Hello!

It’s just us three this week, talking recent news (and some hot goss).

First, we discuss the suppressed vigil for the 32nd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre (6.4.1989) in Hong Kong. When thousands of police officers cordoned off the usual gathering place, Victoria Park, Hong Kong residents came up with creative ways to demonstrate, using cell phone flashlights and much else. (Remember: “Be water.”) We talk about contemporary meanings of Tiananmen in Asia and the rest of the world, the chilling effect of HK’s National Security Law, and the 1989 protesters’ demands not only for democracy but also a better life for Beijing’s working class (h/t Zhang Yueran). Bonus content: “A Day to Remember,” a short film on the suppression of public discussion about Tiananmen in China. 

Second, we unpack the right-wing bogeyman of critical race theory, legislative attacks on free speech in schools, and awful stories out of Kansas, Montana, and Pennsylvania. What’s the right’s bigger strategy here? Has the U.S. left failed by ceding “free speech” to conservatives? How dangerous are these currents, and what is to be done? Plus: white tears in Tammy’s middle-school social studies class.

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Tammy and Jay’s former comrades at The New Yorker are getting close to a strike. Please learn more, reach out to management, and sign up for news alerts!

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Friend of the pod, Jay, with Justice is Global, invites you to a free screening and discussion of “Call Her Ganda,” a documentary about Jennifer Laude, a Filipina trans woman who was murdered by a U.S. Marine—and the crew of activists who fight back.

The Zoom discussion will take place on June 10, with filmmaker PJ Raval, Filipino trans rights advocate Naomi Fontanos, and representatives of Malaya Movement and GABRIELA. (The film will be made available 24 hours beforehand.)

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If you’re into storytelling across media, join Jay, Andy, and Tammy (and other friends of the pod) on June 26 for the Page Turner conference at the incredible Asian American Writers’ Workshop. Register here, and use discount code: FRIENDOFAAWW!

Thanks for listening and reading! Please support us (and join our absurdly lively Discord!) at Patreon or Substack, and send questions and comments to [email protected] or @TTSGPod.

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Hello!

Special guest this week. Ocean Vuong, a poet, novelist, essayist, and the author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. Ocean has won the Whiting Award, the T.S. Eliot Prize, and was recently a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient.

Jay and Ocean talked about Mixed Martial Arts, Ocean’s novel, and whether one can be a writer and a Buddhist at the same time. The conversation went to completely unexpected places — lots of discussion about Wang Wei, Ezra Pound, Gary Snyder, and Anderson Silva.

Ocean’s novel is out in paperback this week, so pick it up!

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Andy talks with Vinson Cunningham (New Yorker) and Jane Hu (UC-Berkeley English and Film) about the HBO show Mare of Easttown -- a.k.a. “Murder Durdur” -- which concludes its run this Sunday. We’re hooked, and we can’t figure out why!

*Warning: this episode includes spoilers!* 

* Why are we all obsessed with this show about “specific whites” in the downwardly-mobile Pennsylvania suburbs?

* Why the appeal of regional accents?

* (Philly accent Youtube recs: Tina Fey, James McAvoy, Kate Winslett)

* Does the show have clear politics? Does it redeem the police?

* How successfully does it blend multiple genres (cop show, family sitcom, YA romance) into one? 

* Does the show say something interesting about race and gender?

* Comparisons to The Wire, Twin Peaks, Law & Order, The Undoing &c.

* Finally, we reveal who actually killed Erin McMenamin??

Please share, contact us, and subscribe!

* Email: [email protected]

* Twitter + DM: https://twitter.com/ttsgpod

* Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ttsgpod

* Substack: https://goodbye.substack.com/p/support-the-show-through-substack

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Hey, sports fans!

A break from the news cycle with our friend, Vinson Cunningham, a theatre critic at The New Yorker, playwright, novelist, and all-around lovely guy.

We talk about the NYC mayoral race (race/authenticity politics), basketball (the architecture of MSG; the LeBron effect; Jokic, Luka, and European style), and how the theatre world has survived the pandemic (read Vinson on virtual theatre and his recent review of a piece in Tammy’s neighborhood).

Speaking of incredible performances:

Thanks for listening and supporting the pod! Please stay in touch, and see you in the Discord!

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Hello!

We’re back in a new arrangement (Andy and Tammy this time) for our second of two episodes on what’s happening in Palestine. Our special guest is Esmat Elhalaby, a post-doc at UC Davis who will soon join the faculty of the University of Toronto.

Esmat tells us about his family ties to Palestine, especially Gaza, the scope of recent bombings by Israel, and what is excluded and silenced by the US media’s framing. He also places US actions—and Americans’ evolving views—in the context of broader global support for the Palestinian people and explains why we should revisit and revive histories of internationalism.

Finally, we discuss the poet Rashid Hussein, the late Edward Said’s seminal book Orientalism, the metaphor of Palestine for “the east,” and the historical possibilities and limits for pan-Asian + Asian-American + anti-colonial solidarity — all covered in + inspired by Esmat’s recent essay about the new biography of Edward Said.

Some recommendations from Esmat for more reading:

* “This time it’s different” by Ahmed Abu Artema Electronic Intifada

* “Protests by Palestinian citizens in Israel signal growing sense of a common struggle,” Maha Nassar The Conversation

* Teach-in “Palestine in Resistance: Voices of Anticolonial Mobilization”: https://www.facebook.com/ArabStudiesUH/videos/753092018711925

* An account from Haifa, by Muhannad Abu Ghosh: https://ctjournal.org/2021/05/20/haifa-war/

* Coverage of Gaza from the Middle East Research and Information Project: https://merip.org/2021/05/revisiting-merip-coverage-of-gaza-jerusalem-and-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict/

* @JehadAbusalim on Twitter 

Thanks for listening. You can support us (and join our thriving Discord!) at Patreon or Substack, and send questions and comments to [email protected] or @TTSGPod.

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Hello!

This week we talked with Joshua Leifer, an editor at Jewish Currents, about the ongoing military violence against Palestinian communities in Gaza this past month (for those keeping track, Josh helped organize that Jewish Current-TTSG webinar from two weeks ago!)

(Tammy unfortunately had to sit out today’s episode with a last-second conflict 😔 )

We talk to Josh about his recently co-authored explainer on the clashes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, resistance from Palestinian groups and the Israeli Left, and the role of Biden and US (and international) solidarity.

We also discuss his colleague Peter Beinart’s essay “Teshuvah: A Jewish Case for Palestinian Refugee Return.”

Also: does 2021 represent a turning point in debates over Israel/Palestine in the US? Comparisons and connections to BLM and other protests against settler colonialism worldwide? And Josh’s personal experiences navigating Jewish-American debates, Zionism and anti-Zionism, and diasporic internationalist organizing.

Other links from the conversation + recommendations for further reading:

* +972 Magazine: https://www.972mag.com/

* Nathan Thrall NYT on the Boycott-Divest-Sanctions (BDS) movement and the Democrats 

* The late Palestinian writer Edward Said’s prescient (1999) essay on “The One-State Solution” 

* Human Rights Watch’s Apartheid Report on Palestine (2021)

* Peter Beinart on Biden's Israel record

* Tareq Baconi's writing at the New York Review of Books

Please share, contact us, and subscribe!

* Email: [email protected]

* Twitter + DM: https://twitter.com/ttsgpod

* Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ttsgpod

* Substack: https://goodbye.substack.com/p/support-the-show-through-substack

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credit: @penpencildraw

Hello!

Andy here with a Friday episode in discussion with historian Meghna Chaudhuri (NYU, Boston College) on the COVID disaster currently unfolding in India: the officially reported death count is 240,000 but may actually be more than one million.

Meghna and I talk about what everyday life has been like for her, quarantining with family in Kolkata during this second wave, which broke out last month -- from the free-for-all search for treatments and hospital supplies to navigating misinformation around vaccines and medicines. 

We also assess the past year of governance by the ruling party BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi; why this wave is not just a natural but also political disaster; the BJP’s longstanding “anti-science” stance and the appeal of the BJP’s perverted anti-imperialism in an economically stagnant India; misinformation in both corporate and social media (“Whatsapp Uncles”); and why we should probably not expect an international panacea to save India in the short-term (e.g., the TRIPS waiver) and instead focus on some very basic questions about competent local governance.

Some further reading:

* “India’s COVID-19 Emergency” in The Lancet

* “A Report Card on the End Times Brought Upon Us by Hindutva” by Meena Kandasamy in The Wire (India)

* “Parking Lot Crematoria Burn Through the Night as Covid-19 Overwhelms Delhi” by Fahad Shah in The Nation

And for those looking to contribute from abroad, Meghna suggested some avenues for (more) direct assistance could be found at Mutual Aid India

*Had a few audio issues with this one — sorry! I tried my best to edit out the weird feedback noises but not all could be fixed.

Please share, contact us, and subscribe!

* Email: [email protected]

* Twitter + DM: https://twitter.com/ttsgpod

* Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ttsgpod

* Substack: https://goodbye.substack.com/p/support-the-show-through-substack

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Hello! 

A long but focused discussion this week—on two new essays that attempt to write recent history.

First, Tobi Haslett’s “Magic Actions” (n+1), recovering the explosive potential of last year’s George Floyd uprising, institutional attempts to domesticate it, and ongoing struggles for abolition and Black liberation. 

Second, Brendan O’Connor’s “When the Party’s Over” (The Baffler), a look at social-democratic politics after the thrill and demise of the Bernie campaign, the drudgery of party work, politician fandom, and finding a (new) base for socialism in 2021. 

ICYMI: Our conversation with the good folks at Jewish Currents, archived on YouTube:

Thanks to everyone who came to our picnic in Brooklyn on May 2! And thanks also to our listeners who gathered for a hike, book chat, and carbs in Los Angeles this past weekend!

Support our pod (and join the Discord!) at Patreon or Substack, and be in touch with questions and comments via [email protected] or @TTSGPod.

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Hello!

This is Jay. This week, we have my conversation with sociologist, writer, and data artist Tamara K. Nopper. She’s been an invaluable resource for me for years now — if I ever actually sound like I know what I’m talking about, it’s likely because of something Tamara sent me to read over the years. Today, we talk about this moment that I’ve been fascinated with for years — what happened after ‘92, not just in terms of what happened on the ground in Black and Korean communities, but also within the academy, where a seemingly new type of scholarship emerged to make sense of it all.

We talk about that, Korean banks, “the secret history” of Third Worldism, and a whole lot more. There’s a lot we agree about but also a lot we disagree about on these topics.

Tamara recently did a great talk with our friends at the Asian American Writer’s Workshop. Watch it!

Tamara also edited ‘We Do This ‘Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice,’ a book of Mariame Kaba’s writings and interviews (Haymarket Books), and researched and wrote several data stories for Colin Kaepernick’s Abolition for the People series.

——

Thanks to everyone who made it out to the inaugural TTSG picnic this past weekend! We had a huge turnout. And thanks again to everyone who joined in our first book club, where we discussed Alien Capital. The building of the community both on the discord and on social media has been really overwhelming. If you’d like to join, please either subscribe to the newsletter on Substack or on patreon at patreon.com/ttsgpod.

thanks!

Jay

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Hello from the AAPI Oscars!

This week, we begin with a guessing game from George Mason University’s “Speech Accent Archive” (thanks, listener Jai Kang!). Join us and guess along as we make horribly essentialist assumptions about Asian accents (h/t danyo and sansmouton!). 

In our main segment, we dig into the murderous policy of global vaccine apartheid. We first discussed this topic back in November, and things have only gotten worse, with India being the most visible site of a world-historical crisis.

To guide our conversation, we rely primarily on a recent piece by Alexander Zaitchik at The New Republic that explains how Bill Gates, the Gates Foundation, Big Pharma, and global intellectual-property rules have brought us to this point. How should we understand this moment in the context of the last 30 years? Can ordinary people defeat supra-state oligarchs?

Links:

* Contrary to what Gates has said, there are, in fact, many capable vaccine factories around the world waiting to be mobilized (thanks, listener Stephen Buranyi).

* The WTO is debating a temporary waiver to the IP regime known as TRIPS. Will the Biden administration listen to the will of the people?

SAVE THE DATE!

On Monday, May 3, at 7pm ET, we’ll be doing a free event with our friends at Jewish Currents magazine (we subscribe!).

Please register here and join us in exploring the possibility of diasporic internationalism against the backdrop of US imperial decline!

And, as always, support our pod (and join the Discord!) at Patreon or Substack. You can send questions and comments to [email protected] or @TTSGPod.

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