Author: Time To Say Goodbye

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 hegemonic vision of a warmed earth, one that has become almost cliche in the thirty years since Sower’s publication. Why don’t we have other, new visions for climate death? What would those even look like?

We also get a bit into a recent article in The Atlantic about Butler and her use of “historofuturism” in her work.

And we talk a bit about the state of the Black quarterback and muse on why Lamar Jackson might get a more traditional, sports-talk-racist treatment than other Black quarterbacks in the league.

We will be continuing our look into extinction literature next week with a look at Becky Chambers’s “A Psalm for the Wild-Built.” If you’d like to read it before the show, please do so!

As always, if you’d like to upgrade your subscription and help support the show, we rely on your contributions to keep it going. Please click over and help us for $5 a month!

— TTSG

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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 and movies. In this episode, for example, you’ll find a “Book Corner” at the end where we talk about the rise of true crime podcasts and a recent op-ed in the Times.

Tyler also wrote a piece about the Claudine Gay scandal at Harvard, which we discussed at some length here.

As always, if you’re getting this email and want to support the show, please subscribe for $5 a month and you’ll receive access to our Discord server, where all these things are discussed at great length.

thank you!

Jay

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!

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 would both disenfranchise many of the people who had voted for her to be their representative but also seemed to reflect the unrelenting power of homeowners in Southern California.

You can read some of those pieces here, here, and here.

What became clear to me during the reporting of those pieces was that Mike Davis was right when he wrote “the most powerful ‘social movement’ in contemporary Southern California is that of affluent homeowners, organized by notional community designations or tract names, engaged in the defense of home values and neighborhood exclusivity.”

The real battle in California, then, is between the self interests of homeowners to protect their value and the “character” of their neighborhoods and the best interests of everyone else. This is not a fight that follows basic partisan lines nor is it one that really has much coherence to it, but it’s the fight that every politician in California, especially in Los Angeles or here in the Bay Area, must navigate to get anything done.

Nithya and I talked about all that and the massive scandal in the Los Angeles City Council in 2022, where Latino members of the council and labor leaders were caught on tape making bigoted statements about pretty much every other group in the city. What those tapes revealed, at least to me, was how a type of identity politics actually functioned in the country’s second biggest city.

If you want to know a bit more about Nithya, here’s a link to her campaign page and a story about the leaked tape scandal.

thank you!

TTSG

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!

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 was talking about Trayvon Martin and George Floyd. The NFL, still enmeshed in the blackballing of Colin Kaepernick, put together a variety of initiatives around ending racism or whatever. The NBA had its weird bubble spectacle with all its Nike approved slogans on every surface possible, including the player jerseys.

Today, almost all of that is gone. Sports coverage, for the most part, feels explicitly apolitical. Even the NBA’s big concession post the summer of 2020 — that they would not play any games on election days and use their arenas as polling sites — came and went this year without any real interruption to what had become a non-stop In Season Tournament hype cycle.

Are we in a period of overcorrection? To discuss this question, I brought on Bradford William Davis, an investigative sports journalist and a former sports columnist at the New York Daily News.

Here is a sampling of Bradford’s work.

A lengthy investigation into Major League Baseball’s practice of using multiple balls during the season. (for my money, one of the finest works of investigative sports reporting in the past five years)

A look into injury and labor concerns in the NFL

An investigation into sexual assault and misconduct in US Fencing

TIMESTAMPS

6:02- are we in a moment of overcorrection for politics in sports media?

17:05 - OHTANI TALK and did he not come to SF because of crime, homelessness and wokeness?

28:45 - DRAYMOND TALK and “mental health” as a catch-all explanation.

45:00 - a defense of investigative journalism in sports

52:00 - JUST TELL US WHAT’S HAPPENING, REPORTERS!

ANNOUNCEMENT: We will be taking the next two weeks off for the break but will be back on Wednesday January 3rd.

Thank you!

Jay

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!

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 Maine and the L.L. Bean outlet.

7:00-34:00 - EXTINCTION LITERATURE TALK

34:00- end - How to think about what’s happening on campus, the need to address concerns about double standards in speech with seriousness and good faith, and a defense of DEI programs.

You should read Tyler’s work as well. Here are some links

How Much Blood is Your Fun Worth? in the Atlantic.

I’m a Black Professor. You Don’t Need to Bring That Up. in the Atlantic

The Moral Theater of Social Justice Parenting in NYT

I Teach at an Elite College. Here’s a Look Inside the Racial Gaming of Admissions in NYT

Lastly, I wanted to put in a short message here about the future of the show. As noted, the show will still continue and while there’s no definitive plan yet on what the next months will look like, there will still be episodes and an ongoing assessment of what’s working and what’s not. Obviously, the show will not be the same without Tammy, but the community we built over the past three and a half years has always been extremely important to me and not something I take for granted. If you have any suggestions or complaints or whatever, please feel free to email me at timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com. I’m extremely grateful for all of your support over all these years and I want you to know that you also have a say in what comes next.

thanks

Jay

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 “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 replacing her TinyLetter, R.I.P.), sign up here, and find links to her older work here. You can also keep in touch via email and follow her on Instagram for eventual zine-y things! 

Mai can be reached via email, but apologizes in advance for her dismal reply rate. 

Subscribe on Patreon or Substack to join the TTSG Discord community. You can also follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and X (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

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 traveling; and what makes a good artistic collaboration. [Note: From 3:15 to 26:10, Jillian presents a slideshow, but the BTS is great even without the visuals!] 

🎧 Heads-up: Tomorrow (Monday, Dec. 4) Tammy and Jay will record their final co-host ep, and take listener questions! Ask away here: https://forms.gle/bVtcVVyyNKz7Epe76 

Subscribe on Patreon or Substack to join our Discord community. You can also follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and X (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 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 secretaries). [53:30] Finally, we debate whether the term “barbaric” has been selectively applied since October 7, along with larger questions of media bias. 

In this episode, we ask: 

Where does China’s relatively strong support of Palestine come from, and is it actually as strong as it seems? 

How does the movement for a free Palestine fit into the idea of what it means to be a good leftist? 

Should media outlets rethink when to publish gruesome images of victims of violence? 

For more, see: 

* Times coverage of the Biden-Xi Summit (and Blinken’s reaction to a Biden gaffe) 

* More on the three young Palestinian American students who were shot in Vermont, the NYU doctor who was fired over his racist social media posts, and the friendship between a Palestinian and a pro-Israel chef in Philly that has soured

* Words from Lydia Polgreen and from Jay on the question of publishing graphic photos of children killed in Gaza 

Reminder: Tammy is hosting a virtual TTSG book club meeting for subscribers tonight at 5pm PST // 8pm EST (9am in Shanghai) with cartoonist, illustrator, and Discord OG Jillian Tamaki! We’ll get some BTS insight from Jillian on the graphic novel she just published with her cousin and co-author, Mariko Tamaki, Roaming. You can find the Zoom info on Discord or in this post! 

Subscribe on Patreon or Substack to join our Discord community. You can also follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and X (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! 

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 telling students about the suspensions. We also talk about divestment, broadly, as an organizing tactic and discuss the anti-apartheid divestment protests for South Africa. 

Tammy will be back next week for three more episodes!

Reminder: On Nov. 29, Tammy will host her last TTSG book club event over Zoom with cartoonist, illustrator, and Discord OG Jillian Tamaki—on Jillian’s new graphic novel, Roaming! Check out the Discord for details and a book discount.

Subscribe on Patreon or Substack to join our Discord community. You can follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and X (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

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 of unlearning pro-Israel propaganda and where a trans, anti-Zionist, observant Jew finds himself today, both institutionally and spiritually. 

In this episode, we ask: 

How is the presumed “objective” position within a media institution created and reinforced?

What good (if any) can an open letter do? And how much does it matter what an American Jew thinks about all of this? 

How do people’s minds actually get changed on Israel-Palestine? 

For more, see: 

* Jamie’s latest Substack post: Do I believe that there are questions that should never be asked? 

* Jamie and Jazmine Hughes on Democracy Now! discussing their resignations from the Times Magazine 

* Jay’s recent piece on the chilling of pro-Palestine speech within journalism 

* AP coverage of the Writers Bloc action in the New York Times building last week

[1:04:00] And a big announcement! Listen to the end to catch Tammy and Jay present a new phase for the podcast. (Spoiler: Tammy is moving on in early December; Jay is continuing and wants your feedback.) 

As always, subscribe on Patreon or Substack to join our Discord community, which we hope to continue cultivating into the future. Also: On Nov. 29, Tammy will host her last TTSG book club event with cartoonist, illustrator, and Discord OG Jillian Tamaki—on Jillian’s new graphic novel, Roaming! Check out the Discord for details and a book discount.

You can follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and X (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