Bittersweet Infamy - #124 - My X Father

Episode Date: May 18, 2025

Guest host Kai Cheng Thom tells Josie and Taylor about the turbulent relationship between terminally online rich guy Elon Musk and his transgender daughter Vivian Wilson. Plus: look to the heavens as we memorialize the ill-fated Laika, the first dog in space.

Beautiful Anonymous changes each week. It defies genres and expectations. For example, our most recent episode, I talked to a woman who survived a murder attempt by her own son. But just the week before that, we just talked the whole time about Star Trek. We've had other recent episodes about sexting in languages that are not your first language or what it's like to get weight loss surgery. It's unpredictable. It's real. It's honest. It's raw. Get beautiful anonymous wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Bitter Sweet and Food. I'm Taylor Basso. And I'm Josie Mitchell.

On this podcast, we share the stories that live on in infamy. The strange and the familiar. The tragic and the comic. The bitter. And the familiar. The tragic and the comic. The bitter. And the sweet. Welcome to episode 124 of Bitter Sweet Infamy. Titanic April is over.

We're now into uncategorized May. Yeah, free ball in May, if you will. If you will, I wouldn't, but Josie, I would, I wouldn't do. Listen, this is no way to start our episode when we have such an exalted guest among us. I bet you say that to all the girls. Oh, constantly, constantly, and then they call authorities on me. We have a guest, the very insightful, the very wise Kai Cheng Tom. Nobody has ever said that about me before.

That's amazing. That's bullshit. That's bullshit. I'm sure you've been called wise at the very least. Maybe not insightful, just cause that's, you know, it's a little bit of a word calendar word, but wise. Certainly. To give those of you at home,

actually I should say for those of you who recognize the name Kai Cheng Tom, back in episode 115, This Bud's Not For You, I utilized an article that she wrote for Extra pretty extensively about, I guess, like trans representation in advertising, and I did it in the context of the Dylan Mulvaney Bud Light fiasco, let's say. And when I was doing that, it plucked upon the heart string that has been there for many years, thinking, oh, we've got to have Kai Cheng on the show. We've got to have Kai Cheng on the show. And now we do.

Kai Cheng, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. I completely forgot that you asked me if you could reference that article. And I have also forgotten what that article was about. But that's amazing. Neoliberalism, probably, I think. It was about your Sephora campaign partially and like how that didn't end up changing the world the way that you thought it might. But I look amazing. Like that's the best I've ever done. You look glad, very pretty shots of you.

At the very least, you've got some portfolio shit. Yeah, thank you. And for those of you who didn't listen to that episode or just wanna learn a little bit more about Kai Cheng and General Kai Cheng, Tom, is an award-winning writer, performer, and creative arts facilitator based in Toronto, which is Toronto, in Colonizer Talk, whose work delves deeply into the themes

of revolutionary love, transformative justice, and healing from collective trauma. She loves lasagna, the Animorphs, and the reboot of She-Ra. So one out of three Garfield-cfield coated things the rest sort of a grab bag Yeah, I think so I agree no yet Mondays Yeah, mailing people to Abu Dhabi kicking dogs kicking dogs and hating the boring man in your life Nermal bitch Nermal I bitch, Nermal. I would mail Nermal to Abu Dhabi too. You know what?

That bitch had it coming. Yes. Thank you so much for being on the show. Thanks for having me. It's very nice. I'm so excited. We're like wearing red florals too. Yes, we didn't plan it,

but we're both wearing red florals. Beautiful. I'm wearing black. I'm wearing like a black sweat shirt, so. Honestly, you're bringing the mood down, Taylor. I've been told that several times. They've asked me to leave funerals for that reason. They're like, you're kind of arching the vibe here. And Kai Cheng and I go, I was about to say we go way back, but actually we met each other right around the time that Josie and I met each other. That's a way back. We can way back that.

That's a way back. About 18 years now. Yeah, that's like almost two decades. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Two miserable decades. The gray in my beard is starting to show. We were very little when we met. Apparently we were all very little when we were first making little seeds of connection. Yes, yes. A friend of mine from the movement, it should be said. Kai Cheng and I met through our, I guess, like queer activism spaces together.

Oh my god, the movement. Yes, definitely a friend from the movement. Josie once asked me when we were in, relatively in our youths, probably around 1920, she turns to me, we're sitting at a bar, and she goes, so how long have you been working with the movement? And I was delighted by that turn of phrase and now I still say it some 15 years later. You had just come from some facilitation thing and I was a little baby, as you say, and I didn't quite know how all to get it across.

So I said, the movement. Which movement were you referring to? I'm not positive. The 2SLGB DQIA plus community, to put it in Jojo Siwa words is what she was going for. Yeah, there we go. Yeah, that's what I was going for. But I think I think that was part of it is like my question was like, how long have you been facilitating and like community spaces, but I didn't have that vocab.

No, which ones they were. So it was just like the moves. Yes. And truly it is. And so Kai Cheng and I know each other from our work in the movement during that time. Yes. Did you know you were moving? Did you know that we were moving when we did that? You know what's really funny is that I'm kind of part of like the American like cultural arts,

social justice scene these days. And so it is extremely common parlance to refer to the movement or simply drop to the and refer to movement. So is she a part of movement? I know him from movement. They are movement people. Like how the Brits have to say, I had to go to hospital. Precisely. And so, yes, Josie is vindicated. Yes. Oh my gosh. You were sort of a seer. You were a trendsetter even. Holy cow. Well, was it my ignorance or my American-ness? Or are those the same?

We continue to ask these important questions. Yeah, already dropping wisdom wherever we go. This feels different now. Now I've changed your life. Did I know we were moving, Taylor? No, I actually, I went to that particular part of movement. So Taylor and I met when we were both being, I think the term was youth leaders. Yes, something like that. We were a very movement title. We were youth leaders, like the first edition of a queer youth camp, like a queer youth summer camp off the coast of BC. And honestly, I was there because I really wanted to meet more gay people.

Like I was in that phase. I already knew like a ton of gay people, but it was like a small little bitchy gossip girl scene in the social circle that I was in. And I wanted to meet cute gays and also pad my resume. Absolutely. That's why I was there. And I think you met some new gay people and it probably looked okay on your resume, so

mission accomplished. Well, probably. Thank you. Check. That was also kind of the start of movement for me. Like, we attended a bunch of workshops and I was like, these are very meaningful. And then I've been in gay, I've been in gay ever since. I've been moving around ever since. I've been dropping the article adjective the and.

Did you know we were, Taylor, you were like more involved even than me at the time. Okay. Probably. Like you were facilitating, you were a staff in addition to youth leadering as this can. Didn't you have a little cute learning moment, Taylor, where there was a bat in the auditory or in the- There was a bat. This wasn't the year that Kai Cheng was there, so she doesn't know that I'm like an echolocation expert.

Yeah. Can you echolocate? Yeah. Yeah. You probably can't hear that on the Zoom, but yes. Nobody can hear, we can just, there's just you making tiny squeaking sounds. No, there was a moment where during the talent show a bat flew in and people like into the, I guess the little hall that we were doing the exhibition, the talent show in, and everyone was kind of chattering. So someone in the audience, I got to give them the credit, I forget forget who but someone in the audience was like oh

There's too many people talking and so I was like everyone Let's be real quiet because our bat friend uses something called echo location and so the quieter We are the better She'll be able to find her way out dadadada and of course everyone quiets down and the bats able to fly out and I feel Very much like the bat whisperer. You know what? I mean literally in this case because we were whispering you're a hero heroes come in all kinds of forms right yes thank you and I agree I'm sad I missed that year but you were too busy moving somewhere else you were moving you appropriately probably moved to Toronto by then and there was a whole Montreal interview oh

that's what I'm thinking of oh yes, yes. Right after I met you, I lived in Montreal for eight years, getting into all kinds of gay trouble in movement and then moved again to Toronto, where I am today. And how's that treating you? Are you enjoying like, first of all, how's the weather there right now? It's extremely expensive. Oh, true. Here too. Here too. Push the curtain back, look outside, check the weather.

It's still expensive. Yeah, yeah. It's looking pricey out there Voices honestly It's like like cold and springy some bitch from Vancouver sent me like a photo of a blue sky and the cherry blossom Yeah, you're experiencing that right now God I hate you and it's a beautiful. I gotta say the cherry blossoms are blossom in this year It's a it's a beautiful year for him, and it's very nice and springy in my neck of the woods. I'm glad that climate change is treating you well. You gotta wait for the sun to start turning red with smoke in August and then we'll see.

When I think about the year that I met you, Taylor, like the sky hadn't started to turn orange every summer at that time. Like that's a new thing. We were still plausibly within the now, now not anymore. Now we're fucked. But at the time we had optimism about the climate. Right. We said we could maybe slow warming down. We could curb warming at like a certain number of degrees, which we have now by far overshot several times. We've shot past it and we don't give a fuck. We are enjoying however making many many many AI generated images of ourselves. Yes, of ourselves and little and I'll probably date this episode right now the trend is little AI action figures of oneself. You're listening to

this in May but we're taping this in April so Kai Cheng I don't know if you know how we do things around these here parts here in Bittersweet Infamyland. I'm sure you're about to tell me. I am just about to let you know. Before the main story of every episode, which Kai Cheng has beautifully brought to our little potluck situation here, we do a little, you know, 10 to 20 minute guy called the Minfamous. And this is basically the opening act for your story. It's a little small infamous story, a mini infamous story, hence Minfamous. Josie came up with it. I'll send you the royalties later for that sweetheart. For today's Minfamous, I thought I would actually bring something that you're a

little bit of an expert in. When we have guests, we like to play into those guest hands a bit and ideally do something where we learn a little bit more about that guest. And so I thought I would bring something that Kai Cheng has literally written the book on insofar as she has written a book about this subject before. Oh wow. And it's something that she's written a children's book about, in fact. And I thought I would bring a little bit of something that we could discuss about the story of Laika.

The space dog! The first dog in space. So before we dive into that, I should say that my mother, Anna Maria, hey, what's up? She has informed me before that she specifically doesn't like the sad animal stories. She can't watch those Sarah McLaughlin SPCA ads anymore. They're getting to her. They're so hard. Literally as I said this, I just got a text message from my mother.

I bought myself a plant called Jewel of the Desert just because of the name. So she's a soft, sensitive lady. Wow, but this is also like one of those like walked over the grave kind of moments. Like she felt us in the ether. She knew. And she was like, I just bought a plant and let me tell you about it. Is she felt us in the ether. She knew. And she was like, I just bought a plant

and let me tell you about it. Is she a witch? Hmm. I'll look into it is the answer. Okay. Undecided, undetermined for now, but like watch this space. She has informed me that she doesn't like the sad animal ones.

And yet I find in the past, you know, 20 episodes or so, I've weirdly ended up going to the sad animals. Well, by accident a few times stories where animals die So I'm officially announcing that this is my last one for I don't know a calendar year I'm gonna no at no dead animals if I can help it 2025 But before we do that, we should dive into this one last sad animal story where an animal dies So mom feel free to skip ahead you'll like the rest of this episode, it's very up your alley, but this one, you, Minfamous, you might wanna skip.

So just to go over this real quick, and please, Kai Cheng, feel free to jump in with anything you know. Late 1950s, space race is red hot, a subject that we kind of end up coming back to a lot on this show, Cold War. Soviet Union has just launched Sputnik 1, which became the first man-made object to

orbit Earth on October 4th, 1957. Sputnik 2, which launches less than a month later, is slapped together within four weeks to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Russia's Bolshevik Revolution, per the orders of Premier Nikita Khrushchev. In order to top Sputnik 1, decision is made that Sputnik 2 should have a compartment on board for a live passenger, After top Sputnik 1, decision is made that Sputnik 2 should have a compartment on board for a live passenger, namely a dog. Remember that in 1957, human crude space travel has yet to occur, so this is seen as a crucial step in testing the viability of manned spacecraft. It should be noted that the technology for reentry had not yet been developed at this

point, so it was always understood that this mission would kill the Pup on board. Do we know why it was dog? Why was the animal selected a dog? I don't know, Kai Cheng, do you know? Not like super explicitly. I do know that they were easy to source. They took strays from the streets of Moscow. Yeah.

Oh, so it wasn't even like a special dog that got like cute little training drills and like special attention and all that? Oh no, they did. Yeah, no, they were trained. Okay, okay. But like to withstand pain. Yeah, I was gonna say, let's not say cute,

let's say rigorous, some would say torturous. It was like animal torture. Yeah. I had like air bud montage in my head. Not quite. Okay, that's why these animal, the sad animal stories are so hard. Yes, you and Anna Maria agree. The potential for cuteness is so high.

Oh, the dogs bring all the cuteness and then the humans do what they can to deplete. Yes. As we do. We're the villains of the dog story. We are the villains, as we frequently are the villains of the dog story. As we frequently are the villains of these sad animal stories. The thought, by the way, was that this dog would have a painless death of oxygen deprivation seven days into the trip.

That was the plan. As Kai Cheng says, very easy to source stray dogs from the streets of Moscow. Lyka was a three-year-old stray mongrel, may have been a husky spitz mix, we think. Chosen for the mission from among many other stray female dogs under the logic that female dogs were smaller and more docile than their male counterparts. So even in the selection of this dog, women can't get a break, right?

No. The scientists actually named this dog Kudryavka or a little curly. But when she was introduced to the public via radio, Kudryavka barked on this radio broadcast. And so she became known as Laika, which means barker. Like a baptismal kind of name. Laika, baptismal name, yes.

Yeah. You got it. Nice. Thank you. Thank you. I'm bringing the levity in this one where I can folks. The story is about to get very dark. Yeah, story is about to get very dark. Lyka enters her small compartment three days

before liftoff wearing a space suit and attached to a sanitation device for the purposes of defecation. They put these dogs in a weird little shitting machine that they didn't like. It's no good. Did they not, Kai Chang? Yeah, they did. I'm sure you didn't put the weird shitting machine that they didn't like, it's no good. Oh. Did they not, Kai Cheng? Yes, they did.

I'm sure you didn't put the weird shitting machine in the children's book, but they did have the weird shitting machine. It is not in fact in the picture book. I see why, I see why. On November 3rd at 5.30 a.m., November 3rd, 1957, we should say Sputnik took off. We can tell from heartbeat and breath

rate monitors that Leica was probably quite frightened by that process. Leica reaches orbit alive circling Earth in about 103 minutes. Official Soviet sources fabricate a version where Leica survived for several days until November 12th. The loss of Sputnik 2's heat shield, however, means that Leica probably died of hyperthermia overheating soon after launch, probably by the craft's fourth orbit. Oh. Yeah. Very painful. Very painful. Sputnik 2 continued to orbit for five more months. While most of the contemporary coverage of the time looked at the event from a political or scientific perspective, views

have since shifted to take into account the animal rights aspect of Laika's death. Speaking 30 years later, Russian medical doctor and space dog trainer Oleg Gazenko, who selected and trained Laika, said, the more time passes, the more I'm sorry about it. According to Animals in Space by Colin Burgess and Chris Dubs, the Soviet Union launched dogs into flight 71 times between 1951 and 1966 with 17 deaths. The Russian space program continues to use animals and tests, although unlike like how they typically plan for the survival of these animals. Or so they say. Or listen, you don't think Mr. Putin's telling us the truth? But he's such a beguiling figure with such piercing eyes.

He does often appear shirtless in the news. He is like, there is like a seductive quality to Putin. That's, you know, you're learning a lot about me, but. Unpack this. You seem amenable to this quality of Mr. Putin's. Am I reading this wrong? I'm just saying. I have like a dad complex and...

Well, Vladimir Putin's great if you need someone who's gonna really lay down the law and poison your enemies. No better daddy than Vlad-y, right? Maybe he'll launch me into space. Maybe he'll launch you into space and you'll burn up due to a lack of a heat shield. It would be funny if it weren't horrifyingly... Yeah, as so many of the things about fascism and the world are. Laika has since become an animal icon of the space race commemorated in numerous ways,

encompassing art, science, and more. Notably, that includes the 2021 children's book For Laika, the Dog Who Learned the Name of the Stars by Kai Cheng Tom, illustrated by Kai Yun Ching. Good title. Thank you. Who would write a book like that? My God. I wanted to ask, has it always been a dream of yours to write a children's book

in which the cuddly animal protagonist explodes into a ball of flame at the end? Has that always been on the list? Not necessarily the exploding into a ball of flame, but certainly like the martyred heroic sacrifice, yes. I was raised Christian in an evangelical Chinese Christian tradition. I didn't know this about you. Oh yeah, there's so many things you have yet to learn about me Taylor.

Even unpacking all these years later, we're still moving in the mint together. Yes. So yeah, that's still there. And I was also like in my early studies, I treated to a reading of Old Yeller. Oh boy. That's a cheery book. Oh yes.

Also Shiloh. Remember Shiloh? Does Shiloh get it in the end too? All the dogs. See, it's not just me, mom. I'm not the only one doing this. She's not listening. I told her not to listen.

It's a genre. One of my favorite, I think one of the first novels I ever read was a children's novel called The Last Wolf in Ireland. It's also a sad story where the animal bites it in the end. Jeez. Yeah, it's a lot. Yeah.

So, I mean, I think it's always been in me. And then I'll say like the official answer to this question. I spent a bunch of time working in pediatric social work and like a question that child psychotherapy patients often ask is what happened to my beloved animal at post animal passing away? Yeah. Parents say like the darndest things

in like responses question. They're like, they went to a farm. Yeah. Yeah. You know, they went to a farm. Yeah. Yeah. You know, they went to go live with a relative or whatever. The best recommended best parenting practice is to tell them the animal died. Yeah.

Yeah. We're gonna have to break that news at some point, right? And we've even talked about, on a previous episode, we talked about an awful Sesame Street episode where Snuffy's parents get a divorce that they shelve for being too traumatizing. But it was sort of came on the heels of a much better received Sesame Street episode

that was about the character of Mr. Hooper dying. It's a whole school of thought and a whole school of practice around like, how do we explain mortality to children in ways that are healthy and can be more affirmative than less, you know? Exactly, yeah. Like how how do we like, honor children's intelligence and also the like, right to information about the world, but also in a way that is like, presented in a not-bleak way,

like telling them things in a way that we are not talking like that on this podcast, speaking with beauty and also like, hope and spirituality spiritual and this is kind of what I wanted to do with the Laika story because it's kind of told with a focus on Laika's potential perspective, you know, in the children's book. Yes. And in this book, she's sort of her internal logic is that she wants to know the names of her parents and she's been told that they are written in the stars kind of thing. Exactly. That's real sweet. kind of thing. Exactly. That's real sweet. Thank you.

Thank you. Yes. I mean, you know, my friend Anthony, Anthony Oliveira, author of Day Spring, I just have to like name drop that. Sure, sure. He's like a gay Catholic. Anyway.

That's the short bio, short bio. Under his name when he appears on the news, gay Catholic kind of thing. I think he would love that, honestly, because he will not shut up about how he's a gay Catholic. Or like gay ex-Catholic, we'll put it that way. And the book Dayspring is like a very sexy retelling of the story of Jesus. But when he read the, like a picture book that I read, he was like, you decided to make

like a visionary. It's like a very, it's like a Kai Chang coded thing to do, to be like, you know, like what if she was like a martyr and like ascended into the heavens and spoke to the, this is like a very, it just like tells you a lot about me in like maybe a good way or maybe not a good way, it's unclear. Well let's find out because I'm about to put on my Barbara Walters and dig a little deeper here, smear some Vaseline on that lens and cue up the piano music. Damn.

What? Because I noticed in the book, I read the book via the public library prior to this. And I noticed in the book that you referred in like your author notes to like, as maybe being a little bit of an inspiration to you to be brave or something like this. Is that a thought worth unpacking?

I'm curious about that. Oh my God. You like really went for it, eh? Yes! You read the book before you do the interview. Yes! This is a fucking professional operation. We have a network kai-cheng.

Wow. Terrifying. What a mortifying ordeal to be known, huh? I'm like sweating over here. Oh no! The listeners don't know this, but we're on Zoom and you can see me on camera. And one of the first comments you made

when you saw me appear was, is that a new tattoo? And it was. Like a fucking crazy person, I asked about a large new tattoo on her arm and I peered into her soul apparently while I was doing it. I'm just saying you're obsessed with me, okay? It's not untrue, but that's not, you got lucky with that.

None of that was evidence. But to not let you slip out of the net, in what ways does Laika's bravery, you got lucky with that. None of that was evidence. But to not let you slip out of the net, in what ways does Laika's bravery inspire you certainly enough to kind of commit it to print? So I first heard about, like, through another children's book, actually. Okay. And now I really fucking wish

that I remembered the author's name, but there's like a series of children's novels called the Goldstone series that is set in rural BC like on Vancouver Island. Right. Yes. And the first one is I think set in like the 19th century. Julie Lawson. Wow, how did you do that? With Google Princess. Yeah. Wow. Yes, it's Julie Lawson. The second novel is set in the 1950s on Vancouver Island, which is the time and place where my father grew up. So like a meaning for me. A recurrent motif in that book is that how the little children who are the characters, the main

characters, are tracking the launch of Sputnik and talking about Leica. And there was something about like the combination of the way Julie Lawson writes that book. It's very wistful, it's kind of about growing up and navigating into adolescence. And then the image of this dog in the stars that the characters are speculating on that touched something in my little gay heart, because I too was navigating adolescence

and I was like, I'm about to launch myself into the space of queerness and movement and living in Montreal. And I don't have a heat shield, baby. I don't have a heat shield! I might burn to death. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And now that I'm saying that, I'm like, right, and I was raised evangelical Christian. Yeah.

And like burning in the flames of hell for my sins is a very present motif also in my life. So I think that's what I was thinking about. And then this magical thing happened when I moved to Montreal about eight weeks after meeting you, Taylor. It was raining super hard. I got there on the train. How romantic.

From Ontario. It was very romantic. And some of my friends were like, let's go to a bar. I had just met them. So we were friends and I met like a day ago. And we went to Saint Laurent. We're looking for any bar that was open on like a Wednesday night or something like that.

There was this like bar in a basement called Laika. Fate. Fate. So we went there. That bar is closed now, but it was open for a while. People who've lived in Montreal, like circa 2010 to 2020 would know this bar, Laika. It was like a touchstone for me in like the landscape like circa 2010 to 2020 would know this by Laika. It was like a touchstone for me in like the landscape of Montreal so I could never forget

the Laika story and the fact that I had launched myself into space and that I was burning in the flames of hell for my kids. And I guess the last piece of it is like there's something about the story of Laika where she's this like little dog who's being instrumentalized for everybody else's weird sick little purposes. But she's also being brave. And I think that was kind of like, like the personal resonance there is that I didn't ever feel like I had control over my adolescence or my 20s. Like I was just kind of like following a story that was kind of like laid out for like a little gay kid. Yep. But I had purposes of my own. And in the book, I really wanted to create like a fictional world

where we could get a glimpse into that combination of agency and longing inside of like a narrative that we can't control. Isn't she smart? You're so well spoken. Well, thank you. Yes, so that was it. If folks can find it in their hearts to read this like actually deeply sad book, it's like a deeply sad book, it's

like a deeply sad book about a deeply sad story. The refrain is that Lyca is always saying to herself, I must be brave. And then the stars finally at the end of the book speak back to her and they tell her that she has been a brave dog. And I think that's all I want when I die is I want Jesus and the angels and the stars to tell me that I've been a brave puppy, you know? Yeah. I mean, that was one of my initial questions is like, how do you unpack and understand

and move through such a sad story? But the answer is to look into yourself and see how it applies to you and how it moves you forward in your life. And that's exactly what your answer was. So yeah, that makes sense. In a way, we are all trapped on a vessel hurtling through space about to burn to death. Boy howdy. No, I'm super inspiring and delightful. Go and check that out. Thank you, Taylor. Yeah, no worries. Go and check out Kai Cheng's writing in general. She's got a lot of really

great multi-genre poetry, fiction, memoir. Like you got a few thumbs in a few pies. And if you're specifically interested in this book, it was called For Like A The Dog Who Learned The Name Of The Stars. It's got really great, pretty illustrations by Kai-Yun Cheng. It's a lovely presentation and I enjoyed reading it. And it's, and it sits with the sadness of the story without being miserable.

It doesn't deny the sadness. It just holds it along with other thoughts, which is one of my favourite things that art can do, is to hold many thoughts at once. That's so nice. Thank you for reading my book. And for bringing a very sad story into MInfamous. We're about to go into another one. It's great. Sorry, Mom. Good. Good.

Well, at least we've got each other. Hey sweethearts, Taylor here. Visit our Ko-fi account at ko-fi.com slash bittersweetinfamy. That's K-O-Hyphen-F-I dot com slash bittersweetinfamy. Become a monthly subscriber to join the Bittersweet Film Club. Not only do you get to hear me, Josie and Mitchell analyze infamous films, but you get to tell us which movies to watch. This month we're joined by one of our subscribers, Titanic-obsessive Dylan, as we pick apart James Cameron's 1997 disaster piece, Titanic. You'd think that having company would make Josie and I be on our best behaviour, but not really.

James is wrapping up post-production on Avatar 3, Fire and Ash, which is coming out in December. Fuckin' Fire and Ash! Fuck yeah! I'm Tom Josie! Fuck yeah! Join the Film Club now with your monthly pledge over at ko-fi.com slash bittersweet infamy and we'll see you at the movies. All right, Kai Cheng, what did you bring

the Bittersweethearts, that's our fandom that we don't really have, but like there's three, they're great. What? Love them. Love them. What did you bring us today? Okay, I wanna tell the tale of a father

and a daughter and also an ex-wife. This is the story of Elon Musk, a little known person named Elon Musk. Is he like a independent music artist? Who's that? He's actually one of planet Earth's very few benevolent billionaires. Oh, he's a good guy, okay. Yes, and he's currently rescuing America from some overspending... Yeah, bureaucracy, I think, maybe. Yeah, someone's gotta do it. ...rescuing people worldwide from having funding for life-preserving medication. Everything, infrastructure, yeah. Right, yeah. medication. He is rescuing us all. But I think

the interesting thing about Elon Musk is that this is like really his whole story for a long time has been that he is like the billionaire savior of the earth and he was gonna rescue us from the aforementioned climate crisis with the electric car. Yeah. Oh yeah. Remember how he owns a thing called Tesla? I mean I sure do but maybe not for the reasons that he Yeah. Oh yeah. Remember how he owns a thing called Tesla? I mean, I sure do, but maybe not for the reasons that he'd like me to. My reasons are, boy, they sure are lighting Teslas on fire and parking lots these days. But I remember that from like 10 years ago when he released the patent for the Tesla engine. Is that it or something like that?

Yeah, something like that. I didn't research this part of the Elon Musk story, sorry. It's a long, complicated story. There's a lot of Elon, baby. I remember when I first told Kai Cheng, like, oh, what are you doing? And she responded very simply, I think Elon Musk. And I was like, I reacted the way that you might if someone told you that they were about to juggle chainsaws in front of you. I was like, are you sh- like, that seems, that seems a lot. Is that dangerous? Are you okay? This is a lot of Elon.

I'm not. I'm not. There's a lot of Elon. And I will say my particular interest in this. Okay, so I want to tell the story of a father and a daughter and an ex-wife who's also a mother. And the hook for me is that I am a daughter with a father and also a mother, and also obsessed with family. Like I'm obsessed with the notion of the family. Okay. And like the like weird little like torture chamber prison that the nuclear family can

become. Of course, a source of joy and beauty or whatever. Yeah, yeah, what all that shit. But really, we're here for the torture. We're here for the crucible. Yes, like the chainsaws and the fire. So I was a family therapist for like quite a long time. Yeah. I trained specifically in that discipline. I have a degree in family therapy. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And spent, I don't know how many years, not that many, like five years, as the facilitator and coordinator of a program specifically aimed at the parents of transgender adolescents and young adults. Okay. Okay. And in my life have met, I don't know, somewhere between 100 and 200 parents of transgender youth through this program, and then of course my own and others. Yeah. And I'm like, I am obsessed with like the thing that happens to parents when their kids come out. Like just obsessed. And that thing is like usually this like massive explosion

of like an existential like self crisis. And it's usually wrapped around or it's wrapped inside like the idea that all of the parents' emotions are in some way about preserving or protecting the life of the child which is like somewhat true but also generally like not true. Yeah. It has so much to do with like the ego and I don't mean that in a bad way necessarily. No we all have egos. We all have egos. That we feed and deny in various ways over the course of every single day in our interactions. Yeah.

Exactly. And like, how could you not reflect on yourself as a parent, right? Like, I mean, come on, that just seems like a deeply triggering experience to be a parent and have a child. So, like, whatever. But I mean, the journey is so much about oneself. Is your interpretation, or perhaps it is my interpretation, that the person has to cloak this in the this is for the good of my child, because it gives both a more altruistic packaging

for these complicated emotions, and it also displaces them from being within the self, it makes them about somebody else, and then it perhaps seems less complicated because then it's not a bunch of work that you need to do on yourself it's your protectiveness over someone else. That's how I read that but what's your reading of that phenomenon? No absolutely I think you're on the money more the second thing you said than on the first. Yeah so we call this projection you know I think a lot of like psychology obsessed queers will know this is like the phenomenon of prediction where we're like, oh, this giant emotion that's giving me an

existential crisis is not about me. It's about this other person. And the function of projection is to protect us from having to like reflect deeply on ourselves. Yeah, because that's scary. It's so frightening. Yeah. So, so, so, so, so frightening. Yeah. I mean, yes. Like the thing that happens to people when their children come out as gay or trans or queer or whatever,

is that it, first of all, forces parents to reflect on whether or not they've been quote unquote good parents. Right. Because we live in a society that says that if your child is queer or trans, then you have like failed in some way. Or if you didn't notice it, then you were sleeping on the job too.

Exactly. Like basically there's no way to win. And then at the deeper level, it also very often brings up feelings about the parent's own sexuality and or gender. Of course. I will throw in one more thing about parents and kids who come out is that, so first of all, I would run these groups for parents, and they're always really lovely. To any parents, whoever worked with me, who might be listening to this podcast about infamy, you are not infamous, you're wonderful, I love you, you went to the program, which means that you did

the right thing, you know? You did the thing, yeah. As we told you repeatedly, every week for 10 weeks, the fact that you're here means you're a good parent. Yes. And also, so many parents came up to me after official session was over and was like, you know, had I known that gender queerness was an option. Really? Oh, yeah, was an option. Really? Oh, yeah, totally. Yeah, like a huge number.

And you know, parents who, if there are any parents who were to be here listening to this, they'll probably recognize this exercise that I used to do in the first week of every cohort of the program, which is simply to say, if you are here as a woman

who ever went through a quote unquote, tomboy phase, raise your hand. Mm hmm. Like, yeah, right. In any group of cisgender women, like, you know, like, the hands go up. It's like 40 to 60 to 80 percent, you know, like it's a huge number of people who go through some kind of period of of gender exploration inside of themselves. Yeah. And then I think there's a similar thing for cisgender men, except that it is so intensely

dangerous in dominant culture for cisgender men to express anything resembling either homosexuality or femininity that it's a very squished kind of phenomenon. Yeah. So it's all there, lurking inside of us, and then some child comes along and just like claims the freedom to do whatever they want with their gender. No!

It's deeply shoring. You can't do that! You know, it's actually a little bit jealousy. Yeah. Oh, totally, yeah, that totally makes sense, yeah. You know, and fear, like, if I couldn't do that, why can you do that? And also, I would have been killed for doing that. Maybe you'll be killed for doing that. Yeah

I'm like my dad did hit me for doing that Right. Yeah, I had a doll once I tried to play with my cousin's doll once when I was you know Three years old and I got the belt for it And so if I couldn't do it you certainly can't do it because I love my dad and he taught me right from wrong, right? Yeah, it's very complex. You see that you one sees the bind that all the parents are in. This is why partly why I'm fascinated with Elon Musk because he has a transgender daughter, the fabulous Vivian Jenna Wilson, who has in recent months graced the cover, I think, or at least the inside pages of some magazines.

But she was featured in Teen Vogue last month, which is very exciting. She looks very glamorous. Good for you, Vivian. She's extremely well-spoken, extremely online, overall delightful human being, as far as her internet persona tells us, which of course that's everything about her, clearly.

It's 100% accurate and realistic depiction. Josie and I are always exactly as you hear us on this podcast, never any different and we don't curate ourselves for the internet whatsoever. Same. So there you go, 100% lovely person, Vivian. To back the story up a little bit, Vivian is the child of a woman named Justine who is Elon Musk's first wife.

Oh, very first wife. Oh yes, whom he met in Canada. Interesting side note about Justine, she is the published author of some fantasy romance novels. Yes. Fun. Yes. And I did read one of them. Okay. It is called Blood Angel. Blood Angel. And so did you read that for this or was that already on the reading list? I read it because I'm obsessed with this story. Okay. Like this like particular family system, but I didn't want to let, you know, I didn didn't I didn't want to actually stock, but this book is out in the public. It's you know it's an accomplished family. So Vivian came out in the early 2020s. Wait wait wait what happens in Blood Angel? What's going on in Blood Angel? Yeah yeah wait. You can't just leave us hanging there. Congratulations to Vivian what happens in Blood Angel? It's like a dark fantasy romance novel.

It's kind of got like a Gothic vampiric quality. I don't want to spoil it too much. Give me like a log line. Give me like a so and so exists in a society underground and she has to like give me the two sentence book jacket description of what happens in the first little bit. Give me the setup at least. Okay, okay.

I'm actually just going to pull up the publishers description so I can do it justice. Sure, that works too. Okay, it's like a young artist is haunted by the siren song of a succubus-like demonic figure. Okay, that's fun. It's urban fantasy. Yes. Ooh, urban fantasy lucrative in the 2010s.

Yes, yes. So that's what I'll say about that. Vivian comes out! Yaa-hoo! Woo! And it's like pretty young, so there's not a lot of information out about it, and rightfully so. Yeah, let's protect people's privacy. No one should look too deeply into that. The way this story really came to my attention is that last year, like I knew that Elon had a trans child and she'd kind of like made some online comments before that, but I was honestly trying to look away because I could feel the fascination rising up in me as a former

family therapist and I was like, just like, don't look too much into it. Right. But then last year, last summer, Elon Musk has like transformed. He's gone from his like liberal Tony Stark, protector of the environment kind of persona and like spiraled into this kind of other thing that he is now, neoconservative, proto-fascist or just fascist, Nazi salute making person. And he has an interview with Jordan Peterson, which they post in a video.

Up yours, woke moralists. We'll see who cancels who. It's my Jordan Peterson, I've been working on it. That was nice. That was very good. We all have gifts, we're all called in different ways, right? Your neighbors must be very concerned. They're like, what is time to speak to? My neighbors love me.

Yeah, that's why they're concerned. So Elon does his interview with JP. Yes. And so anybody can go look this up. It's on X. He does an interview with JP and he's telling the story of how his child came out. And he's using all kinds of like misgendery pronoun vibes. It's like an offensive interview to those of us in the movement. Yes. offensive interview to those of us in the movement. Yes, it's offensive. But I think what's really interesting about the interview is that he is saying things that are things that I used to frequently hear when I worked in the. Oh, yeah.

Like psychotherapeutic, working with parents of trans kids kind of realm. So some of the tropes that he says are like, he's like, well, my kid came out So some of the tropes that he says are like, he's like, well, my kid came out and it was a shock to me. It was very confusing and terrifying. I don't know if he says terrifying, but he says it's confusing. And then he says he's kind of like emotionally blackmailed into signing some documents to allow his kid to access gender-affirming medical care. And he talks about how his child, how Vivian, he thinks that Vivian is like a gay, he thinks that Vivian is like a gay boy, quote unquote, which is also a trope that parents of trans kids say. And he's sort of just saying like that he doesn't believe it, that he knows his kid really well. And I think this is like projection number

one that I often used to see with parents of trans kids. It's like first the denial that we might not know something about our child. And then I guess I don't know anything about the family except what is said in public, right? And blood angel, yeah. Yeah, blood angel. It's interesting to me that Elon would be Yeah, but it's interesting to me that Elon would be like saying that he has this deep relationship with his child and that he knows her really well and that she couldn't possibly be trans, etc. She herself contradicts this narrative in a lot of her comments, but it's this thing where a lot of parents are like, my kid would never be trans, I know them so well, and then they're not really actually so present in their kids' lives.

Yeah. Where does Vivian fall in the birth order? Because Elon Musk very famously has too many kids to realistically keep track of each one's individual personality. Is she first? She's from the first marriage. Yes, she is the first of the first marriage. Interesting, interesting. So this is kid number one. There is for sure there's some kind of special pull to that.

That's interesting. There's something there. So yes, the second really alarming thing that Musk says is that his kid is dead. So he uses this phrase that is very common among the parents of trans people that his child is dead. And he uses the term son, which is like, again, a misgendering, right? Sure. And then he says that the quote unquote woke mind virus killed his child. That fucking woke mind virus waking everyone up. Motherfuckers.

It's rough. And then he says that because of this, this is why he has vowed to destroy the woke mind virus. And we see here in this moment, like the narrative, like the villain narrative that Elon Musk has like formulated for himself where he's like, he's making himself into this avenging angel figure.

Right, yeah. No one will lose a child like I feel that I lost a child to this ideology. Ever again. And here we are today, right? With him doing all the things that he's doing. Right. And I just think that this is really fascinating. So there's a few things just to unpack here. And I just think that this is really fascinating. So there's a few things just to unpack here. Like again, there's this like really interesting, like frightening, disturbing trope of like, my child who has transitioned is dead. When like abundantly, this is not the case, right? Like you have this child who you say is dead, but also is appearing in Teen Vogue.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. As like very vocal on the internet. Easy to find. If you want to.ogue. Yeah. Right, yeah. As like very vocal on the internet. Easy to find if you want it. Yeah. Yeah. Like a present person like one could very easily be like, you're my child, I want to talk to you. Potentially also one could say, I apologize for anything horrible I might have done, you know, or anything important I might not have done in your childhood, but it is for some reason psychologically easier to say the kid is dead and no longer there. Which to lose, I mean, any loved one is extremely hard and painful, but I can't even imagine losing a child. Like to want that in place of creating a relationship with your child

who is alive, who perhaps you disagree or whatever it is, obviously there's something there. There's something going on, yeah. To prefer the death of the child, it's just like, what is going on? Why would you want that? But it takes it out of your hands. It makes it something again that's outside of you.

If the child is alive, then you now have to confront your own prejudices or your own concepts, gender or your own understanding of what your child's life was gonna look like or whatever that is. And you have to do that work within you. That's your work to do. If the child has died, that is something that happened

outside of you, I think. And that fulfills the kind of virus narrative too. My child became ill. Yeah. Right. And da da da. It was like taken away from me. Yeah. All of that means that also one doesn't have to take

like the responsibility for the relationship into one's hands. Like, if you're like, my kid was taken from me and is now dead, then all I have to do is go around avenging them. There are hundreds of thousands or billions of innocent people, you know, who are unrelated to me, rather than look at the possibility that I wasn't the very best father in the world or that I wasn't like the most attuned parent in the world. And I think what's really tragic about this, too, is it actually really is kind of like a villain narrative. Like, Elon Musk has always had this kind of like larger than life quality to him. He's really striven to create a myth of himself. The affluent billionaire,

the superhero, he likes to make photos of himself in like suits of armor and stuff. Yeah. But it's like it's the sad villain story. Like in a Greek tragedy, he is also making the thing that he is saying he doesn't want come true. Because when you repeatedly say, especially if you say it in public in front of millions of viewers for the record, that your child is dead to you, it becomes less and less likely that your child is ever going to want to rekindle that relationship. And so in that way he's making the spear come true, right? Like he's saying that he lost his relationship with his kid and he's making himself lose his relationship with his kid. If we look at Divian's responses online or ones that she's published in interviews or whatever, she speaks to the fact that

she's really upset about him going around saying these things, and rightfully so. Yeah. As anyone would be. So it's deeply sad. And to me, really speaks to, like, if we just could come back to, like, the whole family thing, it's like that at the heart of, like, some of these, like, giant systemic issues or, like, authoritarian fascism or whatever, there is actually kind of like a psychological complex at the heart of it. Like it is in fact about our inability to reconcile ourselves to the

relationships we have that are close to us in our lives that we also can't control. And I think that Elon Musk and Vivian Wilson are not like unique in this way, although they're unique in the fact that Elon's influence can touch so many people. Yeah. But I think it's like a fractal of what's happening in general in society right now. Yeah. To what degree do you think this would get objected out of court because it calls for speculation, but do you equate Elon's seemingly having availed himself of this familiar pipeline where now it's all folded into the fact that he gets his kudos from his transphobic buddies and he gets his attaboys and his attention that he wants on something of his terms from largely a transphobic crowd, etc.

I guess what I'm trying to suss out is like a chicken or the egg thing here. Is Elon's own kind of veering into this sea seemingly, is it to do, do you think, with his relationship with his daughter? Or do you think that the one that his relationship with his daughter was sort of influenced by the sea of chuds that he's now in? Yeah, okay. Ejected from court.

I don't... Yeah. Again, yet again, ejected from court. I don't. Yeah. Again, yet again, ejected from court. They keep doing this. It is kind of like a chicken or egg thing. But if I just think about all of the many family relationships, my guess is that it is the quality of the relationship that precedes the veer into extremism.

The fall. Firstly, Elon presented himself as something of like a liberal darling In the early mid 2010s. Yeah, I did, you know some really famous anti-trans figures like JK Rowling Yeah, whoever else Donald Trump has to be a Democrat. Yes, he did because he was moving in these like upper New York kind of cocktail party scenarios where it probably benefited him to appear that way. That's where the power was, yeah. Ostensibly pro-gay or whatever.

My guess is that for many parents and people who fall into anti-trans thing or any kind of extremism is that it's like first about the relationship that one has with others and the relationship with oneself that then makes one vulnerable to the pull of crowds or movements like that because what happens I think for Parents not sure what happened for JK Rowling over there, but I think you know for a lot of parents It's that there is this really frightening thing that happens when a kid comes out And I think those parents tend to misinterpret that frightening thing as the kid coming out and becoming someone

they don't know or getting stolen from them or something. And really what is frightening is that they have to face the possibility that they don't know either their child or themselves as well as they thought they did. And they go looking for answers, looking for something to assuage that fear and that pain. And right there waiting is the entire transphobic movement ready to say, you know, there's a woke mind virus. It wasn't you. In the end, you actually did do everything right. You did everything you could have. It's just that this woke cult, this woke brain thing got your child. And it's got my

child too. It's me too. Don't worry. I'm here for you too. And there's no work you have to do. There's no growth you have to do. Not one thing you have to change. Yeah. Except maybe to help save other parents from the same problem. Right. Yeah. Right. By helping them also declare their children dead or whatever. I mean, I guess now I will have to speculate on JK Rowling because why not? You know, You can, you can if you want. I was literally like coming in I was like don't ask her anything about JK Rowling I'm sure she's tired of that fucking bitch but I'm also obsessed with JK Rowling. This is like I think I'd like to torture myself or something but I don't know if you'll use space dog? No. That was insane right?. We're learning a lot about me today. But did y'all read that statement

that JK Rowling put out when she first declared herself like an anti-trans rights person or however? Yes. Was it the anti-woman one? The thing I do know for sure is that when she came out about her views about trans people, cause she kind of been waffling for a while, like she'd liked some things on Twitter and people were like what's going on? She was like,

I think literally was like my thumb slipped or something like that. She was like I had a boomer moment. I had a middle-aged moment or her agent said that about her. I remember this. Yes, that's right. That's right. Yeah, she like came out and was like here's who I am. And it's this really long letter and she clearly did put a lot of thought into it. Like whatever else you can say, she thought about this letter for a long time. In it, she's talking about how she's really sympathetic to trans women and she cares about the violence that we experience, which is now contradicted by the fact that, you know, the UK has just declared trans women legally not women and Rowling like did a photo of herself

smoking a cigar and drinking bourbon or something. It's kind of gross. It's very gross. What a tiresome person. Her original statement is that she's like, I love trans women and I care about them so much, et cetera. And then she says this really interesting thing about she struggled with herself as an adolescent and had she known that being trans was an option, she might have identified as a trans

masculine person or as a trans guy. And one is always like, the evidence is always right in front of us, you know? Like, there is always this thing of like, hmm, but like, why would that have been such a bad thing for anyone to get to have, including Miss Rowling? So there's just something very haunting about all of this. Yeah, these squashed dreams and hopes and personalities and like inner beings that were never allowed out and so now no one can be who they are. Like, and I think there's something particularly sad too when it comes to parents, because I'm not a parent, but I would imagine the terrifying process of being a parent, one of the lovely things is that you get to see the world so closely through another person and you get to have these questions asked of you through this person that you are bringing

into the world. I don't know, it just seems like an opportunity to expand your world so much further. Some people don't want their world expanded. That's true. Some people want their world small and predictive. They wanna replicate their experience rather than expand it. But that also just seems like why have a kid? I guess the word replicate is in there, right?

Yeah. That- You know, reasons of primogeniture. Yeah, yeah, all those things. Extending one's mortality beyond death. I mean, that might be it, though. I think so many people do have children because they are consciously or not trying to extend themselves beyond death. And the fact that the child is actually their own human person who makes different decisions

actually is like an experience of mortality in a certain way. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That self that you've kind of put out into the world in the form of your kid dies a death that you have to experience. But then, no, no, I'm not dead. They're dead. They died. Yeah. It's all creepy and haunting, but also like, like I think in here somewhere inside like the mess of it and the tragedy of it and the- The fascism. Yeah, the fascism of it. It's like the answer somewhere. And I'm kind of like an optimist about psychology

in this way. You're too empathetic for your own goddamn good. You know that, right? Says Taylor Basso. Says Taylor Basso. Yeah, when I'm calling you out on like, I can't believe you're being so kind to the antagonists of this story.

If I'm saying that shit, oh, you're far gone. This is the reason I got into psychology in the first place or into like psychotherapy, you know, after the second world war, you know. Wow, we're going way back. Let's take me, take me. Known fascist moment. Yes.

The disciplines of psychology, philosophy, and sociology were not super distinct from one another at the time. So you've got like Eric Frome writing The Escape from Freedom. You've got Hannah Arendt writing whatever it is Hannah Arendt wrote. I'm outing myself here as having never read a Hannah Arendt book from start to finish, just like excerpts. I don't know who Hannah Arendt is folks, it's fine. Okay, I am among that sort of crowd. Yes.

I joke, I joke. Down for us sweetheart, please. One of the kind of like reigning theorists on totalitarianism of the mid-20th century. Yeah. Thank you. Okay, okay. Eric Fromm being like a kind of a well-known sociologist, I believe, writing about totalitarianism and why people chose totalitarianism post-World War II.

It's just interesting to be reading or thinking about that literature today. And then I guess the last theorist I'll mention is Carl Jung. Okay. Check. No one. He was a psychologist of the bunch. He wrote The Hunger Games. Yes, he did. He wrote The Hunger Games. Mockingjay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got you. And 1984, I believe. Yeah, a few of them. He was prolific. To kill a mockingbird, a few. I mean, Jung was a weirdo.

There's some like really, as the kids say, problematic elements of Jungian psychology. No. Like he, for example, thought that all gays had a Peter Pan complex. Trying to stay young? Trying to stay young, trying to avoid growing up. What's wrong with that? As Vicky Gunfelsen says in season one of the Real Housewives of Orange County, I don't wanna get old.

We're proving a point here. But it's all right, Jung is problematic, but a lot of like the early disciples of Jung, and I think Jung himself talked a lot about evil and like the psychology of evil, which is not super popular these days at a moment when Psychologies become very like scientificized like you can't really study evil under randomized controlled trial conditions

So and we're having a lot of disagreements about what constitutes evil. I think yeah, there's yeah, I think we are Yeah Yeah And the union idea that if you're not able to integrate Psychological content inside of yourself like if you have a part of yourself that you reject, then you will project it onto other people, and then you will try to destroy those other people because you can't bear that part of yourself walking around in the world. Yeah. All of that feels really relevant to right now.

Mm-hmm. Jung had the idea as well that unless humans as a collective are able to integrate the unwanted parts of ourselves then we're always going to be stuck in the cycle of war and the cycle of authoritarian fascism. I think that's playing out. I think what's the weirdly hopeful thing about that is there is kind of an answer and I think the answer is like we gotta deal with ourselves. Right, yeah. Well as you said earlier, like the answer is right in front of us. Like we don't have to hunt that far. No, no. It's like kind of always obvious. Yeah. But we deal with ourselves when we're given the tools to deal with ourselves and I think that

one of the qualities of authoritarianism is deprivation, right? Like if we accept the tools to be something like education and therapy and money, writ broadly. All good tools to have. Yeah, those are all things that authoritarian governments discourage, so. Ah, I guess that's true. Sorry, I didn't mean to shit on your hope moment there.

Yeah, no. I wasn't's true. Sorry, I didn't mean to shit on your your hope moment there. Yeah, no. I wasn't trying to. The other hope is that maybe like the authoritarian fascists themselves will do a little self-work, which seems unlikely. Right, yeah. You think that Donald Trump needs to be visited by three ghosts in the night, and I agree. I do. I do. And Elon Musk needs the fucking ghost of talk to your fucking kids, the ghost of pay grimes for alimony

and the ghost of cyber trucks are ugly. Hey, all the people be alimony. Yeah, exactly. If we could all be visited by three ghosts in the night, then the world may be a better place. This is where you start to really hear like the insanity of me coming out. I'm just like, if we could get everybody into therapy,

then I'm sure everything would be OK. I'm not sure that's the insane thought of all the thoughts in the equation. That one's not the insane one. No, I get it. I think it's really hard to be a fundamentally empathetic person who also sees the need for revolution. That's tough. Yeah. That's tough. Marie-Louise von Franz, who is like maybe the best known and most widely read of Jung's first students. Okay. Because Jung writes like a lunatic. Like, I don't know if anybody that here has

ever tried to read the Red Book. He's like, I dreamed of Siegfried and then also, and then he talks about Jewish people, but not in a coherent way, and kind of in an anti-cinematic way. He's riffin'. Yeah. He's just going, you know. But Marie-Louise von Franz, you can tell this is a woman who likes mathematics. She's just like, here is how the psyche works, and then she lays it all out for him. And what she says is generally the answer to strife and conflict in the psyche is compassion. Like she's like, we have to assimilate it through like love or whatever. I don't

know if she says love, but she kind of says like it's about compassion and dialogue. But there is also a part of human nature that is, what does she call it? Terra damnata, a cursed earth, like a poisoned land from which nothing good can grow. And it is this part of humanity, like a small part, but significant, that must be constrained. Yes. No matter what. Like, you're not actually supposed to love every single part of yourself. There might be a part of you that is like, has like an impulse that is deeply wrong.

And you have to constrain that part. Yeah. To harm others for the sake of harming others or for winning power. Like for fun. Yeah. Yes. I mean, I think that is what Mary-Louise Franzen says. She's the part of you that likes to harm for the sake of harming is the part you must constrain. And that's true of the collective as well. In that way, she's like, you can't just love everything into goodness and you should not be naive to the existence of evil. Because if you are naive to the existence of evil, then you will always empower evil to flourish and grow. So it's like a lot of one and a little bit of the other, if that makes sense? I get that. I've thought about Donald Trump, that part of his popularity is that he gives you license to cruelty, basically. In the way he treats others, like he lets you speak

about others in ways that are nakedly demeaning or in which you don't have to hold your tongue in any way. You can just say whatever bigoted thing you think about XYZ group and that's acceptable. I think people have a hard time keeping a lid on that shit, the shadow self. Tara O'Groton, you know, that thing. Oh, Tara D'Amata! Tara O'Groton, that's what I said. Yes, yeah. I think that people have a hard time with that.

It's so funny, we never want to integrate the shadow that actually should be integrated, which is like, maybe part of me is not the best parent. What if I loved that part of myself? Yeah. But we love to manifest the parts of ourselves that are like, what if we were cruel to immigrants? Yeah. What if we were mean to a minority? Like, that part people adore. Yes. Very willing to open that door. Yeah. Disgustingly popular.

The work needed to constrain the parts of ourselves or the collective that harms for the sake of harming. I think the thing that I struggle with is the action of constraining that seems to me to be the very action that that part of me or collective is doing. Like I feel like I am using that same tactic that I condemn and don't want. And that kind of sends me into this weird cycle of like, but wait, shouldn't we love everybody? Shouldn't we? You know, like, it sends me into this weird cycle where I don't want to be doing that work of constraining because my argument is that I would be doing the same action that I condemn, if that makes sense, right? But then, I don't know, we can't love everybody. We have to acknowledge Terra de Mata.

Revolution is so necessary and empathy is so necessary. And I think the danger is really in like taking action to combat or constrain evil. We sometimes have to do things that we normally wouldn't like to do. Would like, yeah, we have to like actually like fire somebody from being the president and then they're jobless. You know, yeah, that's what I'll say on this recorded podcast. I got you. Yeah. Well, you. I got you. Yeah.

We might have to fire the president. Yes. And it's not nice to fire people. However, it's less the action of firing somebody from being the president. And it's more like taking a lot of pleasure in doing that. And I think we do see that in, I don't know, like the movement, if you will, is that we often do take a lot of pleasure in imagining or enacting justice in ways that kind of mirror the things that the opponent or the enemy is doing or whatever. We can really enjoy canceling somebody, we can really enjoy calling somebody out,

we can really enjoy the idea of bash back kind of politics or whatever. I'm sympathetic to that. I wrote a novel that is about trans women beating up straight guys for fun. So clearly like there's something inside me, right, that is pulled on by this. I think the trick is like to know that sometimes we have to do those actions we would rather not do and that it's very tempting to get into doing those actions and then start to enjoy them for their own sake. Right.

It is so fascinating that like all of this stems from a conversation about a dad who kind of fucked up. He can still perhaps mend his ways. So there's that. No, fuck that. No, Elon, fuck you, Elon. Someone needs to spit. I'm not accepting Elon.

Come back, come straight. Just do it. Fuck you, Elon. Josie, go ahead. But it is, and it's exactly what you were saying, that the answer is so close to our noses that it's inside of us. It's the dad who fucks up.

It's right there. There's something very freeing about that, being like, okay, great, everything's accessible. But then there's also something terrifying about that. Right. Cause it's like, oh, I have to do something. The power of being able to analyze something is like part of what needs to happen is that we need to, I don't know, fix our relationship with our kids or with our

parents or whatever. Yeah. But then I think about what that might be like to actually do in my own real life. Right. You take the conjecture out of it and apply it to Tuesday and you're like, fuck. Yeah. If you had to, I guess, give a parting wish for Elon and Vivian going forward, some sort of benediction or piece of advice or whatever. If you had them both on the line, probably separate lines that can both listen in realistically just for their own sake and safety.

What would you say? Totally. So are you pretty much asking Kai Chen? Fix it. Okay, now imagine you're their- Fix it, you've got 30 seconds. You're their family therapist and they only get, yeah, these 30 second increments.

That's it. That's very funny. You know, there's actually like a protocol for this. Oh, here we go. Yeah, there's actually like a protocol for this. Oh, here we go. Yeah, there's like a psychological protocol for this. Or it's like a therapeutic protocol maybe. And I would say therapeutic protocols, do they ever work?

Who knows? But I guess I would probably want to start by saying like Vivian, it sounds like life has been pretty hard when it comes to your dad. I also want to shout out that it really seems from the outside like Justine, Vivian's mom, is doing a great job and like that they have a very excellent relationship so like this is good. Don't forget the mom! You know like let's just like shout that out. She wrote a fantasy romance novel about a succubus Right and is a mom.

And is a mom who is apparently doing a great job so there you go. To Vivian I guess I would say like you're doing a good job. Yeah keep up the good work. Being a person like is apparently doing a great job. So there you go. To Vivian, I guess I would say like, you're doing a good job. Yeah. Keep up the good work. Being a person, like keep on being a human. Yeah. You were brave today or whatever it says in the stars. You were brave like that.

Exactly. Like you were brave. Like you were so brave. And just like, you know, like keep doing you. I think that is like actually like the first and only thing. And then I think the thing to Elon would be like, it's actually like never too late. Like it actually, it really is just like,

it's never too late to change the course of things. And we actually do say this, or I would say this anyway to parents, no matter what they had done, actually I would say it is not too late. No matter how far gone the relationship seems or how impossible it might be or whatever, it could be that your kid might never want to talk

to you again. That would be really, really sad. But we don't know that for sure because we don't know the future. What's definitely not too late to do is to say some things that could have been said instead of like, my child is dead or whatever. Like the things that probably could be said are, when you came out, it was terrifying to me because I didn't know what to do. And as a dad and a billionaire, I'm supposed to always know what to do. And I didn't. And it was really scary. And I have no tools with which to understand the life you are living.

And you are so liberated. And I don't know what to do with that inside of myself. It terrifies me and makes me think about myself in ways that I don't know what to do with that inside of myself. It terrifies me and makes me think about myself in ways that I don't even know how to start to handle. But that's not about you, it's about me. In all the ways that I have not been perfect, I am sorry for that. I hope that we can make it better, you know? Like you're a great kid and you're alive and I love you, even if you never speak to me again. Like, it's never too late to say that thing and whether or not, like, however the kid responds to

it in the external world, I believe that there is always something important that happens internally for the kid who gets to hear or read those words from a parent. The parent just saying you're alive can be quite transformational. It's huge. It's huge. So it's never too late to do that. And the act of doing it might be transformative for the kid. It might be transformative for the relationship.

But most importantly, it would be transformative for oneself. That was beautiful. It was slightly longer than 30 seconds, those of you who are disqualified. Yeah, I know! Buy our coffee account at ko-fi.com forward slash bittersweetinthemy. But no pressure, bittersweetinthemy is free, baby. You can always support us by liking, rating, subscribing, leaving a review, following us on Instagram at bittersweetinthemy, or just pass the podcast along to a friend who you think would dig it. Stay sweet. First and foremost, a massive thank you to our guest host,

Kai Cheng Tom. If you want more from her, you can find her at Kai Cheng Tom on Instagram. She's Razorfem on X relevantly, she's got a lot of social media presence and she has a website at KaiChengTom.com. She's got a regular column at Xtra.ca, that's X-T-R-A.ca. She often has very thoughtful and interesting things to say. For her story, Kai Cheng referenced the July 22nd, 2024 interview on Jordan Peterson's ex-account at Jordan B Peterson, and that interview was with Elon Musk.

She also briefly referenced Blood Angel by Justine Musk, as well as a host of other thinkers and sources that you can tell she kind of just has up there in the mental libraries. Very impressive woman. As for my own story about Laika, I referenced the sad, sad story of Laika the space dog and her one-way trip into orbit by Alice George for Smithsonian magazine April 11th, 2018. Huge thanks as always for listening to the show. If you want to support us, you can join us as a monthly subscriber over at ko-fi.com. That's K-O-F-I dot com slash bittersweetinfamy.

You can give us a one-time gift too, but becoming a monthly subscriber makes you a member of the Bittersweet Film Club, where you can get access to at least 14 episodes of the show where we go over films together, including our most recent episode about James Cameron's 1997 film, Titanic. Other members of the film club include Terry, Jonathan, Lizzie Dee, Erica Jo, Soph Wobble,

as well as Dylan and Satchel, who appeared on our most recent film club episode. This too could be yours, right, if you joined the Bittersweet Film Club. Bittersweet Infamy is a proud member of the 604 Podcast Network. This episode was edited by Alex McCarthy, whose laptop blew up in the middle of it, so we're very, very grateful and appreciative, and Alexi Johnson. Our cover photo is by Luke Bentley, our interstitial music is by Mitchell Collins and the song that you are currently listening to is Tea Street by Brian Steele. Be nice to your kids go and give him a hug.