Blood Work

bloodwork

A show about the Economy of Violence

  1. 2 DAYS AGO

    A History of Violence w/ Patrick Wyman

    Prompted by a meditation on mercenaries, Gregk consults the henchest man in ancient history to discuss ancient forms of violence work and whether our current conjuncture is really a rupture, or more a return to form. Follow Patrick Wyman on Bluesky Listen to Past Lives Listen to Tides of History Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production This episode was produced by Thomas O’Mahony Our theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis Tron Our artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel If you enjoyed this episode: – Support Blood Work via Patreon – Leave a rating or review on your podcast app – Follow us on Bluesky / Instagram / Twitter Image: A group of unidentified mercenaries operating in Gaza, 2025. THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE: WEST MIAMI ANTISOCIAL CLUB ALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIO For this week’s newsletter, we situate the United States’ latest wave of aggression against Cuba within the longer histories of the the twentieth and nineteenth centuries, stripping back the various narratives the western hemisphere’s imperial master has layered, like wallpaper, over its designs on Cuba over decades.

    1h 11m

  2. 3 FEB

    Combat 18, Part 2: We Need Some More Lads in Here w/ Gareth Watkins [PREVIEW]

    This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon. Gareth and Gregk reconvene to tell the second chapter in the C18 saga which, naturally, features some sunlit uplands, a Swedish man named ‘Pie’, and a wizard. Follow Gareth Watkins on Bluesky Read his recent article, “Has Ukip Gone Full Nazi?” in The New Statesman Read his excellent essay, “AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism” in New Socialist Listen to the Death // Sentence podcast Image: A title card from a C18 propaganda video tape, sourced from the third World in Action documentary about the group. Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production This episode was produced by Thomas O’Mahony Our theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis Tron Our artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel   For more: – Support Blood Work via Patreon – Follow us on Bluesky / Instagram / Twitter THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE: SURGES, EMISSIONS, FLOWS ALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIO Following a few weeks in which the news has focused heavily on events which continue to unfold in Minneapolis and the broader United States, this week we’re shifting the focus to West Africa and the Middle East, to two conflict zones which still swirl and churn amidst the fallout of the 2011 Arab Spring, and the long first two decades of the twenty-first century.

    14 min

  3. 27 JAN

    Combat 18, Part 1: Lad’s Army w/ Gareth Watkins

    Gareth and Gregk discuss what happens when a group of football hooligans decide to elevate their violent bloodlust into a fully-fledged political movement. (Spoiler: Bad, stupid things.) Follow Gareth Watkins on Bluesky Read his recent article, “Has Ukip Gone Full Nazi?” in The New Statesman Read his excellent essay, “AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism” in New Socialist Listen to the Death // Sentence podcast Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production This episode was produced by Thomas O’Mahony Our theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis Tron Our artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel If you enjoyed this episode: – Support Blood Work via Patreon – Leave a rating or review on your podcast app – Follow us on Bluesky / Instagram / Twitter THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE: OLD WORLD BRB, NEW WORLD AFK ALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIO This week, we took a look at Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent address at Davos in which he declared the end of the ‘rules-based international order’ (while conceding this had always been US hegemony draped in a convenient fiction) plus recent developments regarding Trump’s grotesque Board of Peace foundation, and provide some thoughts on where we now stand, how we got there, and who walked us there, step by step. Sources: Nick Lowles (2014 [2001]), White Riot: The Violent Story of Combat 18

    1h 52m

  4. 20 JAN

    Cruel to be Kind: Sanctions [PREVIEW]

    This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon. We situate the favourite tool in the U.S. arsenal in its historical context, and try to make sense of that silent, peaceful, deadly weapon. Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production This episode was produced by Thomas O’Mahony Our theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis Tron Our artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel For more: – Support Blood Work via Patreon – Follow us on Bluesky / Instagram / Twitter THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE – Witness, No Witnesses This week, we look at two news stories which demonstrate the differing approaches to advancing right-wing politics in the US and UK. The rise of Donald Trump and his dominance of political discourse over the past decade has placed spectacle front-and-centre in our understanding of right-wing thought and, indeed, placed right-wing thought front-and-centre in our perception of dominant political ideology. But as our second news story hopefully demonstrates, the brazenness of Trump’s particular political style at times serves to aid the advancement of right-wing cruelty and sadism elsewhere, when a comparative lack of ripples across the water creates the illusion that less is occurring beneath the surface. Now available in audio Image: An Iraqi mother nurses her sick child at a hospital in Baghdad in 1994. (Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)

    16 min
  5. Reign of Terror w/ Spencer Ackerman

    13 JAN

    Reign of Terror w/ Spencer Ackerman

    Gregk speaks to the award-winning national security journalist Spencer Ackerman about the long shadows of 9/11 and the War on Terror, how America’s response to those events contributed to its current condition, the media’s role in justifying and legitimating state violence, and much more. Spencer Ackerman is a national security journalist whose work has appeared in The Guardian, The Daily Beast, Wired, The Nation, Zeteo and many other publications, and whose career has spanned almost the entirety of the Global War on Terror. In 2014, he shared the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for his work at The Guardian on Edward Snowden’s disclosures surrounding the NSA’s global surveillance programme. In 2021, he published Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump. He also recently wrote a ten-issue run on IRON MAN for Marvel Comics, currently available in two trade paperbacks. His latest book is The Torture and Deliverance of Majid Khan: A Father, A Son and the War on Terror, forthcoming from Penguin. Spencer is also the founder and proprietor of FOREVER WARS, an ongoing chronicle, investigation and interrogation of the continuities, departures and permutations of the War on Terror If you enjoyed this episode: – Support Blood Work via Patreon – Leave a rating or review on your podcast app – Follow us on Bluesky / Instagram / Twitter   Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production This episode was produced by Thomas O’Mahony Our theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis Tron Our artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE – DEI-Codi For this week’s newsletter, Gregk shares some of his thoughts on the extra-judicial killing of Renee Good by an ICE officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota on January 7, 2026, and reflects on the homologies between the Trump administration’s paramilitaries and the death squads that operated in Central and South America during the latter half of the twentieth century – in many cases backed, trained and coordinated by the United States. Image: U.S. Military Police guard detainees within Camp X-Ray at Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, 2002. (Shane T. McCoy/U.S. Navy/Getty Images)

    1h 32m

  6. 6 JAN

    COIN All the Way Down: A Discourse on Counterinsurgency [PREVIEW]

    This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon. We look at the history and philosophy of a doctrine so broad and plastic that even its theorists concede it might not mean anything at all—because if it doesn’t mean anything, then maybe it means everything. Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production This episode was produced by Thomas O’Mahony Our theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis Tron Our artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel For more: – Support Blood Work via Patreon – Follow us on Bluesky / Instagram / Twitter   THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE – FLORIDA RASHOMON   A few days ago, the United States knocked over Nicolás Maduro, Head of State of Venezuela, in arguably the most brazen U.S. regime change operations in the Western Hemisphere since the arrest of Manuel Noriega on the very same day in 1990. Everyone in the Trump administration agrees it was an act of bold, decisive leadership from America’s Commander-in-Chief – and yet no one can agree why it was done. This week’s newsletter takes a look at some of the competing justifications for the action from the mouths of America’s best and brightest. Image: American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians walking through the streets of Huế in Central Vietnam (Getty Images)

    13 min

  7. 23/12/2025

    Chestnuts Listening on a Blood Work Fire w/ Thomas O’Mahony

    For their first ever Christmas episode, Gregk and producer Thomas get together for a casual fireside chat, discussing some of the key questions animating Blood Work, reflecting on the project’s progress so far, where they’d like to take it next year, and offer some perspectives on how this thing that we call violence connects to that other thing that we call politics. And then, as a little Christmas Treat, Gregk tells Thomas about the history of one of the worst hangovers of ‘90s counter-consumer culture jamming, and how it’s connected to some of the worst people in US culture today. New Yorkers, you knew it was bad, but if only you knew how bad it really is. If you enjoyed this episode: – Support Blood Work via Patreon – Leave a rating or review on your podcast app – Follow us on Bluesky / Instagram / Twitter Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production This episode was produced by Thomas O’Mahony Our theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis Tron Our artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel   THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE – AUMF LAMF The US’ Authorisation for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) 2001 is an authorisation so broad and loosely defined that it renders the problem of the square peg and the round hole moot; the hole’s aperture can always be widened, and virtually any peg can be hammered through. This week, I’ve picked three articles which demonstrate how its passage inaugurated a permanent, global State of Exception for US warmaking, how recklessly this aperture has been exploited, and how dangerous that is for global governance. Available now, exclusive to Patreon supporters. Image: Cover artwork from the 1985 The Christmas issue of An Phoblacht/Republican News. Source: The Irish Republican Digital Archive

    1h 54m

  8. 16/12/2025

    "What Does The Forest Say?” w/ Dr. Florin Poenaru

    This week, Gregk speaks to Anthropologist Florin Poenaru about his essay for North South Notes, published on the one-year anniversary of Romania’s cancelled Presidential elections, in which ‘outsider’ candidate Călin Georgescu was alleged to have benefitted from a Russian-coordinated TikTok interference campaign. In their conversation, they discuss the layers of power within a globalised political order, the capacity of intelligence services to produce as well as gather knowledge, and the question of where power resides in a country where politics, media, business and academia are constantly imbricated by a large and unruly security apparatus.   Read Florin’s article, ‘The Forest’ in North South Notes. Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production This episode was produced by Thomas O’Mahony Our theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis Tron Our artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel If you enjoyed this episode: – Support Blood Work via Patreon – Leave a rating or review on your podcast app – Follow us on Bluesky / Instagram / Twitter   THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE – FAFO-FI-FUM This week, I share three pieces on wars old, new and prospective which reflect the festering wounds of America’s most recent imperial project; the licking of wounds and casting around for a space in which to reassert itself; and the early nicks and scratches we’re already seeing as both the war machine and US consent manufacturing apparatus (brrrrrrr) leap a little too enthusiastically on the latest champion of peace, liberty and justice only to learn that she… well, just might not actually be very ‘bout it ‘bout it. Available now, exclusive to Patreon supporters. Image: A satellite shot of the Romanian Foreign Intelligence Service (Serviciul de Informații Externe/SIE), situated within the Băneasa Forest in northern Bucharest.

    1h 29m
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About

A show about the Economy of Violence

Information

  • Creator
    bloodwork
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    20
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2025 All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    Blood Work

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