Hello! Today’s episode is about THE GREAT BLACK HOPE , a new book by the historian Louis Moore. We talk about the history of Black quarterbacks, both in college and the NFL, the financial and societal pressures that have both led to change and kept some things the same. On a larger scale, we talk about how sports serves both as a testing ground for ideas about race but also how racism locks in certain ways of thinking. Thanks! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other su...
Oct 09, 2024•1 hr
Hello! Apologies for the slight delay in getting this episode out but we have a great show today with the writer Jazmine Hughes. We talk about Ta-Nehisi Coates’s new book about writing, the West Bank and his travels, the writer-as-activist-celebrity, and the strange and tangled relationship that we, as minority writers, have with prestige media outlets. 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.co...
Oct 02, 2024•1 hr 10 min
Hello! This week Tyler pays tribute to the great literary critic Fredric Jameson who tragically passed away recently. We talk about the importance of his work and why it will be hard to find someone like him given the state of the academy and literary culture. And then we dive into what happened between RFK and Olivia Nuzzi and how journalism ethics talk ruins every party. Enjoy! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit...
Sep 25, 2024•1 hr 2 min
Hello! A quick note before we start: We recorded this as we always do on Tuesday for an early Wednesday release. The last part of the show focuses on what at the time was a wishy-washy and evasive response from Kamala Harris when asked about what Trump and Vance were doing to Haitian residents in Springfield, Ohio. Since then, Harris has come out and called their attacks a “crying shame” and likened it to Trump’s demonization of the Central Park Five. We decided to keep the section in the show b...
Sep 18, 2024•1 hr 4 min
Hello! Today we have a fun conversation with recurring guest Ben Recht, a professor of computer science and machine learning at UC Berkeley and Leif Weatherby, an associate professor of German at NYU. We talk about the article they wrote about Nate Silver’s latest book, the world of Big Data, and then we start talking about how maybe the inability for the iPhone to improve might signal a type of end of history. This was a fun one with lots of random asides with two very smart people so please en...
Sep 11, 2024•1 hr 23 min
Hello! Welcome back to school everyone. This week, we talk about an article in the New York Times that asks whether we infantilize students and whether we should start treating 18 year old college kids like adults. We also get into the admissions numbers out of MIT after the Affirmative Action Supreme Court and whether we might be seeing a sea change in how the public looks at prestigious Ivy League institutions (as in they hate them now). Enjoy! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discus...
Sep 04, 2024•1 hr 11 min
Hello! Today, we talk about Kamala’s big speech at the DNC, the cat-and-mouse game her campaign is playing with the media, why we’re probably fine with it in the end, and RFK’s 45 minute speech that outlined his new role as Trump’s new attack dog. (Mostly because JD Vance is not doing so well.) We also talked about scandal in the English Department at Pomona College and a big story in the Chronicle of Higher Education that stars some of the most annoying people you’ll ever read about. Also as a ...
Aug 28, 2024•1 hr 21 min
Hello! We’re joined today by Matt Karp, a columnist for Harper’s, a professor of History at Princeton and one of the most intelligent and incisive writers on the left. We talk about AOC’s big night at the DNC, the somewhat moribund state of the left after Bernie’s big win in the 2020 Nevada primary, and whether the future for the left is bright or gloomy. This was a lively one and lotta good thinking from Matt here so please take a listen! One note: apologies I think there was some street work b...
Aug 21, 2024•1 hr 28 min
Hello! Today, we talk about the rural vote and the positioning of Tim Walz as the rural whisperer. Will it work? Is there such a thing as a “rural identity” that might look at Walz and gravitate towards him? What’s the thinking behind all that? To help us through it, we talked to Paolo Cremidis, the organizer of the recent Rural Americans for Harris Zoom call and the executive director of the Outrun coalition. Topics covered: Ice skating rinks turned into giant Fiji water bottles, running back O...
Aug 14, 2024•1 hr 1 min
Hello! This week we’re extremely excited to have on Astra Taylor, a filmmaker, author, and organizer with the Debt Collective . We talk about Walz, whether VP picks matter, good vibes and joy for once, and also what the hell was RFK Jr. thinking when he dumped that dead bear cub in Central Park. Astra also talks to us about the book she co-authored with Leah Hunt-Hendrix titled “ SOLIDARITY: THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE OF A WORLD CHANGING IDEA ,” which all of you should pick up and read as it’...
Aug 07, 2024•1 hr 21 min
Hello! We brought back repeat guest and esteemed journalist Bradford William Davis to talk about White Dudes for Harris, “weird,” and Trump at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) conference this week in Chicago. Also discussed: good cringe, Cocomentum, and whether the left should just kinda let the liberals and the identity politicians cook. Please enjoy! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye...
Jul 31, 2024•1 hr 12 min
HELLO! Today we talk about the Kamala campaign, who she should pick as VP, speculate on where Joe Biden might be, and offer a spirited defense of AOC doing politics. Gets a bit unhinged in the middle tbh but we at least had a good time with this one. If you’d like to see Trump play the theme song, click here (Substack won’t let us embed tweets bc Elon did it first, I guess. https://x.com/GraduatedBen/status/1815807377309864437 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other su...
Jul 24, 2024•1 hr 3 min
Hello! Today, we talk about what exactly is going to happen to the country just a few days after the assassination attempt of Donald Trump and whether this will go down as a turning point in the country’s history or if it might just be quickly forgotten as everyone goes deep into RNC and JD Vance talk. Jay shares his very stupid thoughts on whether Donald Trump might have seen God after a near-death experience and the chances that he might be a changed man and Tyler makes both the best case and ...
Jul 17, 2024•55 min
Hello! This week, we are back from vacation and catching up on the only story in America, which is the mental fitness of the President. Jay is on Team “The Democrats are probably too incompetent and divided to actually run a difference candidate in time and so it might actually make sense for them to just get behind Biden and hope everything breaks correctly and they draw to flush against Trump’s made two pair.” Tyler is on Team “It is fundamentally bad to have a President who cannot do normal t...
Jul 10, 2024•1 hr 26 min
Hello! Today, we are extremely excited to have on John Ganz, author of the new book When the Clock Broke , a retelling of the 1990s that touches on politics, music, television, and the history of right wing cranks who ultimately would become a prelude for Trumpism. There’s a ton that we discuss: The LA riots, Pat Buchanan, Murray Rothbard, Sister Souljah, and much more. If you’re interested in how the fringe elements of the 1990s became much less fringe by 2016, this is a wonderfully written and...
Jun 26, 2024•1 hr 51 min
Hello! Today we’re doing a Pardon The Interruption-styled show in which we go down a list of topics. We’re experimenting a bit with format these days and so please let us know if this more rapid fire version works for you! Today’s topics: Hobby Horsing as a sport? Dimension Apple from a great post from the Read Max Substack . Tiger parenting in 2024. Are you a crazy sports parent or a math/violin parent? Is there a difference? Joe Biden’s age and the promise of President Harris. The jumps in thi...
Jun 19, 2024•1 hr 4 min
Hello! Today, we have a great conversation with Andrew Boryga, the author of VICTIM , a truly subversive and funny novel about a young writer who hustles his way through the media world by just giving it what it wants from him: oppression stories, identity trauma tales, and a lot of embellishment. We also talk about Caitlin Clark (Jay tries to do a sports talk segment) and the great novel JAMES by Percival Everett. Do books like JAMES and VICTIM signal some change in the way that the publishing ...
Jun 12, 2024•1 hr 23 min
Hello! Today’s show is a talk about an exciting new book by Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman titled “ What are Children For ?” (Release date: June 11) We talked about “slow love,” the common complaint from millennials that they do not have enough financial stability to start families, the ambivalent mother narrative, and something right in Tyler’s wheelhouse: eco apocalypse fiction. Why is the United States birthrate declining? Why are middle and upper-middle class women waiting longer to have ...
Jun 05, 2024•1 hr 23 min
Hello! Today, we talk about Biden’s speech at Morehouse College which should be seen as a preview for his message to Black voters amidst polling results that show he has lost a significant percentage of both the Black and Latino vote. We also talk about the passing of Bill Walton, activism in the NBA and sports, in general, and what we should think about the social justice basketball moment from 2020 in the bubble when the league and its corporate sponsors wallpapered half of Disney World with s...
May 29, 2024•1 hr 6 min
Hello! This week, we have on David Austin Walsh, author of “ Taking America Back: The Conservative Movement and the Far Right ,” a new book that tracks the development and coddling of far right political figures and their co-dependent relationship with mainstream Republicans. Lotta good history here and David asks Kang whether he thinks “Rich Men North of Richmond” is still good. This is a lively one with a lot of interesting history about conservative media and how it developed through the midd...
May 22, 2024•1 hr 3 min
Hello! This week we talk about something we meant to discuss last week — Macklemore’s new song “ Hind’s Hall ,” and politics in music and literature. There’s some Immortal Technique, the Coup, and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young thrown in there too. We also talk about the pretty bad polls that came out for the Biden campaign, which showed him losing in some weird ways in battleground states and took a deeper look into the crosstabs, always the more interesting part of any poll. thanks as always ...
May 15, 2024•1 hr 15 min
Hello! This week we are happy to present one of our most requested guests, Vincent Bevins. He is a longtime foreign correspondent and the author of two books, The Jakarta Method and If We Burn . We talked about the lessons of the mass protests of the 2010s around the world, the allure and some of the downsides to leaderless/horizontal protest movements, and about how the media has covered the campus protests around the country. This is a good one so please enjoy! This is a public episode. If you...
May 08, 2024•1 hr 8 min
Hello! This week we revived a TTSG tradition of answering your questions on the air. Topics covered range from why Tyler puts on a wetsuit and swims out to rocks to fish for striped bass, the rise in extreme sports, why standardized tests are actually good, the state of the student protests going forward and our worries about state repression, and Jerry Seinfeld complaining that all sitcoms are too woke. (One note, we recorded this yesterday morning before the NYPD crackdown at Columbia and CCNY...
May 01, 2024•1 hr 15 min
Hello! Today, we talk about everything that’s happening on campus from Columbia to NYU to Berkeley. Tyler talks about the responsibilities of faculty in these moments and what he thinks is driving a surprisingly strong faculty response to the arrests in New York City. We also talk about how to process the instances of antisemitism at these protests and Jay talks about some of the difficulties that have arisen with the leaderless activism model over the past decade or so. Also, we will be having ...
Apr 24, 2024•1 hr 8 min
Hello, Today’s episode is our conversation with Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon who traveled to European Hospital in Gaza in late March. He talks to us about what he saw there and the massive humanitarian toll, particularly on children. We talked about the conditions at the hospital and the role of the doctor as truth teller in a conflict that is being obscured from view. Dr. Sidhwa and his colleague Dr. Mark Perlmutter wrote an account of their trip which you should read here . And you can ...
Apr 17, 2024•29 min
Hello! Today, we have a packed show with our guest Danny Bessner of the American Prestige podcast. Danny argued the other side of the fascism debate and expressed why he and others believe the word is not appropriate to describe what’s happened to the American right. And Danny stuck around while we discussed Tyler’s debunking of the book “White Rural Rage” and why the type of liberal elite discourse we have right now might eventually be politically catastrophic (while also just being gross.) As ...
Apr 10, 2024•1 hr 32 min
Hello! Today’s guest is the John Ganz, author of the Unpopular Front substack and the upcoming book “ When The Clock Broke .” We talk about the now years-long debate about whether what’s happening among the right wing in American should be called “fascism” and how such definitions should and should not be used in a political manner. We also talk about normie/resistance liberals and the concept of a popular front that needs to exist to defeat all that Trump might bring with him into office. These...
Apr 03, 2024•1 hr 2 min
Hello! Tyler is back for today’s episode in which we talk about open container laws in New Jersey, the discourse about the discourse on Kate Middleton and the Royals, and some thoughts on how to get children off their phones and the Internet, more broadly. Jay reveals that his takes are aging at a more rapid rate than he is and Tyler proves his Marxist bonafides by suggesting the most radical plan you’ve ever heard for getting kids to stop staring at some glowing rectangle for hours and hours up...
Mar 27, 2024•1 hr 4 min
Hello! Today a very special March Madness episode with New York Times and CNN contributor Jane Coaston. We talk about the recent ascent of women’s basketball, the gendered ways in which we always expect good, progressive behavior from women’s coaches and athletes, Caitlin Clark-as-Larry Bird and Caitlin Clark-as-baller, and a bit about NIL and the transfer portal. I’ve wanted to have Jane on the pod for a very long time and this will not disappoint if you want her very good takes on women’s spor...
Mar 20, 2024•1 hr 1 min
Hello! Today’s episode is a talk with Vinson Cunningham about his new novel GREAT EXPECTATIONS which came out yesterday and is in bookstores everywhere. It’s everything you would expect from Vinson: beautiful sentences, long meditations on hoops, the church, and love, and a engrossing storyline that follows a young man who goes to work on the campaign of a certain senator from Illinois during his first presidential run. BUY IT HERE . And if you’re in New York City, Vinson will be in conversation...
Mar 13, 2024•1 hr 10 min
