Time To Say Goodbye

Hello from the “White Projects”!  For Tammy’s final ep as co-host, we answer questions from our beloved subscribers. Thank you for asking us to ponder:  * Vice, Jezebel, and the loss of irreverent digital media * What makes podcasting so terrifying (and freeing)  * Biden vs. Trump in early polls + in Tammy’s reporting on young voters  * Our worst takes from 3.5 years of blabbering  * Whether TTSG...

For Tammy’s last TTSG book club as pod host (!), we welcome Jillian Tamaki, award-winning author and a key member of our early-COVID Discord crew. Jillian’s new graphic novel, Roaming , published with her cousin and co-author, Mariko Tamaki, follows three Canadian college freshmen on a spring break trip to New York. We hear about Jillian’s use of vernacular tourist archives like Flickr and YouTube...

Hello from Philly!  This week, Andy joins us for one of Tammy’s last eps as a host of TTSG. 🥲 After catching up on dog COVID , [6:10] we discuss how China’s historical self-identification as a vanguard of the Third World has given way, through decades of technological and economic growth, to a more general anti-West position . [29:00] We also reflect on the various pockets of U.S. public opinion...

Hello!  This week, Jay talks to a student organizer for Columbia University Apartheid Divest , a coalition of seventy five student organizations who have been organizing and putting on protests on campus. Last week, the administration of Columbia University suspended two of the student groups – Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace .  The organizer and Jay talk about why Co...

This week, we’re joined by our friend Jamie Lauren Keiles , a former contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine who is working on a book about nonbinary identity in America and posting at the archival Instagram account @sexchange.tbt . [4:45] Jamie discusses his resignation from the Times Magazine , and why he signed the recent open letter by WAWOG (the Writers Against the War on Gaza) as...

This week, we are joined by Tania Hary, the executive director of Gisha (“access”), an Israeli legal organization that fights for the freedom of movement of Palestinians. [2:25] We discuss the restrictive status quo that was in place long before October 7, in which Israel controlled travel in and out of the occupied territories, the flow of goods and food into Gaza, and the Census-like registry of...

Hello!  This week, New York Times Magazine contributing writer and repeat guest Rozina Ali talks with us about media coverage of the war in Israel and Gaza as well as the challenges faced by journalists, more than twenty of whom have been killed in the region over the past two weeks. We also discuss whether there has been a chilling of speech in the West, the history of suppressed expression when...

This week, we’re joined by Amjad Iraqi, a senior editor at +972 Magazine and a policy analyst at the think tank Al-Shabaka . Since Hamas’s brutal attack and Israel’s declaration of war , thousands of people in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel have been killed. More than a million people have been ordered to leave the northern Gaza Strip; more than two million Gazans are being denied food, water, el...

Hello from yet another devastating news week!  [0:30] We begin by addressing Hamas’s recent attack on Israel , to which Netanyahu responded with a declaration of war . (We’ll have an area expert on the show next week to talk about all this at greater length.) [12:10] In the second half of the episode, we discuss the new U.S. Senator from California, Laphonza Butler, and how her appointment by Gavi...

Hello from the Condé cafeteria!  This week, our guest is Samhita Mukhopadhyay, a writer and editor and the former executive editor at Teen Vogue . [5:30] Samhita’s personal essay in The Cut explores how being prescribed the new weight-loss drug Mounjaro, not long after her father died of complications from diabetes, challenged her thinking around health and body image. [36:00] We also discuss the...

Hello from the negotiating table!  This week, it’s just us, talking more hot labor summer and a bit about poetry (Tammy recommends the work of Mai Der Vang !). [9:00] After 146 days on strike, the Writers Guild of America, which represents about 11,000 screenwriters, announced on Sunday that they’d reached a tentative agreement with the AMPTP studio group. (Forgive the timing of this ep: the WGA r...

Hello from karaoke!  This week, we bring you more Olivia Rodrigo content –with Karen Tongson, USC professor, podcast co-host , and lover of all singable musics! [28:50] Jay and Tammy* go deep with Karen on her childhood with musician parents, AzNs in California’s Inland Empire, overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), transpacific music circuits, and why it’s racist to pile on a twenty-year-old Pinay pop...

Hello from British Columbia!  This week, [4:15] we start with the latest concerning video of Mitch McConnell and whether the conversation around fitness for office can (and should) cut across party lines. [21:45] Next, we talk about the Korean fine-dining wave in NYC , the effect of soft power, and why you won’t see us at Naro anytime soon. [45:05] In our final segment, we discuss the Serial podca...

Hello from three far-flung cities!  This week, we’re joined by our pal Vinson Cunningham, staff writer and theatre critic for The New Yorker .  After briefly interrogating Jay’s recent pivot to dad-hiker fashion (pic for subscribers only), we hear Vinson’s take on the Trump mugshot . [4:05] The image gets us talking about aesthetic self-perception, the celebrity accused in popular culture, and the...

Hello from a Cessna!  This week, it’s just us, on a grab-bag anthropological journey. [2:55] First, Jay unpacks his recent trip to Martha’s Vineyard and what he learned about the academic elite on a panel about affirmative action . [23:35] Next, we discuss Season 4 of “Love After Divorce” , in which Korean-American divorcees shack up and speak subpar Korean. [42:30] Then we catch up on the sad sag...

Hello again from the ongoing climate crisis!  Kaniela Ing is a Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) organizer and former state legislator who now works as the national director of the Green New Deal Network . Kaniela joins us just days after a fire ripped through the island of Maui , decimating the town of Lāhainā and killing a yet unknown number of people. (10:40) Kaniela tells us about his relationshi...

Hello from an East Bay movie theatre!  This week, it’s just us, trying to dodge yet another COVID surge. (A note from our producer, Mai: Lots of people are getting sick , and testing is hard to come by and not always accurate. It’s never too late to mask up again —if not for yourself, then for your more vulnerable neighbors!)  (3:25) Jay went to see “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” wi...

Hello from a freezer full of “non-human biologics”!  This week, we speak with Arielle Angel, editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents and known alien stan. (3:30) We get her thoughts on last week’s Congressional hearings (nothing a true believer like Arielle didn’t already know) and what aliens are up to when they visit Earth. (26:15) In our main segment, we discuss the democratic crisis in Israel spurr...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit goodbye.substack.com Hello from Jay’s final week in paradise!  In this bonus episode, we answer questions from subscribers. 

Hello from the diasporic battleground!  This week, we’re joined by investigative journalist and filmmaker Anjali Kamat to discuss Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s red-carpet state dinner and the spread of his Islamophobic, anti-democratic Hindutva ideology. (1:45) We start with a short history since Modi was elected in 2014, (12:20) dig into the conspiratorial lynchings that mirror right-wing campai...

Hello from Honolulu!  It’s just us this week, trading places: Tammy is home in humid Brooklyn, and Jay is on the road, visiting family in Hawaii! (6:00) First, we discuss the planned release of 500 swimming pools’ worth of radioactive(?) wastewater from Fukushima, which has spurred lousy takes from Beltway types and a run on salt in South Korea . (19:10) Next, we look at Vivek Ramaswamy’s long-sho...

Hello from the South Korean Ministry of Culture’s Brooklyn satellite office!  This week, Tammy welcomes back Jenny Wang Medina, our resident scholar of Korean cultural exports and semiotics, for a record-tying fourth appearance on TTSG / third-anniversary spectacular! We talk about a few recent Korean/Korean American/Asian American productions: (8:30) the Netflix hit “ Beef ,” with Ali Wong and St...

Hello from the East Bay!  It’s just Jay this week, chatting with friend of the pod Darrell Owens , a Berkeley-based housing expert. We discuss a new study from the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at UCSF on the causes and consequences of homelessness in California.  In this episode, we ask:   Can the revelations in this study—or any new evidence, for that matter—finally move the needle...

Hello from the Hill!  This week, we’re joined by Ligia Guallpa, executive director of Workers Justice Project (WJP) , a group that organizes low-wage, immigrant workers in New York City, including the app-based delivery workers who call themselves Los Deliveristas Unidos . WJP and the Deliveristas just won the passage of a mandatory minimum wage , a huge improvement for e-bike and car delivery wor...

Hello from clear-skied Brooklyn!  Thank you to everyone who attended our (first) third-anniversary TTSG summer picnic! And thanks to all who subscribe, listen, spread the word, and otherwise support the show.  It’s just Tammy and Jay this week, unpacking some complex cultural shifts in Asian American food and education. (5:15) First, Tammy guesses which Asian cuisines dominate Asian restaurants in...