After Party with Emily Jashinsky - “Happy Hour”: Emily Answers YOUR Questions About Nick Fuentes, the Best Bravo Franchise Ever, and Life and Career

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

Each week join Emily Jashinsky for a fun, informative look at current events, culture, and her own personal journey as she answers listeners’ questions. Today’s questions include Emily’s thoughts on: Reality TV, social media, if she’s a “mellow” person, cable TV vs new media, her style of analysis, why she’s a journalist, what drives her, her 2A beliefs, if she’s dating anyone, the rise of Nick Fuentes, thoughts on “The Life of Julia” and young women, her appreciation for our audience, and more. Submit your questions on our Instagram account: @afterpartyemily. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hi, after-party listeners. Welcome to a new installment of After Party that we're calling Happy Hour an even more casual version of an already casual show where I get to chat with all of you through the great questions and comments that you send in via social media and email. So let's get to it. I realize, by the way, as I'm saying this, the After Party Happy Hour theme consistency is starting to make it sound like I have a problem, which, listen, I have many problems. I don't think drinking is one of them. So it just so happens that we're trying to, of course, convey a theme of fun and whimsy. You know, it's the after-party to the daily news cycle. And right now it's the happy hour where I get to just roll up the sleeves and talk through some of your great. And sometimes, by the way, challenging questions. Those might even be my favorite ones, questions, comments, feedback, all of that. As a reminder, I'm Emily at devilmaicaremedia.com. I respond to so many of the emails that I get over there. Appreciate you guys listening. Let's just start with me saying how grateful I am. Do everyone for watching and listening to After Party, we're roughly at the three-month

mark now, I think, which is amazing. I appreciate it so much. I'm a big podcast listener, so I like actually doing this audio format. If you've been listening to me since Federalist Radio hour. You know that I'm very accustomed to sort of the daily grind of audio only, and I actually really like it. So I'm really excited about a happy hour, and I'm excited to answer some of your questions. Let's start with this one from AHA Design Studio. Nailed it. AHA design studio. And this person Ask best Bravo franchise. Hmm. I promise these won't all be

pop culture questions, but I have to start with this one because I do talk about Bravo a lot. If we're just discussing right now, which franchise is the best right now at this moment in Bravo history, I would say probably Salt Lake City Housewives

or Miami Housewives. I'm just, I've really, I've followed Miami Housewives closely. I haven't watched it episode to episode until recently at the recommendation of like literally everyone. And it's the closest thing that I can think of to old school Real Housewives of New York where there's a, you know, all these people have real drama in their lives and real pain and real suffering.

But it doesn't loom over the show. with this weight that I think has weighed down obviously some of the other housewife franchises. And I heard Dorinda and Luanne from New York City, which is historically, I would say, the best franchise talking about this recently and saying that, you know, they would finish filming and never feel like their lives had had just been over because of something they said or had just been ended because of something they've said that was impolitic, politically incorrect. Well, they were hammered in Tequila, Mexico, or wherever it is. And I do think that the weight of these shows has started to be a lot heavier, and it does make it less pleasant to watch.

Nobody's watching the Bravo reality TV shows to feel the weight of the world on everyone's shoulders. They're mostly watching it as satire and comedy. It's not the same, really, as the reasons people watch other reality. TV shows. So anyway, quick thoughts on that. Now, historically, I said best housewife franchise is Real Housewives of New York. I would say best show that Bravo's ever put out is Vanderpump Rules. There's a couple of seasons of early Southern Charm that compete with Vanderpump Rules, but if you haven't watched Vanderpump Rules all the way through yet, you're missing out, even if the last couple of seasons are a bit laggy. Sarah Bedford, our guest Sarah Bedford,

It asks, what do you think of Taylor, Frankie Paul is the new bachelorette and how excited are you? This is my last reality TV question, I promise. We have other ones about politics. But starting with this one, I've just got to say, I think the secret lives of Mormon lives, I forced myself to finish that first season, which I don't usually do. But it was such a pop culture phenomenon that I had to, Fiann that I had to get through it. And I really disliked it for the reasons that I do like Bravo, but I just liked it for the reasons that I also disliked. like The Bachelorette, which is, the Bachelorette for me is, you know, I don't watch reality TV to be, to get any, let's say, to get so much overproduction. I think the Bachelorette fails at

the balance between being produced and overproduced. And I think that was the same of Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. And especially now in the influencer era, this is something that's really been hurting Bravo too, as people know how to kind of play the game of reality TV. And it's actually such a commentary on media and politics too in the weirdest possible way. I'm doing the weave, again, of course, here. But the overlap is these platforms teach us how to behave differently in politics and in culture. So whether you're on a reality TV show or whether you're a politician, the platform and the incentive of the platform teaches you how to behave differently. And this is where Trump comes in in 2015 and just absolutely cleans up because he understands Twitter and he understands the debate platform.

So the televised debate platform, he understands how to win that because he's mastered the incentive system behind that debate format. So he's got it on lock in ways other politicians don't because they don't quite realize what's shifted. And now basically everything is reality TV because we live our lives. whether we know it or not subconsciously, based on the fact that everybody's got a phone camera in their pocket, a video camera, a regular camera, a audio recorder in their pocket at every given moment. And CCTV cameras are attached to just about every physical structure. You know, these things have definitely changed the way that we behave in whatever medium that we're in. same thing with like email the you know we always talk about marshal mclellan like the man this is one weave by the way wow uh but the the sort of existence of the platform is changing what's communicated on that

platform inherently shaping it it's it's very obvious but in ways we we don't always appreciate as new platforms arise and we we kind of code switch from one to the other in our daily lives where you're trying to email someone then you call someone that you text someone then you signal someone whatever it is. And I have no idea how I ended up here in response to a question about the Bachelorette, but I do, I mean, I actually do know how I got from point A to point B. It's just it was a hell of a ride. But that's where I think I've always felt Bachelor Bachelorette or overproduced in ways that are really entertaining if you're looking for a page turner, right, like the reality television version of a page turner, but if you're looking for

something that's kind of just comedy all the way through. That's where Bravo comes in, I think, really excels. And that actually answers HaD Design's other question. Are you excited about Real Housewives of, I assume that's a thing, Salt Lake City? Yes. Watch the Premier. Great. Wesley Wainer asks, how are you so mellow all the time?

How are you so mellow all the time? I don't think I don't think of myself as mellow to be honest I guess wow now I'm really on the I'm on the therapist couch maybe I am mellow

I was always not at home in the kind of cable news format so I jumped into the cable news format in 2015 when I was 22 years old. And you did a bunch of Fox back in the day, Fox business back in the day. And, you know, it's definitely a bit more, you have less time. So in order to make a point in an argument or even analysis, you have to, it's just truncated.

So you have to convey things more succinctly and more dramatically. Otherwise, you know, you can't sort of take the same amount of space because there are commercial breaks. It's just sort of built into the system. I'm not begrudging it. It's just kind of how it is. And for me, the rise of new media and podcasting was just much more comfortable because it's, I'm really, This is why I like writing, actually. And I love writing, to be honest, more than anything.

And I wish I could do more and more of it. I'm starting to do a bit more of it now over at Unheard as much as I possibly can because you have the space to sort of act in good faith and flesh out your arguments. This is the benefit of having more than 140 characters on X now. not that there's I mean there was a wonderful art to mastering your point in 140 characters but you know there's the boundaries can be can create beautiful art but you know when you're trying to make an argument in good faith those limitations are tough because for me maybe it comes across as mellow I'm actually like really paranoid um I'm always really paranoid that I'm hurting

somebody's feelings or that you know I'm saying something that'll be misinterpreted. And I think that's not unique to me. I think it's a pretty common experience that people have. Yeah, I think it's actually a pretty common experience people have who came up at the same time as me in media. Because when I was young and writing stories, I mean, it's a very, it's not real PTSD. I would never compare it to real PTSD, but in the sort of informal sense that people use the phrase PTSD, these pileons that you would get from like grown adults on social media just being as mean and nasty as possible because you wrote something, or you said something on TV, frankly, that was taken out of context. Those were just,

those like really seared my memory. And in a good way, I think, you know, it does, it can make you, like, pretty anxious, but in a good way has made me paranoid about trying to signal that I'm operating in good faith. And it's not just a signal. It's not just a symbol. It's actually taking this step to constantly be bringing in other arguments and to constantly be trying to respect the other side, whether you're talking face-to-face to someone or whether you're working something out like I'm doing right now. You just, for me, I think maybe it comes across as mellow because I you know it's it's my style of I guess analysis is is really I'm I'm sort of allergic to aphorisms and and packing stuff into quick bites just because I had that experience

so many times and it was um you know for me it just it's it's much more constructive or I learned I think it's much more constructive to actually open up the space when when you don't have the same restrictions as commercial breaks anymore. Like, you can really open it up and have deeper, broader conversations that you say, well, okay, now that I know you're operating in good faith, A might not be true, but what about B? Can we agree on B? Okay, we don't agree on B, but what about this combination of point A and point B? Maybe we can meet on that, or because we can't. Now I know, actually, that this is an accurate representation of what you think, or maybe it's not. But those conversations, I think you find a place of truth.

Like you, this is to me, like people ask, well, why are you a journalist? You someone asked me this the other day. And the answer is that just that I have this, you know, obsession with what's true and what's not true. And again, I think that's not uncommon for people who are my age. I'm 32. And it's when, you know, after 9-11, after the recession, and, you know, and the social media explosion that for me just severed my young adulthood, like, in half.

It actually, like, literally cut my high school experience in half and many others. Like, the iPhone was introduced in 2007. I graduated from high school in 2011, so when people started to adapt it in mass, it was about when I was going into college. And truth became, right, like a, it became something that you really had to work hard. harder to find. And so for me, it's just a incredible gift that every single day for my job, I get to try to get as close to the truth of any major question that is plaguing our politics or our culture as I possibly can. That's exciting. And I do really, really love that. So that's always

what it's about for me. I'm not even, I don't really care about scoring points or that sort of thing, because what drives me is just I want to make sure that I'm speaking truth, that I'm believing the truth, or that what I'm sharing is the truth. Otherwise, I would be saddled with so very much guilt. And our sort of concept of what's right and wrong is not always black and white, like fact. You know, I obviously come to this from a perspective of a conservative Christian. So, but, you know, just doing the best because if you, I think, you know, it's an enormous responsibility to have any kind of platform, to use X, to have an X account, whether you have a lot of followers or a few followers. I think it's a responsibility to publish things on the internet.

And that comes with, you know, it should come with a sense of duty. Man, it's part of it is a truth to me is just so important to religion. It's so important to my faith. And so I feel like it's a really cool synergy for me to be able to be in that space. And even when you disagree with me, I hope you know I'm genuinely trying the best that I can because otherwise I would not feel good about what I'm doing and even what I'm believing. So, all right, let me answer this one. This is butts on the loose, boots on the loose, BUTZ on the loose. Second Amendment beliefs.

I grew up, you know, hunting and fishing, Wisconsin. Love the Second Amendment. I think it's, I just was also talking to somebody about this the other day. I think as Americans, it's an important part of our identity. I totally understand where people's frustrations are. I actually think, you know, that part of the problem with the, the discourse is that on the Second Amendment and the policy process on the Second Amendment is that we're also paranoid. The left was so paranoid that the right wants to bring back, you know,

automatic weapons in mass for every 12-year-old's birthday. And the right is so paranoid that everyone's guns are just going to be taken away. And for example, if you live in a rural area or if you live in a city like I do. You'd be disarmed. And, you know, when the police don't come, you can't rely on the police, that's horrifying. And obviously, there are many other reasons, but there's just a lot of fear. This topic in particular is one, sort of like the microcosm of the entire Cold War, where everyone was just terrified. And it prevented a lot of rational, it was it's sort of rationally prevented rational discourse right because like nobody's wrong to be paranoid we have plenty of examples a of people saying yeah they want all guns gone and be of horrific crimes that are played out now my

personal opinion a lot of this is in the united states there are so many heinous gun crimes that even if we took the sort of like middle ground of what Democrats want, if Republicans met Democrats more than in the middle, even those laws would not prevent some of the most horrific gun crimes that we see. And I think that's the case over and over again. Like unless you took everyone's guns, some of these crimes are going to be played out anyway because they're memetic violence at this point.

And if you want to act out the meme and guns are still available, you'll probably find a way to get your hand on a gun. I'm all for like principled laws about people's health records and all of that. And I think there's probably more that we can do in that space. But that's where I come from on this. I tell the story a lot of two of my best friends who were, they went to like a shooting range. They grew up in the Northeast, and they came back from the shooting range and said that they both had cried when they fired a gun for the first time. And my instinct was to laugh at them. And then I realized, oh, that's, it's really not cool to laugh at them for that because it's, like, if you don't grow up with it, it is actually scary.

So I think some of this is just, you know, it's just different cultural backgrounds. I am going to read. Okay, so Rob Hill 2297 says, are you single? I'm not. I'm not the great Phil Wegman of Real Claire politics, and I have been together for many years. So that's where I stand on that one. He's wonderful.

You follow him. If you don't. Great journalist. One of the best, one of the best. So let's see, what's another one? 3D Troy asks what are your thoughts on the rise of Nick Fuentes? I could talk about that a lot, to be honest. That could be like a full episode.

I agree with Tucker Carlson that Fuentes is like enormously talented as a broadcaster, as a presenter, as they say, in the UK. and, you know, talk about this a lot, but I sort of came up in college as an intern for Christina Hoff Summers from 2012 to 2014. And you may remember that as the time when Gamergate was sort of bubbling to the surface. And everything is Gamergate, right? That's the saying. If you missed the Gamergate online melee of that time period, I think what it, I remember being at a Gamergate meetup, actually, 2014 or 2015, and where all of these people have been, you know, working with at the time it was

like Milo and Christina to push back on the demonization of just like normal young men, lonely young men who've had trouble making friends in the mainstream, eccentric or misfits, and they all got together in person. And some of it was definitely, like there are some people on the fringes that are are not, I think don't deserve to have, quote, mainstream politics. And there's some people, though, that have just been so browbeaten by the, especially pre-20204, like, capital P.W. Peak woke era. And, you know, live in places that were deindustrialized and hollowed out and have had their lives upended by technology, social media, pornography and all of those things. And I have an enormous empathy for especially young men who find

themselves struggling. I actually tend to think the Charlie Kirk, Nick Fuentes, contrast or juxtaposition was actually a good one for the right, because I think Charlie, especially towards the end of his life, was modeling the kind of anti-phemy. Fuentes a positive example in a way that was not mean or nasty or even many times explicit. It was just a sort of positive behavioral model that you could ex-posed with Fuentes or some of the things that Andrew Tate says. So I expressed that with a lot of, like, empathy. I do worry. I definitely worry. And I think actually you can see Nick Fuentes worries about where the ongoing

Groyper war ends up. So, you know, I think it says a lot that Fuentes seems in some senses. Maybe people disagree. I mean, I'm certainly not listening to him every night, but I think he seems uncomfortable where some of where it could go. But I also think, like, many people, him and his followers, are desperate and feel like they don't even have the solution. They might not like one direction, but they don't think

any other direction is much better. And that's one of the biggest problems in our politics right now, and it's actually totally understandable. This is from Jamal Brown. Emily, I appreciate your writing and critical thinking, and not long ago, I watched a discussion you had on the topic of college-level educated women in their voting patterns. I was wondering, have you combined that topic socially or culturally with what used to be known as the life of Julia back in and around the 2012 election for the women who are between 25, 35, 35 as living the life of Julia being good, bad, or indifferent? Do you think their voting patterns are due to the messages, the Obama administration promised them as young women.

Life of Julia is such a critical and I think forgotten moment in our politics. And I was thinking about this actually the other day. So it's funny this question gets brought up because to me, the life of Julia is the kind of, that's where you get the difference between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, both of which we're saying the government and the system is unfair. the Occupy Wall Street folks actually wanted, like Life of Julia, again, put out by a sort of, hmm, dare I call Obama neoliberal, maybe more centrist-e, business-friendly, progressive president, who was obviously wary of leaning too far to the left, but Life of Julia was pretty far to the left.

It was just kind of coded as almost this, maybe utilitarian is the right word along those lines. This is kind of progressive pragmatism is maybe a good way to put it. And that was so shockingly all encompassing that it, I think the Tea Party right at the time was able to say, no, this is why the system is unfair, because I'm trying to get ahead and the government is rigging the game by being unfairly supportive of Julia, for example. But the professional right, the establishment right, took that backlash to things like Life of Julia and said, ah, what our populist conservatives are actually upset about is any government safety net. Like what they want us to actually do is, um, you know, they want austerity, basically.

And that was a misread. What people wanted was just a fair system where the deck wasn't stacked. And that's why, you know, you still have, like, great resistance on the right, as Steve Bannon points out, to touching Medicare, Medicare, whatever it is. And so I think there was this enthusiasm in the professional right saying,

wow, we have this movement in favor of austerity. this is our permission structure to implement austerity. That just wasn't actually what it was. And the media misread the Tea Party as being cruel and what was like they wanted the image of Paul Ryan throwing the grandmother off the cliff in her wheelchair. And it was actually just a really, if anything, a cry for a fair system. For a government that didn't push us to the brink with a subprime mortgage crisis,

for a government that then didn't set up that system and then bail out the big guys. and Occupy Wall Street, in a sense, was similar. But, you know, they were obviously ideologically different. That was just the middle of the Venn diagram that I think people really, really missed. So it's an interesting question. I don't think it was so much what the Obama administration was telling them as, for women, I don't think it was so much what the Obama administration was telling them as it was the sort of cultural synergy between the pragmatic progressives of the time,

the cultural progressives, especially, and Hollywood and Wall Street, that confluence was super powerful. And, yeah, it I think gave a lot of women a sort of false sense of what would ultimately bring them fulfillment and purpose. And millennial women just ended up lagging behind. Some of them fell through the cracks and, you know, don't have the lives that they could have had. So that's just some quick thoughts on that. Others are catching up just late, which means they also may not have the lives that they could have. Limon Stone over at the Institute for Family Studies has good research on that. Last question. Always loved listening to you on the MK shown was thrilled when you launched this podcast. Your fascination with the belief systems and politics of every single kind of person is evident makes for the most interesting conversations and analysis on your show. Really appreciate your open-mindedness too and need to dissect for your audience. Any and all viewpoints, you are always super fact-based while also considering the nuance of all viewpoints as podcasts as let me to explore any other. in which you're involved, opening up a new roster of great listens. Damn you, I don't have time for this at all seriousness. Thank you for putting your perspective out there for us. Thank you, Elizabeth Ferguson. That is incredible. I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful to you for saying

that it's so kind and it's the type of feedback that it just means so much to me. It means so much to me that anybody would listen to anything that I have to say. So I appreciate that. And it's always great to hear from others who sort of share that fascination with different perspectives. Another thing I always think of it as is, you know, I have more questions than answers. And that's another reason why I'm in journalism, because I love asking questions. And I, you know, don't honestly think that I have all the answers, but I'm trying to come up with them often by asking more questions. So it means a lot to me that there are other people out there who, you know, sort of appreciate

that and find that to be valuable and something that they are looking for as well. I like that there's a market for that and I just appreciate everyone sticking with me. It means a lot. It really, really means a lot. So I've gone on long enough. I'm really excited. You can probably tell I'm really excited about these happy hour additions. We hope to be doing these at least once a week into the future. These were questions from Instagram and Instagram. DMs. I also get a lot of great emails and didn't read any of the email questions because I didn't know if any of you wanted to be anonymous. So next time, if you're emailing a question for happy hour, just let me know at Emily at devilmaicaremedia.com and I'll mark those and make sure I'm not

doxing anyone who sends an email and doesn't want to be docs. So if it's a happy hour question, let me know in the email. And I'll try to answer more and more of these on air. Appreciate everyone for tuning in. Emily at Double Make Care, media.coms where you can send emails. Also, we're, of course, on all different platforms. And we're live at 10 p.m. Eastern Mondays and Wednesdays, having lots of fun and appreciating everyone who, you know, it's probably already in bed at 10 p.m. Eastern. It catches up after the fact, like I said, I'm a podcast listener. So solidarity podcast listeners. And thank you to everybody who catches the show on YouTube.

It's been a blast. We'll see you back here with more happy hour and more after-party soon.