The Megyn Kelly Show - Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal on Culture Wars, the Trans Trend, and Fad Psychology

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00:00:30.780 When I found out my friend got a great deal on a wool coat from Winners,

00:00:34.520 I started wondering, is every fabulous item I see from Winners?

00:00:39.280 Like that woman over there with the designer jeans.

00:00:42.000 Are those from Winners?

00:00:43.520 Ooh, or those beautiful gold earrings.

00:00:45.980 Did she pay full price?

00:00:47.340 Or that leather tote?

00:00:48.360 Or that cashmere sweater?

00:00:49.560 Or those knee-high boots?

00:00:51.020 That dress?

00:00:51.820 That jacket?

00:00:52.480 Those shoes?

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00:01:01.380 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:01:03.280 Your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:01:06.800 Hey, everyone. I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:01:15.800 Today on the program, we have got a treat for you.

00:01:19.300 A team of reporters, social commentators, and stars of the hit podcast, Blocked and Reported,

00:01:28.520 Jessie Single and Katie Herzog.

00:01:30.760 Now, I first fell in love with them through Katie, who is the funniest thing going on Twitter.

00:01:35.000 If you don't follow her on Twitter, she's a reason to join Twitter.

00:01:38.660 She's just got a sense of humor like none other.

00:01:40.760 And he's right there with her.

00:01:42.120 He's just actually come out with a new book, which you might find interesting, too.

00:01:44.620 We'll talk about it a little bit about fad psychology and why it can't cure our social

00:01:48.720 ails.

00:01:49.580 Wah, wah.

00:01:50.200 Just just when you thought you had life solved.

00:01:53.460 But these two are sort of I think I described them the other day as sort of disaffected liberals

00:01:57.580 or sort of liberals who have been kicked out of the liberal crew because they're not taking

00:02:01.100 the same approach to issues like, I don't know, transgender rights as others.

00:02:06.680 I mean, they're totally pro trans rights, 100 percent pro.

00:02:08.740 But they write openly about some of the issues that have been caused, like what happens when

00:02:13.040 somebody detransitions and what happens with some of these puberty blocking drugs.

00:02:17.780 Is it as safe as people would have you believe?

00:02:19.600 Actual journalism.

00:02:20.540 That's all it is.

00:02:21.120 But they get hammered, right?

00:02:22.320 They get hammered.

00:02:22.980 Nonetheless, they persist and they haven't lost their senses of humor along the way.

00:02:27.920 Their podcast is described as, and I quote, part politics, part pop culture, part obsessive

00:02:32.740 dissection of esoteric Internet slap bites and sporadically insightful.

00:02:36.960 Anyway, you're going to enjoy the conversation.

00:02:38.320 We'll get to them one second.

00:02:39.600 I promise you'll like them.

00:02:41.360 But first, this.

00:02:47.740 Hey, guys.

00:02:48.580 Hey.

00:02:49.180 Hi.

00:02:49.700 Thank you so much for having us, baby.

00:02:51.160 The pleasure is all mine.

00:02:53.440 I'm so excited.

00:02:54.660 There's so many things I want to ask you, including this one.

00:02:57.420 Katie, I love you on Twitter and I don't understand why you are you wearing a scuba suit in your

00:03:02.640 little Twitter?

00:03:03.760 What is it?

00:03:04.520 What are you wearing in that little picture?

00:03:06.040 It is a so I was a I had a show on the local like PBS station and at one point they forced

00:03:13.480 me to put on a wetsuit and a scuba mask and swim in a tank with salmon.

00:03:17.960 This is what this is what PBS.

00:03:19.520 This is what taxpayer money goes to to see if they were swimming upstream.

00:03:25.560 I don't like why.

00:03:26.200 It was it was it was it was like it's sort of an environmental kind of show.

00:03:30.240 And it was I don't actually remember what the exact episode was about, but but it was an

00:03:34.360 actual tank like a like a holding tank for like baby salmon that they would eventually

00:03:38.300 release into the water.

00:03:39.540 It was very weird.

00:03:41.100 I love it because to me it bespeaks of a lack of vanity, which to which I cannot relate,

00:03:47.600 but I admire it in other women.

00:03:50.260 Well, it also has the added benefit of not showing my face.

00:03:53.880 So there's that.

00:03:56.020 Well, I saw something funny you tweeted out the other day.

00:03:58.200 Maybe it was I don't know as recent, but you said something like I love taking flights to.

00:04:01.800 So was it where I just got back?

00:04:04.820 I just got back from Vail.

00:04:05.740 Yeah, Vail, because it allows me to keep up in the latest developments in plastic surgery.

00:04:11.080 Also for lots of fur and Vail.

00:04:13.840 Oh, is that right?

00:04:15.040 Oh, yeah.

00:04:15.580 Oh, yeah.

00:04:16.500 It's a whole thing.

00:04:17.260 I don't do Vail a lot.

00:04:18.240 So I didn't know that.

00:04:19.480 You know, it's Aspen light, you know, same same vibe.

00:04:22.940 OK, I what I do know about I think it's Vail is when you go out there and you drive to,

00:04:28.140 you know, the mountain, there's a big liquor store called Beaver Liquors.

00:04:33.800 It's kind of fantastic.

00:04:36.180 I'll have to I'll have to stop by next time I go.

00:04:39.980 Right.

00:04:41.020 Anyway, we go out to Montana, which is actually pretty nice.

00:04:44.760 Yeah.

00:04:45.360 Yeah.

00:04:46.220 I don't know.

00:04:47.000 I'm going to I'm going to look at it in a new light now for new plastic surgery advances.

00:04:51.240 I had never considered that.

00:04:52.420 But every time I go to Scottsdale, Arizona or L.A., yes, I have the same feeling as you.

00:04:58.140 And, you know, I'm probably only noticing the blood, the bad plastic surgery because

00:05:02.980 you surely don't actually notice the good plastic surgery.

00:05:06.640 Well, can I tell you, I think that might be the difference between like New York and L.A.

00:05:10.380 because the women here, I think, are vain, but the they just don't look like they've been

00:05:16.060 trying too hard.

00:05:17.140 You know, in L.A., you see a lot of those huge lips and the huge boobs and the huge butts.

00:05:22.740 Yeah.

00:05:23.460 And in New York, it's sort of more like an effortless, like, wow, why does she still

00:05:27.920 look 20 when she just got a social security card?

00:05:31.100 In Seattle, it's just it's just flannel and fleece.

00:05:34.700 There's it's not a very vain city.

00:05:37.860 I don't think I could make it there.

00:05:39.160 No way.

00:05:39.440 Are you there?

00:05:40.640 I live I live in I live in like a Navy town outside Seattle.

00:05:43.540 But that's where I where I was for until I bought a house out in kind of the suburbs.

00:05:47.220 But yeah.

00:05:47.920 OK, I don't I mean, you tell me.

00:05:49.840 But whenever I do a story about like some conservative who got run out of Seattle for

00:05:55.280 a bad tweet or a bad I'm like, I I'm not a conservative, but I think I'm associated

00:06:00.420 enough with the brand that I don't think I'd be happy.

00:06:03.200 I think people wouldn't like me.

00:06:04.700 You would be you would be run out of town.

00:06:06.940 I mean, I'm not kidding when I say like Alex Jones was in was in Seattle for, I think,

00:06:10.760 like five, five minutes before somebody threw a cup of coffee in his face.

00:06:14.560 Oh, my God.

00:06:15.320 Wait, yeah, you're not kidding me.

00:06:17.900 No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:06:19.220 I'm not I'm not equating.

00:06:20.580 I'm not equating the two.

00:06:21.800 Not at all.

00:06:22.340 But I couldn't really live there.

00:06:25.780 Stickers all up calling her turf and everything.

00:06:27.740 Right.

00:06:27.960 If I'm problematic, he would be incredibly problematic in Seattle.

00:06:31.440 Yes.

00:06:31.800 Where are you, Jesse?

00:06:32.640 Where do you live?

00:06:33.940 I live in Brooklyn.

00:06:34.740 I'm recording this after my parents house outside Boston.

00:06:36.960 I'm visiting them.

00:06:38.320 OK, so how did you two connect?

00:06:40.760 Online.

00:06:41.520 We we met first through email.

00:06:44.900 I emailed Jesse when I was working on a story about detransitioners and then we became Twitter

00:06:49.360 buddies.

00:06:50.420 We get asked that question a lot.

00:06:51.840 And I think we should start giving different answers every time.

00:06:54.640 Say we like we met at Twitter rehab or something like that.

00:06:57.460 We were married briefly in the 90s.

00:06:59.580 It's a long story.

00:07:00.920 Yeah.

00:07:01.720 Yeah.

00:07:02.120 We met at adult swim camp.

00:07:04.680 Oh, no.

00:07:05.140 I like that.

00:07:06.320 Yeah.

00:07:06.540 OK, so you met online.

00:07:07.920 So it was Twitter love that brought you together, which I like Twitter love.

00:07:13.060 It was Twitter love that brought me together with you, too.

00:07:15.660 Yeah.

00:07:16.000 I fell in love with both of you guys.

00:07:17.220 Just you're so clever.

00:07:19.060 Your approach to humor is so you're just you're just you're not afraid to say anything, which

00:07:24.620 is rare in a journalist.

00:07:25.760 You make fun of anyone and everything, which I also love, most of all yourselves and each

00:07:30.460 other.

00:07:31.380 So there's something kind of endearing about your act, you know, like just the two of you

00:07:34.800 mocking each other in a loving, respectful way.

00:07:38.520 But there's something like underneath the underneath the Twitter stick.

00:07:41.980 There's no actual personality.

00:07:43.400 So we need to.

00:07:44.980 That's it.

00:07:45.580 So now are you the other day when I was teasing you guys, I'm like, how should I tease these

00:07:51.080 guys?

00:07:51.320 And I went with something like what did I say, like ostracized liberals or heterodox?

00:07:56.180 I know you hate that word liberals.

00:07:57.640 But like you would.

00:07:58.940 Am I correct to say you're you're more left leaning, but you've kind of been kicked out

00:08:03.200 of the club because you've reported, honestly, on certain trans issues that have led people

00:08:07.740 to say terrible things about you?

00:08:09.640 I think that's fair.

00:08:11.180 I mean, it's weird.

00:08:12.100 So the reason I bristle a little at heterodox is like when you look at the views we've actually

00:08:16.120 expressed, they, you know, 95 percent of the country would find them uncontroversial.

00:08:21.100 What's so weird about media right now is like you need to be in that five percent to remain

00:08:26.860 in the good graces of sort of everyone on Twitter.

00:08:30.400 And yeah, I mean, I think we've tried to push back against the idea that that we've said anything

00:08:35.200 all that controversial, although the fact that you haven't treated as controversial tells

00:08:39.120 you something.

00:08:39.640 Yeah.

00:08:39.760 Yeah.

00:08:39.960 Well, so let's talk about that, because this is there was a great piece about you, Jesse

00:08:44.700 and Quillette that I recommend everybody read.

00:08:47.800 It's and it's called The Campaign of Lies Against Journalist Jesse Single and Why It

00:08:51.960 Matters.

00:08:52.980 And and it sort of lays out what happened to you.

00:08:56.340 But one of the points I want to start with is.

00:08:59.840 The guy makes a great point.

00:09:01.380 The author makes a great point about how all the stuff you've said, I've said it.

00:09:06.880 A lot of people have said it and it's not a thing if you're at all affiliated with the

00:09:13.560 right.

00:09:13.940 You don't get in trouble for saying all the stuff you've said and reported.

00:09:18.080 If you are affiliated with the left, they come for you.

00:09:21.740 So why do you think that is?

00:09:23.220 Why do you get in such trouble for reporting that it's not even like, hey, you should consider

00:09:27.640 detransitioning if you're trans?

00:09:29.480 It's hey, some people have detransitioned.

00:09:31.680 Transitioned like that's like you're reporting in a nutshell.

00:09:35.180 Yeah, I mean, so I think this is a flaw that emerges in a lot of political movements.

00:09:39.140 There's definitely been versions of this on the right.

00:09:40.960 But it's this whole thing of like you attack whoever is immediately to your left or to

00:09:45.580 your right instead of, you know, taking a bigger picture approach.

00:09:49.920 So in recent weeks, Katie and I have both been getting attacked as though our writing

00:09:55.100 inspired the state level laws seeking to ban youth transition.

00:09:59.340 But Katie and I have never come out against youth transition in that manner.

00:10:03.520 We've just said kids should be well assessed before they go on, you know, major medical

00:10:08.340 treatment.

00:10:08.960 So I think like maybe from the point of view of people on the left, like there's nothing

00:10:13.700 they can do about Mitch McConnell, but they can sure as hell try to drive us out of the

00:10:16.980 club and have some impact on our career in a way they can't on Mitch McConnell's, which

00:10:22.460 I would argue is maybe not the best approach because we're we're sort of not the problem.

00:10:27.220 Uh, if you look at it correctly, but it's a, I don't know.

00:10:31.600 I do think there's something very peculiar about, uh, online politics at the moment.

00:10:35.820 And there's this real drive to, to purify your own spaces.

00:10:39.660 Mm hmm.

00:10:40.220 I think, I mean, you tell me what you think, Katie, but I feel like it's twofold.

00:10:43.680 They feel betrayed because you're quote supposed to be seeing the world, you know, as they do

00:10:49.320 on their side.

00:10:50.100 And also they feel more threatened because your sphere of influence is their people,

00:10:57.280 you know, like they don't want somebody saying something they don't approve of in the circles

00:11:01.600 in which they travel.

00:11:02.580 It's one thing.

00:11:03.100 If you're going to be Tucker Carlson, you're going to influence, you know, a bunch of folks

00:11:06.540 who live in Mississippi, they can live with that, but they can't live with you influencing

00:11:10.260 Seattle and you Brooklyn.

00:11:12.400 I think that's totally right.

00:11:13.400 I think both of you are right.

00:11:14.280 You know, it's this sort of narcissism of small differences where you could, you could

00:11:17.980 agree on 95% of the issue, but that 5% just becomes intractable.

00:11:23.780 And that becomes so threatening that there's this, uh, this impulse to try to remove you

00:11:28.140 from the conversation.

00:11:29.320 And it's really unfortunate because we should be debating these issues in a way that's evidence

00:11:33.580 based and it's good faith and not resorting to personal attacks on people.

00:11:37.520 Um, because I think, you know, in, in, in, in reality, we all do want the same thing,

00:11:42.520 which is good outcomes for everybody.

00:11:44.600 Um, but our ways of getting there are, are very destructive.

00:11:48.740 Well, and even if, if you take away sort of the overall goal of good outcomes for everybody,

00:11:54.660 you're journalists, you report on the facts, the facts, you don't make the facts.

00:11:58.180 You, you can, sure.

00:12:00.240 You could say, I'm never going to report on anybody who's de transitioned, but why would

00:12:04.820 you do that?

00:12:05.380 I mean, the news is the news.

00:12:07.520 This is a whole, this is a very large movement and a very large cultural development.

00:12:12.300 That the trans rights movement over the past 10 years in particular, and, uh, we have

00:12:17.740 to be able to report on it and you don't get to just report the news that is pro one piece

00:12:22.320 of it, or it's not even a pro or anti it's, this is a piece of it.

00:12:26.160 This is part of what we're seeing.

00:12:27.460 It's made a lot of news just recently because of, um, Kira Bell, this gal over in England,

00:12:33.600 who's really ticked off that she, she feels she was rushed through this process and detrant

00:12:38.020 and, and transitioned from a female to male and had a double mastectomy and is mad that

00:12:44.500 not more people in the system stopped to say, you sure you want this as opposed to yes,

00:12:48.980 yes, yes, affirm.

00:12:50.620 Yeah.

00:12:51.200 And well, what's so disturbing about it is, is I, I, Katie and I both see ourselves as

00:12:55.240 journalists, you know, opinion journalists, but we're not, we're not activists.

00:12:58.080 It's not our job to only present one party side or the other.

00:13:01.120 And the complete collapse of scientific journalism on this one subject where it's just not treated

00:13:08.820 like the, it's basically like a biomedical ethics question is really complicated to know how to

00:13:15.660 best help a 20 year old, 12 year old who is in genuine anguish. But the only tools you have in

00:13:20.940 your tool belt are, are these treatments that are experimental. According to the UK government,

00:13:25.360 there is not great evidence for them. I happen to think that they are the best bet for kids who

00:13:29.620 would otherwise suffer a great deal, but there's a genuine conversation to be had here. And

00:13:33.400 it depresses me that we've gotten to the point where I almost have to point people to right-wing

00:13:39.640 outlets that I, I, on other issues don't trust very much at all because our side of the aisle

00:13:44.060 just isn't covering this issue well and covering this issue well does not mean invalidating these

00:13:49.220 kids or saying they should never go on hormones. It just means treating it like any other scientific

00:13:53.120 controversy. I found that really demoralizing and infuriating.

00:13:56.960 Well, can you talk about, cause you guys, you're pretty brave. I have to say, especially,

00:14:00.260 you know, given that you've taken such a beating, both of you for your reporting.

00:14:05.320 But I did hear you guys talking about recently these, I think it was puberty blockers and how

00:14:11.240 there really are risks to these. And I will confess, I was in the camp of like, I'd heard people say

00:14:16.520 that they could have potentially bad effects, but it never really researched it. Seemed like a drug.

00:14:21.860 Is it Lupron? That's been around a long time to, you know, for precocious puberty. When somebody

00:14:27.600 starts, you know, if a girl's going to get her period at eight, they'll give it to her or

00:14:30.680 that kind of thing. So I was like, how bad could it be? And that gives the kid another couple of

00:14:35.140 years to figure out where they are mentally. If you, if you're using it, if you think you're trans,

00:14:39.700 I learned a lot from what you were saying in terms of the long-term studies that have been done on that

00:14:45.400 for kids who have received it for non-trans issues. And, and they're, they're a little scary, Katie.

00:14:50.320 Yeah. So Lupron has been FDA approved since the early nineties as a pain reliever for women with

00:14:58.060 endometriosis, as well as for, for precocious puberty. But if you, if you, it's sort of

00:15:04.500 interesting. So Jesse and I did a show about this a couple, I guess last week, specifically about the,

00:15:10.140 these bills in North Carolina and Arkansas and a couple other places that would ban puberty blockers

00:15:14.680 for children and even for adults in some cases or, or ban cross-sex hormones for adults. And if you,

00:15:21.660 if you Google Lupron, which is, which is the brand name of, of this one particular puberty blocker

00:15:28.080 and side effects, what you find is that there are some very serious side effects. And in fact,

00:15:33.980 it's apparently so toxic that it's not recommended for use for more than 12 months in a lifetime.

00:15:38.760 Um, I found an article from a Las Vegas news station that says that there are, uh, that the FDA has

00:15:46.080 listed over 200 or I'm sorry, 25,000 adverse reports for Lupron. Um, and that, and there are

00:15:51.440 really serious side effects like suicidal thoughts, stroke, muscle atrophy, um, joint and bone and joint

00:15:57.160 pain. Um, some people say that it's affiliated with vision loss and you can find lots of articles about

00:16:02.680 people saying like people who were prescribed this drug for precocious puberty or some other reason who

00:16:06.780 were saying they were, I was harmed by this drug. But if you Google Lupron transgender, which you

00:16:12.980 mostly find not entirely, but what you mostly find are these sort of, you know, uh, this is reversible.

00:16:19.880 This is a, this is a life-saving drug for, for, for young dysphoric children. And they're not talking

00:16:25.460 about the side effects. Some will, but, but most don't. Um, so you get really two different sides of

00:16:30.200 the story just by doing that one exercise. Um, and it's interesting to see this because what you see in

00:16:35.840 mostly left-leaning media is this, is this thing repeated over and over again. This is irre, this is

00:16:41.980 reversible. Um, this is just a pause. And it turns out that that's probably not always the case. And

00:16:48.240 if you really care about trans kids, and I'm not saying these activists don't care about trans kids,

00:16:52.280 I think they really do care about trans kids. But if you care about them in a smart way, we should be

00:16:56.920 acknowledging the potential side effects because to not do that is going to cause actual harm to the

00:17:02.140 kids that you are supposed to be helping. Um, and this isn't to say that puberty blockers shouldn't

00:17:06.740 be legal. I'm really, both of us are very much against these state bills. Um, we don't think that

00:17:13.220 the state has any business getting in between, you know, patients and doctors when it comes to this,

00:17:18.720 or really other issues, other healthcare issues. Um, so that's not the answer either, but we really do

00:17:24.760 need to grapple with the, with the very real effects of this medication. And we need to do it in a way

00:17:29.660 that's honest, um, and not sort of, you know, not turn it into a culture war issue. And this

00:17:34.380 has become a culture war issue and that is making it harder to actually get to the bottom of what's

00:17:39.360 going on right now. Well, it's so crazy when you list those side effects and you think they just

00:17:43.560 stopped the J and J vaccine for six incidents of blood clots out of 7 million vaccines, right?

00:17:50.300 Six, six blood clots and one death though. We don't know the circumstances of that. So,

00:17:55.000 but I mean, at a 7 million vaccines, it's a minuscule amount and look at all the side effects

00:18:01.200 you list on this, on this one drug, very popular and being dispensed at the ready. But I just,

00:18:07.180 one point I want to follow up on is I think that the reason some of these more red states are feeling

00:18:12.360 like they need to pass these bills, um, and the bills, I I'll be honest, they make me somewhat

00:18:17.420 uncomfortable. But I think the reason they're feeling like I have to do it is because

00:18:21.960 the, the doctors have surrendered to these far left skulls who just tell them they have only one

00:18:29.380 option, which, which is to affirm and then prescribe. Otherwise they're going to be in

00:18:34.060 trouble. They'll be in trouble with the licensing board, you know, the, the, the, the massive medical

00:18:39.660 industries like the AMA and, and, um, American Academy of Pediatrics. They're sort of leaning on

00:18:46.440 these doctors now to prescribe the drugs as requested and to just affirm. And I think that's

00:18:51.900 scary too, to a lot of parents who, who would prefer to have an objective medical take on where

00:18:56.820 their kid is. I mean, this is one of the real problems right now is like trans healthcare is

00:19:01.300 just a complete wild West in the U S. So, um, the story I got in trouble with about this stuff on was,

00:19:07.320 uh, for the Atlantic, it was a long story. I highlighted several clinicians who are seen as

00:19:12.440 affirming clinicians. They are seen as the good guys. In my view, they did a very good job helping

00:19:17.580 kids work through these issues, decide, helping them decide who would benefit the most from blockers

00:19:21.760 and hormones. So I hear what you're saying. I think some of these clinicians are quacks and are not doing

00:19:27.480 a good job, but the problem is there's no real standards of care. All the standards of care we have

00:19:32.840 are completely non-binding. We don't have a national healthcare system. So it's just like the care you get

00:19:37.940 in rural Oklahoma versus the Bay area. It may be awful in both places, but in complete opposite

00:19:44.020 directions. There's just, if you're, I feel so bad for parents going through this. Cause it's like a, a roll

00:19:49.020 of the dice, whether the doctor, uh, your kid goes to, or the therapist, your kid goes to, has any idea

00:19:54.040 what they're doing. And that's like, that's not a good situation.

00:19:57.240 Well, Abigail Schreiber just tweeted out something, a study a couple of days ago about how they, they looked

00:20:04.160 at, uh, female to male transitioners, um, who had actual surgery and the number of complications

00:20:13.780 in those cases was stunning. It was more than every single case had a complication. It was like

00:20:19.980 double of those who had the procedure had serious complications and complaints and some complained of,

00:20:27.880 you know, pretty significant deformities and so on. And, and she was kind of making a similar point,

00:20:32.840 which is this science is so untested and trying to find doctors who are honest and actually know

00:20:39.340 what they're doing is very sketchy. Anyway, the, the way through all of that historically has been

00:20:46.880 to be open and honest about it for the medical profession to report the, the errors and the

00:20:51.420 problems and then for the journalists to fearlessly report on them. So people have real information

00:20:57.120 just feels like we're not in that place, Katie. Right. So I haven't seen, uh, Abigail's tweet or the study

00:21:03.300 that she's talking about, but, and you know, there are different medical procedures. So top surgery

00:21:09.120 at the trans, uh, if a trans guy, you know, wants to have his breast removed, that's a double

00:21:13.200 mastectomy. That's a, that's a common surgery. It's been done for a long time. You know, I'm sure

00:21:18.820 there are complications with that, but there are more experimental surgeries like thalloplasty, which is the

00:21:22.560 creation of a penis. And I've interviewed people who've had this procedure and there can be really

00:21:26.960 horrific side effects. Just incorrect. It's an incredibly difficult surgery and there can be

00:21:31.780 really terrible side effects. The thing is, if someone like Jesse or I reported on this, we would

00:21:36.340 be accused or Abigail Schreier, we would be accused of being transphobic and trying to deny trans people

00:21:42.380 healthcare. If, uh, Jezebel or some other, some other outlet or a trans person reported the same

00:21:49.320 thing, you know, they would be, they would be lauded for saying, for, for, for trying to improve.

00:21:54.880 Jezebel did a piece on this horrible surgeon who, who just horrific outcomes, but that we should want

00:22:00.300 that kind of reporting. Yeah, we should absolutely. Yeah. And, and, but when Jesse and I do it or when

00:22:04.660 Abigail does it, it's, it's seen as transphobic when other people do it, it's seen as elevating

00:22:08.940 trans healthcare, which we should all want. We should not want people to have these horrific

00:22:13.420 outcomes from their surgeries. We should all want the same thing, but because this has, it has been so

00:22:18.200 filtered through these cultural lenses and some people are good and some people are bad, you know,

00:22:22.420 it becomes sort of impossible. Um, and as Jesse said, you know, some of the, some of the only good

00:22:27.340 reporting on these issues is being done in the conservative media because the mainstream and left

00:22:31.680 media is terrified to report on these things. Well, and not only that, but the, the, as you guys know,

00:22:38.340 the other narrative that gets thrown back at you as a journalist and others, anybody poking these bears

00:22:43.440 is you're going to cause children to kill themselves. I mean, they play that the ultimate

00:22:49.100 Trump card, any parent, anybody denies the questions, right? Like that, that's scary to hear.

00:22:55.580 Obviously nobody wants that, but it's, it's also, it doesn't seem like an appropriate card to throw

00:23:02.280 out there. So cavalierly. No, it's dangerous. And we also don't know that it's true that if you,

00:23:08.440 uh, if you tell a kid, no, you cannot have puberty blockers at the age of 13, that does not mean that

00:23:13.200 the child is going to kill themselves. And, and, and that's a really irresponsible way to report on

00:23:18.020 suicide. And this goes against all of the, all of the, the acceptable standards of reporting on

00:23:22.860 suicide. You do not want to spark a suicide contagion by telling children that if they don't get what

00:23:27.920 they want, when they want it, the inevitable outcome is, is suicide.

00:23:32.180 Hmm. It's everything's sort of, what did they say? Ass overhead when it comes to the

00:23:38.160 reporting on this stuff, but I, it's gotten personal with you guys and Jesse, I confess,

00:23:43.320 I didn't realize quite how bad it was until I read the, the piece in Quillette. Um, so I hope I'm

00:23:48.560 not, I love Coleman Hughes. You guys know him, right? Yeah. Um, so he had me on his podcast and

00:23:55.080 he refused to ask me about my NBC cancellation and that whole thing. Cause he was, and he said,

00:24:02.500 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

00:24:05.840 when I listened back to his intro. Um, I'm, I'm not going to ask her about it because one of the

00:24:11.760 problems with cancel culture is you re-traumatize the person when you keep asking them about it and

00:24:17.800 making them relive it. And I was like, you had another reason, a little Coleman. So I don't mean

00:24:23.660 to, you know, bring up just the awful things, Jesse. So forgive me, but I did want to ask you

00:24:29.180 because what they're trying to do, these sort of trans activists, I guess they are trans journalists

00:24:33.620 or not even necessarily trans journalists. Some of these are just, um, like one of the ones he

00:24:38.260 talks about in his piece is, uh, a quote, popular parenting columnist named Nicole cliff who have

00:24:44.280 come after you in really, and I want to say upfront zero proof for any of this. It's is, it isn't true,

00:24:50.040 but I mean, stuff like he's sexually exploited at least a dozen trans women. And that one's true

00:24:55.260 that you were sending out dick pics, not true. That's verifiable. But I mean, they went to the

00:25:02.660 place that hurts. Yeah, I will say, I mean, one of the, uh, and I don't mind you asking,

00:25:07.340 it's not traumatizing. I mean, it's infuriating. Um, yeah, basically this started in 2016, sort of

00:25:14.480 the light version of it. After I wrote another controversial article about the, um, a gender

00:25:19.180 clinic in Toronto that was closed. But, uh, after the 2018 Atlantic article, a lot of weird so-called

00:25:25.120 sock puppet accounts popped up on Twitter, basically trying to contrive some sort of me too event against

00:25:30.840 me. They would say that I had sent inappropriate pictures that I had sort of tried to hit on trans

00:25:36.580 women, just basically anything from the sort of me too playbook. You can imagine all of it,

00:25:42.080 all of it fabricated. And I was able to ignore it because it was mostly just weirdos and, and you

00:25:48.220 don't necessarily want to give oxygen to weirdos, uh, by, by responding to them aggressively, but

00:25:53.680 things really escalated when Slate's parenting advice columnist, Nicole cliff publicly announced that

00:25:58.840 I was obsessed with trans women. And then I had, um, repeatedly tried to get them to meet me for

00:26:05.920 lunch under shady circumstances. I've laughed because I hate, I don't like people. I don't

00:26:11.260 like meeting people for lunch. Um, intermittent fasting. He would never do it. I'm honestly,

00:26:16.540 I'm a grab a, I can choose the bodega kind of guy. Does it the intermittent fasting?

00:26:20.920 A hundred percent. We have to do a show on that. It's, it actually works.

00:26:23.860 Starvation is yes, is, is a good way to lose weight. Totally. As it turns out,

00:26:28.940 you don't actually eat, you lose weight.

00:26:32.700 Huh? I'd never put two and two together like that.

00:26:34.800 I eat. I just don't eat between the hours of 8 PM and noon. And then I eat like a fiend and it's

00:26:39.240 awesome. All right. Sorry. Keep going, Jesse. So yeah. Bodega cheese. That's more your thing by

00:26:43.420 yourself. Not with real people. Exactly. Not with real people. I hate real people. Um, no. And so just,

00:26:47.640 just seeing this stuff escalate and, and always with no proof. Uh, and it gets so ridiculous. I

00:26:53.640 mean, one, one trans writer accused me of slut shaming her and the start and the finish of that

00:27:00.960 allegation is I complimented a piece she wrote about dating as trans. I just, in a parenthesis.

00:27:06.380 How dare you monster. Um, so there's a really good book called Galloway was middle finger by a woman

00:27:14.840 named Alice Drager. I believe Katie sends it to people who get sort of publicly shamed and,

00:27:18.860 and it's about what happens on the left. If you're seen as crossing certain lines. And most of the book

00:27:23.900 is about the horrific rumors that get spread against people often with no proof, uh, for,

00:27:29.380 for doing this. I'm lucky that this all happened to me in my mid thirties rather than my mid twenties,

00:27:35.300 because I genuinely think it would have ruined my career. Otherwise, if I hadn't yet been established

00:27:39.460 as a journalist and had good editorial contacts, who, who would want to commission a piece from

00:27:44.720 someone like me with all this stuff floating around online? I just, it infuriates me. There's

00:27:49.380 no accountability for professional journalists who spread these lies, delete the tweets, never apologize.

00:27:55.380 If we can't agree that journalists shouldn't spread public slander about their perceived enemies.

00:28:02.800 I what's left with the journalism. Why should anyone trust us? So that's what's,

00:28:06.880 that's, what's really gotten me about this. People can misinterpret my work. They can call

00:28:11.280 me transphobic, but to just fabricate lies about someone that it's been an unpleasant experience.

00:28:17.540 Well, and, and I, I see you fighting back now sometimes, and I like it. There was somebody

00:28:21.720 out there. Um, her name is, I guess she's a video game developer, uh, Brianna Wu, who tweeted out

00:28:27.440 about you. She, she piled on and said, I have my own Jesse single stories. I've never shared publicly.

00:28:33.120 One day I will. And I have receipts as if like, you gave her a receipt after you harassed her or

00:28:40.500 were creepy to her. I'm like, and here's your receipt for my treatment. Anyway, I love it because

00:28:46.160 that is so, it's disgusting because that's what's like a middle schooler, sociopathic middle schooler,

00:28:52.080 but it's been done in the me too movement where people, with people saying, I've got my own stories

00:28:55.560 about this guy, you know, one day I'll tell him. And sometimes they come through that happened in the

00:28:59.100 Andrew Cuomo case with the accuser number one. Um, so I think it has this tendency of getting

00:29:04.380 people to believe it. And you were like, you quickly respond saying Brianna should share these

00:29:09.040 stories immediately. I think it's really important to get to the bottom of this. Oh, what a shock.

00:29:13.220 No receipt receipts were provided. No additional claims were made and they never will be.

00:29:18.400 Well, the great, the great thing about that particular story. So Brianna is not just a

00:29:23.360 video game developer. She ran for Congress twice, um, did not win as, as, as clearly. Um, but one of

00:29:29.920 our followers offered to put up a thousand dollars if she would share the receipts and then other

00:29:36.200 people started, started pledging money. It was the safest bet you thought you could have possibly

00:29:40.200 made, but we got like $60,000 of pledges that, you know, people would donate to the charity of

00:29:45.840 Brianna was choice. If she could just provide the evidence that she claimed that she had,

00:29:50.620 um, that Jesse had, you know, done something untowards to her and she just, you know, never

00:29:55.200 happened. So that's amazing. Right. So I think that she was actually harming trans children. I mean,

00:30:00.320 think of how many trans orphans $60,000 could have, could have, uh, could have fed.

00:30:04.800 Good point. Coming up in one second, we're going to get into LGBTQ. What does, what does Q mean?

00:30:10.840 Exactly. I've heard different things. They're going to walk me through it and we're going to talk

00:30:13.740 about why there are so many letters. Is it necessary? What does it say? Is that virtue

00:30:17.020 signaling? Should the B still be in there? Well, we'll get into all of it. Plus we're going to turn

00:30:22.140 to the latest police involved shooting out of Minnesota. Um, as you know, this officer, Kim

00:30:27.520 Potter now, uh, had discharged her weapon instead of her taser and she killed a young man, Dante Wright.

00:30:34.520 And there have been riots and there are now charges. And we're going to talk to our guests about it.

00:30:40.160 But first this now, Katie, let me ask you about being a turf. This is, this is what JK Rowling is

00:30:51.900 claimed to be. They've used this term against you. Just explain what it is and how you get labeled

00:30:57.320 that. Sure. So a turf is a radical, uh, trans exclusionary, radical feminist. I'm not trans

00:31:03.220 exclusionary and I'm not a radical feminist. So this does not apply to me whatsoever. I don't think it

00:31:08.020 applies to JK Rowling either. It's interesting, you know, Jesse gets these, uh, he gets allegations

00:31:13.580 or, or rumors about this sort of like weird sexual innuendo because he's a straight man and I'm a

00:31:18.240 lesbian. So people call me a turf. Um, so this is just, so it's basically stereotypes or just applying

00:31:24.160 stereotypes to us, uh, which seems problematic to me. Um, so, so this is a term that is used. A lot

00:31:30.660 of people say that it's a slur. I don't totally think that it's a slur, but it is definitely not a

00:31:34.560 term of an endearment and it's used just to shut down conversations. It's basically, it's a, it's

00:31:39.320 a synonym for transphobic. So in my case, what happened was that in 2017, I wrote an article for

00:31:44.360 the stranger Seattle's all weekly, um, where I was a staff writer on D transitioners. And it was a,

00:31:50.420 uh, it was not an opinion piece. It was just sort of a profile of six or seven people who had gone

00:31:55.300 through this experience. And I, I, I regret it recently. And I realized that it was sort of, I,

00:31:59.400 I, I went kind of overboard, uh, reassuring people or trying to reassure people that the

00:32:04.960 existence of D transitioners doesn't in any way invalidate trans identities. And I think trans

00:32:10.380 adults should have access to healthcare and really sort of hedged, um, in a way that I probably

00:32:15.300 wouldn't do now. Um, it was sort of embarrassing to reread that and see how sort of cautious I was,

00:32:20.080 um, with this piece. Um, but there was a really crazy outcry and it wasn't just online,

00:32:25.520 although of course it was online, but people, uh, somebody burned stacks of the newspaper and

00:32:30.260 sent me a video of it. And people put flyers all around Seattle, calling me transphobic.

00:32:34.420 There are stickers around Seattle calling me, uh, transphobic. There's another one calling me a

00:32:40.000 Jordan Peterson apologist. Um, there's a picture of my face, uh, that says I'm a Nazi sympathizer.

00:32:45.640 And so this, sure. Right. And this is, Seattle's a pretty small town. Um, and so this was not just,

00:32:51.540 you know, I lost tons of friends. Um, I was basically ostracized. I heard at one point,

00:32:55.520 there was a, there was a photo of me. Somebody printed out a photo of me and put it in a urinal

00:32:59.540 at a gay bar in Seattle, a gay bar that I had, that I had been to and enjoyed. Um, so, so this

00:33:04.400 went, you know, it was online, but it was also offline in a way that was very disturbing. Um,

00:33:09.120 and if you read the piece, I think anybody who, who like actually reads the piece will see that it

00:33:14.080 is, there's nothing transphobic about it. And in fact, argues in favor of, of adequate, you know,

00:33:20.940 good healthcare for trans people. Um, so it was just this, it was a very bizarre experience.

00:33:25.340 To see sort of this caricature of myself, um, as a, you know, an evil transphobic bigot,

00:33:30.420 um, emerge from this, from this deeply reported story that actually had trans sensitivity readers.

00:33:36.340 Um, not a word that I knew at the time.

00:33:38.380 Can we be honest about there, there's something going on with lesbians and the trans community

00:33:44.300 activists. I distinguish the activists from the community writ large, because I just don't think

00:33:49.280 they are represented by these very loud, very bullying activists, but there's something going on

00:33:54.580 because, you know, Abigail talked about this in her book and on my show, when she was talking about

00:33:58.820 how it's no longer considered cool to be lesbian. Sorry, Katie. I know, I know. We're over lesbianism.

00:34:06.100 That's true. That's true. Right. And this has actually been true for, for years. Um, you know,

00:34:11.080 queer, it's cool to be queer. It's not cool to be a lesbian because lesbians are seen and I'm sort of

00:34:16.860 generalizing here. Um, but in, in many circles, lesbians are seen as, as exclusionary because

00:34:22.240 lesbians are, you know, female homosexuals who are same sex attracted, who sort of by definition or

00:34:28.200 the old definition, um, you know, males, trans women would not be, would not be included in sort

00:34:34.880 of their, their sexual interest. There are plenty of lesbians who date trans women or trans guys and

00:34:41.400 call themselves lesbians. That's also a thing. Um, but it's where the old definition is often seen

00:34:46.760 as, seen as a problematic. Um, yeah. So, so, I mean, aren't you by, by definition, exclusionary

00:34:52.520 is exclusionary if you're a gay man or, or a lesbian woman. I mean, yes, you're exclusionary. I mean,

00:34:57.280 I'm exclusionary too as a, as a straight person, right? There's only one, one group I like in that

00:35:02.320 way. That's what's so weird about this is I've like straight men seem to be, no one seems to be

00:35:07.020 focusing on straight men who are a much larger group than lesbians and, and what our sort of

00:35:11.420 preferences are. It's this weird focus on lesbians per se that I don't, I, I, I've had trouble

00:35:16.580 understanding. A hundred percent. I've noticed it too. Go ahead, Katie. So it also doesn't,

00:35:22.540 so there's lots of drama within sort of the lesbian community or what would have been formally known as

00:35:26.960 the lesbian community was just sort of queer, queer women. Um, there's lots of infighting and drama

00:35:32.260 about whether or not, you know, uh, lesbian spaces should be allowed to be female only.

00:35:37.660 You don't see that in gay male spaces. So if you have a, like a dance party, that's for

00:35:42.900 specifically for lesbians, chances are there's going to be some complaints. If you even use the

00:35:47.700 term lesbian in your advertising or whatever, because that's seen as exclusionary, you don't

00:35:52.000 see that in gay male spaces. So you're supposed to say queer instead, right? Right. What's the

00:35:58.680 difference? Can you just explain how, how is that term the way it's used? What's the difference

00:36:02.980 between being a lesbian and being queer? I mean, now queer is sort of meaningless because

00:36:07.620 queer has expanded to also mean like heterosexuals who are polyamorous or kinky. So it's basically

00:36:13.960 anything that isn't like a monogamous heterosexual, um, sort of traditional relationship because people

00:36:20.160 want to opt into it, I think, because everybody wants to be special. Um, so you have, you know,

00:36:25.480 people who would not have been considered queer a couple of years ago have now opted into this,

00:36:29.300 into this, uh, it used to be a slur. Now it's been embraced. Now it's like, you're allowed to

00:36:34.020 say that now. I mean, you have to say now, you do, can I say it? Can somebody who's straight say it?

00:36:40.220 Yeah. I mean, it is, it is the acceptable term now. It is a way of, of like signaling your

00:36:45.140 allyship is to use the term. Is that what the Q is on LGBTQ? Because somebody told me the Q is

00:36:49.600 actually questioning. I was like, I thought it was queer. I don't understand. Yeah. It just depends on

00:36:53.660 who you ask. I mean, that's Q and not actually. They're there now. It's very inclusive. Yeah,

00:37:03.940 exactly. I'm sorry. But if it's, if it's queer, didn't we cover it with bi sort of,

00:37:08.160 and it's like too many letters. They, I don't think that questioning, by the way,

00:37:11.360 should get its own letter. That's that right. They shouldn't get a letter. LGBT is enough.

00:37:15.340 That just means that you're an adolescent if you're questioning and, and bi is now problematic too,

00:37:19.940 because bi presupposes that there are only two genders. So really what you, if you're, if you

00:37:24.360 want to be like, like the best, you know, the best queer, the best ally, which you are as pan,

00:37:29.720 which means you are attracted to all genders, all 47 genders.

00:37:34.020 So it's going to be LGBTQ soon.

00:37:36.760 Right. We're just going to get rid of the L and the B. It'll just be Q and P from now on.

00:37:41.220 Yeah. So there's lots of tension within the queer community. And I should say there isn't

00:37:46.380 really such a thing as the queer community. There's, you know, just like, there's no such

00:37:51.160 thing as the black community or the white community there. This is a population that

00:37:55.020 oftentimes doesn't get along that oftentimes doesn't like each other and doesn't socialize.

00:37:59.920 But yes, there's lots of tension. And a lot of it tends to be generational where you have older

00:38:04.060 gay men and lesbians who sort of don't understand or don't appreciate the new, the new rules being

00:38:09.900 imposed upon us. I wrote about this for Andrew Sullivan's newsletter and it did not go over well.

00:38:15.680 I will, to put it mildly. But there is a thing, and this isn't just lesbians, but there are lots

00:38:22.300 and lots of females who are either opting into sort of the non-binary identity or transitioning.

00:38:30.280 And I've seen this in my own friend circle in a way that is kind of mind blowing. I mean,

00:38:35.460 I should keep a spreadsheet of everybody's pronouns now, because it seems like half of the women that

00:38:40.520 I know are now trans or non-binary and have changed their name. Some of them have gotten

00:38:45.260 surgery. Some of them haven't and just sort of opt into this non-binary thing. But it is,

00:38:51.420 it is a trend. And even saying that it's a trend is something that people think is offensive. But I

00:38:57.700 do think that this is a trend. It's a social contagion. And that makes sense because lots of

00:39:02.880 human behavior is, I mean, most human behavior, all human behavior possibly is socially influenced.

00:39:08.760 And there's this idea that if you think that there is some social influence on what is happening,

00:39:14.540 that that is somehow deeply offensive. Because no, it has to be about this deep internal identity,

00:39:20.680 this deep sense of who you really are. And there can't be any social influence on that. So if

00:39:24.900 somebody says that they're trans or non-binary, it can't possibly be influenced by the people around

00:39:29.040 them by their peers, you know, but that's just everything we do. Everything we do is offensive

00:39:33.180 now. I mean, like, you guys know that everything we do is offensive. You can't, if you cannot tiptoe

00:39:38.900 through the line, through the landmines of life in 2021, America, without stepping on one. I mean,

00:39:45.820 you're just they're everywhere. So you're going to offend. And by the way, I love that on Twitter,

00:39:50.280 you say your pronouns are me, me, me. These are my pronouns. Me, me, and back to me.

00:39:56.540 Right. Well, there is a narcissism about this, you know, this identity,

00:40:02.160 identitarianism that we're seeing right now. I mean, when I was when I was a younger person and

00:40:06.500 sort of coming into my own sexual identity, the idea was to get rid of labels. We would talk about

00:40:11.700 how labels didn't define us. And now it's like the more labels you can put on yourself, the higher you

00:40:17.060 are in the hierarchy. I know I, I, I refuse to do it. I'm supportive of the trans community.

00:40:23.600 Love you, supporting you, rooting for you, but I'm not going to say my pronouns,

00:40:27.660 figure it out. If you want to say your pronouns, you want to tell me privately what they are,

00:40:30.960 happy to go by whatever your pronouns are, but I'm just not going to run it, walk in a room,

00:40:34.620 say my pronouns. And if that makes me a turf, oh, well, I've been called worse.

00:40:39.160 All right. Let me shift gears with you for a second, because I just want to hit you guys up

00:40:42.000 on your, for your take on a couple of the things in the news today. Cause I think you're left

00:40:49.080 leaning, but I'm interested in your, in your opinion on things like, uh, what's happening in

00:40:55.260 Brooklyn center, Minnesota. You, you saw that this 20 year old man, uh, Dante Wright was killed

00:41:00.980 by a police officer there, a white woman. He was black because she pulled what she thought was her

00:41:06.600 taser. This is her explanation, but it was in fact her gun and she shot him and he died. And now

00:41:11.860 we've had a couple of days of riots in minute in Minneapolis or in this town, Brooklyn center,

00:41:17.140 Minnesota, and 60 people were arrested for the riots there and so on and so forth. I am,

00:41:23.840 I, we're going to get into this in a second, but I don't understand why the city manager had to be

00:41:30.120 fired because he said, and he's a black man, by the way, the city manager, because he said,

00:41:34.620 I think we should, you know, she's entitled to due process. Now she resigned, the cop resigned.

00:41:38.680 And he just said before like the mob comes for her, because it was at this like city hearing.

00:41:44.880 He's like, she's entitled to due process. He got fired just for saying that. And I have to tell you,

00:41:51.320 it disturbs me. No one's defending the woman's, if you believe what she said, mistake. And it sounds

00:41:56.460 like it was genuine because on tape, she goes, Oh my God. She goes, taser, taser, taser. Then she

00:42:01.080 fires and she goes, Oh my God, I shot him. It was in my gun. So it's pretty clear that it was a

00:42:05.920 mistake, but we'll see. But why shouldn't we have an investigation? Why shouldn't we have due

00:42:09.300 process? Why must we just appease the mob immediately by saying, yes, she's awful.

00:42:15.520 And apparently we've got to go with racist and she's afforded to no process whatsoever.

00:42:21.920 Yeah. It's super disturbing. I, uh, you know, uh, Chelsea Handler at, during the show on trial

00:42:26.960 tweeted something about like, why should we have trials? Uh, if this whole thing was on video,

00:42:31.400 um, you know, which is sort of the same point, you know, that due process is somehow doesn't,

00:42:37.680 uh, doesn't apply or shouldn't apply. Um, if we think that the crime was bad enough,

00:42:42.260 which is just a terrible trend. You know, I think this was one of my sort of, um, criticisms of me

00:42:48.380 too. You know, we need to have due process claims should never just stand on their own. We shouldn't

00:42:53.900 hashtag believe women or hashtag believe victims. We should always do an investigation and defending

00:42:59.880 that principle is incredibly important or should be incredibly important, especially for liberals,

00:43:04.660 especially for people like us. And one of the things that disturbs me about this trend that

00:43:08.800 we've seen in recent years is that liberals are, are, are giving up that mantle, the mantle of,

00:43:14.180 of actual liberalism where due process is important. Free speech is important that we

00:43:17.920 defend the rights of people who have done terrible things because the principle should be more

00:43:23.000 important in these individual cases. And, uh, we are not seeing that right now.

00:43:26.600 Yeah. And you, you've got people like Rashida Tlaib who tweets out after this happened and I

00:43:32.920 quote, it wasn't an accident. Okay. She's going to be the arbiter. Like she just knows she's in

00:43:37.420 the woman's head. It wasn't an accident. Policing in our country is inherently and intentionally

00:43:42.180 racist. Dante Wright was met with aggression and violence. I am done with those who condone

00:43:47.480 government funded murder. No more policing, incarceration and militarization. It can't be

00:43:54.920 reformed that this literally is what black lives matter in their chapter in your neck of the woods

00:44:00.280 in Seattle has said explicitly, open the jails, get rid of the justice system, no more courts,

00:44:05.220 no more prisons. And we've heard in a wider basis, no more cops because it's, it cannot be reformed

00:44:11.640 and it's government funded murder. This is a sitting us Congresswoman. This person is insane

00:44:17.100 because as we all know, what would happen if, if her world came about is those of us with any sort

00:44:22.920 of money in our pockets would be just fine. And people who live in the poor communities would get

00:44:27.360 killed in astronomical numbers. Right. I tweeted something about this, about how, uh, how, you know,

00:44:33.580 sure, like let's do this and rich people will hire private security and poor people can do like

00:44:37.800 community watch or whatever. This is also a losing position when it comes to democratic politics,

00:44:42.200 because if you look at polling, including polling of black populations, they don't say that they want,

00:44:47.820 you know, the police defunded. They don't say that they don't want prisons to exist anymore. What they

00:44:53.000 say is they want better policing. And sometimes that actually means more policing. They want their

00:44:57.600 neighborhoods to be safe. Like everybody should want their neighborhoods to be safe.

00:45:00.840 I mean, that's what's so frustrating about this is there's been decades of polling suggesting,

00:45:04.640 as you would expect that if you're a black American in a low income area, you have like a

00:45:09.280 tortured relationship to the police. I think police are abusive all the time. I I'm from an upper

00:45:14.740 middle-class white family and my own family members and myself have had multiple run-ins with,

00:45:18.560 with police who were jerks and not obviously not as bad as being assaulted or killed, but

00:45:22.620 it frustrates me that this is sort of seen as like the left position or even the like person of color

00:45:28.980 position when polling shows that black people want police to show up to protect them. On average,

00:45:34.960 we can't speak for every member of a group, but they also don't want to be treated poorly by them.

00:45:38.920 This shouldn't be a surprise if you just look at the polling. So I think that a lot of the reporting

00:45:43.260 on this has been terrible and has been very, frankly, soft on this abolitionist position that

00:45:48.820 is really half-baked. Like they can't answer basic follow-up questions about what it would mean.

00:45:53.840 It's also a distraction because someone was just killed for basically no reason because of a horrible

00:45:59.060 error. And we're talking about police abolition, which is not going to happen versus how to try

00:46:04.000 to make sure that doesn't happen again. I don't even know how you make sure that doesn't happen

00:46:08.020 again. I feel like this woman, when I first saw it, I thought, okay, so she must be a newbie.

00:46:12.000 You know, she must've just panicked in a tense moment and the guy was resisting arrest. And that's a,

00:46:16.920 that's an intense situation for any officer. She'd been in the force for 20 years. I think she did the

00:46:21.700 right thing in resigning. There's no future for her in that police department. The police chief

00:46:25.260 also resigned. That's just a political move. He didn't need to go. She made a terrible mistake.

00:46:31.840 If I make a mistake in this job, I have the opportunity to come back on and correct it and,

00:46:35.920 you know, write the record. You guys too, in your jobs, it's not the case for a police officer.

00:46:40.500 And certainly in this environment, mistakes aren't, aren't quote allowed, right? They're not going to

00:46:44.860 be allowed at all. I have no problem with this woman losing her job. A man lost his life. She can at

00:46:49.780 least lose her job. But people are saying they want her to be charged. It's like, okay, so we can

00:46:55.520 do that. Um, then we will have due process. Then there's going to be a system to figure out whether

00:47:00.880 in fact she committed any crime because all the evidence we've seen so far suggests it was an

00:47:05.440 accident. And none of the evidence suggests it was racist. She was white. He was black, but he was

00:47:10.540 resisting arrest. That's why. And even the officers on site were saying a taser would have been

00:47:15.080 appropriate given what this guy was doing. The fact that she reached for the wrong thing is awful.

00:47:19.800 But I don't know. We jump immediately to racism in all these situations now when the, the, the race

00:47:26.200 of the person being arrested is black. I think that, you know, the media is very complicit in this

00:47:31.320 because here's an example. So, uh, I live in a small town in Western Washington over the summer,

00:47:36.340 a couple months after the death of George Floyd, a guy was killed by police about 13 miles from me.

00:47:41.480 Um, and we don't know this. We don't know the full story. He was, uh, he was sitting on an,

00:47:45.300 on an overpass apparently, and something happened. Uh, he was unarmed and he was shot and killed by

00:47:49.720 police. The Seattle times, the local newspaper didn't even send a reporter the 13 miles across

00:47:55.780 the water to report on this story. It got almost no press locally. Why is that? Well, the guy was

00:48:02.300 white. If he had been, been black, it would have been a major story. There would have been riots and

00:48:06.780 protests in the cities. And if you look at the data, and I know Megan, you've talked about this

00:48:10.940 on your show. If you look at the data, what we can see is that white people are also killed at,

00:48:17.400 at, you know, at significant rates, actually not even significant. This is all actually pretty rare

00:48:22.100 by cops. We just, we know that it is not only people of color who are being killed by police.

00:48:26.920 And we also know that white cops are not more likely to, to, to kill unarmed people than, uh,

00:48:31.720 than cops who are, you know, black or Brown. But instead of the media contextualizing this and

00:48:37.080 saying, you know, George Floyd was one of, uh, 14 or 15, I'm not sure what the member, what the

00:48:42.680 number is, but 14 or 15, uh, you know, black men killed by police in 2020. Every time they talk about

00:48:48.060 these incidents, they leave people with the impression that there are many, many more police

00:48:53.700 killings of unarmed people than there actually are. And I've done this.

00:48:56.920 I've asked people, I've said, you know, how many, how many, you know, unarmed black men do you think

00:49:01.280 were, were killed by police last year? And the answer is always at least a thousand because the

00:49:06.060 media doesn't actually contextualize this. And if the media started doing this, I think it would

00:49:10.220 give people less of a skewed perspective of what's going on. And the thing is, if you want to, if you

00:49:15.020 want to stop police shootings, ending racism, doing implicit bias training, isn't the actual, isn't

00:49:20.780 going to do it. That's not going to do it. Nothing at all. It will do absolutely nothing at all.

00:49:25.120 I mean, I do think deescalation training is clearly needed. I mean, that is a thing. And I

00:49:31.340 remember I interviewed four African-American female police chiefs from that, um, sort of the

00:49:38.560 North Carolina quarter that, that, that area rally Durham. And, um, they were saying how they very

00:49:45.600 rarely had physical confrontations on the job because as women who tended to be more slight,

00:49:50.320 you know, in stature, they had to learn deescalation. They, they really had no choice.

00:49:54.380 They, they knew they weren't going to be pulling their gun all the time. And they wanted to get

00:49:56.960 to a point where they could handle it. And one of my favorites, um, she was hilarious. She was like,

00:50:01.700 she showed me her beautiful, long, beautiful nails. And she goes, do you think I'm going to

00:50:04.460 mess these up on some loser suspect? She's like, Hey, anyway, we need more of that for sure.

00:50:11.040 But we also have to understand this is inherently dangerous job and another lesson in all of it.

00:50:17.020 And most of these cases is don't resist arrest, go back later, fight it later. If it's a bad cop,

00:50:24.120 if it's a racist cop, if it's a bad arrest, you can fight it on the scene. All the odds are against

00:50:30.440 you, all of them. So it's just, there, there's a responsibility within the black community,

00:50:36.080 within the white community, both to teach our, especially our young people don't resist

00:50:41.120 arrest. It's a losing proposition. You're, you're never going to win. You're never going

00:50:45.200 to successfully flee the police. That's definitely true. And there's also, we need to also be talking

00:50:49.620 about mental health. You know, there's also a correlation between police react, you know,

00:50:54.620 police get called because of a, uh, you know, sort of a mental health welfare check and somebody ends

00:50:59.020 up dead. You know, there are ways to reform the system, um, that don't involve defunding the police

00:51:04.100 and actually might involve giving them more money in some cases or reallocating it in different ways.

00:51:09.740 Um, but yeah, this idea that we're just going to get rid of police, get rid of prisons, it's never

00:51:13.640 going to happen as, as Jesse mentioned. Um, and so it just seems like a distraction, a way of sort

00:51:17.940 of signaling how, uh, how, how progressive you are on this particular issue when it's not going to help

00:51:22.260 anything, it's not going to happen. And if it did happen, it would probably make things worse for the

00:51:25.640 very people who you should be protecting. So Jesse's got a new book out, uh, talking about,

00:51:31.640 it's called why fad psychology can't cure our social ills. And, um, it's, that's sad to learn,

00:51:37.980 but it can't. And it's better to know rather than continue to practice some of these ridiculous

00:51:42.340 techniques, thinking you're helping yourself when you're not. And, uh, my old pal, Sheryl Sandberg

00:51:47.100 in her book, lean in included one of these and Jesse is ready to debunk it. Are you doing it right

00:51:53.100 now? Are you wasting your time thinking this one particular thing is going to help you at home or the

00:51:57.160 office? Stay tuned to find out what it is. But first I want to bring you a feature we have here

00:52:02.740 on the program called sound up. And this is where we play you a sound bite that we think you should

00:52:06.900 hear. That's been making the rounds and we'll talk about it. And in this particular case, it is the

00:52:12.220 sound of the city manager who got fired. The one that we were just talking about at a Minnesota who got

00:52:20.920 fired simply for calling for due process for Kim Potter, the police officer who has now resigned

00:52:27.860 from her position after what she says was an accidental shooting. Listen, in response to the

00:52:33.260 question about termination, uh, all employees working for the city of Brooklyn center, uh, are entitled to

00:52:39.900 due process with respect to discipline. Uh, this employee will receive due process, due process,

00:52:47.400 discipline, uh, will be determined. If I were to say anything else, um, I would actually be

00:52:53.440 contradictory. The idea of due process. This guy got fired for saying that fired.

00:53:02.700 What is happening to us? One city council member who, who actually voted to oust him came out and said,

00:53:09.620 I did it because I feared retaliation by the protesters. If I had voted to keep him in quote,

00:53:14.220 he was doing a great job. I respect him dearly. Again, this is a black man who loses his job in the

00:53:21.500 wake of the shooting of another black man who was resisting arrest, not to justify anything,

00:53:25.020 but just for perspective on why the situation was so tense. And so he says, let's, you're asking me

00:53:30.260 if she's going to be fired. We're going to give her a process. No, not only is that not okay,

00:53:34.660 you're fired too. Police chief's gone. Right. And now when we, when we taped with Jesse and Katie,

00:53:42.160 I actually didn't know this, but just moments, moments after we said goodbye to them, we just

00:53:45.640 found out Kim Potter's being charged with second degree manslaughter. The, the now former Brooklyn

00:53:51.100 center, Minneapolis police officer, Kim Potter is going to be charged with second degree manslaughter.

00:53:56.360 That's the same charge. One of them that Derek Chauvin's charged with. So somebody thinks that

00:54:02.180 his kneeling on the neck and everything that happened in that case for nine minutes warrants the

00:54:08.600 same charge against this woman, which we all saw unfold on camera where she says, taser, taser,

00:54:14.140 taser. And somebody has to say she was absolutely reckless, um, in pulling out her gun and firing it.

00:54:19.920 Now, I guess you could make the case. Did she not recognize what she was feeling was a gun

00:54:23.420 and not a taser? Um, well, if you want to do process for that, to figure it out, you got to go,

00:54:29.860 you're going to lose your job too. You have to be quiet and just accept whatever,

00:54:32.840 whatever punishment the mob wants. That's how it's going to be. Got it. Mob rule. The mob

00:54:39.500 threatens the city council with riots, which are underway. And they just do whatever they think

00:54:46.280 they need to do. It's not about the conscience. It's not about the law. It's not about procedure.

00:54:50.540 It's about avoiding the wrath of the mob. He's fired. And maybe you'll be fired too. If you say

00:54:55.860 anything, the mob doesn't like that's our country right now. And it's pathetic back to our guests in

00:55:01.800 one second, but first this. Now, one instance in which the police did a very good job was when

00:55:12.120 they arrested Bernie Madoff. Just transitioning. That's a really good segue. I realized this has

00:55:18.720 absolutely nothing to do with really our subject matter, but I just, I want to talk about it.

00:55:22.520 He's, he's dead. Bernie Madoff died. And I was just looking through the facts, you know, on the,

00:55:26.560 the, it's not a no bit yet, but just the right quick write-ups that about his death and his life.

00:55:30.700 He was 82. He had been treated for kidney disease that was terminal. I mean, I'm sure you don't

00:55:36.500 treat anything too aggressively when you're in prison. And he, he stole, they estimated $65

00:55:43.440 billion from people. He had 37,000 victims in 136 countries. Everybody from Steven Spielberg to

00:55:55.600 Kevin Bacon to Elie Wiesel, which is truly disgusting. Um, you know, Nobel, Nobel prize

00:56:01.720 winner and Holocaust survivor. And he died. And I just like, that story was so big. He was arrested

00:56:07.900 in December of 08. And I just think about like the, the carnage left in his wake. His son killed

00:56:14.540 himself. Um, the family was just completely ruined. The other, the other son died pretty

00:56:21.060 young of cancer after Bernie went to jail. Anyway, any thoughts on, on Bernie Madoff and

00:56:27.000 the, his passing and his life.

00:56:29.640 Rest in peace, Bernie.

00:56:30.980 I was going to make a joke about how, how he inspired our podcast, but then

00:56:35.340 the description got very dark.

00:56:38.820 That's the next stage of the blocked and reported empire is, uh, is financial investment.

00:56:42.700 Yeah. Could we announce our new, uh, pyramid scheme on your podcast, Megan? Would that be

00:56:46.200 okay? Send one dollar to five of your neighbors.

00:56:50.360 It doesn't have to do with the GoFundMe. The GoFundMe is actually to fund your career as a

00:56:53.680 budding rap artist, isn't it, Jessi?

00:56:56.040 Exactly. Thank you for mentioning that.

00:56:57.860 Clearly white collar crime does not get the attention it deserves, um, compared to the,

00:57:02.600 you know, low level drug crime or things like that.

00:57:05.020 Katie, people question our sense of morality a lot. So we should just take this opportunity

00:57:08.620 and use Megan Kelly's platform to say that we disagree with what he did.

00:57:12.020 We do. We, except when he ripped off Eli was ill. That was fine.

00:57:18.480 I always, I'm like constantly having to sidestep Katie's just endless anti-Semitism on the

00:57:24.180 podcast. So I'm, I'm sorry this came up.

00:57:26.340 It's identify as Jewish, Jessi. I've opted in.

00:57:30.300 What, speaking of that, what's your rap name, Jessi?

00:57:34.620 Juicy. How many listeners do you have?

00:57:36.500 I don't know. This is a bad idea.

00:57:39.200 You could say, cause you're Jewish.

00:57:41.340 Exactly. Yep.

00:57:42.020 Aren't those the rules? How's it going so far? You have a lot of fans?

00:57:48.060 Yeah, we, um, so when we launched the podcast, uh, or the Patreon, which is sort of our premium

00:57:53.240 subscription service, a, almost a year ago now, I said that, uh, if we got to a certain

00:57:59.360 level of, of dollars per month, I would release a rap about psychology's replication crisis,

00:58:04.340 which is also the subject of a, a book of mine. The quick fix that just came out.

00:58:08.280 That's where we're going next. Excellent. Um, yeah. And then I was, um, I think a mere eight

00:58:13.940 or nine months later, but I finally released it, uh, the day my book came out actually. And it was,

00:58:18.820 I had some help from a psychologist named David Pizarro at Cornell who made me sound, uh, less like what you're

00:58:25.240 hearing now. Uh, and I thought, I don't know, Katie thought it wasn't horrible and I, I trust her judgment.

00:58:31.080 Oh yeah. I'm a real connoisseur of rap music. You should really trust my judgment. My, I was actually

00:58:35.280 impressed with the length. It was like almost five minutes and lots of the words rhymed. Um,

00:58:39.740 I thought it was going to be much, much worse than it was. It was sort of impressive. Yeah. And if

00:58:43.500 people want the, uh, want access to that for whatever reason, um, they can, uh, join their

00:58:47.500 Patreon. People should, we should use that as a quote for our podcast. I thought it was going to

00:58:51.000 be much, much worse than it was. New tagline. So can I tell you, I, I was listening to you guys and

00:58:57.180 some terrible music started and I hit the fast forward, fast forward until I got past it. And then I

00:59:03.320 heard you talking about what it was and I almost rewound, but no, I didn't. So you should listen to

00:59:08.660 it. It's actually, it's actually impressive. It's been linked to birth defects in like 17 states.

00:59:16.000 All right. Can we talk about your book? Because I'm interested in this. You basically are,

00:59:20.900 tell us the name of it and tell us what my take is you're sort of debunking some of the crazy

00:59:24.780 pseudoscience that we've been depending on in this country to make ourselves feel better about

00:59:29.120 ourselves for the past 30 years, but you're not totally like shitting on it. It's not like

00:59:33.140 there's no potential merit to it, but you're like major asterisks on all of these self-esteem

00:59:39.260 research and all the stuff that's gone down. That's, that's my take. You'll do a better job

00:59:42.960 of naming the book and explaining it. Yeah. So the book is called the quick fix why

00:59:47.260 fad psychology can't cure our social ills. Uh, it stems from before Katie Herzog dragged me down

00:59:54.060 into culture war hell with her. I, I worked at New York magazine. I edited a vertical about behavioral

01:00:00.500 science and I sort of carved out a niche as someone who would be skeptical of the press releases you

01:00:05.960 would get from Harvard or the university of Pennsylvania touting some incredible new finding

01:00:10.260 about human behavior. So I decided to write a book that will basically help people, you know,

01:00:15.420 cut through the overhyped claims we often get from psychologists on issues like, you know,

01:00:20.460 the implicit association test, which can supposedly reveal your hidden racism, but,

01:00:24.360 but has very little evidence behind it. Uh, I do talk about the decades long self-esteem craze,

01:00:29.980 uh, which claim that like all sorts of, uh, societal problems, including crime could be

01:00:36.120 solved by improving people's self-esteem. There's also a military program that costs about $500

01:00:41.500 million that supposedly reduces PTSD and suicidality among soldiers, but no evidence to support that

01:00:49.240 just sort of a giant waste of money. So there's like, I don't know, if you look around the world,

01:00:54.080 there's a lot to be skeptical of it. And my goal with the book is to just help the average reader

01:00:58.720 who might not have much of a background in social science, um, have the right questions to ask when

01:01:03.340 their work or their school adopts one of these ideas. So basically you've taken away hope from

01:01:08.960 millions of people. Yeah, that's what we do. We're the, we're the hope stealers.

01:01:12.160 Just those things you thought might get you out of this crazy ass life and make you succeed from

01:01:18.860 whatever miserable life you're in wrong. None of it's going to work unless the system radically

01:01:24.320 changed. You're completely screwed. However, if you listen to blocked and reported, you can't,

01:01:29.120 your, your teeth will be wider. Your skin will be clear. Your finances will improve.

01:01:33.500 Exactly. Well, so one of the things my editor nudged me on really helpfully is like a lot of these ideas

01:01:38.480 do have some merit behind them. There's a kernel of truth there. And we have, you know, for

01:01:43.480 individuals, things like cognitive behavioral therapy seem to have some evidence behind them.

01:01:47.680 What doesn't work is the idea that you can give everyone an implicit association test and address,

01:01:52.440 you know, a problem of racial discrepancies that, that dates back hundreds of years or that you can

01:01:57.600 improve kids' self-esteem and suddenly there'll be better students. A lot of these ideas, when you

01:02:01.780 actually say them out loud, like it's sort of surprising anyone believed in them in the first place.

01:02:05.340 But what about grit? That was the one I was like, so I think of grit. I don't think of grit as like

01:02:10.440 doubling down determination. Like I'm just going to try, try, try to get an A on this test. Although

01:02:15.980 I, I understand that's a definition. I see it more as like stand tall, take life's punches,

01:02:21.920 forge forward, stop licking your wounds and feeling sorry for yourself. But how are you defining grit?

01:02:27.160 Because that's one of your targets saying, eh, this one's still a little shaky.

01:02:31.400 Yeah. Don't, don't try. Don't put effort in anything. Adopt the Jesse single technique.

01:02:36.800 Um, grit was this new scale developed by a social psychologist named Angela Duckworth.

01:02:42.320 Uh, she won a MacArthur genius grant for her work on that and other stuff. She basically claimed that

01:02:47.860 like perseverance and passion matters way more than we think as compared to sort of innate ability,

01:02:55.180 IQ, SAT scores, physical ability. And this really caught on, especially in educational circles.

01:03:02.500 No one really bothered to do the like careful research required to test if this is actually true

01:03:07.560 until recently, at least. And it, it just turned out to be very overhyped. Obviously, if the choice is

01:03:13.020 like train your kid to be hardworking versus not hardworking, being hardworking helps. But the question

01:03:19.360 of how much it helps or, or how much that matters relative to their innate ability, the answer there

01:03:24.500 is maybe like not what we want it to be. The fact is that intelligence in a lot of settings might

01:03:30.080 matter 30 to 40, uh, might be 30 or 40 times more important quantitatively than, than grit.

01:03:35.700 That's so disempowering. If you don't have, so you don't have, if you don't have a high IQ,

01:03:39.680 you're screwed.

01:03:41.300 Well, no, I think there's so many other things that can factor into your success in life. And,

01:03:46.480 and especially if you can find the right niche and find what you're good at IQ itself only explains

01:03:52.340 like 40 to 50% of success. There's still a lot of room there for other stuff, but the question of

01:03:57.200 whether you can just like train yourself to be grittier and that on its own will make you much

01:04:02.320 more successful. That's what I'm skeptical of. And I realized like, not everyone wants to hear that,

01:04:06.920 but again, if you're, if you're a science journalist, you sometimes have to deliver bad news.

01:04:11.820 What about, um, the power posing? Can you explain that?

01:04:14.960 Power posing is this idea that if you stand like super woman, uh, super woman, wonder woman with

01:04:21.860 your hands on your hips or in some other legs apart, some sort of, uh, uh, expressive, expansive

01:04:27.960 pose for a minute or two, uh, psychologist named Amy Cuddy and her colleagues produce research

01:04:34.480 suggesting this will help make you more, uh, assertive. It'll help make you better negotiation

01:04:38.800 settings. And it's sort of looped in with the Sheryl Sandberg lean in movement as like a way to help

01:04:44.300 women, uh, improve in the workplace. Uh, there's basically no evidence to suggest this is true

01:04:50.700 not to be a bummer again. Uh, and that one makes perfect sense to me. What the, what, first of all,

01:04:56.820 if you're standing like wonder woman and leaning in, it's not going to end well for you. You're

01:05:00.480 definitely going to topple over. It's very dangerous. It doesn't make any sense that the way you stand at

01:05:07.160 work is going to, and I understand they don't like crossing arms. It projects like, you know,

01:05:10.940 you're closed off, but you know, it's really so comfortable to stand with your arms crossed. It

01:05:15.080 just is. Yeah. Yeah. There's nothing wrong with that. Um, what about squatting Jesse? Do you have

01:05:20.060 any information on that? That's how I usually like to do my meetings. Yeah. Everyone should just be

01:05:23.960 squatting all the time. No chairs, squatting and grunting are like caveman style. You laugh, but I

01:05:31.740 was subjected to one of these very classes when I was in one in seventh grade and one in 10th grade,

01:05:36.160 Jesse. And, um, it was called my Oh short for myself and others. And we were taught about self

01:05:42.340 esteem and we were taught how to be an active listener. And one of the things on the list,

01:05:47.060 I remember this was friendly grunts. And you say that to a group of 11 and 12 year olds and then

01:05:52.160 make them practice. And the whole room was like, Oh, you don't say this is not appropriate interaction.

01:06:00.660 This is why it helps to grow up in sort of like a secular Jewish household. Cause you get home from

01:06:05.660 school from all that uplifting, like, here's how to be a good person. You get like a lot of sarcasm

01:06:09.840 and cynicism to balance it out. I feel bad for all you Gentiles. No, are you kidding me? If you're

01:06:14.680 Catholic, I mean, I forgot about the cat. It's even worse. Yeah, please. I feel like that's the Jews

01:06:20.340 and the Catholic are like right next to each other on the other than the Jesus being Christ thing.

01:06:24.580 We are the same and the afterlife, the mommy issues in particular, like they're very similar and the

01:06:29.660 guilt and the right. And the inability to be happy, all those things, just all the, all that stuff.

01:06:35.660 Um, so what kind of reception have you had? Cause it's like, do people close this book feeling?

01:06:41.900 I, cause I always say like, it's better to know the truth, right? It's like, if you thought you

01:06:45.560 had this great friend and then you find, um, some letter they wrote about you, some email they wrote

01:06:49.460 about you. That's like, I actually can't stand or she's horrible. It's better to know the truth.

01:06:53.340 You know, the truth is whatever it is. It was the same yesterday as it is today. It's just your

01:06:57.100 knowledge may advance. And so I feel like this book is in that vein, right? Like, sorry, but that stuff

01:07:03.220 is actually not scientific. And you know, it's, if you want to use it to convince yourself,

01:07:06.900 otherwise go for it. But the truth is it hasn't been proven out. Like what are people going to

01:07:12.520 feel when they, when they close this book? I, again, because of the influence of my editor,

01:07:17.640 I think there's like a fair bit of optimism in there amongst all the debunking, which is what I want.

01:07:22.500 I want people to feel like science is this powerful thing that can help us. We just need to

01:07:27.120 understand it and understand its limitations. So, you know, the reception has been good. And I think

01:07:32.060 people don't like the idea that they've been hoodwinked and the military one really gets to

01:07:36.180 me. Cause when you think about half a billion dollars, what the good that could have done

01:07:39.980 for a population that comes back from war, totally traumatized, that that went to a program that can,

01:07:45.480 in my view, be fairly called pseudoscience. I think anyone should be outraged by that.

01:07:51.080 Now, before I let you go, can I ask you guys, cause some of your tweeting and some of your banter

01:07:54.940 about enjoying the pandemic has been absolute gold. You're, you're, you're not necessarily

01:08:00.200 anti-lockdown. Explain what you've most loved about the past year.

01:08:07.360 I haven't put on hard pants in a year. That's been really nice. Um, I sort of live a pandemic

01:08:12.760 lifestyle anyway. I don't particularly like the mask, but not interacting with people. It's totally

01:08:17.700 fine with me. I've lived a podcaster life, podcaster lifestyle and pandemic lifestyle are very similar.

01:08:22.820 Hmm. It is nice being on your own. I mean, I'm, I'm in my children's playroom every day and it's

01:08:27.700 awesome. Nobody bothered me except for Abby. And you know, I had her before, so it's fine.

01:08:31.980 Yeah. I mean, it's weird. This is part of the reason I'm a lefty. It's like,

01:08:35.780 if you have some resources at your disposal, we've just been able to shield ourselves from

01:08:41.680 all the worst parts of it. I mean, I can work from anywhere. I, I just, I don't know,

01:08:48.180 not to end on a downer note, but so many people have been hit so hard from this. And I feel so guilty

01:08:52.620 that it's been relatively easy for me to ride out. And, um, I think maybe we can talk about this

01:08:57.760 some other time, but I think that's one of the fundamental divides that, that would make it hard

01:09:01.480 for me to ever be conservative. Like not, not that conservatives are arguing differently. I just,

01:09:06.740 I sort of feel strongly that we don't have the protections in place. We should given how wealthy

01:09:11.460 a country we are. And I feel guilty that this has been relatively easy for me to, to, um,

01:09:17.000 ride out. So there's just a last little bit of basically virtue signaling as I sign off.

01:09:21.300 Jewish guilt. Thank you. Jewish guilt. Just get, just keep trying to get those liberals back on

01:09:25.840 your side, Jesse. You work it. Exactly. Yeah. I'm sure that'll do it. Well, listen,

01:09:30.140 good luck with the book. Thank you both so much for being here. And, uh, I hope we talk again.

01:09:34.920 Thank you, Megan. Thanks for having us. It's been really great.

01:09:40.680 So don't miss our show on Monday because we've got former Wisconsin governor, Scott Walker.

01:09:45.680 This guy was a star in Republican politics. Now he's heading up a Young America's

01:09:50.880 foundation, which is a conservative leaning group that sort of tries to get the good word out to

01:09:55.340 young people about the joys of being a conservative and sort of argues with folks on principle about

01:10:02.800 why they think they have the better ideas and tries to get, um, to young people to make sure they

01:10:07.780 know this is an option for them, right? Like you don't have to join the progressive side in order to

01:10:12.520 be a good person. There are lots of good ideals on the other side as well. And he's got a plan right

01:10:16.540 now. His group has for getting organized on college campuses to fight back against some of

01:10:22.380 the, some of the woke stuff that we're seeing and some of the messaging. And it's actually beyond

01:10:26.080 college campuses, K through 12. They unearthed a shocking story out of Ames, Iowa, just a week or

01:10:31.980 so ago, which we'll talk to him about. And there is a fun moment in this interview, which we just

01:10:36.520 taped, you know, he helped prepare Mike Pence for the vice presidential debate. And he's got some

01:10:42.460 thoughts on Kamala Harris and how she did and whether she's going to be the nominee

01:10:47.040 for the democratic party in 2024. Oh, and by the way, is he going to run? Is he going to throw his

01:10:52.080 hat in that ring? We get into all of it. Uh, it was a delightful exchange and I give him credit for

01:10:56.980 coming on because I think I've said before that he's boring, but he, he wasn't at all. He was actually

01:11:02.100 really interesting, interesting, and we had fun and I liked the guy and I think he will too. So that's

01:11:06.700 next time. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:11:15.060 The Megan Kelly show is a Devil May Care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.

The Megyn Kelly Show - April 16, 2021

Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal on Culture Wars, the Trans Trend, and Fad Psychology ｜ Ep. 90

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