Rhyming Chaos

The daily onslaught of outrageous news of corruption, destruction of government capacity, and attacks on science and education in the U.S. right now is dizzying. “What now?” you scream as you scroll through the morning’s news. It’s a little like the world Geremie R. Barmé stepped into in 1974, when he arrived in China as an exchange student from Australia. The late Cultural Revolution was a “constant bombardment of noise and information” that likewise made one dizzy before breakfast.

Geremie is a Sinologist, historian, filmmaker, translator, and author of a number of books on Chinese culture and politics. You can read a recent interview with him on his work here, and find his most recent writings at China Heritage. He was the guest on the first episode of Rhyming Chaos, released on February 20, 2025: How to commit a self-coup, in the U.S. and in China.

In this follow-up podcast, recorded on September 30, the same day Donald Trump told a gathering of senior leaders of the U.S. armed forces that they must target “the enemy within,” we discussed:

* The relentless daily “bombardment of noise and information” in 1970s China.

* The “Hall of One Voice” 一言堂: Deng Xiaoping’s term for when only Mao’s voice mattered, and the sycophants around him ensured he heard nothing that might upset him.

* Snitching in the Cultural Revolution, JD Vance, and Laura Loomer.

* The surveillance state in China and the U.S., and Larry Ellison’s vision.

* Big character posters 大字报 and Twitter.

* Attacks on expertise, science, and learning under Mao and Trump.

* The progress of Project 2025; Russell Vought and Stephen Miller’s radical plans to reshape America.

* Perpetual anger: Why Trumpists remain furious and the maintenance of grievance culture in China.

* The Mao-era disconnect between rhetoric and reality; current American conspiracy theories and inability to distinguish fact from fiction.

* Lin Biao’s militarization of China (1968-1971), and increasing military control of American society.

The Rhyming Chaos podcast is produced by Jeremy Goldkorn and Maria Repnikova, and edited by Cadre Scripts. The theme music is Paper Boy, composed and performed on the guzheng by Wu Fei. Our closing music is Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1, arranged and performed by Wu Fei. Our cover art is by Li Yunfei.

Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, leave us a review, and if you like what we’re doing, please take out a paid subscription at rhymingchaos.com.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.rhymingchaos.com

Pedro Monaville is a historian of modern Africa and an associate professor at McGill University who researches colonial and postcolonial Congo, revolutionary movements, and the connections between art and history, among other subjects.

He is the author of Students of the World: Global 1968 and Decolonization in the Congo, which one review called “a fine-grained examination of the radicalization of Congolese students, their slow maturation during the fin d’empire…that put them on a collision course with the dystopian regime of President Mobutu.”

Mobutu Sese Seko was the president and dictator of Zaire from 1971 to 1997. He changed the country’s name from Congo to Zaire as part of an “authenticity campaign” to remove colonial influence. In some ways, he was a cartoonish dictator, with palaces, gold tchotchkes everywhere, yachts, fleets of limousines, a personality cult, and self-bestowed titles such as “Father of the Nation,” “Helmsman,” and “Supreme Combatant.” Despite his anti-colonial ideological rhetoric, Mobutu controlled an incompetent government that caused misery and hunger for ordinary people.

But above all, Mobutu was corrupt, and he saw a phenomenal business deal for himself in the proxy conflicts and power plays in Africa during the Cold War. He presented himself as a bulwark against communism, which allowed him to loot his country and commit human rights abuses with the tacit blessing of the U.S. In 1988, the New York Times cited a State Department estimate of Mobutu’s personal wealth: $5 billion (equivalent to $13.65 billion in 2025).

Mobutu surrounded himself with corrupt lackeys, whose loyalty was partly assured by fear, and partly by his blessing of their place at the trough. He is said to have once admonished officials whose corruption was becoming excessive: “If you want to steal, steal a little in a nice way, but if you steal too much to become rich overnight, you will be caught.”

In the podcast we discuss:

* Mobutu’s rise from journalist to military chief to dictator

* Congo’s brutal exploitation under King Leopold II, Belgian colonial rule, and the assassination of independence leader Patrice Lumumba in 1961

* Mobutu’s early legitimacy building: “authenticity” campaigns involving cultural nationalism, renaming cities, and economic nationalization

* The Congolese student movement, and how it developed into a credible opposition force through the 1960s

* Student identity and elitism

* Systematic violence against intellectuals: The June 4, 1969 student massacre in Kinshasa and the destruction of universities

* Mobutu’s control mechanisms: His use of complicity, unpredictable cycles of punishment and reward, and keeping elites “on their toes” to maintain power

* Language and cultural politics: The role of Lingala as a unifying language through military, music, and Mobutu’s political communication

* Mobutu’s tactics and current threats to higher education and intellectual freedom in the United States

* Congo’s ongoing conflicts

The Rhyming Chaos podcast is produced by Jeremy Goldkorn and Maria Repnikova, and edited by Cadre Scripts. The theme music is Paper Boy, composed and performed on the guzheng by Wu Fei. Our closing music is Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1, arranged and performed by Wu Fei. Our cover art is by Li Yunfei.

Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, leave us a review, and if you like what we’re doing, please take out a paid subscription at rhymingchaos.com.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.rhymingchaos.com

Huey Li is the author of Dividing the Rulers: How Majority Cycling Saves Democracy, and a popular explainer of U.S. and Chinese politics on TikTok, YouTube, and Substack.

He regularly debunks misguided ideas that trend on those platforms, pouring cold water on some of the excessive enthusiasms of his audience, and helping them to understand the way authoritarian rulers and dictators exercise their power.

In this show, we discuss:

* Majority cycling

* The state of American politics

* Misguided perceptions of China

* Political polarization

* TikTok and whether the Chinese government is manipulating its algorithm

* Constraints on presidential power in the U.S.

* The importance of voting

* The illusion of benevolent dictatorship

The Rhyming Chaos podcast is produced by Jeremy Goldkorn and Maria Repnikova, and edited by Cadre Scripts. The theme music is Paper Boy, composed and performed on the guzheng by Wu Fei. Our closing music is Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1, arranged and performed by Wu Fei. Our cover art is by Li Yunfei.

Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, leave us a review, and if you like what we’re doing, please take out a paid subscription at rhymingchaos.com.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.rhymingchaos.com

Katie Stallard is the author of Dancing on Bones: History and Power in China, Russia, and North Korea, which was named political book of the year 2022 by the Financial Times, Sunday Times, and BBC History magazine. She was previously based in Russia and China as a foreign correspondent for Sky News, and is now Senior Editor, China and Global Affairs, at the New Statesman. She is also an endurance athlete.

In this show, we discuss:

* The role of history in authoritarian regimes

* Symbolism and power in military parades

* Trump and authoritarian spectacles

* The mechanics of narrative control

* The disturbing trends in American history education

* The courage of dissent in authoritarian regimes

* Journalism in hostile environments

* Lessons for American dissenters from running ultramarathons

The Rhyming Chaos podcast is produced by Jeremy Goldkorn and Maria Repnikova, and edited by Cadre Scripts. The theme music is Paper Boy, composed and performed on the guzheng by Wu Fei. Our closing music is Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1, arranged and performed by Wu Fei. Our cover art is by Li Yunfei.

Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, leave us a review, and if you like what we’re doing, please take out a paid subscription at rhymingchaos.com.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.rhymingchaos.com

Howard French has reported for the Washington Post and New York Times from nearly every country in Africa; all over the Caribbean; Japan; and Korea. He is the author of several books, including Disappearing Shanghai: Photographs and Poems of an Intimate Way of Life, and China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants are Building a New Empire in Africa

His latest book, The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide is an examination of the life of Ghanaian Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah, who in 1957 became the first leader of a post-colonial country in sub-Saharan Africa.

On this show, we discuss:

* Kwame Nkrumah’s rise from the son of a goldsmith in a small town to activist to leader of Ghana

* Nkrumah's role in Ghana's independence

* Pan-Africanism

* If there are any lessons from Ghana for Trump’s America

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.rhymingchaos.com

William de Jong Lambert is a historian of science whose research focuses on evolution, genetics and heredity. He is the author of many papers and books including The Cold War Politics of Genetic Research: An Introduction to the Lysenko Affair. Trofim Lysenko was a Soviet agronomist and promoter of kooky theories that greatly exacerbated the famines of the Stalin era.

Which makes William the perfect guest for Rhyming Chaos this week, as the destruction of the U.S. science and healthcare system accelerates under the leadership of U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump. As Rick Wilson put it:

RFK, Jr., heroin addict, sex addict, anti-vaccination lunatic and aspiring architect of millions of deaths purged the CDC last night. He gutted the world’s premiere public-health agency in his endless quest to destroy vaccine science and plunge this nation into the Middle Ages.

It is widely reported that Kennedy has ordered a clampdown on reporting of COVID and human cases of H5N1 bird flu, and that he plans to entirely ban COVID-19 vaccines in the coming months.

In this podcast, we discuss:

* Lysenko’s background and rise to prominence in Soviet agriculture

* Lysenko’s animus against genetics and his theories about plant reproduction and animal husbandry

* Stalin's Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature, which was supposed to turn Siberia into a Garden of Eden

* The stifling of scientific progress in the Soviet Union under Lysenkoism, and how long it took to recover

* Why American institutions are vulnerable to anti-science sentiments

* The challenges of communicating complex scientific ideas to the public

* Life on American campuses in 2025

The Rhyming Chaos podcast is produced by Jeremy Goldkorn and Maria Repnikova, and edited by Cadre Scripts. The theme music is Paper Boy, composed and performed on the guzheng by Wu Fei. Our closing music is Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1, arranged and performed by Wu Fei. Our cover art is by Li Yunfei.

Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, leave us a review, and if you like what we’re doing, please take out a paid subscription at rhymingchaos.com.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.rhymingchaos.com

Andrea Pitzer is the author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, among other books, host of the excellent podcast Next Comes What, and writer and publisher of the newsletter Degenerate Art.

In this podcast we discuss:

* How the ethics of journalism as taught in the U.S. system empower Trump

* The definition of “concentration camp” and if Trump’s camps meet the definition

* Forced labor in Nazi Germany and Trump’s America

* How Trump uses the perception of crisis in America for political gain.

* The economic incentives behind the ICE bonanza and how companies profit from detention systems (in history and now)

* Vladimir Nabokov and what he might think of Trump’s America

* And much more…

Other links:

Andrea Pitzer on How to Get ICE Out of Your Town: text, video.

Nazi Republican candidate for California governor Kyle Langford’s Auschwitz tweet: Screenshot by AuschwitzMuseum.

The Rhyming Chaos podcast is produced by Jeremy Goldkorn and Maria Repnikova, and edited by Cadre Scripts. The theme music is Paper Boy, composed and performed on the guzheng by Wu Fei. Our closing music is Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1, arranged and performed by Wu Fei. Our cover art is by Li Yunfei.

Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, leave us a review, and if you like what we’re doing, please take out a paid subscription at rhymingchaos.com.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.rhymingchaos.com

Christina Pagel has a PhD in space physics and is a professor of operational research in health care at University College London. Operational research is a pragmatic branch of mathematics used to help people solve real-life problems.

She has an excellent newsletter called Diving into Data and Decision Making, where she has recently turned her attention to mapping and explaining the Trump administration’s retreat from science, and its authoritarian attacks on universities. She also produces the Trump Action Tracker, which documents “the actions, statements, and plans of President Donald Trump and his administration that may pose a threat to American democracy.”

The Rhyming Chaos podcast is produced by Jeremy Goldkorn and Maria Repnikova, and edited by Cadre Scripts. The theme music is Paper Boy, composed and performed on the guzheng by Wu Fei. Our closing music is Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1, arranged and performed by Wu Fei. Our cover art is by Li Yunfei.

Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, leave us a review, and if you like what we’re doing, please take out a paid subscription at rhymingchaos.com.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.rhymingchaos.com

Derek R. Peterson is Ali Mazrui Collegiate Professor in the History Department and the Department of Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Michigan. He is the author of many books and articles on East Africa, including A Popular History of Idi Amin’s Uganda, just published this year, and co-author of The Unseen Archive of Idi Amin: Photographs from the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation.

In this episode we cover:

* Idi Amin's rise to power

* Amin's charismatic personality

* The new technology of radio—the Twitter of Uganda in the 1970s—that allowed Idi Amin to communicate directly with the populace

* How the Amin government relied on local officials to implement policies without providing necessary resources

* The expulsion of the Asian community, and Amin’s “Economic War”

* Zohran Mamdani’s Ugandan background

* The media environment of Amin's Uganda and contemporary America

* Lessons for America from the Rwenzururu Kingdom about living off the grid

The Rhyming Chaos podcast is produced by Jeremy Goldkorn and Maria Repnikova, and edited by Cadre Scripts. The theme music is Paper Boy, composed and performed on the guzheng by Wu Fei. Our closing music is Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1, arranged and performed by Wu Fei. Our cover art is by Li Yunfei.

Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, leave us a review, and if you like what we’re doing, please take out a paid subscription at rhymingchaos.com.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.rhymingchaos.com

Arash Azizi is a writer and historian who grew up in Iran and now lives in the U.S.

His first book, The Shadow Commander, is about Qassem Soleimani, the head of the country's elite Quds Force who was killed by a U.S. drone strike near Baghdad International Airport in January 2020, in the last days of Trump’s first presidency. His second book, What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom, is an account of the uprising that began after a young woman, Mahsa Amini, died in September 2022 while detained by Iran’s morality police for allegedly not wearing the hijab in accordance with government standards.

In this episode we cover:

* Daily life and activism in Iran

* Women's rights and misogyny

* Feminism and other activism in Iran

* Iran and global right-wing movements

* The role of the Supreme Leader in Iran

* The end of the Islamic Republic

* Pro- and anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism and philosemitism

* Apathy and political engagement in Iran and the U.S.

The Rhyming Chaos podcast is produced by Jeremy Goldkorn and Maria Repnikova, and edited by Cadre Scripts. The theme music is Paper Boy, composed and performed on the guzheng by Wu Fei. Our closing music is Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1, arranged and performed by Wu Fei. Our cover art is by Li Yunfei.

Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, leave us a review, and if you like what we’re doing, please take out a paid subscription at rhymingchaos.com.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.rhymingchaos.com