Time To Say Goodbye

Hello! Today for the holiday weekend, we have Nancy Fraser, the Henry and Louise Loeb Professor of Political and Social Science at the New School. She has written widely on feminism, injustice, the problem with identity politics, and neoliberalism. Her most recent books are Cannibal Capitalism and The Old is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born , both of which were published by Verso. We revisited an...

Hello! Today we have Jamie Lauren Keiles, the author of an upcoming book about the rise of nonbinary identity in America, back on the show. We talk about the thinly veiled post mortems by some within the Democratic coalition to abandon 'the whole trans thing,' the history of how trans rights became such a large part of the country's political conversation, and much more. If you want to follow Jami...

Hello! Today we brought back our polling experts Ben Recht, a professor of computer science at UC Berkeley and Leif Weatherby, a professor of German and the founding director of the Digital Theory Lab at NYU. We set out to really talk about one question: Can we trust these polls and were they right or wrong? Then we talked a lot about how campaigns think and how our data driven society leads to a...

Hello! Today we brought back our polling experts Ben Recht, a professor of computer science at UC Berkeley and Leif Weatherby, a professor of German and the founding director of the Digital Theory Lab at NYU. We set out to really talk about one question: Can we trust these polls and were they right or wrong? Then we talked a lot about how campaigns think and how our data driven society leads to a...

Tyler and Jay talk about the distressing results with Trump at 92% to win on the needle, what might happen for the Democrats in the future, and spend a whole lot of time talking about the "minority vote" and what went wrong. We promise we do very little "I told you so" in this episode. Honestly, it's about as morose as you'll ever hear us as we both go through what we think the next four years wil...

Hello! We talk about the Trump rally in New York City, Kamala’s closing statements and why, despite months of criticizing the Harris/Walz campaign and living in deep blue states, we both ended up voting for it. We also try to tee up what the next four years might look like for the Democrats whether Harris wins or loses. As always, this show is funded by subscriptions. We give everything away for f...

Hello! This week we are discussing the state of reading in America and the big Atlantic article that said that college kids can’t really make it through difficult books anymore and blamed woke or something. Our guest is Susannah Grossman, a veteran teacher who has been on both sides of this debate. Really good episode this week imho — lotta lively talk and perspective from someone who has been ins...

Hello! Today we’re talking about Kamala Harris’s plan for Black men, crypto, one million loans for $20,000, and Trump’s 30 minute spotify playlist party which included his favorite song (Time to Say Goodbye). We also give our best case for the Harris campaign’s strategy and its endless tacks to the right. The LEAST toxic TTSG in months! As always, we appreciate all our listeners but if you could h...

Hello! Today’s episode is about THE GREAT BLACK HOPE , a new book by the historian Louis Moore. We talk about the history of Black quarterbacks, both in college and the NFL, the financial and societal pressures that have both led to change and kept some things the same. On a larger scale, we talk about how sports serves both as a testing ground for ideas about race but also how racism locks in cer...

Hello! Apologies for the slight delay in getting this episode out but we have a great show today with the writer Jazmine Hughes. We talk about Ta-Nehisi Coates’s new book about writing, the West Bank and his travels, the writer-as-activist-celebrity, and the strange and tangled relationship that we, as minority writers, have with prestige media outlets. Enjoy! This is a public episode. If you'd li...

Hello! This week Tyler pays tribute to the great literary critic Fredric Jameson who tragically passed away recently. We talk about the importance of his work and why it will be hard to find someone like him given the state of the academy and literary culture. And then we dive into what happened between RFK and Olivia Nuzzi and how journalism ethics talk ruins every party. Enjoy! This is a public...

Hello! A quick note before we start: We recorded this as we always do on Tuesday for an early Wednesday release. The last part of the show focuses on what at the time was a wishy-washy and evasive response from Kamala Harris when asked about what Trump and Vance were doing to Haitian residents in Springfield, Ohio. Since then, Harris has come out and called their attacks a “crying shame” and liken...

Hello! Today we have a fun conversation with recurring guest Ben Recht, a professor of computer science and machine learning at UC Berkeley and Leif Weatherby, an associate professor of German at NYU. We talk about the article they wrote about Nate Silver’s latest book, the world of Big Data, and then we start talking about how maybe the inability for the iPhone to improve might signal a type of e...

Hello! Welcome back to school everyone. This week, we talk about an article in the New York Times that asks whether we infantilize students and whether we should start treating 18 year old college kids like adults. We also get into the admissions numbers out of MIT after the Affirmative Action Supreme Court and whether we might be seeing a sea change in how the public looks at prestigious Ivy Leag...

Hello! Today, we talk about Kamala’s big speech at the DNC, the cat-and-mouse game her campaign is playing with the media, why we’re probably fine with it in the end, and RFK’s 45 minute speech that outlined his new role as Trump’s new attack dog. (Mostly because JD Vance is not doing so well.) We also talked about scandal in the English Department at Pomona College and a big story in the Chronicl...

Hello! We’re joined today by Matt Karp, a columnist for Harper’s, a professor of History at Princeton and one of the most intelligent and incisive writers on the left. We talk about AOC’s big night at the DNC, the somewhat moribund state of the left after Bernie’s big win in the 2020 Nevada primary, and whether the future for the left is bright or gloomy. This was a lively one and lotta good think...

Hello! Today, we talk about the rural vote and the positioning of Tim Walz as the rural whisperer. Will it work? Is there such a thing as a “rural identity” that might look at Walz and gravitate towards him? What’s the thinking behind all that? To help us through it, we talked to Paolo Cremidis, the organizer of the recent Rural Americans for Harris Zoom call and the executive director of the Outr...

Hello! This week we’re extremely excited to have on Astra Taylor, a filmmaker, author, and organizer with the Debt Collective . We talk about Walz, whether VP picks matter, good vibes and joy for once, and also what the hell was RFK Jr. thinking when he dumped that dead bear cub in Central Park. Astra also talks to us about the book she co-authored with Leah Hunt-Hendrix titled “ SOLIDARITY: THE P...

Hello! We brought back repeat guest and esteemed journalist Bradford William Davis to talk about White Dudes for Harris, “weird,” and Trump at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) conference this week in Chicago. Also discussed: good cringe, Cocomentum, and whether the left should just kinda let the liberals and the identity politicians cook. Please enjoy! This is a public episode....

HELLO! Today we talk about the Kamala campaign, who she should pick as VP, speculate on where Joe Biden might be, and offer a spirited defense of AOC doing politics. Gets a bit unhinged in the middle tbh but we at least had a good time with this one. If you’d like to see Trump play the theme song, click here (Substack won’t let us embed tweets bc Elon did it first, I guess. https://x.com/Graduated...

Hello! Today, we talk about what exactly is going to happen to the country just a few days after the assassination attempt of Donald Trump and whether this will go down as a turning point in the country’s history or if it might just be quickly forgotten as everyone goes deep into RNC and JD Vance talk. Jay shares his very stupid thoughts on whether Donald Trump might have seen God after a near-dea...

Hello! This week, we are back from vacation and catching up on the only story in America, which is the mental fitness of the President. Jay is on Team “The Democrats are probably too incompetent and divided to actually run a difference candidate in time and so it might actually make sense for them to just get behind Biden and hope everything breaks correctly and they draw to flush against Trump’s...

Hello! Today, we are extremely excited to have on John Ganz, author of the new book When the Clock Broke , a retelling of the 1990s that touches on politics, music, television, and the history of right wing cranks who ultimately would become a prelude for Trumpism. There’s a ton that we discuss: The LA riots, Pat Buchanan, Murray Rothbard, Sister Souljah, and much more. If you’re interested in how...

Hello! Today we’re doing a Pardon The Interruption-styled show in which we go down a list of topics. We’re experimenting a bit with format these days and so please let us know if this more rapid fire version works for you! Today’s topics: Hobby Horsing as a sport? Dimension Apple from a great post from the Read Max Substack . Tiger parenting in 2024. Are you a crazy sports parent or a math/violin...

Hello! Today, we have a great conversation with Andrew Boryga, the author of VICTIM , a truly subversive and funny novel about a young writer who hustles his way through the media world by just giving it what it wants from him: oppression stories, identity trauma tales, and a lot of embellishment. We also talk about Caitlin Clark (Jay tries to do a sports talk segment) and the great novel JAMES by...