The Breakup Theory

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 podc...

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 relatio...

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, tr...

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 amon...

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 maki...

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 (an...

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 fir...

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, he...

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 lo...

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 listen...

In this episode, I speak with two beautiful trans writers, artists, thinkers, Nat Raha and Mijke van der Drift. They recently published Trans Femme Futures with Pluto Books. Their book describes an expansive ethics of collectivity, care, and complicity from the perspective of trans femme knowledge and experience. Nat and Mijke developed the book over the last number of years through different iter...

In this episode, Caroline and I respond to a letter from a listener who is trying to navigate a tricky relationship. It is a relationship with a lot of fuzziness, moving from romantic and sexual to friends. There are also attempts at real conversation, though they aren't always clear, producing a difficult dynamic to understand and find bearings. They know they need to end it—or at least take spac...

Today I'm sharing a conversation I had with one of my favorites, Dean Spade, about his recent book Love in a Fucked Up World out with Algonquin Books. Dean has been an inspiration for a long time with his commitments to abolition, anti-Zionism, and trans liberation, among other things. His previous book, Mutual Aid , came at a perfect moment when people were getting together in response to COVID-1...

Today I'm re-releasing a conversation I recorded for the Final Straw Radio with Joshua Clover in 2021. Our conversation focuses around his 2016 book Riot. Strike. Riot , in part within the context of the George Floyd rebellion. I wanted to present this conversation in memoriam of Joshua, who we learned last week had died. As many of the testimonials you can find online, Joshua was a great friend a...

In today's episode, Caroline and I respond to a listener's letter about breaking up with their psychoanalyst after five years. Right now, there is such an emphasis on therapy as a means to address trauma, as well as to adjust to the terror of the current conditions in the world. There is also a whole industry of self-help that coincides with shaming of people by individualizing their faults and fa...

On today's episode, I have a conversation with Vicky Osterweil, a fellow member of our new writing collective, CAW, and the author of the indispensable history and provocation,  In Defense of Looting, and a forthcoming book on intellectual property and Disney, called The Extended Universe . We decided to have this conversation in the opening month of the Trump administration to game out some possi...

Hello everyone! I have been away longer than usual between episodes due to circumstances, and I appreciate you all coming back to listen. As a kind of compensation, this is a long one today—I got to talk to one of my favorite people to get into it with, Conner Habib. We had recorded a conversation along with Dean Spade in the approach to the election in order to reorient people's thoughts and atte...

In today's episode, River and I return to a conversation about Gaza, focusing on the discourse surrounding it, the function of antisemitism in the colonial creation of Israel, the state of resistance and the state of Israel's genocide, as well as decolonization and the way whiteness and identification with institutions hampers leftist's solidarity with decolonial movements. Perhaps a fitting epigr...

CW - the last part of this episode contains mention and some details around sexual assault We're back with another entry in our letters episodes! In this conversation, Caroline and I discuss three different dilemmas presented to us by listeners. In the first we address the problems that come with queer longing and the difficulty of living single amidst the horrors of the world and social arrangeme...

On today's episode, I got a chance to talk with Solomon Brager, the artist and author of the recently published graphic memoir,  Heavyweight . Solomon Brager is a cartoonist and writer living in Brooklyn, New York. They are a 2023-2025 Jerome Hill Artists Fellow, a member of the Pinko magazine editorial collective and the director of community engagement at Jewish Currents magazine. Heavyweight de...

On today's episode, I talk with Ariel Ajeno, who recently published an essay in the latest issue of Pinko , called "After Consent" : What is the role of consent in a revolution? Ariel Ajeno is a writer, dancer, and independent scholar based in Chicago, IL. The beautiful essay mixes personal experience with theoretical and practical analysis of the benefits and limits of consent and how that relate...

On today's episode, I am presenting the talk that Cindy Barukh Milstein and I did at the Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair, which we called An Anarchism of Despair. When we planned to collaborate for the talk, we checked in on where we were mentally, emotionally, and politically in relation to the specific moment, filled with frustrations around anarchists' involvement in movements, and the wall...

In today's episode, Caroline and I respond to a couple of listener's letters. As I was editing the episode, I thought about the common theme, and came to this idea of getting over things. The first letter asks about how much work we are supposed to put into our relationships and ourselves, and what are the ethics of leaving someone in a crisis. The second letter asks for support around a relations...

In this episode, I talk with a student from the New School about the encampments there and what we can learn from the experience. Students at the New School set up their encampment in the lobby of the University Center in April a few days after the encampment was established at Columbia University and over 100 students were arrested. The New School student encampment last for over two weeks and ev...

On this episode, Caroline and I respond to a listener letter that really gets at the heart of the breakup experience: A fundamental question of how do you survive a devastating break up, and how to relate to yourself afterwards. We take the opportunity to look at this situation from all the angles. The main issue is coming to accept that you live with ghosts.    And then we turn to a new a new seg...