Workers' Lit

The American ruling class is at war.

Physically, they are at war with Iran, pummeling the country with unrelenting airstrikes, slaughtering civilians, and doing their best to make yet another nation unlivable.

But they are fighting another war: a psychological war against every one of us. They are building a world of declining literacy, misinformation, confusion, and fear.

Combine those two wars and you get an apathetic American populace even as its own country murders untold innocents

Breht O’Shea of RevLeft joins Aysha, Jen, and Jacob to discuss these dual wars and how we can fight back.

Check out RevLeft here or wherever you get your podcasts!

Note: due to the urgency of the events of the Iran War we switched episode release order this week, releasing the politics episode on March 2 with our literature episode (on The Hunger Games) slated for March 4. Be ready for that!

Lenore and Jen are joined by Rae of ProlesPod to discus Gabriel Rockhill's new book, "Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism?" You may be asking: what is a piper? Well, that part's not important.

What IS important is the way the CIA and other U.S. government forces spent the 20th century infiltrating the media and every level of academia, squelching dangerous opposition, promoting capitalist propaganda, and even bolstering controlled left opposition that posed no threat to U.S. empire.

ProlesPod is a podcast about history, politics, and culture... without the liberalism. You can listen to ProlesPod here or wherever you get your podcasts.

If this episode interests you, why not go check out the book itself? You can buy it here.

Last time we covered Stephen King, we were walking a long ways. Now we're running. We're speeding up, folks!

Today we're covering King's 1982 dystopian novel, "The Running Man." Joining us are Evan and Bill from the "Left of the Projector" podcast. Together, we'll get mad at how clearly Stephen wrote this book in just one week and then...didn't fix it.

Topics include the fetishization of the working class, super-individualism, King's recurring bigotries, and 9/11.

If you're wondering if there's a version of this story we like, you're in luck! In just a few days a pt 2. about the 2025 Edgar Wright adaptation will be up on Left of the Projector feed, ft. Aysha, Lenore, and Jacob, so go over there and subscribe to those fine folks to be ready to hear it!

Listen to Left of the Projector here or wherever you get your podcasts

It's a bonus interview with the great science fiction author, Nick Mamatas!

We talk about Nick's new book, the horrors of Silicon Valley, and Shakespeare adaptations.

Don't miss out: go get your copy of "Kalivas! Or Another Tempest" right now.

You can follow him on Bluesky @nmamatas.bsky.social

2026 is an election year, and we have no intention of ignoring it!

We are joined by candidate for Governor of Georgia, Representative Ruwa Romman.

Ruwa represents GA’s 97th House of Representatives district in Gwinnett County and is the first Muslim and Palestinian woman to ever be elected to the GA House of Representatives. She is a long time organizer, served as a delegate of the Uncommitted movement in 2024, and has a plan to build an affordable, better Georgia for ALL, not just the 1%.

In this conversation we hit on hot-button issues such as internal Democratic Party conflict, police and ICE brutality, overcoming identity-based gaps in building a winning coalition, and the importance of building a mass movement that will not only bring good candidates into office, but govern alongside them and hold them accountable.

Not from Georgia? No worries, this conversation has something for everyone!

Want to read more about, donate to, and/or volunteer to the Ruwa Romman Campaign? Check out her website here!

https://www.ruwaforgeorgia.com/

Episode art comes from AP photo of Representative Ruwa Romman.

We promise we're super mature with Philip K. Dick's last name. Mostly.

This week we're taking on Philip K. Dick's 1956 sci-fi novelette, "The Minority Report." What if you could solve crime before it happens? What if said process led to a lot of violence and exploitation? What if you dealt with all that that while worrying that your wife was cheating on you with your hotter assistant? That's more or less the vibe here.

We go further and discuss science fiction's broader contribution (positive and negative) to our culture's political imagination, and think about the future of the genre.

We couldn't have done this without our remarkable guests: Dalton and Dylan of The Pod Universe. If you like cool sci-fi, great podcast, and boundless creativity, you'll love their work. After all, they're making a whole cinematic universe...in podcast form!!

Check out The Pod Universe here.

Can you kill a country with hardly anyone noticing? The Trump Administration intends to try with Cuba.

In this episode we examine the criminal blockade on Cuba, and the way knowledge of it is essentially non-existent among Americans. Plus, we touch on different levels of information warfare based on class strata, Marco Rubio's plots, and...Elmo's feud with Taylor Swift??

Support the Let Cuba Live Campaign here:

https://www.letcubalive.info/

Articles quoted in this episode:

https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/cuba-united-states-oil-blockade-trump-mexico-claudia-sheinbaum

https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/marco-rubio-is-deliberately-blocking

Elmo v. Rocco:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgyAWij3SLk

Episode art features a political cartoon by Carlos Latuff

Gay. Gothic. Romantic. I know you’re already cheering, and you should be, because we’re covering Vincent Verga’s 1980 novel “Gaywyck.”

Why must breathy bodice rippers feature only the heteros? There’s plenty of good gay drama to be had, and gay drama Gaywyck delivers.

We discuss the genre of the gothic romance, the groundbreaking nature of Verga’s willingness to not pull punches, and the place weird queer fiction like this is situated in the narrative.

Cover art comes from the original publication of Gaywyck.

This is a really, really, REALLY cool guest.

Today we are joined by Talia Bhatt, writer and radical trans-feminist whose work covers epistemic injustice, Third World feminism, and ranked competitive breast growth (yes, she has RANGE!)

Want to know more? Just listen! She’ll explain it better than we can.

You can find info on all of Talia’s work (including her new book, “Brown/Trans/Les”) at her website below:

https://taliabhatt.com/

What's more literary than talking about one piece of literature? Talking about the very nexus from which literature flows!

Today we sat down with Dave Ring of Neon Hemlock, an independent press for speculative fiction, rad zines, and queer chapbooks.

Discussion topics range from the mission of Neon Hemlock to the state of publishing in the Age of Slop to the importance of queer art.

Links to check out the things we mention in this episode:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/davering/what-elegant-stars

https://www.neonhemlock.com/books/bitten-peach

https://www.neonhemlock.com/books/cyberscion

https://www.neonhemlock.com/books/shatter-the-sun

https://www.bafflingmag.com/issue-twenty-two/crowdfund-your-new-citizen-body-a-performance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing