Advisory Opinions - That Hunter Biden Story

Episode Date: October 15, 2020

It’s October 15, 2020, and 12.4 percent of the votes that were cast in the 2016 election have already been cast this election cycle. Sarah and David try to discern through the tea leaves what this means for voter turnout this year. “There’s two different schools of thought here,” Sarah says. “One is that we’re on pace to have record turnout and one is that we’re simply banking Election Day votes early this time.” On today’s episode, our podcast hosts also discuss the journalistic, political, legal implications of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden story before breaking down the key ingredients to a successful marriage. Show Notes: -Divided We Fall by David French, “Emails reveal how Hunter Biden tried to cash in big on behalf of family with Chinese firm” by Emma Jo-Morris Gabriel Fonrouge in the New York Post, Malwarebytes Inc. v. Enigma Software Group USA, LLC, “Why Only Amy Coney Barrett Gets to Have It All” by Katelyn Beaty in the New York Times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You ready? I was born ready. Welcome to the Advisory Opinions Podcast. We've got some interesting stuff to talk about today. This is David French with Sarah Isker. And let's start with the quickest topic before we move on to the real meat of the podcast, which will deal with the Hunter Biden New York Post story and all the ramifications thereof. And there are many. And then we're going to answer a really interesting culture question that a listener asked us. And so stay tuned for the end of the podcast, because that's going to be an interesting

discussion. But before we get to Hunter Biden, journalism, politics and law, Sarah, I've got a question for you. Yes, sir. What is the significance of the number have cast ballots so far in the 2016 election. I thought it was the number of people who wanted to listen to our podcast. Well, yeah, I mean, it is, but they've unfortunately not quite. I mean, only about 15 million of them have found it. So we're still we're still leaving about two million on, you know we're still leaving 2 million on the floor but yeah yeah so that is 17 million

143,629 ballots cast already turnout which means it is october 15 2020 and 12.4% of the votes that were cast in the 2016 election have already been cast. Your thoughts? Well, there's two different schools of thought here. One is that we're on pace to have record turnout, and one is that we're simply banking Election Day votes early this time. So it's the same voters who voted on Election Day last time are simply turning out early this time. So it's the same voters who voted on election day last time are simply turning out early this time in part because of the virus, in part because there's been so much attention around early voting and how easy it is. And it's just making people feel more comfortable with it. There's some evidence for both on the, it's just early votes early early, you know, it's the same votes coming in early argument is, you know, we know that a lot of people said they were going to vote early this year.

There's a worldwide pandemic. It's not surprising that voter behavior would change this year. On the no, no, we're just headed towards record turnout. There is some evidence of that, which is that when you ask people whether they plan to vote early this year, there's only actually about a 5% uptick overall of registered voters who say they are going to vote early this year versus the same ones who said they were going to vote early in 2016. Now, interesting fun fact about that. So it was 40% who said they were going to vote early in 2016. Now, interesting fun fact about that. So it was 40% who said they were going to vote early in 2016, and it was 45% who said they were going to vote early this year. But about 25% of voters voted early in 2016, which means that a

lot of people in 2016 thought they were going to vote early and didn't. So it's also possible that this year, 45% of voters say they're going to vote early and actually will. And around and around we go, trying to discern from the tea leaves how and when people are voting. Here's my question, David. When are you going to vote? I'm going to vote early. Probably tomorrow. I'll probably give it a shot tomorrow. I've got the most free calendar day tomorrow that I've had in, oh, I don't know, weeks since my book hit the store, hit the shelves.

Which, by the way, I have a book. Subtle plug. A book plug that if you haven't purchased, why are you, stop listening to the podcast right now or listen to it in your car on the way to the bookstore or while you click on the amazon link but anyway um so yeah i tomorrow's a pretty free day schedule wise i just need to i have a sunday newsletter to write and if uh if the lines aren't too ridiculous i think i'm going to start tomorrow, but I'm a classic person that my data shouldn't

count for the total because I'm going to vote either way. But you vote, did you vote early in 2016? No. You voted on election day in 2016. Yep. I've only voted early, I think maybe once or twice in my life. Wow. So why are you voting early this time? Because of the potential of long lines on election day. I think you are not alone in this. Yeah. Yeah. So just get it done when the line should be shorter. But you know, it's interesting, Sarah, you said it was 25% of voters who voted early in 2016. I mean, you're already at 12.4% right now. You're already at like 12.4% of the 2016 turnout. I would be stunned if we're not well over 25% of the 2016 total turnout,

even by a week or so from now, perhaps, two weeks from now. And by the way, there's no potential that we're, for instance, doubling turnout overall, which means the answer is probably going to be a little bit of both. We probably will have higher turnout this year and we're going to have substantially more people vote early. Like most things, it's not all black and white. And so, you know, there's 157-ish million registered voters. And in 2016, 125-ish million voted. I bet that number is, you know, 129 or so this year, 130 maybe even.

So we'll see. That's a percentage-wise maybe not that big, but, you know, three to five million more people voting is a big deal in this country. And I will bet that we have. Certainly over 30 percent early vote turnout, probably in the low 40s. Yeah, that would be my best guess, too. guests too. And looking at the all-important Florida numbers, one more time before we move on to the Hunter Biden story, the very bizarre Hunter Biden story, typically in Florida, it has not been the case that mail-in absentee ballots have overwhelmingly favored the Democrats.

That's not typically been the case. But wow, the numbers. 2,092,000 ballots have been returned so far. 1,043,000 of them are Democratic. Registered Democrats. As in we don't know who they voted for. For some reason, Steve has gotten on my case about that because it makes it sound like we know. So registered Democrats voted. We can assume who they voted for. Correct. One million forty three thousand Republican six hundred and twenty three thousand no party affiliation, four hundred and one thousand. So that is for those

keeping percentage score at home. Forty nine point nine percent Democrat, twenty nine point eight percent Republican and nineteen point two percent no party affiliation. So which, by the way, is interesting because in the Gallup poll, and this was national, not in Florida, but 62 percent of Democratic registered voters plan to vote early. Twenty eight percent of Republican voters plan to vote early. So based on those Florida numbers, the Republican numbers are actually spot on with the Gallup poll. The Democratic voters are a little lower than the Gallup poll, again, nationally predicted in Florida.

Right. Well, it's it's another of it. It's more evidence that everything becomes partisan now because there's no logical reason really why one party or the other would overwhelmingly choose to vote early. Correct. And it's almost become a point of partisan pride. No, I'm going to show up on election day and vote. Or no, I'm going to vote early.

Now, if I had to choose, if you made me choose which team is going to have an advantage, I'm going to say, all things being equal, the team that banks the vote and doesn't leave it all to chance on. Do we have a tropical storm on Election Day? I mean, it is Florida after all. Do we, you know, do I wake up on Election Day with coronavirus? Do I? I mean, there's all kinds of things that can happen when you sit, when limit it to one you know 10 or 12 hour window in one day but uh we shall generally been you know on the election day operation side an assumption

you never know whether the assumption's right but that those long lines at the end of the day on election day and remember if you're in line before polls close on election day, you get to stay in line and vote. It's basically that the line closes on election day, not that your vote has to be done by that time on election day. The assumption has always been that those people in line are Democrats at the end of the day because they had a job that they couldn't leave early and that Republicans have these white-collar jobs and therefore are just showing up at 2 p.m. Here's the problem this year.

A, there's going to be a pretty good assumption that if you're showing up on Election Day, there's a much higher chance that you're a Republican this time around just based on the polling. And then as a result of that, there are usually lawsuits, little mini lawsuits, you can think of them as, mini lawsuits around the country to keep polling places open later, meaning not only to let people stay in line, because you have to let them stay in line,

but to in fact allow some new people to join the line because maybe a machine broke down and so they left and they came back later, who knows what. And generally Democrats have been the ones to bring those lawsuits and Republicans have been the ones to say, no, the rules are the rules and the polls close at 8 p.m. Be really interesting to see that flip this year and for each side to adopt the other side's arguments. And it will just, for some reason, that hypocrisy is going to bring joy to my heart. And it is inevitable. Inevitable. Okay. So shall we wade into the morass of the Hunter Biden story, Sarah? Well, at least part of morass covers my thoughts on it. covers my thoughts on it. Okay. So let's go, let's sort of walk through this from a journalistic standpoint, from a political standpoint, from a legal standpoint.

And here's the rough, here's sort of the rough version of what occurred, allegedly. Allegedly, a person who may or may not have been Hunter Biden dropped off a laptop at a computer repair place in Wilmington. The person who received the laptop is a, and this story is, I mean, y'all, this story, the person who received the laptop is a legally blind individual who could not tell if it was or was not Hunter Biden. The laptop was apparently convenient, by the way. What are the chances? The odds, Sarah, the odds. So the laptop is apparently left and unclaimed completely. So, you know, again, a person's dropping off a laptop for repair and never picks it up.

The odds, Sarah. So this individual who turns out to be somewhat of a conspiracy theorist, a Seth Rich conspiracy theorist, then either the FBI contacts him or he contacts the FBI. His story gets really sort of shifty or shady. But in any event, he ends up giving the laptop to the FBI, but not before making a copy of its hard drive, as one does. So then... If I had a nickel. Yes. I mean, every computer that lays around my house, I just go ahead and copy the hard drive. But the so then he gives the hard drive to. None other than Rudy Giuliani's lawyer and Rudy Giuliani then proceeds to provide the hard drive to the New York Post.

The New York Post has now started to write apparently what is a series of stories based on the contents of the hard drive, which include everything from purported emails from Burisma. This is the Ukrainian energy company that Hunter Biden had a sweetheart gig with, indicating that maybe perhaps a Burisma executive met with joe biden to a an alleged hunter biden sex tape uh to various other um unflattering pictures of hunter

biden and maybe and also some uh also some purported documentation of Hunter Biden's Chinese business relationships. And it's unclear what else. So the New York Post then prints story number one, and today story number two, based on the contents of this alleged Hunter Biden hard drive. The media, which is very keen and alert on potential what are called hack and leak operations, begins to wonder whether or not this was a real hard drive or products of a hack and leak. Because apparently Russia had hacked Burisma relatively recently. And so it began to send up all the warnings, Is this hack and leak? Is this hack and leak? So Facebook throttled the reach of the article under its algorithms, which was somewhat controversial. But then Twitter absolutely blocked the ability to reach it. Twitter, hold my beer on Section 230.

Twitter, hold my beer on Section 230. Yes, Twitter, which then led to calls for Republican senators to intervene to reform big tech. And we'll get into all of that nonsense in a bit. But let's talk about it first from a journalistic standpoint. All right. Sarah, you get a hard drive from Rudy Giuliani and you're a journalist. Again, if I had a nickel. If you had a nickel. I mean, I'm just getting hard drives all the time. I have a stack of hard drives right here, all from Rudy. No, you get a hard drive from Rudy.

As a journalist, what should a journalist do with that hard drive? I mean, we actually have experienced this on the other side, as so many people have pointed out. In 2016, it's not that different from BuzzFeed getting the Steele dossier. Yep. They were not the only ones who got the Steele dossier. We know that other outlets had it and had decided not to publish it until they could independently verify some or any of the allegations contained therein. This time, I'm not aware that anyone else

got the hard drive except for the New York Post. And the New York Post was pretty clear that they were publishing it as the story is that we got this, not that it is true or verified. That is interesting. Well, and BuzzFeed's justification for publishing its story was not that this is true or verified. And in fact, in its story, explaining the decision to publish was saying that they were working to verify but had not been able to verify. But they were publishing it under the justification that all or part of the dossier had been shared within the federal government, including to President Trump. Yeah, that was clever, but it's not really

different. I mean, this is like, I I've, I've seen this so many times in journalism and it actually drives me crazy that the story is that someone commented on it. We're not saying it's true, but now that they've commented, we're going to publish it. It's like, well, that's not reasonable. I think it's actually pretty, um, underhanded journalism because they will reach out to someone for comment. And then when they give them the comment, that's their news hook to publish. Um, and unless you have a very sophisticated press operative who is like asking the

right questions, you'll never know that they actually did not have enough to publish under their own ethical standards until you gave them a comment about it. I was offered parts of the dossier in 2016. Um, I think probably because I would now it wasn't, I was offered parts of the dossier in 2016. I think probably because I would, now it wasn't, I have the steel dossier.

I mean, it didn't go by that name when people, it was sort of in, and I don't know if you caught wind of this during 2016, Sarah, but there was a lot of background murmur that there was compromise on Trump, that there was compromising Russian intelligence on Trump, and that there was intelligence that Trump had worked with the Russians. And I didn't pay much attention to it. I mean, it perked my ears a little bit because of the

WikiLeaks and how Trump was calling for more WikiLeaks dumps. But I mean, my gosh, the amount of rumor oppo that was flying through the air in 2016. I mean, crazy stuff, crazy stuff. So you get these sort of raw oppo rumors all the time. And the responsible thing to do is if it seems credible to you, you quote unquote report it out. You do your own work to try to verify. Well, I couldn't verify. I didn't have the resources as a writer for National Review to verify whether or not Michael Cohen met a Russian operative under some bridge in Prague. And so I passed. I'm not going to publish unverified rumors. I passed.

I'm not going to publish unverified rumors. And if I can't verify them myself or have availability of resources that can verify them, I'm just not going to do it. Don't just dump it out into the public square under the grounds that, hey, this is something people are talking about. So that was my problem with the New York Post. Look, if Rudy gives you a hard drive,

that's the start of a process not the end of the process yeah and so and especially when you if you know anything about some of these hack and leak operations you'll know that one of the things that hack the hack and leakers, one of the things that is a Russian, uh, one of the things that is a Russian practice is to take a hack and leak and mix in true information with false information. And so if you have photos of Hunter Biden, that acts as the authenticator. In other words, oh, of course this hard drive is Hunter's. Here's his picture. And then that makes you believe the fabricated information. So there's a lot of work

that should have been done the instant that hard drive got into the hands of the New York Post. And then there's the fact that it appears that Trump knew this was coming for a while. That this was coordinated with the Trump campaign. And then there's the fact that it appears that Trump knew this was coming for a while, that this was coordinated with the Trump campaign. And then there's also the reality that Giuliani has known to work with a Ukrainian

who's considered by our intelligence services to be a Russian agent. I do want to correct one thing you said. Trump knowing about it ahead of time is not coordinating with the Trump campaign under the legal definition of coordination. Just flagging. Right, right. Yeah, it is not collusion under whatever definition of collusion that implies lawbreaking. No, I agree with you.

Okay, so that is the journalistic aspect of this. It was a journalism fail. But it was bound to happen. Here's the issue. Back, whatever you want, 30 years ago, 50 years ago, whatever, when there was a very narrow set of people who could be in media, the three networks, the five major newspapers, and then a bunch of local newspapers, there was a high bar. When the internet opened that up to a lot of new websites, blogs, etc., places like BuzzFeed, it was always going to have this effect that someone was going to publish whatever you had. Now, sometimes it's so low on the totem pole,

it just doesn't catch up at all. Like, for instance, I don't know if you saw this, there was a woman who was in People of Praise, the group that Amy Coney Barrett supposedly belongs to for her church. And this woman left the group and sort of had these salacious allegations about the group. No one would publish it. And then it eventually, I saw, wound up in Newsweek. Newsweek, by the way, not the Newsweek that you remember from your parents' generation. It's a whole new thing now. But no doubt that was shopped around to the New Yorkork times the washington

post etc and they all said no similar with the steel dossier it was shopped around to a lot of places someone was going to say yes it happened to be buzzfeed but if it hadn't been buzzfeed they would have gotten around to newsweek or some blog eventually and um and what they did that was clever there was they gave it to everyone so the story became this thing is circulating i mean that was the news hook like so the people who did it created their own news hook without having to rely on any reporting uh and and buzzfeed was the one who you know snapped up that little nugget. And so this time around, it's in some ways a less clever news hook because it looks so unbelievable, the story of how this laptop came to be.

But the Steele dossier, in a a sense is the news hook for this because it's like steel dossier part two on the other side uh and that's what i think is really dangerous and we just we've seen this tit for tat go on in the confirmation battles and that's why i think it just reminds me of it when you talk about sort of salacious allegations and then one side does it and then the other side does it. We know how this battle not ends, but where it evolves to at least. And so I am not at all surprised. And I am not at all surprised that the Trump team was made aware of it, even if they did not have any say in when or how or whatever it would be released, that would be coordination. Yeah. So from a journalism standpoint,

we were always going to get there once the internet existed, but these are the dangerous results is the wrong term, but unfortunate results is now that it's pretty easy for whether it's a foreign adversary or a domestic one, or just someone who's not even that clever at this point to come up with a way for a news organization to publish something that is unverified or unverifiable, but salacious. Yep. And, you know, going back to the BuzzFeed, there's a couple of things that really stood out to me that really made me mad about the BuzzFeed decision. They wrote when they were justifying it,

they said they obtained it through characteristically ferocious reporting. Okay. And this is what I wrote at the time. And I still feel this way. It's not ferocious reporting to upload a dossier that was being freely offered to reporters across the nation. This wasn't meeting a source under a Somalian bridge moments before he's assassinated with

a silenced pistol. This was nothing more than nothing less and nothing less than taking a document someone was eager to give you, uploading it into the cloud and publishing it. I mean, that's what we've got. And this is part two of that. It really is part two of that.

And the problem is, and this is going to be a segue into the political. Yes. The problem is, and this is going to be a segue into the political. Yes. The problem is, though, that this actually is almost perfectly calculated, imagine that, to feed into a particular narrative on the right that goes all the way back to the Ukrainian impeachment. to the Ukrainian impeachment, that the real scandal has always been,

that the real scandal surrounding Ukraine has always been Hunter Biden and that Rudy Giuliani, rather than sort of being this rogue free agent who was interfering in American foreign policy in pursuit of trying to prove various conspiracy theories, was actually a fearless hunter and seeker for the truth. And then now, there you have it. And why are you burying it? Mainstream media. And that is the narrative. That is the narrative that you're seeing pop up on right-wing talk radio,

on Fox Primetime. And my question to you, Sarah, is what kind of political effect will this have? I have an idea about it, but I'd love to know what your ideas. Well, that's another area that I think is interesting because the, uh, mainstream media, I'm really starting to hate that term.

The mainstream media and the tech platforms are playing right along and being very helpful. I think think yes uh to that narrative uh maybe in unintended ways maybe at this point intended you know the washington post had a great fact check of it that's the way that it should be handled you should address it and if you think that it's unverified or unverifiable say say that and discuss that. Don't just ignore it, because that is feeding into this feeling on the right that if it's negative for your chosen candidate, we're simply going to have a media blackout because we control the airwaves, so to speak. And that's not good for anyone. From a political standpoint, I think that this, I don't think that it has penetrated very far yet, but I think we have three more weeks and it could. If it penetrates within the electorate, I think it could have the result of increasing enthusiasm among Trump's base. I do not think it will have the effect of moving any voters in the middle. And I do not think it will have the effect of decreasing

enthusiasm in Biden's voters. So in other words, minimal effect. It could have a minimal turnout effect on the right. Gotcha. So, yeah. Where to begin? Okay, I agree with you on all of those things.

And I also agree with you that from the right's standpoint, actually the thing that when you say Twitter and Facebook were helpful, they were more helpful to Rudy and the New York Post than they could have ever intended to be. Because what they immediately did was take all of the attention off of this really weird story. This re I mean, you just tell it.

Oh, yeah. A guy comes in and drops off laptops to a nearly blind computer repair operator. He can't tell if it's Hunter true. It means it's not passing the surface plausibility test, which this is one of the ways that you should examine a story. And it turns it into big tech is terrified by this. And you saw this on MAGA Twitter all over last night. Big tech's response essentially confirms the story. They're so afraid of this. I mean, which is ridiculous. I mean, to say that because someone doesn't want you to hear something that they believe might be misinformation

is actually confirmation is galaxy brain logic. But it immediately got the conversation shifting away from Rudy, who is not ready for prime time anymore in his public presentation of his arguments and his evidence, from Rudy to one of the two favorite boogeymen of the right these days, big tech and the mainstream media. And they just gave it on a silver platter. And then to make it even worse, Twitter, to defend what it did, said that it was doing it because it prohibits the use of our service to distribute content obtained without authorization. What? Yeah, there's some problems with that argument.

Not argument. There's some problems if they think that's their rule, they have not been enforcing it. CEG, the New York Times getting copies of Donald Trump's tax returns. There is no world in which they got those legally, or rather that the person who had them had them legally the new york times received them legally um similar to this though right like the new york post did not receive anything illegally the person who had them uh arguably might have we don't even know that you know at the point that quote unquote hunter biden relinquished ownership over that laptop, you know, I'm not involved in the weeds of how the legality of that would work.

I remember property law a little. You can certainly abandon property. And so it's possible, if all that story is accurate, that Hunter Biden under the law abandoned that property, and therefore it is entirely legal. We know for a fact that anyone who had Donald Trump's tax returns and gave them to a third party did something not legal. So, yeah. So where was that rule a month ago?

rule a month ago? I mean, you know, and if you begin to enforce this rule, I mean, where does that mean that if you have a whistleblower who provides classified information that Twitter it will be everywhere but Twitter? Well, and Twitter will

now determine whether they believe the whistleblower had whistleblower protections or violated the classified information laws. They're going to decide that themselves now? Oh, okay. That's a terrible idea. And I think their general counsel will tell them not to do that. Yeah. I think that what happened, honestly, is it's this sort of classic herd mentality that takes over social media, especially Twitter on occasion, where you all of a sudden have people saying, what are you doing, Twitter? Why are you allowing

this Russian disinformation to spread through the body politic? You're going to ruin everything. You're going to hand the election back to Trump. And Twitter is like, oh, no, what do we do? What do we do? And then they just react. And then hours later, Jack comes out and says, well, we didn't really message very well on this. And then, you know, quote retweets the Twitter thread,'s the best here's the best possible defense for twitter which if twitter was smart it would have offered from day one which is we along with a number of other social media companies have been working with federal authorities to attempt to recognize attempts to uh improperly interfere with the election through unlawful hack and leak operations. We are throttling this back because it has the hallmarks of an

improper hack and leak while we conduct further investigation. That's not, people would still jump on that. They would still be very, very upset at that. But at least it has the ring of, oh, I don't know, being based in some sort of real, actual, sensible rationale, given the very weird circumstances surrounding the release. I would still be dubious of that reasoning, but it's a heck of a lot better than, oh, we just don't allow people to put improperly obtained information on our site. Okay, so David, here's my question to you. You now are the grand poobah of Facebook and Twitter. You know that there are rumors of foreign interference heading into and around Election Day and specifically on election night. and specifically on election night. And so you're in a heightened state,

waiting, watching, you know it's coming. You have had many test runs within your company to practice what will happen when something, you know, anything could happen. And they've had many internally. So this is your first test publicly. What would you have done? Oh, with this particular, with this story. You suspect that it could be the result of a foreign adversary's attempt to interfere in our election through disinformation? I think I would do two things. One, I would indicate that in the absence of concrete evidence

that this represents foreign disinformation, we are going to allow the information to disseminate on our platform. However, we are working closely with federal authorities to determine if there is any evidence of disinformation. If we determine there is concrete evidence of disinformation, we will immediately throttle access to it. And that would be the response. And you put out that response in a press release. What about the people who are seeing the information on your website but don't see that? Would you put that in like a little bubble before they can click on it? Would you put that in like a little bubble before they can click on it?

I would put it in the Twitter trend. So when you pull up Twitter, you have, if you're on a desktop or a laptop or your iPad, you have the trends on the right. It would be front and center on the trends so that if I'm looking at Twitter, I, at looking at Twitter, I would see that. So that would immediately highlight. This is something that we are devoting resources to investigating, but in the absence of actual evidence, because right now, so far in the

public sphere, we don't have, we have a lot of smoke based on Giuliani's past activities and his associates and sort of the facial weirdness of this story. We have a lot of smoke that says, this looks like a kind of a ham, almost like a ham-handedly weird info op, but we don't have the actual evidence. But right now, you know, people are beginning to look at the things like the serial number of the hard drive, the metadata and the documents. And already you're starting to see some things that are eroding at the story. And so I think you put that press release out immediately. And Facebook has this interesting sort of algorithm response where they don't censor it.

They don't censor your ability to click on it so that if you went to the New York Post page, it's right there, easy to click on. But they deprivilege it in the algorithm, which is, I think, a very defensible response if there's a lot of smoke. But again, you explain it. You explain the reasons why you would do that using objective criteria. And you announce your intention to investigate. It is, but what you don't do, I think Twitter had the exact wrong response.

You're going to have the partisans scream no matter what. Like the partisans are going to scream. They're going to yell. They're going to have the partisans scream no matter what. The partisans are going to scream. They're going to yell. They're going to be furious. Tucker Carlson's going to dedicate half his show to it. But that's not your target audience. The target audience are not the partisans who are going to be upset with any warning of any type.

Your audience is going to be that sort of persuadable group of people who doesn't quite know what to think about sort of persuadable group of people who doesn't quite know what to think about all of this. And they like transparency, they like explanation, and they like common sense. So that would be, if I'm print grand poobah, that's what I'm doing. Okay. What do you think, Sarah? I think that these folks are in a really tough position. Yeah, there's no question about that. And I think that these folks are in a really tough position. Yeah, there's no question. And I think that we don't, you know, it's easy to whack them of like, this is a terrible idea.

And it's much harder to say what a better idea is aside from just letting it happen. And I think that they feel a responsibility, having created these companies and running these companies, to not simply let things happen that they know could affect an election with only 20 days to go, and that by the time the FBI does or does not determine that there was any Ukrainian or Russian involvement, that it would be too late. And that yet, maybe they would follow some rules that they had set up that make sense behind the veil of ignorance, but that they live in reality and that they feel responsible for some of this stuff as well they maybe should. No, I think they should.

And I do think that, I think the virtue of my approach is that when you have something like this that has all of this smoke surrounding it, coming through a non-conventional source through very bizarre means that has the hallmarks of classic Russian disinformation hacking, that highlighting that reality, highlighting those concerns, then sure. Yeah. The talk radio bubble and the Fox bubble is going to make hay. But what you, what you then do is you give the marketplace the ideas marketplace of ideas the opportunity to say wait a minute this look that

this thing that you know tucker carlson's sprinting with has all all the hallmarks of russian disinformation and they're running with something that has all the hallmarks of russian disinformation. And they're running with something that has all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation without independent verification. That's what they're doing. And so it takes the focus away from the Twitter action and puts the focus squarely and becomes part of the process of highlighting what I think is the real story of all this wasn't Hunter Biden, because I'll tell you, Sarah, although I will say this, the New York Post has convinced me I'm not voting for Hunter Biden. You do not believe that he has the requisite qualifications to be president. I do not want Hunter Biden as president of the United States. So, but aside from convincing me not to vote for Hunter Biden for president, I mean, and I think the real story here is the combination of the Rudy New York Post information operation

loop here in the absence of journalistic standards. I think that's a real story. It highlights the real story, lets the marketplace of ideas work in the way that it can work. So that's the virtue, I think, of my approach. Let's take a moment and thank our sponsor, Bills.com. Being in debt sucks. Credit cards, student loans, mortgages, doesn't matter what kind, being in debt is the worst. Well, there is a way to defeat your debt, thanks to Bills.com. If you're losing sleep over maxed out credit cards or stressed out thinking about your mortgage payments or student loans, Bills.com

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No, Justice Thomas. Anyway, do you want to fill in the folks on two things. One, what did Justice Thomas do? And two, you said to me that you had a, you were having a Section 230 discussion with your husband. And without violating marital privilege, if you could fill us in on that. Okay, so the brisket had his four-month shots yesterday. And as a result... Sorry, on Tuesday. As a result, though, as parents know, this creates a whole new baby for some number of days afterward. And you're discovering who this new baby is. This new baby is cranky and has a fever and won't sleep and all this stuff. Not our baby. Nope, nope, nope. Our baby in the

last 24 hours was only awake for four hours. He just slept it off, man. So amazing. It was amazing. So our normal routine, we were like kind of trying to keep him on the normal routine and he just fell asleep like way early, which I knew meant he was going to wake up again. So he woke up at seven from that little nap and it meant we just sort of were going to have like another hour with him where he was pretty groggy, pretty out of it. It didn't really want to play. So we just sort of held him and fed him. And then Scott and I talked about section two Section 230 like you do in the nursery. Oh my goodness.

It was very romantic. Well, don't leave us hanging. What did you talk about Section 230? So in the orders list yesterday, there was a petition for writ of certiorari that was denied. It was in a case called Malwarebytes Inc. versus Enigma Software Group USA LLC. But there was a statement respecting the denial of cert by Justice Thomas that was actually pretty lengthy, but in short said, hey, I think we should take a case on 230 liability because I think all these lower courts have been misreading

the protections of 230 to be far too overbroad than what the text itself provides and that we should be potentially holding tech companies liable for publishing and disseminating information on their platforms, at least in terms of allowing the cases to go forward. Right now, the immunity is that you can't even bring a case against these companies. He's saying, I'm not saying that all the cases will be meritorious, but that my reading of Section 230 is that actually, when they are distributing the information, that should be the trigger and that 230 does not protect against that, which is sort of a whoa. Because up to this point, when you and I have talked about Section 230, because up to this point when you and i have talked about section 230 we have i i think without with some cause said that this is up to congress to rewrite the law and that the various suggestions by various senators or house members don't make a ton of sense in terms of how they would work

out practically on these platforms but But here comes Justice Thomas, Leroy Jenkins style, saying, no, no, Congress, don't you worry about it. You've got one vote here to do at the court what you're having trouble doing in the legislature.

Whoa. This is like some... So we've talked about the various schools of interpretation originalism textualism etc we haven't spent as much time on the concepts of judicial restraint and judicial modesty versus a new form of conservative judicial activism that is really caught hold within the federalist society movement mostly by libertarians who want to see more, I'm going to use Clark Neely's term that he titled his book,

judicial engagement on issues of economic liberalism. Yeah. This is an area of judicial engagement, I would say, by Justice Thomas. Yes. Very un-Thomas-like in another sense as well. It's not all that textualist. I think I agree. Yeah.

It's not all that textualist. I mean, if you look at... He's trying to make a textualist. He's making a textualist argument, but, you know, versus a lot of his other textualist arguments, this one takes 10 pages to explain, which normally means that your textualist argument is a little not obvious, at least. Yeah. I mean, just for listeners who haven't heard the 230 spiel yet, here's a brief version of it. So what happened early in the internet is nobody really

knew how to deal with some of these new platforms. And so you had very gated ways to go into the internet back in the day. AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy. You'd get a disk or a floppy disk. Sometimes a floppy disk, Sarah, a floppy disk. You'd put it in, you'd load the AOL program, you'd slog onto the internet. Yep. On your phone line. So you're not getting any phone calls while you're on your AOL. So you're on your phone line and they had chat rooms. And in the chat rooms, which are, you know, it's funny, chat technology is not that different. So you have your chat rooms and you have your message boards and people would put information up there. And the different internet providers had different approaches to it.

Some of them moderated the chat rooms to make sure that there wasn't, say, nudity or, you know, racist language, etc. And some just let anything happen. And there were two court cases in New York that said, that one of them said, if you have no moderation at all, in other words, anything goes, then the internet service provider is not liable

for the information that is put on their there that the users put on their site so by all means have child predators on your site as long as you don't prevent them from exploiting children you're not liable right exactly so anything goes meant that you're you could it essentially incentivize the transformation of an internet site into a raw open sewer. But another company said, no, we're going to moderate. And so New York court said, aha, you moderate. Therefore, you're going to be liable for everything that goes on your site. So you had two choices.

It was either raw sewage or censorship now this is two two two problems of this one is the practical problem that what you're going to end up with is an internet that is if it if it's not sewage it's closed it's just a closed system uh and if it's an open it's full of sewage so that's that is a an impediment to the development of the web. And so Congress stepped in in the Communications Decency Act, and what it said is, no, you're not going to be liable for content put on your site if you engage in good faith moderation. And so if you moderate the content, you're not going to be liable. if you moderate the content, you're not going to be liable.

This was, I think, A, arguably constitutionally required, arguably, and B, was the rocket fuel for the internet as you now understand it. Your ability to leave a comment on Yelp, your ability to have your own Facebook page, your ability to tweet, your ability to be on Reddit, your ability to comment on a YouTube. All of your participation as a normal human being who is not a celebrity who possesses their own independent platform is due to Section 230. Section 230 is what allows Facebook, for example, to exclude nudity or Instagram to exclude nudity. Let's be more basic. It's what allows Facebook and Twitter to exist. To exist. And so what has ended up happening is people have completely, I think, in bad faith misread

Section 230. They have said, well, what Section 230 requires is neutrality. No, No. Section 230 empowers a website to moderate according to its own standards. So, for example, if you wanted to start a Christian dating site, it would allow you to say, we're going to not permit unchristian speech on our platform. un-Christian speech on our platform. That would be Section 230. Section 230 is what allows us in our own dispatch to moderate comments,

to say to a commenter, you went too far, I'm going to delete that. It allows us to express our values, to create a platform that expresses our own values, the values of the creators, of the platform. So if Jack wanted to, he could say, Twitter is a progressive social media platform. And we're not going to be neutral in our moderation.

And you'd have a choice. I can use Twitter or not use Twitter. But it allows for the expression of the corporation and the values of the leaders of the corporation. That's part of the whole purpose of it. Here's what I think is interesting. Both on the statutory changes side of two 30 and the legal changes side of two 30 or the court changes side of 230 and the legal changes side of 230 or the court changes side of 230. What they want is for Twitter, Facebook, sort of the big platform companies to allow their expression, and in this case, conservative expression that they feel like is being either throttled or banned, et cetera. None of these changes will do that. What they will do is

shut down Twitter and Facebook. And maybe that's an acceptable alternative, but then that means you also can't have a conservative Facebook or Twitter. It will just end those types of platforms on the internet. And part of me wonders whether we're too far into them to get rid of them. I mean, look, there's days where I wish Twitter would be shut down, but is it too much a part of our lives, Facebook, Twitter, et cetera, to simply end them? Because you can't come up with a way where these companies are, for instance, bound by the First Amendment. There's no government action there. So the only thing you're doing is saying that if you go back to the pre-230 days,

if you moderate content, then you're responsible for it. Therefore, you can't moderate content. then you're responsible for it. Therefore, you can't moderate content. Well, then within days, they'll turn into disgusting porn hubs and then no one will go on them. So that's basically ending them. Or libel, et cetera, or defamation. In which case, I just don't see when you have 150 million users in the United States, like active users, how you could police that in any meaningful way. I mean, an algorithm can't really do that for you, except for big news stories that, again, like you said, affect celebrities, et cetera. But what if I just post something mean about you, David, that's false?

They're not going to be able to do anything about that. Oh, I'll do something about it. I'm sure you would. So I'm just not sure how this works itself out or if the right understands that they can't get what they want. They can't just get a Twitter that is fair to them. The only thing they can get is no Twitter.

And I wonder how many politicians, again, going on the statutory route, when they, you know, makes for a really good talking point, but when rubber hits the road and their campaign consultants tell them how much money they raise on Facebook, whether they're really going to want to shut down Facebook. Well, and here's the other, so there's, this gets complicated. So here's another reality. Fact of the matter is there's a lot of right-wing voices who've kind of made a name for themselves

by complaining about Twitter on Twitter. I mean, this is sort of a thing now. And it's one thing to complain about Twitter and say, hey, Twitter, reverse your policies. Change your mind about this, and here's why. Totally legit. But Twitter, on Twitter, I'm going to, change your mind about this and here's why. Totally legit. But Twitter, on Twitter,

I'm going to like sort of the Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, taking, sallying forth to Twitter to threaten Twitter with punitive legal action as a result of Twitter's exercise of its own liberty. It's a problem, but you know liberty. It's a problem. But you know what? It's a problem. It's not a problem for Tom Cotton or Josh Hawley because it helps increase their presence, guess where?

On Twitter. So there's a little bit of this. It's kind of a game. Got to be honest. There's a game going on here. And then the other part is, honestly, Facebook is really good for conservatives. Well, that's sort of the funny part

is I think a lot of people are like, well, we just want a conservative platform. It's called Facebook actually. Yeah, it's called Facebook, y'all. Twitter is for liberals. Facebook is for conservatives. This has sorted itself out over the last four years and it's a done deal. And that's why Facebook has been

what some would refer to as wishy-washy Hamlet-esque in their indecision because their employees are liberal. And they certainly are based in a liberal place, but they understand where most of their active users are coming from and their ad revenue.

And so that's why they're doing very different things than Twitter is doing. You'll notice Facebook throttled the New York Post story. Twitter banned it. Yep. So who, Sarah, was the top web publisher? I just quickly looked at this for July 2020. The top web publisher on Facebook for July 2020. Was it the New York Times or was it dailywire.com? way by a by magnitudes and of the top 10 publishers on facebook i believe that eight are not just conservative like kind of not wall street journal conservative like conservative yeah i mean let's put it this way so new york times the gray lady the the most famous newspaper in America, received 61,527,000 engagements on Facebook. I have 61 million. Got it. Daily Wire, 98,884,000. Yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah. People who say conservative speech doesn't do well on social media uh now there are anecdotes there are individuals who've been treated unfairly there's no question about that but this idea that big tech is throttling conservatism i'm gonna need to see your homework on that. But it makes for a really good talking point. You can raise a lot of money.

Yeah, on big tech, using it. Oh, irony of ironies. But it'll be interesting to see where this Justice Thomas thing goes. I think that, you know, well, so clearly we know we have one vote to grant cert on a Section 230 case.

So I think you'll see a flood of lawyers trying to bring Section 230 cases now. I don't know that you have four votes on the court to even take one of these cases because you don't at this point that I'm aware of and I'm not a Section 230 expert, but I'm not aware of any circuit splits on this. I think the lower courts have been actually pretty consistent in interpreting Section 230. And generally speaking, the Supreme Court is not going to take a case if it's settled law. They're taking it because it's not settled. Justice Thomas wants it to be unsettled, but it's not. And also, I think if Justice Roberts has any sway with his colleagues, he would tell them Congress is talking about amending Section 230. Let them do their job without undue interference or nudging from us, because then they'll simply defer to us to do it.

And this will create a whole mess. Justice Thomas, I'm sure, didn't get that memo or else he obviously wouldn't have done this. But no, more likely he did get the memo and was like, yeah, thanks. I'm going to do this anyway. But it was a very interesting opinion. We'll put it in the show notes. It is not the most readable judicial opinion I've ever read. But I think you can get the gist if you skim it. So, yeah, it's going to be fascinating to see where this debate goes, especially because a lot of these

Republican senators were thundering. We are going to intervene. We will hold you to account just a few weeks before they might be wiped out from control of the Senate. So I wonder if the thundering from the right for federal intervention into social media is going to, huh, wonder what will happen if it is a Biden-Harris administration. Because there's a lot of energy on the left to reform Section 230. They don't have the same priorities that they do not have the same priorities that right wing Twitter critics have at all,

because what they would say is Twitter acted too slow. Yesterday, the Twitter and Facebook are not censoring enough right-wing speech um and that they would under the under the um justification of dealing with misinformation you know all of those i'm just looking at like the top top uh posts from like july was from CBN, which is a Christian outlet about how awesome hydroxychloroquine is. That was one, you know, you, a lot,

you see some from places like Patriot post. Yeah, that's not. Here's the other interesting thing about that, David, from a platform perspective, it's much easier to institute the left's preferences under the law to simply say that distributing information that has been flagged as inaccurate,

something or other, blah, blah, blah. That actually is something that they can do versus what the right wants, which is, yeah, we still don't want child porn, but we otherwise don't want you moderating content or you're going to be liable is actually much harder to create a framework for that under the law. So the left has a much more downhill road to their section 230 amendments than the right does as far as I'm concerned. 30 amendments than the right does as far as i'm concerned oh the left has a path i mean to prohibit dissemination of of misinformation um however the right you're exactly right that the holly legislation for example requires viewpoint neutrality and political content moderation um and not only does it require viewpoint neutrality it requires viewpoint neutrality and

virality as well so that if your content one side's content goes more viral than the other side's content it would trigger government oversight what what um so yeah they're the right-wing solutions are muddled because they're in this position where they don't want to open up Facebook. They don't want to open up Instagram or other Snapchat to outright awful porn, etc. And viewpoint neutrality, short of porn, of course,

includes white supremacy. It can include, what's's the NAMBLA? As in, you can say that your viewpoint is that you enjoy sexual relations with children as long as you're not doing it on the platform or

posting pictures and stuff like that. You can just say that's your viewpoint and that would be you would be required to allow that viewpoint on your platform as quote viewpoint neutral. Yeah, so a lot of this isn't very well thought out. Let's take a moment and thank our sponsor Gabby insurance when you've had the same car insurance or homeowners insurance for years. You get kind of trapped into paying your premiums and not thinking about it. That makes it really easy to overpay and not even realize it.

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Go to Gabby.com slash advisory. That's G-A-B-I.com slash advisory. Gabby.com slash advisory. Do we have time for our culture topic or do we want to punt it? I think we have time. We don't have to spend a ton of time on this. Yeah, so... I got an email from a listener and it said, I love listening to your interactions and reading about

your ideas. David especially celebrates the achievement of a successful marriage between two devout working professionals who continue as successful parents. Dude, what am I? Okay. Anyway. who continue as successful parents. Dude, what am I? Okay. Anyway. What am I? A potted plant? Yeah. I mean, I've been a successful marriage of two working professionals who are successful parents for four months. I've kept him alive. Four months, David. Here's a balancing op-ed from this morning's New York Times, which I commend to your attention. I would argue that Caitlin Beattie, I think that's how you pronounce her name, captures well the experience of a majority of women who would hope to have balance in their lives. I'd be interested to hear or read your reactions to it.

And this is an op-ed called Why Amy Coney Barrett Can Only Have It All. Sorry. Why only Amy Coney Barrett gets to have it all? Her strong faith, embrace of motherhood and career accomplishments have made her an icon for the right. So why aren't more girls from conservative Christian traditions encouraged to be like her? And this triggered an interesting conversation between me and the listener and me and David. So David, I'm going to let you go first with your thoughts. Yeah. So I think the premise that certainly in educated, devout Christian circles outside of a really narrow slice of that world that focuses very much on

what I would call either Victorian leading up to the Leave it to Beaver era gender roles in professional life. Outside of that very small slice, the parents I know would look at Amy Coney Barrett and say, I mean, I'm not going to try to pressure my daughter to be a Supreme Court justice with seven kids. That's a kind of a burden to put on somebody, but are very pleased, very pleased when their daughters go to law school, go to medical school, and have marriages and kids. I mean, there's a very strong, especially in educated Christian circles, bias towards adopting what I would call the general secular world's view of

at the very least, you're going to finish your education before you get married. It may even be preferable to finish your education and get started in your career before you get married. And yeah even be preferable to finish your education and get started in your career before you get married. And yeah, we might be more accepting than some other communities in saying, well, once you have children, staying at home is a good choice or a viable choice. But even that pressure to stay at home after marriage has really dramatically loosened,

even in very much so, even in my own lifetime. In fact, if anything, it's the dynamic may have suddenly flipped to an assumption that you'll keep on working. So I think there's some aspects of that op-ed that are just not based in what the reality of religious communities right now. And it's one of the reasons why so many young Christian women reacted so favorably to the Amy Coney Barrett, not just her nomination, but her family story. They were like, yeah, you can do this. You can do this. And that listeners is David's very optimistic take. And I'm going to disagree with it strongly. Okay. I think we are lying to young women when we hold up Amy Coney Barrett and say simply, she worked hard. She's really smart. And that's what made this possible.

possible. I do not believe that. I believe something my mother told me, which is the most important decision you make in your life is who you marry. There is no decision that even comes close. That person will control so much of your destiny from that point forward. And when you look at Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sandra Day O'Connor, and Amy Coney Barrett, there is a through line, and it is their husbands, in a way that it is not the case for men. Men can marry any different types of women. They may be happier or less happy, depending on their own personalities. but its effect on their careers is simply not as profound as it is on a woman's career. Now, some of this is that maybe it's my age, maybe it's simply my friend group, whatever it is, but I have obviously very brilliant,

I have obviously very, you know, brilliant, high-powered, wonderful female friends. And look, I don't have that many friends. So two of my high-powered female friends. We know that's a lie. We know that's a lie. But like, you know, a percentage, two is a high percentage, a real percentage of my close female friends. a real percentage of my close female friends. Two of them got married when they were the lesser or equal partner in their relationship and became the more high-powered partner, a la an Amy Coney Barrett, a Sandra Day O'Connor, or a Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In one of them, the marriage simply fell apart due to infidelity on his part because he said

he was no longer being appreciated in their marriage um and i 100 attribute that to him feeling not no longer sexually appreciated but no longer appreciated because he was not the primary breadwinner but also not the primary alpha alpha yeah um the other one became abusive and uh you know that has been really hard as a friend to to watch and i do think it's related to the same idea that we have not, we've trained our women so well. Like she said, anything guys can do, girls can do better. You know, you can be anything you want to be. You want to be a doctor, a lawyer, a astronaut, ladies, you are your own limitation. As far as that that is concerned what we have not done is trained our men to feel okay with that and so what you see are men being a little confused befuddled by these

relationships where the woman is the one who is interesting at the cocktail party and people are walking up to her. So I'd say we're kind of talking past each other a little bit because my argument is about what is the background culture of American Christianity and women's careers, which is not— Yeah, but my point is you can't have that career unless you have the partner because yes, these marriages are breaking apart. In an abusive marriage, thankfully that marriage is going to end. But for a lot of women,

they sense it early on and so they throttle themselves back because they realize that their marriage can't last if they continue to push ahead of their husband's career. And so, yes, they're hearing on the one hand, go get that education, go be a lawyer, go be great. And on the other hand, they're sensing that that's not going to work out well. So I think what you're describing, so the one hand I'm saying, I think the stereotype of a Christian community that is not rewarding, that seeks to throttle back women is wrong. But I do think that you're describing a background, cross-cultural, cross-religious, male-female marriage dynamic that is a very real thing.

That is a very real thing. And I think you also see it and you've heard it, and I've heard it many times, especially as women advance, like they go to Harvard Law School, they go to Yale, they get a PhD, and all of a sudden it is as if the pool of marriage, whereas a man, as a man advances,

the pool of eligible women grows. As a woman advances. Extidentally. Yes. It's like going to Harvard Law is like being six feet tall as a woman. There are still men out there who you can date who are taller than you, but man, that pool just shrunk, and you're going to have to potentially make some compromises on the other end. I obviously did not because Scott is perfection.

And a 6'3". But yeah, I think you're 100% correct about that, that as a woman grows more accomplished, her pool, just the reality is. And I think also my question for you though, Sarah, is are there a lot of women who are Harvard Law students who would be totally cool marrying a guy who's a CPA, has a BA from a mid-level state school, making a good living as a CPA, but it's very clear from the get-go that her career, she's got the dynamic career,

she's going to be the breadwinner how many so i think this kind of goes a little bit doesn't it no no david i will tell you about my friends who so one friend married a lawyer who went to a local college um and that marriage ended in divorce one friend married a police officer that also ended in infidelity and divorce um one friend married something similar to what you're talking about a cpa that marriage has not ended but it is not a particularly happy one. So yes, many of my female friends have married, you know, quote unquote beneath their station, whatever, whatever term you want to use. But again, I don't think we're preparing men for

that. And so I don't think it's working very well because all these women were trying to find their marty ginsburg and you know god bless marty ginsburg uh or uh judge barrett's husband they're just not that many of them out there who are that self-secure in their masculinity and their role in the household that they know they don't have the emotional tools to deal with that. And I think that we should be more honest with women about that because I think that by not being honest, they end up in bad situations. My friend who's in the abusive marriage is a very, very Christian family and household. And the extended families were not prepared for what to do in this situation. They initially told her to stay in the marriage potentially. And it's not that they're bad people. They just didn't have the tools of what to do in this case.

So it's not that I think those women shouldn't go pursue their educations. But if we're more honest with them, I think they will have a better time discerning which men to marry and which ones probably will not produce a successful marriage. Because as we have discussed, marriage is hard and it's full of compromises and people change. And that's both the fun of it and the drawback of it. And we don't talk to young people enough about marriage choices. And instead, we just let Hollywood show these rom-coms where if you fall in love with someone, that's going to be enough to sustain the marriage. And that's obviously not the case, but we then don't tell them what factors should they be considering?

What are the trends in successful marriages versus the trends in not successful marriages? And simply telling women to, you know, go follow their heart's content is only half the message. Well, and I mean, we have a culture that says to men that your status is an objectively measurable thing based on your relative career achievement within your circle including your family and that defines that that's a fundamental definer of who you are um which puts this burden on men that in this changing job environment, many of them are not thriving and not responding. And I think that that's one of the things that I've written about this a ton, about locating your sense of who you are as a man, not in your class status, not in your education, but in a sense of real virtue. That you're not defined by your career, you're defined by your virtues.

your career you're defined by your your virtues and it's just it it's a cultural zig when the world has been saying for a very long time to zag and and so that yeah i agree with you completely that that it is that there are strange i have never seen a i'm trying to think if in my life I have seen that sort of achievement mismatch with real thriving in a marriage. And I can say I've seen it once. I've seen it once. And with a guy who made a choice to be a stay-at-home dad and their marriage has thrived. It thrived. He's an awesome dude and a super smart guy and a guy who could achieve very well in a career.

But his wife was on an absolute fast track involving an awful lot of travel, and he made that choice. And they thrived. But that's the one, that's one example I can think of. So I just think when we look at Amy Coney Barrett and we see seven children and a successful marriage and being nominated to the Supreme Court, instead of saying, look, ladies, you can have it all if you shoot high and try hard and are smart,

I would like to see a little bit more breakdown. And yep, the message isn't going to be as sunny, but you can't have it all at once. The marriage is the most important decision that you will make. If you want a successful career and a family, the marriage is what makes that. Not you, not your IQ, not whether you went to Harvard Law. So do some studying, do some reading into the types of marriages that make that work and the types of people in those marriages who can make that work. Think about seven children and what that takes and what chapters are you going to dedicate to that in your life? And what chapters are you going to be able to dedicate to career advancement in your life? Understanding that it's not going to all happen within the same 24 hour period where you're going to have four hours with

children and four hours with career and four hours to do dinner and laundry. Like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. The question of who does the laundry in your house yesterday in the hearings cracked me up because like, that's hardly the point. laundry in a in a and i think as marriage that would allow that type of career advancement it's not that he does the laundry is that there's 27 chores and how you know how did y'all divide those is it consistent my guess is yes that he always does his and she always does hers versus sort of a grab bag of like oh i see the trash needs to get taken out it's whoever is less tolerant of the trash overflowing onto the ground

so i just want to get into the nitty-gritty of this i want our culture to stop glossing over it and just um heralding these women who do make it as like look see it's possible no no it's not just that like they were better there were like 75 factors that allowed this to happen that we could teach to women and men but we choose not to. So do you want to hear some interesting social, social science? Yes. It turns out I'm trying to pull up. I'll put it in the show notes of if I can find it here in the next little bit,

but recent study was showing that some of the most, the two communities of people who were most equitable in the division of labor in their marriages, can you guess them, Sarah? The two communities? American sub-communities. Yeah. Is it going to be Christian,

evangelical households or something? Highly religious and highly progressive, the two. Huh. So highly religiously conservative, more equitable, highly politically progressive. Huh. So highly religiously conservative, more equitable, highly politically progressive. Interesting.

And I wonder if on the religious side, tell me if you think my instinct is correct on this, that the chores being distributed are actually not the same within those two, that within the progressive household, like the man is doing the laundry and the woman's doing the dishes and it's all just, it is a grab bag, even if it's a consistent grab bag. But in the highly religious households, I bet we could list out the chores very accurately that the men do and that the women do. Could very well be the case. Could

very well be the case. But what about be the case. What about in your household? What are your chores? What are my chores? What are your house maintenance activities? You would have to realize how phenomenally disorganized we are on a sort of a day-to-day basis. So the only thing that I do that Nancy definitely does not do is the yard. Okay. Wait, but what, who moves the trash from the household to the bins? Anybody. Oh my God. You actually are that household who is, whoever is less tolerant of the trash overflowing. Um, whoever is in the vicinity

when it starts to overflow. No. See, that to me means that Nancy is doing it more because... Oh, I think I do it. I think I do it more simply because when it's starting to overflow, it's pretty heavy. And so... Okay. Who unloads the dishwasher?

Any of us. Yeah. But mainly the kids. This sounds like a disaster. I would say, but net-net it works out to where Nancy unloads and loads the dishwasher more, but the person who,

but really truly the kids unload and load the dishwasher more. Like when the three are in the house, it's about exclusively a child labor situation. Okay. I know we have a high school female student who listens to this podcast, and I just want to tell you, you know who you are. Nancy and David are very special people who can make that work. That is a terrible plan. I mean, we're heavily dependent on child labor,

Sarah. I just have to say it's a good teaching tool for them. We have a strict division in our household. There are things that Scott does and if he hasn't gotten around to doing them, I will not do them. They just will not get done. That's the plan. I will say this. My other job that is exclusively my job is changing light bulbs um interesting yeah which involves getting up on ladders and all of this stuff for high ceilings and I just tend not to do it um and eventually the lights go out one by one by one and this is an actual true story and then we'll we'll this podcast. One day I'm sitting behind my computer playing World of Warcraft, as one does,

and I see two guys from the youth group, from the church youth group come in. I'm like, hey guys, what are y'all doing here? And he said, Miss Nancy hired us to replace your light bulbs. Oh, so this is actually really interesting because this is a question I was going to ask you. Because I told you that Scott has his specific things

that he does in the house and I have mine. But if one or the other of us hasn't done our thing, even though it looks like it should have been done, I will never tell Scott, you haven't taken out the trash, please take out the trash. There's no nagging involved. It will get done when it gets done and i just accept that even if it's not when i would have it done so it sounds to me like nancy actually did not nag you to change the light bulbs

she just solved the problem on her own and that is a fascinating and i bet also consistent element of happy marriages of just doing exactly what she did. I can't change the light bulb on my own. He has not changed it. Clearly, he's noticed that the light bulb is out. And so I will simply, in maybe a conspicuous passive aggressive way, get the light bulb changed. And how many light bulbs were changed on that day? Oh, do tell. 34. the light bulb changed. And how many light bulbs were changed on that day? Oh, do tell. 34. Oh!

David! I know. Yep. David! It involved a trip to Home Depot. Mm-hmm. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I'm busy.

Busy, Sarah. In the dark. In the dark. I mean, that's like a very like 19th century lifestyle you're living at that point. Like, why even bother to have the electricity? Well, you know, think about this. I mean, the Bill of Rights was written without electricity. I'm sure that's exactly how your book is similar in fashion to the bill of rights. Quill and paper with an oil lamp until the oil runs out.

And I don't replace that either. So. And you're almost twice as old as the guys who wrote that. So, oh, I hadn't had an old joke in so long. Sarah. No, no. All right, on that note, we will bring this podcast to a close.

Thank you for listening. Please go rate us on iTunes. It's deeply appreciated. And we will be back Monday, no doubt with maybe, I don't know, 19 new cycles to discuss between now and then.

But until then, we will talk to you later.