After Party with Emily Jashinsky - Midterm WARNING Signs, Cynthia Erivo Confronts Sunny Hostin, & The Truth About Lethal Injection

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

Emily Jashinsky breaks down the growing midterm warning signs for Republicans and surprising bright spots for them in key races, including Debra Messing’s unexpected endorsement of a Republican. She dives into stunning new developments in the “Cornell 7” controversy, from Sunny Hostin revealing that Cynthia Erivo confronted her over her initial comments to Rosie O’Donnell invoking Jeffrey Epstein and Trump while defending Jane Doe. Emily also reacts to a viral frat bro’s self-congratulatory group chat takedown on the case and revisits the Duke lacrosse, UVA and “Mattress Girl” scandals to explain why history may be repeating itself. She reacts to Christa Pike surviving a botched lethal injection and Nidal Hasan facing execution by firing squad, explaining why she opposes the death penalty but believes firing squads are more honest about the violence of execution than lethal injection. Emily then examines the exploding “no contact” movement and why TikTok, therapy culture and changing ideas about trauma may be fueling family estrangement, and more… PreBorn: Dial #250 and say “BABY” or visit https://Preborn.com/EMILY SelectQuote: Compare top‑rated life insurance options. Visit https://SelectQuote.com/emily to get the right coverage at the right price. GhostBed: Discover how GhostBed’s cooling, pressure-relieving design can help you sleep more comfortably and wake up feeling refreshed, plus get an extra 10% off their lowest prices of the season at https://GhostBed.com/EMILY with code EMILY. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to After Party. The midterm elections are less than a month away. I'm about to roll a video of Trump voters talking about who they are going to vote for in the great state of Michigan. So many election updates to breakdown. I'm also going to bring in what I think is weirdly good news for Republicans in just one moment. Later in the show, we're going to get into some really deep stuff. Like, for example, a callback to some of the similar cases to Cornell 7, Duke, UVA. We're going back to them. And we're going to break down a new Wall Street Journal story about going no. contact, please subscribe if you haven't yet. It's a really, really good way to help us keep doing our independent journalism here on after Friday, subscribe on YouTube. Wherever you get your podcast, email me at Emily at double-acremedia.com. And I will include your email in our Friday shows on the podcast side. But let's start with elections because once again, we are less than a month away from the midterm elections. And MS now impaneled a group of former Trump voters in Michigan. You can see them. They're sitting around a room. You can see their faces. You can see some of them seem tortured and utterly disillusioned with the state of politics. It's kind of a good reminder

of why some people chose to vote for Trump. We forget here in Washington, people don't put a lot of faces to the kind of hypothetical person who voted Biden and then, I'm sorry, voted Obama, then voted Trump, then maybe voted Biden, and then maybe voted Trump again. But that's a, that's a real person in a lot of these rest belt states. Many of you know people like that in a lot of these rest belt states, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, those types of places. And here we have MS now asking a panel of Trump voters who they're voting for in this is huge election to try and flip that Senate seat away from Republicans between Mike Rogers and Abdul El-Said. Al-Said is leading across just about all of the polls.

Here's the clip. Show of hands, who has decided who they're going to vote for in the Senate race? How many of you are going to vote for Mike Rogers? It's about one hand. How many of you are going to vote for Abdul Al-Said? It's about four or five hands. And how firm do you think you are in your choice to stick to that? I'm about 90%.

If I don't vote for him, I'm not voting. Right. That's how I would be too. I wouldn't vote for my practice. Okay. And so if you're listening to that, it was a room for, I would say it was probably 15-ish people somewhere around there. And less than half the room had made up their mind.

And more people, though, of those former Trump voters, of the people who had made up their minds were going for Al-Syad. over Donald Trump. Now, let's put up this element. The Cook Political Report has made changes as of just yesterday. They said the Kansas Senate race, they ranked it from lean Republican to toss up North Carolina Senate race, Lean D to likely D. No huge surprise there, obviously, but New Hampshire Senate race, they went from toss up to lean D. So between North Carolina and New Hampshire, you saw races that were likely going to go to Democrats just going further in that camp anyway. But Kansas is a pretty interesting surprise of the midterm cycle. It wouldn't be like

this probably if Trump hadn't started the Iran war, meaning gas prices, gas prices, gas prices. And the fact that inflation was not was steadily going down before Iran and has now ticked back upwards and people don't know what's in sight for them the rest of the year. That's obviously a big factor in the Kansas Senate race. It's a huge factor in the Michigan Senate race because we had a voter call into the Megan Kelly Rap-up show. The guy's name was Rob and Michigan who drew of diesel truck for his business and he was saying he might just have to park it because he can't keep swallowing the costs of increased diesel he didn't want to vote for abdu al-sayad he didn't want to vote for mike rogers either i don't know where he's going to land but he was pissed to say the least like you

see with some of those voters in the ms now focus group i get it's ems now by the way believe me cook political report is now estimating democrats will pick up between two and six senate suites seats that they say is squarely within the range of the four seats that democrats need so what it's starting to look like is the great vindication of Mark Halpern, because if we toss this up on the screen, mentioning Kansas, the Senate Leadership Fund, that is like Senate, like literally, it's named, it's one of the most well-named groups in politics because it actually is the fund that Senate leadership, so John Thun World maintains, they are pushing another $14 million into Kansas. This should be a very safe seat for Republicans. You don't remember Halperin was on the show last

week to break down his report suggesting, as Steve Dees over in Iowa said as well, that Republicans who are in comfortable races or what should be comfortable races are not feeling comfortable. And in fact, some of them believe that if they're up by one or two points in the polls, they may actually be down and they may be losing. That would include places like South Carolina where Republicans are now realizing they have to put a lot of money. Trump just put out a tweet about Darlene Graham's opponent, I think you call Tranny instead of Annie, something like that. But you can tell that Republicans are starting to sweat about South Carolina. South Carolina. What all of this tells us is that obviously the climate is really bad for Republicans, but the question is what,

like how big of a bloodbath that said this is, how big of a blue tsunami it is, the fact that Republicans are now moving money to Kansas, to Kansas with less than a month to go before the election, would tell people that that Cook political report rating of between two to six seats is probably leaning more heavily on the five to six seats in the five to six seats direction. So you have Mary Palpola doing very well in Alaska. I highly doubt Dan Osborne is going to win in Nebraska. I shouldn't say I highly doubt. I doubt Dan Osborne is going to win in Nebraska. But if this is one of those years where something was missed in the polling that underestimated the, the Democratic enthusiasm and possibly as that focus group shows, is not.

picking up on Trump voters who have flipped to Democrats. And it's just the waiting is off is off because the Trump voter, as we saw in 2016, is a kind of unique person in American politics. And what they do in midterms can be unpredictable because Trump is not on the ballot. And now that Trump's approval rating is as low as we've really seen it, it's just hard to account for all of these things. So I would say right now, nobody knows what direction that goes and pollsters could still be undercounting Republican voters because Republican voters don't want to talk to pollsters. Like, that's all baked into some of the models now and they try to account for that, but it could still, that could still very much be a thing. We don't know, right? We don't know whether

this becomes just a moderately bad year for Republicans or a really, really bad year for Republicans. But what I would say right now is that the tea leaves in places like South Carolina, places like Texas, where Ken Paxton has never led, has never led in the real clear politics average, once has Ken Paxton had the lead in that is the Republican Senate candidate in Texas where Mike Rogers is down in Michigan you're having these problems that's pretty significant for Republicans when they're trying to gauge how bad of a year it could be and that does make a big difference because it speaks to how big Democrats majorities will be in the House and the Senate, meaning how much power leadership will have in terms of bringing bills to the floor doing

investigations, like it is fairly significant. Because you can imagine if Democrats have, what Republicans have now, a tiny, tiny margin, it means a lot. They get to decide who's the head of the committees. They get to control the floor, all of that. But it's significant because if they have a big margin, they're going to actually be able to really move legislation and they'll have more votes on impeachment and all that kind of stuff. So not like you're great for Republicans, but, but all that is to say, There are some interesting signs people are not talking about and racist people are barely paying attention to that I think are also worth mentioning to kind of balance out our perspective on what's happening around the country right now. Obviously, gas prices are high. They are stubbornly high. People are not happy with the war. They're most unhappy with cost of living. They voted Donald Trump into office because he said he was going to make it easier to afford a good life in the United States.

and when gas prices are higher and inflation did not continue to go down. It did before the Iran War, even with the tariffs. We talked about that the other week, analyses that the tariff impact on inflation had stabilized and really been a lot lower than a lot of people expected. That stopped coming down right when the Iran War started. People are mad about prices. They're also mad about the war, but most importantly, they're mad about prices. And so candidates, though, make a big difference.

This is interesting. If you look at the real-clear politics average in Wisconsin for the governor race, where Tom Tiffany is up against David Crowley. It was going to be Francesca Hong for a moment, but the polls proved to be very wrong on that. Now, primary polling is different than general election polling, but Crowley is up in the real-clear politics average by a bit. I'm going to do this in New York, and I'm going to do this in Wisconsin. I'm going to do this in Minnesota. So stay tuned. Starting with Wisconsin.

Kind of interesting here. Tom Tiffany is within the margin of error in the latest Marquette poll of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points. You can see that up on the screen. I'm going to lean in a bit. So yeah, it's up. It had Crowley up three. The latest Marquette poll had Crowley up three. Well, the margin of error was plus or minus 4.3 percentage points. It actually drives me insane when people report on these polls without reporting that it's within the margin. Now, that could, of course, mean margin going in a different direction, but it could also mean that Tom Tiffany is actually winning the Wisconsin race. And that's, I mean, to even be within the margin of error in a state like Wisconsin, I find very interesting because this is such a bad

climate for Republicans. Everybody remembers what happened to Scott Walker and his gubernatorial election. So that's quite, that's quite significant, I would say. And there's still time. And Tiffany has been moving roughly in the right direction on that. Now, let's go to New York. Barely anybody is paying attention to the New York governor race. But it's also very interesting. Very, very interesting. A merest poll recently, RCP average has Kathy Hokel up. Yeah, it's like 11 points.

So Kathy Hogle is, I think, clearly winning this race. But the most recent Marist poll that was factored into the RCP average had Bruce Blakeman up, 49 to 42 with independent voters. He's clearly winning upstate voters. He had like 51%. So over half of upstate voters. But he is up with independence, up with independence in the state of New York over Kathy Hokel.

So that Marist poll had Hockel up 11, which is similar to her RCP average. But Blakman up 49 to 42 with independence. And as if to underscore this randomly, again, not getting a lot of attention here, the star of the Trump 1.0 resistance. Deborah Messing has endorsed the Republican opponent to Kathy Hokel in New York. York's gubernatorial election. This is a New York post headline. State Dem backer, Deborah Messing endorses GOP's Bruce Blakeman for New York governor. She said he's, quote, what we need. Reading a little bit from the article here, Will and Grace actress Deborah Messing is snubbing

Kathy Hochel and instead backing Republican Bruce Blakeman's gubernatorial campaign. It's quite a sea change for Messing, who once stumped for Hillary Clinton for president and donated to far-left actress Cynthia Nixon's campaign for governor in 2018 and how much. has been, at least until recently, a staunch critic of Blakeman boosting President Trump, but Brooklyn Native Messing, who appears in a video, she did a video with Blakeman, has complained about what she claims is a decline in her hometown's condition. Quote, this is from Deborah Messing, bear in mind, the person who endorsed Cynthia Nixon's gubernatorial campaign back in 2018. She said, the decline in this city over the last four years

has been so exponential and devastating, economically, socially, and on every level. And obviously we've lost so much business here. People are leaving, said messing. She called New York City, quote, the city I love, but quote, it's not the city I love anymore. I believe in all my heart that you are the answer. You are the affordable campaign candidate. She told Bruce Blakeman, quote, people are just really struggling. They need their utilities to be lower. She also alluded to the $9 congestion pricing toll to enter Manhattan and said, quote, it's just too expensive to live in New York City. And I love the fact that it that is at the top of your mind. She told Bruce Blakeman.

I don't know what the hell is going on there. I really don't know what's going on there. But Blakeman is winning more than half of voters upstate, according to that Marist poll. And with independence, he's winning. Now, Debra Messing is hardly an independent. That is a died-in-the-old Democrat. And for some reason, she's got behind Bruce Blakeman.

Her reason is affordability. And that is a thing that is going to happen in blue states around the country where the incumbent, even in the Trump economy, the incumbent owns the local economy. And that's kind of interesting. In Wisconsin, there's a democratic gubernatorial incumbent. For example, in Minnesota, there is a democratic gubernatorial incumbent. So Michelle Tovoya, as we've covered here, it's getting very little attention nationally. But Michelle Tofoya, we can put this next one up on the screen. A recent poll had her 46 to 45%.

This was an insider advantage poll late September. 46 to 45%. Flanagan up 46, Michelle Tofoya, at 45. Well, I checked the margin of error on that one. The last two polls, Flanagan was up one points and two points. The margin of error in those polls, the insider advantage margin of error was plus or minus 2.95. And then in the other poll, the margin of error was plus or minus four. That can be Michelle Tafoya is winning the Minnesota gubernatorial election.

Now, if Halperin is to be believed, if Mark Halpern is to be believed, Senate election, but if he is to be believed, and by the way, Democratic incumbent in that seat as well. So that's what's interesting about these races where we're seeing a couple of Republicans playing it closer than arguably they should be, is that they're going up against, even if the candidate is not an incumbent, the incumbent party. right? And so if Halperin is correct and his reporting is enormously strong, as like as as reporting can possibly get industry-wide, everybody would tell you that, the sourcing that he has on this. That means Republicans believe the climate in these elections is worse than the polling

shows. So that could mean that Tofoya is actually down five. It can mean DeFoya is down 10. Right? We saw it in Susan Collins' election back in 2020. Sarah Gideon was the toast of the town here in Washington, D.C. Democrats were very excited about her. She was up easily in the polling. The polling actually looked like the Hockel election right now, Hokel-Blakeman. And Collins ended up winning with an easy margin. She won, but I think what she was down by in the polls, roughly.

It was like she was down eight or nine and ended up winning by seven, eight or nine, somewhere around there. But it's possible that the polling gets this stuff really wrong. Now, that was a tough year to poll, of course, for obvious reasons. But we've seen it before. The question is just which direction it goes in where. Either way, it's not going to be good for Republicans. I'm very confident saying that. The question is how bad and whether than areas where Republicans found good candidates recruited somebody like Michelle Tofoya. I mean, Tofoya, like Mike Rogers, is now singing a different tune on the Iraq War. Alpha News got an exclusive, Iran War, I should say.

Alpha News gotten exclusive with her recently where she said no president, Republican or Democrat, has a blank check to wage war indefinitely without getting the consent of Congress and the support of the American people. Iran cannot be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon, but we are seven months into this conflict and Americans are in pain from higher prices. President Trump needs to level with the country about our strategy and the path forward. There was also another Ken Paxton leak of him griping about Trump and the drags that's caused on his campaign just this morning. Another leak, and this confirms my theory.

It doesn't confirm my theory. I can't confirm it. But I should say, I think augments my theory, supports my theory, that these are leaks that are coming from inside Paxton world. I think they're trying to get permission in a red state where Trump is very popular to distance themselves from Donald Trump. I think to FOIA, and you can see in this statement, is doing something. something similar. She had previously been a supporter of the Iran war, but if you're, she's threading the needle pretty cleverly in the statement. She's saying, no president has a blank check to wage war indefinitely without getting consent of Congress and the support of the American people. So

right now, Defoy is saying it's, quote, indefinite. And he can't have a blank check. And so it's, it's kind of a process complaint. And she's saying we are now seven months into this conflict, right, to kind of make a distinction between why she once was more supportive of the war. and why she now isn't. Mike Rogers got grilled about something similar on Fox News yesterday by Martha McCallum. But what you can see here is they're trying to distance themselves from Trump

because the consensus is building that in this midterm election, previously the logic has gone with Trump, that in midterms, what you need to do is mobilize the Trump base. Mobilize the Trump base. Get those people to the polls, hardcore MAGA. Make sure that they vote,

even though Trump is not on the ballot, because MAGA voters are very excited about change. They're very excited about upsetting the status quo, and they're very anti-left in many cases, even if they have previously voted Democrat, whatever it is. If they think the left is anti-Trump, they're very pro-Trump.

So they will show up to support Donald Trump. Trump has said, pretend that I'm on the ballot. So if the strategy, this murder-term election, is that there aren't enough voters like that anymore to make a big difference, it's actually to go for those independents, right? Halpern is correct. He told us last week on the show. He said every election is about turnout and independence, right? Some people try to say it's one or the other. It's about,

midterms are all about turnouts. Well, no, it's also about persuasion and getting independence to support you. But what we may be seeing is Republicans deciding that the independence are going to be more important, people who are going to vote and who are genuinely up in the air this cycle this time around because they feel like the MAGA base is maybe a bit too depressed. And I just mean depressed in terms of enthusiasm, depressed, not psychologically depressed, although that may be true of some people. But it's a bit too depressed to be worth putting a bunch of money into trying to, putting all of the money into trying to boost, boost, boost, turnout.

Instead, try to persuade persuadable independence in places like Michigan, in places like Minnesota, and maybe in places like Texas, where Kemp-Paxson seems to want permission. Again, this is a red state. This is not Minnesota. where here in D.C. on Capitol Hill, people kind of always understand that in a place like Minnesota or Wisconsin, the candidate is going to want to put a little bit of distance between themselves and an unpopular Republican president or Democratic president, depending on the election cycle. This is Texas. So Trump is going and doing all of his rallies that probably is, I mean,

it's easy for them to do the rallies. It's expensive, but it's relatively easy for them to do the rallies. and you're trying to rally the base, get those people to 100% absolutely get out the vote. Yes. But now it seems like candidates are balancing that. Like Paxton said in one of those leaks that he thinks having the midterm convention was a drag on him, that it was actually harmful that Republicans came to Texas. That might be the turn that we see over the course of the next month. And it may be why you see a couple of Republican surprises in a,

and otherwise likely bleak night on election day. All right. We are going to take another quick break. We will be back with updates in the Cornell 7 case and also the opposite of updates. We're going to go way back, starting with Duke Lacrosse, going to UVA and more. We're going to hit Columbia, the infamous mattress girl story. Then we're going to talk about Crystal Pike, and we're going to talk about this trend of people going no contact with their families.

We'll be right back. For 20 years, preborn has stood in the gap between fear and hope. And this year alone, God has used pre-born to save nearly 60,000 babies, 60,000 babies from abortion. We've covered this a lot here on the show, but since Rovi Wade was overturned, the abortion industry has not slowed down at all. It's actually adapting. So women now face this decision faster. They face it more privately and often more alone than ever before. But every day, instead a pre-born network clinic, a woman sees her baby on an ultrasound, and here's a heartbeat for the first time. And we all know we've all heard stories from people. Everything changed. when that happens. The chance for new life skyrockets. And this year, that moment has led to thousands

of commitments to Christ, proof that pre-born isn't just saving babies, it's saving souls. 20 years in, we still believe we were made for this moment. Will you help us meet the next woman before it's too late? Right now, another mother needs that moment. You can give it to her. Just $28 helps provide one life-saving ultrasound. $140 helps rescue five babies. All gifts are tax deductible. Please give today. Dial pound 250 and say baby. That's pound 250, baby, or visit pre-border. That's preborn.com slash Emily. That's preborn.com slash Emily. Well, America's sweetheart, Rosie O'Donnell is now invoking the Epstein case in her defense of the Jane Doe in the Cornell 7 case. We also have a sunny Hosten clip where she's explaining a little bit of her initial hesitance to stand in solidarity with Jane Doe.

It's a very, very interesting clip. So let's hear from our celebrity friends of the show, starting with Rosie O'Donnell invoking the Epstein case, invoking Trump in in the Cornell 7 narrative, cyclism. I think the answer to why we are not seeing all the files is Donald J. Trump. That's the reason that they're protecting him, because as we all know, there's more than enough evidence, witness testimony, and dead women to accentuate the need for the DOJ to open it up. But they won't because they're all synchophants. He is a very sick man. He is a very dangerous man. and November 3rd, democracy itself is on the ballot. If you care about women getting raped, the Cornell 7, every survivor standing behind me, and every child like I was who was sexually abused, you need to use your voice today.

You need to get everyone you know out to vote because it's not that the fascists are coming. The fascists are here, ladies and gentlemen. They are here. And this is an emergency. Pull the lever, break the glass, sound the alarms. Do not stand for this. I will stand with these women until it is all finished. And the powerful men end up in prison where they belong,

including our president, Donald J. Trump. So she was speaking at an Epstein Bookmobile event. So then she brought the Cornell 7 into it, into this conversation about Jeffrey Epstein, which, by the way, this is, I mean, we've talked about it many times here. Maybe some of you disagree with me. I'm pretty much with her that there was a Trump Epstein cover-up. Now, I probably disagree with her on the likelihood of what was being covered up related directly to Donald Trump in all of that. But I think it's disgusting.

And I think it absolutely protected predators. And so I'm with you there. to bring Epstein and the Cornell 7 together in the case where you have a bunch of undergraduates who were investigated by the school, who were investigated by the police. These guys actually were investigated. Two of them were punished with expulsion. Almost all of them were punished, but two of them did get expelled. Others faced suspensions. They were investigated. They went through the whole Title IX process with Cornell for months and months and months. And actually, let's put this New York Post headline up on the screen. Matthew Ingalls,

quote, one of the seven Kai five paternity brothers at the center of the explosive Ivy League case told Cornell University Police that he was the one too intoxicated from booze and ketamine to consent to sex that faithful 24 night. Records obtained by ABC News showed. Ingle's suggested that the alleged victim, a then 20-year-old student, only identified as Jane Doe in the court papers, was the one who therefore assaulted him during the debauched. and drunk in night and not the other way around as she has claimed. Ingalls has previously been identified as the frat brother who told his brother who told his friends through a fraternity group, the group chat to quote, come whip it out disgusting after another and had announced.

There was, quote, free P word to be had in the house referring to the accuser. Ingalls was the brother who first invited Doe over to the house and propositioned her for a threesome that allegedly devolved into various brothers coming into the room to take terms having sex with her. Ingalls allegedly fell asleep at one point during the sexual encounter prompting another brother to reportedly take his place before he woke again and later rejoined the sex. That was according to documents released by the Tompkins County DA, who's again a Democrat. So that statement, that's from the sworn statement of Jane Doe, who says he did pass out at one point. And now he's saying that it was her. And he's not the only one. Two of them have said she initiated

the contact. This is not an Epstein case. It's not even close to an Epstein case. And it's rather interesting, or it would be rather interesting, to ask Rosie O'Donnell why, by her own standards that she's using to Judge Ingalls, she is not applying those same standards to Jane Doe. Let's hear from Sonny Hostam, who got a call, I guess, got a call from the principal, basically, and the principal in this case was Cynthia Arrivo. We covered Hosten's deep skepticism about jumping to the conclusion that Jane Doe was indeed a victim in this case. She was supportive of, again, the Democratic DA in Tompkins County choosing not to bring charges against the quote Cornell 7 and took a ton of heat from it, a ton of heat for it. Cynthia Arrivo got in touch with some complaints and Sunny Hassan now

appears to be doing something like damage control. Let's listen. So Cynthia Arrivo is a good friend of mine. And she had only seen the clip. And she called me and said, sis, I know you, and I know your heart and I know your life's work has been about protecting women and children. But the clip that I saw doesn't reflect who you are. She said she has had to learn to give people her opinion in a way that they can receive. it rather than just be blunt. And she said that I need to, instead of leading with the law, I need to lead with empathy so that people can receive the law, the message about the law. And that's why the next time we talked about it, I led with that so that people would be able to receive Yes, the problem is that Sunny Austin is just too much of a legal expert to be reacting with feelings and empathy.

That's definitely the problem with Sunny Austin. Her initial statement, which we played last week on the show, made complete sense. It explained why the Tompkins County DA with the sworn statement, the sworn statement. And there is some contention about the sworn statement because it was condensed from interviews that the Jane Doe gave in which she said she felt, quote, with 100% confidence that she was raped. She's like, quote, I don't remember the very event of the very end of the event where I was raped. And now the Tompkins County DA is saying that did not make it to him in the sworn statement. So there is some contention about what went from that big long interview into the sworn statement and then to the DA who made the decision not to charge.

Jane Doe signed off on that statement. She made edits to it, according to the DA, had notes on it, that is to say, marked it up, and they did revisions. And then she signed off on that statement. So it's not as though she was left out, cut out of that process. That is the statement that she signed off on. And Sunny Hosten correctly explained that based on the statement she signed off on, the DA would not have been able to bring charges. Some people then argue, perhaps that's true.

Perhaps something called the voluntary intoxication loophole should be closed, meaning you can still be a victim in a broader range of circumstances if you voluntarily consumed alcohol or drugs. That's what we're now, the new buzzword is the voluntary intoxication loophole. And I think there are some states that have better, clearer laws, having looked into this over the last week. I think there are some states that have better clearer laws on this. Those laws would not work in this case the way that the supporters of Jane Doe here want them to. And by the way, it's so frustrating to get polarized in these cases over supporters and non-supporters of Jane Doe.

I support anybody who went through the trauma that she went through. It is awful. What happened to her is awful. old men sending those text messages, absolutely disgusting. No woman deserves to be treated that way. What she described and signed off on in her own words appears to have been consensual every step of the way over and over again. And I would even argue that about Ingalls. A lot of people are right, not championing Ingalls and saying Ingalls, some of it is owning the lips, but saying Ingalls is the real victim here. Now, let's be consistent. What this shows is people getting

intoxicated, consensually engaging in sex, to the point where they were falling asleep, passing out, blacking out, browning out, all of that. But the evidence suggests that there was no exploitation in terms of consent, in terms of incapacitation over and over again. You do get cases where a stone cold sober man, or mostly sober man, has a blacked out woman on the bed, and takes advantage of her. These kids are all absolutely hammered. By every account, absolutely hammered. So closing the quote-unquote voluntary intoxication loophole

as everybody is now calling for, I don't think would have changed what the Tompkins County DA did in the first case with this situation. I also wanted to play this TikTok of a guy weighing in on his group chat. Let's just roll it. This tweet was sent earlier today. Deshawn Watson going off in honor of the Cornell 7 chills and two people in the group chat laughed at that two people that I actually you know like I thought would know better and the guy who sent it I find it insulting that he felt comfortable enough to send that and all I did had to do to call him out in the group chat was say three words I said that's not funny so self-congratulatory as soon as I said that

People rolled back. They removed their laughs. They understood where I was coming from. And they realized that was right. I don't understand where we're at with men in this country where they feel comfortable enough to say shit like this and get away with it. And to even do even worse shit, like the Cornell 7, like Deshawn Watson.

And Donald Trump literally today said he feels sorry for them because he feels like they won't get a fair shake, the Cornell 7. And like even referring to them, the Cornell 7 is corny as fuck. Like, these guys are rapists. These guys should be going to jail. And everyone in that group chat, that's what they're accusers for the guys,

should be held accountable, but only takes one person to stand up and say, that's not funny. Super low lift. Literally the bare minimum you can do. It's a humble brag about how he said those three words. That's not funny. And solved sexism, misogyny, and violence

with one neat. trick. Well done, dude. And that's what's so frustrating about this case is that people are glomming onto it as a virtue signal. And he asked the question, I don't understand what's happening with men in this country. Actually, what makes men more likely to joke and laugh about this stuff is the fact that they genuinely are furious and resentful in some healthy ways and some not healthy ways about what has happened for years in cases like this one. And guess what it is absolutely true. that way too many men historically through time memorial and now get away with this shit. Absolutely true. It will always be true, unfortunately. We should have a system in a society

that minimizes that to the maximum extent possible without depriving other people of their civil liberties or devolving into kangaroo courts, which is exactly what happened when the Obama administration tried to create more balance and more protection for women through Title IX, specifically through Title IX on college campuses in the early 2010s. It was a decision. disaster. I'm going to explain more of that in a minute, but it's actually a very good explanation for why a lot of men are so resentful. They're making memes about that shit on social media. And what's frustrating is when people jump onto this case with the most facile understandings of actually pretty basic, easy to understand facts about what happened and use it as a virtue signal to perform.

or to brag about their own virtues in the group chats and on TikTok without having any basic understanding of why some people are pouring cold water on the rush to judgment two years later in this case. I want to take a real walk down memory lane because why am I covering this case so much? When I was in college, one of the hottest topics for young people was quote-unquote rape culture. This led to the Obama administration. This was like the height, by the way, of the feminist blog movement. So Jezabel, feministic, all of those places. Tumblr was still big at the time. All of those places were run by very hardcore feminists.

They had an outsized voice in the culture. They had a lot of influence over at places like the half-year. PATHyton Post and the pages of the New York Times, the Atlantic. It was a very, very powerful movement at the time. And that led to the Obama administration changing the Title IX regulations. On the basis of sex, you're not allowed to discriminate. This was before they changed sex to also include gender identity, which we've talked about many times here as well. But it changed the way college campuses investigated rape and sexual assault. It all happened about five years after the infamous Duke LaCross case.

And if you have not studied the basics of the Duke LaCross case, you cannot possibly understand, to quote that bro-tick-talker, what's happening with men in this country. Because this was the first of a handful of cases, especially with millennial men, that forged serious resentments, sometimes in healthy ways, sometimes in unhealthy ways, but with justifiable cause because of the way these stories were treated by the media, by the political class, not just Democrats, and then also by the broader left. If you don't know the name Crystal Mangum, you should. Because back in the late 2000s, Crystal Mangum's name was absolutely everywhere.

The Duke Lacrosse case was splashed across the media. for weeks and then really was a significant story for about a year afterwards. Some people may have missed that just within the last year or two, Crystal Magnum came out and admitted she made the whole story up, implicating these Duke lacrosse players in horrific series of abuses. Let's take a listen to Crystal Mangum admitting what she did recently. I testified falsely against them by saying that they raped me when they didn't, and that was wrong. And I betrayed the trust of a lot of other people who believed in me and made up a story that wasn't true because I wanted validation from people and not from God.

It's pretty well said. But that's Crystal Mangum in her own words. And if somebody had eardropped into the time when this story was splashed across the media, social media didn't really exist at the time, but had airdrop back and brought a message from the future saying, Crystal Mangum in the mid-2020s is going to admit to having made this all up to testifying falsely, there would be jaws on the floor because of the way these players were being treated at the time. a lot of commentators, analysts, because of the very real fact that men are on average stronger than women and have and always will take an advantage of women due to their physical size, due to their biological differences,

this is always going to happen. And so that's a real thing that we have to contend with is men and women living in society. it does not mean that the court of law or the court of public opinion should balance women's testimony should weight it any heavier than it waits men's it should come to it we should come to these conversations clear-eyed about the differences between men and women but we don't get to rush to judgment because this is what happens and the lives of those guys were ruined at least for years they're coach's life. He did an interview with 60 minutes that you can plug into YouTube and watch. His life was ruined. The Obama administration comes in the early 2010s, changes the Title IX guidelines.

Feminists tell anybody who pushes back that they are perpetuating rape culture. And what ended up happening is it was like once every couple of months, a story like the Cornell 7 story, usually just involving one man and one woman, would hit the press. It was happening more frequently than that. And provide an example. of why it is wrong to rush to judgment in these cases. Is it the most important thing happening in the world right now? No, but I'm talking about it because it happens to be square in my own experience. When I started working in media, when I was a college student, these are some of the cases that I was paying attention to covering and researching. I worked for Christina Hoffsummers

at the American Enterprise Institute at the time, and Christina was paying very close attention to these cases because she had just finished the re-release of the book The War Against Boys. Talk about a war boys, an unjust war against boys, where we are changing the standards to wait one sexist testimony differently from another. Basically, that's what it did. Emily Yoffie ended up doing a wonderful three-part series in the Atlantic in 2017. I'm going to read from it in a bit. But before I do, I just want to download in everyone's mind a couple of other stories that came out of this era that I'm again talking about this case so we don't go back to that era because we already ran this experiment where we thrust some of these cases that had already been litigated via

university Title IX proceedings, which are not perfect and have plenty of their own problems. Again, remember, two of these kids were expelled for sexual assault. One of them now says he was sexually assaulted. So whether or not the Title IX case accounted for all of that, he told the Title IX investigators that he was too incapacitated to consent. Is the Cornell University Title IX investigation capable of handling it? That's a separate question for now. But it's That's a very real question. This happened all of the time. We ran this experiment.

We're seeing something very similar and we're seeing so much. I mean, we're almost getting to Duke lacrosse level. It's hard to compare apples and oranges because social media makes us different. You don't just have a few networks and the cable channels to compare the coverage to, but we're almost getting to Duke lacrosse level with Cornell 7, if not actually we're already there. Talk to 20-something and ask if their TikTok feed is full of this. probably hear, yes, especially from young women. There was a case about a Rolling Stone reporter,

Sabrina Rubin Erdley, who published a horrific rape story out of the University of Virginia. I think this was in 2015. It fell apart, but not after, again, feminists, journalists told the people who were raising questions about the plausibility of the story that they were perpetuating rape culture or implied they were perpetuating rape culture. This was the fire that forged Gamergate, which some people think is like the skeleton key to the entire cancel culture world, to the entire anti-woke backlash, to what was being called at the time, the alt-right. Some people think it's a skeleton key that explains the entire Trump movement. It was cultural dysfunction. It was unjust and it created a lot of resentment, some of which

are channeled in very unhealthy ways. And if you're upset about young men being angry and resentful, some young men being angry and resentful and channeling that energy and very unhealthy, ways, you should pursue a standard of justice in the court of public opinion when these cases come up. You should not rush to judgment. You don't have to say a damn word in these cases. And you shouldn't, if you don't know what you're talking about, if you're not going to bother to acquaint yourself with the very recent history of what's happened. Here's a report. A corporate media report. This is CBS News. I found a very similar one from ABC News. This is CBS News. after the Rolling Stone report collapsed in the most spectacularly embarrassing way,

one of the worst journalistic disasters on its own in the modern industry. Because again, I cannot convey to you how prolific the panic over the story was. Let's roll it. Well, the jury says Rolling Stone magazine and reporter Sabrina Erdley is liable for malice for publishing a now discredited story about a gang rape at a university. Liable for malice. ...Fritorytaternity house. The multi-million dollar lawsuit was brought by Nicole Aramo.

She's an administrator at the school. The 2014 story falsely reported that Aramo discouraged a student at the school from reporting the alleged rape. A police investigation found no evidence that the incident ever occurred. Joining me now by phone is CBS News legal analyst Ricky Cleman. Ricky, I want to this article. Boy, did it set up a firestorm at the University of Rivers. Virginia and really schools nationwide, even prompted police to launch an investigation into the alleged assault.

What do you make of this verdict? I actually expected this verdict. I have said on CBS this morning that Nicola Romo may be one of the only, is not the only, public figure. She was labeled a limited purpose public figure. When we think of a public figure, usually we think of a politician or a celebrity. But Nicola Romo, the then dean, had been the face of the university. So the judge declared as a ruling. She was a limited-purpose public figure.

Why is this important and why is this verdict really so interesting? What happens is if you are a public figure, you cannot win if a newspaper or magazine simply publishes something negligently. You have to show that the magazine in this case, or newspaper Rolling Stone, published with actual malice. And another way of phrasing that is a reckless disregard for the truth. That standard is astronomically high. But I said it once, and I believe it's true because the jury said it too, that in this particular case, Nicola Romo, as a limited purpose public figure, could show that this was terrible, terrible journalism,

and it really was done with reckless disregard for the truth. Yeah, that wasn't on Hannity. That was from CBS News. It was CBS News legal analyst at the time. This story is widely accepted as a journalistic disaster. Those are two of the most high-profile cases that have fallen apart. Duke Lacrosse, UVA. If you haven't heard of the name Emma Sulkowitz,

You're definitely not a millennial like me. God bless you. But when I was in college, there was a girl named Emma Salkowitz, who became known as, quote, mattress girl and was blanketed across corporate press. Friendly coverage, credulously buying the story that she spun. So I'm going to read a little bit here from Kathy Young,

reflecting on this case in reason. Emma Salkowitz, she wrote, The infamous Mattress Girl, surfaced this week on National Public. radio talking about her efforts to get a serial predator, a sadist in the truce meaning of the word, that's quote, off the Columbia University campus. Sulkowitz referred to in the story as an quote, activist and survivor, and that's an important point from Young because that is the media tipping its hand and wading the credibility of the woman. Young goes on to say,

mentioned that the subject of her efforts went a settlement from Columbia this month in a lawsuit charging that Sulkowitz's activism amounted to gender-based harassment. When a disciplinary hearing in late 2013 cleared Paul Nungesser, that's man who was accused, of charges that he raped Salkovich, she refused to accept the outcome. Her protest, which included carrying a mattress on campus for most of her senior year to represent the, quote, weight of her victimization, made her the heroine of a new feminist revolution. It was considered a piece of performance art and celebrated as a powerful piece of performance art. You can go back in Google, you will see it absolutely everywhere. This was an important victory, not just for Nungesser and his family, or I'm sorry,

Columbia issued a statement. Remember, this is Columbia, issued a statement. reaffirming Nungessor's exoneration. This was an important victory not just for Nunghesser and his family, but for those who have argued the war on campus rape, however worthy its goals, has often trampled on the innocent. Salkowitz described a brutal assault by a then anonymous friend and occasional sexual partner who she said suddenly turned violent during a consensual encounter, hitting her, choking her, and anally raping her while she screamed in pain. According to Salkowitz, the man was found not responsible after a botched investigation and remained enrolled at the university, even though he had been accused of sexual assault by two. other female students as well. This was, again, being used as an example of why the Obama administration standards were important and maybe not even enough. That was the feminist argument. Kathy writes, the facts grew considerably mercury when I read an earlier report on the case in Bwag, Columbia's

online student magazine. The multiple complaints it turned out were not independent of each other and the other two women were not alleging rape. One was an ex-girlfriend who had felt emotionally and sexually exploited, that's quote, by the accused. Though she did not recognize it as abuse at the time, she and Sulkowitz both decided to file complaints after sharing their experiences. The other one said he grabbed her and tried to kiss her at a party when they went upstairs to get more beer. An incident that she admitted that a few hours after the assault she talked to, that she admitted she didn't regard as assault until she learned about the other charges. The annotations, this is in the report and the documents, also contained a surprising claim from Sulkowitz that a few hours after the assault, she talked to a female friend who, quote, explained it was rape. Would that really need explaining?

And why? Because she said it was so violent. Would that really need explaining? And why was there no record of this friend being called as a corroborating witness? In the Title IX investigation, Kathy asks. Eventually, she says, I got an answer, which adds a minor but fascinating detail to the story reported here for the first time. A source familiar with the case confirmed that in her original complaint, Sulkowitz mentioned talking to a friend Tony, not her real name, the day after the incident. Investigators interviewed Tony, but she was not called to testify. The source said all she could say was that Sulkowitz told her she felt weird about what had happened between her and Nungesser. It turned out that Tony was a campus activist. Now, let's turn to 2017. So we cover Dukler. We've covered UVA. We've covered mattress school at Columbia University, 2013. This was playing out over the course of a decade until the Trump administration came in in 2017, and then education department head Betsy DeVos immediately got to work trying to make these standards better. Not get rid of all of it, but make them better. And actually, DeVos's new standards,

it was a Washington Post editorial board at the time, if I remember incorrectly, that supported the DeVos standards. We have played this experiment before, and even the corporate press came around to the side of the center and the right. And at the time it was the quote-unquote intellectual dark web. We have done this before. So Emily Offey does this great three-part series in the Atlantic, looking back on the Obama-era Title IX changes. She interviewed a woman named Lee Burdette Williams, quote, who from 2009 to 2014 was the vice president for student affairs and the dean of students at Wheaton College of Mass. of this was happening at liberal art schools. Before that, she was the dean of students at the University of Connecticut. Yafi says she spent some of her final years in academia overseeing

such tricky cases. She told me that sexual assaults do of course happen, that allegations must always be handled seriously and with great care, and that she herself oversaw the explosion of students who were found to be violators. But she also said that many of the cases she dealt with, especially recently, involved a female student who had had had a sexual encounter that had left her unsettled, but that did not fit the definition of a crime. Does that sound like Cardinal 7 possibly to you? At its worst, Title IX is now a cudgel, Yoffrey writes, with which the government and school administrators enforce sex rules too bluntly

and in ways that invite abuse. That's an uncomfortable statement. It does not cancel or diminish other uncomfortable statements. Women and men are assaulted on campus. Those assaults can be devastating, and the victims do not always receive justice when they come forward. But we have arrived at a point at which schools investigate, adjudicate, and punish the kind of murky, ambiguous sexual encounters

that trained law enforcement officials are unable to sort out, and also at the point at which the definition of sexual misconduct and many campuses has expanded beyond reason. That is what we are at risk are at going back to, after we had a necessary correction. If the Cornell 7 mania scores political victory, should a Democrat come back into office and change the Title IX standards, once again, back to the disastrous Obama era, changes. And it would be really sad if we returned to that in a way that possibly even sends young men in more unhealthy directions, causes, stirs more resentment, more angered, possibly even more hatred. If you were in college at the time, there was a ton of talk about how the change

Title IX standards were making people less likely to have sex, basically. That's what everybody was talking about because men were genuinely concerned. This was like a real fear, especially at elite schools where they were super tuned into these debates because, for example, one had just happened at UVA, Columbia was in the news. People were afraid of hooking up. And it was conservative. I'm not exactly like, oh, yes, everyone go out and have sex outside of marriage. Like, that's great. That's not what I'm saying. But what I'm saying is that people were afraid to actually like get into romantic encounters because they didn't want to be accused, even of, for example, grabbing or kissing, not even just of sex, but grabbing or kissing

in a way that was defined as assault. And because they felt that the standards had been weighted so much that they actually invited abuse, as Yafi put it, we did this, we did this, we ran this experiment. And people suffered. It was bad for men and it was bad for women. And it would be a damn shame if all of that was for nothing because we threw it away when everybody forgot all of those lessons or Gen Z never bothered even look into some of those lessons. It's very recent history. If you're in Gen Z, you're too young to have lived throughout to remember it.

But millennials and older, especially millennials, can tell you this was one of the very biggest stories in the pre-Trump era. One of the very biggest stories for young people in the pre-Trump era and genuinely did have an effect on the way young men and young women. we're experiencing each other and relating to each other. So that's why I'm covering the story a lot. It happens to be kind of right in my wheelhouse. I've covered a lot of this before, but I also think it is very, very important at a time when we can't really afford to further polarize the sexes.

We already see men and women pulling apart from each other on lifestyle questions, political questions. And this starts to make it worse. And in some very unhealthy ways, I think, as well. because even a righteous cause can be channeled in very, very bad ways. And I think we have seen some of that happen, both with women and with men. It's not good for anybody. It's not good for anybody.

I thought it was really worth. I know this was long, but I thought it was really worth revisiting UVA, revisiting Duke, revisiting Columbia, because it's not unreasonable that people who didn't live through this aren't familiar with it. I would argue that people who are speaking publicly, which you don't have to do, should familiarize themselves with the recent history before they speak. Because yes, it's true that women often are not heard and taken seriously enough. But it is also true that because of that, men can be abused in the process and all that can occur in a way that's bad for everybody. So that's why I wanted to talk about this.

We are going to take a quick break. I'll be back with more on Krista Pike. Life insurance, we all know we need it, but we keep putting it off because it feels complicated, expensive, or maybe just like something that can wait. But stop waiting. Take care of it today with Select Quote. In just 15 minutes, high quality coverage can be secured to fit any life and any budget. Here's what makes Select Quote different. Their licensed insurance agents work for the consumer, not for the insurance companies.

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Don't delay peace of mind. Select quote. They shop, you save. Get the right life insurance for you for less at selectquote.com slash Emily, go to selectquote.com slash Emily today to get started. It's actually not often that the death penalty is making major headlines in the news cycle, but of course it is last week and this week with the case of Krista Pike and now the case of Nadal Hassan, whose name you may not remember, but was a very big story back in 2009. So let's start with Krista Pike because many people probably

heard what happened. New York Post is now reporting that Krista Pike can recall her own name and actually has memories of being in the hospital after surviving two botched lethal injections, according to a doctor who advised her legal team. Pike, who is 50, is conscious and speaking after becoming the first death row inmate believed to have survived lethal injection after the bungled execution last week. Her lawyers revealed Tuesday she received the death sentence for brutally murdering her 19-year-old classmate, Slemmer, his name of the victim, in a jealous rage in January of 1995. Krista Pike is guilty. Nadal Hassan also guilty.

Let me put this next headline up on the screen. The Pentagon has announced it will execute a former U.S. Army major by a firing squad, the first military execution in more than 60 years since the end of World War II. Nadal Hassan fatally shot 13 unarmed U.S. soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009, injuring another 32. 13 unarmed U.S. soldiers. Pentagon spokesperson, Sean Parnell, announced on social media on Monday that U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegesheth had made the recommendation and President Donald Trump approved it, the execution is scheduled to take place at Fort Hood in Texas on December 3rd. According to the Secretary of the U.S. Army, it will be the first military execution by firing squad since the end of World War II.

This makes for an interesting juxtaposition. I was listening to NPR this morning, and they had an expert on who said they didn't think that Nadal Hassan would be announced as the first person to be executed by a firing squad if the Krista Pike case hadn't happened. the week prior, that it probably catalyzed that decision. It is a very interesting juxtaposition. I want to get into a little bit of why. These are two useful cases to look at because in both cases, the perpetrator, the person who is set to be put to death, is absolutely guilty of horrible crime, horrible crimes in Nadal Hassan's case, horrible crimes. Just absolutely no question about it. utterly unsypathetic, disgusting people who deserve the highest possible just punishment. Now, we have talked about the death penalty a little bit, especially on our Friday episodes of the show,

which is podcast only. So if you miss those, they are a big part of the show. You can subscribe on Apple or Spotify, wherever you do your podcast. They drop every Friday. We've talked a little bit of the death penalty on those episodes as we get into some of these deeper questions. And many of you disagree with me. I'm very, very anti-death penalty. And my own perspective, which we don't have to get into too much, I've just never believed that it's a just power to grant the state, the power to kill unarmed people, unarmed non-combatants, basically. I just don't believe it. I believe that a sort of building block of civility, decency, Western civilization is mercy. And I think you can toss somebody in the slamer for the rest of their life.

That may be even worse than death, to be honest. Actually, some people argue for the death penalty on efficiency grounds. They say that this is debated. It's cheaper and it's actually more humane than letting someone rot in a prison cell. But that doesn't get to the question that actually is my opposition or that is the sort of foundation of my opposition, which is whether or not it is just to administer to allow the state to administer the death penalty to non-combatant inmate. I don't agree with it, but that's not the point of this. It's not the point of it at all, actually.

So I'm sure I'll get plenty of emails. People disagreeing with me on all of that. But I didn't mean to make a comprehensive argument against the death penalty here. Just wanted to give you a bit of an explanation for why I don't support it. And I wanted that to be on the table when I explain why I think this case is so interesting. Leval injection is a sterile, antiseptic, surgical mask, basically, to minimize our own discomfort with violence. That's what lethal injection is. There's good evidence, by the way, that it is enormously painful.

There's evidence that, like, NPR looked at a bunch of autopsies over several decades and found that it, in like 80% of cases, involves pulmonary edema. So suffocation, the feeling that the person is drowning. Again, maybe you think the person deserves that and you have no sympathy for them. That's beside the point I'm making, which is that the lethal injection masks the violence of it for the sake of us. the inmate looks placid, the inmate looks calm. And there's good evidence, again, that what you don't see is an enormously violent process playing out because we give them a shot actually to make it so that they can't do facial contortions

and the rest of it. So it's either humane or it isn't, and that's fine, right? It's either humane or it isn't humane and that's fine. You agree with it. Right? It's either really violent or it's not really violent. It's either really violent or it's fine, I should say, or it's not really violent and it's totally humane. And that's why I think actually the Heggsuff decision here is much more logically consistent and morally consistent as well.

Lathlethal injection, like I was saying, it's like a mask. It's literally a mask to distance ourselves from the reality of the punishment that we are meeting out. And it seems like we're moving to a direction where people recognize that in the name of humane treatment of prisoners, we have done something very inhumane. It's a weird metaphor for a lot of our politics. That in the name of making ourselves feel humane. humane and feel civil. We have created processes that are much less humane and civil. Personally, I think I'd rather take a bullet than lethal injection. Think about that on your own, like, for yourself. We don't totally know what people experience through lethal injection, but I think that's

also why the Krista Pike story has become such a major one. There are enough botched lethal injections to make people or should be, I would say to make people uncomfortable with the process because we start to hear a little bit of what it feels like. And you see how this process that is meant to look so peaceful, you see the actual violence of it. And this effort to kind of distance ourselves from the violence that we are meeting out comes from the place of us not liking violence, right? but when you distance yourself from it, you end up not owning your own concept of justice, which I believe they're a perfectly good faith, reasonable. It's something I've been torn on myself throughout my own career, but reasonable disagreements with me on that.

Most of my friends disagree with me on that, and I think they have reasonable arguments, and they're coming from a place of good faith. I think it's less reasonable to defend lethal injection because of how much evidence suggests that it is an utterly torturous process that really makes us, more comfortable with something that we should be. It's an illusion, right? It's an illusion to mask the violence of it. So I either own the violence or don't, but don't try to pretend.

It's not what it is. And that's why I thought this particular juxtaposition of Pike and Nidalasan was very interesting and worth dwelling on for just one moment. Big Wall Street Journal story on the news. no contact movement. We're going to talk about it right after this break. It's kind of funny how we've all just gotten used to saying things like, oh, I'm just a hot sleeper, I'm a light sleeper, or my back always hurts at night. Like we're just so used to making excuses for bad sleep. We will accept things like,

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You'll notice the difference almost immediately wake up feeling completely cool, fully supported, and genuinely refreshed. Because remember, bad sleep isn't something that we should just accept. It's honestly not normal. And with Ghostbed, you don't have to just accept it anymore. And best of all, you can try Ghostbed right at home for 101 nights to experience the difference yourself. You can get an extra 10% off the lowest price of the season with my code Emily at ghostbed.com slash Emily. That's ghostbed.com slash Emily promo code Emily. I've been meaning to talk about the quote, no contact movement for a really long time of people going quote, no contact with

their family, particularly with their parents. And a Wall Street Journal story, massive Wall Street Journal story probed into the phenomenon pretty high. helpful way just came out before, though. I actually wanted to start with this clip of Oprah, who did a special 10 months ago on the no contact movement. We're going to get to the journal argument and article in just one moment. But first, Oprah did a special interviewing people who had gone no contact. Again, this was like 10 months ago. This movement has been bubbling up on social media for the last couple of years. And with that Wall Street Journal article, I think it underscores that it's really, really hitting a point of critical mass. So let's listen to a little

bit from Oprah special first, then we'll dig in. I have been no contact with my entire family for a year and a half now. No contact. No contact. Not a phone call, not a text, not a nothing. Nothing. For a year and a half now. Okay. Chris, how about you? It's been four years since I've had contact with my parents and my siblings. Four years? Not a word. Not a word. Okay. And Kendall. I've been no contact with my 30-year-old son for two years. By your two years. By your choice. By choice. Okay.

I have a lot of thoughts on this. I want to start though with the Wall Street Journal, which reported on some of these trends and got some facts to the surface of this kind of murky abstract conversation. We see these videos on social media, people saying they're going to contact. The journal puts some data to it. They say many experts believe that estrangements between adult children and their parents are becoming an epidemic in the U.S. So experts believe this. Just like divorced in 1970s, much like then, the movement is driven by a convergence of large societal trends.

societal trends. This time the rise of social media algorithms, changing therapeutic approaches, and a broadening definition of trauma. Keep that in mind. Quote, many experts agree a shift is underway. Since the pandemic started, the number of social media users discussing estrangement has exploded. Adults share personal stories about how cutting off their parents has improved their mental health. Estranged parents, such as Laura Wellington, aka Dormat Mom, say that estranged children are misguided and spoiled. Most estrangements appear to be initiated by young adults, experts say. Keep that in mind. Most appear to be initiated by young adults. They point to a mental health crisis among adolescents and young adults, a diminished skill for

tough conversations, and a focus on identity over family. But now psychologists say young adults' definition of harmful parental behavior is changing among some 1,000 estranged parents surveyed earlier this month. 82%. So this is surveyed data. 82% identified the increased use of labels such as toxic, abusive, or unsafe. as contributing to the family cutoff, says Peter Anderson, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Beverly Mass, who helps families with estrangements

and conducted the survey. Most estrangement experts point to social media and especially TikTok as one of the biggest boosters of the trend. TikTok blew up in the U.S. in 2020, as people were forced inside early in the pandemic. It's powerful algorithms. Feed people short videos based on what they have lingered on, like your shared. Watch one video about cutting off your parents,

and soon you're deep down a rabbit hole of estrangement content, other social media companies soon followed suit, suddenly going, quote-unquote, no contact, as it is known in internet lingo, was being promoted to millions by a multitude of, a multitude of, quote, estrangement influencers, many of whom claim expertise by virtue of having cut off their own parents. Last month, more than 138,000 new videos. The hard, stone cold facts, 138,000 new videos that mentioned cutting off or going low contact with parents were posted on TikTok more than 10fold, up more than 10fold, compared with August 2020. On TikTok, that is, listen to this. According to ineffigy, which analyzes these social conversations and trends, they supplied that data. More than 82% of the posts were by women. So most experts believe that no contact is being proliferated as a social contagion on TikTok. Most experts believe that it is coming from the young adults themselves.

Most believe it's connected to this broadening definition of trauma. And most, it looks like, most of the people are. posts on social media about this movement are by young women. I'm sure some of the posts, by the way, are by people who are weighing in on no contact. It's hard for researchers to distinguish between people who are disagreeing with no contact and who are approving of it. I'm sure that's where some of the posts are coming from. Basically, this entire conversation has exploded. But what the Wall Street Journal shows in this article is that experts believe it is actually proliferating and is a form of social contagion. And that is profoundly sad, especially at a time,

when we have a loneliness epidemic in the US, we already have a huge problem with people being lonely, isolated, just about as bad as the problem has ever been here in the United States. And on top of that, we now have a social contagion of people cutting off contact with their parents. And really under dubious pretenses, I have to add. And that's what we're going to get into. So Quillette reviewed a new book by Catherine Liu. It's called Traumatized, The New Politics of Public.

I'm sorry, the new politics of public suffering. And Quollett writes that it documents the history of trauma culture and offers a convincing critique of the professional managerial class, the PMC, whose self-serving interests sustain it. Quote, trauma culture, Lou observes, demands blind acceptance of its ideals of political progress, prepackaged in small bites of prevention, awareness, and witnessing. She notes elsewhere that when trauma studies elevated trauma testimony to a sacred realm that defied analysis or history, its scholars embraced anti-intellectualism. as a form of crypto-religious over-identification with trauma testimony.

And when I read that, my mind went straight back to Christopher Lash, culture of narcissism, 1979. And remember, these diagnoses are not coming from, like, movement conservatives. Talking about a university professor, and here I'm talking about Christopher Lash. Lash wrote in culture of narcissism, quote, the contemporary American may have failed, like his predecessors, to establish any sort of common life.

But the integrating tendencies of modern, industrial society have at the same time undermined his quote isolation. This is really powerful, just reading it side by side with the Wall Street Journal article, as I'm doing right now. Having surrendered most of his technical skills to the corporation, he can no longer provide for his material needs. As the family loses not only its productive functions, but many of its reproductive functions as well, men and women no longer manage even to raise their children without the help

of certified experts, the atrophy of older children without the help of, um, certified experts. The atrophy of older traditions of self-help has eroded everyday competence in one area after another and has made the individual dependent on the state, the corporation, and other bureaucracies. So then Lash goes to narcissism, which he says represents the psychological dimension of this dependence. Very similar to what Catherine Lewis saying all these years later. He writes, notwithstanding his occasional illusions of omnipotence, the narcissist depends on others to validate his self-esteem. He cannot live without an admiring audience. His apparent freedom from family ties and institutional constraints does not free him to stand alone or to glory in his

individuality. On the contrary, it contributes to his insecurity, which he can overcome only by seeing his grandiose self reflected in the intentions of others or by attaching himself to those who radiate celebrity power and charisma. For the narcissist, the world is a mirror, whereas the rugged individualist saw it as an empty wilderness to be shaped by his own design. The world is a mirror. The world is a mirror. So Lash is saying that the erosion of our social ties created the culture of narcissism. So Lash would be a critic, of course, of capitalism as part of what, not the only thing, but as part of what started eroding our community ties. Modernity, decadent modernity, capitalist modernity, as what eroded our country.

ties to each other, to the family. People were leaving the home with hour-long commutes to a sterile office building with people they don't really know, and probably we never will know that much, and they spend, in some cases, more time with them than their family. In a community that they don't live in. Maybe you live in suburban New Jersey, and you work in Manhattan around all these other people who don't live there. It's kind of like Mary Harrington's criticism that she makes. She has a great book on this, but of modern feminism. Harrington argues actually that it was industrialization, capitalist industrialization, that created this idea that women needed parity with men by having office jobs.

When in the past, nobody had an office job, right? Parity was having different but equally important roles, different roles, but equally important roles in the household, the immediate village, the immediate community. And as industrialization has frayed some of those ties, Lash is arguing, that fueled a rise in narcissism. Lash was also a great media critic, and you can see he's getting at some of that as well. But just, again, remember he's saying, narcissism represents the psychological dimension of this dependence on others. We depend on others for validation. And now with social media, we start depending on others who are distant, who may just be represented by a like on TikTok

or a share on TikTok or repost on Instagram rules. That may be all that, of that person you ever know. But in the aggregate, you're dependent on them for some validity, or you become dependent on them for some validity. Because we export so much of our social lives onto these global technologies, onto these global platforms. And so it naturally then follows from Lash to lose diagnosis here. Which again, very interesting.

Because as we started looking for validation, In this mirror that last describes, it's so powerful to find that in shared trauma and shared experiences. And it's so easy for that to become a meme. This is another reason why the broad cultural picture makes me uncomfortable with looking at people who think it's right to go quote unquote no contact because they've been gravely wronged by the parents who are maybe just doing parenting. That would go back to the coddling of the American mind with John Haidt and Greg

LeChianov, who's been on the show. show, that book was, I think, published in 2015, about how the coddling of millennials in particular had led to safetyism, right? But I think if you go back to Lash, what you see is safetyism is a form of narcissism, of needing to be validated, asking for validation that maybe you're not getting because safetyism took off on college campuses or the coddling took off on college campuses. Why? People are away from their families and their communities. They were looking for a sense of self. And a lot of young people were going, quote, quote, no contact with their parents. How close do they live to their parents?

How ingrained into the fabric of their everyday lives are their parents and their grandparents? Probably not nearly what it once was. So it makes it a little bit easier. Now, it's not easy for any of these people, probably. But there's an element of narcissism in it. It's probably an element of modern narcissism in all of us. When you see these big picture trends, I know many of you have probably gone through this with people in your lives. Because it really is taking off.

And just giving it a name, like no contact, I think felt to people like a formal diagnostic almost or a formal path. I'm simply going no contact. And it is a method of self-care. Lou writes about self-care, trauma as self-care. But you're expanding the definition of trauma to bring in things like maybe some genuine bad parenting. A lot of bad parenting in the country. question about it. No many people have dealt with that. Not me, of course. Shut up mom and down. Who watch every single episode because we don't go no contact. But pushing through these

things is healthy because these are the people in the world who love you most. Some people have genuinely terrible parents, of course. And in some cases, again, you should be in no contact because it is deeply, actually toxic, dangerous, violent situation, abusive situation. I'm not talking about those cases because I still believe that they're in the might. minority. It is healthy to push through the pain and to try to subjugate the eye for the importance of your family. And again, just even on a individual level, these are the people who love you unconditionally in the world. And even when that's tough, these are the relationships that are most worth salvaging because of that. Because they're a protective shield as you go

through life. So it's not easy. We've been conditioned in all kinds of ways to pursue unhealthy solutions to the obvious and real enduring complications that are going to come up. Because you love people so much. That's why the disputes can be the most painful. We've really been conditioned to deal with them in some unhealthy ways. And now we're being conditioned to even give up on that and do something even more unhealthy. We're just cut everybody off. But pushing through it in a way that really intentionally subjugates yourself, that can feel better than anything else. When you're most angry at somebody, asking what they need can make you feel better than anything else. And listening to them, instead of demanding they hear you, just try it.

That can feel better than anything else. Pushing through instead of giving up because some influencer told you there's a no contact label. that feels easy and almost clinical. I can see why it's taking off. I think it goes back to Lash and Lash's diagnosis of modernity. I wanted to cover this for a long time because you see it so much in the culture these days. And it's just so profoundly sadly.

We really cannot afford more isolation and alienation in this country. So for the good at yourself, the good at your family, the good of your community, and to go to the country. I'd say push through. That does it for us on today's edition of After Party. Please subscribe if you haven't yet. It's the best way to help us out.

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