After Party with Emily Jashinsky - Aaron Rodgers TORCHES ESPN and Fauci, RFK Jr. Unloads on Dana Bash, with Meghan Daum, PLUS Sophie Cunningham Attacked

Episode Date: August 4, 2026

Emily Jashinsky is joined by Meghan Daum, author and host of “The Unspeakeasy” Podcast. They begin with Meghan's personal story of losing her home in the 2025 California wildfires before discussing Spencer Pratt, Los Angeles' homelessness crisis, why California's approach to addiction and mental illness continues to fail, and whether public frustration could reshape the state's politics. They also react to Aaron Rodgers' criticism of Anthony Fauci and ESPN as Emily argues America has entered an era of "raw milk politics," where audiences increasingly prefer unfiltered conversations over legacy media gatekeepers. Then Emily and Meghan respond to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s epic clash with CNN's Dana Bash over COVID and the media’s role in shaping pandemic hysteria. Later, they examine Ariana Grande's retreat from public life as a springboard for a conversation about body positivity, social media, AI, and the growing unhappiness of young Americans. Emily rounds out the show with new media attacks on Sophie Cunningham over her defense of women's sports, arguing critics have distorted her views while ignoring the broader public debate over transgender athletes, and more.   For more information on Meghan’s work: https://www.theunspeakeasy.com https://www.youtube.com/@TheUnspeakeasyPodcast   To join one of Meghan’s retreats: https://www.theunspeakeasy.com/retreats   ZBiotics: Go to https://zbiotics.com/AFTERPARTY and use AFTERPARTY at checkout for 15% off any first time orders of ZBiotics probiotics.   SelectQuote: Compare top rated life insurance options. Visit https://SelectQuote.com/emily to get the right coverage at the right price.   Cowboy Colostrum: Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code AFTERPARTY at https://www.cowboycolostrum.com/afterparty Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

All right, everyone, welcome to After Party. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. Our guest is the great Megan Dom. So excited to have her here on the program. Do as a favor, subscribe. If you haven't subscribed yet, clicking the subscribe button on YouTube is one of the most important ways to help the show. Keep doing the independent journalism we love to do here on After Party.

So, again, very grateful to everybody for being here. Make sure to like, comment. All of that helps a lot as well. And subscribe wherever you get your podcast because the show is three days a week on podcast feeds. we do an extra show on Fridays. That is audio only. All right, lots to discuss. We are going to be talking about California with Megan.

She has a lot to say on that. We're going to be talking about Aaron Rogers stepping out of line. Con on Anthony Fauci. I guess that's kind of in line for Aaron Rogers. RFK juniors. What's the best way to put it? Just knockout verbal battle with Dana Bash on CNN State of the Union on Sunday. really depressing new numbers on happiness among young adults.

Ariana Grande says she's stepping back from public life after her tour finishes. And of course, we will be covering the latest media coverage. We'll be covering the coverage of the WNBA madness, the firestorm swirling around Sophie Cunningham. As we speak, it continues to escalate. So as I said, much to discuss. We are going to take a quick break here. We'll be back with Megan Dom on the other side of it.

talking about California. See you in a second. Well, living in a big city and honestly working as a journalist means that your social calendar is always packed with dinners, birthdays, rooftop parties, all the stuff you got to do to keep up with sources. So balancing a fun social life and professional life with real adult responsibilities requires a smart game plan to say the least. And that's why I reach for Zbiotics pre-alcohol probiotic drink before heading out. Zibiotics pre-alcohol probiotic drink is the world. first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. It really does work. And here's how it works. When you drink alcohol gets converted

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All right, everyone, I was promised we're joined now by Megan Dom for my money. She's one of the most interesting writers in the world. She's author and host of The Unspeak Easy Podcast. You should also go check out the unspeak easy retreat. You can go to the unspeakeasy.com slash retreats to find more information and maybe to find a little bit of community. Megan, thanks for being here. Hi, Emily. I'm so excited to be with you. I can't believe you stay up this late three times a week. It's not that bad. I promise. You have no life. Do you have no? I can't tell if you have the best life or no, none. You know what's funny? Is the thought process behind the show is that I'm up this late anyway. I'm always up really late. I'm a night owl. And so I figured

I could just do the work during the night and then do what I like to do, just sleep in anyway. So it's kind of a basketball place. Because you're the opposite of the morning show. You're the night show. Okay. Yes. Yes. I figured it out. Okay. Well, Megan, if people don't follow Megan's work, she's just such a beautiful writer, poignant writer. And just, you know, in the last couple of years, Megan, you've been writing about your own experience in California a lot. And before we dive into Spencer Pratt, some recent developments in California politics, I was wondering if you could just catch up the audience, some of whom might not be, or some people might not be familiar with your story,

a bit about what's happened to you in the last couple years. Oh, you mean California-wise? Yes, ma'am. Yeah. Well, I have lived in Los Angeles for the better part of 20 years. I do spend some time back in New York, but I'm basically here. I was at Los Angeles Times columnist for about 12 years, and this is very much my city in, whenever that was, January 2025.

I was one of the people affected by the wildfires. I lost my home, the home I was living in, totally burned to the ground in the Eaton fire, so I was writing a lot about that and talking a lot about that. But, you know, aside from the fires, it's funny because, you know, when we talk about what's gone wrong with Los Angeles, the fires are not really the main story. The main story to me is this homelessness crisis, the street homelessness crisis, which frankly, I don't even think we should use the word homeless anymore. And I can tell you why in a minute if you're interested. But it's just become a city that I don't recognize in a lot of ways. And I think a lot of people are feeling that way. And finally starting to, to say so out loud, but it's interesting how it's been a long journey to actually being able to admit this. Well, let's get into that, actually, because I think we can put the Spencer Pratt post up on the screen.

He reposted a video of what appeared to be, this was captured by someone who goes out in Skid Row a lot. So it appeared to be a person having a baby, a woman having a baby on the sidewalk in Schindlero recently. And Spencer Pratt said, this is Nithia Rahman's slum utopia. Crack had gave birth on the street while smoking crack. Nithia runs homelessness and housing for L.A. City, and she gave them their free crack pipes. The baby was found dead in a blanket. This is what L.A. voted for. God help us. Now, I can't confirm those details. This is what Spencer Pratt ran on the record and said, I think,

according to the person who filmed the video, but Megan, to your point about not even using the term homelessness anymore, it seems to me this would be a good example of exactly what you're talking about, a center of American wealth and power and honestly optimism. looking so dystopian in particular corners. Bring us into what Los Angeles looks like. Well, these are drug-addicted street campers. These are drug-addicted, severely mentally ill, illegal street campers. Whether or not they're homeless is sort of a side point.

There's a lot of people who are homeless. There are many cohorts of homelessness, of course, right? There are the invisible homeless or the people who, you know, truly did. miss a couple of rent payments and found themselves with nowhere to live. They're the couch surfers, people living in their cars. I mean, there's obviously a serious affordability crisis, housing crisis. That is all happening. But the homelessness that we see, the encampments, the scenes like you just described,

this is, in my view, like 99.9% drug driven. This is addiction. And frankly, this is something that I have learned. more about recently. A lot of it is methamphetamine driven. I mean, we talk about fentanyl, and that's certainly a factor. But this new form of hyper-pure meth has changed the landscape of addiction

and people's behavior in the last five years even. And I mean, this is something I've talked about on my podcast, Sam Kannonis, who is an investigative journalist. He's done several books on this, and he's talked about this. And, you know, he will say, and I think this is fair, that the sort of recovery community and the sort of homelessness, some people will call it the homelessness industrial complex. You can choose your term.

I mean, people who think that their job is to deal with this, they haven't really caught up with the effects of this new kind of drug. So you have this harm reduction model, which has to do with the idea that people need housing first. They can work on their addiction once they get into some kind of housing. that does not work under these circumstances. Arguably, it never really worked, but it certainly doesn't now. And a lot of people still haven't figured that out.

So we're kind of talking past each other in a lot of ways. Yeah, I wanted to read from the City Journal article. Chris Rufo and another one of the City Journal writers went to Skid Row and bought, not bought. They obtained meth pipes, to your point about meth. Oh, no, you can get those for free. You can get those handed out by outreach workers. Yeah, no need to buy. No money involved. No.

So here's what they wrote. They said, quote, we discovered that instead of directing addicts to get clean, the taxpayer-funded program doles out free paraphernalia, enabling addicts to get high. No questions asked. Across several visits, we obtained drug testing strips, syringes, and crack pipes. One worker told us that while drug use isn't allowed on site, we, quote, wouldn't be bothered if we just got high outside unless we overdosed. And, Megan, this has been happening for a long time. This experiment has been run in various cities around the world, certainly in the United States. now, of course, Spencer Pratt didn't make the runoff of Nithy Rahman, Karen Bass, who have overseen this crisis that does not seem to be getting significantly better.

Nithy Rahman, I believe, is on one of the committees, like the head of the committee that's supposed to be dealing with encampments. So Steve Hilton running for governor, obviously, but why? Why? In a place of such wealth and power between, you know, San Francisco, at least before the new mayor, Los Angeles here, California itself, why? Why? Why? why does this keep happening? It's multifactorial. And I've spent a lot of time over the last year trying to figure out what's true, what is hype, what's a right-wing talking point, what's a left-wing talking point.

You have this situation where you have these nonprofits, these NGOs that have contracts with the city, and they're supposed to be helping the homeless. So they will, you know, for instance, have some kind of facility down on Skid Row, for instance, where they provide care of some sort, outreach, housing. They have different kinds of functions.

And I think two and a half billion in Los Angeles alone in taxpayer money has been lost. They just can't account for the money that they've received for these nonprofits. So they're supposed to be doing things like keeping people off of drugs or keeping them fed or giving them shelter of some sort. but often they will have some kind of place for them to come in and get, you know, food, wound care is a big thing that you often see down in Skid Row because people shoot directly into like, you know, festering wounds. But then they'll also offer a safe injection site right there on the premises. So you'll have, you know, mental health counseling and, you know, you could see a medical provider. You could get a sandwich. You could have a shower.

You might be able to have relief for your pet. And also, guess what? There's a courtyard right here and it's a safe insurance. injection site and you can shoot up right here where it's safe. And this just doesn't work anymore. This is a model that came from the AIDS crisis back when safe needle exchange had a real reason behind it. And obviously, HIV is still around, but, you know, and people can get hepatitis and

other things from sharing needles, but we are not dealing with the same thing. And there is just a kind of, I think, willful. willful ignorance of the reality of the situation. But to answer your question, I don't know. I don't know why you have this big contingent of people who are insisting that we're going to meet folks where they are. And when they're ready, they'll get help. Well, people get help when they get arrested, usually.

Or something serious happens. Right. And if we zoom out to kind of the 30,000-foot view, that's kind of why Nithia Rahman and Karen Bass. I mean, San Francisco is an interesting case study right now. We'll see what happens. But that's sort of why they can't backtrack on it, because they're utterly wedded to this idea that the, the carcels system is deeply racist, fundamentally racist, inherently racist. It is violence against people who are incarcerated to put them in prison when they clearly need help and are violating the law and are disrupting the public order and the public good. So you can't really walk back on that after it's become. such a fundamental part of your position about the justice system, I suppose. Is it what, I guess, like, Gad's sad. I think they could walk back on it.

But, I mean, they could just say, okay, we're not going to do this anymore. I mean, San Francisco, things got so bad that they elected Daniel Lurie, who apparently is making a dent in it. They recalled their, you know, their district attorney, right? Chesa Boudin. Like, the people got really fed up. And apparently just hasn't gotten bad enough here. But, you know, the other thing is that people come to these places.

They come to Los Angeles. They come to Portland. They come to Seattle because there's going to be services. You know, I've been down in Skid Row several times over the last several months, and I'll talk to people and I'll ask them where they're from. They're from Ohio. They're from, you know, Texas. They're from Canada.

They're from all over. And they come to these places because they know they can get services. And they know that they're going to be allowed to sleep on the street. How do the progresses? that you encounter in California cope with this just ideologically? I have had so many bizarre conversations with people and they say, well, it's not really that bad. It's better than it used to be.

Or, you know, it's all about housing affordability. As if, you know, missing one rent payment, you're going to end up, like, on a urine-soaked mattress in a tent. Like, there's no, that's not how you get from A to B. You know, there's a lot that goes on in between there. You know, I have this theory that this is a little bit of a crack pot theory, but I have this theory that people are not driving themselves around as much in cities. And so they're not seeing it.

They're taking Uber's. They're looking at their phone. They're not actually looking around because I personally, I don't see how you can drive around the city and not see it. Every freeway ramp, there's encampments, you know, underpass. it's just everywhere. But I think people, they are not, like, as attuned to their surroundings just generally, like as a species. I think we are just so focused on screens that we're not actually seeing our environment. That's just my little pet theory.

That's a really interesting theory, especially with Uber and the like. And also just with the way people are sorting in cities now where, you know, there's less socioeconomic overlap in neighborhoods than there used to be. And that's been going on for a long time. but I suppose maybe a confluence of different factors leads up to people just not being aware and having the ability to dismiss it and say, that's just Skid Row.

It's not all of Los Angeles. Although last time I was in downtown Los Angeles, it was awful. It was rough. It's everywhere and it's on Venice Beach. I mean, Skid Row is a 50 block area. It's very large and that is downtown. That's part of downtown. But we see this all over the city

because it's allowed to happen. I mean, another thing, is you could go to Whole Foods and there could be somebody panhandling out there. There's no escaping it, but I do think that when you get into these very high wealth classes, people are sending their assistant to Whole Foods or Air One or whatever it is to go get their stuff.

And they're just not looking around for some reason. Or there's a donor's a progressive donor class and they want to keep certain politicians in power for whatever reason. they want to feel good about themselves. And just quickly, I want to say, like, to your point about, you know, worrying about, you know, carceral state sorts of things, there's a real hangover and guilt complex over the old asylum system.

People hear involuntary commitment, even to a rehab facility, something that would be, you know, potentially very thoughtful and well put together. And they think, oh, this is like going back to the old, state mental hospital system, the old asylum system. We don't want to go back to that because people were held against their will. And, you know, one flew over the cuckusness actually did a great deal of damage to any sort of discussion around this. And so I think that's as much, if not more, an issue than, you know, people worrying about systemic racism, that kind of thing. And you sat down with Spencer Pratt and, you know, both of you lost homes in that situation. I guess this is different than the street

camping, but California is just so badly mismanaged. It feels like it's becoming, at least in the major cities, Gotham, where you have the ultra, ultra rich, and then the genuine poor and absolutely no middle class to speak of, and the rich are able to live in the cities because they have the security, although things get hairy, obviously, per the Batman movies. But I don't understand. I mean, I guess I do understand the California political system is its own animal. But I'm wondering what you think kind of comes next in California politics. Is there a seat change? Is there something San Francisco that can, on the San Francisco level, that can happen statewide?

I think it's going to have to get worse. I think we're going to have to go through this next phase. I mean, the rise of the Democratic Socialist parties, I mean, it's something that you've talked about, everyone's talking about. I feel like we're going to just have to get through that phase and see how bad it gets. Or, you know, maybe they'll get it right. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they'll prove me wrong. I don't know.

But apparently it hasn't gotten bad enough. And, you know, in terms of like the zombie apocalypse sort of stuff, I was a very vocal supporter of Spencer Pratt. I was one of the few journalists. I guess as a journalist, you're not actually supposed to support a candidate. I'd never done that before. But I was so just up in arms about this homelessness crisis that I really got behind him.

even though he was an extremely flawed candidate. But, you know, a lot of the messaging and the AI, you know, videos that he was releasing and had this, you know, zombie, you know, he talked about zombies and he used that word and he was playing around with that, those memes. It's not always like that. There is a working class here. There's a middle class here.

They tend to live not in L.A. City. There's a lot of suburbs here. Southern California is the collection of suburbs, really. And, you know, another thing about Los Angeles is the way the city itself is carved up. There are independent municipalities within the city. So, like, for instance, Burbank is its own city. West Hollywood is its own city. Culver City.

Pasadena, Santa Monica. None of those places vote for Los Angeles mayor, for example. They have their own mayor. So I think that it's, you know, you do have sort of middle class normies maybe living out, you know, in the valley somewhere or in Riverside County, which is that's a whole other county. But it's, it's more, it's, it's not quite as, as black and white as, as all of that, but it's a, it's a complicated place. And it's hard to get your mind around. Yeah, no, it really is. And I always say this. I sound like a broken record on it. But the thing that makes me more said than anything else is the opening of LA Confidential, the Kevin Spacey

movie, the, the first scene, it's all of these ads, mid-century ads about how California is the, center of the American dream and how you can have this like wonderful middle class beautiful natural wonderful existence in California it's the next frontier of post-war middle-class America and just the cultural juxtaposition is stings to watch what's happen well I know you wish you could go back in time and buy as much real estate as you could I mean and the other thing is you get the people who did buy real estate back then the they're paying the same property tax. I mean, we have this property tax law that your taxes don't get up. You pay the tax that your house was worth when you bought it. So if you bought your house 50 years ago,

you're really not paying any property tax. So there's all kinds of things like this. It's complicated, but, you know, I love it. I still love it here. And there's a reason that I'm staying and there's a reason that I'm speaking out about this because I really do think, I do think there's hope because people are getting really fed up. A little personal story the first time I'd stepped foot in California, I think it was like 20 years old. And I stepped out from the Santa Barbara Airport, which if you've ever been to the San Barbara Airport, it's an otherworldly airport. It's ridiculous. And you're looking at the mountains, the ocean. I turned to my friend who's a lifelong California. And I said, why doesn't everybody

live here? Like my exact words. And it's so obvious why not everybody lives in California. But man, is it depressing? Sorry, I'm being so depressing, Megan, but Oh, no, no. Well, I mean, yeah, especially not everybody lives in Santa Barbara for one big obvious reason. Just Oprah and Ellen, although Ellen went to the Cotswolds for some reason. Well, and Megan and Harry. They live in Montecito. Yeah. God bless them. But California has a way of creating disillusioned progressives. And let's roll this clip of Aaron Rogers. We're going to talk about Aaron Rogers and RFK Jr. Both of whom I think, I think you could comfortably situate left of center, especially Robert of Kennedy Jr., Aaron Rogers, kind of in the hippie bucket, I guess, if ever there was one, California boy.

He was on with Pat McAfee just today and unloaded on Anthony Fauci, totally unprompted. Got a great response with the crowd that was gathered. I think this was at Pebble Beach. Let's take a listen. Now I'm going to plead the fifth. Okay. Okay. Like that.

Like that absolute coward, Tony Fletcher. Absolutely coward. What are you scared of, Tony? I thought you were the science. And how much time did the network spend of that? How much time did they spend on my responses every week, on my vaccination status, on Taylor and Travis's wedding? Yeah!

Did they do even a minute? Did they do even a minute on Tony Foucher? That was Megan in the background. No, I bet they didn't. This is awesome. Go back to Fauci? Go back to the coward Tony Fauci. Who's spending the entire time writing in his diary about how fun it is to be famous.

You got to be kidding me. Okay, so on that note. What are you going to say about me now? Debate of back. What are you going to say about me now? No, I got no debate here. You got a 500. No, seriously, what are they going to say about me now?

Now, now that you can't talk about the COVID stuff because obviously it was made, you know, in a lab in China. That's like not even questionable anymore. Tony Fauci is. an absolute criminal. I'm on, I'm on good terms of my family. I'm on good terms of my family. What are you going to say now? What are you going to say now? What are you going to talk about Rex Ryan's foot fetish, but please don't talk about,

you know, anything else right now. Don't talk about, you know, any scandals involved. Don't talk about, you know, pop culture. Talk about Taylor and Travis's wedding. What do the insiders know about that? But don't talk about, you know, shit that actually has to do with our business or writing wrong. This is quality content.

What can I say? Yeah. California has a way of creating, I call them cultural class traders, like Aaron Rodgers, like super rich. But this is, he's sounding off on Fauci after the Fauci Diaries revealed that he was really close to a lot of DC journalists and the, I don't know, the political elite. And we all knew them. But the diaries obviously revealed the depths of the ties. And Megan, it's kind of like just looking at that. with Sophie Cunningham and the UFC fight.

I'm just thinking like the cultural lines are being drawn. And the elites in California at ESPN, they have no idea what's coming. I mean, all the world is a podcast stage, right? I mean, everybody, because everybody comports themselves in this way now. I mean, I think it's really still very unsettling. I mean, it's still unsettling to me. I mean, I'm on Gen X.

Like, I'm old school. I've been a journalist for 30 years, and you would never behave that way. You would never go on a talk show, a talk show, and kind of just shoot the breeze like that. But everything is, you know, kind of just like we're having now, a casual discussion. But, I mean, there's a lot of, I think there's a lot of good to that, too. I mean, it's, I don't know, I don't know if there's a sweet spot. Like, is there a way to have, like, a really quality? Like, I guess, I think you do it actually very well, you know, a sort of kind of.

casual, more off-the-cuff conversation, that is still, thank you, that is still quality controlled. But, yeah, I mean, look, people have always loved to see celebrities talk about politics. It's kind of like a crossover. It's sort of like when Mork from Mnty is on the happy days. It's like a crossover. It's like when you see somebody from one show, your favorite sitcom, show up on another show.

That's what it's like to hear a celebrity talk about. politics, I think. They bring Fonzie on Laverne and Shirley. Yes. Yes. Well, and with Rogers, he said something interesting. He said, what are you going to do? What are you going to do to me, basically? I'm paraphrasing. But that's interesting to me because it speaks to the democratized media landscape that you were just talking about. Like, you can't punish Aaron Rogers in 2026 the way that you could in 2020 or 2021, let alone 2010, 2011. It's not the same anymore. And the way that I always think about it is people were told, drink this ultra-processed milk, whatever. It's great for you. Don't worry. We've tested all of it. Trust the FDA. Whatever. And people start realizing,

oh, maybe this isn't great. Maybe there are hormones going into this. I don't want, whatever. And so then they say, just give it to me raw. I just want the raw milk. And sometimes you've got to heat the milk up a little bit. It doesn't need that much processing, but you've got to heat it up a little bit. And I feel like we are going to total, like raw milk politics. No, I like this metaphor. I like this. This is like a cut. You couldn't get a whole book out of this probably. That's a TED talk at the very least. Yeah.

I don't like any of this old wine. I want some fresh wine. Yeah. I know. I mean, what, I mean, you're young. Do you, like, I mean, you are young. Does this feel like, does this feel natural to you? Does this feel normal or does it still, like, land with you as a new frontier?

I love it. I love Aaron Rogers going. ESPN and saying something genuinely interesting. To me, it's not that interesting if it's another interview with Colin Kaepernett talking about how the national anthem is racist, which is what you hear on all of the corporate media channels over and overgone ad nauseum for however long. If you're going to say something interesting, then, and he, by the way, was rumored to potentially be an RFK Jr., who will talk about in a moment, his vice presidential pick. Like, he's been injected into the political system. So if you're interviewing Aaron Rogers, you're probably going to expect

some of this. So I don't mind it. I think it's kind of fun. great and for now it's still disruptive. And I enjoy the kind of rebellious disruptive nature of it. But I don't think you're wrong to say this might not bode well for the future of the discourse and the polity. I think we're in the discourse was in its infancy like, you know, maybe 10 years ago, the sort of independent creator space. But now it's in its toddlerhood. So it's really the most tantrumy, awkward phase. So I just think we have to ride this out. It's a really rough, confusing, complicated ride. I mean, just, I know we're going to talk about Fauci in a minute,

but like everything with that is just such a mishmash of confusion and rage and obfuscations and revisionist history, that it's very hard to make sense of it. It's especially hard for Californians who were locked down forever. I mean, especially depending on where you were. It was a long pandemic. Let's talk about Fauci because Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was on State of the Union with CNN's Dana Bash over the weekend. Obviously, this is on the heels of Rand Paul releasing Anthony Fauci's diaries, which I wanted to call private diaries. They are not private. He wrote them on public computers on his government email. Just astoundingly stupid decision. Doesn't he have like a quill? He should have like an amazing pen. I feel like Anthony Fauci is the kind of guy they would have given many amazing pens to.

And indeed he may have been gifted these amazing pens, but yet he chose to type away on his government email account, which we now know it was Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s team who uncovered these emails that he said were secreted away, which is sequestered and secreted away. Nice word. Okay. Yeah, I guess if you're HHS secretary, that word is on the tip of your tongue. But nevertheless, he went on with Dana Bash, and they got into what I think is like a historic land. landmark level knockout verbal battle on CNN over the Fauci Diaries, which Dana Bash makes a couple of appearances in. So let's watch from Sunday their back and forth. How do you prepare for the next pandemic? I mean, I think we did virtually everything wrong the last time. So what about now?

The principal thing that we need to do is we need to listen to what's happening to doctors on the ground. And then, Dana, the other thing that I would say is, is that we need to protect our constitutional rights. That that is the primary obligation. What does that mean? Doctors who are saying you're doing it wrong for being marginalized and vilified. Because, again, I really want to move on.

But you are saying, you are, really? You don't say. No, I wasn't part of the problem. Yeah, there was absolute press malpractice. You're talking about therapeutics, fine. It is also factually true that the COVID vaccine worked. The COVID vaccine prevented deaths. You think the COVID vaccine protected children?

I think that what I have talked to scientists and doctors about. You talk to scientists, can you look, can you show me one study? Yes, I can. I can tell you that when it comes to the vaccine, there have been studies that show that because of vaccine, disinformation, disinformation, there could have been. 100 to 200,000 lives in the U.S. saved. You are saying nonsense. You are saying something that you cannot show me a single study. I am not saying nonsense. I want to talk about.

cite me the study that you're talking about it. I am not here to defend. Cite me the study. This is not productive. I am not here to defend all of the practice. Let me finish. You're talking nonsense. You're making assertions you can't support it. And then when I call you on there, you're telling me, I'm arguing.

Okay. You want to talk? Let me just say for the record that I am not saying that the entire way that the COVID reaction was accurate. It was a scary time and people made mistakes. Absolutely. Let me finish. You were scaring people. Why are you saying that? Because that was the job of CNN. Okay. Okay. Stop. Okay. Stop. How many people are dying? We were trying to be, we were listening to the leaders in this country, including the president. He also said, all you know how. to do is repeat things people told you and say, quote, trust the experts. That's what you did during COVID. Now we know that Dr. Fauci, the expert was lying about everything. And now you're ruling out

the experts again for something you have no personal knowledge of. And just for good measure, Megan, I want to reference this email in the Fauci diary from April 17th of 2021. He says, Dana Bash sent me a text. This is the quote, he includes. I just watched the whole Jordan thing, referring to Jim Jordan. Again, you're a better man than I. As our friend Wolf Blitzer said to me yesterday, No one would have blamed you if you said simply, Mr. Jordan, go F yourself. Now, I looked at the dates. He was on her show. Fauci was on her show a couple of days later that very weekend.

We also know he was having dinner with her colleague, Jake Tapper, while he was telling people to cancel their Thanksgiving plans. He was having Tapper over to his house. He went to Jake Tapper's house. This is maddening, Megan. Would you rather be in the Fauci Diaries or the Epstein Files, Emily? Which do you think is cooler or more elite? It's probably cooler to be, unfortunately, in the Epstein files.

I agree. Because there's an air of mystery. Yes. And everybody was, right? It was like scientists, you know, academics and people are kind of feeling left out. So, Dana Bass, she probably, you know, she's like, this is like the junior varsity. Yes. Of the Fstein files.

Look, I don't even know where to start. it's, you know, I'm one of those people who will say, yes, in the beginning, they were building the airplane in the air. Remember they just, that phrase was constantly being used? And it is genuinely true. Yes. It was a mysterious new virus. Emerges, yes, of course. But I love how there was like a five-minute period where it was totally okay to talk about the lab leak. Like that was okay and legitimate people were talking about it.

And there was even a little, you know, even mainstream media, I think there was discussion and then like somehow boom maybe because Trump was into it uh it was just verboten and then it was off the table and somehow that was racist uh and i never understood that because isn't it more racist to say that like you uh you know people eat wild animals and eat bad that you know can't can't control that it's like that to me is much more racist than you had a very uh like like a very you know sophisticated you know, high security lab with research projects that were being funded by the American, by the way. So if you're into beating up America, this is for you, I would think, right? Yep. That was a missed opportunity. And for the right, it was, it challenged the rights narrative

about China. I remember at the time, everyone was, oh, this is Chinese virus, Chinese virus. It was like, well, if we were funding the virus, it's actually an American Chinese virus. Right. And Trump actually, I mean, that was incredible speed with which the vaccine got developed. And he could have taken credit for that. But he very quickly wised up and realized that wasn't the way to go. I mean, you know, one of the details here, of course, speaking of that, is that we now know that all of these, and I think we knew this before, the diaries. But, you know, all these therapies like ivermectin, et cetera, they were not given any credence because if, there was any evidence that any kind of drug therapy was working, you could not have this emergency order to develop the vaccine as quickly as they did. And, you know, it reminds me of a lot of

the framing from back in the AIDS crisis, which Fauci was very much a part of and the messaging around safe sex and what is safe and condom use and everything. And that's actually something that I wrote about very early in my career, you know, 30 years ago. And there was a lot of kind of similar, we didn't use this word back then, but gaslighting going on from public health corridors and from Tony Fauci himself. Wait, that's really interesting. The way he reacted in the kind of early months reminds you of some of the early response. The whole thing.

I mean, so basically, you know, when the AIDS crisis started up, I mean, first it was called, it was called grins. I mean, it was gay related immunity deficiency. immunodeficiency, I think that was the acronym. I mean, it was this gay cancer. It was really horrific what was happening. And they couldn't get a handle on it. And Ronald Reagan was president and was ignoring it for a long time.

There was a lot of criticism. And Fauci was very much in the mix. And what started happening is that in order to get research dollars toward AIDS and HIV, they had to kind of frame it as if this wasn't just a gay disease. It was very stigmatizing. to be gay at the time. This was the age of the moral majority and Jerry Falwell and, you know, you know, big evangelical Christian right sort of influence.

And so, you know, I remember being like a college student and in my early 20s throughout my 20s and always hearing like, you know, you're just as likely, you know, if you're a heterosexual, you know, person, you know, dating in the world, you're just as likely to get AIDS as, you know, an IV drug user hanging out of bathhouses in Haiti. You know, like, and they were always doing this. And it became, it was the original virtue signals, frankly. Like Madonna would release a record, and the whole inside sleeve of it was like this, you know, facts about AIDS.

And it was a way of showing that you were, you know, cool with homosexuals. And it was really a vehicle of virtue signaling. and we didn't use that word at the time. But it absolutely was. And it scared the hell out of a whole lot of people who really didn't need to be scared. I mean, when I got to college in 1988, they, I kid you not,

like the college health department or some kind of, you know, student ambassador from that, from the health world of the college, would say, you know, there are people on this campus who have AIDS. There are lesbians on this campus who are giving HIV to other lesbians.

And we were like, oh my gosh, Oh, my gosh, it's true. It's true. I mean, bananas. Well, the virtue signal point reminds me actually of how Dana Bash was acting in that interview, which is, and in her emails to Fauci, which is that the kind of toothless, rub, mouth breather, idiots on the other side of this, which is clearly how Fauci thought of everybody who disagreed with him. Even as he's writing about 10 out of 12 scientists early in the pandemic, suspecting this in a private meeting of being a lab leak, he then proceeded. to try to smear everybody who disagrees with him. He's obsessed with smearing Scott Atlas and Jay Batacharya,

both publicly and privately, we now know. And the virtue signal element, now that you say that really is such a strong undercurrent. I mean, maybe it's not even an undercurrent. It's very overt. And Dana Bash, in 26, still to this day, I think most of the country would watch that interview and probably not love either person in the interview. Probably be sad about the whole situation. but frankly would look at Dana Bash and probably recognize her as the one that's rigid and not acting in a truly journalistic capacity when she said her job is to find the truth and to talk to people. It's like, well, she's talking to Fauci and taking his side as the capital T truth. And anybody who disagrees with him, he says is an idiot, so they must be an idiot. And

it's virtue signal public health. It's a disaster. Yeah. I mean, it comes down to this question of how much nuance, my favorite word is, you know, my, this is my podcast, my nuance day F merch, you know, how much nuance are the American people or anybody? How much nuance are citizens willing, able to metabolize? Are they really that stupid? Like if they had, if Fauci had started, you know, from the beginning said, okay, we need to, you know, masks might help, but we need to, we got to, we got to, We've got a pipeline problem and we need to save them for, you know, essential workers.

We need medical workers to be able to wear masks. We don't have enough right now. Hang on. Like, would people not have been able to handle that? Would they not have been able to handle that they said the vaccine is not going to prevent transmission, but it will make you a lot less sick when you get sick? And I think that is fair. That is, to me, a factual fact, as Danabash might say.

A lot of people were a lot less sick. when they got COVID because they were vaccinated, but they still were transmitting it all over the place. Like, would the people have been able to say, oh, okay, I get that? Like, this is a little complicated. Or would they have just, you know, gone crazy and run wild and it would have been on Fauci's watch,

and it would have been his fault. What do you think? And, I mean, it's Dana Bash's, it's not Dana Bass's job to tell people what to think. And that's where they, Oh, yes, it is. Of course it is. But that's where they go wrong is this idea that the American people cannot be trusted with the real information, the raw milk. They can't be trusted to make a decision about whether they want to process it a little. It's my job to give them the fully processed version. It's my job to tell them what's actually capital T true. When she said that in the interview, that her job is to tell the truth, well, you're a journalist. Your job is to report and help us get closer to the truth and not to tell us what the truth is. I thought that. I thought that. that was actually kind of an interesting little slip-up. Yeah. I mean, the thing is,

maybe it was ever thus. I mean, we're constantly talking about how, oh, when there were just three networks, people trusted the media. They trusted Walter Cronkite. These were voices of authority. But, you know, Walter Cronkite was getting his marching orders from the U.S. government as much as anything else. So it's really more just that we can no longer pretend that there's a single source of truth. But we've got everybody running around with a microphone and we might as well listen to professional athletes. Which, hey, you know. Well, it's kind of like we were talking about

with Spencer Pratt. You were saying like you're not used to getting behind politicians. But when you present people in a two-party system with one really bad choice and another choice that's less than ideal, you're pushing people towards falling into one of, like, lesser than two evil politics. And sometimes it produces, and I'm not, I think Spencer's an interesting case. I'm not trying to, like, undermine Spencer. But it does, he's, he's not a traditionally qualified type of payroll candidate. Come on. Right. So they're pushing, they don't even realize that they're pushing people further and further into the lesser than two evil politics, which may become their undoing anyway. Yeah. He did major in political science at USC. Don't, don't you

remember that was a huge uh his uh his supporters were constantly bringing that up yeah yeah no the least bad choice that's what we're stuck with but um you know yeah oh here we are i can say political science degrees are useless because i have one but um we're going on that no we're going to take a quick break we'll be right back with more of me and dom in just one moment see on the other side life insurance we all know we need it but we keep putting it off because it feels complicated it feels expensive or it feels like something that can wait. Stop waiting. Take care of it today with select quote. And just 15 minutes high quality coverage can be secured to fit any life and any budget. And here's what makes select quote different. Their licensed insurance agents work for

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Select quote. They shop, you save. Get the right life insurance for you for less at selectquote.com slash Emily. Go to selectquote.com slash Emily today to get started. We're back now with Megan Dome, author and host of the great Unspeak Easy Podcast. So you can check out Megan's retreats that she does over at the unspeak easy.com slash retreats. Megan, I wanted to talk about Ariana Grande. Unfortunately, there was no Lena Dunham hook in the news this week because I really want to talk to you about.

You're not a true culture. I'm about to do it. Oh, okay. Sorry, go. Go for it. Ariana Grande and the body positivity movement meeting an interesting, I guess meeting in an interesting place right now because Ariana Grande announced. Oh, yes, it is. It's intersection.

Yes, that's right. It lives at the intersection of. I think that's what you want to do. That's beautiful. It's like you're teaching a seminar, maybe in political science at USC. No, it's in cultural studies. Something studies. Yes.

Okay. So, yeah, Ariana Grande. Fat studies, an actual thing, I think, at some schools. Ariana Grande, in exclusive to People magazine, says that she will be retreating from public life, will be, quote, taking a step back from visibility after her latest tour. I'm going to read a little bit from a newsweek article here. Ariana Grande has announced she's taking a break from public life after, quote, unquote, endless scrutiny over her appearance and personal life, quote,

she looks forward to finishing the tour and ending it on a high note, both healthily and happily, and then taking a much-deserved break from public-facing work and appearances, which has led to endless, ongoing public scrutiny, a spokesperson said. Now, Newsweek goes on to note what I think a lot of people who are listening to this or watching it probably have seen. Public scrutiny over Grande's appearance began in earnest in 2023 ahead of the release of Wicked. She said that it was, quote, unquote, dangerous behavior to comment on whether she looks, quote, skinier or heavier, and that today's society has a comfortability that we shouldn't

have at all commenting on others' looks appearance or what they think is going on behind the scenes or health or how they present themselves. she has said that her new single pedal, the video dropped for this a few days ago, and it's like a seven-minute music video, it's really something. Newsweek wrote, it, quote, appeared to be a commentary on how she is perceived by the public. It shows different fictional versions of herself auditioning for a Hollywood production while faceless executives write notes on what's wrong with her, calling her not good enough, boring on the eyes, and that it couldn't hurt to lose a few pounds.

The character then applies again with a changed experience, but repeatedly receives the same not good enough rejection. And Megan, we look at Ariana Grande, which apparently she doesn't want us to do. It is stretching. She's going into invisibility. She's retreating from visibility. She's decentering herself also.

She walked into that one. I didn't even think about it. Oh, yeah. She's erasing. This is erasure. Wow. She really is retreating from visibility. I mean, it is obviously unhealthy.

No, I mean, yeah, we shouldn't, we shouldn't joke. Look, but the thing is, she's not the only one. I mean, look at Demi Moore. There are several examples of this. Look at the Osbournes. All of them, even Jack Osborne is skeletal, I think. Yes, yes. Yeah.

So, look, I mean, this is an interesting phase that we're in with these GLP-1s. Again, like people don't. It will be interesting to see if this is just going to, become a fad? Like, is it going to become cool to be, like, a little bit chubby now? Like, like, the way it's cool to... That's the status symbol. That's touching grass. Like, that will be the touch, like, so you just don't touch it at all. It's like people aren't getting Botox anymore, so I'm very cool. I have forehead wrinkles, you know, but... I do actually think there's something to that. I think we might have a point where that is actually a status symbol because it has

become, it has, with like the real housewives and the Kardashians, the, the work has, the work has started to look, not just because of the level of work that's being done, but because it's so inextricably intertwined with influencers and, like, lowbrow celebrities. Yes. I actually think you might be right. It's, yes, it's sort of, it's coded. It's, yeah, it's sort of like lower, it's down, it's, it's lower class coded. I don't know what the word I'm looking for. Yeah, I mean, okay, so Ariana Grande, do we think that she's like going to rehab or something or, I mean, when do you make of this? Yeah, that's an interesting question. I mean, it's also interesting they put out a statement to kind of get ahead before the tour's over and then blame the public for endless scrutiny in the statement. I don't know. I actually, I'm curious what you make of this because I've always had a hard time. On the one hand, I think Ariana Grande is correct that, you know, you can see a celebrity and not know exactly what's happening behind the scenes. And, you know, some people might be healthy and look different, show up in different ways. ways, or maybe there's just something truly traumatic. They are not ready to talk about. They

shouldn't have to talk about publicly. On the other hand, her entire career, it's not like she's only known for being a singer or an actress. Like, her entire career is intertwined with her physical appearance, and she's certainly been eager to make money off of that before. So I've always actually really had a hard time with this. Yeah. I mean, it's, I mean, it kind of reminds me of you know, like during Me Too, there was this thing where it was always about getting cat called on the street, you know. Like it's so difficult. To be a woman, just to get out of bed every morning and, you know, get dressed and go to work and walk down the street, you're a badass. It was always, it took nothing to be a badass.

And part of it was because, you know, you would get cat called just endlessly harassed walking down the street. But it was always a humble brag. I mean, any woman who would complain about that, it was really a way of showing off. that you were getting cat called quite often. And it's funny because I had actually some students. I was teaching, they were high school students, believe it or not, that I was teaching this class. And several of the girls, several, a few, too,

had written essays about how they were secretly competitive with each other about getting cat called. Like if you came and said to your girlfriend at the end of the day, oh my God, it was so horrible, like five guys, you know, and the other one yelled about my butt. And the other one was like, oh, I had six. And you had to be sort of upset about it and take umbrage and everything, but it's really a feather in your cap.

And then they would even admit that if they didn't get cat called that day, they would feel like there was something wrong with them. So it's a little bit like, oh, they're scrutinizing my body, so I must be doing something right. They're saying I'm sick. I mean, this is the tragedy of anorexia because you want to be ill. You want to be seen as ill. That's really what it is.

people are saying she's obviously sick, the anorexics will really enjoy that to some degree. And, you know, I'm actually not shoe-warning Lena Dunham into this conversation, even though it might seem like it. Megan, for some background, is one of the great writers on Lena Dunham. Oh, thank you. But it's not shoe-warning it to say, I really think Ariana Grande in some way, I'm not sure if she's the anti-Lena-Dunum or actually the logical conclusion of Lena-Dunna in that she says she's not ashamed of her body. She says she's fine. She says she's healthy.

Just as Lena Dunham often has, obviously she's had health challenges, but she's, she really was like one of the pioneers of 2010's body positivity, fat, fat, activity. Joan Rivers died midway through the 2010, so she got off easy for the rest of the decade. But I mean, I don't know. Is she the anti or is she a continuation? Oh, that's really good question. I mean, the thing is that Lena, she only, that, I mean, she's so, so talented.

I mean, you know, Lena Dunham is like so much more interesting to me than, all right, right, brought it. 100%. But, I mean, she's a totally different kind of figure. But, um, but, uh, I mean, with, she would, in girls, she would shoot herself herself at these incredibly uns flattering angles, but she would never do that to the other actresses.

I mean, the other actresses looked beautiful. Um, so it was really, And she was making a political statement, but she was only ever kind of putting herself in that position. But I don't, yeah, I mean, that's so interesting. So if somebody is just going to get so sick and skeletal, but it's like, don't judge my body. So it's the, it's the unhealthy positivity movement.

It's the on the brink of death positivity movement. I don't know. Which could be on, it's horseshoes. It's weight or shoe theory. That's right. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of like I always said, all the, you know, extreme woke people should get together with the, the woke right. And they should just all hook up and, you know, solve the fertility crisis and have all these mixed, mixed wokeness babies.

Well, also that happened in the past. The fertility crisis, Margaret Sanger attempted to solve with some of the right wing. and the left wing once. Did not go one. Yeah, I know. But I mean, I think we need to have creative solutions to things. Well, you know, it is one of the other reasons I'm sort of empathetic with Ariana Grande and Lena Donovan, but particularly Ariana Grande in this case, is that it's probably the hardest time ever, ever to be a celebrity. A lot of the mystique around ultra-famous A-A-A-List actors, actresses has evaporated because, you know, they're still mysterious. but it's also a penopticon. And every time they step out, when they're not calling the paparazzi's,

they're still getting photographed. They can try to get away from it, but it's hard to do. So what's interesting is that we can put this new research from the Institute for Family Studies, which leans right up on the screen. This is a report based on general social survey data that landed in 2024. Brad Wilcox posted this shocking chart. America's in the midst of a happiness crash. He wrote, reports of unhappiness have more than doubled since 2000. Reports of unhappiness have more than doubled since 2000. Young adults ages 18 to 35 have been hit hardest. 11% of young adults back in 2000 reported being not too happy. So specifically if you're if you're answering that you're not too happy in the general social survey, that was 11% in 2000. That number is 26% today.

It seems to spike right in the lead up to 2015, right around 2015. A lot of other surveys have found similar data that spikes around the time of iPhone critical mass. So when most young people had smartphones with social media, algorithmic social media loaded onto them. And to tie it in Ariana Grande, too, the reason Facebook found it was having a detrimental impact, Instagram was having a detrimental impact on young women's health, obviously had a lot to do with their physical image being reflected back to them constantly on Instagram and curated by other people. I have to imagine this is related to the rise and unhappiness among young adults. And filtered.

I mean, they're not even looking at real images. They're not looking at people. Like, they're not, I'm so out of it. I remember when I discovered that people were actually just taking selfies of themselves, you know, for like, or even on like dating profiles. their cameras just automatically had some sort of filter. So like if you're out with your girlfriends and you're just taking a picture of yourself,

it immediately doesn't look like you. And then you can go and face tune it later anyway. So nobody actually looks like a real person. And then this ties into porn. And, you know, you hear these reports about people not being able to get sexually aroused by an actual human being because their actual human beings are kind of repulsive compared to AI.

generated images and pornography. It's just, yeah, it's really weird. It makes me sad as a Gen Xer to see this. And, yeah, I can imagine that it would contribute to unhappiness. Although I also wonder if it's just there's less stigma in saying that you're unhappy than there used to be. Interesting. We didn't, we would never say that.

Like, I just feel like if they had asked, you know, 20 or 30 years ago, like, it just wasn't cool to go around talking about how you were depressed or you were not. mentally unstable or, you know, what you said, you're a therapist, that kind of thing. There wasn't a lot of currency in that. I think what worries me about that is I think there's truth to it. Obviously, Greg Lukianov and Jonathan Hayt wrote back in 2015, I think it was, the coddling of the American mind about the over-therapization. And Christina Hoffsummer's and Sally Sattel wrote a book back in 2000 about when it was called

One Nation on Therapy, I think. Under therapy, yeah. Right. And there's a self-of-examers. fulfilling prophecy potential where the more you see yourself as a victim of the system, the more you see yourself as somebody who's supposed to be unhappy because others are a quarter of young adults say they're quote, not too happy. Not too happy, but what is it? How did they come up with that friend? Not too happy. I don't know. It's a good point. The general social survey has some funny

questions on it. But yeah, anyway, all that is to say, if you start seeing yourself as part of this, I don't know, the almost trend to the way you're part of a movement like a sort of you know an hedonic

wave. You know, the other thing, Emily, I was thinking about just literally yesterday something dawned on me with the AI,

you know, chat GPT, for instance, you know how it's designed to affirm you all the time. Like it's always, you know,

agreeing with you. And so if you were to say, oh, I'm afraid I'm going to end up, I'm afraid I'm going to be a bag lady or something like that. And it would be like, well, I can understand why you might worry about that. Like, it will do that kind of thing. Just a random example. I'm not saying I'm not, a friend of mine might have typed that into chat GPT.

So if you, but, you know, if you start talking with an AI about your feelings, it's going to validate them. So if your feelings are not rational, it's going to validate them. And it's going and it just encourages this rumination. It's not going to say, whoa, you're crazy. Like, come on. It's not going to say that.

And I think that's a huge part of this. Well, and that's one thing that emerges from therapy as well is that a lot of it has become, especially like Youngian has become validating or overly validating. And I guess if you're an Ariana Grande type young woman struggling with your body image because it's a huge part of your personal or in some cases professional life if you're an influencer or an Ariana Grande. But either way, your personal life, it's on Instagram. You're curating your image for everybody. And it's to rack up likes and retweets, which are your condition to see those as validation.

then, I mean, what are you supposed to do? You're going to go and hear you are perfect as you are. Right. Oh, yeah. That's what you're going to get back. And they're surrounded by handlers who tell them that too. But in a way, whose jobs, yeah, are dependent on.

The point about chat GPT is that we are all going to be surrounded by handlers if you're going to chat GPT. Yeah. Yeah, it will tell you what you want to hear. It's a feedback loop. I don't know. I mean, I've always said that I think that getting off of screens away from AI, away from, you know, face filler, et cetera, is going to be like a new status flex. Like, the more analog you can be, I think that's going to be a sort of elite signifier. And only the elites, not only the elites, but it's going to be a lot easier to do that if you're an elite because you're going to be able to have a kind of job or lifestyle that allows you to not be glued to your.

laptop at your desk all day, perhaps, or whatever. But, you know, I think a great many people are going to get really lost in this, in the void. And it's going to be the people who are least equipped to fight it. White collar workers looking down the barrel of potential mass layoffs. You have the trades booming. And we'll see. I think you might be right about this. Megan, Dom, it has been such a pleasure. I always love talking with you. And I just, again, I want to, you are, you are truly a nuanced thinker and you're, you're very disciplined and fair.

And I just appreciate that so much. So keep doing that. Likewise, you are enormously kind. And can you tell people where they can figure out how to get to the unspeak easy retreats? Yes. Yes. Listen, I've heard from people, they love these retreats. These retreats are amazing.

So, yeah, so the unspeak easy is a community. that grew out of my podcast and my writing. But basically, it's very simple. We go out to a beautiful place. These are small retreats, and we just have off-the-record conversations for two or three days, bringing guest speakers.

Sometimes they're women only. It started off as a women's thing, because I have this whole theory that women drive cancel culture and women were getting kicked out of their book clubs and stuff and lost all their friends. But we have a big co-ed retreat coming up in the Hudson Valley in New York,

October 19th through, The guest speakers are John McWhorter, the linguist and writer, of course, Lisa Marciano, speaking of Jungian. Speaking of Jung, she's a Jungian analyst, and she's one of the co-hosts of this Jungian life. And this really exciting new theater person named PJ Adzima, who is the producer of this incredible new musical called Slam Frank, which I think you're going to be hearing a lot more about. Have you heard about this? Oh, of course. It's been viral on TikTok. It's crazy.

Yes, it's crazy. And the guy, Andrew Fox, who wrote it, got the idea because there was a Twitter thread where somebody was earnestly asking whether Anne Frank ever questioned her white privilege or interrogated it. And so it's a musical about a woke theater company trying to put on a production of the Diary of Anne Frank through an Afro-Pan Sexual, Gender, Queer, Hip-Hop. something wins. Yeah, so Ann, her name is, her name is,

she's Latinx, actually, Anne Frankl's Latinx. She's Anita Franco, which I don't know what, I don't know what Ani DeFranco, the singer-songwriter, thinks about that. But anyway, but PJ Adamsima, who is the producer of the show, and he started in Book of Mormon for a long time on Broadway. He's this fascinating young performer and producer who is just incredibly well-spoken and thoughtful.

And so he's going to be joining us, so we're going to be talking about the arts. We're going to be talking about culture war stuff, but also just culture. So, and these are small. You know, we have a small number of people. You got to apply, but it's at a beautiful place. And everything is included. And people make friends for life. And, you know, even if some couples even got together.

It's really, it's really exciting. Yeah. So they can go to the unspeak easy.com to find out about that. And we also have a women's weekend retreat coming up in San Francisco at the end of September. And our guest speakers for that are going to be Evan Barker, who's the author of this new book about being a Democratic operative called Nothing Left. And Alex Guttentag, who works with Michael Schellenberger at Public. So that's the women's weekend thing, September 26, 27th.

And the co-ed retreat is October 19th or 21st. So people can go to the unspeak easy.com to find out about that. and they should soon because spaces are running out. And I hope they do. Megadolm, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. My pleasure, Emily. Anytime.

All right. We'll be right back. We have more WNBA coverage, coverage of coverage coming up. So stick around and I'll see on the other side of this quick break. All right. It's here. It's summer, at least for now. And if you want to actually feel confident, feel less bloated,

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and it is inspiring some truly ridiculous media coverage. Let's take a listen here to ESPN, praising the head coach of the Links, Cheryl Reeve, who wore a pro-trans t-shirt while the Links played The Fever. here's a bit from the coverage, S6. Well, we see Cheryl Reeve wearing a shirt today in support of trans kids. Trans kids belong on the shirt. This in the aftermath of Sophie Cunningham's recent comments, we actually saw Cheryl and Sophie speaking at center court pregame.

And yesterday, Cheryl Reeves spent a lot of time talking at length. with the media about this topic. I would encourage anyone to go and listen to Cheryl Reeves' comments, incredibly thoughtful, easy to find online, and just encourage anyone to go and listen. Incredibly thoughtful. Where was that for Sophie Cunningham? Also easy to find online.

Also thoughtful. You're not going to hear ESPN directing anybody to go take a look at Sophie Cunningham's comments where I think this was actually in an ESPN profile, she said simply, she wanted everybody to be included, has said over and over again since it came out. This is something she's saying with love, but she doesn't think Ben should play in women's sports. That's it. You're not going to hear ESPN pushing anybody to go take a look at that viewpoint. Instead, what you're seeing from ESPN, and let's now take a look at the Guardian,

is prose like this from Howard Bryant yesterday. Quote, Indiana Fever Guard, Sophie Cunningham is now in the act, accepting the role as the rights anti-black, anti-transgender culture war ambassador, the role originally intended for Caitlin Clark. This piece finishes by saying Cunningham is using the attention not to further a cause, but to further herself. She has been likened as a modern-day Dennis Rodman in her ability to draw attention. to herself, but Rodman was a Hall of Fame player, and as a player, Cunningham is moderately impactful. She understands the source of the attention, the white dude bros who are the engine of the male sports economy who need a sexy, long-legged blonde to fuel their interest in the women's and the avenues it provides.

The broadcast booth, the paid celebrity appearances, the playful get-over-yourself, the UFC Ring Girl brand. She's setting up her second act, and if she plays these 15 minutes right, they could last 30 years. It's an obvious empty grift for an obvious empty culture. no debate that we exist in an obvious empty culture. I'm not sure I'd be pointing the finger at Sophie Cunningham for that so much as I would be pointing the finger

at folks who absolutely insist, insist that men should play in women's sports and then point their fingers, pun intended, we're talking about Sophie Cottingham, at the right, or not even at the right, at J.K. Rowling, at anybody, Martina Navratilova, who dares to step out a line on this particular question, they are then being accused of acting as ruthless culture warriors looking for some cheap clicks. But the people who foisted this on society get a pass, of course,

because these types of columnists were part of that movement. Again, let me just read what Howard Bryant wrote that Sophie Cunningham has, quote, accepted the role as the rights anti-black, anti-transgender culture war ambassador. Anti-Black! What should do that was anti-black? The only way you're making that argument is if you're applying the intersectional crunch off framework to the Sophie Cunningham situation, which is to say that by speaking out against men and women's sports, she is marginalizing, further marginalizing the

marginalized, because racial and true. trans discrimination is intersectional. And also, I'm sure the argument would be made, that because her fame is, as Bryant writes, based on a male sports economy who needs a sexy, long-legged blonde to fuel their interest in the women's, he says that as white dude bros who need a sexy long-legged blonde

to fuel their interest in women's sports. So because Sovukhunningham is getting support from people who kind of like her, I think she was brave. I mean, she first went viral for standing up for Caitlin Clark, who has not said a racist thing in her entire life, has played a sport alongside black women at a professional level, at a college level, has never uttered a racist word in her entire life. But Caitlin Clark is accused of being racist because she's slotted into the white savior character and accused of flopping and doing it to the detriment of the black athletes, reveling in her celebrity to the detriment of the black athletes, and chasing the fame at the detriment of the black athletes. Caitlin Clark is a great three-point shooter.

That's why Caitlin Clark is popular. It's fun to watch people. especially in women's basketball, which is comparatively slow, popping threes. It's why people loved her in the NCAA championship when she was at Iowa. It's why people like her now. It's really not that complicated. She seems like a nice person.

She's got an interesting personality. It's, again, not that difficult to comprehend. She makes the game a bit more exciting. Sophie Cunningham first got famous for defending Caitlin Clark, who was getting pummeled with... Less than favorable treatment from referees who are in very difficult positions, by the way, because they know every call is now under a racial microscope. It's made people obviously less safe.

White players and black players obviously less safe because the refs now have to have that in their mind when they're trying to protect their players and make calls. That's how Soviet Conningham got famous, was just for defending Caitlin Clark. Now she's being called anti-black and anti-transgender. which she said she's not. She said she supports trans men, trans women. She doesn't think women should, men should play in women's sports. That is like an 80-20 or 70-30 cultural position,

depending on the poll that you're looking at. And yeah, the Howard Bryants of the world would write off the majority of the American public, I suppose, is anti-trans. But that's cultural doomerism. That's what that is. That's saying, wow, this country is full of hateful bigots when in fact it's actually just full of people who say it doesn't make sense, even in isolated cases, to let Leah Thomas into a girl's locker room or to let it continue happening

in high school sports where girls are getting elbows to the head that are way more powerful than they would be if they were just playing against another girl. People just don't like it. They think it's wrong. And they're so sick of having to talk about it. And the right is not forcing you to talk about it. The right has certainly realized that there's a political gain to be made on this issue. But only because during the Obama administration, Barack Obama's education department said you must read gender identity into quote, on the basis of sex in Title IX. So when that happened, it held schools around the country hostage, said, we will take away your federal funds if you do not read on the basis of sex as on the basis of sex slash gender identity. That is what created a cultural battleground. It came from the left.

It has continued to come from the left who should own it. If you are progressive, that implies change, right? It implies you want to change, disrupt the status quo. So pointing your finger at people, not just on the right, Martina Navratilova, J.K. Rowling, whomever it is, that say, no, we just don't agree with this. Pointing your figure at them for fomenting the culture war when you're the person that decided to pick this fight, then smearing those people baselessly as anti-black bigots. And by the way, the other thing I take issue with in this Howard Bryant comment, this Howard Bryant column, where it says that Cunningham understands her source of attention comes from white dude bros who need a sexy, long-lated blonde to fuel their interest

in women's sports. That is so deeply insulting to all of the little girls who play basketball around the country, who love Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham. It is very insulting to all of the women. Just today on the Megyn Kelly Wrapup Show and Sirius, Sex. We had a lesbian basketball player call in and say she thinks that this is ridiculous. You have female basketball players all the time who will privately, I'm sure, say they think this is ridiculous on a high school level. But nobody wants to say so publicly.

Sophie Cunningham did it. It became the first major current female athlete to do it. So it's all too much when the finger gets pointed at the Sophie Cunningham's of the world. who, by the way, she could be doing so much more to revel in this. She could be going on Fox News. You think they haven't invited her on? She could be going on and talking to all of the, she did a profile for ESPN.

She could be talking to all of the right-wing outlets. She could be going on the podcast circuit. She's not. She just said something to ESPN. That's it. That's it. Caitlin Clark got asked a question about it today. I wanted nothing to do with it.

Or yesterday I wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. So we are witnessing between UFC and the Aaron Rogers monologue we covered earlier in the show on Fauci, which I think is a stand-in for how a lot of people who are kind of normal, average Americans look at these issues now, a cultural coming apart that I think elites and media and at the top of these institutions, WNBA, NBA, NBA, Olympics, and then political places as well are not prepared for because media has democratized now. And it's not for Aaron Rogers 2021. And it's not for the trans issue, 2021 either. So I'll leave it there for tonight. Thank you all so much for tuning in. Appreciate it. We're going to be back on Wednesday with more After Party. Please subscribe if you

haven't yet. It helps us keep doing the independent journalism here on the show. My email is Emily, devil make bear media.com. You can hit me up there with questions for a Friday episode. and I hope you all have a wonderful evening. God bless. We'll see you back here with more soon.