in honor of the real housewives, of course.

HEALING WITH THE HOUSEWIVES

My name is Amy. I am a sociologist and I have a Ph.D. and I like to think I’m reasonably smart and I believe that wealth is distributed in ALL the wrong ways in my home country of the U.S. of A. I am a raging feminist and damn proud of it. I believe the propagation of MAGA beliefs is mostly the result of widespread inequality, abuse of power, corporate monopolization, and crippling fear.

And. Wait for it. I love Bravo. The network where wealth is flaunted in all the dumbest ways. The network whose roster of stars includes dingdongs who will charter four private planes to Puerto Rico to deliver $50 gift cards to the people, as long as they can catch it on camera. This IS a crisis, after all...

Continues at ⁠https://amyblackstonephd.substack.com/p/8c9f81f1-0049-449c-a10e-0a1a16e3d0b2⁠

CITED IN THIS EPISODE

Branco, Susan F. 2025. "Teaching while Streaming: Adult Adoptee Themes in the Real Housewives Reality Series." Family Journal 33(2):244-247. doi: ⁠Teaching While Streaming: Adult Adoptee Themes in The Real Housewives Reality Series - Susan F. Branco, 2025⁠ .

We, like so many of you, are sick and tired of our broken healthcare system in the United States of America. In this episode, Amy reads a piece expressing her despair over the state of it. We discuss how disempowering it can feel to be a patient in this system. And we consider how Luigi Mangione's 2024 shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson reflects similar feelings of disempowerment and also a rising class consciousness in the United States. Finally, Lance SHOCKS Amy by quoting a sociologist to HER and we even manage to have a few laughs.

A PATIENT SANS PATIENCE

I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired

Sick and tired of medical forms and filings and faxes*

Sick and tired of bureaucracies and bureaucrats

Sick and tired of treating symptoms, never causes or cures

Sick and tired of pollyanna pundits and politicians

Sick and tired of systems and structures built by and for only the fortunate few

Sick and tired of the sick and tired system that got us here

Sick and tired of the sick and tired system that's keeping us here

Sick and tired of the sick and tired system that hasn't a clue or a care to get us out

*Does anyone else worry that an industry that's supposed to be cutting edge relies so heavily on faxes?

Originally posted at ⁠https://substack.com/@neverthelesspersisting/note/c-102724456⁠

CITED IN THIS EPISODE

1. Commonwealth Fund: ⁠https://apps.urban.org/features/wealth-inequality-charts/⁠
2. Thiele Strong, Megan. "Support for Luigi Mangione Reflects Working Class Weariness of Top-Down Violence," Common Dreams, December 28, 2024.
3. Turner, Bryan. 1992. Max Weber: From History to Modernity. New York: Routledge.
4. Urban Institute: ⁠https://apps.urban.org/features/wealth-inequality-charts/⁠

Welcome to Season 2 of NEVERTHELESS, PERSISTING! We're still here, we're still sick, we're still tired, and we've still got idiocracy to lament and solutions to share. In this episode, Amy shares her haiku, TIRED, and Amy and Lance discuss the never-ending quest to describe to not-sick people how it feels to be always-sick. We also talk about how people have always used stories, poetry, and other forms of creativity to help others understand experiences and conditions they themselves don't share.

TIRED

Fatigue surfaces

As helpless as to quicksand

The world carries on

Originally posted at https://substack.com/@neverthelesspersisting/note/c-91231028

EPISODE CITATIONS

https://mcpress.mayoclinic.org/living-well/what-those-with-chronic-conditions-wish-their-friends-knew/

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo14674212.html

Also,

• Anne Karen Bakken and colleagues apply Arthur Frank's model in their 2023 analysis of 14 ME/CFS patients' narratives of "recovery"

1. 1. "The analysis yielded a common plotline with a distinct turning point. Participants went through a profound narrative shift, change in mindset and subsequent long-time work to actively pursue their own healing. Their narrative understandings of being helpless victims of disease were replaced by a more complex view of causality and illness and a new sense of self-agency developed."

   2. Bakken, Anne K., Anne M. Mengshoel, Oddgeir Synnes and Bolle S. Elin. 2023. "Acquiring a New Understanding of Illness and Agency: A Narrative Study of Recovering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome." International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being 18(1). doi:⁠ https://doi.org/10.1080/17482631.2023.2223420⁠ .

• Colleen Donnelly applies Frank’s model in her 2024 article in the journal Disability & Society to make the argument that those who are unable to turn their chronic illness stories into RESTITUTION NARRATIVES are rendered mute.

1. 1. “There is a need to allow more venues for allowing stories about ongoing struggles that do not resolve rather than to silence these narratives because they don’t fit our learned, preferred tastes.”

   2. Donnelly, Colleen. 2024. “Claiming Chaos Narrative, Emerging from Silence.” Disability & Society 39(1):1–15. doi: 10.1080/09687599.2021.1983420.