Blood Work

We look at Grégoire Chamayou’s groundbreaking 2015 book on Drone Warfare to examine the phenomenon of killing without vulnerability, and the troubling ethics such technologies induce.

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: An 18-year-old factory worker named Norma Jean Dougherty poses for a photograph at the Radioplane factory in Burback, Califorina, in 1944. Shortly after, she would achieve international stardom under the stage name ‘Marilyn Monroe’.

Blood Work is a Scam Goldin P...

Josef enters the Zone to talk about his experience working in the U.S. State Department and discuss the quiet violence work of diplomats, administrators and functionaries.

For more from Josef Burton:
– Follow him on Bluesky and Twitter
– Listen to his appearance on QAA discussing Iranian Monarchists
– Read his 2023 essay ‘Impolite Society’ in The Baffler

Image: A photo of the exterior of the Writers’ Building in Kolkata, originally built as an office for junior clerks in the East India Company and which served as the effective seat of British power on the Indian subco...

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.

Josef enters the Zone to talk about his experience working in the U.S. State Department and discuss the quiet violence work of diplomats, administrators and functionaries.

For more from Josef Burton:

– Follow him on Bluesky and Twitter

– Listen to his appearance on QAA discussing Iranian Monarchists

– Read his 2023 essay ‘Impolite Society’ in The Baffler

Image: A photo of the exterior...

The girls from No Gods No Mayors swing by to talk about mayoral megalomania and the evolution of the violence inherent to municipal politics.

Listen to No Gods No Mayors

For more from Mattie Lubchansky:

– Read Simplicity
– Read Boys Weekend
– Listen to Temporal Culture War

For more from Riley Quinn:
– Listen to Trashfuture
– Listen to Trouble in River City

If you enjoyed this episode:
– Support Blood Work via Patreon
– Leave a rating or review on your podcast app
– Follow us on Bluesky / Instagram / Twit...

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.

We take another dive into the Blood Work theory zone, looking at Cameroonian postcolonial thinker Achille Mbembe’s seminal 2003 essay on the production of death as the crowning political activity of our era.

Image: Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics (2019), Duke University Press

Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production
This episode was produced by Thomas O’Mahony
Our theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis Tron
Ou...

We explore the modern history of putting big guns on wheels, then dive into the history of Chad and its border dispute with Libya to learn how a humble pickup truck became a quintessential weapon of war.

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 Nigerien military convoy on a counter-terrorism patrol in the Sahara Desert (UNICEF)

Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production
This episode was produced by Thomas O’Maho...

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.

Blood Work’s EU Correspondent joins us to discuss Europe’s sclerotic struggle to adapt to a rapidly changing world, why NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is such a freak, and what the heck actually went down in Ceuta.

For more from Ciarán Dold:

– Follow him on Bluesky
– Listen to Corner Späti

– Follow CS on Instagram

– Visit operationglad.io

Image...

Hussein comes on to talk about the most important film of the COVID era that isn’t Christopher Nolan’s TENET.

For more from Hussein Kesvani

– Listen to Ten Thousand Posts and Trashfuture

– Order Vittles #3 to read his piece about how Muslim consumers have become central to the evolution of British food culture

– Follow Hussein on Bluesky

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: An image from a Jap...

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.

Molly from Weird Little Guys comes on to talk about the long thread connecting Confederates, Klansmen, Veterans and armed white power groups past and present.

For more from Molly Conger:

– Follow her on Bluesky
– Listen to Weird Little Guys

Image: Louis Beam attending a Klan rally in Santa Fe, Texas, in 1981. Dressed in a Klan robe, he is using a torch to ignite...

Brian and Josh enter the Blood Zone to explain how Christian conservatives were transformed into one of the most powerful blocs in contemporary US politics.

For more from Josh Boerman and Brian Alford:

– Listen to their podcast, The Worst of All Possible Worlds

– Listen to Josh’s podcast with June Sternbach, Ill Conceived

– Follow Josh, Brian, TWOAPW and Ill Conceived on Bluesky

Image: President George W. Bush attending a National Day of Prayer ceremony at the White House on May 3, 2007. Seated beside him are Dr. James Dobs...

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.

Gregk is joined by Tom and Producer Thomas to discuss whether cultural reputation laundering is really such a new phenomena, and whether anything is even being washed at all.

Read Patrick Redford’s piece ‘The State of Sportswashing’ in Defector here.

Read Jack Crosbie’s piece ‘The White House UFC Fight Was Donald Trump’s All-American Dream’ in Rolling Stone here.

For more from Tom Usher:

–...

Article 1:

Army, Allied Militias, Islamist Armed Groups Commit Violations with Impunity
Report by Human Rights Watch – Jun 28, 2026

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

Jonathan joins us to talk about the gang violence that has engulfed Haiti since 2021 and place the instability that has haunted that nation within its proper political and historical context.

For more from Jonathan Katz:

– read his newsletter, The Racket

– Follow him on Bluesky and

– on Instagram

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 man stands in front of a burning barricade on a street f...

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.

Gregk speaks to the author of a new book on US-Iran relations to place the two countries’ braided history in its proper context and make sense of… how we got here.

Axis of Empire: A History of US-Iran Relations is out now, available from Verso

Image: A photograph of a large anti-USA mural painted on the side of a residential apartment block in downtown Tehran

Blood Work is a...

Devin joins Gregk to talk about his book The Veiled Prophet: Secret Societies, White Supremacy, and the Struggle for St. Louis. It’s a conversation that goes some places.

The Veiled Prophet: Secret Societies, White Supremacy, and the Struggle for St. Louis comes out on June 23, 2026, published by Haymarket Books.

Pre-order now:

– Haymarket Books (US)

– Blackwell’s (UK)

Follow Devin O’Shea:

– on Bluesky and

– on Instagram

– and check out his Spotify playlist of 90s Mall Music

Image: Painting of the first 1878 Veile...

Genghis Tron’s keyboardist and programmer joins us to talk about the band’s new record and making despair-laden music in a collapsing world.

GENGHIS TRON: SIGNAL FIRE — OUT NOW.

STREAM HERE

PHYSICAL COPIES & MERCH AVAILABLE VIA:

– Bandcamp

– Relapse Records

– Rough Trade (UK)

– Shirt Killer

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 th...

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.

Our story of Britain’s most infamous neo-nazi terror gang concludes with a Harlow Night of the Long Knives and a final, desperate attempt to kick off and claim the race war.

Follow Gareth Watkins on Bluesky
Listen to the Death // Sentence podcast

Image: A man walks past a burning barricade during the Oldham riots in 2001.

Blood Work is a Scam G...

We explore the cultural history of rug-weaving in Afghanistan, and how decades of war caused that country’s craft and conditions into a morbid reciprocity.

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: Super Smash TV
A...

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.

Gareth returns to continue our history of ‘90s Britain’s most notorious neo-nazi gang, recounting the time Will Browning convinced a Scandinavian to mail a package bomb to an Olympic swimmer.

Image: Thomas Nakaba marching at a far-right rally in Copenhagen, Denmark, in the 1990s.

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 ar...

Do Your Own Research: Conspiracy, Paranoia & the Drive to Violence w/ Julian Feeld

Julian and Gregk discuss the history of conspiracy, lone wolves, mass psychoses, and his new show SUPER STRUCTURE on the power of propaganda, political repression & revolutionary struggle.

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: ‘Pizzagate’ gunman Edgar Maddison Welch being apprehended by police shortly after storming the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington D.C. on December 4, 2016. (Sathi Soma/AP)<...

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.

We conclude our two-parter with a story that runs through Lewis Powell, Times Square, 9/11 and Occupy, and concludes by considering a vanguard of neoliberal authoritarianism: The Olympics.

Image: An interior shot of the amusement park at Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota

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 pro...

In the first of a two-parter, we trace the evolution of the modern city from industrialisation to the 1970s, when a trio of crises laid the foundation for an anti-political backlash

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 photograph taken on Leyden Street, London, during the 1979 ‘Winter of Discontent’ (Source: Maurice Hibberd/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production
This episode was produced by Thomas...

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.

Gregk and Thomas pause to reflect on some of the topics covered since they last spoke, and meditate on recent events.

Image: A still from Werner Herzog’s 1992 documentary Lessons of Darkness

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:

–...

Joe and Gregk use Gregory Stanton’s ‘Ten Stages of Genocide’ to discuss the tactics & techniques states deploy to legitimise and perpetrate mass murder.

Image: Remains of victims of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide retrieved from a mass grave in Huye District in January, 2024.

Follow Joe Kassabian on Bluesky

Listen to Lions Led by Donkeys

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 is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.

We take a foray into the world of euphemisms, turns-of-phrase and the disingenuous world of militarese

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...

We look at the history of women’s participation in suicide bombing attacks and how society has tried to make sense of women who carry out the most extreme political act of all.

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 is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.

In the conclusion to our series, we look at what happened when the Soviet Union collapsed, and the rifles it had been making for over four decades started leaking out into a rapidly changing world.

Image: A screencap from a video dated June, 2001, showing al-Qaeda militants wielding Kalashnikov rifles at al-Farouq training camp, Kandahar, Afghanistan

Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production
This episode was produced by Thomas O’Mahony

Gareth and Rocz join Gregk to account for the many crimes of modernity’s slow, silent killers – engineers, technicians, and urban planners.

Follow Gareth and Rocz on Bluesky

Watch Well There’s Your Problem on YouTube

Watch RailNatter on YouTube

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...

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.

As the Soviets entered the Cold War, they had a gun they could use as conduit, commodity, or currency. The US, meanwhile, hit the snooze alarm. In Vietnam, a rude awakening awaited them.

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:

– Su...

We trace the evolution of international arms transfers from mercantilism to the modern era, and the perverse incentives produced by the symbiosis of private enterprise and state imperatives in arms production.

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...

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.

It’s time to tell the story of Mikhail Kalashnikov, his eponymous gun, the horrors of the Eastern Front, and one of the biggest fumbles in US military 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

For more:

– Support Blood Work via Patreo...

We begin our history of the most famous firearm of all time with a prologue: Because in order to understand how we got here, you gotta understand where we came from.

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...

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.

Josh drops by the Blood Work studio to talk about one of the most mentally unhinged prestige TV shows of the early millennium and what it might tell us about America’s relationship with violence.

Follow Josh Boerman on Bluesky
Listen to The Worst of All Possible Worlds
Listen to Ill Conceived

Image: Jack Bauer interrogating Marie Warner in Season 2 of 24.

Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Pr...

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...

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 tit...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 pe...