Workers' Lit

We are officially one year into Donald Trump’s second term. How’s everybody feeling?

This week we discuss the nightmare 365 days that have passed, the battles to come, and the framework that’ll beat Trump for real.

Also, we congratulate Usha Vance and her pool boy on their soon-to-be-born child.

(We had some technical issues on sound today, so sorry about that!)

Articles quoted from in today’s episode:

https://zeteo.com/p/our-year-from-hell-trump-first-draft

https://zeteo.com/p/trump-robbery-285-days-to-stop

It’s time to get real old-sporty

This week we narrowly avoided death-by-pool to deliver you a discussion of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 gilded age masterpiece, “The Great Gatsby.”

Joining us is Joshua Ilon, voice actor on The Penumbra Podcast (Juno Steel, Mr. Serling, Jacob, Sir Tristan the Cold) to discuss just how ridiculously relevant Gatsby has become in 2026, our own fraught gilded age.

Listen to the Penumbra Podcast here!

Listen to Kevin and Harley of Penumbra’s episode of Workers’ Lit about “The Secret History”

It's time to break the ICE.
Jen and Jacob discuss the dramatic week that's passed since the murder of Renée Nicole Good, the latest stats on ICE, Trump, and Congress' popularity, and the campaigns in motion to hold these fascists to account.
Read Renée's poem here:
https://poets.org/2020-on-learning-to-dissect-fetal-pigs
Sources cited in the episode:
https://www.filesforprogress.org/datasets/2026/1/dfp_ice_shooting_minneapolis.pdf
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jan/04/ice-2025-deaths-timeline
https://zeteo.com/p/keith-ellison-minnesota-ice-trump-vance
https://www.cnn.com/polling/approval/trump-cnn-poll-of-polls
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1600/congress-public.aspx
https://substack.com/home/post/p-184378952

April is the cruelest month, but it’s January so we should be good.

Today we’re discussing T.S. Eliot’s 1922 modernist poetic masterpiece, “The Wasteland.” We also discuss Eliot himself…who’s a lot less cool than his poem.

Joining us as we wander the wasteland is Chris Richards, AKA The Eclectic Radical. You can check out his work here!

Author and Executive Director of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, Vijay Prashad, returns to the show to discuss the United States' kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores, Trump's claim that the United States now owns Venezuela's oil industry, and American foreign policy in the age he calls "hyperimperialism." We also get into Venezuela's unique and tumultuous history as it struggles to build socialism despite US aggression.
Is all the discussion of Venezuela, Maduro, sanctions, international law, and all that jazz a little confusing? Vijay breaks it down perfectly.
Also, stick around to hear Vijay's thoughts on the American education system in one of our best tangents ever.
Check out the Tricontinental Institute here!
The episode art is Vijay with Nicolas Maduro himself.