Time To Say Goodbye

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? [12:50] In our main segment: “Tár,” the dark portrait of a high-powered orchestra conductor’s fall from grace, starring Cate Blanchett. How does the film see the dangers of artistic personas (with a #MeToo plotline reminiscent of James Levine’s abuses), “cancel culture” (per Richard Brody’s review), and labor relations? And how do the movie’s heavy-handed academic scenes compare to Vinson’s experience as a college teacher? [33:40] The film also critiques a specific type of (aging? resentful? arrogant?) second-wave feminist, as Zadie Smith argues in her illuminating piece in the New York Review of Books. We also discuss Becca Rothfeld’s analysis of “Tár” and the obsession with reputation management. Plus: the orientalist narrative of a Western (anti-)hero finding herself in the East. Thanks for listening! Subscribe on Patreon or Substack to join our Discord and participate in an upcoming movie night with Jay, Tammy, and fellow listeners. As always, you can follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, and stay in touch via email at timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com. 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 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 2022 than in any other year in the past decade, according to Mapping Police Violence* Oakland’s Anti Police-Terror Project* Cultures of violence in police departments and special units: * Rise Of The Warrior Cop by Radley Balko* The Riders Come Out at Night by Ali Winston and Darwin BondGraham* We Own This City by Justin Fenton* The killing of Amadou Diallo, which led to the disbanding of NYPD’s Street Crimes Unit* The L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputy-Gang Crisis* Similar dynamics within the military (correction: from NYT, not ProPublica): Death in Navy SEAL Training Exposes a Culture of Brutality, Cheating and Drugs * The Oakland Police Department’s extended recruitment video* A worker shortage across government: It’s Not Just a Police Problem, Americans Are Opting Out of Government Jobs* Jeet Heer’s take in The Nation: The Killing of Tyre Nichols Is an Indictment of the Entire Political System And revisit these TTSG essays and episodes: * Racial dynamics in recent mass shootings: Monterey Park, Half Moon Bay, and who owns a tragedy* Police killings across race, a provocation by Barbara Fields and Adam Rothman in Dissent, and discussed in “SCOTUS trouble, working-class white people, and Taiwan's military”* Abolition as practice: * How not to think like a cop, with Naomi Murakawa* "I want you to care when people are still alive," with Yves Tong Nguyen of Red Canary Song* "A world where prisons serve no purpose," with Kony Kim of the Bay Area Freedom CollectiveAs always, please subscribe via Substack or Patreon to support the podcast and access our listener Discord. You can also follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, and email us at timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com.  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 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 identification and hate-crime designations and ponder alternatives. (We recorded on Monday evening, just before news broke of yet another mass shooting—this time, in Half Moon Bay, killing seven people. Jay expanded on these ideas in this essay for TTSG.) How should the left respond to violence that doesn’t fit into a predetermined, racialized narrative? [18:00] In our main segment, Beatrice takes us through the theory of Health Communism and its promise to save us from our financialized care nightmare. We discuss the transformation of “health” into an aesthetic commodity and the dogma of personal responsibility that keeps us from making population-level change. Though the book does not discuss COVID-19, Beatrice explains how our pandemic response has highlighted the left’s blind spots with respect to disability. She endorses a "margin to center" / “edge case” method, drawing on Black feminism, and a global approach to social determinants of health. Plus: how mainstream talk of Medicare for All falls short, a Supreme Court case about nursing homes, and the meaning of “extractive abandonment.”Speaking of communism: On Tuesday, January 31, at 5pm EST, Tammy joins sci-fi novelist and activist China Miéville for a conversation about “contemporary capitalism’s rapidly multiplying crises and the Communist Manifesto’s enduring relevance,” in celebration of his new book, A Spectre, Haunting. Register here! Thanks for listening! Subscribe on Patreon or Substack and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. As always, feel free to email us at timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com.  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 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 the commodification of shelter over the past decade, plus organizing successes at the state and local levels regarding rent stabilization, funding for affordable housing, and tenant protections. [34:02] Both guests emphasize the need to diversify the types of housing that exist outside of the private market. We also discuss the various strategies needed to to get out of this crisis—from robust tenant protections to social housing, coops, community land trusts, and tenant purchases of property. What are the connections between housing activism and the environmental justice movement? What if everyone who lives in a place, not just homeowners, could decide what happens to their homes?[41:10] Ritti and Navneet also say what they make of NIMBY-vs.-YIMBY activist fights and the horrific policies being implemented against our homeless neighbors (CARE Court in California and Eric Adams’s increased use of forced institutionalization in NYC). How should we address this aspect of the housing crisis? (Hint: Definitely not like that!) Get involved in the fight in New York! If you want to hear more, we’ve previously talked housing with Darrell Owens, on the fight to end single-family zoning; Paul Williams, on social housing; and Jia Tolentino, on the nightmarish rental market in NYC. We also asked Mike Davis about housing back in 2020, inspired by input from Navneet (who wrote about Mike just before he died).Thanks for listening! Subscribe on Patreon or Substack to join our Discord and participate in our ongoing chats about housing, organizing, and more. As always, you can follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, and stay in touch via email at timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com. 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 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 firing.) We also touch on [21:32] the circus surrounding the votes for House speaker and [23:30] Jay’s short-lived boycott of Twitter following Elon Musk’s suspension of journalists. [34:25] Next, we talk about Biden’s recent move to expand Title 42, the Trump-era policy that limits immigration under the guise of COVID prevention. Tammy relays what she’s heard from people in the immigrant-rights space, who have been continually disappointed by Biden’s policy choices, and speculates on the intractability of U.S. politics around immigration and labor. [43:25] Jay offers some free advice to the Dems about the mendacious Republican representative-elect George Santos. Thanks for listening! Please subscribe on Patreon or Substack, stay in touch via email (timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com), and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. 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 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 had their second kid in May, and Jay and his wife Casey just welcomed their second child this week! Speaking of kids, [14:10] Andy gets the podsquad to analyze Fear of Falling, Barbara Ehrenreich’s 1989 study of U.S. middle-class identity and the “professional managerial class.” We dissect Ehrenreich’s theories about educational capital, anxiety over class decline, and how this feeling of precarity animates many Americans’ concepts of the family. Plus: Malcolm Harris’s contribution to the discourse; and [31:30] Andy’s take on labor unrest in academia and a less exploitative vision for higher education.  [41:10] Next, Tammy talks geopolitics and the bellicose, paranoid shift spurred by the war in Ukraine. Have we moved past the era of “stateless” threats (i.e., the War on Terror) and returned to a global order that pits the U.S. against China and Russia? What of the super-statist international cooperation we imagined in our youth, and what does the Ukraine war mean for small countries? We also talk about the ever-increasing (and rarely disputed) defense spending in the U.S. as well as Korea's rising profile as an arms dealer to the world. [52:50] Last, Jay observes that race and identity have recently come to feel less central to our national discourse. Why the lackluster defense of affirmative action? Why is there so little public anger over police killings? We try to unpack the many possible causes—anxiety about the midterms, inflation, media skew—and ask whether the shift is ultimately good or bad. Subscribe via Patreon or Substack for access to the full conversation and to join our Discord. You can also follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, or email us at timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com. Thanks for a great year!  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 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 through stuff.” We discuss questions of craft, how to assemble two decades of documentation, and the intense highs and lows of young adulthood. Plus: Hua on pre-Internet zine-making and private worlds, emulating Maxine Hong Kingston (who’d emulated Walt Whitman), and the joy of putting his parents and Ken in textual proximity to Aristotle, Jacques Derrida, and Charles Taylor. You can also watch a video of our conversation, professionally produced by A/P/A, here: Big thanks to Amita Manghnani, Crystal Parikh, and Laura Chen-Schultz!  And thanks for your support. We were psyched to see TTSG on Slate’s list of best chat podcasts of 2022! Please share the pod with anyone who might enjoy “a solid balance between the troubling and the absurd.” ☺️You can follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, and subscribe via Patreon or Substack to join our Discord, where you can be a part of our conversation about TTSG merch! As always, feel free to email us at timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com. 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 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 workers at a Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou scaled the factory fence. Protestors have expressed anger and grief about the country's Zero-COVID policy and much else besides. Ting situates this movement(?) within a long history of resistance—from Tiananmen to the Toilet Revolution to Bridge Man—while explaining why it also feels so unprecedented. We talk about the leadership of feminists and queer activists in recent mobilizations, the emblematic struggle of migrant laborers in China’s surveillance system, solidarity with Uyghurs, and the long-held anguish that imbues every white-paper gesture. (Check out Eli Friedman’s terrific Boston Review essay for more context.) How has transnational and intersectional support helped to widen the protestors’ aims? If you’d like to follow the protests, Ting recommends: 公民日报 Citizens Daily CNChinese queers will not be censored.和姐妹们颠覆父权暴政 We Are All Chained Women 北方广场 Northern Square 女权中国 Feminist ChinaAs Jay mentions at the end of the episode, he and his wife are expecting a second kid any day now (yay!), so we may be off the air over the holidays. We’ll make sure to keep you posted here, in Discord, and on social media. Thanks for your support. Please subscribe on Patreon or Substack, stay in touch via email (timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com), and follow us on Twitter—and now Instagram and TikTok!  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 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, disciplinary biases, and disparate access to jobs after graduation. Why should we believe universities’ pleas of poverty, when their money so clearly goes to bloated administrative positions, campus police, and extravagant sports facilities? [38:58] We also discuss strikes at Starbucks, The New School, and HarperCollins, and the revived possibility of a rail strike next month. Something’s clearly in the air—will US labor law and the NLRB limit or bolster worker power? [45:27] Next, Tammy fills us in on the annual labor rally in Seoul, which, this year, targeted President Yoon Suk Yeol’s malfeasance and the mass deaths in Itaewon. As the new administration promises to concentrate wealth even further and avoids interacting with the public, how should the Korean working class respond? What kind of government is the Yoon administration, and what is the government for, anyway? [53:02] Lastly, we remember Staughton Lynd, a key leftist intellectual and organizer who passed away last week. Lynd and his wife, Alice, were key figures in movements for civil rights and labor and against incarceration and war. RIP. Next week, we’ll be taking a break from recording. Our next episode will be a live recording with Hua Hsu, so be sure to pick up his book—and please join us in person next week, if you’re in NYC! 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 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 journalism. Plus: Did SBF’s obsession with effective altruism (or, as Tammy puts it, the Davos-ification of philosophy) inoculate him against criticism? 38:50 – Speaking of Silicon Valley founder fetish… we then turn our attention to the train wreck of Twitter under Elon Musk. Could this disastrous moment in tech workers’ rights shift the industry’s (and especially Twitter’s) stance on unions? Or will downsizing keep workers in their place? Which of the Max’s predicted paths will Twitter take, and what would its death mean for the left and for journalism? Support TTSG by subscribing via Patreon or Substack, following us on Twitter (lol), and sharing the show with friends. You can always reach us by email at timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com.  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