Blood Work

Latest Episodes:

Machines Infernal: The History of the AK-47, Part 1 Feb 24, 2026

Show notes

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 IN VIOLENCE: Little Marco’s Big Speech
ALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIO
This week, we discuss the thinly-veiled white nationalist vision laid out by Marco Rubio in his Munich Security Conference speech. But first, we provide a little background on the man himself and what it means that a man like that would be giving such a speech—because this might be one of those cases where the medium is the message.

Sources:

C. J. Chivers (2010), The Gun: The Story of the AK-47

Larry Kahaner (2008), AK-47: The Weapon that Changed the Face of War

Chris McNab (2001), The AK-47

Image: The American-British entrepreneur Hiram Maxim posing with his eponymous Maxim Gun.

24 Reasons Why w/ Josh Boerman Feb 17, 2026

Show notes

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 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: Zombie Liberalism
ALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIO
This week, we took a look at Nancy Pelosi's response to a question on the topic of Iran at the Munich Security Conference, examining what her answer (or non-answer) can tell us about the state of establishment liberalism as we enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century, and whether these obstinate, self-ordained standard-bearers of the liberal international order are sufficiently equipped to bring the fight to an ascendant Fascist International drawing the knives out on nearly every continent. (Bad news. Sorry.)

A History of Violence w/ Patrick Wyman Feb 10, 2026

Show notes

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.

Combat 18, Part 2: We Need Some More Lads in Here w/ Gareth Watkins [PREVIEW] Feb 03, 2026

Show notes

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.

Combat 18, Part 1: Lad’s Army w/ Gareth Watkins Jan 27, 2026

Show notes

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

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

Cruel to be Kind: Sanctions [PREVIEW] Jan 20, 2026

Show notes

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)

Reign of Terror w/ Spencer Ackerman Jan 13, 2026

Show notes

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)

COIN All the Way Down: A Discourse on Counterinsurgency [PREVIEW] Jan 06, 2026

Show notes

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)

Chestnuts Listening on a Blood Work Fire w/ Thomas O’Mahony Dec 23, 2025

Show notes

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

"What Does The Forest Say?” w/ Dr. Florin Poenaru Dec 16, 2025

Show notes

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.

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