After Party with Emily Jashinsky - SAVE Act Truth, PLUS Kennedy “Love Story” Secrets, Weinstein Speaks, and Bravo Sued, with Maureen Callahan

Episode Date: March 12, 2026

Emily Jashinsky opens the show with an explanation of what’s really going on with the SAVE America Act, and why elites and the establishment are wrong in framing it as a far-right priority. Then Emily is joined by Maureen Callahan, host of "The Nerve with Maureen Callahan," to discuss the fascination with the new Ryan Murphy series, “Love Story,” and how it romanticizes the relationship between John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy while ignoring how toxic and dysfunctional it actually was. Maureen details her own extensive reporting about the Kennedys and how tragically dysfunctional so many of them are, as well as the questionable candidacy of Jack Schlossberg for Congress and the role the media is playing in promoting him. Maureen also tells a fascinating story about Ryan Murphy’s attempt to option her book, “Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed,” and Emily shares her own story about the Kennedy effort to shut down the movie “Chappaquiddick.” Then the discussion turns to Harvey Weinstein’s new prison interview, Maureen reveals the face-to-face meeting she had with Weinstein, and why men like him convince themselves that they are innocent of wrongdoing. The two also discuss RHONY’s Leah McSweeney and her case against Bravo and Andy Cohen, and Spencer Pratt’s run for L.A. Mayor. Then Emily gives powerful closing thoughts about divisions on the political right, how viral clips often strip important context, and why adults need to be mindful of what they read and how they respond.   Unplugged: Switching is simple, Visit https://Unplugged.com/EMILY and order your UP phone today!   Cowboy Colostrum: Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code AFTERPARTY at https://www.cowboycolostrum.com/AFTERPARTY   Cardiff: Get fast business funding without bank delays—apply in minutes with Cardiff and access up to $500,000 in same day funding at https://Cardiff.co/EMILY Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to another edition of After Party. It's a Wednesday at 9 p.m. Eastern, so we know where you are. Thanks for being here. Tonight's guest is the one and only Maureen Callahan of the nerve with Maureen Callahan. And we pre-taped. Morin keeps normal business hours. So God bless her for that. We pre-taped a huge conversation where Maureen actually goes into some of the background of her own experience reporting on the Kennedy family in light of every. everything going on in pop culture right now with Love Story. Of course, the Ryan Murphy glimpse at the lives of JFK Jr. and Carolyn Beset. Maureen is going to tell us exactly how accurate that is. We're going to go into all kinds of interesting, fascinating, dare I say, questions about that. Harvey Weinstein just gave a massive monster interview to the Hollywood reporter ahead of the Oscars. So we're also going to talk to Maureen about that. we have a really, really big show tonight.

And so I'm glad you're all here. Because Maureen was pre-taped, we're going to have a lot of fun in the chat. I can promise you that. So there's going to be all kinds of good stuff coming up. If you're watching live, go ahead. Head on over to the YouTube chat section. I'll be in there for the duration of the Marine interview. I also want to start by talking about new developments on Capitol Hill.

We're going to get into all of that. First, I always forget. Subscribe. Please subscribe. If you haven't subscribed, please subscribe. Super helpful to subscribe on YouTube. Thank you. Like, comment, all that stuff is very helpful. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Make sure you subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. I do what's called Happy Hour every Friday where on Thursday afternoons. I take your questions via email and the afterparty Emily, Instagram. Email is Emily at doublemycaremedia.com. You can send in those questions. questions, anything under the sun, basically. I'll answer it. And that is only on the podcast edition of the show. So please subscribe there if you haven't yet. All kinds of great stuff to

get to. I do want to start, though, like I teased here, with developments from Capitol Hill. Let's put this up on the screen. Here's a headline in Politico just from this afternoon. Republicans plan marathon debate for the Save America Act. So what does that mean? Well, the Republican grassroots is as animated as I have seen it since TARP, Obamacare. This is, the Save America Act has the Republican base in a state of state of serious anger with Republican leadership. And majority leader, Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, did not make his life any easier

or the situation any better for Republicans by saying this. Here is from Andrew Desiderio of Punchable News. We're going to get back to Punch Bull News in just one moment. But Desiderio said in response to, Brennan Leach of NBC News, who noted that Thune was asked if he felt pressure to pass the Save America Act mounting. Thune replied, this was just on Monday, quote, a lot of that is, it's in the kind of, you know, paid influencer ecosystem. And he said, well, there's support among some Republican senators, quote, the process and how you ultimately try to get a result is still unclear

to me. Fast forward to today. I just read that headline. Politico's reporting Senate Republicans are planning for days of marathon sessions as they try to put Democrats on defense over their controversial elections bill backed by President Donald Trump. The strategy described by two aides granted anonymity to comment on private deliberations is emerging after GOP leaders signaled they will bring the Save America Act to the floor next week. Well, how? According to Politico, quote, it will fall short of the talking filibuster that some hardline conservatives want to force. That's because leaders are still expected to move to curtail debate at some point by invoking existing Senate rules and setting up a vote at a 60 vote margin, meaning it will fail given the opposition from Democrats and even some Republican senators. So what the Republican leadership team is saying at this point is that they're basically going to give a debate that'll probably go for a week, something like that. There will be, as Politico notes, overnight sessions. Democrats will be forced to stay on the floor, quote, to prevent any Republican from calling a final vote on the bill.

We had Rachel Beauvart of the Conservative Partnership Institute on not long ago outlining exactly this strategy. Senator Mike Lee has been sounding the alarm over and over again about leadership's hesitance to do this. Now, this is parliamentary procedure. This is a granular parliamentary procedure stuff. It's not that interesting to most people. But the Save America Act, Donald Trump has picked on bond, is very, very important to the Republican base just today. Trump said John Thune.

He was asked by a reporter. Thune doesn't seem to have the votes. Well, Trump said he needs to be a leader and get the votes. This is what people like Rachel say will happen if you do a talking filibuster or perhaps even in the week-long forced debate. in the Senate over this, which is you make Democrats answer why they don't want the Save America Act. Hmm, interesting. Now, if you are a Senate Republican who pays attention to the New York Times, you see headlines like this one up on the screen right now. Thune is in a vice as Trump and

far right demand fight on voter bill. Okay? The far right and Trump are demanding a vote on this voter bill, All right, well, let's actually go over here to Harvard. Harvard! This is from a recent Harvard-Harris poll. I'm reading the sub-headline here. Most voters back the Save America Act, believing only U.S. citizens should be allowed to vote. The bullet points.

58% of voters believe there is at least some voter fraud in U.S. elections, particularly among Republicans and independents, 58% of independence. despite 60% saying the elections are generally secure. So most Americans believe elections are secure, but there's some fraud. Wow, they sound correct. 85% of voters say only U.S. citizens should be allowed to vote, including a strong majority across political parties.

Oh, far right. Okay. 71% of voters support the Safe America Act, with 54% prioritizing stopping voter fraud over access concerns for eligible citizens. Now, there's this argument that it's disenfranchising voters because you have to get a photo ID, what you have to do to shovel snow, shovel snow in New York City. But you can't, it's disenfranchising to say you need to have photo ID to register to vote. That's the state of play that we're in. People recognize that as ridiculous and patronizing, frankly.

And again, if we say, let's put in the Save America Act, no state shall ever allow people to vote by phone, by smartphone, right? Okay, well, you are, of course, you're disenfranchising people who can't make it to the polls. You can easily see how this argument goes. I'm the type of person who believes you should have one election day and it should be a national holiday. That should be that, except for some mail-in emergency, you know, you're serving overseas, whatever. circumstances. But these arguments about disenfranchising people crumble fairly easily when you start asking difficult questions. It's not that people have their voter IDs easy or their photo ID is easy and the like. But it's that if you want to participate in a secure system, whether it's flying

or shoveling snow, apparently, it's not really too much to ask in the year of our Lord 2026 that you have a photo ID. Yes, it's an extra hurdle for some people, but it's hardly. an unreasonable extra hurdle. Let's keep going through the Harvard Harris poll that was released last month. Seventy-one percent of voters support the Save America Act. Democrats are at 50 percent, 50 percent of the opposing party. Republicans, 91 percent, independent, 69 percent, with 54 percent prioritizing stopping fraud over access concerns for eligible citizens. The majority of voters support specific requirements of the act, including proof of citizenship, voter ID, states removing non-citizens from voter rolls, that polls at 80%.

And states sharing redacted voting roles with the Department of Homeland Security, that pulls at 61%. 73% of voters say we should have a national law requiring all ballots to be counted within 24% of election day. But 68% of voters support early voting, so roughly disagreeing with me, including a majority across political parties. This is how you get covered as far right in the New York Times. I'm just going to throw that up on the screen again. Thune is in a vice as Trump and far right demand fight on voter bill. And it also brings us back to what an error it was for John Thune to say a lot of the pressure is, quote, in the kind of, you know, paid influencer ecosystem. I don't love the paid influencer ecosystem as much as the next person.

But this is to dismiss this in any context as pressure from paid influencers rather than from the grassroots of the Republican Party is a huge, huge error for John Thune. I mean, that's a really, really big, really big error. I mean, I'm going to go here with NBC News. NBC News. You've heard so far from Harvard and NBC News. NBC News goes through what it would actually do. Require proof of citizenship to register to vote. Okay. require photo ID to vote. I'm scrolling through the article if you're listening to this.

Require states to search for non-citizen voters. This is what the bill does. And as Roe Conn, I've said this before, pitches the billionaire tax in California, which I think I disagree with, but as he pitches it as an anti-revolution tax, if you spend any amount of time among conservative voters who look at what happened in Georgia in 2020, where there were votes, so many votes cast by people who were registered in the wrong place that it outnumbered the margin of victory for Joe Biden.

Now, that's not to say Donald Trump would have won the election, and this is where I disagree with many conservatives, but if you look at that and you see how the media called you crazy for bringing up any problems with what happened in Georgia over and over and over again in 2020, And you see places like Washington, D.C., where non-citizens are allowed to vote in local elections. This is a recipe for disaster because we just had a historic surge that basically doubled the non-citizen population of the country in about a three-year time period. So to treat this as far-right fringe unreasonable when you have polling showing the act is popular with the American public, to dismiss it as the Republican majority leader,

the pressure that you're getting as paid influence or ecosystem pressure, just mistake, mistake, mistake, mistake after mistake after mistake. And one of the reasons I wanted to talk about this is actually the Great Account on X, State of Republican, was incensed by, let me put this up on the screen, we'll go back here, to Andrew Desiderio of Punch Bull. after Desiderio, who's a reporter for Punchball, also, I happened to go to school with Desiderio. Super nice guy. Data Republican took issue with this post among a lot of coverage from Punchball and Desiderio. Wow, Andrew wrote, Thune openly blaming, quote, paid influencer ecosystem for hyping the talking filibuster. It's been pretty clear for weeks now that there's a bunch of MAGA accounts being pushing coordinated messages about it, often using the same doctored videos that falsely blame Mitch McConnell for the holdup.

Yeah, there are a bunch of MAGA accounts pushing coordinated messages about it. Probably. That's probably true. But it's because they're in line with the base of the Republican Party, which if you walked into any county party headquarters in this country and started talking to them about the Save America Act, right now at this very moment, the people who phone bank and knock on doors, they would tell you you don't need a paid influence. or ecosystem for them to put pressure on Thune. Take the paid influencers out of it. There would still be plenty of pressure on Thune. It's just...

So Data Republicans sees this and looks at Desiderio's framing of this. I think this is a fair critique, to be honest, and says that is a very Thune-friendly framing. You're accepting his premise that there is a lot of paid influencer pressure. being put on the senator, which, you know, again, can be true, and it can also be true that it's not the greatest source of the pressure. And so the framing comes into question. And data Republicans started going to town, let me go up to the top of this thread, on Punch Bull's coverage and Punch Bulls' relationship with Senate leadership. And Data Republican, if you're not on X, has a website

as well. I think it's just data republican.com. You can follow a lot of like national endowment for democracy type funding, nonprofit type funding on the website, super, super sharp observer and analyst. And if you're outside of D.C., some of this stuff probably does look really surprising to you. Like, why is a reporter parroting the talking point as credible from John Thune and kind of dismissing this as all paid influence or stuff? Well, it's because outlets like Punchbowl really are in existence to manufacture and recycle the conventional wisdom, reinforce is probably a better word, the conventional wisdom of the Beltway establishment. That is their business model. So Data Republican very kindly noticed that last year, over at breaking

points, a source had given us a pitch deck from Punchbowl that they were selling to or that they were using to try to bring in corporate clients, including like Google and the like. And at that time, I'll put this back up on the screen here, I asked the White House straight up because this was Doge era. I think this was like last March, yeah, or last May, so almost exactly a year ago. I asked the White House if it was canceling government subscriptions to Punchbowl in light of all of this. And they said, yeah, several subscriptions were canceled. They were charging corporate sponsors $210,000 for a week of email ads. And we got our hands on this pricing sheet.

Incredible, truly incredible stuff. And I think the most egregious slide I put up on the screen, or I put in this report, was how they framed editorial access. They said, sponsors can buy, quote, editorial features exploring different areas of a mutually agreed upon topic and a podcast series. So at the time, I noted, this is farming out assignment editing to giant corporations. It is absolutely humdrum, normal, banal in D.C. just last week after Anthropic got into a major dustup with the Pentagon, who sponsored Politico Playbook for the entire week. Anthropic! You could, a couple of years ago, find all kinds of meta ads in Playbook and Axios talking about how we must reform Section 230, which is, of course, great. for Facebook because they can afford to lobby for reforms to Section 230 that work well for meta or Facebook, whatever. And so that's the business model for Axios, Politico, Punchbow,

and the like. This is how they operate. They sell coverage that is amenable, reinforces the conventional wisdom for major corporate clients. And they're very close to Senate leadership, whether it's Democrats or Republicans, and House leadership, whether it's Democrats or Republicans, because their Capitol Hill coverage tells lobbyists what they need to know to influence Capitol Hill. So in order to give that information lobbyists, they become very cozy with leadership. They might not agree with leadership. They might sometimes throw a little punch, no pun intended in the nose at leadership. But overall, they will do whatever it takes to maintain their access to House and Senate leadership,

because that's what the Brad is buttered. That's what the corporate sponsors love. Love, love, love. So I thought it was great to see Data Republican picking up on this with Thune World and Punchable World because this is a great example of how, well, dare I quote Chomsky and say consent is manufactured by elites to dismiss the concerns about the Save America Act as the far right and Trump. These are coming from the far right in Trump.

This is coming from a paid ecosystem of influencers as opposed to the United States. as opposed to the pressure coming from those people who make phone calls to their members, make phone calls to their senators, and are knocking doors for the county Republican Party, the real grassroots. That's where the pressure is coming from. And it's important to know why the Capitol Hill rags cover the process, the way that they cover the process. And this becomes, again, licensed for the New York Times to dismiss the concerns as being from the far right. it becomes licensed for Thune to have throwaway lines when reporters come up to him and say it's about paid influencers. This is a glimpse into the process.

It's a glimpse into how the ugly, ugly sausage is made. You'll have a newsletter every once in a while that's covering, not even every once in a while, that's covering defense policy or Amazon. And you scroll up to top and it says, oh, this letter was sponsored by Amazon. But in the copy of the story, it doesn't mention that at all when it's up on the website. website or whatever. It doesn't mention that. You have to see it on the newsletter if you're just an average news consumer to see that. If you're looking at tweets or social media posts from the reporters, you don't know that they have sponsorship from Facebook or Amazon or whatever else. So I can go on and on about this forever, but we have a very big Maureen Callahan conversation to air. So thanks for sticking around as I did my best to kind of debunk the convention. wisdom that gets pushed by the conventional wisdom machine here in Washington, D.C., the corporate conventional wisdom machine that is humming as ever here in Washington, D.C.

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As promised, everyone, I'm about to head on into the YouTube chat for our collective imbibing of Marine Callahan's wisdom, which will start right now. I'm so happy to be joined once again by the great Maureen Callahan. She is the host of The Nerve with Maureen Callahan. Maureen, great to have you back. Thanks for thanks for having me back, Emily. It's great to be with you. Such a pleasure. And on Oscar week, no less, a big week for you, Marine. And actually, you're doing a live stream, which is so fun, right? It's on Sunday.

Yes. Yes. The nerve is doing our third, I think it's our third live stream, Oscar night, going to be our biggest and best one yet. We started 6.30 p.m. Eastern for some good old school red carpet coverage. Our mission with red carpet awards coverage is extremely. an extremely humble attempt to take a little bit of the vacuum left by the late great Joan River. So we've got lots of guests. We've got lots of surprises. We've got one very special guest, Emily, that we have been trying to land probably since the nerve began. Oh, it's Megan Markle.

And it is not, unfortunately. Megan's got other fires to put out, quite frankly. But we're very, very excited. So we hope everyone tunes in just for some of the insanity. Yeah, I can't wait. I don't think anyone can see it. I was trying to move. But behind me, I have a giant framed Warhol-style picture of Joan Rivers,

because I think that's Joan Rivers. Is it in like a quadrant? Like a Joan Rivers? It's not a quadrant. It's just one. It should be a quadrant. No, I mean, he did those other big ones too, but that's incredible. Yeah.

Well, and it's, I mean, this is why what the nerve does is important because it's a story about the media at its heart and how the media is, we're about to talk about the Kennedys. The media is often fawning towards celebrities in ways that it is towards politicians, but even more shamelessly. And there's such a hole in the market for people to take the piss out of celebrities who are exercising a lot of power and influence over society, Marine. Yeah, our tagline, our motto at the nerve is real talk about fake people. So, for example, when we cover what's really going on at the Today Show, you know, the Access Hollywoods of the world cover how much Savannah's colleagues love her and how much they're weeping on air and rending their garments and it's such a big family.

And over at the nerve, we're telling the truth, which is that according to an impeccably place source of mine, the minute Nancy Guthrie went missing and Savannah jumped on an airplane, talent got in that chair, their makeup chairs, and said, it was car. because Savannah is such a raging bitch. So that's come to the nerve for the real story. Yes, please do, because the real story is as ever more interesting than the fake story you get in the tabloids. Speaking of which, let's start with the Kennedys

because love story is unsurprisingly a cultural phenomenon. This is the Ryan Murphy rendering of the JFK Jr. Carolyn Beset relationship, which, Marine, you have covered at length and long before love story covered at length. Now, this is getting criticism, again, unsurprisingly, by people like Daryl Hannah, put F3 on the screen. This is a New York Times op-ed penned by Daryl Hannah with the title, How Can Love Story Get Away With This? Hannah is absolutely offended by the depiction the show has of her, who she was obviously, of course, in a relationship with JFK Jr. for a long time.

There are competing accounts of what actually happened in that relationship as there are with Carolyn and John. So I want to start Marine with this F4. This is your column. The real Carolyn Beset

was a violent, deeply disturbed co-ed with the humiliating. I don't write the heads, I love it. You should take credit for this. Delize must stop. Her friends are telling the truth and it's ugly. And once again, you wrote in the Daily

Mail F5. Carolyn Bissette, pregnancy bombshell for the first time Maureen Callahan reveals truly ruthless plot to snare JFK Jr. And secret betrayals she took to her grave. Maureen, you're speaking my language on all of this because when I started to see Gen Z like a few years ago pick up on JFK Jr. and Carolyn Beset, they were like enamored with the 90s aesthetic, which this couple absolutely nailed. I mean, poetry, sartorial poetry.

It was driving me crazy because these were terrible people. Terrible, terrible people, at least to each other. this is not a relationship with emulating and you've done reporting original reporting on this. So as you've watched this wave of admiration crests over the memory of JFK Jr. and Carolyn Beset, you must be getting some hate for saying things like the real Carolyn Beset was a violent, deeply disturbed Cokehead. It depends on what common thread you're in, frankly, tomato, tomato. I do consider myself something of an expert in this. I wrote a book that was published two years ago called Ask Not,

the Kennedys and the women they destroyed, became an instant New York Times bestseller, by the way, Ryan Murphy tried to option it. Wow. Wow. So my issue with this is there are a lot of people, especially as you're talking about Emily, Jen Zier's, people who were born after these two died,

who are taking. love story as Bible and verse as the truth. And even though there's this disclaimer at the beginning of every episode, which we are parsing and taking apart like a medical school cadaver every week. It's wild. Yeah, like we take it apart and we show what Ryan Murphy's version of events is. And then we talk about the real version of events. And I'll give you just two major ones.

When you say, for example, JFK Jr. is a terrible person. The bulk of the culture at large would say, how could you say such a thing? He was a harmless guy. He was he was super handsome and he was super charismatic and he was only ever nice to people. And so, and he died tragically. That's blasphemy, right? Well, here's what's never reported, but was in the final NTSB report as to the cause of that plane crash. Not only that John F. Kennedy, Jr., through his own recklessness, was solely responsible for the deaths of himself.

his wife and her sister-in-law. But before crashing into the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, in a graveyard spiral, he almost slammed into a packed American Airlines commercial jetliner, 230 souls on board. He, upon taking off, had cut off communications with ground control, which is something no pilot does, let alone a very inexperienced one. And so they're in the NTSC,

B report, you can look at the dialogue between the American Airlines pilots to ground control saying, hey, there's this little plane up here. This guy doesn't know what he's doing. He's headed right toward us. Are you talking to him? And ground control says, no, we're trying. This guy isn't talking to anybody. And they, these experienced commercial airliner pilots rerouted themselves and averted that crash. But there's no such thing when it comes to. John F. Kennedy, Jr., especially, who had a history of dragging his girlfriends into risk-taking behaviors that were almost killed them, almost killed them. So there's no such thing as sort of lightheartedness when it comes to this stuff. Like, the line on him is always like, he was scattered,

you know, let's medicalize this. You know what he had? He had ADHD, you know? These are two very different things. And Carolyn Bissette in love story is depicted as just, you know, again, America's reluctant princess, what was she supposed to do? She was beautiful. He was hot. They fell in love. He happened to be a Kennedy. You know, shades of Megan Markle.

Shades of Yoko Ono to John Lennon upon their meeting. So what do you do? Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? You know, Carolyn Beset made it a point. She was bound and determined to get herself in JFK Jr's orbit to meet him and to marry him. And she did it. And to those two headlines that you just read,

The Daily Mail one, Michael Bergen, her ex-boyfriend, her long time on and off ex-boyfriend, who Carolyn was heartlessly using to get junior jealous. He writes of her having two abortions. Both babies were his. And both times, the first time she got pregnant, he said, we'll work this out. Like, I love you. I want to be with you. It's going to be okay.

And she said, I'm not having this baby. It's not your decision. The second pregnancy, Michael was at home in Connecticut. She was like, maybe I'll join you, maybe I won't. He comes back to the city and sees on the front page of the New York Post, JFK Jr. and his new mystery blonde, his new mystery blonde is Carolyn Beset, who only Michael and Carolyn know is also pregnant with his baby. So she was on a date with JFK Jr.

telling Michael to go home by himself because she just needed time to think, but really she was waiting around for JFK Jr. to call. And, you know, she, her heartlessness goes on from there in the most recent episode, we see how she iced her own sister out of being her maid of honor. And this is very true, you know, her wedding party was composed only of Kennedys.

There was not a single member of her own family representing the besets. This was not a merger of two families. This was a, it's almost like a foreigner, you know. When you marry into the Kennedy family as a woman, you become subsumed into that organism. But John would say this to Carolyn as has just about every Kennedy husband ever to their wives, just because you marry in. And just because you have their children, it doesn't mean you're a real Kennedy. You'll never be a real Kennedy.

Mary Richardson. Mary Richardson. Yeah, R.F.G. Junior's wife. So there are competing allegations of both physical and emotional abuse. I mean, I think the emotional abuse allegations are pretty well substantiated at this point. It depends on how you define emotional abuse, but it was really rough stuff between both of them. The Kennedy family has denied some accounts that there was physical abuse between Carolyn Beset and JFK Jr. Or other people say, no, it was in the other direction.

This has all been denied, Marine. But, you know, I have a friend who was working on a high level at Chappaquittic, and I've heard behind the scenes how powerfully, I'm sure you've experienced this as much as anybody, the Kennedy family still operates in secret to shut down negative depictions. They probably worked pretty hard to shut this one down. What do you make of the abuse allegations that have gone back and forth over the years? Well, you know, honestly, I kind of think that the Kennedy family should thus far be pretty pleased with. with the Ryan Murphy interpretation slash depiction. The show opens with Carolyn getting a manicure and having her manicurist repaint and repaint and repaint, and this is the day of the crash. So what's being set up is a very misogynistic,

unsubstantiated report that I believe was sourced to a journalist named Ed Klein by the Kennedys, that Carolyn Beset caused the crash because she was being a vinglory bitch about getting her manicure right in Ed Klein's telling it's a pedicure. Again, the only person responsible for that crash is the pilot. Secondly, the Kennedys can say all they want. There was no physical abuse and John was certainly not physically abusive.

We've all seen the footage of that physical fight in the park in New York City. The title of the Ryan Murphy episode was called Battery Park. Now, why I do think the Kennedy should be happy. about it is because in Ryan Murphy's retelling, that fight was about who loved each other more, who was afraid of getting married. I'm sounding a little bit like Bill Maher right now. His mannerisms are coming in,

like, you know, rolling the eyes, clucking the tongue. It's like the Kyle Dunnigan impersonation of him. I can't help it. But, you know, in reality, that fight was over Carolyn giving him, excuse me, shit, for, you know, cheating on him with other women, which he was. He was unfaithful to her. She was unfaithful to him.

This was not a great love story, if anything. And this is where I think this stuff gets really dangerous. And so our mission at the nerve, while it's often fun and it's funny, there's often like a real gravity behind it because the idea that this would be swallowed whole by younger generations as a true love story, when these people, each of them,

were deeply damaged, beyond toxic, spoiled, entitled, abusive. And together they made each other worse, not better. And, you know, Carolyn's own mother didn't want her marrying John of Kennedy Jr. She may have been the only mother in America who didn't want her daughter marrying this guy because she saw him coming from a mile away exactly

not only who and what he was, but the institution that came along with him and just how, I'm not putting, I'm going to put this in my mouth, depraved they are and were. It was wild to see in the most recent episode, Emily, they have a Ted Kennedy yelling at John after the park fight going, this family means something of people. You know, it's like Ted Kennedy drowned woman. You don't get the F out of here. Okay.

But you know, you handled it like a gentleman, Marine, and that's what counts. In what way, Emily? In no way. In no way. Start to finish. Absolute piece of crash. So actually, this is the Ryan Murphy. I was so bored by the show, Marine, honestly, that I stopped watching.

I stopped watching. What episode? Episode two. It was so boring. What bored you about it? Like, what for you was like, I'm out? Well, you know, there have been a couple of Ryan Murphy's series that I've really loved, a couple seasons of American Horror Story,

that I've thought were really good. America Crime, a couple seasons of that I thought were really good. But it is so, it is so soapy in a way that is detached from reality, which brings me to the disclaimer point that you were making. If you had to put that disclaimer at the front of the show, as Ryan Murphy did in this case, I think it's clearly because he was embellishing to a point of almost worthlessness. I don't know if you got that sense. And maybe this is where I'll ask you about Daryl Hannah's op-ed,

the Kennedys, not surprisingly, have slammed this. Jack Schlaasberg has slammed this. Daryl Hannah said this wasn't bearing a lot of truth to the reality of her story. How do you assess the veracity of love story? It's faithfulness to true events. I think it's about a three out of ten. Three out of ten. There are some scenes, I do think they get close to an emotional truth.

You know, the scenes in later episodes where Carolyn is telling her, sister, listen, you're not going to be my maid of honor. It's going to be Caroline Kennedy. I need these people to like me. And if I have to sacrifice you on that altar, so be it. Or when she quits Calvin Klein. You know, there was an ABC, again, under the mantle of ABC News. Legacy Media wonders why. They did an hour long special on John and Carolyn, our last American royal love story and they said that their reportage was that Carolyn was fired from Calvin Klein because she was too much of a distraction, not so. And common sense would tell you that would never happen. Carolyn Kennedy, Carolyn Beset, as Mrs. John of Kennedy Jr., would be the trophy of all trophies

at an American fashion house. Who wanted to design her wedding dress more than anyone and who thought he had the right? Calvin Klein, where she worked, where she worked, where she. she was introduced reportedly to JFK Jr. Where that relationship was cultivated, where the likes of Calvin vouched for someone like Carolyn, who just came from regular life. She was not of those circles. And there was a very interesting scene in the most recent episode

where Carolyn's like giving Calvin a bunch of bullshit. Like, oh, I can't possibly do my job to the best of your at my ability. And he's like, save it, sister. He literally says to her. her, it's not an accident you got John F. Kennedy Jr. to marry you. It was a master stroke. You know, and that really gets to like the real guts of what was going on there. But in other ways, they really do place a very gauzy film over it. Like, if this were in my hands, I would have shown John F. Kennedy Jr. nearly killing his girlfriend, Christina Hogg, more than once. I would have

shown Carolyn besie the drug use is treated it's very hands off the way in which she used and abused Michael Bergen who really did love her it's largely hands off and so to the Darrell Hannah op-ed yeah which I read and I thought good for her and I hope she sues for defamation because I do think a message needs to be sent I think Ryan Murphy decided the calculation was he could not make Carolyn and beset anything other than somewhat flawed but inherently likable. Both of these people, if you depicted them as they were, I do think the real story is far more compelling. The real people were far more damaged and fucked up.

And what goes on behind the scenes is always way more compelling than what they present in real life. But I think he made the calculation that otherwise there would be no one to root for. and it would be a much harder show to pull off. That actually makes a lot of sense. Did you feel from Ryan Murphy when he was trying to option and writes to your book? I don't know how far along that got,

but what made you uncomfortable about it, if anything? It didn't get very far. So they approached us, and he approached us along with, we had another high-profile bidder. And I had a meeting with his number two, like a lengthy meeting, And right after that meeting, the paperwork landed in my inbox and my agents inbox, which

almost never happens. So that sort of showed a real seriousness of intent. Like we're not even going to take the time. We're going to draw up the paperwork before we even meet with you. And then what typically happens, and this is really how it's done, they make an opening bid. And then you come back and you say, this is our number. And you begin good faith negotiations.

And the minute we began negotiating, they disappeared. They're powerful. That never happens, though. That, like, never happens. My agent was like, I've never had this happen. I don't know anyone, any of my colleagues this has happened to. And I think the best we could come up with was that he couldn't believe. We weren't just like, yes, yes, yes.

The great Ryan Murphy wants my book. I can't believe. You know what I mean? So, you know, but in the end, it really was for the best. He has taken some stuff from Ask Not, which I knew I had a feeling. They definitely took a scene from an earlier book of mine, Champaign Supernova. I did a piece on it on the nerve. It did make me very angry.

But in the end, this is not the story I would have ever told. So, you know, it's all for the best. Yeah, that makes sense. Let's keep talking about the Kennedy's Marine because you're... Sure. Well, I mean, they obviously still have cultural influence. They will have historic cultural influence. There's a reason Gen Z gravitates towards, this has been not just about JFK Jr. and Carolyn Beset. This is extending to the Kennedy lore in general. You're seeing it all over social media. Like the vibe posting about the Kennedys is everywhere and not for nothing. There's obviously something that is embedded in the American psyche that wants to see the Kennedy family as protagonists, although many Americans. like people who read your books understand the more complicated story behind the surface. But Jack Schlossberg running for that congressional district in the Democratic primary, New York 12, a new poll has him in the lead.

This was a poll put out, I can't even believe I'm saying this, by George Conway's campaign, because George Conway has decided that he's also running in the Democratic primary for Congress. And Jack Schlossberg is beating him by 10 points. double digits. So a lot of undecided voters. There's, you know, a lot of people splitting the vote in this race, many, many candidates. But Schlossberg, inexplicably, is gaining momentum. You've talked about him a bit, Maureen. He is a very unlikable character. His social media is weird. They're trying to clean it up, make him more presentable, make him more JFK Jr. like, what do you make of him potentially being the Democratic nominee, which would basically guarantee him the same? seat in this race. This is a real problem. And when you said George Conway is running, I was like, what? No, really. George Conway's got a real problem because who knows that, who knows that? But this is also not our fault, those of us who are unaware, because, and this goes to how insidious and dangerous this

stuff is when it comes to the mainstream media. Of course, Jack Schlossberg's in the lead. You know why? He was just the subject of a very glowing profile on CBS Sunday morning. He's getting a tongue bath by the national media, who, by the way, gave his mother a much harder time when, you know, remember she wanted Hillary Clinton's Senate seat? When Hillary was running for... And the governor of New York said, no, go earn it. And she had to go and do a bunch of actual media interviews

in which she could barely string a sentence together, let alone a cohesive thought. And if you really put Jack Schlossberg to the test, if any media entity worth their solve, would do their effing job. You know, there was a report that just came out the other day. You know, this guy's never had a real job. He's 33 years old.

Yeah, did you see his financial disclosures? He lives off of four trust funds. Yep. What does he know about what it's like to be a working person struggling in New York City? I mean, who, like, he would never do it. He would never go on your show. He would never go on Megan's show.

He would never go on any show that was remotely oppositional. and what's going to happen when it's actually time to debate? Like, is he going to get all kinds of special dispensations because he's a Kennedy? Yeah, I mean, in this sense, maybe he's the perfect person to represent the Upper East Side. I think this is an Upper East Side district. It's 12th congressional, so you know better than I. He lives in Chelsea. Do you have to live in the district that you are seeking to represent?

No, not technically. I don't think. Really? Yeah, I don't think so. But here, I'll look it up. I'm curious why you think the media can't quit the Kennedys, is it because it's probably a combination? They don't care about the full story or they're afraid of the Kennedys. I feel like they're actually afraid of the Kennedys behind the scenes, but does that actually still have so much power when it comes to like a Jack Schlossberg

behind the scenes that the Kennedys still command fear among political writers? Your guess is as good as mine. Their power was defanged a long time ago. You know, I would say, listen, if they still have the power that they once did, ask not would never have seen the light of day. Yeah, I was wondering about that, actually. So, and you know, the media picks and shoes is what Kennedy's, they want to lionize and which ones they want to vilify.

Look no further than RFKJ. I am not a fan. I don't like the guy. I think he treated his wife who committed suicide abominably. I think he's got terrible character. But so the media has no problem with that, especially when the Kennedy family as a whole comes out and says, we're not with him, okay? On the other hand, the New York Post published

an amazing piece last summer in which the rest of the Kennedy family said that Caroline Kennedy and her mama's boy, Jack Schlossberg, were persona's nongrata up on the Cape. And a lot of it had to do with Jack's antics. And one of, I think it was Kira Kennedy, maybe it was one of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s children was named, quoted as saying, we hope he gets the help he needs, which we all know what that's code for. Right.

So, you know, if New York decides they want to elect someone based on his last name, his total lack of any life experience on the whole, and a social media account that has been well scrubbed, go for it. You know, I don't know how much worse it can get in New York, but go for it. But really, just Emily, I don't know how you feel, but like it makes me crazy. Like it's New York City. It's the media capital of the world. Yeah. Like legacy media is dying.

You want some eyeballs? Get oppositional. Get adversarial. Do your jobs. Do your jobs. Yeah, the people will appreciate. I mean, again, your book proves this, that people, there's a chunk of the country that does have this instinctual desire to see the Kennedys. And the Kennedys, I mean, there's an instinctual desire to see them as protagonists because I think probably they figured so heavily into the 20th century story and continued to this day. So we want to see them as the good guys because in many ways they represent us and they represent what voters. Why? Why do we want to see them as the good guys? I mean, the stuff that is just in Ask Not Alone, the rapes, the murders, the suicides, the grave injuries resulting in paralysis, the lobotomization of a beautiful young Kennedy, JFK's sister.

You know, I mean, what happened? Yes, what happened to Carolyn Beset and her sister, Lauren, you know, if not only was JFK Jr. responsible for that. And I guarantee Ryan Murphy's show does not get into this. But it's in RFK Jr's diaries, which I read when it was time for Carolyn Beset's mother to meet with Caroline Kennedy to discuss what was going to happen to the remains of these three, her two daughters and JFK Jr. What was left of them, I should say, what was left of them at the bottom of the ocean. Caroline didn't even bother to show up. She sent her husband, Ed Schlossberg, and R.FK Jr. writes in his diaries, Ed sat there, and I'm quoting, because I will never forget this. It's burned into my brain.

Bullied, bullied, bullied, the shattered, grieving mother. These are the people who raised Jack Schlossberg. All bets are off. All questions are on the table. I don't understand why there's a segment of this country that won't grow up. There's a segment of this country that is hell-bent on clinging to this fairy tale, and that's what it is. It's a complete and utter fairy tale. This is a dangerous family. They're dangerous people. They're dangerous personally, professionally, and politically. It's funny you mentioned the fairy tale label because I was actually just going to say, I think it recalls why so many people in the UK still want to believe the best of the royals, even as they eagerly poke holes in the fairy tale, the fiction of,

the royal family. In America, though, we shouldn't want to lionize the royals, you would think, at least. But I think there's something about the fact that the Kennedy has publicly projected a vision for America, an image of America, ask not, dare I say. And we don't want to believe that we were conned and we don't want to believe that these were our representatives on the global stage. That's really hard to swallow because they've been so powerful for so long. It really does go to the power of optics, visuals, messaging. And it's something that the patriarch, Joe Kennedy, Sr., understood, and we're talking as early as the 1920s.

He worked in Hollywood as a producer. He was going to force that image down America's throat. And in no small part, because they were considered lace curtain Irish. They were not accepted by the quote unquote wasps. And they were going to force themselves into be coming that kind of American royalty. But when we're looking now, Emily, for example, there's no bigger story than the Epstein files.

There's no bigger story than who's in them, what's in them. There are reports now that there are digs underway at least one Epstein property looking for bodies. There are reports that there were medical experiments going on. I mean, stuff that you would think, oh, that's so outlandish. And now you think anything's possible, literally anything. anything's possible. A Prince of the Blood, the former Prince Andrew, has all but been expelled and may face trial. So if we can begin to look very hard at people in power who present one way,

but behind closed doors are quite different, Harvey Weinstein, Sean Combs, I mean, need I go on, Bill Cosby, you know, again, he's now a free man. But I don't understand. what, and I do blame much of the mainstream media for this. I really do. You know, not for nothing, the mainstream media, the bulk of it wouldn't touch, ask not. They wouldn't touch it. Why?

If this were about any other family, if this, especially on the other side of the aisle, you know, it would have been a 60 minutes piece. It would have been all over the place. Mm-hmm. What I heard from my friend who was working with Chappaquittic, on the business end of that is there was a full court press to be sure it wasn't taken seriously and even that it wasn't shown in theaters. Oh, you're talking about the film?

The film, yeah. Oh. I should have specified that, yeah. So the film which came out, I want to say, what, seven years ago? Yeah, it would have been around 19. Yeah. The film did a great job. I thought that film did a really good job.

And yeah, not a surprise because I saw that film and I loved it and I would ask people I know who love film and love movies. Did you see it? Like, what? What? No, it came and went. Came and went. No major stars in it either. Yep. And that's because, again, this is what I've heard. I think I even reported it at the time. I would have to go back and check. But it was a full court press to be sure that people didn't star in it, that studios weren't buying it, that theaters weren't showing it. And it sort of succeeded, but the movie still got made despite all of that. So I thought it did a good job, too. I didn't know it had your stamp of approval. Yeah, no, absolutely. Do you know which Kennedy's? Because I know there was a, there was a, um, I think it was Ethel at the time. But I have to go, I have to go back. Ethel. Your disapproval of that tells me I probably wrong.

No, you could be very right. But I mean, I would have thought it would maybe be Caroline or Maria Shriver, who successfully got another Kennedy miniseries booted off over to like a lesser, a lesser network. But like, you know, the other thing about the way they depict. picked Ethel and Her and Hickory Hill in Ryan Murphy's show is like when they go, when JFK Jr. brings Carolyn there, it's this beautiful, clean, sunlit, you know, it's lots of whites and pale pinks and it's immaculate and there's fresh flowers everywhere. And then when they all sit down to dinner, you know, the camera's moving in on an amber lit dinner, dinner, like a dining room and it's meant to feel very much like the crown like it's meant to evoke the crown like this is

America's version right not so but the the real ethel was so vile and cheap and hygienically disgusting and such a terrible mother and these are these are true stories not only did she have a horrible reputation and was eventually banned by like major department stores because she would buy expensive gowns wear them and keep the tags on then return them without dry cleaning them and it was supposed to be their honor and privilege to have dressed a, dressed a Kennedy. But also people would go over to the house and it was filthy and would smell. And there would be these priceless rugs that were gifted by like,

you know, Iranian heads of state that were soaked through with like dog piss. And she just dog, her dogs would just shit all over the place. And she would just wait. I'm sorry to be graphic, but you got to hear it to get the full effect. she would wait for the turds to harden and then just kick the turds under the dining room table this was the real hickory hill okay great gardens baby it was both sides of the family both sides the family and to just bring it back to jack schlostberg mental illness runs deep in this family on both sides the buvier side and the kennedy side okay so caveat and tour voters of new york oh my gosh marina i could do this all day

I'm going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. First, this spring, if you're finally ready to see glowing skin, stronger hair and steady energy, you got to add colostrum to your daily routine because it all starts in the gut. And once your gut health is right, everything else follows. That's where colostrum comes in. Cowboy colostrum provides the highest quality first day whole bovine colostrum available in the U.S. sourced exclusively from 100% American grass-fed cows. Unlike other brands, cowboy colostrum is never stripped down or over-processed. its whole, full fat and rich in bioactives and growth factors for maximum nutrient density, and their ethical practices only collect surplus colostrum after calves have had their fill. It's also easy to use. You just mix a scoop of your favorite flavor, chocolate, there's Madagascar vanilla, there's matcha, there's my favorite strawberry. I like to mix it in a glass of milk.

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the last segment. And I want to talk about this big Weinstein interview that the Hollywood reporters, the Hollywood reporter just dropped. It's literally called the Rikers interview reporter. Mayor Rochhan obviously had a longstanding relationship with Harvey Weinstein, as is written about in the piece. He says, quote, I'm dying here. He is insistent, Weinstein is, that he will be, quote, proven innocent. He says he will never forgive Gwenneth Paltrow for outing him. for his less than gentlemanly behavior toward her, although he did also confirm the Brad Pitt story, which was interesting, Maureen, in this interview. He said, you know, Brad did come up to him and confront him about

making an advance on Gwyneth Paltrow. Now, Marine, if people aren't deep in the weeds in the Harvey Weinstein story, the lore surrounding many of these allegations, and this goes back many, many decades, you've been reporting in this space for a long time. So you've seen all of this up close for a long time. How much bullshit is Harvey Weinstein peddling in the Hollywood reporter? He's peddling a lot of bullshit that I truly think he's convinced himself is true. And I say this because I was one of a few journalists in New York City while Harvey was on trial who had a one on one. I was never left alone with him ever.

But I had a face-to-face meeting with Harvey about potentially doing an interview with him and everything in that interview or that meeting per se, that was a meeting, it remains off the record. But he, I do think believes it. And I also know Mayor, I worked with Mayor years ago at New York Magazine. He's a great reporter and a great editor. I'm surprised Mayor was surprised a little bit.

Harvey's completely unrepentant, believes he did nothing wrong, and believes that. everything is transactional in Hollywood and that there's no way a young actress who's invited up to his hotel room for a quote-unquote meeting doesn't know what that is. What's interesting to me, though, is, you know, there's a very, there are three brothers who are just convicted, very high-flying guys in a federal court in New York City of sex trafficking, rape, the Alexander brothers, two or twins, they were like realtors to the 1%.

And one worked at high level security, insecurity. But the point being, there's always an apparatus around these guys that keeps everything going and that train keeps moving. Those abuses and those victims, they're fed to these guys, they're fed into the maw, everybody looks the other way. Like, look at, look at Sean Combs. Okay, who got off on a slap on the wrist, but we all saw that Cassie video. We all saw that Cassie video. You're going to tell me there's a reason Oprah Winfrey has never said a word against Sean Combs or her great friend Harvey Weinstein or her great friend Russell Simmons or her great friend. Are you kidding me?

It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, everybody knew, everybody knew. And there's, I think there are no less than six, maybe, okay, there were 60 victims that were bound up in the federal trial of the Alexander brothers, but there's going to be, there are no shortage of civil lawsuits being filed right now. One of which is by a bravo reality star for a million dollar listing LA named Tracy Tudor. And Tracy says that she was drugged and raped by one of the brothers at a business meeting in New York City in 2014. A male colleague found her and that she told top, top people at Douglas Elliman. Douglas Elliman, according to these civil lawsuits, there were top execs that go all the way to the former CEO, Howard Lorber, who allegedly knew and didn't care because these guys were making them so much money. And if some women have to get raped, just my, my verbiage, my opinion, that's just the cost of doing business, Emily. And it just goes to, it all sort of folds in with this Kennedy mania going on right now. The bottom line is women in this culture remain expendable. We just do.

We just do. Okay. So on that note, I was just thinking as you were talking, because you've mentioned when we were talking about the Kennedys, Epstein, we just talked about Weinstein Diddy, and, I mean, there are other examples, but the thread from Me Too until now is abusive women. And that's where a lot of conservatives have come into these stories. People on the right, I mean, this is bipartisan disgust toward American elites, but a lot of conservatives in particular have been, their interest has been piqued by these stories because a suspicion is kind of being confirmed. On the other hand, there are conservatives

who look at Epstein allegations, Weinstein allegations, and say, well, the media have been imprecise with their language. There's, you know, a whiff of moral panic here and there. Some people take that way too far, in my opinion. But all of these stories remind us, Marine, from Epstein to Diddy, actually even to Bill Cosby, as you mentioned, the legal challenges of proving sexual abuse in court are, and you've reported these stories, so you know the legal difficulties, even just putting them in the press. This stuff is hard, hard, hard to prove definitively, legally and get verdicts. And that's by design. That is what elites know. And that is why they do it with impunity. Am I wrong?

That elites abuse women because it's very difficult. You hire the best lawyers and you can get it all tossed out. There's something else at work, though, that I do think is more sinister. and just a much darker part of human nature, but especially on the part of these men. Because, you know, I even think back to men who were credibly accused and who lost their jobs or decided to resign but never faced any legal criminal charges, less moon viz being one.

Subject of a major New Yorker expose, I'm sure has always denied any wrongdoing whatsoever. But, you know, there's something called the hedonic treadmill. And that theory is that, you know, as you achieve more, as you amass more wealth, as more becomes available to you, as there's less you have to work for, as there's less you desire because it all comes easy to you. You need to up the stakes. It's almost like a drug addict. You need to up the stakes in order to get a dopamine hit. And so you can see how, because as a woman, it always confounded me like, why do these guys need to?

to rape. Matt Lauer, another one, never faced any criminal charges, but the fact that the entertainment media industrial complex will not let him back in says something to me, just to me. To me, it says that, you know, these powerful men, rich, famous, all of those things are great attractants. They could have just about any woman they want. That has to get old. So now, Now I think we have to graduate. I think we have to graduate to power, control, and degradation. And that's where rape comes in. And then that probably gets boring.

Do you remember, Emily? I mean, I know you're not in New York City, but there's a story going on right now. Like a very, very, very wealthy guy, like a sion of some like very famous family, married, children, kept a sex dungeon in like a very high, you know this story, right? He's going to go to trial soon. like it's a torture and and he was taking photos and you know i mean so uh i think i think there's just an aspect of this that is um animalistic and depraved and evil and um and that's why i really i hope that the epstein story comes to uh doesn't end anytime soon right because like when

you see those headlines like they're digging for bodies it can seem almost fantastical like something out of the National Enquirer. Like, what? They're digging for a pot. Why not? Why wouldn't that have happened? You are a sharp critic of Andy Cohen and Bravo. And bad day for Bravo yesterday in court, their attempt, sudden attempt seemingly to, we can put the element up on the screen. Move this trial to arbitration instead of remaining in litigation was tossed out by a judge and and tossed out in a stinging rebuke by a judge. This is a lawsuit that was brought by Liam McSweeney, who alleges that Bravo knowingly she was recovering from alcoholism and was intentionally putting her in difficult situations to cause her to relapse for the sake of the show. And that reminds me

at the point you just made about a culture in which women are treated as expendable. I am a Bravo lover. I'm a Roney lover. It's challenging for me to have these conversations, Maureen, but it's important to watch these shows with a critical eye because there is something to them that gets at, particularly why very wealthy executives at a network like Bravo would be comfortable putting people like Liam McSweeney, who I think has plenty of agency in this situation.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not coming down on one side or the other the lawsuit. I'm curious what you make of it, Marine. But there is something rather interesting about why they are willing to do this and to put some of this on television and profit off of it. The McSweeney case was obvious as you were watching this season. It was obvious exactly what was happening. It's been obvious with Sonia Morgan time and time again that, and this is part of what Leah alleges, they were knowingly stoking an unhealthy, dangerous situation with some of these women. It's fascinating.

you know, just like you, I'm a Bravo watcher, avid Bravo watcher. I've been a fan of, I think Roney was once the Crown Jewel. Beverly Hills is some of the greatest reality TV you'll ever see those first few seasons in particular. I mean, talk about capturing like the dark underbelly of Hollywood or what it is to be like an also-ran. Have you read Camille Pollya on the Jersey Housewives, by the way? I don't think I have. I'm sending it too. You will love. Please do. I love Camille. spiritual godmother at the nerve. We're going to be talking about Camille with the Kennedys, with the love story going on.

But yes, yes, yes. I agree with everything you're saying. And it's, you know, it's so insidious because they have these women basically sign everything away. You can never sue us. You're indemnifying us. You know what you're getting into.

It's all fun and games till someone gets hurt. And at this point, the slide into alcoholism among middle-aged divorce women is basically a story beat. And pills. Pills, alcohol, drugs, you know, something very, very dark has now come to light,

but this person has come back because they need the money. You know, Denise Richards, remember that season where Kyle Richards, who is now in a lesbian relationship, was still married to her husband and was prodding Denise and determined to end. out her for allegedly having a sexual fling with another female cast member. And you could see the panic in Denise's eyes going, please don't do this, please don't do this. I'm married.

I have a husband like this is going to be a problem. Well, we now know according to her divorce petitions that that husband was physically abusive to her. And so what we're watching with these shows is often what's on camera, but what's going on behind the scenes and off camera and what these producers know and what they don't know and who, who's goading whom? And the ringmaster of it all is Andy Cohen, who I believe is a very dangerous guy. And this is a very specific kind of person.

It is the gay man who presents as an ally to straight women by basically being like, we both know what it's like to be underdogs in society, right? Like we both know what it is to have to scrap and get to that. But they use, they weaponize. that. And Andy is no friend to women. And when you watch him on those reunions, when like they really start getting vicious, and, you know, he has all these little tells, like, his eyebrows will go out twice. And his eye, like, he's like a kid on Christmas. He's like, oh, you're going at it. You're going at it.

And it's, it's really disturbing to watch. But we're all complicit in it, right? Because I watch and you watch and we know better. What are we watching? What are we participating in? So I don't know what the answer is. I don't know what the answer is. I want to do a full episode, actually, the show, just talking through this with you, Marine, in the future. Oh, I would love to. I think that would be great. It's so rich. It's so rich. And it's, and I think part of the reason it still remains, I mean, part of what happens is the shows tend to flatten out because all the players know what's going on. And they begin to really build alliances with their producers and it's sort of like, don't, don't out my worst secrets, but there are psychologically so many levels you can watch shows like this on.

And the one thing I will say that it is in the culture that it really broke ground was up until then we had never really seen women in midlife. Yeah. Like really, you know, post-divorce, post-kids leaving the house, amassing money or, you know, hitting rock bottom, building their lives back up. And so in that way, it is really fascinating viewing. I have to say, I've met Andy Cohen twice and both times he was exceedingly kind. So that's a, it's a, it's a, it was not at a sex party.

It was not at a sex party. Marine, I don't frequent sex parties. But anyway, you know, everybody's doing it, Emily. I mean, I've lamented to our pal, Megan Kelly. I don't get invited either. I don't know what's happening. It's tough times. It's tough times.

Tough times for MKMe. We are just no sex party invitations. Before you run, Marine, I did want to get your take on Spencer Pratt now, according to a new poll, being at 10% among voters in the Los Angeles primary. I'm sorry, the Los Angeles mayoral election, Karen Bass is still leading at about 20%. But Spencer Pratt is in second place. At about 10%, this like the Schlossberg poll has a lot of undecided viewers. The vote is a lot of undecided voters. The vote is split in many different directions, but Spencer Pratt is running a pretty smart campaign.

I'm not personally weighing in on whether he should be the mayor of Los Angeles. Maureen is a pretty compelling story about his house being burned down and being moved to enter politics because of that. If your option is Karen Bass or Spencer Pratt, you might be more tempted to go with Spencer Pratt. What do you make of this apparent surge from Spencer, who was intentionally responsible. of the villain back in the Hills era. So he says, I mean, that's his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his current narrative, as it were. I mean, probably, he's probably right. I would, I would bet he's, he's telling a good version of the truth there.

What do I make of it? I mean, Los Angeles is such a mess. The last time I was there, I couldn't believe, and I live in New York and I couldn't believe the level of homelessness that is not. not only tolerated, but it seems to be encouraged there. Bass and Newsom both their complete ineptitude in handling those wildfires. You know, it doesn't, you know, at first glance, it might strike you as like shocking and sort of reflective of the state of politics, like a reality guy from the hills.

But like, look, who's in the White House. It's a reality guy. Right. Is it any different than Sunny Bono running for Congress and getting a seat? or like, who played gopher on the loveboat, Fred. Do you think I know the answer to that question, Marie? Don't age, shamy, I'm like, do not. That's exactly what I was doing.

No, there was a guy who played gopher on a very popular Aaron Spelling soap opera called The Love Boat. And it was like a joke when he ran for Congress, but he got the seat. We've seen it many, many times before. So, you know, I think we'll see how it plays out. But there's, listen, All Power 2. him, he did get a major, major feature in the Sunday New York Times, Spencer Pratt, around December. And you don't get that without having some stardom behind you, whatever kind it is.

Well, and Karen Bass's major controversy or major error in her career as mayor was about getting caught in dishonesty, why she was in Africa, how she handled. And so when you have someone who people feel like is at least authentic and raw, like a reality TV star, even if he's from the Hills, which is probably the most scripted reality television show of all time. People feel like they can trust, at least that he believes what he's saying. I don't know. That's what I make of it, Marine. I think that you're right. I think his outrage feels genuine and palpable and absolutely justified and dead on. And he's speaking for far, far more people, far more many voters than

just himself and his wife. But again, in New York, in L.A., it's the same as like, This is what people vote for. I cannot believe that Karen Bass, there's a complete lack of shame in this culture. It does not exist anymore. You know, if this were Japan, someone like Karen Bass would have walked off into the forest. You know how they walk off into the forest to die in Japan? Like, she would have just walked off into the forest and be like, I really effed up. You know, I'm just going to disappear.

But no, in America, you just run again. You know, why not take another crack at this thing? Incredible. Marie Callahan, host of the nerve with Marine Callahan. Thank you so much for giving us the time this afternoon. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. It absolutely flew.

I thought we were like 10 minutes in. Oh, I can keep going, but I want to do that to you, Maureen. Thank you. Thank you so much, Emily. All right. Like I said, could have kept doing that forever. I do sometimes hesitate to cover pop culture in depth, and Marine makes it easy.

Because she has, it's not just kind of the tabloid type reporting, but she has like depth to her own reporting about celebrities, real stories about fake people who are influencing our culture. So I really like to talk to her. So I hope everyone finds that valuable. because to me, the way celebrities are covered and treated, like the way the Kennedies are treated, is a real glimpse into the way media works. And so that's one of the things that I just wanted to note because it's you see the process in a way where it's like lower stakes, or the reporters think it's lower stakes and the papers think it's lower stakes. But it's actually really not because celebrities have a lot of influence over our culture.

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Again, that's cardiff.cotech.0-C-O-slash-emily. Real growth, fast funding. Cardiff, borrow better. All right, going to close it out tonight just with a couple quick thoughts because we ran way late. up, especially when I'm with Maureen. I have so many questions for her. At some point, I do think, and I would hope that everyone would stick with us if we did a full episode diving into Bravo, because if you've never read Camille Polly, who we referenced on this episode, I just emailed to Maureen a segment of Camille Pauley's. It was actually her thesis at Yale.

It started that way. She has a great book that's called Sexual Persona, but the introduction to it, or it's the first chapter, was her Yale thesis. And that chapter, is a Rosetta Stone to understanding men and women as far as I'm concerned. And Polly is controversial on the right because Polly is very defensive, A of boomers, B of boomer sexual ethics, and is often overly defensive, as conservatives would argue, of that, let's see, sexual revolution, the early days of the sexual revolution. Now, she's been a critic, obviously, political correctness from the 90s onward of postmodernism, from the 90s onward and is a fascinating thinker. I can't read enough, Polly. I wish she was writing

more and more. I did get to interview her once, which was an incredible experience. But I would love to spend more time with Marine, like just talking about what some of these pop cultural artifacts tell us about our cultural addictions and proclivities. So I hope we get to do that at one point. But I've been thinking, this is weighing on the broader discourse a lot. And I've been thinking lately about just how divided the right is at the moment. And I hope to do something much longer and in more depth on this later. But I just wanted to say, I'm personally thinking about how social media fuels these divisions that might otherwise be easier to smooth over in person over email and alike. And also just urging myself, one of the things that I think about a lot

is urging myself to, and others, to consume full content before rendering judgment. And this is one thing that social media incentivizes us not to do, right? As soon as you log on, it says, what's on your mind today at the top of the screen? Because they want people to spend as much time as humanly possible on meta, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. It's less of a problem with YouTube, but TikTok or whatever. They're trying to get you to produce content, and they're trying to get you to engage with content. X is one of the biggest examples, and it's a de-fustration I have, obviously, with conservatives who glaze Elon Musk, because I think X is specifically because it functions as the Slack channel

for the media and people in elite spaces. It is incredible how often it's every day on almost every major narrative. The discourse is downstream of what editors, publishers, executives, journalists are seeing on X. And I just want to say I've had a couple of experiences lately where I see something trending on X. Sometimes you see it on Instagram or TikTok as well. You see something trending and you see the trend, the conventional wisdom. is that this person said this. And then you watch the full clip.

And I'm not talking even about the full clip. That's the wrong way to put it. But the full hour show or two-hour show or three-hour show, sometimes these shows go even longer, whether Joe Rogan or Tucker or anyone else, you watch the full segment. And this goes in both directions. And you realize that piece of conventional wisdom

was pulled from like two lines that didn't represent the longer conversation or lacking context from the longer conversation. But even good-natured people are incentivized to post that type of thing because it's immediate. It's urgent. You saw this and our brains have been reprogrammed to know what is incentivized for engagement. And you post it. And again, it's not even intentional for many people. Like, this is where a lot of conspiracy theorists go wrong.

I've been here in D.C. for long enough to know this, and I know this about regular people who use X this way. You think this must be someone getting paid. This must be a conspiracy. And of course, that's happening in certain cases. But the story over and over again is that we're just human beings. And with social media, these are websites and apps designed to bring out really the worst in us. This is a race to the bottom of the brainstem, as Tristan Harris has said. And they are a race to the bottom of the brainstem in politics, our social lives, professional lives, our personal lives. it's just so profoundly dangerous. And I've just, again, I've had a couple of experiences in recent weeks where I've seen something and then imbibed the entire piece of content, as they say, whether it's, you know, three-hour interview or something else. And you realize how profoundly unrepresentative, whatever was pulled out of that was. It doesn't mean you can't disagree with whatever was pulled out of that. But the idea that it was, you know, categorically bigoted or whatever, you're just going on. Oh, my gosh. So. I'm trying really hard not to do that on my own. I have all kinds of personal rules with social media for myself as a journalist. But man, I just feel like we've slept walked into this era of, I mean, obviously, total irrationality. And people know that kind of instinctively. When you talk about social media, everyone's like, oh my gosh, it's so bad. It's so bad. It's so bad. It's not to say there aren't good parts of it, but just about everybody instinctively is like, yeah, I know. It's destroying us, it's destroying us, every conversation. And then we keep using it and keep failing to interrogate the ways in which it's warping our behavior and our discourse. And so, again, the incentives here are to be really extreme or to condemn something, right? To be really,

I'm sorry, to be really extreme either condemning something or endorsing something, right? They're not to say, well, I condemn this and endorse that. Or there's something that's really more nuanced here because what gets us to stay on the apps longer is that race to the bottom of the brainstem. It's making us angry or making us happy or making us self-righteous, whatever it is. And the clips are definitely distributed in a way to maximize that. You know, it's five minutes of a 180-minute conversation, whatever. So it's disturbing to me how little we talk about the effect. We talk so much about kids.

I think that's good. For a while we weren't even talking about how social media affected kids as somebody who's high school experience was like split in half by Facebook. I think it's great that we're talking about developing brains. But what it's doing to adults is adults who have most of the power in society is horrifying. And again, we all kind of know it, but we don't stop. Most of us don't stop. And maybe we will at some point. And maybe in the future, and Elon Musk won't just be good on, or won't just be committed to stopping the tightening of the fence around what's acceptable speech. Maybe.

But maybe in the future, it'll be so shameful to own a social media company that incentivizes these extremities in the discourse that people will be pressured not to do it and to go back to just talking with producer Kelly. that when Twitter was a literal news feed, Facebook used to be a literal news feed too. It was like minute by minute. You popped on the feed and it went what was posted one minute ago, what was posted two minutes ago, what was posted two minutes ago, what was posted two minutes 30 seconds ago. Like it was actually in chronological order. That was great. There wasn't an algorithm that was driving what was going to make people stay on the app longer. And that's the race for the bottom of the brainstem. So just some closing thoughts on tonight's edition of the show because I've had that experience lately. And And it's so sad. It's really so sad. And I hope we can all maybe think about it a bit more before we post before we jump into the fray and the like. It's hard out there. It's hard out there. I am thinking particularly of a couple of things I've seen of people criticizing Tucker Carlson lately. Not that I don't think people have every right to disagree with Tucker Carlson. But just that the, and I hope to talk about this more next. Like what I see people are saying happened versus what actually happened. It's really night and day and not in a way that's good for anybody, like whether you agree with this or disagree with him. It's kind of arguing past the point and warping the entire conversation with it. Again, it's not helpful if you're trying to defeat this argument and the like. So anyway,

hopefully we'll cover that next week. Make sure to get your questions into Emily at devil make care media.com. I'll be taping another edition of Happy Hour tomorrow afternoon. So you can email me before then and I will try to get to as many emails as possible. I answer almost all of them at Emily at devilbaycareatmedia.com and at afterparty. Emily, we'll see you all back here on Monday live 9 p.m. Eastern. Please make sure to subscribe if you haven't yet and enjoy the rest of your week, folks.