It Could Happen Here - How The New York Times Backed An Anti-Trans Liar

Episode Date: September 12, 2023

Mia and Gare talk with journalist Evan Urquhart from Assigned Media about how the New York Times pushed the lies of anti-trans ex-clinic employee Jamie Reed and helped get trans healthcare banned across the country.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons?

Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast,

Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app

or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by

an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. It could happen here. It's the podcast that's called It Could Happen Here. Things fall apart and put them back together again, etc., etc. We're slightly rushing this intro because Garrison had to leave in like 10 minutes not 10 minutes but yeah we're away yeah so we've spent a lot of time covering the sort of various aspects of the transgenocide we haven't the aspect the angle we haven't covered that much is the new york times and

partially that's my fault because if if I every time I tried to write something with the New York Times is devolved into about seven hours and be reading every single time the New York Times wrote an article that was pro Hitler. So, you know, it's it's it's difficult to be what you would describe as reasonably objective when you're talking about these people and not just start yelling about the Iraq war. However, comma, other people have done a very very good job about this and things have developed in the sort of world of the new york times printing just a incredibly bizarre transphobic articles and to talk about one of these things and some developments on one of their stories we are talking to Evan Urquhart of assigned media who has published a very very good

story about some real nonsense that the New York Times journalists have gotten up to so welcome to the show yeah thanks for having me always glad to talk about nonsense yeah it's been it's been it's been a real time. Also here is Garrison. Yes, hello. Yeah, so I guess, okay, I think the place to start with this is getting people caught up with the incredibly bizarre story of Jamie Reed. So I guess I wanted to start there. Can you talk a little bit about who Jamie Reed is and how the New York Times and a bunch of other very less reputable somehow newspapers got involved with this? Yeah. So, I mean, there are certainly reputable newspapers that have looked into the allegations of former gender clinic staff member in St. Louis, Jamie Reed. And those organizations, including local papers, have found that her allegations didn't hold up. This was months ago, kind of the beginning of the

year, I believe. She kind of came forward with great fanfare and an alliance defending freedom lawyer and said that the gender clinic she once worked at was harming children. They weren't engaging in informed consent. They were pressuring parents to go along with these harmful treatments. Horrifying stuff that if true would be just a major, major scandal, if true. And the allegations fell apart pretty quickly. Numerous parents and patients came back, came, you know, forward saying this is nothing like what we've experienced. Some of that was pretty directly refuting things that she said, such as, you know, kids never got any therapy. They just saw a therapist for an hour and an endocrinologist for an hour and were immediately approved for hormones. And so people came forward saying, I did six months of therapy.

I did nine months of therapy. I wish you could do that. Like, no, come on. Right. I mean, it was very wild and and very discredited. And then for some reason, apparently back in May, Azeem Goreshi of The New York Times started looking into this story and she didn't find anything different. I mean, if you look at her reporting, if anything, she found even more evidence that Jamie Reid is not accurate and not on the up and up. But the story that she came out with

is really, really weird. And I think the thing that is the most... I don't know, at least before the most recent round of incredibly bizarre stuff, the thing that's the most infuriating to me about the

Jamie Reid story is that the the thing that had come out by the time the new york times was writing about it was that it it looked a lot like if if you look at the stuff that jamie reed had been doing and people talking about their experiences with her it looked like she was trying to sabotage kids getting health care because she personally didn't believe in it. I talked to a parent, a parent who was also talked to by the New York times who, um, had really just wanted like an educational visit for her, like eight year old. And Jamie Reed said, we can't do anything for you. Um, sorry. Uh, you know, we can only bring you in if your child is an adolescent ready to go on hormone therapy. And so after the allegations came out, this parent got in touch with the clinic, Jamie Reed had left and they were like, what are you talking about? We do educational appointments

all the time. Come in. They spent, you know, almost two hours talking to the family about the different, you know, medical possibilities in the far future and just, you know, trying to help educate the kid about their body and their options years and years before they'd ever need anything. Yeah. Which is really infuriating because like the actual story here is that, you know, even, even clinics that are like trying to do the right thing, wind up with just incredibly deranged cis people who basically can at every point in the process, act as a gatekeeper and decide that like, you don't get to get treatment. And that's awful.

And is, is one of them. I mean, you know, even, even in place, even, even in parts of the U S at clinics that are good,

that is a thing that can just happen to you is you get these sort of gatekeeper stuff. But instead of doing that instead of again covering the story they had been handed about someone trying to keep kids from getting health care they did this they you know this turned into this like like full court press against wait gary you you all right i have to close my door because the air conditioner is way too loud in the other room there's the cats but now the cats start screaming at the door but now i open the door they and they don't want to come in so they're just like on the threshold just like staring at me like make a choice come in or come out and i think we're leaving this in this is great content they're out they're gone they had their chance they blew it yeah what happens instead is this is this sort of like full court press with a bunch of you know like starting in sort of

conservative media and then moving into sort of liberal media, like, using this story as an example of, like, why we have to, like, stop. Like, we have to shut down clinics and stuff. All while children in hospitals are getting bomb threats. Yeah, constantly. Every day. Mostly due to kind of prodding

by ghouls at the Daily Wire who are hunting for clicks. And that is also a big part of this is like this tactic of attacking like health care centers and clinics proved to be a pretty good recipe to go viral. That's what the Daily Wire discovered. And that's something the New York Times certainly took notice of as well, is that, hey, this is this is a way to drive a lot of attention towards our website. as well, is that, hey, this is a way to drive a lot of attention towards our website.

And that is just another angle about this sort of thing, which also, like, it leads to real world consequences, not just in terms of healthcare getting restricted, but also like threats of violence against doctors. The right has historically been completely willing to carry out acts of violence against healthcare workers, and let alone, you know, threatening to bomb a children's hospital. Yeah. And the exact allegations were were really devastating for these families. I mean, I talked to Heidi, who's, you know, her daughter's personal medical history was misrepresented, daughter's personal medical history was misrepresented shared with the world shared in a million articles and used to um to fuel gender affirming care bans you know i mean that is like really damaging for a like 17 18 year old who's just trying to like live her life in kind of a

conservative town which also and this this is another aspect of this, is like she is sharing the private medical history of patients at a clinic, which you are not allowed to do. That is a, which is very funny for people who rant about these, all of these people yell about HIPAA literally all the time. And we finally got one. We finally got an actual HIPAA violation.

And, oh. Yeah, I think actual HIPAA violation. And, uh, yeah, I think the HIPAA thing has been, I mean, you know, a Zingarishi could have gotten that story. I feel like, I mean, I think it's been really undercovered. My understanding is that healthcare workers are not supposed to have to share information that's identifiable to the patient. And we have a patient saying, I could tell this was my story. And so, again, I'm not a lawyer, but I think that people have underestimated the extent to which real families could look at these allegations and say, this is me, twisted, distorted, used to hurt my family and other families like mine. And there's kind of no outrage about that. It's kind of this neglected backwater of this story. demonstrably unreliable, who is not someone who's, you know, who's someone who in the field, everyone's like, what is going on here? This is complete nonsense, who like misrepresents and just

straight up lies about, like about their patients. And then also, it turns out like has abused their patients, or in this case, it's not has abused their patients, but in this case, he's like, has successfully, like stopped parents from being able to talk to the clinic about what the options for their kids are but the media sort of doesn't care about that all they all they see is sort of this story and they they just sort of latch on to it and then they spread all of this stuff and it's like you know it reminds it reminds me a lot of that we're like we're still dealing with the consequences of just the completely fake bullshit about like vaccines, vaccines supposedly causing autism, which. And again, like that, that's something that never,

that never would have gotten mainstreamed if the media hadn't picked it up and ran with it. And yet, you know, every single time, one of these absolute like politically motivated frauds like gets up on the stands, like there's, there's the New York times doing, doing their article about it. And like, this used to be like glenn beck's territory who would like bring out like a chalkboard and make like a make like a crazy wall with a yarn and string um and now it's it actually has been relegated to the new york times the the sort of the sort of coverage they're doing

over these types of like moral panics around healthcare. I think if you look at like Fox News 20 years ago, this was the type of stuff that they did for a long time before it was actually a little bit too insane and they had to like fire Glenn Beck. And it's the same sort of stuff now that's propagated by people like the Daily Wire and then picked up on by even more kind of mainstream publications. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me as the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by I Heart and Sonorum, an anthology of modern day horror stories inspired

by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network. Available on the iHeartRadio app.

Apple Podcasts. Or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now. And I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world

as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry,

we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I mean, I think what's so insidious about this story in particular and some of the other New York Times stories is that they represent this as being their deep investigative journalism. They represent this as being the finest that the Times produces. And here is, you know, the mother of a trans girl who went to the reporter and said, I can prove to you I have medical records. I have emails to prove to you. I have medical records. I have emails to prove to you that what is in this allegation is about my family and isn't true. The reporter takes that and kind of sticks it in at the end. You know, like it's not lying, but it is so totally distorting the truth that it feels

like lying. It feels worse than lying. Yeah. Especially because there's like, like thousands of people who will just read the headline. They're not going to scroll to the bottom of the thing and read a little disclaimer being like, ha ha, JK. There's a line on everything. That's not good enough. Yeah, and I think this gets into the part that – so you very recently talked to the mother of one of the girls who Jamie Reid has been lying about. of one of the girls who was, you know, who Jamie Reid has been lying about. I talked to three of the parents who Azeen had talked to. Yeah, and you discovered some very disturbing and incredibly bizarre stuff that Azeen was doing to get parents to stay in the story after Reid's, like like this was in her follow-up story after a bunch of people

came out and were like hey this is like not correct this person has in fact been lying about this yeah so could you could you go into uh what you found about this yeah it was truly truly bizarre i mean i going in there were some parents that contacted me because they'd spoken to Azeen Gureshi and they were really upset about the story. And, you know, I went into it thinking I'm going to do them a favor. I'm going to let them feel heard. They feel disappointed about the story. This kind of happens in journalism. I was not expecting what I got. So this parent had been very suspicious of Azeen because of Azeen's previous writing about trans issues. And so I think she and her family kind of were very cautious and very savvy. And they said, we don't want to be part of a story that's going to be negative on

this clinic that we feel saved our daughter's life. So, you know, I'm willing to talk to you. I'm willing to give you this information about this person who lied about our daughter's history. But if you're going to turn that into a hit piece on the clinic, we don't want to be part of it. And Azeen, you know, reassured her, calmed her fears. And so, you know, they were going forward, but cautiously. And then this mother sees Azeen at a courthouse where Jamie Reed was testifying about the allegations in Missouri and just sees the warm relationship between Azeen and Jamie Reed. And she thinks something isn't right here. I helped her catch this person in a lie, but they're all, you know, buddy, buddy. That seems weird.

So she, you know, she first went up to Jamie Reed and confronted her. She said, I'm liver toxicity, mom. And, you know, she again noticed that Jamie Reed is kind of saying, oh, how can I help you? What do you want? And like looking to a zine, like save me from this crazy person. And so that's when the mother said we're out we're not we're not going to be part of the story and Azeem did not take that for an answer yeah it's nuts um she followed them to their car as they're trying to

leave she stood in the car door so they couldn't drive away saying, you know, please keep talking, keep talking. You know, I need I don't know exactly what she's saying, but like I need you in the story. And, you know, the mom says, like, no, Azeen, we're out. Could please step away from the car? And they drove away. And then Azeen called them and called them and they picked up. And Azeen managed to convince them to let her come over to their hotel room. This is the night before the New York Times article published. And so now Heidi and her husband and Azeen are in this hotel room and Azeen is going paragraph by paragraph telling her everything that's in the story, trying to convince her that it's not a hit piece on the clinic.

And the family isn't buying it at all. The family is like, no, you're describing a hit piece on the clinic. Yeah. But they're left with this horrible, horrible conundrum, because if they actually pull out of the article, which as far as I can tell, they really did have this agreement. Again, Azeen wouldn't talk to me. So like, it's a little unclear what the agreement was or exactly what's going on here.

But in the end they decided, you know, there's no evidence that this woman lied if we pull out of the story. So they felt that they had kind of no choice, even though they felt completely betrayed, completely devastated that their story was going to be used in this way. They felt they had no choice, to stay in yeah and then like the and the way that like it ends the article like is is basically like the article is like completely supportive of jamie reed even though again demonstrably in the article she is lying such a weird article you find someone's lying but you're

still spending all of your words saying well she sort of she lied this one time but she's basically credible just bizarre yeah and then you know and the the new york times's response to this is like the piece you're referring to was rigorously a reporter and edited and thoughtful and sensitive to the moment the state the time stands behind his publication unreservedly it's like well yeah of course of course it meets the new york times like incredibly demanding standards for journalism these are the people who published like these are the people who published the yellow cake uranium story like these people like these people have published things that like a like these people have published stuff about the Iraq war that like British tabloids wouldn't publish so like yeah I like it it's it's

not it's not I don't I don't think it's that surprising to me that like the new york times was like this past editorial standards but that's because again the new york times backed hitler and like deliberately forced the entire country into starting a war by straight up lying about a bunch of stuff they knew was fake let me take a moment and say there are a lot of reporters who work for the new york times who do really great work very very occasionally it's even about trans issues but like it is certainly not a monolith of ridiculous nonsense it's just all of the good work kind of camouflages the ridiculous nonsense and lets them get it through when they, when they go on a tear, when they go on a crusade against, you know,

against someone. Yeah. And I mean, it's, it's, they, I don't know. The New York times,

they, they pick, they pick their moments to get incredibly ideological about this. And then they hide behind the more normal reporting they do in order to sort of like disguise the fact that, again, this person knows that their source is demonstrably lying to them. I just, I don't know. The thing that was interesting to me about the story, too, is that Azeen is someone who up until this point, like, seems to have, like, from everything, I had been aware of Azeen is someone who up until this point, like seems to like, like from, from everything I had been aware of Azeen from.

Azeen did really good. Me too. Reporting. I believe. Yeah. The science community, astronomy community. Yeah.

In astronomy, which I like, I think I don't talk about enormously was that I did astronomy for a little bit. I didn't do very much astronomy, but there was a, there was a small amount of time where I wanted to do astronomy. And so like I knew a bunch of the people

like in that scene, as he had a very, very good rep there as like the person you could go to to talk about like to do a B2 story, which makes it even more weird that, you know, I guess this is just, I don't know. I'm,

I'm hesitant to just brush this off as sort of like trans brain where like some, like a cis reporter starts covering trans stuff and just completely loses their mind. But you know, it's, it's a really startling and disturbing like shift from this person who had a very,

very good rep on. Yes. Like as someone you could go to to like her standing in someone's car door trying to stop a family from driving away because they want because they don't want to be involved in a story where she's lying about them who who could have thought that a radical feminist could be trans exclusionary this is crazy holy shit guys what's going on people are complicated it i think has to do with who she feels sympathy for um and women in science are maybe people that she feels sympathy for and who she for i have no idea what reason doesn't and like innocent parents of trans youth are

apparently people she doesn't really have that empathy for have that ability to where the kids themselves apparently i mean as a trans person i never expect a reporter to have empathy for me but these white parents these middle-class white parents please you must take them seriously Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories

inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted latin america since the beginning of time listen to nocturnal tales from the shadows as part of my cultura podcast network available on the iheart radio app apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly.

I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's

toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on

in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature.

I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers

and to bring their words to life. Listen to Black Lit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The other thing I think I wanted to talk about was the impact that this reporting has had on the broader. So we alluded to this a little bit. alluded to this a little bit but yeah i wanted to talk a little bit about the way that right-wing sort of i mean right-wing lawyers like right-wing politicians have been using like specifically this coverage and also sort of like the the the fear-mongering around gender clinics as something they're using to support like health to support health care bans on trans youth? Yeah. Jamie Reed's allegations directly resulted in a ban on gender affirming care in Missouri.

You know, there were families that were going to the legislature week after week and were keeping it at bay. And then these allegations came out and it fell apart and the care ban was passed. And, you know, it would be bad enough if they found a bad clinic. But, you know, there's nothing miraculous about doctors who treat trans people that makes them incapable of being unethical. You know, like it would have been devastating if it was the truth. But for it to have been, you know, all based on lies is it's just a really tough blow. Yeah, I mean, like, you know, I have friends there and it's it's like it's bleak right now. why I expected these people to sort of like even remotely feel a single emotion about the fact that directly the stuff, the actions that they did led directly to a bunch of kids losing their health care.

But, you know, there's been no reckoning with this, right? As best I can tell, neither the New York Times nor any of the journalists involved, any of the editors involve any of the editors any publishers none of these people seem to care at all about the fact that their about their work directly is leading to the suffering and possibly death of children and i don't know like i i this is one of those things where like either either something about this changes and you know we we get to a point where it's unacceptable to sort of do this kind of stuff or or we wait for the next round of journalists to find some absolute crank both ends right it's a thing you can use as a journalist to advance your career and it's a thing you can use as like a crank to be suddenly on the talk show circle to get a bunch of money it's just lying about all of this stuff yep and i mean you know you try to inject some accountability but you can't make people listen. You know, this is what I do every day and I'm going to keep doing it.

But I'm under no illusions that since people are necessarily going to start listening, it's just you got to put it out there. Yeah. So I guess two more things I wanted to ask about before we sort of wrap up. One is, OK, so on the off chance that there are cis journalists listening to this, what kinds of things would you recommend to them to make sure you, A, don't fall down this rabbit hole, and B, to make sure that if you are attempting to write a story that is good, that you get things right? Yeah, so the Trans Journalist Association recently published an updated style guide, which I would absolutely suggest people check out because it's much more in depth than anything that I can say. But I think that the biggest pitfall people have is thinking that they understand more than they do. So, and I think that the kind of connected pitfall is just a wow, there's smoke, there's fire, like, well, there must be more to the skeptical side than there really is. So while I, you know, always try to butter journalists up by saying you can make up your own mind and, you know, look at the evidence, like really engage with trans people who are not just telling their stories, but who are science

reporters themselves, like myself, really engage with experts who are not trans, but who understand this medical information and are representatives of a mainstream medical consensus and really try to, you know, understand that the experts are experts for a reason. And the mainstream consensus is a mainstream consensus for a reason. And don't be so quick to just assume that a bunch of activists and cranks know something that everyone else is trying to keep from you, because that is a conspiratorial mindset that is below you as a mainstream cisgender journalist and that you wouldn't be falling into with, you know, a mainstream cisgender journalist and that you wouldn't be falling into with you know masks or anti-vax or whatever and it's just because trans people are marginalized that i think people are

kind of falling for this crap and getting rolled you are not yeah to conspiratorial thinking yeah well and this is this is something this is something i'm going to talk about at length more in one day the like 65 000 word thing that i've been writing about the lab leak stuff is going to come out and you know one one of the i've i have i have spent so many hours talking to epidemiologists you have no idea but i one of the things that you know comes up there and it comes up also just in general science conspiratism is if someone like people who actually do normal science do not start yelling

about how they're being censored by the scientific establishment and like there's a giant conspiracy to stop them from talking about their work even people who legitimately are being like actually screwed over by scientific establishment right people who have been abused people you know like people of color people from marginalized backgrounds who, like I know these people,

right? I grew up with a bunch of these people. They don't talk like this about that. The only people who talk like this are absolute cranks. And it would be really great if journalists realized that actual scientists don't talk about science in a way where they're like, ah, the medical establishment is censoring me. I would love for that to happen. I don't know. I'm skeptical that it will happen because it's a great story. Everyone knows that there are times when the medical or scientific establishment is wrong. You as a lay journalist are probably not going to be able to tell, I'm sorry, which times those are. So slow your roll, don't envision Pulitzers, and get grounded on what the basics are, instead of thinking that you kind of know better than the people who

spend their lives researching this is my entreaty to journalists who maybe don't realize how transphobia might be playing a role in their wanting to believe certain things. Yep. And I guess the last thing I wanted to ask you about, yeah, I wanted to ask you about the Trans Data Library, because I'm very excited about this. This sounds rad. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about the Trans Data Library, because I'm very excited about this. This sounds rad. Yeah. So, you know, a few months ago, I started working, you know, with some other people in the trans community, most of whom are, you know, staying anonymous on a resource to try and help people who, you know, we really envision people who are in good faith, but trans issues are not their main thing. You know what I mean? So like, not someone, not Azeem Gureshi, but maybe Azeem Gureshi of five years ago, you know what I mean?

The person who is a journalist who wants to get the story right, but there's so much misinformation out there. There's so many groups with so many different names. They're very skilled sometimes as presenting themselves as legitimate. So this is the Trans Data Library upcoming, hopefully by the end of the month, is going to be a kind of Wikipedia for the user, not Wikipedia and not like editable by the community, because that's very bad idea for trans stuff. A resource on what are these groups? Who are these activists? What have they done in the past? It is intended as a journalistic resource, not an activist resource, which just means, you know, if someone is, there isn't anyone like this, but if someone is a Nobel prize winning scientist, we're not going to pretend they didn't. You know what I mean? If someone has legitimate credentials, you will find that out. If someone has said things that are discrediting, you'll find that out. But it isn't just a list of the most discrediting things someone has said. And we are going to, you know, directly try to get this out to journalists, local journalists, particularly people, again,

who have decent coverage, not people who are already on a tear, and to Democratic politicians who similarly are sympathetic but might need an extra source of information. And yeah, it is coming. I want people to be aware of it so that they can start spreading it and sharing it when it does so that we can hopefully try to, you know, just get some basic information into the hands of people who I think desperately need it. They may not know that they desperately need it, but desperately need basic information on some of these groups and some of these bad actors.

I think that's definitely a good thing because there is a lot of information out there on the connections between, you know, the sort of right wing grifters who come out of the woodworks talking about this stuff. And, you know, the they're they're they're they're sort of demonstrable links to far right extremist groups, to the Proud Boys, to, you know, sort of right wing think tanks. But that's stuff that like the subset of trans people who spend their time doing this are all very well aware of. But the reporters who are sort of venturing into the space for the first time don't know about it all. space for the first time don't know about it all and yeah having having a thing we can put into their laps being like hey this is these are all the people who are like getting paid by the alliance defending freedom and stuff yeah yeah that's what i'm hoping to make um so the url is probably going to be trans data library.org it It is a little broken right now. Go to assigned media.org, you know, follow me, follow my Twitter, follow my project and watch that space for the trans data library.

Um, because I'm hoping it can do some good. Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm excited for it. And yeah, do you have anything else that you want to say before we close out? I think that's it for it. And yeah. Do you have anything else you want to say before we close out? I think that's it for me. Thank you so much for having me on. This was really fun. And yeah. Yeah.

Thanks for coming. And thanks. Thanks for reporting on this story because Lord knows the rest of the media wasn't going to do it. That's why I started doing it. All right. This has been It Could Happen Here. You can find us on twitter instagram it happened here pod and yeah go go into the world and be better about this the new york times which is not an enormously high bar but it's a bar they consistently failed across so you too could be superior have superior journalistic ethics to than the new york times

oh this is what i tell myself every day You, too, could have superior journalistic ethics than The New York Times. This is what I tell myself every day. iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday.

The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it.

Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards.