Latest / Mom Wars / Defending Education

Transcript

Defending Education · Mom Wars

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: I just got a whole lecture about how to start
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: the podcast.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: From the front lines of the mom Wars, here's Bethany
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Mandel and Kara Kennedy.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to another episode of The mom Wars,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: your new ish favorite podcast. I am one of your
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: co hosts. My name is Bethany Mandel. It's very easy
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: to tell us apart. I'm the American, although Carr just
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: gave me a really good American accent, so I don't know.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: I am a mom of six homeschooling. I write for
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: The Washington Examiner very frequently. I think I'm officially a
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: contributor of some sort. I don't really know the details,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: and yeah, I don't know. I should know that, but
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: I don't. And I frequently write for the New York
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Post as well, which I should be doing right now actually,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: so hopefully my editor doesn't listen to this. And I
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: am joined by my co host, how are.
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: Kennedy, who is unemployed? I kind of am now efficially great,
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: But you.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Like, have a child, you have one?
• 0:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I have a child, and I'm going to go.
• 1:01
  Speaker 4: But I got pregnant and then I started feeling sick
• 1:05
  Speaker 4: and I was like, I don't really want a job
• 1:06
  Speaker 4: right now. It's two.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: This has been my life for the last twelve years
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: of like do I have a job? I don't think
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: I have a job. But we are joined by someone
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: who does have a grown up job, Nicky Neely. She's
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: making a face. So Nicky Neely is one of my
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: dearest friends. But that's not why I had her on
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: the podcast. But it always helps. She is the I
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: didn't even do this with you the president.
• 1:32
  Speaker 5: President.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, Defending Education an amazing organization that I love
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: so much, and I wanted to have you on to
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: talk about all the things that you do because you're
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: saving the world quietly and I think everyone should know
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: about it. So tell me, first of all, Okay, how
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: did you get to be where you are and who
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: you are right now today, Nick Knely, how did you
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: get to start defending ED?
• 1:57
  Speaker 5: No, So I kind of like fell into education. I
• 2:00
  Speaker 5: have sort of been a bomb working through my way
• 2:02
  Speaker 5: through the think tank world for the past like two decades.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: So.
• 2:04
  Speaker 5: I was at CATO, I was at the Independent Women's Forum.
• 2:07
  Speaker 5: I ran a state level investigative journalism organization called the
• 2:10
  Speaker 5: Franklin Center for Government and Public integrity because I was.
• 2:13
  Speaker 5: I started out my first shop in DC was at CATO,
• 2:16
  Speaker 5: and I was in the PR shop, and then I
• 2:18
  Speaker 5: created their external relations department. I used to call it
• 2:20
  Speaker 5: drinking for liberty because I would like go to conferences
• 2:23
  Speaker 5: and like be the normal libertarian, which of which like
• 2:26
  Speaker 5: you can actually like make a salary, which is great.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: But I did so few normies in this town.
• 2:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah, But I had a master's degree and I was like,
• 2:34
  Speaker 5: I want to write, and at the time, CATO was
• 2:35
  Speaker 5: kind of a boys club and they were like no.
• 2:37
  Speaker 5: So I laughed and just you know kind of like
• 2:39
  Speaker 5: worked my way up like into running stuff because I
• 2:41
  Speaker 5: realized at one point there were scholars who couldn't manage
• 2:44
  Speaker 5: and there were managers who didn't understand what scholars needed
• 2:46
  Speaker 5: to do, and so I thought that that was just
• 2:48
  Speaker 5: sort of like an interesting like market opportunity for one
• 2:51
  Speaker 5: of a better term. When I was running the Franklin Center,
• 2:53
  Speaker 5: we was interesting. It was kind of in like twenty sixteen,
• 2:55
  Speaker 5: twenty seventeen, and that was kind of the height of
• 2:57
  Speaker 5: when all of the college like shoutdowns happening.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: With the safe spaces.
• 3:01
  Speaker 5: Speakers, and it was like as like the president I
• 3:04
  Speaker 5: was like, whatever, the publisher whatever, like this online outlet,
• 3:07
  Speaker 5: and you know, you'd see that that was stuff that
• 3:09
  Speaker 5: really resonated with readers, and I was like, Oh, there's
• 3:11
  Speaker 5: like a there there. My husband and I were living
• 3:13
  Speaker 5: in Austin at the time they moved back to DC,
• 3:15
  Speaker 5: and I, you know, it struck me that there really
• 3:18
  Speaker 5: was this opportunity to do something in the education space.
• 3:21
  Speaker 5: And so I partnered with some friends at a law firm,
• 3:24
  Speaker 5: cons Wi McCarthy. They did the Harvard Affirmative Action case,
• 3:27
  Speaker 5: so they're super awesome on education civil rights law, and
• 3:30
  Speaker 5: we stepped into doing the litigation on free speech. So
• 3:33
  Speaker 5: I worked on campus free speech issues for a couple
• 3:35
  Speaker 5: of years. I have sued my alma mater, my husband's
• 3:38
  Speaker 5: alma mater. My kids are not going to be legacies anywhere.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: It must be really popular at alumni meetings.
• 3:43
  Speaker 5: Super popular. Yeah, But it was fun because we were challenging.
• 3:46
  Speaker 5: We were structured a little bit differently at the organization
• 3:48
  Speaker 5: speech versus structured as a membership association specifically for litigation purposes,
• 3:53
  Speaker 5: and so when we sued a university, it would be
• 3:55
  Speaker 5: speech first versus a school. Instead of being like nicky
• 3:58
  Speaker 5: and Bethany versus a school, and so people have anonymity.
• 4:00
  Speaker 5: I mean, I think about like poor Abigail Fisher, like
• 4:03
  Speaker 5: trying to date on Tinder, and like you look her
• 4:04
  Speaker 5: up and you're like, oh, no, hard path. So there
• 4:07
  Speaker 5: is kind of that anonymity element of it. And I
• 4:09
  Speaker 5: think when you're dealing with issues of you know what
• 4:11
  Speaker 5: students are being silenced for on campus? Right, it was
• 4:13
  Speaker 5: it's race stuff, it's gender stuff, it's you know, afirmative action,
• 4:16
  Speaker 5: it's Israel. It's like all this stuff. You know, sometimes
• 4:18
  Speaker 5: it's not stuff that people like really want to like
• 4:20
  Speaker 5: fly their free flag and like advertise for like the
• 4:23
  Speaker 5: entire world. But also more importantly, it help with something
• 4:25
  Speaker 5: called standing. Because if you sue your university and then
• 4:28
  Speaker 5: you transfer, you graduate, you're kicked out. The courts will
• 4:31
  Speaker 5: say the harm is done away, you know, the case
• 4:33
  Speaker 5: is moved. But as an association, you have an associational standing.
• 4:36
  Speaker 5: So as long as the organization always has a member
• 4:39
  Speaker 5: who is being harmed, the case can go on indefinitely.
• 4:41
  Speaker 5: So I mean for the Harvard case that was initially
• 4:44
  Speaker 5: filed in twenty fourteen, they didn't get a Supreme Court
• 4:46
  Speaker 5: decision until twenty twenty three. No one in the right
• 4:48
  Speaker 5: mind should be at Harvard for nine years, in the
• 4:51
  Speaker 5: right mind should be at Harvard period. But you know,
• 4:53
  Speaker 5: it's like like like with that. That was how we
• 4:55
  Speaker 5: were able to get at some of what I thought
• 4:56
  Speaker 5: of were the stickier campus free speech problems, because until
• 4:59
  Speaker 5: then it was largely like a free speech zone. It
• 5:02
  Speaker 5: was kind of like very discreete like clear cut issues.
• 5:05
  Speaker 5: We were able to challenge policies just facially, and so
• 5:07
  Speaker 5: the things that we were going after were called bias
• 5:09
  Speaker 5: response teams, which are ripped from the pages of Stazi
• 5:12
  Speaker 5: to East Germany, where students were encouraged to report on
• 5:15
  Speaker 5: each other online anonymously. So I could just go into
• 5:18
  Speaker 5: a form on like the Umish website and say, like Bethan,
• 5:20
  Speaker 5: he said a naughty word, and then you would get
• 5:22
  Speaker 5: called into a star show.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: You would be so scrutified.
• 5:25
  Speaker 5: R yeah, and so weirdly that system is weaponized and
• 5:29
  Speaker 5: like people would make up stuff. But for a while
• 5:31
  Speaker 5: Michigan had this lawed on their website about all the
• 5:33
  Speaker 5: different incidents, and one of them was a complaint that
• 5:36
  Speaker 5: there was a phallax shaped snow sculpture and like is
• 5:38
  Speaker 5: that a hate crime or is that like eighteen year
• 5:41
  Speaker 5: old dude being like immature, Like, come on, guys.
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: What is the most egregious or like insane lawsuit that
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: you can give an example of.
• 5:52
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean when we sued Iowa State, they had
• 5:54
  Speaker 5: a policy against chalking, so you could not chalk on
• 5:57
  Speaker 5: the sidewalk. This is at the height of like the
• 5:59
  Speaker 5: primary camp and so like this is in twenty twenty.
• 6:03
  Speaker 5: I was like the first stop. So every candidate in
• 6:05
  Speaker 5: like you know, it's like the Yangyang is like rolling
• 6:08
  Speaker 5: through ains Iowa and like people can't shop, but like, hey,
• 6:10
  Speaker 5: this candidate is going to be in like the student union.
• 6:13
  Speaker 5: So that was like kind of flagrant. It was also
• 6:15
  Speaker 5: when we sued Illinois, it was interesting to me to watch.
• 6:18
  Speaker 5: I mean, I think a lot of these policies that
• 6:20
  Speaker 5: were put in place on campuses are done so with
• 6:21
  Speaker 5: good intentions, or some of them are. But there was
• 6:23
  Speaker 5: one called a no contact policy, where like you don't
• 6:26
  Speaker 5: want a girl who has been raped to me in
• 6:27
  Speaker 5: a project with her rapist, like totally makes sense, like
• 6:30
  Speaker 5: basically an on campus restraining order. We saw that being
• 6:33
  Speaker 5: weaponized at the time. I mean, I feel very prescient.
• 6:36
  Speaker 5: The it was the SJP chapter asking for it against
• 6:38
  Speaker 5: the Hillel students who didn't want to be with one
• 6:40
  Speaker 5: hundred feet and so like it was things like that
• 6:43
  Speaker 5: where you're watching policies really be like bastardized for other purposes.
• 6:47
  Speaker 5: That was just kind of interesting to me. And so like,
• 6:49
  Speaker 5: I am very into civil rights. My grandparents on my
• 6:52
  Speaker 5: dad's side met in in aternment camp, and so like
• 6:54
  Speaker 5: that's saying a government big enough to give you everything
• 6:56
  Speaker 5: you want is big enough to take it all away.
• 6:58
  Speaker 5: Something that like really like resonates with me. And so
• 7:01
  Speaker 5: issues of racial discrimination, sex discrimination, like are just very
• 7:04
  Speaker 5: interesting to me.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: I read so you're not racist.
• 7:07
  Speaker 5: I am racist. I was called an anti Asian racist
• 7:10
  Speaker 5: in Congress when we did hear China. So that's awkward. Yeah,
• 7:14
  Speaker 5: it's like it's just like having worked on Title nine.
• 7:16
  Speaker 5: I mean, I remember what I was lying to college
• 7:18
  Speaker 5: in like the late nineties. My grandmother who was Japanese,
• 7:20
  Speaker 5: who was in mans in aar. If you are applying
• 7:23
  Speaker 5: to college in California, write down that you're white, you'll
• 7:25
  Speaker 5: have a better chance of getting in. I'm like that's
• 7:27
  Speaker 5: kind of messed up. And so I just It's funny
• 7:30
  Speaker 5: because like I basically play a lawyer on TV, Like
• 7:32
  Speaker 5: I do not have a law degree, but like I
• 7:34
  Speaker 5: hang out with enough of them that like, I sound
• 7:35
  Speaker 5: like I know what I'm talking about.
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  Speaker 1: I was going to ask. I was like, only a
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: master's but you say words like standing, yeah, a lot
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: of confidence.
• 7:44
  Speaker 5: I mean yeah, like we basically like I hang out
• 7:45
  Speaker 5: with people who like have dinner parties where you talk
• 7:47
  Speaker 5: about like the fourteenth Amendments. So like, I'm not a
• 7:49
  Speaker 5: super fun person quite honestly, but yeah, you are.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Actually I tried to go out with you tonight and
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: you said no because.
• 7:56
  Speaker 5: I had to bake the soup fle a. But it was,
• 7:59
  Speaker 5: you know, I was doing all the campus stuff, and
• 8:01
  Speaker 5: then we get to twenty twenty, right COVID hits and
• 8:05
  Speaker 5: I had I was remember talking to somebody and I
• 8:07
  Speaker 5: was like, oh, like, we're gonna go like away for
• 8:08
  Speaker 5: spring break. My friend's the guy who was like, He's like,
• 8:10
  Speaker 5: we do a lot of business in China, You're not
• 8:12
  Speaker 5: going anywhere. And I was like, what are you talking about?
• 8:13
  Speaker 5: And he was right. I had to put a lawsuit
• 8:16
  Speaker 5: that I had in progress of the time on ice
• 8:18
  Speaker 5: cause I don't know, if you think back to March
• 8:19
  Speaker 5: twenty twenty.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Oh, all the courts closed, students.
• 8:22
  Speaker 5: Are literally going home for spring break and then we're
• 8:24
  Speaker 5: not allowed to go back and like get their stuff,
• 8:26
  Speaker 5: Like there was like stuff molding in fridges and like
• 8:28
  Speaker 5: campus still kind of thing. So it felt a little
• 8:30
  Speaker 5: bit petty to sue over free speech policies when everyone
• 8:33
  Speaker 5: in America was on lockdown and leaving the groceries outside
• 8:35
  Speaker 5: for like days in a time. But I remember getting
• 8:37
  Speaker 5: I'm from Chicago, I have all these friends from home
• 8:39
  Speaker 5: or were Chicago Democrats. And I started getting text messages
• 8:42
  Speaker 5: from people and they were like, hey, how do I
• 8:44
  Speaker 5: get my elementary school to reopen? And I was like, oh,
• 8:46
  Speaker 5: bless your heart, like you think they care, But that
• 8:48
  Speaker 5: was like an interesting data point to me that just
• 8:51
  Speaker 5: people kind of didn't know how the system worked. Fast
• 8:53
  Speaker 5: forward a few months, George Floyd happens, and then districts
• 8:57
  Speaker 5: started sending out like these all district missives, you know,
• 9:00
  Speaker 5: we are so systemically racist, we commit to being an
• 9:02
  Speaker 5: anti racist institution. I get another flurry of messages like, Hey,
• 9:05
  Speaker 5: did my school district just call me a name? And
• 9:08
  Speaker 5: it's funny because I think back. You know when when
• 9:10
  Speaker 5: we were growing up, It's not like we got messages
• 9:12
  Speaker 5: about like the Iraq War or like the Challenger explosion.
• 9:15
  Speaker 5: It was just sort of like you sort of sucked
• 9:17
  Speaker 5: it up and went with it. I mean, I was
• 9:18
  Speaker 5: in college on nine to eleven and I remember emailing
• 9:20
  Speaker 5: my professor and being like, hey, do we have class today?
• 9:22
  Speaker 5: Like I assume it's canceled, and he's like, yes, we do,
• 9:24
  Speaker 5: and if you don't show up, your grade will be
• 9:26
  Speaker 5: reflected accordingly.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Where was this.
• 9:29
  Speaker 5: This was at Illinois, and I.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Mean if it was New York, and I've been like
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: that's that's a little rough.
• 9:36
  Speaker 5: But so like there was like, you know, all this
• 9:39
  Speaker 5: is happening in the Cage twelve schools, and again I
• 9:41
  Speaker 5: was like huh, Like you know again, I like play
• 9:43
  Speaker 5: and operate and eat and sleep and breathe civil rights
• 9:45
  Speaker 5: and I was like, well, it's kind of sucked up
• 9:47
  Speaker 5: and sorry, I can't say that probably, But then I thought,
• 9:50
  Speaker 5: you know, I have all these friends who have younger kids.
• 9:52
  Speaker 5: My kids were in like pre like pre k in
• 9:54
  Speaker 5: kindergarten at the time, so my kids were home. We
• 9:57
  Speaker 5: didn't have a problem. But then, you know when kids
• 9:58
  Speaker 5: were home that spring. Everybody was watching their kids on
• 10:01
  Speaker 5: Zoom School. We all remember like sort of the Zoom
• 10:03
  Speaker 5: school disasters, and people were unhappy about what they either
• 10:07
  Speaker 5: sell their kids learning or not learning, aside from like
• 10:09
  Speaker 5: the format of like the asynchronous like how do you
• 10:11
  Speaker 5: make a kindergartener sit there for eight hours? And again
• 10:14
  Speaker 5: people sort of they were felt uncomfortable what was going on,
• 10:17
  Speaker 5: but no one really knew like am I right to
• 10:19
  Speaker 5: feel uncomfortable? Like how do I engage in this? Like
• 10:22
  Speaker 5: what do I do about this? Everybody was walking at
• 10:24
  Speaker 5: eggshells about everything all the time, and I thought, well,
• 10:27
  Speaker 5: there has to be like some playbook out there, And
• 10:28
  Speaker 5: I started looking up civil rights in education, and it
• 10:32
  Speaker 5: turns out that when you look that up, pretty much
• 10:35
  Speaker 5: everything that has to do with civil rights is at
• 10:37
  Speaker 5: the college level. It's campus free speech, it's kangaroo courts
• 10:40
  Speaker 5: for Title nine. It's not like, you know, can my
• 10:43
  Speaker 5: kid be forced to do a privilege walk like he's
• 10:45
  Speaker 5: ten years old or stuff like that. The thing that
• 10:47
  Speaker 5: really like flipped the switch for me where I decided
• 10:49
  Speaker 5: I wanted to do a Cados twelve organization ANEW was
• 10:53
  Speaker 5: The Wall Street Journal did a profile was superintendent in
• 10:55
  Speaker 5: the Chicago suburbs called Evanston, which is kind of like
• 10:58
  Speaker 5: notoriously like insane. It's our Northwest. And he said he
• 11:01
  Speaker 5: was going to reopen schools for black and brown children
• 11:04
  Speaker 5: before white children in the name of anti racism. And
• 11:07
  Speaker 5: so I started screaming my computer, like you can't do that.
• 11:10
  Speaker 5: And I went to a friend and I said, like,
• 11:12
  Speaker 5: I want to start a CA to twelve organization. I
• 11:14
  Speaker 5: think this is the next front. And you know, I've
• 11:16
  Speaker 5: been doing this for higher ed like like and my
• 11:18
  Speaker 5: assumption at the time, I look back on my original
• 11:20
  Speaker 5: business plans and I thought that all these school districts
• 11:23
  Speaker 5: didn't know that they were violating families' rights. That like,
• 11:26
  Speaker 5: we would have our scary lawyers on those scaried letterheads
• 11:28
  Speaker 5: send a bunch of notes to districts. They would say, Oopsma,
• 11:32
  Speaker 5: Kulpa didn't mean to be doing that, you know, X,
• 11:34
  Speaker 5: y Z, and they would change. I was very very
• 11:37
  Speaker 5: clearly wrong. They knew exactly what they were doing. This
• 11:39
  Speaker 5: is like far worse than we thought. But that first
• 11:42
  Speaker 5: year it was he was dealing with a lot of
• 11:44
  Speaker 5: problems related to race in twenty twenty one. So it
• 11:46
  Speaker 5: was when the sixteen nineteen project was doing their curriculum.
• 11:50
  Speaker 5: There was Reuben di Angelo. Everybody had to rewhite fragility.
• 11:53
  Speaker 5: They were making kids do privileged walks and stuff like that,
• 11:56
  Speaker 5: and so that was kind of like where like things
• 11:58
  Speaker 5: started from. And it's funny because I feel like, like
• 12:01
  Speaker 5: sort of like we have just been speckling on issues
• 12:03
  Speaker 5: over the past couple of years as different stuff has
• 12:05
  Speaker 5: come up, Like in twenty twenty two and twenty three,
• 12:08
  Speaker 5: gender came on like a title wave that was driven
• 12:11
  Speaker 5: in part by the Biden administration trying to rewrite Title
• 12:13
  Speaker 5: nine and like expand that to gender identity. But I
• 12:16
  Speaker 5: mean there has been curriculum issues, privacy issues, anti semitism issues.
• 12:20
  Speaker 5: It's I mean, it has been like any one of
• 12:21
  Speaker 5: like a number of things. And it's so funny because
• 12:24
  Speaker 5: I think back when I first started working in education,
• 12:26
  Speaker 5: being like school choice good, teachers' union's bad, And I
• 12:29
  Speaker 5: had no idea that like the education industrial complex was
• 12:33
  Speaker 5: as big or as entrenched as it was. I mean,
• 12:35
  Speaker 5: it is like, you know, a massive part of the
• 12:37
  Speaker 5: federal budget, state budgets, et cetera. It is something that
• 12:40
  Speaker 5: all of us have been through. So it's something that
• 12:41
  Speaker 5: we're all touched by, which ended up being I think
• 12:44
  Speaker 5: sort of like our ore, Like the key to unlocking
• 12:48
  Speaker 5: all this is that you know, you don't necessarily feel
• 12:50
  Speaker 5: comfortable challenging your doctor if you're like if doctor says like, hey,
• 12:53
  Speaker 5: I'm going to give you fifteen milligrams of blank. But
• 12:55
  Speaker 5: if somebody's like, hmm, like this is the like we're
• 12:57
  Speaker 5: not going to read those books anymore, Like we all
• 12:59
  Speaker 5: read those books when we growing up, Like I learned
• 13:01
  Speaker 5: how to read. And so I think people feel a
• 13:03
  Speaker 5: little bit more comfortable sort of digging into and taking
• 13:06
  Speaker 5: a stand in education. And so we have just been
• 13:08
  Speaker 5: kind of building the plane as we have been flying
• 13:10
  Speaker 5: working with parent activists over the past four years.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: So it's been it's been a lot of fun. It's
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: sort of we're sort of like learning every day. Okay,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: I have two questions I'm going to hit I think
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: the easier one. First, you switched gears a little bit
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: this year, and you were parents defending education and now
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: you're just defending education. Why did you make that rebranding change.
• 13:30
  Speaker 5: It's been interesting because one thing that I saw just
• 13:32
  Speaker 5: over the past couple of years was policies that I
• 13:34
  Speaker 5: used to sue about at the university level are now
• 13:36
  Speaker 5: trickling down to CATA twelve, and so it's like, what
• 13:39
  Speaker 5: happens in Vegas isn't staying in Vegas. So the bias
• 13:41
  Speaker 5: response teams we ended up actually suing Wellsey Public Schools
• 13:44
  Speaker 5: in Massachusetts a couple of years ago because they had one.
• 13:47
  Speaker 5: And you think it's bad enough when like a nineteen
• 13:49
  Speaker 5: year old is like anonymously tattle tailing on their friends.
• 13:51
  Speaker 5: Imagine giving that power to like a nine year old
• 13:53
  Speaker 5: like going to happen in that situation, And I worry
• 13:56
  Speaker 5: about the behaviors The programs like this set up because
• 13:59
  Speaker 5: I think it encouraged students to like go and tell
• 14:01
  Speaker 5: at authority figure as opposed to like going and hashing
• 14:04
  Speaker 5: it out in person, Like if I hear you calling
• 14:07
  Speaker 5: car as something mean, it's kind of incumbent on me
• 14:09
  Speaker 5: as like a person, like a normal just member of
• 14:11
  Speaker 5: society to be like, hey, like don't call our names.
• 14:13
  Speaker 5: What are you doing? But if my default setting and
• 14:15
  Speaker 5: one end being conditioned to is like go tell the cops,
• 14:18
  Speaker 5: like go tell the teacher, rather than adjudicating that myself,
• 14:21
  Speaker 5: like there is like a weird like people are just
• 14:23
  Speaker 5: not able to handle conflict at all. And so I
• 14:26
  Speaker 5: really worry a lot more about those behaviors taught to
• 14:28
  Speaker 5: young children. So that was kind of one concern. And
• 14:30
  Speaker 5: then also, you know, a lot of the bad curriculum
• 14:34
  Speaker 5: that we saw in schools was coming from higher ed.
• 14:36
  Speaker 5: It's coming from colleges of education, you know, those programs.
• 14:39
  Speaker 5: When you think about like what teachers are learning now,
• 14:41
  Speaker 5: we did a study this a couple of months ago.
• 14:43
  Speaker 5: They're not learning how to do effective phonics. They're learning
• 14:46
  Speaker 5: like reading Belle Hooks and Dear, you know, you know,
• 14:49
  Speaker 5: like all of kind of these like activists. They're learning
• 14:51
  Speaker 5: how to you know, get kids like to become child soldiers.
• 14:54
  Speaker 5: They're not actually learning how to be effective educators, which
• 14:57
  Speaker 5: is also screwed up. And I think I to look
• 15:00
  Speaker 5: at this also as like a vicious cycle, because I
• 15:02
  Speaker 5: think a lot of the bad stuff that kids are
• 15:03
  Speaker 5: learning in the CA to twelve system are also non
• 15:06
  Speaker 5: manifesting on college campuses. I look at things like policies
• 15:10
  Speaker 5: like restorative justice, where students are never held accountable for
• 15:13
  Speaker 5: bad behavior. You know, they start a fight, they cheap,
• 15:16
  Speaker 5: et cetera. They go to the principal's office, they hold
• 15:18
  Speaker 5: hands and sing kumbayah and then go back. There are
• 15:20
  Speaker 5: no consequences, equitable grading where they have never no one
• 15:24
  Speaker 5: has ever failed for turning in an assignment late or
• 15:26
  Speaker 5: getting answers wrong, and then they're surprised when they're actually
• 15:29
  Speaker 5: like held to a standard somewhere.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: So I feel like the equitable grading and the free
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: the restorative justice that is an offshoot of gentle parenting toddlers. Yeah,
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: and it is so corrosive when you have kids who
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: from toddlerhood who have never faced consequence since and who
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: have never you know, just not gotten what they wanted
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: going from like kindergarten, preschool through high school into college
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: and they just have no coping mechanism was whatsoever. Yeah.
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: And the worst part is as well with that is
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: that when these people finally get responsibility, either when they
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: just realize that they need to grow up or one
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: of their parents dies or whatever, and like responsibility is
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: frost upon them, they thrive and they think like particularly men.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: If they are given the opportunity to do that. The
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: problem is people's parents aren't croaking until they're way too old.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: Everyone's parents should croak when they're sixteen and nineteen like mine.
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: It's sad because it's not doing anybody any favors. Because
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: then when the kid finally gets responsibility and realizes, oh,
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: this is actually really fun. I get to like be
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: in charge, then they realize that they wanted it the
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: whole time, you know, and then they resent their parents
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: for being useless.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: Hello, I'm James Lanlex and I'm at the diner. You know,
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: classic American diner chrome long boomerang pattern for micha accountter
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: with little jukeboxes. We love these, and you can join
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: me here every Saturday where we talk about whatever happens
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: to spring into my mind at the moment. There's no
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: predicting where it will go, except that it'll be done
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: in about thirty minutes. Join me, won't you, every Saturday
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: from the Ricochet Audio.
• 17:19
  Speaker 5: Network Ricochet, Yeah, join the conversation.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: So a lot of the stuff that you do is
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: like the scary lawyer letters for these crazy violations. But
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: I loved I think it was like a year ago now.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: I went to the hill with you and accidentally forced
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: gumped my way into like all of the photos and
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: looked like I was a part of your organization. Whereas
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: I was just a guest. But I think it was
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: because I had a headscarf on that day because I
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: looked like such a mess that I was like I
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: have to put my head in something. And then I
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: looked really authentic because it was. And so they're like,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: let's put the Jew in the front. But you are
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: not a Jew, and yet you subject yourself to Jews
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: a lot. You have become like this like bizarro defender
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: of ours in in lower not. I guess it's lower education.
• 18:20
  Speaker 5: It's not well, yeah, like aspiring you. I grew up
• 18:23
  Speaker 5: on the North for Chicago.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: I know, like what are you? You sent our family
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: for some holiday a box that the kids were like,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: this is.
• 18:31
  Speaker 5: The best dessert we've ever had.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: It was Passover.
• 18:34
  Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yeah, oh my god, it was.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: So and you saved Passover and they were it was
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: like it was like cakes or something. And I hate
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Passover desserts are disgusting because you can't use flour, it
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: can't be leavened. It's horror. It's a horror show. And
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: then Nikki saved the day on like the day of
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Passover starting and I got this box and I'm like, crap,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: she sent us cake, What am I gonna do with
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: this on Passover? And then the kids were like, it's oh,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: sure for pers Over and it was like this like
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: thing that was sent from heaven like mana. But anyway,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: how did you become this wonderful defender of the Jewish
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: people in the past almost two years? Honestly? Like, what
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: have you seen on campus? And why are you subjecting
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: yourself to the Jewish people so much?
• 19:19
  Speaker 5: No, it's you know it? Actually, yeah, it started like
• 19:21
  Speaker 5: way earlier. So we started working on investigating ethnic studies
• 19:24
  Speaker 5: in California in twenty two, so foying school districts. This
• 19:28
  Speaker 5: is in the wake of California had passed this law
• 19:30
  Speaker 5: AB one oh one that mandated ethnic studies curriculum in
• 19:35
  Speaker 5: K to twelve classes. And this is like the original
• 19:38
  Speaker 5: intent of this program was like, let's do multiculturalism. Surprise, surprise.
• 19:42
  Speaker 5: It was hijacked by activists and so has ended up
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: being this very like let's just divide everybody into like
• 19:47
  Speaker 5: increasingly small categories and pit them against each other in
• 19:49
  Speaker 5: the oppressor or press framework. The original iteration of the
• 19:53
  Speaker 5: bill actually was so wacky anti Semitic that like even
• 19:56
  Speaker 5: for newsome like and like the state legislature. They were like, oh, work,
• 19:59
  Speaker 5: this makes us little bit queasy. That being said, the
• 20:01
  Speaker 5: final version keep districts the leeway to decide what curriculum
• 20:05
  Speaker 5: they were buying off the shelf. And there are activists
• 20:08
  Speaker 5: out there that are selling this like horrific, like wackadoo
• 20:10
  Speaker 5: version called liberated I think studies. And so we'refoying districts
• 20:14
  Speaker 5: just to see kind of how schools, how districts were
• 20:16
  Speaker 5: implementing this, because we had heard some rumors that there
• 20:19
  Speaker 5: were some antisemitism in some of the curriculum totally correct.
• 20:22
  Speaker 5: So we my coaches and I had been tracking this
• 20:24
  Speaker 5: from twenty twenty early twenty twenty two on. Sadly, when
• 20:29
  Speaker 5: October seventh happened, everybody in my team was already really
• 20:32
  Speaker 5: well aware that this was the canary in the coal mine.
• 20:35
  Speaker 5: This is an attack on the Jews, is an attack
• 20:37
  Speaker 5: in Western civilization. It is attack on the Renaissance, It
• 20:41
  Speaker 5: is attack on values, it is attack on families, is
• 20:43
  Speaker 5: attack on normalcy, because there is. And it's funny because
• 20:47
  Speaker 5: you look at sort of like who is driving this.
• 20:49
  Speaker 5: It's the unicause, right, It's like the pro Palestinian activists
• 20:51
  Speaker 5: are aligned with the environmental activists, with like the pro
• 20:54
  Speaker 5: choice activists, and so like there is sort of this
• 20:57
  Speaker 5: like you know, with the transactivists, So there is this
• 20:58
  Speaker 5: kind of weird death cult to kind of what is
• 21:01
  Speaker 5: going on. And I think like, if like that's who
• 21:03
  Speaker 5: kind of we're fighting against, then like I feel like
• 21:05
  Speaker 5: I'm kind of on the right side of all this.
• 21:07
  Speaker 5: But it has been really it's been really rewarding because
• 21:10
  Speaker 5: obviously after O twoby seventh, we saw huge amounts of
• 21:13
  Speaker 5: horror on college campuses, right it was everybody had phones
• 21:16
  Speaker 5: or everything was being recorded. The same thing was happening
• 21:19
  Speaker 5: in Catage twelve schools because we would hear it through
• 21:21
  Speaker 5: a network. We work with about three and seventy five
• 21:23
  Speaker 5: parent groups across the country. We have a tip line,
• 21:25
  Speaker 5: and so we were hearing all these anecdotes, but no
• 21:28
  Speaker 5: one was talking about it because like I mean, there
• 21:30
  Speaker 5: were like encampments of like Columbia and Harvard, so that
• 21:33
  Speaker 5: was very headline grabbing. But I mean I look at
• 21:35
  Speaker 5: districts like Sequoia Union in California, where there were swastikas
• 21:39
  Speaker 5: that were drawn in a bathroom in a school. The
• 21:41
  Speaker 5: district's need York reaction. The first thing when they put
• 21:44
  Speaker 5: out was this is a Buddhist religious symbol. I beg
• 21:46
  Speaker 5: your fucking pardon, like what like absolutely not, And like
• 21:51
  Speaker 5: they finally had to like walk it back and be like, oh,
• 21:53
  Speaker 5: we were mistagging. But like it was watching stuff like
• 21:55
  Speaker 5: that happen, and as we saw a lot of these
• 21:57
  Speaker 5: incidents on college campuses get swept under the rug. You know,
• 22:00
  Speaker 5: were it not for the assidious documentation that a lot
• 22:03
  Speaker 5: of college students were making, you know a lot of
• 22:05
  Speaker 5: a lot of the charges would not have stuck. This
• 22:07
  Speaker 5: is the problem at CATA twelve because you know, as
• 22:09
  Speaker 5: you know the issue of cell phones in the school, right,
• 22:11
  Speaker 5: like who is recording one and who is documenting what?
• 22:14
  Speaker 5: And then also you know just the fact that in
• 22:16
  Speaker 5: K to twelve they're minors, right, and so we would
• 22:18
  Speaker 5: see a lot of and I think this is what
• 22:20
  Speaker 5: I find really kind of particularly like insidious and gross
• 22:23
  Speaker 5: about a lot of the work we do is watching
• 22:25
  Speaker 5: adults exploit the power dynamic between authority figures and children
• 22:29
  Speaker 5: is something that's really scary because you know what kind
• 22:32
  Speaker 5: of student is you know, is a student going to
• 22:34
  Speaker 5: push back against the teacher who was saying Israel is
• 22:36
  Speaker 5: a subtler colonial nation. You know, there's Genneside taking place,
• 22:40
  Speaker 5: like those kids are just like why would my teacher
• 22:42
  Speaker 5: lie to me like it's my teacher, of course not.
• 22:44
  Speaker 5: And so watching those things unfold, we were trying to
• 22:47
  Speaker 5: document it and we actually a week after the Harvard hearing,
• 22:50
  Speaker 5: we're on the hill and talk to a bunch of
• 22:51
  Speaker 5: representatives and we said, will you commit to doing a
• 22:54
  Speaker 5: K to twelve hearing? This is a problem there as well.
• 22:56
  Speaker 5: To their credit, they agreed. When you joined us in March,
• 22:59
  Speaker 5: it was kind of part of that pushed to be like, hey,
• 23:01
  Speaker 5: you said, you do this thing, this is really important,
• 23:03
  Speaker 5: and so it was a real honor just to be
• 23:05
  Speaker 5: able to help alongside, because you know, this is not
• 23:07
  Speaker 5: a war that can be won when any one party,
• 23:10
  Speaker 5: like you know, obviously Israel standing up for itself is
• 23:12
  Speaker 5: like a nation under siege, and so you know you
• 23:14
  Speaker 5: need the help of friendly neighborhood schickxses like me.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: What was the what were some of like the headlines
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: from that which, by the way, like you, this is
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: this is my biggest issue with you always is that
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: you downplay your role and your participation too much, Like
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: you you are the reason that K through twelve anti
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Semitism hearing happened on the Hill. You had the press
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: conference like it was you. It was the Nicky Neely Show,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: and it was amazing to watch. What was what was
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: the end result of that? Like what did you feel like?
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Because there were some headlines there that like MCPS, which
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: I went because my local school district MCPS, which I
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: would never send my children to. I moved here, by
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: the way, because I planned on sending my children to MCPS.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: It will not I can't because they hate me now.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: But which, by the way, I want to talk to
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: you about, Like how you know, Okay, I have two
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: questions for you. I'm very distracted. This is the problem
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: when you talk to your friends on a podcast. Number one,
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: what were some of the big takeaways from that hearing?
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: And then number two? How And I'm just so curious
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: for my own how do you balance being an activist
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: but also you're a parent of children and I have
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: an issue where people are always suspicious of me, that
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: they're afraid that I'm going to turn them into like
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: a plot line in a piece that I'm writing. And
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: are they wrong? So how do you navigate that as
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: a parent.
• 24:45
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think so. For the first question, I think
• 24:47
  Speaker 5: one of the big takeaways is just you know, we
• 24:48
  Speaker 5: have seen Congress really not be able to wrap their
• 24:51
  Speaker 5: head around Catachwall the way that they have been able
• 24:53
  Speaker 5: to wrap their head around hire it. There are good
• 24:55
  Speaker 5: reasons for that, right, I mean, education is fundamentally a
• 24:57
  Speaker 5: state a local issue, and we don't Congress micromanaging curriculum
• 25:02
  Speaker 5: or things like that. I mean, you know the power
• 25:03
  Speaker 5: that people are trying to get Trump and Speaker Johnson
• 25:06
  Speaker 5: tees right now, how would you feel if that was
• 25:08
  Speaker 5: President Kamela and Speaker Kee jeffries, Like, do we really
• 25:12
  Speaker 5: want the federal government mating those kind of decisions? Almost
• 25:14
  Speaker 5: certainly not. But also, you know, the federal government provides
• 25:17
  Speaker 5: a smaller percentage of local district's budget, and so they
• 25:20
  Speaker 5: just have fewer strings to pull. It's like usually seven
• 25:22
  Speaker 5: to ten percent per districts, whereas obviously with the federal
• 25:24
  Speaker 5: with universities, there are hundreds of millions of dollars in research
• 25:27
  Speaker 5: funding at stake. So that was interesting. That also was
• 25:29
  Speaker 5: kind of a factor in why I wanted to expand
• 25:32
  Speaker 5: it to higher ed that we could use Congress and
• 25:34
  Speaker 5: the federal government to affect greater change. And then I
• 25:36
  Speaker 5: would see I see that trickling down to the K
• 25:38
  Speaker 5: to twelve level. You know, that was that was a
• 25:40
  Speaker 5: little bit frustrating. That being said, you know, I was
• 25:42
  Speaker 5: really hardened that there is a real commitment from all
• 25:46
  Speaker 5: these members to pursue this, to continue to add you know,
• 25:49
  Speaker 5: asking the questions. I think they you know, there was
• 25:51
  Speaker 5: there were expectations that this would be kind of like
• 25:53
  Speaker 5: how Harvard was. I think we have seen a lot
• 25:55
  Speaker 5: of administrators start to learn from that initial Harvard Mit
• 25:58
  Speaker 5: hearing right how to answer and duck and weave. But
• 26:02
  Speaker 5: you know, this is are we going after the symptoms
• 26:04
  Speaker 5: or are we going after the causes? And I see
• 26:06
  Speaker 5: now that Congress as really they understand like there are
• 26:08
  Speaker 5: greater forces at work, you know, these this is a
• 26:10
  Speaker 5: union problem, This is a you know who else is
• 26:13
  Speaker 5: playing this? Where is this money coming from? And so
• 26:16
  Speaker 5: I think, as you know, after the hearing, we were
• 26:18
  Speaker 5: telling people like this is a great first step, like
• 26:20
  Speaker 5: we are so excited for continuing engagement on this issue.
• 26:22
  Speaker 5: And so that's one thing as we go and meet
• 26:24
  Speaker 5: with them, we just remind them like, hey, like you know,
• 26:26
  Speaker 5: there's a lot more work to be done, can't wait
• 26:27
  Speaker 5: to help, And so just to try and provide them
• 26:30
  Speaker 5: with ideas or documents that maybe you can help them
• 26:32
  Speaker 5: on that path has been something that we're trying to
• 26:34
  Speaker 5: continue doing. To your question about trying to kind of
• 26:37
  Speaker 5: navigate this as a mom, like, it's like it's hard, man,
• 26:40
  Speaker 5: Like it's it's funny because I was talking to somebody about, like,
• 26:42
  Speaker 5: you know, the idea of like having it all, and
• 26:44
  Speaker 5: it's like there are days where I'm like a great
• 26:46
  Speaker 5: employee and like a terrible mother, or a days when
• 26:48
  Speaker 5: I'm like a great mom and like a really bad employee,
• 26:51
  Speaker 5: but like never is it all like the best day
• 26:53
  Speaker 5: of everything all the time. And so that has been
• 26:56
  Speaker 5: something that has.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Been Your kids are ten and eleven.
• 27:00
  Speaker 5: Uh yeah, ten to eleven. But it's you know, I
• 27:03
  Speaker 5: guess when I'm trying to comfort myself, I'm like I'm
• 27:05
  Speaker 5: setting an example for my daughter that I am going
• 27:07
  Speaker 5: out and like not letting people push me around or
• 27:09
  Speaker 5: being a victim of circumstances that like we are standing
• 27:11
  Speaker 5: up for and giving a voice to the voiceless. But
• 27:14
  Speaker 5: you know that being said, I like you also cannot
• 27:16
  Speaker 5: send my children to our local school district, and you know,
• 27:19
  Speaker 5: I think that's probably fine, but it also on some level. Yeah,
• 27:22
  Speaker 5: I mean, like we bought a house in Northern Virginia,
• 27:24
  Speaker 5: you know, based on the school system. And it's funny
• 27:27
  Speaker 5: because you know, as we were getting everything off the
• 27:29
  Speaker 5: ground at then Parents Defending Education, we had these tips,
• 27:32
  Speaker 5: we had all this foy material, and I wanted to
• 27:34
  Speaker 5: put everything on a map on our website because I
• 27:36
  Speaker 5: wanted to show people just because you live in a
• 27:38
  Speaker 5: good state, in a you know, a red state or
• 27:40
  Speaker 5: a good school district, you send your kid to a
• 27:42
  Speaker 5: private school, doesn't mean that there aren't problems there. I
• 27:45
  Speaker 5: mean you're seeing like the weird gender stuff in like
• 27:48
  Speaker 5: religious schools, and you're seeing like in red states, like
• 27:50
  Speaker 5: there are like wag a doo policies and parental secrecy
• 27:54
  Speaker 5: things taking place, and so this is you know, the
• 27:56
  Speaker 5: sunshine is the best disinfectant. So we want people to
• 27:59
  Speaker 5: at least know what the heck is taking place in
• 28:01
  Speaker 5: their backyards because then it gives them reason to get
• 28:03
  Speaker 5: up the sidelines.
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: What what would your advice be for parents like me
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: who in the next couple of years are going to
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: start looking at schools and are terrified at the options
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: and every single option seems bad.
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: Like what would you tell them? What should we look
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: out for?
• 28:22
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it's you know, as we know there
• 28:25
  Speaker 5: are everybody has different issues that they care about. Like
• 28:28
  Speaker 5: I like I personally, like I'm not like super into
• 28:33
  Speaker 5: like I don't know like like I don't mind like
• 28:34
  Speaker 5: adult transgender stuff, but like I do have a real
• 28:37
  Speaker 5: problem when like my five year old is being told
• 28:39
  Speaker 5: that she could be born in the wrong body. And
• 28:40
  Speaker 5: so I think it's like, but other people, like I
• 28:42
  Speaker 5: look at you know, like what motivates activists. And it's
• 28:44
  Speaker 5: funny because we have worked on so many issues over
• 28:46
  Speaker 5: the years that now we have kind of an audience
• 28:48
  Speaker 5: of people who are like love your DEI stuff, don't
• 28:52
  Speaker 5: like your trans stuff, or like love the anti semitism,
• 28:54
  Speaker 5: Like think you're a little over the top on the
• 28:56
  Speaker 5: DEI stuff, And so you know, every person's trigger is
• 28:59
  Speaker 5: something different, and so I think, you know, we have
• 29:01
  Speaker 5: we have come up with different like questions to ask
• 29:04
  Speaker 5: of your teacher of your district on our site so
• 29:07
  Speaker 5: that people could just dig in and sort of figure
• 29:08
  Speaker 5: out like who is like who, Like when did you
• 29:11
  Speaker 5: pick this curriculum, like can I go in? Can I
• 29:13
  Speaker 5: be a room parent? I think also, you know, so
• 29:16
  Speaker 5: people just knowing the questions to ask. And it's funny
• 29:18
  Speaker 5: because I am somebody who constantly talks in war metaphors,
• 29:21
  Speaker 5: so like I am probably not the best position to
• 29:23
  Speaker 5: do this, but it's I think, like more often than not,
• 29:28
  Speaker 5: Awkham's razor is that people do things because they don't
• 29:30
  Speaker 5: fully understand what they're getting into. Like not every teacher
• 29:33
  Speaker 5: is like like an avowed anti Semite. Like sometimes they
• 29:36
  Speaker 5: just like we're looking for a world history lesson and
• 29:38
  Speaker 5: just grab something off like off the internet. And then
• 29:41
  Speaker 5: if a teacher, if a parent came in and said, like,
• 29:43
  Speaker 5: you know, this makes me really off under old, they
• 29:44
  Speaker 5: would say, oh my gosh, never thought of it that way.
• 29:47
  Speaker 5: I'm so sorry, We'll never use this again. There are
• 29:50
  Speaker 5: certainly bad apples that spoil the barrel, and we have
• 29:52
  Speaker 5: seen lots of emails between teachers where teachers are bullying
• 29:55
  Speaker 5: each other or they're trying to really push one world view.
• 29:59
  Speaker 5: But I think it's you know, kind of like gathering
• 30:00
  Speaker 5: those facts and gathering that information at least to kind
• 30:03
  Speaker 5: of figure out like what the playing field is at least.
• 30:06
  Speaker 5: And also, you know, we're always happy to be the
• 30:08
  Speaker 5: bad guys and like file foyas and ask questions and
• 30:10
  Speaker 5: embarrassed people so that you don't have to be the
• 30:12
  Speaker 5: bad guy.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: So can you explain to our listeners what a FOYA
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: is because it is one of the most powerful weapons
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: that no one knows that they have.
• 30:20
  Speaker 5: Yeah. Sorry. FOYA stands for Freedom of Information Act, which
• 30:23
  Speaker 5: is basically just a public records request and so you,
• 30:26
  Speaker 5: as a member of the public, are entitled to transparency
• 30:29
  Speaker 5: from government agencies. Government which includes public schools, CAT twelve schools,
• 30:35
  Speaker 5: public universities. So you can make a request for emails, curriculum,
• 30:40
  Speaker 5: lesson planned stuff like that, and they have to give
• 30:42
  Speaker 5: it to you. It has to be I mean, and
• 30:43
  Speaker 5: there are parameters and this is governed by state loss.
• 30:45
  Speaker 5: You can't say, like, I want everything that you have
• 30:48
  Speaker 5: ever emailed ever.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: But can I Can I tell you a funny FOYA story. Yeah,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: one of my friends who I don't think that she
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: would ever ever want this to be public, so I
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: have to be as vague as I possibly can be.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: Her husband is a public servant. He is in the
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: legislature in his state and his wife works for an
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: organization that a lot of people don't like, and people
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: made the connection, and so the organization's activities they she's
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: listening to this right now, thinking like, Bethany, please, please please.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to be as careful as I can. Okay,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: So the topic that her organization covers is very controversial,
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: and so someone foyd everything that her husband talked about
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: related to that topic because they wanted they wanted to
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: see if there was corruption at play what he's doing.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: But she had sent him a text message to his
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: government issued phone that was X rated, and that was foyd.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: Oh delevered to the person who requested that information, And
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: so she's like, and now this random person has a
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: naked photo of me.
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: Oh my god.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah a lot. So the moral of that story.
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: Is done sex to a government email. That is the
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: only emaul.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: So a lot of these government employees never consider the
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: fact that they can be foided, and so they are
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: remarkably careless. One of my other favorite foia stories which
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: I can tell is I used to run and may
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: run again. It's unclear. A book company called Heroes of Liberty.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: It's a children's book series, and I tried to donate
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: it to Montgomery County Public Schools and they rejected my donation,
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: and so I foided the form. Why they rejected it
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: because they have to fill out a form and on
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: the form it said the reason that they rejected it
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: was because it was too patriotic.
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: So awful, I will say so. In the UK we
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: call them fis just that's what we do.
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: And the way that people will get around an FOI
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: in the UK is they'll just take five years to
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: do it.
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: Does that happen in the US too?
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 33:01
  Speaker 5: I actually have a lawsuit right now against Apparnent Education
• 33:04
  Speaker 5: for stuff that I had requested from the previous administration
• 33:06
  Speaker 5: between twenty twenty two and twenty four.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: And they also charge you a bazillion T dollars.
• 33:11
  Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, there are different ways. The federal government will
• 33:15
  Speaker 5: usually waive the fees, but districts, I mean I have
• 33:17
  Speaker 5: paid Fairfax County Public Schools probably thirty thousand dollars over
• 33:21
  Speaker 5: the past four years for documents.
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: What is the price of an average FOI.
• 33:25
  Speaker 5: Because it's there. It depends on the volume of materials
• 33:28
  Speaker 5: that are returned. Because and then sometimes let's say, well,
• 33:30
  Speaker 5: we have to have legal review it to redact it
• 33:32
  Speaker 5: or data done, so they'll charge labor costs on top
• 33:35
  Speaker 5: of that and then like a copying costs. I mean,
• 33:38
  Speaker 5: it's funny because there are lots of little roadblocks they
• 33:40
  Speaker 5: try and throw up to make it a pain in
• 33:42
  Speaker 5: the ass for you. Years ago, I was doing a
• 33:44
  Speaker 5: report against Cook count for the Cook County budget and
• 33:47
  Speaker 5: they gave me thousands of pages of hard copy documents
• 33:50
  Speaker 5: and like you know, so it's just you have to
• 33:52
  Speaker 5: like go through and like physically like highlight stuff and
• 33:55
  Speaker 5: so just little things like that. But then it's funny
• 33:58
  Speaker 5: because like to me, that's blood in the water. I
• 34:00
  Speaker 5: feel like a shark. I'm like, ooh, you got something
• 34:01
  Speaker 5: good in here that you're hide or like dragging their feet.
• 34:05
  Speaker 5: Like one of the things that I requested from Cardona was,
• 34:08
  Speaker 5: I think in like right after our trip seventh he
• 34:09
  Speaker 5: gave a speech and he said from the River to
• 34:11
  Speaker 5: the Sea. I wanted those emails like who wrote that speech?
• 34:14
  Speaker 5: Like what was the correspondence related to that? But these
• 34:16
  Speaker 5: are things that I had requested years ago and ended
• 34:18
  Speaker 5: up having to sue the federal government. And so I
• 34:20
  Speaker 5: have sued a bunch of school districts and universities in
• 34:23
  Speaker 5: both my professional and personal capacity, just for stuff that
• 34:26
  Speaker 5: they I am entitled to as a member of the public.
• 34:29
  Speaker 5: And they don't really like being actually held to the
• 34:31
  Speaker 5: law because like, yeah, again, they don't think of themselves
• 34:33
  Speaker 5: as government employees that you know, everything they put in
• 34:36
  Speaker 5: writing and Canada will be used against them. Nor do
• 34:38
  Speaker 5: they expect someone to be like, yeah, you know what,
• 34:40
  Speaker 5: I'll pay that thirteen thousand dollars invoice come at me.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: So you know, that's that's why I love you. That's
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: why I love you. All Right, We're going to take
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: a quick ad break and then I want to completely
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: shift gears to kids and travel because you are the
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: reigning queen.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: Hey everybody, sorry for interrupting, but I have to remind
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: you it is well is it. I don't know. Are
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: these the dog Daves this summer? You know that's so
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: named because of serious the star and the sky which
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: you know, there's Latin and there's dogs and all that stuff. Well,
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: let's just put it this way. It is August in
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: this summer. It is serious time to consider joining Ricochet,
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: where you can find people who are a serious but
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: also well. August is also known as the silly Season,
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: so some of the ricochetes are like that as well.
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: In other words, the gamut of conversation topics, personalities, and
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: the rest can be found in the member site at
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: ricochet dot com. Sure you can go to the front page,
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: you can read the stuff, you can listen to the podcast,
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: but there's so much more in the member site. We'd
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: invite you to go there and become part of the
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: the Internet's civil center. Right conversation you've been looking for
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: ever since you plug that thing in ricochet dot com.
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: If not August, then when.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: So I've done two big trips with my kids so far,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: I've been doing like road trips with my kids their
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: entire lives. But I had never done international travel until
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: last June, when I brought my older three kids to
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: Paris kind of kind of spontaneously. I didn't really think
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: that much about it. I was supposed to bring my
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: older daughter on a work trip, and then the work
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: trip got moved, and then I had these non refundable
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: tickets for me and my daughter and nothing to do
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: in Paris, and I was like, I'm going to drag
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: my sons too, and they did not want to come
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: when I told them how long the flight was, they
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: were like, absolutely no, we're not interested. And I'm like, well,
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: I've already bought your tickets and you're coming anyway. And
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: I got on the plane with them, and my oldest
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: son did not fall asleep until literally five minutes before
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: we landed in Paris. And we get there and we're
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: waiting for the bags, and then he just became an narcoleptic.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Waiting for the bags, he fell asleep. We walked to
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: the train station and I'm waiting in line to buy
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: our two tickets, and he fell asleep on the floor,
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: like dead asleep on the floor, and so I have
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: to like wake him up, and I like put him.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: I'm like picking this like nine year old up, and
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: I put him on the luggage cart and I'm like
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: wheeling the luggage cart with my nine year old on it,
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: and my other two kids are like, my younger son
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: is bouncing off the walls. My oldest daughter is fine.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: And then we go through the we go through the
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: turnstile to get onto the metro and he his reflexes
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: are just not there because he's so tired, and the
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: doors slam on him and he just breaks down like
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: he he lost it at that point, and I took
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: a picture of him when he fell asleep on the
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: floor waiting, but I posted it actually after that incident,
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: and I tagged you and I was like, Nikki, neely
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: makes this look too easy? What was I thinking bringing
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: three kids with me? And also, by the way, I
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: was on antibiotics and I didn't eat enough and so
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: I was throwing up the whole flight with three little
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: kids next to me, and so then I get to
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: Paris and it's a mess. Whatever. So my first five
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: hours in Paris were an absolute nightmare, and I cursed
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: you every single second. It was awful. Those first those
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: first couple hours were awful because I also had lied
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: to the hotel about how many people were in it,
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: which is what I do everywhere, but you can't do
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: that in Europe because they have like fire safety codes
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: that they actually listened to, and so they almost didn't
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: let us into the hotel. It was a nightmare the
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: first like five hours we were in Paris. And Nikki
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: travels all the time with so we have the same
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: age children. You're ten and eleven year old. I have
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: a ten and eleven year old.
• 38:44
  Speaker 5: I have one third of the children you have though, right,
• 38:46
  Speaker 5: But I.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: Only had three kids with me, and so this was
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: my test run of like international travel and my first
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: five hours were in absolute nightmare?
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: Was it Homsted than the first five hours of London
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: with five kids?
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah it was bad. Yeah it was really bad.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: And so anyway I cursed you because you travel all
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: the time with your children, and I want to like,
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: where have you been and how do you do it?
• 39:13
  Speaker 5: For?
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, so I will I will say the rest of
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: Paris was a dream and it was the best week
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: of my life. And then I bit more off and
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: we went to London with five I went to London,
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: just me my five kids, also a dream. It was great,
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: It wasn't a nightmare. So now I'm fully on board
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: crazy international travel with children. But you were my trendsetter
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: who I cursed and now praise. But how did you
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: get started doing this with your children? So?
• 39:38
  Speaker 5: I traveled a lot growing up. My mother is Irish.
• 39:40
  Speaker 5: My mother was a flight attendant for Erlingis. So like
• 39:42
  Speaker 5: Kay Middleton and I have been in common like with
• 39:44
  Speaker 5: the doors Dmmanuel thing, I grew up traveling going to
• 39:47
  Speaker 5: like I would go to Ireland with my mom for
• 39:49
  Speaker 5: like a long weekend kind of thing. Oh wow, And
• 39:52
  Speaker 5: I was baptized in Ireland. I baptized my son in Ireland.
• 39:55
  Speaker 5: So his first flight was he was two months old,
• 39:58
  Speaker 5: so he had a house board and the lake little
• 39:59
  Speaker 5: squeishe kid like popped up on a pillow. We have
• 40:02
  Speaker 5: just I think part of it is just sort of
• 40:04
  Speaker 5: like like it's conditioning yourself, but it's also conditioning them.
• 40:07
  Speaker 5: Like now my kids get on right, they have their
• 40:09
  Speaker 5: backpack full of snacks. They're like, I'm going to get
• 40:11
  Speaker 5: a coke when the part comes by, like what you know,
• 40:13
  Speaker 5: Like so they sort of know the routine, which is funny.
• 40:15
  Speaker 5: Now I look at like my thirty something year old
• 40:17
  Speaker 5: brother and he's like, oh, I couldn't fly and visit
• 40:19
  Speaker 5: you in in DC. I'm like, you live in Chicago,
• 40:22
  Speaker 5: Like it's like ninety minutes, like what are you doing?
• 40:25
  Speaker 5: So like so there was kind of like the managing
• 40:27
  Speaker 5: the adult side of it and then managing the like
• 40:30
  Speaker 5: the kid's side of it. Like I definitely like my son.
• 40:33
  Speaker 5: I dragged him somewhere last year and yeah, he like
• 40:36
  Speaker 5: passed out like hard. I have like pictures of him,
• 40:38
  Speaker 5: like like passed out on like the pub tables. Well
• 40:41
  Speaker 5: I'm like, well, I'm going to drink champagne. Yeah. I
• 40:43
  Speaker 5: mean we have had like disastrous ones. Like a couple
• 40:45
  Speaker 5: of years ago when we were living in Texas, I
• 40:47
  Speaker 5: had I found some super cheap lights to go to
• 40:49
  Speaker 5: Vietnam while my daughter was still a lap infant, like
• 40:52
  Speaker 5: you know, under two years old they fly for free.
• 40:54
  Speaker 5: She was a big lap infant. It was like, right,
• 40:56
  Speaker 5: she was like twenty two months old or something.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, but.
• 40:59
  Speaker 5: We were we were supposed to go Austin to Dallas,
• 41:03
  Speaker 5: to Tokyo to PNoy or something. Funny enough. The light
• 41:08
  Speaker 5: that broke was the Austin Dallas one, which threw everything off,
• 41:11
  Speaker 5: and so then we couldn't make anything else. We ended
• 41:12
  Speaker 5: up fighting in the Dallas uber for a couple hours
• 41:15
  Speaker 5: and then going the other way around the world. So
• 41:17
  Speaker 5: we went from Dallas to Doha to like Hanoi, and
• 41:21
  Speaker 5: so we like circumnavigated the globe in like eight days.
• 41:23
  Speaker 5: It was like, in retrospect, kind of a nightmare and
• 41:25
  Speaker 5: like little squealy kids like as lap infants, like when
• 41:28
  Speaker 5: you're sitting in like the steerage seats in the back,
• 41:31
  Speaker 5: like you know, they're trying to sleep on the floor
• 41:32
  Speaker 5: and the flight attendants are yelling at you like I
• 41:34
  Speaker 5: can't be on the floor, like you want to carry it?
• 41:36
  Speaker 5: Like what do you want to do? So oh yeah,
• 41:40
  Speaker 5: my god, like there is like I mean, I like
• 41:42
  Speaker 5: plea Like this is also like just a reminder that,
• 41:45
  Speaker 5: like Instagram life is like not real life, right Like
• 41:47
  Speaker 5: when I was last week coming back from Marseille with
• 41:49
  Speaker 5: my daughter, I got a text message from Air France
• 41:52
  Speaker 5: when I was in the uber trying to get like back,
• 41:54
  Speaker 5: Oh I remember this, and it was like now you're
• 41:56
  Speaker 5: flying to or Lee And I was like, well, that
• 41:58
  Speaker 5: sucks because our connection is out of Charles de Gaull,
• 42:00
  Speaker 5: Like you're gonna send me on a bus in the
• 42:02
  Speaker 5: middle of rush hour, midday in Paris, like what are
• 42:05
  Speaker 5: you doing right now? But it's you know, we kind
• 42:08
  Speaker 5: of like gutted it out and I got to, you know,
• 42:11
  Speaker 5: spend the entire bus ride like texting about how awful
• 42:14
  Speaker 5: their customer service was. And so that was cathartic.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: Last November, we went to Puerto Rico with our kids,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: which I thought was like a very vanilla easy trip.
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: On the way home, our flight was delayed five hours,
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: and as we were boarding, they informed us that they
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: were landing in the wrong airport. We were supposed to
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: land at Reagan and they were like, just kidding, Reagan's
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: gonna close. They'll bring you to Dallas. And we landed
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: at three am and then had to get on a
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: bus to Reagan to get our car and we walked
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: in our house at five o'clock in the morning. But
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: that taught me that I could do it, which is
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: why I took on the London trip, because I was like,
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: our kids nailed that horrible day that we flew back
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: from Puerto Rico and they killed it, so we can totally.
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: I can totally handle London without the baby. And that's
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: what I did.
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: Can I tell you how much more highly strong I
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: am than both of you. I flew to Vermont last
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: week and I did. We did end up going, but
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: our flying was delayed for one hour at Dullas and
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: we had the pop up on our phone that the
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: fly was delayed one hour, and I just said to
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: neckla's just turn round ago, did you that's my threshold?
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: One hour? No, he wouldn't let it.
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: We were going to a funeral so yeah, definitely. After
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: one hour, I was.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: Like, nah, well we had we had to do that
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: to get home.
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's yeah.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: So I will say I complained very much because if
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: if I had known that all that was going to happen,
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: we would have just stayed in Puerto Rico another few days,
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: like twist my arm, Sure, Okay, I guess we'll have
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: to stay in San Juan. And it was like Thanksgiving.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: So I didn't care m but they didn't until we
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: were boarding and trapped.
• 44:02
  Speaker 5: No, And I you know, I think there's like you know,
• 44:05
  Speaker 5: she's gonna sound like super like fancy, but like you like,
• 44:07
  Speaker 5: I think like going to like like London is like
• 44:09
  Speaker 5: an easy trip. Like I like, I think like there
• 44:12
  Speaker 5: is an element like I want my kids to like
• 44:14
  Speaker 5: see what the rest of the world looks like and
• 44:16
  Speaker 5: like know like what real hardship is. Like I gotta
• 44:18
  Speaker 5: talk to you about, like I really actually want to
• 44:20
  Speaker 5: send my kids to Israel for a summer to like
• 44:21
  Speaker 5: go pick garlic on a kid books, like go do
• 44:24
  Speaker 5: something that sucks and that is hard. But that is
• 44:26
  Speaker 5: like real life because you're not all like staying in
• 44:29
  Speaker 5: like you know, like the kinda in like London or
• 44:31
  Speaker 5: anything like like like in like you know, different places
• 44:35
  Speaker 5: in the world.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you if you want a hardship station, that's
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: not it.
• 44:39
  Speaker 5: Well, it's like it's like my kids are when when
• 44:42
  Speaker 5: my daughter was in camp in England, she called it
• 44:44
  Speaker 5: fancy camp and so like, you know, fancy camp versus
• 44:46
  Speaker 5: like picking garlic are like two very different things, right.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: But the problem is she's gonna be picking garlic with
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: a bunch of jack Americans and so it's just gonna
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: be it's just gonna be a different experience there. No,
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: I agree. I I traveled, so I only traveled as
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: an older teenager. I became an exchange student when I
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: was sixteen. I went to Belgium for the year and
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: then I traveled thereafter and it became like a core
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: part of my identity. And it was fun because when
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: I brought the kids to Paris, they heard me speaking
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: French and they heard me understand. They saw me understanding French,
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: and I was having entire conversations and it blew their
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: minds because they were like, we did not know this
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: part of our mother existed, what is going on? And
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: they could not get enough of it. And it was
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: fun and I'm excited for that. For Israel, We're going
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: to Israel in November, and same thing. Bless you put
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: clients I do. So it's so I bummed off of
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: Nikki's itinerary. Actually when we did London and Paris, I
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: just was like, can you send me your itinerary? And
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: I basically copied it. But this time I actually have
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: to do my own. But I've been using chat GBT
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: a lot because people have been sending me their itineraries
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: and then I put them all into CHATCHYBT and I say,
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: meld these and I get some really good results. But
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: it's so this trip is challenging one because Seth is
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: the least laid back person in our family, and so
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: I actually have to have my stuff together, whereas like
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: the kids are go with the flow. But he's like,
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: you expect to have a place to sleep tonight, and
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: I'm like, whoo, that has to be planned beforehand?
• 46:22
  Speaker 5: Well to ask all right?
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: Then, So so I have to like plan to like
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: have places to sleep every night, which is you know, challenging.
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: It was so stressed.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: So we're doing We're doing Greece for a week and
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: then Israel and we're going to do three weeks in
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: Jerusalem and then a week up north, and like most
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: of it is done. We're gonna hit Copenhagen for a
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: night on the way home. But like there's like all
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: of the like the stupid stuff, like I have to
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: book a car at one place and I have to
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: book the car service, like all of those stupid things
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: that I hate doing. I'm saving for last.
• 47:00
  Speaker 5: I see. I like love doing this like my happy
• 47:02
  Speaker 5: party too, sitting in a couch on Saturday, like like planning,
• 47:05
  Speaker 5: like researching, like like booking out, like all the travel
• 47:08
  Speaker 5: stuff and like like I come up like fieldayteneries.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: But I don't like booking the car. The car is
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: not fun.
• 47:15
  Speaker 4: See, I'm the person that just turns up with my passport.
• 47:18
  Speaker 4: Hopefully if I.
• 47:19
  Speaker 5: Remember the passenger princess, I end up I am.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: But I like doing this stuff. I really like choosing
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: what we're gonna do. And I'm my kids. It's so
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: sweet because both of the trips that we took Mother's
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: Day followed right after, and we have a tradition that
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: I don't want gifts on Mother's Day. I just want
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: Seth to like print out a thing all about my
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: mom and to help the kids fill it out if
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: they're too young to do it themselves. And it's really
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: cute what they say, like Mommy loves to eat babies,
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: Mommy loves to smell babies, Mommy smells like farts, all
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: those things and both the last two years, all the
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: kids went on the trip said mommy is best at
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: planning trips. And I'm like, yes, that is what I
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: want you to take from your childhood is we take
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: these crazy trips. But how so you have done crazy trips?
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: Like I didn't know this Vietnam story, but I was
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: amazed at your Australia story, which now pales in comparison
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: to Vietnam. With a toddler, how do how do you
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: manage this? Like what what secrets do you have?
• 48:28
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it's like using like I think the
• 48:30
  Speaker 5: flights are like a big hassle, like and so finding
• 48:32
  Speaker 5: the cheap lights, like the Scott's Cheap Lights type thing,
• 48:34
  Speaker 5: I think is helpful. And so that it's funny because
• 48:37
  Speaker 5: we used to like just like I like I would
• 48:39
  Speaker 5: like talk to like the kids or my husband and
• 48:41
  Speaker 5: be like, hey, how do you feel about like you
• 48:43
  Speaker 5: go about this country? Like all right, sure, whatever, And
• 48:46
  Speaker 5: now my children are sentient and they have demands, which
• 48:49
  Speaker 5: is how we ended up in Australia because my daughter's
• 48:51
  Speaker 5: obsessed with animals. She wants to be a vet and
• 48:53
  Speaker 5: so she's she really wanted to go to Australia to
• 48:55
  Speaker 5: see the quakas and the kangaroos. And I was like, oh,
• 48:57
  Speaker 5: like that's really far. But then there was there was
• 49:00
  Speaker 5: like a fair sale that came up what was like
• 49:02
  Speaker 5: relatively affordable. It was like you know, seven hundred bucks
• 49:04
  Speaker 5: or something, which is pretty good, really yeah, and so
• 49:07
  Speaker 5: we jumped on that and then yeah, kind of figured
• 49:09
  Speaker 5: out like what are the highlights of stuff you want
• 49:11
  Speaker 5: to do, and so we were We were in Sydney
• 49:13
  Speaker 5: Port Douglas which is where the Great Barrier Reef is
• 49:16
  Speaker 5: Perth to see the quakas, Melbourne because people said it
• 49:19
  Speaker 5: was nice, and then home, so it was like it
• 49:21
  Speaker 5: was a lot to do in two weeks.
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: Did you break up the flight? They because that that's
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: the fight that really terrifies me.
• 49:27
  Speaker 5: We it was DC to Dallas on the way down,
• 49:30
  Speaker 5: but it was still I mean it was like a
• 49:31
  Speaker 5: seventeen or eighteen hour flight from there, which is like
• 49:34
  Speaker 5: a lot, but we and we were you know these
• 49:36
  Speaker 5: I am not flying business class on any of these flights,
• 49:38
  Speaker 5: like we are sitting in the back with like the chickens.
• 49:40
  Speaker 5: But we we lucked out that it was not a
• 49:42
  Speaker 5: totally full flight, and so I was able to like
• 49:45
  Speaker 5: lie down and then have like a child lay on
• 49:46
  Speaker 5: top of me, which was not extremely comforting, but you
• 49:50
  Speaker 5: know it was she was comfortable.
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: At least, so eighteen hours worth a ten and eleven
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: year old.
• 49:54
  Speaker 5: Yeah, But like they like they get on and they're like,
• 49:57
  Speaker 5: can't wait to see what movies are. They're like, you know,
• 49:58
  Speaker 5: they have their list. I'm like, you, we have to
• 50:00
  Speaker 5: sleep for a little bit so you don't like absolutely
• 50:02
  Speaker 5: collapse when we get to like our destination. But they're
• 50:05
  Speaker 5: like like I hope there's chicken or like oh the
• 50:07
  Speaker 5: pasta and like egg like on American airlines as grows,
• 50:10
  Speaker 5: So like they're also like kind of little like travel
• 50:13
  Speaker 5: lead us at this point, which is like funny, but like,
• 50:15
  Speaker 5: you know, they have their gear and they have their
• 50:17
  Speaker 5: stuffed animals and their iPads and so like I also
• 50:20
  Speaker 5: feel like it's you know, like when you go to
• 50:21
  Speaker 5: the airport and there are no laws in the airport,
• 50:23
  Speaker 5: like people are doing shots at tequila at five am.
• 50:25
  Speaker 5: Same with kids, not that they're doing shots a tequila,
• 50:28
  Speaker 5: but like you can have a lot of screens when
• 50:30
  Speaker 5: we are in transit to like minimize this, like we
• 50:32
  Speaker 5: won't dial it back when we get to somewhere, but
• 50:34
  Speaker 5: like if there is a flight delay or when we
• 50:36
  Speaker 5: got back from France, we were at Dallas for an
• 50:38
  Speaker 5: extra three hours because the baggage carousel broke, So I
• 50:41
  Speaker 5: just got to sit in like that like weird like
• 50:43
  Speaker 5: limbo area in in Dallas for a couple hours, which
• 50:46
  Speaker 5: I did not want to do, but like she just
• 50:48
  Speaker 5: gotta out. She had like a tube of pringles and
• 50:49
  Speaker 5: her iPad and she's like, I'm good.
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: I don't care.
• 50:51
  Speaker 5: And so I did feel bad for the people who
• 50:53
  Speaker 5: have like a one year old that was going insane.
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: So that is also my policy. So I just I
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: don't like traveling with Seth Baker because he gets mad
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: when things blow up in my face, whereas the kids
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: don't know to get mad at me yet, And so
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: that is also my policy. And I let the kids
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: on a flight down to Florida just like whatever I let,
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: I was like anything you want from the bed, from
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: the beverages, and they were all like, juice please, but
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: I'm a juice Nazi, and so that much sugar. My
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: kids were like, and okay, fair to Seth. Our daughter,
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: our younger daughter puked all over him on the descent,
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: like fwhere and he looked at me and he was like.
• 51:38
  Speaker 5: It was the juice.
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: I do the juice, and he did. He very clearly,
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: was like, they're gonna they didn't have enough in their stomachs.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: You let them have donuts in the airport, and now
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: you're gonna let them have juice. This is gonna blow
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: up on us. And I was like, it's fine, and
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: then it blew up on him and he was pretty mad.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: It's pretty mad. So sorry about that. But when things
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: will the kids don't know to like be mad at
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: me yet, like the airport or the hotel in Paris.
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: They didn't know that they could be mad at me
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: for that, so they didn't get mad.
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: I feel like Seth con not organized anything and then
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: also get mad like I nicked us everything, but I
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: don't maybe maybe I did get mad.
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean this, he didn't get mad at like
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: the accommodations or the car or anything, like he got
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: mad because I let them have juice on an empty
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: stomach after having donuts at seven am.
• 52:37
  Speaker 5: So well, and I think also kind of to like
• 52:40
  Speaker 5: to your point though, it's also that like the kids
• 52:42
  Speaker 5: like it's like my son, but I don't know, Clark.
• 52:45
  Speaker 5: We went to Scotland a couple of years ago for
• 52:47
  Speaker 5: a spring break. I it was like during COVID and
• 52:49
  Speaker 5: I tested positive and I had to stay in Scotland
• 52:51
  Speaker 5: and like just like Clark had to fly home along
• 52:53
  Speaker 5: with the kids. But they got to like they had
• 52:55
  Speaker 5: horrible flight problems and ended up having to overnight in
• 52:59
  Speaker 5: Atlanta at like a shitty, dreary in somewhere. The kids
• 53:03
  Speaker 5: were like this is the greatest hotel, and Clark's like
• 53:05
  Speaker 5: I want to kill myself, and but they're like free
• 53:09
  Speaker 5: breakfast biscuits what and so like you know, like their
• 53:13
  Speaker 5: standards are so low compared to like what an adult is.
• 53:16
  Speaker 5: Like yeah, like so I don't know. That's also like
• 53:20
  Speaker 5: a nice part about traveling the kids is it's like
• 53:21
  Speaker 5: it's like kind of innocent and like yes.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: See, yes, we stayed at an airbnb in London. It
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: was unreasonably an uncharacteristically crazy hot. When we were there
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: in May, it was ninety degrees the first couple of days.
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: It was crazy, and we stayed in place obviously that
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: had no AC and the kids were like, I think
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: I'm dying. But it built character. And my daughter is
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: at Sleepway Camp right now and she is apparently complaining
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: to all of her friends that this is just like London,
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: and it was, and they're all like, I'm sorry what
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: you're complaining that, it just it's just like London. Oh
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: you poor sweet child, and all of her friends are
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: making fun of her about it.
• 54:04
  Speaker 4: So I agree with it.
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: I'm so American now that like the lack of AC
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: and ice in Europe, I can't do it anymore.
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: It's the it's the dryers that get me. Actually, we
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: came home with such an appreciation for America that I
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: wrote a whole Fox News piece about it. Because there
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: was no AC, there was no dryers, and the kids
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: were so funny because.
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: I have a dry until I was twenty seven.
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: So they put on their clothes that had been hanged drying,
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: and they were kind of stiff, and they're like, what's
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: wrong with my underwear and my shirt? I'm like, welcome,
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: to the rest of the world. It gives you, It
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: gives you an appreciation for America. This was really fun
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: and I think we should do this again. That we
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: kept you up until ten o'clock at night, and I cam, sorry.
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: Were you going to go partying together? Early earlier you
• 54:54
  Speaker 4: were going to go Passian party.
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: No, I was going to make her come to DC.
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: There's a there's a farmer's market on the mall. No
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: one listening to this is going to be able to
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: go because it's going to be over by the time
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: this episode or sorry everyone, but I was going to
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: go to the mall because there's a farmer's market and
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: it looked really cute. But then when Nikki told me no,
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: I kind of lost my will and so then I
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: didn't go.
• 55:14
  Speaker 4: It's fair long.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: It's kind of Nicky's fault.
• 55:18
  Speaker 5: It is if you want to put anything else fun.
• 55:20
  Speaker 5: So another time I'll have your brunch and not have
• 55:23
  Speaker 5: kosher bagels.
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that was really it was a fun time.
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: It was actually thank you for joining us. It's really
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: fun and we'll have to do this again next time.
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: You have a crazy story, either personal or professional.
• 55:40
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm going to Paris in like six weeks with
• 55:42
  Speaker 5: my eleven year old for my birthday. Hey, it's so
• 55:45
  Speaker 5: much fun.
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: So this is the other thing I love about you.
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: I was trying to wrap it up, but this is
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: the other thing that I love about you is that
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: you genuinely like your children. And I also genuinely like
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: my children because they're fun to be around.
• 55:56
  Speaker 5: They're funny, like it's right, like there's the nature nurture
• 55:59
  Speaker 5: thing and then watching them just develop and like where
• 56:01
  Speaker 5: did you? Like why is my eleven year old so
• 56:03
  Speaker 5: into dungeons and dragons? Like where did this? What is
• 56:06
  Speaker 5: going on? He walks around our house with a wan
• 56:08
  Speaker 5: and he calls it doing stick business and like like
• 56:11
  Speaker 5: it's like very officially, he's like, I'm gonna go do
• 56:13
  Speaker 5: some stick business now, Like.
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: I don't understand boys. This is my problem I really have.
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: It's thank god I have a girl. I have girls,
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: have multiple girls.
• 56:20
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and my doll is so different. It's just like
• 56:22
  Speaker 5: it's fascinating to kind of like watch them. They're at
• 56:23
  Speaker 5: like an interesting age, like I found babies like kind
• 56:26
  Speaker 5: of boring. Like it's like you're fine, but like they're
• 56:28
  Speaker 5: like little like love blobs.
• 56:29
  Speaker 4: Like you guess you had them back to back.
• 56:31
  Speaker 5: Yes, I blacked out for like years of my life
• 56:33
  Speaker 5: because that's what I'm doing.
• 56:34
  Speaker 4: I'm pregnant and I have nine month old.
• 56:36
  Speaker 5: So yeah, I don't remember like chunks of my life.
• 56:39
  Speaker 5: So it's fine. I figured there was a period where
• 56:41
  Speaker 5: I was like, will I die of exhaustion or caffeine
• 56:43
  Speaker 5: poisoning TDA?
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: But yeah, and then you survived and it's really fun.
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: Now yeah, okay you at the end, all right, until
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: next week. I also want to say thank you to
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: who might be a relative of Nurse Kate Johnson who
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: left a sort of her name was john Sten. I
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: don't know, maybe it was a relative, maybe not, but
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: thank you for leaving that review. Please subscribe and leave
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: us more reviews because it makes us feel happy. And
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: we're not talking into a void which we got our
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• 57:13
  Speaker 1: a lot of you out there. Don't forget to follow
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: us on Instagram and theoretically Twitter, but we don't treat
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• 57:17
  Speaker 5: Sorry.
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: And subsec, which is actually where we are subsec the
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: mom Wars dot subsec dot com. Nicky, where can people
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: find you?
• 57:24
  Speaker 5: We are at defending n dot org so they can
• 57:27
  Speaker 5: learn all about problems in schools at the K twelve
• 57:30
  Speaker 5: and higher ed level. They can submit tips, ideas for investigations.
• 57:33
  Speaker 5: We have lots of research projects into different problems in school,
• 57:37
  Speaker 5: all different topics, so lots of material there.
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: And on Twitter you're I am.
• 57:41
  Speaker 5: At Nicky Neely, and I c K I and E
• 57:44
  Speaker 5: I OY and your delight and I love you, Thank.
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: You, thanks rat, thanks everyone from joining us until next week.
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: Saddle up
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