What if the Super Bowl was invaded by aliens?

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I Want To Believe

This week we talk Ukraine, the ruling class's fixation on Boxes, and the mass hysteria of Devil's Milkshakes issuing from East Palestine, Ohio

Check out Aaron's story here: https://spacelight.substack.com/p/this-machine

Tarence's article here: https://thebaffler.com/latest/the-devils-milkshake-ray

And our Patreon here: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 279: Vance Macabre

We talk Chicago, we talk class, we talk boobs.

ANDERS + ALEX DSA BENEFIT SHOW
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JAKE STAND UP SHOW
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ALEX PODCAST KICKSTARTER
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Class Dealignment In The Minotaur's Maze

Forget adrenochrome. There's a very real network of private companies extracting blood plasma from financially precarious Americans and selling it (and its derivatives) for piles of money on the global market. They target parts of the country in economic decline and incentivize plasma sellers to become repeat visitors to their centers, despite the physical downsides of the process. Our guest this week is Kathleen McLaughlin, author of Blood Money: The Story of Life, Death and Profit Inside America's Blood Industry.

Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to ongoing series like 'Manclan' and 'Trickle Down': www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous

Kathleen McLaughlin: https://twitter.com/kemc / https://kemc.substack.com
Blood Money: The Story of Life, Death, and Profit Inside America's Blood Industry
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Blood-Money/Kathleen-McLaughlin/9781982171964

QAA's Website: qanonanonymous.com

Music by Max Weber. Editing by Corey Klotz.

Episode 221: Plasma Vampires & the Blood Business feat Kathleen McLaughlin

"Unions used to make sense but are obsolete in today's economy!" Unions are an "outside force" or "third party." "I'm a strong worker. Unionization will harm me personally and only help the weak and lazy workers." "Unions are rigid, old fashioned hierarchies."

We’ve all no doubt heard these talking points at some point, if not often, from news shows, opinion pieces, TV dramas, members of our families, our co-workers and, probably most of all, our bosses. What’s remarkable is how little these general talking points have changed throughout the decades. Some versions of these pat anti-union lines have been around since there have been unions. It's generally unseemly to appear anti-worker or not OF the working class so opposition to the one thing that historically empowers the working class––unions––is seen as crass and politically incorrect.

So, in its place has emerged a popular set of go-to, sophistic arguments that allow one to appear pro-working class without the messiness and ideological heavy lifting of actually supporting labor organizing and unionization. These McArguments––that after decades of anti-union messaging feel right without being right––appeal to ignorance, prejudice, vagueness and gendered and racialized perceptions of what labor is, and what labor deserves: the protection and stability offered by collective bargaining.

On this episode, we detail eight of the most popular anti-union talking points, their origins, who they serve, their purpose and power, and––most important of all––how to combat them.

Our guest is union organizer and author Daisy Pitkin.

Episode 177: Popular Anti-Union Talking Points and How to Combat Them

"Our progress has been part of the living history of America," President Jimmy Carter declared in a 1979 speech. "America is a nation of progress, of moving forward," Senator Chuck Grassley stated in 2022 on the Senate floor. "The story of America is a story of progress and resilience, of always moving forward, of never, ever giving up. It's a story unique among all nations," President Joe Biden announced in his 2023 State of the Union.

For decades - even centuries - policymakers, and media on their behalf, have employed some variation on the same rhetorical theme: the United States is a nation of progress, especially so-called "racial progress." Though our Great Experiment has been imperfect, we're told, it's constantly improving, steadily and automatically forging ahead toward its ideal state. Yes, we've been home to the violent oppression of untold sums of people, but look how far we’ve come!

There have objectively been political gains for all groups historically and currently denied basic rights in the U.S. This is obvious. But the trajectory is far from linear, raising the question: How far have "we" really come? Are people, especially Black, Latino, and Native people, less likely to suffer through poverty than any time before now? Are police and prisons any less violent? To what extent have U.S. law and policymaking really evolved?

On this episode, we dissect the liberal assertion that social, particularly racial, progress in the U.S. is inevitable, that there's this comforting "arc" of history bending towards justice. We examine how this idea came to be, who gets to define the metrics of "progress," and why it's dangerous to advance the tidy Vaseline-lens narrative that societal improvement is part of some preordained future.

Our guest is Dr. Julian M. Rucker.

Episode 178: The Palliative Pop-History of American "Racial Progress" Narratives

Artists Matt Bors and Ben Clarkson join the show to talk about the state of the animation industry, AI art, and of course the famous Garfield cum comic

BUY THE BOOK https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Justice-Warriors/Matt-Bors/9781952090226

PAID PROTEST 04/06
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JUSTICE WARRIORS w/ Matt Bors and Ben Clarkson

In this public News Brief, we break down Johnson's "surprise" win and how it upends every lazy media trope involving local Democratic politics pushed over the last two years.

News Brief: How Brandon Johnson's Win Upends US Media's Patronizing, Simplistic "Crime" Narratives

In this public News Brief, we detail how uncritical acceptance by centrist––and even liberal––media that the US is seeing an unprecedented "labor shortage" is helping justify repealing child labor protections in roughly a dozen states.

Media's Credulous "Labor Shortage" Reporting Helps Lay Groundwork For Repealing Child Labor Laws

This week it's a grab bag of allergy-fueled bits and news, followed by an op-ed from a friend at the NYTimes about the formula for making crime go up

Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 287: Big Time Criminality

"I Was A Teenage Conspiracy Theorist," The Atlantic magazine playfully titled a 2020 essay. "Choose your reality: Trust wanes, conspiracy theories rise," reported The Associated Press in 2022. "Do You Know Someone Who Believes in Conspiracy Theories? We Want to Hear About It," wrote The New York Times last year.

Fears of "conspiracy theories" are a common trope in the U.S. media, a worry that's grown more acute with the rise of QAnon, anti-vaxx sentiment, anti-semitism and a host of other dangerous theories that unduly rot brains throughout the country. To a great extent, this understandable: Many ideas that meet the definition of "conspiracy theories" are, indeed, baseless and dangerous and can direct people's political energy and resources into wasteful, racist, and downright stupid rabbit holes.

But that fact shouldn't delegitimize or foreclose all skepticism of those in power, but too often the term "conspiracy theory" is used to do just that. Repeatedly, media lump together so-called conspiracy theories, regardless of their accuracy, rationale, and ideology: at once, UFO chasers, QAnon, and the Black Panther Party being subject to FBI disruption are somehow placed in the same category of paranoid kooks. At the same time, unproven, and often debunked ideas advanced by media that also meet the definition of "conspiracy theories" — such as Saddam Hussein being behind 9/11 or so-called Havana syndrome — are treated as unassailable, meriting ongoing investigation, limitless resources, and of course, utmost solemnity.

On this episode, we detail the double standards applied to conspiracy theories inside and outside of the realm of U.S. corporate media. We’ll examine the development of the concept of conspiracy theories and the media's selective invocations of the term to discredit real grievances directed at American power and the U.S. government, and moreover, how power-friendly conspiracies — namely those focused on Enemy States like the Havana Syndrome narrative — are permitted to fester and grow without pushback because their red yarn dot connecting implicates the right lists of Acceptable Bad Guys.

Our guest is Jacobin writer Branko Marcetic.

Episode 180: Havana Syndrome and the Power of Mainstream, Acceptable Conspiracy Theories

Citations Needed is a podcast about the media, power, PR, and the history of bullshit. It is hosted by Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson, and produced by Florence Barrau-Adams.

Episode 177: Popular Anti-Union Talking Points and How to Combat Them

Citations Needed Podcast