Episode 23 - Dean Spade on How We Act When Things Get Really Hard
Release Date: 05/15/2025
The Breakup Theory Episode 30 - WE ARE NOW LIVING IN THE HELLSCAPE OF POETIC SCIENCE w/ P.
The Breakup Theory
In this episode, I talk to my eternal roommate, P, about his new book, God, Artificial Intelligence, and Me. This is a really ambitious text that weaves together personal history with the history of Christianity, colonialism, technology, warfare, and resistance. It is a beautiful object in itself, with illustrations and pictures and innovative layout of text. It looks like a monster of a tome (and it definitely encompasses a cosmos), but P tries to draw the reader in without overwhelming them. I strongly suggesting purchasing the book. And just by luck, P runs a distro, A Boulder on the Tracks...
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Episode 29 - Living with Trans Despair with Simon(e) van Saarloos
The Breakup Theory
Today I am presenting a talk that Simon(e) van Saarloos and I did, kind of as a followup to our last talk together at the NYC Art Bookfair, called “Living with Trans Despair.” I’m going to give you the origin and details of the event before I present the edited recording of the event itself., so this is a bit of a long introduction. The idea to make a sequel came in the initial planning of our first talk about Simon’s book, , as we discovered we were both in the process of writing books dealing with despair. The circumstances of the event were particularly special: a friend of ours and...
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Episode 28 - Jaime Grant on What We Can Do Intimately With Each Other
The Breakup Theory
In this episode, Caroline and I talk to the wonderful Dr. Jaime M. Grant, Sex and Intimacy Coach, Researcher, Writer, and longtime Activist. She has recently published , after her previous contribution to the series, . (Yes, it’s that series!) Jaime has also written a book and been leading a workshop for many years around the world on mapping your desire, helping people get in touch with what they actually like and want and perhaps have not been able to access. Jaime has been involved in queer and racial justice movements for decades, as well as doing survivor support, research on trans...
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Episode 27 - A Conversation with Simon(e) van Saarloos: Disintegrating Linear Timelines -- NY Art Bookfair
The Breakup Theory
CW: This discussion mentions childhood sexual abuse When Simon(e) van Saarloos invited me to be in conversation with them at the surrounding their recently published , I was honored and excited. We had already been discussing recording a conversation for the Breakup Theory, so it was serendipitous that this event came along. I love doing the podcast, but it’s really exciting for me to do public talks and get to engage directly with people. Simon and I met before the event and we found that we were able to really push each other’s thinking into interesting and exciting places, so we...
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Episode 26 - Agony Letter: The Thing That Cracks Us Open
The Breakup Theory
CW: brief mention of suicidal ideation Oh my god, we are so back! As with everyone, this has been a year of hell, or lead paint, or whatever, and I have only been able to release a few episodes. But let me tell you, I am sitting on a few waiting to be edited and have plans for more, getting back into a regular production. For this episode, I invited the beautiful Dean Spade to respond to a listener letter with me. He has started up a in the wake of his book, with the same name , where has been discussing relationships and giving advice about how we can fight and love together better....
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Episode 25 - Practices that Do the Unchoosing with Nat Raha and Mijke van der Drift
The Breakup Theory
In this episode, I speak with two beautiful trans writers, artists, thinkers, Nat Raha and Mijke van der Drift. They recently published with Pluto Books. Their book describes an expansive ethics of collectivity, care, and complicity from the perspective of trans femme knowledge and experience. Nat and Mijke developed the book over the last number of years through different iterations as a zine and a conference, but also as an offering from many years of organizing, not just for trans liberation, but for all people. In reading the book, I found, you take on a slight altering in language as...
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Episode 24 - Putting Ghosts in Their Graves (another letter with Caroline)
The Breakup Theory
In this episode, Caroline and I respond to a letter from a listener who is trying to navigate a tricky relationship. It is a relationship with a lot of fuzziness, moving from romantic and sexual to friends. There are also attempts at real conversation, though they aren’t always clear, producing a difficult dynamic to understand and find bearings. They know they need to end it—or at least take space from it—but they also are tied into the queer anarchist community in a small town that centers around this person’s house. As they say, they are trying to put the ghost back in its grave,...
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Episode 23 - Dean Spade on How We Act When Things Get Really Hard
The Breakup Theory
Today I’m sharing a conversation I had with one of my favorites, Dean Spade, about his recent book out with Algonquin Books. Dean has been an inspiration for a long time with his commitments to abolition, anti-Zionism, and trans liberation, among other things. His previous book, , came at a perfect moment when people were getting together in response to COVID-19 and the George Floyd Uprising. This new book has also appeared right when we need it, when we feel worn down and scared, and need to find better ways to connect with each other. His thinking here lines up very closely with the...
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Episode 22 - In Memoriam Joshua Clover, a Rerelease from The Final Straw Radio 2021
The Breakup Theory
Today I’m re-releasing a conversation I recorded for the Final Straw Radio with Joshua Clover in 2021. Our conversation focuses around his 2016 book Riot. Strike. Riot, in part within the context of the George Floyd rebellion. I wanted to present this conversation in memoriam of Joshua, who we learned last week had died. As many of the testimonials you can find online, Joshua was a great friend and comrade to a wide range of people. He is remembered not just as a poet and an academic thinker, but also as someone ready to throw down in the streets. I didn’t know him really beyond his work...
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Episode 21 - Breaking Up With Your Therapist w/ Shuli and Caroline
The Breakup Theory
In today’s episode, Caroline and I respond to a listener’s letter about breaking up with their psychoanalyst after five years. Right now, there is such an emphasis on therapy as a means to address trauma, as well as to adjust to the terror of the current conditions in the world. There is also a whole industry of self-help that coincides with shaming of people by individualizing their faults and failures. We may all need therapy to a certain extent—but when do we end it? Breaking up with a therapist is a kind of practice breakup: it’s a controlled environment where you can exercise your...
info_outlineToday I’m sharing a conversation I had with one of my favorites, Dean Spade, about his recent book Love in a Fucked Up World out with Algonquin Books. Dean has been an inspiration for a long time with his commitments to abolition, anti-Zionism, and trans liberation, among other things. His previous book, Mutual Aid, came at a perfect moment when people were getting together in response to COVID-19 and the George Floyd Uprising. This new book has also appeared right when we need it, when we feel worn down and scared, and need to find better ways to connect with each other. His thinking here lines up very closely with the things that concern me, namely thinking beyond politics and anarchism as relationships, building bottom up. Dean starts from the idea that all of our movements and struggle are based on our relationships, and if we can’t get those right, how can we expect to work together to end this world and build another. Love in a Fucked Up World finally gives us a self-help book for queer anarchists: it contains so much insight matched with practical suggestions to help guide you through your own stories and the ones you project on others that get in the way of real connection. It really moved me in moments and gelled certain ways to understand myself in relation to others.
Our conversation goes into nitty gritty relationship issues and zooms out to the ways these affect our collective work. We talk about how anarchists and leftists deprioritize and avoid doing this internal and interpersonal work, only to find that all of the problems appear in every place you go. It is so important to talk explicitly about our social needs and how our collective work fits into them. We can’t separate politics and love. Meetings are social spaces and our search for political direction is completely enmeshed in our search for intimate connection.
But I’ll let Dean tell you more about this—he wrote the book on it.
First, I want to announce the official launch of CAW, the writer worker collective that I belong to along with carla joy bergman, Dani Burlison, and Vicky Osterweil. It is a subscriber based platform where we will share all of our projects, a discord server, and offerings like writing workshops, book clubs, movie nights, as well as a zine and sticker library. If you sign up for free you get access to our weekly newsletter, our advice column, our podcasts, and the zines and stickers. If you subscribe to a paid membership, you have full access to everything. We have various subscription tiers, but everyone who subscribes has the same access. Please go over to https://www.cawshinythings.com to check out what we are doing there, and join if you want!
The Breakup Theory is a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts, which brings together important shows with news, analysis, reportbacks, and culture. Check it out at https://www.channelzeronetwork.com
(Note: I incorrectly say thechannelzeronetwork.com. There is no THE in the URL!)