After Party with Emily Jashinsky - CNN’s Latest Gimmick, Lindy West’s Cope, and Millennial Culture Implodes, PLUS Healing America, with Daryl Davis

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

Emily Jashinsky opens the show with a breakdown of CNN’s desperate attempt to rebrand. She explains why the aesthetic may work temporarily, but this is not a long-term fix. Then Emily is joined by Daryl Davis, musician, Civil Rights activist, and author of “The Klan Whisperer,” for a discussion on his life’s work of bridging divides with extremists like members of the KKK. They discuss President Trump’s rhetoric, new polling showing Americans view each other as morally bad, why cancel culture doesn’t solve anything, how to respectfully talk to someone who vehemently opposes you, the media’s role in our problems, and how to define racism and bigotry. Emily wraps up the show with an explanation of why she loves talking to such a diverse line-up of guests on “After Party,” and looks at the millennial cope unfolding before our eyes in the stories of Lindy West, Clavicular, and the cancellation of Taylor Frankie Paul’s season of The Bachelorette.   Cowboy Colostrum: Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code AFTERPARTY at https://www.cowboycolostrum.com/AFTERPARTY   PreBorn: Help save a baby go to https://PreBorn.com/Emily or call 855-601-2229.   PDS Debt: You’re 30 seconds away from being debt free with PDS Debt. Get your free assessment and find the best option for you at https://PDSDebt.com/EMILY Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to After Party, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in. Tonight's guest is Daryl Davis. If you don't know Daryl Davis, I know many, many of you do. But if you don't know Daryl Davis, you are in for a treat. This is truly one of those nights where, as a journalist, you look around and you think, I get to talk to the most interesting people in the world, the rare perk of the job, which can often be very depressing.

So I'm so excited to bring Daryl in in just one moment. but Jake Tapper is now broadcasting from his office. So we have some big news to get to on that front. Elder millennials are losing their minds over a new Lindy West memoir. If you don't remember the name Lindy West, or you're too young to have ever heard the name Lindy West. You don't want to stick around. I think I'm going to do a weave that takes Lindy West.

It starts with Lindy West. Then it takes a detour to clavicular. Now we're going to end on Taylor Frankie Paul. I think I can do it. I think I can do it. So stay tuned for the end of the show where hopefully I'll be able to successfully pull off that weave. But like I said, more importantly, Daryl Davis is here to kind of understand why the country feels so tenuous and to maybe feel a little bit better about it as well. First, of course, I have to remind everybody, subscribe, subscribe, subscribe, our independent journalism here is free.

So the best way to help supporters is to subscribe. Subscribe on YouTube. subscribe wherever you get you get your podcasts leave a review it helps we're just so glad that all of you are here coming up on our one year pretty soon so thank you thank you thank you to everybody let's start with jake tapper all of a sudden on friday afternoon the few people who were watching cnn for work discovered that tapper had brought the camera crew jake tapper had brought the camera crew into his office They strung up lights.

They got him podcast microphones, which Anderson Cooper had been using on a CNN set earlier that week. Everybody was dressed down. I think Cooper was just wearing a button-down shirt. One of the other guys had taken his tie off, and they had their sleeves rolled up. They were on the CNN set with big microphones, big podcast microphones. And then suddenly Tapper is broadcasting literally from. his office and he's so excited about it. The odds that this were his idea are very high. I can't do the clip justice. So let's just roll Jake Tapper here broadcasting live from his

office last week. So you're probably wondering what's going on, why we're in my office for the first hour of the lead today. So it's an experiment. This is my actual desk where I do my actual work, not the desk in the studio. And we thought we would bring you into the space where me and my team do our actual journalism and plan the show every day. So here we are giving it a shot. You might also be wondering about the decor, the posters and the kerchiefs and such on my wall. Well, the theme is these are all losing presidential campaigns. And this hobby started 26 years ago after I covered my very first presidential campaign in the year 2000. Campaining and hopping from bus to plane to plane, I collected the lawn signs and posters of all the candidates I covered. And by the end of the election, I had a really great collection of, well,

Losers. You may be wondering about the posters and the kerchiefs and such. He could talk like a normal human being if he tried. I think he's actually trying there to talk like a normal human being. And he can't help but sound like an alien who's been raised to speak human through observation of like a billionaire and their family. you may be wondering about the posters and the catches and such incredible stuff. It is, though, not just, you know, one of the criticisms that's mostly correct is the substance has to follow. And the substance, I think of it actually a lot like food.

I think about people's media diets, a lot like their regular diets, which is that you want to minimize the amount of processing that's done between the news gathering or the food gathering and consumption. And so with Tapper, you have to then, people are going to have to say they feel as though the processing has been minimized, right? You want some processing. You know, not all of us are going for the raw milk here, but you don't want it to be over processed, right? You want to take out, you know, you want to process it so that you get rid of like the crazy tips or whatever else gets baked into a news story as you're putting it together as a journalist. but you don't want it to feel fake. You don't want it to be like gummy worms. You'd rather have like a blueberry than a gummy worm.

Not me, but for our health, that's probably the right metaphor. So Tapper is trying to do, to make it look like he has reduced the processing between the news gathering and the news consumption without actually having done that. Now, there is going to be a value to just the aesthetic change. Some people have rightfully made the criticism. like, what does it matter? It doesn't matter at all. It does matter a little bit because there's an important reason. If you think of the last time your thumb stopped as you were scrolling, called a thumb stopper, you had a thumb stopper from a cable news segment. What you're scrolling through Instagram or TikTok or Facebook or whatever or wherever, YouTube, that is increasingly rare

because people's trust in cable news feels really low. You expect cable news to be boring. You expect cable news to not be trustworthy, and so you're much more likely to have your thumb stop as you're scrolling around on something that doesn't just smack you as boring, untrustworthy, or some combination of both. There are some exceptions to that, but it does help to make it look different to stop people when they're scrolling. and CNN is now on an odyssey from a cable news channel to a new media company. They're behind on that, obviously. But that's really, that's the first step. The second step is, of course, going to be trustworthy. You have to actually do the news well in a way that trust you without just blaming,

that will make people trust you without just blaming your viewers for not trusting you and screaming into the void about why trust in media is so low. and blaming your audience for not trusting real journalism and just wanting to get dessert in their news diet, you haven't given people reason to trust you for many years, and there's some real humility that has to come with that. But so far, listen, I've been here in DC Media, it's faux humility for the most part.

There are some people who have undergone real efforts to be better and to be more trustworthy. but for the most part, it's a lot of talk and little actually, there are a few people who will actually concede that they did something wrong to the degree that it actually needs to be changed. At the end of the day, these damn viewers, they just, they only want chaos, they only want sensationalism and they don't care about real news. Well, people do. They just don't trust your delivery vehicles anymore and for good reason. So it's not just about changing the car that delivers, I'm just having so much fun with metaphors tonight, that delivers the news from point A

to point B. You actually also have to do a better job making the route. So that's, if CNN thinks that they can just dress down their journalism with podcast mics and Jake Tapper, I mean, this is being panned, by the way, we should add. I bet this was. is actually Jake Tapper's idea, live from his DM office where he angrily tells other journalists why they're being too mean to him or they get something wrong. When he says the office where he and his team does actual journalism, the likelihood that's what's happening in his office is high. It's actually just DMs to people telling them to stop saying mean things about him on

the internet, or criticizing him on Twitter. but he has a lot, not just Tapper, but if CNN really wants to make a transition, you're going to have to see it in more than just unbuttoned shirts without ties and podcast microphones. And everyone knows that. The industry insiders have panned this to others, but it's a bit rich coming from them that they're upset about. And they're like making fun of Jake Tapper. I mean, maybe that's just how bad the Tapper segment was or maybe they're projecting because they're also struggling to find out what's going to work. But if you do good journalism and you're honest with people, people want to see more, you know, Jake Tapper,

if Jake Tapper wants to do real honest journalism, he should talk more about the time he went on a date with Monica Lewinsky and wrote about it for, I think it was Salon. It was Slater Salon. I think it was Salon in the 90s. And he should talk about, you know, working for the Brady campaign, the anti-gun group more in the 90s. He should give people a better sense of where he's actually coming from across the board on these issues, what he thinks, so that they can judge his content accordingly and not continuing to act as though he's the voice of God delivering the news, Walter Cronkite style. It's just not how it works anymore. And people don't trust it. All right. That's enough on Jake. Tapper. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. This spring, if you're ready to finally see glowing skin, stronger hair and steady energy, you need to add colostrum to your daily routine because it all starts in the gut. And once your gut health is right, everything else follows. That's where colostrum comes in. Cowboy colostrum provides the highest quality first day whole

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Please support our show and tell them our show sent you. All right, I'm happy to be joined now by Daryl Davis. He's an American R&B and blues musician, civil rights activist. He's author of the book The Clan Whisperer and co-founder of the Pro Human Foundation, one of the most interesting people in the world, there I say it. Daryl Davis, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Emily. Thank you for having me.

It's a pleasure to be here. Oh, I'm so excited that you've joined us. It's great to meet you, Daryl. I'm a big admirer of your work. And if folks aren't familiar, many are, but if folks aren't familiar, how do you, if you're meeting somebody at a coffee shop, you're talking to someone new, you just met, and they say, oh, what do you do? How do you describe it, Daryl? Well, some people call me the rock and roll race reconcilator. So, you know, music is the universal language. So music is my profession, but trying to improve race relations is my obsession. So oftentimes, you know, we'll get into a conversation about music. It turns out, you know, you might be on some opposite end of some issue that I'm on the other side of the spectrum. But the music unites us and we're able to hear one another.

And that's what's important that we hear and listen to one another while we're having conversation. And if I'm not mistaken, you are friendly friends with former neo-Nazi white supremacist types who were musicians themselves. And that's been a source of kind of bonding for those. Some of them, some of them, KKK members, neo-Nazis, other white supremacists and things. Some of them were musicians, indeed. Others, you know, we're not. But, you know, again, it's how we come across to one another, how we circumvent cancel culture, because I don't agree with you. Therefore, we cannot talk.

We cannot even sit in the same room. Or in some of their cases, we can't even live in the same country. Well, speaking of that point, the president posted a rather timely for the sake of this discussion, and interesting post on truth social actually just yesterday. He said this is F2. Now with the death of Iran, the greatest enemy America has is the radical left, highly incompetent Democrat Party. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President DJT.

Now, on the other side, Trump was in Memphis recently, and Justin Jones, or Justin Pearson, who's a state representative down there, said that Trump wasn't welcome and quote, he is a racist xenophobe who spewed hatred and hurt our communities more than he has helped them. And meanwhile, as I mentioned, Trump is saying the greatest enemy America has the radical left-tiling competent Democrat Party. Daryl, let's start with Trump. Does that, does that construction where he's saying, you know, now at the death of, he's literally comparing Democrats to the mullahs in Iran, presumably. I think that's how a lot of people would see that tweet. has Trump himself changed the norms of how we see each other? Is he kind of a symptom of? Is he reflecting where the country was heading on that? Okay, let's be clear here. Donald Trump did not invent racism any more than Barack Obama or George Washington,

for that matter, or George Bush. It doesn't matter. You know, racism has been around for a long time ever since we came to these short. we being, you know, black people and even before us with Native Americans, you know, for 400 years. I believe Donald Trump is a racist. I believe he is not healthy for the country, but at the same time, I believe that he is one of the best things that has happened to this country. And let me explain that, all right? Not through anything intelligent that he has done, but just the fact that he has brought all of his personality,

which I do consider to be racist, narcissistic, and corrupt. He has brought it to the forefront, and therefore you can no longer turn a blind eye to it. For a long time, we have been in denial in our country about the problems, whether it's discrimination against women, whether it's against blacks or Mexican people or whoever. All right, all we had to do was just turn a blind eye, If we don't see it, we don't hear it, then therefore it does not exist.

But now everywhere you turn, you see it. You have to face it. You know, you cannot run from it. And that's what Donald Trump has brought to the forefront. And so now people are unafraid to come out and speak their mind. And that's great because now we know what the problem is and we can address it. I hear so many people say, well, racism is over. You know, we've had a black president.

That does not mean racism is over. All right. So it is our job to address it. Whether we agree with Donald Trump or not is here. And whoever is going to be in office, you know, everybody, you know, there's no one shoe fits all. I think every president has had their, you know, their ups and their downs, including Donald Trump. But it's up to us the people who will be around in this country a lot longer than any president will be in office. they will be there for a minimum of four years, a maximum of eight years.

We're going to be around a lot longer than that. And so the problems that we encounter, whether they are caused by this president or his predecessor or his successor or his successor, is up to the people. We the people. That's what the thing said, the preamble, we the people. We have to solve this. And he has brought to the forefront and put it in our face and now we have to address it. our country can only become one or two things. It can become that which we sit back and watch it become,

or two, it can become that which we stand up and make it become. So we have to ask ourselves the question, do I want to sit back and see what my country becomes, or do I want to stand up and make it become what I want to see? I've chosen the latter, but I can only answer for myself. Well, a lot of social scientists use opinions towards interracial marriage as the proxy, and I know you know this, Darrow, but as the proxy for race relations and as the country has gotten much more comfortable with interracial marriage, a lot of social scientists, look at that and they say, this shows that the United States has made enormous progress on race relations in recent decades. That was a good look during Jim Crow at where people would draw the line in very racist ways towards black Americans, often, especially in the South.

I forget what was Loving v. Virginia was like 1950. Correct. Lovin v. Virginia, correct. Yeah. And so in so many people's lifetimes, that's become, those ideas have become much rarer. Is there, is it your sense that Trump is perhaps making visible something that had been stigmatized but still existed? Or is it growing again racism in America? What do you make of that? Okay. You may tell you what's happening here? Yes. I can, okay, I can tell you exactly what's happening. And I learned this. in 1982. All right. Let's go back before 1982. Let's go back to 1974. I was 15 years old. I'll be 68 years of age next week. Actually, this week, I forgot when my birthday is.

Happy birthday, Darrell. Thank you. But anyway, back in 1974, I was 15 years old, going to school in a town called Rockville, Maryland. And we had, A class. Now, Montgomery County, Maryland and Fairfax County, Virginia, back in the 1970s and through the 80s, had the two top school systems in the entire country. One year, Montgomery County would be number one in the whole country. Next year, it would be, you know, Fairfax County, back and forth, back and forth. Today, in the 2000s, I think Montgomery County is ranked like eight or nine or something. We've, you know, fallen down. But anyway, back then, we had one of the best school systems. We had a class called the POTC, which stood for problems of the 20th century. We had a great teacher, fantastic.

He would bring speakers into our classrooms to speak on controversial subjects. This was like a 12th grade class, a senior class, but I was taking it as a sophomore in 10th grade. On this particular, you know, it might be about abortion. It might be, you know, some controversial topic. On this day in 1974, he brought the head of the American Nazi party to our classroom. You can never do that today, you know, because today everything is politically correct or incorrect. That term did not even exist back then, and I wish that term would go away so that we can do more of this. So we can have people have platforms and see what is going on, you know, amongst the people, right?

So I'm glad he was able to do that. Did I agree with the guy? Absolutely not. So this guy's name was Matt Cole. The American Nazi Party was founded right across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., in town called Arlington, Virginia by a fellow named George Lincoln Rockwell, who was a big proponent of the ideology of Adolf Hitler, and he would always confront Martin Luther King whenever Martin Luther King had marches and things like that.

Rockwell was murdered by one of his own American Nazis, a guy named John Paltor. Rockwell's right-hand guy was a fellow named Matt Cole, K-O-E-H-L. Matt Cole took over the organization. And on this day in 1974, Matt Cole and his right-hand person, Martin Kerr, came to my school. And Matt Cole stood in the front of my classroom and espoused the views of white supremacy. And he pointed at me and pointed at another black classmate of mine

and said, we're going to ship you back to Africa. And then he went like this. And all you Jews out there are going back to Israel. Now, I'm 15 years old. I just sat there looking at him like, what on earth is this man talking about? I didn't say anything. I just looked at him. One of my classmates spoke up.

She said, but they live here. What if they don't want to go? And Matt Cole said, oh, they have no choice. If they do not leave voluntarily, they will be exterminated in the upcoming race war. That was the first time I heard the term race war. And, you know, it made me think, I'd had racist experiences before. But this, you know, it was kind of like a catalyst for me. to, you know, dig in deep, deeper and learn more about this.

So I graduated two years later in 76, and I went right to college, majored in music. And but, like I said, music became my profession, but race relations became my obsession. So I began, you know, trying to find people like Matt Cole, and I sought out Matt Cole, and I found him. And I had a conversation with him, and he told me a lot of lies. He remembered me from eight years prior. I found him in 1982. He was having an unpublicized demonstration across the street from the White House in a place called Lafayette Park. So anyway, I confronted him. And he remembered me, and we had about maybe a 40, 45 minute conversation.

He told me a lot of lies, but one thing he told me was true, and it's in 1982. He said that they, meaning white supremacists, were very concerned about the year, 20, 42. And I've been following that. And sure enough, you know, the U.S. census is taken every decade. The last one, of course, was in 2020. The next one would be in 2030. When I was a child, the black population here in the United States was 12%. Native Americans, 1%. Latino, Hispanic Americans, almost 2%. Asian, Pacific Islander Americans, right around 3%. Whites were like 86 to 87%. Each decade, this is happening. Okay?

And it's well predicted in the year 2042, for the first time in the history of the United States, this country will be 50-50. 50% white, 50% non-white. Between 2045 and 2050, it's going to flip. And for the first time in the history of this country, whites will become the minority. Now, there are plenty, plenty of white people in this country who don't. don't care. They say, hey, that's evolution. No big deal. Doesn't bother me. But then there's a slice of our population, the ones that I deal with, right, that do care, who tell me, Daryl, I don't want my grandkids to be brown. You know, they call it the browning of America, or white

genocide through miscegenation, through race mixing. These are the ones who are very concerned about that. And these are the ones who look to people like Donald Trump to help change this, because they are fearful, and Donald Trump peddles in fear. They're bringing rapists and murderers and drugs across our border, as though we don't have rapists and murderers and drugs homegrown right here already, right? People are fearful, and what you do is, you know, you pander to fear, and you project that you are the only person who can save them from this. This is why we're seeing a rise, a boost in a white supremacist,

especially lone wolves, those who go into black churches in Charleston, South Carolina, or the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, or the sick Indian temple, Oak Creek, Wisconsin, the Buffalo grocery store, the Walmart in El Paso, and murder people. Because you have all these groups that are saying, you know, come join us, come join us. You know, we're going to take our country back. And these people out of fear of their identity being erased, because I know some of these people. I know the mentality. They truly believe that they are patriots.

You know, we built this country, we wrote the Constitution, we discovered this country, and now people are coming here who don't look like us and squeezing us out of our own country. That's the mentality. They feel it's their patriotic duty to save the country, to take it back to what it was. All right? And so they run and join these groups that promise to take the country back.

When the group fails to act in a timely fashion to take the country back, they say, you know what? if the Klan can't do it or the neo-Nazis can't do it or the alt-right or whoever, I'll do it myself. And that's when they walk into one of these places and open fire. And as we get closer and closer to 2042, we're going to see more and more of those lone wolves because they're becoming unhinged. And we're already starting to see that. So these are things that have to be talked about.

You know, we have to learn our history, not remove and erase history, take things out of museums, and certain books and not talk about things or erase programs that, that you know, try to point out inequities or inequalities and things like that. We need to come together because this country was built on diversity. It was built on everybody who came here, whether they were the Native Americans who were already here, whether they were the slaves that were forced here,

or whether there were people who immigrated here, know, through Ellis Island or wherever else. We all contributed to the fabric of this country, which makes it rich in its power to make it a, you know, one of the greatest countries in the world. It has its flaws, but those can be fixed when we work together. And you mentioned cancel culture a couple of times. I think we have this new poll, really stunning numbers here from Pew that were just released this month. In the United States, we have the worst numbers of all of the countries that Pew surveyed on this when it comes to whether we believe our fellow citizens are morally bad. So 53% of U.S. adults say Americans have bad morals and ethics. This is F4.

It's very, very interesting numbers released from Pew here. This was of 25 countries in America. These numbers were the absolute worst. And I'm sure that's a combination of the right and the left. But I wonder, Darrell, if many people, it's kind of a two-step process. On the one hand, you're now categorically, you know, many Americans are saying this person is bad. And then step two is that means I can't talk to them. And step two is where you disagree with a lot of people. And I'm sure you've had a lot of conversations with people on the left about this in just the last 10 years, 15 years, as the kind of canceled culture wave surge, is saying you absolutely have to talk.

You have to talk about people you think are morally bad. We all are at fault, all of us, left, right, middle, whatever, okay? You know, what was it a couple of different quotes? He who walks in silence hangs the innocent and lets the guilty go free. Okay? You know, I grew up as a child of parents in the U.S. Foreign Service. my parents were a U.S. State Department. I grew up as an American Embassy kid,

traveling all over the world, beginning at the age of three. When you combine my, you know, I've lived in many different countries. When you combine my childhood travels as an American Embassy kid today with my adulthood travels, playing, performing around the world

or speaking around the world, I have been to 65 countries on six continents. I can tell you something. From the time I traveled as a child through some of my, you know, early adulthood and and up until a few years back, people always want to talk to you. They revered Americans. We were like the greatest thing, you know, since sliced bread or whatever. You know, they wanted to talk to you, want to meet you. You know, what's it like in America? I want to visit there one day, blah, blah, blah. Um, today, they're like, what the heck has happened in your country? They cannot believe the lows that our country has sunk to. You know, you mentioned, you know, those Pew numbers.

I mean, I'm not a poll person. You know, I don't have that, you know, those tools. You need to take polls. But I can see where those numbers are coming from. We also have one of the, we have the, not one of the, the highest prison recidivism rate in the world. You know, so what are we doing here? here. You know, we people, people, are there innocent people in prison? Of course there are. There are people

who could not afford a lawyer or, you know, cards were stacked against them or whatever reason, you know, they're in prison, but there are a lot who, who deserve to belong there. But what are we doing there that when they come out, they end up going back? And other countries seem to have that problem solved. Some of their prisons may be worse than ours, but if those people get out, they don't go back. All right? Why do we go back? Why do we have these numbers?

You know, we, we need to take accountability for ourselves and go back to what we used to be where people, you know, revered. For example, a promoter asked me to help him book a festival with different artists, you know, different musicians. I've played this festival before, great festival, et cetera. And I recommended this guy from Europe who, wanted to come over here or we wanted to get him a couple years ago and he wanted to do it but he was already booked on the day to the festival so the promoters said hey you know you know

let's get him next year or whatever well I contacted the guy and he's he's afraid to come over here he said I can't do it you know this is this is typical so what what is going on with we the people we need to get our act together and it's going to take all of us work working together. We don't have to agree with one another, but we have to agree to be civil with one another and work towards the common goal. For example, you will hear people say, well, you know, this country was founded on Christianity. No, it was not. Now, I'm a Christian, okay, and I'm proud to be a Christian. I'll tell anybody I'm a Christian. All right. I'm not the Christian that the Klan claims to be. They claim to be Christian too, obviously, or I'm not a Christian nationalist or any of this stuff. All right. But, This country was founded on the right to worship as one chooses.

Because the people who came here from England and so forth, the song, the pilgrims, etc., they did not want to worship the king. They wanted to worship as they chose, right? Nothing was said about Christianity, the freedom to worship as you choose. So what does that mean? It means you can be Hindu, you can be Buddhist, you can be Christian,

Islamic, Muslim, you know, Judaism, whatever, okay, or atheists for that matter. It was founded on the freedom to worship as you choose. But now we've taken it

and we've twisted it to say it was founded on Christianity. No, it was not, even though we are a predominantly Christian nation. Another thing that has been twisted around that we really need to rethink here is the term

proud and pride, pride, proud, it means the same thing. It means, okay, so for example, you hear people say, well, I'm proud to be black or I'm, you know, I'm proud to be white, you know, white pride, black pride, whatever. To me, that's a crock of bull spit, all right? You cannot say that. You can say it, but it means nothing, all right? Right. We need to go back to the original definition of proud and pride, which is the feel

killing one derives from accomplishment. You are not white because you achieved it. You didn't accomplish that. Your parents accomplished that. That's why I'm black. My mother and father accomplished that. They can be proud of me. Your parents can be proud of you, regardless of what color you are.

A Jewish person is only Jewish because their mother is Jewish, according to Jewish law. They did not accomplish it, all right? So therefore, what did you accomplish? Okay, you have your own podcast. That's something you can be proud of. I have a college degree. I can be proud of that. I wrote a book.

I can be proud of that. You know, you won the 10K marathon. You can be proud of that. That's an accomplishment. All right? So I give people respect at the baseline. Human, because you are a human being. I don't have to know you.

I don't have to like you. But I respect you as a human being. But my respect meter goes up when I see your accomplishments on top of that baseline. respect. But just to walk around and say, I'm proud to be white, I'm proud to be black, is nonsense. What have you done? So we need to go back to that. Now, we can say, I'm not ashamed of being white. I'm not ashamed of being black or Jewish or gay or, you know, whatever it is you are. You know, no one's telling you have to be ashamed of it. No. No one should be ashamed of what they're born.

It's what you make of yourself. You know, like Martin Luther King said, you know, don't judge somebody by the color of their skin, judge them by the content of their cancer. character. Oh my goodness. I can't wait to keep this conversation going. I have to take a very quick break. Daryl Davis is going to be back in just one moment. But first, over the years, I have been clear about this. I'm not just pro-birth. I'm pro-life. And being pro-life means standing with mothers not only before their baby is born, but long after. And that's exactly why I partner with pre-born. Pre-born doesn't just save babies. They make a motherhood abundantly

possible. They provide free ultrasounds and share the truth of the gospel with women in crisis. And and then they stay with real practical help, including financial support for up to two years after the baby is born. This is what true Christ-centered compassion looks like, and not just for the baby, but for the mother, too. And here's where you can make a difference. Just $28 provides a free life-saving ultrasound, one chance for a mother to see her baby. And when she does, she's twice as likely to choose life.

Pre-born is trying to save 70,000 babies this year. So don't just say your pro-life. Live it, help save babies, and support mothers today. go to preborn.com slash Emily or call 855-601-229. That's preborn.com slash Emily. All right, we are back now with Daryl Davis, who is, of course, American R&B and blues musicians, civil rights activist, author of the clan whisperer and co-founder of the Pro-Human Foundation.

Darrell, I wanted to ask about persuasion because that's what I think you were really just talking about. the humility to approach other people as being of equal dignity and worth as human beings. And then also the, I think it's really like the compassion to try and persuade them. It can't be easy. I feel like it's really an act of love when you, you know, have a beer with a clan guy or anything like that. It can't be, that can't be fun. Maybe it is sometimes, Daryl, when you make, you convert them. But that's really about persuasion.

And I'm just curious if you sense that people have given up on persuasion, they kind of are writing people off more than they have in the past. Okay. So, yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, Emily. And let me say, let me tell you how I view it. I don't view it as me persuading or converting anybody. You know, when you see my name in the media, it will say, you know, black musician converts, you know, 200 KKK members or white. supremacists or whatever. No, I did not even convert one, but I have been the impetus for over 200 to renounce their ideology, whether it's neo-Nazism, you know, the clan or whatever else,

or even just individual racist next door who don't belong to any particular group. And what I never set out to persuade or to convert anybody. I simply set out to find out an answer to a question that has plagued me since the age of 10 when I was the only black Cub Scout in a parade in which some people threw rocks and bottles at me. And I didn't understand it. My first thought was, oh, those people don't like the scouts because that's how naive I was. You know, I didn't realize they were throwing it because I was a black scout because I grew up around people from all over the world. And, you know, there was, you know, in my sphere, in that environment, there was no racism. You know, I never even heard the word.

So I did not set out to convert anybody. Now, how do they get converted? How do they convert themselves? I won't say I persuade them. But what I do is this. You've heard the expression, one's perception is one's reality. That is so true. Whatever somebody believes, it's real to them.

Even if it's not real, it's real to them. You may see through the smoke and mirrors, but it's real to them. You cannot change anybody's reality. And if you attack their reality, you're going to get resistance. You're going to get pushback because that's all they know, right? So you were probably told as a kid, as I was told as a kid, a tiger does not change its stripes. A leopard does not change its spots.

That's who they are, right? So why would I think that a Klansman or neo-Nazi would change? their robin hood or their swastika armband or what have because that's what they are just like the tiger or the or the leopard I was wrong a a tiger and leopard cannot change their stripes or spots because those are immutable characteristics with which they were born a clansman or clanswoman or neo-nazzi is not born with that robin hood or that swastika that is an acquired ideology what can be learned can be unlearned. So if you try to tell somebody you're wrong, give me your robin hood, take off that swastika or whatever, you're going to get resistance because that's what they believe, that's what they know, it's real to them. So what you want to do is you want to offer them a better perception or perceptions, plural. If one of those perceptions resonates with them, then that perception becomes their reality and they end up converting themselves. How does that perception resonate?

it causes a cognitive dissonance. All right. I'm going to give you a hypothetical example, Emily. Let's say you have a seven, eight, nine-year-old little brother. And he goes to a magic show with his buddies. And he comes home and tells you, Emily, you're not going to believe this. This is magician on stage.

He asked for a female volunteer, and 50 women raised her hand. And he looked around and picked one out of the audience, brought up on stage, stuck the mic in her face, you know, what's your name, where you're from? And then he had her climb into this. long box and stick her feet out the hole at that end and her head out the hole at this end. And then he closed the lid.

He took a chainsaw and went right through the middle of the box. And the saw came out the bottom of the box. He cut her in half, Emily. And then he told her to wiggle her feet out the hole. And she wiggled her feet. And you say, listen, it didn't really happen like that. Yes, and dad, I'm telling you, I saw it. I was there.

I saw it my own eyes. You weren't there. I was there. I saw it. You've attacked his reality. He's 100% right. He was there. He saw it. You were not there. So how dare you tell him that what he saw is not real? Right? You've attacked his reality. He's going to push back. Okay. And then to prove to you that he's telling you the truth, he tells you, after this man dissected this woman in half, he took the half of the box with the feet and moved it over here to stage right. And the half with the head, put it over there on stage left. And then he, he took the half of the box with the feet and then he took the half of the box with the feet and then he, he took the back, he took the back. And then he took the back he walked over there and talked to the lady's head. And she spoke back to him. And then he brought the two halves back together. He did some abracadabra incantation over the box.

And he opened the lid. And she climbed out. He cut her in half, put her back together. And she got out and there was no blood. And you say, listen, it's an illusion. No, it's not. He's going to go off on you. And next thing you know, you guys are going to be rolling around the floor, smacking each other.

Okay? Because you're attacking him. You're attacking his reality, he's going to push back. So rather, you know, you will never win attacking somebody's reality. What you want to do is offer them a better perception. Cause the cognitive dissonance. All right. So what you do is this.

You say, listen, I understand what you're saying, but let me ask you a question. Do you think it's possible, just maybe, just perhaps, that when he asked for a female volunteer and all these women raised their hand and he picked one out of the audience, do you think just maybe it's possible that should, worked for him? Maybe she knows the trick and she travels all over the country with him and sits in that same theater seat wherever they are. He looks around the audience and always zooms in on her, brings her up. And when she climbs into the box, there's already a pair of mannequin, dummy legs laying on the floor of the box that are wearing the same stockings and stiletto heels that she has on. So she reaches over and shoves them out the hole just

so you see the ankles and the shoes. And she brings her own knees up. under her chest. So now her whole body is on that half of the box. So now when the saw goes through, it never even touches her. And he says, wiggle your feet. She reaches over, shakes the ends of those handles on the legs, and the feet wiggle outside the hole. So now when he separates the two halves, she no longer can control those feet. He does not want you looking at those feet. So he diverts your attention from looking at them by walking over here and talking to the lady's head, because he doesn't want you to see those feet can't move anymore. Of course the lady's head's going to talk back

because her whole body is there. And then he brings the two halves back together. She reaches over, pulls the dummy legs back into the box, leaves him on the floor, and she climbs out. And then your brother says, hmm, you know, that might be the only way that could work. You offered him a better perception. It resonated and now he's changed his own reality.

That's how we communicate. We are so trigger-happy to attack somebody, attack their reality, rather than give them something to think about. Because, you know, when somebody is in a mode where they know something or they believe it to be true and you start attacking them, it just reinforces where they are. Their wall goes up, the ears get blocked, they don't hear a thing. But let them speak, let them express themselves.

Okay, don't cancel them out. Let them get it all out and then just offer them something to think about. It's called planting a seed. Give them reasonable doubt. I wish I knew how to be that persuasive when my brother was seven or eight or nine. But now, but now on that note, I got to tell you this. On that note, I did go see David Copperfield one time. And I did see him make an elephant disappear for real.

And there's no. changing my reality. Wow. Well, that's impressive. I'd love to see that. Well, you know, that's actually interesting because there are, I mean, I think of what it must be like to be 10 years old today. Some of the differences over the years, and I'm sure you've seen this firsthand, we

are all now in sort of different realities because of what we're being fed that changes our perceptions. So the media is shattered into a million pieces compared to where it was in the 1970s. The internet exists. The family has continued, the nuclear family has continued to see erosion. We are more secular. And then also deindustrialization of places in the Rust Belt and other areas, particular pockets of the country that were hit very hard by NAFTA or whatever it is.

And Daryl, I'm wondering how you think about all of these factors, because that's on the right at this point in time. Many of us are having this conversation, and it's really a debate. It's, you know, are young conservatives becoming more radical? Are they becoming more racist? Are they becoming, you know, neo-Nazis at higher rates? And as you think about this question, A, do you think that's true? And B, why do you think that might be? What does it have to do with all of these changes over the last few decades?

Okay. Well, I think, you know, you probably got into it a lot more before I was brought onto the program. But I caught maybe the last, you know, a minute and a half of you talking about CNN, for example. You mentioned Jake Tapper. I agree that the news is not the news that I knew when I was a child. You mentioned one of my heroes, Walter Cronkite. Okay, I remember Walter Cronkite, Walter Cronkite, I met him one time, David Brinkley, Chet Huntley, Barbara Walters, you know, people like that, Ed Bradley, they gave you the news, they gave you the facts and you figure it out from there. Today, you know, you watch the news. It doesn't matter what channel. It's more editorial, you know, we're telling you what to believe because you're too dumb to figure it out on your own. You know, that's the impression I often get, you know, regardless of what news channel is. I'm watching.

But back then, you know, they just gave you the raw facts and you can figure it out, all right? We need to get back to that pure news, not, you know, or or or or tell people, you know, right off the top of the back, you know, this is our opinion, you know, rather than try to, you know, disseminate it as, as fact. Like, you know, for example, I watched the debate between the last, I watched both debates, but this last one between Trump and Biden. And I think it was Dana Bash and Jake Tapper were moderating. And Donald Trump pointed next to him where Joe Biden was standing and said,

he's letting millions and millions and millions of people across our border, maybe even 20 million people, and they're taking away black jobs. Every black person in this country, like, what? It's a black job. Including me. Okay. What is a black job? What is a black job?

Okay? Now, if he had said that 400 years ago, we all would have understood because we only had one job back then. It was called being a slave. All right. Today, we have CEO jobs. We have doctors, lawyers. We have all kinds of jobs. Okay.

Not Jake Tapper, Dana Bash, not one of them said, oh, excuse me, a Mr. Trump. could you define, please? What is a black job? Not one of them questioned him on that. They questioned him on other things that he said that didn't ring right with them. If you had been sitting there and he said, you know, these people

come across our borders and they're taking away, you know, women's jobs. You know, would you have said, well, excuse me, what is a woman's job? Because today, you can have the same jobs men can have. Why didn't he say they're taking away American jobs? That would have made a lot more

since. It would have spoken to the entire public. It would not have divided us, black jobs, white jobs, Hispanic jobs, whatever kind of jobs. Nobody questioned him on that. I guarantee you if Dana or Jake or one of them had been black, they would have cut him off and said, whoa, explain to us what is a black job. So, you know, we're seeing things like this and it rings differently to us, then it rings to somebody else. Just like, you know, if it's a female issue, it would ring differently to you than it might ring to a male.

And, you know, these are experienced journalists, hardcore, hard-hitting, ask those tough questions-type journalists, you know, at respected news stations. I don't care if it's Fox or CNN or MSNBC or whatever, okay? Those are questions that should have been asked. when that came up. And one of, and I think actually, just going off that point, one of the things that has driven conspiracy theories or maybe been like rocket fuel for certain conspiracy theories

in the last 10 or so years is the level of trust that people have in media. And I feel like this is something that you've encountered probably for years. Darrell, when you're talking to folks who, you know, maybe it's economic reasons, maybe it's family reasons, maybe it's psychological reasons, they go down these deep rabbit holes and they're into the protocols, the elders of Zion, and they're talking about the Schofield Bible and whatever the heck else. That seems to coincide with this moment where we have low institutional trust. Do you sense that there are people at risk of falling into, you know, different radical racial ideologies as conspiracies kind of bloom on the internet? Is that something that happens?

Give us your thoughts on that. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, you know, social media and these news channels can be a double-edged sword, like fire, for example. You know, if your home is cold, I can bring fire to you and heat your house. If I'm mad at you, I can bring fire and burn your house down. So it can be a double-edged sword. There are a lot of great things, you know, that have come out of the internet.

But there's also a lot of things, you know, that give mistrust and distrust and misinformation and disinformation intentionally in order to create something, a conspiracy or what have you. But again, people are, you know, do you know the term white flight, for example? Mm-hmm. Okay. So white flight doesn't even exist anymore. You know, if you, if you would ask somebody, say, in there, between age 15 and 25, so what do you think of white flight? They'll be like, what? What is that?

Because they don't know, okay? Because over the past couple of decades, the color of the American landscape has changed so much that anywhere you go, there's already somebody there that doesn't look like you. So there's no more white flight. When I came to Montgomery County, I'm from Chicago originally, but like I said, I lived all over. over the world. But when I came to Montgomery County, Maryland, in the 70s, they still had covenants in neighborhoods where if you were white and you were in a white neighborhood, if you moved out, you could not sell your house to a black or a Jew. That was a law. Okay, their covenant, all right? That was still in existence when my parents were looking for a home, all right?

And there were certain neighborhoods the realtors would not show us. I remember that. All right. Now, today, of course, all of that's changed. So we're seeing these changes, and we're seeing people who are feeling, you know, human beings, some people put it this way, you've probably had cats and dogs, or you have friends or siblings who've had cats and dogs in their family. They say that a dog is a man's best friend. And yes, that may be true. But I'll tell you something. human beings are more akin to cats than dogs, okay?

If you were to take your dog, Emily, and move to a different house every month and take your dog with you, your dog would be happy. Your dog is happy wherever you are. You try that with your cat. Your cat is always going to be trying to escape and go back to what it knew, okay? And if the cat can't get out of the house, you're not going to find it for a week. It's going to be hiding under the bed and some little crevice somewhere. It will not appear. It's scared. It wants to go back to what it knows.

Human beings are like that. We do not like change. And we're seeing our country change. And some people are having a harder time than others with the demographic shift. That's also one of the reasons why Canada was asked to be the 51st state to stop this and make it this. I want to ask one more big question, Daryl, about how we define racism and bigotry, because it seems to me that for all the problems the right has, one of the problems on the left is that often they will accuse somebody who merely disagrees with them on the question of, for example, affirmative action policy. It could literally be Clarence Thomas, racist, begot.

If you disagree on this foreign policy thing, beg it. And that is a very dangerous, right? Can you talk to, do you feel like that's happening? I think cancel culture kind of peaked and hopefully it's waning, but it still happens. It's somebody's lame attempt to cancel somebody because they have no other intelligent resource to present their argument. So therefore you're a Nazi or you're a racist. And it happens on both sides. It happens on both sides, left and right, okay?

You're just painting somebody with a broad brush because they have no more better information to give the other person to make them take a fresh look at something. So therefore, you know, I can't talk to you because you're a racist or you're a Nazi or whatever. And that has nothing to do with the person, you know? They may simply not understand. Are there racist out there?

Absolutely. I see them all the time. Okay? Are there Nazis out there? Absolutely. I know some. Okay. And I know people of that mentality on all sides.

All right. So yes, you know, we use that, we use those terms very loosely. And, and we, you know, like, like I said, you know, we need to go back to the original definition of those, of those terms. Just like we need to go back to the original definition of being proud and or being proud or having pride. Okay, so you're proud? Okay, well, what are you proud of? Oh, well, I won the Miss America contest. Okay, fine.

You should be proud of that. You know, but don't be proud just because of the color of your skin. You know, that you can accomplish, you know, Jack, whatever. So, you know, we have to go back to our original definitions and start, you know, stop throwing, you know, terms around. Number one, there is no such thing as races, plural. There is one race. It is the human race.

Science has proven that race is a man-made construct. There is no white race, black race, Hispanic race, Asian race. Your race, Emily, and my race are 99.9% the same DNA. Therefore, that makes us the same race, all right? And other countries realize that. They know that because they don't have the problems that we have. They may have their own set of problems. Don't get me wrong.

You know, everybody has some kind of history, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the shameful. And sometimes they're similar. Sometimes they're different. Let's take, for example, Northern Ireland, all right? You have issues between Catholics and Protestants. You know, they bomb one another and do this and do that. Over here, we don't have that problem. Catholics and Protestants get along just fine.

All right. In Beirut, it's Muslims and Christians. In Israel, it's Palestinians and Israelis. In Rwanda, it's the Hutus and the Tutsis. Your tribal thing. Everybody has their own little sets of, of bigotries and things like that. All right.

But when it comes down to race, there's only one race, right? And all our DNA is 99.9% the same. That needs to be taught in elementary school. Of course, you know, you would tone it down to the level of which elementary school kids can understand that. And then you increase it as you get, you know, older. Don't wait until college when people's minds are already made up and everything's locked and you've got to kind of break.

those connections and reprogram them because when kids are young like this they're sponging information they want to learn that's when you plant those truths for example when i was in when i was in school i graduated high school in 76 in college in 1980 uh in one of the best school systems in this country we did not learn in in our history class that we had internment camps in this country for Japanese Americans. I did not learn you. Wow, that was only decades. That was only three decades earlier.

Exactly. Okay. And I did not, you know, I did not learn that in school. I was incredulous. I'm like, no way. And my teacher said yes. I went and asked my parents, they said yes. How come that wasn't in the history books? It's in the history books today.

Kids are learning it today, okay? But that wasn't in there back then, because it was shameful. Even today, the Tulsa Race riots are not in the U.S. history books. and they existed. They were horrific. It wasn't until about maybe 25 years ago

that Germany began teaching their own kids about the Holocaust. That was not in the books. You know, because, you know, we don't want to expose ourselves to our flaws. We have to do that. We all have flaws. The good, the bad, the ugly, and the shameful.

All those cards need to be turned face up on the table, addressed, and then we move on together. Last question then, Daryl, how, what do you get from not giving up on people? I know there are a lot of folks out there who might want to give up on this uncle or this nephew because things have gotten tense. There was a clip of Jimmy Kimmel's wife recently talking about family members who she's had to distance from, put distance between them and the family members because of, honestly, because of Trump.

And, you know, I have to imagine you've seen this pay dividends, not giving up on people pay dividends over the years. Absolutely. Why should people be thinking about just pushing through? How should they be thinking about pushing through? All right. So let's look at it like this. Look, I've heard time and time again, especially in the last few years here, I'm not going to Thanksgiving dinner with my family because my sister voted for so-and-so and I voted for this one. We just can't talk.

You know, my dad voted for, you know, whatever, right? Like I said earlier, I don't care who's going to, who is president. Whoever that person is, is only going to be there for four years, minimum, eight years maximum. How long have you been with your family? You've been with your family for decades. Are you going to throw away a decades-long relationship over somebody who's only going to be around for four to eight years?

Come on. All right. If I can go to a Ku Klux Klan rally, look at me. If I can go to a Ku Klux Klan rally and talk to those people, you can sit down at your Thanksgiving table with your family and talk to your weird uncle or your sister or your brother or whatever, you know. What's important is this. We don't find out why that person voted for Donald Trump

or why that person voted for Kamala or Joe Biden or whoever. because we get triggered. You know, oh, well, you know, you voted for him. He must, you know, you must be a racist too, you know, or whatever the case may be. All right. We need to find out why they did. And once you find out, you might think, hmm, yeah, you know,

I can see why you voted for him. I wouldn't have voted for him on that, but I understand why you did because such and such affected your family and you think he's going to fix it. I understand why you did it. And, you know, and when you have these conversations, then they can see why you voted for the other person, all right? And you may, whether you agree or don't agree, at least you understand why the person did. And they may not be a racist at all, something that that person said appealed to them.

Like, for example, let's take, let's take Donald Trump, for example, since you mentioned his name, all right? Every president that we've seen, let's say from George Washington to George Bush, to George Bush, or Obama, whatever. Every candidate has had one base of people. Everybody in this base loves their candidate, and everybody in this base love each other. They all are in common with this. We come to Donald Trump.

We see something different. He has two bases of people. We've never seen that before, all right? He has these two bases, and these two bases, like, you know, the, The far right, for example, the Nazis, the KKK people, the white supremacists, that's their guy. They all voted for him, all right? These people over here who are not white supremacists, they voted for him too, all right?

But because they believe that he's a good businessman, you know, and what they tell me is, I'm tired of politicians, we need a good businessman in here to fix our economy. He's going to fix the economy. He's going to give us better health care, whatever the case may be, whatever he says. They're buying into it, okay? These people over here who are looking at him as the problem solver of the economy, they don't like the other base. They would never associate with the KKK or neo-Nazis or white supremacy. The people over here in the white supremacist base, they don't like those people over here

because they're intermarried with Jews. They're intermarried with black people. They have gay people in their family or LGBTQ. people in their family. So you got these two distinct bases who don't like each other, but they like the same candidate because that same candidate has the ability to talk out of both sides of his mouth, tell this base what they want to hear, tell that base what they want to hear. All right? So you've got these two bases voting for the same person. We've never quite seen that before. We're in the past we've always been used to one base. So again, you know, everybody hears something that they, that they, that

they interpret that's going to benefit them. And you can't blame them. If you're hung up on women's rights and I'm hung up on, let's say, black rights or whatever, and somebody's talking that language, that's what we zero in on. That becomes our reality until somebody causes a cognitive dissonance and says, yeah, but he's awful for women's rights. But then on the other hand, he's going around grabbing women by the crotch. and bragging about it, you know?

So that causes the cognitive dissonance. And then you got to say, well, okay, well, hmm, you know, well, that's okay. I can, I can, you know, forgive that as long as, you know, I get treated equally. Well, what, well, what if that was your mother that he grabbed or your daughter or your wife? Then all of a sudden it becomes a little more real to you and causes another cognitive dissonance and you got to evaluate. So that's what we have to do.

We have to sit down and talk to one another and find that, rather than get triggered and call somebody a racist or a Nazi without figuring out why, what was it about that person that appealed to them and let them know what it is about our person that appealed to us. We don't necessarily have to agree and vote for the other person's candidate, but we have to understand why they did this. And if we find out it's because, you know, their candidate hates women or hates black people, then yes, they're a racist too.

And then we've proven the point. Daryl Davis, I can't tell you what a pleasure it's been to have you on the show. Daryl's book is called The Clan Whisperer. He's also co-founder of the Pro-Human Foundation. Sir, thank you so much for spending so much time with us this evening. Thank you, Emily. And let me just add in conclusion about the Pro-Human Foundation.

You know, so many people talk about what they're against. I'm anti-this. I'm anti-that, you know, blah, blah, blah. Okay, fine. Now we know what you're anti. But what are you pro? What are you for? So there aren't so many organizations out there that tell you what they're for, what they want to promote. All right, they always tell you what they're against. So myself, a lady named Letitia Kim, a super attorney and an entrepreneur named Byn Barton, we found an organization that tells people what we're for. The pro-human. We all are we are about human. We're not a we're not a we're not. We're not a, we're not. anti-racist, as in anti-racist, the noun, the person. We're not against the person. We're anti-racism.

We're against the ism, the message. But we're pro-human, because everybody's a human being, even the racists are human beings, right? So we're pro-human being. And if anybody wants to join us, please, you know, go to pro-humanfoundation.org, and we welcome you. Darrell Davis, really, thank you so much for your time. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Wow. That was awesome. So grateful to Daryl for sticking around for the whole hour. I've been looking forward to this for a very long time. So exciting stuff. I've got more in just one moment. But first, a fresh start is possible. Debt can feel like it's getting worse every month. But that only continues if nothing changes. PDS debt has already helped hundreds of

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at PDSdebt.com slash Emily. That's PDSdebt.com slash Emily. Again, PDSdeat.com slash Emily. All right. Well, if you follow my work in different places or you have over the years, you know, even if it was back at Federalist Radio Hour, I love having people on no matter if they're left or right or center, whatever. You know, it's a criticism sometimes that I see is like, well, what does Emily actually believe? Why is Emily talking to this person? It's like, people are interesting. And frankly, people are smarter than me.

And there are all kinds of fun questions you can pepper people with and have a better understanding of where they're coming from at the end of the day. It sounds so cliche and honestly, it sounds so stupid. I get it, especially right now. It sounds quaint and maybe a little boomery. But I just think other people are very interesting. And they have interesting reasons for what they believe, interesting experiences that have brought them to what they believe. So, you know, Daryl has seen so much.

He's seen so much. And he's truly been one of the people at the front lines of continuing communication with folks who have been absolutely radicalized. And he's willing to tell you what he thinks the left is doing wrong. He's willing to tell you what he thinks the right is doing wrong. And he has so much experience actually talking to people who have drifted into radicalization in one way or the other. I mean, one of the things that we have talked about

in the last couple of happy hour episodes, or it seems like almost every happy hour episode for the last six months, basically is conspiracy theories. sometimes on the right, sometimes about Israel, whatever it is. And I think you see in a lot of people who are spinning up those theories, the internet has trapped them in some unhelpful physicians where it's almost uncomfortable as a viewer. It's probably one of the reasons some people watch it, right?

It's like with reality TV, some of us are just addicted to those uncomfortable moments because there's something very real in it. One of the things you can't fake is that authentic discomfort, right? That's one of the reason prank shows are so popular. It's like you can't, you have to have whatever Ashton Cusher is doing on punk, that was a really toxic millennial reference. But whatever he's doing, you have to have someone else on the other side who's actually very uncomfortable or scared or whatever because you can sense that it's real emotion.

And I think what we've seen is just the way. way algorithmic social media is totally poisoning people's ability to think rationally and clearly about a lot of this stuff. So I was curious to get Daryl's take on that. As promised, though, I said I would weave together the misadventures of Lindy West, clavicular, and Taylor Frankie Paul, and I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I think I can do it. If you've never heard the name, Lindy West before. You're probably very confused. If you're also on X, you're probably very, I don't know what the middle of that Venn diagram is, but you're probably very confused right now about why you keep seeing these two words next to each other,

Lindy and West, and why the elder millennials on your feed seem to be so caught up with Lindy, West. I mean, I counted one, two pieces in the Atlantic just in the last week. We can put one of them up on the screen. This was a fantastic piece. Both of these pieces in the Atlantic Like, we're excellent, and I'm not used to saying that. This was by Helen Lewis. It was called The Death of Millennial Feminism. The great Tyler Austin Harper also had a piece reviewing Lindy West's new memoir called Adult Braces.

And basically, Lindy West is the sort of peak elder millennial. Lindy West wrote for Jezebel at its heights. And once again, if you don't know what Jezebel is, God bless you. you missed out on an absolutely horrible era of the internet. Here is Lindy West's bylines in September 2014, right before she left Jezebel. Jezebel was one of those sites where people would blog like three articles a day or something. It'd all be like 300 words of just pure snark.

Like, here's a headline. Scarlet Johanson gave birth. Golden Retriever loves watching football so fucking much. Oh my God. some of us liked Chris Pratt before it was cool. I'm actually just going to click on that one for the hell of it. Apparently there's been some grumbling lately, she wrote, from people who identify as Chris Pratt early adopters,

unoppressed with the jilly cum lately, swimming over Guardians of the Galaxy. And to those Chris Pratt hipsters, I say, you guys are being ludicrously legit. All cast, because I am one of you. She wrote like Donald Trump was tweeting at the time. I like Chris Pratt, she goes on to say, again in all caps. For who he is as a person, you shallow fucks. And Lenny West went on to have

a calm like at The Guardian and was understood to be a feminist thinker, not just like a blogger, but was really seen as somebody who was a feminist thinker. What was the, was it like, Honorable Al-Laki that got the obituary that they were like an austere scholar? I forget which like jihadist got that from like the post of the times but lindy west was actually treated like an austere feminist scholar and this new memoir has just the the peak millennial feminist arc baked into it and it took a turn there have been all kinds of reviews making this point it took a turn over the weekend where slate where you would imagine lindy west getting a very friendly hearing says they got an email responding to their review, just getting absolutely hammered by Lindy West, Lindy West's non-binary husband.

Basically, it turns out that Lindy West isn't a thruple, Lindy West's husband who, I guess, like, it sounds as though racially guilted West into opening up their marriage to this Lindy West's husband's girlfriend. And the adult braces part of all of this. Yeah, the headline here from The New York Times, Lindy West thought she couldn't handle polyamory.

She was wrong. You go, girl. You get a polychule. You get a polychule. You get a husband. You get a wife. You get a they. That's really what's happening here from some corners of the media.

But here's a point from Slate. much of adult braces reads like a divorce memoir for the elder millennials raised on Jezebel in the golden age of Twitter, something in Elizabeth Gilbert or a Roxanne Gay might release to light up group chats everywhere. What a depressing sentence, because that's really what was happening, circle like 2012 in millennial culture. But really, Lindy West and Lindy West's husband get in touch with Slate. These reviews are popping up in every publication. But Slate gets an email.

Let me put this up on the screen. The weekend after we published this profile of Lindy West, she and her partners all emailed me about their displeasure with the result. Quote, I feel hurt by this piece. It feels subtly designed to generate exactly the kind of backlash against Aham Fule, that's the husband, and by extension, me. It's hard to weather backlash that's about someone else, especially when I tried so hard on my book to convey who we are

and the complexities of what really happened. Perhaps I failed. Roya, who I believe is the third, says, if I'm honest, it just feels like a slate article, which no one I know actually reads and certainly wouldn't pay to access, even for this. I hope that one day you can apologize sincerely to Lindy. She deserves it. And then the husband's email, quote, indicated the most dissatisfaction among the triad. It's republished and full at the bottom of this piece.

So let's scroll onto the box. Oh, yeah, I'm not logged into my Slate Plus membership. Damn, what a sad state of affairs we are in here. But Lindy West, this is my theory, and this is where we're going to go with this, Lindy West is basically a proxy for elder millennial culture. So Matt Iglesias posted on X, another toxic elder millennial. Maybe he's junior gen X. I don't know.

Aglaeus posts, shouldn't someone have to write the Lindy West is good? and actually write about everything take in order to justify the volumes of takedowns I am seeing. But this is really interesting, actually, because the idea that Lindy West would publish a memoir that is so Lindy West. I mean, Lindy West has not changed one bit. Much hay has been made about how Lindy West was anti-Hooters, and then at one point on her feminist arc became like pro stripper. And that's genuinely interesting. But what you're seeing there is the same person who is wearing an ideology like fashion. And it's this contrarianism, right?

Like, it's a person who's not necessarily dressed fashionably, but is dressed contrarian. That's in ideological form. That's what Lindy West and her peers of this generation carried with them. And it became fashionable for a moment. There was this peak era of like BuzzFeed and whatever else, like Wonkette, dare I say, Gawker, where it was all wrapped into, this Liz Lemon

cosplay. That's really what it was. It was Liz Lemon cosplay of, you know, 28 to 35-year-old women and probably gay bloggers who were doing the

snark thing and getting a lot of plotts for it. Like, it was seen as very edgy. And I think probably because it was, if you go back to the blogosphere, which Iglesias was a part of, certainly Lindy West was a part of It was the first different thing from traditional media on the internet. It was what came up of blog spots when they first popped up.

And it was so very millennial. And I always go to culture of narcissism from Christopher Lash to understand what happened in my generation. I think it's happened just across the board. he talks about very early in culture of narcissism, the therapy, the therapeutization. And this book was written what in the 70s or the 80s? He writes, love as self-s sacrifice or self-abasement, meaning as submission to a higher loyalty. These sublimations strike the therapeutic sensibility as intolerably oppressive, offensive to common sense, and injurious to personal health and well-being.

And what we started to see are the people who were raised by parents who had adopted a lot of this, bring it into the workplace and into politics. And when it merged with politics, I think it was particularly toxic. It became cancel culture, essentially. So if you were reading Jezebel in 2014, you were getting glimpses into what was mutating into cancel culture. This is more lash. Today, Americans are overcome not by the sense of endless possibility, but by the sense of endless possibility, by the banality of the social order they have erected against it. It's just so crazy how prescient this was.

As the family loses not only its productive functions, but many of its reproductive functions as well, men and women no longer manage even to raise their children without the help of certified experts, the atrophy of older traditions of self-help has eroded everyday competence in one area after another and has made the individual dependent on the state, the corporation, and other bureaucracies.

Notwithstanding his occasional illusions of omnipotence, the narcissist depends on others to validate his self-esteem. On the contrary, the narcissist, Lash says, it's apparent freedom from family ties and institutional constraints. That is important because we're talking about the blogosphere, right, where you're totally leaving behind institutional constraints. Quote, does not free him to stand alone or to glory in his individuality. On the contrary, it contributes to his insecurity, which he can overcome only by seeing his grandiose self reflected in the attentions of others or by attacking himself to those who radiate celebrity power and charisma. This became millennial politics. And that's where I'm going to go ahead and put this clavicular reaction up on the screen.

I'm not going to play the clip because I think Esenel gets annoyed if you do that. But here's the caption. Clavicular goes off after seeing S&L Jestermax and impersonate him saying millennials have no culture. I mean, what he's saying is that millennials have a totally memetic, repetitive, hollow culture. This is, when I watched the sketch, I couldn't believe how cringy it was. I feel like the word cringe has become cringe. Maybe we need a zoomer correspondent to explain that. But it's like your skin crawls when you watch this sketch. And clavicular, like Donald Trump, is somebody who should be eminently easy to mock.

that is a gift to comedy writers. And they do the worst possible. It's sort of like what they did with Tucker the other week. I don't know if you saw that. It did this impression of Tucker, impression of Tucker on Weekend Update. That was like Tucker Carlson, circa 2014. It bore absolutely no resemblance to Tucker.

We talked about it with Griffin last week. It was so, again, like hollow and just self. it's people who don't get questioned enough because they've projected a fragility. So there's too much friction to question people who project that fragility. And if you yourself are fragile, you don't question other people because you don't want to be accused of stepping into their fragile space or their, like they're, you don't want to be accused of. stepping into, you know, their fragile space or they're, like, they're, you don't want to be accused of injuring them and one way or the other causing drama. And so millennials conditioned themselves. And consumers are very different than this, at least the many that I've

met on campuses and, you know, through different speeches and the like, just they, they grew up with much more conflict. The world was much more, you know, millennials had this, this very monotonous culture. It was all progressive cultural leftism, which sounds ridiculous because it got a corporate sheen, right? But Malinels are still living in that era. Truly, the only person who's even like thinking about maybe escaping seems to be Taylor Swift. We'll see what happens. But these are people who didn't get questioned and challenged enough. And they produced a cultural output that was really cringe-worthy because of that. And it does go back to the culture of narcissism. And this is where Taylor-Frank-Paul, if you haven't been paying attention to what's going on at the Bachelor,

is different. This is what's kind of strange to people about the Taylor-Frank-Paul story. I was talking today. I mean, let me just do the basics here. Mom talk comes out of Utah a couple years ago. They get their own show on Hulu's Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. I watched the first season. And And as somebody who loves reality TV, it was like, killed me to watch that season of the show. Like, it was so, I thought it was terrible. And I think The Bachelor is terrible. I get why people watch it. It's sort of written like, it's produced like a page turner, like a cheap beach read.

I think there are much more sophisticated reality television options available for people with a refined reality television palette. And those include the Real Housewives of New York City. But nonetheless, Taylor Frankie Paul. is horribly accused. I'll just read here from USA Today here. In an unparalleled moment in Bachelor history, Bachelor Nation history, it says, fans will not see any of it after,

this is Taylor, Frankie Paul's season, she was The Bachelorette, after ABC canceled the 22nd season of The Bachelorette, just days before it scheduled Sunday, March 22nd, premiere, the Disney own network pulled the plug to an ongoing Utah police investigation into a, quote, domestic assault involving the secret lives of Mormon wives star and her ex-partner, Dakota Mortensen, of both level allegations. The season cancellation on March 19th comes after TMZ published a shocking video showing the

2023 violent altercation with Paul, seen yelling, hitting, kicking, and throwing furniture at Mortensen, while a child is heard crying. The video is indeed horrific, horrific. It's heartbreaking. ABC decided to make Taylor, Frankie Paul, the Bachelorette. And what's really different about that is I don't think anybody sees her as a protagonist, right? In the golden age of TV, the days of Mad Men, really started with Sopranos, and then went into Breaking Bad and the like. Cultural critics were curious about why Americans, during this time, period were obsessed with anti-heroes. And there are many examples. But that didn't, you didn't

see that on the Bachelorette. The Bachelorette was protagonists. And I think a lot of the reason is that millennials really needed to see themselves as the good guys. And I think that was rooted in a total narcissism. I'm not saying that Taylor Frankie Paul isn't deeply selfish. I think that's obviously true when you see someone in a fit of rage, seeing red to the point where they're throwing bar stools, metal stools, at their partner with their child in very close proximity. Horrible video. But ABC was saying, we're going to put an anti-hero in a bachelorette because of virality. There was this fascinating, I'm trying not to go on too long here, but there was this fascinating Axios story today about how Democrats, I'll just pull up the link, are now starting to talk

more and more about, there we go, more and more about their personal trauma. So the headline was potential 2028 Democrat presidential, Democratic presidential candidates are introducing themselves to voters in a striking way. by documenting their childhood resentments, family chaos, and fights with their parents. And I mean, this is what we talk about all the time in terms of Neil Postman and like the epistemology of the algorithm, right? Like that's what this is. It's just like with Jake Tapper. It is a faux authenticity, right? Like when institutional trust is really low, what we're going to see are people like Gavin Newsom, trying to peel back the layers of their personal onion

and look more authentic. If you're not doing it in a truly authentic way where you're really bearing your soul, people know that right away. And Taylor Frankie Paul, this has always been my problem with The Bachelor, is that people are acting. And it's one of the things I didn't like about Mom Talk either

is that they were playing the roles of, or Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. They were playing the roles of being influencers. like there were influencers who were trying to play the role of people on reality TV. They're super messed up people. I'm not going to deny that. But they were trying to like really act as part of the genre that they knew very well. If somebody, by the way, is seeing this clip without any context and there is a picture of this Axios headline up on the screen.

And I'm randomly talking about the Secret Lives of Mormon Lives. This is my masterpiece. This is my greatest contribution to society. You're welcome. I think it is connected, though. I think it is connected. I think what we're entering now, millennials were coping.

And I think that's very true about Lindy West, who was coping with an insecurity. Lindy West was somebody, her memoir was made into that trill TV series with Adi Bryant, who was ideological on weight loss issues in a way that always felt like cope. Adult braces,

this Lindy West trying to say that she's totally cool with polyamory. It all feels like cope. And it's cope for something that's really obviously just unhappiness. And with clavicular, you see a dude who's literally saying, yeah, I want to be, like, what will make me happy and fulfilled is taking a hammer to my cheekbones and looking, like taking the hormones that might make me inferred. streaming at all hours of the day. Like, that's what I'm going to do.

And you know what people, why people find that compelling? Because he's actually doing it, and he actually believes what he says. It's crazy and it's stupid. But he actually believes it. And so this era of low institutional trust is a huge contrast with millennials coping by trying to create fashionable, comforting narrative. narratives that really did become this institutional corporate cancel culture where people were looking outward to fill these like gaping holes in themselves

with social justice and now it's like well just gonna take a hammer to my face or we're gonna cast a crazy person openly crazy person who's who's who's bad, like genuinely bad on The Bachelorette. Like Taylor Frankie Paul was just seen paparazzi's caught her in a sweatshirt over the weekend. I forget what it said on the back. It said something ridiculous on the back of it over the weekend. Yeah, it said, can't wait to sleep with you. The Lindy West era, it would have been, you know, hashtag feminism, can't wait to sleep with you, right?

Like this would have been dressed up as a political thing, a political point. But now it's just like we're all, we're all just nakedly coping in totally different ways. You know, there's not a social justice cope really anymore. And Lindy West was the era of the social justice cope. Lindy West is still coping by putting out pieces of writing that dress up this polyamory is something that's been great. And what's interesting is that now people kind of see through it, right? People kind of see through it.

And you can't get away with that anymore. So this has been my weave. I don't know if any of it made sense, but I had a lot of disparate thoughts that I wanted to tie together. So appreciate you guys hanging in there with me. By the way, independent women did a little profile of me. If you want to go check it out.

It's at the Independent Women website. And it's, I had to, you guys know how much I love getting pictures taken of myself and talking about myself, speaking of the culture of narcissism. Did have to do a little bit of that. But if you want to hear a little bit of my backstory, independentwomen.com. I'm a photographer at my house. It was a wild time. We took glam shots on the steps of the Supreme Court. Why not?

Why not? go ahead and head over to the independent women website, independentwomen.com. You can read it there. I am a fellow with them. So it's always pleasure to collaborate and go take a look. Thanks so much for tuning in tonight, guys. Really appreciate it.

We'll see you back here on Wednesday live. We've got Michael Malice, Michael Malice. So stay tuned. We'll see you then.