Hello from Mai’s COVID den! It’s just Jay and Tammy this week. (3:25) First, we chat about a mini-generation of Asian women named after Connie Chung and the news anchor’s professional legacy. (22:18) Then, we discuss the public killings of Banko Brown in SF and Jordan Neely in NYC—and the disturbing turn against poor (particularly Black) people in our cities. We ask: Has America so devalued the lives of homeless people that any offense now seems to warrant vigilante murder? How do these conversa...
May 17, 2023•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello from the vault! In the first of a series of episodes commemorating TTSG’s third anniversary, OG Andy Liu returns. 🎉 We look back at the first episode we ever released, on April 13, 2020 , and ask: (9:30) Was Andy right to attribute both the spread of the coronavirus and the backlash against Asian Americans to China’s growing power? (34:30) Has COVID diminished the concept of U.S. exceptionalism—if not within the U.S., at least in the rest of the world? (56:30) Is it possible for leftists ...
May 10, 2023•1 hr 21 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello from the start of AANHPIXYZ Heritage Month! It’s just Jay and Tammy this week, going long on two of our favorite topics: U.S.-Korea relations and progressive media. [3:15] First, we address the carefully crafted viral moment from Korean President Yoon’s debut at the White House, and the sanitizing of human rights realities in Asia. [17:30] Next, we discuss the controversy over an article about Tucker Carlson published by the American Prospect —and mea culpa’d by the top editor following on...
May 03, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello from a cruise ship! This week, we welcome book critic and Philly basketball devotee Jennifer Wilson back to the show. We discuss [1:00] the epidemic of belligerent airline passengers; [6:25] the surprising (and not so surprising) firings of Tucker Carlson from Fox News and Don Lemon from CNN; [15:10] Jen’s favorite 76er, James Harden, and his ejection for nut-punching; and [27:40] journalist Lauren Oyler’s recent piece on Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop cruise and the sexist genre of wellness writi...
Apr 26, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello from a 90-degree day in New York! This week, we’re joined by Alex Han, executive director of In These Times and a longtime organizer based in Chicago. Alex previously worked for Bernie’s 2020 campaign and SEIU Healthcare Illinois and Indiana. We get into the context behind the surprise mayoral win by former teacher and organizer Brandon Johnson, over “corporate reformer” Paul Vallas. We discuss [15:45] the values (neoliberal versus progressive) at stake in this race, [25:08] which strategi...
Apr 19, 2023•1 hr 20 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello from Jay’s COVID den! Mai would like you to know that she begged Jay to skip recording and rest after he tested positive for COVID , and did the same with Tammy a few weeks ago. They did not listen. Please don’t follow their bad example! This week, Tammy and Jay chat with repeat guest Silky Shah, executive director of Detention Watch Network and longtime organizer for immigrant rights. [1:45] We start, though, with a discussion of “Veep,” which Jay has been rewatching—a show that continues...
Apr 12, 2023•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast Hello from the Bay Area! This week, it’s just Jay speaking with Malcolm Harris, the author of the recently published Palo Alto : A History of California, Capitalism, and the World . We talk about [5:40] why Malcolm wrote a 600-plus-page epic instead of a shorter, more personal book; [27:25] Palo Alto’s origin story, including Leland Stanford and immigrant labor on the railroads; and [43:20] what mainstream histories get wrong about the New Left and Silicon Valley’s development. (Heads-up: There ...
Apr 05, 2023•1 hr 19 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello from Jay’s flooded basement! (Apologies for our less-than-ideal audio.) This week, our guest is Bryce Covert, a writer who covers the culture and work of child care (and its increasingly dire state) in the U.S. Bryce tells Jay and Tammy [14:50] what she’s been hearing from providers as pandemic-stimulus funding dwindles; [27:55] why care workers haven’t been able to win better pay, even in a strong labor market; and [52:25] how private-sector incentives might help—but don’t go nearly far e...
Mar 29, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello from Tammy’s COVID bunker! This week, after a short tribute to Montana’s “dean of journalism,” Chuck Johnson, R.I.P. , Tammy speaks with Kshama Sawant, the three-term socialist Seattle City Councilmember who recently announced that she will not seek reelection after this year. Instead, she has launched Workers Strike Back , “an independent, rank-and-file campaign” to support organizing nationwide. We discuss [9:42] the Amazonification of Seattle, [31:05] a historic municipal bill banning c...
Mar 22, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello from Jay’s tradlife mancave! It’s just us this week, dissecting all the ways our culture has gone too far. We begin with [0:20] a debrief of the most Asian (American?) Oscars ever. Then, updates [20:40] on feminism in South Korea and [40:38] the Stepford wives of TikTok . In this episode, we ask: Are Asians now over represented in Hollywood?! What happens when electoral politics revolves around gender relations? Why doesn’t anyone want to give birth in South Korea, despite myriad family su...
Mar 15, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello from a D.C. hotel! This week, our guest is Ken Chen, writer, professor, and former director of the Asian American Writers' Workshop (AAWW). We discuss [6:45] Ken’s recent piece for n+1, about photojournalist and activist Corky Lee and the deep histories of class, race, and violence woven into his work, centered in Manhattan’s Chinatown. [1:03:20] We also chat about writing, publishing, and Asian American literature as a social-realist project. In this episode, we ask: When does a photo ach...
Mar 08, 2023•2 hr 32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello from our normal, boring lives! Tammy returns from her reporting trip out West, and Jay is back at work after taking half his parental leave. It’s just us this week, talking through [3:20] the political disaster that has unfolded around the derailment and chemical release in East Palestine, Ohio. Plus, [28:25] a new Intercept interview with D.E.I. consultant Tema Okun, about her viral paper “White Supremacy Culture.” In this episode, we ask: Have we learned anything since the 2016 election ...
Mar 01, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello from a sci-fi future! Tammy’s on a reporting trip this week, so it’s just Jay talking to our guest Ben Recht, a professor of computer science and electrical engineering at UC Berkeley. We talk about the history of artificial intelligence, the new bots from Open AI (ChatGPT) and Microsoft (Bing A.I.), and share some of the reasons why they are both skeptical but also kinda impressed. In this episode, we ask: Well, what really is A.I., and how does it differ from machine learning? Is this Si...
Feb 22, 2023•1 hr 20 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello from an ongoing ecological disaster! Our guest this week is Nick Wurst, a freight-rail conductor and a member of the SMART-TD union, who joined Tammy and Jay after an overnight shift. Nick is also a socialist and a member-organizer with Railroad Workers United , a cross-union solidarity organization. He was featured in Tammy’s recent New Yorker piece about the state of union power in the U.S. On Friday, February 3, a train carrying volatile chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, relea...
Feb 15, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello from Juilliard! This week, our friend Vinson Cunningham, award-winning critic at The New Yorker , joins Tammy and Jay to discuss 2022’s wokest(?) film, “Tár.” (Spoiler alert!) [1:00] Before we get into it, we address Kyrie Irving’s request for a trade from the Brooklyn Nets… and what makes him so annoying. (We recorded before Irving’s move to the Dallas Mavericks was announced.) Plus: What does his situation say about workers’ rights, in the context of highly-compensated NBA players? [12:5...
Feb 08, 2023•1 hr 21 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello from our culture of violence! This week, Tammy and Jay talk through some painful questions following the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police officers. For more on the cases and reports mentioned in this episode, see: * San Francisco’s attempt to expand police surveillance: Breed and New DA Jenkins Pushing Hard to Expand Police Access to Private Security Cameras All Over Town * Accusations of racism in the prosecution of NYPD officer Peter Liang * More people killed by police in...
Feb 01, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello from Tammy’s dark apartment! This week, Jay and Tammy are joined by Beatrice Adler-Bolton, co-host of the podcast Death Panel , with Artie Vierkant, and co-author, also with Artie, of the new book Health Communism , a manifesto that reimagines our systems of care. [2:00] But first, we try to process the horrific mass shooting at a dance studio in Monterey Park , California, in which eleven people were killed on Lunar New Year. We discuss Asian America’s reactive hyperfocus on racial identi...
Jan 25, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello from rental hell! This week, Tammy is joined by two friends of the pod who work in housing: Ritti Singh, a tenant organizer in Rochester for Housing Justice for All (and a TTSG Discord leader), and Navneet Grewal, a longtime attorney currently working for Disability Rights California . [5:30] Ritti breaks down the role of a housing organizer, particularly in a majority-tenant city, and Navneet explains her role as a lawyer supporting on-the-ground groups. We discuss the momentum against th...
Jan 18, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello from a Berkeley basement! This week, Jay takes a break from being his daughter’s personal helper to catch up with Tammy. [5:25] We start by discussing right-wing obsession with gender and sexuality. What do recent attacks on librarians tell us about older moral panics and Republican strategy? (Check out this Vice News video of a librarian in Michigan , a ProPublica piece from June about the targeting of an educator in Georgia , and a New York Times piece on a Hamline University adjunct’s f...
Jan 11, 2023•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello from what feels like the distant past! This week, erstwhile co-host Andy Liu joins Jay and Tammy to look back on 2022. (A note from Mai, our producer: Paid subscribers can get the full version of this ep , with some bonus banter about gambling, parental virtue signaling, etc.! Also, we recorded a week ago, so please forgive dated references to Morocco in the World Cup, Elon, and Jay’s not-yet-born second child.) Twenty twenty-two was big for TTSG’s resident parents. Andy and his wife Reiko...
Dec 21, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello from somewhere other than Jay’s basement! This week, we’re excited to release the episode we recorded in New York with Hua Hsu, as part of Tammy’s residency at the A/P/A Institute at NYU. Hua is a TTSG regular and the author of a new memoir, Stay True . The book focuses on Hua’s friendship with Ken, a classmate at Berkeley who was killed the summer before their senior year. We probe the book’s depiction of Asian male friendship, or, as Hua experienced it, “two Asian American people working...
Dec 14, 2022•1 hr 18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello from South Korea’s sad World Cup cheering section! This week, we talk about the unrest in China with Dr. Ting Guo, a scholar at the University of Toronto who studies religion, politics, and gender in transnational Asia. Ting is also great on Twitter and co-hosts a Mandarin podcast called "in-betweenness" (@shichapodcast) . [7:50] The protests in mainland China—and, in solidarity, throughout the world—began late last month, after an apartment fire killed ten people in the city of Urumqi and...
Dec 08, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello from the picket lines! This week, Jay and Tammy report on labor actions on the streets of Berkeley and Seoul. [4:30] First, Jay tells us what he’s heard from striking student workers at the University of California. More than forty-five thousand UAW union members are drawing attention to their financial precarity and austerity in academia. We parse the possible fault lines among this remarkably large group of workers: the relative resources and prestige of different UC campuses, disciplina...
Nov 23, 2022•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast Hello from the Matt Levine fan club! This week, the writer and editor Max Read returns to discuss the disintegration of the tech world. 2:45 – First, Max and Jay explain what happened to cryptocurrency exchange FTX , founded by Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), and how its calamitous end has eroded people’s faith in crypto. We marvel at FTX’s narrative arc (“ Star Wars” and a Bahamian polycule !), the social network that enabled SBF’s messianic rise , and the material conditions in tech-business journali...
Nov 16, 2022•1 hr 23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello from the decline of the West! This week’s episode features a wonderful conversation with Minh-Ha T. Pham, a professor at Pratt who researches fashion labor under global capitalism and digital capitalism—and whose new book, Why We Can’t Have Nice Things , is out now. 3:45 – We begin by reminiscing about the era of the fashion blogger (including Minh-Ha herself ) and the role that young, transnational Asians played as cultural intermediaries for historically exclusive, white brands. Is there...
Nov 09, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello from Jay’s trick-or-treating route! This week, Jay listened to hours of affirmative-action arguments from the Supreme Court so that you (and we) didn’t have to. He recounts Ketanji Brown Jackson’s sharp line of questioning and lays out the progressives’ Catch-22. Does a third path reveal itself if we deny Harvard and its peers their institutional, “meritocratic” power? Is it true that Asian Americans are actually given a leg up in some academic environments? Next, we hear from Tammy, in Ko...
Nov 02, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit goodbye.substack.com Hello from Tammy’s mysterious trip to Korea! In this bonus ep, we answer questions from our beloved subscribers. Thank you for getting us to ponder: * The political dimensions of K-12 school lotteries * A post-affirmative action world * Midterm election hotspots (plus: the effects of labor power and anti-Asian sentiment) * What Tammy and Jay have learned from ea…...
Oct 28, 2022•4 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hi from the science desk! Jay and Tammy chat this week with a very special guest, eco-apocalypse reporter Kendra Pierre-Louis. Her work has appeared on the How to Save a Planet podcast (RIP) and in The Atlantic and The New York Times , among other places . Kendra tells us about her non-traditional path to journalism, the trouble with climate journalism in many newsrooms, and the burden and opportunities of being a Black reporter on the “gloom beat.” How do we make environmental collapse feel rea...
Oct 26, 2022•1 hr 18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello from Tammy’s surfing hagwon! This week, we’re celebrating 1 MILLION DOWNLOADS! Sounds fake, we know, but Substack doesn’t lie. Thanks for tuning in to our ramblings for the past two and a half years—long live TTSG! At the top of the show, we listen to a posthumous podcast with New Yorker editor John Bennett and several of his writers. We reflect on “Bennettisms” about the editor-writer relationship and how writers can help their readers. Next, Tammy reports on the heightened military tensi...
Oct 19, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello from a U.S. neocolony! It’s just Tammy and Jay this week, trying not to obsess over surfing and wallpaper. We talk about the new Netflix show, “ Mo ,” which, despite its marketing, avoids many pitfalls of the mainstream immigrant tale. The show succeeds on account of its main character: the very flawed yet charismatic Mo, a Palestinian-American man with a pending asylum case, played by comedian and show creator Mo Amer. We also dig into what makes the city of Houston such a compelling and ...
Oct 12, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
