Latest / Blocked and Reported / Episode 295: Gone Broke? Go Woke!

Transcript

Episode 295: Gone Broke? Go Woke! · Blocked and Reported

0:11
katie i don't want to um gloat but uh you're having some animal
0:15
problems are you
0:17
really gonna make me talk about it yeah i i am go for it come
0:21
on just say it okay i
0:22
have thousands of little pets living in my ceiling body oh in
0:27
your ceiling so what
0:28
SPEAKER_00: happened how did you find out tell us the whole story
0:31
SPEAKER_01: It's not much of a story.
0:32
I saw one carpenter ant and then I saw 10 carpenter ants and
0:36
now I'm seeing 100 carpenter ants.
0:38
SPEAKER_01: Yes, we have apparently carpenter ants in our ceiling.
0:42
SPEAKER_01: They are chewing their way through my ceiling.
0:44
Although I was complaining about this to Andy the other day and
0:47
he pointed out that
0:48
SPEAKER_01: at least my house is delicious.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: Andy Ngo or Andy Mills?
0:53
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
0:53
SPEAKER_00: Andy Ngo was like the Muslim center.
0:55
SPEAKER_01: Andy Ngo and I talk on the phone all the time.
0:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: So wait, what did he say?
0:58
SPEAKER_00: Because he's the kind of guy who could fix an infestation, I think.
1:01
SPEAKER_01: It was more podcast talk.
1:03
SPEAKER_01: He just said, well, your house is delicious.
1:04
SPEAKER_01: And then we moved on.
1:05
SPEAKER_01: But look, I do have, I have the professionals on it.
1:10
SPEAKER_01: This will get fixed eventually.
1:12
SPEAKER_01: Apparently, it takes time.
1:13
SPEAKER_01: You spray the poison,
1:14
and then you have to wait for them to eat the poison and track
1:16
the poison back to
1:17
SPEAKER_01: their babies.
1:18
SPEAKER_01: I have been committing genocide,
1:21
SPEAKER_01: though,
1:21
SPEAKER_01: and I feel bad enough about it that I actually asked my friend Chad,
1:26
SPEAKER_01: who is a licensed entomologist.
1:29
SPEAKER_00: Human rights expert and entomologist and anything you want him to be.
1:32
I did ask my friend Chad if ants can feel pain,
1:36
and he assures me they cannot.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: I didn't actually, they can feel pain 10 times as much as humans can.
1:42
SPEAKER_00: Little known fact.
1:42
SPEAKER_01: It wouldn't stop me.
1:44
SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, I do feel bad about it.
1:45
SPEAKER_01: I am like committing genocide on these ants,
1:47
SPEAKER_01: but,
1:48
SPEAKER_01: and I know like I've read some,
1:50
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:50
SPEAKER_01: Wilson,
1:50
SPEAKER_01: I know they're an incredible species.
1:54
SPEAKER_01: I want them to die.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: I mean that.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: So,
1:57
SPEAKER_00: well,
1:57
SPEAKER_00: anyway,
1:57
SPEAKER_00: the,
1:58
SPEAKER_00: the reason I had a jolt,
2:00
SPEAKER_00: I feel horrible saying this cause I would not want,
2:02
SPEAKER_00: um,
2:03
SPEAKER_00: you or especially Jana to suffer in any way,
2:05
SPEAKER_00: especially Jana,
2:07
SPEAKER_00: especially Jana.
2:08
SPEAKER_00: But I did like,
2:09
SPEAKER_00: I felt like a certain,
2:10
SPEAKER_00: well,
2:11
now it's your turn just because the pigeon thing I went through
2:13
forever ago had
2:14
SPEAKER_01: such- I don't think the pigeons are,
2:16
SPEAKER_01: the pigeons were not in your home.
2:17
SPEAKER_00: They effectively were.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: They were right there.
2:20
They were like pressed up against the window mocking me and it
2:24
sort of just
2:24
SPEAKER_00: permanently,
2:25
SPEAKER_00: I don't want,
2:26
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resolves quickly,
2:28
but I think this will bring us closer together as a podcast
2:30
because it destroyed-
2:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: This destroyed a chunk of my brain that will never come back.
2:37
SPEAKER_00: This will put us more on the same level.
2:39
SPEAKER_01: I would honestly take pigeons.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: Oh my God.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: Over ants.
2:42
SPEAKER_00: Over ants.
2:42
The thing about ants is like,
2:44
it's never like,
2:45
I saw a carpenter ant and then that was that.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: There weren't any others.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: No.
2:49
There's never like any suspense over what,
2:53
the question of whether you're going to find more.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: There's always more because they're fucking ants.
2:55
SPEAKER_01: Right.
2:56
And the thing about ants also,
2:57
carpenters in particular,
2:58
is that they literally eat your house.
3:00
SPEAKER_01: So it's like they're not termites, but they tunnel through wood.
3:04
SPEAKER_01: This is what my friend Chad has told me.
3:07
SPEAKER_01: So it's like there could be structure, whatever.
3:10
SPEAKER_01: It's the whole fucking thing.
3:12
SPEAKER_01: Everybody pray for me.
3:13
SPEAKER_01: Don't pray for the ants.
3:14
SPEAKER_01: The ants are dying.
3:15
SPEAKER_01: Pray for me.
3:16
well katie i'm sorry about the ants uh we've got a lot to get
3:20
to today but before
3:21
we do um we briefly alluded to this in another episode but my
3:25
beloved patriots were
3:27
narrowly defeated by your was it narrow katie yeah i think so
3:31
by your seattle
3:32
seahawks uh in the super bowl last weekend i don't remember the
3:35
exact score i think
3:35
it was like maybe one point a last second one to two was that
3:39
one to two points
3:40
SPEAKER_01: yeah it was a great game super interesting i hear
3:42
SPEAKER_00: Oh,
3:42
I bet to non-football fans it was just incredibly entertaining
3:46
the way they kept
3:47
SPEAKER_00: kicking those field goals.
3:48
After the game,
3:49
a small group of people got extremely mad at me on the
3:53
internet.
3:53
SPEAKER_01: Again?
3:54
SPEAKER_01: What was it for this time?
3:55
So I'd been asked by an editor I know at the Boston Globe to
3:58
write a column about
4:00
SPEAKER_00: the game before it happened.
4:01
The plan was to run my piece as well as a dueling piece by a
4:04
Seahawks fan in both
4:05
SPEAKER_00: the Globe and the Seattle Times.
4:08
SPEAKER_01: Why did they ask me to do the dueling piece?
4:09
That would have been really funny because you would have had
4:11
like Wikipedia what is
4:13
SPEAKER_00: football and stuff.
4:14
SPEAKER_01: I would have asked Chad.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: And for reasons that'll become clear,
4:17
SPEAKER_00: I want people to get a sense of the tone I took with this column.
4:20
SPEAKER_00: It's also rare that I can force you to read my writing.
4:23
SPEAKER_00: But here, please read a couple of these snippets.
4:25
Okay,
4:27
I don't want this column to be full of cheap slams and
4:30
parochial New England boosterism.
4:32
SPEAKER_01: Instead,
4:32
SPEAKER_01: I want to extend some kind words to our rivals this Super Bowl Sunday,
4:35
SPEAKER_01: because when it comes to Seattle,
4:36
SPEAKER_01: one simply cannot deny that it is,
4:38
SPEAKER_01: in fact,
4:38
SPEAKER_01: an American city.
4:39
SPEAKER_01: A crueler,
4:40
SPEAKER_01: less open-minded Pats fan would attempt to deny this,
4:43
SPEAKER_01: but I typed Seattle into Google Maps,
4:44
SPEAKER_01: and sure enough,
4:45
SPEAKER_01: it popped up.
4:46
A strangely femur-shaped strip of land plopped ill-advisedly in
4:49
the middle of a
4:50
SPEAKER_01: bunch of what I assume to be unnamed straits,
4:52
SPEAKER_01: brackish ponds,
4:53
SPEAKER_01: and uninhabitable,
4:54
SPEAKER_01: likely vampire-infested evergreen forest.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: Using context clues, do you think I was being serious or I was joking?
5:03
SPEAKER_01: Can't tell.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: OK, let's read one more to see if you can tell.
5:06
I understand there are some hurt feelings over the fact that
5:08
the Patriots rebuild was so short.
5:10
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't feel fair that we should be back in the Super Bowl so quickly.
5:13
SPEAKER_01: But this mentality ignores a few crucial facts.
5:15
First,
5:15
Boston is the most important city in the United States and
5:18
arguably the world.
5:20
SPEAKER_01: It makes sense that we should win a lot of sports titles.
5:22
SPEAKER_01: Seattle is a different story.
5:24
SPEAKER_01: A historical zig here or zag here.
5:26
And it is a small fishing village or perhaps a backwater fort
5:29
that exists solely to
5:30
SPEAKER_01: keep an eye on the Canadians.
5:31
SPEAKER_01: That's actually sort of true.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
5:33
SPEAKER_00: But do you think I'm being serious?
5:34
SPEAKER_00: I was joking.
5:36
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to guess joking.
5:37
SPEAKER_01: This is tough.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: Last one.
5:39
SPEAKER_00: This is my prediction.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: And then give me your final assessment of whether I was joking.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: Just read my prediction.
5:44
Pat's 55,
5:45
Seahawks 0,
5:46
and you guys will be lucky if it's even that close.
5:48
SPEAKER_01: You make terrible predictions.
5:49
This reminds me of the time when we bet that you bet that
5:53
Kamala Harris was going
5:54
SPEAKER_01: to win the election.
5:55
SPEAKER_01: Your track record is fucking... Did I bet?
5:56
SPEAKER_00: Did we actually do a bet on that?
5:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you paid me $100.
5:58
SPEAKER_01: We bet on stage.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I forgot about that we bet on stage.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: Just,
6:01
SPEAKER_00: okay,
6:01
SPEAKER_00: you're not a football...
6:02
SPEAKER_00: Saying Pat's 55,
6:03
SPEAKER_00: Seahawks 0 is like saying,
6:05
SPEAKER_00: I think Kamala Harris will win every state.
6:07
SPEAKER_00: It's just sort of... It's a gag.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: It's a gag prediction.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: So, the Super Bowl wraps up...
6:13
SPEAKER_00: Ten minutes later, I get an email from a Seahawks fan named Parker.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: This is like right after they won.
6:19
SPEAKER_00: He hasn't even had time to celebrate yet.
6:21
SPEAKER_00: First thing this guy does is email me.
6:23
SPEAKER_00: Katie, just read the top of it.
6:24
SPEAKER_01: Hey,
6:25
just writing to give you some feedback on your article slash
6:27
column in the Seattle
6:28
SPEAKER_01: Times,
6:28
SPEAKER_01: or should I say the Grunge City Times.
6:31
SPEAKER_01: I truly hope your article in the Seattle Times was satire.
6:33
I have a feeling it was because there's no way with a nose that
6:36
big you wouldn't
6:37
SPEAKER_01: smell the bullshit you were typing.
6:39
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
6:40
SPEAKER_01: He takes it there in the second fucking paragraph.
6:45
SPEAKER_01: Your 55-0 Pat's prediction is so atrociously absurd,
6:49
SPEAKER_01: but I don't even need to mention that considering your quarterback is...
6:51
SPEAKER_01: All right.
6:51
SPEAKER_01: Do I need to read the whole thing?
6:52
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
6:53
SPEAKER_00: This one is particularly funny and appropriate.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: So just read that line.
6:57
SPEAKER_01: Considering your quarterback is taking more sex than a gay porn star.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: Do gay porn stars take sex per se?
7:05
SPEAKER_00: Maybe he meant sex.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: He continues.
7:07
Next time you spew vomit from your mouth,
7:09
you should make sure you're not lying down.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: That's how you choke.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: This is like meaner than anything.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: Do you think Grok wrote this?
7:15
Hopefully next time you decide to sit down and say a whole city
7:18
has done so little
7:18
SPEAKER_00: to pull its weight,
7:19
SPEAKER_00: you think about the weight of your words being used against you.
7:23
SPEAKER_00: He continues,
7:23
I can only imagine how awkward it would be to seriously write
7:26
such a shit piece and
7:27
SPEAKER_00: have this be the result of the game.
7:28
How embarrassing for the football team from the most important
7:31
city of the US,
7:32
SPEAKER_00: question mark,
7:33
SPEAKER_00: question,
7:33
SPEAKER_00: question mark,
7:33
SPEAKER_00: which is not true.
7:34
SPEAKER_00: New York is way important in every way.
7:37
SPEAKER_00: We had had so...
7:39
SPEAKER_00: Because we've never intersected with sports fans,
7:43
SPEAKER_00: I think in the history of the show,
7:44
SPEAKER_00: it's so easy to forget how many of them are like this.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: I'll just make you read three more sentences.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: Eight minutes later, I get another email.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: This one with the subject line, 55-0 question mark.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: Katie, read this.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: And just keep in mind.
7:55
SPEAKER_01: This one is from Pete.
7:56
And I did not mention anything about my grad school,
8:00
but this is what he said.
8:02
SPEAKER_01: Princeton, huh?
8:03
SPEAKER_01: 55-0.
8:03
SPEAKER_01: Fuck you, worthless lying sack of shit.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: Lying.
8:07
SPEAKER_01: Lying.
8:07
SPEAKER_01: Basically, you'll say anything for money, right?
8:10
SPEAKER_01: They're always going to the Jew thing.
8:11
SPEAKER_01: You'd sell your mother's ass for money.
8:13
SPEAKER_01: That's hurtful.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: My mom's dead.
8:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
8:15
SPEAKER_01: You have zero integrity, zero class, and zero credibility.
8:18
SPEAKER_01: That's true.
8:18
SPEAKER_01: But you went to Princeton!
8:19
SPEAKER_01: Wow, exclamation point.
8:21
SPEAKER_01: Let's face it.
8:22
SPEAKER_01: The only thing you have to do at Princeton is get in.
8:24
SPEAKER_01: P.S.
8:24
SPEAKER_01: It's Puget Sound and Lake Washington.
8:26
SPEAKER_01: Fuck you, you arrogant troll.
8:28
SPEAKER_00: These are the people.
8:28
SPEAKER_00: These are your neighbors, Katie.
8:30
SPEAKER_00: These are the people... These aren't my neighbors.
8:31
SPEAKER_01: I live across the water.
8:33
SPEAKER_01: Hey, I'm actually surprised that...
8:37
That the outcome of this wasn't people bitching that the
8:41
Seattle Times published
8:43
SPEAKER_01: Notorious Transfob Jesse Single.
8:44
SPEAKER_00: I got nothing on that.
8:45
I just got this whole...
8:47
I guess your haters probably don't read the Seattle Times.
8:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:51
SPEAKER_00: Or the Boston Globe.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: But I was surprised.
8:53
SPEAKER_00: There were only a few of these.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: There was one other one.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: But they were like,
8:56
SPEAKER_00: among the angriest emails I've gotten,
8:58
SPEAKER_00: and we've...
8:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
8:59
way worse than sort of other groups that we have pissed off
9:02
over the years.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: All right.
9:03
SPEAKER_00: What are we talking about?
9:03
So,
9:03
yeah,
9:04
let's dig a little bit more into the elites who secretly
9:07
control society.
9:09
SPEAKER_00: One story in particular that I found really interesting on that front.
9:12
SPEAKER_00: Before that,
9:13
do you mind if we revisit one aspect of the Jeffrey Epstein
9:16
stuff you led earlier
9:17
SPEAKER_00: this week?
9:18
SPEAKER_01: Do we have to?
9:18
SPEAKER_00: I think we have to.
9:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:20
SPEAKER_01: So this was a primo episode.
9:21
If you haven't listened to that,
9:23
well,
9:23
join us,
9:24
boxreported.org,
9:25
then go listen to it.
9:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:26
SPEAKER_00: I guess I shouldn't mention that this also...
9:28
SPEAKER_00: The argument...
9:30
SPEAKER_00: This came up in our comment section and on the subreddit.
9:33
And it basically recapitulates an argument that goes all the
9:36
way back to 2019 when
9:38
SPEAKER_00: this podcast was just a gleam in...
9:41
SPEAKER_00: Someone's eye.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: We didn't exist in 2019.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: We did.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: You and I did not exist.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: No.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we were not born yet.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: You wrote in The Stranger that Jeffrey Epstein...
9:52
SPEAKER_00: I like how many times we've ended up talking about this podcast.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: You're the one who always brings this one up.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: This article that actually enraged people.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: You basically argued,
10:00
SPEAKER_00: tell me if I have this right,
10:01
SPEAKER_00: Epstein was not a pedophile and he didn't do anything wrong?
10:03
SPEAKER_01: Not quite.
10:04
If you stop it,
10:05
Epstein was not a pedophile and then he did do something wrong.
10:09
SPEAKER_01: I believe that was the gist of the article.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: Right.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: I'm being a dick.
10:13
Your point in this article was Epstein does not appear to have
10:20
been into prepubescent children.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: He appears to be into very young but postpubescent girls.
10:27
SPEAKER_01: Well,
10:29
SPEAKER_01: there was the...
10:30
SPEAKER_01: I believe it was the...
10:33
How old was the kid he raped on the boat with Bill Clinton
10:35
while Trump and Melania
10:36
SPEAKER_01: were watching?
10:37
SPEAKER_00: Well, that was just Bill Clinton.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: Oh, he was just watching.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: Epstein tried to stop him.
10:41
SPEAKER_00: He was like, Bill, don't do that.
10:43
SPEAKER_00: Actually, Hillary was the one who instigated it.
10:45
I've been watching,
10:46
according to Mario Knopfel on X.
10:48
And a whole lot of other people.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: No,
10:50
part of your point was if we actually want to understand and
10:53
prevent this sort of
10:54
SPEAKER_00: behavior...
10:55
these distinctions,
10:56
even though they're like stereotypical nerd shit,
10:58
um,
10:59
they,
10:59
they matter.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: Right.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: So,
11:02
SPEAKER_00: um,
11:04
SPEAKER_00: part of the problem is as soon as you bring this up,
11:06
like that's literally a meme on the internet of a guy in a
11:08
fedora and be like,
11:09
SPEAKER_00: actually it's a few,
11:10
SPEAKER_00: wait,
11:11
SPEAKER_00: keep a feeling or a fever feeling.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: I always make sense to it.
11:13
SPEAKER_00: Well,
11:13
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
11:14
SPEAKER_00: I was,
11:14
SPEAKER_00: the reason I bring this up is like,
11:15
SPEAKER_00: I was looking at the comment section of our episode.
11:17
That's the first thing I do after an episode goes up as I read
11:20
every comment.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: Um,
11:21
SPEAKER_00: And it was sort of the same thing,
11:23
SPEAKER_00: this idea that,
11:25
SPEAKER_00: and most of the fire was directed your way,
11:26
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry to say,
11:29
SPEAKER_00: that you were somehow letting Epstein off the hook by bringing this up.
11:32
So I wanted to give you a chance to respond,
11:35
are you letting Epstein off the hook?
11:37
SPEAKER_00: And again, arguing that everything he did was great.
11:40
Look,
11:40
the point of the episode was that this has turned into a giant
11:44
satanic panic.
11:46
And it is scooping up people who I don't think fall for this
11:51
sort of thing.
11:53
SPEAKER_01: People I like.
11:54
SPEAKER_01: I saw Anna Kasparian today.
11:56
SPEAKER_01: She did something with Tim Dillon.
11:57
SPEAKER_01: I saw this clip floating around.
11:59
SPEAKER_01: They were giving credence to this episode.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: Like Tim Dillon did like a conspiratorial thing?
12:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:03
SPEAKER_01: I mean, Tim Dillon, that tracks.
12:05
But Anna Kasparian,
12:06
who has said plenty of things I disagree with,
12:08
but I don't think of her.
12:10
SPEAKER_01: I like Anna.
12:10
SPEAKER_01: She's probably listening to this.
12:12
SPEAKER_01: I like you.
12:13
I think the idea that Jeffrey Epstein was talking in code about
12:18
pizza and grape soda is...
12:21
SPEAKER_01: I think it's silly.
12:23
And I think a lot of people are giving credence to
12:25
Pizzagate-style conspiracy
12:27
SPEAKER_01: thinking when what the man did,
12:30
SPEAKER_01: actually did,
12:31
SPEAKER_01: what we know that he did,
12:32
SPEAKER_01: is bad enough on its own.
12:34
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to turn him into a demon or a monster or...
12:39
SPEAKER_01: The devil.
12:39
The Times did this article just pointing out like both the
12:43
actual bad stuff showing
12:44
SPEAKER_00: all these people's chumminess with Epstein and then lying about it,
12:47
SPEAKER_00: especially in the case of people like Elon Musk.
12:49
SPEAKER_00: But then also they have,
12:50
SPEAKER_00: they quote Tucker Carlson,
12:52
SPEAKER_00: you know,
12:52
SPEAKER_00: there's these weird exchanges,
12:53
there's inside jokes and one of them involves pizza and Tucker
12:58
Carlson goes,
12:58
SPEAKER_00: it was this exchange that made us think,
13:00
SPEAKER_00: whoa,
13:00
SPEAKER_00: wait a second.
13:01
Maybe the long debunked conspiracy about Pizzagate wasn't
13:04
actually debunked and
13:05
SPEAKER_00: maybe someone should take a closer look at this.
13:07
SPEAKER_00: No.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: Let me just read one paragraph from the Times.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: This is what sparked Tucker Carlson saying this.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: In an email exchange in 2018,
13:14
SPEAKER_00: Mr.
13:15
SPEAKER_00: Epstein's urologist,
13:16
SPEAKER_00: Dr.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: Harry Fish,
13:17
SPEAKER_00: informed him that,
13:18
SPEAKER_00: quote,
13:18
SPEAKER_00: you have refills available,
13:19
SPEAKER_00: end quote,
13:20
SPEAKER_00: and that,
13:20
SPEAKER_00: quote,
13:20
SPEAKER_00: after you use them,
13:21
SPEAKER_00: wash your hands and let's go get pizza and grape soda,
13:24
SPEAKER_00: end quote.
13:24
A peculiar combination used in several emails between the two
13:27
men that Dr.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: Fish wrote,
13:29
SPEAKER_00: no one else can understand.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: He did not respond to an email request for comment.
13:33
SPEAKER_01: I wonder why.
13:34
SPEAKER_01: I...
13:35
It's it's weird,
13:36
but I just and maybe this is a failure of imagination on my
13:39
part.
13:39
Maybe everyone is always doing pedophile shit all the time and
13:42
I'm just not invited.
13:44
There's likely explanations for this between a weird inside
13:48
joke like I have with
13:50
SPEAKER_00: many of my friends.
13:51
If you took snippets of our emails out of context,
13:53
they would sound weird.
13:54
If you took snippets of your and my text messages out of
13:58
context,
13:58
they would sound weird.
14:00
That versus Dr.
14:02
Mr.
14:02
Epstein's urologist,
14:04
who before he met Epstein was just a urologist.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: is talking in code about a pedophilic sex ring.
14:12
SPEAKER_00: I think if you have any evidence of that, present it.
14:16
And the reason this matters and the reason the pedophilia thing
14:20
came up is it's
14:22
SPEAKER_00: important to try to figure out what's what.
14:23
And the whole reason we made that distinction on the show is
14:26
because online things
14:26
have reached such a fever pitch that people are claiming with a
14:29
straight face that
14:29
SPEAKER_00: an expert on infant lactation is,
14:32
SPEAKER_00: I guess,
14:32
SPEAKER_00: trying to help Epstein get...
14:37
SPEAKER_00: literal babies to suck him off.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: That appears to be what it is.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: And just based on what we know about creeps like Epstein's proclivities,
14:45
SPEAKER_00: in the absence of evidence that he was into actual babies,
14:47
SPEAKER_00: it's like,
14:47
SPEAKER_00: that's one we can cross off.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: That didn't happen because we have no evidence he's into babies.
14:51
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: I'm like...
14:54
And I'm becoming Katie-ish on this where I just think these
14:57
distinctions are
14:58
SPEAKER_00: actually really important.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: And then you make them and people are like, oh, you're excusing it.
15:02
Because other people are like,
15:03
oh,
15:04
you called the 14 and 15-year-olds developed.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if we said developed or partially developed.
15:09
SPEAKER_00: That makes it sound like you think they're women and adults and consent.
15:12
SPEAKER_00: We don't think any of that.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: That's not the point.
15:14
SPEAKER_01: No,
15:15
SPEAKER_01: the point is,
15:15
it really seems as though we are reaching satanic panic levels
15:20
of conspiracy
15:20
SPEAKER_01: thinking here.
15:21
SPEAKER_01: I just opened Twitter.
15:22
SPEAKER_01: Jake Shields.
15:23
SPEAKER_01: Let's see how many followers he has.
15:26
SPEAKER_01: 892,000 followers.
15:27
SPEAKER_01: Multiple girls have reported they were locked in cages.
15:30
SPEAKER_01: Here is Epstein buying cages.
15:33
SPEAKER_01: And the email that he shows is about Epstein.
15:38
SPEAKER_01: Let me just read you the quote.
15:40
SPEAKER_01: Jeffrey is requesting a price list for the birds.
15:43
SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure what size cage the birds should be in.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: Well, no, but if everything's code...
15:49
birds could mean babies right right birds people or people call
15:53
women birds in the
15:54
uk it does it does happen yeah here's another one from jake
15:58
shields here's an email
16:00
from jeffrey epstein sending woody allen chairs from wayfair as
16:03
a gift wayfair
16:04
wayfair we're back to this children in in fucking cabinets this
16:10
is psychotic i
16:12
i think what's breaking people's brains is the stuff that's
16:15
already out there even
16:16
just the details we have about his creepy mansion and obviously
16:19
the stuff going on
16:20
in palm beach county obviously his relationship to trump which
16:23
at one time was very
16:24
close it's also and obviously like trump walking into fucking
16:28
dressing rooms at a
16:29
beauty like it's all so gross and so out in the open and we
16:33
already know so much
16:34
SPEAKER_00: that i think it's like breaking people's brains that there isn't
16:37
SPEAKER_00: Another shoe hasn't yet dropped that proves that there was literally an
16:41
SPEAKER_00: international ring of actual pedophiles,
16:44
SPEAKER_00: including super famous people.
16:47
And I think the truth is like there were a lot of creepy people
16:49
around Epstein.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: And yes, some of them messed around with underage girls, not women girls.
16:54
SPEAKER_01: And this is...
16:55
SPEAKER_01: destroying people's reputations.
16:57
SPEAKER_01: The one that really gets me is actually Bill Gates.
17:01
SPEAKER_01: And look, Bill Gates cheated on his wife.
17:03
SPEAKER_00: We know this with a literal baby.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: He had an affair.
17:06
SPEAKER_01: No, he had an affair with an employee at Microsoft.
17:09
SPEAKER_01: He cheated on his wife.
17:11
Bill Gates is responsible for saving more human lives than
17:16
probably everybody
17:17
SPEAKER_01: outside of the guy who invented penicillin.
17:20
SPEAKER_01: Bill Gates,
17:21
there's no credible evidence that Bill Gates was involved in a
17:24
fucking child
17:25
SPEAKER_01: trafficking ring.
17:26
SPEAKER_01: What we know about him is that he cheated on his wife.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: But do you know whose lives he saved?
17:29
SPEAKER_00: Does that make him a shitty husband?
17:30
SPEAKER_00: He saved babies' lives, Katie.
17:31
SPEAKER_01: Babies' lives.
17:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I wonder why.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: Kind of accumulate them for his friend Jeffrey Epstein.
17:34
SPEAKER_01: Jesse, I just opened up Twitter.
17:36
SPEAKER_01: Michael Schellenberger.
17:38
SPEAKER_01: The New York Times today noted that in one Epstein email,
17:40
SPEAKER_01: there is a,
17:40
SPEAKER_01: quote,
17:41
SPEAKER_01: peculiar combination of pizza and grape soda,
17:43
SPEAKER_01: dot,
17:44
SPEAKER_01: dot,
17:44
SPEAKER_01: dot.
17:44
SPEAKER_01: I encourage people to read the messages themselves.
17:46
In no case did I get the feeling that they were actually
17:48
talking about pizza and grape soda.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: Okay, guys, Michael Schellenberger's on it.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: Dude,
17:52
SPEAKER_00: he's so...
17:55
In terms of people with big platforms who are incredibly
17:57
irresponsible with those
17:58
SPEAKER_00: platforms and who are taken seriously,
18:00
SPEAKER_00: he's bad.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: He's quite bad.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
18:02
SPEAKER_01: Check out this turducken of posting.
18:05
We've got Michael Schellenberger being reposted,
18:07
retweeted by representative Anna Paulina Luna.
18:11
SPEAKER_01: So this is a Florida, Florida rap.
18:14
She says,
18:14
given the coded language in his communications,
18:17
this raises serious questions for me.
18:21
SPEAKER_01: The coded language, grape soda.
18:24
SPEAKER_01: And guess who retweeted this?
18:26
SPEAKER_01: Mike Cernovich.
18:28
So the turducken,
18:30
the innermost part of the turducken is a sitting member of
18:32
Schellenberger.
18:33
SPEAKER_00: No, Schellenberger.
18:34
SPEAKER_01: Then Cernovich.
18:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so the turd is Schellenberger.
18:38
SPEAKER_01: The duck is representative of Anna Paulina Luna.
18:41
SPEAKER_01: And in the inn is Cernovich.
18:44
SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense, turducken?
18:45
SPEAKER_00: We can't get it.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: The Epstein stuff is such a rich vein of online bullshit.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:49
SPEAKER_01: And look, there should be investigations.
18:51
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
18:52
SPEAKER_01: Yes, I think that.
18:53
But this drop of three million fucking emails and files to
18:58
people who have
19:00
SPEAKER_01: apparently zero skepticism is just leading to this fevered moral panic.
19:07
SPEAKER_01: It is turning sane people crazy.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: There was just one quick thing from the subreddit.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: This is like sort of the steel man position, I think.
19:15
Barpod is allowing its criticism of a few internet dorks
19:18
grifting people by
19:19
SPEAKER_00: advertising all these tips and files is true,
19:22
SPEAKER_00: which fine,
19:22
SPEAKER_00: report that story if you'd like.
19:24
SPEAKER_00: It's not surprising, though, to disbelieve everything in the file dumps.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: How do you know what's true or not?
19:30
SPEAKER_00: How do you know that Epstein didn't murder children or teens or whoever?
19:33
SPEAKER_01: Tell me which children.
19:34
SPEAKER_01: Can we have some victims names?
19:36
SPEAKER_00: I think it's irresponsible to just say,
19:37
SPEAKER_00: quote,
19:38
SPEAKER_00: oh,
19:38
SPEAKER_00: that can't be true because it's just too weird,
19:40
SPEAKER_00: end quote.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
19:42
this is a little bit different from the satanic sex abuse panic
19:45
because there is
19:46
SPEAKER_00: obviously underlying criminal behavior at the core of it.
19:50
We know some of the illegal,
19:52
horrible stuff Jeffrey Epstein did,
19:53
but to say...
19:55
SPEAKER_00: how do you know Epstein didn't murder children or teens or whoever?
19:58
SPEAKER_00: Like,
19:58
SPEAKER_00: It's like saying,
19:59
how do you know the daycare center didn't tie children to a
20:02
tree and drive nails
20:03
SPEAKER_00: through?
20:03
SPEAKER_00: It's like, well, because there'd be some physical evidence.
20:05
There'd be someone who's like,
20:07
my kid went to the island,
20:10
didn't come back and disappeared.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: And there's different levels of evil.
20:16
SPEAKER_00: And Epstein was very evil.
20:17
I just don't think there's any evidence he was getting sucked
20:21
off by literal
20:22
SPEAKER_00: infant's evil or murdering teenager's evil.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
20:26
SPEAKER_01: Look,
20:27
SPEAKER_01: if people can find some actual victims,
20:29
SPEAKER_01: some people who are claiming that their children,
20:31
SPEAKER_01: their specific children,
20:32
SPEAKER_01: who they can name,
20:34
SPEAKER_01: were murdered by Jeffrey Epstein or,
20:36
SPEAKER_01: yes,
20:36
SPEAKER_01: disappeared on his island or whatever,
20:37
SPEAKER_01: this is worth investigating.
20:39
But until you have actual victims,
20:41
this is just rank fucking speculation from crazy people.
20:44
And I think that there is something about this moment that has
20:46
completely broken
20:47
SPEAKER_01: people's brains.
20:48
SPEAKER_01: This is unrelated to Epstein, but...
20:51
SPEAKER_01: Another friend of the pod,
20:53
SPEAKER_01: another person who was on the show when we first started the show,
20:56
SPEAKER_01: Megan Murphy,
20:57
was on her Substack this week talking about how the moon landing
21:00
was faked.
21:01
SPEAKER_00: Wait, really?
21:02
SPEAKER_01: She thinks that the moon landing was faked.
21:04
SPEAKER_00: Let's see.
21:08
SPEAKER_00: Is there anyone left who still believes we landed on the moon?
21:11
SPEAKER_01: I'm raising my hand right here.
21:15
SPEAKER_00: This is that thing where like...
21:18
SPEAKER_00: Bridget Phetasy says, I do.
21:19
SPEAKER_01: Good.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, if you do, I can be convinced, perhaps.
21:22
But that video,
21:23
so there's some...
21:24
She genuinely thinks the moon landing was fake.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: We just live in an age that's so bad for this conspiracy theorizing.
21:30
There's just no consensus reality left,
21:32
and it's just going to keep getting worse.
21:34
And I think that people who have lost trust in the media
21:39
because of the trans issue
21:41
or because of the coverage of COVID might be particularly
21:45
susceptible to this
21:46
SPEAKER_01: because there have been real failures in institutions that we all,
21:52
SPEAKER_01: most of us grew up thinking were...
21:54
were trustworthy but just because you know the ama was wrong is
22:00
like wrong on or
22:01
was wrong on the science of youth gender medicine doesn't mean
22:05
they fake the
22:05
fucking moon landing megan i mean that but that's that that's
22:09
sort of the slippery
22:10
slope is like you have legitimate complaints about and yeah
22:13
that's the one we've
22:14
SPEAKER_00: talked about the most um is the youth gender stuff and that just
22:19
SPEAKER_00: sets you down this path of like,
22:21
SPEAKER_00: well,
22:21
SPEAKER_00: if they were wrong about that,
22:23
SPEAKER_00: could they be,
22:24
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
22:25
SPEAKER_00: maybe they're wrong about everything,
22:26
SPEAKER_00: which like,
22:28
SPEAKER_00: there's a certain logic to that,
22:29
SPEAKER_00: but no,
22:30
SPEAKER_00: there's stuff they're not wrong about,
22:31
SPEAKER_00: such as the mood landing.
22:33
SPEAKER_01: Or, do we know, Jesse, were you there?
22:36
SPEAKER_00: I was not there.
22:36
I was busy dealing with the pigeons,
22:38
so I wasn't able to make the mood landing.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: Just last note on this, we mentioned this in the episode earlier,
22:44
SPEAKER_00: But there are genuine trade-offs.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: First of all,
22:47
SPEAKER_00: just like the Epstein files,
22:49
SPEAKER_00: which when Pam Bondi was talking about them,
22:52
SPEAKER_00: it seemed to be a very specific thing,
22:53
SPEAKER_00: like implicating specific named individuals,
22:56
SPEAKER_00: not just any email sent by anyone in his orbit.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: But they've reached a point where if you don't release the Epstein files,
23:02
SPEAKER_00: people will accuse you of hiding stuff.
23:03
SPEAKER_00: If you do release the Epstein files,
23:04
you get this dynamic where every word is scrutinized and you
23:08
get Mario Knopfel
23:09
SPEAKER_00: types doing what they do.
23:11
I just think it's unlikely that if Epstein literally murdered
23:14
children or teens,
23:16
he would have then referenced these criminal acts using a
23:18
paper-thin code that any
23:20
SPEAKER_00: idiot on the internet could decrypt.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: Maybe he's just really bad at doing crimes.
23:23
SPEAKER_01: You're such an apologist, Jesse.
23:25
SPEAKER_00: Anything else on the Epstein stuff, Kitty?
23:28
SPEAKER_01: No, I am.
23:28
SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, I think this is going to be a recurring story.
23:31
SPEAKER_01: I just, I look, the guy was a creep.
23:35
SPEAKER_01: He was a convicted criminal sex offender.
23:38
SPEAKER_01: He was a criminal.
23:38
SPEAKER_01: He was on the sex offender registry.
23:40
SPEAKER_01: Eight babies.
23:42
SPEAKER_01: Probably not.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: Well,
23:42
SPEAKER_00: and the other,
23:43
SPEAKER_00: actually,
23:44
SPEAKER_00: I,
23:44
SPEAKER_00: sorry,
23:44
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to keep ranting about this,
23:45
SPEAKER_00: but like,
23:47
SPEAKER_00: maybe tell me about what we're thinking,
23:48
SPEAKER_00: but you keep seeing this coverage.
23:49
SPEAKER_00: It's like, this really reveals these networks of unaccountable elites.
23:55
SPEAKER_00: And I just don't, is that,
23:58
SPEAKER_00: Before this happened,
23:59
were you unaware that there were networks of unaccountable
24:02
elites who jetted around
24:03
SPEAKER_00: the world doing a creepy part?
24:04
SPEAKER_00: Like, was that, is that, is that really news?
24:07
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
24:08
SPEAKER_00: Like, I do think it's revealing.
24:10
It's useful to know who interacted with Epstein and especially
24:14
the people who chose
24:15
SPEAKER_00: to keep hanging out with him after it was clear who he was.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: That's a huge black mark on their character.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: And there are people like Tina Brown who are like, no, fuck that.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: But I'm not like, I don't know.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: I think
24:27
SPEAKER_00: I think it just keeps coming down to it's like Trump with the piss tape.
24:30
Everyone's waiting for like the smoking gun thing to come out
24:33
and it's not going to come out.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: And in the meantime, they're like, well, this does reveal XYZ.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: It's like sort of, but I'm not surprised about the elites.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
24:42
SPEAKER_01: Right.
24:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
24:43
SPEAKER_01: Can I say one more thing about this?
25:00
SPEAKER_01: to have shipped to his private island, Little St.
25:02
SPEAKER_01: James.
25:03
And the online chatter about this is that he obviously he was
25:07
dissolving bodies in
25:08
SPEAKER_01: this,
25:08
SPEAKER_01: which is obviously why there's no bodies.
25:10
SPEAKER_01: And I said, you know, there's the purchase.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: The purpose of the purchase is in the purchase order.
25:15
SPEAKER_01: This was for he had a desalination plant on his on his island.
25:21
SPEAKER_01: This is a chemical that is used for something in desalination.
25:26
SPEAKER_01: It's in the water purification system.
25:28
SPEAKER_01: And someone on – I think this was on the subreddit – said,
25:31
SPEAKER_01: well,
25:32
what I didn't mention was that he ordered this on the same day
25:36
that the FBI began
25:39
SPEAKER_01: their federal child sex trafficking investigation of him.
25:43
SPEAKER_01: And, like, it was irresponsible of me not to mention this.
25:47
SPEAKER_01: And the reason I didn't mention it is because it's fucking ridiculous.
25:50
SPEAKER_01: This is ridiculous.
25:53
SPEAKER_01: I guess the leap there is, like, they opened the investigation, which –
25:59
SPEAKER_01: How would he know about that unless like he had someone in the FBI?
26:03
Do you think the FBI calls up the lawyers for the for the
26:07
target of the investigation?
26:08
SPEAKER_00: You know, we're opening up an investigation on this.
26:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:11
SPEAKER_01: So I guess I guess the leap is they open up the investigation.
26:15
He has a plant in the FBI who tells him that this opened up
26:19
this day and he's like,
26:19
SPEAKER_01: fuck,
26:19
SPEAKER_01: we got to get the sulfuric acid.
26:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
26:22
SPEAKER_01: This is crazy thinking.
26:23
SPEAKER_01: This is crazy.
26:25
SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry.
26:25
SPEAKER_01: He was not dissolving bodies on Little St.
26:28
SPEAKER_01: James.
26:28
SPEAKER_01: He was a fucking creep and an abuser.
26:32
SPEAKER_01: He wasn't dissolving bodies.
26:34
It's also the classic thing of certain conspiracy theories
26:36
where this person is
26:36
SPEAKER_00: like infinitely powerful,
26:38
SPEAKER_00: infinite resources,
26:39
SPEAKER_00: evil genius,
26:40
SPEAKER_00: but then he also like puts the order for dissolving the bodies in
26:44
Even like mid-tier mob bosses know they have a guy who handles
26:50
that stuff and it's
26:51
SPEAKER_00: all done verbally.
26:51
It just doesn't make past the smell test or will prove to be
26:54
wrong and evidence will come out.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: But you can't generally dissolve bodies without someone being like,
27:00
SPEAKER_00: oh,
27:00
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
27:00
SPEAKER_00: I'm missing a relative.
27:01
SPEAKER_01: This is a coincidence.
27:03
SPEAKER_01: Do I know for 100% sure that he wasn't dissolving bodies on his island?
27:08
SPEAKER_01: Yes, I do, because that's, I got it.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: Well, we've just lost all of our listeners.
27:12
SPEAKER_01: That was like one of those primo episodes where I'm like,
27:15
this is either going to get us a bunch of new subscribers or
27:18
we're going to lose a
27:19
SPEAKER_01: lot.
27:20
SPEAKER_01: I think this was in the lose a lot category, but...
27:22
SPEAKER_00: Well,
27:22
I also don't – I don't think there's actually a market for like
27:26
the more moderate
27:27
SPEAKER_00: take on Epstein.
27:28
SPEAKER_00: No.
27:28
SPEAKER_01: No, I don't think there is either.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: And also it's not even a moderate.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: It's like we're not even saying – okay.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, one other thing just before we get to the main story today.
27:37
SPEAKER_00: 30 minutes later.
27:37
SPEAKER_00: We should do housekeeping.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: But first,
27:39
I just – you had mentioned us possibly talking about there have
27:43
been a lot of
27:43
SPEAKER_00: developments in youth gender worlds.
27:46
And I don't want to talk about them yet because I'm working on
27:49
a freelance piece
27:49
SPEAKER_00: that is one of those things where I'm not yet sure it's going to run.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: The draft is complete.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: If it does run, we will have a lot to talk about the next episode.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: But even if it doesn't, we can then also be free to talk about it.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: But in the meantime,
28:03
people should check out your Substack Live with Ben Ryan on this
28:06
big detransition
28:07
SPEAKER_00: case involving a young woman named Fox Varian.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: And then,
28:11
SPEAKER_00: of course,
28:11
people should read up on the American Society of Plastic
28:13
Surgeons and the American
28:14
SPEAKER_00: Medical Association somewhat backing off from youth gender medicine.
28:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:20
SPEAKER_01: Helen wrote a piece about this in The Atlantic.
28:21
SPEAKER_01: We'll post a link in the show notes.
28:23
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
28:24
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I'm glad you did that with Ben and people should talk about it.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: Oh, should we do housekeeping?
28:29
SPEAKER_00: You do housekeeping.
28:30
SPEAKER_01: We are a podcast.
28:31
SPEAKER_01: We are not yet a video podcast.
28:33
SPEAKER_01: Although let's check our YouTube page.
28:35
SPEAKER_01: So we quietly started a YouTube page.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: Well, no, we had started years ago.
28:41
SPEAKER_00: And then we reactivated it.
28:42
SPEAKER_01: We reactivated it.
28:43
SPEAKER_01: And I use this thanks to our designer.
28:47
SPEAKER_01: She helped us set up this program that...
28:51
SPEAKER_01: Turns our episodes into video with no actual video.
28:54
SPEAKER_01: Like a visualizer type thing.
28:56
SPEAKER_01: Just the text on a screen.
28:58
SPEAKER_01: A visualizer, yeah.
29:01
SPEAKER_01: But this program,
29:02
SPEAKER_01: it's called Headliner,
29:03
SPEAKER_01: it automatically uploads old episodes and it appears to be doing it in no
29:08
SPEAKER_01: particular order.
29:10
So we have some episodes that are like the recent ones and then
29:13
some that are like
29:14
SPEAKER_01: episodes from...
29:15
SPEAKER_01: Like it goes from here.
29:16
SPEAKER_01: We go from episode 292 to episode 13, 12, 11.
29:21
SPEAKER_01: And I keep deleting them because I want them to be,
29:24
SPEAKER_01: I want there to be some semblance of order on the page.
29:28
SPEAKER_01: So I think our,
29:29
I think we're actually like regularly losing subscribers on the
29:33
YouTube page
29:34
SPEAKER_01: because this makes no fucking sense.
29:35
SPEAKER_00: Wait, you delete, they go in random order and then you delete them?
29:38
SPEAKER_01: They go to random order and then I delete the old ones.
29:41
so wait we just had four weeks ago episode 12 of our podcast
29:45
from 2020 go up yeah
29:47
yeah with 38 views yeah yeah so the so our pivot to video is
29:51
going very well
29:52
although look our hassan piker episode we only have 24 videos
29:56
uh yeah it's there's
29:57
honestly i don't know how this works there's no rhyme or reason
30:00
to this it's it's
30:01
SPEAKER_01: like it uploads like one a day and then i delete the old ones so sorry
30:06
SPEAKER_00: Wait, but then how will they get re-uploaded?
30:07
SPEAKER_01: I want them to be in order.
30:09
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
30:10
SPEAKER_01: It's a whole system.
30:10
SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to figure it out.
30:12
this is all news to me i thought it was just okay well so we
30:16
have a youtube page
30:17
honestly i don't go watch the videos if you want i don't know
30:21
why you would you
30:22
could just listen to them but if you want well no the point of
30:25
this was it's not
30:26
this isn't for the current listeners it's to bring in the
30:29
younger generation that
30:29
watches everything in video though we don't actually have video
30:31
to offer them yeah
30:33
so anyway we pivoted to video everyone else is doing it so we
30:36
are too we're
30:37
SPEAKER_01: followers
30:38
SPEAKER_00: Except when it comes to Epstein.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: We really blew our wads on this Epstein stuff.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: I feel like a little tired now.
30:45
SPEAKER_01: The ants and the Epstein.
30:46
SPEAKER_01: It's a rough one.
30:47
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: So we are a podcast.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: You can reach out to us.
30:49
Send us your angry emails about Jeffrey Epstein or tips on how
30:53
to get rid of
30:54
SPEAKER_01: carpenter ants to blockedandreportedpodcasts at gmail.com.
30:58
SPEAKER_01: But most importantly, please become a premium subscriber, a primo.
31:02
SPEAKER_01: You get at least three extra episodes every month.
31:05
SPEAKER_01: We have a fuck ton of extra content for primos this month.
31:08
SPEAKER_01: We're doing our three extra episodes.
31:10
SPEAKER_01: We did this live with Ben Ryan.
31:12
SPEAKER_01: I'm doing a live with Laura Delano.
31:14
SPEAKER_01: This is part of our book club.
31:15
SPEAKER_01: The book club meeting is on February 22nd.
31:18
The book that we are discussing is Unshunk,
31:20
A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance.
31:23
SPEAKER_01: So go ahead and get that book, read that book.
31:26
SPEAKER_01: It's very interesting.
31:27
SPEAKER_01: This is a new thing that we're doing.
31:28
SPEAKER_01: We also have our personals.
31:30
SPEAKER_01: They are dropping.
31:31
SPEAKER_01: They will have dropped by the time our free listeners get this show.
31:34
SPEAKER_01: We got a great batch of personals this year.
31:37
SPEAKER_01: And I think we might, I think we, if we don't get a baby out of it,
31:41
SPEAKER_01: or a marriage, we might at least get one murder.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: One or the other.
31:44
SPEAKER_01: Personals are great this year.
31:45
SPEAKER_01: One or the other.
31:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
31:47
So you get a bunch of extra content for joining us and you also
31:50
support the show.
31:51
SPEAKER_01: And honestly, we need it.
31:54
SPEAKER_01: Epstein takes aren't doing well for us.
31:56
uh thank you for housekeeping katie um so yeah i wanted to
32:00
devote some time to this
32:01
SPEAKER_00: big new article in the atlantic by tyler austin harper harper is a really
32:06
interesting guy who has blown up over the last few years uh
32:09
when i first heard
32:10
about him he was a professor at bates college he actually left
32:13
his professor job to
32:14
SPEAKER_00: become a staff writer at the atlantic um
32:17
SPEAKER_01: Interesting move.
32:19
SPEAKER_01: I mean, look, I probably would have done the same thing.
32:21
SPEAKER_01: The Atlantic is amazing.
32:23
SPEAKER_01: What a place to work.
32:25
But to go from – he was an assistant professor tenure track to
32:28
go from something,
32:29
a position that has immense stability to a position that has no
32:34
stability.
32:35
Although the Atlantic is,
32:36
I'm sure,
32:36
more stable than business about any other outlet.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but it's insane.
32:41
SPEAKER_00: You can get laid off from the Atlantic.
32:43
SPEAKER_00: I mean –
32:44
SPEAKER_01: Have you had any media layoffs or have you ever been laid off?
32:47
SPEAKER_00: No,
32:48
SPEAKER_00: but I haven't had enough...
32:50
I've had one slightly prestigious media staff job and I left to
32:55
write a book.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure I would have been laid off eventually from New York Magazine.
32:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've had two media layoffs.
32:59
SPEAKER_00: What was the first one before The Stranger?
33:02
SPEAKER_01: And I've had...
33:04
SPEAKER_01: I've been laid off from probably six jobs and then fired from another 10,
33:10
SPEAKER_01: but that's separate.
33:11
SPEAKER_01: Different business.
33:13
SPEAKER_00: I think...
33:14
SPEAKER_00: I don't remember when I first noticed Tyler Austin Harper,
33:17
SPEAKER_00: but yeah,
33:17
SPEAKER_00: he was at Bates at the time.
33:18
And he's got this sort of interesting insider outsider thing
33:21
going because he was a
33:22
SPEAKER_00: black professor.
33:23
SPEAKER_00: In Maine.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: At a very stereotypically white liberal arts school in Maine.
33:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
33:27
SPEAKER_00: He wrote this column about being the, quote, wrong person.
33:32
Kind of black professor that I found really interesting and a
33:35
job with some stuff
33:37
SPEAKER_00: I've heard from others in like similar positions.
33:40
SPEAKER_00: Just read a little bit from it.
33:42
SPEAKER_00: Over the last decade,
33:43
I have been persistently dumbfounded by comfortable white
33:45
supposedly quote unquote
33:47
woke faculty members suggesting that a black person isn't
33:50
sufficiently focused on
33:51
SPEAKER_00: their own blackness.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: Every time I've been criticized for studying white authors,
33:55
SPEAKER_00: it was a progressive presenting white academic levying the complaint.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: So he like this sense of academic freedom is important to him.
34:02
He wants to be able to study and write about what he wants to
34:04
write about.
34:05
SPEAKER_00: He also like he's he's a hunting and fishing and guns guy.
34:09
He actually wrote a piece about the Second Amendment
34:11
ramifications of the killing
34:12
SPEAKER_00: of Alex Preddy.
34:13
So he does this very interesting and extremely dangerous kind
34:17
of night fishing.
34:18
SPEAKER_01: Did you read that piece on The Atlantic?
34:19
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
34:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:20
SPEAKER_00: Tell us about the night fishing.
34:22
SPEAKER_01: I can't even describe it.
34:23
There's these incredible photos where you like you like wait
34:26
out or swim out to
34:27
like these like slimy rocks and somehow perch on them and then
34:33
catch like shoot at
34:34
SPEAKER_00: the fish.
34:35
SPEAKER_01: Something like that.
34:37
SPEAKER_01: So what's the what's the newest piece about?
34:39
It's called the multi-billion dollar foundation that controls
34:42
the humanities.
34:43
SPEAKER_00: It's specifically about the Mellon Foundation.
34:46
SPEAKER_00: So yeah,
34:47
SPEAKER_00: even before Trump,
34:48
it was only getting more important because all these colleges
34:53
and universities,
34:53
SPEAKER_00: shrinking budgets,
34:55
SPEAKER_00: to the extent there's money,
34:56
SPEAKER_00: it goes to STEM fields.
34:59
SPEAKER_00: No one cares about the humanities.
35:01
But today,
35:02
post-Trump,
35:03
quote,
35:03
today,
35:03
no single entity,
35:05
including the federal government,
35:07
has a more profound influence on the fiscal health and cultural
35:10
output of the
35:10
SPEAKER_00: humanities than the Mellon Foundation.
35:13
The national endowment for the humanities grant budget was $78
35:16
million in 2024.
35:17
This Mellon Foundation alone awarded $540 million in grants
35:23
that same year.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: Its endowment sits at roughly $8 billion.
35:28
SPEAKER_00: So this is just funding a huge amount of scholarship,
35:31
half a billion dollars a year at a time when this kind of
35:34
funding is very hard to
35:35
SPEAKER_00: come by.
35:35
SPEAKER_01: All right.
35:35
SPEAKER_01: So that seems good.
35:36
SPEAKER_00: That's great.
35:37
So a lot of the story is about the shifting priorities of the
35:40
foundation and
35:40
specifically what happened after a woman named Elizabeth
35:43
Alexander became president
35:45
SPEAKER_00: in 2018.
35:46
SPEAKER_01: And who is she?
35:47
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to have you read a little bit from the story.
35:49
SPEAKER_00: And as you listen to this,
35:50
SPEAKER_00: listeners,
35:51
SPEAKER_00: keep in mind,
35:52
SPEAKER_00: we've hammered home at this point so often on the show,
35:55
this question of which social justice ideas percolate through
36:00
the culture and the
36:01
SPEAKER_00: extent to which maybe they are held not by oppressed people,
36:05
SPEAKER_00: but by ultra,
36:06
SPEAKER_00: not ultra,
36:07
SPEAKER_00: but like wealthy elite types,
36:09
SPEAKER_00: privileged elites,
36:09
SPEAKER_00: let's say.
36:10
So read Tyler Austin Harper's description of Elizabeth
36:13
Alexander,
36:13
head of the Mellon Foundation.
36:15
SPEAKER_01: Alexander's pedigree made her a natural choice to lead the foundation.
36:19
SPEAKER_01: Born to Clifford J.
36:20
SPEAKER_01: Alexander Jr.,
36:21
a Kennedy administration official and the first black secretary
36:23
of the army,
36:24
SPEAKER_01: and Adele Logan Alexander,
36:26
SPEAKER_01: a noted historian,
36:27
SPEAKER_01: she has spent a lifetime in elite institutions.
36:29
Sidwell Friends,
36:30
that's the Quaker school that the Obama— Prep school in D.C.,
36:34
yeah.
36:34
SPEAKER_01: Yale Boston University to study poetry with Derek Walcott,
36:38
SPEAKER_01: a PhD in English from the University of Pennsylvania,
36:40
SPEAKER_01: a stint as an assistant professor at the University of Chicago,
36:43
SPEAKER_01: followed by Smith,
36:45
SPEAKER_01: followed by Yale again,
36:46
SPEAKER_01: followed by,
36:47
SPEAKER_01: you know what?
36:48
SPEAKER_01: God, her student loans must be huge.
36:50
Followed by reciting her own poetry at Barack Obama's first
36:53
inauguration.
36:54
SPEAKER_01: Quote, in today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made.
36:59
SPEAKER_01: Any sentence begun on the brink, on the brim, on the cusp.
37:04
SPEAKER_01: Is that a good poetry voice?
37:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was really good.
37:06
SPEAKER_01: A sin is the Ford Foundation's director of creativity and ironically,
37:10
SPEAKER_01: free expression after that.
37:11
SPEAKER_01: Then Mellon.
37:13
SPEAKER_00: So Harper quotes her as having said in 2020.
37:16
SPEAKER_00: She started in 2018.
37:17
SPEAKER_00: 2020 was when this stuff peaked.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: Quote,
37:20
there won't be a penny that is going out the door that is not
37:23
contributing to a
37:24
SPEAKER_00: more fair,
37:25
SPEAKER_00: more just,
37:26
SPEAKER_00: more beautiful society.
37:27
SPEAKER_00: Every penny, Katie.
37:29
SPEAKER_01: Is art meant for anything but that?
37:31
SPEAKER_01: So what does this mean in practice?
37:33
How do you determine what is going to contribute to a fair,
37:36
more just,
37:37
more beautiful society?
37:38
SPEAKER_01: And what is this?
37:39
SPEAKER_01: Because when I hear more beautiful society,
37:41
SPEAKER_01: I think,
37:41
SPEAKER_01: all right,
37:42
SPEAKER_01: every penny is going to looks maxing.
37:43
SPEAKER_00: Looks maxing, banksing murals, stuff like that.
37:46
So this had been a foundation that would give humanities
37:49
scholars money to just do scholarship.
37:52
Like there had not been in the past a sense that your
37:55
scholarship necessarily has
37:56
SPEAKER_00: to promote social justice.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: So that changed under Alexander.
38:00
So Harper quotes a director responsible for grant
38:04
administration at a small college saying,
38:06
who said that humanities professors at her institution were
38:09
distraught by Mellon's
38:10
SPEAKER_00: new focus,
38:10
which they saw coming at the expense of areas of inquiry
38:14
without obvious social
38:15
SPEAKER_00: justice relevant.
38:16
SPEAKER_00: And then she characterized some of the reactions she had heard.
38:19
Are you saying that it's no longer valuable that I'm doing
38:21
research on these texts
38:22
SPEAKER_00: from this time to see what I can learn about them?
38:24
SPEAKER_00: Is that not valuable anymore to anyone?
38:27
And what's interesting about this is there is this right-wing
38:31
attempt to cut
38:33
SPEAKER_00: funding for humanities for humanity's sake.
38:37
SPEAKER_00: This won't make us money.
38:38
SPEAKER_00: This won't produce a tangible outcome.
38:41
SPEAKER_00: This is sort of the same thing, right?
38:42
It's like you can't just study some ancient text because it's
38:45
part of humanity's rich tapestry.
38:47
You need to do research projects that will make the world a
38:51
more just place.
38:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
38:52
SPEAKER_01: Right.
38:53
SPEAKER_01: It's not this has to contribute to the GDP.
38:57
SPEAKER_01: It's this has to contribute to social justice.
39:00
SPEAKER_00: GWP, the gross woke product.
39:03
SPEAKER_00: And this is something that we've seen not just in the humanities,
39:07
but when you see it's sort of an arms race to prove that your
39:12
area of academia
39:13
SPEAKER_00: produces social justice output.
39:15
SPEAKER_00: So...
39:16
SPEAKER_00: Even fields like chemistry and astronomy,
39:20
SPEAKER_00: where for different reasons,
39:21
SPEAKER_00: it's pretty clear why we study them and what we're hoping to discover.
39:24
You've seen these fields try to throw up the social justice
39:28
flag and prove that
39:29
SPEAKER_00: they're part of the fight for a better world,
39:30
SPEAKER_00: right?
39:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
39:31
And this leads to a certain type of person or a person who can
39:36
espouse particular
39:38
SPEAKER_01: values becoming more prominent in academia.
39:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
39:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the incentives point that way.
39:44
SPEAKER_00: The more social justice you are,
39:46
the more you'll have a chance at holding on to the bottom rung
39:49
of this increasingly
39:51
SPEAKER_00: slippery ladder.
39:52
And it's sort of worse than that because Harper mentioned
39:58
situations in which
39:59
SPEAKER_00: academics he has known have twisted their own work,
40:01
SPEAKER_00: which they did not see as strictly political,
40:03
SPEAKER_00: into a more racialized or social justice-y direction just to improve the
40:08
SPEAKER_00: possibility of it getting funded.
40:09
SPEAKER_01: You just put a land acknowledgement in your headline?
40:14
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
40:15
SPEAKER_00: Harper,
40:16
SPEAKER_00: he's not a conspiracy theorist,
40:17
but the Mellon Foundation is not the explanation for every
40:21
trend in academia,
40:23
SPEAKER_00: but he's making this pretty simple and hard to refute point,
40:26
which is that if the single biggest source of funding for the
40:29
humanities chooses to
40:31
SPEAKER_00: favor a certain style of work...
40:33
SPEAKER_00: that's going to have clear-cut consequences.
40:35
SPEAKER_00: He writes,
40:35
SPEAKER_00: quote,
40:36
It is hard to see how an incentive structure that pushes
40:38
scholars to fake or fudge
40:40
SPEAKER_00: an interest in social justice helps produce a more just academy.
40:44
SPEAKER_00: If anything,
40:45
this seems likely to further entrench higher education's
40:48
tendency to confuse
40:49
SPEAKER_00: performative preening with real societal improvement.
40:53
SPEAKER_00: It also faces the difference between serious scholarship on race,
40:56
SPEAKER_00: colonialism,
40:56
SPEAKER_00: or gender and gaseous buzzword mongering.
40:59
SPEAKER_01: Does he have specific examples of this buzzword mongering?
41:03
SPEAKER_00: Well,
41:03
SPEAKER_00: so he talked about when he was a student,
41:06
Mellon had this thing called the dissertation completion
41:09
fellowship that gave
41:11
SPEAKER_00: scholars support just to finish their dissertations.
41:14
SPEAKER_00: And they could be writing about whatever.
41:16
SPEAKER_00: That program was eliminated in 2022.
41:18
SPEAKER_00: And there's a new program.
41:20
SPEAKER_00: called the Dissertation Innovation Fellowship.
41:22
And whenever innovation comes into the conversation,
41:24
that's usually not a great sign.
41:27
SPEAKER_00: This focuses on,
41:28
SPEAKER_00: quote,
41:28
SPEAKER_00: supporting scholars who can build a more diverse,
41:30
SPEAKER_00: inclusive,
41:31
SPEAKER_00: and equitable academy,
41:33
SPEAKER_00: end quote.
41:34
SPEAKER_01: And so what exactly is being funded?
41:37
So I went to the website and I looked up the current crop of
41:39
fellows and I don't
41:40
want to like sometimes people do this thing where they look at
41:44
the title of a
41:44
SPEAKER_00: dissertation and they assume that it's worthless,
41:46
SPEAKER_00: which like you don't know that you don't know this area.
41:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
41:49
You see this often with things like that,
41:50
like the term environmental justice.
41:54
SPEAKER_01: It does sound like a woke buzzword.
41:57
SPEAKER_01: We did an episode on this after the Trump administration.
41:59
It actually describes an important concept,
42:02
which is not really identity-based.
42:06
You know,
42:06
this could be flood remediation for low-lying trailer parks in
42:11
West Virginia.
42:12
It could also be dealing with smog in inner cities or like
42:15
infrastructure projects
42:17
SPEAKER_01: to deal with rising sea levels in Alaskan fishing villages in
42:21
It's a word that turns off people who don't understand it
42:25
because it sounds super
42:26
SPEAKER_01: woke,
42:26
SPEAKER_01: but it describes a very important concept.
42:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
42:29
SPEAKER_00: Well,
42:29
SPEAKER_00: so with that in mind,
42:30
SPEAKER_00: I looked at the current crop,
42:32
SPEAKER_00: and let me just read one example that jumped out at me,
42:34
SPEAKER_00: and then I'll explain why it jumped out at me.
42:36
SPEAKER_00: This one scholar was doing,
42:37
SPEAKER_00: quote,
42:37
research integrating methods in climate science and historical
42:41
research to
42:42
SPEAKER_00: interrogate the ways natural disasters informed,
42:45
SPEAKER_00: shaped,
42:45
SPEAKER_00: and constrain the actions of historical figures and political entities in
42:49
SPEAKER_00: pre-colonial Punjab,
42:51
SPEAKER_00: India.
42:53
that's all well and good the problem is if you're doing
42:54
something like history and
42:55
you're trying to understand why certain things happen when they
42:58
happen inevitably
42:59
that's going to be the result of like a million different
43:02
factors and as Harper
43:05
SPEAKER_00: explained in his piece this fellowship is
43:10
SPEAKER_00: You don't just get the money, no strings attached.
43:12
They work with you on the direction of your research before
43:15
that direction is finalized.
43:17
So they're going to fund you if you have something social
43:19
justice-y to say about,
43:21
SPEAKER_00: for example,
43:22
SPEAKER_00: climate science.
43:23
SPEAKER_01: Right.
43:23
So do you think that this particular scholar just wanted to
43:28
talk about the history
43:29
SPEAKER_01: of pre-colonial Punjab India,
43:31
SPEAKER_01: but had to shape it into this
43:34
SPEAKER_01: interrogation of climate science, all of that stuff.
43:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:37
SPEAKER_00: So that's the concern, right?
43:39
SPEAKER_00: Is that in exactly the same way – not exactly the same way.
43:43
SPEAKER_00: We're not in Soviet Russia,
43:44
SPEAKER_00: but like in Soviet society,
43:48
stuff would get funded and science would be promoted if it
43:51
promoted the party in a
43:52
SPEAKER_00: certain worldview.
43:53
SPEAKER_00: This is like a lighter version of that because –
43:56
This scholar who's like looking into very complicated stuff
43:59
from a long time ago is
44:02
now going to be specifically nudged toward telling a version of
44:06
the story that will
44:06
be that 21st century progressives who hold the funding purse
44:10
strings want to tell.
44:12
And I don't see how anyone could think that that's a good thing
44:15
rather than a bad
44:16
SPEAKER_00: thing,
44:16
given that there's a limited pot of funding for the humanities
44:19
in general.
44:19
SPEAKER_00: Right.
44:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
44:21
SPEAKER_01: this sort of thing has been going on in journalism,
44:23
SPEAKER_01: too,
44:23
SPEAKER_01: where you approach a story already knowing what you're going to find.
44:26
SPEAKER_01: And I'll say like,
44:27
this is not just something I've experienced as a writer and
44:31
like leftist outlets.
44:32
SPEAKER_01: I've also experienced this with kind of anti-woke centrist outlets.
44:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
44:37
there's this one example that jumped out at me back in 2020
44:40
where the New York
44:40
SPEAKER_00: Times sent a bunch of journalists to Minneapolis to talk to activists and
44:45
SPEAKER_00: protesters and talk about police reform.
44:47
SPEAKER_00: And they didn't quote anyone who was opposed to defunding the police,
44:52
even though I think two-thirds of black Americans are opposed
44:55
to defunding the
44:56
SPEAKER_00: police.
44:56
SPEAKER_00: So that's sort of the journalism equivalent of that.
44:58
SPEAKER_00: You approach a story and frankly...
45:01
yeah i don't i don't think they had a conspiracy this story had
45:04
like between the
45:06
byline names and then the researchers listed at the bottom like
45:09
nine people and i
45:10
don't think it was a conspiracy where they're like we're going
45:12
to tell this
45:13
particular story but i think like it was sort of preordained
45:16
that that was what
45:17
they were going to find in minneapolis is support for defunding
45:20
the police and that
45:20
doesn't necessarily reflect the the people being police right
45:24
and you can i think
45:25
SPEAKER_01: if you like i haven't read that particular story so i don't
45:28
SPEAKER_01: know how they handled it, but you can contextualize this.
45:30
Like if you're going to do a story on defunding the police,
45:32
that's completely fine.
45:33
SPEAKER_01: Interview people who want defunding the police,
45:36
SPEAKER_01: but just include some actual polling in your piece.
45:39
SPEAKER_01: Contextualize it.
45:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
45:42
SPEAKER_01: Say it's unpopular.
45:43
SPEAKER_01: These people are outliers.
45:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
45:45
SPEAKER_00: And this just gets back to something else.
45:50
SPEAKER_00: Harper writes in his piece,
45:51
SPEAKER_00: which is,
45:51
SPEAKER_00: quote,
45:52
Alexander's appointment to Mellon also speaks to another trend
45:55
I've observed within
45:56
wealthy liberal institutions in which people of color from
45:58
unusually privileged
45:59
backgrounds are anointed as standard bearers for a radical
46:03
cultural worldview that
46:04
SPEAKER_00: many working class minorities do not share,
46:07
SPEAKER_00: even as the former are ostensibly intended to,
46:09
SPEAKER_00: quote unquote,
46:10
SPEAKER_00: represent the latter.
46:11
SPEAKER_00: I would snap my fingers here, but I think that's appropriation.
46:13
SPEAKER_00: But
46:13
this is this is a huge problem where like the people who get to
46:17
tell the story of
46:17
Minneapolis's response to George Floyd's killing themselves
46:21
come from certain
46:22
backgrounds even whatever color their skin is and themselves
46:25
have certain views on
46:26
the best way forward and that just sort of pollutes the whole
46:28
process of open
46:29
SPEAKER_00: inquiry
46:30
SPEAKER_01: Right.
46:30
SPEAKER_01: Well,
46:30
it's this assumption that if you – it's a racist assumption
46:33
that if people have a
46:34
SPEAKER_01: certain color,
46:35
SPEAKER_01: this colored skin,
46:36
SPEAKER_01: they're going to – did I just say colored skin?
46:40
SPEAKER_01: Don't cancel.
46:40
SPEAKER_00: Colored skin, yeah.
46:40
SPEAKER_00: Skin of color.
46:46
SPEAKER_01: Everybody in this demographic, which is obviously a fiction.
46:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
46:51
SPEAKER_00: Well,
46:51
SPEAKER_00: I think in 2026,
46:52
people are no longer falling for this because like you'd have
46:55
to live under.
46:56
How many rocks would you have to leave under live under to not
46:59
understand that
46:59
SPEAKER_00: there are non-white wealthy people from privileged backgrounds?
47:03
Or you just look at look at results from the 2016 election and
47:06
you look at Hispanic
47:08
SPEAKER_01: populations that voted for Donald Trump.
47:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
47:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
47:10
SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
47:11
there's this real stolen valor thing where people who claim to
47:13
be speaking for the
47:14
SPEAKER_00: oppressed end up caping for rich and powerful institutions.
47:18
SPEAKER_00: So on Thursday,
47:18
SPEAKER_00: Harper said on Twitter,
47:20
SPEAKER_00: this is in reaction to some of the backlash he got to the piece,
47:23
amusing watching self-described leftists leap to the defense of
47:26
a billion-dollar
47:27
nonprofit created by robber baron kids and helmed by an Obama
47:30
World Ivy Leaguer
47:32
that applies $500 million annually in the service of
47:35
economically defanged identity
47:37
SPEAKER_00: mumbo-jumbo in revolutionary garb.
47:40
SPEAKER_00: That nicely sums up the problem.
47:42
And I should just note...
47:43
Sorry to interrupt you,
47:44
but do you know anything about his background?
47:46
SPEAKER_00: Tyler's?
47:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
47:47
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I know he taught at baits and he hunts and fishes.
47:50
SPEAKER_01: So that's sort of an interesting contradiction there.
47:54
SPEAKER_01: But I mean, is he also one of these sort of...
47:57
elite black you know yeah so his his dad was a cop and a
48:01
veteran so like um i don't
48:03
know his exact you don't know his tax returns uh socioeconomic
48:07
background i don't i
48:08
did not acquire his irs documents but that that's the sort of
48:11
background where
48:11
you're that's just a more common background than someone who
48:14
went to elite schools
48:15
SPEAKER_00: and and believes in say defunding the police um
48:18
SPEAKER_00: So I just want to mention,
48:19
SPEAKER_00: too,
48:19
like Harper does say that the Bellin Foundation also moved
48:22
toward paying more
48:23
SPEAKER_00: attention to like less funded,
48:25
SPEAKER_00: less represented higher ed institutions.
48:27
And they'll they have worthwhile initiatives like they'll
48:29
provide funds allowing
48:30
SPEAKER_00: kids from those schools to do otherwise unpaid internships.
48:34
SPEAKER_00: So it's not like he glosses over the good stuff.
48:35
SPEAKER_00: But overall, his his piece just like nicely explains like.
48:40
Why part of the reason why we're suddenly hearing certain
48:43
buzzwords everywhere and
48:44
SPEAKER_00: certain views are so seemingly popular,
48:48
SPEAKER_00: even as they're actually not that popular.
48:49
SPEAKER_00: They're the views that,
48:51
SPEAKER_00: you know,
48:51
SPEAKER_00: people at the top of certain hierarchies have and want to spread.
48:54
SPEAKER_01: Does the Mellon Foundation fund journalism?
48:59
SPEAKER_00: I don't think so.
49:00
And I was actually curious about this analogy because obviously
49:04
the same thing is
49:04
SPEAKER_00: going on in journalism,
49:06
SPEAKER_00: but I think it's not for the same reasons.
49:08
SPEAKER_00: Like there's definitely foundation money sloshing around in journalism.
49:11
SPEAKER_00: I know some people who like try to get grants here and there,
49:14
but I don't think we have anything nearly as big as like a
49:17
foundation with an $8
49:19
SPEAKER_00: billion endowment and half a billion in annual grants.
49:24
SPEAKER_00: Um,
49:24
So I don't really think foundation funding can explain what's
49:27
happening in journalism.
49:29
SPEAKER_00: Well,
49:30
SPEAKER_00: from your environmental reporting background,
49:32
SPEAKER_00: there's definitely grants and stuff there,
49:33
SPEAKER_00: right?
49:34
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
49:34
SPEAKER_01: Grist was heavily funded by foundations and large donors.
49:41
They did have small donors as well,
49:42
but grant writing was a huge part of the funding there.
49:47
SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure that did influence the scope of coverage for sure.
49:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
49:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
49:53
SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm looking at their funders now.
49:56
SPEAKER_01: They have a huge number of funders, one of whom is anonymous.
49:59
SPEAKER_01: Do you think that's the Anarchist Collective?
50:03
SPEAKER_01: And most of these foundations are foundations that work in,
50:09
SPEAKER_01: you know,
50:09
SPEAKER_01: in climate – of course,
50:11
SPEAKER_01: like,
50:11
SPEAKER_01: it's a climate change outlet.
50:13
SPEAKER_01: But I do think, like –
50:16
SPEAKER_01: And I'm trying to think,
50:17
SPEAKER_01: if you pitched a sort of heterodox piece there about how,
50:22
SPEAKER_01: let's say,
50:23
SPEAKER_01: fracking was good,
50:24
SPEAKER_01: actually,
50:25
SPEAKER_01: because fracking is a bridge fuel to get off of coal.
50:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
50:32
Yeah,
50:33
I don't think the Matt Iglesias case for fracking would make it
50:37
into that outlet.
50:39
SPEAKER_00: I just want to end on one point, which is...
50:43
SPEAKER_00: Tyler Austin Harper specifically talks about the idea of go woke,
50:47
SPEAKER_00: go broke,
50:48
SPEAKER_00: quote,
50:48
SPEAKER_00: according to this theory,
50:49
ultra progressive faculty coalesced around an unpopular liberal
50:53
orthodoxy,
50:54
turning off undergraduates and the public and accelerating the
50:57
humanities decline.
50:58
dot dot dot um this tale places too much of the blame on
51:03
humanities professors
51:04
overestimating their actual power within institutions more
51:07
important the went woke
51:09
went broke hypothesis does not account for the ways that
51:11
economic transformations
51:13
within a higher education have accelerated the trends that
51:16
conservatives lament so
51:18
he basically he then says like uh specifically the right-wing
51:20
theory of the case
51:21
gets the causal error wrong the humanities aren't broke because
51:24
they went woke and
51:25
SPEAKER_00: The humanities went woke in large part because they were broke.
51:29
SPEAKER_00: As other donors,
51:30
the government and universities themselves all but abandoned
51:32
these fields,
51:33
SPEAKER_00: Mellon,
51:33
SPEAKER_00: the Mellon Foundation became a lifeline.
51:35
SPEAKER_00: So I think a lot of that is applicable to journalism,
51:38
SPEAKER_00: not that we now have some foundation that funds journalism.
51:42
But I think journalism going broke meant a higher and higher
51:46
percentage of the
51:46
SPEAKER_00: people in journalism were from elite backgrounds.
51:49
And we do have data on journalism becoming more and more of a
51:52
rich kids game.
51:52
SPEAKER_00: Right.
51:53
SPEAKER_01: Right.
51:53
SPEAKER_01: This is a point that Matt Taibbi has made,
51:55
SPEAKER_01: that journalism used to be considered basically a trade.
51:58
SPEAKER_01: I think he comes from an old newspaper family,
52:01
that this was not the sort of job that you would go do unpaid
52:05
internship after
52:06
SPEAKER_01: unpaid internship.
52:07
You would get a job in the mailroom and then as a copy boy and
52:11
then work your way
52:12
SPEAKER_01: up,
52:12
SPEAKER_01: which still exists.
52:13
Like Donald McNeil Jr.,
52:15
who famously got pushed out of the New York Times a couple
52:17
years ago.
52:18
SPEAKER_01: We did a bunch of stories on that.
52:19
SPEAKER_01: He started out in the mailroom.
52:21
SPEAKER_01: And that path doesn't exist anymore.
52:26
SPEAKER_00: No.
52:26
And if journalism is overwhelmingly kids from the same sorts of
52:30
schools with the
52:30
SPEAKER_00: same sorts of backgrounds,
52:31
I think that's just going to make them less likely to question
52:34
certain orthodoxy
52:35
SPEAKER_00: and more willing to parrot it.
52:37
SPEAKER_00: And that's just not good.
52:41
Yeah,
52:41
I mean,
52:42
this is an argument that I made that I've been making for...
52:47
SPEAKER_01: over 10 years at this point,
52:48
SPEAKER_01: that journalism schools,
52:50
SPEAKER_01: like at NPR,
52:51
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if this is true,
52:52
SPEAKER_01: if this is still true,
52:53
SPEAKER_01: but when I was trying to break into journalism in my late 20s,
52:59
SPEAKER_01: to be an intern at NPR,
53:01
SPEAKER_01: you had to be within a year of graduating from college.
53:05
SPEAKER_01: And I wrote to NPR and I was like, this is classist.
53:08
SPEAKER_00: You should.
53:09
SPEAKER_00: Oh, completely.
53:10
SPEAKER_01: This is completely classes.
53:11
SPEAKER_00: Like specifically filters out the sorts of people who like.
53:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
53:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
53:14
that's people who go get in jobs and that like people like me
53:17
who go spend 10 years
53:19
fucking around in bars and then decide they want to get a job
53:21
in journalism.
53:22
SPEAKER_01: You shouldn't exclude those people.
53:23
But also you should be if you actually want to expand the
53:28
diversity of journalism,
53:30
SPEAKER_01: hire people from community colleges.
53:32
SPEAKER_01: Right.
53:32
yeah that in itself just lowering basically lowering the
53:36
standards is going to
53:38
increase the diversity and maybe there'll be some downstream
53:40
consequences of that
53:41
but you will have a more diverse pool of um of applicants yeah
53:44
uh it's all very
53:45
depressing but anyway this was really good wait sorry can we
53:50
speaking of depressing
53:51
yeah i just opened twitter oh no why do you keep opening
53:53
twitter during the episode
53:54
SPEAKER_01: this is the problem jink weger i no longer believe official 9-11 story
53:59
SPEAKER_00: This is actually, he actually tweeted this.
54:04
SPEAKER_01: Two paper passports did not burn and were found on the rubble,
54:08
SPEAKER_01: but it was so hot,
54:09
SPEAKER_01: World Trade Center 7 burned down across the street.
54:11
SPEAKER_01: Nonsense.
54:12
SPEAKER_01: It's time to look for who gained from 9-11.
54:15
SPEAKER_01: Our government doesn't work for us.
54:16
SPEAKER_01: They've been lying the whole time.
54:18
SPEAKER_00: This is psychotic.
54:19
There is a proposed community note that says that actually one
54:26
hijacker passport was found.
54:28
SPEAKER_01: Not two.
54:29
SPEAKER_00: Oh, my God.
54:30
SPEAKER_00: The matrix continues as if nothing happened, he said.
54:33
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
54:33
Well,
54:34
so it's good that there's no more funding for just like normal
54:38
journalism or academia.
54:39
SPEAKER_00: What could go wrong?
54:40
SPEAKER_00: Anything else you want to add on this, Katie?
54:42
SPEAKER_01: No, just like people stop.
54:45
SPEAKER_01: Let's stop.
54:46
SPEAKER_01: Let's all just agree to stop.
54:47
SPEAKER_00: I'll just stop.
54:48
SPEAKER_00: Let's stop.
54:49
SPEAKER_00: Just everybody stop.
54:50
SPEAKER_00: This has been blocked and reported.
54:52
SPEAKER_00: As always, we are produced with help from Jessica the 80s baby.
54:55
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.
54:55
SPEAKER_00: Bye.
54:56
SPEAKER_01: Bye.
55:10
Bye.