Locust Radio Locust Review

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. Laura, Tish, and Adam  discuss Project 2025,  Agenda 47, and other far-right plans to roll back democratic norms, target trans persons, and implement other reactionary-to-fascist policies in the United States. We also discuss how this is related to Israel’s genocidal war on Palestine, and the general authoritarian trajectory of mainstream politics — as expressed in the prosecution of the Cop City organizers in Atlanta, increasing prison sentences for climate protesters, and the recent attempts to ban Palestine solidarity in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

To get the second — patron only — portion of the episode subscribe to Locust Review or join the Locust Review Patreon.

Related readings, artworks, videos include: Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History” (1940);

Bertolt Brecht, War Primer (1955); Ali Abunimah and David Sheen, “Israeli Forces Shot Their Own Civilians, Kibbutz Survivor Says,” Electronic Intifada (October 16, 2023); Aime Ceasaire, Discourses on Colonialism (1950); Chauncey DeVega, “Trump Plans to Become Dictator — Denial will Not Save You,” Salon (September 7, 2023); Max Ernst, The Elephant Celebes (1921); Huthifa Fayyad, “Israel-Palestine War: What You Need to Know After 10 Days,” Middle East Eye (October 16, 2023);  David Hearst, “The Nakba that Israel Has Started Will Backfire,” Middle East Eye (October 13, 2023); Naomi Klein, “In Gaza and Israel, Side with the Child over the Gun, The Guardian (October 11, 2023); Sabrine Kriebel, “Manufacturing Discontent: John Heartfield’s Mass Medium” New German Critique No 107 (Summer 2009), 53-88; Michelangelo, Moses (1513-1515); China Miéville, The Last Days of New Paris (2016); TOI Staff, “Citing Israeli Example, Zelensky Says Ukraiainians ‘Need to Learn to Live with Conflict,’” The Times of Israel (August 28, 2023); Eran Torbiner, Matzpen, Anti-Zionist Israelis, video documentary about the Israeli Socialist Organization (2003); Leon Trotsky, “The German Catastrophe” (1933); Adam Turl, Dead Paintings (2011-present); Tish Turl, Stink Ape Resurrection Primer (ongoing in Locust Review); Tish Turl and Adam Turl, Big Muddy Monster Atlas Project (2021-present).

The Locust Radio theme is by Omnia Sol. Locust Radio is produced by Omnia Sol, Alexander Billet, Adam Turl, and Tish Turl. Locust Radio is hosted by Laura Fair-Schulz, Tish Turl, and Adam Turl.

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. Our second segment discusses the efforts of organizers in the Carbondale Assembly for Radical Equity (CARE) to help trans and queer persons — targeted by the recent wave of oppressive legislation in states like Florida, Texas, and elsewhere — relocate to the relative safety of Carbondale, Illinois. 

Guests in this episode:


Sean Cashbaugh, a postdoctoral lecturer in the Princeton Writing Program and author of  “A Paradoxical, Discrepant, and Mutant Marxism: The Emergence of Radical Science Fiction in the American Popular Front,” in the Journal for the Study of Radicalism.


Cassandra Coffey, “a forty-year-old transfeminine nonbinary anarcho-communist redneck from Kentucky who has spent the past several years involved in queer liberation action and grassroots organization for causes that promote equity, emancipation, and challenge unjust authority.”


Joe Shapiro, associate professor of English literature at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale and author of The Illiberal Imagination: Class and the Rise of the U.S. Novel (University of Virginia Press, 2017).


Mattie Stearns, “a nonbinary libertarian socialist J20 defendant, organizing in Carbondale for about ten years, and life-long resident of Carbondale. They are going to school to become a venture socialist. They are a general trouble-maker.” 



You can reach out to CARE at carbondalecare@proton.me or by messaging the CARE Facebook page. You can donate to CARE by making a donation on the Carbondale Rainbow Cafe website and writing “CARE” in the memo box. Or you can send a check by mail to Rainbow Cafe, 118 N. Illinois Avenue, Carbondale, IL 62901, and write “CARE” in the memo line. 

This episode’s opening reading is “Cogita’s Plan,” from the “Stink Ape Resurrection Primer” forthcoming in Locust Review 10. Music featured in this episode includes Melissa Carper, Mike Watt and the Secondmissingmen, and Omnia Sol.



Locust Radio is a project of the Locust Arts and Letters Collective. It is hosted by Tish Turl, Laura Fair-Schulz, and Adam Turl. It is produced by Alexander Billet, Omnia Sol, and Adam Turl.

In this Locust Radio “Special Report” — a preview of a segment from forthcoming episode twenty-one — we discuss organizing mutual aid and solidarity with trans and queer persons being forced to flee the increasingly draconian laws and regulations being put forward (and often passed) across the country. According to some studies, as many as 130,000 to 260,000 queer and trans people have already been displaced, with hundreds of thousands more considering relocation. We are releasing this segment early because of the urgency of the crisis and in the hope of building solidarity.

The Carbondale Assembly on Radical Equity (or CARE) was formed in early 2023 in Carbondale, Illinois as a multi-tendency coalition of the different activists, organizers, and leftists in town. One of the things CARE has focused on is gender refugees relocating to Carbondale. Carbondale is, to borrow from mainstream terms, the bluest town at the southernmost tip of a blue state, jutting into increasingly hostile territory — a fact that has also led to the relocation from “red states” of gender affirming and reproductive care clinics to the city. 

On Sunday, July 2nd, Tish and Adam interviewed two CARE organizers to discuss what led to the forming of the assembly, the mutual aid it facilitates, how folks can start projects similar to CARE in other relatively safe areas, how folks can reach out to CARE, and how to support the work CARE is doing. We also touch base on the overall fight against the fascist onslaught against trans and queer persons. 

Our guests are Cassandra, “a forty-year-old transfeminine nonbinary anarcho-communist redneck from Kentucky who has spent the past several years involved in queer liberation action and grassroots organization for causes that promote equity, emancipation, and challenge unjust authority. Her pronouns are she/her and they/them”; and Mattie Stearns, “a nonbinary libertarian socialist j20 defendant, organizing in Carbondale for about ten years, and life-long resident of Carbondale. They are going to school to become a venture socialist. They are a general trouble-maker.” 

You can reach out to CARE at carbondalecare@proton.me or by messaging the CARE Facebook page. You can donate to CARE by making a donation on the Carbondale Rainbow Cafe website and writing “CARE” in the memo box. Or you can send a check by mail to Rainbow Cafe, 118 N. Illinois Avenue, Carbondale, IL 62901, and write “CARE” in the memo line. 

The closing music for this special report is “I Hate Illinois Nazis” by Pet Mosquito. 

Locust Radio is hosted by Tish Turl, Laura-Fair Schulz, and Adam Turl. It is produced by Omnia Sol and Alexander Billet. The opening theme is by Omnia Sol, with sound editing by Drew Franzblau. Locust Radio is a project of the Locust Arts and Letters Collective, which also publishes Locust Review and Imago. To support Locust Radio become a Locust patron. 

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). We discuss music, the city, cultural fragmentation and the accelerated alienation of neoliberal culture, the “blue note,” Fred Ho’s concept of kreolization, the digital algorithm as capitalist standardization of music, sound as social control, music as a potential tool of social revolution, crackle and anachronism, acid communism, and getting “left behind” by the bourgeois rapture. Alexander Billet is a member of the Locust Collective who has written numerous articles and reviews for the Los Angeles Review of Books, Salvage, Jacobin, and the Radical Art Review. 

Readings in this episode: “Feet Firmly Planted on the Earth,” by the late Iranian poet and Marxist Ahmad Shamlou, from the collection, Aida, Tree, Dagger, Memory (1963), republished in English in Locust Review 9 (2022), translated by Saman Sepheri; a selection from Sound, a serialized novella by Tish Turl, published over several issues of Locust Review (starting with Locust Review #2 in 2020). 

Music featured in this episode: Enchanters, “Missing Mountains” and “Unlikely Windows” from Post-Harvest; Diamond Soul, “Screens,” from Maya-mi; and Omnia Sol, “Security to Section 3,” from X-Mas Miracle 2.

Artists, art, musicians, books, and articles discussed in this episode: Theodor W. Adorno, “On Jazz,” Discourse Vol. 12, No. 1 (Fall-Winter 1989-90), 45-69; Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” (1936);   John Berger, Ways of Seeing (book, 1972), and Ways of Seeing (BBC documentary, 1972); Alexander Billet, Shake the City: Experiments in Space and Time, Music and Crisis (London: 1968 Press, 2022); Cynthia Cruz, The Melancholia of Class: A Manifesto for the Working-Class (London: Repeater, 2021); Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology, and Lost Futures  (London: Zero Books, 2014); Mark Fisher, “What is Hauntology?” Film Quarterly Vol 66. No. 1 (Fall 2012), 16-24 (University of California Press); Fred Ho (American jazz musician, composer and Marxist, 1957-2014); Henri Lefebve, The Right to the City (1996); Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844); Tish Turl, Sound (novella serialized in Locust Review, 2020-present); Tish Turl and Adam Turl, Born Again Labor Museum (conceptual art installation and project, 2019-present)

Locust Radio is hosted by Tish Turl, Laura Fair-Schulz and Adam Turl. It is produced by Omnia Sol.

In this episode of Locust Radio, Tish, Laura, and Adam discuss the theme of, and editorial for, Locust Review #10, “The Monsters Are Coming,” the social construction of the monstrous, the idea of “solidarity with monsters,” differentiating between “their” monsters and “ours,” and how every accusation from the far-right is an admission of guilt.  We also touch on the obliviousness of the British ruling-class and its recent “coronation” spectacle, and the looming midnight of the 21st century. 

In this episode, we also listen to music from Melissa Carper, Omnia Sol, and Kid Pixie. Please go to their bandcamps and buy their music! 

Adam also interviews Nick Shillingford from the Socialist News and Views podcast, and Luke Herron-Titus from Southern Illinois Democratic Socialists of America, for the third Irrealist Worker’s Survey (IWS). In the IWS interviews we discuss solidarity with AI, self-determination for Frankenstein’s monsters, working-class sabotage, conspiracy theory robots designed by Oxford University “scientists,” being liminal spaces, and more.

Artists, authors, books, articles, and artworks discussed in this episode include: 

B. R. Ambedkar, The Annihilation of Caste (1936); William Blake, “Jerusalem” (1808); Kelly Budruweit, “Twilight’s Heteronormative Reversal of the Monstros: Utopia and the Gothic Design,” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts , 2016, Vol. 27, No. 2 (96) (2016), pp. 270- 289; Jeffrey Cohen, Monster Theory: Reading Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 1996); Emory Douglas (visual artist, member of the historic Black Panther Party for Self-Defense); Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch (Autonomedia, 2004); Brian P. Levack, “The Horrors of Witchcraft and Demonic Possession,” Social Research, Vol. 81, No. 4, Horrors (Winter 2014), pp. 921-939; Dave McNally, Monsters of the Market: Zombies, Vampires and Global Capitalism (Haymarket, 2011); China Miéville (author); Anupam Roy (visual artist); Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818); Susan Stryker, “My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage” (Gordon and Breach Science Publishers SA, 1994); Enzo Traverso, Left Melancholia: Marxism, History and Memory (2016); Tish Turl and Adam Turl, Stink Ape Resurrection Primer (serialized in Locust Review #4 onwards, 2021-present); HG Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896); HG Wells, The War of the Worlds (1895-1897); and more…

Locust Radio is hosted by Tish Turl, Laura Fair-Schulz, and Adam Turl. It is produced by Omnia Sol and Alexander Billet.

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, the indifference of the political center, the primordial soup of nihilism, the global surplus army of labor, the 2022 US elections as “liberal” World War Three abroad vs. fascism at home, the apocalyptic AI image generators that “paint the last selfie ever taken,” and the algorithm of AI image generators as a “machine of reward and discipline.”

The second half of this episode is available to Locust subscribers and patrons only.

Fundraisers discussed in this episode: Carbondale Union Barista Solidarity Fund, Locust Review INFLATION Fundraiser, and Annual Born Again Labor Museum Fund Drive. Music included in this episode includes: The Whistle Pigs, “I’m Broke, ” The Flowers of Evil,  “Pink Llama,” These Magnificent Tapeworms, “16 Tons”; and Omnia Sol, “Vapor.” Readings in this episode include: Tish Turl reading the Michelist short story by Donald A. Wolheim (pen name: Millard Verne Gordan), “Bomb” from Science Fiction Quarterly (1)9 (1942); Adam Ray Adkins reading his poem, “Burnt Offerings” from Locust Review 9; Tish Turl reading “Rumbumble” from the Stink Ape Resurrection Primer in Locust Review 7;

Artworks, artists, writers, articles and texts discussed in this episode include: “Wars Beneath: Atomization, Alienation + Excavating Futures in an Age of Conflict,” Locust Review 9 (Fall 2022); Mike Linaweaver, “The Someday Massacre,” Locust Review 9 (Fall 2022); Charles Baudelaire; Georges Sorel; “Planet Cleveland Unionizes,” from Stink Ape Resurrection Primer 6 in Locust Review 9 (Fall 2022); Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology, and Lost Futures (2014); Banksy; Lionello Puppi, Torment in Art (1991); Ben Davis, Art in the After-Culture (2022).

Locust Radio is a project of the Locust Arts & Letters Collective, produced by Omnia Sol and Alexander Billet, and hosted by Tish Turl, Laura Fair-Schulz, and Adam Turl. Show music by Omnia Sol. Original credits mixed by Drew Franzblau.