Latest / Mom Wars / Open Marriages Never Work

Transcript

Open Marriages Never Work · Mom Wars

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: From the front lines of the mom Wars. Here's Bethany
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Mandel and Kara Kennedy.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of your favorite podcast.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: My name is Bethany Mandel, and I had to go
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: through the editorial pages of The Free Press to find
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: a replacement for my friend Kara Kennedy, who is still
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: on maternity leave and just left me to podcast all alone.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: And I picked up one of my favorite columnists ever anywhere,
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: and then I just suckered her into coming on, and
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: for some silly reason she said, yeah, so here we are.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: I am joined by kat Rosenfield. She is a calumnist
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: for The Free Press and the author of several novels,
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: which I was admitting. I never have someone on the
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: podcast that I haven't read their book, but I have
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: not you read your book, but my husband has read
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: all of your books, and so I feel like there's
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: like an osmosis thing that happened.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, I don't know, it's no, that's how that works.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no. But he's a big fan. He I
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: I the first one he bought. I was like, oh,
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: that was nice of you, and he was like, yeah,
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: it's actually good. And I was like, oh, that's so nice.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: And then he just kept reading your books and I
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: was like, oh, it must actually be if you are
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: going back again and again to the same Well.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is how I get people, you know. I
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: write one thing they like and then they get hooked
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: and you know, and then I get your whole family
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: the same way.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: There you go. So how did you start writing like,
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: what like novels?
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, oh, I kind of fell backwards into it.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: It was two thousand and eight. The economy had imploded.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: I had been trying to move into being a copywriter
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: and instead I ended up unemployed. And my husband knew
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: that I had had a novel and a drawer, and
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: he was like, why don't you finish that since you're
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: not going to really have an opportunity to just work
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: on something like that and be unemployed long term, you know,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: like this again, And so I did and that ended
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: up being my first book.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Amazing, amazing. And so how you've written three now or four?
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Shut up? Seriously? And I don't know if we own
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: all of them, because I think we own three or four.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would guess that, don't. You don't own the
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: early work because I was a young adult fiction writer.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: That was where I got my start, which meant that
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: I was a fly on the wall when everybody in
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: that community started to lose their minds, and I ended
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: up starting to write about that a little bit. And
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: I don't write young adult fiction anymore for that reason,
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: but I do have an interesting career as a culture
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: writer also for that reason.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Okay, so that is actually why. That was the intended
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: purpose of why I had you on, because I wanted
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: to talk about your more recent culture writings. So but
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: now I'm remembering all of this, so rewind back to
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: being a young adult writer and having this all on float,
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Like what what happened? Because I've written so much about
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: how the literature world for kids is just like insane.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Someone posted today, actually my actually she was my nears
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: just she was my book assistant, she was my research assistant,
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: and she posted that. In Massachusetts, there's a website for
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: the health classes and for fourth graders. There's a graphic
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: photo of a man enjoying what the internet has to
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: offer in his bed. Oh this and it's like full,
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: it's very graphic, and it's for fourth graders.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: I assume you mean he's watching like cooking videos.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right, Yeah, I try to keep this show like
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: okay enough to keep in the background when kids are around.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't I mean, maybe it's just
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: my kids. My kids have heard everything.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, cooking videos, yeah, enjoying them in bed as one does.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: What happened to this? So okay? The sort of TLDR is.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Around twenty fourteen, people in One's publishing and young adult
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: fiction got very obsessed with the kind of proto ideology
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: of what would eventually become known as woke. And it
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: was I think initially well intentioned. You know, they wanted
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: to see a greater diversity of stories being told by
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: a greater diversity of people. Ultimately, though, as you know
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: so often happens with well intentioned social justice oriented movements,
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: this became primarily a tool for extremely grasping, opportunistic people
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: to try to eliminate the competition in order to promote
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: themselves professionally. And this sort of crazy orthodoxy took over
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: in the young adult fiction space around twenty sixteen and
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: just became very all consuming. It was very conformist. I
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: think there are a few different reasons for this, but
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: one of the things that really spurned the kind of changed.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: The change in the content of the books was partly
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: this desire to see very certain kind of political or
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: politically correct, progressively pious ideas being promoted. The idea was that,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: like we were educators, we needed to be instructing kids
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: properly morally, we needed to like get everyone on the
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: right side of history. This was partly about politics, but
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: it was also, in my opinion at least partly about
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: the fact that a lot of the people working and
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: especially writing in children's publishing were sort of maladjusted adults
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: who wanted to write books for the unhappy kid they
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: had been. They had this idea that, like, you know,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: when I was like a gay thirteen year old or
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: you know, or confused or awkward, if I had just
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: had a book, you know, that showed me what I
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: you know, what I want, what I want as an adult,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: that I would have been less unhappy. I think that
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: they projected a lot of their kind of like adult
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: anxieties and issues onto children's literature, and the books got
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: a little weird as a result.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and that's not conjecture. I have read so
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: many interviews with child authors and young adult authors where
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: they say that explicitly that this is written for twelve
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: year old me, ten year old me, eight year old me.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: And I see a lot of this kind of theme
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: in I mean across the spectrum. And I noticed it
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: when I was first in college. It was like a
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: physician healed myself. And so everyone in a nutrition class
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: had an eating disorder. Everyone in a psych class had
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: their own mental struggles that they were dealing with and
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: they were trying to fix themselves. Everyone in a communications
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: class was autistic and could not communicate to save their lives,
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: and that's why they were a communications major. And so
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: I definitely have observed this in the children's literature space
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: that it decentered the story and you know, the beauty
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: of literature and instead became like, this is my agenda,
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: and I'm very open about it. And not only is
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: that annoying from you know, if you don't share that agenda,
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: but it also just makes for bad literature.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, to be a successful young
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: adult fiction writer, you do have to have certain proximity,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: like emotionally and intellectually to the experience of being a teenager.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: But it is possible for that proximity to be healthy
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: and that it is possible for that proximity to be unhealthy.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: And I think that you know a certain you don't
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: really get to decide who gravitates towards literature for the
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: unhealthy reason, but then their books end up getting produced,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: and that, yeah, is what it is.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: I have read, unfortunately, so much of this literature. It
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: was funny. Actually, we were talking before we started about
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: my cleaning lady. She's like cleaning out my counters right
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: now and everything because it's very per past over. And
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: she found a stack of children's books that I've used
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: for work that I would never let my children read,
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: and so it's funny. She found like Pride Puppy George,
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: which was a young adult story about an individual who
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: went from Melissa to George, or maybe it was George
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: to Melissa, I don't remember which one. One of them.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: They had to change the name of the book because
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: they dead named, and so the author apologized for dead
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: naming her own character and making it the title of
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: her book. Yeah, it's really painful, but I've read a
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: lot of these books and I'm always struck by it
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: doesn't seem like they've met a kid this age. Because
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: George or Melissa whatever it was I can't remember was
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: written for a kid my older two children's ages. I
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: have my kids run the gamut from twelve down to three,
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: and so I was reading George like, my kids would
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: never get into this, Like has she ever read a
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: children's book for this age? Rage Let alone met a
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: twelve year old. I can't see my kids getting sucked
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: in the same way they're sucked into JK. Rowling or
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: Rick ryed In or like any of those kinds of books,
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: because it's there's just it's flat, like it feels very
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: prescriptive and preachy and annoying, and I wanted to shoot
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: myself when I was reading it.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is interesting how much those books tend to
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: just not resonate with the children for whom they're supposedly intended.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: This was something that I thought was very interesting during
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: the controversy surrounding gender queer Do you remember that it
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: was like a big deal just a few years back,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: And that book is of course, I mean, objectively, it's
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: pretty graphic, it's pretty inappropriate. It depicts cartoon sex acts
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: involving a dildo. I'm sorry, we're trying to keep this
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: family friendly and never it depicts really graphic cooking videos.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: It is something that was brought into libraries by adults,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: you know, saying, well, you know, we think it's important
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: for kids to have access to this book. And that
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: was really about the political anxieties of the adults who
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: were in charge of deciding what was in the library.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, a big thing about so many of these
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: books that were the subject of so much controversy, including
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: gender Queer, is that not a single child had ever
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: checked them out. They were just there, you know, and
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: they were not interesting to their intended audience, and so
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: they just became instead these kind of cultural flashpoints to
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: do battle over, but nobody was actually reading them.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I just I just wrote a piece for the
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: Washington Examiner this week about like an alternative library association,
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: like who who could not get more exciting than that?
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: But they in their mission statement they say, very plainly,
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: like the America. I don't they don't call out the
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: American Library Association, but effectively, this is what they're doing.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: They're saying, we believe unlike the other folks. They don't
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: say that, but we believe that children childhood is a
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: separate stage of maturity that needs to be treated as
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: separate because one of the things that really disturbs me about,
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: you know, the progressive takeover of libraries and the window
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: that it gives us into this ideology is that like,
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: they don't think that childhood is a thing. They don't
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: think it exists. And so that line from like there
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: to minor attracted persons is a straight through line, like
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: there's just there's no do not pass, go, do not
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: collect two hundred dollars. And I find it one of
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: the most disturbing aspects of like this woke progressive ideology,
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: that the total erasure of childhood as a distinct unit
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: of maturity in life.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I had a thought about that angle on things,
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: so I can't really speak to it. But when I
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: was writing about the sort of soft censorship that takes
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: place in libraries through this process called weading, which is
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: very like unilateral, you have a librarian who's just deciding
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: what to remove from their collections or what to like
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: remove from the display cases. And it was such an
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: interesting thing because it had become this flashpoint. You know,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: we're always talking about book banning, like we're against banned books,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: we're for free speech, but so often the books that
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: are being described as banned, I've never you know, there's
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: never been any problem accessing them. They're just books that
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: conservatives conservatives object to, whereas the books that you have
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: trouble accessing are the ones that librarians object to. Librarians
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: do tend to be liberal, and so there's this question
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: of like what actually does it mean to ban a book,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: especially in the digital age where everything is infinitely replicable,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: And it's really about two things. One is, you know
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: what is front and center at your library, which, of
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: course you know, there's also this question like the battle
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: for the soul of the library? Right you go in
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: and if all you see is, you know, everything like
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Rainbow Pride for children in the kids section, you understand
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: if you're a more conservative parent, more conservative person, that like,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: this space is not for you, which is an interesting
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: development I don't think is great. But the other question
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: is like, you know, what does it mean to censor?
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: Who really has the power to censor? And my argument
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: was that the people who are able to quietly remove
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: books from shelves, you know, from library collections, to do
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: so on an ideological basis, who aren't really accountable to
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: anybody except for themselves, and who also increasingly are able
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: to have a chilling effect on books like Back at
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: the Source, to basically persuade authors to write differently or
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: not write at all because they don't think that it's
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: serving the proper political purpose. That's really where the power
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: to censor lies in our contemporary era.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: I had that experience when we so Carol Markoitz and
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: I wrote a book, Stolen Youth. It came out exactly
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: three years ago, and so we were shopping at like
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: four and a half years ago, like the book Proposal,
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: And this was at that moment in time, like that
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: snapshot where Abigail Schreyer's book was taken out of target,
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: Ryan Anderson's book was taken off of Amazon, and then
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: like Abigail wasn't able to advertise on Amazon as well,
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: And we got knows from publishers that were completely understandable,
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: like we don't think we will actually be able to
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: have a storefront to sell your book, like your book
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: is way more offensive than Abigail Shryer's book, and that
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's the only way it will be good
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: is if it's really offensive. It has to be a
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: barn Burner and Abigail Schreyer's book was not a barn Burner.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: Neither was Ryan Anderson's. And so eventually the Daily Wire
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: acquired it and we wrote it for the Daily Wire.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: And in my conversations with editors, writers, agents, everyone across
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: the board, they said exactly what you just said, that
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: chilling effect of like you have to fit the narrative,
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: you have to fit the quota. One of the editors
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: I spoke with at a major children's publishing how said,
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: I cannot I have a literal quota system. I cannot
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: publish a white straight man. I don't. I'm not allowed.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: And I think about like C. S. Lewis and all
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: these like that, quality literature just would not exist. And
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: so I wonder how many people just don't what we're
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: missing in the literature world.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, at this point, the question of where
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: are the straight, white male writers is an interesting one,
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: and I hope it's you know, somebody addresses it. I mean,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: it's being addressed somewhat. Jacob Savage wrote that good piece
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: for Compact that kind of looked at some of the numbers,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: you know, the statistics who's being published. That's sort of
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: outside the children's space. But it is interesting to think
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: about how the landscape of who is being published now
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: has changed, because there was back in twenty fourteen, which
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: you know, it's like that was more than ten years ago.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: There was this sense of like, oh, well, white men
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: had their day. You know, they they've dominated literature. It's
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: somebody else's turn. And you know, I suppose if you
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: go back to certain length of time you look at
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: the American literatyah, sorry, literary landscape, you say, okay, who
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: was being published at that time? Yeah, you're going to
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: find a lot of straight white men. But that was
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: like the sixties or the seventies, And at this point,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: the sins of the boomer literati are being visited on
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: a generation of men who have never known, like, you know,
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: a day in the sun. They've never experienced this sort
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: of boogeyman of white male privilege. And I think that
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: we're doing a little bit too much of punishing gen
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: Z for the at this point probably like imagined sins
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: of what men have came before them.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: We also don't even have to imagine that, like people
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: are not writing these children's books anymore, because you're not
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: writing young adult fiction anymore, would you I'll be writing
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: this stuff if this was not the landscape, probably not.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: I got into Ya at a moment that I referred
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: to as peak YA. It was right after Twilight broke
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: out big, and there was just so much money and
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: so much room in young adult fiction to do a
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: lot of different stuff. And I was writing very literary
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: fiction for young adults. So it was like basically, you know,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: in terms of like the prose quality and the themes,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: it was relatively dark, it was relatively adult. I just
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: had teenage characters basically, and you know, it was great
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: at that moment to be able to do that, to
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: have the room to do that. But the landscape started
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: contracting at that point in a way that I I
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: don't know, I think that like because of the way
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: things were moving, and also because of the way my
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: interests were shifting. You know, I was already writing like
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: basically like adult stuff fourteens, so it made more sense
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: for me to just write for adults, even if I
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: hadn't been pushed out, which of course I was.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: Hi. I'm Ben Sas and I'm Chris Steierwalt, and this
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: is not dead yet.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: We're all dying, but some of us have been brought
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: face to face with that reality.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: However long each of us have to do it though.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: We all want to live a good life, one with meaning,
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: love and joy, and our guests are here.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: To help us do exactly that.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: Now available for download and streaming at ricochet dot com.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: Ricochet Yeah, join the conversation.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: So this podcast was basically a bait and switch because
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: I asked you to come on to talk about Lindy West,
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: and then we just spent half an hour not talking
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: about Lindy West.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: That's okay, we can still talk about Lindy West. That's literature.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: Also, I know. So I think there's actually a through
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: line here from the conversation we just had to the
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: conversation that I intended to have, which is on Lindy West.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: I think it's the same Brooklyn Park Slope intellectuals who
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: led the censorship regime NYA, who are the ones who
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: are like I think Palliamory is great? Before we start
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: talking about Lindy West, can you just give everyone a
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: like cliff Notes explanation of who she is who hasn't
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: been down the rabbit hole that you and I have
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: been down.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: For the last Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's funny because
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: for me, you know, like free speech liberal feminists who
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: grew up in the nineties, Lindy West and I are
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: about the same age, and so I have been familiar
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: with her all my adult life. I've read her stuff.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: I used to really enjoy her work, I would, you know,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: makes it a little bit sad to see what's happened
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: to her. She started out as a blogger at The Stranger,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: the Seattle All Weekly. She then published a memoir called
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: Shrill that was made into a Hulu series. She was
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: a writer at Jezebel. I just transposed those in the timeline.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: She was a writer at jezbel first, then she published
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: her memoir, then the Hulu series. And she has always
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: been like a fat activist. She's very fat. She's also
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: very pretty. She's very unapologetic about, you know, saying that
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: she deserves to have a good life. The end of
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: her memoir Shrill was basically kind of the bringing that
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: to fruition. She meets a very nice guy, you know,
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: conventionally attractive, who marries her, and that's like her happy ending.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Then she recently released this new memoir called Adult Braces,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: which kind of complicates that narrative, and it is all
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: about this road trip she took in twenty twenty one
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: after or her husband. Well we'll, you know, we'll debate
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: did he, you know, like emotionally blackmail her into polyamory
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: or in opening up their marriage? You know, was had?
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: She always agreed to this and she was just being
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: a brat about it. Who's to say, I think we're
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: going to say. But so it's all about, you know,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: how she she did this cross country road trip to
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: try to make peace with the fact that her husband
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: wanted an open marriage. And then when she went back home,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: she and he and his girlfriend, who I think not
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: coincidentally is thin moved into a cabin that her family owns,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: and they have been a three person marriage ever since.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: So I think the most important part of that part
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: of it, the cabin, is that she sleeps in the guest.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: Rooms for the most part.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So, I first of all, I can't get
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: enough of the story for several reasons. One, it's pure voyeurism.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: I just I can't get enough of how bizarre and
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: weird this is. And I own the fact that I'm
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: just being a gossipy, catty person. Number two. I think
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: that it really speaks to something that progressive activists are
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: trying to do in our society. I was first. I
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: don't think I was really that familiar with her, but
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: I was first, sort of. I got on the train
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: of Lindy West because there was a Modern Love column
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: about her. It came out about a week ago on
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: the fourteenth. I want to read how the author introduces
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: her interview with Lindy West, because I think it is
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: very instructive of what they're trying to do here. And
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: So this is a staff writer. Her name is Anna Martin,
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: and she writes whenever non monogamy comes up in conversation
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: with my friends. And we are thirty somethings in Brooklyn,
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: so this is not infrequent. I always say, I always
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: say some version of the same thing. I deeply admire
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: the people who make it work, but I don't think
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: I could ever do it myself. The truth is, I
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: worry that I'm too insecure. Really, that's the lesson.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: I don't know why polyamory is the fetch that everyone
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: is trying to make happen right now. This actually may
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: be a good place to debut my conspiracy theory, which
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: is that there is some guy just who has a
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: lot of money and wants a harem and doesn't want
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: to have to feel bad about it, and he's like,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to throw everything I've got at making
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: harems socially acceptable even politically correct to have, and you know,
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: and he's astroturfing this massive campaign, like in every mainstream
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: legacy outlet, to make polyamory happen.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: So I think it's I think it's liberal kink. It's
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: it's and it's to me because they would not be
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: okay with it. Like if we were talking about Mormons
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: and not not like the extremist Mormons, not LDS, but
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: I think it's FLDS fundamentalist LDS, they would they would
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: think that that's kooky religion. But this is, this is
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: like their weird, kinky religion that they've decided, and it's
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: weird because it's very biblical, like they're they're just stepping
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: into a time machine and going back to when we
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: had to have polygamy in order to repopulate the earth
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: because there was one man and thirty women because all
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: the other men died in a war. I think that
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: it's part of just this overall effort to destroy the
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: building blocks of civilization, the foundational aspects of it. And
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: they're doing it with gender as well, like there's no
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: such thing as a man or a woman. It's all
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: you know, what you decide to be. And monogamy is another,
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: you know, basic building block, and they've decided let's let's
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: try to do away with that too, and childhood as well.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: That's an interesting theory. I'm not sure I agree with you,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: but that's really it is your podcast.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, No, disagree with me.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: I mean I I like well, I mean I obviously
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: I like my conspiracy theory about the guy like maybe
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: it's maybe it's maybe it's several men sitting in like
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: a room smoking cigars, being like.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not your scene. So we've got it. We've
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: got to figure out who it.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: Is, you know, it could it could be whoever killed him. No,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. I think he'd probably kill himself.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: No, I don't know. I disagree with you. There's not
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: a conspiracy theory that I have not actually brought into.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: Oh I love this. I want maybe later to hear
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: about what your favorite one is. But just to return
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: to the topic of polyamory. What is interesting about this
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: to me is that the way that it's spun, especially
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: by West in her book, is that it is like
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: the most politically progressive, perhaps even feminist thing, to have
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: this open marriage. And that is specifically because she's a
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: straight white woman, but her husband is is a person
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: of color and now who now, I guess sometime within
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: the past couple of years, decided to go by they
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: them pronouns, you know, announced announced he was non binary.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: I don't do they them as a matter of like principle,
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: so I'm just gonna keep calling him him. But and
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: then the girlfriend, whose name is Roya, is like, in
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: addition to being thin, I think she is Persian and
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: also queer. And so the idea is that I mean,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: she says this in her book that basically the husband,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: when he initially talked to her about the polyamory conversation,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: persuaded her that her desire for monogamy was sort of
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: somehow connected to like a desire to own him like
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: a sleeve, Like she's a white woman who wants to
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: own a black man. And she was like, oh, I
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: never thought about it that way. Now I understand how
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: it's actually really problematic that I don't want you to
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: have sex with other people, and it's just I mean,
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: I don't know, Like, on the one hand, I guess
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: I have a grudging respect for this guy that he's
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: managed to worm his way into a place where he
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: can be the cad to end all cads and people
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: are going to act like he's actually doing something amazing
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: and progressive, but at the same time he's awful.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, an odd dude. I get a lot of the
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: same vibes from not the man that Lena Dunnam married,
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: but her boyfriend before that, where he kept telling her
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: we can't get married until gay marriage is legal, and
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: then gay marriage was legal and he was like, I
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: just don't want to marry you. And I feel like
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: both men really victimized these young women because of their deep,
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: deep seated insecurities about their weight. She wrote a piece
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: Somebody found, an old piece that she wrote and about
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: her wedding, and she said, as a body positive activist,
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: she wanted to make a bold political statement at her way,
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: and so she says, thin girls were chosen, treasured and
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: treated like a prize. Fat girls were settled for at best,
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: and we settled in turn for whomever would take us.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: And then she talks about, you know, marrying this guy
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: who did that for her, and it is so sad
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: now knowing that he's just cheating right in front of
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: her face, with a thin woman in her bedroom, Like
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: does she not have friends?
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: It is so tragic. I mean, the fact that what
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: you just brought up that article is actually, I think
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: such an important piece of this puzzle, which is Lindy
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: West really created both a brand and an identity around
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: the idea of being a fat woman who married a
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: conventionally attractive man and got her happy ending. Yeah, and
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: that was so important to not just like her professional persona,
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: but I think to the story that she had been
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: telling herself about herself. To admit that actually he's a
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: bad man and a cheater who doesn't respect her, who
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: doesn't love her the way that a man should love
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: his wife, that has to be devastating in so many ways,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, And for that reason, even though like this,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: within this book Lindy West reveals herself to be a
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: kind of a cruel person, I still really feel for her,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: Like I just I think that it's such a horrible
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: thing that she ended up not just experiencing an objectively
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: heartbreaking situation, but painting herself into a corner where she
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: couldn't even say that it's heartbreaking. She can't call it
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: what it is.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: And he did a bait and switch. He got married
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: and and you know, they had their happy ending, and
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: she wrote about it and she put it out there,
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: and then he pulled it out from under her and said,
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: if you want to stay with me, you have to
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: be okay with me having sex with another woman in
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: the room next door.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so supposedly this was something that he told her about,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: like he was like, I, you know, I'm not good
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: at monogamy. I think, you know, I think monogamy is
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: unreasonable and bad. Then the whole conversation about monogamy maybe
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: being racist, like all of this supposedly took place before
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: they actually got married. Oh but but there, but he
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: also wasn't dating other people then, right, right, It's the
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: timeline is a little bit hard to parse. The other
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: thing that's hard to pars is they allegedly had like
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: an agreement, but she didn't really want it. She never
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: wanted it. She never wanted to be with other people.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: You know, she didn't want him to be with other people,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: but she like said okay to this because she also
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: didn't want to lose him. I guess tell as old
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: as time, right, But even within the con finds of
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: this agreement they supposedly had, he still violated it. One
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: of the things that you learn in the course of
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: reading this book is he had not just the one
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: thin girlfriend. He was also having an affair with a
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: second thin girlfriend who lived like next door to them.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: And she's of course not dating anyone, right, Like, she's
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: not taking advantage of this open marriage.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: No, no, I mean, except that she supposedly sometimes has
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: threesomes with her husband and the other woman. But you
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: do not get the sense reading the book that this
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: is something that happens very often. I definitely do not
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: think that she and the other woman are engaging with
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: each other sexually when the husband is not around, right,
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: So it really is kind of a harem situation.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: So what bothers me about this whole situation? My mother
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: was an uber, uber feminist. She would my mother dad
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: when I was sixteen, but she would be horrified at
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: how I turned out like pro life conservative, like what
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: did I do wrong? But I have the ability to
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: like code switch and think as my mother as like
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: the super duper progressive woman. And but my mom would
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: be of the like JK. Rowling version of feminists, where
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: she would be like, I'm sorry, you want a man
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: who's convicted of rape to have access to a woman's
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: locker room. I'm sorry? What she would feel the same
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: about this because feminists have twisted themselves into a circle,
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: into a pretzel rather to say like this is somehow
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: acceptable for a woman to be treated like this. This
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: is the epitome of abuse, and it is so disrespectful
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: and sets us back, as you know, half of humanity,
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: back to the bad things of biblical times. We got
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: rid of the polygamy. It was bad, and now they're like,
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: let's let's have let's take another look.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, what's interesting about this book to me also
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: is I mean, I've actually not seen anybody saying that
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: it's good feminist, just non feminist, liberal conservative. This is
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: an astonishing achievement at a moment which we are more
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: polarized than we've ever been. This is a cultural artifact
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: that everybody agrees is bad and everybody has a different
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: lens on it. I've seen oh God, like ten different
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: pieces written from different angles, which I think is it's
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: astonishing what a rich vein to mind this one book is.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: And you know, for that we should be grateful to
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: Lindy West forgiving it to us. But it is amazing
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: to me that everybody you know is reading this and
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: getting angry about it for different reasons, but ultimately reaching
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: the consensus that no, like this is bad. This is
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: a bad book, this is a bad situation. It just
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: feels so really sorry for her.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean maybe this is like a watershed moment.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: Hi, this is a young Culter. Welcome to my Ricochet
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: podcast and Coulter every week on Ricochet.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: You're home to Center Right conversation. Hey, that was pretty good.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: I just saw some interesting Pew research just a couple
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: of hours ago that infidelity is the lone issue polled
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: that a majority of both Republicans and Democrats believe is wrong,
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: and it pulls very closely. Eighty eight percent of Democrats
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: think it's wrong and ninety three percent of Republicans say
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: married people having an affair is wrong. And that's essentially
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: what this is. And it's just like a much more
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: warped version because at least when you're having an affair,
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: you have the respect for me to hide it. Yes,
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: in this situation, you're just flaunting it in the bedroom
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: that I own.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: That is the thing about it, that kind of I
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: don't know that I guess maybe grinds my gears the
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: most is you know, men have been cheating on their
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: wives since time immemoriam, and I guess you know vice versa,
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: the idea that like, you want to do that, and
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: you also want to make it so that like she
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: you can rub her face it and she's not allowed
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: to be upset, and if she's upset, that makes her
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: like a bad progressive and maybe a racist. That's the
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: part of it.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: It's just like, oh, come on, it's really it's deeply cruel,
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: Like he's not he's not just hurting her, he's trying
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: to hurt her. What So you said in the book,
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: which I'm wondering if you recommend actually reading the book.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: I was tempted.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: Everybody needs to read this book. Everybody in America needs
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: to read this book just so they can talk about
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: it with me personally.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: I would like to read one of your books before
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: I read this book, so I'll faund it on my Yeah,
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: I'll put it on my giant to read Pyle. But
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: is there did she did she deserve it? Did she
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: earn being so hated that he's just trying to hurt
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: her like this?
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: Oh God, I don't. I mean, who deserves this? It's,
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: like you said, incredibly cruel. And I mean there is
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: an argument to be made that this is a mess,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: very much of her own creation, and you know, especially
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: since she has chosen in the wake of releasing this
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: memoir to just double down and insist that everybody's misunderstanding it.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: But to me, that just is like, that's just sad
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: on top of sad. You know, it just makes me
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: feel worse for her.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: It reminds me of Eat Pray Love. Do you do
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: you get that vibe at all from it?
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: You know, I think that the hope was that it
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: would be received is Eat Pray Love. But the thing
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: about Eat Pray Love is that and about Elizabeth Gilbert
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: in general, you know, you get the sense that she's
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: not lying to herself about herself. You know, she's I
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: think she's a very impulsive person and I have a
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: theory she know, she recently wrote this book we're talking
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: about Elizabeth Gilbert. Now, she wrote this addiction memoir called
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: All the Way to the River, and my theory, having
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: read that book, is that her actual addiction is to
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: telling stories about her life, and she will just continue
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: to do things to make content of her life, you know,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: so that she'll have a new story to tell, which
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: is a kind of an interesting compulsion and of itself.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: But I think that she is truthful about all of this.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: I think that she's you know, and she's messy, and
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: she's a hell of a storyteller. I mean it's her
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: books are like being cornered at a party by somebody
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: who's like had the most insane life experience you've ever
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: heard of, and they've got you by the wrist and
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: they're going to tell you and they're not going to
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: let you go, and you're like, I'm here for it.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: Lindy West's book feels more like an attempt to persuade
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: the reader, but really persuade herself that she's not unhappy,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: and I don't think she succeeds in doing either.
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. When I read the interview in Modern Love,
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: I thought to myself, Oh you are this is a
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: You've put a lot of effort into trying to convince
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: yourself you're okay and that you're happy. And it's that
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: meme of the girl just sobbing and Messcara going down
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: her face and she's like, I'm fine, I'm fine.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: That is literally the book's cover. Wait, seriously, yes, it
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: is a are you kidding? It's a cartoon porter of
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: Lindy West grinning through tears with mess Scara running down
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: her face.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: I had no idea. Yeah, oh my god, oh my god,
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: how did okay? So? I asked this as a rhetorical question.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: Does she talk about how she has friends? Like? Does
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: she have friends? Because I have a group chat. We
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: used to have a podcast. It was called Lady Brains,
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: and a lot of the listeners to the show used
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: to listen to Lady Brains, And so I have a
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: group chat of my best friends who we've all been
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: very close for like fifteen years. If I said that
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: my husband had said a fraction of this, they would
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: be on my front door. They would be like ready
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: to go, like, yeah, a few cases packed, we're getting
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: you out of here. Does she talk about friends?
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: She does have friends, and I wonder, I don't know,
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: it's it's hard to say, you know, is she in
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: a position where she can be told what other people
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: see about her life. I understand that, Like she certainly
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: has spent a lot of time dismissing everybody who criticized
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: her book thus far as being you know, a hater
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: who doesn't understand, or maybe like, oh, these people are conservatives,
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: so who cares what they think that kind of thing.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know if anybody close to her has has
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: tried to step in, or if she's in a place
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: where she could receive that information and without just shutting down.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: I just want to say to her, you deserve better
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: than this. Like it's not because I'm conservative, it's like,
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: as a woman, like woman to woman, you deserve better.
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: No one deserves being treated this way. And I feel
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: the same about what Elizabeth Gilbert did to her husband,
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: like she was the villain of E Pray Love. No
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: one deserves what she did to him. But I that
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: used to be like the feminist thing to do is
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: to hype another woman and say you deserve so much better.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: I I mean, those people are not her friends. If
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: they haven't said this, well.
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: Everybody, I think this is what I will say my
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: sense from the book is that she's very much in
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: a bubble with people who are also on team polyamory
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: as woke basically. And it's what is interesting to me
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: about that is that so much of the story that
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: Lindy West tells about her life is really only applicable
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: to somebody who lives inside that bubble. Even this whole
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: thing of like I'm a fat woman and I found love,
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: you know, can you believe it? You go to like
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: any rural area and like there's tons of fat people
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: falling in love and getting married, Like it's we're a
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: very fat country and we are coupling up, and you
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: know that is it's just not strange for a fat
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: woman to find love and to get married to a
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: guy who values her. I think it is strange if
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: you live in one of these kind of like coastal
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: liberal enclaves where people tend not to be fat, and
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: where you know, although nobody wants to talk about it,
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: there's quite a lot of stigma around being fat, and
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: people don't consider being fat to be attractive. And I
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: don't know, I guess maybe that's a little bit of
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: a tragedy. And she even actually writes in the book
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: about being approached by men while she's on this solo
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: road trip. I mean, she's got a very pretty face,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: and I think that she's not you know, she's not
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: repulsive to men in general, but she's so grossed out
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: when this happens because she reads the guys approaching her
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: as likely conservatives or you know, or maga people, and
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: so it's like, ew, how dare you? Which is I
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: don't know, it's I guess maybe ironic is the right
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: word to describe that.
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: I think that one of the most one of the
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: least conservative things about me is my soft spot for
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: Lena Dunham. And this is this just reminds me so much.
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: It's it's the it's the whole. It's the same ethos
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: of like I accept myself but then I surround myself
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: with Blake Lively and Taylor Swift and it makes me
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: feel like crap about myself.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The thing is, Lena Dunham seems overall to me
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: just as a casual observer, more well adjusted.
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: I think she is at this point, yes.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean this is the thing is like,
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: this is a very this feels this memoir feels like
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: something that Lena Dunham would have written in her twenties
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: as auto fiction. You know, it feels like girls, except
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: its real life. It's real people, and it's middle age,
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: which makes it I mean, it's certainly not cute. It
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: also feels tragic for that reason.
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: Didn't she write about how she when they got married.
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: I'm almost certain I remember this correctly. When when they
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: got married she pictured them having like a white pick
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: offence and having a kid or two, like she had
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: pictured a traditional quote unquote life of you know, being
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: monogamous and having a child.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I wanted that she did. And I mean,
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: whether it was reasonable to think that that would happen
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: with this man who, at the age of I think
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: twenty eight, was twice divorced with two children from his
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: previous marriages.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: Oh wow.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: You know, we can debate whether that was a naive
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: thing to imagine that would happen with him specifically or not.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: But but yeah, I think that is what she wanted.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: She's now convinced herself that it's not what she wants.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: She wants to be in a threttle where she sleeps
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: in the guest room while her husband has sex with
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: somebody else. Down the hall.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: Wow, it's so tragic. It's really very sad. I think
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: it's comforting that you, at least in your observation of
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: like reading everything that there is out there that there
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: is it sounds like universal condemnation, because that was not
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: what I would have expected, like, you know, living in
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: my priors of like, oh, of course progressives love this.
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: It's nice to hear that that's not the case.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think everybody just finds it sad, you know,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: again for different reasons. But there's really very little too
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: like about this story unless you are a character in it.
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: Right. I wonder what her what her family and you know,
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: Roya's family think about, Like that's the that's the picture
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: that I always want when you get these stories. I follow,
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: and it's weird that I do because both my parents
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: are dead. But one of my cultural things that I
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: enjoy following is people who are estranged from their parents,
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: And so I follow accounts of people from both sides,
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: people who are estranged and who did the estranging, and
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: I always want to hear the other side whenever, some whenever,
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: like the doormat mom. This is like one of the
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: Instagram accounts I follow whenever she posts I would like
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: to see a tet. I'd like to see her daughter respond. Yeah,
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: and I really want to see what the other people
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: in Linda Linda West's life think about this from their perspective.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there was So this was a very
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: weird deep cut of short lived substack drama. The writer
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: Meg Keen on her substack posted a review of the book.
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: She wrote about how it was, you know, not feminist,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: and you know it was basically a depiction of abuse.
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: And the husband showed up the comments and argued with
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: a bunch of people for a while, and then I
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: guess maybe came to his senses and deleted everything that
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: he had said. Who But yes, I wild times out
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: here on the internet.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: I love substack. I love it. I once had an
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: ex boyfriend when I was working at Commentary Magazine. I
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: ran the back end of the website, and I had
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: an ex boyfriend who used to white night me in
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: the comments section, and he signed up with his real email,
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: but he would use a burner account as his user name,
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: and he had no way of knowing that I was
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: the person who ran the back end, and so I
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: was like, dude, I know that it's you. It's kind
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: of weird. We broke up a long time ago. I'm
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: married now, Like, you don't have to white night me
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: in the comments.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: Oh well, you know, but were you right?
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: Like yes, I was right.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know, maybe he's just on the side
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: of truth.
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: No, but him and I disagreed deeply about everything, and
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: that was part of why we broke up. Also, he
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: was a cheater and terrible guy.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: But I maybe this was his way of saying he
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: was sorry.
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: Maybe, But I'm I'm always interested, you know, as I'm
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: interested in like the other side, hearing the other side.
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: What frustrates me is when people are not as like
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: transparent as you and I are, Like we are the
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: most stalkable people on in America. Like you wonder what
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: we think, Like, just log onto my Twitter and you'll
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: find out. I'm my Instagram. Also, I'm updating my story
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: several times a day. I think it's deeply unjust when
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: people are not as stalkable, and I think it's I
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: think it's not fair, And well that's what I have
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: to say about that.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I'll go ahead and agree with you there.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: Although what's funny is also that you know, being an
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: open book just seems to convince people that there's all
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: of this secret, sinister like insane stuff that you believe
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: and are not saying.
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: Okay, so I want to end on this note. Actually, Okay,
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: what is your favorite conspiracy theory that you believe? And
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: then I'll tell you mine.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, My favorite conspiracy theory that I believe is that
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: the Titanic that sank was not actually the Titanic. It
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: was it was another ship called Oh, I can't remember
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: the Oh sorry, my husband would know, but I'm not
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: going to yell for him right now the phone. Yes,
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: what was it called? The ship that sank that wasn't
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: the Titanic. You don't remember, You're useless to me. I'm
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: getting another boyfriend who would remember this. But anyway, so,
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: the but the story is that there was this other
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: ship that was going to be decommissioned after this voyage
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: and they wanted, you know, for insurance purposes, to send
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: it out, you know, tend that it was the Titanic,
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: and the tragedy was not supposed to unfold the way
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: that it did. But the reason that the ship sank
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: had to do with it being this other older ship
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: that was in a state of like disrepair.
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: Got it? How mainstream is this conspiracy theory?
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: I read about it in Popular Mechanics, so I think
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: it's pretty mainstream. Okay, what's okay? What's yours?
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: Dinosaurs?
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: I think they were real?
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: No, I think that there's something like a dinosaur. But
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: the hubris, it's the hubris that really does it for me.
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: We own a lot of dinosaur books because I have
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: four boys, and the humors that they have when they're
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: like they were this tall, this is what they look like,
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: this is how fast they ran, this is what they ate,
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: and all of that certainty, it sets off my alarm bells.
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: I'm like, I don't I don't think. I don't think
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: you know that much because you've got like four bones
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: of that dinosaur, and you've constructed this whole pretense skeleton,
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: and you think you know what it looks like and
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: what it sounded like. And I just I think that
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: there were like weird creatures that existed a long, long,
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: long time ago, and we have we have no idea,
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: we don't know anything about them, and I think I
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: don't know why. I mean, I think that it's a
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: lie that has spun out of control in big paleontology.
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: But I don't know. I don't know of the I mean,
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: your your conspiracy theory has like real actual validity when
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: it goes to like the reasoning. I don't have the
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: reasoning for my dinosaur conspiracy yet, other than it's just
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: the hubris of the scientists. And I mean we kind
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: of saw it with Are you familiar with what happened
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: with Alzheimer's research?
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: I did hear about this. It's yeah, I mean devastating
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: really yeah.
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: And so it was just everyone was lying, and everyone
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: thought that everyone else wasn't lying, and so they would
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: sort of push the ball forward with the lies about
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: the research they were doing and you know, change the
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: data and whatever based on this app this thesis that
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: turned out to not be true, and everyone was lying
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: and didn't know everyone else was lying. That's what I
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: think about dinosaurs.
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, that doesn't not make sense to me.
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: I'm not necessarily sure that it applies to dinosaurs, but
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: it does apply to science in general. If you don't mind,
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: I will tell you my favorite story out of medical
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: history before I let you go. In the early nineteen hundreds,
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: at an asylum in New Jersey. There was a man
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: who ran the asylum, a doctor. His name was Henry Cotton.
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: I love where this is going. He was convinced that
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: he had found the cure for insanity. Then the source
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: of insanity. This source was your teeth. Your teeth make
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: you crazy, and so he would take people's teeth out
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: to cure them of insanity. When that didn't work, he'd
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: be like, maybe it's not your teeth, Maybe it's something
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: else in the body, and he would start removing organs.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: He had this theory. It was called focal infection. There
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: was an infection somewhere in the body that was causing insanity,
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: and he would just remove things from people, things they needed.
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: He killed dozens, if not hundreds of people at this asylum.
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: And at the time, the New York Times covered this
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: man and his practices, and they said the only tragedy
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: was that he hadn't discovered the cure for insanity sooner,
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: and then eventually they were like, never mind, and.
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: Maybe all the dead people, who was also kind of tragic.
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: By then he was dead, but not before he pulled
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: out a whole bunch of his own teeth and also
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: his wife's teeth and his children's teeth. Oh my god,
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: so Cubris not even once.
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: I love it. So this is what I love, and
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: I think this is why I'm so drawn to Lindy West.
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: I love just how crazy humanity is, every every form
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: of it. I I love watching it as an observer
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: who is not crazy, who has like a very conventional
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: normal life that I've created because I grew up in
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: a crazy house. But I just love I love looking
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: at the just shit show. I mean, we we this.
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: I'm going to just mark this as e explicit like
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: we've talked about dildos, like the ship has sailed. It
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: is such a shit show other people's lives, and I
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: I have some enjoyment looking at it from afar.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: You know, good stories, true stories always always beat the
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: you know, instructive graphic novel about dildos.
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: There you go, thank you for bringing There you go.
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: There you go. Where can people find you? Not that?
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, like I You're everywhere and you're amazing.
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: Yes, just don't don't come to my house. I am
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: on Twitter slash x as kat Rosenfield. I am writing
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: for the Free Press. I am right now in a
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: bookstore near you with my new novel How to Survive
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: in the Woods. You can find it in the thriller section.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: It's got a big old bloody knife on the cover
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: and that's about it.
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: I love it. And because we are the mom Wars,
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: where can What are the names of your young adult books?
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: Because I feel like, especially my older daughter would appreciate them.
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: I thought you were about to be like, what are
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: the names of your children? I was like, don't have
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: any I'm wrapping the childless cat Lady continuent.
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: And I didn't say it. I didn't say it. That
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: was not the focus of our of our conversation.
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: No, no, And I appreciate that because I don't really
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: have a whole lot to say about being childless that
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: is worth hearing. My young adult books are called Amelia
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: and is Dead and Gone and Inland, and I will
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: say they have mature themes in them. But if you
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: have like a literary minded kid, I think they will
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: enjoy them.
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: Amazing. All right, Well, I can't wait. Thank you for
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: joining us, folks. Don't forget to subscribe to the substack
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: where you can watch us have this conversation. Cat looks
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: at me. I have a cold. It's not as great
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: and subscribe on on your favorite podcast services of choice. Amazing.
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: All right, until next time. What do I say at
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: the end of this satellite? There we go Satellite Ricochet
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: join the conversation.