After Party with Emily Jashinsky - Dolly Parton’s REMARKABLE Life, Harry’s Visa & Meghan Divorce Rumors, & Blake’s $8M Reality Check, with Maureen Callahan

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

Emily Jashinsky is joined by Maureen Callahan, host of “The Nerve with Maureen Callahan,” to reflect on the death and extraordinary legacy of Dolly Parton. Emily and Maureen discuss how Parton’s privacy, stoicism, generosity, and refusal to be dragged into partisan politics made her increasingly rare in modern celebrity culture. They revisit Parton’s infamous interview with Barbara Walters and explain how Dolly managed to completely outclass an interviewer seemingly determined to humiliate her. The conversation then turns to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s planned return to Britain, including Maureen’s theory that the move could be a soft launch for a divorce and what their return could mean for Prince William and the larger royal family. Emily and Maureen also react to the latest development in the Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni legal battle after a judge dramatically reduced Lively’s request for roughly $8 million in legal fees to about $400,000. Finally, Emily breaks down Meta’s massive settlement over social media addiction claims and explains why the billions of dollars and new child-safety measures still amount to little more than tinkering around the edges of a much bigger problem.   SelectQuote: Compare top‑rated life insurance options. Visit https://SelectQuote.com/emily to get the right coverage at the right price.   PreBorn: Help save a baby go to https://PreBorn.com/Emily or dial #250 keyword BABY   Ghostbed: Discover how GhostBed’s cooling, pressure-relieving design can help you sleep more comfortably and wake up feeling refreshed, plus get an extra 10% off their lowest prices of the season at GhostBed.com/EMILY with code 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, everyone. Thank you so much for being here with us. Our guest is the great, the one and only, Maureen Callahan. And what a night to have Marine Callahan with us because I want to do just a long, free-flowing conversation with Maureen on the death of the great Dolly Parton. I did a quick reaction video here on the channel yesterday. And wrote a piece for the Federalist about the life in times of Dolly Parton. I know she's a celebrity that means a lot to so many of us. That's been abundantly clear. just in the last 24 hours or so after her passing. But I want to talk to Marina about what she meant to American culture, what she meant to American music, to women in particular, but really to all of us. There's an interesting Washington Post mention of a poll that found she's literally the most unifying figure, global figure, in America. Nobody else even comes close to her.

So we're going to dive into some of those numbers. We have an old Barbara Walters interview. You probably have already seen this. It's going everywhere on social media that we're going to revisit with Maureen Callahan. So a lot to discuss. Please go ahead and subscribe. If you haven't yet, it helps us so much to subscribe here on the YouTube channel. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast. We're three days a week on the podcast side. So we also do a Friday episode where I answer all your questions that you send into Emily at devilmaycaremedia.com. So get those in by

Thursday afternoon is usually when I record. And we will get them answered on this week's edition of Happy Hour, which will air Friday on the podcast feed. I'm also going to weigh in on this massive settlement, a huge, huge settlement. Maybe not big enough, though. A lot of details to break down on that front that we will bring to you. Now, let's first, though, start with Maureen Callahan. We're going to bring her in and we're going to have what I hope is a wonderful and free-flowing conversation about the wonderful figure. I think one of the great American poets, one of the great American songstresses, one of the great American writers, performers, of course, entertainers as well. but first and foremost, I just think, as a writer, Dolly Parton, belongs,

is not taking her place in really the Great American Soundbook. So let's go ahead and bring in Marine. Can take a quick break. We'll be right back. Life insurance, we all know we need it, but we keep putting it off because maybe it just feels too complicated, too expensive, or like something that can wait, but stop waiting. Take care of it today with Select Quote.

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So don't delay peace of mind. 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. So happy to be joined by Maureen, host of the Nerve, Marine. It's great to have you back here today. Sad day, but a good time to reflect on the legacy of Dolly Parton, which is complicated and worth, I think, diving deep into. So thanks for being here. Thanks for having me, Emily. I've been really looking forward to coming back. Oh, I love having you on. Marine audience loves you. Everyone loves

Marine Callahan, probably except for the people you cover. Some of them might not love you so much. Yeah, but I do think some of them definitely have like a kind of inability to look away. You know, we, I don't know if you got a chance. I know you're very busy woman, but we've been covering on the nerve the emergence of a new troublemaker. in our very active live chat named Jeff. And we all have very good reason to believe that Jeff may be Oprah. I love the idea of Oprah sitting down behind a computer and being like, what will I call myself? Jeff.

Jeff Smith, which that handle alone has become something of a mystery because most troublemakers believe it's not Jeff Smith. It's Jeff, apostrophe S. Myth. Jeff's myth. I love that. Yeah. It's a whole investigation that's ongoing. I won't bore you with the details. But if you're interested, it's over at the nerve. I am. And I'm very interested in the troublemakers. So yes, everyone, if you're also interested in this mystery, head over to the nerve and join Marine in solving it and the others in solving it. But let's start with the news about Dolly Parton because yesterday she passed away at the age of 80. And it caught, I'll say it caught me by surprise. It's not surprising when an 80-year-old celebrity passes away. DiParton obviously is larger than

life. So it's going to surprise you, even if she was 100 years old, it would be sort of surprising just to get the news that this larger-than-life figure is no longer here on earth with us. But nobody really knew that she was sick. There had been some hints about it over the course of the past year, but nobody really knew she was sick. It turns out that she passed away after what her family and representatives are saying is a short battle with cancer. Share went on CBS this morning and talked about the fact that we didn't really know publicly. I'm so curious to get your take on this Marine, just from the publicity perspective and Dolly Parton's decision to mostly keep this battle private.

We didn't really know that this was happening in her life. Let's take a listen here to share. You know, she just had a spirit and it was a spirit that was always thinking the best was happening, the best was going to happen, you know? Her friends loved her. Her life was good. Yeah. Are you surprised to hear that we really didn't know that she was as ill as she apparently was

because she made it sound like everything is fine. Were you surprised she handled it this way? Not really. No. Why not? Because it was her spirit. I mean, she wasn't like, no matter what was happening, she was either going to go with it or it was going to get better.

Marine, this is incredibly rare these days. in the world of highly public celebrity life. It is so rare that somebody keeps a struggle like this private for a number of reasons that I'm hoping you can elucidate for us. But were you surprised that Dolly Parton decided to keep this diagnosis to keep this struggle out of the public eye, basically until she passed away from it? No, I wasn't.

I mean, like everybody else, I was shocked when I saw it come across the news that she had died. she had had to pull out of a number of performances. She had to pull out of her Vegas residency. She continued sort of making announcements, whether through her publicity team or pre-recorded hits for social media, that she was down with either an infection or some kind of illness that she was being treated for,

but everything was fine. everything was fine and she was going to get better but she just needed rest and you know it's it is increasingly rare um in this sort of post-opra world in which nothing is shaker than detailing um one's illnesses or prognosis or victimization in any way i mean i think this is one of the things like when somebody like dolly passes and people like her in the public sphere are increasingly rare. I think one of the things we collectively mourn isn't just her and how singular she was. She was a true American original. Everything Cher was saying there. She was an optimist. She never treated her origin story as anything other than to be proud

of. Lesser people would be, maybe they would feel some kind of embarrassment about coming from that level of real, real poverty. She was one of 12 siblings who was raised in like a single room cabin where it had one bedroom and that was it and then the rest was single room. Her father couldn't really read and write, which was why she established the Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, which to this day ships three point over 3.4 million books monthly around the world for free, two children ages zero to five, regardless of household income. of what books gave her.

So when somebody like her, like I think what we all also are collectively mourning are people in public life like Dolly Parton who were really, we're losing a generation and a generational kind of stoicism and optimism. And I think that's why you see people on both sides of the aisle mourning her because she truly embodied the American dream. I mean, and she was sweet. She was a good, she was a force for good in the world. And so no, to learn that she had been diagnosed with cancer,

the Daily Mail has reporting today that she was diagnosed about six months ago. And she, she knew and understood what that diagnosis meant. And she really began getting her, affairs in order and she she stayed at home you know she didn't have to leave um so yeah it's just it was it was just um it was kind of a heartbreak by the way did you happen to see emily m&m's post about dolly absolutely so interesting that post which had like i think by the time i saw it last night it had like three million likes you know he posted he just very simply posted a letter she had written to him him saying, congratulating him on his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And she had hoped to meet him that night, but she wasn't able to and she hates events like

that. They're no fun. And you know, you know how they are. She said something like I personally don't like them. I don't think she used the word hate. Dolly wouldn't use that word, I think. And saying that she, she hoped that this sentiment wouldn't freak him out at all, but that she always felt a connection to him and that she didn't really know all that much about rap music, but she understood he was the best at what he did and to keep going because he was touching more people than he probably ever knew. And it was such an unpretentious, heartfelt, genuine, truly a fan letter to this man from a legend in the industry. And it's just, to me, that encapsulates Dolly. Eminem sharing that. Eminem, who is very private otherwise, is really not in public life anymore sharing that. And the virality with, I just, I think that says everything.

Let's read from it. I just pulled it up. She wrote, I hope what I have to say will not seem weird or strange to you, but I've always felt some unexplained connection to you, like I know you somehow. And Marine, it does strike me now. That's something a lot of celebrities would simply post on Instagram. They would do it for the publicity of writing someone this kind letter, not for the actual act of writing someone this kind letter. It seems to me that's exactly what most people would do now, is they would post this from their own notes app or something like that to social media. Rather than privately sending it to M&M, it would be kind of milked for publicity. Yeah, I mean, that definitely wasn't Dolly, you know, and notice too that Eminem kept that private until her death, you know, which I think says a lot. You know, someone, a friend of mine said to me last night, I sent this, I sent that to him.

And he said, I love it when greatness recognizes greatness. And, you know, not everybody has the generosity of spirit and the security in themselves to do that, you know. My, you know, I wrote in my own post, my small humble tribute to Dolly, that for me, my introduction to her, like, I think for so many Gen Xers, was there was this one summer in the early 80s when HBO was running nine to five on a loop. And I would watch that thing over and over and over and dream of like what it would be like to be a working woman in the world and these like three different archetypes represented by Lily Tom. and Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton. And, you know, of the three, like, Dolly was just the sweetness and the one that was always underestimated because of her looks and her sexuality. And, you know, she had this real brain under there.

And she did in real life. She was a smart, savvy business. You do not climb out of the kind of rural poverty that she climbed out of. without real, real smarts and savvy. You know, I did a little tribute to her yesterday, just picking up on this point about the charity that you were making. She immediately started investing back in her local community, like literally investing via Dollywood,

which created hundreds of jobs over the years, but also through these charities. And one of the interesting themes of Dolly Parton's life is this public-private difference. And I know we're going to touch on this a bit more later, but just sticking on the charity. The Associated Press kind of profiled her charitable giving back, in 2022. And, you know, they write, sure, social media slews did piece together this week that

the country superstar had been quietly paying for the band uniforms of many Tennessee high schools for years. And yes, it did take decades for her to reveal that she used the songwriting royalties she earned from Whitney Houston's version of I Will Always Love You to purchase a strip mall in Nashville to support the surrounding black neighborhood in her honor. Oh, and it did eventually come out that Parton donated a million dollars for research that helped create the Moderna vaccine for COVID-19. She said, quote, I don't do it for attention to the Associated Press, seemingly on the red carpet before the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy was given to her at Gotham Hall in New York City. She said, but look, I'm getting a lot of attention by doing it, kind of joking, and then going

on to say, others deserve more attention than her, but this wasn't just with her remarkable, charitable giving. I mean, some people have been doing back at the napkin math saying she probably would have been a billionaire, if not for all, she gave away based on what we can glean about her net worth. She did this with her marriage. She was married to Carl Dean for nearly six decades, died within a year of him, as is so often the case. I think that tells you a lot about a good marriage often. But she did that with her marriage. She did that with her philanthropy. And she also kind of did that with her personal life in general. Dean and her would travel the country in an RV. Those were the vacations that they would take. They were driving around on an RV. And while she was a singer-songwriter who was often confessional and would write about her life, her family, poverty, her struggles, she did keep so much of it private. And that, to your point, is more

greatest Jen than Boomer. She was born in 1946. But this is what Hollywood used to be. There would be mystique surrounding someone. And that would make them kind of more interesting and admirable and more of a figure of projection. She's been totally vindicated in that, I think, approach. You know, there's, I'm reading a biography right now of a Hollywood, of an iconic Hollywood legend who is no longer with us. And it's such a reminder, you know, the greatest generation. There were so many movie stars, Emily, who were forged by World War II, who either survived it and went on to careers in Hollywood, were directors. who dropped everything and went to the State Department and said, send us over there. There's an incredible HBO documentary called Five Came Back. Have you seen that?

I haven't seen it. I'm going to watch it now. It's incredible. And it's about directors like, you know, Billy Wilder, like these people who came from Europe, and they dropped everything and said, send us over to Europe. And we will film what we can so that the American public can see,

the atrocities that are happening, understand why we need to be in this war. And they all came back profoundly changed. One of our greatest movie stars who served in that way was Jimmy Stewart. It's all too easy to forget because they never made a huge deal about it. It was something they did. They served their country. They worked for the resistance in Europe. And then when it was over, they came back here and they went about their lives with dignity and gratitude for what they had.

and forever changed by what they saw. We don't have that anymore. We have trigger warnings and safe spaces. And that's what I mean when I think of someone like Dolly passing. Like, we're mourning her, of course, but we're mourning something greater. Like we're grieving something that we are losing societally, I think. Great point. Great point.

Let's talk about her relationship with the press. There are a few people I'd rather talk about this with the new Maureen Callahan. You actually mentioned in your post that Barbara Wall Walter's interview, a pretty infamous interview that Dolly Parton sat for with Barbara Walters back in 1977, and we pulled a long chunk of it. We're going to put it up on the screen. You and I will be on the screen as well, so folks can watch us react in real time as we are reliving this moment that I'm sure when it aired in 1977 on television was making people cringe around the country, but let's go ahead and roll this again. It's from 1977. So, you know, comparably early in

Pardons career, but she was very famous by this point as well. She would go on to have more fame as she moved into the world of disco and pop crossovers and especially Hollywood, making movies and the like. But this is 1977, Barbara Walters and Dolly Parton. Where I come from, what I have called you a hillbilly? If you had a, it would have been something very natural, but I would have probably kicked your shins or something. No, actually. But when I think of hillbillies and I'm thinking of your kind of people? I think you probably are. The people that grew up where I was were the ones that you would consider the Little Abner people, Daisy May, and that sort of thing.

They took that kind of thing from people like us, but we were very proud people. People with a lot of class. It was country class, but it was a great deal of class. And most of my people were not that educated, but they are very, very intelligent, good common sense, horse sense, we called it. My assistant asked me something, and I'm going to blame it on her because I wouldn't have had the nerve otherwise. Is it all you? Well, I can't show you here right on television. I'll take your word for it.

I get asked that question. I always answer that by it because people are in awe of the whole thing. A lot of people say I have. A lot of people say I have it. I always say that if I hadn't have had it on my own, I'm just the kind of person that would have had me some maid. You don't have to look like this. You're very beautiful. You don't have to wear the blonde wigs.

You don't have to wear the extreme clothes, right? No, it's certainly a choice. I don't like to be like everybody else. I've often made this statement that I would never stoop so low as to be fashionable. That's the easiest thing in the world to do. So I just decided that I would do something that would at least get the attention. Once they got past the shock of the ridiculous way I looked and all that, then they would see there was parts of me to be appreciated.

I'm very real where it counts, and that's a lot. inside and as far as my outlook on life and the way I care about people and the way I care about myself and the things that I care about. But I just chose to do this and it's show business is a money-making joke and I just always like telling jokes. But do you ever feel that you're a joke, that people make fun of you? Oh, I know they make fun of me. But actually all these years the people, you know, has thought the joke was on me, but it's actually been on the public. I know exactly what I'm doing and I can change it at any time. There's like 10 one-liners that are brilliant, basically poetic from that clip alone.

Maureen, it was like two minutes, but you and I are both critical of people at times who are over-indulging in plastic surgery. But what you see with Dolly Parton there is her absolutely owning it, claiming her own agency over this look and saying, show business is a joke. Basically, I feel like copping to creating performance art. with her look very brilliantly, I would argue. She's revealed in the past that it was modeled off of the town trollop where she grew up, who she admired as a little girl for looking so beautiful. She absolutely claimed her agency and ownership over this look in the face of Barbara Walters' total confusion befudlement.

I think you're being generous to Barbara Walthors. Barbara could be a real bitch. She was the, I thought she was the worst, but. She could be a real bitch on wheels. And she hated Emily. You know, she really hated beautiful women who men wanted. She did the same thing to Elizabeth Taylor. She couldn't come after Elizabeth Taylor on coming from poverty and a pocket of the country where education wasn't available to her ilk.

So she went after Liz for like her weight, aging out of hot, you know, all that stuff. But what my big takeaway from that interview is how Barbara thought that she was going to humiliate Dolly. And she kept at it when she couldn't do it the first time with the first question. You don't have to look like this. Like how condescending. You know, Dolly likes looking like that. And a lot of people found Dolly Parton beautiful. You know, nobody ever, the Barbara Walters documentary is so revealing because it's so, it's so open about how.

Barbara's Achilles heel was she wanted to be considered beautiful. And she didn't think she was. And it's all over that interview. And Dolly outclassed her by refusing to show that she was insulted by answering with anything other than kindness. And oh, I think you misunderstand. You, the educated urban sophisticate from a newsroom from MB, you misunderstand me. I'm not misunderstood here. You're the, you know, she very elegantly flipped that table without ever losing her cool.

And you come away, any sane person comes away, feeling sorry for Barbara Walters for being such a miserable cow, my opinion. Dad, you can't libel the dead. That's fine. I would have said something like that about her while she was alive. Maybe I did, actually. We could check the record. But anyway, Marine, the relationship Dallie Parton had with the press over the years was careful. She was so strategic.

And even when she was criticized, I'm a really deep country music fan. And when she was criticized, she got enormous, enormous blowback from Nashville when she, during the disco age, started going to the crossover genre. I mean, kind of a pioneer of the crossover genre with country music, she openly said back in a 1978 interview that someone dug up last year, she's like, listen, if I wanted to make a bunch of money, I was doing great in country music. I hit a ceiling at 200,000 records. And she was like, you can't make a bunch of money

just in country music. And it was very open about, at the time in 1978, saying it's a business decision, not trying to add some pretentious gloss about how this was her artistic choice, but literally just saying she wanted to make more money, she wanted to be more successful. And through all of that,

she never capitulated to the changing cultural mores of obsessive self-confession, despite being, again, a singer-songer. writer. She's not, she wasn't a tabloid fixture. And that is brilliant strategically because it made her, I think, much more likable, unifying as a figure. Like, she just refused to give into it. Yeah, so many artists did and still do catch, for lack of a better word, shit, whenever they sort of like try to, try to grow outside of their genre or experiment. You know, the same thing happened to the stones in the early 80s,

with like Miss You know, that was disco. They were going to disco. They caught a bunch of it. Bob Dylan. Dylan goes electric. I mean, Dylan never went into disco. Could you imagine? Oh my God, I would die.

I actually would love to like take some mushrooms and listen to Dylan doing disco. That sounds great. I mean, even Taylor Swift got it at a very young age when she began moving out of country into pop. You know, it's everybody sort of feels like they have ownership over their artists to a degree. But, you know, I think at her core, um, Dahl. I would bet, I have two theories actually about Dolly. One is the sort of over-exaggerated femininity. I would bet was born of growing up in deprivation.

And then when she got some money and some fame and access to all of the best in Hollywood from costumers to makeup to wig makers, I mean, that must have been amazing for her. And also gave back, very quietly gave back. Another one who very quietly gave back, we only learned after. after his death was Prince. Mm. Also kept his charitable activities very, very quiet. I mean, it came out.

He was like bankrolling a school in Harlem or something after his death. But she kept, she, she, she, it was that. And I also think that probably growing up with that level of deprivation, she probably saw and experienced a lot at a very young age. And I think that probably grounded her in what was real and what was not real, what was not important.

And of course, she was a true artist and she was an astute businesswoman. And I think she enjoyed fame and knew how to run that table and not let it run her. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I was actually just thinking, as you were saying that, someone resurfaced an oral history of steel magnolias. I saw this on Roger's subject, subsect today, where the. The writer of Steel Magnolia, his name's Bobby Harling, said, we were shooting part of the Christmas scene, and this was in the dead of August,

and we were sitting out on the porch of Truvies Beauty Shop. We were waiting, and there was a lot of stop and start. The women were dressed for Christmas, and Dolly was sitting on the swing. She had on that white cashmere sweater, and she was just swinging cool as a cucumber. Julia said, Dolly, we're dying, and you never say a word. Why don't you let loose? Dolly very serenely smiled and said, when I was young and had nothing, I wanted to be rich and famous.

And now I am. So I'm not going to complain about anything. Yeah. How beautiful is that, Marine? It's beautiful, but I also think it's a very, that just skims the surface. I mean, when you think her parents had 12 children living in a log cabin. I looked at the, I haven't been to Dollywood, which has been on my list forever. but I was looking at the interior, which is a replica of her childhood home,

and when you see what passes for the kitchen, her father couldn't read or write, how they supported 12 children and fed them and clothed them. It boggles the mind. Could you imagine what their Christmases were like, what they found under the tree? You know? So I just, I think that there's a reason why,

Dolly touched so many people, whether you were a fan of her music or not. You know, she, she, her, her legacy goes all the way down to, I was just looking finally, Miley Cyrus, her goddaughter. That's right. Issued a statement saying how profoundly shocked and sad she was, but that she, she, she, she will carry Dolly with her forever and she will always want to make her proud. And, uh, I mean, what more can you say? Right.

Right. Well, immediately, people started trying to shoehorn Dolly Parton into their political mascot in one way or the other, which is interesting because the Washington Post noted in some of their coverage, she was the only global figure that a majority of conservatives and liberals both supported in one March poll. And by far, not even close, the post says, quote, leaving the likes of Taylor Swift in the favorability dust. That's a poll that found a majority of conservatives and liberals, both supported. She's the only global figure, the only global figure, Dolly Parton. And it reminded me of the time as wokeness was starting to kind of crest Trump's first administration of when she was on the stage at the Oscars, I'm pretty sure it was the Oscars, with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin doing their 9 to 5 reunion. And Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin are both trying to make anti-Trump statements. Dolly Parton reverts to a joke about boobs on the Academy Award stage brings the House down. Instead of going in one direction, she's willing to be self-deprecating and have a good laugh rather than lecture down to the

American people about their politics. She also got pressed by ABC back in 2018. On the Trump question, she turned down two presidential medals of freedom from Trump. She also turned down one from Biden because she said in all these cases, it would just be getting political. But here was her back and forth in 2018 with ABC that is just you can tell they desperately want to get this out of her let's take a look we have a president of the United States who said those things on that bus I'm not addressing that I do not get into that of course I have my opinion about everybody and everything but I learned a long time ago keep your damn mouth shut if you want to stay in show business I'm not in politics I'm an entertainer and yet you're also a role model yes I am that's why I don't talk about people so if you

or decide you may want to ask me something more serious, don't because I'm not going to answer it. Fair one, you might still ask. Well, you can ask, but I might still tell you where to put it. I don't know where you got it. Just masterfully diffusing the situation where they're trying to get her to comment on the freaking access Hollywood tape two years after it came. I mean, seriously. Now, share a comment on this this morning on CBS. She called in the CBS.

Let's take a listen to that too. And she used to say, look, my dad was a Republican. my mom was a Democrat and I'm a hypocrite. She made a joke. She managed to stay out of politics at a time when everybody was getting sucked in. How the heck did she do that? Getting sucked in. You guys are sucking me.

I know. Well, because she was smart. She was smart, Marine. How do you look at me, you've covered celebrities getting sucked into it, as I think Tony DeCopold just said there, like as though the media has no agency and sucking them into it and demanding that they answer for that access Hollywood tape. But you've covered. this and she again refused to take the bait. She did it so masterfully. What do you make about it?

I just love her. You know, it's all, it's like, it's like so much in life, Emily. Things are often in how you frame them and in the delivery. She basically, she was laughing and she said, you could keep asking me and I may tell you where to shove it. And she's, and he starts laughing. And he knows, he gets it. Like, she's been through this before. We just saw her dismantled Barbara Walters without batting an eye. But, you know, she, she came from that generation. of performer. There's a very famous press conference. It was during the Vietnam War. Elvis was asked, why won't you speak up? Why won't you say anything? And he said, I am an entertainer. Now, of course, Elvis did go to the Nixon White House and get himself named a DEA agent,

but that's another story for another time. I forgot about it. I was like, wait, what? Actually, that's also a good juxtaposition of how Dolly Parton had this enormous amount of fame. She did come from deprivation and struggle and did not get sucked into drugs and alcohol at all, ever, at least that we're aware of. That we know of, yeah. It's very true. You know, she was just remarkable. And she understood it. You know, it's the same with one of the clips going around online was Dolly on Johnny Carson. Yes, beautiful. And she sang this song. She wrote for him and paying tribute to him as you know she was famous she was a kind of famous before she did carson but then after she did carson she got really famous and johnny got got her there and um johnny was another one he was on

television in every american's living room for decades through the vietnam war through watergate through the cold war through aids like he never got political and that's another thing that we're mourning with the passing of a dolly yes it's such a good example he, you know, and he would tell political jokes every night, but you didn't know how he voted. And it's because he was broadcasting instead of narrowcasting. And that's the story of Dali Parton's careers. She came from the time when country music was starting to not just be narrowcasted as regional music, but be broadcasted. And you should have the DiParton show on television.

You know, at the time there's Johnny Cash show. The variety show was a real thing. Yeah. Bringing all of this, he-ha, bringing all of this to the entire country. And I think that really shaped her career, the way she saw her career. I wrote about this for the Federalist back in 2019. There was a great podcast that was done of all places by WNYC. It was interesting.

It was a very frustrating podcast. It was called Dolly Parton's America. And I wrote about it at the time, the host, Jada Bumrad, asked Parton to revisit the 2017 Emmy Awards when Jane Fonda and Lily Tonlin attacked Trump. And she then told Shima Ollier. that I wanted to say, let's pray for the president. Why don't we pray for the president? If we're having all these problems, let's just, you know, why don't we just pray for the president? Jad said, I have to be honest, that moment messed me up. Seriously, that moment messed you up. He goes on to say, I kept thinking about, you know,

I came in thinking that her refusal to talk about Trump was probably mostly a business calculation. I mean, she has a lot that she needs to protect, including a massive charitable foundation. So I think we can all get that. But it's also easy to see that silence cynically, like a refusal, he said, to speak truth just because it might hurt the bottom line. But when she said, let's pray for the president, it just hit me like a ton of bricks. I just thought, oh, no, no, no, no. That's not at all what's happening here. He came to the realization that while there's a business logic, there's also a spiritual stance.

This is an ethos that she has chosen. And it's undeniably one of the reasons that she can have the fan base that she has because everyone feels safe at a Dolly Parton concert. So she would, I mean, with 9 to 5, with her stance on LGBT, issues. Obviously, she was a backer of the Moderna vaccine, and people can debate all of that. She said, I don't consider myself a feminist, as my friend Madeline Osborne wrote at the Federalist today, but I'm feminine, and I believe that women should be treated with respect and allowed to be due, allowed to do whatever. So, Marine, she just, nobody, I don't know that anybody has ever

treaded the line quite like she did. And it's funny to me that that's so baffling. And especially it was when this quote unquote woke fever was rising people thought well it's not political to denounce trump like this was the hollywood line it's not political it's just it's a it's no it's a it's a it's a moral imperative you must right it is a moral imperative and what's um just so like insufferable about that piece you just read from is that journalist is assuming that because he believes dolly parton is good yes she must hate trump she must be secretly a inside a woke Democrat, but you know what? This person is diagnosed Dolly Parton is too cowardly to say anything, which is such an insult

to this woman. We just saw her sitting across from a bloated newsman saying, come on, tell us what you. And she's like, no, back off. And she got him to do it. So all of that stuff is just, again, she wouldn't do it. She wouldn't be bullied into it. And it's so interesting because there's this big conflagration going on right now in Hollywood. with Mark Ruffalo, who is one of the most insufferable.

There is not a pin du jour. He will not dawn on the red carpet and give his completely uneducated takes. I mean, if you hear this guy talk extemporaneously about any issue, and it doesn't have to be political. It can be about like water purification in upstate New York. He's an idiot. He's a moron. He doesn't know anything.

But he loves this mantle. You know, and anyway, he issued a statement about the Ellisons, who are, you know, taking over Hollywood right now. Yeah. And what he thinks of their business dealings and what he thinks they mean geopolitically. And in terms of Jews. And David Ellison basically told him to shut the fuck up. Mark Ruffalo.

That wouldn't have happened 15 or 20 years ago. That would have been a dispute that a studio would have handled behind closed doors. Things are different now. Things are a lot different now. But that I point that out just as a, as a. as a stark contrast to the way that Dolly Parton decided she was going to comport herself the way she wanted to comport herself and nobody, not the media, not any sort of political pressure from within the entertainment industry was going to sway her to betray herself. Those people are

increasingly rare. Well, I think it's because we're going back to narrowcasting because broadcasting and monoculture that comes with broadcasting is dying because of the democratization of the media and technology. And so Mark Ruffalo now wants to really impress like this narrow slice of the country that's the kind of hard left and has given up probably on being like a Leo DiCaprio type figure that is more widely impressive to the country whether or not he should be. But I guess Leo is not a great example because he's pretty political too, but he's not, you know, talking about Trump every day like Ruffalo is. I don't know his politics, really.

I know he's a big environmentalist who travels on private planes and yachts. Yes, exactly. I don't know how he votes. Right. Yes. And he's kind of the last, one of the last of that type. But yeah, when we go back to narrowcasting,

we lose that monoculture. And there's good and bad that comes with the democratization of media. But it seems to me this is kind of a bad. Like we do lose some of the unifying touchstone type figures what I would I I hope everyone can take from the loss of the dolly is is the loss of I I I it's kind of like it can feel often so dictatorial like if you if you as a as a public figure in entertainment do not like you know when

Michael Jordan dies we're going to see similar similar conversations happening You know, Michael Jordan, when pressed back in the 80s, why don't you get political, said, well, Republicans buy sneakers too. Which is that line is so interesting because the implication is that he's a Democrat and he would be alienating Republicans, but he said it in such a way. Or that it's understood to him that he should be castigating red America and standing as proudly as a blue American, which we don't know what Michael Jordan thinks either. And I like it like that. I wish we could get back to that where there wasn't this kind of like valorization of one's character, intellect, purity, intellectual and otherwise if they identify themselves as of one stripe. You know, I guarantee, I wonder if we ever learned what Dolly really thought politically, would she lose half of the affection from half of the country that wouldn't have agreed with her? It's such an interesting question because she seems to have come from this place where she just believes that everybody's opinions are dignified and she's not one to judge.

And so maybe her true politics were also kind of like throw the bombs out. I don't know. I kind of think of her as a humanist. When you look at her charitable work, it had nothing to do with politics. It was about humanity. It was about education. It was about. It was about medical advancements. It wasn't about anything other than that. And I kind of think that she probably was of the stripe of someone who regards, you know, every human is somebody's child. That's it. So well said.

And such a good segue into what we're going to talk about next. Megan Markle, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back with more Marine Callahan. Well, I'm really honored to pass along a heart. felt thank you from my friends at Preborn. If you're a regularly listener to the show, you know how much I love Preborn, how special I think they are. Their president, Dan Steiner, asked me to share just how grateful they are for faithful supporters like you. So far this year, because of generous partners, more than 50,000 babies have been saved from abortion. Think about that,

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To give, dial pound 250 and say the keyword baby with pound 250 baby or visit preborn.com slash Emily. That's preborn.com slash Emily. We're back now with Maureen Callahan, host of The Nerve. Obviously, go check it out. You know that. You don't need me to tell you that, certainly. But I'm very eager to hear your take, Marine. I've been hearing a lot of your take on Megan Markle. But today, People Magazine released a new cover show. story. How exciting is this. Megan Markle is returning to the country where her royal life unraveled, but those close to the Duchess of Sussex say she is coming back under dramatically different

circumstances. The headline is why Megan Markle's return to the UK will be, quote, different this time. As people exclusively revealed, the article goes on to say, Megan and Harry are relocating to the UK this month for an extended period with their kids who are enrolled in school there and will begin classes in September. The family will establish a private, non-royal home, based, believed to be outside London, while retaining their residence in Montecito. But returning to Britain does not mean returning to royal life. Megan and Harry will remain private, non-working members of the royal family, with King Charles making clear there will be no change to the arrangement established when they step back from

official duties in 2020. This time, however, Megan returns without the palace hierarchy that once governed her life and with her own career, team, and support system. This is a quote from an ally, quote, an ally. she's been vocal about how she felt about it before, but that doesn't mean things are going to be exactly the same. Again, it doesn't mean it can't be different and change. Maureen, this reads like a whole lot of cope that they laundered via a compliant press at People Magazine. Yes, People Magazine is the Sussex's preferred media outlet in America. People Magazine is

historically very friendly to the Sussex's. So yes, they issue their press releases and their versions of events and then people dutifully reprints them. My favorite is the cover of this week's people. And it's the two of them grinning like the morons they are. It's like cover Mad Magazine from the 70s. And the headline, Emily, is change of plans, exclamation point. It's just a change of plans. It's an exciting change too. It's an exciting time. We're facing down bankruptcy. We have been ordered by a British court to pay back between 63 and $80 million US, which we don't have because Netflix just cut us loose. It's funny. I didn't read about that in the piece, though, Maureen.

Oh, they must have had to cut it for space. But that's important context, yes, the important context that People magazine isn't especially interested in. No, and nor are they interested in what I think is the sexiest reason for this flight. Really, a lot of it has to do with Harry's visa issues. They were like, you get out by the 31st, otherwise we're coming for you. Oh, really? Reportedly, yeah, that's what Lady C told us a couple of days ago. But, you know, Lady C broke this on our show.

So, and she's got, so Lady C has a lot of sources high up in the, I don't, I don't know. There are people who would know. I don't know if they're in intelligence agencies, but they are in and around the government of the United States. I'll put it like that. So this is the reporting. Harry allegedly reportedly has another woman with whom he is in love. This other woman is known in and around Montecito. She is from the West Coast. She is American. She is age appropriate. Oh, that rules out Oprah. But it's a great detail, right? The age appropriate tells you this is a real live person, not like Stedman. So may he rest in power.

May he rest. So she is also reportedly allegedly in love with Harry. And Megan allegedly reportedly knows because she found incriminating text messages on Harry's phone. So there's sort of a, there's a multi, there are a lot of factors at play here that would that would precipitate a sudden move such as this. I love that. So right now they're saying they're going to be private royals, but that's not what they said two days ago. Two days ago, they said that they told people magazine that they felt very accomplished because they had successfully executed the very thing the queen forbade being half in and half out. And now that they've gotten that down over here,

they're going to take their little act over back to the UK where they're despised. They're at the bottom of the popularity polls right next to Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. And they're going to be Private Royals Plus, which to me sounds like, you know, when you subscribe to any given app on a streaming service, they're like, would you like the Plus version? The commercial free version. No, I wouldn't. I would not like to pay $2.99 more a month.

But they're like Private Royals Plus now. They're like any given app you can download, you know. It's so the thing, I'm columning on this for the Daily Mail right now. And the thing that I actually find very sinister about this. The king has made it clear that he is welcoming his son back into the fold. He would love to reconcile. Those two, by the way, haven't even issued an apology for anything. They're not sorry.

They're not sorry about it. They're just hoping it's all bygones. Bygones, bygones. I think they're looking to box William in. Oh, okay, interesting. Because this is, let's put up your other Daily Mail column on the screen, F7. The headline was, this is an epic humiliation for Harry and Megan, but these two are dangerous. We should fear a twisted real strategy behind their UK return.

And you've talked also about how interesting it is they're keeping the Montecito mansion and just referring to this as an extended or via people as an extended return, not as a permanent move because there's potentially, you've basically alluded to the fact that this could potentially be a soft launch of a divorce. And there's a real danger for the royal family brewing with this extended return. And so is that because they're, you think, trying to box out, William, bring their kids over to the UK, get the kids mingling together in school. Like, tell us more.

It's twofold. My theory is twofold. I don't believe a word they say. Extended stay. What does that mean? They're liars. They lie. The royals are racist.

I was suicidal. They wouldn't do it. They lie. I think it's twofold. One is this very well could be the soft launch of a divorce. The children get enrolled in school. Megan's loathed. They're going to live up in the Cotswold.

what's she going to do with herself all day. She has no friend circle. Hang out with Ellen. No, I doubt it. You know, Elton's now on the hook. No, Ellen. Ellen. Oh, Ellen. Ellen's moving back to L.A.

Isn't that hilarious? Back to Montecito, probably. I refer to it as like, it's like akin to a hostage swap among major nations. It's like when we got a brink of grinders back. Somebody always gets the short end of the stick. We can handle Ellen. It's the UK getting the short end of the stick with this trade. But secondly, I think this is what we're going to see in the run up to say Christmas.

Why is William being so cold? It's Christmas time. Charles, the king has cancer. Why is he being such a stubborn son of a, you know, about this? 30th anniversary of Diana's death is approaching next summer. Why won't William just make peace with his brother for this most momentous memorial? How cold-hearted is he? Is William too cruel to be a good king? That's what they're up to. And Charles, I theorize, is jealous of William, resents William, always has. And this is a play because William

possesses all of Diana's gifts. William looks exactly like Diana. He is beloved by the public. He has her magnetism, her charm, her facility in each. ease with people. He can talk to anyone from any walk of life. Charles resented all of those qualities of Diana from the minute they got married when they did their first royal tour in Australia. And the crowds arrived and it was the people divided. You know, Diana would work one rope line. Charles would work the other. And the people, Diana was the Beatles, you know. And Charles would hear people going, oh, we get him, not her. And that was the beginning of the end. And so I think this is a very dastardly sinister play that is going to look to depict and ice out William, who, you know, listen, he's got great advisors and he's very smart and he's very savvy and I know he won't fall for it.

But I think this is what both, you know, it's called Operation Thaw in Charles's office. And one of his top advisors, Sir Clive, I believe his last name was Alderton, who had worked for Charles for decades and who was so close to Charles that he was among the top people. prepping Charles for the coronation left over reportedly Operation Thaw. He thinks Harry and Megan are snakes in the grass and the end and you know, would you trust them, Emily, not to be recording and memorializing? No. Anything in everyone they are privy to for another Netflix special. We know Netflix would happily take a 30th anniversary Diana special. Mm-hmm. I have to imagine the trust has totally gone among the brothers, the families, it's hard to imagine them being so trusted. And Emery, another great point that you've made

is like this is clearly rooted in their failure to have the American celebrity life they envisioned of red carpets and being beloved on red carpets and having these successful media ventures that did not pan out for them. What was it, the Spotify and Netflix ones archetypes? It all failed. The only thing that was successful was the memoir. my gosh, Lemonada. I can't even remember all of their failures. Oh, I know. And, you know, it's that and it also truly, I think, is Emily. That Oprah interview had one objective, begin destroying the monarchy, begin destroying the British royal family. If we can't be number one, if we can't be the next to take the crown,

nobody can. And if they couldn't do it from outside the palace walls, trust me, they're going to try to do it from inside the palace walls i think william sees this as the true threat it is it's not just existential it's a practical real dangerous imminent threat and i think he sees it and i think his father diana was right in that panorama interview all those years ago when she said charles is not up to the top job people thought those were the words of a scorned woman they may have been but they were also true finally there's breaking news today in the Blake Lively Justin Baldoni case that I wanted to get your take on, Maureen, I'm reading from an NBC news report. This really did just break hours ago. Justin Baldoni's production

company over his definition, she sued Baldoni's production company over his defamation lawsuit against her, but a federal judge ruled Wednesday. Lively had been seeking $8 million, but U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Lyman dismissed Baldoni's defamation extortion lawsuit against lively last year. So she was allowed to move forward with a request for financial damages under at California, Me Too era law, that in and of itself is hilarious and ridiculous. Lyman wrote in his ruling that while counsel's rates were not unreasonable, again, she Lively asked for $8 million. The number of hours for which Lively seeks reimbursement is unreasonable.

So she's getting about $400,000. He also, according to NBC, rejected her request for fees related to media relations expenses and some travel in a statement Lively's attorneys said in part, Blake Lively's case was never about money. It was about accountability. She lifted the curtain for other victims and set the precedent for others to come forward and expose similar conduct. The result demonstrates that the legal system is not as easily manipulated as social media

and still functions as a force for accountability. No, this $8 million judgment was not about, she was asking for $8 million. It was not about money, Marine at all, even though it was clearly determined to be an unreasonable amount of money. It wasn't about the money, Marine. And I have to, before I toss this to you say, I disagree a little bit with a friend Megyn Kelly today who said, Ryan Reynolds is probably so rich. He's fine. It probably wasn't about the money. It was her trying

to frame herself as a Me Too heroine. But I would add, I feel like Ryan Reynolds' star is falling so much that to maintain their lifestyle, it may have been about the money. I agree. I do agree. Ryan's psycho-arsonist Ryan Reynolds, as we call him at the nerve. You know, he definitely, I think his back is up against it. I forget the studio. I think it was Paramount or Warner Brothers has dropped him. He had three pictures in development there and they dropped him in the middle of this lawsuit. I read that the judge did say the judge by the way is the brother of the Hollywood director Doug Lyman who did Mr. and Mrs. Smith. I read that he said to lively, listen, if you legitimately are claiming $8 million in legal fees, ma'am, you have been over bills.

So, you know, and thirdly, again, it like, it sort of like wraps, it sort of circles back to the top of our conversation. Why are we mourning a Dolly Parton so, so deeply? Because we're left with this. We're left with the Blake livelies of the world who couldn't shine Dolly's high heels, you know? Completely. That is such a perfect contrast, a sad and depressing contrast. But that's, I mean, Ryan Reynolds was. I watched the last Welcome to Rexham season.

My read on it was that he was being downplayed. His role was being downplayed in Rexum. Yeah. I mean, he's still, of course, a huge part of it. But it seemed like there was less Ryan this season than there has been in the past. And it just seems like based on some of the coverage of the two of them, which has always been really favorable. Even the tone of the coverage has shifted because I think the tabloids are realizing people are

absolutely sick of these two. Yeah. And they see them for who they are. They're bullies. You know, those text messages that leaked in discovery between Taylor Swift and Blake Lively in which they were mocking Justin Baldoni and calling him this little bitch. And, you know, it's just, we got a real look behind the curtain. And these people are terrible.

And the weird ass kissing to Matt Damon and also to Taylor Swift. Oh, I'm so lucky to have you as my best friend. Like, they were talking like 12-year-olds. And so was Ryan Reynolds to other celebrities. It was disgusting. Yep. They're very well matched, it seems. They're both equally despicable.

Blake lively, you know, she probably also shot high with that ask because she is unemployable now. Yes. What director is going to trust her not to turn around and do the same thing? Well, him too. He was in on the whole thing. Exactly. Exactly.

You know, for some reason. And the other person who is not getting away from this is a Q Jackman. who has been very vocal in standing by his very good friends, Ryan Reynolds and Blake lively, you know, like a day or two after the Mech Gala. Do you remember when she showed up on the steps of the mecgala? Yeah. Within hours of this case being settled out of court. And Hugh Jackman was on the Today Show saying,

I was so honored for Blake Lively to ask me to help her with her dress. You know, you're like, you people are disgusting. You haven't gotten the memo yet that we've sent. We're done with you. Like, we're done with you. you. Dolly Parton, the picture of dignity. Blake lively, Ryan Reynolds, Megan Markle, Harry, the picture of undignified celebrity life. 100%. And if I could just say one other thing. Please.

Pre me too. Dolly Parton, the way that she looked. What kind of male chauvinism, sexism, harassment, worse, do you think Dolly was probably subjected to? I would bet a lot. A woman like that coming from rural poverty who's looking to become a star, I would bet a lot. Did we ever hear her say a peep? We did not. She defended Porter Wagoner. She defended him. She defended him. She was with him when he died, I think. You know, so I just like, you know, there's a happy medium. She was raised in a different time, a different environment. But again, like this is part of why we're all grieving her. Like there are so many things about her that we're grieving that we haven't even identified yet, but we know we lost something

really, really substantial and major and rare. You know, it's just, yeah. Marine Callahan, host of the nerve, you've been so generous with your time. I was really looking forward to this, and you did not disappoint, as always. Thank you. Thank you, Emily, for having me so much. I love coming on your show. Thank you. We'll do it again soon. I hope so. Well, you may not remember every time you toss turn or wake up hot during the night. but your body does, your body never forgets. And I've noticed a real difference when I sleep on a mattress that actually supports me. That's why I'm so excited to sleep on a ghost bed. Ghostbed is engineered to help reduce the things that can interrupt your sleep with a design that helps relieve pressure, regulate temperature, and support your body throughout the night. It's literally cool. The cooling technology is built into every ghost bed mattress, so you're not waking up feeling overheated and uncomfortable. The result, you can wake up feeling more refreshed, less stiff, and like you actually got the rest your body needed. if you're like me at least. Ghostbed mattresses are also made in the USA, and their 101 night sleep trial. You can try at home. You can try a ghost bed at home with this trial and see how you feel

when you wake up because that's really the test. So if you're waking up sore or tired before your day even starts, check out Ghostbed. For a limited time during Ghostbed's Labor Day sale, they're offering my audience an extra 10% off their lowest prices of the season. Go to ghostbed.com slash Emily and use promo code Emily. That's ghostbed.com slash Emily. Promocode Emily. Well, Meta agreed to a major settlement today, though. It may actually still not be big enough. A lot of the headlines are focusing on how big it is, but it truly may not big enough. Let's be big enough. Let's get into it. This is a variety headline meta to pay up to $8 billion in a settlement with states over social media addiction claims. So meta will pay up to $18 billion over 10 years. So just think about how they're

parsing out. That payment. by the way, and implement broad child safety reforms on Instagram and Facebook under a nationwide settlement with 52 state attorneys general, including California's Rob Banta, the agreement subject to court approval, resolves claims by the state AGs that met a designed Instagram with addictive features, knowingly exposed young users to serious mental harms, and intentionally misled the public about the safety of its platforms, among other things. Now, let's put this on, a summary from variety of bullet points about what meta is agreeing to do with Instagram and Facebook when it comes to child safety controls because this is interesting. When TikTok was surging, there was a lot

of conversation about how the Chinese version of TikTok and it was owned by China, by a Chinese company, company based in Beijing by dance at the time that has since shifted obviously with the Trump administration. But that's a debate for another day. But there's a lot of conversation about how in China, their version of TikTok had all of these controls that the government expected to see implemented by the company. And it was making a much healthier version of the app for Chinese kids. A lot of these changes that meta is agreeing to look or are going to make Facebook and Instagram look a little bit more like the Chinese version of TikTok. So that includes you can see in these bullet points. The productive positive positive.

for children include mandatory pauses after 15 minutes of continuous use, and again, at 60 and 90 minutes to interrupt endless scrolling. Just by the way, that's a concession that Instagram and Facebook are going to allow kids to continue scrolling for 60 and 90 minutes, which a body of social science research is now telling us very clearly will affect, on average, kids' cognition, memory, those sorts of things. So even that they would have a productive pause, they were forced to implement as part of a settlement, even that they would do that is a concession. They're still going to let kids do the 60 and 90 minutes scrolling. Nighttime blocks restricting children's access from 12 a.m. to 6 a.m. Again, that was something we saw with doing the Chinese version of TikTok.

Limiteded school time access for children, eliminating push notifications on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. during the school year. I'm also going to pause right there. That's a concession. They still are allowing push notifications on an app for children. If you were, watched the social dilemma, as many people did with Tristan Harris over at the Center for Humane Tech, he talks about designing notifications. I think this was actually when he was at Google and designing Gmail notifications. And there's a lot of writing about what happened during this time period when notifications were being developed in Silicon Valley. We think of them as old hat now is totally part and parcel of these products. But they don't have to be, especially not for children.

They were designed to be addictive, to keep you on the app. That's why they're red, because red is a color that triggers urgency in the human brain. That was all intentional. And so here they're keeping, they're just agreeing to eliminate during the school days, 8 to 3 p.m. push notifications, but they're still going to let kids scroll 60 to 90 minutes. They're still going to hit kids with push notifications after 3 p.m. It also says they're going to agree to robust age assurance measures to more effectively verify the age of young users, safer age appropriate content controls, including stronger safeguards against bullying, content promoting, eating disorders, and content related to suicide and self-harm, stronger, more user-friendly parental controls, limits on social comparison features,

including beauty filters and visible light counts that have been linked to poor mental health outcomes in teens, in kids and teens, both the implementation and effectiveness of the features will be regularly assessed by an independent auditor and the settling states. So obviously some good news that the product appears like it's going to be slightly better for kids and that It didn't have to be implemented by some heavy-handed government regulation here in Washington, D.C. And by the way, I'm not ruling out. There may be room for some heavy-handed government regulation here in Washington, D.C. But this legal coercion is at least a step in the right direction.

The fact of the matter remains, you shouldn't have to regulate any of this. And you sure as hell shouldn't have to force META into court to hear the testimonies that they had to hear, that they had to hear, to confront the pain. of the kids around the country and the social harms of the kids around the country that they've been running an experiment on for more than a decade. I say that as one of the kids they ran an experiment on, Facebook basically split my high school experience in half, and it wasn't nearly as bad as what it's like on Instagram for kids right now. I remember getting notifications sent to my email, and I used a wild amount of data on my non-smart phone at the time, because the email notifications would come. And I think you could reply to the email to write on another person's

wall. And at the time, let me tell you, that was very distracting as like a 16 or 17 year old in high school, but it's not nearly, nearly the same as having a smartphone with push notifications in your pocket after kids have exported a huge amount of their social lives onto these apps. And the apps have since been designed with algorithmic timelines back when I was doing this in high school, not all that long ago. and the experiment was being run on me, the timeline was something you could literally scroll to the end of. There was no infinite scroll because the algorithm was serving you up,

like live updates on Twitter at the time, too, from people that you knew and that you followed. You could literally get to the bottom of it. Now, no, you can scroll for 90 minutes, and Facebook's just going to tell you if you're a kid, here's a reminder to stop scrolling. Great, lovely. They had to be forced.

They had to be dragged, kicking, and screaming into court where they had to confront all of these social harms. And even then, these states agreed to a $17 billion settlement over 10 years, which for Facebook, let me tell you. That's ridiculous. Florida is not agreeing to it. I'm sure there'll be some other states, just as I'm going to air here. Florida is the first one I saw that said, we're not agreeing to this. And they said, we'll continue to see meta in court, which I think is fantastic. Because clearly meta is willing to make these changes and the social pressure exists to make meta make these changes. But it's actually insane that a billionaire like Mark Zuckerberg and the other billionaire executives

and Facebook, their board and the like meta had to be dragged kicking and screaming into court to do this and didn't just have it weighing on their conscience every single day and night to the point where they voluntarily would upend their own product to help it stop doing this to children. And I wanted to pull actually this example from the early days of Hollywood. And it's going to sound totally unrelated. But follow along with me. Have you heard of the Hays Code? I've talked about it here on the show before because I've found it to be an interesting parallel

to this kind of second-guided age class of oligarchs we found ourselves with many of them from Silicon Valley. The Hase Code was voluntary. If you've heard of it, it basically governed standards, content standards for Hollywood between the mid-1930s and the late 1960s. It changed over the years, was kind of diluted over the years, but at a certain point, the studios came together and agreed to a voluntary content code.

And why I think this is an interesting parallel is that at this time period, the country was far from perfect, don't get me wrong, but there was such a shame and stigma associated with defiling the culture and doing social harm to kids and to the public, that the studios were shamed into agreeing to this.

They were going back and forth on it on what they would agree to, what they wouldn't agree to. There was a real process to cobbling together the Hays Code, and it ended up saying, you know, some of this stuff, by the way, is not stuff that I'm saying studio should agree to now. Camille Pollya has written in the past about how actually a much more, a much stricter environment in terms of moral standards forced Hollywood to create better art, right? Because the structure itself forced them to be much more creative.

And actually, the movies were much sexier when people couldn't be outright naked, right? Like, it's a pretty interesting take. And it's kind of beside the point for the purposes of this conversation. But for example, you see up on your screen, this is just the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on the Hays Code, but some of the moral obligations that they agreed to was no picture shall be produced, which will lower the moral standards of those who see it, hence the sympathy of the audience, shall never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil, or sin. Now, listen, I actually don't agree that the studios should agree to a version of that today,

because I think you could make the argument that's something like crime and punishment. if publishers were to agree to something like this couldn't be made into a book or wouldn't be published by these like major publishers if they were to agree to this. So I'm not endorsing it. I am saying though that the principle behind it was you are going to be so stigmatized and shamed if you don't agree to contribute positively to the culture that they all ended up agreeing to this. And today our oligarchs, our class of oligarchs are so utterly

shameless, that a company like meta, which was causing truly obvious glaring harms on a global scale, but especially to kids, had to be dragged over the course of years, kicking and streaming into court to confront these harms. And only in a settlement would they agree to create some basic guidelines that are already not even that strong, right? Productive, positive, pauses after 15, 60, and 90 minutes, nighttime blocks. This all is common sense that should have been implemented so many years ago. But Mark Zuckerberg was shamelessly profiting off of allowing kids to scroll. And we'll continue, by the way, because remember, these pauses don't happen until 15, minutes, 60, and 90 minutes.

Nighttime blocks 12 a.m. to 6 a.m. And they're just getting rid of push notifications during the school day. That is still shameful. But what's even more shameful is that he allowed this to happen for more than a decade as the social harm research began stacking up. A lot of the people in Silicon Valley were not letting their own kids have access to tablets and that sort of thing at young ages because they knew in their own hearts that it wasn't good for them. And it only happens because he's dragging and screaming into court.

There was some kicking and screaming and dragging with the Hayes coat as well. but everyone got together and agreed to it because they didn't want to be seen as people who were polluting the moral standards of the country. It was just so much more shame about what you were doing to profit. How were you making your money? We may be getting back to a place

where the shame is again rising for better or worse. There's a case that hopefully it will be for the better because this settlement reflects meta, understanding the brewing public backlash. What they've had to endure from parents confronting them about their experiences with awful stories of kids, I shouldn't say that meta had to endure it because that ascribe some sympathy as not what I mean. But they've had to hear from so many parents over the years who have great cases about this app being intentionally designed in ways that profited meta,

profited executives at the expense of kids' health, the expensive kids' lives. Utterly remarkable. Utterly remarkable that this is what it took to get meta to agree to so little. So I say great on states like Florida that are going to keep pursuing this in court. This is better than the status quo.

It's still bad. And what's especially bad is that it gives you some insight into the mind of somebody like Mark Zuckerberg, into the minds of people behind Facebook, these social media apps, they will not change algorithmic timelines. If they ever do it in the next couple of years, I will be shocked because that is the source of their money now. They want to keep us scrolling as long as possible. It's why the algorithms incentivize extreme content. I fully endorse this or absolutely condemn this. That's what keeps you scrolling. It has distorted our conversations. And I'm talking right now about adults, not even kids. It is affecting adult memory and cognition. And this

settlement is literally just them saying, we're going to make some minor tweaks for kids. We are going to drastically redesign this product so that it contributes something positive to the country. They're not drastically redesigning anything. They're tweaking the product. They're tinkering around the edges of the product. And it is out. outrageous that they are allowed to show their faces in polite society despite operating social media apps that function this way. For the exact same about the Trump administration facilitating this U.S. sale of TikTok, keeping billionaires like Jeff Yass around, who also is big with Kalshi, openly promotes the good that can come of gambling.

These people should not be allowed to show their faces in public. But they're proudly profiting off of this stuff now. Proudly profiting off of making tiny tweaks for the product for children, seemingly nothing for adults. And this is a start. This is a start. But it is close to nothing. I'm happy to say I think it's a good thing. But in the grand scheme of the harm that these social media apps do, it's barely anything.

It's barely anything. Good, but just to start. Not something to celebrate meta over. Far from it. All right, that's going to do it for us on this evening's edition of After Party. So appreciate all of you for tuning in. As a reminder, shoot me an email at Emily at Double Macaremedia.com. Get your questions in for this week's edition of Happy Hour that's going to air on Friday. Pretty usual. It airs on Friday. Get those in by tomorrow afternoon. I'll make sure I answer as many of them as I possibly can. It's just about every single one of them. So thank you to everybody for submitting those questions. Thank you to everybody for subscribing. We've got some cool stuff coming up on After Party that I'm not going to reveal too much about right now. But please do stay tuned for more.

We'll see you back here on Friday with another edition of After Party.