The Daily Beast Podcast - The Super Bowl Halftime Show Was Tailor Made to Trigger MAGA

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

The New Abnormal hosts Andy Levy and Danielle Moodie break down Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show. Then, Dannagal Young, author of “Wrong: How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation”, joins the show to talk about what common sense means and why President Donald Trump is using it as a catchphrase. Then Dr. Emily Nagoski, author of “Come Together: The Science (and Art!) of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections,” joins the show to discuss what the conservative policy agenda Project 2025 means for sex educators. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What an excellent show we have today.

Danigl Young, author of Wrong, how media politics and identity drive our appetite for misinformation, joins us to talk about what common sense means and why Donald Trump's using it as a catchphrase. Then we'll talk to Dr. Emily Nagowski, famed author of Come Together about what Project 2025 means for sex educators. But first, let's have some fun. We never talk about sports on this show due to much, much to Andy's chagrin. And we're not going to talk about sports today either. But I am going to talk about the Super Bowl halftime show seen around the world by a hundred million people, which was the art of resistance. Kendrick Lamar was probably the best choice, even though this decision was made. well before we knew the results of the election to offer the halftime performance.

The incorporation of Samuel L. Jackson as Uncle Sam, who comes out and essentially welcomes everyone to the American game. Kenjel Gamar opening up and saying that he was, Kenjel Lamar opens the show and says, the revolution's about to be televised. You pick the right time, but the wrong guy. The entire critique of America, using Samuel L. Jackson as Uncle Sam, saying, don't be too loud, don't be too ghetto, was an actual response to what Kendrick Lamar received. There was a letter sent by a group of Republican Louisiana lawmakers to the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation ahead of the Super Bowl, demanding that his performance not be, quote, too lewd or offensive, aka too black. because it would offend, quote-unquote, hard-working taxpayers with children, again, i.e., hardworking and taxpaying, being white. It was the blackest, most brilliant, halftime show I've ever seen, but from beginning to end, with Lettuce, Performing, Lift Every Voice, and Sing, the Black National Anthem, John Baptiste singing the Star Spengel Banner, Kenjell Mar's performance, it was a gorgeous display

of resistance through art. And I just thought it was superb. Yeah, I thought it was great too. Maybe the only Super Bowl halftime show I can think of that I thought was better was Prince. And partially that was just because the rain was streaming down while he was doing purple rain. And it was just absolutely amazing.

But no, that was a fantastic performance. We were talking before we started recording. My view on this was, because I've seen some, obviously there was the MAGA, was incensed by this. Matt Gates particularly tweeted he didn't like it, but I would assume that's because not like us is sort of about him as well. But I saw some critiques from the left saying that Kendrick didn't go far enough. Someone said he should have burnt an American flag, which you're never going to do at a Super Bowl. I mean, come on. No. But what I thought was that it was what he did was used sort of what you were talking about, Danielle, the calls to not be too lewd, to not be

to whatever. And he used that to be more artful about his, I guess, resistance. I just don't like that word all that much these days, but about his protest, about what he was saying. And by using, as you said, whoever's idea was to use Samuel L. Jackson dressed up his uncle Sam to be sort of echoing, whether you want to call it white America or mainstream America, I don't, whatever, absolute genius. And making an American flag out of black bodies. Because you look at that and you're like, hey, I'm using the symbols of patriotism. I'm just using them not the way you want me to necessarily.

But you can't get mad at me. I'm daking an American flag. And so it was sort of that sort of subversion. And a lot of that is, I think, because of the constrictions. And I just thought it was a really genius way of working around constrictions to absolutely make the point that you want to make. Yeah, you can't erase black culture and the black experience. And I just, it was amazing. Okay.

So speaking of trying to erase things and this administration, boy, if you can call it that, this regime has been busy at work. over nearly four weeks, trying to do everything from end birthright citizenship via executive order and fiat, closed down USAID over executive order and freezing out civil servants who make our country and make these agencies go round, all because of President Musk, right, and his desire to use his power and his influence, his $400 billion of disgusting wealth in order to make sure that those that are most vulnerable remain that way. But right now, Andy, the response from judges on the federal bench have, I don't know, conjured a little bit of faith inside of me that maybe the rule of law isn't entirely dead just yet. Yes, they are nothing but good signs so far. I worry that as

they get up higher in the chain, it's not going to be so great, particularly once any of this gets to the Supreme Court. But yes, absolutely. So far, we have seen, I think it's now three judges, sort of slap down the idea that the president can just end birthright citizenship with an executive order when for a hundred plus years it has been the law of the land because of the 14th Amendment. And then we have seen another judge on Monday halting another funding freeze for NIH, the National Institutes of Health, and basically saying that a judge had already ruled, had already put a temporary restraining order on that. And this judge is basically saying that the Trump administration has not been in compliance with that order. It's the same judge. Sorry, it's John McConnell, basically saying, hey, I issued a TRO.

You guys are ignoring it. You can't do that. So I'm issuing another ruling saying you've got to follow the rules here. And so yes, absolutely. So far we're seeing good work from judges. I hope it stays that way. And I'm assuming, Danielle, that the response to this from the administration has been, well, we got to go. If the judges say it, it's the law.

We got to go along with it, right? That's so cute of you to think that. No. But you also have, I guess, J.D. Vance. I don't know where he's been for a while, but I guess to make his presence known that he's actually. He's been tweeting. He's been tweeting, Daniel. Yes, yes, you're right. I guess from his office that he still has. So J.D. Vance tweets and says that, quote, judges aren't allowed evidently, Andy, to overrule the president because he has, quote,

legitimate power to defy judicial rulings. Maybe I'm wrong in all the schooling I've had. But I thought that in a democracy, you had three equal branches of government, right? That there was this thing called checks and balances in order to make sure that one branch, i.e. the executive branch, wasn't more powerful than the other ones. And so now you have the vice president of the United States saying that, quote, if a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be, be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general and how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power.

Make it make sense. Here's how I'm going to make it make sense. Vance knows that's not true. Oh, yeah. He's lying because I refuse to believe that a guy could graduate from Yale law school and have such a fundamental lack of understanding of how our legal system, how our judicial system, how our political system works. I do believe that he understands how it works. I do believe that he doesn't care and that he doesn't want it to work that way while the Trump administration is in charge. I can guarantee if it were a Democratic administration in charge, we would be seeing a different tune

from Vance, much as we did. you may recall that Joe Biden froze slash forgave some student loans. And there was a huge uproar from Republicans saying he couldn't do that. And then there was a judge's ruling that agreed with them. They were celebrating that judge's ruling. Oh, yeah. That seems to me to be sort of the same thing here. So no, J.D. Vance doesn't believe the things he is saying. And as Georgetown law professor, Steve Lattick, pointed out on Twitter, he said, the point of having elected, unelected judges in a democracy is so that whether acts of state are legitimate can be

decided by someone other than the people who are undertaking them. In other words, as you said, Danielle, checks and balances. Like, the executive branch saying something is legitimate doesn't make it legitimate. And what Vance and what Elon Musk and what others, what they want, again, and this is at this point, not even close to a shock, is they want Trump to be thought of as not a president, but as a monarch, as a dictator, call it what you will, where his edicts are the law.

And that's simply not how it works in this country. And there are many faults to America going back hundreds of years. This ain't one of them. This is actually a good thing. And so, of course, they want to ruin that too. Yeah, I want to lift this up as well because Elon Musk, unelected, right, unelected immigrant to the United States from South Africa, walked into the Department of Treasury with his in-cell goon squad of 19 and 20-year-olds to access our most personal information and data, right? Just given the keys to do whatever you want.

read code, change code, right? And over the weekend, also a federal judge restricted Elon Musk's access vis-a-vis doge to our most important information. And I just want to read this piece from the New Republic, from their article and pod, Musk threatened darken maga rages, where it was said that the ruling that the federal judge made over the weekend keeps Musk and his White House Doge team out of the Treasury Department databases with payment information. Other sensitive details about countless Americans,

not to mention tax returns. And they can't get in there and break the code if they start mucking about. Like the idea, I mean, we are getting ready in what, like two months, right? Is our tax day, right? April 15th. And there are so many posts and means.

going about that are just like, should I send my taxes directly to Tesla headquarters? Do I send them directly to Elon Musk? Because like, clearly my taxes are not actually going to go to American agencies, building of infrastructure, public schools or anything like that. They're literally going to just divert it via code by the Goon Squad to Elon Musk's pockets. And I'm like, I can't find the lie. No, there's no lie there at all, which would explain why you can't spot it. There's nothing wrong with your eyes, Daniel. Thank you. Speaking of actions that are absolutely illegal, Russell Vott, who is our new acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, he has told all staff to stay away from the office and do no work, according to Reuters, who got a

hold of an email he sent. They have also shut down the CFPB's Washington headquarters, and they they are basically looking to completely eliminate this department. It's not an accident that this department has gone after Elon Musk's companies for many, many violations of the law. The idea that you're going to kill the organization that protects consumers from financial shenanigans, whether they're from banks or large corporations or whatever, an organization that has gotten billions of dollars for consumers. This is what they want to shut down. This is all part of the Project 2025.

Russell Vaught was one of the key architects and writers of Project 2025. And all of this is illegal. The president cannot shut down the CFPB. But the question is, who is going to stop them? and the CFPB Union is now bringing a legal case. So we'll see what happens. But there's no end to this is, I think, the lesson here. No, and I wonder what they think continuing to lay off thousands of civil servants and workers,

what effect that is going to have on our economy, that they clearly don't give a shit about. Because when Donald Trump was asked recently on Fox about the price of eggs, the things that he campaigned on doing, he said, I don't care, right? Like, I don't care about the prices. And oh, by the way, yeah, the middle class is going to be hurt, but that's the price of progress. Because Donald Trump's progress and ideas of progress look a lot like regression. So, not quite sure if he understands what that word means. But the fact is that the CFPB was created in order to actually protect people from corporations that are duplicity. in not only in their terms and agreements, but in the ways that they work to hoodwink the public

out of millions and millions of dollars. Because of the CFPB, millions of Americans have been able to get back tens of millions of dollars from corporations. And that is clearly a problem to those who have made their entire wealth and fortune off of scheming and grifting and fucking lying to the public. These people that thought that they were voting Donald Trump in in order to get their prices down, in order for their lives to be better, I'm just curious as to how they've been feeling

over the last few weeks. And according to recent polls out of CBS, not that fucking well, right? Where 66% of Americans feel as if, oh, Donald Trump is not, quote, unquote, focusing on the right things. Yeah, because guess what? Ending diversity, equity, and inclusion,

transparency and just neglecting to follow the rule of law isn't exactly what the American people voted for in November. But what do I know? A lot, Daniel. And I'll just leave us with the words of Elizabeth Warren, who is one of the big champions of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And she said, if you have a bank account or credit card or mortgage or student loan, this is code red. I am ringing the alarm bell. Elon Musk and the guy who wrote Project 22. 25, Russ Vaught are trying to kill the CFPB. If they succeed, CEOs in Wall Street will once again be free to trick, trap, and cheat you. This is what fighting for you apparently means to this administration.

Dr. Danigle Young is a professor of communications and political science at the University of Delaware and the author of the fantastic book, Wrong, How Media Politics and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation. She recently wrote a fascinating piece for. or Theconversation.com entitled How Populous Leaders like Trump Use Common Sense as an ideological weapon to undermine facts. She joins me now to explain. Dana, thank you so much for being here. Great. Thanks for having me back. So as you note in the piece, in his inaugural address last month, Trump called for, quote, the revolution of common sense. And then later in the month, he was asked how he could blame the aircraft collision over the Potomac on diversity policies, even before any

investigation, he replied, because I have common sense. It's easy to roll our eyes at this. Actually, he said, because I have common sense. Okay. Okay. Right. Fair point. But it is, it's really easy to roll our eyes at this, but

basically what you're saying is we shouldn't. So start by explaining exactly what people mean when they use the phrase common sense. This is such a wild thing. As soon as you start to learn about it and think about it critically, you're going to hear this everywhere. This phrase, common sense. You're going to hear it from folks in the Trump

administration, but also from conservative leaders across various states. The concept of common sense that we all know, this sort of general concept of common sense is just, we all know this to be true. We all, we don't need to read books to understand this. We all just walk around and know this thing, right? But the way that scholars think about this, they call it a lay epistemology, meaning a lay person or regular person's way of coming to truth or way of understanding the world. Most of us, when we're going about our business, walking through life, we're making decisions every day like at the grocery store or in traffic or with parenting or whatever. We're usually doing that based on our personal, like, direct experience because it's really

proximate to us. And that's how we learn really well is from what we have lived through. we also make decisions based on our intuition or our gut, but also our emotional responses to things. Those are the things that fundamentally guide us. Now, when it comes to how else might someone come to truth, how else might someone guide their decisions, it would be through perhaps some kind of deference to expertise, maybe people who have dedicated their lives to the study of a thing, to some kind of methodical investigation where they're acquiring evidence and facts and perhaps data, that is a different way of coming to truth. So when people say trust common sense and when Trump says, I know that this plane crash was caused by DEI because I have

common sense, okay? What it does is it, first of all, proposes that we all should assume that DEI caused the plane crash. That's one piece. The other piece is it suggests that you do not need investigations or evidence or expertise or data to come to a conclusion because our gut and our emotional responses are the things that are going to bring us to truth. And I'll tell you all, Andy, in most of our lives, like personally, common sense is often really celebrated. Like people always say, listen to your gut. What did your gut say?

Like in relationships, like, oh, should I break up with this guy? what does your gut say? Like no one's saying, look at the expertise, like look at, look at self-help books and look at the data and evidence, right? So we live in a culture where intuition and common sense are really celebrated. So it resonates with us. What we have to be really careful about, though, is that when people and leaders use this as like, this is the way to truth, what it actually is doing is setting the stage for, one, us to be guided by our biases. and what we already want to think is true. And number two, it sets us up to be more open to misinformation and disinformation because if leaders are saying, you don't need evidence in data, you don't need to listen to experts, it is actually paving the road for them to be able to deliver bullshit. Yeah, and we're always sort of told that common sense reveals obvious truths and that it really is its value neutral.

But the research shows otherwise, doesn't it? And that's, you use the word biases. And that's exactly what the research reveals about common sense, isn't it? Yeah, common sense is the opposite of value neutral. Common sense is fundamentally value-laden. And not only is it value-laden, not only is it ideologically laden, right? So conservatives common sense looks a hell of a lot different than a liberal's common sense, right? It's also really embedded with your social identity.

So depending upon what, quote-unquote, team you're on, your common sense is going to tell you a completely different thing. Maybe not just because of your worldview, but because of, you know that the way that your team makes sense of the world is this way. And when Donald Trump signals that and says, yeah, everything's going to hell in a handbasket because of DEI, right? Like, DEI is sort of this boogeyman. If you identify with Trump and you think of yourself as somebody who's on his team and he's this exemplar of your team, his way of coming to truth is going to shape your way of coming to truth. And if he says his gut tells him it's this, then you're going to be like, well, this amazing prototype, this shining star of my team says his gut tells him as DEI. So my gut also

tells me it's DEI. And there really is nothing accidental about the use of the phrase common sense for someone like Trump. It's the language of populism, right? Correct. And we actually find that this isn't just like a Trumpy thing. This is something that populists around the globe are doing and have done. When I published this article, I had a lot of feedback and emails from folks saying, we actually saw this in Canada with the right-winning movement in Canada. Leaders really celebrating common sense. It's all about common sense. And the reason why exactly, it's what you said, that because populism is predicated on this moral divide between the so-called corrupt elites, people in power, we're all bad and corrupt, and the good, pure people, the people, usually

working class people, people who are like working with their hands, whose crafts are perceived as pure and good, those people, the way that they come to truth, it's through common sense, direct experience, and emotional responses. And if that's how good people come to truth, then that is the most pure truth that one can arrive at. Now, I got to say, if left to our own devices, like tens of thousands of years ago, our intuition, our common sense and our gut, were actually a wonderful way to bring us to truth such that we would survive. The reason that they're not great now is because we do not live in a benign information environment, like the jungle tens of thousands of years ago.

We live in an information environment where between algorithms and leaders seeking power and profit, all of these entities are trying to exploit our natural inclinations for their own benefit, to their own benefit. So common sense intuition and gut are not inherently bad. Okay. They are highly exploitable because they never actually urge us to consider new information. They never actually encourage us to think we could be wrong. Right. How often is your gut like everything that you thought was true is probably not. Like probably not. Your gut is an ego protective device. Your gut is designed to also make you feel good. Yeah. Yeah. And that really, I was thinking about this. And it's like a lot of times when you think about common sense, you think about something like,

well, if I'm near a stove and I feel heat, I probably shouldn't put my hand on the stove. And that's common sense. But that's obviously not the same thing as Donald Trump saying DEI caused a plane collision. But what he's trying to do is make them the same thing, right? Yeah. And it's super attractive to us because to be told that something is just common sense is like, yeah, to think otherwise would be super dumb. It also suggests that if anyone is trying to suggest some other more complex thing to you, they're probably either corrupt or ideologically biased or have their own agenda. And that is something that we're seeing a lot come through this administration and their sort of allies, this sense that existing institutions, whether they be media institutions,

or academic institutions or medical institutions or scientific institutions, because they are doing complex work that maybe isn't super understandable to the layperson, that complexity is itself supposed to be an indicator of either corruption and or bias, which is really something. a scary anti-intellectual path to take because we actually, we can't all be experts in all the things. We can't be experts in like astrophysics and cancer and this and that, like that just, we need area experts who specialize in a thing and dedicate their lives to that thing to be able to advance the work in that thing. So most of us aren't going to understand a whole hell of a lot of what experts do.

But the translational piece and the trust piece, those are essential. Unfortunately, trust in major institutions has declined across the board. And that's not just in the U.S., that's a global phenomenon. And you've done research that shows that the more a person trusts common sense, the more likely they are to be wrong, right? Yeah, and this is, it's so tricky because I've gotten pushback on this piece. We published a piece with my colleagues at the University of Delaware, finding that people who report trusting intuition and emotion as the best ways to get to truth,

they were actually more likely to believe misinformation related to both COVID and the 2020 election. Now, both of those areas and both of those areas of misinformation, meaning they believed that COVID was a hoax. They were more likely to believe that COVID was no more deadly than the flu. And on the election piece, they were more likely to believe that Donald Trump had won the election and that there was rampant fraud in the election. In order for, like, those are demonstrably false claims. And we know that because of the institutions that study those things, because of the courts who looked through everything and said no, Joe Biden won, etc. And on the COVID front, it is medical science shows us these things. It is tricky because belief is. in those two bodies of misinformation, it's higher among people who trust intuition and emotion in their gut.

But even to this day, they still do not concede that those things are false. So even when I'm talking about these results, it's tricky because they're like, well, those things are true. They're actually demonstrably false. It really is the chicken and egg thing. The other thing that was interesting was that we separately measured to what extent people trusted evidence and data. or they felt that when they have a hunch, it should be confirmed with evidence before they believe it. People who trusted evidence and data the most

were significantly less likely to believe in this information about both COVID and the 2020 election. And perhaps unsurprisingly, both of these ways of knowing are associated with support for Donald Trump. The more you support Donald Trump, the more likely you are to trust intuition and emotion, the more you support Donald Trump, the less likely you are to trust evidence and data.

So there's a real synergy here that I think is at work. And that's why I kind of dubbed this sort of the populist playbook because it's not just Trump, right? Like this is sort of the schick of these folks on the right in these populist movements. And I think it's dangerous because it creates this feedback loop and paves the way for more propaganda to come. Well, and again, I mean, something we're seeing now is Trump and musk, et cetera, trying to gut the National Institutes of Health, basically trying to eliminate a lot of sources of information, of research, of study. And that really does go hand in hand with the sort of, we don't need those things. We've got our gut. Absolutely correct. So I was trying

to put weave this together into this piece. It's actually kind of a short piece, right? that all of these things are tied together. When you have huge cuts at NSF and you have huge cuts at NIH, and you have the National Science Foundation, which has historically been tracking global ocean temperatures, right, for decades, tracking the effects of climate change on ocean temperatures. Then you have the NIH tracking cancer rates and cancer rates as they are associated with all different aspects of population dynamics

and industry, etc. the ability to understand the actual causes and perhaps solutions for these large-scale problems is facilitated through getting huge, giant, large-scale data sets. Otherwise, we're leapsed with our direct experience. And our direct experience might be great in a limited way, but our direct experience is not going to help us understand how to solve climate change, or the cause of the climate change or the causes of cancer.

So to the extent that they are cutting what is fundamentally the acquisition and production of knowledge, they are fueling more common sense, quote unquote common sense, intuitive and emotion-based ways of understanding the world, which will inevitably lead to more biased perceptions

of the causes for social problems, the solutions for social problems, and who is good and who is bad. And as you say in the piece, this even applies to things like meta, eliminating fact-checking in favor of community notes. I immediately saw these things that's tied together because for a long time, Zuckerberg, Zuckerberg's journey has been fascinating. That could be a whole other show, right? Zuckerberg for a long time said, no, we're not responsible for the content on our platform.

And then it was clear that Russia had created fake accounts and exploited Facebook's decentralization in the 2016 election. Okay. So then Zuckerberg says, we are responsible. So now we're going to do more intense content moderation. But content moderation is hard and expensive. And they then became the target of the right. So you have Jim Jordan's weaponization committee, basically looking into, quote, of quote, censorship. It was unsure, expensive and a pain in the ass for Facebook to deal with this for years. And two weeks before Trump was inaugurated, Zerner, Zuckerberg conveniently was like, you know what, we're not going to moderate content anymore.

We're not going to moderate misinformation anymore. People can say whatever the fuck they want. Because, man, if I'm going to have to moderate lies on Facebook and Trump is president, things are going to get real, real uncomfortable, real fast. That's my sense, right? So, but by changing what they had was a partnership with independent expert fact-checking organizations, right? These are nonpartisan expert organizations that, Don't just say, this is a lie or this is true. They go in and they look at, they interview additional sources. They look at data.

They look at statistics. They look at history. To shed light on claims that are being made. To be able to kind of come in as an arbiter of the truth. Zuckerberg's like, no, no more experts. We're just going to do community notes, which means taking the power out of the hands of trained experts and just giving it to people. which you're like, oh, okay, that's great.

So people can just weigh in and give context, and because the users are diverse, then great. People on the left, people on the right, and eventually the community notes will shape out to be neutral. Will they, though? Do we know that, though? Does public opinion of lay people really should be trusted to be more accurate than experts?

It's an open question. My sense is that this is more emblematic of like deference to a populous authoritarian approach to truth. Well, and Zuckerberg even said when he ended the fact-checking program, he said that they were, quote, too politically biased, right? Yeah. And again, that's the sense that if you have folks in these positions of expertise and these institutions that they're going to bring bias with them.

And I always think about Stephen Colbert's amazing quote from like 2004. I think it was in the White House correspondence dinner that he hosts it was George W. Bush, I think. And he said, yeah, reality has a well-known liberal bias. And if you look at the outcomes of scientific inquiry, it's fair to say that you're going to end up with sort of versions of reality that are going to be more in line with a liberal view of the world. But I don't think that's because scientists are corrupt. It's not like a scientist or ideologically. It's because the way that a liberal approach to governance works is that you're going to look for systemic solutions to problems. And that's kind of what science does, right? That's kind of what a lot of the work and research in higher ed does is looking for answers, sort of systemic solutions to problems, which if you're in the business of making government smaller and putting more control in the hands of individual people, and making sure that individual people have as much freedom as they can, you can understand how there is an ideological asymmetry there.

Yeah, absolutely. Unfortunately, I'm out of time, which I hate because I love talking to you. But the bottom line seems to be when a politician or someone like that starts talking about common sense, you should use your own common sense to know that they are doing that for an ideological reason. Well said. Well said. Technically young, thank you so much for being here. And hopefully I'll have you back soon.

Great. Thanks so much, Andy. Folks, I am so excited to welcome back to the new abnormal Dr. Emily Nogowski, who is the famed sexual health doctor, American sex educator, researcher, and New York Times bestselling author of books that you have read. And if not, you should, come as you are, come together, burnout, among others, as well as TED Talks that have been seen now. by millions. Dr. Nogowski, we're living in wild times. And when I say that, it's like there are so many directions to go. But I think that what is really interesting right now is this idea that there is this resurgence of white Christian nationalism, which is wrapped up in patriarchy, which is largely anti-woman, anti-free expression, anti-LGB, and the list goes on and on from there. And I think that what we have been witnessing coming from Republican, Maga Republicans and policies, whether they be at the state level or

now at the federal level with this second administration of Trump, is a desire to pull America back, pull women and queer people back to, I thought initially it was the 1950s, but now I have a sneaking suspicion that I was thinking about the wrong. century. Yes. Just what do you make of this kind of stamping down of free expression, of sexual liberation, of bodily autonomy, and this pseudo-conservatism that is also battling with the trad wives, but yet these people that come from histories of sexual violence and aggression towards women. Yeah. So in 2020, I was really worried that Trump might win a second term. So I spent my lockdown reading every book I could get my hands on about fascism's autocracies and dictatorships.

I wanted to know what my role would be as a sex educator in that situation. Turns out that reading paid off because here we are and I can use what I learned because of what I learned was that the keystone, the universal aspect of all of these governmental systems, regardless of who they is, because there's always got to be an enemy within, all of them are characterized by a misogynist patriarchal, regionally enforced gender binary. And you've got to ask yourself, why? And it turns out that the why is that they absolutely require anybody with the uterus to be using that uterus, to make babies to build more population, to have more people either to be cogs in the machines of capitalism, or else to be can and fodder. And that's what the people without uteruses are for.

We are their livestock, and we are being forced into, sorry to use like, it's dark. Yeah, no, no, say it. Dark. And I think if we understand the full extent of the necessity of our obedience to rigid gender roles, the more we understand why trans people are the ultimate, because they are living, breathing, walking, talking, joyful, gorgeous counter-narrative that actually you don't have to obey the rigid gender roles that you were assigned at birth. And in fact, it's not a binary at all. It is this gorgeous the way Kate Bornstein says, is that gender is a beginningless spectrum of endless possibilities. Wow. One, that is gorgeous in terms of just the phrasing around that. And I have long thought

as a person that is from the LGBTQ community. I have long thought, why trans people, right? Like, why do they pinpoint on a population that is hovering around 1%? And it is exactly for the reasons that you stated. It is this idea that you do not have to embody or show up in or follow the binary, that you can actually exist as you are as you want, right? And that their freedom, their freeness, just by virtue of existing, is an affront and is a danger to the patriarchy. So I just want to like unpack that a bit because there are people.

right? And we're at a point where, I mean, well, we're well past it, but we're at this point where it is very clear who is being pointed at, who is being targeted, and many people, rightfully so, are in fear, right? And because of that fear, they're like, I'm not a part of that group, right? So I don't need to link arms with those people. And I continually remind people of the Martin Neumola poem, first they came for, right, that you don't have to. have to know somebody that is trans to understand what they are doing with this identity to serve as a mechanism for do not be like these people because we're coming for you. So can you just unpack it a bit in terms of the patriarchy, misogyny, and the valuelessness that they see

in women and feminine bodies? Yeah. So I was describing sort of like the system, like, what are the requirements of the system from us. Why do they require us to perform our genders according to their rules? But the mechanism within the system that they're using to make sure we are obedient is shame around gender. 25 or more years ago, when I was first trained around trans issues, the person came in and did the training and at the end of it, I was like, so why? Why do people get so angry about a trans person walking down the street. Remember, this is like 1999, 2000. And the person leading the training said, well, how do you feel about your gender? And first of all, as a cisgender person, I had never thought about it before, which in and of itself is a privilege. But then I was like,

yeah, feel pretty good about it. And the person leading the workshop said, so there are a lot of people who feel really insecure in their gender, who have invested a lot of time, energy, and money, into making sure they're performing their gender correctly, and to see a person walking down the street defying their gender role, it suggests that all that time and energy and money that you have spent investing in your rigidly constructed gender identity was a waste, and there actually is a world where you can be precisely who you are without following those rules, and in order not just,

So it's multiple things. It's both this person is daring to defy the rules I thought I had to follow and I find that intolerable. But also I need everybody else who's watching me to know that I know that I'm not allowed to break the rules. And so I'm going to do everything I can to destroy that person who dares to be free so that everybody around me knows that I know that that's wrong. Wow. That's it in a nutshell. The person who says this, if you want to follow someone in social media who says this so beautifully, Alok Menon is. Oh, yes. Already a great follow. But yes, for all of the listeners, yes. And they have a new comedy special called Biology. And I'm pretty sure you have to say it.

Biology. When we look, right, at the attacks. Most recently, the executive orders coming down from Trump to ban transatl. women from sports to ban what we saw on Capitol Hill against the newly elected representative Sarah McBride, who is the first openly trans member of Congress and the policies coming down about the bathroom, the policies. Everything is largely to the point that you're making a reminder of your place, a reminder of where we are going to put you and where you should belong. And I want to understand for people who are not trans, for people who are cisgender, what is the example?

What is the alarm? The example that they're trying to make, but the alarm that should be going off in all of our heads to kind to, again, link us to this shared struggle that is around freedom and free expression. Oh, yeah. In terms of the poem, first they came for the trans kids. Now they're coming for the trans adults. And here's the thing, just because you're not trans doesn't mean you're not breaking the rules of your gender. I am child free by choice. I am breaking the rules. And there's a world where they start coming for me because I'm breaking the rules. They will narrow the rules of what is acceptable for us in our gender performance if you dare to be a cisgender man who is a stay-at-home parent. How dare you? Like, we're going to make it so that you are not allowed to stay-at-home

with your kids while your partner wins the bread that sustains the livelihood of your family. They're going to narrow it down so that if you dare to be a cisgender woman in a workplace, they're going to make your life miserable. They're going to make it impossible for a woman who has a job to get child care. And again, you look at this party, right, which is filled with hypocrisy, which is filled with lies, right? This MAGA party. And they say, that they are the party of family values. They have said that they are the party of life, right? Yeah. They say all of these things. And yet, exactly to your point about if you cared about people,

you would make sure that child care was something that everyone could access. Right. Right. Who want, if you cared about life, you would make sure that everybody that wanted to be a parent could be a parent. You wouldn't be banning, right? Procedures like IVF. and other fertility treatments that both straight, cis, and queer people access in order to create the families that they want. Yeah, most people who get abortions are already parents. And we know that reducing access to abortion results in more people being sick and dying, which means those kids losing a parent. So if you're in favor of families, you have to be in favor of the whole range of reasons. reproductive health care. If you really care about families, you're going to address the health

inequities that mean that black women in America are three to four times more likely to die in childbirth. Do you actually care about families? Do you just care about very specific families? There was a hilarious situation where the Department of Transportation was going to prioritize funding to districts that have the highest birth rates. Transportation, they're going to fix the potholes in places where they, like, child care was right there as a thing you could do to help people. Of course, they don't want to do that because they want women to have no option but to stay at home and take care of their kids. And I am not saying that being a stay-at-home mom is a bad thing. I'm saying not having a choice is the problem. And they want to make it so that there is no option. And that's the thing that I feel

like is the thread that goes through all of the groups that they attack, all of the, quote unquote policies that they try and introduce at the state, local and federal level is all about making sure that people have no choice, making sure that people's lives are as small and as miserable as possible, making sure that we are just fighting over whatever crumbs are left behind and moving through this place of scarcity as opposed to understanding and seeing, right, that there is abundance and that we need to look at systems and how they've been constructed in a more holistic and expansive way. What do you think that the opposition, right, to this way of thinking, to this scarcity gets wrong in terms of the ways in which that we message

and talk about what is happening? Because I feel like we just go group by group instead of focusing on the collective harm that's being done. Yeah. So two things. One, I actually think the conversation starts with addressing the big daddy bad, which is capitalism itself. And I feel like the key to addressing the big daddy of the big bads is with Trisha Hersey's work around rest as the antidote to capitalism and white supremacy. And it feels so difficult for people to center rest in their lives, not just sleep, but all forms of rest. because it feels like we have to scrape and scrap for, we have to wear ourselves out in grind culture to get every little bit of everything it takes just to be able to pay our rent and feed our kids and put clothes on our backs. But the way we begin to unravel from those lies is to put rest at the

center of our resistance and let the other pieces fall into place from that. And the other thing I really want for everyone who hears this, if you're a cisgender person, right on letter to your 13-year-old self about the ways that you have undone the lies you were being told then about who you were required to be based on the gender you were assigned. Talk about the ways that that assignment prevented you from having access to resources and opportunities that you longed for. Talk about the ways that parts of that felt right and were a really good fit and other parts really, really weren't. All of us have a gender story, and I want us to be aware of the ways that we have been walking around inside of that story so that when the time comes that we need to

put our cisgender bodies in front of a trans person. We are deeply connected to ourselves as a gendered person and know that we had as much choice as every trans person. This is the choice that feels best and right for us. We are all equally free and all of us are equally dependent on the freedom of everyone else. With just the few minutes that I have left with you, which this is just, it feels so, so short, is I want to talk about the gendered story. Women, I feel like those that are inside of feminine bodies understand all the ways in which we've been tempered, right? sit like a lady, dress like this, speak like this, move like this, be like this, just this balance beam of existence. And if you make one misstep, you can crash out. Men, however, seem to just

be understanding. And we as a society unpacking the gender story that male bodies have been told. Can you speak to the importance of that and expanding this idea. of masculinity beyond the toxicity that we've been fed. So in burnout, which I co-wrote with my twin, we're identical twins. They're a-gender, non-binary. But in burnout, we describe the way women are raised as being a human giver syndrome.

We are obliged to be pretty, happy, calm, generous, and unfailingly attentive to the needs of others. And if this is a moral obligation, so if we dare to meet our moral obligation, we deserve to be punished. And if there's no one around to punish us, we're just going to go ahead and beat the crap out of ourselves. Men, if you're assigned boy at birth, you have, I describe it as human winner syndrome in come together. Human winners have this moral obligation to fight and win, to be strong, competitive, infallible, and independent. And there is no win you can win. that means you can stop fighting. You have to fight forever and you will never fully have earned your

right to exist. Everybody is profoundly fucked over by the gender binary and only in the process of recognizing that that happened to us and that we have a choice about it. Do we have the opportunity to break free and I'm not saying it's easy? But I am saying that when you do, that opens the gateway not just to expanding justice for everyone, but also going back to my actual profession, the kind of sex that turns the universe into rainbows. Oh, Dr. Nogowski. We need 17 more episodes and hours with you.

Yeah, I communicate in 100,000 words at a time. Like, it is just too good. We will have to leave it there today, but I appreciate you. appreciate your work, your activism, and just the language that you provide to all of us to be able to understand and unpack where we are and how we got here. Thank you. Thank you so much for making the time for the new abnormal. Really appreciate you. Thank you. It's genuinely my pleasure. Andy Levy. Danielle Moody. How are you kicking off this good, good week with your Fuck That Guy?

Technically my fuck that guy will be neo-nazis. I assume I don't have to explain why. Not on this show anyway. Yes, well, fair. It may be some Kanye fans in the audience. Right. But what I really want to do is highlight the way some people are pushing back on neo-Nazis. I don't know if you saw over the weekend or maybe I think it was on Friday, a neighborhood in Ohio in the, I believe in the greater Cincinnati area called Lincoln Heights was subject to a group of neo-Nazis hanging banners.

and flags off of overpasses, various things like that. And the town is considered a historically black community. The town's residents started by yelling at them to leave. They then set fire to one of the neo-Nazi flags. They basically chased them out of town. And obviously, this is absolutely fantastic. I guess there's a question as to whether the sheriff's office in that county, Hamilton County, why they allowed the neo-Nazis to hang this flag. But we can probably figure out the reason for that. Mm-hmm. I just thought it was so tremendous.

And if you haven't seen video, there's video of the flag being set on fire and it being stomped on. And it's really cathartic, and it's really, really nice to see. So I want to highlight that. And then along with that, Springfield, Ohio,

which you may remember as the place where Haitian immigrants were, according to Donald Trump and J.D. Vance and others, they were eating the dogs and eating the cats. The city there is now suing a neo-Nazi group for what it says was, according to the Washington Post, leading an intimidation campaign against people who defended the area's Haitian community from these racist attacks. There's a white supremacist organization called the Blood Tribe, and basically they called on their supporters. to launch a quote-unquote hit on Springfield. And they showed up at Springfield Jazz and Blues Festival, waving swastika flags, wearing red and black uniforms, pointing guns at families, et cetera.

And so the city of Springfield is now fighting back by suing them. And so I wanted to sort of highlight these two things. So much of this show is, understandably, we don't really have a choice. It's talking about a lot of really, really bad shit. We all here at the new web normal think it's, It's good to highlight some good stuff that's going on and some stuff that gives us hope and some stuff that shows Americans acting like actual human beings as opposed to most of the things that we cover here on the show. So for that reason, the neo-Nazis are my fuck-that guy, but the city of Springfield, Ohio and the residents of Lincoln Heights, Ohio, are my sort of heroes of the week. Oh, very good. I like that, Andy. Yeah, I think that is really important to lift up the acts of protests that are developing around the country of Americans deciding to take their cities and their towns back when neo-Nazis, white supremac organizations now feel like they can march down city streets, march down Main Street, because they feel like they have been given a green light from the white supremacist regime.

that is in the White House. People are taking action. And there are lots of folks that continue to ask, like, what can I do? What should I be doing? I feel helpless. I fear full of fear. And I'm like, there are actions being taken all around the country. And these are examples of them of how people are uniting together.

Maga may be loud and they are indeed in power right now, but people have a lot of power as well. So, bravo to these communities that are linking arms in the way that we need. need to be in this moment. All right, Danielle, drag us back in the gutter, I guess. You're fucked that guy. Thank you. Thank you for that. So speaking of gutters, New York City and Mayor Adams. Eric Adams has shown himself to be an abysmal character. Not only is he a grifter, a schemer, and a liar, and is under investigation and has been indicted for these things, but he has been tap dancing for Donald Trump and for MAGA in order to say, and he has been, save his own ass, right, from a federal prison where he is, would in fact beheading if he wasn't

tap dancing for Donald Trump right now. What are one of the ways that he's tap dancing? Well, let us tell you. So earlier on Monday, Eric Adams apparently gathered his top commissioners giving them marching orders around the Trump administration. Number one, don't criticize Donald Trump. and number two, don't interfere with immigration enforcement. Oh, and number three, trust the crooked ass mayor. Y'all, first of all, in a democracy, you absolutely have the right to criticize whoever the fuck you want, right? Namely, the president of the United States.

Number two, New York City, before Mayor Adams decided to hand it over to Donald Trump and his MAGA administration on a platter, was a sanctuary, for immigrants and undocumented people. And number three, trust the mayor. Why would I trust a liar and a thief and somebody who's been indicted on those very charges who has stolen from the people of New York City, allegedly? But there's no other reason why you would be down in Mar-a-Lago more than you are in your office right now if, in fact, you weren't trying to get out of jail-free card.

But just because Adam seems to be extraordinary. dense, let me make it plain. You are only as beneficial to Donald Trump as you are wiggling around on the end of the fishing rod, right, as the bait. Donald Trump pardons you now. What good are you to him? You're not. So if you think that you're going to get a pardon at the end of the day, the day is never going to end for you. The song is never going to go off and the tap dancing is going to continue because you're better serving him, right, in that way. But Eric Adams, not that bright. So I wanted to make it clear for him.

And if this is not clear enough, you are absolutely and totally my wholeheartedly fuck that guy to start this week. Yeah, could not agree more. I guess it's worth pointing out that this whole thing started because there was some confusion over what city employees are supposed to do. if Immigrations and Customs Affforcement agents try to come into city buildings, which of course includes schools and hospitals. And as reported by the great local outlet, the city, there was a memo in January that instructed city employees to intercept ICE agents attempting to end the buildings. And then Hellgate, which is another spectacular local outlet here in New York City, said that another memo had gone out saying that employees could let federal law enforcement in if they feel

reasonably threatened. And so there was a bunch of confusion among officials. And that's when Adams basically said, stop complaining, keep your head down, refrain from criticizing President Trump, and trust that Adams will make sure the city doesn't get federal grants pulled. And they were also ordered not to be critical of the president or federal government on social media. Look, all of this is, we've seen other mayors, we've seen governors say, hell no, you are not coming into our schools. You're not coming into our hospitals trying to deport people. Apparently, that's not the case here in New York because somebody wants a pardon. And somebody is also kind of anti-immigrant to begin with.

So I think this even goes beyond him wanting a pardon from Trump. I think he agrees with Trump on this. So fuck that guy. Fuck that guy. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of The New Abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder.

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