TLP Weekend Edition (October 5-6, 2024)
What we're reading, watching, and listening to this weekend.

📰 “In deep-blue Philly, working-class voters are shifting toward Republicans,”in The Philadelphia Inquirer. A just-released analysis of precinct voting in Philadelphia by Anna Orso, Layla A. Jones, Julia Terruso, and Aseem Shukla delves into voting changes in the city by race and income between 2016 and 2020. Among other powerful findings, their analysis shows a stunning 75 percent net increase in the vote for Trump in working-class Hispanic precincts between 2016 and 2020. Exemplary data journalism.
📊 "2023 PRRI Census of American Religion," by the Public Religion Research Institute. PRRI recently produced a report that took a detailed dive into America's religious landscape. In addition to looking at trends in the aggregate, the report also published several maps gauging religiosity and the distribution of various religious traditions at the county level. Take a look at the report for yourself to see how your county or state compares to the rest of the country!
📖 “Cultural revolution in the land of Kafka and Borges: On Peter Kropotkin's Memoirs,” in Global Inequality and More 3.0. The great inequality scholar Branko Milanovic discusses the memoirs of Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin on his Substack, which is highly recommended. If you’ve never heard of Kropotkin, he’s worth learning about, as well as the working class anarchist movement he helped inspire. His theories of course were completely dominated in the end by those of Marx. But with the benefit of hindsight we can see that his criticisms of statist socialism and proposals for alternatives had considerable merit.
🎧 Rogue Heroes: The History of the SAS, Britain’s Secret Special Forces Unit That Sabotaged the Nazis and Changed the Nature of War, audiobook, written and narrated by Ben Macintyre. Audiobooks are great companions on long city walks, in the gym, or out on the trail. Rogue Heroes is one of our favorites. Ben Macintryre narrates his own true account of David Stirling, John “Jock” Lewes, and a cast of other unbelievable characters who created Britain’s famous Special Air Service Brigade (SAS) in the desert of North Africa, carrying their story through to the vital missions in Italy and Germany. (There’s a decent television adaptation of the book on MGM+ to check out afterwards as well. But as usual, the book is the best!)
Also recommended: Spy stories make solid audiobooks in general, and Daniel Silva’s latest installment in the Gabriel Allon series, A Death in Cornwall, is worth a listen. Follow Gabriel’s exploits tracking down a Nazi-looted Picasso and unraveling the corrupt financial infrastructure of the “London Laundromat” and its connection to politics.
🎸 Uncollected Noise New York ‘88-’90, by Galaxie 500. A treasure trove of demos, B-sides, and unreleased Galaxie tracks finds the band in its earliest days trying out different approaches and songs. Galaxie famously slowed down their playing on their four cult-favorite albums (studio records Today, On Fire, and This Is Our Music, and one live record, Copenhagen) creating a distinctive sound that influenced countless 90’s and ‘00s indie bands. Although the band didn’t make it too long, in this collection Dean Wareham, Naomi Yang, and Damon Krukowski play fast and loose—and seem to have a grand time doing it.
Related: Dean Wareham’s, Black Postcards: A Rock & Roll Romance, is one of the best music memoirs around, telling the story of his Galaxie and Luna days in glorious and funny detail.
"Democratic leaders say their problem is communication, not policy."
If you have activists going door-to-door in the poorest neighborhoods, the ones with failing schools and people working 2-3 jobs just to make ends meet -- and you're pushing LGBQT and January 6th, what the heck do you expect? NO ONE CARES ABOUT THOSE ISSUES, those are luxury beliefs. People are just trying to raise healthy, educated kids, and avoid being a crime victim.