Hello!

We talk today about the Biden Crime Family, Trump’s sleepy and then not-sleepy speech, the Panama Canal, Mars, and whether Trump actually had prepared for his big (second) moment. Then we go into Elon’s salute and the eerie silence that has fallen over the “resistance” and what that might mean for the next few years.

Enjoy!

Hello!

Today’s episode is a lively one! We talk about optimization, working out, RFK Jr., and how health and the woowoo New Age trends of the 1970s somehow got right-coded and then turned into a pathway to becoming one of the worst people on earth. Our guest to discuss all this is Maya Vinokour, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Russian Studies at NYU. Her first book, called Work Flows, focused on labor discourse in Soviet Russia came out last year.

Her thoughts on all this can be found in the Nation and Jacobin.

Hello!

Today we have a belated 1/6 anniversary special with repeat guest John Ganz, whose great book “When the Clock Broke” can be ordered here and whose essential substack can be read here. We discuss how the public will remember January 6th and whether it might already be fading from the collective memory. What do we make of it today after last November’s election? How do we think Trump will treat 1/6, whether the people in jail who are now pleading for pardons or the lasting imprint it may have placed on the public trust?

We also talk about Trump’s “plans” to annex Greenland.

Enjoy!

Hello!

After a long string of edifying and informative conversations with experts and thinkers, Tyler and I catch up on the big fight in MAGA world over H1B visa holders, highly skilled immigrants, and what we make of Vivek’s big tweet about… Saved By the Ball? Kids going to malls instead of studying? Really what year did he think he lives in? Anyway, all this discussed in this episode!

Hello!

Today we have another informative and deep episode with Claire Dunning, a historian and associate professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. Her first book, which came out with the University of Chicago Press in 2022, is a history of urban nonprofits and philanthropic organizations titled Nonprofit Neighborhoods: An Urban History of Inequality and the American State. More recently she has written about what she calls the “nonprofit industrial complex” as well as the growing turn away from neoliberalism in the philanthropic sector which Claire recently wrote about in a Nonprofit Quarterly essay entitled “What Does the ‘End’ of Neoliberalism Mean for the Nonprofit Sector?”

We had Professor Dunning on to talk about the discourse about "the groups," how the non-profit industry became an industry and arguably lost its way, how to change the influence they might have in politics into something that could be good and serve more people, and a whole lot about the history of how both the term "non-profit" and the relationship these groups have with the government changed over the course of the past seventy of so years.

enjoy!

Hello!

Today we have on Max Kim, the Seoul correspondent for the LA Times and a repeat TTSG guest to provide a worthy service. If you are interested in what's happening in Korea but don't know a whole lot about Korea history, politics, or even who President Yoon might be outside of a few viral clips of him singing and his incredibly stupid recent coup attempt, Max is here to provide his analysis and his reportage on everything from what Yoon might been thinking, how he came into power, the Korean traditions of protest, and everything else you might want to know that we could fit into an hour and fifteen minutes.

Please read Max's writing on this.

a great piece from 2022 in the Baffler about Yoon

LA Times article from yesterday on "who is running South Korea right now?"

A moving piece about the Gwangju Massacre

This week we have on David Hill, the author of a great Rolling Stone article on the online sports betting industry. Dave is the best writer on this topic in America and we talked about his childhood in Hot Springs, Arkansas, the history behind some of these big companies like Draftkings and FanDuel and how they try to exploit players to turn a profit. We also talk about how those profits have not really materialized for these companies and how the whole industry feels like a giant bubble right now. If you want to know everything worth knowing about all these ads you’re seeing and all these bros talking about their parlays, enjoy!

Also, wanted to say that we will be having an episode on the failed coup in Korea next week. Given the fluidity of the situation, did not want to jump the gun on something that would be out of date by the time we hit publish.

And as always, if you enjoy this podcast — and thousands of you tune in every week — please hit the subscribe button and help us keep the lights on over here.

thanks!

Hello!

Today for the holiday weekend, we have Nancy Fraser, the Henry and Louise Loeb Professor of Political and Social Science at the New School. She has written widely on feminism, injustice, the problem with identity politics, and neoliberalism. Her most recent books are Cannibal Capitalism and The Old is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born, both of which were published by Verso.

We revisited an extremely prescient essay she wrote in 2017 for American Affairs about progressive neoliberalism, hegemony, and how Trump both disrupted and reified the existing order. Lotta great talk in this one about whether the Democrats will ever wake up, economic populism, what Trump might do in his second term and more!

Hello!

Today we have Jamie Lauren Keiles, the author of an upcoming book about the rise of nonbinary identity in America, back on the show. We talk about the thinly veiled post mortems by some within the Democratic coalition to abandon 'the whole trans thing,' the history of how trans rights became such a large part of the country's political conversation, and much more.

If you want to follow Jamie's very cool instagram, it's @sexchange.tbt.

Enjoy!

Hello!

Today we brought back our polling experts Ben Recht, a professor of computer science at UC Berkeley and Leif Weatherby, a professor of German and the founding director of the Digital Theory Lab at NYU. We set out to really talk about one question: Can we trust these polls and were they right or wrong? Then we talked a lot about how campaigns think and how our data driven society leads to a bunch of very odd and almost random decisions but also very little reflection. Luddites rejoice, this one is for you.

Also, as always, we would really appreciate any help to keep the lights on. We give away this podcast for free every week and can only keep doing it with continued donations from you. It’s just five dollars a month, which is about what you pay in delivery fees every time you order Chipotle from DoorDash or come up with some other five dollar purchase that fits in here. We do appreciate it and thank you so much to everyone who subscribed last week!

Hello!

Today we brought back our polling experts Ben Recht, a professor of computer science at UC Berkeley and Leif Weatherby, a professor of German and the founding director of the Digital Theory Lab at NYU. We set out to really talk about one question: Can we trust these polls and were they right or wrong? Then we talked a lot about how campaigns think and how our data driven society leads to a bunch of very odd and almost random decisions but also very little reflection. Luddites rejoice, this one is for you.

Also, as always, we would really appreciate any help to keep the lights on. We give away this podcast for free every week and can only keep doing it with continued donations from you. It’s just five dollars a month, which is about what you pay in delivery fees every time you order Chipotle from DoorDash or come up with some other five dollar purchase that fits in here. We do appreciate it and thank you so much to everyone who subscribed last week!