Hi everyone! I have been putting up episodes less frequently, but I'm hoping to change that. I just turned in the manuscript from my next book, which took over a bunch of time. But I am planning for some great conversations coming up over the next months, so stay tuned.

This is a special episode. I got to talk with two beautiful thinkers and doers, Josh Rivers and Conner Habib. Josh makes the podcast Busy Being Black, where he hosts deep, heartfelt discussions with Black artists, writers, and philosophers. I love Josh's openness in his approach, the way he forges connections with his conversation partners, and how he brings so many strands of ideas and practices together.

Conner makes Against Everyone with Conner Habib, where he also hosts discussions with thinkers, writers, and artists about political, spiritual, and creative questions. Conner digs deep into the material and always has so much wisdom to offer. Also, make sure you check out Conner's harrowing debut novel, Hawk Mountain. It hit me somewhere deep, familiar, unnerving. I loved it.

If you listen to the Breakup Theory, you may already be familiar with Conner, since we have recorded multiple times together. But if you haven't checked out Josh's or Conner's work, you are about to find a huge catalog of important topics and amazing people in conversation. Go do it now!

Josh and Conner are honestly two of my favorite people to talk with. My favored approach to thinking is in dialogue with others, not following any specific plan, but moving associatively through the meeting of our thoughts, references, and questions. I love going into something not knowing how I will come out of it, welcoming in discovery that fires me up and sets me on new paths. Both Josh and Conner are the kind of people who thrive on this approach too. This is what we do in the following conversation. It was sparked by a series Conner made on his podcast called A New Spiritual Society, inspired by one of Conner's spiritual teachers Rupdolph Steiner's idea of fourfolding. Conner follows this framework to plumb the depths of the spiritual heart of culture, politics, and the economy. You don't have to listen to this series to understand our discussion, but I highly recommend that you do. Conner specifically gears his thinking to our current situation and provides insight into how we might reframe the way we do things and the way we are situated in the world. The series is really a feat of the imagination, and also very helpful.

Josh and I came in to follow the thread of the spiritual heart, bringing in our own current projects and thinking. All of us have different passions, with some overlapping, and this makes for a wide-ranging conversation. At the end, Josh prompts us each to ask a question of the other two, which kind of works to sum up the lines of thoughts we follow.

JOSHUA: How do you care for what you love? CONNER: If you let go of the set of capitalism vs communism (or socialism) what's left in your view of how to change the world? SHULI: How do you open things up so that you have a new and altered view?

At the end, Josh then invites us to dance. Maybe you will find that desire in yourself as well.

I loved this conversation and I'm still energized by it, so I hope you find it inspiring too. I won't go on longer because our talk is substantial. Let me know what you think!

Before we get into the conversation, I'll do my usual rundown of ways you can support this project.

If you like this podcast, please rate it and follow it on the different apps where you listen to it. That does help boost the potential audience. Also, tell your friends too! I love hearing from people about their thoughts—but as always any questions you might want us to tackle on the show. You can leave us a message at (917) 426-6548 or using the form https://form.jotform.com/thebreakuptheory/stories. Or find me on Instagram @thebreakuptheory and DM me.

If you want to access more of my work, as well as the work of the wonderful carla joy bergman, Dani Burlison, and Vicky Osterweil, you can sign up for our newsletter at https://cawshinythings.com. If you subscribe, you will also get access to all of our articles, our discord server where we have discussion, movie nights, writing workshops, and book clubs, and more. Our podcasts, advice column, and zine and sticker library are always free. I am proud of the thing that we are building together, creating a support system for the lonely and often impoverished work of writing—and also finding new ways to engage with new people committed to collective thinking and writing.

If you want to reach any of us there, you can email [email protected]

The Breakup Theory is a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts, which pulls together a wide variety of shows taking an anarchist perspective on culture, politics, actions, and more.

Today, I tackle a letter with an old friend, Amar, who some of you may know from his work on The Final Straw Radio. He is one of the reasons I am making this show, as The Final Straw invited me in to start recording conversations. In past Final Straw episodes, Amar and I have tackled different internal and external struggles with people addressing conflict or proposing new paths for social relations. Amar's curiousness and openness has always been personally helpful to me when trying to chew over difficult feelings and ideas. He has a capacious understanding and gives so much grace to the experience of problems we run into while we are trying to do good.

Now, this letter has actually been sitting in my inbox for a while, and I feel bad that I let it go for so long. I can make excuses, like last year involving a bunch of personal stuff that took up most of my attention, and then the need to finish my new book. But I'll also admit that at first I wasn't sure how to tackle the issues the letter writer raised in a way that honored all of the feelings. There were many factors going on in a time of great crisis and I wanted to try to hold them all together. I kept batting around ways to approach it, until finally I realized Amar would be the perfect person to bring into the conversation. And as you will see, I was not wrong!

In our conversation, we tackle the breakup of a long monogamous relationship and the debut of a new polyamorous life, an international romance beset by war and geopolitics, and the sudden letdown of planned encounter canceled at the last minute. There are so many big feelings here that the letter brings up and each one could be the focus on its own conversation. Bringing them all together surely tangled up the writer who was trying to sort out a new phase of life and a new way of relating to lovers.

I hope the writer is still listening to the podcast and can find some support in our conversation here. It is likely that their life has moved on in ways, but perhaps there is some feeling lingering here that can find some reflection in our engagement. But of course, I imagine that our discussion will reach other listeners too.

With this letter episode, my wish is to spark some more correspondence. It hasn't been the focus of the most recent Breakup Theory shows, but it is one of my favorite things to do and I know listeners love to hear these discussions—whether they are the one who wrote or not. We are all getting hit hard out there. So please write, or tell your friends who are struggling to reach out.

You can leave us a message at (917) 426-6548 or use the form https://form.jotform.com/thebreakuptheory/stories (the latter is encrypted and anonymous). Or find me on Instagram @thebreakuptheory and DM me with your question. I really love hearing from you—and so do the other gay anarchists and friends who listen.

If you like this podcast, please rate it and follow it on the different apps where you listen to it. That does help boost the potential audience. Also, tell your friends too!

If you want to access more of my work, as well as the work of the wonderful carla joy bergman, Dani Burlison, and Vicky Osterweil, you can sign up for our newsletter at https://cawshinythings.com. If you subscribe, you will also get access to all of our articles, our discord server where we have discussion, movie nights, writing workshops, and book clubs, and more. Our podcasts, advice column, and zine and sticker library are always free. I am proud of the thing that we are building together, creating a support system for the lonely and often impoverished work of writing—and also finding new ways to engage with new people committed to collective thinking and writing.

If you want to reach any of us there, you can email [email protected]

I will be hosting a book club on our discord server June 3 at 5pm eastern on the queer anarcho-nihilist journal baedan (the first issue), a hugely influential text for me. Subscribe and join us, whether or not you read the book! Everyone is welcome!

As Amar says at the end, go find The Final Straw Radio. It is a long-running resource to learn about anarchist actions, struggles, analysis, and ideas. The show is so wide-ranging in its subjects and guests, it will surely open up your horizons. Plus, they make zines out of the transcripts of different episodes. You can print them out for the event you are tabling at. You can find them on any podcast app and select radio stations. But also support them at https://www.patreon.com/tfsr There are different tiers of membership that help fund the transcription. You can get gifts like zines, stickers, and pins. You can even get your zine sent to an incarcerated comrade.

You can find their tremendous back catalog at https://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/

If you search, you will see the episodes I contributed (under an old name).

I'm linking to a conversation we recorded with Vicky about a really interesting essay put out by Your Lazy Comrades in the year following the George Floyd uprising and another on misogyny in anti-fascist movements.

https://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/post/2022/04/10/the-interregnum-roundtable-with-vicky-osterweil/

https://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/post/2021/08/09/combating-movement-misogyny/

The Breakup Theory is a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts, which pulls together a wide variety of shows taking an anarchist perspective on culture, politics, actions, and more. Check them out at channelzeronetwork.com

Today I talk with the great writer and friend Megan Milks about their new essay collection Mega Milk, published this year by Feminist Press. I just have to say that Mega Milk by Megan Milks is maybe the best title/author combo that will ever exist. But beyond that amazingness, Megan's book contains many paths of exploration through milk both literal and metaphorical toward questions of names, transition, family history and dynamics, nourishment, connection, and human relationships with animals, agriculture, business, and land. The book is vulnerable, freaky, kinky, funny, and informative, all at once.

As I say to Megan, I find the genre of the personal essay to be one of the most difficult types of writing to pull off well. You need to find something singular enough to make broad connection with an array of readers, and often the most successful type nestles such a memoir inside a tangential impersonal narrative based in research and fact. With a book, there is typically a thematic line (here, milk) that is able to hold the essays together loosely without strangling them. The key is for the writer to open the essay up to all of the contingent possibilities while still maintaining a formal hand to guide the reader. It is not a genre I have delved much into, stopping immediately at the vulnerability.

One of the most interesting things to me about the trans personal essay collection in particular is how it gets at transition askew. It is not a transition narrative, from A to B (the classic kind). Nor is it a realist stylization of trans experience. Where transition comes in, it is in pieces, resisting linear time, often becoming incidental to the thoughts, feelings, and research of the writer. And yet, transness is somehow always there. I think it is an exciting place for trans literature to go, navigating out of the genre stereotypes that congeal every half decade or so.

As with names, which Megan and I discuss, there is perhaps a kind of ambivalence towards the representation of transness. I bring up Ralph Ellison's essay, "Hidden Name and Complex Fate," which ruminates on his near namesake, Ralph Waldo Emerson, placing Ellison into a particular relationship to American literature, a burden of an inheritance to take on as he also aimed to escape the nightmare of history into invisibility. The name works retroactively, creating meaning where maybe there was none. This pertains too to the trans narrative, told retroactively often with an attempt to make it seem fated from the beginning. Megan's name is not hidden, but they wrestle with its potential fatefulness, with transition coming in as a kind of freeing or loosening while still retaining that meaningful burden.

Okay, I'm getting all lit crit on you. And perhaps this veers away from Megan's own thinking here. So I will let Megan talk for themself in our conversation.

But first, I can't recommend this book enough, so pick it up at your favorite bookstore. Megan has two other books with Feminist Press, the novel, Maragaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body—which I loved so much as it plays with the kid detective genres of my childhood—and Slug, a collection of short stories. Get them all!

Megan is also out on book tour. If you listen to this when it comes out, you can still catch Megan in Chicago on April 10 at Women and Children First. Also 5/14 in Decatur, GA at Charis Books as part of Sam Ace's Meet Me There Series, with Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (another beautiful writer). And 6/11 in Boston at the Model Cafe - T4T Reading Series.

You can follow Megan on Instagram @sklimnegam . Megan often offers workshops, which you can learn about there.

Before we get into the conversation, I'll do my usual rundown of ways you can support this project.

If you like this podcast, please rate it and follow it on the different apps where you listen to it. That does help boost the potential audience. Also, tell your friends too! I love hearing from people about their thoughts—but as always any questions you might want us to tackle on the show. You can leave us a message at (917) 426-6548 or using the form https://form.jotform.com/thebreakuptheory/stories. Or find me on Instagram @thebreakuptheory and DM me.

If you want to access more of my work, as well as the work of the wonderful carla joy bergman, Dani Burlison, and Vicky Osterweil, you can sign up for our newsletter at https://cawshinythings.com. If you subscribe, you will also get access to all of our articles, our discord server where we have discussion, movie nights, writing workshops, and book clubs, and more. Our podcasts, advice column, and zine and sticker library are always free. I am proud of the thing that we are building together, creating a support system for the lonely and often impoverished work of writing—and also finding new ways to engage with new people committed to collective thinking and writing.

If you want to reach any of us there, you can email [email protected]

I will be hosting a book club on our discord server April 22 at 5pm eastern on the anarcho-nihilist book Blessed is the Flame by Serafinski. Subscribe and join us, whether or not you read the book!

The Breakup Theory is a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts, which pulls together a wide variety of shows taking an anarchist perspective on culture, politics, actions, and more. Check them out at https://channelzeronetwork.com

Today I am sharing a conversation I recorded with Elia Ayoub to discuss and analyze what is going on with the US-Israeli war on Iran. We recorded on Tuesday March 10, and events keep changing, but this conversation will still be relevant insofar as we look at the geopolitical causes and consequences. After Elia lays down the groundwork of the current situation, we discuss the complex politics among states, non-state groups, and civilians. One of the issues that I have continued to run into since the attacks on Iran first began is some people's utter confusion in how to place the state of Iran and its government in relation to anti-imperial struggle. It turns out you can be anti-Zionist and not pro-Ayatollah! Elia helps understand the authoritarian role of the Ayatollah, from the 1979 revolution onward, while also bringing us into similarly complex analysis of Lebanon and Hezbollah. Both Iran and Hezbollah have countered Israel with military force; and they have both done their own share of murder of populations and interventions on behalf of authoritarian regimes. We put all of this in the context of Israeli's continuing genocide of Gaza.

Elia provides some possible scenarios that could develop from the war continuing and also possible ways it might end or be stopped. As we experienced with Gaza, it seems to a certain extent that either the will of the US or a coalition of other European states is necessary to put an end to the violence. Iran has made some effective decisions that maximize its military and economic power against such terrible foes, and as Elia says, this whole scenario will likely end up realigning alliances in the region. As long as the US is willing to press on in this war, Israel will also deploy all of its might to continue its destruction with little regard for any life after. In the end, I think this is where we land: the war itself does not make much political or economic sense, and so for both Trump and Netanyahu it exemplifies a death drive that pairs genocide with ecocide and maybe even omnicide, as desalination plants are destroyed, for example. We don't know what the long ranging effects of this war will be on the people living in the area, but it won't be good—even if it ends now.

I'll stop there and let you listen to more of what Elia has to say.

If you don't know Elia already, I hope this conversation inspires you so seek more of his work out. Elia Ayoub is an anti-authoritarian historian, researcher and writer. He created The Fire These Times podcast, where he hosts conversations and provides commentary on the most important issues that we face in the anti-authoritarian struggle. He also offers masterclasses, such as his current course on Lebanon. He co-founded the worker-owned media collective From the Periphery, so Elia is pursuing similar aims as CAW. You may have already heard his collaboration with carla joy bergman on their anarchist Star Trek podcast, Resistance is Fertile. He holds a PhD in Cultural Analysis on postwar Lebanon and runs a newsletter on the region called Hauntologies. He is also the Encyclopaedia Lead at the Decolonial Centre. He can be found on Bluesky and Instagram.

Elia wanted to share some links to provide funds for Lebanon Emergency Relief. I will include them in the notes for the episode, along with all of the links to Elia's work.

The artwork I used for the episode image is "Iran-Iraq War" painted by the Kurdish former political prisoner and exile, Osman Ahmed in 1982.

Fundraisers:

https://www.chuffed.org/project/171933-lebanon-emergency-relief

BuJu https://www.instagram.com/p/DVovwUojIYq/?igsh=cHJoNTlxd2o3M29t

Before we get into the conversation, I'll do my usual rundown of ways you can support this project.

If you like this podcast, please rate it and follow it on the different apps where you listen to it. That does help boost the potential audience. Also, tell your friends too! I love hearing from people about their thoughts—but as always any questions you might want us to tackle on the show. You can leave us a message at (917) 426-6548 or using the form https://form.jotform.com/thebreakuptheory/stories. Or find me on Instagram @thebreakuptheory and DM me.

If you want to access more of my work, as well as the work of the wonderful carla joy bergman, Dani Burlison, and Vicky Osterweil, you can sign up for our newsletter at https://cawshinythings.com. If you subscribe, you will also get access to all of our articles, our discord server where we have discussion, movie nights, writing workshops, and book clubs, and more. Our podcasts, advice column, and zine and sticker library are always free. I am proud of the thing that we are building together, creating a support system for the lonely and often impoverished work of writing—and also finding new ways to engage with new people committed to collective thinking and writing.

If you want to reach any of us there, you can email [email protected]

The Breakup Theory is a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts, which pulls together a wide variety of shows taking an anarchist perspective on culture, politics, actions, and more. Check them out at https://channelzeronetwork.com

The links:

https://thefirethesetimes.com/

https://fromtheperiphery.com/

http://hauntologies.net/

https://decolonialcentre.org/

https://bsky.app/profile/ayoub.bsky.social

https://www.instagram.com/eliajayoub

Today's episode features a recording of the talk that Vicky Osterweil and I gave at the 2025 New York Anarchist Bookfair, called "How Do We Live Now?", where we discussed our CAW project and the way that anarchists can participate in the culture war. As Vicky reminds us in the talk, politics are downstream from culture. The seriousness of the left often leaves out the importance of culture—of making beautiful things that inspire and touch us, or that make life worth living—in favor of militating for a revolution. Like everything else, we need to wait until after the rev to attend to these things—or perhaps there will be no artistic pursuits at all. But the history of anarchism shows that culture is often a starting point for anarchists, and it provides a source of feeling that can create a whole world of pleasure and connection around us right now. If it wasn't important, the right wing and fascists would not have mounted decades of attack against these things we produce and that shape us—the so-called culture war that aims to destroy a source of radicalization. As we can often learn, there is usually truth in their attack against us, and rather than deny its importance, we can lean into the source of their fear as part of our refusal to reproduce us world, to turn the culture war into a social war.

It is always a pleasure and inspiration to talk with Vicky, so I, for one, enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you all do too. At the head, I just want to note that the sound quality is not at the normal level, you can also hear the room while we talk. This also means that my edits are a little rougher because there is no silence between our sentences. All this to say, there may be some difficulty in making out some phrases, but I still felt it was worth sharing. But apologies in advance for the lower quality.

I also want to note that I included our responses to audience questions, but cut out the questions themselves. I still think there is a coherence that you can follow in our responses. I'll mark the transition to questions, so that it doesn't seem to come from nowhere.

Here is the description we wrote for the workshop:

The right wing is correct: this is a culture war—and we cannot cede ground or meet them on their territory, unless we are ready to give in. In this CAW Writer Collective workshop, Vicky Osterweil and Shuli Branson will lead a conversation about the role of anarchist culture in fighting the current political forces using both their framework of culture war, or as we prefer to name it, social war. The question we pose—how do we live now?—aims to turn our attention towards the beauty we make every day in refusal, relationship, dreaming, and making life both individually and together. We will provide anarchist analysis of the obstacles and possibilities we face for collective action, emphasizing the creation of a wide and robust anarchist culture to create possibilities together against society. Art and analysis go hand in hand, and an often overlooked part of the anarchist project is a replacement of this social world of capital, the state, and empire with a culture of autonomy and collectivity: our bread and our roses. We have to destroy this world in order to truly sense the other worlds we have right in our hands.

Before we get into the conversation, I'll do my usual rundown of ways you can support this project.

If you like this podcast, please rate it and follow it on the different apps where you listen to it. That does help boost the potential audience. Also, tell your friends too! I love hearing from people about their thoughts—but as always any questions you might want us to tackle on the show. You can leave us a message at (917) 426-6548 or using the form https://form.jotform.com/thebreakuptheory/stories. Or find me on Instagram @thebreakuptheory and DM me.

If you want to access more of my work, as well as the work of the wonderful carla joy bergman, Dani Burlison, and Vicky Osterweil, you can sign up for our newsletter at https://cawshinythings.com. If you subscribe, you will also get access to all of our articles, our discord server where we have discussion, movie nights, writing workshops, and book clubs, and more. Our podcasts, advice column, and zine and sticker library are always free. I am proud of the thing that we are building together, creating a support system for the lonely and often impoverished work of writing—and also finding new ways to engage with new people committed to collective thinking and writing.

If you want to reach any of us there, you can email [email protected]

Also, Vicky has a new book coming out with Haymarket called The Extended Universe: How Disney Killed the Movies and Took Over the World. You can preorder it from the Haymarket website, or bookshop.org or wherever else you order books!

The Breakup Theory is a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts, which pulls together a wide variety of shows taking an anarchist perspective on culture, politics, actions, and more. Check them out at channelzeronetwork.com

In this episode, I talk to my eternal roommate, P, about his new book, God, Artificial Intelligence, and Me. This is a really ambitious text that weaves together personal history with the history of Christianity, colonialism, technology, warfare, and resistance. It is a beautiful object in itself, with illustrations and pictures and innovative layout of text. It looks like a monster of a tome (and it definitely encompasses a cosmos), but P tries to draw the reader in without overwhelming them. I strongly suggesting purchasing the book. And just by luck, P runs a distro, A Boulder on the Tracks (https://aboulder.com) where you can buy this book as well as his first book Resilience, Disaster, Elusion, A Damning History of Colonial New England, which delves into the history of the Northeast around the time of the American War for Independence, detailing "Native self-defense and African defiance to Caribbean pirates and mutinous servants." On the website, you'll see a great collection of books all sold on a sliding scale. To get God, Artificial Intelligence, and Me, you can email [email protected].

In the conversation, we touch on some of themes I just mentioned, but also get into other discussions about guilt and generations and possibilities of militancy. I won't go too deep into it now, it's a long enough conversation and yet we didn't hit everything we planned! I think we'll do another episode on the idea of the spectacle, coming soon.

Here's a little background on P: P. has lived in the midwest for most of his life. He was raised catholic and has spent many years trying to unpack that. In his latest book P tries to relate the estrangement caused by catholicism to the alienation baked into consumerism, science, and artificial intelligence. P. has been an anarchist since the start of the second Iraq War. He is currently a high school teacher struggling to subvert compulsory education as much as he can.

Before we get into the conversation, I'll do my usual rundown of ways you can support this project.

I have been told I need to do a bit more upfront promo, so if you like this podcast, please rate it and follow it on the different apps where you listen to it. That does help boost the potential audience. Also, tell your friends too! I love hearing from people about their thoughts—but as always any questions you might want us to tackle on the show. You can leave us a message at (917) 426-6548 or using the form https://form.jotform.com/thebreakuptheory/stories. Or find me on Instagram @thebreakuptheory and DM me.

If you want to access more of my work, as well as the work of the wonderful carla joy bergman, Dani Burlison, and Vicky Osterweil, you can sign up for our newsletter at https://cawshinythings.com. If you subscribe, you will also get access to all of our articles, our discord server where we have discussion, movie nights, writing workshops, and book clubs, and more. Our podcasts, advice column, and zine and sticker library are always free. I am proud of the thing that we are building together, creating a support system for the lonely and often impoverished work of writing—and also finding new ways to engage with new people committed to collective thinking and writing.

If you want to reach any of us there, you can email [email protected]

The Breakup Theory is a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts, which pulls together a wide variety of shows taking an anarchist perspective on culture, politics, actions, and more. Check them out at https://channelzeronetwork.com

You have been listening to The Breakup Theory.

Song excerpt credits -

The opening few bars from:

Paul McCartney and Wings - "Jet"

The Who - "Won't Get Fooled Again"

Pink Floyd - "Brain Damage"

Today I am presenting a talk that Simon(e) van Saarloos and I did, kind of as a followup to our last talk together at the NYC Art Bookfair, called "Living with Trans Despair." I'm going to give you the origin and details of the event before I present the edited recording of the event itself., so this is a bit of a long introduction.

The idea to make a sequel came in the initial planning of our first talk about Simon's book, Against Ag(e)ism, as we discovered we were both in the process of writing books dealing with despair.

The circumstances of the event were particularly special: a friend of ours and amazing artist, Phoebus Osborne, had a show up at the gallery Parent Company, a four channel video installation called oh it's my ass, it's my anus. Phoebus welcomed our talk into part of the series of events he was holding surrounding this exhibition. But to make the talk even more special, we framed it with poetry readings from two beautiful poets, Sahar Khraibani and Rebecca Teich , whose contributions provided a perfect bookend for our talk, which was also surrounded by the intensely beautiful environment created by Phoebus's installation.

To give a better sense of this solo work, I will provide a little description from Phoebus: The exhibition is comprised of an immersive multi-channel video installation that explores underground, interior environments as sites of resistance, intimacy, and imagination. Weaving together footage of limestone caves, cemeteries, bathroom DJ sets, queer beaches, and domestic spaces, the work creates a sensorial field. Within the gallery, sound reverberates and screens and projectors glow, creating a space for reverie for the viewer. The installation insists on interiority—not as a form of withdrawal, but as a radiant space of gathering and potential.

The text we wrote to open the talk was this: The liberal bumper sticker reads "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention." We could equally substitute despair for outrage. Things only seem to get worse, especially for trans people, pregnant people, undocumented people, poor people, racialized people, the list goes on. Whereas outrage is supposed to spur you to canvas and vote, despair is seen as an obstacle to the traditional possibilities of transformation. Taking instead a radical approach to despair, writers Simon(e) van Saarloos and Shuli Branson are working on respective projects that integrate queer nihilism with the openness of transition, delinking hope and change to operate in the shadows of a progressive rainbow that demands assimilation, rationality, and maturity. This discussion will engage the meeting point between Simon(e)'s forthcoming book Trans Despair (AK Press) and Shuli's Antidote to Despair (Pluto Press) through a look at the creative counterworlds of trans life.

Simon and I have found that we have very generative collaborations and conversation, so I hope you find this talk engaging too. It goes into many different places, following the train of our thoughts bouncing off one another. Of course, it doesn't have a resolution, but opens on to more questions. I have included our responses to audience questions at the end of the talk, but left out the questions themselves to maintain privacy.

Before giving you the talk, I want to provide a little more background on all of the people collaborating: You already know me of course, so I'll skip that.

Phoebus Osborne (b. 1984) is an artist based in Queens, NY. His practice engages material traces of nonlinear relationships through a matrix of film, sculpture, performance, drawing, writing, and sound. Extending from his lived experience with chronic pain, he contemplates the accelerating illnesses of the planet at large and considers how modes of relationship can empower resilience and enable repair. His works have been presented within the US and Europe, including commissioned works at Transmediale Berlin, La Caldera Barcelona, SFMoMA, Oakland Museum of California, Lenfest Center for the Arts, and The Poetry Project.

Simon(e) van Saarloos is the author of Against Ageism. A Queer Manifesto (2023); Take 'Em Down. Scattered Monuments and Queer Forgetting (2021) and Playing Monogamy (2019) as well as several books in Dutch. Their writing has appeared in co-edited volumes and academic journals and they also write fiction and theater. They are currently writing a new book for AK Press, titled Trans Despair: Staying Unrelated and Insecure. Van Saarloos also works as an independent curator of public programming and artistic collaborations.

Sahar Khraibani is a writer and artist whose work has been presented with Montez Press, The Brooklyn Rail, the Poetry Foundation, and the Poetry Project among others. Sahar is a recipient of the Creative Capital / Arts Writers Grant, a fellowship at The Poetry Project, a MacDowell Fellowship, a 2024 residency at Mass MoCA, and is an alumni of the Whitney Independent Study Program. Sahar teaches at Pratt Institute and is the author of Anatomy of A Refusal (1080PRESS, 2025) and ONE THOUSAND GHOSTS IN THIS FEAST (Wendy's Subway, 2025).

Rebecca Teich is a writer, curator, and PhD student in English at the CUNY Graduate Center. Teich is the recipient of the 2023 Graduate Student Paper Award from the CLAGS and is a 2023 and 2024 archival research fellow through the Lost & Found Archival Research Grant. Teich's writing has been featured in The Kitchen Magazine; Peach Magazine's Invitation to Form: Epic Mix; BOMB Magazine, The LA Review of Books, The Poetry Project Newsletter, and elsewhere. Teich's first chapbook, Caffeine Chronicles (2021), was published by Portable Press @ YoYo Labs and their collaborative pamphlet, "Shared Discernments," co-written with Kimberly Alidio, was published by 1080 Press in 2025.

If you want to access more of my work, as well as the work of the wonderful carla joy bergman, Dani Burlison, and Vicky Osterweil, you can sign up for our newsletter at https://cawshinythings.com. If you subscribe, you will also get access to all of our articles, our discord server where we have discussion, movie nights, writing workshops, and book clubs, and more. Our podcasts, advice column, and zine and sticker library are always free. I am proud of the thing that we are building together, creating a support system for the lonely and often impoverished work of writing—and also finding new ways to engage with new people committed to collective thinking and writing.

If you are interested, I will be leading a book club meeting to discuss Avgi Saketopoulou and Ann Pellegrini's Gender Without Identity on Wednesday January 14 at 5pm eastern. You are invited to subscribe and join, regardless of your reading of the book.

The Breakup Theory is a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts, which pulls together a wide variety of shows taking an anarchist perspective on culture, politics, actions, and more. Check them out at channelzeronetwork.com

In this episode, Caroline and I talk to the wonderful Dr. Jaime M. Grant, Sex and Intimacy Coach, Researcher, Writer, and longtime Activist. She has recently published Kink for Dummies, after her previous contribution to the series, Polyamory for Dummies. (Yes, it's that series!) Jaime has also written a book and been leading a workshop for many years around the world on mapping your desire, helping people get in touch with what they actually like and want and perhaps have not been able to access. Jaime has been involved in queer and racial justice movements for decades, as well as doing survivor support, research on trans discrimination and more. As you will hear, she is a passionate advocate and coach whose work really revolves around inspiring forms of connection through intimacy, relationship, and self-empowerment.

Talking with Jaime about kink, poly, and sex was extremely helpful to me for putting into perspective the role of queer sex and intimacy within struggle for liberation, autonomy, and the end of empire. I am always interested in the ways that our relationships reproduce the world around us, but I have sometimes wondered if sex as revolutionary is just a dream. (Perhaps I've taught too much Foucault). Our world is structured such that a process of self-discovery involves interrogating your sexuality and gender, so often getting caught up in the traps of identity that end up separating us or becoming modes of punishment. And even though we are told we have unique identities, we are still doing this work under social duress and shame, regardless of more expansive and visible queer communities, more attention to different ways of engaging in sex and relationship, and years of work that people like Jaime have done to support people in these discoveries. Polyamory plays a specific role within anarchist and anti-authoritarian perspectives as giving us ways to relate non-hierarchically, but as with queer love in general, can get caught up in should and should nots, or the miasma of endless processing.

Jaime brought a refreshing perspective, that really should be the first way we access these things. Her approach to creating space to discuss issues around sex and intimacy and to be frank about desire is supportive in a way that makes the possibility of naming the hidden and dark parts of you seem much easier. Listening to her wisdom and experience kind of gave me this feeling that things could actually be simpler, that this wisdom could be basic, and that we often make things too complicated. (Maybe that's just me).

I am a theory girl always getting tangled up, so I was also grateful that Caroline brought her professional and personal experience into conversation with Jaime to help contextualize the challenges that people face when trying to create new supportive relationships with poly or kink dynamics.

I was genuinely moved by this conversation, not just because of Jaime's kindness and passion, but by how clearly she was able to show the power of connection and relationship in changing the world—something I'm always thinking about but I can get pessimistic too. I hope you too find it inspiring to hear her practical perspective that helps simplify ways to open up or lives and even be kind to ourselves and the ones we love.

Jaime is accessible in many ways: You can find her at www.justsexpodcast.com, on instagram @jaimemgrant, on facebook J'aime Grant, or email [email protected]

Her books are out, and she is available for coaching!

If you want to access more of my work, as well as the work of the wonderful carla joy bergman, Dani Burlison, and Vicky Osterweil, you can sign up for our newsletter at https://cawshinythings.com. If you subscribe, you will also get access to all of our articles, our discord server where we have discussion, movie nights, writing workshops, and book clubs, and more. Our podcasts, advice column, and zine and sticker library are always free. I am proud of the thing that we are building together, creating a support system for the lonely and often impoverished work of writing—and also finding new ways to engage with new people committed to collective thinking and writing.

If you are interested, I will be leading a book club meeting on Emma Heaney's collection, Feminism against Cisness on November 19 at 5pm eastern. You are invited to subscribe and join!

The Breakup Theory is a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts, which pulls together a wide variety of shows taking an anarchist perspective on culture, politics, actions, and more. Check them out at www.channelzeronetwork.com

CW: This discussion mentions childhood sexual abuse

When Simon(e) van Saarloos invited me to be in conversation with them at the New York Artbook Fair surrounding their recently published Against Ageism: A Queer Manifesto (MACK Books), I was honored and excited. We had already been discussing recording a conversation for the Breakup Theory, so it was serendipitous that this event came along. I love doing the podcast, but it's really exciting for me to do public talks and get to engage directly with people. Simon and I met before the event and we found that we were able to really push each other's thinking into interesting and exciting places, so we anticipated a good conversation. It also turned out that we are both working on books about despair—theirs is the upcoming Trans Despair through AK Press. Mine will be out late next year . . . shhhh, it's a secret.

If you haven't yet had a chance to read Against Ageism, I'll give a brief set up. Simon writes in a hybrid personal, theoretical, and sometimes academic style (i.e. citations of academic work). This style really invites you in to their deep consideration of embodied existence, age, sex, and gender. The book is very provocative in many ways, which I'll allow you to hear about in our conversation. It turns out age is a very rich entry point into thinking about a whole tangle of things we take for granted about how we live. Of particular interest for me was the approach to different ways of thinking about time, crip time, linear time, racialized time, queer time all opposed to the cishetero narratives of growing up.

I have typically taken an approach to thinking about age from a perspective of youth and youth liberation, specifically addressing the situation of trans kids. In this book, Simon focuses a bit more on the so-called older ages, perception, and relationship—and also death and grief. All of these issues Simon intimately connects to sexuality and desire and the experience of transness and queerness they have had (and that other people might share and understand).

This episode comes directly from a recorded conversation at MoMA PS 1 in Queens, NY, so the format is different than normal episodes. I am grateful for MoMA PS 1 and Printed Matter (who hosted the bookfair) making this recording and sharing it with me.

Simon and I found this conversation so generative that we are planning another—so if you like this one, look forward to another on a different timeline.

Besides sharing this podcast and rating/following it, if you want to access more of my work as well as the work of the wonderful carla joy bergman, Dani Burlison, and Vicky Osterweil, you can find us at CAW where you can sign up for our newsletter at https://cawshinythings.com. If you subscribe, you will also get access to all of our articles, our discord server where we have discussion, movie nights, writing workshops, and book clubs, and more. Our podcasts, advice column, and zine and sticker library are always free.

The Breakup Theory is a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts, which pulls together a wide variety of shows taking an anarchist perspective on culture, politics, actions, and more. Check them out at https://channelzeronetwork.com.

CW: brief mention of suicidal ideation

Oh my god, we are so back! As with everyone, this has been a year of hell, or lead paint, or whatever, and I have only been able to release a few episodes. But let me tell you, I am sitting on a few waiting to be edited and have plans for more, getting back into a regular production.

For this episode, I invited the beautiful Dean Spade to respond to a listener letter with me. He has started up a podcast in the wake of his book, with the same name Love in a Fucked Up World, where has been discussing relationships and giving advice about how we can fight and love together better.

This letter came from someone who had a terrible experience with an accountability process and over the years this has caused them to become disenchanted with the ideas of transformative justice, prefigurative politics, community and life . . . It has gotten really bad for them. As Dean has many years of experience with TJ and accountability process, working with different groups in figuring out how to address conflicts, dealing with conflicts in his own groups, I thought that he would be a perfect person to think this through with.

We aren't able to solve the letter writer's problem of course, but we explore all the ways that it becomes difficult to deal with conflict, to lose faith in accountability and any kind of movement work, and how inability to figure out relationship issues derail us. We discuss the emotional spaces that all of these issues take us into, the trauma and pain we bring into each room, and the ways we get stuck perceiving others' perceptions of us.

I personally share a kind of pessimism on accountability with the letter writer (as you may know if you've read some of my work), while Dean offers a more capacious understanding: that transformative justice describes any situation where we don't involve cops, defer to any authority, and no one gets arrested. It isn't based on the success so much as the attempts to address conflicts. In this way, many of the problems come from high expectations, lack in skills in conflict or mediation, and lingering liberal models.

Some of the advice we do offer pertains more to how someone can try to find healing in themselves and do a process, including grieving, even when people are disappointing them, even alone. As always, I come down to letting people go, letting them and yourself off the hook, and trying to find the simplest soothing such as a hand on your chest.

I hope that the writer takes something from this. Their letter is already very insightful about the issue, and so that seems to me to be a step, not towards a reenchantment, but perhaps something else.

Just to give another content warning, there is brief mention of suicidal ideation and suicide in the letter.

If you want to support me and the making of this podcast, please go over to cawshinythings.com, my writer-worker collective CAW with carla joy bergman, Dani Burlison, and Vicky Osterweil. We offer a variety of things, some for paid subscription and some freely available. Podcasts, advice columns, stickers, zines and a regular roundup of our work comes with a free subscription. If you pay $5, you have access to all of our content, including a discord where we offer writing workshops, movie nights, and book clubs.

The Breakup Theory is part of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts, you can check all of the offerings out at channelzeronetwork.com