It Could Happen Here - Trans Journalism In the Era of Trump

Episode Date: May 6, 2025

Mia talks with trans journalists David Forbes, Mira Lazine, and Mady Castigan about how a lack of trans journalism got us here and how it can be supported. https://ashevilleblade.com/ https://thefreeradical.org/ https://www.madycast.com/subscribeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

My husband has a secret son from a past partner. Hold up Sam, how do we know how we've done the DNA test? Well John, luckily it's Mother Maya have a DNA test week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. And this wife writes, My husband received a Facebook message from a woman saying that he is the father of a 5 year old. At first he didn't remember her, but then he realized they had a one night stand right before we started dating. Wait, but do we have proof he's the dad?

To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm ready to fight. Oh, this is fighting words. Okay, I'll put the hammer back. Hi, I'm George M. Johnson, a bestselling author with the second most banned book

in America. Now more than ever, we need to use our voices to fight back. Part of the power of Black queer creativity is the fact that we got us, you know? We are the greatest culture makers in world history. Listen to Fighting Words on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Sam Mullins, and I've got a new podcast coming out called Go Boy, the gritty true story of how one man fought his way out of some of the darkest places imaginable.

Roger Caron was 16 when first convicted. Has spent 24 of those years in jail. But when Roger Caron picked up a pen and paper, he went from an ex-con to a literary darling. From Campside Media and iHeart Podcasts, listen to Go Boy on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves.

A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. Call zone media. brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. Cool Zone Media. Welcome to It Happened Here, a podcast about transgender. I am your host, Mia Wong. Now, we have spent a lot of time on this show covering a bunch of really bad stuff and also some cool

stuff. We've had some cool trans things on this show, too We're gonna have some more in like the coming weeks, but it is a bleak time to be trans Really anywhere in the world the United States is also pretty fucking bad right now But in the words of Langston Hughes between the darkness and the dawn there rises a red star and one of the things that has happened as this sort of like, you know, sort of the crisis of transphobia and the crisis of the genocide and the sort of multiple genocides the government's doing and as sort of transphobia as like an institutional state discourse has like solidified is that, I mean, honestly, multiple generations of trans journalists have really kind of like

risen to the forefront. And yeah, we've been seeing a bunch of extremely cool reporting and a bunch of very, very good work from a bunch of like more radical trans journalists. And that's the thing that kind of like, there's been so few of us for so long, and suddenly there's several and it rips and I'm really happy about it. And with me to talk about sort of, you know, what trans journalism is like in this moment, how it functions, and you know, and how it can be sustained going forward and why it's sort of important is David Forbes, who is the editor of the Asheville Blade and also an independent

journalist. Mira Lazine, who is a freelance journalist who recently launched the outlet Free Radical and Maddie Castigan, who's an independent journalist and the creator of Maddie Cast News. All of you, welcome to the show. Thank you. Happy to be on. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I'm ecstatic to have all of you on to get to talk about this because I don't know, I guess the place that I want to start is like I, I remember this kind of like period in like 2024, 2023, 2024, where it was like, I mean, it still is really bleak for trans journalism in a lot of ways, but like, you know, I'm just in trans media in general. Like I was just watching like the space that had been opened a little bit in

like the 2010s for there to be trans people in media just like closing. You know, and like I've been watching like pretty immediately around me. Like I've been watching the number of like trans fams, especially like non white trans fams just like disappearing from media. And it was, you know, it was, it was like watching the stars disappear from the sky. And the thing about the stars disappearing from the sky is, you know, there's, you don't notice it unless you're looking at them, in which case the light has fucking gone forever. And it was this really, really bleak thing. But also, you know, as it's happening, and as we've been sort of like resisting this,

I've been getting to watch like the stars go back on in the sky and like watching new like people emerge and watching people who've been doing cool work for a really long time sort of like come out into the open and like get more sort of national recognition. And yeah, I don't know. I guess, I guess that's the sort of place I wanted to start is just talking a little bit about like, what it's like to be fucking doing journalism right now, because Jesus Christ. I'll go ahead and start. I've been a journalist for over 20 years. And for those who might be wondering, since you referred to trans femmes, I am a trans woman, I use she, they pronounce. I also like the name David.

So, but I have seen it kind of wax and wane. I've seen it go up and down. And to some degree, what we're facing now, it is a much worse and escalating version, but it is also some of what I've seen trans journalists face. I came out publicly in 2016. I started my transition in 2015. And immediately, my freelance career basically died overnight. And it wasn't like I was writing for, you know, right wing outlets or something.

And you know, honestly, the fact is, and this is, I think, unusual among trans journalism, because a lot of it admirably focuses on national, even international level stuff, because what we face is so vast. But if it had not been for the local support, because the blade, a lot of the blade subscribers are local, that we certainly welcome people to subscribe from wherever they are. I would be homeless, and there's a good chance I wouldn't be talking to you all right now. But at the same time, in this kind of what I call the quiet purge, which I think has been escalating in recent years that you talked about, we've got trans journalists who used to write for national magazines living out of their cars now. That is the reality we face our publications all working-class trans people and

You know, we've had journalists arrested twice. Yeah. Oh my god for doing their jobs Two of our journalists were were taken to trial in 2023 on a minor trespassing charge Which is almost unheard of in the US as bad as the US often is. As you mentioned also this was like trespassing for fucking reporting on the cops doing a helpless encampment sweep. On Christmas. Yeah on Christmas.

Yeah yeah yeah. Like just like unhinged police state shit. Yeah. Yeah even in LA they'll like sometimes they'll accidentally quote unquote arrest journalists but then they'll be like, okay, we'll let you go because you're a journalist. They don't actually take you to trial. This is one of those kind of welcome to Asheville moments.

Cause I think people buy the marketing sometimes and think we're this super progressive city and actually it's an incredibly repressive, like tourism Fife. And that's, this is kind of really still a point though, like the city government, city council here is six Democrats and one kind of like Bernie Sanders type independent, though even more tepid. And the DA is a Democrat. And still, you know, they were hell bent to persecute trans journalists. One of our, one of our journalists, Matilda Bliss was openly mistreated and misgendered based on her gender during that. So to some degree, what's happening now is certainly a worsening, but it is also an extension

of what's been going on for a very long time. So okay, like it is getting worse. I don't know where we're going to be in a two, three, even one year, but also like this is not a new fight. Yeah. I can speak to it a little bit too. I've been a journalist for, I guess, what, six months because it's a long story, but I kind of got into it more out of fear for myself.

Sometimes people think I'm selfless and maybe I am a little bit, but a lot of it is really selfish and just feeling like I have to do stuff to protect myself and my friends basically. But even in that short period of time, I have faced a lot of bad stuff from honestly, predominantly the left and liberals and sometimes even other queer people being a trans woman of color. And that wasn't really initially what I was afraid of, you know, I was afraid of like, I'm going to get death threats and Nazis up and like, my docs being actually none of that's happened. I can't really explain why other than I just don't use Twitter and I guess so they don't know I exist.

But I have like one of the first national news story that I broke, or one of them I guess, it was about like Meta AI being like super racist and I like kind of figured that out. I like proved that it was racist basically I just like used my brain to make it tell on itself and explain its prompt and all that. And it became this huge international news story. But it was like immediately co-opted by a Washington Post journalist who retweeted me and then recreated the conversation and

posted it again. And then I had to go on like this weeks long like kind of campaign to try to just get basic credit for that. And eventually she did credit me in the column to give her credit, but that was not something that was forgiven and a lot of others that I said the thing to also didn't credit me and that's just been a recurring trend that Yeah, like I I'm kind of invisible even though I make a lot of Important news so that kind of sucks. Yeah, there's something happens fucking constantly I'm like my my like welcome to the this this is before I was out too.

And it's also like, you know, part part of what's going on here is like one of the things you learn really quickly in media is the extent to which so much national media is just like what they do is steal stories from like people like who are, you know, from sort of like like more regional media or people that think they can get away with taking stuff from like if this goes all the way up the chain, right? Like, if you want to know what's gonna be on Rachel Maddow's show, look at what's happening on Behind the Bastards whenever they cover someone on the right.

And within about three weeks, you will get a Rachel Maddow episode that is five minutes a thing. But like, you know, but like, you know, it's obviously like it's significantly worse with like trans people because like, yeah, they can just fucking steal stories from us. Like, I remember, god, my fucking... The first journalism... Well, that's not true. But the first journalism-y stuff that I did with cool zone people was we were treating them like the Atlanta spa shooting.

We tracked down... There was a Facebook post that people were circulating reportedly from the shooter that was basically blaming anti-China media stuff for it and We tracked down that this person did not have a Facebook and that all of this was fake But that person that posted been circulating to the national news and we were like, well, yeah This is like fake right and then like every single news like every single like CNN fucking Fox News like every single major news outlet just like

Took all of our work and like repackaged it and then never fucking mentioned that it was like Gare and I who did this because, you know, why would you credit the transgender anarchists when you could simply repackage the story yourself? And this is a problem that's like goes all the way up to like, this is part of the reason we're here right now, right? Like we're complaining about this on sort of like a professional level because like it's annoying, but also like the reason we're here right now, right? Like we're complaining about this on sort of like professional level because like it's annoying.

But also like the reason we're fucking here right now is because the person who got to write about trans stuff was fucking Jesse Singal, who is a cis man whose only qualification was the thing he previously wrote about was men who fuck other men who don't consider themselves gay. And because he was the person who got to write all of the like trans coverage, though he's just like some fucking cis dipshit right like he's now the guy who's like been being cited in fucking legal cases for ages and ages for why you should restrict trans health care. The Atlantic and its consequences on society. Disaster. Disaster. Yeah Amir, do you want to talk a bit about your experience with it? Honestly what you just described has been happening to me this week so I've been in the industry for about three to four years now consistently and consistently for a little bit longer and Initially it was way easier for me to

Get eggs like within the first few months of me seriously starting I got accepted pitches into the Scouter for Magazine and places like that. And then like, within like six months after that, it became a nightmare to get pitches accepted. Yeah. And it just so happened I became more out as trans. Mm hmm.

In that timeframe. Definitely not a coincidence at all. But more recently, this week I launched my independent newsletter, the free radical. Go subscribe. You go subscribe. It's legitimately great. You will get reporting there that you won't fucking get. Well, OK, you will get recording there that you won't get from anyone else until about three weeks later when all the national outlets pick it up and it will be better. And you will have it first for the person who actually reported it.

And every article I've written so far, I've taken a second to basically be like, okay, here's some anarchist shit you should read, y'all. He does my audiences mostly like clips and I'm just like, here, here, read this, please. But my first story, I broke the suite was about a trans woman who was legally held in Guantanamo Bay and That story got picked up by bigger media outlets pretty quick within the first like 12 hours The news are like them did a very good story that basically cited me every chance They got come to find out this is because a trans woman wrote that she's awesome. I just followed her the other day. Oh, but then

Brazilian news outlets started picking up on this. This was a Brazilian trans woman who got like sent to Guantanamo. Yeah. And the first one to do this was the newspaper, forgive me if I am mispronouncing this, Folha Deus South Paulo, I believe it's called. I might be mispronouncing that. I apologize if I am, but they are one of the biggest newspapers in Brazil and definitely one of the oldest. And that story was all right. You know, they credited me for breaking the story.

I was talking to the person who wrote that. She's sweet and even did a ritual recording. It's awesome. And then right after that, like dozens of other outlets came in, none of them credited me. And they posted like social media stuff about the story. Not a single one of those credited me. And they're getting like thousands of likes and comments and shares and yeah most egregious I think is I've seen a few of them credit the journalist with full huh as breaking the story and I've seen one say them as breaking the story. Oh my god.

Who's whose article might you literally in a subheading, says I broke the story. Yeah. And I didn't check in on it today yet, but last night I was like up late just looking at all the news outlets that was boosting and it's like, I'm glad this story's getting coverage, don't get me wrong, it's an important one.

It's just like. Yeah, no, it's great, yeah. Almost none of them are seeing where they got the story from. It's just like, oh, wow, there's this bigger outlet cover. I'm going to credit the bigger outlet. So to explain why we're also sort of concerned about like the way this attribution stuff works, right?

This is a incredibly material problem for us, right? And like, I am very lucky in that, like, in terms of trans journalism, I have like a stable job. But the thing is, right, unless unless you fucking got really lucky and you got hired, like as a cis person, and then you have a bunch of very, very supportive, like co workers and like your bosses are supportive, you are like trying to cobble together like every cent that you can possibly pull out of a fucking couch cushion. Because like, you know, I said this on the show before, right? Like if you're a trans person in the US, even when even before all the turf

tariffs hit, right, like you you were living in the night in like 1936 Great Depression levels of unemployment. And, you know, and so and so that means that like it actually matters a lot when when other outlets steal your stories and don't attribute it to you because, like, you have to find a way to fucking make money. And like almost all trans journalists are like, the most hideously broke people you've ever heard of in your entire

fucking life. Like, and this is also, you know, and this is this is also part of the way that like class plays out in in the transmuted you see is like. You know, the people with the biggest platforms tend to be trans people who were already doing OK, because those are the only people who can afford to fucking do this. And like, that's why most of you have heard of me and most of you probably

have not heard of David Amira, even though David Amira do like quite frankly, more important journalism than I do, and like, in terms of especially in terms of like, and like break way more fucking stories than I do, because that's not kind of like not exactly like my thing, right? But that's because I was like, you know, like I was already sort of like in a place that was financially secure,

and everyone else is so unbelievably fucking broke all the time. And it matters when fucking stories get stolen, because the only way that if you're a trans journalist and you're, you know, you're working at your own outlet because an outlet won't fucking hire you because that's just the way that the fucking media is structured. The only way for you to get paid is by like people seeing your stories. And that's part of why there's like like, just not that many trans journalists, is because, like, the level of discrimination on top of the kind of, like, erasure of independent journalists

that already happens makes it just, like, financially impossible to fucking do it. Yeah. It's not just, uh, liberal media. Or it's not just, like, the cis-hat liberal media, too. Sometimes, like, uh, I had a similar thing with when I broke the story of Reign and some other sexual abuse nonprofits removing all the trans people from their websites. That became a national news story and the Washington Post picked it up also.

And I think part of that was because I complained so much about the previous time where they almost didn't cite me That maybe they were a little bit more cautious about me is my theory But anyway after that initial news story that cited me same thing happened where it's like everyone's like oh well We can just cite the Washington Post now and so this person no one knows And the first website to do that was like a queer news outlet And then I just kept watching as like I think It was like three or four different queer or like feminist

women focused news outlets did the same thing of not citing me and There was even like a really long piece from this other like outlet That was felt like it was going out of its way not to cite me because it was talking about this entire issue about nonprofits censoring people and that was an entire conversation that was started specifically because of a news article I wrote but it specifically did not cite me even though they mentioned how one of the organizations that I reported on had reversed course which is something that they emailed me and said it was because of me so that's how that that's how deep this goes. They will like go out of their way to like carve you out of a story that exists because of you even if they are

ostensibly you know not just a liberal like a New York Times outlet but like a left-wing like progressive-facing outlet that's trying to like market itself like that. They just they just want to exclude trans women from their own stories even it's kind of crazy. Yeah The extent of it is actually telling of a local level to Here the blade diddle number of reporting and we also featured some like really well thought out in pretty sharp opinion columns Which is one thing we kind of specialize in something really good for like raising issues in local level About how awful the tourism development authority is, which is this hotelier cartel that takes every dime of all the local hotel tax, every

bit of it, and then uses it to market the place to more rich people and push crackdowns on pretty much everyone else. So we pushed this, it became a widespread public demand, a lot of organizing happened around it. And there was zip zilch zero mentioned that like spurred by investigations and editorials in the Asheville Blade, even one of the people who wrote that editorial, it was a local resident activist who dealt with some tourism stuff, was literally being quoted the fact she'd written a piece for the Blade and that, you know, was just not mentioned. And it actually became kind of a running kind of grim joke because we're all working class

trans people and, you know, half of us are trans femme is just the Asheville Blade does not exist. And some of that was for liberals, but honestly Asheville has a massive trans misogyny problem. We think we were the first media outs to do like a quick guide to trans misogyny, which we did kind of like a slideshow about it in our Patreon and stuff because it was that extensive. But even the left in Asheville has some real problems with trans misogyny. So, and it's applied to everything not just from trans issues, but even to bread and butter kind of local stuff, which we also do a lot of reporting on. You know, it's, we can't admit that trans leftists and anarchists are shaping the discussion any way shape or form. Mm-hmm. [♪ music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game music playing, video game find out soon. And this wife writes, my husband received a Facebook message from a woman saying that he is the father of a five year old.

Whoa! At first he didn't remember her, but then he realized they had a one night stand right before we started dating. Wait, but do we have proof he's a dad? Well, the author says there's no confirmation the kid is even his son. But the woman from Facebook has a meeting with her lawyer soon. I think she's going after our money. If the kid is actually my husband's, she would be entitled to it too. So what's a husband gotta say about this? This could be his kid.

Well, apparently he broke down in the middle of the living room apologizing, but this is what scared me. His first instinct, if the kid is his son, is to pay the child support, but not be an active father in the kid's life because he only wants a family with me, his wife. Oh, this is a mess.

To hear the explosive finale, follow OK Storytime 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 found his his jar in our apartment I collect my roommates 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. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the World of Drugs podcast. Yes sir, we are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives.

This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is.

Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. Got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette, MMA fighter Liz Karamouche. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them.

It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple podcast.

The imaven, I'm La Gata, the cultures favorite reggaeton historian, musicologist, public scholar, and recording artist. Yes, that means I've done the work. On my show, the Reggaeton con la Gata podcast, I'm not only talking to Flor Menon, who has the number one reggaeton track in the world right now. I'm also going to be on Perreo to speak with music inhibitors like Rainal, who is known for her media roquera tracks and collaborating with artists like Bad Bonnie. We're also giving you the culture breakdown

straight from the source. Listen to Reggaeton Cueva Gata on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's funny, cause like, even us, even the podcast, it could happen here, which is like a pretty big national thing. There's no one else talks about us. It's fucking amazing.

You can just like see, you can like literally watch like every other podcast that's like a tenth of our size, there's like media coverage of, and there's nothing. And they will never admit that we fucking did anything. It's awesome. It's so cool. And I think there's like a convergence of actors here too, because like, you know, on the one hand, like in terms of sort of the way that hyper visibility works, right? Hyper visibility for trans femmes only works negatively.

Like there's only the kind of like you get fucked by it. But then also on top of it, you get the reverse version of it where it's like, yeah, you know, your labor was stolen. And this is, you know, this is true both in movements, this is true of the way that sort of capitalist media functions. And then on top of that, we have the kind of like trifecta of like, we will never mention that you exist, which is trans, independent and radical at the same time. And like this is the habits like every fucking trans family journalist, like friend of the show, Maya Arson

Crime W has had this happen to it like a billion fucking times. I want to talk a bit more about kind of just like the financials of how this plays out and how independent media is sort of being supported in this era, because, you know, like it's also really true that like, even even the like nominally trans outlets like a lot of it functions a labor exploitation. And yeah, let's let's talk a bit about that. Like I have a lot of strong cakes. Seen some shit. Oh boy. I have so many opinions.

So I mentioned I kind of more formally got a start three to four years ago. My first article was published in like 2018 and it was just like a local thing when I was living in Scranton, Pennsylvania area where embossing happens, but I found something to report on. The reason I got started, that would have been like early 2022, the reason I got started then was because I was homeless and I needed a way to make money. And where I was living at the time was a complete job desert. I didn't have a car and there was nothing in walking distance to me.

The only things that were were like minimum wage food service jobs that over half an hour walk and my only one disabled. My body is in pain if I stand up too long. So those jobs did not last long because I physically couldn't. And so I tried to find something that I could do remotely more consistently. And I went all in into freelance writing and journal. Real, really the money making career. Oh yeah. I'm totally, I'm just in this for the money.

You know, I, I made such amazing profits that year, which is why I ended up homeless again, and by the end of the year I was living in a motel. God. yeah. And a lot of the writing I was doing at that time was very generalist, and I hadn't really found much of my niche yet. But as I began to zero in more on trans issues over time, and just politics and stuff like that, because as an aside, I also tried to break into gaming journalism because I, unfortunately, am a gamer regrettably. There's many such cases.

There's many such cases. And that industry is just dead. It was dying at that point. And now it's just like, do you want to get a job as a gaming journalist? You're not gonna. I tried. We need more people to do it, but it does not pay. So I ended up going into politics journalism, which pays like marginally better.

And by marginally better, let me talk about some of my rates. Oh, God. Yeah. One outlet I've written for pretty consistently over a while. To start, it paid me about a hundred bucks an article flat rate. And this includes for highly researched in-depth recording articles. Pete Slauson My god. Jared Harkness Yeah. This is again, like, shit that's going to be stolen by a national outlet

in two days. Like, like… Peter Bregman And by a lot of these stories took weeks to make and fell for a hundred bucks. And so, I eventually got quote, upgraded to that outlet to doing 75 a piece, but four pieces in a month. And so that was great. You know, that $200 a month for each individually reported piece that really paid the bills. And eventually it changed into 150 a piece for in-depth reporting pieces that often took over a month's worth of work to get going.

And I had to meet my deadline or else they would get really angry at me. And they would be really dickish. And that was one of my better experiences. Certainly not the best. I've had plenty of people who were wonderful who I've written for and who I've had great times with. But the through line of all of it, even the places that pay better, they're for one-off stories. They're for things that do not guarantee a source of income long term. Even the places that have paid me the best

for individual stories, it's not enough. Not the least of which because, you know, the cost of living is horrible right now. Terrorists are going show up and, oh God, what the fuck is happening? But also because none of it's consistent. The closest to consistent I had was overworking myself by writing upwards of 10 articles a week. Sometimes upwards of five to seven in one day. And all of them being reported in and in that. And it's not sustainable doing that.

No. Oh, but that's just common. That is just normal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's and it's like the sort of bleak thing about it is your options are you have money already. You won the fucking lottery basically. And like you got a stable position. You work at a rate that is like genuinely hideous or you have a second job.

And sometimes it's a lot of these things combined. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a tendency to talk about discrimination as something that's sort of like abstract or something that's even just kind of like point of hiring stuff, which is all true. And like, you know, it is like, yeah, like part of the problem with this is that it's impossible to get like fucking

staff positions and like, and like, I mean, I could say this say this is like because I mean I got hired like as a cis person Right and like they would have hired me if I was trans but like that's also just true for a lot of people Which is that like that's like the way that you can do it So like there is the like front door discrimination but then also the second aspect of it is that like The way that all of this stuff plays out structurally in the economy is that you get reduced to sort of contract labor unless you try to go and go it by yourself. And because of the incredible just material financial oppression of trans people, this

is another big part of the reason why there's just so few, you know, and like there's becoming more, right? And I'm incredibly happy that like, you know, like I'm fucking talking with three trans journalists. This rules. And also the reason there's not more of us, which is important because like cis people trying to cover our stories is a fucking disaster. Like that's how we got here.

But like part of the reason why there's not more is just that like it's so difficult to survive doing this. And you know, and that's also, I'm gonna turn this into a minor plug, which is like go subscribe to the Ashville Blade, go subscribe to Free Radical, go subscribe to Manicast News, because like, literally the difference between like people being able to have an apartment and pay their rent or like living in a car is like the amount of support that you get from this stuff. That's absolutely true. And I should note the, you know, the blades of co-op. We've been one for

for half a decade now and Part of the reason for that was we'd seen how Unfairly like income was treated Just in the press in general and also I'm an anarchist and while I love being an editor I don't want to be a boss. I want to like work with other people. And it's made us a lot more effective. I would say we wouldn't exist if we hadn't become a co-op. But also, when we do hit a difficult financial spot, we operate in a shoestring budget, especially post-Helene as sadly a lot of folks have been driven out of Asheville by the refusal of various

governments to do anything about rental aid by the resumption of, like very quick resumption of evictions and a lot of other horrible stuff. Like it's a struggle. We all are working class folks. We all work over their jobs and face trans, you know, the discrimination, trans misogyny and transphobia. So it's, it's difficult. And even with being a co-op, we

do the best we can and we do, unlike other places, pay freelancers fair rate. But sometimes it's legitimately difficult to divide up our tiny budget. And at some points we say, look, we can't cover this right now, or we have to say, okay, in some cases, I've done it before certainly, I'm covering this, but I am going to literally have to split up payment for it over multiple months because we just don't have the money in some cases, I've done it before, certainly, I'm covering this, but I am going to literally have to split up payment for it over multiple months because we just don't have the money in there, but I feel it does need to get out there. And even if those decisions are made more fairly, it is still a real problem that we are dividing up a fairly small pool of resources.

We do a lot with that, but it is a real limitation. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'm kind of in a similar boat in terms of my publication, Maddie Cass News. So, I'm in one of the categories you mentioned. Actually, I'm in two of them where I fund what I'm doing not from my work, but from my first job, my main job, I guess, which I got, I guess, pretending to be cis or maybe you know non-binary they them or whatever and then kind of jump scare them uh but anyway that job pays pretty well thankfully you know software engineering one of the lottery professions for trans women you get your health care you get your money but uh I've been trying to go beyond just me and try to help other people as well. So recently we just applied for fiscal sponsorship with 501c3, which hopefully let us become

a charity tax deductible and all that. And I've also been putting a bit of my own money and I've also been, you know, pretty much begging all the readers to give us my because one of the biggest goals of my publication has, it kind of started off more about like, you know, reporting on the news, of course, but now it's reporting on the news and also, you know, making sure the people who report on the news aren't homeless, actually. Maybe that's a bad thing. Everyone I know in my life knows people like all these journalists who report on this news, but a lot of

them probably don't even know how much like they suck they struggle just like getting through their daily lives so I'm really trying to hopefully create some structure for us to have at least one nonprofit that will fund trans journalists at like a living wage of at least you know $25 an hour which I honestly don't think is a lot especially like in a place like LA, $25 an hour, which I honestly don't think is a lot, especially like in a place like LA, but $25 an hour is probably more than you can get almost anywhere as a trans journalist also. I've heard a lot of jokes about, you know, we're passing around the same $20 in the trans community and it's a little bit more of that, but I'm also hoping to see if I can try to fundraise from other people and try to, you know, raise awareness for this issue.

Because I don't have a lot of time myself to be writing articles these days because I do have a full-time job. But yeah, hoping to kind of make a dent on this issue and raise awareness. And it's really a win-win for all trans people that, you know, if we're paying people who need this money to survive, but they're also creating really important news coverage that literally is like life changing for hundreds of thousands, millions of people at many times. And that's how I see it's an exceptionally important issue that is completely unaddressed. This is also part of the issue with the way that like trans issues are reported on by the media is that they're they're largely, you know, it's not it's not things like healthcare aren't important, right?

But like, just the raw class dynamic of all of this just does not get talked about. Right? The homelessness rates that I don't I don't actually fuck. I should have the homelessness rates off top of my head. Things like three or four times at the very least, more likely across the entire trans population to be homeless than cis people. And like, you can just fucking see that. If you know trans people, it's like, yeah, fucking everyone's spent a bunch of time being homeless. And like, you know, that's just the conditions of this and You know, this is a thing that like as you the listener like It is possible for this doesn't have to fucking be like this No, like it doesn't you you have the power in your hands like to keep people off the street and like with a roof above Their head and you can do this by clicking the links in the description

From our co-op. thank you for repeatedly mentioning that aspect. I think also this class dynamic does shape the type of trans coverage you see, too, quite a bit. We did some reporting one time on the city of Asheville spending over a million dollars to the Salvation Army, which is basically a queer and transphobic cult. But that piece was reported very differently from if it had been reported by, say, a trans journalist who'd been very well off their entire lives, you know, because a lot of us people in our co-op have either

been close to or been homeless before. And so we were able to bring in the experience of knowing that if you are a trans homeless person, the Salvation Army isn't letting you in or is one of the worst possible shelters you can end up in. And that piece was written and read very differently because we were drawing from that on the ground experience. Yeah. On that note, I have written so many stories that have been about just the poverty rates of trans people and what we've all gone through. I used to be a daily contributor for LGBTQ Nation. They were one of the outlooks that I was trying to crank out as many articles as I could for. And the editors, lovely people there, no issues with them, lovely folks.

They just, they didn't have enough money to begin with to pay me enough, so you're going to do. But I remember working on a story sometime like the summer of last year for them where I was writing about some new report that came out talking about just like poverty rates, job discrimination rates of trans people. And one thing I've noticed is like David mentioned, there is a huge disconnect between even if you have like a wealthier trans people, right? About an issue versus those who are in poverty. Like, a lot of the sources I had for the specific article, I don't remember the headline because I wrote like 500 articles

for Qnation last year. But a lot of the sources I used for that article and other ones like it are big nonprofits. Obviously, your mileage may vary depending on which nonprofit, but most of the folk who were writing these reports or who were doing the press releases and stuff like that. You could just kind of tell that they maybe did not have quite the same experiences as say trans people who have been homeless, trans people who have had to deprive themselves of medical care because they couldn't afford it, trans people who have had to go without food because not enough money. And it's almost like a lot of people

who didn't have to go through this stuff, like intellectualize it more. They see it as like these abstract numbers and they know it's bad, but they don't have that like individual connection. Like even many of the nonprofit folk, a lot of their friends, even their social circles are all going to be on average, you know, I can't say for every single person, obviously,

like on average, more wealthy, more stable. They have family to back them up. They have plenty of options. And I don't know, rambling a bit, but there's just a disconnect, you know, whenever reaching out to folk who won the birth lottery a little bit. Yeah. One of the most expensive article that we did at Maddie Cass news earlier last month

was about Maryland prisons and how they're basically torture chambers for trans women as most prisons are. But it seems like they're especially bad in Maryland, you know, despite it being supposedly a safe trans state, you know, 70% Democrats. And that was kind of an example of just like how unprofitable, how impossible to not just unprofitable, because when you think unprofitable, it's like, oh, you're not making money. It's not about that. It's's like if you're losing like 80% of the money you put into these articles because it takes so many like I'm very strong believer of paying people you

know a living wage so I was paying the journalists like well over $25 an hour for you know dozens of hours of work and that adds up really fast and then court fee like pacer fees every all these other costs are adding up. And it ends up being like around a thousand dollars for the single article. And it's a really important article that, you know, raise a lot of awareness. Everyone in Maryland in the trans circle, they're talking about it. But at the same time, it's basically a charity project, right? This is why I'm trying to become a nonprofit, because there's simply no other way to be able to fund this stuff. There's no

capitalist model for reporting on trans women in prison. It's not a, it's not something that people are, you know, like I definitely get, there's a lot of people who support us out of the goodness of their hearts and that's really nice. But even that is not enough because of, that's just how it is. There's just not enough people who care about these issues sadly, especially the more intersectional it is, you know, even a lot of people in the queer community aren't as worried necessarily about people in prisons, they're more worried about people not in prisons. And, you know, of course, everyone matters. But I think it's really important to focus on those most intersectional issues. Because when you really think about it, like, prisons are basically, you know,

where they do everything they want to do to transform and warrant in prison that's where they get to do all of it and no one's looking the ones no one's watching them no one's holding them accountable but yeah I think it's basically a complete failing of capitalism like it's there's definitely be some outlets that you know maybe they keep it doing better but at the same time a lot of the time it's basically you know be really shitty the people or close down and neither of those are great options and personally I would close down but I can't tell other people what to do and I think really is a systemic issue that society doesn't care about us that the cis people who really should be funding these things and

trying to solve these issues just pretend like we don't exist and you know go out of way to even erase our presence, even when we do, you know, create national news. My husband has a secret son from a past partner. Hold up, Sam, how do we know how we've done the DNA test? Well, John, luckily it's Mother, may I have a DNA test week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. And this wife writes, my husband received a Facebook message from a woman saying that he is the father of a five-year-old.

Whoa! At first he didn't remember her, but then he realized they had a one night stand right before we started dating. Wait, but do we have proof he's the dad? Well, the author says there's no confirmation the kid is even his son, but the woman from Facebook has a meeting

with her lawyer soon. I think she's going after our money. If the kid is actually my husband's, she would be entitled to it too. So what's a husband got to say about this? This could be his kid. Well, apparently he broke down in the middle of the living room apologizing. But this is what scared me. His first instinct, if the kid is his son, is to pay the child support,

but not be an active father in the kid's life, because he only wants a family with me, his wife. Oh, this is a mess. To hear the explosive finale, follow OK Storytime 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 pizjar in our apartment. I collect my roommates' 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. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott.

And this is season two of the We're On Drugs Podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players

all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote unquote drug van. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. Got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote.

Marine Corvette. MMA fighter. Liz Karamouche. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does.

It makes it real. Listen to does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcast. ["Reggaeton"] That's the fun part about being an artist that you need to have the patience for finding your head.

I'm La Gata, the culture's favorite reggaeton historian and musicologist. On an episode of my show, the Reggaeton con la Gata podcast, I sit down with Goldie, a Boricua reggaetonera who's demanding her place in the male-dominated music industry. That's the game, like who stays and who leaves, you know? Listen to Reggaeton Cuella Gata on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow Reggaeton Cuella Gata

and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today. You know, I think part of the difficulty of it, right, and this is specifically the way that trans issues function about class in journalism or a microcosm, it's like the most intense version of the stuff that's happening to the entire journalism industry, right? Where like, you know, part of what we're seeing is like, is just, it's been the destruction of local news, right? And the product of this is that the only people who can be journalists are like a bunch of fucking rich dipshits.

And you know, like, yeah, you've all fucking read like New York Times columnist is like the platforming of genocide denier today. Right? Like that. And that's that's sort of the product of this. And it means that, like, unless like literally like people like you like you the fucking listener and I guess this doesn't apply to you if you're you know like statistically a good number of you are like you are also transgender and you make like fucking nine dollars an hour like running a forklift or

something like this is not this is not on you like i know how much of you are going to be like holy shit actually give money to these people it's okay. But like, this stuff is only possible if people are actually fucking willing to support it, like, until we can like fundamentally change the way that the entire political and economic system works in this country and in this world. And until then, it's like, yeah, like it's, this is a fucking problem for like us here too,

because, you know, like, again, like I got fucking lucky. Like, I am extremely dissimilar. Like I am the trans woman, like one of the trans women who you will hear from the most. And I have like a stable job. I haven't been homeless and I haven't done sex work. And this makes me completely unlike a huge portion of trans people, especially trans femmes. Right. And yeah, it's like, yeah, I have fucking colors the way I do this shit in ways that like I don't see because like I

haven't had to like do this shit and this is a real fucking problem. The only way that it can not be like this is if people are actually willing to support the people who understand these things because they fucking gone through it. And so your options are like all of our stuff gets reported on by Jesse Sengal and we all fucking die, or we fund trans journalism and we fight them and we all live in a fucking better world. My backup option if trans journalism doesn't work, you mentioned sex work, is quite literally to write furry smut and hope that pays.

The last year, the Asheville Blade marked our 10th anniversary. So I think that is worth mentioning too. I think sometimes things, and they truly are precarious. They truly are difficult in some ways. They're only getting more precarious and more difficult. But at the same time, despite our journalists being arrested, despite being kind of like targeted and ignored by a lot of liberals and even some leftists in town. We're still here. We're still doing journalism.

We just put out a really powerful investigation about, you know, more mouth, yet more malfeasance in the police department. So, so yeah, like it can be done. It's not impossible. And as tight as things are, there is also a lot of resilience and we do get a lot of very genuine support. I do think that's worth emphasizing too. So like there is strength and there is some hope here. Yeah. And you know, and again, it's like, it's, it's not impossible. It just requires a, it requires a bunch of fucking work from the trans people who are

doing it. And then also it requires, you know, putting on my fucking NPR, Fletcher voice. It requires viewers like you to, you know, it requires people to care enough about it, to support it and make it exist. And yeah, I think that's a, that's a kind of good note to starts for wrapping up. Do you have anything else that you want to make sure you get in? Yeah. Remove two plugs. I guess, yeah, for me, as I'm also kind of in that spectrum of like being a little bit

more privileged as far as trans women go financially. And my message to other people who make, especially if you're a cis person, you make over $100,000, you're comfortable and you're feeling bad listening to this. You know, go give a trans person money. Go give my real estate money. Go give David Forbes money. Like we have to we really need everyone to start pitching in, especially people who aren't trans, and we really need like it's it's literally life saving the money. And I think one thing to consider is, you know,

one thousand dollars to someone who makes a lot of money is completely different from $1,000 to someone who is like a month away from being homeless. $20 functions like that? Like, yeah, $20. Like, no, I know so many people like $1,000, like they'll go, they'll spend $1,000 in a couple of weeks on restaurants. Right. And then there's people, there's trans people with a thousand dollars it's like change their

life forever there's people who spend and I don't even do a $20,000 a year on sushi having worked in the service industry yeah I feel bad when I spend like 20 bucks on Popeyes once a week. Like, yeah, exactly. So if you spend 20,000 dollars a year on sushi, please spend 19,000 dollars a year this year instead and give one thousand dollars

to a trans person. That's my advice for you. Double the income of a trans person today. This is also like, you know, part of what I was talking about with like the Great Depression, like we don't live in the same economy that everyone else does. Like it is literally a different fucking world. And the more fucked you are, like down the fucking scale of like, of like trans poverty,

the more it's like you literally like the reality that like the people live in is just completely alien to you. It's like, what the fuck? I want that kind of money. Fuck. Mira, David, yeah, do you have anything else you want to say before you wrap up? Please support trans journalists, please. Dear God, please.

Everyone I know who is primarily a journalist for work is broke. We need the money, please, dear God. Um, yeah. I would, yeah, add to that. But another thing is, look, you should support trans journalists because trans people deserve to, you know, to be supported and to be able to make a living. Also, frankly, we're really good at this, like be supported and to be able to make a living. Also, frankly, we're really good at this, like generally as a whole, like we have a lot more perspective,

I think on how this hellscape social structure actually does and doesn't work and a lot more determination to actually tell the truth in general. And so, you know, dollars to the Ashfall blade, for example, or to, or to Mira or to Maddie cast like they go to journalism. Yeah, yeah. You know, they're not going to like some Baroque hierarchy of, you know, of gentry administrators or something or CEOs, like it goes to journalism. It goes to actual interesting reporting and views and things that need to be said. So if people are even just looking, if some journalism is something they care

about or think needs to be stronger, this is the way to do it. Yeah. And like, like this is also a directly political thing because like the word that y'all do, like I have literally watched it change the sort of political landscape. Like that's, that's just like a thing that happens, you know, like, and I think we're all very cynical about sort of the power of like the truth to do anything because it requires people to act on it. But, you know, if you don't know anything is happening, it is not possible to act on something. Yeah. So like, you know, you are simultaneously you are supporting,

like you are supporting trans people in like the most precarious position we've been in in fucking ages. You are like supporting your supporting journalism and you are not even poking a stick. You are helping build a lance to like stab into the side of the people who are like destroying this world. And yeah, I think that's fucking important. So if people want to support you, where do they go? Where do they go? Go go go go go Yeah, so if you want to support me go to the free radical org that that that is my newsletter on there is stuff to just subscribe and And and give money you can do a free subscription, you know, if you especially for broke, please do a free subscription like we don't

I don't need your $20. I'll give you my $20. Please. And also I have a COFI. Um, if you know, like a one time thing, it's Mira Lazine. I'm the only one only Mira Lazine on there. And if you subscribe, you're supporting some of the only trans anarchist national news coverage.

Yeah. Basically, in every single article I write, I try to find a way to shoot or anarchist theory and what the fuck and fuck it. Like my first article, I was like, Hey, go check out crime thing. Yes. The one I published yesterday, I just, I went on a whole like page long tangent where I'm like, okay, cool. So this is what more liberal people are saying, but here's go read Lorenzo Combo or urban

go read query and anarchism, go re go read this shit. Um, and, and yeah, that's, I just want to shoe horn anarchist theory and get more people to be anarchists. Um, yeah. Yeah. So if you ever want to support Maddie cast news, News, to be clear, I don't take any income from the website. I actually have plans to put lots of money into it.

But all of your money will be going towards supporting other trans journalists. So that's one way to contribute to the cause. Or even if you just give me your email, I appreciate that too. But my website is maddycast.com and that's only one D. So M-A-D-Y-cast.com. And roundbluebluesky2 with the same website name. And yeah, thank you. People can find our co-ops work at ashfullblade.com and there's a giant link to our Patreon there. For 15 bucks a month, you can get a lovely Gentry Tears

mug which we're particularly proud of. It's so cool. It rules. Thank you for the endorsement. And at the end of each article, we have, in addition to our Patreon, a link if folks just want to send us some one-time support. We'll certainly put that to use as well. And if they would like to see some of my personal writings about trans survival, as well as some anarchist looks at various periods of history, patreon.com slash David Forbes, if that is more than a cup of tea. Statistically in our audience, I know there are a bunch of you whose special interest

either is or could be medieval peasant uprisings. You are not going to find better writing on medieval peasant uprisings anywhere else. Yes. There is a limit to the extent to which you can actually talk about the structural problems that are happening, and you can't fucking talk about how to solve them. And this is also partially why I've become a journalist. I kind of jokingly refuse to call myself a journalist because I I f**king, I f**king refuse to be associated with like all of those goddamn Atlantic motherf**kers whose institutional job is to endanger trans people.

Like you know, but also- Seed no ground to fascists though. That's true. That's true. Yeah. You know, cause it's like, we're the ones actually f**king doing this s**t, but also, yeah, like this is, you know, to do my one, to do my one Karl Marx quote, it's like, you know, philosophy has hitherto only sought to describe the world.

The point is to change it. And that's a thing that we have the power to collectively do together. And that's something that like the New York Times does not want you to know that you can change things. No. Yeah. that you can change things. No. Yeah, they, to borrow a term that David has recently gotten into my vocabulary a bunch, the Gentry really fucking do not like the idea of solutions. Their idea of a solution is, go vote for Pete Buttigieg, go sign the ACLU's petition.

Yeah. I want to, I want to read this, this fucking post that I saw that Kendra writes about the New York Times I think a lot about the top New York Times editor who I told the historians were warning were in a similar period to the ramp Up to the Holocaust and maybe we could look back and see what MIT had done wrong did not repeat his mistakes He shrugged New York Times didn't really cover the Holocaust. Oh my god What so don't support these people support the people who actually do this shit. And you know, like, I'm going to I'm going to make a kind of comparison. But it was like, at the time this shit was happening, there was a bunch of very good

coverage of the Holocaust and of what was happening. But it was because it was all happening from fucking like because it was like largely Jewish radicals who were doing it. All that shit fucking got ignored and shit that could have been fucking prevented wasn't. And we don't have to live in a world where that shit fucking happens. And we can make it not be like that. But like the structural, the structural like structural nature of the media is one of the ways that this fucking happens. And we don't have to let the New York Times do this again. No, and that's a good reminder.

There is another way with journalism. You know, Ida Wells was able to detail the extent and horror of American segregation and lynching and also called for people to shoot the Klan. The modern idea that you have to be detached and everybody attached from a pretty gentry perspective. You know, there's a world elsewhere. There's other ways to do things. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple

Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. My husband has a secret son from a past partner. Hold up Sam, how do we know how we've done the DNA test? Well John, luckily it's Mother May I Have a DNA test week on the OK Storytime podcast so we'll find out soon. And this wife writes, my husband received a Facebook message from a woman saying that he is the father of a five-year-old.

At first he didn't remember her but then he realized they had a one-night stand right before we started dating. Wait, but do we have proof he's a dad? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm ready to fight. Oh, this is fighting words. Okay, I'll put the hammer back. Hi, I'm George M. Johnson, a best-selling author with the second most banned book in America. Now more than ever, we need to use our voices to fight back. Part of the power of Black queer creativity is the fact that we got us, you know?

We are the greatest culture makers in world history. Listen to Fighting Words on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, I'm Sam Mullins, and I've got a new podcast coming out called Go Boy, the gritty true story of how one man fought his way out of some of the darkest places imaginable. Roger Caron was 16 when first convicted. Has spent 24 of those years in jail. But when Roger Caron picked up a pen and paper, he went from an ex-con to a literary darling.

From Campside Media and iHeart podcasts, listen to Go Boy on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap away, you gotta pray for yourself, as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself.

Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. me a better dad because I realized my worth.