It Could Happen Here - Behind the Scenes of that Teen Vogue Article on Vivian Wilson, Elon Musk's Daughter

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

Ella Yurman and Teen Vogue news and politics editor Lex McMenamin talk about interviewing Elon Musk’s trans daughter and how news outlets cover trans issues.  Sources: https://www.teenvogue....com/story/vivian-jenna-wilson-elon-musk-trans-youthSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:02:13 Cool Zone Media. Welcome to It Could Happen Here. It is continuing to happen, Stonks. But we will discuss Stonks probably later this week. This episode's going to be much more fun because I am pleased to have returning to the show Ellie Yearman, writer, comedian, and creator and host of Going Down with Ellie Yearman, a trans political comedy news show. As well as joining us here is Teen Vogue's news and politics editor Lex McMinneman.
Starting point is 00:02:46 Welcome both of you. Hi. Hi, thanks. So we're going to be talking about the recent Teen Vogue special issue cover story on Vivian Wilson, the estranged daughter of Elon Musk. Ella, you put together a fantastic piece last month and this is what we're gonna discuss how this article came together, that viral photo shoot in Japan which is fantastic. All the styling in that shoot was lovely. But I think this this particular piece was really relevant for like trans people and also relevant
Starting point is 00:03:22 because of the way like global politics has been shaken up by a few specific people and focusing in on Vivian I think was really special. So I guess I would first like to hear about like yeah like the broad strokes of how this first came together. From our perspective, you know, I don't know that like everyone is aware of this and certainly I don't know that all of my friends in our various trans subcultures know this but at Teen Vogue we've been covering like trans politics and trans rights for a long time like far before I got here but I've been here for almost four years and
Starting point is 00:03:56 it's been a pretty big part of my beat in part because of it being like a very unavoidable thing within following like US state legislatures and then obviously like at the federal level which has only intensified more and more in the last year. And so that's like one aspect of it but at the same time we love young people that shitpost and so Vivian had been on our radar for a while. Totally. I also think people are maybe more aware of this whole like comrade teen vogue vibe of like we're really interested in talking to people that have a clear political leaning that have like a sense of how they see themselves in the
Starting point is 00:04:30 world in a political context. And Vivian sort of came right out the gate as someone who was really eager to share her thoughts on these things. So from last summer, like within like a month of when Vivian was kind of introduced to the world through her father talking about her on Jordan Peterson's podcast. We were trying to get in touch with her and it was something I was talking a lot about within the office and we didn't really know what to do because she was just kind of, she just kind of emerged from from nowhere onto the internet. And so I had been talking about it a lot, including with Ella, because we talk a lot. And so Ella eventually revealed like, oh, that's Oomfy.
Starting point is 00:05:09 I am itch-wools with Vivian. Not Oomfy. You did kind of, I mean, substantively it's been said. Are you threads Oomfys? What are you Oomfys on? Instagram. Instagram, nice. I would never use threads, my god.
Starting point is 00:05:21 So over to you. That's my Teen Vogue intro, but Ella, if you want to. Yeah, no, because yeah, I have just been in contacting Vivian because she was certainly getting like an unhinged number of media requests starting last summer. Yeah, that's, that's true. Right. So she did that one NBC interview after, after Elan went on Peterson and I do not work at Teen Vogue, but Lex and I know each other because
Starting point is 00:05:45 you're contractually obligated to know everyone else who's part of the you know Deep State Illuminati doing trans politics online club. Yeah I was just gonna say trans people club but also Deep State yeah. The pronoun council yeah. Exactly. We're all established members. We swear allegiance once a year there's a whole ritual don't don't worry about it. So when I got in touch with Vivian last fall, which I got in touch with her initially to see if she would come on going down, and I reached out to her and I said, you want to come on my live comedy show? And she said, no, I'm actually not
Starting point is 00:06:19 sure live comedy is for me. I'm a little worried I'm not funny enough. And since then, she has changed her mind. She's told me repeatedly that she regrets saying that to me, that she has decided she actually is funnier than everyone else alive. All of the things that a prolific 20 year old poster might say. Absolutely. But so I got in touch with her and then she said no and I was like, okay, well, at least I have this mutual now.
Starting point is 00:06:47 And then a few months later, I mentioned to Lex that I'd gotten in touch with her and Lex said, okay, so she doesn't want to do a live comedy show that nobody knows about. Most among us does not want to do a live comedy show. What if instead we did a really fancy photo shoot and put her in Teen Vogue, a legacy journalism magazine? And I said, honestly, I think that's a better sales pitch. Instead, we did a really fancy photo shoot and put her in Teen Vogue, a legacy journalism magazine. And I said, honestly, I think that's a better sales pitch. And it was.
Starting point is 00:07:09 Yeah, no, it is really compelling. I mean, the photo shoot pulls a whole bunch of people in. It's certainly, if I was in Vivian's position, that would be interesting to me. And it does help spread around. So much of the piece is talking about, like, the struggles of living as a young trans person in America. And the fact that you can use a Teen Vogue photo shoot to, like, spread writing about that around the internet is, like, super, super useful. Yeah, I mean, I just want to, like, second what Lex has been saying. I think the work Teen Vogue
Starting point is 00:07:39 has been doing is really important. Like, so many, I mean, Garrison, you know like so much trans media is like independently distributed and like DIY and I love us for that but it is always really heartening to see like mainstream media institutions uplift trans voices the way Teen Vogue has been doing. And it's also like Conde Nast as an institution which is like Teen Vogue's parent company is only one of multiple media conglomerates that will very proudly use trans people in a representative way,
Starting point is 00:08:09 and sell magazine covers with trans people on it. You can think of Hunter Schaefer, for example. She's been on the cover of several Vogue's, but at the same time, Hunter Schaefer also received a misgendering passport after the Trump admin. So I think that if legacy media is unwilling to connect the dots between like profiting off of like the aesthetics of trans people but not actually like talking about
Starting point is 00:08:30 the political underpinnings of like why trans people are even able to be visible at this time and like what the you know trap door as Termaline calls it of trans visibility means then it's like why even do this work in the first place. So Vivian was like a really great opportunity for us to like build on like we've done several photo shoots particularly with trans women because I and trans girls at Teen Vogue because we like feel very strongly and Ella makes this point in the piece that like the way that trans femme people are like objectified and commodified and also like the target of such extreme vitriol is something it feels really important to take a stand against. It just felt like doing this with Vivian who's so high profile but also hadn't had the opportunity yet to take
Starting point is 00:09:09 control of her own narrative in the public eye and with this being her second ever interview for a cyber photo shoot like it just felt like a really big opportunity that was worth using as a big swing you know. No like she is at like the center of this like matrix of trans commodification in so many ways. Like this special issue is the first time Vivian was really like framed as the subject matter of like any piece and like framed as her own person. For the entirety of her adult life, she's been used as this rhetorical object, like both by her dad, but as well as like by people on the left who's like objectified Vivian to use her as a bludgeon against her father. Totally.
Starting point is 00:09:48 And yeah, like people are very willing to like commodify or use trans people in certain ways, but to have like trans people writing about other trans people in a way that frames them as a subject matter is so important. Yeah, I mean, I think Vivian, one of the things that drew me to the story in the first place is that Vivian's sort of case is such an interestingian, one of the things that drew me to the story in the first place is that Vivian's sort of case is such an interesting microcosm of the transphobia experience as a whole. Yeah. She's incredibly talked about for something that is not her fault and not under her control at all in the same way that right now on the national stage, like trans femininity and transness at large, but specifically trans femininity is
Starting point is 00:10:24 the like problem to be spoken about by especially conservatives like Butler calls it a phantasm like gender nonsense I read that book you have my copy I think I'm almost certain I do that that makes sense yeah that most certainly that's the trouble with gender right gender gender trouble. Yeah. No, no, that's the original book It's afraid of gender. Thank you very much. Oh, I have your book But I haven't looked at it in a long time and separate remember the word phantasm And so yeah I totally agree with what like said of it's really exciting to sort of like take her out of being used as a prop
Starting point is 00:11:03 And give her own voice back I think one of the most exciting moments in the piece to me is the moment where I ask her about sort of the allegations that Ilan like shifted rightward because of her and she pushes back against sort of that narrative very strongly. And I think that is the way we've seen her being used both on the left and the right as sort of a this is why he's doing this. It's clearly the fact that he has this 20 year old trans girl and she's like, actually, that's a crazy thing to say about a 20 year old. And especially to like counter the narrative of her life that's been driven by Walter Isaacson's 2023 biography, which is like so hostile and to have like a prominent, like a prominent
Starting point is 00:11:47 biography like that, like trying to make a narrative out of out of your existence. And it was something you have like no like input in no control. And that's like so demeaning. It's also like a very like, you know, trans misogyny moment as well. Like, yeah, it is interesting how much of like, Vivian is so is so relatable. Like, a lot of trans people have, shall I say, challenging relationships with their parents. Maybe not to this extreme, but sometimes, frankly, right? A lot of people are forced to cut off contact with their family. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:12:20 No, I've just been thinking a lot about this because, you know, Trump released yet another executive order. I think that this one was today basically trying to codify allowing trans youth to access gender affirming care as abuse, quote unquote, which is something that the Republican Party has been flagging for months that they were going to do at the federal level as well. It has already shown up in the rhetoric
Starting point is 00:12:39 around trans youth health care, which obviously is going to be used as justification for targeting trans adults access to health care and Something that you know, I'm the only trans person on my team something that kept coming up in Vivian's story was that it was almost like anyone could relate to this because anyone can relate to having like A shitty parent an abusive parent like a bad dad whatever and so I think there's an extent to which this story has like a lot of value in like forcing cis people to really be confronted with the fact that like how trans youth are treated like objectively is like abusive and it's not the access to health care that is the abuse it's like the way that they're
Starting point is 00:13:16 dismissed. It's the way they're belittled. It's the way they can't even be like trusting their own parents to be looking out for them and to the extent that they have to push themselves out into the world to clarify that point. So like that's one aspect of it. I totally agree with what you were both saying that it is like a microcosm of the trans experience. But I do think there's like this other valence for like allowing her to like control how this is being perceived or received sort of by cis media and like cis, like the cis political sphere which is like how trans people are just getting shoved
Starting point is 00:13:45 into that over and over and over again with very little context, felt like a really valuable thing to be able to do given how, like frankly, so much of my coverage right now just feels like it's like trying to raise attention to the fact that like, these are kids, these are young people. Like everyone should be able to relate to a young person saying like, I have a bad parent and that sucks
Starting point is 00:14:04 and is a formative thing for me. Like that is something that like other children are afforded the ability to do. And like, we just don't let trans kids like have that as something that's part of their truth when it's such a key part of like growing up trans in a hostile household. I'm Camila Ramon, Peloton's first Spanish-speaking cycling and tread instructor. I'm an athlete, entrepreneur, and almost most importantly, a perreo enthusiast. And I'm Liz Ortiz, former pro soccer player and Olympian and like Cami, a perreo enthusiast. Come on, who is it?
Starting point is 00:14:40 Our podcast Hasta Abajo is where sports, music, and fitness collide. And we cover it all. De Arriba, Hasta Abajo. Sit down with real game changers in the sports world, like Miami Dolphins CMO Priscilla Shumate, who is redefining what it means to be a Latina leader. It all changed when I had this guy come to me. He said to me, you know, you're not Latina. First of all, what is that move?
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Starting point is 00:16:06 Blood on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith. That's my daughter, man, who my wife has always said is just a beardless, d***less version of me. And that's the name of our podcast, Beardless, D***less Me. I'm the old one. I'm the young one. And every week we try to make each other laugh really hard. Sounds innocent, doesn't it? A lot of cussing, a lot of bad language. It's for adults only. Or listen to it with your kid. It could be a family show. We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out. It's a work in progress. Listen to Beardless **** with Me on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever. You get your podcast. Sonoro and iHeart's My Kultura podcast network
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Starting point is 00:17:24 Fernando's never going to love you as much as he loves this job. Chulito, that painting is ours. Listen to The Set Up as part of the MyCultura podcast network available on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. or wherever you get your podcasts. And something like Vivian talked about at length is like as someone who did transition as a minor, there's all of this like villainization around whether that's whether that's puberty
Starting point is 00:17:58 suppressing hormones, whether that's having HRT and how like the landscape that like me, like her, Ella, and like a lot of people that our age like came out of is not gonna exist for the next generation of like trans kids. Or at least it's gonna be very different. And we need to do everything we can to stop it from being as bad as it what it looks like it's going to be. And Vivian like talked about this at length in the piece
Starting point is 00:18:23 with the restriction of puberty blockers, all the stuff in schools, and this complete demonization of not just the health care, but also the people, of trans kids as this own demon of America that's invading or is threatening. So I think it is really cool, Vivian, to talk about that at length in the special teen Vogue cool photo shoot article. I will say I think, yeah, I think it's so important that that's talked about. And I'm glad she did. I'm also really glad as someone who covers like trans politics and news all the time, it was such a breath of fresh air to be able to frame this piece as like a look into what like the joy of transition looks like and and looking
Starting point is 00:19:05 at like how her transition has brought her closer to the life she wants to be living. And I'm not that old, but like talking to someone who's a few years younger than me and who transitioned at an earlier stage in life gave me like such a beautiful vision of what the future could look like if we if we fix some of the bullshit that's going on these days Alright, I'm being I'm being clowned on in the chat I'm not that much older than Vivian is what I meant and now I'm peeking my microphone and the podcast gonna sound terrible Look what you've done I'm not that much older than Vivian
Starting point is 00:19:37 but she started transitioning at a much younger stage of life than me and to see like what that has done for her and Like the way I don't know stage of life than me and to see like what that has done for her and like the way I don't know it was just really beautiful to talk to like a 20 year old girl and be like oh you're like trans but it's like it's like not actually that big of a deal and it like it also like confirms a thing that like I mean I made a joke about this earlier with like we love young people that shitpost but like I think so much of liberal and right-wing talking points about like young people in general like sees them as so humorless.
Starting point is 00:20:07 They are like, eh, cancel culture, nah, nah, nah. Like, nonsense. Whereas Vivian is so funny. We actually struggle to cut jokes out of the piece. Ella could tell you we went back and forth for hours about so many jokes that did not. And just one-liners. She's so quicky. And so like…
Starting point is 00:20:23 She's so funny. She's extremely funny. A very dense style of humor. as in like there's a lot of there's a lot packed in, like almost every other sentence. Alex and I are both some of the fastest talking people I know. And I would put Vivian in that same group of people who can keep up with us or out talk me. Uh-huh. That comes across in the writing, too, like the way that the interview is transcribed. You can you can read that pace into the piece.
Starting point is 00:20:47 She's awesome. So much of our editing was just like sort of taking out, yeah, like little jokes or like she's 20 so she is swearing all the time. Or... Dude, the amount of cursing. I much love, but also that was the editing process for this was much less like stress and more just like, how many f-bombs are we keeping today? Heart hand emojis.
Starting point is 00:21:09 The way edits goes is you send in a piece and the editors give you like change some stuff and then I get to look at a new draft and I get to be like, hey, why did you change that? And then we go back and forth over and over again until eventually it's not up to me anymore. But at one point, I did have to, I did have to say, actually, femboy is one word. Correct, yeah. It's different from fem space boy. Fem space boy. And she meant something specific
Starting point is 00:21:30 and I felt really like I was bringing. I'd like to clarify, I was not involved in the grammatical edit of that. There were multiple editors whose hands that touched. As a subject matter expert. What can I say? I said, excuse me, Condé Nast, Femboy means something. No, I am so happy that we have someone like Vivian who's able to appreciate drag way more than what I'm ever able to,
Starting point is 00:21:54 even though I can appreciate it on a conceptual level. Having this complete, sincere engrossment in it is so thrilling, because a significant portion of this piece is talking about how much Vivian loves drag. Oh my god and so much. Ellen knows nothing about drag also so that was like a really good combo for all of us. That was I yeah I sat down with her and we started talking and very very quickly she brought up RuPaul's Drag. And I would just like she kept calling it RPDR, which I'm pretty sure I've even get into my sources. Garrison, is that something you call drag race?
Starting point is 00:22:32 Have you heard RPDR said out loud? I've never heard this. No. OK, whatever. What I want what I'm here to say is as someone who actually watches a drag race, Ella, that is actually not that uncommon to refer to it that way. But, you know, we had two different roles as the two trans people whose brains were wiped by the story. Ella's job was to actually write the piece and mine was to interface with Vivian about drag race. About drag race.
Starting point is 00:22:55 So clearly it all came together the way it was supposed to. I did at the very end of our first call, I said, dude, is there anything else you want to say? And she talked to me for another 15 minutes about Drag Race specifically. Which is a classic. A classic her. Rules. Yeah. I was like, no, I sort of meant about your dad or about any of the important things we
Starting point is 00:23:14 talked about. She's like, no. So in season 15 of Drag Race. That rules. That's so cool. She's the best. But no, it's so funny that you talk about how like there's this character of humorless trans people, which is very funny because all of the biggest shit posters online right now are mostly trans women. The trans comedy scene is huge. And like, this is something that Vivian talks about, like spending the COVID lockdown in like online queer communities and how,
Starting point is 00:23:49 how like the drama and like conflict in those spaces trains you for how to be like really funny and snappy. How fighting with like fellow queer teenagers like prepared you for that, which has like certainly been like my experience. I mean there's a reason you can sort of tell, and I'm sure this applies to beyond trans people, but you can sort of tell which social media you grew up on, like if you were a Tumblr teen or a Reddit teen or a 4chan teen. You can tell because your style of fighting and making jokes changes
Starting point is 00:24:22 because it's such a deeply formative part of it. And I don't know what online forums the right were on growing up, but they were the wrong ones. Well, a lot of 4chan as well. Sure. Just the not funny parts. Not funny, yeah, no. I'm still trying to untrain my defensive way of writing that I learned on Twitter.
Starting point is 00:24:44 Because it's a horrible style where horrible style of writing have to Like have like 12 prefaces exactly. Yeah. Yeah, you're so article one. I am NOT a racist waffle pancaking the entire time Which is it's weird cuz like it's like Twitter does have its own style of humor I also like also like picked up on but it also has that defensive style of writing which which needs to get untrained But it is, you know a work a work in progress. I think it's downstream of tumblr like picked up on, but it also has that defensive style of writing, which needs to get untrained. But it is, you know, a work in progress. I think it's downstream of Tumblr. I remain strong on my stance that the Tumblr porn ban ruined the internet.
Starting point is 00:25:14 No, absolutely. Absolutely. I'm Camila Ramon, Peloton's first Spanish-speaking cycling and tread instructor. I'm an athlete, entrepreneur, and almost most importantly, a perreo enthusiast. And I'm Liz Ortiz, former pro soccer player and Olympian and like Cami, a perreo enthusiast. Come on, who is it? Our podcast Hasta Bajo is where sports, music, and fitness collide. And we cover it all. De Arriba, Hasta Bajo.
Starting point is 00:25:47 Sit down with real game changers in the sports world, like Miami Dolphins CMO Priscilla Shumate, who is redefining what it means to be a Latina leader. It all changed when I had this guy come to me. He said to me, you know, you're not Latina. First of all, what does that mean? I'm not that wide open. Yeah. History makers like the Sukar family who became the first Peruvians to win a Grammy.
Starting point is 00:26:10 It was a very special moment for us. It's been 15 years for me in this career. Finally, things are starting to shift into a different level. Listen to Hasta Abajo on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. Cyrus the Great of Persia was a conqueror, and he tried to increase his empire by marrying Temiris,
Starting point is 00:26:38 the widow of the king of the Masangedi people. She refused his offer, and so he decided that he would invade her kingdom instead. Turns out that was a big mistake. To hear the full story of Tamirus's bloody revenge, listen to the latest episode of Noble Blood, available now. New episodes of Noble Blood every Tuesday. Listen to Noble Blood on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 00:27:11 Hey, kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith. That's my daughter, man, who my wife has always said is just a beardless, dickless version of me, and that's the name of our podcast, Beardless, Dickless Me. I'm the old one. I'm the young one.
Starting point is 00:27:23 And every week, we try to make each other laugh really hard. Sounds innocent, doesn't it? A lot of cussing, a lot of bad language. It's for adults only. Or listen to it with your kid. Could be a family show. We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out.
Starting point is 00:27:35 It's a work in progress. Listen to Beardless **** with Me on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On November 5th, 2018, 33 a.m. a red Volkswagen Golf was found abandoned in a ditch out in Sleephole Valley. The driver's seat door was open. No traces of footsteps leaving the vehicle. no belongings were found, except for a cassette tape lodged in the player. On that tape were 10 vile,
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Starting point is 00:28:32 You feeling this too? A horror anthology podcast. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I guess I'd like to talk a little bit more about the structure of the piece. or wherever you get your podcasts. I guess I'd like to talk a little bit more about like the structure of the piece and how it succeeded so much in putting Vivian as a subject, right? Because like the first half is written in more of like a traditional like article format to give context and frame Vivian as a person. But then halfway through, it switches
Starting point is 00:29:05 to a back and forth interview, which allows Vivian to just speak for herself. And I think having both of those, and not just one or the other, strengthens the piece entirely and strengthens being able to see Vivian as a complete person. Because as I'm getting the context for her life and the political situation in the first half, then I get to
Starting point is 00:29:25 see how much she reminds me of like regular 20-something trans girls. And you know, like half of the friends I have, though I do disagree on Team PETA. PETA's a bitch boy. It's Team Gale all the way. Thank you. Controversial. All right. All right.
Starting point is 00:29:42 All right. I'm excited that we agree on this. But those sorts of like offhand comments and like there's other things that like give you like a, you know, a view into this person. It's so useful to have like, you know, like at least 50% of the piece be this like just straight interview. We unsurprisingly talked a lot about
Starting point is 00:30:03 how we were going to structure this piece and partially landed on Q&A format for like, we knew this was going to be a behemoth, like no matter how we tackled it given the subject matter and then ultimately how long the transcript was, and you know, just like it, there were many aspects of this that like we were like, okay, how do we, how do we do this in a way that's going to read well to people? Because something we also think about a lot is accessibility. Young people famously hate reading now, but we wanted this to actually be something that a young person could sit down,
Starting point is 00:30:35 dash through, still get some historical political context out of, and still come away being like, haha, Team Peter, Team Gale, or whatever the hell. Maybe have subway surfers on like another phone at the same time. Yeah, exactly, yes, exactly, exactly. And then I would say the, I want Ella to talk about the transcript
Starting point is 00:30:54 and like interview stuff, but like the intro I think is probably where I spent the most of my time editing this piece and like adding stuff and a lot of adding stuff, it ballooned, like we wanted this to be a lot shorter than it was and then it just kept feeling like there were more pieces to really tie it together. But I would say like the reason that was the case
Starting point is 00:31:15 is because it was a really hard line to walk to acknowledge that like people would be clicking on this in part because of Elon, but that we wanted to like trick them into coming for Elon, but staying for Vivian. And so like- Yeah, it's not about Elon, nor should it be, yeah. Right, and so, like, Ellen and I had a Zoom with Vivian
Starting point is 00:31:34 in, what, November was the first one, or was that- I think so. Yeah, November, December, so just, like, so she could kind of get our vibe and just kind of suss out if she was willing to consider this at all. One of the earliest things she said was, I don't really want to talk about him. I don't want this to be about him. We were really down for that. We don't think that her story is about him, ultimately. It felt really important and it was also challenging to make sure that
Starting point is 00:31:59 we felt like people were coming away from this without a garbled interpretation of what the stakes were for her to be coming forward. we wanted it to be especially right now while so much of mainstream media is really fumbling their coverage of like politics at this moment it felt really important to be like super trans politics especially especially and then also just like all of it so like all of it and then especially trans politics we just really wanted the intro to be like as strong and also like informative and also like kind of funny and also like just all the things because and I would say that probably took the most time. Ella, correct me if I'm wrong but. Yeah, I mean I think the intro started off as probably an eighth of the piece and yeah now is closer to a half of the piece and there were so many hands on it I wrote like sort of a very loose like skeleton of what that intro ended up being. I mean I would say the most like it wasn't that
Starting point is 00:32:55 many people adding text it was mostly me. Mostly likes but part of that is because I mean everything like said but also that Musk is currently a high-level government official and is in the news all the time I mean, everything like said, but also that Musk is currently a high level government official and is in the news all the time. I mean, when we started writing, the intro said that Musk had 13 children and then we had to update that twice. New kid just dropped. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:33:17 Over the edit process. Yeah. Things wouldn't stop happening. And then also Vivian wouldn't stop posting, which was a little bit frustrating. At one point I had to DM her, I said, hey, if you get any more information, can you please just tell me and not post it on threads? And she said, oh, totally. That girl is a poster.
Starting point is 00:33:40 Poster and heart. But yeah, I mean, I think I really love the balance the piece found it in the end. Early on when we were talking about structure, I think I pushed for more of a standard profile, mostly because, you know, then I get to show off my writing skills more and I like to write. But after talking to Vivian, even after our early pre interview, but certainly after the full interview where I sat with her for a very long time over zoom and a 14 hour time difference, I immediately was like, no, if I write this out,
Starting point is 00:34:07 it's going to be mostly dialogue anyway, because her voice, she's so voicey and it's so fun to keep it in that voice. She has a very distinctive voice. Yeah. And so do you, Ella. And so it's like, that's really the strength of the piece in so many ways is that people come away with it,
Starting point is 00:34:24 it doesn't feel like you're in the background or like hiding behind something when you're writing this piece. Like it very much feels like the success of it is because you are a part of it. And the New York Times reported that this was Ella's first tree lance article. So I just wanted to add that, you know, Ella kind of did her, did her big one with her first article. Thanks, Ella. No, this is a big one. Now, everything I write for the next 15 years will be underwhelming.
Starting point is 00:34:48 It's all downstream from here. Woo! It's not true. Barron Trump, I'm coming for you. You're going to re-enroll at NYU. Exactly. They'll never see me coming. I am waiting for him to get fixed by like a bisexual sh they it's gotta happen, right? I know I don't think so. I don't know Obama was like into a bisexual she they and he's still yeah Yeah, I'm the Middle East or whatever But no like like mainstream coverage is just completely failing trans people right now I got so mad at a Washington Post article yesterday that I that I skied it about it something I never do is it the sports one? Yes
Starting point is 00:35:22 that I skied about it, something I never do. Was it the sports one? Yes. The girl playing it. Girl. After President Donald Trump banned transgender girls from competing in girl sports, a Virginia high schooler joins the boys' team. She wasn't going to let the president's executive order
Starting point is 00:35:36 stop her. Framed as like a feel-good story, fucking infuriating. And it's so transparent. And again, I feel like I keep bringing the cis into the space. I'm really sorry. One of my like cis colleagues was like, this is disgusting. Why did they write this like a feel good story? And it's like my thing is, if like if anyone with some amount of critical
Starting point is 00:35:55 thinking skills can see exactly through what you're doing, why even do it? Like, it's so transparent, like the way that that story was written. Because it gets clicks. I mean, I guess we you know what got clicks was Vivian. So I actually don't know about that. That's true. And say that and say that I did and I will. Do you want to talk about the length of the transcript?
Starting point is 00:36:13 Because I am curious how long Vivian talked for. Am I am I allowed to say that? Yeah, I think I'm legally down to say, can we explain why? When we're not recording, I can explain why. Okay. I think I got to say most of what I want to say. I mean, I think Vivian's just like a delightful person and I'm really excited for her that she gets her moment in the spotlight and that hopefully this like helps her build herself as a public figure
Starting point is 00:36:37 outside of and away from Elon Musk. And she has all of these aspirations to perform and model. And I hope she gets to do her Anna Wintour drag One day soon. Oh me too. I love that movie. It's a great movie Hi Anna Wintour Lex do you want to plug your little outlet? What's this? It's Teen Vogue? Oh, yeah, I don't know if anyone's heard. Actually, so frequently people haven't heard of it. So it's actually fine. Yes. You can find us at Teen Vogue dot com.
Starting point is 00:37:08 We have no paywall. We have a fact checking department. Most of mainstream media is not doing it like us. If you consider those two points. So, yeah. Labor politics, especially Teen Vogue's been phenomenal the past like eight years. Yep. So true.
Starting point is 00:37:24 If you love Kim Kelly, she is our labor columnist, so come through. I also do some of our labor coverage, but like definitely not to the extent Kim does. Yeah, I'm on the things, I'm on the socials. Yeah, that's it, that's all I had, lol. Ella, where can people find you on the World Wide Web? I'm on Instagram and X the Everything app
Starting point is 00:37:43 as Ella Yermen or Ella Dot Yermen on Instagram. We're gonna get you Ella Yerman or Ella Dot Yerman on Instagram. We're gonna get you on Blue Sky one of these days. Blue Sky. We can fix the vibes. I'm on Blue Sky. I just forget about it. We can do it. Can we?
Starting point is 00:37:53 I suffered through 2012 Tumblr once. I don't need to do it again. That is so not the vibe. I wish it were, but it's not. Oh, Blue Sky. No, it's more 2019 Twitter. Yeah, I agree. Ugh. I'm not a fluke guy. No, it's more 2019 Twitter. Yeah, I agree.
Starting point is 00:38:05 Ugh. You can also find my show at Going Down TV on Instagram, Going Down the Show on YouTube, Going Down Show on Patreon. I don't know, I make a transgender daily show. You guys know about it. New studio looks great. It's so fun. We gotta get you on there.
Starting point is 00:38:20 We gotta get you to come hang out. Hey, well, I will be in town shortly, so. Hell yeah. Oh, fun! I go be in town shortly, so. Hell yeah. Oh, fun! I go to the taping so I can crash. That'll be fun. You should do it. Hell yeah.
Starting point is 00:38:30 Okay, are we, did we do it? Yeah, we're done. Ha ha ha! If What Happened Here is a production of Cool Zone Media, for more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Starting point is 00:38:49 You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Hey, all you women's hoops fans and folks who just don't know yet that they're women's hoops fans. We've got a big week over at Good Game with Sarah Spain as we near the end of one of the most exciting women's college basketball seasons ever. The most parody we've seen in years
Starting point is 00:39:10 with games coming down to the wire and everyone wondering which team will be crowned national champions this weekend in Tampa. Listen to Good Game with Sarah Spayne on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl, and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her.
Starting point is 00:39:32 It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like that could have been my daughter. Like you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy. It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, I'm Laura, host of the podcast Courtside with Laura Corenti,
Starting point is 00:39:58 a masterclass case study of the business of women's sports. I'll be chatting with leaders like tennis icon, Alana Kloss. I don't do what I do only for women. I do it for everyone. And I want the whole market. And innovators like Jenny Nguyen. I would say 50% of the people that come visit the Sports Bra aren't sports fans.
Starting point is 00:40:16 They come to be in community. They come to be part of this culture. Courtside with Laura Karenty is an iHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. Listen to Courtside with Laura Karenty is an iHeart Women's Sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. Listen to Courtside with Laura Karenty on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. My husband cheated on me with two women. He wants to stay together because
Starting point is 00:40:41 he has cancer. Should I stay? Okay Sam, that has to be the craziest story in OK Storytime Podcast history. Well John, that's because it's dump of week and this user writes, last week we had an attempted break-in. I asked my husband, who was supposed to be at his mom's, to come over and change the locks, but his mom told me he wasn't with her. And it took me less than an hour to find
Starting point is 00:40:57 the first two women he was cheating on me with. Did she leave him? Well, to find out how this story ends, follow the OK Storytime Podcasts on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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