Behind the Bastards - Ben Shapiro Knows Less About Sex Than An Amoeba

Episode Date: January 4, 2022

We continue dissecting Ben's unspeakably shoddy book about sex. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian-trained astronaut?

That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know, because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space. With no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the Earth for 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sophie, is that an introduction? I mean, it is, because you did it, so... Well, welcome to America and also to podcasts. And Robert Evans? What? Welcome to America. I feel like you're turning from podcast daddy into podcast uncle.

And the vibes are just of you like, do-de-de-do-do, is he drunk? And then all of a sudden, it's like, oh, there we go. And also, if you look at him, his nose is all pink right now. Yeah, that is huge uncle vibes. Thank you. We are back and we're going to be talking today, as we did one of the last times we talked, about Ben Shapiro's 2013 book, Porn Generation. How social liberalism is corrupting our future.

We're back and we're drier than ever. Yeah, we are bone dry. Now, Sophie, obviously because I returned the Kindle edition of Ben's book last time, I had to go get it again. And as I was typing into Google, I mistyped the title because it's Porn Generation. I typed Generation Sex into the title. And lo and behold, I got a result for Ben Shapiro book from 2005. Now, when I look at it on Amazon, it's called Generation Sex,

exposing the full frontal assault on American innocents. Full frontal assault, what a title. I know. You know, the only thing, the only person that knows less about pleasing a woman than present day adult Ben Shapiro is 16 year old past Ben Shapiro. Yeah, fucking child Ben Shapiro. Well, I don't know, when was he born?

I look forward to finding out how he hedgehogged a bunch of ladies' services while fingering because he did not know how to fucking hurt his fingers. All right, he was born in 1984, so he would have been what? 21. This would have been 21 year old Ben Shapiro. Yep, don't trust him. Don't let him anywhere near a vulva. What are you doing? Certainly not. I don't want him exposing anything of himself. But he published this apparently in 2005.

It's 320 pages published by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Amazon says that there was only a hard cover available and the book is currently unavailable. They don't know when it will be back in stock. We have to haunt it on eBay. If you have a copy or find a copy of Ben Shapiro's 2005 book, Generation Sex, Sophia and I, and I think we can speak for Cody Johnston in this, would very much appreciate getting our hands on that little bastard.

We don't mean Ben Shapiro, we mean the book. I do want to read the Goodreads summary of this book because I found that. Who would? I love this. Let's dive in. American society, according to Ben Shapiro, is a sex machine. From movies to sitcoms, rap to rock, teen mags to porno rags, American culture has become a pusher of promiscuity and perversion. And in this sharp, audacious, fearless book,

Shapiro, the most prominent young conservative in the nation, reveals the gross over-sexualization of our society and how it targets youth culture from early education or rather indoctrination to the disastrous world of sex, lust, and immorality that pervades our high schools, colleges, and beyond. By clearly identifying the problems many unnoticed or ignored of an out-of-control MTV culture, overly sexual ad campaigns, and an overly permissive mainstream media,

Shapiro illustrates the dangers and devastating consequences awaiting today's kids who are, in essence, being sexually assaulted on a daily basis. Shapiro also provides real, solid, and often drastic solutions for what we can and must do to stop the corruption of America's youth. Goddamn! I'm sorry, sexually assaulted? That is deranged. Among other things, how out of touch do you have to be?

In 2005, to think that MTV is a major force in youth culture. Again, 2005. I remember too. I was in high school in 2005. I don't know anybody who watched MTV, except for, like, my Gen X cousins. Okay, I was in college. That hurts. But the point is, yes, that's incredibly out of touch. And also, I cannot imagine being more out of touch than referring to anything as a sex machine when you're 21 years old.

And I know you was like, this is a fucking killer pun. Like, this is fucking sick. Everyone's going to want to be my best friend. It's really going to blow up my social calendar. Yeah, I mean, again, as we've noted, like, his premise is as inaccurate here as it is in his 2013 book. Like, young people are less promiscuous than previous generations for a variety of reasons, which we don't need to litigate now.

But the data is incredibly consistent on that point. And, yeah, I want to read this book. There's something horrific to be said about the fact that he talks about how kids being exposed to, I'm guessing Janet Jackson's boobs at the Super Bowl are being sexually assaulted. The fact that he considers, I don't know, everyone not wearing Puritan garb to be sexual assault is offensive for a lot of reasons and says a lot about Ben Shapiro's mindset.

Yeah, so I just love the life experiences of a man that have been so sheltered and adorable that he can use a sexually assaulted phrase so liberally without thinking about it even a little bit. Anyway, Generation Sex on Goodreads has 12 ratings, an average of 2.58 out of 5. Sounds like a good book. 2.58? Yeah.

That's a lot higher. That means someone went over 2. That does mean someone went over 2. That's not good news for us. Can you read the most positive review, please? There are no positive reviews that are written. The three written reviews are all negative. It was the Cowards' review of just reading at 5 stars. I think a bunch of people gave it 2 stars and Ben gave it 5.

I think that's probably what happened. That sounds realistic. Yeah, sounds like our good lad Ben Shapiro. But now it's probably time that we dive into porn generation. Let's do this. We get face deep in the porn generation. Don't you think we could all get time saved if Ben Shapiro just admitted he was bad at sex? I mean, it's not that he's bad at sex, it's that he's terrified of it

in a manner that completely, to use an old term, completely like... He's clearly deeply frightened by the idea that other people enjoy sex. That's what's going on with Ben Shapiro. He is scared that there are people out there fucking and enjoying it. And he's scared that he doesn't get it. And the only thing to do when you don't get something is to hate it. Yeah, I mean, he's just on the edge of the in-cell mindset in a lot of ways. He's framing it as everybody's having all this sex and it's super immoral and it's damaging society.

And the in-cell line is that a small number of hypersexual men are having sex with all of the women and women just want to take all of the big shit. That's the in-cell line. And Ben's is 15% away from that line, but not that far. And some of it's just using slightly different terms. And I think that also ties into the fear of trans people and queer culture in general. Because can you imagine that not only are people having sex and enjoying themselves, but they might be doing it in a way that he has not thought of yet?

Yeah. And I think that's... I'm sure if no one told him about going down on women, he would have never considered it. Not that he considers it now. I mean, it just wouldn't occur to him. I am certain that he thinks it should be illegal to perform oral sex. I agree. And he also thinks butts should be illegal.

Yeah. He definitely thinks butts should be illegal. All right. So I was just looking into one of the sources, Ben. So like after... You remember when we were talking last time, we kind of ended on Ben talking about this young woman, Katie, who he interviewed about sex ed, who was like, yeah, it was fine.

I felt like I got good sex ed. I didn't have sex until I was 19. And she was like, and they broke Katie. Yeah. And Ben was like, look at... I mean, sure, she's well-adjusted and successful in doing well at an Ivy League institution, but what other damage could there be that we can't see? Okay.

So he goes from like... He talks about Katie and how... He's got this... His actual case study of someone who went through this sex ed he's horrified by is that like, yeah, eventually I had sex and it was fine and I feel good about... Healthy about where I am and she seems to be doing great. And so the case study he brings up to point out how bad all this actually is, is a book by Tom Wolf about a fictional girl named Charlotte Simmons.

And I read into this... We made fun of the fact last time just that he's arguing that this is evidence of how teens actually are, this book written by a man who was in his 60s when he published this book. And it's also... I read more about it because it's like one of the most panned and hated Tom Wolf books. So like this book about young people like 19 year olds in 2004, written by Tom Wolf, everyone has a pager and the internet is never mentioned. Look, no one knows more about young people than old people.

Everybody knows this. Fucking Tom Wolf. It's very funny. So one of the people he brings in as a source after this is K Heimowitz, who is the author of a book called Ready or Not, Why Treating Children as Small Adults in Dangerous Their Future and Ours. And she... I kind of looked into this lady a little bit, like by a little bit being her Wikipedia. And I found a couple of quotes from her articles that people have pulled out.

Here's one from a Wall Street Journal editorial. Marital breakdown is not rampant across the land. It is concentrated among low income and black couples. Americans seem to have a lot of trouble grasping this fact, probably because so much public space is taken up by politicians, celebrities and journalists with marriage on the skids. She argues that like divorce is declining among well educated white people and that couples are happier than ever,

which I don't think the evidence suggests. Well, I mean, the divorce rate in recent years has been declining. It was not in 2000. But I believe it's because fewer and fewer people are getting married. Yes, a lot fewer people are getting married. That'll account for less divorce, kind of how that goes. So yeah, he cites... Shortly after he's talking about Katie,

he cites K Heimowitz's book Ready or Not, What Happens When We Treat Children as Small Adults. And in that, K argues that anti-culturalists are people who believe that childhood sexuality left on its own free of social interference will flourish and grow in healthy ways. Her attitude is that if you just let kids kind of do what comes naturally and provide them with information... They're going to grow up and become perverts.

Yeah, it's anti-cultural to do that. It's anti-cultural to not try and take control of the direction of your child's sexuality and dictate it. And then been quotes a long passage from K's terrible book. Drained of all feeling but physical pleasure, rationalized into Phylofax Personal Organizer entries, the sex given to us by this ministry is little more than techno fantasy. They do not see the alternately insecure and grandiose, idealistic and crude, perpetually glandular teenager most of us know.

Their teenager, like that of so many other experts, is rational, self-aware, and autonomous. Information is all these kids need, they say. Information and some deprogramming to counteract society's continuing efforts to pervert their healthy sexual natures. We have a nation of teenagers who are information rich but knowledge poor. They and their 10-year-old brothers and sisters, for that matter, maybe adults when it comes to technical information. Certainly their putative sophistication about sexual matters

is the subject of endless head shaking by parents in the media. But as they approach graduation in the anti-cultural school of self-sufficiency, they remain predictably illiterate when it comes to real human connection. Okay, so the reason my face looks like this is because I'm still trying to get over perpetually glandular. Yeah, glandular. Yeah, it's this idea like teens are so controlled by their emotions and so parents have to have total control over them. It's this idea that like my parents had that like as your parent, it is my job to exercise total control over you if I think you're doing something that's not healthy,

which is bad and makes your kid not want to talk to you for years, by the way, if parents happen to be here. Yeah, it's not a great sign when your child is afraid to tell you anything that has to do with their authentic sexual development. And it is like, it's this thing where like there's always a germ of truth in this thing and the germ of truth is that, well, yeah, teenagers aren't done developing. Like they're not adults. They shouldn't be treated entirely as adults. They don't have the kind of impulse control that we expect adults to have. But the only way they get that kind of control and become adults is by being given greater and greater autonomy

and power over their own lives and information to make good choices and space to make choices and mistakes. And I don't think Ben ever got that. I think Ben was directed like a fucking missile from the time he was a child by his family to like become this. So I guess I get why he agrees with that, but it is this terror you see in Kay's book and in Ben's book about like giving teenagers a chance to just like be themselves and figure out who that is. That that to them is like not just scary, but like obviously abusive is their attitude towards just like, yeah, kids should be allowed to figure shit out for themselves, which I think is the basis of a healthy society. I think honestly, I think that's the as someone who has zero children.

I think that's the thing that seems the hardest about having a teenager is so much of their understanding is so advanced, but they're not done developing yet. Their brain will keep changing well into their 20s. So to treat them as full on adults is wrong. That's why we don't date teenagers. Yeah, unless we are morally corrupt. And it is also why when teenagers get accused of crimes, it's a different thing. Your brain is not really able to to make the same decisions and understand consequences and understand priorities in the same way that an adult's brain is. That is what that is.

So I'm sure the hard thing about raising a teenager is walking that line of like, yeah, I want you to be safe, but also I want you to be a person that learns how to make your own decisions. And it seems like Ben thinks the safest thing is to never let anyone make any decisions. And then that way they will learn everything they need to know. Well, actually, he thinks the safest thing is to lie to them. Well, same thing. So he quotes Dr. Drew Pinsky, host of Love Line, when she says, as a peer program, the sort of scare tactics that are used with abstinence-only education really don't seem to work. And this is something, there's a lot of statistics backing this up.

Abstinence-only education does not reduce the number of teens fucking each other or teen pregnancies or like it's not good. It's fine to tell kids that it's okay to be abstinent. That's perfectly reasonable, but like abstinence-only education is not reasonable and doesn't work. And there's a lot of documentation. There's so many studies that prove that. Also, Dr. Drew Red Flag. Yeah, I mean, Dr. Drew comes across as the good guy in this because here's how Ben responds to Dr. Drew. Yes, using scare tactics is wrong in most situations, but when the subject cannot comprehend the harmful consequences of an action not yet taken,

then fear is an appropriate motivator to inhibit such an action. It's always comical to watch a parent engage a two-year-old child in a Socratic dialogue about why the kid can't cross the street without an adult present. A two-year-old child can't understand the concept of death. Just as a ten-year-old child can't understand the crucial emotional loss and desensitization suffered as a result of sex without rules. Fear of consequences, whether those consequences are spiritual or physical, is a critical component to teaching restraint. The fuck is sex without rules? Sex without... That's because it's one of those things like...

Is he thinking people... Kids are just like naturally doing SNM without safe words because that's what it sounds like. I don't understand. And a perfectly... A thing that would be both consistent with conservatism and also a thing that no human being could agree with is if you just said, ten-year-old shouldn't be having sex. They're not ready to have sex. Done.

A statement 100% of reasonable people agree with. Done. Ben doesn't say that. He understands they can't handle sex without rules. Like, it's kind of scary that he's making that distinction. That he's like the dangers that ten-year-olds might be having rule-less sex. I don't think ten-year-olds should be fucking period, Ben. Like, what kind of rules would make it okay?

Only if you take them out to dinner first and buy them Pokemon. Well, I mean, I don't know if this is what Ben is saying. I think he's just a bad writer, but one of the obvious things is that it's actually very easy to marry 12, 13, 14-year-olds as an adult in a lot of U.S. states if the parents agree. And it's specifically because there were religions where that... Chunks of Christianity in the U.S. where shit like that happens. Where 14-year-olds get married off and nobody on the right is fighting to stop it because it's part of their culture to marry off children.

It's not... Say what you want about it. They don't fight that shit. Not that there aren't Christians who fight that shit, but like the right as an organized political force is making no inroads to stop these like weird fucking religious kind of culty marriages that happen all over the fucking country. It's great. It's good shit, Sophia. Fucking lucky.

Oh, he brings up Katie again. He takes a shot at... He takes a shot at our girl, Katie. How fucking dare you. Katie, if you're listening, if you're the, I think, Yale student who Ben Shapiro interviewed about sex, first off, you did great. Second, hit us up. I'm really curious about how that conversation with Ben went.

Agreed. And also, way to just keep your head about yourself, Katie, when questioned about all this. Sorry you had to talk to Ben Shapiro about your sex life. That can't have been easy. Good for your mental health or your sex life. Yeah. Social liberals also argue, as Katie does, that kids will have sex sooner or later, so it's better to prepare them for it while they're young.

This kind of cynical resignation has less to do with realism than with promoting a certain political agenda. In reality, social liberals abandon determinism whenever it conflicts with their moral outlook. They say that educating kids about cigarette use means telling them to say no under all circumstances. Instead of teaching them that if they do decide to smoke, they should use filters to minimize their health risk. Ben, how are you going to buy cigarettes without filth? Unless Ben Shapiro thinks there's a shitload of third graders out there rolling their own cigarettes. He's like, I love the image of them. They're a strict palm all community.

Just a bunch of kids standing around the stick ball pitch like one-handed rolling cigarettes, smoking them with a thousand yards stare. I mean, I guess in Ben Shapiro's America, that's the kind of shit you got to watch out for. Yeah. I mean, when he gets coal mining legalized for children again, there'll be a lot of seven-year-olds one-handed rolling their cigarettes as they wait to go down on the fucking elevator into the dark. Yeah, but please don't let them have sex without rules because they should absolutely be having sex at seven. Just not without rules.

I've also been telling kids to just say no to drugs, including cigarettes, isn't a liberal thing. That's all of American politics for like 20 years. Republicans and Democrats were lockstep about that shit. Like the Democrat, Joe Biden was a big part of the whole mandatory minimum shit. You tell me, you want to pretend to me that conservatives and liberals were not both lockstep about just say no policies? I'll call you a fucking liar, Ben Shapiro. Ron Paul's the only guy who gets... I don't think falls into that on the right because whatever else you can say about him, he was consistent on that.

Yeah, it's fucking, wow, Ben. Social liberals want to prevent children from knowing anything about gun use instead of training children to use firearms responsibly. Apparently, kids won't use guns sooner or later if we tell them no. Well, okay, number one, I agree, Ben. There's 400 million guns in the country. Kids should probably be given a little bit more instruction on what they are and how they work. They're basic aspects of American life. There's an argument to be made.

But most kids will never have a gun. Most Americans don't own guns. 100% of Americans own genitals and pretty close to 100% of American adults have sex at some point. There's just not like a comparison between the two. And for another thing, a gun is a thing that you can buy. Sex is a thing that human beings kind of inherently do to make more people. There's not comparing the two. Or it's just for pleasure.

Fundamental, yeah. It's like saying, well, we don't teach kids how to drive in school, but we teach them nutrition. It's like, well, yeah, because not all kids are going to own cars, but they'll all eat. It's like, you could argue maybe we should have something in high school that teaches kids about car. Whatever. I'm not going to fight against it, but one thing is more basic than the other, Ben. You also can't kill anybody, but, well, it's harder to with sex. To kill people with sex?

Yeah. It can be done. It can be done. Most social liberals would prefer that kids be sexualized younger so that they can become more tolerant of deviant lifestyles. And that everyone used to acknowledge as immoral choices. The liberal sexual agenda underlies the teaching of sex education. As David Campos, author of Sex, Youth, and Sex Education, a reference handbook, proclaims, to achieve a sexually healthy lifestyle, youth must acquire a positive and comfortable attitude about sex.

Frank and fact-based discussions about topics once considered taboo are essential. Abortions, condoms, masturbation, oral sex, and homosexuality are among the topics to be found in comprehensive sex education programs. Obviously, that fucking terrifies Ben. And he responds to that by saying, Katie's statements that she can't remember any moral judgments being made sums up today's sex education. Because Ben thinks that masturbation and condoms and homosexuality and oral sex, he does think oral sex is immoral, clearly. Anytime anyone comes, he thinks it's immoral, essentially. Yeah. Unless you're trying to make Ben Shapiro's kids, which he only feels a little bad about.

No, he doesn't want you to come then either. Yeah, he doesn't want you to come. Because then the kids are tainted forever with the sin of pleasure. Who wants that? Yeah. You want them to become joyless automatons just like you. Yeah. Oh, boy.

So, Ben now quotes another woman. He's careful to let us know she's a 23-year-old black woman from Harvard Law, April Cornell. Wow, he had to meet a black person for this? He really did know a lot. Well, he says he did. I don't actually know if any of these are real people. But she says, being a teenager sucks. Teenagers have way more choice today than they had 50 years ago.

I have way more choice than my parents did when they were 15 or 16. It never would have occurred to my mom not to decide not to have sex or decide not to use drugs. There are decisions I had to make as opposed to this isn't the way it is. I think kids are being forced into choices. They're not ready to handle. Which is an interesting attitude, I guess. But I don't think it makes much sense. I guess I disagree with you, April, and the statistics disagree with you too.

Because, again, kids are choosing to have sex less. I wonder if I can find April Cornell if she's an actual person. She probably changed her name after it came out in this book. Yeah, I would want to. Oh, this may not be a real person. I typed in April Cornell Harvard because Ben let us know that she worked at Harvard. And the only result that came up was a Harvard Crimson article about April Cornell, which is a store that sells like a New England aesthetic clothing.

Oh, God. I wonder if Ben Shapiro just learned that. That is the saddest line I've ever seen since Kaiser Sosa. Yeah, it's like a store chain. Oh, no. And there is an actual April Cornell who's an artist and entrepreneur. She was born in Montreal, Canada, and she's pretty white. And I don't think has said any of the things.

But this may not be a real person. This may not be a real person. It was Ann Taylor, and then right after her, Diane von Furstenberg. It was a list of really diverse women. That's fascinating. I wonder, like, I can't comprehensively say that that's not a real person. But it's very funny that when I typed it in Harvard, I don't get any kind of alumni or anything.

I get the April Cornell story. Well, wait till you hear from his friend, Lane Bryant. And then also his friend, Stella McCartney. And he quotes a friend and roommate of hers next that I'm... I wonder if this is real. One sec. I'm trying to dig into this now. Does his friend, Walmart, have anything to say?

Because he quotes the next... After he talks to April, he quotes Michelle McCoy, her roommate, apparently, or friend. And yep, I'm not finding any references to her as working at Harvard at all, either. Or being a student at Harvard at all, either. So nothing comes up on either of these people. I don't know that I think they're real.

I wonder if they've been made up all of these people. I wonder if Katie's even real. You'd love to see it. Or perhaps Katie's real, and he felt like he had to make up other Harvard students or other Ivy League students to, like, make a different point. Because they're saying, like, here's the quote he puts in Michelle's mouth.

I think there's a lot more pressure because so many things are accepted. There's already enough pressure on teenagers to be cool and social. And when you get rid of any moral constraints that would weigh upon them and makes life a lot harder, I don't know that I think a person who's not been Shapiro would say that. That doesn't actually sound like a thing a person would say.

I don't know. I think Ben Shapiro may have invented people for his book. I can't prove that. This is just my theory. The only way to prove it, if you are any of these people. If you are any of these people. If you are Ann Taylor, if you are Katie, if you are any of these people, please let us know.

Because the funniest thing would be if Katie's real, but he just invented these others to have a foil to her because she was so reasonable. But you know who is having a lot of sex, Sophia? The people that purchase these goods and services. These ads are about to flow into your ears on a river of cum. That's what the products we advertise are.

Wait, look closer. It's me. I'm on a canoe. I'm manning the river of cum. You need a special paddle for a cum canoe. It's different viscosity. It's a cum new. We call it a cum new, Robert.

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ooze into your oral cavity like a, you know, like cum. Here we go. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson,

and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes, you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse.

And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark, and not in the good and bad ass way. He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science

you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole.

My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus. It's all made up.

Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine,

I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me. About a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart.

And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, we are back. How's everyone doing? You know, thanks for checking in.

A lot has changed since five seconds ago, so scarred for life. It's been a lot. We talked about come a good amount. You sure did. Oh, wow. Okay, so Ben brings up this narrow, the National Abortion Rights Action League or whatever,

like a campaign they carried off in the Bush years to like, like, order, try to order a Chastity Belt from George Bush, which was, I guess, some sort of campaign they were going. And Ben's response to that is, the choice not to have sex is apparently not a real choice. A real choice is whether to use a condom or whether to get an abortion after having unprotected sex.

And I was like, no, Ben, it's not that the choice not to have sex isn't a choice. It's that saying that the only choice should be to not have sex is not a choice. You should have a choice to have sex or not have sex, to have sex unprotected or using a condom, to get an abortion or to carry a fetus to term. You should have all of those choices.

Every person should have all of those choices. Or also, there's a plan B. Don't act like it's just going somewhere. Yeah, a plan B. I'm not saying those are the only choices. You can come on someone's tits. Like, there's a lot of choices. You can use a dental dam. They're harder to find than you'd think, but you can use them like you have options.

I know. You see the diaphragms. You can use them harder to find. It's not a real choice just saying to choose abstinence. That's not a choice. That's giving someone no option. Just say no is not a choice. And just because you yourself are not a person that experiences horniness does not mean...

Which is fine. ...then I'm not judging you for it, but you're judging everyone who is horny. Yeah. And on the behalf of the horny and the very horny, I am very offended. That's right. That's right. Horny action now, I don't know.

Look, all I'm saying is I think grocery stores should have special parking for horny people. Right up the front. Yes, I agree. This is what horny America looks like. Yeah. And if you park there and you're not horny, people should give you shit for it.

What do we want? You don't love horny. Horny parking. When do we want it? Now. Hey, you see this guy just pulled into the horny parking. He looked horny to you. No.

He doesn't look like he's fucked today in his life. Let's get him. Yeah. Horny lynch mobs, beating people who aren't horny enough in the street. He looks flaccid to me. Get him. Yeah.

Her panties are dry. Get her. He's driving a Hyundai Sonata. No horny person ever drove a Hyundai Sonata. Was that a Kia? Get out of here. Yeah. Yeah.

No, you can absolutely be horny and a Kia. I think that's the only way you can be an a Kia. That is the car for fucking. So yeah, sex in the classroom is the next section. We are just blazing through this. It's easy enough to find anecdotal evidence regarding the dangers of comprehensive sex ed. Young teens being taught about the benefits of oral sex,

masturbation, and homosexual activity, all without parental notification. The Massachusetts Department of Health creating a video in 1989 explaining what to do before, during, and after sex. That's a bad thing to bend. Just like, yeah, that there's a public health video explaining how sex works. Imagine knowing what to do before, during, and after an earthquake. That assures the earthquake will take place.

And it's like, he's framing this as like, decadent, modern values pushing sex. Like, my grandma was like 17 when she got married. Like, what do you... Teenagers have been fucking since there have been teenagers. We might as well make sure they know the basics about what to do. Like, it's like, if every teenager was born with a gun grafted onto their hand, I would be like, yeah,

we definitely need to have gun training in school. They've all got one. They can't be removed. Every teenager has a gun permanently attached to their bodies. We should probably teach them how to use it. It's kind of like that, Ben. Does that make sense to you? Discomparing it to guns make it reasonable? Picture a gun dick, if you were Ben. Imagine that bullets are come, Ben.

Can you imagine this? I mean, he doesn't know how to use guns or his dick, so... It's true. Okay. It's true. Yeah. Imagine you're another human. Yeah. That's a big imagination you're asking for them to have. No, if you could do that, he could not be this much of a right-wing piece of shit. Yeah. Oh, fun. So, we get a little bit of history here.

Ben goes through the history of sex ed and talks about how it was initially sex hygiene, which is accurate. The first sex ed sort of campaigns were about venereal diseases, in particular, a lot of the time, spreading among soldiers and trying to tell people, like, hey, here's how to not get syphilis, right? That is kind of where a lot of it came. But then he still gets it wrong because he talks about how teaching of sex hygiene was largely incorrectly couched in moral terms. The only way to cure the sexual evils thoroughly, the only way to dig them up at the roots,

was to prescribe the same standard of morality for a man as for a woman. Men must be as chaste as women. And, like, no, Ben is actually just talking about one set. He's talking about guys like Harvey Kellogg who did say that we all have to be chaste and that, like, you should do everything you can to not have sexual feelings. But that's separate from a lot of the medical history of sex education, which, while there was a moral element, it was mainly because, like, you were going to damage your body and you are, you know, a member of this society or a soldier in this military

and it's like your responsibility to not danger yourself. Like, there was, anyway, it's just been, again, deletes all nuance from his recollection of the historical record because he's a goblin. Yeah, then we get on to Kinsey. I'm going to skip through the history stuff because I'm going to guess Ben gets all of it more or less that incomplete. Today's sex ed experience for most members of the porn generation is wedded to the idea of permissiveness and tolerance for all sorts of behaviors. As inherently sexual beings, the argument goes,

our sexuality should not and cannot be contained by any system of morality. Sexuality is as much a natural characteristic as race. No, ooh, boy. Uh-oh. Oh, man. Please, please let another ignoramus fucking talk about race. Yeah. Jesus fucking Christ.

He zooms right over this because, again, he's talking about, like, how shitty it is. Like, one of the things he strikes as being bad is that no form of sexual expression may be condemned and all must be taught, which, like, Ben, I went through sex ed in the period you're writing about and we barely learned about, like, sexual intercourse. Like, there was no talk about blowjobs. There was no talk about, like, anal sex other than, like, the vague reference that, like, a condom is always a good thing to have if you're having sex. Like, this idea that kids are being instructed in elaborate sexual acts

has, like, no basis in actual sex ed programs. And not just that, but even the knowledge we received about sexual organs was wildly, like, patchy, I guess. Yeah, patchy would be a good term for it. You know? I mean, I don't think that most people who went through sex ed could tell you where the fallopian tubes are, exactly how many eggs a woman has. I can tell you because any time, like, my friend Valerie has a joke about how many eggs a woman makes, and you can tell by only the women laughing and not even all of them,

that men do not know how many eggs women make in a lifetime. And I know while I'm saying this, men are googling this right now. And that's cool. Yeah, it's like, what, 40? You should Google it because it's important. The point is, we don't learn enough. We don't learn enough. My best guy friend only a couple years ago, I found out he's 40.

I just found out that he thought that when a woman gets pregnant, she throws up one time. That's how she knows she's pregnant and then she's done. Because of movies. Because that's how every movie lets you know that the character is pregnant. But he literally thought that all the women that he's ever heard complaining about morning sickness, he thought they meant the one time they threw him up. Oh, my God. Yeah, that's fascinating because that tells you so much about, like,

oh, so you just, like, went around any pregnant people when you were a kid? Like, okay. No. Yeah. I don't know. That's funny. But still, it's just completely strange, but that is how little all of us know. Yeah, and it's like, I mean, men don't often know much about their own sexual organs.

It's just that thankfully, operation is generally pretty simple. And, yeah, just the level of, like, basic ignorance of really important facts of sex and of STDs, of, like, stuff like herpes, like, and how it spread and, like, how common it is. Like, we're terrible. Like, the idea, like, not only has been wrong about, like, what kids are actually doing, but he's completely off about the degree to which any of the education that does exist is explicit because it's barely adequate in the best of situations. Like, barely adequate is, like, the gold standard for sex ed in most public schools.

And it's, like, and it's telling because he knows more or less what's being taught. He just thinks that it's obscene. That, like, that the 16-year-old would know at all the basic process by which two people have sexual intercourse or the idea that anal sex is an option. Like, the fact that they know that is abhorrent to him. It's not a matter of, like, kids being shown pornography. It's that they should not know these are options. And I think a lot of it is that, like, if they don't know that it's possible to have gay sex,

then Ben thinks they won't be gay. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that if they didn't know that trans was a thing, they wouldn't be trans. Yeah, yeah. It's, like, that is why he's so angry at kids being taught things. Because, again, they're not doing things. They're not doing sex at, like, sexual stuff at any kind of a higher rate.

We know this. And I have to think Ben knows this unless he's even more incompetent than I think he is. Because his real problem is that people are expressing themselves physically in ways that make him uncomfortable because he's a fucking goblin and he doesn't think that should be allowed. And you see that at the end of this segment when he's talking about, like, the immorality of sex ed again. These radical sex educators are correct in one sense. Sex shouldn't be shameful. Just because people have natural desires and drives doesn't legitimate those natural desires and drives in all contexts,

especially outside the context of marriage. I think the sigh is something Ben Shapiro hears a lot in the bedroom. Yeah. And in other areas of his life. The attack on abstinence begins with him just being very wrong again. The public policy brilliance of comprehensive sex education is its self-justifying nature. Sex education is used skyrocketing rates of venereal disease, teen pregnancy, and sexual immorality as an excuse to teach its panoramic view of sexuality.

Unfortunately, there's a rising threat looming on the horizon for sex educators. Abstinence education. If morality can somehow be infused back into sex education, if the tolerance for all sexual activity mission may be discarded safely, the Kinzians are out of a job. Yeah. Okay. I don't know what he thinks, how many jobs he thinks are in the Kinzian community. Yeah.

Not a huge industry, Ben. I'm sure they're much fewer than he thinks. It kind of seems like yelling about abstinence is much more lucrative. I literally know the curator at the Kinzik Institute. I can tell you, not a lot of jobs over there. Yeah. Also, shout out Rebecca. Good for you, Rebecca.

Yeah. The social liberals claim that abstinence education doesn't work because, of course, abstinence is impossible. Denying our young people accurate information about sexual health will not prevent unintended pregnancies or the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. It will, however, prevent them from making responsible and informed decisions about their health and futures. Growled William Smith, the director of public policy at some organization called Seekers that deals with sex ed. I love that Ben has to, like, he said, what he's saying is so reasonable, but that Ben has to color it by saying he growled it. It's very funny.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, okay. He cites another student. This is Anne Kim of the University of Washington.

This person who Ben says exists apparently said this. Within this culture where sex sells everything from shampoo to gum, George Bush has proposed doubling the amount of federal funding for abstinence on the sex education in the classroom. It's a farce to assume that exclusively teaching no sex is safe sex will prevent teens from having it. This message dissolves in the real world where teens, regardless of whether they're sexually active, want to know and talk about sex. So that's him citing someone that I'm sure he disagrees with, that I still don't know if I think that's a person other than Ben.

I wonder if he may, I'm going to see if I can find evidence that this person exists. Yeah, good luck. I just want to know. They're sitting right next to Anne Taylor, so don't you even worry about that. Oh, well, maybe. There's an assistant manager at Sunrise Dental who graduated from the University of Washington recently. You know what? I'm going to go ahead and say that I think Anne Kim might be a real person.

Yay, Ben! Oh, yeah, she's a doctor of pharmacy. You actually talked to a human being for this. Yeah, yeah, and so yeah, there may be some real people in this. Fascinating. I do believe that Anne Kim is a person. So that may, and Anne Kim seems to be saying a reasonable thing. Even though I don't, I don't, I still don't know how much I believe that she said sex sells everything from shampoo to gum.

But maybe, maybe, that just seems like such a Ben Shapiro line. Well, I was just going to say also that, yes, I, yes, the extremely sexual gum commercials. I mean, I'm thinking of double mint twins, right? Bubbalicious? What's the sexiest gum commercial you've ever seen? Oh, Big League Chew. Nothing makes me want, nothing makes me want to fuck like Big League Chew. I thought that was a candy.

It is. It's gum. Oh, but it's gum and a candy? It's gum and a candy, yeah. Okay. I've never had Big League Chew. All right, so the next line that Ben has at the end of this, or during this abstinence section is, the truth is it's too early to tell whether abstinence education can work at a wide level.

There have been no conclusive studies one way or another. That's not true. It's funny because he says, and the studies that do exist conflict with each other. Now, I found a 2011 study. It's pretty fucking conclusive. When I was working at Planned Parenthood in 2004, it was already something that everybody knew. Yeah, I found a 2011 study from the U.S. National Library of Medicine that seems to be pretty comprehensive and includes the line. The data clearly show clearly that abstinence-only education as a state policy is ineffective in preventing teenage pregnancy and may actually be contributing to the high teenage pregnancy rates in the U.S.

Yeah, so there's one study, and then I found another study from 2010 that I think is like his best case study, which is from 2010, that in the archives of pediatric adolescent medicine, which found that abstinence-only intervention was effective in getting very young teens to delay sexual initiation. But the program is not the same as the abstinence-until-marriage programs funded by the Bush administration. But it's very funny that he's like, there's no conclusive studies in the studies that do exist conflict with each other. Well, is it possible that the studies that say that it doesn't work are pretty conclusive and then there's some shit studies that say that it does work? Because the study he cites, which claims that women who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are 40% less likely to have a child out of wedlock, that comes from the Heritage Foundation, which is a right-wing think tank that is not at all a credible, unbiased source on anything. Yeah, they are not scientists.

They are right-wing ideologues paid to find things that argue for conservative causes. Ding, ding, ding. And if I'm not mistaken, yeah, yeah, we'll look into that later. But they do publish a lot of stuff on abstinence-only education. And in fact, I think I found the report, yeah, from 2002. So that's also funny, is that like this thing he's citing is evidence that it works from 2002. We have 2010 and 11 studies that I found in like a second of Googling that showed that it's either ineffective, the programs he suggests, or the biggest study says, actively harmful.

But again, Ben doesn't actually like, he does very selective research. In fact, I can't see anything in this 2013 book. He keeps citing shit from 2002. When there's data, 2010, 11, 13, 2009 studies I found, like there's a lot more recent stuff. But they don't fit my narrative, okay? 2003, 2002, 2003, that's all where it's from. And again, that's a decade ago at this point in a field where there's rapidly being progress and a lot of studies being made. In addition to the fact that like he's trying to talk like the kids that there's data on from 2003 aren't the generation he's primarily writing about.

In 2013, because those people are all college graduates in their mid-20s by 2013, I don't know, it's just, it's so gross. It's like so comprehensively. Manipulating data is also like very ethical. Oh, good. And now we get into, there's a whole, we get into this ends with a whole rant on Hillary Clinton. There's a sub hat chapter called The President's Good Night Blowjobs. Talking about the Clinton impeachment scandal. The fuck does that have to do with that?

It's just like the idea that it's this thing that like despite all of the fucked up shit the Clintons actually did, the worst thing is that Bill got a blowjob. Which is like, there's a lot that's messed up about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, primarily the power imbalance between a young 20-year-old intern and the president of the United States. Yeah, and fucking ruining her life for decades to come because her name became associated with this thing that somehow made him be cool and somehow made her be a dumb slut. Oh wait, patriarchy, that's how? Okay. Even within just the, like, just the subject, if you're like ignoring the fact that he let the Rwandan genocide happen or fucked up so badly in Bosnia or was presided over a campaign of sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands in Iraq. If you're dropping all of that by the wayside, right? And if you're just focusing on the sex part of Bill Clinton, all that stuff you mentioned, perfectly valid things to criticize Clinton over, really solid evidence of harms that his sexual behavior had.

You could also talk about the very credible sexual assault allegations against him. That's not what Ben finds most offensive. Here's Ben. Here's the bottom line. Without the Lewinsky scandal, millions of children would not have had to hear about this issue until reaching maturity, that issue being blowjobs. Instead, oral sex and masturbation with cigars. Can you use blowjobs as an issue? Yeah.

Can you show on yourself more than that? It's the thing that's like, oh, you want to criticize Bill Clinton for like his sexual behaviors? Absolutely. There's like, yeah, let's talk about that. There's a lot that's like really fucked up that he did that we should attack him for. Oh, you're angry because kids heard about blowjobs. Like that's what's offensive about Bill Clinton's sex scandal to you is that like kids became aware of the existence of oral sex. You little loser.

Yeah. Oh my God. Wow. And even quotes. That's incredible. So he quotes a letter from agonized mother of four, Elizabeth Avery Shelton, who wrote a letter to the, oh boy, Elizabeth. When I die, bury me with the inscription agonized mother of four. This woman wrote a letter to the editor of the Seattle Times and stated,

I would like it to be known before her movie and book deal comes out that I want an apology from Lewinsky for being solely responsible for me having to explain oral sex to my four children ages 12 to eight. Now, Ben does know that Clinton owes parents an apology as well, but like, what the fuck? Like, why would she be solely responsible? Bro, this is on you. What the fuck? Not that I think like that's not within the grand scheme of like things presidents do that are bad. The fact that kids learn blowjobs exists isn't on the scale. It's just nowhere near. But the fact that he's this woman's like Monica Lewinsky is solely responsible for me learning about blowjobs.

It's so sad. I feel sorry for her husband. That's fucked up. Like imagine being that person. Of course, everything's so fucked up. There's so many people like that who think like who look at Bill Clinton's sex scan will be like, well, if it weren't for her, we wouldn't be hearing about this. Yep. He's the president.

She's 20 and an intern. He is the leader of the country. Like, and you're putting most of the blame on her. What do you think is... And you know what? Shout out Monica fucking Lewinsky because she's a bad bitch. I have no issues with Monica. And ended up having a good life.

So good for you, Monica. Good for you. And I don't think capitalized on blowjobs in any way. Just it's so gross. She started a purse line. Yeah. Good for her, Monica. She just wanted...

You can join that other lady who's just a clothing brand that been quoted in his next book. Did you do a second advert? I'm going to do one right now, Sophie, because you know what time it is. Goods and services, goods and services. That's right, motherfucker. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right.

I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes, you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse were like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And not in the good and bad ass way.

He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to heaven. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday.

I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match. And when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus. It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space.

And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back.

Alright, so let's close out by Ben's section. We're 11% of the way into this book, Jesus Christ. There's just so much to talk about here. Parental abdication. Comprehensive sex education is taken power out of the hands of parents. The current system has the schools teaching amoral permissiveness and forcing parents with standards to unteach their own children. And parents have to become too lazy to do anything about it. Instead of opting their kids out of sex ed, it's easier for them to avoid the messy birds and bees conversation.

Leave it to the government types to teach the kids about standards of morality. The social liberals who have promulgated this anti-parent system are pleased with the result. Their goal was never to allow parents the authority to teach their children. It was to shill for the god of tolerance. Government is the most easily available tool to use. Why does he think liberals don't have kids? Yeah, why does he think liberals are any comfortable, more comfortable talking to their kids about sex? And it's this idea that school teacher, again, I went through sex ed in this period.

There was no moral lessons whatsoever. And it was so incomplete that I then went to my parents with questions because I didn't understand things. And I did not get good answers to them because my parents weren't comfortable discussing it with me. Which is the problem. Which is why kids do stupid shit. Because they're not being taught to do things safely. Or being taught to do things without shame. It's all very frustrating.

And everything Ben says is wrong. Yeah. I think you've got it. Well, Sylvia, how are you doing? Dry as a bone, my friend. Dry as a bone. Oh, good. I do want to note that at the end of this chapter, Ben says that parents are starting to wake up. Because a poll in 2003 showed strong support for abstinence education.

Again, all stuff from like a decade after this book is published. Also, like, are you calling parents and you're like, hey, would you rather your kid not be fucking? Because they're all going to say yes. Yes. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Also, 98% of likely voters based on a Planned Parenthood study support sex education in high school. Let's see. Here's the CECA survey. Yeah. Okay. It's the same study.

I wonder if there's a less biased source we can find because I just want to see if he's, well, Texas voters support abstinence plus sex education, which is sex education that is medically accurate and doesn't only talk about abstinence, which seems better than what I probably got. So that's overwhelmingly supported by three quarters of voters, including 68% of Republicans in Texas. So yeah, it does seem like Ben is wrong on that too. Massachusetts voters strongly support sex ed. Yeah. It seems like abstinence only education has very little support because it doesn't work at all. And everybody who's reasonable knows it.

Ben was wrong about this as he's wrong about everything else. Sophia, you got any pluggables? Sure. Thanks. You can check out my other two podcasts. I've had parts unknown about love and sex around the world and 420 Day Fiancé with Miles Gray from The Daily Zeitgeist, where we do hilarious stone recaps of 90 Day Fiancé. And you can also, of course, get my album Father's Day anywhere that you buy albums, but mainly SophiaAlexandra.com And you can find me on the internet somewhere.

If you hold me in your heart, I'll come to you. I'll find you. I'll burrow through hell to get to you. That's my promise to you, random listener with my voice in your ear. I've seen you burrow. You're good. I'm a good burrower. I'm a good burrower. My uncle was a... Master burrower? I was trying to think of an animal that burrows, but my possum?

Do possums burrow? It seems like possums would burrow. Beaver. They'd be good at that. Beavers? Yeah, they burrow. They burrow pretty good. All right, well, find your own animal and celebrate burrowing with your loved ones this holiday season. Bye. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price?

Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.