The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Former Radical Progressive Votes Trump with Talia Bongolan Shwartz

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

Talia Bongolan Shwartz is a thirty year old former radical progressive turned first-time Trump voter. In May 2021, she was iced out of her activist circles when "Defend Al Aqsa" and "Zionism is Racism" signs started to outnumber the BLM signs at her weekly protests. This event marked the beginning of an ideological turn away from the left. Today, Shwartz talks Jews and politics on X @talibotz and co-hosts a podcast about gender and transition called The Navel Gays.

This is Live from the Table, a Comedy Cellar-affiliated podcast, coming at you wherever you get your podcasts, also available on YouTube and available on demand on Sirius XM Satellite Radio. This is Dan Natterman, Comedy Cellar comedian, with Noam Dorman, owner of the world-famous Comedy Cellar, the ever-expanding world-famous Comedy Cellar, with locations in New York City and Las Vegas, Nevada. Peri Alashinbrand joins us here as well.

And via the miracle of teleconferencing, we have Talia Schwartz. She's coming at us all the way from Hawaii, from Oahu, via Riverside. She is a former radical progressive turned first-time Trump voter. Like many American Jews, she felt betrayed by her peers on the progressive left. If you want to follow her on X, it's at T-A-L-I-B-O-T-Z, and she co-hosts a podcast about gender and transition called The Naval Gaze.

It's a play on words. G-A-Y-S, not G-A-Z. The Naval Gaze. So please welcome Talia Schwartz. Hello. Welcome, Talia. But by the way, Dan, it's video conferencing, not teleconferencing. What's the difference?

I think you can tell the difference by the teleconference. Tele means distance. No, tele means telephone. Or television. Well, tele means telephone. Or television. Well, be that as it may, it is certainly an age of wonders that we are living in, that we can talk to you all the way in Hawaii, where I guess you're probably just having breakfast over there, I would imagine. I, well, it's about a little after noon, almost one o'clock.

I'm in the bagel business. The point is it's about a little after noon, almost 1 o'clock. I'm in the bagel business. The point is it's earlier. That is true. That's true, yeah. And I think I was right about that. So Tali follows us, follows me on Twitter. She DMed me that she would like to come on the show. She has something she wants to say.

She thought she had something to contribute. And I like to come on the show. She has something she wants to say. She thought she had something to contribute. And I like to do things like that. She seemed very nice. So I said, sure. Why don't you come on the show? So I'm going to turn it over to Talia now to tell us what... Talia.

Well, it's Talia on the screen. Both work. Yeah. Both are great. Talia is my full name. Talia has been a nickname since I was trying to help. I know, but I just wanted to make sure that you weren't going

through the whole show saying her name wrong. Also, can you move into the middle of the frame? Talia, what do you prefer? Whatever one you prefer is really totally fine. I confused you guys. I reached out as Talia, but I'm on here as Tali.

I understood that if you introduced yourself as Robert, but your thing said Bob, I would not be flummoxed by that change of the name. We understand the concept of the name. Anyway, so Tali, which was supposed to be my name if I was a girl. I was born back in the time when your parents didn't know what you'd be.

If I were a girl, my parents were going to name me Tali. So not Talia, Tali. I would have been Elizabeth anyway. Really? Okay. Anyway, so Tali, what is your thing? Like what is it that's burning in your in your gut that you want to uh share with our audience as a listener and uh

tweeter sure so i mean um i reached out to you no i kind of wanted to shoot my shot i'm a avid listener or i guess a watcher of the podcast i watch on YouTube. I'm a big fan of what you guys are doing. And I'm really interested in kind of the very stressful fight that you're sort of having in public right now, trying to manage what seems to be going on on the political right in this country and the sort of major flare up of anti-Semitism. I don't have one thing in particular that I'm looking to get off my chest, but I am hoping to engage you all in a conversation because you're people that I respect and want to talk about this topic with. But yeah, I mean, I'll give a little information about myself and what brings me to this conversation. So I, like many people, have had a major sort of ideological shift in my politics that was the result of sort of my Jewish identity. But this happened for me in the summer of 2021.

So when everyone was sort of waking up after October 7th I like you know I'm and I'm sure like like you all as well I was expecting what happened after I was expecting the response that we got um I was ready for the propaganda war I knew this was how it was going to shake out because I was sort of radicalized in the summer of 2021 if people don't remember that was the last sort of flare-up the last sort of flare up. The last I used to call it a war, which feels silly now to call that a war compared to what's going on right now in Gaza. But that was the last sort of flare up between Israel and Gaza. That was when Americans learned the word Sheikh Jarrah for the first time.

And at that time, I was like a radical left-wing activist. I'm a lesbian. Every left nebulous left-wing cause. I was pro-abortion. I was a lesbian married to a woman who was like starting a transition. I wanted to abolish the police. Every cause, the omni left-wing cause. In 2020, I got super radicalized. I flew home to New York to be part of the protests that were going on in New York because, you know, Hawaii was a little boring compared to that. I was sleeping

at town hall. When I got back to Hawaii, I was doing weekly Black Lives Matters protests and I was like the person showing up with the cars in my in my trunk. I'm sorry, with the signs in my trunk. And then. May that summer comes 2021 comes and all of a sudden people are bringing Zionism is racism signs to the protests and end Israeli apartheid. And suddenly all the groups that I've been working with for the past year, year and a half are now hosting marches from Mauna Kea to Al-Aqsa and colonization from Hawaii to Palestine. And I was like totally despondent. I was like, I was losing my peer group. All of my friends were radical activists that I had been hanging out with at protests that I had gotten to know. And I knew that there was a problem on the left with anti-Zionism. I was acutely aware of this, but I felt perhaps naively that like, it sort of wasn't that big of an issue. And that since I share so many values with these people, that really all it would take is a, is a sit down

and an explanation. And I just found that that wasn't true. I mean, I, I like poured my heart out to two of these older women who run the Refuse Fascism chapter in Hawaii. And after talking to them and pleading with them to reconsider their participation in this event, their response to me was, do you approve of the murder of Palestinian children? So that was the beginning. I assume you did not. Believe it or not. No. Yeah. And the irony is back then, I was much less hawkish. Like I was still pretty, I was very critical of Bibi, all just the reflexive sort of liberal Zionist things.

I felt like the occupation of the West Bank was the real impediment to peace. So I was, yeah, I was much more left wing even with my Israeli politics back then. But this process of sort of losing my group of friends basically started a whole ideological journey for me that kind of changed all of my politics. And so the way that I kind of see that I went through it was it started with the Jewish stuff and that was sort of race stuff so I started you know listening to John McWhorter and Glenn Lowry and Coleman Hughes friend of this uh show and um I felt just a huge relief I think um and then from there I kind of

started challenging some of my priors on feminism and things that I had just kind of believed automatically, like the wage gap and things like that. And then the last sort of sacred cow for me was the gender stuff. And I think it's probably because it is just the most sensitive topic, especially for people on the left. And like I said, I'm gay. And my wife at the time was starting a transition. And so I went through a process of probably a little over a year of really challenging a lot of my, a lot of my beliefs and a lot of my politics. Well, what, what on the, what on the gender issues? I mean, obviously you're not anti, you didn't become anti-gay or anything like that. What, what, what changed on your, um, no, I didn't become, well, no, I'm not anti-gay or anything like that what what changed on your um no i didn't

become well no i'm not anti-gay i there are jokes in there but i won't uh i know it's sensitive but um uh so the gender stuff basically um i don't believe that people are that humans can be born in the wrong body. You know, I kind of took the, when I was first coming around to this stuff, what kind of gave me the buy-in was I was listening to the, um, blocked and reported podcast. And I remember Katie Herzog. Yeah, exactly. And Katie Herzog was said something that was so obvious that I hadn't, I guess, allowed myself to consider.

Cause that's what a lot of left-wing politics is, is you don't really allow yourself to consider bad things or things that could be offensive. And she said something so simple that was like, you know, I thought we were supposed to be moving forward and saying that like a girl can do, be anything, you know, a girl can want to play sports and, and she's just as much a girl and a boy can be into Barbies and singing and he's just as much a boy. Like, when did we go backwards? When did we decide that if you are, if you have stereotypical interests of the opposite sex, that you were actually supposed to be the opposite sex and that you no longer fit in with your sex category. And so that led me down a road. And I definitely got like pretty deep into the sort of gender critical politics, as they call it.

And where I've landed now is in sort of a middle area where trans activists would definitely call me transphobic and then actual transphobes call me like a queer groomer so i've landed in a happy uh middle area but that is basically that i think transition is a really serious thing that should be basically a last resort um and that i yeah you're not with that woman anymore who was transitioned or you are she walked it back she walked it back we're married and you're married and and okay this is interesting so you're still married we're still married yeah what what was her flirtation with transitioning and and did you talk her out of it or did she just wake up one day and say like i snapped out of it how does she you don't hear that often yeah what's her reason so in some ways i was responsible for her getting into it too and this is just because this was sort of the the world that i was in i was an activist all of my many of my friends were in the process of transition. I was in graduate school studying clinical psychology, researching microaggressions against

LGB individuals. A good friend of mine was studying like resilience of LGBTQ POC. And so she needed people to my friend needed people to um pilot their study basically and my my wife is filipino and a lesbian so she's the lgbtq poc and she's filling out this survey and the first sorry my dog she hates when i tell this story yeah um it's a hell of a transit She hates when I tell this story. It's a hell of a transit.

So she's taking this survey and like the first question is, what is your gender identity? And she's just completely thrown for a loop. The way I describe her at that point, she was a normieie like just not very politically involved in either way I used to joke that like she wouldn't know what a trans woman is like oh is that a woman who wants to be a man or a man who wants to be a woman like like a lot of people who still probably don't know entirely what those what those words are meant to represent but I was an expert I was studying this in graduate school I was teaching undergrads guest lectures on human sexuality. And so I started explaining to her what all of these different gender identities mean.

And it basically leads to this like big confession of, of a lifelong experience of gender dysphoria. And all of this is still true. So these, you know, these are still things that she deals with and are, are part of her story, but basically,

so she, she confesses this lifelong gender dysphoria says it was something that she was planning to take to the grave. And I. Lifelong from, from being a child. From being a child. Yeah. And. Like a good.

Queer person, an activist like I, you know, I knew the step was to support her and affirm her for lack of better terms. And so, OK, let's start, you know, like, what do you want to what can can we do to, you know, to bring you in line with how you feel on the inside? Right. I was also then totally responsible for kind of her walking it back too. So she had started this social transition and then the Israel stuff happened and my politics started to change. So, so, so let's, let's, let's review. So, yeah. So she woke up and she, and she, um, you, she decided she didn't want to transition. Now transitioning means what transitioning can mean just essentially announcing that you're, that you're a male, right. Or transitioning can be,

uh, very painful and difficult surgeries, right? And sometimes it can be in between. Removal of the breasts, but then nothing beyond that. So when she was contemplating transition, how far was she going to go with it? If it's personal, you don't have to answer, by the way. Yeah, no, that's fine. She's

comfortable with me talking about this stuff. I've done a couple interviews about this. Plus, I host a podcast about it, so I get to talk about her all the time. And yeah, she's fully aware. She was preparing for testosterone, basically. Surgery was like a maybe down the line thing. But I mean, we had gotten her breast binders. She was like binding her breasts and was preparing to take testosterone. Yeah, I mean, it started with the social transition, changing her pronouns and like shortening her name to something more androgynous. And there are certain things like, yeah.

But this is just, you know, we want to talk about politics, but just because Perry and I have jousted about this topic years ago. But this is interesting. So you're a lesbian. You like women. Now your girlfriend is becoming a man, which if you're not careful that makes you straight right i bet she's probably pansexual so within left-wing ideology how does how is that all reconciled like like what does it mean to be straight or gay if if your person's transition

you know in well yes like what are all these kids today talking about? It makes no sense. Well, in left-wing ideology, it's pretty easy to reconcile because you don't have to think too hard. You're just supposed to, it's just all about the feelings. So like, if you still love this person and they are a man, then yes, this would make you straight. Or like Dan is saying, jokingly,

that that would make you bi or pansexual or something. And this is something that I thought, I mean, I remember by the way, right. I mean, totally. Yeah. No, totally. Totally. I mean, listen, so sexuality is complicated. I think most, I think, I don't think that homosexuality works exactly the same way in women that it does in men. I think most women who end up with women who have a strong, overwhelming preference for women are basically bi, but gay leaning, you know, I've been, you know, I had boyfriends in high school and stuff like that. And so while I feel like when I, you know, when I started to date women and all of this, it felt like, oh, this is totally, this feels much better. This is my strong preference, all of this stuff. But it's not like I like vomit at the, you know, at the sight of a man or anything like that. But I remember,

it's funny because I'm looking at my couch now where we had this conversation. I do remember fleeting going through my mind of just sort of like, am I going to be into her? You know, like, am I going to be attracted to her? You um but you don't but I also remember very quickly after that saying sort of like that doesn't matter like that's sort of a shell that's something that you're not really allowed to think about um it it doesn't matter what what matters most is her or them right at that time it's it matters that they are happy um but that was something yeah you're kind of describing describing in a certain way a kind of brainwashing like like like even within your own most private dialogue you're giving yourself the answers like

that jim jones would give you like you like it's, right? Yeah, it is. Totally. It is. A lot of left-wing ideologies function that way. So you're totally right. And I have salient memories, specifically with the gender stuff, of like thinking something and then having the thought of like, that's a bad thought, you know?

Like that's an offensive thought. And it's not just like, oh, I don't want to get in trouble. It's I don't want to hurt people. And that thought could hurt people, you know. So it's this I think that's the problem, too, that a lot of people on the right don't appreciate is just like how much most people on the left have really good intentions and they are true believers. You know, they're not actually trying to ruin this country and destroy, you know, life or their hedonistic pleasures. They think that they're helping people. And that's certainly what I thought.

But I mean, a lot of the race stuff functions the same way too. That's Louie. That's Parker from outside. Okay. No, it's Louie. Yeah. A lot of the race stuff. Yeah.

A lot of the race stuff functions the same way too. Where like, you know, back when I was very woke on the race stuff, you hear the same little thing in your mind, too. Like it's you're almost being fed lines. Like you said, it is a bit of brainwashing because there's so many internal contradictions, you know, that if you were allowed to think about these things too long, it would it would create cognitive dissonance. And I think that was an interesting thing, too, about my ideological shift is it really happened via listening to debates. I just started like absorbing intelligence squared debates. I would just watch hours and hours of debate on controversial topics, things that I thought that I had strong opinions about. And it was like the first time that I ever allowed myself to hear the best arguments from the

other side. And it actually really started from this whole law of the Zionism stuff and me calling myself a Zionist and people saying, well, you're a far right bigot, you're a conservative. And to me at that point in time, conservative was the worst thing you could be i thought liberal was a dirty word i was like i'm a lefty i'm a progressive liberals are are might as well be right wing how dare you call me a republican how dare you call me a conservative and then i got curious to listen to what the conservatives and republicans were actually saying um i have a question there because well i would just say that, you know, first of all, there's a lot of brainwashing on the right to with with some a lot of their ideology. Totally. But, you know, I would just say I disagree with you about not being born into the wrong body. I mean, I think that that you can be, you know, and you said it was a last resort to have surgery or whatever,

but you acknowledge that there are times when that is the appropriate. Dan was supposed to be born into Brad Pitt. I was going to say, I was going to say, Dan, it sounds close to home. So that's, this is good. The gender stuff is still the most taboo thing. So I'm glad that we're getting to talk about some of this,

but it's not that. So here's like a and again, this is the type of stuff that I say that makes a lot of trans people and trans activists unhappy. I don't think anyone is born inevitably trans. Transition is always a choice. It's a conscious choice that people make. Sometimes it's a pretty damn good one. I know people in my personal life who, they just blossomed. They were, you know, they were, they were awkward and kept to themselves. And they just really like be like they came alive through transition. I also know people who regret their transition 20 years down the road.

So, no, I don't like I don't really think that it's like it's to ever. It's. It's a gamble, basically, it's a gamble and it's a really serious gamble because it's one that you really can't walk back. And I think that adults should be allowed to transition with their eyes wide open, with their eyes wide open. And it's like, we're not doing trans people any favors either by telling them that they can be born in the wrong body, by telling them that they can change sex, and by telling them that anyone who doesn't recognize them as such hates them and wants to kill them. We are making very paranoid, very mentally ill people, and it's not good for them. I mean, it's in the same ways that we see this, obviously, in these other domains, right? Like it's not good for Black people and Mexicans to think that

they're about to be, it's not good for gay people to believe that Trump's about to round them up into concentration camps. That type of hyperbole is not good for anybody and it makes people sick. So, yeah. I agree, but I also agree that there are cases where a transition, be it hormonal or surgical, is the only way. And how else would you describe that other than somebody being born into a body that causes them, whether you want to say it's the wrong body or just something that causes them tremendous distress,

however you want to characterize it. It does. I think it does happen. Because we, yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead.

Let me say so. So this is where, I mean, we really, we were saying this years ago, but I think even before we were on YouTube. This is where I was always struggling. So I grew up very, very live and let live.

I could not care less whether somebody's gay or trans. I was always that way. I was raised that way. But it came from exactly what I just said, the notion that you should live and let live. It's none of my business how somebody leaves their life. So what do I care if you're gay? Or if you dress up in a dress and want to be a woman?

So that was easy, right? But there was a huge difference at some point that got introduced between respect for gay and respect for trans is that with being gay, you're attracted to same sex. That's true.

And then with also with trans, it became, no, I am a woman. And if you don't say I'm a woman, even in contexts where it actually matters, like in sports or wherever it might be, there's something wrong with you. And then that forced me to have these thoughts. Well, but you're not a woman. Yes. There's something wrong with you. And then that forced me to have these thoughts. Well, but you're not a woman.

Yes. There's something in your brain. And again, or you sound like you're a big, you know, I believe me, I don't care. But if you,

if you're going to force this conversation and I have to sell what I actually believe. So obviously psychologically you think something and I'm, I think society should respect it and allow do everything you can to have a fulfilling lives. But to me, it's not really different than someone who has anorexia who says I'm, I'm fat, right? Like in some way there is some disconnect between what you see in the mirror

or what you're feeling and what's actually objectively true. Now it's not nice. Like, like it's, it's the kind of thing which I would never in a million years ever bring up to like, why would I want to say that to any trans person? I was gonna say that I care about any, it's just not, it's nasty. Like it, it's a nasty thing to it's bigotry. If you are feel the compelled, it can be, it can be, well, it, it, it can be, it's a nasty thing to it's bigotry. If you are feel the compelled. It can be. It can be.

Well, it can be bullying. It could be bullying. Sure. But when they when they forced that conversation upon us, we really began to squirm. But then now just kind of jumping ahead. What I am uncomfortable with is that the people like me who would just like to see the thing reset back to just live and let live i don't want to i don't want anything to turn to trans people you know there's a horseshoe now with something which makes you uncomfortable on the right which is the bigots feel like they're ascendant now totally and the people who really are hateful of gays, of trans, they are in common cause now with people sort of like I would describe like me or like you, right?

Yeah. And that's not comfortable for me. And I just, you know, I don't know what to do about that. I'm not going to take the other position. But I am uncomfortable about that. I don't know how you feel about that. No, me too. I get that. I don't know how you feel about that. No, me too. I get that. On the one

hand, I got used to that feeling several years ago because being in the gender critical space, which is like the term that's like the, that's the self-identified term. People will call gender criticals TERFs, right. As it just sort of, as a sort of slanderous thing, but I call myself gender critical. I'm, I'm critical of gender ideology. I, so you, I had to get used to that, that like, they're going to be odd bedfellows. And this was also during a point where I was having an ideological turn in many other domains. And so I'm used to these odd bedfellows now across a range of things, frankly. Odd bedfellows on the bedfellow topic. Right, right. Exactly. But yeah, like, I mean, Nancy Mace, for example, you're helping nobody screaming tranny 12 times

in the Capitol. You're helping nobody. You seem crazy. You are being a bigot. You are being a bully. And this schtick is not going to, I don't think it's going to be very effective because yes, it's pandering to the, to the people who have all this pent up energy. Like you're saying the people who like us, but maybe a little bit further, they don't actually care so much about trans people, you know, feeling good in their life or whatever, who just like want to say it. They want to shout it. They want to prove, see, ha ha. There are only two genders. Even that it's like so stupid. It's like, forget the gender thing. Let's just go back to grounding in the reality of biological sex. I don't care how many genders there are, frankly. What matters is that there are two sexes and that,

and that's, and in the very small number of cases where sex matters, we need to be able to identify it and recognize it. But so yeah, am I uncomfortable with it? Yes, but it's just those are not my people. And frankly, I find them embarrassing. It's something that I've been dealing with is I've been saying like, I'm sick of the gender critical 101. So it's like every conversation I feel like I enter, there's people who are doing this thing that was like cool and exciting to me three, four years ago when I was first, you know, when things, when everything's first seems radical, right? And it's the stuff like no one can be born in the wrong body, right? Like liking feminine things doesn't make you a woman. It's like, okay, yeah, no shit. Like this is just not interesting to me anymore. It's not groundbreaking. I'm more interested in what

do we do about the people who have this experience that Dan is talking about. And again, I don't believe people are born in the wrong body, but there are undoubtedly people who struggle with this internally and don't seem to be able to make it better, you know, without transitioning, trying to live as the opposite sex. And again, I would say, yeah. Okay, so in my limited experience with this, people I know who have transitioned, when they speak, they've shared it with me. It makes maybe perhaps them better, but it's never, at least the people I know,

they have described it, it's not what I thought it would be. I thought once I transitioned, my problems would be over. And actually I find myself reverting to a kind of depression again, which, which in a common sense way is not surprising because you're never going to look in the mirror and see a woman's body or a man's body. You're just not going to. And so, you know, you have this fantasy that I will once I transition it. But then the reality is, it sounds like I'm never actually going to be comfortable. This is also tragic, which is why, you know, whatever. I don't want to almost begin to sound like whatever.

But it's very sad. I know people close to me also were parents of people going through this that trump was very off-putting to me the way he addressed it at the um uh at the inauguration because i believe people so many people are one or two degrees of separation from either knowing people like this or having close friends of theirs who have yes you know that he could have struck a very very powerful more universal chord by by putting it differently by putting it the way you would put it but you without trying to figure it out you could have put it and at the same time because you you actually believe he's right right recognize but he could have done it in a way that would have been much healthier, I thought.

Yeah, well, we need to care for these people because they are still, they still exist. And again, trans people exist. I'm over that conversation, too, from the activists as well. But yeah, the note to strike is. You can just put it as simply like, really, you think these people are ill? Okay, is this the way you speak about people who are ill? Exactly, right.

No, exactly. Totally, totally. And that's the thing, right? I wish it were, this is a completely inappropriate intervention for children, which I believe it is completely inappropriate. And maybe I'll be able to, you know, I've just met too many

detransitioners, frankly, to know that people actually change their minds. And especially for young women, it's completely irreversible. They chop their breath. I mean, again, not to be crude and stuff, but they change their bodies permanently. And a lot of them are coming to regret it. And it's a really serious thing to deal with. But yeah, I mean, I wish we could say that it's a completely inappropriate intervention for children. And these children are about to be even more distressed than they already were, because now they're afraid that they're losing their future, that they're losing the one thing that they were holding on to. Everyone kind of knows has a trans kid or knows their friend was a trans kid. This is a it's really sticky because like you said, we all do. And these are very often good parents, loving parents. They didn't necessarily buy on. They didn't jump on right away. They were cautious, but they're doing what their doctor says is best practice.

They're doing what their kid really wants. They want their kid to be happy. They want their kid to be alive. And Helen Joyce says, these are going to be the people who go down with the shit. The parents, very often. Because to accept that this protocol might be wrong would be to accept that you might have permanently, you might have done permanent, you might have facilitated permanent damage to your

child. So one of the things I had also said a couple of years ago was that in any nonpolitical context, when you're involved with an issue where people were mutilating their bodies, it would be perfectly natural and admirable to say, hold on a second here. Let's go slowly. I understand, but let's dot our I's, cross our T's. Let's get 10 different opinions because this is irreparable. And the parents and parents have really gotten a lot of abuse. I hope it stops. I mean, like loving parents.

Totally. They are not seeing this. This is not political to them. All the people interloping into their personal life, attacking them, yelling at them. This is just their dumb politics. These parents, this is the single thing in the world they care about more than anything. This is like, you know, my daughter does the wrong thing. You go back to some other protest against Palestine now. And I have to spend the rest of my life comforting my daughter who's cut off her breasts. Right. So this is not my fucking political issue this is my life right and and it's really been awful what they've been put through i mean you probably know it from

the side of the people who are putting the parents through this stuff right yeah yeah no and it's um we need yeah it's it's a huge huge it's very unfortunate that it has been so, so politicized. And, you know, we start this off with me being a Trump voter, but I'm not a Republican. And I was a reluctant Trump voter. I mean, when J.D. Vance joined the ticket, that made it much more appealing to me. I think he's a smart and interesting guy and just like young and competent, which is something that we haven't had in a while. But yeah, I really do. I hate how ugly this issue has become. And I mean, even with the girls' sports thing, which you brought up, and it's important because it's so obvious. Obviously, there is an advantage that males have a biological advantage over females, even if they don't go through puberty. I mean, these are just, again, we are a sexually dimorphic species. People need to live, get back in reality. But also, none of these people care about.

Yes, yes. But also, none of these people care about women's sports. And so the activists, when they say that, they're right. Like these people people this is just none of these people care about women's sports and then there's the weird thing like then you get all these people on the right suddenly caring about women's sports which is like women's sports in and of itself is like a dei thing you know for lack of better terms right it's like women's sports only only survives off of subsidy, basically. And it's not the shit on women. It's because we're sexually dimorphic. Right.

And it's much more entertaining to watch men play sports than it is to watch women play sports. And men are a lot more likely to want to play sports and to pursue sports and all of these things. Right. And so this idea that like women's sports is the bedrock of America, I think is a joke, but it is absolutely and obviously unfair and dangerous for males. It's very, very important to the women that are doing it. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And they're put in an impossible situation because most of them just go on and participate and and kind of sit silent don't say anything because they don't want to catch the smoke um some of them you've seen a few instances of these girls like forfeiting and stuff and then some people see that as brave other people see that

as kind of silly and like uh posturing a bit um well they took it to the limit that i had that i had actually predicted on this show which is that we saw a biological man kick the shit out of a woman on global television and that was really because i think i think we've had enough no yeah and and the unfortunate thing is that was another conflation of things because that wasn't even a case of trans. But that was a trend. It wasn't trans. It was a male. And it's gender ideology that has cooked all of our brains so much. Right. Where we it's gender ideology that told us that sex isn't binary, which is what allows someone who is who is very obviously male. Right. But has some disorder of sexual development to identify

as a woman and compete. And, you know, with that, it gets more complicated, too, because a lot of these 5-A-R-D, these males with DSDs who present in early childhood as girls, they get preyed upon in these... What's a DSD? DSD is disorder of sexual development's it's the technical term for what people will call intersex so people will say there's male there's female and there's intersex sort of a misnomer intersex no i know it's jamie lee curtis well that's the rumor but i don't know that i i asked chat gbt that and chat gbt said no. So that what Jamie Lee Curtis is intersex.

Jamie Lee Curtis was not intersex, but I don't know how chat GPT was for sure. So intersex is not a sex. And so it's a it's a sort of a misnomer there. But it's it's an umbrella term for these disorders of sexual development, which, again, people will say, oh, these people are neither male nor female. But the reality is every DSD occurs in either males or females. It makes things more ambiguous. It complicates things for a very, very, very tiny portion of these people. They will functionally look like, act like and seem like the opposite sex. But that's the tiniest, tiniest portion.

But for people with this five alpha reductase deficiency, which is what we're assuming. Androgen insensitivity. I know somebody with androgen insensitivity syndrome, I believe it's called. She's XY, but this is a woman. Right. She can't virilize. No, exactly. She literally, her body doesn't respond.

The person you're talking about, her body does not respond to testosterone. Exactly. So there's no virilization. The person does not mascul to testosterone. Exactly. So there's no virilization. The person does not masculinize. 5-ARD, which is the DSD of the person in the Olympics of Imani Khalif, 5-ARD basically blocks your androgen insensitive essentially in the first hormone wash as a baby, but then you go through your normal puberty. And so people with 5 ARD might be born with like an ambiguous looking genitalia and stuff like that. And they might, the family

might believe they are girls when they are little, but they, they, they're, I mean, their balls drop, their penis grows. I mean, they literally go through male puberty. They don't develop breasts. And so in a lot of these countries where they know that the person's documents say female, but they are male, they sort of prey on the athletic skill of these people. They know that they're going to be able to take advantage of these people's situation. It's the same thing with Castor Semenya. Castor Semenya is another example of 5-ARD. Someone who, when she was a, and I'm okay calling Castor she, you know, if that's how she really lives, but there is questions about how these people actually live in their own, in their home countries. But yes, when she was a little girl,

she seemed to be a girl until puberty. And these are just things, it's not up for debate. I mean, these are just like, we just know these. These are just things that we have the scientific advancements to understand. But all these things have got glommed together. And that's how we ended up at the Olympics with something like this happening. And then people blaming it on trans, even though this wasn't a trans person, because trans ideology has worked really hard to blend sex and gender. And that's a bit of like American prudery too. I mean, have you ever noticed how every government form that you fill out asks you for your gender and then says male or female? It's like we're just uncomfortable with the word sex. Male and female are not genders. That's interesting yeah um by the way let's just circle back to where because this is a topic that um many people comment on oh when you were living on the left uh how did they finesse the fact that the people who they were championing, radical Islamists and not so radical Islamists,

hang gays, you know, abuse people who are trans even have access to food and water to be ideologically advanced. It's, it's, it's a, it's a bit of like the racism of lowest expectations, right? Like, well, well, they come from these cultures and you can't hold it against them. And then for others, it's things just literally like, well, they're being oppressed. I mean, you'll hear it specifically when we're talking about Gaza or things like that in Palestine. And it's like, well, they don't have stable access to water. And so, like, we can't expect them to start thinking about human rights, you know, for minorities when they can't even properly feed themselves and their children. But we know that even in Muslim neighborhoods in America, there's tremendous resistance to,

you know, gay kind, kindness towards gays in public schools and all kinds of things. I'm struggling to remember the exact stories, but I know this, I've read these stories over the last couple of years. You probably know them. Well,

so that's the thing is like, it doesn't get explained very well. It just gets answered with something else. So, like, yes, this thing is bad. And no culture, like, no culture is better than another culture. And it gets, it turns into sort of how dare you, you know? And it's also very easy to show people. Unless it's MAGA culture or southern white culture, in which case it absolutely is worse. Right. Right. And whatever and whatever in their upbringing led them to believe these horrible things or let them to be bigots.

That's irrelevant because they're evil. Totally. Yeah, totally. totally yeah totally so so now obviously what you're describing is um tremendously obvious rationalization when you're changing the subject to why these people hate gays and trans well you can't say people don't have food when they obviously do have food right um so what drives that is it is it anti-semitism is it just like do you hear people saying bad things about Jews? I sense you probably didn't know when I was on the left. You're saying. Yeah, no, no, you didn't hear them. I didn't. I didn't experience a lot of anti-Semitism. I mean, I grew up in New York. Right. All of my friends, I used to joke like all of my friends growing up were Jewish. I had like two girls in my group

who weren't Jewish and they could both recite a bracha if we asked them to and no I never I never let me say what is driving the progressive left to hate Israel so much and have no interest in any

Jews are white and privileged it is that simple. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's race. It's an anti it's an anti white, anti colonial thing more than an anti Semitic thing, in your opinion. Yes. And I and I I struggle with that a little bit because I go back and forth. Yes, I think that the problems that Jews face on the left in America is part and parcel of the problem with wokeness, of seeing white people as the ultimate oppressors, of seeing rich people as the ultimate oppressors, of seeing educated people, whatever, the elite, right? And this framing, I don't know if you guys are familiar with the book by David Hirsch called Contemporary Left Antisemitism, but he's a British sociologist. And he wrote about this like right before the Corbyn election.

So when things were really kind of blowing up over in the UK, he wrote about the problem of antisemitism in the left. And he talks about this concept of the community of the good. And that when you are in the community of the good, you can rationalize treating people outside of the community very poorly because they are evil. It's sort of like the punch a Nazi thing, right? Like you are justified in doing anything to the end justifies the means basically. And so a lot of the anti-Semitism is undoubtedly just part of this woke gobbledygook that places successful people, right, model minorities like Jews at the oppressor end. But it is also particular. There is something. And I struggle with how much of each in all the different flavors of anti-Semitism, like how much of it is a sort of particular thing to the Jews, because you will be hard pressed to find

ugly identifiable antisemitism in most places on the left. It's mostly really draped in anti-Zionism, which is taught as a righteous cause. And so I think that it's mostly cognitive dissonance on the left. And I think that's why I was able to ignore it for so long was because I would see these people who were my friends post these what I just thought as ignorant things about Israel and ignorant things about Zionism and whatever. But they obviously liked me and they obviously didn't care that I was Jewish. They they obviously didn't hate Jews. And I think that's still true. I mean, so many of them are, oh, I have a Jewish grandmother, right? I have a Jewish friend and they're not lying. But there's anti-Semitism.

Well, it's made it impossible for them. It's made it, it seems to have made it impossible. I've struggled with this issue too, by the way. i don't want i i resisted kind of like this simple notion that it's anti-semitism in the tradition of of past chapters of anti-semitism and one example i gave is like i don't think any of these people would have problems if their daughter brought home a jewish guy to marry no like it's not traditional anti-semitism likeemitism like you'd expect that. Right. And yet they're trafficking, trafficking in anti-Semitism. no matter how outrageous and how obvious. And including when Hamas just the day before yesterday parades out these tortured, emaciated, concentration camp-looking hostages. Yeah.

You did not hear any of these people on the left say, you know what, I'm with you, Palestinians. This is too far for me. Almost no. Now, it's true. Months ago, when some first hostages came out and they looked kind of healthy, saying, you see, you tried to tell us that Hamas is treating them badly. Look, look, they're smiling.

They're fine. But when it when the real truth came out and we see what's really going on, the silence is, as they say, deafening. And whether that's anti-Semitism or not, you know what? As a Jewish person, I don't know if it matters. When somebody gets kidnapped, I don't care if they're staying at the Ritz-Carlton.

If you take somebody for a year... You steal them. You know, that you're that you're even saying look they look okay in and of itself is a kind of a ridiculous thing i guess it's preferable to them looking horrible but it's still a crime to kidnap somebody well it is and they don't even know if they're going to make it back it is a crime and it's torture for their for their families but in their minds in the in the you know in and you're 100 right in their minds like well well israel has prisoners so hamas is taking these people and

this is you know it's not pretty but this is the way you gotta be and we gotta negotiate and they said but but but that's but if we if they're well fed and they're well cared for and and not terrorized that's one category of crossing a line. But if you're actually torturing them, then these people were chained for 15 months taking three hours. I mean like never seeing daylight, someone hung upside down, starved to death. And these are the ones we've seen.

We presume that the ones we haven't seen yet are even worse. So where, you know, where are these left-wing people who care about, you know, right and wrong? But of course the far right is no better. No, they're not. And it's interesting. I have a lot of things I want to say. The far right is no better. I don't know if you know, I actually sent you something from James Lindsay the other day. I don't know if you had a chance to look at it or not. But James Lindsay has been I know he's he's a little he's a little kooky. Not not

everyone's a James Lindsay fan and that's fine. But he's been. I'm going to back this up for a second before I get there. When you say like, where's the outrage? People don't care. That's the thing that I've sat with for a while. I'm done asking people to care. It feels undignified. It's clear they don't care. And I can't think of anything worse than burying our loved ones while begging for anyone to give a shit. So I just, I think we need to, as Jews, and that was a segue to say, James Lindsay, who's not Jewish and doesn't need to care, cares. He gives a shit. He sees what's going on and he's not Jewish and doesn't need to care, cares. He gives a shit.

He sees what's going on and he's not afraid to call it out. And in some ways, I think it's so admirable because I'm afraid to call out some of the stuff that I see going on on the right. And I'm not on the right. What did you send me again? I saw something that somebody sent me from James Lindsay. I think it must have been you. He does a podcast called The New Discourses, and it's's mostly just didactic it's just like him kind of lecturing but in that episode that i sent you he's reading uh an excerpt from a book of a a woman who grew up who was a former nazi youth basically and had this jewish best friend and the book starts off like she's writing a letter to her

best friend after the war and whatever, after her de-radicalization, and just kind of goes to that. And he's reading passages from this book, and it's heavy, right? But so there are people who see what's, there are, when October 7th happened, we do have allies. There are people who care.

There are people who saw it and were morally unflinching, knew that it was wrong. And I kind of don't care and can't care about anybody else. In some ways, it's protective. Like, it hurts too much. It's like we open ourselves up too much to that type of pain and let down when we ask people to care because they don't. And it's where I find a lot of frustration with the Jewish activist space. It feels like it's constantly begging people. Kanye West had a Super Bowl ad and the only thing still, do you guys care yet? Are you guys going to call you guys gonna call this no

they're not gonna fucking call it out they're not gonna call it out and it feels really undignified to keep asking them to actually we can call it out there are good Samaritans there are Gentiles you know there there are the righteous among the nations who are gonna call it out who care but we have to stop begging a because it's undignified. And B, and this is not popular, but it feeds some of the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. This is something that I kind of, I think I said to you in my introduction message, but like, I'm very concerned with the, what seems like the liberal American Jewish, not even just liberal, but the American Jewish impulse towards censorship, because we see crazy anti-Semitic shit and we're like, we need to stop that. But then it feeds the people who say, look at the only group of people that you're not allowed to say something about. Right. And those people are jackasses. And it's like, while they're sitting

there saying you can't talk about this, they're talking about it. Right. I mean, it's always they're always contradicting themselves in that very moment in time. But we do feed those things. And I worry about that a lot. And that was a big part of my ideological turn was coming home to free speech and realizing that Jews need free speech. We need it to survive in this nation and any nation. And it occurred to me in this conversations about hate speech and all of these things and the left wanting to sort of outlaw hate speech and outlaw disinformation. What happens when it's president Rashida Tlaib and Zionism is considered hate speech. We're fucked. We're fucked. And we can't allow the person in control to have that much power over what is acceptable to say. And so I think

Jews need to, and I think this is happening already because October 7th did really push a lot of people away from the left. And I think that's a good thing ultimately. But yeah, Jews need to get a real taste for liberty and prioritize that over maybe comfort. All right, Tali, we got to wrap it up. First of all, what's a Jew doing in Hawaii? You got to come back to New York. You never heard of Bette Midler? She's from Hawaii.

Yeah, you guys should... Is she from Hawaii? That's... I believe so, yeah. Interesting. It's possible. I would Google that, but I'm pretty sure she's Hawaiian.

Well, you guys come out and visit... Did you go out there for work? I moved out here for grad school to become a clinical psychologist when i was studying lgbtq microaggressions and um i ended my wife and i ended up opening bagel shops so now we run the only authentic new york style bagel shops uh it's not a we have two locations so it's not a chain you know, we make everything fresh every day. But yeah.

There's a theory that New York bagels are the best because of the water. I've heard. Well, Montreal bagels are my favorite. And many people, there are many people that would agree with me. Montreal bagels have a very unique kind of texture and taste. But in any case... You allow this in your cellar, Noam?

Allow my cellar? What? Matt Midler was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. One of the few Jewish families in a mostly Asian neighborhood. Wow, interesting. That's very interesting that she was born there. Asian meaning Polynesian? I don't know. All right.

So anyway, Talia, you're very, very, very – She's a smart cookie. Very bright. Very well-considered opinions. I'm very happy we had you on. Thank you. You're way more compelling and well-reasoned than a lot of the so-called professional thinkers that we've had on over the years. And I'm very happy to.

One quick question. Are you ever mistaken for a native Hawaiian? No. Never. Believe it or not. No. Okay. Well,

mahalo for coming and meleke. It's not Christmas, but thank you very much. That's the only Hawaiian I know. The old Arlo Guthrie song. If you like a ukulele lady, ukulele lady like you. If you like me like I like you. Oh, I remember that song.

That's a different song. If you like both the same. Anyway. Anyway, so yeah, Tali, I don't know if you ever get to New York, but you got to come to the Comedy Cellar if you get to New York. I totally will. And you guys got to come to Tali's Bagels if you make it to Hawaii. Actually, we've been talking about taking a trip to Hawaii.

Well, there you go. We absolutely will. We're going to show up there. All right. Perfect. So tell us again your podcast and know, your podcast and everything. So people can watch it. Yeah. So on Twitter, I'm at TaliBots, T-A-L-I-B-O-T-Z.

And my podcast is The Naval Gaze. We're available on all most podcast apps, but we're pretty much on YouTube. My co-host is a trans man. So you can contextualize everything that I said in this conversation with that fact. Yeah. I hope you guys check it out. I love this conversation. I really appreciate all the work that you guys are doing. Tali's Bagels locations in Oahu in, well, whatever. You have two locations in Oahu. Yes. All right. Yes. Okay. Bye, Tali. Bye. Thank you guys.