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The Breakup Theory

The Breakup Theory

Written by: The Breakup Theory
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 Conversations on collective liberation and ending things Philosophy Relationships Social Sciences
Episodes
  • The Breakup Theory Episode 30 - WE ARE NOW LIVING IN THE HELLSCAPE OF POETIC SCIENCE w/ P.

    The Breakup Theory Episode 30 - WE ARE NOW LIVING IN THE HELLSCAPE OF POETIC SCIENCE w/ P.
    Jan 19 2026

    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 (https://aboulder.com) where you can buy this book as well as his first book Resilience, Disaster, Elusion, A Damning History of Colonial New England, which delves into the history of the Northeast around the time of the American War for Independence, detailing "Native self-defense and African defiance to Caribbean pirates and mutinous servants." On the website, you'll see a great collection of books all sold on a sliding scale.

    In the conversation, we touch on some of themes I just mentioned, but also get into other discussions about guilt and generations and possibilities of militancy. I won't go too deep into it now, it's a long enough conversation and yet we didn't hit everything we planned! I think we'll do another episode on the idea of the spectacle, coming soon.

    Here's a little background on P: P. has lived in the midwest for most of his life. He was raised catholic and has spent many years trying to unpack that. In his latest book P tries to relate the estrangement caused by catholicism to the alienation baked into consumerism, science, and artificial intelligence. P. has been an anarchist since the start of the second Iraq War. He is currently a high school teacher struggling to subvert compulsory education as much as he can.

    Before we get into the conversation, I'll do my usual rundown of ways you can support this project.

    I have been told I need to do a bit more upfront promo, so if you like this podcast, please rate it and follow it on the different apps where you listen to it. That does help boost the potential audience. Also, tell your friends too! I love hearing from people about their thoughts—but as always any questions you might want us to tackle on the show. You can leave us a message at (917) 426-6548 or using the form https://form.jotform.com/thebreakuptheory/stories. Or find me on Instagram @thebreakuptheory and DM me.

    If you want to access more of my work, as well as the work of the wonderful carla joy bergman, Dani Burlison, and Vicky Osterweil, you can sign up for our newsletter at https://cawshinythings.com. If you subscribe, you will also get access to all of our articles, our discord server where we have discussion, movie nights, writing workshops, and book clubs, and more. Our podcasts, advice column, and zine and sticker library are always free. I am proud of the thing that we are building together, creating a support system for the lonely and often impoverished work of writing—and also finding new ways to engage with new people committed to collective thinking and writing.

    If you want to reach any of us there, you can email Caw.Shinythings@proton.me

    The Breakup Theory is a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts, which pulls together a wide variety of shows taking an anarchist perspective on culture, politics, actions, and more. Check them out at https://channelzeronetwork.com

    You have been listening to The Breakup Theory.

    Song excerpt credits -

    The opening few bars from:

    Paul McCartney and Wings - "Jet"

    The Who - "Won't Get Fooled Again"

    Pink Floyd - "Brain Damage"
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    1 hr and 27 mins
  • Episode 29 - Living with Trans Despair with Simon(e) van Saarloos

    Episode 29 - Living with Trans Despair with Simon(e) van Saarloos
    Jan 3 2026
    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, Against Ag(e)ism, 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 amazing artist, Phoebus Osborne, had a show up at the gallery Parent Company, a four channel video installation called oh it's my ass, it's my anus. Phoebus welcomed our talk into part of the series of events he was holding surrounding this exhibition. But to make the talk even more special, we framed it with poetry readings from two beautiful poets, Sahar Khraibani and Rebecca Teich , whose contributions provided a perfect bookend for our talk, which was also surrounded by the intensely beautiful environment created by Phoebus's installation. To give a better sense of this solo work, I will provide a little description from Phoebus: The exhibition is comprised of an immersive multi-channel video installation that explores underground, interior environments as sites of resistance, intimacy, and imagination. Weaving together footage of limestone caves, cemeteries, bathroom DJ sets, queer beaches, and domestic spaces, the work creates a sensorial field. Within the gallery, sound reverberates and screens and projectors glow, creating a space for reverie for the viewer. The installation insists on interiority—not as a form of withdrawal, but as a radiant space of gathering and potential. The text we wrote to open the talk was this: The liberal bumper sticker reads "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention." We could equally substitute despair for outrage. Things only seem to get worse, especially for trans people, pregnant people, undocumented people, poor people, racialized people, the list goes on. Whereas outrage is supposed to spur you to canvas and vote, despair is seen as an obstacle to the traditional possibilities of transformation. Taking instead a radical approach to despair, writers Simon(e) van Saarloos and Shuli Branson are working on respective projects that integrate queer nihilism with the openness of transition, delinking hope and change to operate in the shadows of a progressive rainbow that demands assimilation, rationality, and maturity. This discussion will engage the meeting point between Simon(e)'s forthcoming book Trans Despair (AK Press) and Shuli's Antidote to Despair (Pluto Press) through a look at the creative counterworlds of trans life. Simon and I have found that we have very generative collaborations and conversation, so I hope you find this talk engaging too. It goes into many different places, following the train of our thoughts bouncing off one another. Of course, it doesn't have a resolution, but opens on to more questions. I have included our responses to audience questions at the end of the talk, but left out the questions themselves to maintain privacy. Before giving you the talk, I want to provide a little more background on all of the people collaborating: You already know me of course, so I'll skip that. Phoebus Osborne (b. 1984) is an artist based in Queens, NY. His practice engages material traces of nonlinear relationships through a matrix of film, sculpture, performance, drawing, writing, and sound. Extending from his lived experience with chronic pain, he contemplates the accelerating illnesses of the planet at large and considers how modes of relationship can empower resilience and enable repair. His works have been presented within the US and Europe, including commissioned works at Transmediale Berlin, La Caldera Barcelona, SFMoMA, Oakland Museum of California, Lenfest Center for the Arts, and The Poetry Project. Simon(e) van Saarloos is the author of Against Ageism. A Queer Manifesto (2023); Take 'Em Down. Scattered Monuments and Queer Forgetting (2021) and Playing Monogamy (2019) as well as several books in Dutch. Their writing has appeared in co-edited volumes and academic journals and they also write fiction and theater. They are currently writing a new book for AK Press, titled Trans Despair: Staying Unrelated and Insecure. Van Saarloos also works as an independent curator of public programming and artistic collaborations. Sahar Khraibani is a writer and artist whose work has been presented with Montez Press, The Brooklyn Rail, the Poetry Foundation, and the Poetry Project among others. Sahar is a recipient of the Creative Capital / Arts Writers Grant, a fellowship at The Poetry Project, a MacDowell Fellowship, a 2024 residency at Mass MoCA, and is an alumni of the Whitney Independent Study Program. Sahar teaches at Pratt Institute and ...
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    1 hr and 18 mins
  • Episode 28 - Jaime Grant on What We Can Do Intimately With Each Other

    Episode 28 - Jaime Grant on What We Can Do Intimately With Each Other
    Nov 7 2025
    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 Kink for Dummies, after her previous contribution to the series, Polyamory for Dummies. (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 discrimination and more. As you will hear, she is a passionate advocate and coach whose work really revolves around inspiring forms of connection through intimacy, relationship, and self-empowerment. Talking with Jaime about kink, poly, and sex was extremely helpful to me for putting into perspective the role of queer sex and intimacy within struggle for liberation, autonomy, and the end of empire. I am always interested in the ways that our relationships reproduce the world around us, but I have sometimes wondered if sex as revolutionary is just a dream. (Perhaps I've taught too much Foucault). Our world is structured such that a process of self-discovery involves interrogating your sexuality and gender, so often getting caught up in the traps of identity that end up separating us or becoming modes of punishment. And even though we are told we have unique identities, we are still doing this work under social duress and shame, regardless of more expansive and visible queer communities, more attention to different ways of engaging in sex and relationship, and years of work that people like Jaime have done to support people in these discoveries. Polyamory plays a specific role within anarchist and anti-authoritarian perspectives as giving us ways to relate non-hierarchically, but as with queer love in general, can get caught up in should and should nots, or the miasma of endless processing. Jaime brought a refreshing perspective, that really should be the first way we access these things. Her approach to creating space to discuss issues around sex and intimacy and to be frank about desire is supportive in a way that makes the possibility of naming the hidden and dark parts of you seem much easier. Listening to her wisdom and experience kind of gave me this feeling that things could actually be simpler, that this wisdom could be basic, and that we often make things too complicated. (Maybe that's just me). I am a theory girl always getting tangled up, so I was also grateful that Caroline brought her professional and personal experience into conversation with Jaime to help contextualize the challenges that people face when trying to create new supportive relationships with poly or kink dynamics. I was genuinely moved by this conversation, not just because of Jaime's kindness and passion, but by how clearly she was able to show the power of connection and relationship in changing the world—something I'm always thinking about but I can get pessimistic too. I hope you too find it inspiring to hear her practical perspective that helps simplify ways to open up or lives and even be kind to ourselves and the ones we love. Jaime is accessible in many ways: You can find her at www.justsexpodcast.com, on instagram @jaimemgrant, on facebook J'aime Grant, or email jaimemgrant@gmail.com Her books are out, and she is available for coaching! If you want to access more of my work, as well as the work of the wonderful carla joy bergman, Dani Burlison, and Vicky Osterweil, you can sign up for our newsletter at https://cawshinythings.com. If you subscribe, you will also get access to all of our articles, our discord server where we have discussion, movie nights, writing workshops, and book clubs, and more. Our podcasts, advice column, and zine and sticker library are always free. I am proud of the thing that we are building together, creating a support system for the lonely and often impoverished work of writing—and also finding new ways to engage with new people committed to collective thinking and writing. If you are interested, I will be leading a book club meeting on Emma Heaney's collection, Feminism against Cisness on November 19 at 5pm eastern. You are invited to subscribe and join! The Breakup Theory is a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts, which pulls together a wide variety of shows taking an anarchist perspective on culture, politics, actions, and more. Check them out at www.channelzeronetwork.com
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    1 hr and 14 mins
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