Bryan tags in for my absentee cohosts and Matt & Felix stop by to talk TV and tease their new Stitcher Premium show: "Time For My Stories" 

Time For My Stories:
https://www.stitcher.com/show/time-for-my-stories

Episode 189: Chaos Walking, The Kurt Sutter Story(w/Bryan Quinby, Felix Biederman, & Matt Christman)

Tanya watches the Q documentary, then the gang takes a trip back to Austin, Texas for some unfinished business

Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 193: Brain Virgins

In this public News Brief, we break down the PR campaign against activists who want intellectual property rules suspended so that poor countries can manufacture their own generic vaccines. With guest Peter Maybarduk of Public Citizen.

News Brief: Big Pharma, Bill Gates Spin Against Generic Vaccines for Global South as Biden a No Show

"Yemen war: Joe Biden ends support for operations in foreign policy reset," reports the BBC. "Trump: US will be out of Afghanistan by Christmas 2020," cheered Military Times. "Trump Orders Withdrawal of U.S. Troops From Northern Syria," the New York Times told us.

For decades, the United States has very often appeared to have "ended" wars that do not, in fact, end at all. Open-ended jargon like "residual counter terror forces," "Vietnamization," "military advisors," along with deliberately ambiguous timetables, process criticisms––all are used to confuse the average media consumer. America's politicians know the American public broadly dislikes war and empire––and thus wants to see it restrained––but these same politicians don't really want to end wars so they have a frequent PR problem: How do you make it look like you’re ending a war or occupation without really doing so?

To solve this conundrum, American political leaders have perfected the art of fake-ending a war. Which is to say, announcing a war is going to end, typically around election time, only to––once the headlines make a big splash––backtrack, obfuscate, claim the "situation on the ground has changed" or the military involvement will only be in a "limited" or "defensive" capacity, shuffle troops around or find other thin pretexts to continue the war or occupation.

In this episode, we discuss the United States' history of fake-ending wars, who these pronouncements are meant to please, why troops levels are often impossible to know, and why so many of our so-called "wars" are not really wars at all, but military occupations that are never really meant to end.

Our guest is Shireen Al-Adeimi, assistant professor at Michigan State University.

Episode 133: The Art of Fake-Ending Wars

In this episode we explore the imminent armed conflict between introverts and extroverts.

Support future scientific research like this at our Patreon: patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 196: Battle Of The Bores

In this News Brief we break down the entirely predictable media coverage of Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestinians--liberal handwringing, vague "progressive" outrage--and make the case for why the most recent "clashes" should compel nominal progressive leaders like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to formally support BDS.

On Palestine, It's Time for Progressives to Stop Reading From the Same Outrage Script & Support BDS

"A good, hard working kid." "A 4.0 student." "He's asking for too much money." "They get paid to play a child’s game." "He shows up and does his work and never complains."

Despite the fact that the concept of paying college athletes has gained some mainstream support in recent years, much of the ideological scaffolding that exists to justify their lack of fair compensation is still very popular and widespread in sports punditry and writing, AM radio and play-by-play broadcasts.

Scrutinizing GPAs and work ethic, talking about how "kids" are "becoming men," racialized claims of lazy or ungrateful players, and wildly different double standards for players and owners for when they attempt to maximize their economic interests all prop up a system that, despite liberal hand-wringing and box checking concern for not paying players at the highest levels, still relies on withholding compensation from college athletes for their labor.

The stakes go beyond just sports. This conservative cultural contempt for athletes as a whole mirrors and informs that of other workers as well. Whenever, say, nurses organize for better pay and safer working conditions or, in the era of COVID, teachers unions seek to continue virtual rather than in-person classes for the sake of public health, they’re dismissed as self-interested and domineering.

On this episode, we parse the racist, anti-labor characterization of athletes in media, how they are both scary threatening men and tiny children whose should be paid and breakdown how this topic has cultural implications to other labor struggles, by informing and reinforcing anti-union tropes across the board

Our guest is Penn State professor Amira Rose Davis, co-host of Burn It All Down.

                              

Episode 136: The 'Ungrateful Athlete': Anti-Black, Anti-Labor Currents in Sports Media

Felix is joined by journalist for AJ+ Mohammad Alsaafin for a wide ranging discussion on Palestinian resistance and the future of Zionism and the Palestinian cause.

Sorry for the slightly abrupt outro, we lost the last few seconds of Mohammad’s audio, but please follow him at @malsaafin and check out and share this concise video explainer on Israeli apartheid he produced for AJ+:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MknerYjob0w
And follow @ajplus on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

Chapo Trap House

BONUS: Focus on Palestine feat. Mohammad Alsaafin

In this episode, we are joined by Chapo Trap House cohost Matt Christman to discuss the rehabilitation of Bush, the future of America, and the growing possibility that Hillary Clinton ushers in Purge Night.

To support the show and get access to more content, become a patron at: https://www.patreon.com/expandthediscourse

BUSH DERANGEMENT SYNDROME ft. Matt Christman

our fat titty ex-president put out a really pathetic playlist the other day full of shit he probably doesn't even listen to because he's a POSER

intro/// Cara Stewart - What Time Does The Last Moon Leave? (1957?)
outro/// Hirth Martinez - Altogether Alone (1975) 

Weekly premium episodes at https://patreon.com/seekingderangements

SD 38 - Obama Gone Pitchfork

On this News Brief, we discuss the ubiquitous weaponization of the term "taxpayer" in media and politics and how it deliberately smuggles right-wing, transactional and deeply racialized notions of people's relationship with their government into our cultural understanding of taxation, public spending and social services.

Our guest is Raúl Carrillo, Associate Research Scholar at Yale Law School.

News Brief: The Transactional Dog-Whistle Politics of the Term "Taxpayer"

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.

On Palestine, It's Time for Progressives to Stop Reading From the Same Outrage Script & Support BDS

Citations Needed Podcast