Imagine Otherwise by Ideas on Fire
A podcast about bridging art, activism, and academia to build more just futures. On each episode, host Cathy Hannabach interviews the scholars, dancers, authors, artists, and filmmakers imagining collective freedom and creating it through culture.
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Erin McElroy on Silicon Valley Imperialism
04/03/2024
Erin McElroy on Silicon Valley Imperialism
How has the Silicon Valley form of technocapitalism shaped geographies around the world? In episode 159 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews Ideas on Fire author, University of Washington geography professor, and housing justice activist Erin McElroy about the global reach of technocapitalism. Erin is the author of the new Duke University Press book Silicon Valley Imperialism: Techno Fantasies and Frictions in Postsocialist Times, which is a fascinating multi-sited ethnography of the dispossessions wrought by Silicon Valley on both sides of the Iron Curtain. In their conversation, Erin shares the complex process of studying technocapitalism across borders, specifically how the research trajectories of doing a multi-sited ethnography intersect with local activist and scholarly commitments on the ground. They also discuss the media figure of the Romanian hacker and how romanticization of the digital nomad lifestyle intensified gentrification and displacement in both the San Francisco Bay Area and cities across Romania and Eastern Europe. They close out the episode with Erin’s vision for a future of technological and housing justice, where the imperialism of Silicon Valley is replaced by translocal and international solidarities. Transcript and show notes:
/episode/index/show/imagineotherwise/id/30662738
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Juan Llamas-Rodriguez on the Visual Politics of Border Tunnels
12/11/2023
Juan Llamas-Rodriguez on the Visual Politics of Border Tunnels
How do media representations of US–Mexico border tunnels shape immigration discourse, public policy, and anti-immigrant violence? To help us think through how these tunnels are represented and often overrepresented in US media, in episode 158 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews Ideas on Fire author Juan Llamas-Rodriguez about his new book . For all of their visual obscurity and inaccessibility, tunnels are hypervisible in media representations not only of the US–Mexico border region but also the bodies—both real and imagined—that are associated with the borderlands. In the conversation, Juan shares his research into how border tunnels are represented in video games like first-person shooters, television news coverage like Anderson Cooper 360°, copaganda reality shows like Border Wars, and action films like Fast and Furious. They also discuss why it is so important to think infrastructurally about media production and how designers and activists are using speculative design to reimagine what the US–Mexico borderlands are and the role of tunnels in that process. Finally, they close out the conversation with Juan’s challenge to both media makers and media consumers alike to accept responsibility for the material consequences of representation and use it to create a world where the free movement of people across and beyond all borders is celebrated and realized. Transcript, teaching guide, and show notes:
/episode/index/show/imagineotherwise/id/29027608
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Tamara Kneese on Death in the Digital Platform Age
11/14/2023
Tamara Kneese on Death in the Digital Platform Age
In episode 157 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews media scholar and Ideas on Fire author Tamara Kneese about the complex relationship between Big Tech and mortality, specifically how digital media platforms mediate our experiences of death. Tamara is a senior researcher and project director of Data & Society’s AIMLab, and her new book Death Glitch: How Techno-Solutionism Fails Us in This Life and Beyond was recently published by Yale University Press. In their conversation, Tamara and Cathy chat about how platform economies built around planned obsolescence shape our experiences of life and death, as well as how gig workers, families, and community organizers are creatively harnessing these tools for progressive possibilities. Tamara shares how in forms like cancer blogs, digital estate planning, online memorializations, and networked mutual aid in the context of COVID-19, communities are reimagining what collaborative online labor and worldbuilding look like. They close out the episode with Tamara’s vision for more just afterlives as well as a more just present, where digital technologies are put to use ensuring labor rights, climate justice, and more expansive futures for us all. Transcript and show notes:
/episode/index/show/imagineotherwise/id/28634183
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Nicosia Shakes on Black Women's Activist Theater
10/04/2023
Nicosia Shakes on Black Women's Activist Theater
In episode 156 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews , whose creative and scholarly work celebrates the intertwining of political activism and performance across the African diaspora. Nicosia's play Afiba and Her Daughters, which offers an intergenerational narrative of Jamaican herstory, premiered at the Rites and Reason Theatre in Providence. Nicosia’s new book analyzes the work of four contemporary women-led theater groups and projects with a focus on how their activist productions take on gender injustice, racism, gang and state violence, and economic inequality. In their conversation, Nicosia and Cathy chat about Nicosia’s familial journey into community theater and why this kind of performance is such a powerful activist tool. She also shares the complexities of doing a transnational feminist, multisited ethnography across two continents and why a methodology of co-performative witnessing is so crucial for engaged theater research. Finally, they close out the episode with how Nicosia imagines otherwise for the future of Black and African diasporic artistic productions and the worlds they build on and off the stage. Transcript, teaching guide, and show notes:
/episode/index/show/imagineotherwise/id/28223159
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Meryl Alper on Autistic Kids’ Digital Media
09/20/2023
Meryl Alper on Autistic Kids’ Digital Media
In episode 155 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews disability media studies scholar Meryl Alper. Meryl is the author of 3 books about how kids with disabilities use digital technologies, including her most recent book, Kids Across the Spectrums: Growing Up Autistic in the Digital Age. Kids Across the Spectrums is out now from MIT Press and it is the first book-length ethnography of the digital lives of diverse young people on the autism spectrum. In their conversation, Cathy and Meryl chat about how autistic and neurodivergent youth and their families resist popular assumptions about their media use while also using digital technologies like TikTok, Scratch, and YouTube to build community, explore identity, and learn new skills. Meryl also shares some behind-the-scenes context about how she navigated ethnographic research during the pandemic and found the spark for this current book in some of her earlier research. They delve into why moral panics over how autistic kids use media often index broader cultural anxieties over how technology is altering society and what it means for the actual youth caught in the middle of these debates. Cathy and Meryl close out the episode with how Meryl imagines otherwise to help build a more just future that centers the worldviews, needs, and desires of neurodivergent and disabled youth. Transcript and show notes:
/episode/index/show/imagineotherwise/id/28097273
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Kristie Soares on Joy in Latinx Media
09/07/2023
Kristie Soares on Joy in Latinx Media
In episode 154 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews performance artist and gender studies scholar Kristie Soares about the political power of pleasure, laughter, and joy in Latinx media. Kristie’s new book Playful Protest: The Political Work of Joy in Latin Media has chapters about gozando in salsa music, precise joy among the New Young Lords Party, choteo in the comedy ¿Qué Pasa U.S.A.?, azúcar in the life and death of Celia Cruz, dale as Pitbull’s signature affect, and silliness in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s interventions into political violence. In the episode, Kristie shares her journey into studying what joy can do for social and political movements as well as the pleasure-filled genealogies of feminist, queer, and trans of color artists and cultural producers that shaped her approach to political joy. She also gives us a behind-the-scenes look into some almost-book moments, or what didn’t end up in this book but that opened onto a new project about queer excess. Cathy and Kristie close out the conversation with Kristie’s project of building a world where QTPOC joy is not policed and pleasure is embraced as an integral part of social, economic, and political life. Transcript and show notes:
/episode/index/show/imagineotherwise/id/27971256
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Cynthia Franklin on Narrative and Activist Politics
08/10/2023
Cynthia Franklin on Narrative and Activist Politics
Host Cathy Hannabach interviews literature professor Cynthia Franklin about the politics of life writing. Cynthia’s new book Narrating Humanity: Life Writing and Movement Politics from Palestine to Mauna Kea traces the complex ways activists, artists, cultural producers, and scholars engage genres like memoir and autobiography to resist racial capitalism, imperialism, heteropatriarchy, and climate change. In their conversation, Cynthia and Cathy chat about why narrative plays such a large role in defining who gets to count as human and how that narrative definition shapes everything from economic policy and medical care to police violence and environmental degradation. Cynthia shares how movements like Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, Students for Justice in Palestine, and the Native Hawaiian movement to protect Mauna a Wākea push back against such narrative humanity, using collaborative praxis and transformative solidarity to build new models for collective care and liberation. Transcript and show notes:
/episode/index/show/imagineotherwise/id/27713076
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Magdalena Barrera and Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales on The Latinx Guide to Graduate School
07/12/2023
Magdalena Barrera and Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales on The Latinx Guide to Graduate School
In episode 152 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews education scholars and leaders Magdalena L. Barrera and Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales about their new book The Latinx Guide to Graduate School. Magdalena and Genevieve teamed up to write this guide after many years of advising Latinx graduate students struggling to navigate the hidden curriculum of academia—a curriculum built around norms of whiteness, wealth, and settler heteronormativity. Demonstrating the brilliance, scholarly rigor, and leadership these graduate students bring to academia, they created this guide to center the worldviews and lives of Latinx communities in graduate education. In their conversation, Magdalena and Genevieve share about their process for researching and writing the book, particularly how they navigated the co-authoring process amidst busy teaching and administrative responsibilities. They also explain how faculty and advisors can support prospective and current graduate students in embracing their full lives—lives that extend beyond many graduate programs’ myopic focus on research productivity alone. Cathy, Magdalena, and Genevieve close out their conversation with Magdalena and Genevieve’s vision for remaking PhD and MA programs in the service of a culturally liberatory education. Magdalena L. Barrera is the vice provost for faculty success at San José State University, where she provides leadership on all aspects of faculty recruitment and professional advancement. Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales is a professor in the School of Education at the University of San Francisco, where her research focuses on the educational and political lives of Latinx communities, undocumented young people, and immigrant families at the Mexico–US border. Transcript and show notes:
/episode/index/show/imagineotherwise/id/27438114
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Katie Walkiewicz on Indigenous and Black Freedom
06/15/2023
Katie Walkiewicz on Indigenous and Black Freedom
In episode 151 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews Indigenous studies and literature professor Katie Walkiewicz about states’ rights and the role this concept has played in US settler colonialism, enslavement, and dispossession as well as in radical projects seeking to create alternative political structures. Katie Walkiewicz is an enrolled citizen of Cherokee Nation, an assistant professor of literature at the University of California, San Diego, and the associate director of the Indigenous Futures Institute. They chat about Katie’s new book Reading Territory: Indigenous and Black Freedom, Removal, and the Nineteenth-Century State. The book shows how federalism and states’ rights were used to imagine US states into existence while clashing with relational forms of territoriality asserted by Indigenous and Black people. They also explore how states rights have been mobilized in two landmark Supreme Court cases: McGirt v. Oklahoma (2020) and Haaland v. Brackeen (2023). In addition to tracing the violent imposition of states’ rights as tools for anti-Indigeneity and anti-Blackness, they also investigate how Black communities and Indigenous nations have sought to reimagine what a state could be, including through statehood campaigns for Black- and Native-run states. Finally, they close out our conversation with a vision for a world of Indigenous and Black freedom, one beyond the bounds of both the nation and the state. Transcript and show notes:
/episode/index/show/imagineotherwise/id/27151752
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Jasmine Nichole Cobb on Haptic Blackness
03/08/2023
Jasmine Nichole Cobb on Haptic Blackness
Host Cathy Hannabach interviews Black visual studies scholar Jasmine Nichole Cobb about haptic blackness and the cultural politics of Black hair in US visual culture. Jasmine is a professor of African and African American studies and of art, art history, and visual studies at Duke University. Her recent book New Growth: The Art and Texture of Black Hair traces the history of Black hair in visual culture across documentary films, portrait photography, advertising, sculpture, and television. In the episode, Jasmine shares how haptics—or the mixing of touch and vision—has been central to how blackness has been lived, represented, and imagined across historical periods. Jasmine and Cathy also discuss why the 1990s and early 2000s were such a rich period for independent documentaries about Black women’s hair in particular and how more recent series like The Hair Tales and Hair Love adapt this genealogy to our contemporary moment. Finally, they close out the episode with Jasmine’s vision for a haptic Black futurity centering Black embodiment and freedom. Transcript and show notes:
/episode/index/show/imagineotherwise/id/26157942
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Mairead Sullivan on Lesbian Feminist World-building
02/22/2023
Mairead Sullivan on Lesbian Feminist World-building
Host Cathy Hannabach interviews women’s and gender studies professor Mairead Sullivan about the histories and futures of lesbian feminism. Mairead is the author of the new book , which offers a love letter to lesbian feminist world building while also refuting the weaponization of lesbian identity against trans lives and trans communities. In their conversation, Mairead and Cathy explore how the political and economic project of lesbian feminism has evolved over time and how different generations of queer and trans folks have remade what the identity of lesbian can and does mean. They also delve into our experiences of aging, anxieties over the loss of the lesbian bar scene, and the complex ways ambivalence and nostalgia play out in contemporary queer and feminist politics. Finally, they close out the interview with a vision for a lesbian feminist future, one grounded in intersectional, trans-inclusive, and capacious ways of imagining otherwise. Transcript and show notes:
/episode/index/show/imagineotherwise/id/26013738
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Josen Masangkay Diaz on Postcolonial Configurations
02/08/2023
Josen Masangkay Diaz on Postcolonial Configurations
Host Cathy Hannabach interviews ethnic studies and women and gender studies professor Josen Masangkay Diaz about US–Philippine relations during the Cold War and how that history shapes Filipino America today. In their conversation, Josen and Cathy explore the role of race, nation, and gender during the Cold War, particularly how they were renegotiated in the wake of decolonization and the postcolonial nation-building projects that followed. They discuss Josen’s research into how postcolonial projects undertaken during the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship as well as during various US presidencies transformed relations in the Transpacific. These projects bound together cultural diplomacy, immigration law, and humanitarianism with struggles over political and economic influence in the region. They also delve into the politics of what it means to name and remember the intimate interactions between fascist authoritarianism and liberal democracy. Memory is something we get into in detail, both the power relations inherent in what is remembered and how—on both national and transnational scales—but also how memory and memorialization are key sites for resistance as folks remake what Filipino America means today. Transcript and show notes:
/episode/index/show/imagineotherwise/id/25869003
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Erin Durban on the Sexual Politics of Empire
01/25/2023
Erin Durban on the Sexual Politics of Empire
Host Cathy Hannabach interviews anthropologist Erin Durban about the past and present relationship between the United States and Haiti as it shapes the lives of queer and trans Haitians. In their conversation, Erin and Cathy talk about the history of US occupation and imperialism in Haiti and how it shapes the work international LGBTQ organizations began doing there in the wake of the devastating 2010 earthquake. Erin also shares how their approach to ethnographic research has shifted over their career, particularly in terms of challenging colonial unknowing even when it appears in one’s own family narratives and community. They close out the episode with Erin’s vision for a queer disabled university, one that centers the needs and liveability of not only those working within the academy but also those whom it affects, including folks we write about. Transcript and show notes:
/episode/index/show/imagineotherwise/id/25635513
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Jennifer Lynn Kelly on Anticolonial Solidarity Tourism
01/11/2023
Jennifer Lynn Kelly on Anticolonial Solidarity Tourism
Host Cathy Hannabach interviews feminist studies and ethnic studies professor Jennifer Lynn Kelly about her new book Invited to Witness. In their conversation, Cathy and Jennifer talk about the temporality and pace of doing ethnographic research for this book while also navigating state visa politics, job search demands, and family commitments can pull in multiple directions. Jennifer also shares the importance of letting a writing project change itself and change its writer over time, and why slowing down and listening to where our research wants to go makes for richer scholarship. They close out the episode with a vision for a demilitarized and decolonized future, as well as how we can make space for joy while building that world. Transcript and show notes:
/episode/index/show/imagineotherwise/id/25317855
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Josef Nguyen on the Politics of Flexibility
03/11/2022
Josef Nguyen on the Politics of Flexibility
Cathy Hannabach interviews digital media scholar Josef Nguyen about the promises and perils of flexible planning, why cultural anxieties over uncertain futures are so often routed through debates over flexible educational technology, and ways to put flexibility to use in the classroom, on the page, and in our daily lives in ways that center collective support and more just worlds. Transcript and show notes:
/episode/index/show/imagineotherwise/id/22421114
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Anima Adjepong on Interdisciplinary Intuition
12/18/2021
Anima Adjepong on Interdisciplinary Intuition
Ghanaian studies and gender/sexuality studies scholar Anima Adjepong on letting go of a scarcity mindset to make a big career leap, using intuition to identify the book you really want to write, embracing intellectual promiscuity, and building a world in which community means being together in our differences.
/episode/index/show/imagineotherwise/id/21530258
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Nitasha Tamar Sharma on Recalibration and Balance
11/10/2021
Nitasha Tamar Sharma on Recalibration and Balance
Cathy Hannabach interviews Nitasha Tamar Sharma about the limits of seeking balance during a pandemic, recalibrating work and life across one’s interdisciplinary career, and forging solidarities that can extend beyond the present and into more just futures.
/episode/index/show/imagineotherwise/id/21106430
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Catherine Knight Steele on Black Feminist Extensions of Grace
10/13/2021
Catherine Knight Steele on Black Feminist Extensions of Grace
Cathy Hannabach interviews digital media scholar Catherine Knight Steele about why extensions of grace and collaboration are so crucial to building the future of Black digital studies as well as a more just world.
/episode/index/show/imagineotherwise/id/20795012
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Christopher Ali on Building a More Connected World
09/29/2021
Christopher Ali on Building a More Connected World
Cathy Hannabach interviews media scholar Christopher Ali about the politics of of rural broadband access and connectivity, including why federal policy has so consistency failed to bring broadband to rural communities.
/episode/index/show/imagineotherwise/id/20635976
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Sandra Ristovska on Seeing Human Rights
09/01/2021
Sandra Ristovska on Seeing Human Rights
Host Cathy Hannabach interviews filmmaker and media studies scholar Sandra Ristovska about the complex ethical, political, and legal relationship between imagery and human rights.
/episode/index/show/imagineotherwise/id/20326568
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Jessica Bissett Perea on Indigenous Transformations in Academic Publishing
08/18/2021
Jessica Bissett Perea on Indigenous Transformations in Academic Publishing
Host Cathy Hannabach interviews Dena’ina musician-scholar Jessica Bissett Perea about transforming the academic publishing pipeline by centering Indigenous worldviews.
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Priya Kandaswamy on Embracing Permanent Change
08/04/2021
Priya Kandaswamy on Embracing Permanent Change
Host Cathy Hannabach interviews gender, sexuality, and ethnic studies scholar Priya Kandaswamy about embracing permanent change as a way to build more just social bonds in our classrooms, communities, and creative endeavors.
/episode/index/show/imagineotherwise/id/19907747
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Mark Villegas on Collaborative Abundance in Hip-Hop Cultures
07/21/2021
Mark Villegas on Collaborative Abundance in Hip-Hop Cultures
Host Cathy Hannabach interviews filmmaker and scholar Mark Villegas about the power of collective abundance emerging from multiracial hip-hop cultures and how centering interdisciplinary abundance in our writing, publishing, and teaching can transform higher education and the worlds beyond.
/episode/index/show/imagineotherwise/id/19859711
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Maile Arvin on Kuleana and Indigenous Feminist Community
06/23/2021
Maile Arvin on Kuleana and Indigenous Feminist Community
Cathy Hannabach interviews Kānaka Maoli feminist scholar Maile Arvin, who explains why she approaches community building through the Native Hawaiian concept of kuleana, or a reciprocal relationship of responsibility.
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Christen A. Smith, Dána-Ain Davis, and Sameena Mulla on Cite Black Women
06/09/2021
Christen A. Smith, Dána-Ain Davis, and Sameena Mulla on Cite Black Women
Cathy Hannabach interviews Christen A. Smith, Dána-Ain Davis, and Sameena Mulla about the Cite Black Women movement, Black feminist approaches to anthropology, and editing a journal special issue about the racially gendered politics of citation.
/episode/index/show/imagineotherwise/id/19404356
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Liat Ben-Moshe on Community beyond the Carceral State
05/26/2021
Liat Ben-Moshe on Community beyond the Carceral State
Host Cathy Hannabach interviews Liat Ben-Moshe about the intersections of disability justice and prison abolition and what it takes to create a world beyond containment, confinement, and segregation.
/episode/index/show/imagineotherwise/id/19108313
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Mecca Jamilah Sullivan on Cultivating Joy through Queer Black Feminist Art
05/12/2021
Mecca Jamilah Sullivan on Cultivating Joy through Queer Black Feminist Art
Cathy Hannabach interviews creative writer, scholar, and professor Mecca Jamilah Sullivan about the political and ethical stakes of centering queer Black feminist pleasure in both literature and life.
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J. Faith Almiron on Abolitionist Pedagogy within and beyond Institutions
04/30/2021
J. Faith Almiron on Abolitionist Pedagogy within and beyond Institutions
Host Cathy Hannabach interviews scholar and performance artist J. Faith Almiron about building an abolitionist future in art and education.
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La Marr Bruce on Renewal, Loss, and Black Creativity
04/14/2021
La Marr Bruce on Renewal, Loss, and Black Creativity
Cathy Hannabach interviews La Marr Bruce about his new book How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind: Madness and Black Radical Creativity and building a world of radical care and love after loss.
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Hiʻilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart on Transgenerational Inspiration
03/31/2021
Hiʻilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart on Transgenerational Inspiration
Host Cathy Hannabach interviews Kānaka Maoli food studies scholar Hiʻilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart about how Hi‘ilei’s approach to scholarly and activist inspiration brings the rich histories and futures of Indigenous community building to bear on her daily practices of writing and living during the pandemic.
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