Time To Say Goodbye

Hello from back in July, when Tammy recorded this special live episode in Portland, Oregon! The occasion was the new album, “1975,” by No-No Boy . No-No Boy is Julian Saporiti, a folk and rock musician from Nashville whose PhD dissertation has taken the form of an extended song cycle about Asian America. Julian and his partner, Emilia Halvorsen , an aspiring lawyer who co-produced and sings on “19...

Hello from Tammy’s DIY SUV camper! This week, we bring you talk of Korean archery, feminism, and misogyny . Plus, the terrifying end of the US eviction moratorium and what politicians and activists are doing about it. * An San, South Korea’s triple gold medalist in archery, has been attacked by men’s rights activists for… having short hair . Why are so many young men so misogynistic ? So mixed up...

Hello from Philly, Berkeley, and Pasadena! This week, we talk about the Tokyo Olympics, food appropriation in Oregon, and Raoul Peck’s film The Young Karl Marx (2017). * What are people protesting in Tokyo ? In this pandemic moment , who are the Olympics for? Plus: props to young women weightlifters and skateboarders. * Why are Asian Americans so mad about congee ? (And why are white restaurateurs...

Hello! This week: two pressing topics from the news and listener questions. First, we talk about the political crises in Haiti and Cuba and questions of U.S. empire and intervention. Though military invasions have become less savory, on Monday, U.S. officials still informally dictated Haiti’s choice for interim president . We place the news in geographic and historical context and draw connections...

Hello! A guest episode today: Andy talks with U Chicago historian Gabriel Winant (@gabrielwinant) about his new book, The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America . We discuss capitalism and neoliberalism, what’s going on with the U.S. socialist movement, and class fissures within the professional ranks.  Check out Gabe’s other writing in many places, inclu...

Hello, and welcome to Asian American Sports Talk radio—from the site of the 2032 Olympics! Three topics today: First, the Chinese Communist Party held a massive centennial celebration last week (here’s Andy talking about it ), and China-watchers pounced on one phrase from Xi Jinping’s speech: that haters would suffer “broken heads and spilled blood” (頭破血流). Hey, imperialist pigs, nothing to se...

Hello! Today’s episode is about housing, the fight to end single-family zoning, YIMBYs, NIMBYs and PHIMBYs. Our guest today was Darrell Owens, a housing activist and policy analyst. We went through a lot — Berkeley’s recent unanimous initiative to end single-family zoning, asked the inevitable questions about whether this would actually help make Berkeley more affordable, talked a bit about the PH...

Hello from Tammy’s 104-degree podcast studio! This week, we talk about the nightmare of piled-up container ships on the West coast , why Covid has triggered these crises along the global supply chain, a bit of logistics history , and the dire ecological future that awaits us. Also, for the first time in a while, some listener questions: * Are there racial aspects to Yang’s mayoral downfall? Or do...

Hello from I-5! Today: another round in our long-simmering, passive-aggressive professional feud (journalists vs. historians), occasioned by two new pieces on how we talk about and apply the lessons of U.S. history.  First, UCLA historian Robin D.G. Kelley in conversation with George Yancy in Truthout . They talk about the recent surge of interest in the 1921 Tulsa Massacre and what’s lost in our...

Note: The following is an unlocked episode originally released on May 7 for our Patreon and Substack subscribers. Enjoy! Hi everyone, Today, a more scholarly episode: Andy speaks with Prof. Iyko Day of Mount Holyoke College’s English program, discussing her book  Alien Capital: Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism  (Duke, 2016). In the book, she analyzes different momen...

Hello from Tammy’s fantasy vacation house! It’s just the three of us today, with two important topics. First, the renewed media and political interest in the Wuhan “lab leak theory,” which had previously been treated as a conspiracy. This essay, published last month by science journalist Nicholas Wade , made a stink by arguing that a lab leak was a reasonable possibility. China’s renowned virologi...

Hi all: Today’s episode is a conversation with Andy’s friend and classmate Chelsea Szendi Schieder , historian of Japan at Aoyama Gakuin University (Tokyo).  Chelsea was involved in compiling the empirical case against Comfort Women denialism, which we covered in an episode back in February . She’s now also written a reflection piece on the experience for The Nation . We talk more about Comfort Wo...

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. (Re...

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 unexp...

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 t...

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 t...

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 th...

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-autho...

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...

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...

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...

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 Novemb...

Hello! We spoke with special guest Michelle Zauner aka Japanese Breakfast about her memoir, Crying in H Mart ; her forthcoming album, Jubilee ; her life as an artist; and how to cook with Maangchi. Enjoy! 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, A special episode this week with filmmaker Ursula Liang about her new film Down a Dark Stairwell. It’s out now on PBS and we hope everyone who listens to the show watches this nuanced, thoughtful and brave film. I (Jay) first saw Ursula’s work in 9-Man , a film about sports in Chinatown. Since then, I’ve followed her career carefully because what she does — deep community reporting, thought...

Greetings from Substack hell! It’s just the three of us this week, talking about the union defeat in Bessemer, Alabama, labor history, and the future of organizing in an Amazon economy. We discuss labor expert Jane McAlevey’s tactical post-mortem on the RWDSU campaign (rebuttals here and here ), Tammy’s critique of McAlevey from last year, and Andy and Jay’s critiques of Tammy! Plus, the divergent...