Hello! Today, we talk to two people who have been thinking about reporting about AI for quite a long time: Repeat guest Ben Recht, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Berkeley and Karen Hao, a journalist who has written an excellent series of pieces for the Atlantic. We talk to Ben about SORA, OpenAI’s video generator that only exists in trailer form so far and what might happen if it’s actually good. (We don’t think it’ll be good. At least yet.) And then we talk some p...
Mar 06, 2024•1 hr 56 min
Hello! On today’s episode, we talk about Aaron Bushnell, the active-duty Air Force twenty-five year old who self-immolated in Washington, D.C., the history of the act and how it has been seen in different eras and different contexts. We compare, for example, how Barack Obama talked about the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street vendor who is credited with sparking the Arab Spring with how much of the liberal commentariat talks about Bushnell (largely in terms of mental health)....
Feb 28, 2024•1 hr 14 min
Hello! Today, we talked about a topic that we’ve been circling around for a while — the minority vote. We now have months of polls all pointing towards the same trends in terms of Black, Latino and Asian voters all moving towards the right for a variety of reasons, most of which are left unexamined by many in the mainstream presses. That, of course, doesn’t mean that we don’t hear about the “Black vote” or the “Latino vote.” We do read the polling results and see charts detailing the shift. But ...
Feb 21, 2024•1 hr 15 min
Hello! Today’s episode is an interview with Carrie Sun, whose memoir PRIVATE EQUITY came out yesterday. (Buy it here !) The book is a memoir about the time Carrie spent working as the right hand for one of the country’s most famous billionaire hedge fund managers. We talk about the allure of finance and Wall Street, Ishiguro and restraint in writing, the ways in which political awakenings can sometimes be quite mundane in their origins, and a lot more about this wonderful book. If you’re a fan o...
Feb 14, 2024•1 hr 25 min
Hello! Today, we talk about the Apple Vision Pro and its grim vision for how you should be spending your time. Also, we talk a lot about Jaron Lanier’s most recent essay about the Virtual Reality in the New Yorker , specifically the question he poses about how technology should fit into our lives and whether tech can just create things because they’re cool without affixing their products to some greater mission for humanity. The Apple Vision Pro doesn’t come with any story about how its going to...
Feb 07, 2024•1 hr 10 min
Hello! This week we have on Musa Al-Gharbi, a professor of sociology at Stony Brook University. We talk a lot about “kids these days” and the tendency for all sorts of reactionaries to blame them for everything that’s wrong with this country. Don’t like illiberal attitudes on campuses? Blame the kids. Do you think free expression is at risk? Blame the kids. Feel like democracy is on the brink of collapse? Blame the kids. (As always, if you’re reading this and not subscribed to our substack or Pa...
Jan 31, 2024•1 hr 37 min
Hello! This week, we talk about the big Polyamory article in New York Magazine and the proposition that breaking the bonds of monogamy might be a political statement, one that frees both sides from the constraints of marriage. Are we just reinventing ways to justify selfish behavior? And why does every personal decision in the lives of upper middle class, well-educated people need to turn into some movement that promises nothing? We also continue our ongoing talk about visions of the climate fut...
Jan 24, 2024•1 hr 2 min
Hello! In today’s episode, we talk about Octavia Butler’s “The Parable of the Sower,” a science fiction novel from 1992 that unexpectedly found itself on the best seller’s list in 2020. The novel imagines a violent and grim future in which the world has warmed beyond safe inhabitation, the lucky get to live in walled off communities while the poor all kill one another in the streets. We talk about visions of climate apocalypse and how Butler, through no fault of her own, might have created a heg...
Jan 17, 2024•1 hr 7 min
Hello! I’m very excited to announce that Tyler Austin Harper will be our co-host for the next month or so. Tyler was on the show last month and introduced himself then, but for those who missed it, he’s a writer at the Atlantic and a professor of literature in the environmental studies department at Bates College. He specializes in extinction literature and film. For the next month or so, Tyler and I are going to talk to guests and to one another about a variety of topics, including literature a...
Jan 10, 2024•1 hr 12 min
Hello! Today we have a great interview with Nithya Raman, the City Councilmember for Los Angeles’s District 4. We talk about housing, the despair around the homelessness problem in California’s biggest cities, and whether there might be a different future for the city’s political machine. My interest in Councilmember Raman started back when I was writing the newsletter for the Times because there was an effort by some of the more powerful local politicians to redraw her district in ways that wou...
Jan 03, 2024•1 hr
Hello! In our Discord server, which you can access by subscribing to the show for a measly $5 a month, a user asked me to not do shows about sports. I took this request seriously as I generally aim to please, but am sad to announce that after much deliberation, I do think it’s worth having a conversation about a very distinct phenomenon I’ve observed over the past few years. As recently as 2020, it was difficult to have a conversation about sports without bringing in all that “politics.” LeBron ...
Dec 20, 2023•1 hr 6 min
Hello! Today on the show, we have Tyler Austin Harper, a literary scholar and an assistant professor of Environmental Studies at Bates College. We talk about the history of extinction literature, the books that tech moguls read and the vision it inspires, the dangers of science fiction and all that’s happening in the Ivy Leagues right now. 0:00 - Jay talks about the new direction of the show, which for now will be a “degenerate Asian version of In Our Time.” 2:40-6:00 - Jay and Tyler talk about ...
Dec 13, 2023•1 hr 31 min
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 was a guerilla marketing campaign for Jay’s book To get Tammy’s infrequent writing updates (soon replacin...
Dec 06, 2023•1 hr 13 min
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 to build scenes of NYC from afar; the complex dynamics among young women friends, especially when t...
Dec 03, 2023•1 hr 2 min
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 on Gaza and Zionism, from Andy’s college students to our elected officials (and their press secretari...
Nov 29, 2023•1 hr 24 min
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 Columbia made this decision, what the climate is like on campus, and what the administration has been te...
Nov 22, 2023•54 min
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 well as an earlier letter criticizing NYT’s trans coverage . [47:40] We also talk about the process ...
Nov 15, 2023•1 hr 9 min
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 the Palestinian population (that is implicated in the questioning of Gazan fatalities). [30:45] Tan...
Nov 08, 2023•53 min
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 it comes to Israel and Palestine, and how all this may shake out in politics and public sentiment. In...
Oct 25, 2023•1 hr 11 min
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, electricity, and fuel. [3:10] Amjad, a Palestinian citizen of Israel based in London, explains what’s ...
Oct 18, 2023•1 hr
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 Gavin Newsom (following Dianne Feinstein’s death ) factors into next year’s race for that seat. We explor...
Oct 11, 2023•41 min
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 decline(?) of the girlboss—Samhita is writing a book on women and work culture —and the enduring powe...
Oct 04, 2023•58 min
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 released details of the tentative agreement on Tuesday night, after we had recorded; members will stil...
Sep 27, 2023•1 hr 3 min
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 star. [3:25] But first, some takes on Hasan Minhaj’s “emotionally true” standup act . (*Sorry for Ta...
Sep 20, 2023•1 hr 22 min
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 podcast “The Retrievals,” which explores questions of gendered pain and corrupt healthcare through the tru...
Sep 06, 2023•1 hr 14 min
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 lack of a good analysis of Trump’s true appeal. [41:45] Next, we discuss last week’s G.O.P. primary d...
Aug 30, 2023•1 hr 17 min
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 saga of former NFL player Michael Oher, who has claimed that the film purportedly based on his life, “Th...
Aug 23, 2023•1 hr 9 min
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 relationship to the affected area and community; (13:55) the systemic causes of this tragedy, including aging in...
Aug 16, 2023•35 min
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” with his daughter, Frankie. We talk about the film’s pleasing animation style and nostalgia-packed sound...
Aug 09, 2023•53 min
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 spurred by Netanyahu’s far-right coalition and (34:00) what this moment could mean for the Palestinian nat...
Aug 02, 2023•1 hr 5 min
