Missing Witches - We Are Cockroach Kin： Slipping Through The Cracks Of Control

00:00:01.000 You aren't being a proper woman, therefore you must be a witch. 1.00

00:00:07.600 You must be a witch. 1.00

00:00:11.360 Looking for your kin? 0.98

00:00:13.680 Join the Missing Witches Coven.

00:00:15.680 Find everything you need to know at missingwitches.com

00:00:30.000 Okay, you have horses, you have dogs, you have cats, you have everything, right?

00:00:39.080 So what's missing?

00:00:40.580 La Cucaracha.

00:00:41.620 That's right.

00:00:42.740 On February 16th, 1988, John Waters unleashed a bug that would go on to multiply, lay eggs

00:00:52.620 in my young brain and the young brains of thousands more.

00:00:56.340 In his most shocking act yet, the legendary filthy filmmaker released a movie with a PG rating.

00:01:05.880 Hairspray.

00:01:07.680 So, at the tender age of ten, I found an unlocked door that led me, through Hairspray, to John's other, decidedly not PG work.

00:01:19.140 And I was forever changed.

00:01:21.480 And I'm sure y'all know that I can't get through a season of the Missing Witches podcast without mentioning John Waters,

00:01:28.440 but what does any of this have to do with a kinship with cockroaches?

00:01:34.220 Well, in the movie Hairspray, my gateway to a new way of seeing and being in the world,

00:01:42.020 our Pope of Trash, a nickname that was coined by another bug freak, William Burroughs,

00:01:47.660 presents a reoccurring motif for us to examine and unpack, the roach.

00:01:55.580 Juxtaposed alongside a story that is at its core about segregation,

00:02:01.880 John places the cockroach.

00:02:04.540 The idea of Hairspray, the product, is all about aesthetic presentation and control.

00:02:14.860 The roach is the opposite.

00:02:18.700 It acts as a symbol of filth and chaos, defiant insubordination, and beneath it all, survival. 0.88

00:02:29.000 In the film's triumphant finale, the Corny Collins show is racially integrated, and another integration. 0.99

00:02:37.340 Tracy, fat, lower middle class, put in special ed because of her hairdo 0.99

00:02:45.020 Wears a pink silk gown covered in a huge graphic roach pattern 0.97

00:02:53.380 And is crowned queen

00:02:57.060 The illusion of control is broken

00:03:07.340 There's a quote that's attributed to philosopher Nietzsche, sometimes the poet Rumi.

00:03:16.340 I can't find the primary resource citation, so it's likely a made-up thing, but whomever said it, it still rings true.

00:03:25.960 If you crush a cockroach, you're a hero.

00:03:30.500 If you crush a butterfly, you're a villain.

00:03:34.160 Morals have aesthetic criteria

00:03:39.000 And indeed, scientific research proves that flies carry more disease-causing pathogens than cockroaches

00:03:49.180 But one survey showed that restaurant patrons are more likely to eat food touched by flies

00:03:56.720 Of the survey respondents, 61% would continue eating their meal after a fly touched and contaminated it,

00:04:05.400 while only 3% of survey respondents reported they would continue eating food on which a cockroach had crawled.

00:04:12.860 Quote, many restaurant patrons may not be aware that houseflies are twice as filthy as cockroaches, end quote,

00:04:21.360 says entomologist Ron Harrison.

00:04:23.460 And we'll get into how remarkably clean cockroaches actually are in a bit, but the message remains clear.

00:04:32.160 Morals have aesthetic criteria.

00:04:36.100 In Hairspray, the roach is made beautiful.

00:04:40.100 And in all of John Waters' works, weirdos infiltrate square worlds and make those worlds more beautiful.

00:04:47.880 A study funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found that the most hated animal in America is the cockroach.

00:05:00.080 So it tracks that John Waters would choose them as icons of the veneration of bad taste.

00:05:06.740 So let's join this veneration today to look upon the most hated animal in America and rejoice in it.

00:05:20.080 I am Cockroach Kin, and I've referred to myself as a cockroach for a long time.

00:05:26.000 I don't need much to survive, but I have survived.

00:05:31.080 Multiple personal apocalypses later, and I'm still here.

00:05:36.740 I'm adaptable.

00:05:38.780 I slip between the cracks of a broken world.

00:05:44.940 As National Geographic points out,

00:05:47.800 All cockroaches want is food, water, and warmth.

00:05:52.840 In all our complexity, we are simple creatures.

00:05:58.080 All of us.

00:05:59.620 Earth, air, fire, water is all we really need.

00:06:04.620 When my deeply fastidious, clean freak of a roommate

00:06:11.180 Spotted a roach in our kind of sketchy apartment building

00:06:14.240 She called the cops, a.k.a. the health department

00:06:17.540 An inspector arrived, and while she was sympathetic to our fears

00:06:21.880 She only saw one roach

00:06:24.000 And, deciding that our situation didn't warrant a formal complaint

00:06:28.500 She used the time to regale us with stories of those infestations she'd seen

00:06:34.000 where cockroaches carpeted the floors and paneled the walls.

00:06:40.080 We started packing immediately and moved out as soon as we could.

00:06:44.980 Because the scariest thing about seeing a cockroach,

00:06:49.060 they are, after all, quite tiny and unthreatening on their own.

00:06:53.740 The scariest thing about seeing a cockroach is that if you see one,

00:06:58.920 it means there are likely thousands more hiding in the darkness.

00:07:05.460 And this is true of witches, too. 0.95

00:07:09.920 We witches are all cockroach kin, 0.98

00:07:13.460 operating in the darkness for our own survival. 0.81

00:07:16.620 Flick on the light and we scatter back to the places between places

00:07:20.980 to continue our work undercover. 0.94

00:07:25.060 Quick, hide!

00:07:26.220 There's safety in the shadows 1.00

00:07:29.240 In a piece from Animal Acts, Performing Species Today

00:07:34.480 And in a performance you can watch on YouTube called 0.93

00:07:37.560 With What Ass Does the Cockroach Sit? 0.96

00:07:42.920 Carmelita Tropicana writes in the voice of Martina the Cockroach 0.98

00:07:47.800 Both Carmelita and Martina draw on the story of Elian Gonzalez

00:07:52.980 On November 21st, 1999, Elyon's mother, her partner, and Elyon fled Cuba by boat

00:08:01.340 as part of a group of refugees attempting to reach the United States.

00:08:05.840 The boat sank during the journey, and Elyon's mother, along with most of the passengers, drowned.

00:08:14.160 Elyon was found floating on an inner tube and rescued by two fishermen,

00:08:18.660 who turned him over to the U.S. Coast Guard.

00:08:21.400 At six years old, Elian became the center of a high-profile international custody battle.

00:08:30.600 Quick hide. Quick hide. That should be my name, not Martina.

00:08:36.960 That's what they should put in my tombstone. Here lies quick hide.

00:08:41.500 Oh, the life of a cucaracha is really tough.

00:08:45.820 People think we're dirty, but what do they expect

00:08:48.380 when we've got to hide all the time

00:08:50.260 inside a greasy stove, under a dresser

00:08:52.960 with a dust bunny the size of a bullfrog

00:08:55.180 and only if you're very lucky

00:08:56.760 behind a can of planter's peanuts

00:08:58.980 that's been opened and you can lick the salt.

00:09:02.340 Oh, we suffer so much anxiety.

00:09:03.900 You've got to have eyes in the back of your head

00:09:05.440 because you never know where the danger's coming from.

00:09:08.920 Through Carmelita, Martina reminds us

00:09:11.940 that all outsiders are cockroach kin.

00:09:15.440 That we have learned how to play dead,

00:09:17.240 How to pretend to be something we're not

00:09:23.180 We know how to hide

00:09:25.100 This is the theater of survival

00:09:28.940 No stage, just survival

00:09:32.800 To play dead is both instinct and performance

00:09:37.280 A rehearsal of disappearance

00:09:40.180 Martina says we roaches live

00:09:44.300 even if our lives are full of insult. 0.68

00:09:49.620 The cockroach and the witch carry what gets projected onto us 0.84

00:09:54.400 and keep moving anyway.

00:09:57.860 There is no need to be transformed.

00:10:02.700 And speaking of metamorphosis,

00:10:04.500 did you know that Kafka never names Gregor's new form as roach?

00:10:09.360 This is just the creature we've decided on in our readings.

00:10:14.300 Because it's described as terrifying and loathsome.

00:10:19.720 But for Martina, the roach doesn't need to be redeemed or transformed.

00:10:26.440 Just continuous. 1.00

00:10:30.420 This is the message of with what ass does a cockroach sit? 1.00

00:10:35.680 Continue. Keep going. 1.00

00:10:38.200 Despite the insults, despite the anxiety, despite the fact that danger lurks

00:10:45.500 Keep going, continue, survive

00:10:51.160 Martina doesn't ask for sympathy, she offers something more unsettling

00:10:57.120 A model of existence that survives without recognition

00:11:02.200 Without narrative reward

00:11:05.340 If the heroic animal ascends, the cockroach persists.

00:11:13.380 If humans seek meaning, cockroaches practice duration.

00:11:21.620 Eyes that have viewed the world for millions of years.

00:11:27.740 In 1976, Muriel Ruckizer wrote Saint Roach.

00:11:32.760 Quote,

00:11:33.780 For that I never knew you, I only learned to dread you 0.80

00:11:38.360 For that I never touched you, they told me you are filth 0.69

00:11:42.520 They showed me by every action to despise your kind 0.95

00:11:47.440 For that I saw my people making war on you

00:11:51.880 I could not tell you apart from one another

00:11:56.720 For that in childhood I lived in places clear of you 0.85

00:12:00.780 For that all the people I knew met you by crushing you, stamping you to death

00:12:07.800 They poured boiling water on you, they flushed you down

00:12:11.300 For that I could not tell one from another

00:12:15.200 Only that you were dark, fast on your feet, and slender, not like me

00:12:22.260 For that I did not know your poems

00:12:26.100 And that I do not know any of your sayings

00:12:30.160 And that I cannot speak or read your language, and that I do not sing your songs, and that I do not teach our children to eat your food, or know your poems, or sing your songs, but that we say you are filthing our food, but that we know you not at all.

00:12:56.940 Yesterday, I looked at one of you for the first time

00:13:02.040 You were lighter than the others in color, that was neither good nor bad

00:13:06.480 I was really looking for the first time

00:13:10.140 You seemed troubled and witty

00:13:15.720 Today, I touched one of you for the first time

00:13:20.760 You were startled, you ran

00:13:23.960 You fled away

00:13:26.400 Fast as a dancer, light, strange, and lovely to the touch

00:13:32.420 I reach

00:13:34.120 I touch

00:13:36.020 I begin to know you

00:13:39.400 End quote

00:13:42.100 Just know that if you do touch a roach

00:13:45.480 It will immediately start cleaning itself of that touch

00:13:48.840 So let's return to this

00:13:50.660 People think we're dirty

00:13:52.940 But cockroaches are actually more like walking hand sanitizer

00:13:57.820 They secrete an antibacterial substance and beyond that they clean themselves constantly

00:14:03.920 And this too is a survival mechanism

00:14:07.560 Roaches don't overthink things like we do

00:14:11.340 In fact, they can live for weeks without their heads

00:14:14.880 Because their system is decentralized

00:14:18.660 They operate with a combination of instinct and senses, and when the antennae on their legs and wings and mouths and head get dirty, they lose the ability to perceive food, water, danger.

00:14:36.940 Did you ever hear the old joke, what will survive Armageddon?

00:14:43.240 Cockroaches.

00:14:45.640 Cockroaches and share. 1.00

00:14:48.660 I invented reinvention, bitches. 1.00

00:14:54.580 When our world is destroyed and the end of time approaches, 1.00

00:14:58.580 two things will be left.

00:15:01.120 Share and cockroaches.

00:15:03.580 Share and roaches, cockroaches and share.

00:15:07.400 When all else is dark, we'll still be there.

00:15:11.380 Share and roaches, cockroaches and share.

00:15:14.600 Get used to us. We ain't going nowhere.

00:15:18.660 What do we all want to see?

00:15:23.660 Cher has become a symbol of survival for the same reason cockroaches have.

00:15:28.940 Because they adapt and evolve, and just like Cher, they have evaded all attempts to keep them down.

00:15:37.560 Cher and cockroaches both exhibit rapid evolutionary response. 0.87

00:15:43.760 For Cher, it might be hair color or auto-tune.

00:15:48.020 For roaches, their high turnover rate means that they can produce many generations

00:15:53.540 in much less time than it takes us humans to come up with new poisons.

00:15:59.000 And we often find that, and many scientific studies back this up,

00:16:04.600 by the time we've found a new way to kill them,

00:16:08.320 they've already evolved and adapted themselves into rejecting the bait. 0.81

00:16:12.680 and this needs to be us two witches evolve adapt hide if you have to but keep going

00:16:25.460 the world is changing constantly and the big they is always coming up with new ways to put

00:16:32.620 us witches down we've been burned and drowned and outlawed but we adapt evolve and carry on

00:16:42.280 As I said, roaches can live without their head

00:16:45.780 They can live without food for a month, water for a week

00:16:50.220 And while we witches might not have that level of self-sustainability

00:16:54.860 We can take an anti-consumerist message from cockroaches to help us fight late-stage capitalism

00:17:01.240 What do we really need?

00:17:05.720 What can we live without?

00:17:07.400 and sexton wrote a poem called cockroach quote roach foulest of creatures who attacks with

00:17:21.500 yellow teeth and an army of cousins big as shoes you are lumps of coal that are mechanized

00:17:30.020 and when i turn on the light you scuttle into corners and there is this hiss upon the land

00:17:37.080 yet i know you are only the common angel turned into by way of enchantment the ugliest

00:17:46.080 your uncle was made into an apple your aunt was made into a siamese cat 0.78

00:17:51.740 all the rest were made into butterflies but because you lied to god outrightly

00:17:58.480 told him that all things on earth were in order he turned his wrath upon you and said 0.99

00:18:06.240 I will make you the most loathsome. I will make you into God's lie, and never will a little girl 0.98

00:18:14.740 fondle you or hold your dark wings cupped in her palm. But that was not true. Once in New Orleans

00:18:25.920 with a group of students, a roach fled across the floor and I shrieked, and she picked it up in her

00:18:32.900 hands, and held it from my fear for one hour, and held it like a diamond ring that should not

00:18:41.600 escape. These days, even the devil is getting overturned and held up to the light like a glass

00:18:51.020 of water, end quote. These days, witches, everything is getting overturned and held up to the light.

00:19:02.900 We persist.

00:19:07.100 O. Anonymous wrote, Ode to Cockroaches.

00:19:11.900 Have you seen a cockroach's face as he turns potato chips into lace?

00:19:19.200 As he, guru of simplicity, survives on the glue in bookbinding? 1.00

00:19:25.560 God's garbage men and women removing waste, gentle, 0.97

00:19:29.640 Not stinging like bees or biting like mosquitoes 0.99

00:19:33.380 Hiding at night from the crushing tread or slamming fist

00:19:38.460 Are God's strongest, smartest creatures his most despised?

00:19:48.340 End quote

00:19:48.940 No, Oana

00:19:54.420 God does not hate roaches

00:19:57.640 and God does not hate witches.

00:20:00.520 We know this because we survive.

00:20:04.460 The scariest thing about seeing a cockroach,

00:20:07.280 they are, after all, quite tiny and unthreatening,

00:20:10.620 is that if you see one,

00:20:13.000 it means there are likely thousands more hiding in the darkness.

00:20:17.600 This is true of witches too,

00:20:19.640 because our numbers are growing.

00:20:23.620 And that's scary,

00:20:24.880 because we know that for survival and evolution, adaptation beats control.

00:20:34.400 In the end, our kinship with roaches is an invitation to notice a shared choreography of exclusion and return.

00:20:47.060 Both witches and roaches have been named as infestations,

00:20:51.520 Treated as signs of disorder

00:20:54.460 And targeted with rituals of removal that reveal more about the fears of the persecutor

00:21:02.200 Than the nature of the accused 0.61

00:21:04.600 The witch, like the roach

00:21:08.700 Is imagined as multiplying, hiding

00:21:13.100 Slipping through the sanctioned boundaries of the home

00:21:18.280 through the cracks of a broken world, through the boundaries of the body.

00:21:25.720 Yet, what persists beneath these projections is a quieter truth.

00:21:32.620 We mark forms of knowledge and survival that refuse central control.

00:21:39.760 We embody our knowledge, our magic, beyond our mere brains and into every cell of our being.

00:21:50.560 The witch carries herbal, communal, and embodied ways of knowing.

00:21:55.760 The cockroach carries an evolutionary grimoire of endurance, adaptability, and life in the margins.

00:22:05.220 We unsettle the fantasy of purity

00:22:11.480 We expose how systems define themselves by what they cast out

00:22:19.400 To view roaches as witchkin as our kin

00:22:26.180 Is to recognize that what is called unclean or dangerous

00:22:31.120 often names a resilience and resistance that cannot be easily governed or exterminated.

00:22:40.580 Remember, witches, survival, especially under pressure, rarely looks like virtue.

00:22:48.560 It looks like persistence in the dark.

00:22:52.320 A continued presence where one is not supposed to be.

00:22:57.760 And a refusal to disappear. 0.87

00:23:01.120 We witches, we are all cockroach kin.

00:23:15.080 Before I leave you for today, a big raucous reminder that tomorrow, May 1st, we kick off our sixth annual Missing Witches Reparations fundraiser. 0.99

00:23:26.840 Witchcraft and the New Age have too often benefited from an extractive relationship with First Nations 0.95

00:23:34.240 The people, the culture, the magic, the land

00:23:38.100 So every year, Risa and I pay forward our community membership earnings for the month of May

00:23:44.220 To the Native Women's Shelter of Montreal

00:23:46.360 And invite you, our coven at large

00:23:49.260 To seek out your local Indigenous-led support organization

00:23:53.280 native women's shelter, water, land protectors, and make an investment in our shared future.

00:24:01.820 Make a donation of $10 or more, take a screenshot of your receipt, and email it to

00:24:07.600 witchreparations at gmail.com. Every $10 gets you one entry in a draw with the chance to win

00:24:17.560 one of more than 25 prizes.

00:24:21.500 So $50 is 5 entries,

00:24:24.420 $100 is 10, and so on.

00:24:26.860 Plus, everyone who donates

00:24:29.020 will automatically receive discount codes

00:24:31.340 from House Witch in Salem,

00:24:33.220 Madam Phoenix in Toronto,

00:24:34.740 and North Atlantic Books.

00:24:37.600 Go to missingwitches.com

00:24:39.580 slash reparations for all the details,

00:24:42.180 but in the meantime,

00:24:43.880 here is this year's prize list.

00:24:47.560 From Jared K. Anderson, the Crypto Naturalist, an amazing prize pack, three signed books, and a personal writing critique.

00:25:00.980 Books from North Atlantic, a Teresa Reed prize pack, four books from Teresa Reed, a.k.a. the Tarot Lady.

00:25:11.920 A signed collection of books from Liv Albert of Let's Talk About Myths, baby

00:25:18.980 A $100 gift certificate to the Crow's Key Mystical Bookstore

00:25:25.820 A Daniel Dulsky Prize Pack

00:25:29.200 The Neuroscience of Tarot book, tarot deck

00:25:34.180 And a personal reading from Dr. Ramakrishnan

00:25:38.240 a personal reading with celebrity psychic medium Sarah Potter

00:25:42.400 and a copy of her book Sober Magic

00:25:44.700 from Amy Miranda, the What We've Forgotten prize pack

00:25:48.380 and, again, a personal reading

00:25:50.540 from Lynn's Childs Kelly, a home to her witnessing session and book

00:25:55.640 free course tuition from Hecate's Cauldron

00:25:58.980 from Cindy Brannan

00:26:00.600 a six-month membership in Amanda Yates Garcia's Mystery Cult

00:26:06.980 Granddaughter Crow's Shamanism Course

00:26:10.920 The Art of Magic of the Tarot Foundations Course with Michael M. Hughes

00:26:18.200 The Bardo Writing Program with Word Witch Kate Ballew

00:26:24.080 Embodied Mentoring Sessions with Lisa Lonman 0.67

00:26:29.520 A Tarot Reading with Megan Hamilton, a.k.a. The Impact Witch

00:26:35.060 Life Coaching Sessions with Ari Von Tress

00:26:38.820 Trauma-Informed Life Coaching

00:26:41.380 An Embodied Astrology Prize Pack from Renee Sills

00:26:47.120 A Solar Return Reading by Lolly Moon, a.k.a. Mystic Moon Medicine

00:26:53.060 A Wild Union Oracle and Terrell Reading from Erica Cettino

00:26:59.340 A Jinx Monsoon Merch Bundle

00:27:02.440 A bundle of Madame Phoenix spiritual supplies

00:27:06.980 A custom-made quilted card mat from Linda McInnes

00:27:12.320 A rainbow weaving by Nova Mercury

00:27:16.360 So exciting, her work is incredible

00:27:19.080 Thank you, Jen Duffin

00:27:20.280 Magical oils and a private oil-making class with Reed Stevenson

00:27:26.440 Altogether, the prizes that we've gathered total more than $6,000

00:27:31.660 dollars, and again, you will automatically get discount codes and the knowledge that you are

00:27:37.280 contributing to a great wave of care. Remember, it's not a gift. It's a debt. It's not a donation.

00:27:47.860 It's a reparation. You aren't being a proper woman, therefore you must be a witch. 1.00

00:27:56.440 You must be a witch. 1.00

00:27:57.980 Looking for your kin? 0.98

00:28:02.600 Join the Missing Witches Coven.

00:28:04.620 Find everything you need to know at missingwitches.com

Missing Witches - April 30, 2026

We Are Cockroach Kin： Slipping Through The Cracks Of Control

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