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, thoughtful portrayals of the concerns of all types of people, and the care with which she makes her films —...
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 strategies of Amazonians United and Athena ; media influence (or interference?); and how the PRO Ac...
Hello! Today’s subscriber episode is a wide-ranging conversation Asad Haider, one of the founding editors of Viewpoint Magazine and the author of Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump . Jay talked to Asad about his concept of “depoliticization,” his book on identity politics, and political exhaustion. *- note from Jay: When we started the podcast, Asad was at the top of the list of guests I wanted to invite onto the show. I was really excited to talk to him at length. Mistaken Id...
Hello from Jay’s backyard Easter egg hunt! It’s just Andy and Tammy this week, with special guest Naomi Murakawa , a professor of African American Studies at Princeton and the author of The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America . Naomi talks with us about her J-A roots in Oakland , how her dad’s career in the criminal-legal system got her thinking about carceral politics, why police reform has long been a trap , and the history of hate crimes legislation in the US. She shares her ...
Hello! This week, your intrepid hosts had the pleasure to speak with journalist Daniel Denvir and his podcast “The Dig,” with Jacobin Radio. Daniel engaged us on a number of topics we’ve touched upon recently, including: the Atlanta shootings and the question of anti-Asian violence; the connection between anti-China foreign policy and domestic anti-Asian racism; the potential for an Asian backlash against liberalism and the Democratic party; affirmative-action fights and the enduring mythology o...
Hello at the end of a sleepless week. In this episode, we analyze the many responses to the murders in Atlanta — in a spirit, of course, of solidarity. Should the murders be viewed as a white-supremacist hate crime ? An occasion for more policing ? Or less? Are we guilty of assimilating the Atlanta shootings to general headlines about anti-Asian racism? Do we risk losing the specificity of class, gender, and the massage industry in particular? Were the killings rooted in misogyny and fetishizati...
In light of the harrowing news out of Atlanta this week, we spoke with Yves Tong Nguyen , an organizer with Red Canary Song 红莺歌 ( @RedCanarySong ), a grassroots collective of Asian sex workers & allies who push for for migrant justice, labor rights, and full decriminalization. Extended show notes after the break. First, here are some groups to learn about and support: * Red Canary Song, New York City * Butterfly: Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Network, Toronto * SWAN, Vancouver * Massage Parlor O...
Happy belated Pi Day (3.14)!* * Also Stephen Curry’s birthday and the anniversary of Marx’s death ! (Guess who’s drafting today’s notes?) 0:00 – Seth Berkman’s NYT article on Subway product placements in K-dramas ( don’t forget: Subway is evil !), Fatima Bhutto’s book on non-Western entertainment gone global, and whether Taylor Swift listens to BTS. 16:00 – The $1.9 trillion “American Recovery Plan,” or ARP, was signed last week. Is it a new era of Keynesian governance ( Zach Carter in NYT ) and...
Hello from the imperial U.S.A.! Our special guest this week is the CHamoru activist attorney and writer Julian Aguon . Julian calls in from Guam to talk about his new book, The Properties of Perpetual Light , which comes out at the end of the month. ( Pre-order it for you and a friend!) Julian reads from the book and talks about: * Developing his voice as a writer and mixing genres: from poetry to political commentary to personal essay; * Guam/CHamoru identity and attempts to build solidarity wi...
We discuss the unfolding row over an academic article by Harvard law professor Mark Ramseyer, who argues, without evidence, that “comfort women” across Asia were not coercively indentured by the Japanese imperial army in World War II, but had legally consented to sex work. (For background on this debate, check out Tammy’s paper from 2006! ) Though typically irrelevant to the rest of society (lol), Ramseyer’s is the rare academic paper to invite public attention and, subsequently, outrage. His bi...
Hello from a Chinese banquet! (If only…) 0:00 - “ 주먹만한 얼굴 ” (tiny face obsession) 2:48 – Reply All We discuss the story buzzing throughout media: the hosts of the Reply All podcast, while reporting on the exploitative labor practices at Bon Appétit , had their own exploitative, anti-union activism exposed last week. What does this say about class versus race politics and the unionization movement in media? Plus, thoughts on the podcast-industry bubble. (By the way, we are aware of the irony of t...
Hello! Special unlocked bonus Patreon episode today with entrepreneur, TikTok cook, and hip-hop head Jaeki Cho. He and Jay talk about Jaeki’s quick rise to TikTok fame via his Korean cooking videos, Asian-American hip-hop in the 90s and 00s, and the ways in which immigrants acquire, imitate and then incorporate language. You can find Jaeki’s TikTok here. And a Friday throwback video for all of you. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bo...
Hello from the angry depths of our work-from-home souls! This Valentine’s Day week: 0:00 – Big, hearty thanks for subscribing and supporting us through our Patreon . Don’t miss the raucous Discord chat or bonus episodes with Anakwa Dwamena and Jiayang Fan. 4:40 – Why are women shouldering the extra work of the pandemic? Why are they the first to lose their jobs and get stuck with multiplying jobs at home? We talk about the NYT’s “Primal Scream” package of stories, the neoliberalism/second-wave-f...
Hello! This week, fabulous guest Darren Byler. Plus, three questions from our very smart listeners. 0:00 – Friend of the show Darren Byler returns (don’t miss his earlier episode, from July, where he discusses his research on Xinjiang with Tammy and Andy ) to reflect on what he (and Andy) heard on Mandarin Clubhouse over the weekend. There was a brief burst of discussion among Mandarin speakers of various ethnicities around the worl d, including many in the PRC, about what’s happening to Uyghurs...
Good snowy morning from Andy and Tammy, while Jay wears shorts! This week, we talk about cultures of luck, public schools, tankieism, Myanmar, and Corky Lee. 2:15 – Andy explains the freaky, punny “Bling Empire.” 12:12 – Our inevitable takes on GameStop, Robinhood, and the global, neoliberal casino of our financial system. For more: stories by Noah Kulwin , Kate Aronoff , and Doug Henwood . Andy recommends this episode of Slate Money podcast . 46:58 – David Brooks gives us hives , but so does mo...
Bonus ep! This past week, the Asian Arts Initiative in Philly (AAI) hosted a short conversation about the question of representation in media and politics. AAI’s exec. director Anne Ishii ( @ill_iterate ) MCed the event, which featured myself (Andy) and Bakirathi Mani , a fellow academic in the region (Swarthmore college, check out her new book Unseeing Empire , with the discount code E20EMPR). We talk: * Kamala and Andrew * south and east Asian comparative diasporas * Asian versus Asian America...
Hi from Obama’s third term! This week, we welcome the wonderful, brainy Rozi Ali , a journo friend who writes about Islamophobia and the US “war on terror.” We also dish about basketball and a kimchi-based spat between South Korea and China. 1:10 – Why Rozi gave up on the Warriors. 3:35 – Korea and China are fighting again. Over kimchi . Not sponsored content: the offending Li Ziqi video (kimchi at the 13:20 mark: judge for yourself!) 17:45 – Biden started his presidency by reversing Trump-era a...
Greetings from the deep state in our heads! This week, we talk some oldish politics (January is moving so fast…) and welcome back our first repeat guest, Hua Hsu, to dig into classic Asian-American cinema. 0:00 – Andrew Yang is running for mayor of New York City. Last we saw him, he was buying Ito En green tea at a bodega and calling the worker “bro.” 8:20 – The better Asian Andrew, our Andy, wrote about the 1.6.2021 Capitol attack in our newsletter last week. We talk fascisms and how to combat ...
This week’s theme, courtesy of Tony Soprano: “Is the U.S. over?” Both Tammy and Jay have new pieces out on our failure to curb the spread of Covid-19 in nursing homes. The country has seemed unable to tackle complex problems. Have we learned anything? What now? 0:00 – We talk about the vaccine rollout in the U.S. and our ominously poor start to distribution. Tammy hates on federalism and the States counterplan (debate joke). Plus: should health care workers have the right to refuse the vaccine? ...
HNY from the heart of Times Square! 0:00 – This week, we welcome JoAnn Lum , the director of NMASS (the National Mobilization Against Sweatshops) , a “multi-trade, multi-ethnic workers center” located on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Though COVID-19 has recently shone a light on horrifying working conditions in healthcare, nursing homes, restaurants, and delivery, JoAnn describes how “essential workers” have faced steadily worsening prospects for decades, and relays her members’ disappointme...
0:00 — We welcome friend of the show Tommy Craggs, enterprise editor at Mother Jones magazine. We first get Tommy’s thoughts on last summer’s inadvertent strike in the NBA and assess the future of our favorite beleaguered sports league. 25:10 — We discuss Tommy’s new piece, “What’s the Matter with Cultural Politics?,” in which he interrogates the “culture contra” stalemate: the idea that what the Democrats need to do is drop the “culture” and “identity” stuff and get back to (white) meat and pot...
Today, Doctors Liu, Kang, and Kim are joined by Doctor Sarah Leonard , publisher of the soon-to-launch Lux magazine (named after socialist extraordinaire Rosa Luxemburg ). 0:00 – We respond to accusations of COVID-19 denialism by comparing the US’s lockdown + welfare policies to those of the rest of the (Euro-American) world: Tammy on Canada’s robust wage subsidy and deficit spending ; Andy on Sweden’s controversial decision to do voluntary lockdowns ( even leftists are fighting over it ); and J...
Hello from Neera Tanden’s shoe closet! 0:00 – The gang’s back together, with geographic and pandemic updates. 10:00 – Data recently compiled by National Nurses United tell us that nearly a quarter of registered nurses in the US who’ve died from the coronavirus are Filipino. Why this outsized fraction ? Can histories of colonization and migration, as well as labor economics, help us make sense of the numbers ? 49:07 – In the first of what we hope will become a recurring a segment, we talk about a...
Hello! This week we have another part of what can now be called a series on the AAPI voter with our guest Taeku Lee, a professor of law and political science at UC Berkeley and the author of several books, including Asian American Political Participation , which he co-authored with Janelle Wong, S. Karthick Ramakrishnan, and Jane Junn. There’s few people more qualified to talk about the enigma of the Asian voter — Taeku has been researching and studying trends in voting since 1988 and was one of...
Happy birthday, Jay’s sister! Tammy checks in from a motel in Kennewick , Jay remembers his lost novel, and we talk turkey. 8:30 – On the global vaccine race. The “good” science ( from Sarah Zhang ), the “bad” vaccine apartheid ( Jayati Ghosh , economist at JNU), Macbook vs. Chromebook, and the politics of glorifying private drug companies ( as in the NYT ). Also, check out this cool new vaccine data center from Duke Global Health Innovation Center: https://launchandscalefaster.org/COVID-19 41:0...
Hello from White House transition headquarters! This week: literal housekeeping, “ students of color ” and “ students of poverty ,” coronavirus nightmares , how not to expect too much from Biden , and a Southeast Asian trade deal . 4:30 – Dads Jay and Andy review right-wing children’s books . 9:30 – Asians get lumped in as white again—this time, in the Thurston County, WA public schools. Why does this keep happening, and why do we care? Should the left abandon race-based sorting and affirmative ...
Hello, Today we have something a bit different for you. TTSG goes a bit Melvyn Bragg with a history episode about Bay Area Filipino DJ culture. Our guest today is Oliver Wang, professor of sociology at Cal State Long Beach, one of the co-hosts of the Heat Rocks podcast , and the author of Legions of Boom , a fascinating book which tracks the history of Filipino immigrants into the Bay Area after the 1965 Hart-Celler Act — first into San Francisco and then out into suburbs like Daly City, Fremont...
Hello from a USPS mailbag! This week, before getting into your letters, we reminisce about Saturday’s election news a.k.a the international dopamine-flood event. We “wow just wow” at the Democratic establishment’s (ridiculous and ridiculously premature) punch left, and swoon over AOC’s punch back in an interview with the New York Times . We also dissect a viral video of Tucker Carlson explaining why Butler, PA, and so many other places in the US (will) remain loyal to Trump. Listener Questions @...
Hello from Philly, Berkeley, and Missoula! In this #2020 special, we share our jaundiced views of the U! S! A! and the election as of Wednesday night, 24 hours after polls closed. Discussed: * Tuesday night’s emotional roller-coaster * Post-vote explanations based on racial and ethnic checkboxes * “ Jay Kang, (G.O.P.) political consultant ” * Propositions 22 and 16 in California * Tammy’s feel-good corner a.k.a local measures to give us hope going forward Links to stuff we mention: * Exit polls ...
