Locust Episode 22 - In The Year 2025

In this episode of Locust Radio, we read excerpts from Bertolt Brecht’s War Primer (1950); listen to readings from Locust Review (2022-2023) — R. Faze’s “My Body’s Portal to Another Dimension;” Adam Marks’ “Rites of Obodena;” and Tish Turl’s “Immortality Beaver” (Stink Ape Resurrection Primer). We also listen to music from Pet Mosquito, Omnia Sol, and Shrvg.

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Locust Radio Ep. 21 - Mutation or Death

Our first segment focuses on the history of socialism and science fiction (SF) in the early to mid-20th century United States, in particular the novels of George Allan England and the Popular Front SF of the Michelists in the 1930s and 1940s.

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Locust Radio * CARE: Trans + Queer Relocation Solidarity in So. ILL

In this Locust Radio “Special Report” — a preview of a segment from forthcoming episode twenty-one — we interview two members of the Carbondale Assembly for Radical Equity about organizing mutual aid and solidarity with trans and queer persons relocating from increasingly hostile areas.

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Locust Radio Ep. 20 - Shake the City

In this episode, recorded downwind from an increasingly immolated Canada, we interview Alexander Billet, author of the book,  Shake the City: Experiments in Space and Time, Music and Crisis from 1968 Press (2022).

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Locust Radio Ep. 18 - The Machine of Reward and Discipline

In this episode we listen to music from the Whistle Pigs, These Magnificent Tapeworms, The Flowers of Evil, and Omnia Sol, and have readings of stories and poetry from Tish Turl, Donald A. Wolheim, and Adam Ray Adkins. And Tish, Adam, and Laura discuss collective social PTSD, the public freakouts Reddit, an increasing intolerability of daily life…

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Locust Radio Ep 17.5 - Ring the Dollar Stores (Preview)

This is a preview of the second half of our Halloween episode. To hear the full episode become a Locust Review patron. In the second half of our Halloween episode our digital recording system continually glitches in a gesture of solidarity to help free us from the grip of capitalist machines.

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Locust Radio Ep 17 - We Are the Monsters We've Been Waiting For

In this Halloween episode of Locust Radio, Tish and Adam discuss folk horror, folk devils, and ghosts, listen to music from Fat JackRabbit, Omnia Sol, Hans Predator, and Worthless Scarecrow, and hear poetry from Mike Linaweaver and Leslie Lea. Our co-host Laura Fair-Schulz was out sick and we look forward to their return in the next episode.

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Locust Radio Ep 16.5 Abolish Wednesdays!

This is a preview/excerpt from the second half of Locust Radio 16. To get the full second-half subscribe to Locust or join our Patreon. In the second half of episode 16, Alex McIntyre, Tish Turl, Laura Fair-Schulz, and Adam Turl discuss demanding our mayors fight bears, abolishing Wednesdays, mildly amusing riots, exploding the continuum of history, that Cahokia was not a hunter-gatherer society and therefore does not disprove the Marxist conception of “primitive communism,” how our anxiety rectangles symbolically take us outside of time while reminding us we are constrained materially in real life, the odd appeal of catastrophe vs. every day banality, the narcissistic comfort-alienation of emotional noise vs. ancient story-telling and art, breaking our backs by staring at screens at work, the contradictions of psychiatric pharmacology under capitalism, and more.

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Locust Radio Ep. 16 - Irrealist Combat League

Our guest this month is Alex McIntyre from the Irrealist Combat League. Our music is by Pet Mosquito and Omnia Sol. And our featured readings come from Mike Linaweaver and the Stink Ape Resurrection Primer (by Tish Turl and Adam Turl).

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Locust Radio Ep. 15.5 - Utopia vs. Apocalypse (Preview)

Our guest for the second half of Locust Radio episode 15 is our very own Alexander Billet. Alex is a writer, artist, and editor at Locust Review. They join us in the virtual Locust studio to discuss the editorial for Locust Review 8, “The Utopia Principle,” which Alex took the lead on writing.

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Locust Radio Ep. 15 - Starbucks vs. Utopia

After the opening reading, a sketch based on an excerpt from the Stink Ape Resurrection Primer, Tish and Adam interview Ken LeBlanc, a rank-and-file member of the Main Street Carbondale, Illinois Starbucks union organizing committee. The Starbucks Workers United organizing effort went public in Carbondale in late May. LeBlanc discusses organizing, how to start a union, the grievances of her co-workers, making food for folks as an art, the Restaurant Organizing Project, how uncontested corporate power breeds unethical behavior, the grassroots organizing in Southern Illinois around abortion rights and reproductive justice, and speculates — at our request — on her idea of utopia.

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Locust Radio Ep. 14.5 - Art w/ Workers + Comrades (Preview)

This is an excerpt from the second half of Locust Radio episode 14. To get the full episode subscribe to Locust Review. In the second half of the episode, we continue to talk to Crystal Stella Becerril about making art as a human compulsion vs. making art for pleasure, how pleasure is distorted by capitalism, art and community, organizing for reproductive rights and unions, making art for our communities and working-class siblings and comrades, Theresa May wearing a Frida Kahlo bracelet, poetry zines, the Bluestockings cooperative bookstore, and more.

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Locust Radio Ep. 14 - What if You Had Taken the Day Off?

In today’s episode we discuss writing poetry and theory, the relationship of poetry and photography to the market, how we are conditioned to understand work and time, the anxiety of trying to take care of yourself in a class society, organizing freelance workers, the art of editing, poetry vs. the digital attention economy; and more.

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Episode 12.5 - Breaking the Gaslights of Pandemic Realism (Preview)

In the second half of episode 12 — for patrons and subscribers only — Tish, Adam and Holly Lewis focus on questions of art, culture and individual subjectivity as they relate to the pandemic, the idea of the working-class seizing virtual technologies, automatic writing vs. anxiety and death, haunting the rich, revenge and utopia, the sculpting of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary violence, the futurity of the doomed, blockchain, video games, and the loss of texture in the virtual world. They also discuss the dynamic of collective and individual imagining and the warm stream of Marxism.

Books, articles, stories and pamphlets discussed: “Alain Badiou: ‘People cling onto identities… it is a world opposed to the encounter,’” Verso blog (2014); Albert Camus, The Plague; Mike Davis, The Monster Enters: COVID-19, Avian Flu, and the Plagues of Capitalism (Verso, 2022); Hal Draper, The Mind of Clark Kerr (October 1964); Daniel DeFoe, Journal of the Plague Year; Mary Shelley, The Last Man, Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Roger Malvin’s Burial” (1832); Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820); Karl Marx, The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844  ; Karl Marx, The German Ideology (1845-46).

Artworks discussed: The Born Again Labor Museum’s Communist Manifesto Redistribution Project and Cat without a Grin ; Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Triumph of Death (1562) ; medieval plague crucifixes; the agit-prop of Gran Fury and Act Up  ; exquisite corpses ; David Wojnarowicz, Untitled (Buffalo) (1988) ; Anupam Roy’s Exodus series; Labani Jangi’s Exodus series; Egon Schiele’s The Family (1918)

Locust Radio is hosted by Tish Turl and Adam Turl. Locust Radio is produced by Alexander Billet and Drew Franzblau. Music is by Omnia Sol.

Episode 12 - A Journal for the Plague Decade

With the pandemic still crawling along, and with so much of the dominant narrative telling us it’s over, we thought it would be helpful to have a discussion about the plague. So our good friend, philosopher and writer and editor at Spectre Holly Lewis, joins us to talk disease, capitalism, ideology, and reclaiming our cultural experiences for the sake of resistance and joy. We discuss the repeated assertion the pandemic is over, only to face another surge, another variant, and more deaths, as well as the split between the right-wing, liberal, and a left approach to the virus and what it really would mean to “learn to live with the pandemic.” Also, a faulty computer is deciding people’s deaths. Good luck.

Articles discussed in this episode: 

Daniel Sarah Karasik, “Against Pandemic Realism,” Midnight Sun.

“Missing Days,” Locust Review, issue 7. (On its way to subscribers mailboxes, also posted on the Locust Review Patreon for subscribers…), 

Kallie Cox, “Born Again Labor Museum offers free Communist Manifestos,” The Southern Illinoisan

Shirin Ali, “'Huge, huge numbers': insurance group sees death rates up 40 percent over pre-pandemic levels,” The Hill.

Book and pamphlets discussed:

Albert Camus, The Plague 

Mike Davis, The Monster Enters: COVID-19, Avian Flu, and the Plagues of Capitalism (Verso, 2022) 

Hal Draper, The Mind of Clark Kerr (October 1964) 

Daniel DeFoe, Journal of the Plague Year

Mary Shelley, The Last Man 

Locust Radio is hosted by Tish Turl and Adam Turl, and produced by Alexander Billet and Drew Franzblau. Music by Omnia Sol.


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Submit work to Locust Review by e-mailing us at locust.review@gmail.com.

Episode 11.5 - I Live an Hour From My Body (Preview)

In the second half of the episode — for patrons and subscribers only — R. Faze reads their story, “I Live an Hour from My Body” from Locust Review #4. We then continue to discuss art and politics with Laura Fair-Schulz, including her works, “Song of the Barren Tree,” “Circuit Eye Vines,” and “Dysmorph Becoming Aware.” We also discuss Laura’s process in greater detail, NFTs and art world finance, Marxism and art history, “business ontology,” division on the left, Mark Fisher’s “Exiting the Vampire Castle,” the contradictions of social media, colonization, and more.

To hear the full episode, subscribe to Locust Review here.

Locust Radio is hosted by Tish Turl and Adam Turl. Locust Radio is produced by Alexander Billet and Drew Franzblau. Music is by Omnia Sol.

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Episode 11 - Locust Phenotype Plasticity

Why does this extraterrestrial on a talk show say the aliens want to “help us,” and why are they so interested in our water? Seems fishy… Adam and Tish speak with artist, writer, and Locust Arts & Letters Collective member Laura Fair-Schulz about her work…

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