The Bulwark Podcast - Erin Ryan: The Murder of Charlie Kirk

Episode Date: September 11, 2025

This country has too many guns and too many crazy people. And the social media oligarchs are fanning the flames of violence by constantly trying to piss people off. The Kirk assassination highlights just how dangerous a moment we are living in. America is not free if people are too afraid to speak their minds. Plus, parenting and the surprising gap in what Gen Z women and men think are the highest priorities in life. Crooked Media's Erin Ryan joins Tim Miller. show notes Tim's latest FYPod episode JVL on Charlie Kirk Andrew on the reaction to the assassination Nancy Mace after the shooting The Wired story on surrogacy Go to https://www.american-giant.com and get 20% off your first order with promo code BULWARK. Thanks to American Giant for sponsoring the show!

Hello and welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I just taped this morning with my FYI pod colleague Kam Kasky, who I thought had a really kind of moving perspective on the news from yesterday, having been a young student leader, political leader, who put himself out there and got. a lot of hate mail and death threats. So go check that out in the FYPod feed if you're interested. But today, we have a doozy one for you. I made a note this is a Death of Civilization episode, maybe. She's a writer as well as co-host and executive producer of Crooked Media's Hysteria

podcast. It's Aaron Ryan. How you doing, girl? Oh, you know, it's been a weird 24 hours, but here I am. It has been a weird 24 hours. Thank you for doing this with me. It was kind of an accident. We had already planned to have you on to discuss some womenly topics.

because I had some women who didn't want me mansplaining to them about various things. And so we will get to that. But I was happy, actually, that we had this scheduled and that you stuck with me because, I think that we can have a meaningful conversation about what happened yesterday. So just before we get to that, the facts of where we stand as we're taping this, Charlie Kirk was assassinated yesterday at an event at Utah Valley University. He was 31. He leaves behind two kids, age three and one.

at the time of this taping, a manhunt is underway for the shooter who fired from a nearby roof. Police have not released a suspect at this time. So so much to discuss, Aaron, I guess just first, what was your kind of initial reaction yesterday and I get this morning after having a night to sleep or not sleep on it? Well, you know, what happened yesterday. It just, it happened so fast. These things happen so fast that you kind of like are trying to play catch up with like the facts on the ground and like your actual emotional response to said facts, I saw the video of it happening. I wish I hadn't seen the video of it happening. I stopped before I stopped it. Before it got to the bad part, I just, I didn't. It was like seconds after it happened and like

the video was posted and I watched it and it was horrible. It was just a horrible thing. And my first thought was just, you know, we knew there was a shooting event, right, at a university. And I thought that there would be like a lot of people who had been killed. And when I found out that only one shot had been fired and it was the shot that I saw the video of, it was just, it kind of, I was like, what's going on? Like, why would anybody do this? Like, what's the, what's happening? I really feel for his kids, his kids are exactly the same age as my kids, like exactly the same age. And like, I feel like that sucks. Like they lost, they lost a dad, you know, and they, you know, whoever Charlie Kirk was in public is not necessarily who he was as a dad. And I feel like, you know,

that's really sad that those kids lost their dad. And then as time went on, I kind of saw how the kind of anger sphere was really champ in at the bit to make this like their next, their new cause. It seemed like there was, there is a backed up desire to unleash just ultraviolence on anybody who is deemed an enemy of mega. And by the evening, I was pretty scared. I was like, oh, I do a podcast. I talk into a microphone. Sometimes I do live events.

Like, what level have we reached of things being like untenably divided that now assassination has to be something that people aren't concerned about? Okay. So then next stage, overnight, I started thinking about like Charlie Kirk, who he was. Can we just get to that in a second? Like, just really quick, I want to sit on the first two points because I just, also the stuff with his kids is just tough and I just I mean I think it's just important to to say that I know that there's also school shooting yesterday yeah as of this time as we're taping it I think there's one person

still in critical condition the shooter killed themselves so hopefully they all come out but I you know I'm sure like you and like some listeners I mean I was like telling my making sure my kid knows I love her last night you know and that is like that's really hard and the videos I did see were in my feet of him with his kids so you know MAGA account I follow we're sharing and, you know, I just, it's too, it's too much for them. In addition to those kids, the other kids that were traumatized by this yesterday where the kids had to watch it, right? We're talking about watching it on video, but they were there. You know, he has an event there that the point of the event is to have people debate and disagree. So it wasn't even just all of his

supporters there, not that that would have made it any better, but like, it was a diverse array of students on that campus that just are now traumatized by now being part of a school shooting and assassination and they had to watch it and be scared and I think that is um not not a world that we want to we want to be living in so anyway I just wanted to sit on that for a second well I guess one more thing actually before we get to Charlie you talked about the reaction in the magosphere and the rage reaction and I think it's scary it's no doubt scary I also I also saw a lot of rage coming Charlie's way which is a little scary and and JV all wrote this last night for us in the triad, which I think, which I liked. He wrote this. He said,

if we're lucky right now, our leaders will understand that Charlie Kirk's assassination was not just evil, but profoundly dangerous for all of us. I just want to sit on that statement for a second, profoundly dangerous for all of us, because that is all of us, right? And I don't mean even all of us podcasters, but like all of us Americans, right? Like that if we get into a place of escalating violence on this, which we're already seeing, of escalating power grabs. That takes us to a bad place. And I guess, you know, I wanted to play just a couple of clips of reactions, try to model behavior, if that's okay. We had Jesse Waters. I'll put this in your anger verse category. Let's listen to Jesse first. We're going to avenge Charlie's death in the way Charlie would want it to be

avenged. They are at war with us. Whether we want to accept it or not, they are. at war with us. What are we going to do about it? How much political violence are we going to tolerate? And that's the question we're just going to have to ask ourselves. So another guy, Matt Forney, who had two million views on this post. Charlie Kirk being assassinated is the American Reichstag fire. Well, you don't, you're not supposed to say that. Like, wasn't the Reichstag fire like pretext? It was, it was like pretext used by the Nazis to seize total control. Like, I mean, also, that was just to be clear. That's just to be clear. is a mag account it's time for a complete crackdown on the left is the next statement

it was that it was not because in theory that i guess could have been a lefty conspiracy theorist trying to like make it no no that was a mag account for bragging about it well first of all not to be pedantic but wouldn't it be more like the ernst von rome wrong thank you i don't know that i don't know that they go that deep oh maybe i guess i was i was going to say i don't know if they go that deep on german history but it might be the one area of history where they do go very deep on. Yeah. I think there's a lot of enthusiasm enthusiasm about German history. Jesse Waters' statement

could have been shortened to three words. Just get them, boys. Like, I don't think Jesse Waters is personally planning on going out and avenging Charlie Kirk's death. Jesse Waters is trying to incite people to go out and avenge Charlie Kirk's death. No, he's got his second wife, the producer, that, you know, and

his fan house in New York. Yeah. He's cool. He's going to be above the avenging or whatever. The thing about Charlie Kirk's death that really hit, that really got to me. I don't think Charlie Kirk thought that he would ever be somebody who would be on the receiving end of political violence. Like, I don't think Jesse Waters thinks he's someone that would ever be on the receiving end. You don't think so even after Trump's? No, I don't think so. I mean, why would he be doing an event out in like an open field with like, with that level of security?

It just feels like, why would he be doing a campus tour? He was like kicking off a giant campus tour. I think he'd just gone to Texas A&M and he was going to a couple of. And he was going to a couple of other, you know, he's going around the country basically taking a victory lap for conservatives like cultural and electoral victories in recent years, or her MAGA conservatives. I don't think that he thought that he would ever be somebody who would actually be caught up in it. I don't think any of these inciters in the anger sphere actually think that they're going to be the ones that have to deal with it. And like, that is the thing that I think goes with what you were saying about. It makes, you know, the world is more dangerous.

for everybody. This country is more dangerous for everybody because nobody is above it. You know, Charlie Kirk wasn't above it? You can say it about the anonymous commenters too from all of the you know what I mean? Anybody like the anger spirit's the leader obviously they hold more responsibility to Jesse Waters but like the same premise is true right? Like a notion for anyone that is out there posting you know about whatever their bloodlust this morning. And just they don't think that it's they're coming for them. No. No. All it takes is one person who is hinged enough and angry enough and whipped into enough of a froth to take action like the person who shot those four lawmakers in Minnesota and killed Lisa Hortman and her husband and their dog.

Like that was somebody that all it takes is one person. And I think that when there's this much rage and this much angry, divisive rhetoric and dehumanizing of the other side, which, you know, talk about like, I know that it's like lame to compare things to Nazi Germany, but talk about Nazi Germany, the dehumanization just happening when it comes to the left. And the aftermath of this is like very, very scary. I said this to Sarah yesterday. I'm kind of two minds about this whole thing. I got very frustrated after the Trump assassination attempt, attempts about the kind of like rhetoric policing efforts. Actually, not the rhetoric policing. That doesn't really frustrate me. The police,

nobody should be calling for people's death. It's just, it doesn't do any kind of, okay? like it doesn't do any good. And, you know, you might not have to share my view that all humans have value, but it still doesn't do any good for people to have that type of rhetoric. It's the blaming that I got uncomfortable with, right? Like this notion that it was like, because somebody said this or somebody said that, this happened. And it's kind of like, well, I mean, we have easy access to guns in this country. And we have a lot of crazy people. And there's a lot of crazy people in any country. And if you have crazy people and easy access to firearms, like that's really the main problem here i mean you know we can all try to be our better selves but like that's the main problem here and so on the one hand like i feel that way and get frustrated on the other hand it's like we should be calling on people to model better behavior we should be calling out assholes that are anger you know fucking that you know make money or get following based on riling people up right you know so i sort of vacillate on on that topic what where are you at and all that. Well, I think that it is, I understand why a lot of people seem like they're kind

of tiptoeing around what they really want to say when they're talking about this because it's like a scary time and nobody wants to like, you know, you're in a room with like an angry... You see a lot of tiptoeing? I don't like to see a lot of more tiptoeing. Oh, no, I'm talking about like mainstream media. I'm talking about like MSNBC, letting somebody go for kind of saying like pretty anodyne comments. Like maybe it'll advise. We should say since you brought that up that Matt Dowd suggested on TV that the assassination of Charlie Cook might have been a fan

of Charlie Kirk, she firing off a victory shot. That was a dumb thing to say. Regardless what you think about, the moral valence of that statement, that is a very stupid thing to say. It was a stupid thing to say. Somebody who's on TV a lot and that's a really, hey, there but for the grace of God go I, that's still really dumb. That's all. Okay.

But there are dumb things that on TV all the time that are not, like I think, Jesse Waters wasn't fired for right, maybe a worthwhile contest. Exactly. Like inciting actual violence, not a fireball offense, saying something about someone in Utah shooting off a gun in celebration. It doesn't quite make sense. I'm a little bit tired of a demand for like sympathy or empathy from the right. I do feel empathy for those children. I feel sympathy for those children. I feel for people who are his friends. I feel sad for them. But I also can't talk about

Charlie Kirk's death without talking about the role that he played and help building a rhetorical architecture that was eager to scapegoat people, was eager to villainize and demonize people. His last words before that shot was fired were trying to blame trans people for mass shootings. In the past, Charlie Kirk has been a mass shooter apologist. He's described the deaths of six people in a school in Nashville as part of the cost of the Second Amendment. He's a professional talker. He used those words. deliberately. I feel like we need to talk about the fact that like he helped build the machinery that ultimately led to his demise and that a lot of people who are, you know, in the trans community

are less safe because of rhetoric that he used to, you know, spout and that others in that space used to spout. Trans people are less safe. LGBTQ people are less safe. Like people have a terrible view of women. Like Gen Z men especially have a terrible retro view of women. Like misogyny, racism being normalized as part of a way that normal people speak to each other is not something that leads anywhere good either. And I'm not blaming him for what happened. I wish Charlie Kirk had not been shot. It was a tragedy.

But I think the world that people like Charlie Kirk are trying to build or were advocating for is one where that would happen more often. Does that make sense? I don't want to sound like I'm blaming. No, it does make sense. And look, I think it's important when we talk about that and hash it out because Trent Kirk said a lot of fucking gross shit. You just search my Twitter feed Charlie Kirk and see all the times that I criticized him

or can show you my text from his PR guy who I became kind of friends is the wrong word. But we had a, we kind of had a relation, an open dialogue relationship. And, you know, he's kind to me. And, you know, we text, we text back and forth. Right shit on Charlie and tell him that what he's doing is irresponsible. And he texts me and say, oh, look what MS. You know, I have no quarter. Charlie Kirk's political agenda.

Here's my problem with kind of like the response sometimes is that what happened yesterday helped his political agenda, period, full stop. And so like, I don't think that it's wrong to say, here are the dehumanizing things that were advanced by Turning Point USA and we should fight against those and we should try to challenge those and beat them politically and beat them in rhetorically and win young people back. like sure but when that bleeds over into like some of the other stuff I've seen about whether this was deserved whether he asked for it or all that I just a I think that that is morally reprehensible and wrong even if he did it I don't aspire to be like him

just because he did false shit after the like you know this stuff after the Minnesota killings I don't want to be like that but like also just even if you discreet the morally I guess my point is this is a political disaster for the anti-chargers What happened yesterday is a disaster. Like he is empowered now, or his movement is empowered now. He's dead. He is a martyr now. You can see people rally around him.

I saw a bunch of people in my feet who are like non-political, you know, raising him up and raising up his movement yesterday. You can see a righteousness building on the right. You can imagine young people rallying around this. Like, martyering Charlie Kirk is the worst fucking thing that could happen. Even if you're not trying to be a good person or care about empathy or reality or whatever, just as a purely political matter, it's like I see things in my feed that are like, fascist dessert. Like, what? You're not fighting fascism. You're helping fascism.

You're helping fascism. You're making fascism more likely because Donald Trump is going to use this to try to gather more power. So I guess that's my point. I see what you're saying, and I agree. I want to say, I think you and I probably have like different following groups, you know, in our social media. social media was populated with a lot of people who felt angry and betrayed by the fact that so many people in like the mainstream media, like your CNNs and your MSNBCs, etc., seemed so afraid of acknowledging who Charlie Kirk was as part of his job and what he did as part of his

job and what harm he caused people as part of his job. I think that like people are so afraid of endangering themselves or their workplaces or their co-workers in this moment that they're not really like, they're kind of backing away from it. People that I follow were not like celebrating his death, but they were kind of just like, why aren't people being more honest about what his legacy is? And I think that's something that I'm noticing. I want to say one thing that I haven't seen discussed very much when it comes to Kirk, that's like the culpability of Silicon Valley in helping kind of bring about the world that we're living in right now. Charlie Kirk got very rich and famous

exploiting algorithmic engagement that rewards rage and rewards outrage and anger and like he took advantage of a system that like is designed for people

like him to rise in it so I feel like social media I know social media is like an easy thing to you know beat up on but like we should not let it off the hook it is culpable in this

it's an important thing to beat up on now because it's like like colleague Andrew Edgar I thought it were a really nice morning shots this morning and folks should read about this. And this was one of the sentences he said about the social media stuff. Maybe I'm

participating in this right now by elevating some of the terrible shit I saw. But he goes following what you expect from political leaders, which was mostly condolences to Kirk's family, below that, see an inescapable culture war, each side excoriating the other, it barely mattered how representative of their

broader political cohorts these posters were. Every American social media algorithm made sure they got to see whichever ones make them the maddest and that's true right and like that is that is true right in addition to as you said charlie kirk leveraged us quite well during his career but like if the stuff that gets the most engagement that gets the most put in your face is the stuff that's going to piss you off the most then again all it takes is one crazy and you live in a country with just unlimited access to firearms firearm power unimaginable like fucking even three decades ago with the amount of air 15s

that have proliferated. So if you live in that country, we have the social media feeds trying to make you as mad as possible, easy access to firearms. And all it takes is a couple insane people to do this. That is just a powder cake. This is a disaster.

And the big tech oligarchs are absolutely accountable for this in addition to the gun manufacturers. Like everybody is accountable for this. And we're setting up a society where people are going to be afraid to speak their mind. and that's really fucking bad. Yeah, a prerequisite for participating in society or like for being a, you know, professional communicator is basically to like live inside an angry machine all day long every day.

And like, it drives people nuts. And even people who are like semi-normal can be just driven nuts by it. I think it is something that like, I wish if we're going to try to like unite the left and right on this, we should be like, hey guys, this is. bad. It's making us unhappy. It's making us feel terrible about ourselves. It's making us feel terrible about everybody else. Like, what are we doing? What is the upside? Going after the phones, the phones definitely feels like a safer enemy than the guns. Unfortunately, I mean, I'm all for still going after the guns. I don't think, I know people are sick of talking about that. I'm not,

but the phones, like the whole premise, like the Elon Musk premise that Twitter is the town square and everybody is right to Twitter's not the fucking town square. Like you're making millions. billions, by trying to piss people off by finding the most insane people that you can find anywhere in the world and then giving them a global town square to radicalize people. That is what's happening. In these moments, you see it so acutely. Yeah. I mean, Twitter is like a town square where you can just stand there and you scream the craziest

thing you think at the top of your lungs. And then somebody is like, I think that too. And then they find you. And then you join together and you scream it together. And soon there's like five of you screaming the craziest thing at the top of your lungs. It's like it emboldens people. It lets people think that their fringe beliefs, their unexamined fringe beliefs are more mainstream and common sense than they actually are. But like, let's talk about the guns a little too, because they were in Utah.

They're like no gun laws in Utah. I've spent a lot of time in Utah. They tackled a guy because he had a different guy with the gun. They assumed it with him. Yeah. And professors in Utah are, college professors are terrified today because there's, I think in Utah, there's a law that students are allowed to open carry in the class. room and teachers can't stop them. So, like, they're of age. They're adults, right? So, like, college kids are able to just, like, go into their lecture halls with guns. And that's not

something that, like, professors can ask them to not do. Like, there's guns everywhere. People open, carry, like, it is, it is jarring to be pretty much anywhere outside of Salt Lake City. You'll sometimes see it in Salt Lake City. But, like, most of the rest of Utah, there's just, like, guns everywhere. And the fact that Charlie Kirk's security did not, like, operate with that, Assumption. Or maybe they did. I don't know. This is the thing.

I was texting with Ryan Bussie this morning. He was a gun control advocate. He used to work for a gun company. He's a, you know, he's come around, seeing the danger of firearms. So he's like a real expert on the stuff.

And he was like, dude, it's like the scary thing about all this is like, to somebody who doesn't shoot guns, which is me, like I fucking grew up in suburban Denver and I had guns scare me. And I never was a gun shooter. I don't know anything about guns.

I can't tell you anything about guns. He's like, it might seem like it was really, like it took a real skill, right? Like, it looks like the guy's really far away, like to a naked eye. He's like, man, it's like so many people can do that shot. Like he goes to, I forget if he said 200 feet or 200 yards, whatever it was. He's like, so many people can do that shot.

They had security there. Obviously, Trump had secret service. He's like the scary thing about this is like with the type of weapons that we have in this country, how easy that is. He's like, that's the scary thing about this. Like, that security really isn't. I mean, sure, people should have security and stuff. But like. Yeah.

What could they actually do? Like, if anything, like the proliferation of guns is the fundamental problem. Well, guns and people team up to kill people. And so we've talked about the phone thing, which is like people's brains being turned into Swiss cheese and then they have access to guns. It's just, it's an inevitability. And I feel like, I feel like this is going to make it difficult for people who tour college campuses and speak to do outdoor events or it's going to make people question

whether or not to move things indoors, you know, like. Which means we're not in a free country. That's the point. Nate this point yesterday was Sarah. And it's just like, I know that the gun people like to talk about how they want to own guns so they can live in a free country. But you actually aren't in a free country if you don't feel free to go into a college campus and say what you think. I agree. Even if it's like really awful stuff.

Even if it's bad stuff. Even if it's really awful stuff that demonizes and dehumanizes people who have done nothing wrong in order to become rich and famous, which is what Charlie Kirk did in life. I just had one more thing I want to say about the phones. I'm in an and another thing mode today. So hopefully you can also feel free to be in that mode if you want and not answer my questions and just rant. But like in my feed this morning, I have like simultaneously people saying that I'm responsible for Charlie Kirk's death and also because I do anti-Trump media and also people who are like, whatever, you're too nice, doing me deserves it. And like, again, if this was really the town square, like imagine I'm sitting, I'm thinking about like sitting out, I don't know, where was I? I was on vacation this year in Spain and there's this in the gay neighborhood in Barcelona.

this beautiful square that people sit out in and have wine. It's a nice life. You know, people smoke cigarettes and drink wine. And we're sitting out there just kind of watching the gaze frolic back and forth for a couple hours one day. It's a nice vacation day. And like, imagine if I'm in that town square and instead people are coming up to me going, you're a complicit in murder. Like, fuck you. You're a Nazi. You're Antifa. I'm just like, okay, well, I'm not going to sit in this town square anymore, right? You know what I mean? Like people or if you're at a restaurant, the manager is going to come over and be like, sir, ma'am, like, please, like, you need to go. Like, I'm going to call the police, right?

Like, that isn't true. Like, that isn't how society is actually supposed to work, but we have now emboldened these guys to become the richest people in history, making a completely toxic environment that breaks everybody's brain and makes everybody upset at each other. And there's no, and we decide, and the government, not we, but our government decided to make no rules around it at all. So there you go. Yeah. So that's fine. I agree with you there. I think it's, it creates a town square with the only people there are, our assholes. Like, can I say that? It's like a, it's like a, is that, does that include me?

No, I mean, I go, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm there sometimes too. Just be in an A-hole. And like, it doesn't contribute to anybody's like mental health, well-being. It doesn't make me feel good to be in fights on Twitter. It does, like, I go on rarely now because it's just, it's a gross, it feels like a gross place. Yeah. Unfortunately, the other apps weren't really much better of a place for me yesterday. All right, guys, we have a new sponsor in the clothing space, and I've got some of their clothes,

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obliged to at least play a little bit I had saved some of what James tellerico played yesterday it's kind of long so I'll put it in the link in the show notes for people but I want to play zoron this was zoron last night Charlie Kirk is dead yet another victim of gun violence in a nation where what should be a rarity has turned into a plague. It cannot be a question of political agreement or alignment that allows us to mourn. It must be the shared notion of humanity that binds us all. To the point of the plague that he brings up, I thought that was really nice. In May, two young employees of Israel's D.C. Embassy were killed in June,

shooting of two Minnesota state lawmakers. as we've talked about this and their families, fire bombing of a march that was for the hostages in Israel in Colorado, the guy that shot at the CDC, the security guard died, shot 500, thank God. That could have been way worse. I mean, there's so many. Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania,

was Molotov cocktail was thrown into his house on a Jewish holiday, I believe. Yeah, it's bad. And I think political violence and gun violence are a plague that are one in the same in the U.S. because that's where we're at. And I think characterizing Charlie Kirk as a victim of that is also a very smart way to put it because he is a victim of it

and also a promoter of it, but he's also a victim of it. And it's very sad. Final topic on this. You kind of referenced our unreliable, would that be the word we would use? How about incompetent? How about incompetent leadership of the FBI? Yes.

Cash Patel, former January 6th, children's book author and podcaster, is now head of the bureau. He was live tweeting the investigation yesterday. He posted that they got the suspect, got their guy, had to post again that they'd freed him later. We should also point out the cash had fired Mehtab Sayad. She's a Pakistani American who's a counterterrorism expert. She was recently forced out as special agent in charge of the FBI's Salt Lake City Bureau. which is the one investigating Kirk's shooting, the acting agent in charge, was a cyber security person. Kyle Serafin, who's actually MAGA, but I think had a falling out with cash over some internecine war I don't know about.

He was a FBI agent. He was yesterday calling Cash a screw up, a moron. This is the most embarrassing thing I've ever seen from a former FBI director. I mean, at some point, there is some dark comedy in this, just how incompetent Cash Patel is. On the other hand, it's fucking serious. Like, this is serious. Like, I'm not blaming, like, the FBI's incompetence on Charlie Kirk's assassination, but the fact that the FBI is firing people who are good at protecting people and replacing

them with other stooges, the fact that they're firing people that are specialized in actual domestic terrorism, white supremacy, far radical terrorism, whatever the ideology domestically, they're getting rid of those people, replacing it with immigration, you know, enforcement. It's bad. Yeah. I mean, I feel like the administration is, like, DEA. for idiots in a way, people who are just loyalists and they don't really have any other skills besides following marching orders and doing whatever the president says.

Can we speak very briefly about that video that the White House put out last night? Oh my God. Yeah. I should have had. Yep. Thank you. Please. I don't like pulling Trump's voice on this podcast. We play it as little as possible. So I had not, I'd not pulled the audio. But so for folks who haven't seen it, tell them what they put up. So Donald Trump gave the audio and the content of the statement was predictable, right? It was what you would expect Donald Trump to say in the wake of Charlie Kirk's death. But what stood out to me was that it did not look like a video that was like a real video. It looked like it was AI generated. And I don't know if I'm just completely like Epstein-pilled at this point. I don't know. I'm telling you this. Donald Trump

Jr.'s written statement about the assassination was, I guess I can't say definitely. I strongly suspect it was chat GPT written because it had all of the marks of it, the m-dashes, it didn't sound like Donald Trump Jr. He started it by saying he's not good at this, which felt like, which felt like, which felt like kind of a confession. Anyway, so that's my, if you're going to be Epstein-pilled, I'll be Epstein-pilled on the, on the Donald Trump Jr. AI is, is the shadow. Chat-GPT should have an official cabinet post at this point with the amount of AI that's being used to generate statements, executive orders. But if you watch the video, the video is strange. the color is like hyperpigmented his hands moved strangely his face moved strangely it like rung some bells for me some alarm bells it was like this isn't real he's also blaming the radical left i don't know i had several

i had several i texted a couple of your colleagues actually over there crooked media about this where they're like this is ominous because he's you know talking about how it's the radical left's fault and all this in addition to being weirdly taped and i don't know i'm so i'm so catastrophizing about the state of affairs i looked at it and i was like well And thank God he hasn't called martial law yet. I don't know. And I referenced this earlier, but regardless of what we find out over the next little bit, based on what we've heard of what they're saying is on those bullets, I'm pretty concerned about. And we saw it from Big Balls, what they did in D.C. After he got beat up, I think that there's some potentially ominous power grabs coming

from the federal government. Okay, fair. I'm going to say this. Maybe I'm polyanaing this. I love that. This podcast listeners need a Pollyanna. So please. This happened in a very red state, in a very red county in a, like there is a Republican

governor, Republican supermajority in in Utah legislature, the county, the city. Like that is, there is not a single drop of blue in any position of power in Orham, Utah. So there is no blue city to invade. If this had happened in Atlanta, I would be terrified for everyone. that lives in Atlanta. Great point. But is Donald Trump going to invade Utah? Like, I don't know how there is a plausible justification for a martial law crackdown.

And I also don't think that the president has the resources to do what he did in D.C. on a nationwide scale. He is going to run out of goons, right? Like, there are not enough people to do. ICE is having trouble recruiting. Like, they're off. I'm saying, like, there are, there is a limited number of. Maga goon resources at Trump's disposal.

And I don't think that there is a clear geographic target for a retribution. But that doesn't mean that, like, they couldn't crack down in some other, like, non-geographic way with, like, restricting speech, restricting travel, something like that. But in terms of like... Going after lefty groups of some kind. Exactly. I'm just going to say, if you are somebody who is progressive on the left or on anti-Maga in any way, shape or form. Just be very careful with yourself for the next couple weeks. If somebody is

speaking to you about something in a way that feels like incitey, don't do it. Like don't talk about violence. Don't do violence. Don't. Don't. Just do not do it. Here's my final and another thing on this is like I think that especially in our world, I don't people who pay really close attention to this who know everything Donald Trump's doing. There's a lot of people who rightly myself top of list are like deeply concerned about where we are at in the state of the country and where our trajectory is but like you know we're at like a 64 on the way to Haiti or whatever you know Cambodia this shit can get a lot fucking worse than it is now and like that is my other caution about all of this is that like sometimes like you people are a little flip about like things

already so bad it's already authoritarianism it's already done you know what I mean and like they can make things a lot worse. So there's my anti-Pollyanna, which is in the spirit of the podcast. All right, y'all, we've got a double dip on clothes today, but we've been talking about this brand for a while now. It's American Giant. American Giant is about keeping things simple and close to home. They aren't affected by terrorists because their products never left the USA.

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Not if you're a conspiracy theorist like me. Not if you're a conspiracy theorist, which I am not. I wish I was. I was watching Candace Owens' podcast yesterday. she has this theory that the Stanford prison experiment in the 70s one of the prisoners was Brigitte McCrone I swear to God and she's like going she's doing this thing where she's like she's done all this research and she's like prisoner number 2603 was this person in prison and it was

it's a code prisoner number 706 was Brigitte when she was a man and I'm like man fuck I am jealous of you like this is why your engagement is so much better than mine like I wish I had that conspiracy bone in me the could pull that off. Oh, I do. So, um, okay, great. Well, here we go. I'm like a litter. I'm not doing any dick checks on world, global first ladies. Not we're not, I'm not, I'm not giving a crotch cup to anybody. No, I'm not doing that. I don't believe in any of that. But I did just get done researching this project I'm working on about Gillen Maxwell. Okay. It's for work. It's not just like, I'm not just like doing it for fun. Great. And on this topic, I wanted to

you to tell me about it, but I should just say breaking news this morning, Bloomberg has released an email cache of 18,000 emails from Epstein, which goes very deep on his relationship with Golan. And so it's back in the news. Interesting. Well, I'm going to be reading all 18,000 of those emails after I'm done because I'm Epstein-pilled. The Epstein thing continues to get pretty hot for President Trump. I believe it was this week earlier. The House Oversight Committee released a page from Epstein's birthday book that Donald Trump definitely probably drew. And, yeah, it seems like it's just not going away in any way, shape, or form. Can you tell us more about your Galen research project?

Oh, I'm making, we do a series at a crooked called this, this effing guy. Can I say the F word? Oh, of course. I'm a little hurt that you're not, you're not a daily listener to the podcast because I'm fucking mess, fucking, fucking, fucking, my fucking, my poor child has just dropped the F on that my husband yesterday. I'm like, oh, man, I hope my hope grandma isn't listening to this podcast. But anyway, continue.

I hear the F word so much that I don't think it like registers to me because I do listen to your podcast on the day. I'm just joking. Same. Okay. So we do a series called this fucking guy and it's like a deep dive into the sort of like biography of somebody who is kind of like making America worse. It's a very simple concept, right? But usually I do a lot of the research for it. So I end up having to just like go deep into like newspaper clippings from the 90s.

And you know, I feel like I'm in one of those super cuts of somebody. learning something at the library and microfiche and all that stuff. Yeah, sure. So we just, we just completed shooting Gulen Maxwell. And it's really crazy how her life and how many ties she's had to like intelligence, like foreign intelligence for her whole life. Her father died mysteriously by falling off of a yacht off the Canary Islands. He was buried in the Mount of Olives in Israel. There's a book about him called Robert Maxwell Israel's Super Spy. There's also a theory that he was working with the Soviets as he allowed his print printing press to be like a mouthpiece for propaganda from the Soviets in the 80s, including

Nikolay Chowcchescu, which is a crazy person to promote. As soon as her father died, she started working for Jeffrey Epstein, but the nature of their relationship has always been very strange because she was working for him, but they were sleeping together, but they broke up, but she kept working together, but she kept sleeping in his bed. It is very odd. And she also told feds in July that they broke up because of 9-11, because on 9-11 he didn't want to come over and hang out with her. So they broke up. But then she kept working. with him until 2009. None of it makes sense. It all just like feels very odd. And then a lot of people who have been close to either Robert or Galen Maxwell or Jeffrey Epstein have died mysterious deaths.

So there's that too. I'm excited to watch this. Oh, I lost my marbles. I guess I should just say me calling you up for not listening to this podcast was my Jeb Please Clap moment. It was like, please tell me that you're a fan. I am a watcher. You know, like Jeb, like son. I am a fan of this series that you're mentioning. One of them we're going to end with. talking about as a little dessert for everybody if they made it this far on the podcast. So, stick around. The other, it is, it's very serious. I mean, I guess it's the state of the generation and whether we procreate as a species. So it's another serious topic that I want to get to. There's this poll that was going around this week that I have given my manly thoughts on

that some folks gave me negative feedback on. And I was like, you know, Aaron would be the great person to talk to this poll about. I noticed you did a long thread on it. But for people who missed it. I was talking about like the question was essentially how do you define success in life. And the young male, Gen Z voters who voted for Trump, rated having children as one of the first two things that were most important to them. Gen Z women who voted for Harris ranked this is the least important things. The only thing less important was being famous. Which I thought that was, I took a deep breath of sigh of relief at that, at least, that the Gen Z folks are not just mostly focused on TikTok fame. So that's good. So thumbs up to Gen Z.

for that. The Gen Z. Harris voter is ranked having kids and a spouse as least important to self-definition of success. So, you know, I'm concerned about this for a variety of reasons, but I guess I want to hear your reaction first. Okay. So the definition of success is the way that it was like the question was asked, but I think a different way to think about it is like what benefits you? What is something beneficial to you? What is something that would be fulfilling for you? Sure. And what we're seeing is that women are like, getting married and having children would not be something that is fulfilling and men are saying that it is, right? I think that women see, I think women don't want their mother's lives

and dads and men want their father's lives. And we're talking like broad brushes with like heterosexual couples, right? Yeah, sure. This whole conversation is going to be, we should just have a big caveat right here. They're exceptions to everything. Right. Of course. I'm not talking about We're generalizing. Right, right. We're generalizing across a very big diverse society. Right. I think that the amount of labor that is expected of women in the context of marriage that is not compensated or marriage and childbearing that is not compensated, recognized or even respected, especially by people on the right, is something that women are onto.

Young women especially, they see what their mothers have gone through. I think most women I know at one point got pulled aside by a female relative, a mom, a grandma, an aunt, somebody, and said, you go to college, you don't let guys do this, you know, you don't want to be doing this. You should do something different than what I'm doing. And I don't know that men had the same thing happened to them. Different than what I'm doing in what way. Can you just, can you expand on that a little So like, I think that a typical, the typical breakdown of like how much housework is done by women versus men and what is expected of women in the context of the home. It's disproportionately seen as a woman's job and a woman's role to like clean the house, raise the kids. It's also like a hundred

percent women's biological labor to be pregnant and have children and deal with all of the biological aftermath of that. Like I mentioned before, I have a one-year-old and a three-year-old and, like, you cannot downplay the, like, physical cost of having a child on your actual body. Like, of course, men are like, yeah, have a kid. Yeah, have a kid. That's not anything that's, like, on his body. He doesn't have to be pregnant. He doesn't have to give birth. I would say this even as a dad, I'm going to say one of my eye-opening moments when my daughter was born was, I wouldn't say I got chastised. That's the right word, but I kind of, I got my horizons expanded when I was kind of talking with some of my girlfriends about how like, yeah, I mean,

whatever, like a kid doesn't sleep that much at night, but we're doing pretty good, you know, like we're taking turns on doing the nighttime feedings. And they're like, oh, yeah, yeah, but you aren't experiencing like, this changed my body, that changed my body. I learned a little too much about all the changes to women's bodies and the fallout following birth. So, like, no, no doubt. I totally hear you. And that's something that can't be overcome. Like, we cannot erase the toll, the physical.

Money doesn't even solve that, really. And you can have a night nurse, but it doesn't, that helps makes it better. It doesn't save you from the hormone crash or, like, lactation and all this stuff, like the painful things that happen to you when you give birth. Like, a C-section is, like, one of the gnarliest surgeries that exists, giving birth a regular way, also not a walk in the park. You know what I mean? It's all, the only way out is through something very like bloody and costly on your body, right?

So the way to make, to get women to care more, if we're trying to focus on family formation, right? If we believe that family formation is good, then what we need to do as a society is. Do you, that caveat makes you think maybe you're, you're on the fence on that. Do I, do I, do I, do I, think family formation is good. and a value that we should be promoting. I think that it's something that should be accessible to everybody who wants to do it. But I think the reason that people don't want to do it is because it's not worth it to them. And the reason that it's not worth it to them is because of all the labor and the toll it takes on their body and a lack of a social safety net, a complete lack of a social safety net.

like there is there is no you know we don't have child care is like crazy expensive it's like for two kids every month we pay like twice what our rent is in child care like it's crazy wow there is basically uh no paid maternity leave or parental leave in this country um you're lucky if you get even a few weeks of paid leave like there's just systemic issues that are like why would i do this this sounds like a huge logistical pain in the ass but then i think that there are cultural issues around the value that men add to their households beyond just earning a paycheck. Do you know what I'm, do you understand what I'm saying? Yes.

Like value like participating in raising the child, like participating in doing housework, participating in being a good roommate. Like I think that there are a lot. I have friends. My husband is like, you know, one of the good ones. But I have a couple friends that married guys that are like allegedly progressive and they went to college and they're super smart and you'd think that they would be like groovy but the expectations that are on my friends who like went to the same college as they did earn just as much

if not more money than they do the expectation is still that my female friends are like doing the child rearing they're scheduling everything they're managing the house they're doing all the housework and it's like kind of a raw fucking deal like why would you aspire to be made into a servant and contribute much more than half of the resources. And by resources, I mean emotional, fiscal, and, like, you know, time resources to your household. Like, why? Why would that be appealing to a woman? So in order for that to change, we need to change the culture around young men and teach them that it is very important for them to be useful to their households in ways that transcend financial.

They need to be able to, like, do things around the house. Can you prepare a simple meal? Can you fix things? Can you, like, everybody should aim to be a productive member of a household. And here's my giant swing in this, like, you know, and another thing, rant I'm going on. I think everybody, every American student in all schools should be required to take four years of Homek. Four years of Homek and four years. Four years.

Four years. I could use four weeks. No. Well, exactly. But I think it should be four years, teach you how to do things like how to live in a house and be a useful member of a house. hold. These are things that people are not being taught, and especially men. And I just think that that is probably one of the two-pronged ways into more women who want to have kids finding a suitable partner and feeling supported enough to have kids. So those are my thoughts.

That's a good rant. I would add it to that, and maybe this cuts both ways because you're trying to encourage men to be better husbands. They shouldn't need this. But also the social credit men get for doing parenting is much greater. So it's like not surprising. that men would be happier about having kids. Like, I got to take, like, not as much anymore because she's seven, but when I go on an airplane with my daughter, like, between ages of baby and like three or four maybe, I mean, you would think I was Mother Teresa. And people are asking to help me to hold my, do you need help with your bag, do you want me to

hold her a little bit, do you want me to buy you a drink? I mean, I was, I've never been treated so well in my life anywhere. Yeah. And so that is definitely, I mean, that's just one example of a broader trend. But maybe that's good at some level because we want to give men positive encouragement, but maybe that's counterproductive, frankly. It's counterproductive because also, like, women are at the same, like, being, we're kind of demonized for taking kids in public.

Like, I think that this kind of, like, anti-child thing that we're seeing in, like, especially child-free spaces online, which I understand are kind of a hornet's nest. There is a real, like, anger at children being in spaces like, you know, restaurants and grocery stores and breweries or whatever. And I think that there is something to be said for, like, kids being well-behaved or whatever. But, like, I've seen, like, threads where people are like, yeah, there should be child-free flights. I would pay for a child-free flight. It's like, yuck.

Fuck you. Yuck. Like. Yeah. So this goes to my, is this what I want to get to. This is where my, I don't even know if it's pushback. But I guess I want to get your perspective on this of something that's, I think, could live simultaneously with your accurate critique of our society, which is like, Being a mom always kind of sucked, right?

Like a lot of things that you just said, some of it is particularly true now because women are working more, right? And so it's kind of a double, they're getting a double whammy. But like a lot of the other things that you said were always true, maybe in worse, frankly, in past times. Like we're at a moment now where, you know, women born in the 2000s are having like half as many children as the previous cohort. So like that's not a poll. Like that's like actual data. The amount of people who say they want to be child free, not childless, to your point of these child free spaces, like not, I wanted to kid but just didn't happen. I didn't find the right partner. We had medical issues,

whatever, but I'm choosing to not. Like, that number is skyrocketing right now. And I just think that, like, at some level, I agree with you that we need to do it from a policy wise, like things to make parenting more appealing and better. Like, I agree with basically every recommendation you had, except maybe four years might be a little much a whole heck. But a lot of we settle on one. We'll start with one and see how it goes. But besides that, I'm with you. But, like, I just think somewhere, there's. There's a cultural thing that I see particularly on the left, particularly with younger people, about how, like, I can't bring a kid into this world.

The world is so terrible. Climate is happening. Being a mom is terrible. I need to have a home and a mortgage and a 401k and stuff before I'm ready to have a kid. And I think that there's like a cultural message that's being sent to young people that's maybe sending them up to fail because for like all of the challenging parts about being a parent, it's also like an unbelievable blessing. and if you look at studies of people older in life,

like older people are happier when they have like grandkids around, when they have a spouse around. And I just worry that people are being pushed to a direction that is harmful, particularly young women, because they're focusing on the negatives and the challenges, which are real and we should ameliorate, rather than like getting a story, a narrative told to them about like the value.

What do you think about that? Well, I have a little bit of pushback there. I think that, young girls and women are a little bit more socially adept. They're raised to, like, form their own social groups. That's like, I think girls are better at, like, forming communities, generally speaking. Young women are better at, like, forming communities. And actually, the forming community thing is, like, a lot of times within a heterosexual

marriage, it is, like, the woman's responsibility to, like, manage the social life of the household. Like, men who are single don't, they're not really great at, like, making friends or forming a friend group. That's true. I noticed that. I'm carrying the woman's role in my household in that one. You know, the nice thing about a gay is like the stereotypes, we can trade back and forth. Yeah. I'm carrying that one. But yeah, I hear you.

That is, I noticed that. Yeah. So that's something like, and I don't think men are as good at making friends. And so I think that the loneliness in old age is not something necessarily that I would say that women are necessary that are going to suffer. I think that there are a lot of like. Fulfillment, though, or whatever. I don't know. Yeah.

There's like, there, there are going to be a lot more like. I just want to say this because people are going about. I'm not saying you can't be a fulfilled single older woman or man for that matter that didn't never have kids. You absolutely can't. I'm just saying that like that maybe people are not hearing the positive side of the fulfillment that can come from making the sacrifices to do it, I guess is my point. Yeah.

I think that being a mother is like very costly in in many ways and the way that it benefits you. It's costly in tangible ways and beneficial in like intangible ways. And so I think that it is easy for someone to wrap their head around the fact that like, okay, here's something. So I got two little kids. It was a choice I made. I wanted to have to. My career is like completely, all I can do is all of my time is spoken for, right?

I can't like write a book proposal. I don't have time. Like I go home and I take care of my kids. My husband and I take care of the kids. Like I don't have time to develop more like hobbies. I haven't been to a concert in years. I used to love going to shows. Like, I don't really get to read as much as I like to.

Like, all of these things when it comes to, like, personal development are kind of on pause. Well, I deal with this very demanding phase in motherhood. It's difficult for me to socialize. It's difficult. Like, I have to plan my entire day. I feel very, like, constrained. And I think that that's something that a lot of women don't want to have to deal with even in a short period of time because it's like, I live in a neighborhood in L.A.

with a lot of moms who are my age, a lot of older moms, and it's very easy to make friends at the playground. But I think in other places, it's kind of a lonely existence. Like, you don't have time to socialize you, only are taking care of your kids. If you're a stay-at-home mom, like, when are you getting to hang out with other people? I think that there's a lot of, like, people can see the drawbacks in the short term and they don't really think that it's worth the upside of like fulfillment in the long term. Also, I'm just, going to say this. I got two kids. Love them. Think they're great. They're so cute. This morning, my little one was like taking one of my makeup brushes and putting it in her mouth

and then running away when I tried to take it away from her. So that was, that was cute or gross. I love that. Is that a case for children or against? I don't know. I mean, it's the eye of the beholder story. She thinks it's funny. She has, she loves this like Miss Rachel sketch where they do the like sign language ABCs and she like gets really excited when they get to Z and she makes the Z sign language. Like, she's just so cute. I think that, like, it is a perfectly valid life path to not have kids. The thing that is upsetting to me is that the reasons that people may not want to, that women may not want to, are not because they don't like kids or they don't, like, think it might be good. It's because they lack the support and they don't think that they could find somebody they can rely on to help them do it in a way that isn't completely, like, self-immolation.

Also, I think that there's a lot of people that have one kid that would like to have two, or people that have two. are people that have two that would like to have three and can't because this country is shitty to parents, like absolutely no support. So I think that's a factor as well. Here's where we have an agreement. And Josh Hawley agrees with us too. We should be supporting parents more. At least he says that he does. All right. Good. This is why I add you on. It's important for me to challenge myself. Some of those answers hurt me on the inside, but I realized that I need to expand my worldview. And some listeners want to hear all the worldview hear from folks that have different backgrounds and perspective. I don't

know, I just, you know, look, we're all sopsistic at some level. So I'm just going to just talk about my own life and experience. And this is all you can really know. But like, you know, my mother had me when she was a fucking kid, baby. She was a child. They had no money. We're in a tiny duplex. Her life was very challenging. She was still a nurse at the time. And, you know, I just think that that is a common story of a lot of people throughout a lot of history. Is that like it was challenging. It was hard. It was financially hard. It was physically hard. But it also is like really fulfilling and important and meaningful and brings love to the world and I love little babies and hopefully I brought love to my mother most years. There were some years where I

didn't, I think. And, you know, on balance in the end, it's like, it's worthwhile. And that's not for everybody. And I think it's for everybody. But it's, I hate sometimes when I feel like the worthwhile part of the story is lost. And I worry, I think that for people who are like 22 right now, they're hearing a lot of why it's not worthwhile. That's the part to pains me a little bit. Yeah. I mean, it's not apples to apples here, right? Because back when you were a kid, a minimum wage job would get much closer to paying rent

on an apartment than it does now, right? There was, I think, a lot more opportunity for people who are like middle and working class to have a life with children that worked. But I don't think that's the case now. Housing is so expensive. minimum wage has not gone up since, like, I don't know, since, what, 1997 or something like that. It's like, it's been so long, like the financial demands. I agree with all that.

I'm just thinking you also hear these arguments from people that are like from pretty privileged families. Sure. Like, I just say, like, it's a widespread feeling. Sure. I definitely, I am totally with you. Yeah. Particularly, like, it's very hard right now for, you know, working, middle, lower middle, working class, young Gen Z folks in cities.

I mean, you do have to give up creature comfort. You give up creature comforts. Like when I have these kids and this massive child care expense so that I can go to work every month, it's like, you know, we can't really go on vacation. We used to go on really cool vacations. We can't do that anymore. Like we used to...

Yeah, Mekanos sounds nice, you know? Yeah, I used to like wear Mekinos. I hear that. Mekinos? You're still doing Mikonos? I was just picking the fucking the first one that came to mind. EOS and Coase are better. No, it's like,

people are, like, happy with the amount of, like, pleasure and leisure that exists in their lives. And, like, when you have kids, you really have to dial that back for logistical reasons, but also probably for financial reasons as well. I've taken too much of your time. I've already mentioned you a lot of time. But you had one provocative tweet. I absolutely have to ask you about it. I cannot let you go if we do not, I do not ask you about it. And so what that means is we have to cut the time where we are going to discuss crazy Nancy Mace.

And that is good because I'm going to. the video. I'm putting the video to the link in this episode. People can, we can promote hysteria. You can go to the hysteria YouTube feed and watch one of Aaron's Deep Dyes on Nancy Mace. As insane as you think Nancy Mace is, it's a whole different level. I mean, it is wild. So anyway, I'm just going to leave it that. It's a cliffhanger for people. Here's your tweet. I think I agree. I might be in trouble. I think I agree with it. Okay. Surrogacy should be so regulated that for most people it's illegal. That is a controversial statement. I want to hear why you said it and we'll leave it. Yeah. Okay. Well, I said that because there was this wired article that

ran, I think, last week. And it was about a venture capitalist in San Francisco who hired two surrogates to carry her babies at the same time because she wanted twins. And the baby boy died in utero because of a placental issue. Like the placenta detached in the pregnancy was no longer viable and the baby died, which is very sad. But this biological mom, biomom went absolutely rip shit on the surrogate,

absolutely rip shit, like trying to ruin her. She called the FBI on her like 12 times. Like I think that there's something that feels very exploitative about for-profit surrogacy being a thing that exists. Like you can't sell organs legally, right?

I don't think you should be able to sell. I think that buying another person's body is like is unethical. And it kind of, talk about catastrophizing as like a kind of like, you know, late stage capitalism, like post row catastrophizing person. I think that where this is leading, where unregulated surrogacy is leading is a world where poor women's bodies are for rent by rich women. I think that surrogacy should be allowed for people who physically cannot have their own children and it should be very, very regulated. It should be available to people who are medically unable to. And I don't mean like by age. I mean like you're 35,

you have cancer. You got to get like chemo and you can't have your own kids. Or if you're like a same sex couple and neither of you could carry a child. I think that those are acceptable. But I think that it should just be so regulated and surrogate should be very protected because what happened to this woman in the wired piece is like super fucked up. I just am happy you said it. I don't, I don't know. Look, I again, honor people the one that have surrogacy and that do it the right way and that love those babies and the birth moms that are doing it. But I agree. I think that it can veer into an area of creepiness and that people are kind of afraid to say that because they don't want to hurt the feel. I think right for a good reason. They don't want to hurt the feelings of like friends in

their life, whatever, that have gone the surrogacy route. And I don't want to. But we need rules around shit, you know, because there are people that abuse everything. And I don't know, that's been something that's been like creeping in the back of my head for a little while that I just sort of, you know, keep in my household. But since you tweeted it, I was like, all right, let's do it. Let's, let's hear about it. I think that's a fair. I mean, eventually we're, I think we're on a collision course with that conversation. Like, eventually it's going to be something that everybody's talking about because like this case that was written about in Wired is like egregious and for every story that you read about something like that you know that there's

some stories that have gone untold and that are just kind of like these small terrible things that are happening in in people's lives oh man thank you so much so we had so many fraught topics today and i appreciate you like putting yourself out there we wanted to do this and being honest with us and uh who the hell knows what we'll talk about next time but But I'd like to do it again, all right? Yeah, thanks for having me. All right. Boy, that was a heavy one.

But I really appreciate Aaron coming on to do that and working through it all with me today. We have one of our favorites tomorrow. Thank God. So hopefully he can give us some wisdom and guidance. We've got a bunch of other stuff to get to, particularly the latest out of NATO, I guess, in Russia's attacks on Poland. So it'll be a good episode tomorrow. Hope to see you all then.

Hang in there. Love each other. Hug your kids. Peace. Time to think of consequences Enjoy yourself Take only what you need from it A family of trees

Wanted to be haunted Enjoy yourself Take only what you need from it A family of trees want to be haunted. be haunted the water is warm but sending me shivers a baby is born

crying out for attention the memory's fake like looking through a far mirror decision to decisions I made it not fall, but I thought this wouldn't hurt a lot, I guess not. Show yourself, take only what you need from it. Fend me out trees, want it to be haunted. Try yourself, take only what you need from it.

A family of dreams wanted to be haunted.