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April 16, 2021 - The Megyn Kelly Show
01:10:41
20210416_katie-herzog-and-jesse-singal-on-culture-wars-the-
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Welcome to The Megan Kelly Show 00:02:05
Welcome to The Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
Welcome to The Megan Kelly Show.
Today on the program, we have got a treat for you.
A team of reporters, social commentators, and stars of the hit podcast Blocked and Reported, Jesse Single and Katie Herzog.
Now, I first fell in love with them through Katie, who is the funniest thing going on Twitter.
I mean, you've got to find, if you don't follow her on Twitter, she's a reason to join Twitter.
She's just got a sense of humor like none other.
And he's right there with her.
He's just actually come out with a new book, which you might find interesting too.
We'll talk about it a little bit about fad psychology and why it can't cure our social ills.
Just when you thought you had life solved.
But these two are sort of, I think I described them the other day as sort of disaffected liberals or sort of liberals who have been kicked out of the liberal crew because they're not taking the same approach to issues like, I don't know, transgender rights. as others.
I mean, they're totally pro-trans rights, 100% pro, but they write openly about some of the issues that have been caused, like what happens when somebody detransitions and what happens with some of these puberty-blocking drugs?
Is it as safe as people would have you believe?
Actual journalism, that's all it is, but they get hammered, right?
They get hammered.
Nonetheless, they persist and they haven't lost their senses of humor along the way.
Their podcast is described as, and I quote, part politics, part pop culture, part obsessive dissection of esoteric internet slap fights and sporadically insightful.
Anyway, you're going to enjoy the conversation.
We'll get to them in one second.
I promise you'll like them.
But first, this.
Hey, guys.
Hey.
Hi.
Thank you so much for having us, mate.
The pleasure is all mine.
I'm so excited.
There are so many things I want to ask you, including this one.
Katie, I love you on Twitter, and I don't understand why you are wearing a scuba suit in your little Twitter.
What is it?
What are you wearing in that little picture?
Biomedical Ethics and Lupron 00:16:21
It is a.
So I was a.
I had a show on the local, like, PBS station.
And at one point, they forced me to put on a wetsuit and a scuba mask and swim in a tank with salmon.
This is what they, this is what PBS, this is what taxpayer money goes to.
So that's just to see if they were swimming upstream.
I don't like why did they make you do that?
It was, it was in a bit, it was like a sort of an environmental kind of show.
And it was, I don't actually remember what the exact episode was about, but, but it was an actual tank, like a, like a holding tank for like baby salmon that they would eventually release into the water.
It was very weird.
I love it because to me it bespeaks a lack of vanity, which to which I cannot relate, but I admire it in other women.
Well, it also has the added benefit of not showing my face.
So, so there's that.
Well, I saw something funny you tweeted out the other day.
Maybe it was, I don't know, it was recent, but you said something like, I love taking flights to, was it, where it was?
Oh, I just got that from Bale.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Veil because it allows me to keep up in the latest developments in plastic surgery.
Also, fur, lots of fur and veil.
Oh, is that right?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
It's a whole thing.
I don't do Vail a lot.
So I didn't know that.
It's Aspen Light, same vibe.
Okay.
What I do know about, I think it's Vail, is when you go out there and you drive to the mountain, there's a big liquor store called Beaver Liquors.
It's kind of fantastic.
I'll have to stop by next time I go.
Right.
Anyway, we go out to Montana, which is actually pretty nice.
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't know.
I'm gonna look at it in a new light now for new plastic surgery advances.
I had never considered that, but every time I go to Scottsdale, Arizona, or LA, yes, I have the same feeling as you.
And you know.
And probably only noticing the bad plastic surgery because you surely don't actually notice the good plastic surgery.
Well, can I tell you, I think that might be the difference between like New York and LA because the women here, I think, are vain, but they just don't look like they've been trying too hard.
You know, in LA, you see a lot of those huge lips and the huge boobs and the huge butts.
In New York, it's sort of more like an effortless, like, wow, why does she still look 20 when she just got her social security card?
In Seattle, it's just flannel and fleece.
It's not a very vain city.
I don't think I could make it there.
No, wait, are you there?
No.
I live in like a Navy town outside Seattle, but that's where I was until I bought a house out in kind of the suburbs.
But yeah.
Okay.
I mean, you tell me, but whenever I do a story about like some conservative who got run out of Seattle for a bad tweet or a bad, I'm like, I'm not a conservative, but I think I'm associated enough with the brand that I don't think I'd be happy.
I think people wouldn't like me.
You would be run out of town.
I mean, I'm not kidding when I say, like, Alex Jones was in Seattle for, I think, like five minutes before somebody threw a cup of coffee in his face.
Oh my God.
Wait, you're not equating me to that.
No, I'm not equating the two.
I'm not equating the two.
Not at all.
Katie Herzog couldn't really live there.
There's stickers all up calling her turf and everything.
Right.
If I'm problematic, you would be incredibly problematic in Seattle.
Yes.
Where are you, Jesse?
Where do you live?
I live in Brooklyn.
I'm recording this for my parents' house outside Boston.
I'm visiting them.
Okay.
So how did you two connect?
Online.
We met first through email.
I emailed Jesse when I was working on a story about detransitioners, and then we became Twitter buddies.
We get asked that question a lot, and I think we should start giving different answers every time.
Say we met at Twitter rehab or something like that.
No, we were married briefly in the 90s.
It's a long story.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We met at Adult Swim Camp.
Oh, no.
I like that.
Yeah.
Okay.
So you met online.
So it was Twitter love that brought you together, which I like.
Twitter love.
It was Twitter love that brought me together with you, too.
I fell in love with both of you guys.
You're so clever.
Your approach to humor is so, you're just, you're not afraid to say anything, which is rare in a journalist.
You make fun of anyone and everything, which I also love, most of all, yourselves and each other.
So there's something kind of endearing about your act, you know, like just the two of you mocking each other in a loving, respectful way.
But there's something very.
I think, like, underneath the.
Underneath the Twitter stick, there's no actual personality.
So we need to take off this front.
That's it.
So now, are you the other day when I was teasing you guys?
I'm like, how should I tease these guys?
And I went with something like, what did I say?
Like, ostracized liberals or heterodox.
I know you hate that word, liberals.
But like, am I correct to say you're more left leaning, but you've kind of been kicked out of the club because you've reported honestly on certain trans issues that have led people to say terrible things about you?
I think that's fair.
I mean, it's weird.
So, the reason I bristle a little at heterodox is like when you look at the views we've actually expressed, they, you know, 95% of the country would find them uncontroversial.
What's so weird about media right now is like you need to be in that 5% to remain in the good graces of sort of everyone on Twitter.
And yeah, I mean, I think we've tried to push back against the idea that we've said anything all that controversial, although the fact that we're treated as controversial tells you something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, so let's talk about that because this is.
There was a great piece about you, Jesse, in Quillette that I recommend everybody read.
And it's called The Campaign of Lies Against Journalist Jesse Single and Why It Matters.
And it sort of lays out what happened to you.
But one of the points I want to start with is.
The guy makes a great point.
The author makes a great point about how all the stuff you've said, I've said it.
A lot of people have said it.
And it's not a thing.
If you're at all affiliated with the right, you don't get in trouble for saying all the stuff you've said and reported.
If you are affiliated with the left, they come for you.
So why do you think that is?
Why do you get in such trouble for reporting that it's not even like, hey, you should consider detransitioning if you're trans?
It's, hey, some people have.
Detransitioned.
That's like you're reporting in a nutshell.
Yeah.
I mean, so I think this is a flaw that emerges in a lot of political movements.
There's definitely been versions of this on the right, but it's this whole thing of like you attack whoever is immediately to your left or to your right instead of, you know, taking a bigger picture approach.
So in recent weeks, Katie and I have both been getting attacked as though our writing inspired these state level laws seeking to ban youth transition.
But Katie and I have never come out against youth transition in that.
We've just said kids should be well assessed before they go on major medical treatments.
So I think, maybe from the point of view of people on the left, there's nothing they can do about Mitch McConnell, but they can sure as hell try to drive us out of the club and have some impact on our career in a way they can't on Mitch McConnell's, which I would argue is maybe not the best approach because we're sort of not the problem if you look at it correctly.
But it's a, I don't know, I do think there's something very peculiar about online politics at the moment.
And there's this real drive to purify your own spaces.
I think, I mean, you tell me what you think, Katie, but I feel like it's twofold.
They feel betrayed because you're supposed to be seeing the world, you know, as they do on their side.
And also, they feel more threatened because your sphere of influence is their people, you know, like they don't want somebody saying something they don't approve of in the circles in which they travel.
It's one thing if you're going to be Tucker Carlson, you're going to influence, you know, a bunch of folks who live in Mississippi, they can live with that.
But they can't live with you influencing Seattle and you, Brooklyn.
I think that's totally right.
I think both of you are right.
You know, it's this sort of narcissism of small differences where you could agree on 95% of the issue, but that 5% just becomes intractable.
And that becomes so threatening that there's this impulse to try to remove you from the conversation.
And it's really unfortunate because we should be debating these issues in a way that's evidence based and is good faith and not resorting to personal attacks on people.
Because I think, you know, In reality, we all do want the same thing, which is good outcomes for everybody.
But our ways of getting there are very destructive.
Well, and even if you take away sort of the overall goal of good outcomes for everybody, you're journalists.
You report on the facts, the facts, you don't make the facts.
You can, sure, you could say, I'm never going to report on anybody who's detransitioned, but why would you do that?
I mean, the news is the news.
This is a whole, this is a very large movement and a very large, Cultural development that the trans rights movement over the past 10 years, in particular.
And we have to be able to report on it.
And you don't get to just report the news that is pro one piece of it, or it's not even a pro or anti.
It's this is a piece of it.
This is part of what we're seeing.
It's made a lot of news just recently because of Kira Bell, this gal over in England who's really ticked off that she feels she was rushed through this process and transitioned from female to male and had a double mastectomy and is mad.
That not more people in the system stop to say, You sure you want this?
As opposed to, Yes, yes, affirm.
Yeah.
And what's so disturbing about it is, Katie and I both see ourselves as journalists, you know, opinion journalists, but we're not activists.
It's not our job to only present one party side or the other.
And The complete collapse of scientific journalism on this one subject, where it's just not treated like the.
It's basically like a biomedical ethics question.
It is really complicated to know how to best help a 12 year old who is in genuine anguish, but the only tools you have in your tool belt are these treatments that are experimental.
According to the UK government, there is not great evidence for them.
I happen to think that they are the best bet for kids who would otherwise suffer a great deal, but there's a genuine conversation to be had here.
It depresses me that we've gotten to the point where I almost have to point people to right wing outlets that I, on other issues, don't trust very much at all because our side of the aisle just isn't covering this issue well.
And covering this issue well does not mean invalidating these kids or saying they should never go on hormones.
It just means treating it like any other scientific controversy.
I found that really demoralizing and infuriating.
Well, can you talk about it?
Because you guys, you're pretty brave, I have to say, especially given that you've taken such a beating, both of you, for your reporting.
But I did hear you guys talking about recently these, I think it was puberty blockers, and how there really are risks to these.
And I will confess, I was in the camp of like, I'd heard people say that they could have potentially bad effects, but I never really researched it.
Seemed like a drug, is it Lupron that's been around a long time to, you know, for precocious puberty when somebody starts, you know, if a girl's going to get her period at eight, they'll give it to her or that kind of thing.
So I was like, how bad could it be?
And that gives the kid another couple of years to figure out.
Where they are mentally, if you're using it, if you think you're trans.
I learned a lot from what you were saying in terms of the long term studies that have been done on that for kids who have received it for non trans issues.
And they're a little scary, Katie.
Yeah.
So Lupron has been FDA approved since the early 90s as a pain reliever for women with endometriosis, as well as for precocious puberty.
But if you, it's sort of interesting.
So Jesse and I did a show about this a couple, I guess last week, specifically about these bills.
In North Carolina and Arkansas, and a couple other places that would ban puberty blockers for children and even for adults in some cases, or ban cross sex hormones for adults.
And if you Google Lupron, which is the brand name of this one particular puberty blocker, and side effects, what you find is that there are some very serious side effects.
In fact, it's apparently so toxic that it's not recommended for use for more than 12 months in a lifetime.
I found an article from a Las Vegas news station.
That says that the FDA has listed over 25,000 adverse reports for Lupron.
And there are really serious side effects like suicidal thoughts, stroke, muscle atrophy, bone and joint pain.
Some people say that it's affiliated with vision loss.
And you can find lots of articles about people saying, like people who were prescribed this drug for precursors puberty or some other reason, who were saying, I was harmed by this drug.
But if you Google Lupron transgender, what you mostly find, not entirely, but what you mostly find are these sort of You know, this is reversible.
This is a life saving drug for young dysphoric children.
And they're not talking about the side effects.
Some will, but most don't.
So you get really two different sides of the story just by doing that one exercise.
And it's interesting to see this because what you see in mostly left leading media is this thing repeated over and over again this is reversible.
This is just a pause.
And it turns out that that's probably not always the case.
And if you really care about trans.
And I'm not saying these activists don't care about trans kids.
I think they really do care about trans kids.
But if you care about them in a smart way, we should be acknowledging the potential side effects because to not do that is going to cause actual harm.
To the kids that you are supposed to be helping.
And this isn't to say that puberty blockers shouldn't be legal.
Both of us are very much against these state bills.
We don't think that the state has any business getting in between patients and doctors when it comes to this or really other healthcare issues.
So that's not the answer either.
But we really do need to grapple with the very real effects of this medication.
And we need to do it in a way that's honest and not sort of.
You know, not turn it into a culture war issue.
And this has become a culture war issue, and that is making it harder to actually get to the bottom of what's going on right now.
Well, it's so crazy when you list those side effects and you think they just stopped the JJ vaccine for six incidents of blood clots out of seven million vaccines, right?
Six blood clots and one death, though we don't know the circumstances of that.
So, but I mean, out of seven million vaccines, it's a minuscule amount.
And look at all the side effects you list on this one drug, very popular and being dispensed at the ready.
But I just one point I want to follow up on is I think that the reason some of these more red states are feeling like they need to pass these bills.
And the bills, I'll be honest, they make me somewhat uncomfortable.
But I think the reason they're feeling like they have to do it is because the doctors have surrendered to these far left scolds who just tell them they have only one option, which is to affirm and then prescribe.
Otherwise, they're going to be in trouble.
They'll be in trouble with the licensing board.
You know, the massive medical industries like the AMA and American Academy of Pediatrics, they're sort of leaning on these doctors now to prescribe the drugs as requested and to just affirm.
And I think that's scary too to a lot of parents who would prefer to have an objective medical take on where their kid is.
I mean, this is one of the real problems right now is like trans healthcare is just a complete wild west in the US.
So the story I got in trouble with about this stuff on was for the Atlantic.
It was a long story.
I highlighted Several clinicians who are seen as affirming clinicians.
They are seen as the good guys.
In my view, they did a very good job helping kids work through these issues, helping them decide who would benefit the most from blockers and hormones.
So I hear what you're saying.
I think some of these clinicians are quacks and are not doing a good job.
Trans Healthcare Wild West 00:14:44
But the problem is, there's no real standards of care.
All the standards of care we have are completely non binding.
We don't have a national health care system.
So it's just like the care you get in rural Oklahoma versus the Bay Area.
It may be awful in both places, but in complete opposite directions.
There's just, if you're, I feel so bad for parents going through this because it's like a roll of the dice whether the doctor your kid goes to or the therapist your kid goes to has any idea what they're doing.
And that's like, that's not a good situation.
Well, and Abigail Schraub just tweeted out something, a study a couple of days ago about how they looked at female to male transitioners who had actual surgery.
And The number of complications in those cases was stunning.
It was more than every single case had a complication.
It was like double of those who had the procedure had serious complications and complaints.
And some complained of, you know, pretty significant deformities and so on.
And she was kind of making a similar point, which is this science is so untested and trying to find doctors who are honest and actually know what they're doing is very sketchy.
Anyway, the way through all of that historically has been to be open and honest about it, for the medical profession to report the errors and the problems, and then for the journalists to fearlessly report on them so people have real information.
Just feels like we're not in that place, Katie.
Right.
So I haven't seen Abigail's.
Tweet or the study that she's talking about.
But, and, you know, there are different medical procedures.
So, top surgery, if a trans guy, you know, wants to have his breast removed, that's a double mastectomy.
That's a common surgery.
It's been done for a long time.
You know, I'm sure there are complications with that, but there are more experimental surgeries like phalloplasty, which is the creation of a penis.
And I've interviewed people who've had this procedure, and there can be really horrific side effects.
Just incredible.
It's an incredibly difficult surgery, and there can be really terrible side effects.
The thing is, if someone like Jesse or I reported on this, we would be accused, or Abigail Schreier, we would be accused of being transphobic and trying to deny trans people health care.
If Jezebel or some other outlet or a trans person reported the same thing, they would be lauded for saying, for trying to get out of this.
That's what happened.
Jezebel did a piece on this horrible surgeon who just had horrific outcomes, but we should want that kind of reporting.
Yeah, we should absolutely.
Yeah, and but when Jesse and I do it, or when Abigail does it, it's seen as Transphobic.
When other people do it, it's seen as elevating trans healthcare, which we should all want.
We should not want people to have these horrific outcomes from their surgeries.
We should all want the same thing.
But because this has been so filtered through these cultural lenses, and some people are good and some people are bad, it becomes sort of impossible.
And as Jesse said, some of the only good reporting on these issues is being done in the conservative media because the mainstream and left media is terrified to report on these things.
Well, and not only that, but as you guys know, The other narrative that gets thrown back at you as a journalist and others, anybody poking these bears, is you're going to cause children to kill themselves.
I mean, they play that the ultimate Trump card.
Any parent who in any way denies your questions, right?
Like that, that's scary to hear.
Obviously, nobody wants that, but it's also, it doesn't seem like an appropriate card to throw out there so cavalierly.
No, it's dangerous.
And we also don't know that it's true that if you, If you tell a kid, no, you cannot have puberty blockers at the age of 13, that does not mean that the child is going to kill themselves.
And that's a very irresponsible way to report on suicide.
And this goes against all of the acceptable standards of reporting on suicide.
You do not want to spark a suicide contagion by telling children that if they don't get what they want when they want it, the inevitable outcome is suicide.
Everything's sort of, what do they say, ass over head when it comes to the reporting.
On this stuff, but I it's gotten personal with you guys and Jesse.
I confess I didn't realize quite how bad it was until I read the piece in Quillette.
Um, so I hope I'm not.
I love Coleman Hughes, you guys know him, right?
Yeah.
Um, so he had me on his podcast and he refused to ask me about my NBC cancellation and that whole thing because he was and he said he didn't say it when I was on the air, he said it later when he was taping the intro, and I heard it when I listened back to his intro.
Um, I'm not going to ask her about it because one of the problems with cancel culture is you re traumatize the person when you keep asking them about it and making them relive it.
And I was like, yet another reason I love Coleman.
Yeah.
So I don't mean to, you know, bring up just awful things, Jesse.
So forgive me.
But I did want to ask you because what they're trying to do, these sort of trans activists, I guess they are trans journalists or not even necessarily trans journalists.
Some of these are just like one of the ones he talks about in his piece is, A quote, popular parenting columnist named Nicole Cliff, who have come after you in really, and I want to say upfront, zero proof for any of this.
It isn't true.
But I mean stuff like he sexually exploited at least a dozen trans women.
Well, that one's true.
Yes.
That you were sending out dick pics.
Not true.
That's verifiable.
But I mean, they went to the place that hurts.
Yeah, I will say, I mean, one of the, and I don't mind you asking, it's not traumatizing.
I mean, it's infuriating.
Yeah, basically, this started in 2016, sort of the light version of it, after I wrote another controversial article about the gender clinic in Toronto that was closed.
But after the 2018 Atlantic article, a lot of weird so called sock puppet accounts popped up on Twitter, basically trying to contrive some sort of Me Too event against me.
They would say that I had sent inappropriate pictures.
That I had sort of tried to hit on trans women, just basically anything from the sort of MeToo playbook you can imagine, all of it fabricated.
And I was able to ignore it because it was mostly just weirdos.
And you don't necessarily want to give oxygen to weirdos by responding to them aggressively.
But things really escalated when Slate's parenting advice columnist, Nicole Cliff, publicly announced that I was obsessed with trans women and that I had repeatedly tried to get them to meet me for lunch.
Under shady serpents, I've laughed because I hate, I don't like people, I don't like meeting people for lunch.
Um, but intermittent fasting, he would never do it.
Honestly, I'm a grabbing, I'm a spider kind of guy, does it?
The intermittent fasting 100%.
We have to do a show on that.
It's it actually works.
Starvation is yes, is a good way to lose weight, totally.
As it turns out, you don't actually eat, you lose weight.
Huh, I'd never put two and two together like that.
I eat, I just don't eat between the hours of 8 p.m. and noon, and then I eat like a fiend, and it's awesome.
All right, sorry, keep going, Jesse.
So, yeah, bodega cheese, that's more your thing by yourself, not with real people.
Exactly.
Not with real people.
I hate real people.
No, and so just seeing this stuff escalate and always with no proof, and it gets so ridiculous.
I mean, one trans writer accused me of slut shaming her, and the start and the finish of that allegation is I complimented a piece she wrote about dating as trans.
I just, in a parental, I said, How dare you, monster.
So, There's a really good book called Galileo's Middle Finger by a woman named Alice Drager.
I believe Katie sends it to people who get sort of publicly shamed.
And it's about what happens on the left if you're seen as crossing certain lines.
And most of the book is about the horrific rumors that get spread against people, often with no proof, for doing this.
I'm lucky that this all happened to me in my mid 30s rather than my mid 20s because I genuinely think it would have ruined my career otherwise.
If I hadn't yet been established as a journalist and had good editorial contacts, who would want to?
Commission a piece from someone like me with all this stuff floating around online.
I just, it infuriates me there's no accountability for professional journalists who spread these lies, delete the tweets, never apologize.
If we can't agree that journalists shouldn't spread public slander about their perceived enemies, what's left with the journalism?
Why should anyone trust us?
So that's what's really got me about this.
People can misinterpret my work, they can call me transphobic, but to just fabricate lies about someone, it's been an unpleasant experience.
Well, and I see you fighting back now sometimes, and I like it.
There was somebody out there.
Her name is, I guess she's a video game developer, Brianna Wu, who tweeted out about you.
She piled on and said, I have my own Jesse Single stories I've never shared publicly.
One day I will.
And I have receipts as if like you gave her a receipt after you harassed her or were creepy to her.
I'm like, and here's your receipt for my treatment.
Anyway, I love it because that is so, It's disgusting because that's what's happening.
It's like a middle schooler.
It's like a sociopathic middle schooler.
But it's been done in the Me Too movement with people saying, I've got my own stories about this guy.
You know, one day I'll tell them.
And sometimes they come through.
That happened in the Andrew Cuomo case with the accuser number one.
So, I think it has this tendency of getting people to believe it.
And you quickly respond saying, Brianna should share these stories immediately.
I think it's really important to get to the bottom of this.
Oh, what a shock.
No receipts were provided.
No additional claims were made.
And they never will be.
Well, the great thing about that particular story so, Brianna is not just a video game developer, she ran for Congress twice, did not win as clearly.
But one of our followers offered to put up $1,000 if she would share the receipts.
Other people started pledging money.
It was the safest bet you could have possibly made.
But we got like $60,000 of pledges that people would donate to the charity of Brianna Wood's choice if she could just provide the evidence that she claimed that she had that Jesse had done something untowards to her.
And she just never happened.
So that's amazing.
Right.
So I think that she was actually harming trans children.
I mean, think of how many trans orphans $60,000 could have fed.
Good point.
Coming up in one second, we're going to get into LGBTQ.
What is What does Q mean exactly?
I've heard different things.
They're going to walk me through it and we're going to talk about why there are so many letters.
Is it necessary?
What does it say?
Is that virtue signaling?
Should the B still be in there?
We'll get into all of it.
Plus, we're going to turn to the latest police-involved shooting out of Minnesota.
As you know, this officer, Kim Potter, now had discharged her weapon instead of her taser and she killed a young man, Dante Wright.
And there have been riots and there are now charges.
And we're going to talk to our guests about it.
But first this.
Now, Katie, let me ask you about being a TERF.
This is what J.K. Rowling is claimed to be.
They've used this term against you.
Just explain what it is and how you get labeled that.
Sure.
So, a TERF is a radical trans exclusionary radical feminist.
I'm not trans exclusionary and I'm not a radical feminist.
So, this does not apply to me whatsoever.
I don't think it applies to J.K. Rowling either.
It's interesting.
You know, Jesse gets these, he gets.
Allegations or rumors about sort of like weird sexual innuendo because he's a straight man and I'm a lesbian.
So people call me a TERF.
So it's basically stereotypes.
You're just applying stereotypes to us, which seems problematic to me.
So this is a term that is used.
A lot of people say that it's a slur.
I don't totally think that it's a slur, but it is definitely not a term of endearment and is used just to shut down conversations.
It's basically a synonym for transphobic.
So in my case, what happened was that in 2017, I wrote an article for The Stranger, Seattle's Alt Weekly, where I was a staff writer.
On detransitioners.
And it was not an opinion piece.
It was just sort of a profile of six or seven people who had gone through this experience.
And I reread it recently and I realized that it was sort of, I went kind of overboard reassuring people or trying to reassure people that the existence of detransitioners doesn't in any way invalidate trans identities.
And I think trans adults should have access to health care and really sort of hedged in a way that I probably wouldn't do now.
It was sort of embarrassing to reread that and see how sort of cautious I was with this piece.
But there was a really crazy outcry, and it wasn't just online, although of course it was online, but people, somebody burned stacks of the newspaper and sent me video of it.
People put flyers all around Seattle calling me transphobic.
There are stickers around Seattle calling me transphobic.
There's another one calling me a Jordan Peterson apologist.
There's a picture of my face that says I'm a Nazi sympathizer.
And so this, right.
And this is Seattle's a pretty small town.
And so this was not just, you know, I lost tons of friends.
Basically, ostracized.
I heard at one point there was a photo of me.
Somebody printed out a photo of me and put it in a urinal at a gay bar in Seattle, a gay bar that I had.
That I had been to and enjoyed.
So, this went, you know, it was online, but it was also offline in a way that was very disturbing.
And if you read the piece, I think anybody who actually reads the piece will see that it is, there's nothing transphobic about it.
And in fact, argues in favor of adequate, you know, good healthcare for trans people.
So, it was just this, it was a very bizarre experience to see sort of this caricature of myself as an evil transphobic bigot emerge from this.
From this deeply reported story that actually had trans sensitivity readers.
Not a word that I get at the time.
Can we be honest about there's something going on with lesbians and the trans community activists?
I distinguish the activists from the community writ large because I just don't think they are represented by these very loud, very bullying activists.
But there's something going on because, you know, Abigail talked about this in her book and on my show when she was talking about how it's no longer considered cool to be lesbian.
Sorry, Katie.
I know, I know.
Katie was never a lesbianism.
That's true.
That's true.
Right.
And this has actually been true for years.
You know, queer, it's cool to be queer.
Queer Identity Labels Shift 00:06:14
It's not cool to be a lesbian because lesbians are seen, and I'm sort of generalizing here, but in many circles, lesbians are seen as exclusionary because lesbians are, you know, female homosexuals who are same sex attracted, who sort of by definition, or the old definition, you know, males, trans women would not be included in sort of their.
Their sexual interest.
There are plenty of lesbians who date trans women or trans guys and call themselves lesbians.
That's also a thing.
But sort of the old definition is often seen as problematic.
Yeah.
So, I mean, aren't you by definition exclusionary if you're a gay man or a lesbian woman?
I mean, yes, you're exclusionary.
I mean, I'm exclusionary too as a straight person, right?
There's only one group I like in that way.
That's what's so weird about this is I've like straight men seem to be.
No one seems to be focusing on straight men who are a much larger group than lesbians and what our sort of preferences are.
It's this weird focus on lesbians per se that I don't, I've had trouble understanding.
100%.
I've noticed it too.
Go ahead, Katie.
And so it also doesn't, so there's lots of drama within sort of the lesbian community or what would have been formerly known as the lesbian community, which is sort of queer women.
There's lots of infighting and drama about whether or not, you know, lesbian spaces should be allowed to be female only.
You don't see that in gay male spaces.
So, if you have a dance party that's specifically for lesbians, chances are there's going to be some complaints if you even use the term lesbian in your advertising or whatever, because that's seen as exclusionary.
You don't see that in gay male spaces.
So, wait, can I just ask you?
So, you're supposed to say queer instead?
Right, right.
What's the difference?
Can you just explain how that term is used?
What's the difference between being a lesbian and being queer?
I mean, now queer is sort of meaningless because.
Queer has expanded to also mean like heterosexuals who are polyamorous or kinky.
So it's basically anything that isn't like a monogamous, heterosexual, sort of traditional relationship because people want to opt into it, I think, because everybody wants to be special.
So you have, you know, people who would not have been considered queer a couple of years ago have now opted into this.
It used to be a slur.
Now it's been embraced.
Now it's like, you're allowed to say that now?
I mean, I do.
Can I say it?
Can somebody who's straight say it?
I do.
Yeah.
I mean, it is.
It is the acceptable term now.
It is a way of like signaling your allyship is to use the term.
Is that what the Q is on LGBTQ?
Because somebody told me the Q is actually questioning.
I was like, I thought it was queer.
I don't understand.
Yeah, it just depends on who you ask.
I mean, that's QAnon actually.
They're there now?
Yeah, yes.
Yes, but it's too many letters.
It's very inclusive.
Yeah, exactly.
I'm sorry, but if it's queer, didn't we cover it with bi, sort of?
And it's like too many letters.
I don't think that questioning, by the way, should get its own letter.
That's right.
They shouldn't get a letter.
LGBT is enough.
That just means that you're an adolescent if you're questioning.
And bi is now problematic, too, because bi presupposes that there are only two genders.
So, really, what you, if you want to be like the best, you know, the best queer, the best ally, which you are, is pan, which means you are attracted to all genders, all 47 genders.
So, it's going to be LGBTQ soon.
Right.
We're just going to get rid of the L and the B. It'll just be Q and P from now on.
Yes.
I'm so confused.
So, there's lots of tension within the queer community.
And I should say, there isn't really such a thing as the queer community.
There's, you know, just like there's no such thing as the Black community or the white community, there's a population that oftentimes doesn't get along, that oftentimes doesn't like each other and doesn't socialize.
But yes, there's lots of tension.
And a lot of it tends to be generational, where you have older gay men.
And lesbians who sort of don't understand or don't appreciate the new rules being imposed upon us.
I wrote about this for Andrew Sullivan's newsletter and it did not go over well, I will, to put it mildly.
But there is a thing, and this isn't just lesbians, but there are lots and lots of females who are either opting into sort of the non binary identity or transitioning.
And I've seen this in my own friend circle in a way that is kind of mind blowing.
I mean, I should keep a spreadsheet.
Of everybody's pronouns now, because it seems like half of the women that I know are now trans or non binary and have changed their name.
Some of them have gotten surgery, some of them haven't, and just sort of opt into this non binary thing.
But it is a trend.
And even saying that it's a trend is something that people think is offensive.
But I do think that this is a trend, it's a social contagion.
And that makes sense because lots of human behavior is, I mean, most human behavior, all human behavior possibly.
Is socially influenced.
And there's this idea that if you think that there is some social influence on what is happening, that that is somehow deeply offensive because no, it has to be about this deep internal identity, this deep sense of who you really are.
And there can't be any social influence on that.
So if somebody says that they're trans or non binary, it can't possibly be influenced by the people around them, by their peers, you know.
But that's just everything we do.
Everything we do is offensive now.
I mean, like you guys know that.
Everything we do is offensive.
You can't, if you cannot, Tiptoe through the line, the landmines of life in 2021 America without stepping on one.
I mean, you're just, they're everywhere.
So you're going to offend.
And by the way, I love that on Twitter, you say your pronouns are me, me, me.
These are my pronouns.
Me, me, and back to me.
Well, there is a narcissism about this, you know, this identity, identitarianism that we're seeing right now.
I mean, when I was a younger person and sort of coming into my own sexual identity, The idea was to get rid of labels.
We would talk about how labels didn't define us.
And now it's like the more labels you can put on yourself, the higher you are in the hierarchy.
I know.
I refuse to do it.
I'm supportive of the trans community.
Love you, supporting you, rooting for you, but I'm not going to say my pronouns.
Police Due Process Debates 00:15:39
Figure it out.
If you want to say your pronouns, you want to tell me privately what they are, happy to go by whatever your pronouns are.
But I'm just not going to run it, walk into a room, say my pronouns.
And if that makes me a turf, oh well, I've been called worse.
All right, let me shift gears with you for a second because I just want to hit you guys up for your take on a couple of the things in the news today.
Because I think you're left leaning, but I'm interested in your opinion on things like what's happening in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota.
You saw that this 20 year old man, Dante Wright, was killed.
By a police officer there, a white woman, he was black because she pulled what she thought was her taser.
This is her explanation, but it was in fact her gun.
And she shot him and he died.
And now we've had a couple of days of riots in Minneapolis or in this town, Brooklyn Center, Minnesota.
And 60 people were arrested for the riots there and so on and so forth.
I am, we're going to get into this in a second, but I don't understand why the city manager had to be fired because he said, and he's a black man, by the way, the city manager, because he said, I think we should, you know, she's entitled to due process.
Now she resigned.
The cop resigned.
And he just said before like the mob comes for her, because it was at this like city hearing, he's like, she's entitled to due process.
He got fired just for saying that.
And I have to tell you, it disturbs me.
No one's defending the woman's, if you believe what she said, mistake.
And it sounds like it was genuine because on tape she goes, oh my God.
She goes, taser, taser, taser.
Then she fires and she goes, oh my God, I shot him.
It was in my gun.
So it's pretty clear that it was a mistake, but we'll see.
Well, why shouldn't we have an investigation?
Why shouldn't we have due process?
Why must we just appease the mob immediately by saying, yes, she's awful?
And apparently, we've got to go with racist, and she's afforded to no process whatsoever.
Yeah, it's super disturbing.
Chelsea Handler, during the Chauvin trial, tweeted something about why should we have trials if this whole thing was on video, which is sort of the same point that due process is somehow Don't apply or shouldn't apply if we think that the crime was bad enough, which is just a terrible trend.
I think this was one of my sort of criticisms of Me Too.
We need to have due process.
Claims should never just stand on their own.
We shouldn't believe women or believe victims.
We should always do an investigation.
And defending that principle is incredibly important or should be incredibly important, especially for liberals, especially for people like us.
And one of the things that disturbs me about this trend that we've seen in recent years is that liberals.
Are giving up that mantle, the mantle of actual liberalism, where due process is important, free speech is important, that we defend the rights of people who have done terrible things because the principle should be more important in these individual cases.
And we are not seeing that right now.
Yeah.
And you've got people like Rashida Tlaib, who tweets out after this happened, and I quote, it wasn't an accident.
Okay.
She's going to be the arbiter.
Like she just knows she's in the woman's head.
It wasn't an accident.
Policing in our country is inherently and intentionally racist.
Dante Wright was met with aggression and violence.
I am done with those who condone government-funded murder.
No more policing, incarceration, and militarization.
It can't be reformed.
This literally is what Black Lives Matter in their chapter in your neck of the woods in Seattle has said explicitly: open the jails, get rid of the justice system, no more courts, no more prisons.
And we've heard on a wider basis, no more cops because it cannot be reformed and it's government-funded.
Murder.
This is a sitting U.S. Congresswoman.
This person is insane because, as we all know, what would happen if her world came about is those of us with any sort of money in our pockets would be just fine, and people who live in the poor communities would get killed in astronomical numbers.
Right.
I tweeted something about this about how, you know, sure, like let's do this, and rich people will hire private security, and poor people can do like community watch or whatever.
This is also a losing position when it comes to Democratic politics because if you look at polling, including polling of Black populations, they don't say that they want.
You know, the police defunded.
They don't say that they don't want prisons to exist anymore.
What they say is they want better policing.
And sometimes that actually means more policing.
They want their neighborhoods to be safe, like everybody should want their neighborhoods to be safe.
I mean, that's what's so frustrating about this there's been decades of polling suggesting, as you would expect, that if you're a Black American in a low income area, you have like a tortured relationship to the police.
I think police are abusive all the time.
I'm from an upper middle class white family, and my own family members and myself have had multiple run ins with police who were jerks and not obviously not as bad as being assaulted or killed.
But it frustrates me that this is sort of seen as like the left position or even the person of color position when polling shows that.
Black people want police to show up to protect them on average.
We can't speak for every member of a group, but they also don't want to be treated poorly by them.
This shouldn't be a surprise if you just look at the polling.
So I think that a lot of the reporting on this has been terrible and has been very, frankly, soft on this abolitionist position that is really half baked.
Like they can't answer basic follow up questions about what it would mean.
It's also a distraction because someone was just killed for basically no reason because of a horrible error.
And we're talking about police abolition, which is not going to happen versus how to try to make sure that doesn't happen again.
I don't even know how you make sure that doesn't happen again.
I feel like this woman, when I first saw it, I thought, okay, so she must be a newbie.
You know, she must have just panicked in a tense moment.
And the guy was resisting arrest.
And that's an intense situation for any officer.
She'd been in the force for 20 years.
I think she did the right thing in resigning.
There's no future for her in that police department.
The police chief also resigned.
That's just a political move.
He didn't need to go.
She made a terrible mistake.
If I make a mistake in this job, I have the opportunity to come back on and correct it and, you know, write the record.
You guys too, in your jobs.
It's not the case for a police officer.
And certainly in this environment, mistakes aren't, quote, allowed, right?
They're not going to be allowed at all.
I have no problem with this woman losing her job.
A man lost his life.
She can at least lose her job.
But people are saying they want her to be charged.
It's like, okay, so we can do that.
Then we will have due process.
Then there's going to be a system to figure out whether, in fact, she committed any crime because all the evidence we've seen so far suggests it was an accident.
And none of the evidence suggests it was racist.
She was white, he was black, but he was resisting arrest.
That's why.
And even the officers on site were saying a taser would have been appropriate given what this guy was doing.
The fact that she reached for the wrong thing is awful.
But I don't know.
We jump immediately to racism in all these situations now when the race of the person being arrested is Black.
I think that the media is very complicit in this.
Here's an example.
So I live in a small town in Western Washington.
Over the summer, a couple months after the death of George Floyd, a guy was killed by police about 13 miles from me.
We don't know the full story.
He was sitting on an overpass, apparently, and something happened.
He was unarmed and he was shot and killed by police.
The Seattle Times, the local newspaper, didn't even send a reporter the 13 miles across the water to report on this story.
It got almost no press locally.
Why is that?
Well, the guy was white.
If he had been black, it would have been a major story.
There would have been riots and protests in the cities.
And if you look at the data, and I know, Megan, you've talked about this on your show, if you look at the data, what we can see is that white people are Also killed at significant rates, actually not even significant.
This is all actually pretty rare by cops.
We know that it is not only people of color who are being killed by police.
And we also know that white cops are not more likely to kill unarmed people than cops who are black or brown.
But instead of the media contextualizing this and saying, George Floyd was one of 14 or 15, I'm not sure what the number is, but 14 or 15 black men killed by police in 2020, every time they talk about these incidents, They leave people with the impression that there are many, many more police killings of unarmed people than there actually are.
And I've done this, I've asked people, I've said, you know.
How many unarmed black men do you think were killed by police last year?
And the answer is always at least a thousand, because the media doesn't actually contextualize this.
And if the media started doing this, I think it would give people less of a skewed perspective of what's going on.
And the thing is, if you want to stop police shootings, ending racism, doing implicit bias training, isn't going to do it.
That's not going to do it.
Nothing at all.
It will do absolutely nothing at all.
I mean, I do think de escalation training.
Sure.
Is clearly needed.
I mean, that is a thing.
And I remember I interviewed four African American female police chiefs from that sort of the North Carolina quarter, that area, Raleigh, Durham.
And they were saying how they very rarely had physical confrontations on the job because, as women who tended to be more slight, you know, in stature, they had to learn de escalation.
They really had no choice.
They knew they weren't going to be pulling their gun all the time and they wanted to get to a point where they could handle it.
And one of my favorites, She was hilarious.
She was like, she showed me her beautiful, long, beautiful nails and she goes, do you think I'm going to mess these up on some loser suspect?
She's like, hey, anyway, we need more of that for sure.
But we also have to understand this is inherently dangerous job.
And another lesson in all of it, in most of these cases, is don't resist arrest.
Go back later.
Fight it later.
If it's a bad cop, if it's a racist cop, if it's a bad arrest, you can fight it.
On the scene, all the odds are against you.
All of them.
So it's just there's a responsibility within the black community, within the white community, both to teach our, especially our young people, don't resist arrest.
It's a losing proposition.
You're never going to win.
You're never going to successfully flee the police.
That's definitely true.
And there's also, we need to also be talking about mental health.
You know, there's also a correlation between police react, you know, police get called because of a, you know, sort of a mental health welfare check and somebody ends up dead.
You know, there are ways to reform the system.
That don't involve defunding the police and actually might involve giving them more money in some cases or reallocating it in different ways.
But yeah, this idea that we're just going to get rid of police, get rid of prisons, it's never going to happen, as Jesse mentioned.
And so it just seems like a distraction, a way of sort of signaling how progressive you are on this particular issue.
When it's not going to help anything, it's not going to happen.
And if it did happen, it would probably make things worse for the very people who you should be protecting.
So Jesse's got a new book out talking about it's called Why Fad Psychology Can't Cure Our Social Ills.
And that's sad to learn, but it can't.
And it's better to know rather than continue to practice some of these ridiculous techniques thinking you're helping yourself when you're not.
And my old pal, Cheryl Sandberg, in her book, Lean In, included one of these.
And Jesse is ready to debunk it.
Are you doing it right now?
Are you wasting your time thinking this one particular thing is going to help you at home or the office?
Stay tuned to find out what it is.
But first, I want to bring you a feature we have here on the program called Sound Up.
And this is where we play you a sound bite.
That we think you should hear that's been making the rounds, and we'll talk about it.
And in this particular case, it is the sound of the city manager who got fired, the one we were just talking about out of Minnesota, who got fired simply for calling for due process for Kim Potter, the police officer who has now resigned from her position after what she says was an accidental shooting.
Listen.
In response to the question about termination, all employees working, For the city of Brooklyn Center, they are entitled to due process with respect to discipline.
This employee will receive due process.
Due process discipline will be determined.
If I were to say anything else, I would actually be contradicting the idea of due process.
This guy got.
fired for saying that.
Fired.
What is happening to us?
One city council member who actually voted to oust him came out and said, I did it because I feared retaliation by the protesters if I had voted to keep him in.
Quote, he was doing a great job.
I respect him dearly.
Again, this is a black man who loses his job in the wake of the shooting of another black man who was resisting arrest, not to justify anything, but just for perspective on why the situation was so tense.
And so he says, let's you're asking if she's going to be fired.
We're going to give her a process.
No.
Not only is that not okay, you're fired too.
Police chief's gone, right?
And now when we taped with Jesse and Katie, I actually didn't know this, but just moments after we say goodbye to them, we just found out Kim Potter's being charged with second-degree manslaughter.
The now former Brooklyn Center Minneapolis police officer, Kim Potter, is going to be charged with second-degree manslaughter.
That's the same charge, one of them, that Derek Chauvin's charged with.
So, somebody thinks that his kneeling on the neck and everything that happened in that case for nine minutes warrants the same charge against this woman, which we all saw unfold on camera, where she says, taser, taser, taser.
And somebody said she was absolutely reckless in pulling out her gun and firing it.
Now, I guess you could make the case.
Did she not recognize what she was feeling was a gun and not a taser?
Well, if you want to do process for that to figure it out, you got to go.
You're going to lose your job too.
You have to be quiet and just accept whatever punishment the mob wants.
That's how it's going to be.
Got it?
Mob rule.
The mob threatens the city council with riots, which are underway, and they just do whatever they think they need to do.
It's not about conscience.
It's not about the law.
It's not about procedure.
It's about avoiding the wrath of the mob.
He's fired, and maybe you'll be fired too if you say anything the mob doesn't like.
That's our country right now, and it's pathetic.
Back to our guests in one second, but first this.
Now, one instance in which the police did a very good job was when they arrested Bernie Madoff.
Just transitioning now to.
That's a really good segue.
I realize this has absolutely nothing to do with really our subject matter, but I just want to talk about it.
He's dead.
Bernie Madoff died.
And I was just looking through the facts, you know, on the, it's not a no bit yet, but just the quick write ups about his death and his life.
He was 82.
He had been treated for kidney disease that was terminal.
I mean, I'm sure you don't treat anything too aggressively when you're in prison.
And he stole, they estimated $65 billion from people.
He had 37,000 victims in 136 countries.
Everybody from Steven Spielberg to Kevin Bacon to Elie Wiesel, which is truly disgusting, you know, Nobel Prize winner and Holocaust survivor.
And he died.
And I just like that story was so big.
Skeptical View on Grit 00:08:46
He was arrested in December of 08.
And I just think about the carnage left in his wake.
His son killed himself.
The family was just completely ruined.
The other son died pretty young of cancer after Bernie went to jail.
Anyway, any thoughts on Bernie Madoff and his passing and his life?
Rest in peace, Bernie.
I was going to make a joke about how he inspired our podcast, but then the description got very dark.
That's the next stage of the Blocked and Reported Empire is financial investment.
Yeah, could we announce our new pyramids team on your podcast, Megan?
Would that be okay?
Send one dollar to do with that GoFundMe.
It does have to be with the GoFundMe, the GoFundMe is actually to fund your career as a budding rap artist, isn't it, Jesse?
Exactly.
Thank you for mentioning that.
Clearly, white collar crime does not get the attention it deserves compared to low level drunk crime or things like that.
Katie, people question our sense of morality a lot.
So we should just take this opportunity and use Megyn Kelly's platform to say that we disagree with what he did.
We do.
Except when he ripped off Eli Wazelle, that was fine.
I'm constantly having to sidestep Katie's just endless anti Semitism on the podcast.
So I'm sorry this came up.
I identify as Jewish, Jesse.
I've opted in.
What, speaking of that, what's your rap name, Jesse?
Juzy.
How many listeners do you have?
I don't know.
This is a bad idea.
You could say because you're Jewish.
Exactly.
Yep.
Aren't those the rules?
How's it going so far?
You have a lot of fans?
Yeah.
So when we launched the podcast or the Patreon, which is sort of our premium subscription service, almost a year ago now, I said that if we got to a certain level, Of dollars per month, I would release a rap about psychology's replication crisis, which is also the subject of a book of mine, The Quick Fix That Just Came Out.
That's where we're going next.
Excellent.
Yeah.
And then I was, I think, a mere eight or nine months late, but I finally released it the day my book came out, actually.
And it was, I had some help from a psychologist named David Pizarro at Cornell, who made me sound less like what you're hearing now.
And I thought, I don't know, Katie thought it wasn't horrible, and I trust her judgment.
Oh, yeah.
I'm a real connoisseur of rap music.
You should really trust my judgment.
My, I was actually impressed with the length that was like almost five minutes and lots of the words rhymed.
I thought it was going to be much, much worse than it was.
It was sort of impressive.
Yeah.
And if people want the, want access to that for whatever reason, they can join our Patreon.
People should, we should use that as a quote for our podcast.
I thought it was going to be much, much worse than it was.
New tagline.
So can I tell you, I was listening to you guys and some terrible music started and I hit the fast forward, fast forward, fast forward until I got past it.
And then I heard you talking about what it was and I, Almost rewound, but no, I didn't.
So you should listen to it.
It's actually, it's actually impressive.
It's been linked to birth defects in like 17 states.
All right.
Can we talk about your book?
Because I'm interested in this.
You basically are, tell us the name of it and tell us what my take is you're sort of debunking some of the crazy pseudoscience that we've been depending on in this country to make ourselves feel better about ourselves for the past 30 years.
But you're not totally like shitting on it.
It's not like there's no potential merit to it, but you're like, Major asterisks on all of the self esteem research and all the stuff that's gone down.
That's my take.
You'll do a better job of naming the book and explaining it.
Yeah.
So the book is called The Quick Fix Why Fad Psychology Can't Cure Our Social Ills.
It stems from before Katie Herzog dragged me down into culture war hell with her.
I worked at New York Magazine.
I edited a vertical about behavioral science and I sort of carved out a niche as someone who would be skeptical of the press releases you would get from Harvard or the University of Pennsylvania.
Touting some incredible new findings about human behavior.
So, I decided to write a book that will basically help people, you know, cut through the overhyped claims we often get from psychologists on issues like, you know, the implicit association test, which can supposedly reveal your hidden racism, but has very little evidence behind it.
I do talk about the decades long self esteem craze, which claimed that like all sorts of societal problems, including crime, could be solved by improving people's self esteem.
There's also a military program that cost about $500 million that.
It supposedly reduces PTSD and suicidality among soldiers, but no evidence to support that and just sort of a giant waste of money.
So there's like, I don't know, if you look around the world, there's a lot to be skeptical.
And my goal with the book is to just help the average reader who might not have much of a background in social science have the right questions to ask when their work or their school adopts one of these ideas.
So basically, you've taken away hope from millions of people.
Yeah, that's what we do.
We're the hope stealers.
Just those things you thought might get you out of this crazy ass life and make you succeed from whatever miserable life you're in.
Wrong.
None of it's going to work.
Unless the system radically changed, you're completely screwed.
However, if you listen to Blocked and Reported, your teeth will be whiter, your skin will be clearer, your finances will improve.
Exactly.
Well, so one of the things my editor nudged me on really helpfully is like a lot of these ideas do have some merit behind them.
There's a kernel of truth there.
And we have, you know, for individuals, things like cognitive behavioral therapy seem to have some evidence behind them.
What doesn't work is the idea that you can give everyone an implicit association test and address, you know, a problem of racial discrepancies that dates back hundreds of years, or that you can improve.
Kids' self esteem, and suddenly they'll be better students.
A lot of these ideas, when you actually say them out loud, like it's sort of surprising anyone believed in them in the first place.
But what about grit?
That was the one I was like, so I think of grit.
I don't think of grit as like doubling down determination, like I'm just going to try, try, try to get an A on this test.
Although I understand that's a definition.
I see it more as like stand tall, take life's punches, forge forward, stop licking your wounds and feeling sorry for yourself.
But how are you defining grit?
Because that's one of your targets saying, eh, this one's still a little shaky.
Yeah, don't try.
Don't put effort in anything.
Adopt the Jesse single technique.
Grit was this new scale developed by a social psychologist named Angela Duckworth.
She won a MacArthur Genius grant for her work on that and other stuff.
She basically claimed that perseverance and passion matter way more than we think, as compared to sort of innate ability, IQ, SAT scores, physical ability.
And this really caught on, especially in educational circles.
No one really bothered to do the careful research required to test if this is actually true until recently, at least.
And it just turned out to be very overhyped.
Obviously, if the choice is like train your kid to be hardworking versus not hardworking, being hardworking helps.
But the question of how much it helps or how much that matters relative to their innate ability, the answer there is maybe not what we want it to be.
The fact is that intelligence in a lot of settings might matter 30 to 40, might be 30 or 40 times more important quantitatively than goodness.
That's so disempowering.
If you don't have a high IQ, you're screwed.
Well, no.
I think there are so many other things that can factor into your success in life, and especially if you can find the right niche and find what you're good at.
IQ itself only explains like 40 to 50% of success.
There's still a lot of room there for other stuff.
But the question of whether you can just like train yourself to be grittier and that on its own will make you much more successful, that's what I'm skeptical of.
And I realize like not everyone wants to hear that.
But again, if you're a science journalist, you sometimes have to deliver bad news.
What about the power posing?
Can you explain that?
Power posing is this idea that if you stand like Superwoman, Superwoman, Wonder Woman, with your hands on your hips or in some other.
And legs apart.
Legs apart, some sort of expressive, expansive pose for a minute or two.
A psychologist named Amy Cuddy and her colleagues produced research suggesting this will help make you more assertive.
It'll help make you better in negotiation settings.
And it's sort of looped in with the Sheryl Sandberg lean in movement as a way to help women.
Uh, improve in the workplace.
There's basically no evidence to suggest this is true, not to be a bummer again.
Jewish Guilt and Truth 00:06:12
Uh, and that one makes perfect sense to me.
What the what.
First of all, if you're standing like Wonder Woman and leaning in, it's not going to end well for you.
You're definitely going to be able to walk in.
You have to topple over.
It's very dangerous.
It doesn't make any sense that the way you stand at work is going to.
I understand they don't like crossing arms.
It projects like you're closed off.
But you know what?
It's really so comfortable to stand with your arms crossed.
It just is.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's nothing wrong with that.
What about squatting, Jesse?
Do you have any information on that?
That's how I usually like to do my meetings.
Yeah.
Everyone should just be squatting all the time.
No chairs.
Squatting and grunting are the pieces of success, like caveman style.
You laugh, but I was subjected to one of these very classes when I was in one in seventh grade and one in 10th grade, Jesse.
And it was called Mayo, short for myself and others.
And we were taught about self-esteem and we were taught how to be an active listener.
And one of the things on the list, I remember this, was friendly grunts.
And you say that to a group of 11 and 12-year-olds and then make them practice and the whole room is like, oh, you don't say, this is not appropriate interaction.
This is why it helps to grow up in sort of like a secular Jewish household because you get home from school from all that uplifting, like, here's how to be a good person.
You get like a lot of sarcasm and cynicism to balance it out.
I feel bad for all you Gentiles.
No, are you kidding me?
If you're Catholic, I mean, I forget about the Catholic.
It's even worse.
Yeah, please.
I feel like that's the Jews and the Catholic are like right next to each other on the other than the Jesus being Christ thing.
We are the same and the afterlife.
The mommy issues in particular, like, they're very similar.
And the guilt.
And the inability to be happy, all those things, all that stuff.
So, what kind of reception have you had?
Because it's like, do people close this book feeling?
Because I always say, like, it's better to know the truth, right?
It's like, if you thought you had this great friend and then you find some letter they wrote about you, some email they wrote about you that's like, I actually can't stand her, she's horrible.
It's better to know the truth.
You know, the truth is whatever it is.
It was the same yesterday as it is today.
It's just your knowledge may advance.
And so, I feel like this book is in that vein, right?
Sorry, but that stuff is actually not scientific.
And, you know, it's if you want to use it to convince yourself otherwise, go for it.
But the truth is, it hasn't been proven out.
Like, what are people going to feel when they close this book?
Again, because of the influence of my editor, I think there's like a fair bit of optimism in there amongst all the debunking, which is what I want.
I want people to feel like science is this powerful thing that can help us.
We just need to understand it and understand its limitations.
So, you know, the reception has been good.
And I think people don't like the idea that they've been hoodwinked.
And the military one really gets to me because when you think about half a billion dollars, what the good that could have done for a population that comes back from war totally traumatized, that that went to a program that can, in my view, be fairly called pseudoscience.
I think anyone should be outraged by that.
Now, before I let you go, can I ask you guys because some of your tweeting and some of your banter about enjoying the pandemic has been absolute gold?
You're not necessarily anti lockdown.
Explain what you've most loved about the past year.
I haven't put on hard pants in a year.
That's been really nice.
I sort of live a pandemic lifestyle anyway.
I don't particularly like the mask, but not interacting with people, it's totally fine with me.
I live a podcaster life.
Podcaster lifestyle and pandemic lifestyle are very similar.
It is nice being on your own.
I mean, I'm in my children's playroom every day and it's awesome.
Nobody bothers me except for Abby.
And, you know, I had her before, so it's fine.
Yeah.
I mean, it's weird.
This is part of the reason I'm a lefty.
It's like if you have, Some resources at your disposal, we've just been able to shield ourselves from all the worst parts of it.
I mean, I can work from anywhere.
I just, I don't know, not to end on a downer note, but so many people have been hit so hard from this, and I feel so guilty that it's been relatively easy for me to ride out.
And, um, I think maybe we can talk about this some other time, but I think that's one of the fundamental divides that would make it hard for me to ever be conservative.
Like, not that conservatives are arguing differently.
I just sort of feel strongly that we don't have the protections in place we should, given how wealthy a country we are.
And I feel guilty that this has been relatively easy for me to ride out.
So there's just a last little bit of basically virtue signaling as I sign off.
Jewish guilt.
Thank you.
Jewish guilt.
Just keep trying to get those liberals back on your side, Jesse.
You work it.
Exactly.
Yeah, I'm sure that'll do it.
Well, listen, good luck with the book.
Thank you both so much for being here.
And I hope we talk again.
Thank you, Megan.
Thanks for having us.
It's been really great.
So don't miss our show on Monday because we've got former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.
This guy was a star in Republican politics.
Now he's heading up a Young Americas Foundation, which is a conservative leaning group that sort of tries to get the good word out to young people about the joys of being a conservative.
and sort of argues with folks on principle about why they think they have the better ideas and tries to get to young people to make sure they know this is an option for them, right?
Like you don't have to join the progressive side in order to be a good person.
There are lots of good ideals on the other side as well.
And he's got a plan right now, his group has, for getting organized on college campuses to fight back against some of the woke stuff that we're seeing and some of the messaging.
And it's actually beyond college campuses, K through 12.
They unearthed a shocking story out of Ames, Iowa just a week or so ago.
we'll talk to him about.
And there's a fun moment in this interview, which we just taped.
You know, he helped prepare Mike Pence for the vice presidential debate.
And he's got some thoughts on Kamala Harris and how she did and whether she's going to be the nominee for the Democratic Party in 2024.
Oh, and by the way, is he going to run?
Is he going to throw his hat in that ring?
We get into all of it.
It was a delightful exchange.
And I give him credit for coming on because I think I've said before that he's boring, but he wasn't at all.
He was actually really interesting and we had fun.
And I like the guy.
And I think you will too.
Kamala Harris 2024 Thoughts 00:00:35
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