After Party with Emily Jashinsky - Epstein Haunts the Elites, Mamdani to White House, with Matt Taibbi, PLUS Jasmine Crockett’s Big FAIL

Episode Date: November 20, 2025

Emily Jashinsky is joined by Matt Taibbi, Editor-in-Chief of “Racket News,” shortly after President Trump signed the bill to release the Epstein files. Taibbi explains why this story is starting to feel like Russiagate all over again. The two also discuss the embarrassing response from Congresswoman Stacey Plaskett after she was outed for texting with Epstein during a congressional hearing and they take a walk down memory lane exposing how involved she was with the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender. Taibbi recounts his own uncomfortable run-in with Plaskett over the Twitter Files. Then the conversation turns to a new classroom clip of former Treasury Secretary and Harvard professor Larry Summers addressing his own embarrassing email exchanges with Jeffrey Epstein and Taibbi explains why this is a perfect example of elite arrogance. Jashinsky and Taibbi also discuss today’s AI boom and why it could harm the middle class, a new video from Democratic lawmakers telling the miliary to refuse orders, Matt’s interesting history with Senator Bernie Sanders, and President Trump’s upcoming meeting with NYC mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. Emily rounds out the show with a Rep Jasmine Crockett’s terrible attempt to link some Republicans to Epstein… but it was the WRONG Epstein, and the controversy surrounding Kelsea Ballerini's song “I Sit in Parks.” Vandy Crisps: Ready to give MASA or Vandy a try? Get 25% off your first order by going to http://masachips.com/AFTERPARTY and using code AFTERPARTY. PreBorn: Help save a baby go to https://PreBorn.com/Emily or call 855-601-2229. 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. I just got back from a Black Tie dinner. So this is literally my After Party tonight. Couldn't be happier to be joined by Matt Taibi in just one moment. Please make sure to subscribe, by the way. I am the worst about being like, oh, hey, this thing we're doing, subscribe to it. But please do it. It helps us a lot.

Thank you to everybody who has subscribed. I appreciate it. The whole team appreciates it. we are forever in your debt. Now, on tonight's show, we are going to be covering a lot of ground, because as usual, there's a lot of ground to cover new developments in the ongoing fallout over the Epstein investigation and actually reactions pouring in already after the bill passed Congress. The Epstein Files Transparency Act, I think is actually what's technically called, always love those bill names, but that passed Congress. And we've gotten some early

signals about how it might actually be executed on. So we'll have to see what's going to come. And I'm really eager to get Matt's reaction to people like Larry Summers getting caught up in all of this. We have new video of Larry Summers, by the way, who was teaching a class at Harvard today. And someone had their smartphone. And let's just say he addressed everything. So you're going to want to stay tuned for all of that. Breaking news this evening, Zoroamamani is going to be at the White House on Friday. He is going to be meeting with Donald Trump. At least as of right now, President Trump announced that on true social. I actually have new media pool duty on Friday, so I'm going to be there. I'm excited for that. Excited to ask Matt about it as well.

And before we wrap, I have some thoughts on the new Kelsey Bellarini song. Why not? I guess I always have thoughts on the new Kelsey Ballerini song. But this time, I hope it will be somewhat interesting as a reflection on the trajectory of country music. All right, on that note, let's bring in the one and only Matt Taibi, who is, of course, editor-in-chief of Rackett News. Matt, thanks so much for coming back. Thanks for having me, Emily. I appreciate it. Oh, my gosh, of course. Let's start with Epstein, because you wrote a great piece in Rackett just today.

And the headline here was the Jeffrey Epstein story is beginning to smell like Russiagate. And this is such interesting framing that I feel like has gone by people. a post on the 17th, where the headline was, the Epstein Circus will shatter our last delusions. So as somebody who's covered the intelligence community and elite corruption for a really long time, and even some of the people who are popping up in these emails, unsurprisingly, what are your big takeaways as the estate document dump that we got last week continues to be kind of hashed out as everyone gets a chance to go through these 20,000 documents? Well, on the one hand, it's fascinating, right?

Because we see things like the exchange with Stacey Plaskett, where what's fascinating about that is the idea that a member of Congress would be in the middle of a hearing, taking essentially dictation from a donor or, you know, somebody behind the scenes. and asking questions without having any knowledge of the facts of the situation. That speaks more to the sort of grave incompetence of the current crop of members, because once upon a time it used to be your aide or the chief of staff of the committee who would be telling you something and handing you a sheet with some things on it. But for people to be texting in the middle of a hearing with somebody like Epstein and then just asking a question not knowing, you know, who the person is. It's incredible, and it is very revelatory.

On the flip side, though, I read a lot of the stuff, and overwhelmingly it's banal and boring. Even the Larry Summers thing, which was, it's actually quite comic the exchange, but there's nothing in there that speaks to a vast intelligence conspiracy or anything like that. So that's why I wrote the thing I did today because there are all these assumptions that are being built into the coverage that are, I think are kind of troubling, but they're not proven out yet. And everybody's in kind of a mania about the whole thing. But we'll see what comes of it. I mean, it's going to be fascinating to see what documents are actually produced.

You mentioned that you have some insight into the process. I'd be curious to hear what that is. Well, Mike Johnson was out today. I mean, speaking of Russia Gate, Mike Johnson, I don't know if you saw this, but he was out, actually I think it was yesterday, already signaling that because the EPSC and File Transparency Act has carve-outs basically, and understandable carve-outs, they always are, for national security, personal information, et cetera,

that it's already, we can actually. just roll the clip. Let's, I will stop putting words in Speaker Johnson's mouth. This is S6. National security concerns, okay? The discharge requires the Attorney General to release within 30 days, quote, classified information to the maximum extent possible. This ignores the principle that declassification should always rest and always has rested with the agency that originated the intelligence. Why? So that they can protect. their critical sources and methods. It is incredibly dangerous to demand that officials or employees of the DOJ

declassify materials that originated in other agencies and intelligence agencies. Okay. Matt, you are used to hearing the national security excuse for not declassifying documents. I mean, this is something that goes back at the very least to the Kennedy assassination, which Mike Pompeo was still telling us what, like, year ago had serious national security implications if we were to release all of the files because people are still alive and sources, et cetera. So I actually think that's an important point from Mike Johnson just to see him signaling that already because the Trump administration

is in charge of the Department of Justice right now. So like what are we expecting here? I mean, it's ridiculous. The language to the maximum extent possible is already ridiculous. And we already saw this summer, you know, the Trump administration, in particular, Tulsi Gabbard's, you know, Department, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the DOJ to, I guess, under Pam Bondi and Cash Patel, they went ahead and fought hard to declassify documents that originated in other agencies. So when there's a will, there's a way. when they feel like it's in their political interest to do so I don't think that excuse is going to hold water I think it's a huge mistake

for them to already be signaling that they're going to be excising some of the materials but you can almost hear the sigh of relief all across Washington you can probably hear it from where you are now because you know we've already seen this week

there have been two pelts already with Stacey's Plesquette and Larry Summers, we know there are going to be more people whose careers are going to be wrecked by this thing. It's only a question of how many. So I would imagine there's going to be pressure brought to bear to make sure that only the stuff that each party wants out is out, right? And that's going to be what the fight is. You know, it's crazy to me on this Plaskett stuff because Lee Fong, who we both know,

has been doing reporting on her and her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein for years. have others. And yes, these emails that were recently released gave us this wild insight into her literally being at a congressional hearing and texting with Jeffrey Epstein, who Jimmy at Raskin referred to as a constituent. We all know. She has to be responsive to her constituent mail. So it was nice of her to respond to constituent mail during the hearing itself. Live during the hearing, yeah, I know. She didn't even need an intern to go through the constituent mail. It's like, that's how responsive she is. Let's take a listen to her. This is S2, responding to questions about all of this.

And I got a text from Jeffrey Epstein, who at the time was my constituent, who was not public knowledge at that time that he was under federal investigation, and who was sharing information with me. We all know that Jeffrey Epstein's actions were absolutely reprehensible. As a constituent, as an individual who gave donations to me, when I learned of the extent of his actions, after his investigation, I gave that money to women's organizations in my community. You want to talk about texting, texting felons? How often do you text President Donald J. Trump?

that's the individual we should be concerned about. So Plaskett, for what it's worth, was I believe Lee has reported this out, but she was working for a law firm that was entangled with Jeffrey Epstein literally right up until she went into Congress. Now, Virgin Islands, obviously, U.S. Virgin Islands isn't a state. So she doesn't have, it's sort of like Eleanor Holmes Norton in Washington, D.C., doesn't have the full voting privileges of a member from a state. But, Matt, that's a really incredible spin.

I mean, it's not good, but maybe it's the best she can do on what happened in that hearing. So it's amazing, and I'm the exact right person to ask this question about because Stacey Plaskett actually threatened to throw me in jail for perjury over essentially a typo. And in that clip, she says that she was unaware of the scandal, but in the deposition from 2023, and, And Lee pointed this out as well. When she talked about the question of trying to solicit money from Epstein for the D-Triple-C, she mentioned that there was a problem there because of his association with scandal. So she was already cognizant of the scandal at that time. So I don't know.

It's at least hypocritical a little bit for her to talk about somebody else. you know, talking out of both sides of her mouth. Also, the thing about giving the money to charity, she didn't do that right away. She actually hesitated initially to do that, which nobody pointed out. So it's ridiculous. It's embarrassing.

You know, she did work for the firm that represented Epstein when it, and helped him buy Little St. James Island, helped him attain a tax credit with the Virgin Islands Development Authority for whom she had been the General Counsel almost right up until the moment that that deal was done, basically. So she's intimately involved with Jeffrey Epstein. And when she was actually asked in the deposition, have you ever done work for Epstein or Epstein-related? entities, her answer was, I don't recall, so not that great. Yeah, I'm reading from Lee right here.

He reposted his story from 2023 on Acts not long ago. This is, again, from 2023. His lead here is Democratic Delegate, Cece Plaskett, has distanced herself from convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein, claiming she was completely unaware of his donations. However, recent court filing shed light on a much close relationship, between Plaskett and Epstein than previously known. His headline was House Democrat worked for Epstein's tax

and political fixer. And the takeaway is that the reason Epstein was able to carve out so many special privileges on Little St. James was because he had these relationships with local officials in the Virgin Islands. He was showering them with donations. And that's how he ended up being able to operate like he did on Little St. James.

I mean, it's just incredible that Lee reported this in 2023, and it takes some of the things. these like really salacious emails for anyone to care about it seemingly at least yeah and it's it's not just um stacy plesquette i mean the number of people involved that's another uh one of the details it's staggering like there was a lawsuit originally and there were john doze one through a hundred when it came to the uh the defendants who were essentially like government officials and the virgin allen's authority so uh you know everybody involved in public service in the Virgin Islands

there are connections that are laid out in another lawsuit I think it's United States versus J.P. Morgan Chase if I'm not mistaken but there are payments that are laid out in the exhibits of that lawsuit I looked that up in Pace earlier today so just the it's really a story so far just about kind of ordinary common run corruption and the buying of access, right? So here's a person who already has a conviction is a registered sex offender,

but is able to carve out these amazing benefits and buy an island, you know, with tax incentives because of these amazing donations that are going all over the place and gets, you know, access to a member of Congress. in the middle of a hearing. Also, one has to wonder about some of the, the leadership positions

that Stacey Blesquette has. You know, she was the ranking member of the House weaponization of government committee. She's, she's, and,

you know, she's front and center of a lot of things for a non-voting member of Congress. So that makes you wonder a little bit, too, but,

you know, we'll seem to come out of it. Refresh my memory, but she was, like, the most aggressive hostile and I would argue like uninformed member

of the committee questioning you am I remembering that correctly that's oh yeah it was just vicious to you yeah absolutely it was really funny because I was expecting um when we're testifying about the Twitter files I was expecting the questioning to be hostile but I thought there would

be like a colloquy where they would challenge me sort of intellectually about censorship and you know the national defense but she came out right away she called Michael and I and me so-called journalists and a direct threat to all who opposed them

and there was just all this bizarre rhetoric and was angry and fulminating right from the beginning I mean Michael and I were kind of glancing at each other sideways because we didn't expect that and that turned out to be the tenor of the whole thing it was scripted that way each one of the members had his or her own uh attack avenue but she was certainly the angriest of all of them it was it was kind of off-putting it was it was really weird in the moment yeah i remember being really weird at

the time thinking you know first of all matt and michael are not conservatives i think it's it was like somebody told her that you guys were like tucker carlson or something yeah exactly right Yeah. And, you know, now we know that she can probably be handed something two seconds before, and that might, you know, result in the question. So, you know, she doesn't know who we are. I mean, that became pretty clear during through the hearing, you know, calling me a so-called journalist. And then that's, that's a little weird. I've done a lot of long service and mainstream media and all that stuff and written, you know, written books and all these things. But, you know, to her, I was some kind of like online influencer who had never done anything and same thing with Michael so but I think I do think that this you know this thing is going to be very damaging Epstein to a lot of politicians probably as more documents come out well I want to force you to watch this clip of Larry Summers addressing his class at Harvard so Summers we should preface this by saying

actually in one of these email exchanges, Matthew Stoller caught, that he was trying to sleep with the daughter. Actually, he seemed like he was. I mean, we don't have to go into that. I don't particularly want to get into that. But he was courting the daughter of a Belt and Road official in the CCP and appeared to be doing favors for him in order to get in tight with his daughter. Wow. I totally missed that. Oh, my gosh, I'll send it to you. It's so wide. And Larry Summers is also, obviously, in these emails, engage in a very close, like, confidant-level relationship, asking, bouncing everything under the sun off of Jeffrey Epstein all of the time.

And he's since stepped back from public life, stepped down from all of these very fancy positions. Apparently, though, still teaching at Harvard. So let's go ahead and take a look at this clip, taped yesterday by a student one of his lectures. Some of you will have seen my statement regret expressing my shame with respect to what I did in communication with Mr. Epstein, and that I've said that I'm going to step back on public schools for a time, but I think it's very important to fulfill my teaching obligations.

He has to fulfill the teaching obligation. We're going to go forward and talk about the material in the class. So, Matt, it's brutal. You've reported on the likes of Larry Summers, who of course was Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton, when much of the reporting you did during the recession, the seed of that was planted. And I imagine you have thoughts on the very notion of Larry Summers being a sort of idealized, renowned figure who's teaching at Harvard in and of itself being kind of interesting as a statement on where we are and how we've reckoned with what happened in. 2008 in the years leading up to it. So what do you make of Larry Summers now having to address his close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein? Yeah, in my article today, I called it Cancel Culture Sepaku because he's essentially killing himself as a public figure before they can do

it for him. But no, I mean, he's, I also said he's a rare like 10 out of 10 on the celebrity repugnant scale. He's everything that you can't stand about quote-unquote elites in our society, right? He's arrogant, you know, a fixture at Davos, and he personifies literally the habit of this class of people to shower and lavish awards on intellectual mediocrity and give it exalted academic titles. He's just a person who's not that smart who was put in charge of the leading academic institution in America and is really renowned for saying dumb things. Like that's the thing he's most famous for. And now he's sort of at the end of his career. He's going to be famous for,

I guess, courting, you know, a daughter of somebody in the CCP and nicknaming her. peril. I mean, by the way, I'm a little bit curious about the genesis of that nickname. But no, the exchanges between him and Epstein are just, it's embarrassing. And Epstein is really trying to cheer him up. He's like flattering him by trying to tell him that the chance that his mistress will find another person or is in a being. In a Bayesian sense, because Summers has this thing about Bayesian statistics, which I don't even really understand. It's on the order of discovering life on another planet. The probability that she'll find something like that is zero.

She won't find another Larry Summers. I mean, these are people, one guy's worth $600 million, and the other ones is like the president of Harvard, and they have these terrible insecurities. it's really kind of sad to read. Yeah, I put the Stoller post up on the screen here. This is from December 22nd, 2018, where, as Stoller puts it, he is trying to seduce someone that he was mentoring. Her father is a Chinese official running part of the Belt and Road initiative, and she explicitly thanked Summers for supporting her dad.

It's really heartwarming, actually, when you think about it that way. Unbelievable. But, Matt, I feel like this argument that you flesh out today and bracket is extremely provocative of the Epstein story being like Russiagate. And at the time that Russia Gate was, you know, starting to percolate, bubble to the surface back in 2016, 2017. And, you know, David Korn was running with the plants and all of that. It took a lot of courage for people to kind of hit the pause button and be like, not going all in on this. And so I'm sort of curious if you see us in a, maybe a similar, or see yourself, maybe even in a similar moment right now.

Well, Michael Tracy is really the trailblazer in this one. He's been taking, taking. So often he is. Yeah. But, no, I mean, I think obviously these are two completely different things, right? Like the Russia Gate, as we subsequently found out, there obviously was a real thing that happened. and there was a leak of emails from the Democratic Party that came from somewhere and which the government attributed to Russia.

And so people were trying to make a connection. Here, though, there's much more meat on the bone. There's obviously a lot of real detail involving Larry Summers' biography, the admitted conduct with young women. He said some incredibly revolting things about post-pubescent girls and how they should all be available to men. And he's convicted. He's a registered sex offender.

And there's a lot of stuff there about his own conduct. And if you talk to people who've covered the story for a long time, they'll tell you that there's a huge there there when it comes to his own conduct. The problem is there isn't a lot in terms of, at least officially, sort of accusations of trafficking to other people. Even though his last charge was for trafficking, and they regularly describe a trafficking ring in news stories, the accusation is that he trafficked women to himself. he and Jillian Maxwell.

So that's one part of it. The other part of it is that, yes, there are a lot of provocative details that have been reported by people like, you know, our mutual friend Ryan Grimm, about, you know, his relationship to Ehoubaraq to the hack materials from the, I think it's the, I forgot what the name of the hacker group was. Denial, distributed denial of certain, whatever they call themselves. Right, exactly, yeah, and it shows that he had him brokering a security deal with Mongolia for, you know, on behalf of Israel. Which you're very familiar with, Matt. If anyone should have been brokering this Mongolian deal, it should have been you. That's right, yeah, I'm probably the only guest you've ever had who used to live in Ulaan Bata, right? No, no, not just used to live in.

That's right. I played professional basketball. He was a professional Mongolian. It's one of the best fun facts about Matt Taiyvi. It should have been you. Yeah. So, look, all that stuff has a, it definitely, there's no question that he had this mind-blowing rolodex of contacts with Israeli officials, with arms dealers. I think there are four different Israeli prime ministers that he's been tied to.

And, you know, Barack would have been the head of the Mossad at the time he was corresponding with him. There's also the story about an Israeli agent staying at his house. The problem that I have is that these two wings of the Epstein story, there's never been any evidence linking the two of them. In other words, everybody assumes that it's an intelligence conspiracy that involves sexual blackmail, but the evidence for that is lacking, right? So that's what I'm just trying to say, is that there's a, the news is sort of ahead of its skis on this in the same way it was with, with Russiagate. You know, you would see references to, you know, Trump's back, back channel relations with Putin or something like that, right? As if it were already factually established. And that's the same thing that's going on here with, with Epstein.

We assume that there is an operation going on, but it just, it isn't there yet. I mean, it might be, it could easily be true, but it's just not there yet. It's interesting because we know there were, you know, there were young girls coming in for the massages. And in fact, there was that email that came out about Epstein, I think it was actually two Michael Wolfe talking about like the rub and tug, like girls coming in. And I think he says they're all mid-20s, something like that. But we do know that the way he was originally caught was that very young girls from basically West Palm Beach were being brought in to him in Palm Beach. Wax shacks, believe it or not. Yeah.

Oh, my gosh. Just like nasty, disgusting stuff. But there are, credit words due to Tracy here, he does throw cold water on some of the, some of the particular media acceptance of stories that have. been, I mean, Jafray is a good example, Virginia Jafray is a good example, that she herself took back. And, you know, a lot of these girls were targeted particularly because they were vulnerable and troubled. And so it is genuinely very hard to know what is, what is real, what is not real. But I think that's a good point that things become conventional wisdom. You know, things get repeated so much as it become conventional wisdom. And that totally happened

with Russiagate. And I have seen it happen here. And it's just, you've seen this sausage get made so many times, Matt. It's like something gets repeated so many times that people stop questioning it. Yeah. And there's a universe of things that this, that the Epstein story could be. It could be, you know, he's not Mossad. It could be he's 100% a CIA person. It could be that the intelligence ties are informal. It could be that it's, it's, it's a lot of, it's, it's, It's a commercial prostitution thing. It could be that it's not that at all, that it's a vanity situation,

that he just likes to have young girls around. There's evidence for all these different things, but the thing that hasn't been established, right? Like, we don't have reports, you know, in writing where you see, you know, Epstein talking to a Mossade agent about so-and-so's sexual pro-report. clivities and how they could be used, or we don't have anybody saying that they were blackmailed. That's what's missing from the story, right?

So I think people just need to keep that in mind as we wait to see what might come out of these documents, is that it could go in a number of different ways. And, you know, once upon a time in the news, a cigar was just a cigar until proven otherwise, right? And now I think, you know, seriously, post-Russia Gate, we start with the maximalist interpretation of everything because we're so used to, we're accustomed to everything turning out to be a crazy conspiracy, but it's not always true, right? Or sometimes it's a lesser version of what we think, and that might be the case here. I think we get algorithmically nudged into those big takeaways, too. Yeah, it's interesting. And Matt, one

thing I wanted to ask you about as well was how you think about the connection between the repulsive personal private lives of these men, whether it's Jeffrey Epstein, Larry Summers, Bill Gates, so many people to choose from as these emails come out, Tharkas, and the like. Michael Wolfe, we could do a lot. We could talk forever about Michael Wolfe in particular, but go ahead, Matt. Well, I was just going to say his presence in the middle of any story makes me suspicious about anything that's about it. But anyway, go ahead. It makes me like circuiting, like I start to twitch. But it all seriousness, I'm curious how you think about the ways these personal

private lives reflect. Because, you know, there are a lot of times people will be like, well, listen, I don't know what was going on in their marriage, don't know what was going on in the personal lives. But there is obviously a pattern where you have elites abusing their power, especially men who know they can, because they're rich and powerful, get way more women than they otherwise would be able to. And we see that fully transparent in these emails where they think they're just talking to Jeffrey E. Epstein, even though they're on a freaking g-mail, like Larry Summers. I mean, just amazing, amazing stuff from our moral superiors. But you've covered the like political corruption very closely. And is there, do you think, a correlation or how do you think

about the possible correlation between these very messy personal lives, seemingly corrupt personal lives and the corrupt political lives? Yeah, it's interesting. You know, I've definitely noticed in the last eight years in the kind of post-Trump era that there's increasingly an assumption among voters on both sides of the aisle that people don't tend to rise in politics unless they're compromised in some way, right? And, you know, it's, it's, there are these popular conspiracy memes that have become, um, I think sort of embedded in the consciousness of American voters, uh, in some cases for good reasons, in some cases for fanciful reasons. But, uh, yeah, I don't know how to think about it.

Um, I am shocked that any modern, um, public figure would talk about anything that's damaging, um, on email. or even do anything that's damaging, frankly. Like, in other words, if you're a public figure on the scale of a Larry Summers or, you know, a member of Congress, I would have to assume that everything you do is going to come out and become public. And finding out that that's not the case, even that is extremely interesting because it speaks to the arrogance of these people, right? They obviously assume that they would be able to get away with,

misbehavior or things that look like misbehavior without any consequence. So that's already interesting. It's just a question of finding out exactly what it is we're dealing with. Like, is it, I mean, are these relationships coerced, right? Is there a thing where there's a quid pro quo going on, where that's known, or is it just, you know, some sleazy guys hanging out with sleazy guys? I don't know how that works. I honestly don't.

You know, the political, the corruption, the financial angles, you know, the sort of circle of how people go from public to private and back to public again and get rewarded financially along the way. I think we're all familiar with that. But this other side, this, you know, the side with the high life, the partying, the girls, the private islands, like, that's not something that, I don't think that. that many people know about. So that this will be interesting for everybody to find out about it.

You know, I hadn't thought to ask you this question, but I just thought about it in the moment. And I'm genuinely curious what you make of some of this open AI conversation about the bubble. And this might seem totally unrelated. But again, you covered this in 2008 and during the recession. But I'm just thinking about right now, I saw this. This is actually Neil Ferguson piece in the free press.

But he's talking about the circular funding of Open AI via NVIDIA, and this core weave company where you have the funding for open AI coming from companies that as Ferguson writes here are both investors and suppliers to open AI. And the connection that I'm just making here in my mind and even thinking about some of your... Yeah, I mean, it's just like there's an arrogance. They kind of know that they're going to be okay so they can play chess with the pieces of the board that are the American economy. And they know that they're going to get bailed out.

they're too big to fail and everyone else is just left with the bag yeah i mean that's certainly the lesson after 2008 right um you know when that was the horror of things like the goldman sacks a big short story was finding out how they thought how these big powerful banks thought about these things behind the scenes that um you know we have to get um you know sort of back to normal. The government understands that and they will angrily insist on their right to be bailed out in every situation. And since that's been validated and has continually been validated, not just with the initial bailouts, but with, you know, sort of the Fed funding, you know, there was the the COVID bailouts as well, right? So they know that even if they just experienced a downturn that

they're going to be propped up. There's an implied backstop to everything they do. However, I am hearing, it's funny that you bring that up. Some of my old friends from the finance days have been calling up and saying that the rug is going to come out from under this AI bubble sooner rather than later. So there's a lot of fear about that at the moment. And what you're talking about, where eventually, So the check has to come due for some of these investments.

Somebody actually has to have money in the end. And that's what when people found out with the mortgage thing, that there was no there there in the middle of that, you know, all those different bubbles, that was when everything felt everyone ran for the exits. And maybe we're nearing that moment now. I mean, is that what you're hearing? Yeah. I mean, and that just feels so familiar.

And, you know, I saw a Tyler Cowan piece the other day saying, well, maybe it is a bubble, but bubbles still, you know, with railroads can create products that last. It doesn't mean that AI is, you know, a bust just because we might be in a bubble. And it's like, that is cold comfort to the people who will once again be left with the bag when you have the circular funding schemes that just feel like they're going in a terrifying direction. And people said that about the original. bubble in the 90s, right, with the original tech bubble. That was when Middle America essentially lost its accumulated savings from the post-war

period, dumped it all into this booming stock market with stocks like Pets.com and things that were basically just business plans scribbled on napkins. And ordinary people lost everything. a whole bunch of bankers and lawyers made fortunes and cashed out on time. And then in the end, yeah, we did get Google and we got a whole bunch of other things, but it came at the cost of hollowing out the whole middle class.

So it's incredibly off-putting to hear the way people on Wall Street talk about those things. And if they do it again with AI, which I imagine that probably will be how it turns out, right? You know, these things have, they're not monetizing themselves yet. It's amazing technology that that doesn't make money yet. And that is a familiar story. Yeah, absolutely.

I'm going to take a quick ad break here. We'll be back with Matt Taibi in just one moment. Now, over the years, I have been very clear about this. I am 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 very proudly with pre-born. Preborn doesn't just save babies. They make motherhood abundantly possible. They provide free ultrasounds and share the truth of the gospel with women in crisis. And then they stay with real practical help, including financial support for up to two years after the baby is born. That is what true Christ-centered compassion looks like, 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, truly life-saving in many, many cases. One chance for the mother to see her baby. And when,

when she does. She's twice as likely to choose life. Preborn 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 855601-229. That's preborn.com slash Emily. We're joined once again now by Matt Taibi, who is editor-in-chief over at Rackett News. Matt, thanks for being back. I have to get your take on this video. Alyssa Slotkin, Senator Alyssa Lachin potential presidential candidate, Alyssa Slotkin, a darling of the Democratic establishment posted that has raised eyebrows from Lindsey Graham to Mike Lee. Let's go ahead and roll S-7 here. We want to speak directly to members of the military and the intelligence community who take risks

each day to keep Americans safe. We know you are under enormous stress and pressure right now. What the hell is trust their military? But that trust is at risk. This administration is pitting our uniform military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens. Like us, you all swore an oath. To protect and defend this Constitution. Right now, the threats to our Constitution aren't just coming from abroad, but from right here at home. Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders. You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution. We know this is hard and that it's a difficult time to be a public servant. But whether you're serving in the CIA, the army, or Navy, the Air Force,

your vigilance is critical. And know that we have your back. Because now, more than ever, the American people need you. We need you to stand up for our laws. Our Constitution and who we are as Americans. Don't give up. Don't give up. Don't give up. Don't give up. Don't give up the ship. Matt, are you convinced? So that was Senator Slotkin, Senator Mark Kelly, Chris DeLusium. Representative, Representative Maggie Goodlander, Representative Chrissy Hulahan, and rep Jason Crow, speaking directly to the military and the intelligence community saying, quote, don't give up the ship. Here's Senator Mike Lee posting on X. Which orders are you encouraging our military to disobey? Be specific. So, Matt, what is your reaction to this montage from Slotkin?

First of all, what's the deal with the finishing each other's sentences thing? It's like the imagined video? Right, yeah, it's such a weird trope on like the left, I don't know. But also, it's straight out of Starship Troopers. It's the I'm Doing My Part video. You know, it's such blatant bad, overwrought propaganda. And this whole idea of you can refuse to obey illegal orders. Well, that's always been true. And we've had a gazillion

illegalities in government that the Democrats didn't say a word about for decades. So why now? And also, just this general notion of encouraging an uprising, essentially, I don't know. I mean, there are so many things about modern politics that just make you shake your head and say, we're just in this new territory. I don't even know how to think about it. Honestly, like, is that, you know, is that, that's beyond insubordinate or, or unhelpful. It reminds me, again, of the beginning of Russia gate, right? There were, when there were these leaks about encouraging people not to share intelligence with the United States.

You know, yes, that made Trump look bad, but it also made the United States look weak and vulnerable. and sent a signal that the, you know, the country was in schism and, and, you know, maybe the government was not stable. Is that what they're trying to project? I mean, is that right? I don't think so. Right. And, you know, I was thinking if the, if Republicans had done this, you know, Mike Waltz or whomever had done this during the Obama administration or the Biden administration, people like Alyssa Slotkin would have been horrified. And I guess that just speaks to, I mean, I don't know, there's this weird. schism in the intelligence community itself because, Matt, you and I, I don't understand what Alyssa Slakin is even talking about here. I assume it's Venezuela related, but I think you and I, could be that. I'm like, you and I are probably also like uncomfortable with any fudging of war powers that might be happening. And I think there's some pretty good evidence that there's fudging of war powers happening right now in the Caribbean. But would Alyssa, I mean,

does not strike me as something that would bother Senator Alyssa Slok in one bit to be quite, honest well no and and that's been going on uh you know it hasn't been going on in this context i mean i did stories where i interviewed uh families from yemen uh who were you know who had relatives who were drone to death um you know by mistake uh you know i talked to these people i found out that there's a standard payment um of a hundred thousand dollars in cash to people who were accidentally droned in sort of extra legal assassinations. I mean, these aren't declared wars. These aren't authorized military actions.

All of this was done under the auspices of highly dubious connections to, like, the initial authorization after 9-11. So for, you know, former CIA members to suddenly be piping up about illegal activity, is that I'm sorry. That's that's just laughable. It really is. All right, Matt. Breaking news tonight, Donald Trump posted on true social F-13 here. He said he announced this meeting in the funniest possible way, quote, communist mayor of New York City, Zoron, quote, Kwamey, like how he used to say Barack Hussein Obama, has asked for a meeting. We have agreed that this meeting will take place at the Oval Office on Friday, November 21st. Further details to follow.

But Matt, I wanted to talk you about this because you wrote just an incredible essay over on Rackett. This was right before Halloween, I think it was late October, called the Great Leftist Ignorance Scam. And reading your perspective, again, as somebody who did reporting during the Great Recession, but also lived in the post-Soviet Union, Russia, and is watching now, New York City have like a, you know, not just a sewer socialist. in the 20th century, but a neo socialist mayor of the biggest city like in the country, one of the financial power centers of the world, one of the culture power centers of the world, Trump and Mamdani meeting hilarious in many different ways, but just wanted to like get your, see if you could flesh out some of the points that you made in that piece a little bit,

because you often get pegged as like a man of the Democratic Socialist of America, not just even the the left, but like kind of, you kind of get pegged of that kind of, what branch of the left, I guess? Yeah, I mean, I was a big fan of Bernie's at the beginning. I knew him very well. I did a story with him that was amazing and educational. Like, I followed him around Congress for a month. And he basically taught me how Congress works. And I liked him. I thought he was honest. He seemed to really to be interested in improving the last. of his constituents, he never went off the record with me, never insisted on anything being secret. That's incredible. You followed him around for a month and he never went off the record? No.

I've never heard of that. He is, there are only a couple of politicians that I can think of who were that unguarded. And so I admired him for a lot of things. I think he was principled. I also like the fact that he was willing to work with people like Ron Paul in doing things like auditing the Fed, right? And there was a collegiality that was absent from Congress at that time. So I admired him and I liked a lot of his ideas. But Bernie, he has great affection for the Democratic Party, I think he's patriotic in his own way, believe it or not.

And he knows that there's a line that you can't cross with American politics. So, like, you can't start talking about, you know, seizing the means of production and expect to have, to be a viable national candidate. But something, you know, happened. Something changed with the American voter in the last, you know, 10 years or so. And I started to see this in the campaign trail, even in the 2016 cycle. Like, I would see anti-Trump rallies where young people would be holding hammers and sickles, you know, flags with the Soviet emblem on them. And I would ask them, like, what do you know about the Soviet Union? And, you know, they would basically, they didn't know any of the history.

They're no longer taught about the gulags. They're no longer taught about deep colloquization or collectivization or any of the things. And I saw, I heard a lot of these stories personally. in my time over there. So it's kind of horrifying to me to think that there's been this change in how we view this stuff. Americans tend to be very well informed

about the history of the Nazi party, but we don't know a whole lot about the Stalinist period, or it's been forgotten, and that's what I worry about. Not that Zoran is Stalin. It's just that the language around him is sort of unembarrassed in its embrace of certain things.

Well, at the Zoron Victory Party, Hassan Piker talked about how unfortunately the U.S. won the Cold War and the Soviet Union was toppled. Did you see that? No, that's what prompted me to write the article because, you know, I studied in the Soviet Union. I was there. I watched it, you know, its full incompetence and inability. to achieve anything I mean it was a total failure of a society

even at the end in the sort of post-perestroika period it was horrific and the stories that people told about the things that they went through were just they were mind-boggling and for people to say that and sort of joke about it

it tells you that they don't know a whole lot which is really scary right And that's what is worrying about this phenomenon. The meeting, though, I mean, that's just so WWE, I hope they do it like a wrestling match. I mean, I hope it's televised live, at least. I mean, yeah, he loves to televise those live. I was there when he was touring the Fed with Jay Powell, and it was one of the most, as they were walking down the hallway in the construction, it was one of the most uncomfortable 20 seconds.

and he entirely did that on purpose. Like, 100% he knew what it was doing. Like, he knew that they were going to walk in silence to the press. And he's just, he coordinates this. I mean, he choreographs it to a T. I think actually, Mom Dani and Trump maybe have more in common than they'd be willing to admit. What do you think? They absolutely 100% do.

And, you know, Mom Dani is really, he's the future, I think, of politics on that side of the aisle. for that exact reason. I think he understands a lot of the that you have to have simple, strong themes, the theatrics. He has a lot of the same instincts that Trump has in terms of PR. And so it'll be interesting to see the two of them together because I would bet that there's a moment or two where they get along, which is going to freak both of their bases out. Right. Yes, it will freak both of their bases out, but maybe not them. I mean, I'm sure he's already doing the like Zorong Kwame Mamdani thing, like he did Barack Hussein Obama, and he refers to him as the communist mayor of New York City.

But actually, that's kind of an interesting question, Matt. Like, what do you, like, there's the democratic socialism that Bernie Sanders espouses. And obviously, Zorong comes from Democratic Socialists of America, DSA circles. But there are a lot of people who are in DSA world who are actually not really democratic socialists who flirt with something much more like, socialism or communism, full socialism, or communism. Where do you put Zoran himself on that spectrum? I mean, I don't know. I mean, the Bolsheviks were originally called the Democratic Socialists.

So it's... Then there's national socialists. Yeah, yeah, right. And, you know, part of the whole sort of Marxist or Lenin, it's probably better to say Leninist, approach to politics is this embracing this idea that sort of open

insincerity to achieve power which makes some of this the sort of insincere smile that Mondani flashes from time to time it makes a little chilling for people who are students of history

when he talks about how the seizing the means of production quote came in the middle of a a DSA meeting where he talked about how, yes, we should talk about the things that are popular now, the things that aren't like seizing the means of production, maybe we shouldn't. There's an extraordinary cynicism in that, right? I mean, it's, it's, so that's undisguised.

So I don't know. I don't know how to classify him. We'll have to see how he governs, but the DSA, when you listen to their, you know, their actual meetings, yeah, it's, it's gotten, it's gotten pretty far to the left. It's different from the Bernie version of the DSA that I first covered. So the last question then is like, how do you think about the genuine prospect of like a populist reform on Wall Street when populism is manifesting in Democratic socialism that looks something like a person who's who said seizing the means of production is possibly on the menu? Or Trumpism, which is being showered with gifts, literally. really cash by crypto billionaires at Wall Street at the financial industry.

What are our prospects for just having decent reform, as you see them now? Not great. You know, I mean, I think the one thing that one would hope the populist movements would achieve was that it would scare government and industry into doing a little better by people, right? because ultimately that's the only way that they can get the make people stand down and put their pitchforks down is to, you know, steal a little bit less, be a little bit less greedy, just like a fraction, right? And, you know, maybe improve the lives of the general polity just enough so that people can get by and raise kids or even think about having families, which is, you know, that's the problem right now. Why does somebody like Mendinney happen? It happens because people who are 20 years old or 22 years old, the idea of buying a house and starting a family is just not even in the realm of possibility for a lot of people who are, you know, coming out of college now, right?

So you turn to some pretty extreme politics because nothing else has worked. That's how Trump happened. Why would you keep voting for the same clowns who don't deliver over and over and over and over? again. You've got to try something different eventually. And that's how Membani happens. So we understand why it happens. The problem is, you know, who's going to bring about that more effective form of government and find that balance between these two dueling forms of populism that are becoming ascendant? I don't know. I mean, it's hard to see where the answer is. Matt Taibi, editor-in-chief of Rackett News. Thank you so much.

for what you're doing at racket and thank you for stopping by the show tonight thanks so much emily have a good night you too appreciate it all right we'll be back in with more in just one moment but first let me tell you about my favorite chips the best chips that i've ever had in my life if you've ever read the label on a typical chip bag you've seen like the science experiment of seed oils msg dyes and vague natural flavors quote natural flavors but vandy crisps are part of the growing movement to bring back real food with just three ingredients 100 percent pesticide-free potatoes, sea salt, and grass-fed beef tallow, no junk, just real food. They taste so amazing, and they leave you feeling light, energized, and satisfied with no crash, bloat, or mindless,

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I used to, some of you may know, teach journalism. And she just committed the error that like a freshman commits or somebody who just started working in journalism. Now, mind you, Jasmine Crockett is not a journalist, but she is a lawyer and a member. of Congress, which believe it on, is even less of, or she's actually even in more of a position to know what she's talking about here and yet doesn't. So let's roll this incredible moment of S8 Jasmine Crockett on the House floor trying to say that Republicans took donations from Jeffrey Epstein. She's right about that part. Folks who also took money from somebody named Jeffrey Epstein as I have

somebody named very quickly Mitt Romney the NRCC Lee Zeldon George Bush Win Red McCain Palin

Rick Lazio I just want to be clear if this is the standard that we're going to make just know we're going to expose it all and just know that the FEC filings they are available for everybody to review

this is absolutely ridiculous yes Jasmine they sure are, I'm sorry, Congresswoman, Representative Crockett, they are there for everybody to review. Let's go ahead and put this Chuck Ross tweet up on the screen, F6. He says, Jasmine for US is disastrously wrong here. None of these donors are the, are the Jeffrey Epstein. Several are from the same. Dr. Jeffrey Epstein and the donations to Lee Zeldon are from after the Epstein killed himself. So now, technically, Jasmine Crockett did qualify it, whether it was intentional, by saying somebody named Jeffrey Epstein. These Republicans took money from somebody named Jeffrey Epstein.

But, of course, if you just dug a little bit deeper on all of the FEC reports, you can always see the address. You can usually see a person's profession. You can match details, as, especially with, in many cases, you can match details to the particular person that you're talking about. And with Lee Zeldon, I mean, that would have been obvious because, again, this money came in after Epstein died, and this woman went to the floor of the house, flanked by Stacey Blaskett, who worked at the law firm that was, like, fixing the U.S. Virgin Islands for Jeffrey Epstein legally. she's right there, and Jasmine Crockett's own on the Republicans is that somebody named Dr. Jeffrey Epstein

gave money to these Republicans to the NRCC as well. I mean, genuinely, we can put F7 on the screen. This is another great comment from Chuck Ross. Crockett getting this so badly wrong is I guess why politicians usually outsource their APO research to the professionals. But you would also expect a member of Congress to know more about it. FEC filings. And again, I just want to add, Crockett is a lawyer. She's a lawyer. If a lawyer is able to do anything, it would be to know exactly what you're talking about when you pull somebody's FEC reports, federal election commission reports.

That is like the very basic, basic, basic thing that you would be capable of doing before going to the house floor and saying, We're going to expose it all, mention it all, to quote the House rives. But nope, Jasmine Crockett did not even have that due diligence in her. So perfect, perfect, perfect, all around 10 out of 10. No notes. Jasmine Crockett, you would not be passing any of the journalism programs that I oversaw because that was egregious. And also just one of the reasons Democrats never wanted to really touch.

the Epstein story, getting the muck with the Epstein story. It says you can see from these emails. Let's put Donald Trump himself aside for just one moment and Alex Acosta aside. Those are two massive caveats, not excusing them, just putting them to the side momentarily because people like Larry Summers were high-profile Democrats for a very long time. Many of the circles that Epstein is running in, well, actually almost all the circles Epstein is running in, were primarily left-of-center Democratic Party establishment circles, which is why the left was very reluctant to, wade into the Epstein saga until, of course, it could be made a story about Donald Trump. Now, I happen to think there are some very good questions to be asked about Donald Trump,

about Alex Acosta, who was Trump's pick for Labor Secretary and backed out of it eventually. But Trump, you'll remember, was known as what? A Democrat. A Democrat! Well into the 2000s. And so these were the circles that Epstein and Trump were moving through. And again, like, we're talking about Larry Summers. This is Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary. We're talking about Bill Clinton himself, actually.

And Epstein was really cozy with a lot of very powerful, high-profile Democrats. Of course, those high-profile, high-powered circles tend to be bipartisan corrupt, corrupt on a bipartisan basis because you look at all those guys and they give money to Republicans and Democrats alike. And so that's absolutely true. But it's also true that Epstein was particularly involved in some of those spaces, which is why Democrats were reluctant to touch the story to begin with. So for Jasmine Crockett to be standing up, in defense of Stacey Pusket, who is implicated to, like, just up to her, what's the phrase, up to her ears, her eyeballs in the implications about her relationship. with Jeffrey Epstein was texting Epstein during a question, during a questioning session in Congress of Trump officials or people, I think it was Michael Cohen, one of those guys.

Unreal that they would have the audacity to stand up there and lecture everybody with the wrong interpretations of FEC accounts. Incredible stuff. All right. Now for a story that I have been eager to do for a while. I want to talk about the new Kelsey Ballerini song that is really making waves. We've seen a decent bit of commentary already from people on the right about I Sit in Parks, this new Kelsey Ballerini song. You may have heard it. If you didn't, that's fine. We can go ahead and put this tear sheet up on the screen. That's just sort of about the discourse on this song. It's again called I Sit in Parks. This is glamour that says the discourse around Kelsey Ballerini's I Sit in Parks is getting heated. Well,

If you listen to the song, maybe it'll be a little bit of an inkblot test. But, man, I'll just read some of the first lyrics here. I sit in parks. It breaks my heart because I see just how far I am from the things that I want. Dad brought the picnic. Mom brought the sunscreen. Two kids are laughing and crying on red swings. We look about the same age, but we don't have the same Saturdays. Did I miss it? By now, is it a lucid dream? Is it my fault for chasing things? A body clock doesn't wait for. I did the damn tour. It's what I wanted, what I got. I spun around and then I stopped and wonder if I missed the mark. Okay. Now, you can interpret those lyrics as many people on the right have interpreted them, which is to say, here you have a woman who has prioritized her career and found herself, let me look at Kelsey Valerini's exact age, but she's, yeah, she's 32, so she's the exact same age as me, found herself in her early 30s, wondering if she prioritized the wrong things, looking longingly at families with kids, thinking to herself, did I miss out on that? Now, maybe Kelsey Ballerini didn't miss out on that. You know, she's, she's again in her early 30s, but it's reminiscent of the new Taylor Swift album, of course,

where Taylor is singing about wanting what, like a basketball hoop in her front yard and lots of kids and actually kind of mocking the people who treat their pets as children and prioritize these decadent elite experiences over and priorities over family and sort of the simple American dream type hallmarks of that kind of experience. And obviously this is funny to see show up in country music. You know, a song that was like a gut punch for me a couple of years ago. I try to keep up as best I can with the country charts. And a song that was just, this was, I guess that was this year, Outskirts by Sam Hunt. This one was a gut, a gut punch. Have you heard this song? I mean, it's, I immediately thought of it when I heard the Kelsey Ballerini song.

So he says, we were going to give up on the fast life, have a couple babies, raise them up right, take me to the river, get them baptized. Back in our day, if I'd have just stayed, I wouldn't be living in this condo. I mean, gosh, that is just a knife to the chest, hanging out with Haley from Toronto. God Almighty, baby, we were that close to ditching uptown, putting roots down out here on the outskirts. And he is invoking this Haley from Toronto as kind of like a, it's like the exotic people that you come across in like city life outside of your hometown. right? He's bringing in somebody singing about, he's singing about remembering the South and his nostalgia for the South and the kind of simpler life that he could have had where he's

from, and then juxtaposing it with the people that he meets from interesting places that have nothing to do with where he grew up, like Toronto, for example, in this song. And so that's why I thought of this song at the same time. There's also that Morgan Wallen song more than my hometown. There are actually a ton of examples of this. It's something that I've had my ear kind of tuned to try and pick up as soon as I heard outskirts from Sam Hunt. But again, like there are a lot of examples of this. And you can tell me what you think about this. You can tell me if I'm wrong. But when I was growing up, especially the female country singers, so much of it, not all of it, but so much of it was about kind of ditching your small

town and going to the big city, right? And there's still some of that, of course. I'm not saying that, you know, there isn't any of it now or there isn't one. You know, I'm not saying, I'm not saying the extreme is true in either direction. I feel like there's more, there's been a shift now, away from pining to escape your hometown to a shift where there's more focus on pining to go back to, your hometown. Maybe the pandemic was the marker. Maybe that was the point when it shifted. But I think what you hear in Kelsey Ballery, I mean, she's not specifically singing about her hometown, but she's kind of, and Taylor Swift too, singing about something much simpler and having this longing for something much simpler than this remarkable career that she's been

able to have, that Taylor Swift has been able to have. And I don't even need to necessarily get into the feminist questions of it all, because I think Sam Hunt is singing about something similar. The point I'm making is that there was an escapism. You know, I grew up in a fairly small town in Wisconsin, lovely little town in Wisconsin, but so many people who listen to country music have that similar background. They're not, it's changed now. But if you're listening to country music in the 80s and the 90s, and going back even further, of course, a lot of people were in small towns and the American dream for them wasn't just white picket fence. It was going to Hollywood and making it or going to New York City and working out a magazine, something like that,

right? And people moved to big cities and I'm talking to you as somebody who left a small town for a big city and it's awful to live away from your family, but it was normalized. And we became totally conditioned to see it as a perfectly normal thing, especially as technology developed in ways that made it much easier because you can FaceTime your parents now. You can FaceTime your siblings now. You can FaceTime your grandparents now. And we feel closer.

I mean, you probably remember when Facebook was first coming out. The idea was that distance wouldn't matter anymore, which is just not true. It's just not true because, I mean, I know some of my friends who have kids, it's like they wish that they lived by their parents. They wished that they lived by their spouse's parents so that they had this, especially if they settled outside a suburb, you know, in a big city where they didn't grow up and they just kind of came there for work. They don't feel like they're tied into any type of or knit into any type of social fabric in the way that they would if they lived where they grew up. And I'm not saying

everybody has to live with where they grow up. Their economic questions about all of that, you know, it hasn't been easy. If you lived in Flint, Michigan, to take the Michael Moore example, you might not have been able to stay in Flint, Michigan after what happened to the auto industry. And so not saying what's right or wrong for anyone, again, I'm somebody who left. But I do think the shift is fascinating because there was a time when the ideal was unquestioned. The conventional wisdom was sort of that the best and the brightest would go to the big. big cities and they would have big careers.

And those careers would kind of transcend the strictures of small town life. That was just how everybody thought of it. And what's very interesting to me now is people realizing, and maybe this is post-pandemic because there's so much like remote work availability and all of that, but people really coming to the conclusion, or starting to work their way to the conclusion, that some of our highest ambitions can come from anywhere, that the highest ambition of, you know, making it in the big city. And again, maybe it's because you can take shortcuts now. You don't have to live in Hollywood or New York necessarily to make it, to get your music

scene on TikTok, for example. I mean, there's so many, so many instances of people who have, Justin Bieber wasn't living in New York when he was discovered. That's a very old example now. But there are many more current examples of people just going like bonkers on TikTok. Spotify disempowers gatekeepers in all kinds of ways, streaming just in general, YouTube. So you don't necessarily need to do that. Maybe that's part of why people are thinking back on it. But it's just a trend that I've noticed in country music.

When I was growing up, it was like all of these songs about just like getting out. And everybody knows what I'm talking about. Everybody remembers these songs. But just leaving. Like that was the glamorous thing. And there are a lot of songs about bringing that small town with you to the big city. Was it Alan Jackson song? I'm not thinking of top of my head.

A little bitty, right? Um, it's there are a lot of that, there's a lot of that type of thing. There's more songs like that that I can, uh, maybe I'll just make a Spotify play this a lot of songs I'm talking about, rambling about that as to say, but I do really think it's, there's, there's something interesting happening in the culture and it's, it's healthy because the conventional wisdom that we coalesced around that, again, this was just in general, wasn't every specific case, but just in general that you, to be um people with ambition left they left the they left rural america they left beautiful

queen small towns people are rediscovery how wonderful it is to be knit into this small tribe the social fabric immediately around you the people who are yelling at you on twitter do not know you for the most part people in those youtube comments that are saying what you think is dumb they're never going to meet you and they're saying those things the way that they're saying them they're saying them at all because they're never going to meet you maybe you're one of those people you're you're comfortable saying it because you're never going to meet them maybe that gives you more courage maybe that gives you more um you know more motivation to speak out in some some good ways but also it obviously makes us talk to each other and treat each other in some really

really bad ways and so i think people take comfort and going back to these these physical physical places, tangible places where you're knit into a social fabric and are starting to see the real value in that and realizing that some of our highest ambitions don't have to be about climbing any corporate ladder or celebrity, because celebrity has been utterly cheapened by, you know, Andrew Warhol's 15 minutes of fame has become, you know, almost irrelevant at this point, right? Because on TikTok, everybody gets like 15, million clicks of fame. At some point, it's like playing the lottery. You put out of TikTok at some point you're going to go super viral or you're going to go mid-level viral. And so fame has been just utterly cheapened. There's less glamour involved in fame because everybody, you see them now through like an iPhone camera and everybody's kind of been brought down to earth. So a lot of reasons for this potential shift, but I do think it has been a shift. And I think it's a healthy So if you have thoughts on that, Emily at devilmaycaremedia.com, you can email me there.

Make sure to send me questions for happy hour. I'm also pre-taping a happy hour for Thanksgiving week. So I'll take all the questions you have. Send them in. Subscribe. It helps us so much if you subscribe to our videos on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. We'll see you back here more Monday with more after party.