After Party with Emily Jashinsky - Why CBS Brought Bari In, and Safe New Media, with Glenn Greenwald, PLUS Taylor Swift Changes Her Tune

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

Emily Jashinsky is joined by Glenn Greenwald, Host of “System Update,” to discuss Bari Weiss’ announcement that The Free Press has been acquired by Paramount/CBS for $150 million. They compare the move to past examples of corporate media capture, question whether “independent within Paramount” has any real meaning and warn that commercial and political pressures will inevitably limit dissenting voices. They also discuss how The Free Press has handled censorship debates, especially around Israel, and suggest Weiss’ move to CBS shows no real ideological shift on that front. Emily and Glenn then discuss the news from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) revealing the Biden FBI targeted eight Republican senators’ personal cell phones, PLUS the modern-day Dixie Chicks-style controversy involving country music star Zach Bryan. Emily wraps up the show with a look at Taylor Swift’s new album and turn toward traditionalism. She highlights the song “Eldest Daughter” and argues it reflects a generational shift among millennial and Gen Z women who once rejected traditional norms but now crave family, marriage, and stability. She then critiques a New York Times article about “Gen Z divorce” and concludes Swift’s new album captures a cultural “vibe shift.” Vandy Crisps: Get 25% off your first order | Use code AFTERPARTY at https://vandycrisps.com/AFTERPARTY PreBorn: Help save a baby go to https://PreBorn.com/Emily or call 855-601-2229. Cowboy Colostrum: Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code AFTERPARTY at https://www.cowboycolostrum.com/AFTERPARTY   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Well, hello, everyone. Welcome back to After Party. I say back because I know you've been here before. If you haven't, welcome to your first After Party. We're here live every Monday and Wednesday at 10 p.m. Eastern. Catch us on your podcast, your favorite podcast platform as well afterwards. Now, tonight, our guest is the one and only Glenn Greenwald on what has turned out to be a really big newsday for some of Glenn's areas of expertise, some of Glenn's pet beats, shall we say. And the first one of course is the major news this morning that Barry Weiss of the free press is now editor-in-chief over at CBS News. The free press itself, one of the most successful new media organizations, is of course now part of an old media institution, CBS, that is as of today. Glenn has all kinds of thoughts on this, so it's going to be great to have him on the show with us to break it all down. Also, just this evening, Chuck Grassley, Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, really least evidence from the FBI. Again, this seems to have been found given to Grassley by Cash Patel based on the reporting that we have. This is a new story. So we're glad to have Glenn reacting

to it. But Fox News is at least reporting that former special counsel, Jack Smith, was allegedly tracking the private communications and phone calls of nearly a dozen Republican senators as part of his investigation into the January 6, 2021 Capitol Riots that is reporting from Fox News Digital tonight. We are going to ask Glenn for his reaction. as well as two comparisons that contrary to Zach Bryan is already getting with the Dixie Chicks, one of the most, let's say, consequential skirmishes in the culture war of the last 20 years. So we're also going to get Glenn and his reaction to all of that. I have to say, you know this.

There was like a 0% chance that I was not going to talk about Taylor Swift. I have all kinds of facts and figures related to Taylor Swift because that's what you get here. only the edgiest sexiest pop culture content. But actually, I think there's something we can take from it on marriage and divorce. So we're going to look into that. The New York Times also. This actually works really well at the Taylor Swift. Content, the New York Times published, just a truly incredible dive into what divorce is looking like for Gen Z.

So don't miss that. Stick around for all of that good stuff. First, I want to start, though, with an ad that I'm so excited to read. Let me tell you. That is a weird thing to say, but believe me, I love these chips so much. So, after-party listeners, let me tell you, as Emily Jashinsky, did you know that chips and fries were cooked in tallow until the 90s when big corporations switched to cheap seed oils. Now those oils are 20% of our daily calories and studies link them to inflammation and metabolic issues. That is not okay. Vandy Crisps is fighting back with a chip made from three ingredients, heirloom potatoes, sea salt, and 100% grass-fed beef tallow. No seed oils. These things are incredible. One of my favorite meals in the world is just a very simple sandwich, maybe a peanut butter and jelly with chips on the side. And I have been downing these. They're so, so good. They're so simple and delicious. The tallow packs nutrients for your skin, brain, and hormones. And it makes these chips taste absolutely incredible. Unlike regular chips, Vandy leaves you satisfied, energized with no bloated crash. They're 100% American made. No compromises. The best chip I've ever tasted. I actually really, really mean that.

The tallow keeps you from mindless binging and my go-to is their barbecue flavor. They're truly perfect. So simple, so perfect, so delicious. So if you're ready to give Vandy a try, go to vandycrisps.com slash after party and use code after party for 25% off your first order. That's vandycrisps.com slash after party and code after party for 25% off your first order. All right. Do we have Glenn guys? Glenn here. We're ready to bring the one and only Glenn Greenwald? All right. Glenn is about to check in. So while he's doing that, we're just going to go ahead and roll this clip.

Glenn has definitely already seen it. So he won't need to see it again. This is Barry Weiss of the free press again, announcing the decision to join CBS in a straight-to-camera video earlier today. This is going to be S-1 team. Let's roll it. This morning, the free press is joining Paramount. From day one, the promise and the business proposition of the free press was simple. We would marry the quality of the old world to the freedom of the new. We would seek the truth and tell it plainly. And we would treat readers like adults capable of making their own choices. So many people told us this was no longer possible.

You proved them wrong. You demonstrated that there is a, market a big one for honest journalism. And you've given us a mandate to pursue that mission from an even bigger platform. Okay, so I obviously have a lot of thoughts on this. I know Glenn has a lot of thoughts on this, but I want to start with this post from Ben Dreyfus because I think he actually put it really well. Quote, no matter what you think of the free press, I hope everyone can admit that it is very funny that Twitter got her, meaning Barry, fired from her like a $15,000 a year job at the New York Times. And four years later, she sold her blog for $150 million. And is

the head of CBS News, LOL. LOL indeed, because the free press actually still hosted on Substack. It started as what you may remember, common sense from a few years back. But the reason that we're talking about this story, I think as an important moment in the American news cycle, and actually just in American media history at all, is that it really illustrates the trends, where new media could go, where new media came from, and how it could more. in maybe some good ways and maybe some bad ways. I know somebody who has thoughts on possibly what those bad ways could be.

His name is Glenn Greenwald. He's the host of System Update. And he joins us now to weigh in. Ben, have you heard of Ben? Glenn, have you heard of Barry Weiss? I combined both of your names there, which I think is really sweet. Like if you were married, your celebrity couple name would be Ben. I can't think of anything less likely than that happening.

But nonetheless, in the event that it does, we'll know that our, celebrity name, we'll already know what we want to think about it. Hello, Emily. Yeah, so I do have thoughts on Barry Weiss. You know, congratulations to her on her massive windfall. You know, I know Barry Weiss a little bit personally. I know her wife, Nellie, like anybody, you know, I would say that they're very nice, charming people. I have nothing against them. Probably every person who is an executive at a news network is horrible in various ways. I feel confident saying that.

So it's not like there's anything particularly earth shattering about Barry Weiss or somebody with bad opinions taking over this position. The reason it's worth discussing, though, is because it is part of this broader, highly consequential trend that deserves a lot of attention, which is that Larry Ellison, who, depending on the time, is either the richest or second richest person on the planet, worth roughly the same as Eon Musk, $350 billion, something in that range, the founder of Oracle, happens to be the largest private donor to the Israeli defense forces in history. the largest, I don't know why it's legal for an American citizen to donate millions of dollars to a foreign army, but at least in the case of Larry Ellison and the IDF, it appears to be. And his primary cause in life beyond making money is supporting the state of Israel. And Larry Ellison is also currently in the process with his son, David, of buying CBS News and CBS and its parent company Paramount. They are also attempting to buy the parent company of CNN. and as a result of the deal that President Trump just engineered,

TikTok is going to be purchased by a conglomerate of billionaires, American billionaires, the leader of which is Larry Ellison. So you have this extremely hardcore pro-Israel billionaire at the end of his life, or near the end of his life, he's 81, using his vast wealth to buy as many, seemingly of the most influential media communications and social media platforms as exists at exactly the time that support for Israel is unraveling. And the first thing they do is pay this gargantuate sum of money to Barry Weiss's extremely pro-Israel blog, which is a success when judged against other substack pages,

but is very hard to justify a valuation of $150 million. And then elevating Barry, who has never done television, never been in television, never managed television, to the very lofty position of editor-in-chief of CBS News, where she's already writing memos about the changes she wants to make or the plan she has for 60 minutes and CBS Network News. And this, I think, is extremely disturbing. Not that Barry Weiss herself is elevated to this position, but the broader pattern that it's part of.

Well, Glenn, I know you and I have talked before about the Chomsky clip, and you've posted this a million different times, of him. Do you remember who he was being interviewed by where he asks, like, he gets asked about the grand conspiracy in media, and Chomsky essentially says you'll know this verbatim. That, no, the point is not that you're getting a script. The point is you don't need to get a script.

This is the way that he talked to journalists. This is the way... Right, there was a BBC journalist and the BBC journalist was saying, you see very conspiratorial. I believe in all the things I say, I believe in. I don't need anyone from... No one at BBC's telling me what to believe.

And Chomsky said, oh, I absolutely believe that you believe all the things you're saying. The point is if you didn't believe those, you wouldn't be sitting in that chair. Right. And I wanted to ask you about that because you started by saying, which I agree with, by the way, that Barry and Nellie are, like, lovely people.

And I think Nellie is hilarious. And there's, you know, I was going to ask you about this as well. I mean, common sense when it started on subsect back in 2022, published some genuinely good stuff on COVID and lockdowns. And at the time, dare I say, it's censorship from the Biden administration. And some of the people that, you know, you and I consider to be terrible journalists are quaking at their boots over all of this as leaks from CBS inside of CBS right now suggest to Jeremy Barr and other folks in the media. So on the one hand, is there anything? I mean, we're going to get to the downstream negative consequences that we may see when it comes to censorship and all of that. Is there anything you think good that could come out of Barry in the free press now being part of CBS? I wonder if Glenn froze in this beautiful position where he has a placid smile on his face. If you're listening to this, what you missed is that Glenn froze in the most peaceful position that you can imagine, where it was as if he was, oh, I think we have Glenn back. gun, I was just saying you froze with this like beautiful placid smile on your face. I don't know where I come off. That's my after party with Emily smile. That's going to be on my

face all the time, no matter what we're discussing. Well, I was, I was a like common sense when Barry started it. She left the New York Times. She did some genuinely good stuff on COVID lockdowns. Race, I would say, probably even censorship, dare I say it. Is there anything good from your perspective that could be brought into CBS now that at least Barry? has been willing to touch some things that the old legacy journalists have not. You know, I think Barry, and she herself said it, was that, you know, and I think a lot of successful people, a lot of successes, this is true of. You know, she did a lot of things kind of just that happened to be at the right time and that was a major part of her success. You know, interestingly,

after she left the New York Times and I kind of supported the reason she left, remember that was at the height of like Black Lives Matter insanity and like peak wokeism and the incentives of that. And, you know, I was at The Intercept still just about, I actually left before her, but, you know, this was like while she was having problems. You know, we were having our own similar difficulties at the Intercept with just extremely woke people, trying to, like, control our journalism, control everything we did, you know, just passing everything. Or me and Ryan Grimm and others, a few others suffered the ones who left basically. Ryan was censoring you. That's what I heard. Oh, yes. Ryan's Mr. Super Woke was censoring me, but he's had a reawakening. And so we actually talked, we had, you know, like the possibility of starting in the media outlet,

and we were actually in talks with Barry and a few other people didn't get very far. But, you know, at some point we kind of realized this commonality that we have at the moment, which is like concerned about and objections to the excesses of wokeism and the censorship it was ushering in and the insane repression of thought. It's a very thin read on which to start a media outlet because it's likely to be very fleeting, very ephemeral. It's likely to go away in a short period of time. and then what happens if instead a war breaks out with Israel and suddenly, you know, Barry Weiss and I are at the same outlet.

And I think, you know, they rode that way for a while. Like Barry, you know, when she left the New York Times, she was sort of this like conquering hero, objecting to the liberal repression at the New York Times. That caused a huge amount of support for her and her blog. And then once wokeism went away, like who really even cares about wokeism anymore? We have a government that hates wokeism as a war with it.

It's not like anti-wokism as some dissident view. you know, they were kind of lost. And then war broke out on October 7, two years ago, exactly. And they became, you know, the hardest score pro-Israel, consistently pro-Israel outlet and got, you know, the investments of very big pro-Israel, pro-national security state billionaires and a lot more subscribers as a result. And then ultimately, that's what led there. So, you know, I think very is shrewd. I think she has an understanding of the currents of new media and a way that probably, a lot of older executives that CBS News don't have. But, you know, it's kind of like the Chomsky

point. I mean, David Ellison and Larry Ellison are billionaires. They are very much embedded in the power structure. They're not buying CBS to do anything revolutionary. They're buying it in order to fortify what their ideology is. And that begins and ends with for the moment, support for Israel. And Barry is perfect for that. Well, so let's talk about that structural question. Because I saw Brad Devlin over at the Daily Signal respond to one of Barry's post today by saying, quote, But I thought the independence of the media was the point. And that's actually, I think, a really interesting insight because the independent structure, I mean, in their announcement today, they said the free press will remain independent within Paramount,

which is a hilarious sentence. That's like an actual point that they made. The free press will be an independent part of a massive corporation, meaning it's not independent in any way whatsoever. But Glenn, you actually are independent. like that's structurally. You've written for the Guardian. You've done stuff all over the place. But structurally, that is a different experience.

And I was hoping maybe you could speak a little bit to why that matters. I mean, I've seen the word independent, bastardized in the context of independent media, mantle everyone wants to claim, but not quite as badly as this, saying, oh, we were just purchased by one of the largest media corporations on the planet for $150 million. But don't worry, we're as independent and free and unconstrained as ever before. And it's interesting if you look at the announcement, Barry posted on the free press, huge amounts of comments. I don't mean like, you know, selectively picking of her subscribers are like, wait a minute,

this completely contravenes the entire project you said you were creating, which was to forge independent media separate and apart from these large media institutions. How are you going to possibly justify going there? You know, it's interesting, Emily, because I was on Megan Kelly show last week, and we talked about the Barry Wiss issue, and she asked me about it. And I, of course, said what I just said to you. and she had a much different take unsurprisingly. And, you know, she said, look, I love Barry.

She's a friend of mine. But she raised the point you're raising, which is, why would anybody who has a very successful platform in independent media, who's completely free to do and say what they want, who's making a lot of money, that is a very profitable site, the free press? So that's not the problem. Why would you want to go back into not just corporate media, but the part of the corporate media that is dying most rapidly,

which is network news and, and, you know, network television? I mean, do you know anybody under 50 who's like, hey, did you catch the last 60 minutes interview? Or, hey, I watch, I don't even know who the anchor of CPS News is. What is it? Like Nora O'Donnell or something? So I think she left.

I get the prestige of it. I get, obviously, the financial incentive, all of which are significant. But for people who really do believe in independent media, I mean, you couldn't offer me enough money to go work for a network TV station, let alone be an executive there where you're not even focused on journalism. you have some bureaucratic role. You know, I thought it was creating an independent media outlet when we created the intercept,

but having a billionaire behind us and a ultimately corporation that grew around it met that our independence was in some way compromised. And it's one of the reasons why I left. It's just given what corporations are, that amount of money involved, if you think you're going to be independent no matter what you're promised at the beginning, I think you're going to be in for a rude awakening. I have no doubt Larry Ellison for the moment is saying, oh, Barry, we would never tell you what to do. you're free to do what you do because he's a huge fan of Barry Wives right now because there's a

big war in Israel. That's what the world is focused on. He loves her for that. He loves her anti-woke stuff. But we'll see what happens in a year or two when the topics change, when the focus changes, when the politics change. I doubt she's going to be nearly as free as she thinks she is. That is super interesting. And one of the questions I wanted to ask on actually is, could there be a catch-and-kill situation? Because, for example, one of the reasons in my mind, having this added on to CBS or folded into CBS is potentially a net benefit. For example, just today, they hosted a debate between Coleman Hughes and Dave Smith over at the free press.

And I'm thinking to myself, you know, trying to have a 30,000-foot view perspective on this. What legacy media outlet would be willing to give Dave Smith a voice? Like, are they actually going to be able to bring really interesting voices in? or, and I'm curious again, given your experience at the Intercept, does gradually over time it start turning into, no, let's not do Dave on this. Let's not do that Israel debate. Let's not do this, that, let's not do that Ukraine debate. Is that what you think the real danger is going forward that maybe they caught the free press to kill one of the, or maybe part of the calculus is you can kill one of the biggest new media outlets and control it? It's not like Ellison

wants the free press to go away. He just wants maybe some. control over where it could end up going. I mean, look what happened, you know, just with Charlie Kirk and Turning Point. Like, there's a lot of debate and controversy about what happened. But one thing we know for sure happened because he talked about it, and people close to him, talked about it, is that he relied on very wealthy donors who were multi-million dollar donors to Turning Point on which that organization relied. And they were extremely pro-Israel as Charlie Kirk had been for most of his entire, you know,

adult career. and because he started doing things like inviting Dave Smith to debate Israel with Josh Hammer and because he invited Tucker Carlson to speak at Turning Point, a lot of them went ballistic and he definitely lost at least a couple major donors because they were so angry that he included voices critical of Israel. Now, that's very, you know, kind of writ large. Imagine what happened to CBS News where you not only have major shareholders and investors like the richest people in the world. But on top of that, you have advertisers, you know, the most mainstream corporate advertisers that are run by people.

Yeah, and you think they want to be advertising, selling all their junk to old people, like their medications to old people and their health insurance plans or whatever, their nutrients and supplements and adult diapers. Right after Dave Smith gets done accusing Israel of being a Nazi fascist state and committing a genocide, those commercial pressures are inevitable. There's no avoiding those. Well, this makes me think that maybe, again, I don't know how conspiratorial or, like, deeply strategize this is. I actually don't think it probably is that dark or deeply strategized other than saying this is somebody who agrees with us on a couple of really critical issues. But the future of new media maybe is having the aesthetics of debate and the aesthetics of independence. We've seen that a couple of times, just as there have been buyouts and such in recent times, that the, like, super, gloss of independence of new media. But these major corporations are like, okay, so this person

knows how to do a really good podcast. We'll let them have a debate every once in a while, but it sure as hell is not going to be with Dave Smith. So in a sense, it's sort of like, there's a real risk that very lets the entire project of new media just become the aesthetics of old media content-wise. Yeah, I mean, you know, when I first started blogging, bloggers were considered like profane and dirty and vulgar. And that was right. I hope they were absolutely that except there were a few who weren't that and those were like the Azor Clines

who ended up at the New York Times and the Matt Eglaces who ended up like every mainstream magazine and they wanted those people because they finally accepted that these kind of like outsider voices and bloggers were necessary to kind of adapt to the times but at the same time the only people that

they were going to hire for those positions were the ones who aligned already with the existing voice of those outlets and actually you know it was Ryan Grimm he was on my show. I think you know him. Oh yeah, you already mentioned him as a woke sensor, which is how I know him as well. But he also is your co-host on breaking points. He was on my show last week or a couple weeks ago when we were talking about the Barry thing. And he actually made what I think was the best point or explanation about why Barry is so appealing to people like

David Ellison, which is, okay, this is like a 40-year-old billionaire heir to a fortune. He didn't earn this money. You know, he's spending these billions of dollars that his daddy made. and he wants to feel like he's kind of disruptive the younger generation wants to feel like they're anti-establishment, that they're innovative, that they're new, they're not like their stodgy parents. And Barry kind of gives that by because she left the New York Times

and became this new media creature. But at the same time, Barry is very safe. Like Barry was the one who told all these old people like, oh, your blue-haired kids coming home from college calling you racist, they're the ones who are wrong, you're the ones who are right. I'm here to tell you that. I'm a lesbian. I live in New York. I'm liberal. I'm kind of younger. I don't know how a new media.

And I'm telling you that, no, you're the one who's right. These people are crazy. And she's also very safe from the perspective of, you know, her ideology, nothing extremist about her ever, except her pro-Israel stance, which is very much aligned with the Ellison. So she's kind of like the perfect sweet spot, exactly as you said, to make them feel like they're evolving and doing something new and different and younger and fresher without the threat that that actually entails if you're really doing that without the unpredictability. Yeah, that is really interesting. Let's talk then about, you've mentioned this a couple of times.

Let's talk about the free press israel coverage. And I think you've actually been following Barry's career since she was like an undergrad, if I'm not mistaken. Many people on the left have been aware of Barry since she was an undergrad because she was doing pro-Israel activism on campus. And I think you got mainstream media coverage at the time. But the last couple of years, roughly the censorship question has been really challenging for people in new media who sort of made their names in new media on opposing

Biden-era censorship when it came to COVID, BLM, trans issues, and the like. So what have we seen, because I know you followed it closely when it comes to the free press and Barry Weiss's coverage of censorship and Israel just the last couple years? Well, unlike a lot of people on the right who were very flamboyantly pro-free speech and anti-censorship over the last four years, only to now so flagrantly abandon that and make clear that they don't care about that any longer because the censorship is now coming from their side. Very used to conniving.

Like she's too, I guess I think it's better, like a less negative word. Like maybe she's just too sure that. You know, she's too strategic. She's not going to lay bare her hypocrisy that easily for people like me to just pick up and show it. She's much more subtle. about it. So she can show you, and she, if she were here, she undoubtedly would, the like, loan isolated once every three months article or editorial that the free press published,

where they're like, I'm not really sure about whether this type of censorship against Israel critics is going too far. Maybe it is. So she'll say, look, I criticized it. But when you look at the intensity and the severity of censorship in the name of protecting Israel, ushered by the Trump administration, talking about things like imposing expanded hate speech codes on college campuses to severely increase the amount of views that are prohibited when talking about Israel or Jews or Jewish students or Judaism in the name of stopping anti-Semitism. The amount of denunciation and coverage that it's gotten from the free press is minuscule compared to what it ought to be if she were really a genuine defender of free speech or at least somebody unwilling to make an

exception for the group and issue about what she cares most. Yeah, you know, that's an interesting. because I agree, I don't think she's been sort of flagrantly bad because the free press has been careful. And I actually hadn't really thought about that until now. They have been relatively careful and sort of framing a lot of this stuff as a debate. I'm just so curious to see how that seeps into the framing of news coverage because CBS under Sherry Redstone, I mean, this is already a corporation that's been roughly in the exact same spot on Israel as Barry Weiss, except for Barry has actually been sort of shrewd enough to borrow your word to realize, that people at least need what she might see as their vegetables handed to them in this vehicle of debate or this vehicle of independent expression or whatever. So it's such a strange turn of events because I don't think there's any editorial difference really. Maybe you disagree between CBS before and after Barry. Well, you know what's so funny? I see so many people saying like, you know what?

I'm happy that this is happening because I just want there to be some space for these views. And I'm like, oh, yes, absolutely. You know, the one thing that we all have to lament is that there has been absolutely no space in U.S. corporate media people who love and support Israel. We've been suffocating under this monopoly control by owners of media who are Arab and Muslim and pro-Palestinian. And finally, with the arrival of David Ellison and Barry Weiss, we're finally going to get some space at least for some pro-Israel perspectives for balance.

And the funniest thing about this, you know, Emily, it's like everybody, and I've been thinking about this the last few days, like, everybody believes everybody that the media is biased. But everybody also believes the media is biased against their own views. Nobody believes the media is, nobody ever says the media is biased in favor of my views because that's just true. And it's amazing that there are really people who think the U.S. media is biased against Israel. So the current owner of CBS News, as you alluded to, is Sherry Redstone, who's the daughter. the heir of Sunder Redstone, who bought Viacom and owned CBS, a multibillionaire.

And the reason she said she's selling Paramount is because she said after October 7th, the only thing she decided she cared about was loving and supporting Israel, and she no longer cares about managing a media company or, you know, journalism. She just wants to devote her life to Israel. Does that sound to you like somebody

who oversaw an anti-Israel network? We're talking about 60 minutes with Leslie Stahl and just Israel supporters, remember one ton of he was on TVS morning news that morning show with Gail King and was grilled by that

But Tony DeCopal, right? Yeah, who's I think his wife is Israeli and he lived in Israel for a while. So the idea that CBS was previously some like anti-Zionist outlook or like pro Hamas Central is ridiculous.

But I think that the idea that Barry Weiss has is that although she believes in sort of debate, she also believes that truth is the overarching value for journalism and truth to her is supporting Israel, denying that there's famine

and Gaza is the truth. She thinks this is what journalism is and I have no doubt that she's going to impose there. Even though she won't think she's imposing it as an ideology, she'll think she's imposing it as journalism. That will be the outcome more explicitly than even under Sherry Redstone. Okay. Now, Glenn, I have to ask you

about revelations from Senator Chuck Grassley tonight. I'm going to read from a Fox News story about these documents. I'm not ready to stop talking about Barry Ways. Are you sure we have to church rich? All right, I'm ready. Go ahead. No, I'm actually not either because I think it's one of the most fascinating stories ever that you have this media startup ending as part. Like, I just don't understand. You were saying this earlier. I don't understand why anybody would want to be a part of CBS. Paramount right now.

It just seems completely insane to me, let alone as a journalist. No, but it's actually, now you've got me going, glad, because it's actually a very good point. David Ellison's Skydance merger with Paramount was funded by his father, Larry Ellison, as you mentioned. And Larry Ellison, they now want to merge Warner. They now want a seat and what is the seven-person TikTok board. This is an insane amount of power for anyone family to have, let alone any one person to have. And I just can't imagine the mentality of a journalist who says, I trust that, which is what Barry alluded to today in her message. She said, I believe in the vision that they're bringing to the table.

And just again, like as a journalist, this is my last point. Maybe you'll have thoughts on it, but I just cannot imagine that mentality, period. I mean, the one thing I will say about Barry, though, is let's remember she got her start. She went to the Wall Street Journal. She went to the New York Times. I mean, that is already indicative of somebody who desires to be part of these, like, prestige brands. She went to Columbia University, which is in the Ivy League. So it isn't like she had ever displayed this anti-establishment persona before.

She kind of got driven out of the New York Times, stumbled into substack, became a big success, and to her credit, you know, I give her credit, like built it. But on the one hand, it's like, until we're in the position where somebody saying, hey, Emily, here's $150 million. I'm willing to buy your little YouTube show. I'm also going to make you editor-in-chief of CBS News. You know, I don't think any of us are 100% certain we would say no if handled all that. But I am close to 100% certain that I would.

I just think it's like you have to be a little humble and realize until you're in that position, you don't know for sure. Because I know what that entails. But also, Emily, like, don't you feel like we're so lucky because we're in the realm that's, like, vibrant and that's growing and that's free? And I look at people who are, like, journalists or reporters for CBS News or ABC, and they're on television, but nobody knows them. Nobody cares about them.

Nobody listens to their work. It makes no impact because no one trusts those things. No one watches those. There's no fans. There's no, like, supporters. And it's like Barry is leaving this, like, flourishing forest for this. Exactly. decaying, dying sewer.

But, you know, there's 150 million reasons she has to do it. And I guess on top of that, there's that title. And, you know, it's prestige and it seems like she's a person who values that. Yeah, I mean, there's still this notion, I think, that if you are the right kind of outsider, quote, outsider who speaks like an insider, dresses like an insider, knows the routine because you've been in these newsrooms before you, in some ways are still an insider, that you can go in and make change. And to me, that just, again, from the outside,

if somebody offered me $150 million, I would probably projectile vomit onto them and start crying. Like, that sounds horrible. But at the same time, I think she probably believes this is where I can be the most impactful. Or that's, I guess, what you end up telling yourself. But, Emily, like, name one outsider view that Barry Weiss has.

Like, one dissident outsider view. Well, it was, I mean, she had them at the time on, for example, COVID, Me Too. I woke is, you know, the official position of the U.S. government. Yes, that's right. Yes, there are many things that are now the official position of the U.S. government. Let's see if CBS News has any interest in covering Operation Arctic Frost under Barry Weissgled because Chuck Grassley has a new document dump that comes from the FBI showing, quote, as Fox News put it, former special counsel, Jack Smith was allegedly tracking the private communications and phone calls of nearly a dozen Republican senators as part of his investigation into the January 6th,

2021 Capitol riots. Fox News Digital has learned. This document reviewed by Fox Digital revealed that Smith and his Arctic Frost team investigating J6 were allegedly tracking the phone calls over Republican senators Lindsey Graham, Marsha Blackburn, Ron Johnson, Josh Hawley, Cynthia Lammis, Bill Haggerty, Dan Sullivan, Tommy Tabrable, and Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania. A source says to Fox News that was likely about the 2020 election votes. You can tell that from the pattern of names. and Sean Davis has said he believes this should put Jack Smith in prison. What do you make of it, Glenn? Well, obviously, spying on people for political ends is a topic very near and dear to my heart.

It's what I worked on pretty much of the exclusion of everything else for about four years of my life. With the Snowden reporting, so something, I haven't had a chance to see these documents or this report yet. So I'm responding to it based on your summary. So obviously, that would be a source of concern. I guess the question I would have, you know, in the first instance, is whether Jack Smith obtained warrants. And my guess is, I find it hard to believe that he would be spying on 12 senators without some kind of authorization from like a Pfizer court or probably not even a Pfizer court, probably just a regular Article 3 court that gives warrants surveillance warrants to the FBI. And, you know, if he did that, unless he lied in order to to obtain them, I think it's pretty hard to argue that Jack Smith, committed crimes. I don't think any prosecutor would argue that he did absent lies to get the warrants

the way we know that, you know, FBI agents lied to get warrants on Carter Page and one of them pled guilty and even went to prison for it. But I do think it shows, Emily, like, and this is, you know, I do think there's a lot of political persecution, a lot of, like, very extreme abuses of power by the Trump administration. But I also don't have a lot of sympathy for liberals who are ranting and raving about it and screeching about it because there's a lot of. no question. They deployed exactly the same kind of politicized abuses against their political enemies. And they were so self-righteous about it that they never believed when those of us who were saying, look, you're going to build this machinery. And one day it's going to be in the hands

of your enemies and don't come crying to us when it's used against you. And even if Jack Smith had warrants, that kind of an investigation spying on 12 senators over a contested election is so extreme and excessive that even with warrants, it does illustrate the kind of abuses that took place. Yeah, and your point is really well taken. So these were according to Fox, which quotes an official, who says the records were collected in 2023 by Smith and his team after subpoenaing major telephone providers. So it looks like that's where they got it with subpoena power as special counsel. And these are cast. So these are cast assistance. That's what the document says. So those are, Glenn, you probably know this. The FBI's cellular analysis survey team,

which from my understanding means that basically they're looking at who called whom, when, and for how long in all likelihood. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. Again, I have to see the specific warrants to know for sure, but it is true that the FBI does have a lot of power to spy on people without court approval. A lot of that comes from the Patriot Act. A lot of that comes from the war on terror where the FBI obtaining power to mandate information be turned over from telecommunications carriers without even going

to a Pfizer court. And I'd have to know the details of this. But if there were no warrant, and you're probably right, since they were using the FBI, and the FBI does have a lot of these warrantless powers. Again, I'll pursue one to law, but you can abuse powers, even ones authorized by law.

Then I think this would be a pretty big scandal. I mean, spying on 12 senators at once, as part of what is obviously a politicized prosecution, all Republican senators, a prosecutor who was appointed by a Democratic administration, clearly carrying out the political business of a Democratic party, yeah, that's going to be a major story, regardless of what the legalities of.

are. Well, and as I'm thinking of it now, this entire question of like the quote, fake electors scheme is an interesting one too, because that's probably what they were probing is, was their coordination among the senators to vote in a particular way on certifying the electors? But that in and of itself, I mean, you can disagree with it, as I did at the time, you disagree with their decisions. But to actually cook that up into a criminal investigation, like in some conspiratorial mindset that, I mean, they're just talking. to each other to say whether or not they're going to certify the electors. That's not, obviously, that's not illegal unless you're building into some other case,

which Jack Smith obviously was doing, bringing in different parts of what was alleged to be a conspiracy. So that seems like spying on people over even like the crux of the case, which is, if it's about certifying electors, legitimate political decisions by senators. What this is, you know, the problem I had with the January 6th prosecutions from the start, you know, both the one brought in Atlanta. by Fannie Wells, but especially the line brought by Jack Smith in in Washington, which is the whole question ultimately comes down to whether the people who are contesting the election believe there was any valid basis for doing so, whether they believed there was really any evidence of fraud. And if you believe there was any evidence of fraud, which I believe

Donald Trump believed, all those things that they accused him of doing, you know, going into court, contesting election outcomes, even that call to the, you know, the person in Georgia saying, let's say I know there's 100,000 fraudulent ballots out there. All I need you to do is find 12,000 to reverse the outcome. You know, that has a very sinister ring to it because it can sound on the one hand like, hey, I just want you to fabricate 12,000 votes so I stay in power. But if you believe there were tens of thousands of fraudulent ballots and you're saying just find 12,000 of them, that's all that's necessary, it has a much different tone.

And that's why I never thought Trump would get convicted beyond a reasonable doubt because it's all about whether he believed that the contestation of the election was based in any sort of valid claim, even if it wasn't true. And that's even more true of these senators who have less information than Trump. And so I've always regarded this as an abuse of power. And if it entails spying on Republican senators, all the more so. And there are Democrats in the past who voted against certifying electors. Again, it's not something that I've agreed with in any of these cases, but it's a perfectly legitimate use of senatorial power. And we have checks and balances in our system where Jack Smith is now spying on senators for doing,

apparently what is a perfectly legitimate part of their jobs. Last question on this, Glenn, is you have to be even more frustrated than I am on it because I look at some of the, you know, difficult to assess decisions of the Trump administration where it's like sometimes they're so bad, sometimes that as a conservative, I'm like, oh, I see where you're going, this is good. But at the same time, you look at stuff like this, I'm like, I don't know that anyone takes Democrats seriously or the media seriously on any of these criticisms of Trump, some of which are completely fair. They're completely fair. Like what happened to Ramesa Azturk, completely fair, the excesses of the Trump administration.

But nobody takes it seriously because they cried with Wolf over and over again, and they won't concede that any of this. A, they either just don't talk about it or B, they won't concede that anything may have been done wrong. And I don't know how we can get, we can build back better as a country, Glenn, until some of that happens. And it feels like it never will. You know, I remember before the election, a lot of Democrats would say one of the things I fear most about Trump is that he'll weaponize the justice system in order to try and prosecute his retribution. With a straight face. Like it didn't even occur to them that to anybody else other than them and their followers that might appear like kind of bizarre that that's their concern given that their whole strategy for. ears is go back to Russia Gate, remember, not just these prosecutions of January 6th,

was to try and put Donald Trump in prison as the solution to his political popularity. Now, as somebody who didn't support any of that, you know, I feel kind of frustrated that I have to, you know, sort of rise in protest of it, but I feel like I don't have that many credible allies. I have some, but the Democrats who are standing up and renting and raving and screaming, I remember criticizing them for exactly the same thing. Like, less than the news show. Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell. Oh, my.

Portraits and courage. Yeah, exactly. Those are the people who I'm going to hold hands with and be like, yeah, no politicizing our justice system. Or, you know, the whole Joe Biden administration, like pressuring big tech to censor dissent for years on end about Ukraine, about COVID, about January 6th in the 2020 election. And then they're going to say like, yeah, free speech, no censorship. And that absolutely is a problem. We're in this cycle of retribution. And it's hard to blame conservatives, even though you wish they would, you know, rise above it and say, no,

these principles matter just because they violated it doesn't mean we're going to. That's not really what human nature is. And there is this kind of sense of like, why are we going to tie our hands behind our back and abide by these rules if the other side isn't? Which is how Democrats felt in the Bush era, by the way, when they were trying to impeach him because he was going completely, he was acting in extra constitutional ways, obviously. And so Democrats were like, okay, we'll do the same, we'll do the same thing. Yeah. And that, I mean, of course, that's what Obama ended up doing. And it does, you know, usually if you're like a sub-overtarian, the argument you do try and make to people is, look, imagine if the other side has this power. And the problem in trying to convince

conservatives of that right now is they're like, I already saw what happened. They had this power and I know how they used it. Right. And they're going to use it that way anyway, whether I do it or not. So why should I abide by these restraints that the Democrats have proven repeatedly they don't feel obliged at all to adhere to? Right. It's one of the strange things about the FBI and the CIA going against the Republican candidate, as Republicans always felt so confident, going back to the creation of the CIA, that they wouldn't have to worry about the CIA in any way, shape, or form.

And then that changed in the last 10 years very suddenly. Yeah, I saw an interview today with Jane Fonda, she was on the Bullwark, which is the Bill Crystal site. So you're talking about Bull Crystal and Jane Fubber. That's right. With Tim, yeah. I don't know if you saw it. No, it wasn't with him. It was with Tim Miller, but Tim Miller mentioned that he asked her,

Do you know that you're talking to Bill Crystal's podcast and Bill Crystal's website? And she was like, I love Bill Crystal. He's awesome. I always read the weekly standard religiously. And Tim Miller was like, you did. And this is, you know, I've watched Democrats turn into lovers of the CIA, the FBI, even neocons who are now their, you know, partners in crime and their allies. And it is something that has contaminated everything because now the CIA and the FBI and the NSA are in the hand,

and Homeland Security are in the hands of Trump. And they really tried to imprison Trump for life. They tried to imprison his whole family. Democrats used to sit around fantasizing openly on MSNBC about frog marching Don Jr. And, you know, the whole Trump family, let alone Trump himself out of the White House in handcuffs under Robert Mueller. And then the same thing after January 6th. And, you know, when someone tries to put you in prison and then on top of that, you know, you suffer two assassination attempts, one that almost blows your head off, you're going to feel like you don't know that much deference to the people who did that to you.

Right. No, that's a good point. Glenn's not getting out of here until I talked to him about the fix-on-wife. We could, I mean, if you want, I'm sure you can work Barry. We're going to do that in person soon. That's right, October 24th. Megan Kelly couldn't sell out San Antonio without us, and so she had to make us go with her to sell tickets. The Glenn Greenwald fan base in San Antonio, you can't imagine. Well, of course. I mean, that's a given.

But people, I think a lot of people, Glenn, don't know that you are just, I mean, you could be the mayor of San Antonio. The King of Texas. The King of Texas. Yes, we will be there on October 24th together, which we are very excited for. So make sure you get your tickets. Now, Glenn, when I saw that we were paired up, I was pretty excited about that. Because I don't think we've ever met in person. It's so weird.

I know. I talked to Megan about that. We had a little chat about that on our show. Like we consider each other very good friends, and yet we never actually been together in person. So yeah, I'm looking forward to that with Boldie. It'll be great. All right. Well, so we'll be back with Glenn in just one moment before that, though.

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So do not just say your pro-life. Live it. Help save babies and support mothers today. Go to preborn.com slash Emily or call 855-601-29. That's preborn.com slash Emily. Back with Glenn Greenwald, who's, of course, host of system update, and I know probably is bursting with all kinds of opinions on country music and the burgeoning Dixie Chicks 2.0 controversy over. Zach Bryan, who I think we have his Instagram post,

put up a sample of his new song, which has the lyrics, quote, And ICE is going to come, bust down your door, Try to build the house. No one builds no more. But I got a telephone. Kids are all scared and all alone. The boss stopped bumping. The rock stopped rolling. The middle fingers rising and it won't be showing. I got some bad news. The fading of the red, white and blue. There's nothing better than when a journalist recites music lyrics into a microphone. It's always so beautiful. John Rich, though, country star put out a post that said today, who's ready for the Zach Bryan Dixie Chick's tour? probably a huge Bud Light sponsorship for this one.

Glenn, actually, that made me want to talk to you about this question of the right censorship, cancel culture. People think back on what happened to the Dixie Chicks as cancel culture kind of 1.0 before we had a word for what cancel culture was. And it does seem to me, maybe it's social media, and you'll know this better because, spoiler, alert, you are older. But during the Dixie Chicks controversy, there was a lot of virtue signal. too, right? Like they became this opportunity for people to signal their virtue over. You were either a virtuous patriot who supported the troops or you were a virtuous dissenter. And it was an opportunity for people to pick sides. Now I feel like everything becomes that on a different level. We just

are all going into these trenches. And instead of just pausing to think, maybe, you know, this doesn't have to become another Dixie Chicks thing because it's like young man who served as country singing in a song expressing himself, we signal about how is Dixie Chicks 2.0 and put a Bud Light joke in there for good measure. Yeah. And first of all, you are right. I am older than you, I think, like five or six years. So I do have some added memories, but not. You were born in 1988. Yeah. 1987, in a decade of seven, correct. So in any event, yeah, you know, it was funny because during the whole right-wing backlash against cancel culture, I did always think about that,

the Dixie Chicks because for me, that was one of the first examples of what you would have called cancer culture, had the term existed because it wasn't, and by the way, if you go and look at what the Dixie Chicks actually said, it was so incredibly mild. They were like, because of the Iraq war, we're embarrassed that our president is George Bush. That was it. But of course they were overseas. Yeah, they said we're ashamed of the United States from Texas. We're with you with y'all on this. And they were in London or Manchester. And that was the, whoops, that was the country. Right. There's some rule that you don't criticize the United States when you're you're on foreign soil, but you know, it's so interesting because you can see so many right-wing

politicians during the Biden administration who would go to all kinds of places, including Israel, and just bash the crap out of Biden. Yeah, exactly. Oh, yeah, El Salvador is now our model for how our government is supposed to be. But, you know, so these rules are very flexible and evolving, let's say, to put it generously. But, you know, and the thing with the Dixie Chicks is, it wasn't just that people exercise their right and said, oh, I'm not going to buy their albums. It was nowhere near that genteel. They were calling the radio stations and demanding that people, that the radio stations not play their songs. If radio stations played their songs, they got threats.

They were public burnings of their records, very, you know, redolent of book burnings. They had to cancel various tours and various appearances because they were threatened. They basically had to disappear from public life for, you know, a couple of years because people who didn't live through that time, I think maybe don't realize just how intense the Uber jingoism became at the height of the, you know, war and terror in the Iraq War

before everybody realized it was insane and wrong. And they kind of were proven right. And so, you know, on the one hand, I think people have the right to patronize, you know, who they want. Like, if there's some actor out there, you know, heaping praise on Israel and defending their genocide, I would probably exercise my right not to go patronize their films or whatever. I think it's perfectly within our right. I do think, though, that when, as you said, everything becomes just a litmus test of politicized nobility. Like, everything is microscopically analyzed, even art and music and everything.

just to try and find on which side your ethos falls and completely punish you or venerate you based on any kind of discovery. That's when I think that we are having a very unhealthy culture because not every part of culture is supposed to be contaminated with politics. Right. And at the time, it was people calling up to the radio stations, as you mentioned.

People were like burning the records, stamping on the records. You had conservative groups organizing in opposition or pro-military groups organizing in opposition and radio, conservative talk radio, was all over the story. But now everyone can weigh in via social media, likes, comments, reposts, all of that. And so everyone's sort of their own rush limbaugh in a respect, and it becomes built into your personality. And this is where I was curious for your take as somebody who endure a lot of this during the Iraq war years, especially from the right. But then I think a lot of people probably apologize to you.

And like in the last 10 years, I'm curious. Maybe you have more to say on that. But I just, from your lessons for people who are at risk of being like canceled cultures, who then were reformed cancel culture errs, and now maybe we'll become cancel culture ers, once again, why is it best to remain sometimes, Glenn, just chill and not make everything into a sort of issue where it's trench warfare? Yeah, by the way, like multiple Fox News hosts, you know, would apologize to me, like on the air, let alone privately. And I think that teaches an important lesson, which is sometimes if you are the target of this kind of very public recrimination and you really believe in the, you know, righteousness of your view, you know, stay there and stick to it because it's often the case that public opinion changes. And then you feel good having kind of endured all of that in order to. to have staked out your position. I think the important point that you raise the broader point is that if everything is micro-analyzed through some political or partisan or ideological prism,

all we're going to do is create this very frightened, conformist, you know, kind of like stagnant culture where everybody is petrified of saying anything. And this was always the problem with cancel culture for me. Obviously, the individual cases were bad. But the broader concern was it was teaching American citizens to be petrified. to say what they think because the recriminations, even if they were just a private person, even if they were saying it in passing,

even if they were just expressing a momentary thought on the internet would have such profound consequences negatively for their lives that everybody just kind of concluded, you know what? I think it's just better to be quiet, which is really the climate of an autocracy or like a tyranny where everybody just says, okay, you know, I know that if I just stay quiet,

I know if I remain apolitical and acquiescent and kind of passive, nothing bad is going to happen to me. So that's the choice. And that's not a culture we want to foster. And I think that that is exactly what's happening with public people, you know, who might want to express themselves artistically or personally or in any other way, let alone politically, they just think it's not worth it because of the hell that's unleashed on them in their lives.

And the alternative is just this very staid, vapid culture where everyone wants to just say whatever they have to say to get along. Okay. So last question for you, Alex, I know you've had a busy day. But I, on that, I think about, I mean, this is Joe Rogan has said multiple times. He's kind of reacted with horror and discussed that how the Trump administration has handled immigration, ice raids in particular. And so here you have Zach Bryan, who's sort of another like normie dude who I think he's

actually been on Rogan saying this about ice raids. And without getting into the specifics of ice raids, Glenn, I just the big picture question on this I wanted to ask is I feel like the right went into. to 2025 feeling like the cultural wind was at its back for the first time in more than a generation. Like it was to paraphrase Ronald Reagan morning in America, 1984, everything, I mean that electorally, not Orwellianly, but that's a great adverb though, Orwellianly. And it was all coming to fruition. The right finally was holding the levers of cultural power. And so now it's almost like with Bad Bunny too, the sense of like, how dare you do this? We're in control. Like,

Look at me. I am the captain now. No bad bunny at the Super Bowl. No, you know, songs that say you don't like ice. It just that that seems like a recipe for backlash. Yeah, you know, I think like if I have any ideology, it's my ideology I would describe it as distrust of unrestrained power concentrated to any person or group of people because human beings are not really equipped to handle power well. And, you know, so often people obtain power based on, popular arguments and then before you know it they're intoxicated with that power and going way too far overstepping you know creating their own backlash i mean you saw that in 2020 when the left kind of had this cultural way with the george floyd uh murder and people were horrified and before you know it the left was taking it to places where nobody wanted to go and i think you're seeing that a lot now i know i know this is very cliche to say but i really do believe i believe this about most people but i know americans you know best along with brazilian so i do think americans have a basic decency to them like

most of them, even though, like, especially the ones who are apolitical, you know, they may be resentful about certain problems. For sure, they were resentful about untrampled immigration. Like, they felt like it was, but I don't think they want to see cruelty, like, a gratuitous cruelty. And there's a big difference between dragging, you know, somebody who went to the country illegally and who's wanted on warrants of, like, rape and armed robbery and, you know, grabbing a family and, you know, trampling them into, like, some car by masked agents with guns pointed at their head, who have small children who are working for 20 years on a farm just trying to make a better living for themselves. They may all be here illegally, but I think there's a cruelty and like a kind of almost this like

amp kind of authoritarianism that the Trump administration loves to display that I really think is going to generate a backlash precisely because decent people just don't want to see it. They don't want to feel like they're, you know, ratifying cruelty. And I think a lot of it looks cruel, like look sadistic. And it's meant to, yeah, I have the same sense about this. or performative theatrical elements, which they would say in the best cases to disincentivize people from coming or staying

and not taking advantage of CB home. But we didn't get into all of that, Glenn Grewald. I am still looking forward to October 24th in San Antonio. We will be joining Megan on stage live. Make sure you get your tickets for that. And Glenn, again, I know you've had a busy day. So thanks, Emily, for coming on the show. Emily, what are we going to have after that event?

Oh, we're going to do country karaoke with Barry Wise. we're going to have an after party. Oh, yeah, that's where Barry's performing country music. We're doing Dixie Chicks covers with Barry. Exactly, exactly. Hi there's great seeing you. I'll see you shortly before you. Thanks, Glenn. God's, of course, host of System Update.

We appreciate him coming on. I love System Update. By the way, now I promise some thoughts on Taylor Swift, and honestly, whether you like it or not, it was going to happen. Before we get into that, though, recently I learned about Colostrum. Have you learned about it? It is the very first milk known as liquid gold.

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But before we get into all of that, I have to run the sot of sound on tape video of Taylor Swift and Killian Murphy, of course of Peeky Blinders fame on the Graham Norton show. Just take a look. Watch Killian Murphy's face. There is the new bit of finger jewelry. The hardware upgrade? Yes. Just like every girl in a Nashville puddle pub, Killiam Murphy, non-plus. Like it's a TV. Utterly non-plus. That went viral. And if you pay close enough attention to his face, you just see him, listen, this is my interpretation.

There's many people in the internet's interpretation, struggling to muster the smile, the talk show enthusiasm that one might need to muster in order to react appropriately to that thing. Taylor Swift's hand, which is truly massive. Some people though, I think maybe it was Swifties on social media, we're looking at Killian Murphy and we're like, how sweet he loves Taylor Swift. So it's a good sort of inkblot test of how enthusiastic you think Killian Murphy is about Taylor Swift. But I wanted to react a little bit to the album because I was listening to it the day it came out, obviously I was traveling, but listen, I've written too much about Taylor Swift, like simply too much about about Taylor Swift over the years. And the reason is that I'm very squarely

in Taylor Swift's demographic. You know, she's like probably three or four years older than me. So when I was a teenager, Taylor Swift was really popular. And, you know, I love country music. It's one of my pet topics. As you can probably tell from the last segment we just did with Glenn, I could talk all day about country music.

One of my ambitions before I realized it was dumb was to become a country music historian back in college. So here we are, I'm talking to you. at 11 p.m. on a Monday night about Taylor Swift, who needs a degree? Am I right? But I do have a new piece coming out with the Institute for Family Studies in the next couple of days looking at some of the lyrics because, I mean, my jaw to the extent that it could be was like on the floor on an airplane as I was listening to a couple of these songs. So obviously the first one, eldest daughter, I know this has caught a lot of people's attention. She says, quote,

But when I said, I don't believe in marriage, that was a lie. Every eldest daughter was the first lamb to the slaughter. So we all dressed up as wolves. Just want to pause right there. People remember Lavender Hayes from 2022. And the lyrics in Lavender Hayes were like, no deal. The 1950s shit they want for me. And all they keep asking me is if I'm going to be a bride, the only kind of girl they see is a one night or a wife.

I went back and looked up how Reddit reacted at the time, like hardcore swiss. And they were just trying to figure out what this meant about Taylor Swift and marriage. But Swift herself confirms that she was in those years, rightfully being interpreted as somebody who were saying they don't believe in marriage. And now engaged to Travis Kelsey. This is what she's singing on eldest daughter, that they dress up as wolves, the eldest daughters. I mean, think of millennial women.

This is going to get me started on Lena Dunham and girls. Again, I have to resist myself a little bit here. but this is going to get me started on that for sure, talking about dressing up as wolves in order to have this like hard exterior for just as a kind of cover, a shell for the truth, which is that these women often weren't in marriage relationships. They didn't, they hadn't found the right person. And so Taylor Swift in her, Travis Kelsey era,

feels completely differently. But what's important about that lyric in particular is, the millennial woman, elite millennial woman, using feminism as a cover for something different, openly lying in a political sense. She uses the word lie, of course. So openly sort of covering, using feminism as a shield to mask pain and uncertainty and a yearning

for something much more traditional. So wish list then goes on and talks about, kinds of stuff, basketball. The lyrics are, I just want you, hon, have a couple kids, got the whole block looking like you, got me dreaming about a driveway with a basketball hoop. And then she mocks other people who, quote, those three dogs that they call their kids. So people who have, quote, those three dogs that they call their kids. Remember, this is the person who endorsed Kamala Harris with the picture of holding her cat, which everyone interpreted appropriately as a response to J.D. Vance's, quote, childless cat lady line. And so for Taylor Swift then also to be in the same

song, mocking Hollywood decadence, people who put all of their stock in money and career success and have dogs instead of children, her saying, no, I want lots of kids. I want my husband. And I just want a basketball hoop in a driveway in a block as opposed to, you know, At least she can never live a normal life like that. We all know it. But as opposed to being off in the hills in your massive mansion, she's alluding to something that is much more middle class American dream than anything else. And it's totally traditional.

She talks about having used, like this is her confirming that she was using feminism as a shield, political feminism, as a shield to cover up what she really believed and what she really wanted. And that last part about what she really wanted is important, because I think for a lot of millennial women, this is where I will return to the well of Lena Dunham and Girls, which is just an endless supply for me. But if you, without spoiling the last episode, the last season of Girls, if you watch that show's arc,

what you realize is you see Lena Dunham, I think the brilliant writer, creator of girls, grappling with the reality of what she really wants and what her character Hannah really wants. And I'm not gonna spoil the series, I still really believe people need to watch it, but it ends in a symbolic and literal triumph for traditionalism, dare I say small C, conservatism. And you just, we're seeing as we go through millennial women's 30s into their 40s that that is what so many people want. And Lyman Stone at the

Institute for Family Studies has looked at American women, as looked at the data and found American women do end up having fewer children than they say they wanted. Well, what's, what's positive behind that? I think there are absolutely economic reasons behind that. I think there are many, many factors that go into it. But clearly, some of it comes from, this idea that there's a period of self-exploration in your 20s and career prioritization in your 20s.

I mean, I've talked on the show before about the difference that a lot of people, especially in Christian Trichols, talk about between a startup marriage and a merger marriage, right? Like the millennials were the merger marriage generation. That was the right way to start that chapter in your life after establishing yourself and your success, traveling, accomplishing great strides at work. Then you merge, as opposed to growing, you sort of together in a relationship. And I just think there are going to be more and more examples of this. It's fascinating to me to see Taylor Swift do it so flamboyantly and brazenly and shamelessly and shamelessly on this new record,

which people are absolutely right to mock the lyrics. People will be absolutely right to be mocking the lyrics and just the sort of clumsiness of them, probably until Taylor Swift writes her last song. But I promise numbers and numbers you shall have. Let's take a look. This is actually a Gen Z divorce article from the Times that I promised to talk about.

But before we get to it, I'll put this beautiful New York Times art up. Well, I read from Brad Wilcox. He's of the Institute for Family Studies in the Atlantic back in July. He noted that since the early 1980s, the divorce rate has now fallen by almost 40%. And about half of that decline has happened in just the past 15 years. The idea that marriage will end in failure half the time or more well entrenched in many American minds is out of date. The proportion of first marriages expected to end in divorce has fallen to about 40% in recent years. He goes on to say in 2023, the most recent year available, it was higher.

This is the rate of new marriages among prime age adults. It was higher than in any year since 2008 in 2023. At least some of this increase, he says, Brad says, is a post-pandemic bounce. But the share of all prime age adults who are married has also leveled off in the past few years, which suggests that the decades long decline in the proportion of Americans who are married may have reached its low point. Now, the feminist writer you may be familiar with, Jill Filippevich wrote about what Brad wrote in the Atlantic. She reacted to it by saying, actually, maybe it was millennial feminism that saved marriage because millennial women entered marriage and found it to be very healthy. And that pattern just sort of continued.

At one point, Filippevich wrote, she had such an interesting line. She said, one of the less predictable turns of my life and my politics have taken. is that I, a long-term-time marriage skeptical feminist, wound up a woman in my 40s who is not only happily married, but increasingly convinced that marriage is a broad social good worth promoting and investing in. Marriage and the success success, success, maybe that too. Sequence is actually, as the Institute for Family Studies and others have a lot of data on, also great for people on a class basis. So it's, you end up earning, more and being more financially stable if you follow the success path, which the success sequence,

which is hard to say because of the illiterate of properties that make it so sticky, but at the same time, generally it is a great ticket to upward mobility or financial stability just in general. So let us return to this divorce article from Gen Z to test the Joe Fulipavange point about feminism. Here's the lead that was going viral in this New York Times piece. Quote, in 2021, Kira Benson, a violinist living in Seattle, knew it was time to get a divorce. Ending their two-year, quote, lavender marriage wasn't an easy decision, but the musician had a supportive ally. If you have to dump your ex-husband, Mick's Benson said, co-dump him with his mistress. Before the breakup, Mick Benson 27, who uses the pronoun they, checked in with their therapist, who said a divorce would be a good choice.

Out of queer solidarity, they informed their husband's mistress. This was kosher in Mix Benson's arrangement. When I say mixed, by the way, it's MX. Benson's arrangement, which was not a legal marriage, but a domestic partnership about their shared partners' troubling behavior. Their shared partners troubling behavior. Let's just admit that all of them are engaged in troubling behavior at that point. There is no one person engaged in troubling behavior when there is a shared partner of three. The night of the breakup, Mick's Benson and the mistress spent a cozy evening together.

Quote, we were eating a lot of comfort food, playing a lot of animal crossing. Good Lord. I don't even know what to say about that. A cozy evening together, you would think maybe they were at a ski lodge, having some red wine and relaxing after a long day on the slopes. No, they were eating Cheetos and playing Animal Crossing and then talk to the New York Times about it. The senior most members of Gen Z, the time says, are in their late 20s, old enough to have gotten married, but also old enough to regret it. As this generation enters divorcing age, it's finding little shame in the act, especially when a split, like Mick Spenson's, is motivated by prioritizing one's mental health. And rather than quietly moving on, younger divorcees are often highlighting this facet of their story, even after they're in new relationships.

I just want to say, that is in all likelihood not true. It's probably true of a really small slice of Gen Z that people are getting divorced without shame and quietly moving on. They talk about Emily Radikowski creating divorce rings out of her wedding rings and others. And again, like I don't, who am I to say that some members of Gen Z aren't experiencing this and I'm sure going full throttle into it. But one of the things we've obviously seen with polling is that young men and young women, Gen Z in particular, are starting to come apart at the seams on basic foundational values, like culture questions about marriage and kids and all of that. So I don't know, you know, I think what the best guess here is,

there is going to be a fringe that the New York Times happens to be much more attuned to because they tend to be more elite, more affluent, people who have, you know, who are in their circles that really are, like, quote, shameless about it, pursuing divorces in Gen Z. The New York Times is going to be more attuned to them because they're going to flunt it as some type of cultural signifier and cultural good.

But often what that coverage ends up doing is diminishing the value of things like marriage for people on a class basis or people who don't have the privileges of paying for fancy therapy and having close social ties, civic ties, in the sort of Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone sense, that members of the people

of the elite class do. And it's extremely messed up. Elites will trash these institutions that they enjoy at higher rates, like marriage, for example, by finding, like, nut picking members of Gen Zee and saying, hey, there's a bunch of like, shameless divorces happening in Gen Z when the numbers actually, as Brad wrote, suggests otherwise.

So all that is to say, this vibe shift that's happening, there's a lot of people on the right that are probably gonna wanna claim Taylor Swift, even after all of Trump's back and forth with her as a trad wife or something, I don't know. Taylor Swift is, I'm quite certain, not like a MAGA supporter, although, of course, Britney Mahomes is. But I'm sure she's not going to come out. Maybe I'll be proven wrong as like a political conservative or a MAGA person. But I think that's the point is that like this shouldn't be, you know, this game of like claiming celebrities gets so silly. And this doesn't have to be politicized. We can just at a certain point acknowledge.

this is Gen Z falling back to the Western norm after this period of post-sexual revolution adjustment for the children of baby boomers in the millennial generation. And that is just fine. It doesn't even need to be overcomplicated. We can just enjoy what appears to be happening and not panic over New York Times stories about cozy nights of, I don't know, animal crossing and I was going to say Cheetos, but I already used Cheetos. What's another funny, disgusting food that one eats while playing Animal Crossing? I'd rather not speculate. I'll probably just leave it at that at this point.

But it's what happens over and over again in the presses. Is the nut picking and amplifying these fringe people as representative? I think in the context of Brad's research, it doesn't look like, thankfully, this is what's happening, that polycules are proudly embracing their divorces. not the average experience, probably won't be the average experience. And in fact, the data is forcing us to look at something that's actually pretty good. So, wow, are we ending this on a happy note? I think we're ending this on a happy note.

What a rare occasion that we should be grateful for. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's edition of After Party. As a reminder, you can contact me at Emily at devilmakermedia.com. And if you want to ask a question for a happy hour, That's what comes out every Friday. You can put happy hour in the subject line. You don't have to, but that definitely helps me sort through them as I answer live unscripted when we do those Friday shows. So thanks for tuning in.

We'll be back on Wednesday with more After Party.