Hello from South Korea’s sad World Cup cheering section! 

This week, we talk about the unrest in China with Dr. Ting Guo, a scholar at the University of Toronto who studies religion, politics, and gender in transnational Asia. Ting is also great on Twitter and co-hosts a Mandarin podcast called "in-betweenness" (@shichapodcast).

[7:50] The protests in mainland China—and, in solidarity, throughout the world—began late last month, after an apartment fire killed ten people in the city of Urumqi and workers at a Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou scaled the factory fence. Protestors have expressed anger and grief about the country's Zero-COVID policy and much else besides. Ting situates this movement(?) within a long history of resistance—from Tiananmen to the Toilet Revolution to Bridge Man—while explaining why it also feels so unprecedented. We talk about the leadership of feminists and queer activists in recent mobilizations, the emblematic struggle of migrant laborers in China’s surveillance system, solidarity with Uyghurs, and the long-held anguish that imbues every white-paper gesture. (Check out Eli Friedman’s terrific Boston Review essay for more context.) How has transnational and intersectional support helped to widen the protestors’ aims? 

If you’d like to follow the protests, Ting recommends: 

公民日报 Citizens Daily CN

Chinese queers will not be censored.

和姐妹们颠覆父权暴政 We Are All Chained Women 

北方广场 Northern Square 

女权中国 Feminist China

As Jay mentions at the end of the episode, he and his wife are expecting a second kid any day now (yay!), so we may be off the air over the holidays. We’ll make sure to keep you posted here, in Discord, and on social media. 

Thanks for your support. Please subscribe on Patreon or Substack, stay in touch via email ([email protected]), and follow us on Twitter—and now Instagram and TikTok! 

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Hello from the picket lines! 

This week, Jay and Tammy report on labor actions on the streets of Berkeley and Seoul. 

[4:30] First, Jay tells us what he’s heard from striking student workers at the University of California. More than forty-five thousand UAW union members are drawing attention to their financial precarity and austerity in academia. We parse the possible fault lines among this remarkably large group of workers: the relative resources and prestige of different UC campuses, disciplinary biases, and disparate access to jobs after graduation. Why should we believe universities’ pleas of poverty, when their money so clearly goes to bloated administrative positions, campus police, and extravagant sports facilities? 

[38:58] We also discuss strikes at Starbucks, The New School, and HarperCollins, and the revived possibility of a rail strike next month. Something’s clearly in the air—will US labor law and the NLRB limit or bolster worker power? 

[45:27] Next, Tammy fills us in on the annual labor rally in Seoul, which, this year, targeted President Yoon Suk Yeol’s malfeasance and the mass deaths in Itaewon. As the new administration promises to concentrate wealth even further and avoids interacting with the public, how should the Korean working class respond? What kind of government is the Yoon administration, and what is the government for, anyway? 

[53:02] Lastly, we remember Staughton Lynd, a key leftist intellectual and organizer who passed away last week. Lynd and his wife, Alice, were key figures in movements for civil rights and labor and against incarceration and war. RIP. 

Next week, we’ll be taking a break from recording. Our next episode will be a live recording with Hua Hsu, so be sure to pick up his book—and please join us in person next week, if you’re in NYC!

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Hello from the Matt Levine fan club! 

This week, the writer and editor Max Read returns to discuss the disintegration of the tech world. 

2:45 – First, Max and Jay explain what happened to cryptocurrency exchange FTX, founded by Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), and how its calamitous end has eroded people’s faith in crypto. We marvel at FTX’s narrative arc (“Star Wars” and a Bahamian polycule!), the social network that enabled SBF’s messianic rise, and the material conditions in tech-business journalism. Plus: Did SBF’s obsession with effective altruism (or, as Tammy puts it, the Davos-ification of philosophy) inoculate him against criticism? 

38:50 – Speaking of Silicon Valley founder fetish… we then turn our attention to the train wreck of Twitter under Elon Musk. Could this disastrous moment in tech workers’ rights shift the industry’s (and especially Twitter’s) stance on unions? Or will downsizing keep workers in their place? Which of the Max’s predicted paths will Twitter take, and what would its death mean for the left and for journalism? 

Support TTSG by subscribing via Patreon or Substack, following us on Twitter (lol), and sharing the show with friends. You can always reach us by email at [email protected]. 

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

Hello from the decline of the West! 

This week’s episode features a wonderful conversation with Minh-Ha T. Pham, a professor at Pratt who researches fashion labor under global capitalism and digital capitalism—and whose new book, Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, is out now. 

3:45 – We begin by reminiscing about the era of the fashion blogger (including Minh-Ha herself) and the role that young, transnational Asians played as cultural intermediaries for historically exclusive, white brands. Is there a link between them and Asian garment workers? How did those unpaid “creatives” pave the way for the continued casualization of fashion labor on social media? 

31:50 – We also discuss the problem of fast fashion and the racialized way it’s often discussed. The Chinese company Shein is widely portrayed as the worst offender, as was the Korean-American-owned Forever 21 in its heyday. Minh-Ha questions that framing: In a global fashion economy that requires low wages to boost profits and encourages insatiable consumption at great environmental cost, does it make sense to zero in on these budget (Asian) brands? And do these narratives assume that some countries can only “develop” if their workers are underpaid to produce our clothes?  

Plus, an answer to the question you didn’t know you had about Prada and sequins. 

Subscribe (via Patreon or Substack) to join the TTSG Discord and to attend Tammy’s upcoming meet-up with listeners in Cambridge, Mass.! And don’t forget to RSVP for our December 1 event in NYC with Hua Hsu. As always, you can reach us on Twitter or by email at [email protected]. Thanks for listening! 

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

Hello from Jay’s trick-or-treating route! 

This week, Jay listened to hours of affirmative-action arguments from the Supreme Court so that you (and we) didn’t have to. He recounts Ketanji Brown Jackson’s sharp line of questioning and lays out the progressives’ Catch-22. Does a third path reveal itself if we deny Harvard and its peers their institutional, “meritocratic” power? Is it true that Asian Americans are actually given a leg up in some academic environments? 

Next, we hear from Tammy, in Korea, following the horrific crowd crush that killed more than 150 people in Seoul’s Itaewon neighborhood over Halloween weekend. We discuss the role of government negligence and the rage and grief reminiscent of the Sewol ferry disaster. Tammy explains what makes Itaewon such a special neighborhood, especially for young people and minorities in Seoul. What will it represent going forward? 

Finally, we honor the great people’s historian Mike Davis, who died on October 25. We revisit his classic, “Fortress L.A.,” which appears as Chapter 4 in City of Quartz (currently available as a free Ebook from Verso or, if you prefer to listen, as an audiobook through your local library on Libby.) We also discuss his more recent pieces on foreign policy and organizing, and the huge gap that he and the late Barbara Ehrenreich leave behind. We’ll continue to learn from Mike and follow his advice to take to the streets. 

If you missed our early episode with Mike, you can listen here or read the transcript.

Join us on December 1, in NYC, for our TTSG + Hua Hsu live recording at NYU! It’s free and in a large theatre, so bring your friends and fam. RSVP here! 

If you want to support our show, you can subscribe via Patreon or Substack and follow us on Twitter. You can also reach us by email at [email protected]. 

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

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Hello from Tammy’s mysterious trip to Korea! 

In this bonus ep, we answer questions from our beloved subscribers. Thank you for getting us to ponder:  

* The political dimensions of K-12 school lotteries

* A post-affirmative action world

* Midterm election hotspots (plus: the effects of labor power and anti-Asian sentiment) 

* What Tammy and Jay have learned from ea…

Hi from the science desk! 

Jay and Tammy chat this week with a very special guest, eco-apocalypse reporter Kendra Pierre-Louis. Her work has appeared on the How to Save a Planet podcast (RIP) and in The Atlantic and The New York Times, among other places. 

Kendra tells us about her non-traditional path to journalism, the trouble with climate journalism in many newsrooms, and the burden and opportunities of being a Black reporter on the “gloom beat.” How do we make environmental collapse feel real and personal to ordinary people? What is the shape and utility of climate protests, from the “eco-terrorism” of the ‘80s and ‘90s to the high-profile actions of the past few weeks? Plus: Pitbull’s eco-anthems, the climate B plot on “Partner Track,” and why Kendra continues to abhor mayonnaise. 

A sad note: the incredible Mike Davis has passed on. We were lucky to know him a bit and have him on the show. What a life. 

+ RSVPs open this afternoon for the TTSG + Hua Hsu live recording at NYU, December 1! It’s free and in a large theatre, so bring your friends and fam. Whoo!

+ A bonus ask-us-anything ep is out later this week! Mai makes her debut appearance, and Jay and Tammy reveal all their secrets. Subscribe via Substack or Patreon to get it in your feed. 

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

Hello from Tammy’s surfing hagwon! 

This week, we’re celebrating 1 MILLION DOWNLOADS! Sounds fake, we know, but Substack doesn’t lie. Thanks for tuning in to our ramblings for the past two and a half years—long live TTSG!

At the top of the show, we listen to a posthumous podcast with New Yorker editor John Bennett and several of his writers. We reflect on “Bennettisms” about the editor-writer relationship and how writers can help their readers. 

Next, Tammy reports on the heightened military tensions in Korea and across Asia. What makes this moment feel different in a region accustomed to confrontation and nuclear threats? How has the mainstream response to these threats shifted? And what does the war in Ukraine mean for state sovereignty and Cold War alignments? Plus: Korea’s most economically valuable young men (BTS) report for mandatory military service. 

Last, we go long on the L.A. City Council mess. As we discussed briefly last week, three council members and a union leader were caught making racist remarks in a closed-door discussion last year about redistricting. We dig into the deeper political arrangement in L.A. and the good and bad of ethnic solidarity. Could this incident, which has confirmed some cynical suspicions about local politics, be an earthquake moment that leads to stronger coalitions along race and class lines? Will this turn Jay and Tammy into Republicans? 

Next week, we’ll be recording a 🎉BONUS EP 🎉 for paid subscribers where we answer listener questions. Subscribe via Patreon or Substack to submit your questions and hear the episode! 

Also: Tomorrow, 10/20, at 6:30pm ET, Jay will join historian Erika Lee, New Yorker editor Michael Luo, and NYU’s Rachel Swarns to discuss anti-Asian violence and the complexity of America’s racial divide. Register here!

As always, you can follow us on Twitter and email us at [email protected]. 

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

Hello from a U.S. neocolony! 

It’s just Tammy and Jay this week, trying not to obsess over surfing and wallpaper. 

We talk about the new Netflix show, “Mo,” which, despite its marketing, avoids many pitfalls of the mainstream immigrant tale. The show succeeds on account of its main character: the very flawed yet charismatic Mo, a Palestinian-American man with a pending asylum case, played by comedian and show creator Mo Amer. We also dig into what makes the city of Houston such a compelling and complex co-star. (Jay wrote about “Mo” for The New Yorker.) 

Next, Tammy reveals her steadfast love of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and mini-reviews the band’s new album (tl;dr: <3). We use Karen O’s return as an occasion to talk Asian American rockers, from the Smashing Pumpkins, Linkin Park, and DJ Honda to Mitski, Japanese Breakfast, Thao Nguyen, and the Linda Lindas. 

For our main segment, we discuss today’s grievance-driven identity politics, as analyzed in two recent pieces: Arielle Angel’s “Beyond Grievance” in Jewish Currents, and Brian Morton’s “Against the Privilege Walk” in Dissent. Are we stuck in an Oppression Olympics that undermines coalitional politics? How do these anxieties manifest online and in mainstream political reporting (versus IRL)? Can we combat such narcissism while taking grief seriously? 

We also touch on the racist remarks from L.A. City Council members and a union leader that leaked this week. 

Tune in this Thursday, 10/13, to hear Tammy talk about the U.S. military presence in Asia, along with journalist and unionist Jonathan de Santos in the Philippines, and author Akemi Johnson (on Okinawa) in California. Register here! 

If you want to support our show, you can subscribe via Patreon or Substack and follow us on Twitter. You can also reach us by email at [email protected]. 

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

Hello from Mexico City! 

This week, we talk about the Iranian uprising with Kiana Karimi, a scholar, writer, and friend of the pod who has been active in the fight for women’s rights in Iran and its diaspora. 

But first, in other feminist news, Jay catches Tammy up on the latest high-stakes poker controversy, with its wonderful 🤢🤑 mix of money and misogyny. 

Kiana begins by reading from an essay in progress about the current unrest in Iran. Thousands of people across the country have been protesting since mid-September, after the morality police allegedly killed Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman taken into custody for improperly wearing her hijab. Kiana explains the political history of such rules, the government's idea of a modern Islamic utopia (which has led to fairly frequent periods of rebellion), and the complicated position of Muslim feminists in regards to the wearing of hijab. Also, what else are the protests about? And what does it mean that so many conservative Muslim men have joined fearless young people in the streets? 

Thanks as always for your support! Please subscribe on Patreon or Substack, stay in touch via email ([email protected]), and follow us on Twitter. 

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe