Theory of Change Podcast With Matthew Sheffield

Episode SummaryFor thousands of years, humans have been buying and selling sex. The ancient Sumerians in 2400 BCE included female and male prostitutes on a list of known professions, so the term “oldest profession” is actually more than just a cliché.Despite the fact that sex economies have existed for far longer than most civilizations, many people seem uncomfortable with discussing the important roles that sex workers play in our society, economy, and even our politics. In 49 of the 50 states, prostitution is illegal and far-right Republicans are seeking to ban birth control and pornography, shortly after they succeeded at rolling back a nationwide right to abortion access.While the suppression efforts are part of larger efforts by radical Christian nationalists to roll back modernity, they are also the product of cooperation with less religious people, some of whom even call themselves progressive, to ban work arrangements that don’t really understand.Joining me for an in-depth discussion about the history of sex work and how it’s being revolutionized by the internet is Kaytlin Bailey, she is the executive director of Old Pros, an organization that does both research and advocacy for sex workers. A former standup comedian, she is also the host of “The Oldest Profession” podcast.A computer-generated transcript of the edited audio follows. The video of our August 10, 2023 conversation is available.TranscriptMATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Thanks for being here, Kaytlin.KAYTLIN BAILEY: Thank you so much for having me.SHEFFIELD: All right. Well, so, there's a lot of ground here to cover and I think, as I said in the intro, I think a lot of people may not be familiar with a lot of the topics that we're going to be talking about here today. And I should mention that this episode is going to be the first of a few that are going to be talking about sex work.But I wanted to have you come on as our expert to get it started. So how about let's maybe define some terms here first. So, sex work, what does that [00:03:00] mean?BAILEY: Sex work is a broad umbrella term that encompasses all erotic labor exchanges. It’s a phrase that was coined by Carol Lee in the 1970s to push back against prohibitionist feminists at the time who were using the phrase prostituted woman, but sex work refers to full-service sex work or sort of plastic prostitution.It also includes legal forms of sex work, like stripping or pornography. Domination, foot fetish work and because we're trying to build a big tent, I would like to include Hooters waitresses and other people who use erotic labor as a part of their job.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, okay, and there are some other terms as well, like, a lot of sex work jobs involve kind of a murky legal status in many jurisdictions.BAILEY: The thing that unites all sex workers, whether their work is directly criminalized or not, is the stigma against [00:04:00] sex work. So, there are perfectly legal strippers orLegally registered sex workers in brothels in Nevada that have their children taken away from them or lose job status or are kicked out of school or housing because their employer or landlord or significant other found out about their involvement in some form of sex work.SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm. Yeah. And you use the word decriminalization there. Let's maybe define that. And especially in regard to some of the other terms.BAILEY: Sure. There are only four models for policing prostitution. So, there's criminalization, right? Which criminalizes both the buying and selling of sex work. The way that this plays out is that mostly providers are criminalized.But there's also legalization regulation. So, this is the model that you see in Nevada or Amsterdam, where some forms of prostitution are legal, but you have to work in a registered brothel. And this is sort of [00:05:00] a model that tries to contain and control sex workers and really diminishes the negotiating power of sex workers and creates a two-tiered system where the overwhelming majority of people who are doing this work outside of the registered brothels have no legal protection at all.There's also end demand. Maine actually became the first state in the U S to pass this law, but it originated in Norway. This is sometimes it's referred to as the Nordic model, the Swedish model, Canada has experimented with these laws, but the theory is that in order to reduce the demand for the oldest profession, they try to criminalize the clients or buyers or third-party folks.But of course, it's impossible to surveil clients without surveilling sex workers. And because of the stigma associated with sex work, this leads to people being evicted, a temporary reduction in in demand, which sends people into, a more economic desperate [00:06:00] position that they were in, and desperate people do desperate things.So everywhere that the end demand model has been implemented, violence against sex workers goes up. It undermines our ability to screen our clients or to self-advocate. But what sex workers all over the world have been asking for decades is decriminalization, where neither the buying, selling, or facilitating sexual services is criminalized.And this allows people to report crimes committed against us and move throughout the communities that we're already a part of.SHEFFIELD: And it's the idea that you can just be, like a freelance worker and in charge of your own schedule, that's kind of the way basically a lot of people are doing it anyway, because they don't like other arrangements to be working for somebody else.BAILEY: Yeah. I think it's important to remember that sex work is work, but it is also sex. So, any [00:07:00] kind of surveillance or criminalization or effort to regulate the consensual adult choices that are being made in a very private space is going to erode all of our all of our freedoms. There's no way to surveil sex workers without surveilling-- well, everyone.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And it's interesting, because the same types of models of regulation, they exist with regard to hallucinogenic drugs and, but it's interesting that people seem to be more open to the idea of decriminalizing crack, which can literally destroy your body and brain, and meanwhile, the idea of decriminalizing or legalizing sex work is just somehow offensive. What do you think is the dichotomy network here?BAILEY: From a policy perspective, I think it's really important to remember that drugs are a substance [00:08:00] that can be regulated. But sex workers are service providers.We are people, we are neighbors and mothers, and we have other jobs. So, it's not actually possible to contain and control us in red light districts or exclusively in registered brothels. Sex workers are and have always been everywhere. So, efforts to contain and control us.End up creating a criminalized class, and that reduces our ability to self-advocate for safety and health. And this is the kind of thing that leads to rapes and also murders that we’re not able to report or get a hold of.SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm. Well, and a lot of it also does pertain to the fact that that a lot of this does come out of both misogyny and also anti LGBTQ attitudes as well, because, historically basically acknowledging that there are people out [00:09:00] there who are doing this it's an affront to some people. That it should not exist and should not be known to exist.BAILEY: Sure. I do think that sex work in general is an existential threat to the patriarchy. It's very hard to have a patriarchy if you don't know who the dads are. And I will say that the long history of criminalizing sex work is very much grounded in misogyny and. also homophobia. I'll give you an example of the CANs laws in Louisiana cans stands for crime against nature. And this was a statute that was originally written in the 1800s to target the gay hustler scene in New Orleans. But it was a Louisiana law that made talking about oral or anal sex, a federal crime. And so, when the tough on crime the Reagan administration came through the police officer started using that statute to arrest black women and trans women and charging them with these cans [00:10:00] laws.In addition, they forced them to register as sex offenders, and this really all came to a head in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina when thousands of black women were turned away from shelters for being registered sex offenders when really all they were guilty of was simple prostitution.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and only with adults, like, that's being clear with that.BAILEY: Yes, that's right.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. In some of your advocacy, have you seen kind of a stigma applied both from men, but also from women against sex workers? Like who's doing this in your view?BAILEY: Yeah, I mean, the criminalization of sex work is really a very old coalition between, the religious right and the righteous left, there's [00:11:00] a long and dark history of progressive dating back to the progressive era of criminalizing vice. And a lot of this was grounded in white supremacy.You, if you look at the man act or the white slave law that was passed in 1910, this is really something that is coming from feminists who are sort of demanding this protection against, what would be sort of a, a trafficking panic from the late early, early 1900s. And so, I think it's really important to understand that although prostitution has become a symbol of violence against women, the decriminalization of sex work is the only policy that actually reduces violence against women.So, when Carol Lee coined the phrase sex work in the 1970s, she was really pushing back against. people who considered themselves feminists that nevertheless found themselves advocating for, more police to arrest vulnerable women.SHEFFIELD: [00:12:00] Yeah. Yeah. And it's, and it's also I mean, when we've, we were talking about this topic earlier I think you had said something like that, that some, sort of anti sex work feminists, they kind of think it's like, the sex workers are, have hacked the system, that they're cheating in a way.BAILEY: Sure. I mean, I certainly can imagine, especially before women had a lot of other job opportunities that, brothels and bars were a real source of anxiety within the household, right? When women don't have property rights and their husbands are, spending their paycheck that is supposed to go to the mortgage or to feed their families.At a local tavern. This is the energy that propelled us towards prohibition. But we know what prohibition does to markets. It doesn't make them safer. And I would implore folks that consider themselves to be feminist to remember that you cannot help people. people you are hunting, and that the oldest profession is not a problem that we can arrest our way out of.We can talk [00:13:00] about ways of raising the negotiating power of victims, of increasing folks’ ability to do other work, but we can't send SWAT teams into massage parlors with legally licensed masseurs who are giving their clients sexual services and call that a service to the community that we're arresting and raiding.I do think it's important for listeners to understand, especially as we are absolutely on the ascent of another moral sex panic that is targeting the queer community, the trans community, and also sex work, pornography and consensual sex work.And so, when our government says that they're engaged in anti-trafficking work, we like to envision a good guy with a gun Rescuing a victim from a violent situation. But what, in fact, is happening is that law enforcement officers are engaging in sexual services [00:14:00] with folks and then arresting those people for engaging in those acts.This is not a situation where the good guys are going after the bad guys and people end up better off for it.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and it's also that it's with a lot of these, that as you were saying, that if you're trying to protect people who may be coerced into this, because, and there are some studies that have indicated that legalization or decriminalization can in some jurisdictions has increased trafficking to some degree. But there are conflicting studies with that—BAILEY: No, the studies have shown that there's an increase in sex worker advertising when the when legal penalties are removed, which makes all of the sense. So, if you look at the case of Rhode Island, which decriminalized indoor sex work between 2003 and 2009, you absolutely saw an explosion of sex worker advertising and people traveling to Rhode Island in order to engaged in decriminalized sex [00:15:00] work.You also saw a reduction of gonorrhea rates by 40% and a reduction in reported rapes by 30% and an overall reduction in violence against women. So, the results were actually very positive. You didn't see an increase in violence. You didn't see an increase in exploitation. You did see an increase in prostitution.Now, I think that those results would You know, it wouldn't look like that if the entire region was decriminalized, but when you have an isolated area where this is the only place that you can go to engage in this work without the fear of arrest, of course, you're going to see an increase. But New Zealand decriminalized prostitution in 2003, and although there was a temporary uptick in advertising, the markets really leveled out, and it's Mostly you've seen a reduction in STIs and violence against women and an increase in sex workers who feel comfortable reporting crimes committed against them.But you haven't seen a huge uptick in prostitution overall because the entire country [00:16:00] decriminalized, it wasn't country concentrated in one city or area.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess I just meant in the sense that that for instance, with drugs marijuana legalization, that in California, when, when we decriminalized marijuana out here, it led to an increase both in the legal sale of marijuana, but also the illegal sale of marijuana in some, in some ways.And so, and like, but it's important, I think, the Rhode Island experiment, if you will, it, it shows that. You, you really need to stick to a policy for a while because there are effects that may exist in the short term but are going to go away once the pressure is off, or something like that.And but you mentioned the violence against women. I remember reading about the, the rape rates in the various counties in Nevada where prostitution is legal, [00:17:00] and there's one of them, Elko County, where there are no rapes and there were literally no rapes in that, in that, in the years that they were looking at.BAILEY: I think some context here is really important because you're only allowed to have a legally licensed brothel in a county with less than 700,000 people in it. So, there's no way to work legally in Vegas or Reno, where the highest demand is. And so, the overwhelming majority of sex work that's happening in Nevada is happening outside of these legally licensed brothels. And these brothels came into existence in the 1970s and were very much a compromise sort of between the mafia and local law enforcement.And these brothels are beloved in the communities that they're in. It's a huge source of tax revenue. There are a lot of counties in Nevada that wouldn't have adequate healthcare service, but for the revenue that these brothels provide. But it's not a model that we want to replicate nationally because it really doesn't increase the negotiating power of the people who work there in order [00:18:00] to work as a legally licensed prostitute in Nevada, you have to register with the local sheriff's department.This becomes a subpoenable fact about you for the rest of your life. You can imagine how this. plays out in child custody cases. You have to be hired and work at one of a handful of legally licensed brothels. You're working 12- or 24-hour shifts. And because you are a legally licensed prostitute, you don't actually have the same freedom of movement that any other citizen of that county would have.You have to remain on the premises of the brothels or face a fine. You can't just go to a bar or go to the movies. Because all of these laws are about restricting, containing, and controlling sex workers.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Right. Well, okay. But I actually only meant to talk about it in the context of violence.BAILEY: Oh, sure. So, yes.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. So that basically, there are people, especially like people like Jordan Peterson, talk about sexually frustrated men and how it's this plague on society and only [00:19:00] they are concerned about it.And no one wants to give an outlet to these men who can't get a date or whatever. And yet then they also go adamantly against sex work. And the facts are pretty clear that when you have some form of legalized prostitution, that it does protect the rest of the women. And also, the sex workers themselves.BAILEY: There was a fascinating comparative study that was done, Scott Stern, I believe was the lead researcher comparing the impact Craigslist erotic services had on the cities when it became available. So, Craigslist erotic services, if you don't remember, was a place on Craigslist where people could advertise their interest in engaging in either casual or paid sexual encounters, and it became available in different cities at different times. And what they found is that everywhere that Craigslist Erotic Services became available, the female homicide rate dropped on average [00:20:00] 17%. We already talked about what happened in Rhode Island when indoor sex work was decriminalized.You saw a reduction in rapes of 30%. These results have been replicated in places like Amsterdam or, as you mentioned, in Nevada, clear correlation between access to professional sex workers and a reduction in gender-based violence. I think this has two causes. I think that the presence of sex work allows women to escape abusive relationships.And I think there is something to that point as much as I loathe ceding any ground to Jordan Peterson that there is something about sex workers that turns the temperature down on, on male violence. And this goes back to the epic of Gilgamesh, when Ishtar, the goddess of love and war sent a harlot to spend seven days or excuse me, six days and seven nights with a warrior.Teaching him how to bathe and have table manners and yes, [00:21:00] who was, experiencing intimate sexual moments with him, which helped ease his transition from a violent theater of war back into civilization. And this is something that, like, militaries have known about for thousands and thousands of years.The relationship between sex workers and soldiers is very long. But I, I also think that the military is responsible for some of the most egregious human rights violations when it comes to sex workers. There are the comfort women that we know about in Japan, armies have done similar things and the horror story that you, you think about of like, a woman and a line of men, but it's only the during times of war that you, that you see that that kind of thing play out.But also, here in the United States in 1917, when the U. S. got involved in World War I, we passed something called the American Plan. And our effort to reduce STIs, we shuttered all of the brothels that had been, legally operating in cities across the country. And we also deputized [00:22:00] local law enforcement to arrest women in the vicinity.And this led to a very dark chapter in our history of arresting women for being in public and making the wrong kind of eye contact with a cop. So, I think it's really important for folks to remember that the criminalization of sex work always undermines women's ability to move freely in public space and that efforts to contain and control us rather than reduce the STI rates for example, when they shuttered the brothels in Alaska STIs went up 300%.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and so part these efforts to kind of crack down on things are religious derived as well. And, and we've certainly seen a lot of that. And I guess right now, lately, the Christian right has been focused on trying to ban abortion. But they made very clear that they have an agenda of [00:23:00] items and banning birth control is on the list and rolling back, same-sex marriage is on the list. Some of them are openly talking about banning pornography entirely.One of the ways that they have attacked porn is to be putting in age verification laws. Can you talk about that a little bit?BAILEY: Sure. So, Pornhub, for example, has stopped operating in, I believe three states. I know it's Virginia, I believe it. I'm not sure what the third state is, but age verification laws would force users to upload identifying information, right? Their I. D. in order to watch pornography. Now, legal porn performers, of course, are already subjected to a ton of regulation. They have to sign all kinds of consent forms. They have to upload their own ideas. But the fear here is that users are effectively putting themselves on a stigmatized list.And so, the, the ramifications of that, it's just, [00:24:00] it's, it's too much. And so Pornhub, one of the largest sources of pornography said that they, they can't comply with that law. And so, they are not making their sites available in those states. There's one case I believe of a woman in Louisiana whose husband is in is in the army.And so, pornography is a big part of their relationship, especially when he's overseas. And I believe that she's currently suing, and I wish her luck in her case to get access to pornography. There's one more point I want to make which I think it's really important for folks to understand the history between the criminalization or censorship of obscenity and the criminalization and censorship of information about birth control and abortion.This dates back to the Comstock laws of the 1870s, and he was on a crusade to remove pornography or smut from public space. But in doing so, criminalized [00:25:00] information about birth control and sort of famously went on to arrest Margaret Sanger for obscenity when she was simply trying to share information about how to prevent unintended pregnancy.SHEFFIELD: Well, and we're seeing that now repeat in the state of Florida. Where now they have expanded their, don't talk about gender identity or any sort of sexual education stuff all the way through high school. And now, people can be, fired for having a picture of their spouse or trying to tell children about condoms or how to buy menstrual products.BAILEY: No, it, it, it is it should be alarming. I think the, the long history and the tenacity of conflating the existence of queer people. with obscenity. And so, I know a lot of well-meaning liberal moms that, have a discomfort [00:26:00] with pornography and stand behind a lot of these laws that are already being used to persecute LGBTQ plus folks and make it harder for not just young people, but all people to access information about their own bodies.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and I think that's a, it's a point worth exploring here, because the idea of publicly acknowledging that sex exists, but even further is that this idea that there are some people who do not agree with a conventional viewpoint about sex and sexual relationships, that really is kind of the root of the conflict here, I think, especially for the, for a lot of these fundamentalist religious people.That the idea that there could be a woman who says, ‘I don't care if I have sex with 10 people in a week, [00:27:00] it doesn't bother me. I don't think there's anything wrong with it and I'm going to do that for my job.’ Or there's somebody who says: ‘Yeah, you know what, I'm going to go and find other men and try to help them fulfill needs that they can't get in their regular lives,’ that cannot exist. It's an affront, right?BAILEY: And it's, I think a big part of my job is reminding folks that we already live in a society where people are having all kinds of sex all around you, whether you live in a suburban home or an apartment, people are engaging in sex that might make you uncomfortable. Already, and there's no amount of criminalization or censorship or prohibition that's going to change that.But similar to abortion, we cannot legislate this away, but we can make it less safe. And that's exactly what criminalization and [00:28:00] censorship does.SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm. Well, it's a, and I mean, let's delve into it a little bit further. Like, why do you think they're so disproportionately concerned about this compared to, I mean, like you, you talk about as drugs versus as a substance that could be regulated.But it's, it's more than that, right? It's about other people having an agency that you don't approve of.BAILEY: I think we should get really specific here because the overwhelming majority of laws targeting prostitution are directed at women. People of all genders have always engaged in this work.And a lot of the same language and rhetoric and statutes. that have been, applied to criminalized prostitution are used to target the queer community. But this has always been about controlling women. And I think that this can, this really dates back to the Catholic church, which codified the Madonna.a horror complex and [00:29:00] sort of waged war on fertility deities and priestess prostitutes and powerful women that did not subject themselves to the normal standard of, fidelity or the, this obsession with chastity. I think that informs our obsession with sex ed and contraception and also prostitution.And my basic argument and the point that I make on the Oldest Profession podcast over and over again is that whorephobia is the foundation of misogyny. Hmm.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Now you mentioned the idea of, of Madonna hoard. Let's for people who haven't heard that term, butBAILEY: sure. So, dating back to one of the oldest deities that we have written records about Ishtar the goddess of love and war and the myth around her is that she was Born a virgin every morning and she went to bed a w***e every night and priestess prostitutes were an important part [00:30:00] of the temples that held space for her.And this is at a time when temples were really the organizing force of the ancient world. They weren't just places of worship, but they were also places where important decisions were made. They were the keepers of important knowledge, especially around fertility. They were also the only bank in town. But these temples, polytheism transitions into the Greek empires and the Roman empire and the Roman empire falls and is replaced by the Catholic church.The Catholic church sort of separates that ancient deity and turns her into the two Marys, right? The virgin mother and the repentant w***e and does a lot. Undermine Mary Magdalene who, there's no evidence to suggest that she ever engaged in the oldest profession, but Pope Gregory called her a sinful woman from the pulpit in 591 and really locked into this [00:31:00] idea of That she was a sinful woman and that justified over a thousand years of denigrating her contributions, her significant contributions to the Christian church.And so, this institution that was ostensibly built on the teachings of Jesus, right? And love and forgiveness became about persecuting people who are engaging in these older rights. And so, we have a long history of the Inquisition targeting courtesans or known sex workers for witchcraft and conflating sexual fidelity, especially amongst women with holiness or, or godliness, which is not something that, like Jesus, the historic figure was especially concerned.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, he was documented repeatedly in the New Testament to have been regularly, with and befriending,BAILEY: Much more comfortable with sex workers than he was with tax collectors, for example,SHEFFIELD: Well, actually, [00:32:00] no, he was friends with the tax collectors as well. So, but, but, but, but getting biblical with this, like there is another figure even older than Mary, the two Marys that was like, she was kind of in a large part, I feel like one of the, the very first canceled literary figures, and that was Asherah, and she was, so the, the Hebrew the ancient Hebrews and Judaism grew out of Canaanite polytheism.And Asherah was the wife of the chief deity, and she was the last remnant of that. Over time, the worshipers of Yahweh sort of censored and extirpated all the other deities, but Asherah was the last one that survived, and she was a fertility goddess and people continue to worship her.And she's in the Bible. Like that's what's interesting is and it's really like, and you see people being killed for [00:33:00] worshiping her and, and praying to her and like, she was God's wife. So why wouldn't they pray to her? But yeah, like it's, I mean, that's, that's, it's, it's, it is interesting that there may be something to this monotheism and creating a male deity that a female deity could not.be allowed to exist.BAILEY: And, the Catholic Church is, has a long and well documented history of being much more committed to patriarchal control and property accumulation than they are to love and forgiveness or anything that I might associate with Christian values.SHEFFIELD: Well, and then there's also the Lilith story. Do you want to tell that one?BAILEY: Yeah, so Lilith the story of Lilith coming from the Old Testament was Adam's first wife. And so, the myth, as I understand it, is that Lilith and Adam were created at the same time and from the same clay.So, this [00:34:00] Lilith really wanted to be on top during sex. Now, most marriage counselors of course would tell you that that wasn't the real problem, but it is what the scripture literally says. Both God and Adam agreed that Lilith wanting to enjoy sex with Adam was an existential threat. And so, she left she left the garden of her own volition.started a love affair with some other, some other figures and was living independently. And this all-knowing, all-powerful God could not get Lilith to come back to the garden. So, we see, sort of a very early complication to patriarchal control or this all-powerful God.And so, God made Adam a, a consolation prize, Eve, from Adam's body, his rib or some other part, depending on which translation you're looking at, who was supposedly smaller and more submissive than the original Lilith and even [00:35:00] Eve is blamed for all human suffering from eating from the Tree of Knowledge.SHEFFIELD: So yeah, so and it is it's really important, I think, to know this history because I think there are a lot of people who—I mean there's kind of a paradox that I feel like that the more educated you are on the political right, the more likely you are to support sex workers, whereas in a large measure, the more educated you are on the left, the less likely you are to support sex workers.BAILEY: And I think that's really important because I know a lot of otherwise smart, well-meaning people that support laws that inevitably hurt. The people that those legislators or advocates are claiming that they're trying to help, right? I think everybody is interested in increasing the negotiating power of victims.We all want to see fewer victims of rape, sexual assault, [00:36:00] violence, but. Efforts to contain and control prostitution or efforts to eradicate the oldest profession inevitably hurt people who are engaging in that work, whether they're doing that by choice, circumstance or coercion, this really isn't a problem that we can arrest our way out of.SHEFFIELD: For people that may have some resistance to this, that, when you look at especially people who come from, impoverished backgrounds that, there, there are some jobs that That are just, there's only a few jobs that are even possible for them to do because they have no training, they have no network, they have no education, and so you're, you're, you're going to take away something that will help them not be impoverished.That's what you're going to do to them.BAILEY: I know. And yes, sex work has been a reliable survival strategy for millennia. It has been a way of people, able to accumulate some kind of capital. I think that sex work has funded more [00:37:00] entrepreneurs and artists than all of the grants combined. But It's interesting to me that when prostitution is turned into a symbol of prost it when prostitution is turned into a symbol of exploitation, we end up focusing all of our efforts on eradicating or suppressing prostitution, and we ignore huge swaths of exploitation.We do have real slavery and exploited laborers in this country in our own prison system in agriculture, in mines. And so there are all kinds of jobs out there where we could really be doing more to reduce violent exploitation. But instead, all of those resources are being redirected at mostly adult consensual sex workers.SHEFFIELD: Well, it's also that I think there's, there's a, the, the right wing has under Trump developed an ability to, masquerade as populist in some issues. [00:38:00] So like they talk about big tech and talk about, regulating these. technology companies as if they're not completely in the pocket of all big business.And they're doing that with regard to, this sex trafficking panic that they're, that they're pushing that, they want you to focus on this, which in many cases is just vastly overhyped and exaggerated. doesn't exist to nearly the degree that they are telling you, so that you don't talk about the other exploited people, and you don't help workers that are going on strike, and you don't sympathize with them.BAILEY: I think that's a really great example. And I think that Marriott Hotels is a classic example of exactly this phenomenon, right? So Marriott Hotels has engaged in a PR campaign to raise awareness about trafficking, right? And so, if you check into a Marriott Hotel, you'll often see something on the door or signs throughout saying, if you see something, say something, but all of the signs of. [00:39:00]Trafficking that they list are just signs of sex work, right? They want to discriminate against women traveling alone or people who have multiple guests in the room or people who ask for multiple towels or people with acrylic nails. Meanwhile, Marriott Hotels uses third party companies in order to clean their hotel rooms.So, there's absolutely. Trafficking that's happening at Marriott hotels, but it's not the consensual adult sex workers who are trying to work in the rooms. It's the cleaning staff whose labor rights have been undermined because they've been farmed out to an ungovernable third party.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And in many cases are sort of imported illegal immigrants are not able to advocate for themselves.Correct. Yeah. All right. Well, and now in terms of the empowerment of sex workers that we have seen, I think one of the biggest trends that's evolved has been [00:40:00] OnlyFans. And. That has really revolutionized the pornography industry and done so in a way that seems to have overwhelmingly benefited the workers in against the studios and whatnot.Let's, can, tell us about that.BAILEY: Any time that you are able to directly connect fans to a performer, an artist or a content creator, that's the, that's the best situation, right? As a, as a content creator, people giving you money directly cuts out the studios. It cuts out potentially exploitative third parties, which I think is one of the reasons why we've seen so much of a reaction to OnlyFans.If they've been through the ringer in terms of their ability to accept credit cards or the different regulations that are trying to shut them down. But this is absolutely a model that empowers individual performers at the expense of the larger studio system. And the more regulatory efforts there [00:41:00] are, the more you concentrate power into the hands of a few.We've seen this in big tech and, pornography is no exception. The more of a regulatory burden you place, then the fewer and fewer people are able to meet that bar. And so OnlyFans I think was revolutionary and it helped a lot of people get fund again, schools, startups or just an artistic career or just their life, just the ability to eat and pay their rent.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and we certainly saw that during the pandemic when a lot of performing venues were shut down entirely.BAILEY: Yeah, I knew a lot of folks during the pandemic that lost, their, their day gig and their night gig at the same time. The theaters were closed and also, they weren't able to work at restaurants.And so, it makes sense that we saw a huge influx of people engaging in this work. Unfortunately, because of the reaction. You're also seeing a lot of those same performers who are now, being fired from jobs, being denied [00:42:00] spots at universities or, training for nurses. And with the surveillance technology that we have and facial recognition, we have folks that have only fans accounts that are being denied access at the border.because they're a known sex worker, even though the sex work that they're engaged in is perfectly legal. So, there's a lot of ramifications and this is very much still happening now. Yeah. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Well, and I guess, yeah, given the, it's benefited a lot of different people and people have had contact with it much more than before.And I think, it's, it's made people more aware of that. That there are people that they know who are doing this and that also de stigmatizes it.BAILEY: And that I think is something that's really important, right? Your listeners probably already know and like a sex worker that lives amongst them just because they're not out about that.I think OnlyFans made that more visible, but sex workers have [00:43:00] always been part of every community.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I guess speaking of that though, you have referred to sex workers as “we” a few times here. Do you want to talk about that a little bit? Like, what's your background with all this?BAILEY: I mean, I think it's important to say that there, there really is no typical story. People have engaged in this work for. All kinds of reasons throughout human history, and this work looks different to everyone. I started doing full service hourly sex work in 2004, 2005. I used a message board to schedule and screen my clients.And we met at hotels sort of in the Golden age where we had cell phones, but not smartphones no facial recognition technology yet. And then when I moved to New York to pursue standup comedy I started doing sugaring, which is a new word for a very old thing sort of courting individual patrons to [00:44:00] to support my work.So, it was not an hourly gig, but more of a long-term commitment. But there are as many forms of sex work and as many, nuances and shades of gray of this as there are people, what it means to be a sex worker. It's like, what does it mean to be an actress? Like every career is different.SHEFFIELD: Well, and I, now what about that there is some tension, I feel like also maybe perhaps that for women who might have married up, as they say. They don't want to be thought of as a client and service provider relationship with their marriage, and that makes them uncomfortable with the idea of sex work.BAILEY: Sure. I would say that one of the benefits of being a sex worker as opposed to a wife is the, getting paid up front and having the purchasing power of, being paid a wage or being paid for your services.Every marriage is different. I am married to a [00:45:00] relatively high earner, but it's fundamentally different, partnership is fundamentally different, I think, than paid companionship. I also, want to push back a little bit that, yes, there are many wives out there that consider, their partner, their husband seeing a sex worker as, as cheating, but there are also wives out there that You know, think about sex workers as a paid service that their husband sometimes engages in, right?Whether their wife is suffering from a chronic illness or, the spark has left the marriage. I personally don't believe that one person has the right to sort of. take sex away from another, another person. And I think that marriage can be complicated, it can be a relationship, it's an economic relationship, it's a, community or companionship, raising children.So, I, I don't know if this, like, sex workers versus wives is as clear cut as, as you would like to suggest. There are a lot of married [00:46:00] sex workers, and there are a lot of wives who support that, that see sex workers, or also support their partner seeking sexual services elsewhere because paid companionship is not a threat to the marriage or union or partnership in the same way that having an emotionally messy extramarital affair might be.SHEFFIELD: I did want to get into the. The prostitute with the heart of gold.BAILEY: Sure.SHEFFIELD: Because I really hate that people in Hollywood discount that.BAILEY: Yeah. Because I mean, sex workers have been, it's like, yeah, sorry.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Like, there's a reason that that exists.BAILEY: Because we're often the last line of, of defense for vulnerable people. Brothels were also places where nursing happened. It's where people fleeing domestic violence situations went. It's women helping other women and sex workers helping folks that are in trouble. It's a story you hear over and over again. This is why madams settled the West.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. [00:47:00] When it's, it was also the only way for a lot of men to even have any sort of conversation about feelings or psychology and they may not have even known about those terms. And even now, who might not even know they could go to a therapist.Well, okay. Now, what about people who might say that, I mean, and there have been some studies that indicate that, excessive use of porn can be damaging for individuals.BAILEY: I mean, there were studies in the Victorian era that said that it led, it led to blindness and cancer, but you know, that was a different world panic.SHEFFIELD: Well, that's what, yeah, no, like, I want you to talk about that though. Sure. People who, like, I mean, do you think that there, that people should realize there's a healthy amount of using anything?BAILEY: I think that if we're going to crack down on anything. And I'm just, I'm continuously frustrated by this impulse that we have as a society to look around at like the [00:48:00] very real labor exploitation, right? The very real economic disparity, the very real suffering that so many people are surviving, or many are not and decide to focus our attention on people enjoying themselves.By themselves. People have been engaging in solo sex for as long as a, I mean, this predates us as a species. Anyone who's visited a zoo can tell you that this is a thing that, that creatures engage in. And so, this impulse to pathologize something that is. So natural and so ubiquitous feels like it's a projection and reflects our inability or unwillingness to address a very real problem.SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm. So you would say that it's people who may have issues with excessive porn use probably also have issues in other ways. Sure. And you shouldn't [00:49:00] focus just on that.BAILEY: People can get addicted to anything, reality television, sugar. Even drugs. And I don't think that we have a good track record of trying to criminalize or suppress that leading to good outcomes.We didn't solve drug addiction by criminalizing drugs. We're not going to solve what you might call porn addiction or somebody wanting to change their relationship with pornography or masturbation by trying to eliminate smut from public spaces.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And especially because plenty of people have no problem with how they use it in their own lives.BAILEY: Yes. And so, people that, people can go on their own journey and decide everyone gets to decide what their boundaries are around erotic content or participating in masturbation or sex, but these are very personal choices. And so, I think that it's important for us to recognize this pattern again, of like moral panic or.[00:50:00] pathologizing something that can be innocuous and natural and dare I suggest helpful actually.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, and there have been studies that show that like porn has been helpful for a lot of people who, because as you said, like in marriage situation for absence or physical or emotional trauma on the part of their partner that they couldn't survive in that marriage if it wasn't.So what's kind of the final takeaway you would have people that we haven't maybe talked about?BAILEY: I think it's important for folks to recognize across the political and ideological spectrum. We've been really wrong about the oldest profession for a really long time. I think it's important at this moment in history when we're dealing with multiple cascading crises to. Listen to sex workers.There is nobody who is more motivated to reduce violence and exploitation within the sex trade than sex [00:51:00] workers themselves. And we have a lot of good ideas, but the first thing that we have to do is stop the arrests.SHEFFIELD: Okay. All right. Well, I think that's a great, great message for sure. All right. Well, so we've been talking today with Kaytlin Bailey and she is the executive director of Old Pros and you're also on Twitter at Kaytlin Bailey. That's K-A-Y-T-L-I-N-B-A-I-L-E-Y for those who are listening.BAILEY: Yeah. I'd also encourage if you're interested in this topic, we send out a newsletter of sex worker rights related news every Friday.And you can sign up for that at oldprosonline. org. And you can also follow us across social media platforms at Old Pros online.SHEFFIELD: Okay. All right. Well, I encourage everybody to do that. Thanks for being here.BAILEY: Thank you again so much for having me, Matthew. I really appreciate it. Yeah, I hope that this is a conversation that your listeners enjoy, and I hope they will learn a lot.SHEFFIELD: Alright, so that is the show [00:52:00] for today. I appreciate everybody for joining us and I encourage everybody to go to theoryofchange.show where you can get full access to all of the previous episodes and future ones, and you can subscribe on Substack or Patreon. We have free and paid subscriptions available, and I thank everybody who is a paid subscriber very much, you have complete access to all the transcripts and audio and video. Some of those things are not available to the unpaid members, so I do appreciate everybody who supports us that way.And then also I would encourage everybody to go to flux.community. This show is part of the Flux Network, so do check that out. We've got lots more podcasts and articles about politics, religion, media, and society.And if you've got a podcast or other show like that or you're interested in writing, please do reach out to us. 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Episode SummaryThis episode is the first in an occasional Theory of Change series of in-depth discussions about the politics of different states and how, unfortunately, right-wing extremism is becoming more common in many areas.The first state we're going to be discussing is Idaho. It’s one of America's most beautiful states with amazing mountains and lakes, lush forests, and gorgeous fields and plains. Unfortunately, it is also home to many of America's most insane people as well.Our guide to the politics of the Gem State is Marty Kelley. He is a senior editor with the Wonkette humor blog, and a long-term resident of Idaho since 2001.You can watch the video of this episode, continue reading below for a rush transcript, or read it on the web.Membership BenefitsThis is a free episode of Theory of Change but the deep conversations we bring you about politics, religion, technology, and media take great time and care to produce. Your subscriptions make Theory of Change possible and we’re very grateful for your help.Please join today to get full access with Patreon or Substack.If you would like to support the show but don’t want to subscribe, you can also send one-time donations via PayPal.If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on Apple Podcasts. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. You can also subscribe to the show on YouTube.About the ShowTheory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield about larger trends and intersections of politics, religion, media, and technology. It's part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet.Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChangeMatthew Sheffield on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffieldMatthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffieldTranscriptMATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Welcome to Theory of Change, Marty.MARTY KELLEY: Good to be here.SHEFFIELD: All right, great. So Idaho obviously has a very long history, and we'll get into that.But let's maybe start off with, I think it's fair to say that Idaho kind of has sort of three basic political divisions. Political regions. The northern part tends to be extremely radical and filled with white nationalists and all assorted. religious extremists as well.The central part of Idaho, which is kind of the Sun Valley area, which includes Boise, which is where you live and other areas around there. That is basically the area I'm calling the business and Berkeley section of Idaho, where all the money's made and all where all the godless commies like yourself live.And then in the southeast part of Idaho, that is the heavily Mormon region of the state.[00:03:00] And there's when we'll get into that, but Mormonism in Idaho also has some very interesting divisions of its own.So you moved to Idaho in 2001 after getting a PhD in rhetoric and composition at the University of Arizona. So, what brought you to Idaho?KELLEY: Well, my now ex got a job at Boise State University where she is still teaching and tenured and doing amazing things with ESL composition and writing.And I've stayed because we have a kid together who's now 26. And I can't believe that that happened. And since 2012, I've been writing for the political humor blog Wonkette, my dream job.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well--KELLEY: I can do that anywhere and Boise is a good affordable place to stay.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it certainly is definitely a lot cheaper than many parts of the country for sure.And you know, all kinds of great outdoor activities as I was mentioning. Boise itself also is actually. Pretty nice place to be I have to say it to anybody who hasn't checked it out And you should definitely put it on your bucket list.KELLEY: I like it.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, so, but now you're You were not born in the region, but for you were born nearby in Washington, right?KELLEY: No, in Oregon.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, all right. And it should be noted, in the recent past couple of years Idaho has unfortunately gotten some attention for a lot of different right-wing extremist stuff.KELLEY: Oh, yes.[00:04:30]SHEFFIELD: Especially with different people trying to move in and ban books and etc. But there's unfortunately a longer history than that.And I mean, I guess probably, you know, probably the, the... At least we'll, we'll start with the 20th century, I guess, kind of the most famous Idaho right wing extremist was Ezra Taft Benson, who was a native son from Rexburg, I believe and he was, rose to become the agriculture secretary of Dwight Eisenhower and then was a big conduit for people into the John Birch Society and, and also was a big publicizer of another guy.Now he was Cleon Skousen, I believe he was from Utah but, you know, they were both part of this fringe sect of, you know, extremely right-wing Mormons and those people have always had a home in, unfortunately, all parts of Idaho, but particularly in the, in the Southeast. But, you know, as we kind of move toward More times when people watching or listening or have been alive.Because I believe Benson was born in 1899. So I need to say that was a while ago, but more contemporaneously Idaho became the focus of national attention in 1992 with Randy Weaver. Tell us about who Randy Weaver was.KELLEY: Well, Randy Weaver was a very extreme. Survivalist right wing fellow who showed [00:06:00] up from time to time at the Aryan Nations compound in Northern Idaho.And thank goodness they eventually got shot down in a lawsuit with the SPLC. But in 92, Weaver was I think the feds were trying to arrest him on charges of selling a sawed-off shotgun illegally. And there was the siege at Ruby Ridge and during that his wife and son were killed. You can go to the Idaho state historical society and at their museum, they have the front door with the bullet hole in the glass, which is something to see.And then of course, after that siege was over, the charges fell apart and it became a rallying point for the entire right wing led to the Waco occupation and siege. And then that led to Timothy McVeigh. Then shortly after we had Idaho Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth-Hage, who was already very, very popular with the militia folks in supporting them.Who said that Oklahoma City was, was the wrong thing to do, but it was certainly understandable. And that was kind of the end of her career. Thank goodness. You can still see cars around Boise with bumper stickers that say, 'Can Helen, not salmon.'SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And I guess she kind of has a [00:07:30] spiritual successor nowadays in Janice McGeachin. Tell us about who she is. There's a lot of stories.KELLEY: Oh, she has lots of spiritual successors now. Janice McGeachin was the Lieutenant Governor of Idaho when Butch Otter was governor and the two in Idaho, the Lieutenant Governor and governor are elected separately.And so they are not a ticket. So she was constantly trying to do weird right-wing things whenever he would leave the state. And at 1 point during the coven, emergency, he went to a conference somewhere while she was acting governor for a day, she tried to rescind all COVID measures, all mask mandates, and it was she, she got a talking to when he came back and then she did it again the next time he was out of the state.SHEFFIELD: Yep. And she also became famous for her campaign ads featuring flags and Bibles and, and--KELLEY: Right, she was in a notorious video sponsored by the Idaho Freedom Foundation, which we'll mention again. Soon after they sang a little, I think it was the Idaho anthem. I honestly don't know. They sang a song together and in her part of it she was seen in a camouflaged four by four [00:09:00] holding a gun and a Bible.SHEFFIELD: Which has, you know, quite a lot of visual similarities to ISIS videos.KELLEY: Very much so. Everyone noted that at the time.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, although, you know, there was another woman who had been featured in this photographed herself in a similar way, a younger woman. Oh, right. And I forget what her name was, but people she posted it somewhere and, and she soon became a meme.And then she actually said, ‘I don't know why people are doing this.’KELLEY: Because it's totally different, different flag, different holy book, different guns.SHEFFIELD: That's right. Yeah. And, you know, and one other person who may not quite be as nationally infamous as, as McGeehan, is Bo Gritz. He was a guy who actually ran for president as an independent candidate.He was another one of these Utah, Idaho Mormons. And he was involved, he... Had his own compound kind of, I believe, not too far away from where Randy Weaver had his, you know,KELLEY: If you live in Idaho, you have to have a compound.SHEFFIELD: Oh, yeah, apparently everybody's either in Boise or in a compound.KELLEY: Mine's rented, so--SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well and you know, and I think I think it's and this is a subject we'll come back to at the end But I think you know part of the kind of divide for a [00:10:30] lot of people is that because there are so many vast open areas of Idaho where just nobody's there. You can drive for maybe an hour and not see another car on the road depending on where you're at, and then at the same time, they are not, you know, if you drive a little bit further, you'll come into a you know, modern Western city like Boise, and it can be kind of jarring.I think to some of these people. It seems like you know, I it's one thing about right wing extremism that I think people who haven't don't have a first-hand exposure to it is that you know So much of it is psychological It's not political. It's just seeing that other people have a different way of living and it's wrong.KELLEY: That's right.SHEFFIELD: And it's wrong. I mean, and that's kind of, I mean, that's kind of a, I mean, a large part of what you guys write about it at Wonkette is highlighting that type of behavior from these right-wing figures.And it's unfortunate because, I'll let you speak to it, but it seems to me that the national Republican party is basically, and not just with Trump, over time becoming ever more like these people who were like Bo Gritz who were kind of laughing stocks in the nineties. Somebody like him, like, another Idahoan, Ammon Bundy you know, they have a constituency their constituency.KELLEY: Yeah, very much so. We've it's, it's a small, radical, annoying, [00:12:00] strangely powerful sometimes bunch of crazies.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and I mentioned Ammon Bundy.So he comes from a whole family. Let's talk about them. You want to get the background on those guys?KELLEY: Well, the Bundys are some Mormon fundamentalists who have a vision of the coming apocalypse. What is the white horse something or other?SHEFFIELD: Oh, yeah, yeah. So somewhere there's a Mormon prophecy from Joseph Smith that the, that the male priesthood holders of Mormonism are going to save the United States and that there will be someone will emerge as if riding on a white horse. And he will sweep in to become the president and save America right before the destruction of the wicked.KELLEY: Yes. Yes. And Cliven was into that, and I think Ammon even more so. I honestly don't know Cliven being the father, Cliven being the father who had the standoff in Nevada and then Ammon ran the standoff in Oregon at the wildlife refuge and escaped excuse me, escaped criminal charges in both of those.In Nevada, because the FBI completely screwed up at the prosecution and didn't share I, as I recall, [00:13:30] didn't share important information during discovery. So it got thrown out and then in the Oregon case, they were all basically let off because the jury, as if you ask me, the jury just nullified the case, they didn't want to prosecute them.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, which, you know, and it's funny considering how much they claim to be upset at writing and looting by Black Lives Matter. Well, you know, here's some law-and-order you guys could have done and didn't exactly do it,KELLEY: But it's still, you know, it's still okay to shoot federal cops because they're wrong.They don't have the right to, to enforce laws. And in fact, no parts of the Federal, the federal government isn't allowed to have land outside of Washington, D. C. and military bases. It's a special copy of the constitution that belongs to the Bundy's.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah well, and I guess, yeah, that, you know, that's, those ideas kind of come out of this sovereign citizen.KELLEY: Right, right, combination of the sovereign citizen and the, the sagebrush rebellion stuff.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, yeah, and, and basically, they had this idea that they don't have to pay taxes as well because the United States as a government was ended secretly, and I always forget the year of the thing.KELLEY: I believe it was with the 14th amendment in 1865, 1867, whatever that was.SHEFFIELD: Of course it has something to [00:15:00] do with slavery, right?KELLEY: Yeah, and then we, and then the U. S. became a corporation, and we were all owned by the government until we put a legal notice up that we are now free persons, and we don't belong to the government anymore.And that's never held up in court and they keep doing it year after year.SHEFFIELD: But it makes a lot of money for the people who, who tell you.KELLEY: It's a great scam!It is. If I didn't have a, if I didn't have any sense of ethics at all, I could make a lot of money.SHEFFIELD: Yeah well, I guess, you know what though, you guys do have at least one, another positive thing, a positive thing that you guys are known for, which is Napoleon Dynamite.KELLEY: That's true. That's true. We have the shots.SHEFFIELD: That's right. And when, you know, they, they should have, they should have said what high school Uncle Rico had his football career.But yeah, as somebody who grew up in, in Utah, which has a lot of the same geography and. And characteristics. I was just like, Oh man, this was my childhood on the silver screen. At least the minus the, the fundamentalist Mormonism parts.But yeah, so, all right. So with the, so that's kind of, I don't know, like a rose gallery, if you will, of, of famous right-wing Idahoans.but I guess before we get into, get beyond that though, let's I did want to mention, so, we, we've talked about Mormonism [00:16:30] in the Idaho context a little bit and it's kind of interesting for people who are not from Idaho or, or not Mormon is that Idaho kind of, it's got the, the Mormons on Idaho are kind of split with each other that so for instance there is the, the Brigham Young University, which most people know of is in Provo, Utah but then there's also one in Rexburg, Idaho called Brigham Young University, Idaho formerly known as Ricks College.And Ricks/BYUI has always been kind of like the more fundamentalist version of Brigham Young University. So like, for instance, you're not allowed to wear shorts on campus if you go to Brigham Young University, Idaho. Whereas, in fact, you can have the distinct pleasure of wearing shorts if you go to Provo, Utah, Brigham Young University.KELLEY: Provo sounds like it's a little weak on doctrine there.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, although I've never seen them where they claim what book of scripture says you can wear shorts. I don't know that one. And last I heard, I believe they also don't allow open toed sandals at BYU Idaho.KELLEY: As is only correct.SHEFFIELD: That's right, you know, toe cleavage. You go there and no one has ever even heard of the term toe cleavage. [00:18:00] But apparently it does exist and it's evil.KELLEY: Well, that's obvious.SHEFFIELD: That's right. Yeah.KELLEY: I grew up Catholic, so I can identify.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, the thing though about Idaho Mormons is that they're, they kind of, because of the remoteness, I guess, maybe, or who knows what it was, the Idaho Mormons have always been a little bit weirder than the Utah Mormons. And it's funny for people who have never lived in either of the states, they're like, what the hell are you talking about? People cannot believe that there's any difference, but in fact there is, and people and everybody who's watching this who's from Utah, you can back me up on this, I'm sure.But yeah, and so, but like they've, I don't know, it's like a lot of the, the, there, there is this fringe Mormon movement, and I know what they call it it's a website called the LDS Freedom Forum is what they call it. And it's full of all kinds of fringe Mormons who love Ezra Taft Benson and Clive and Bundy and, you know, pretty much all these other people.And they've been very angry about particularly lately about COVID and vaccines, which the mainstream LDS church has actually been very positive about those things. And Utah, as you, as you mentioned in our preshow chat, was one of the, the highest vaccinated states because but yeah, I guess apparently not Idaho.Is that right?KELLEY: Not [00:19:30] so much Idaho. No, it's funny because the, the mainstream. Mormon political establishment Butch Otter the current governor Brad Little, whose name isn't nearly as much fun, they tend to be pretty reasonable. And it's bizarre, actually, just, I didn't know until talking to you that I, that there is this.More radical Mormon subculture here. And I didn't even notice it. Although I give it a moment of thought then yeah, sure. Ammon and his followers. But when I think of Idaho Mormons, I tend to think of the respectable right-wing Republicans who make up one of the two major parties here. The other being the batshit lunatics from Northern Idaho.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well it's true. And then like that was yeah, it's, you know, Mormonism really is kind of the Republican party in miniature. In that it's made of, you know, businesspeople who just want to make money, it's made of people who just want to sing the hymns in church. And then it's made of people who are completely f*****g nuts, who hate everyone else.KELLEY: So it's diversity is what it is.SHEFFIELD: That's right. That's right. Yeah, and, and I guess, you know, the, the people that are completely nuts, though, they have been really getting agitated lately with all of [00:21:00] this with especially with the COVID pandemic. And so the right wing in Idaho has been growing particularly agitated because of the pandemic and vaccines and other things like that recently, but One of the other things that they've been interested in is the idea of Greater Idaho.Tell us about Greater Idaho.KELLEY: Greater Idaho is the brainchild of this guy in Oregon named Mike McCarter, who thinks that it would be a really terrific idea for the right-wing counties. Of Oregon and maybe a few in Washington to join up with Idaho and become a new state. It would be basically everything from anything outside the influence of the Portland and Eugene areas in Oregon would join with Idaho, and then we'd have one big right wing state that would have basically the they think it would be an advantage because there wouldn't really be any change in Congress because greater Idaho would still just have two right wing senators.And Oregon would, what was left of Oregon would still have its Democrats. And they've actually held nonbinding referendums in something like 10. Counties where it has passed[00:22:30] which basically doesn't mean anything because the legislatures of both Idaho and Oregon would have to sign off on it.Then Congress would end then the president would. So it's not really going to happen, but it is, it's, it's a brainchild is a favorite idea of some right-wing monitors. They also think that it's important to prevent Boise from ever getting. Enough electoral power that it becomes something like Portland.So if you bring in all the right wingers from Oregon and Washington into this one state, then there's no chance that the state Capitol will ever be able to outvote them.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah, that's, that's true. And then, and I'm trying to remember, I don't think they've done a vote, any votes in Washington.Have they?KELLEY: I don't believe so. I, I haven't actually kept up with that. I do know that a few years ago in,SHEFFIELD: Oh, and I guess some of them and some people are talking about. Some California counties as well.KELLEY: Oh, right, right. Yeah. There are some people who also, also want to include some of the counties in Northern California.Basically that would be the, this would override the state of, what is it that they wanted to call it?SHEFFIELD: Jefferson.KELLEY: Jefferson. Yes. Yes. This is an alternative to Jefferson. That would be even bigger. Yeah. Bigger [00:24:00] and bigger and crazier.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, oh, and, but, and if I'm, and they also don't they're so trying to make these other counties be part of Idaho, but then also they don't seem to have a plan for paying for the governmental structures that are owned.KELLEY: They wouldn't need to because it would be small government, and everyone would take care of the homes.SHEFFIELD: Ah, yes. Yeah. Like the hospitals, nobody would use those. And schools. No one would use themKELLEY: There wouldn't be enough of a taxpayer base to pay for the basics. Like, and they could all homes against Russia. I'm not against Russia against Canada. Probably.SHEFFIELD: Well, there is a Moscow, Idaho, right? Now that now that I think about it, which, and actually they've got some great wine over there.I have had some over there. It's an excellent place for wine. Yeah. And so, but it's, you know, it's like. It's just like this, this prolonged fantasy.KELLEY: That's all it is. It is never going to happen. And yet they really think it's a neat idea. So there will be, there will continue to be referenda and it will continue to do nothing.Even when they met with some right-wing members of the Idaho legislature a couple of years ago, the most that the Idaho people would say was. Well, that's interesting.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and as I [00:25:30] understand just this year there was a resolution in February to discuss the idea. It wasn't even a discussion.It was literally, can we have the discussion? And they said yes. And then they didn't do it.KELLEY: Well, they're too busy banning books and outlawing trans people.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and actually let's, let's talk about that. So yeah, books, books have become suddenly very controversial in Idaho.KELLEY: As with everywhere else, as with everywhere else.Yeah, the, the cultural wars are running hot as ever here in the Boise area, fortunately it's gone fairly well. There was an attempt to I was the library board, as I recall, and it went nowhere in not in Boise, but in nearby Nampa or Meridian. I think it was Meridian. When there was a library board meeting that one group of crazies wanted to storm everyone else heard about it and outnumbered them 10 to 1.So at least in the same part of Idaho libraries are safe, but in other parts of the state there have been a couple of libraries that were shut down because there was just no more funding or no one to work at them. So yeah, it's, it's very sad. And the legislature [00:27:00] last year passed a couple of absolutely crazy bills in the house that fortunately went nowhere in the Senate because the Senate so far is still tends to have more of the pro-business normal Republicans, rather than the crazies.But, but this year they, they did manage to do the trans the transgender excuse me, the gender affirming healthcare ban which is just awful they also passed that bizarre bill outlawing travel to Oregon or other States to get an abortion. So people could be put in jail, not for crossing the state line, but for traveling toward.Oregon or Washington to get an abortion with a minor who wasn't their own child in the car. So a parent wouldn't be arrested, but an aunt could.And it was signed by Brad Little, who, despite being one of the more. Sane, comparatively conservative Republicans knows that he's got the crazies always looking for a chance to go after him.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, that's true. [00:28:30] And I mean, it's when you think about it, just to compare the Democrats, I mean, in Idaho, you, you said, you know, nothing about the democratic politics in Idaho because we never hear from them.KELLEY: Exactly. It's, it's true. I mean, we, there are definitely. Democrats who are very good, especially in the Boise area and they do well, they have their voice in the legislature, and they have managed to keep some sanity in the place.But as far as being any kind of a counterweight to the crazies, I don't know what they would do frankly, because there's just not enough of us.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, because I mean, the Boise metro area has about 750, 000 people and Idaho has a lot more than that. And, but you know what though, I mean, I think it is, it's worth pointing out that a lot of this craziness probably does—I mean, you were saying that it does, they're trying to counteract that they believe a lot of people have moved into the Business and Berkeley section of Idaho and they're trying to do something to sort of disenfranchise them.KELLEY: We aren't quite to the point of where was, Oh of, of Texas [00:30:00] where they took away the elections board from the biggest County out for, for Houston.Yeah. They just said, nope, you can't have your own elections board anymore.SHEFFIELD: But you know, they're thinking about it. Yeah. And you know, and, but I mean, I guess, you know, nationally probably the, the only Democrat that from Idaho that anyone had ever heard of. And, and this is just barely, it's Paulette Jordan who ran for governor in 2018, and I guess she ran for Senate in 2020 no idea what she's doing nowadays, though.KELLEY: Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. It's. A, almost a suicide run for an Idaho, for an Idaho Democrat to run for major office. I don't know when our last, let's see, I can't recall when we last had a statewide Democrat in a major office.SHEFFIELD: I guess what Frank Church?KELLEY: Well, right. Frank Church was certainly the last Senator from Idaho.We did have a Democrat who was elected, I think for one term after, after, boy, we had a one term Democrat within the last 10 years in one of the two congressional districts but lost again. You know, former Idaho representative Raul Labrador, who is now [00:31:30] the state attorney general. It's crazies everywhere.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah. Well, one of the big progenitors of that craziness is the Idaho Freedom Foundation, right?KELLEY: They are very big. They said a lot of they managed to have an outsized voice in Idaho politics. They were central to the protests against COVID lockdowns. Not that we ever actually had them against any kind of reaction to COVID against masks, against any kind of public health orders.They and Ammon Bundy did things like protesting outside the home of a. Police officer who arrested someone for violating the lockdown nuts. There was a public burning of masks on the steps of the Idaho Capitol. So that was a good use of fire and plastic. And the Freedom Foundation is they just have all sorts of.Wonderful ideas about how we can make Idaho more right wing. They have a, an annual freedom index that tells you which members of the legislature are sufficiently to the right. They're very involved in the school censorship business and their blog.Most recently [00:33:00] is running articles about great Americans during June because the Democrats are doing something else during June. They won't even name pride. Oh, this is their little joke. It's called pride in America. So they have promo Elon Musk.And Charles Lindbergh, the article on Charles Lindbergh talks about what a great patriot was he was and what a great aviator doesn't have one word about the anti semitism or the America first thing. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, he helped us stay out of World War Two until it was unavoidable. And then he was a great patriot during the war.Nothing about his medal from Hitler. Cause why would you mention that? It's not like we have, not like there's anything wrong with being a Nazi.SHEFFIELD: No, no, there's, according to them, there is not. And it's just a difference of opinion. You know, why would you, why would you cancel someone for being a Nazi? Oh, right. And I guess there's, you guys also had some people trying to start up a Patriot Front group up in Coeur d'Alene that I guess they got arrested recently.KELLEY: Oh, right. Yeah. They, it wasn't that they were, were running one, but, but yeah, they, they came in from all around the West and tried to March at a pride parade last year.I'm not sure whether they were armed with anything more than, you know, clubs and, [00:34:30] and the usual armor and, and shields. But yeah, they were certainly a nasty group and most of them were convicted. And the fun thing of course, is that. Now on Elon's Twitter, you'll be told that if you mention the Patriot Front, you'll be told, Oh, wait, no, they're just an FBI front group.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I've seen people say that and I've asked people that and according to them, it's obvious that they are. It's just obvious they are, yeah. Because they have clean clothes and uniforms, and that makes them FBI.KELLEY: That must be it.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well and it's like well, hey, I guess you never heard of Mormons, But you know and I don't know but you know, I have to say though I do still feel like though that I mean, you know, we, we discussed Paulette Jordan, you know, earlier in the episode that I mean, she did a lot better than a Democrat has for governor in quite some time. And you know, a lot of people are moving to Idaho to the.Voicing area and in Sun Valley. And I mean, you know, is this just do these people see the writing on the wall for themselves? Do you think?KELLEY: Well, it's hard to say. I think that. So far, Idaho has been lucky in having more sane people than crazies. Going back to the Aryan nations there [00:36:00] were certainly Nazis there, but there was also a very, very strong pushback from the Corn Lane community.You still see bumper stickers that say Idaho is too great for hate. In fact, in Boise, we now have down by the library, we have an Anne Frank memorial that was put up by people who were disgusted by the reputation that Idaho got from the Aryan nations. So., I like, I, without sounding like a Pollyanna, I like to think that at some point sanity will prevail, but we're going to go through some stuff.Yeah. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, I mean, there is a group out there called reclaim Idaho. Have you ever heard of those guys?KELLEY: I don't know. There's a Twitter group called the Idaho 98% that I certainly like the name of that does what it can to oppose the crazies out there, or at least to point out that they are spouting nonsense.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and I think you know probably what's going to have to happen is that you know, it’s like People who live in more progressive parts of the country. I think it's hard for them to really grasp the dilemma that progressives in these reds in red states have is that [00:37:30] you know, you the national party has--KELLEY: Why don't they just move?SHEFFIELD: Yeah.KELLEY: I live here. I'm an American!SHEFFIELD: I have the right to live where I want to live, or I have to live where my job is, you know?KELLEY: Right.SHEFFIELD: Or whatever it is. Or my, where my family is or whatever. And the national Democratic Party did really, and this is part of why I'm doing this series, is that the national Democratic Party for a brief few years when Howard Dean was the chairman, actually had a 50-state strategy. But once Obama was able to come in and put his own people in, he was like, okay, you know We don't need that because I can win without this stuff. Let's just save our money guys And let's not do that.And so as a result, I mean, you know a lot of Democrats and red states feel like no one gives a s**t about is that, you think that's a fair assessment?It feels that way sometimes. I don't know about missing out on national attention, but although that is reality,A lot of it comes to, I think that there was this, so there was a book that came out it was around the time that Obama first came on the scene, it was called The Emerging Democratic Majority and the thesis of the book, people only took the first half of the thesis. The thesis of the book was, if Democrats can take their existing electorate and then [00:39:00] add on a new group of people who are college educated and are, you know, Hispanic or Asian who are immigrating in, then they'll have a majority. But. They basically, the National Democratic Party, especially under Hillary Clinton they basically kind of lopped off that first part of keeping the existing constituency.And they're like, hey, well, we got, we have the emerging majority here. Let's go for it, guys. We were let's put all our money into the presidential races. I mean, I think that might be part of it also is that. You know, they were shut out. The Democrats were shut out of the presidency for, for, for 12 years during Reagan and Bush and Bush 41.And they, I think to some degree it kind of made them miss their priorities that they took Congress for granted. But they, and so they became obsessed with the presidency and kind of lost the--KELLEY: I absolutely agree with that. And also the, the left has, the Democrats, the left have simply fallen down on what the right was so good at going back to when I was in college when the right was making sure that there were right wing people running for school boards and for local county officials.And you just don't see that kind of organizational effort on the ground [00:40:30] from Democrats. We should be doing the school boards. We need to be doing state legislatures at every level, not just every four years saying, okay, let's elect a president. Cause we can probably do that, but without the building, the party building that goes on with the lower-level efforts, you just don't have, Oh God, I'm going to use a sports metaphor: You don't have a bench.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, it's that also, and it's that, you know, they're missing the crucial aspect of the American electoral system, which is that, you know, it's deliberately. Like, I always hear people complain about, Oh, the Electoral College is unfair. The Senate is unfair. And it's like, guys, we've kind of been that way for more than 200 years.So, so, you can, you can complain about that. And you can complain about, you know, various Senator is not doing what you want, or you can try to do something about it. And, you know, and I guess to some degree, you know, the, the greater Idaho fantasy of, of the Western right wing is, it's almost like there's a left-wing version of that.And that's, you know, let's, we're going to expand the Senate. We're going to have Puerto Rico as DC as a state, and we're going to break up California, and we're going to do this and that. And it's like, okay. When are you going to get the power to do this ?KELLEY: Right, right, [00:42:00] exactly.SHEFFIELD: Who's going to give it to you?KELLEY: Exactly.SHEFFIELD: The other thing though about it is that, you know, so the American political system is not just, you know, the Senate's biased, obviously, for, for smaller population states but also, you know, just the fact that, I mean, you know, people on the, on the left talk about how.The presidential system should be about people rather than land, right? You know, you see those maps of you know, look at all this land that voted for Republicans. And it's like, that still does actually matter. That, you know, if you--KELLEY: It's what we've got.SHEFFIELD: It's what?KELLEY: It's what we've got.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.KELLEY: And, you know, we're not going to, to change that anytime soon.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and it's, it's also that you can't like, let's say you do somehow, let's say there is enough population shifting such that, you know, the, the blue states quote unquote, end up to having a permanent house and presidential majority. It's going to be problematic that you're creating a country that is just so incredibly geographically polarized.And it's, and not just for the, for the sake of national unity in the, that the Senate's not going to be that way, number one. And then number two, you're creating a huge problem for people who do live in urban areas like Boise or like, let's say Albuquerque, Mexico, or, you know, Texas Democrats. And [00:43:30] you can't just wave them one and say, Oh, well, you know, we'll have a national divorce.And that's like, guys, you're literally probably, you know, consigning a third of the people who you consider your political compatriots.KELLEY: Exactly.SHEFFIELD: You're consigning them to a confederacy. That that's what you're going to do.KELLEY: No, thank you.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.KELLEY: It's not that we it's not that we need to redo secession and let that go for, we need to do reconstruction 2. 0 and do it right. Although how we do that, I don't know.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, but it, you can't start it until you start talking about it.KELLEY: Right, right.SHEFFIELD: And that's just, you know, and, and because I mean, cause that, that is, it's actually an opportunity when you think about it. Because, you know, the, the Republican party in these different states.And not just the national party, but at the state level you know, even, I mean, here in California where I live, I mean, the Republican party here is nuts. Like they're insane. Like they're actually probably more insane than the national Republican party. And you know, so, but especially in red states where the, you know, people, the majority of people had been voting like in Idaho, I, I think since the nineties for, for actually no, since LBJ, I think he was the last Democrat to win Idaho in the presidential election. You know, like, so you've had one party rule. In many states in the country for [00:45:00] decades.And what has it gotten people, you know, it hasn't, it, there's all kinds of problems and, and it there's, you should think of that as an opportunity if you're a progressive to come in and help people and say, look, you have been abandoned, like that's, that's the thing people don't get about, about Trump and the appeal of Trump is that the reason why he has such loyalty from people is because Republicans abandoned these people.And so, and you know, he doesn't really care about them, but at least he pretends to.KELLEY: Right, right.SHEFFIELD: And they, and they love him for that.KELLEY: He's given up so much for them!SHEFFIELD: Yeah, that's how they feel. But at least he's acknowledging that they exist. And that's kind of hard to say that the national Democrats have really done that. I mean, when you look at where they put their ad dollars and, and their campaign cash.Well, so we're coming up to the end here. And I think we've hopefully covered all the, all the major points here and other Idahoans will have to chime in if we, if they think we missed anything, but I mean, do you have any, any parting thoughts for, for the audience as we wrap it up here?KELLEY: When you think about the polarization in the red states and the lunacy, remember that there is never a 100% vote in any of these red states. In Idaho, [00:46:30] Democrats do get 20 and 30% of the vote. That's the same in other red states too, and we can't just forget the people, the, the, the progressives in the red states.SHEFFIELD: Okay. Yeah. No, I think that's a good point. Good point. All right, so you are--KELLEY: Oh and read Wonkette. You should definitely read Wonkette.com. That's a...SHEFFIELD: Yes. There we go. Yes. W O N K E T T E.KELLEY: Yes, dot com.SHEFFIELD: For those who are listening. All right. And then I guess you are at least until it falls apart, you're on Twitter over at DoktorZoom. That's with a K though, not with a C. So people can follow you on there as well.All right Marty Kelley, thanks for being on Theory of Change.KELLEY: Well, thank you very much.SHEFFIELD: All right. So that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody for watching or reading or listening. And you can go to theoryofchange.show to get all the other episodes. And if you're a paid subscriber, you can get full access to video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes. And I do appreciate everybody who supports the show like that.We're not subsidized by billionaires or universities or anything like that. No, we're made possible by people like you. And so please do share the show as well. And if you could subscribe financially, that definitely is appreciated as well.But please do tell your friends and family about the show and what we're doing here. I do [00:48:00] appreciate it very much. I'll see you next time. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theoryofchange.flux.community/subscribe This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

Ever since the 1964 presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater, the Republican party has been in a radicalization loop in which successive generations of leaders overthrew their predecessors by claiming they were not reactionary enough. But since Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, Republican radicalization has increased at a level never before seen.And there’s a reason for this. Older, white fundamentalist Christians over 50 years old are the overwhelming majority of Republican voters. According to a recent Pew Research survey, 70% of people who voted Republican in 2022 were older than 49 years of age. Unfortunately for Republicans, their reliable core of loyal voters is slowly dying off and the number of people who aren’t religious has increased dramatically since the internet became commonplace.Trump and other Republican leaders have realized the only way they can win elections without having to become more moderate is to whip fundamentalist Christians into a frenzy by merging DC Republican rhetoric with the previously fringe movement of QAnon, which is itself an outgrowth of the “Satanic Panic” that started in the 1970s and has never really stopped, even though it faded away from mainstream media in the 90s.As you’ll see in today’s episode, right-wing media figures are telling their fan bases that progressives and transgender people are literally possessed by demons. The rhetoric we’ll be playing today is so extreme and so disturbing that it’s not often covered in mainstream media, which is a problem of its own as well.Joining me to talk about all of these very concerning media and political developments is Julie Millican, she is a vice president at Media Matters for America where she’s worked for more than 15 years. Currently she oversees partner programs and media accountability efforts.Also here today is Olivia Little, who is also at Media Matters as a senior investigative researcher. She’s written about many different right-wing media figures and most recently has been doing some incredible research about the new Christian extremist group that calls itself Moms for Liberty.TranscriptMATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Thank you for being here today, ladies.OLIVIA LITTLE: Thank you.JULIE MILLICAN: Yeah. Thank you.SHEFFIELD: All right. So, let's just start off with you, Julie, you've been looking at right-wing media for 15 years. Things have gotten worse in recent years. These fringe figures, well, formerly fringe figures, were always there at the margins. Is that right?MILLICAN: Yes, that's definitely right. Yeah. Many years ago during the Obama administration, for instance, you would start to see some inklings of these more fringe figures or just internet figures, internet websites, like the Gateway Pundit, for instance, starting to have a little bit more influence over how the conservative media infrastructure at large was talking about issues.We saw back then that this type of commentary was intentionally kept in the background, but that it was obviously gaining some influence and in certain circles what we saw at the time was say, some early inklings of conspiracy theories that were being floated around Barack Obama's birth certificate, for [00:04:30] instance, is one of the first instances that I saw some of these conversations that were happening in more fringe communities start to be a little bit more embraced by more traditional media outlets on the right as well as the Republican infrastructure as a whole.It's where Donald Trump actually was able to gain a foothold. I think a lot of people maybe aren't aware of the fact that he used to have a weekly call-in segment on Fox and Friends which is Fox News's morning talk show. And he would call in every week, talking about the birth certificate.He at one point, if I'm remembering correctly, had a bounty out for it. He was going to pay people to find his original birth certificate, but this was something that was really embraced the fringes and then started to kind of build a little bit of momentum, I think for where we.See both the media infrastructure and the Republican Party today. A lot of it has been fueled by the increased prominence of social media. Particularly as a news outlet, it is allowed for more and more filter bubbles to form people to get pushed to more and more extreme content. And what this is kind of ultimately led to the Trump presidency that was then staffed by the very people who had been pushing some of the more extreme elements before. And then it fully became off to the races from there. Just like a race to the bottom, both within the right-wing media infrastructure and the Republican political apparatus that followed it.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And it's also the case Olivia, that, the Republican, Donald Trump in [00:06:00] particular, his White House and political advisors, they saw when the QAnon movement began, they saw that as a useful tool for them and really kind of, tried to speak in code to it over the years.And, it's gradually become much more prevalent in, in their rhetoric. Would you say that?LITTLE: Okay. Oh, absolutely. They understand that it appeals to the masses and it's sort of this easy explanation for a complex problem. So of course they're embracing it because it's useful.MILLICAN: Yeah, to jump in if you don't mind it's one of those things going back to your point about the satanic panic. It's always about the children, right? It is something that the right has. Successfully weaponized for decades. And it's appealing to people because nobody wants to hear about children being harmed.Everybody wants to protect children from being harmed. And it's not, it's a gateway, I think, to kind of push people into more extreme positions. Because once you get them, I'm bored with the fact that or this belief that there's these global elite somewhere that are, in cahoots to harm children, like you can then start pointing the fingers at well, it's these groups of people and they're the ones that are doing it.And they're not just doing that. They're doing all of these other terrible things. And it's a way to really push people to both embrace a political ideology that they may not have been involved with. previously. But also just to embrace, more and more extreme beliefs and [00:07:30] more and more extreme rhetoric and action that comes from that.SHEFFIELD: Well, it's also that, the QAnon movement is kind of the final form of a lot of this Christian right rhetoric that we had seen earlier in Republican politics. And that it's easy to get people to focus on these fantastical, phantasmagoric conspiracies and Satan, imaginary stuff.The way that they're doing things, currently with QAnon and some of this stuff is a continuation of how things were—I mean, like you look at Pat Robertson, he kind of really got this started in Republican politics by mainstreaming things like the New World Order conspiracy theory. He actually wrote a book by that title and was trying to push this extreme paranoia and as he got older and had more media under his own control, the mainstream media kind of forgot some of those aspects of him.But things have just gotten so much worse in terms of the level of extremism that you see in large-scale Republican and right-wing media outlets.So we've got a bunch of different clips here to get through. I want to get started with some of those. Basically the discussion here, we're going to organize it around these packages of clips. And what I want the audience to see in this first package is that Republican political elites, many of whom are not even religious themselves, necessarily, or [00:09:00] Christians for that matter, basically, they're telling the right-wing voter base and evangelical Christians, fundamentalist Christians, that there is a war against them. And that they need to think of themselves as at war with modernity. And they actually use that verbiage, you'll see in one of the figures here.So the first one is an opening prayer that was given at the recent Moms for Liberty convention. And we'll play that. And then Olivia, maybe you can give us some more details on Moms for Liberty and what they're up to.(Begin clip)PAT BLACKBURN, Moms for Liberty: We have one father, and he's our God. He has called each of us here for such a time as this.Nothing you've experienced this week has been a coincidence. I don't believe in coincidences. Because for months, the leadership team at Moms for Liberty met every morning at 9:15 in the morning for our daily fortification. We read scripture and we pray. And we gave this summit to God, and we said, God, you make it yours. And so [00:10:30] we have had a wonderful week. And no matter what our enemy tried to do to stop us, we've had a very successful summit. (Cut in video)Lord, we celebrate every win and every success because you gave it to us. And we thank you.And so some of us are going carry home some awards tonight, but most importantly, each and every one of us are in this because you called us, and because we're being a willing vessel.So that we can walk in the spiritual walk that you would have us to walk in. And so our rewards are truly laid up in heaven. And no one and nothing can take that away.(End clip)SHEFFIELD: Tell us about Moms for Liberty, Olivia. How did they get started? What were their initial issues and what have they kind of gravitated toward and are known for today?LITTLE: Right. So Moms for Liberty began in early 2021 in Florida. And they initially went all in on. Like anti covid mitigation policies. And they did that in order to cast this sort of like wide net and recruit new followers in a way that they knew wouldn't work if they went all in on like critical race theory.Because they initially tried to, you go back on their archives you'll see that they tried to fundraise based off of anti-CRT advocacy [00:12:00] and they tried to, they had information pages about CRT and but so, so from there they shifted, went all in on anti-COVID mitigation policies.And once those policies, like masks lifted and once schools were reopening, they did a 180 and they went back pursuing anti-CRT advocacy, anti-LGBT advocacy, and they made that pivot, but they were able to channel this parental frustration about the pandemic into pushing their own political agenda that wouldn't have happened without the pandemic.So they really took advantage of parental frustrations during COVID to push their own agenda. And so from there, they grew, they started in Florida in early 2021 and really didn't have many followers or like much of a structure. But early on, we see that they had massive right wing media support and massive right wing political support as well.And they have since moved across the country with the help of these right-wing politicians and right-wing media. They moved across the country harassing or strategically harassing school boards and teachers throughout the country and, now I was just at their summit in Philadelphia.But we've seen a very consistent increase in radicalization or open extremism from the group that at first, they tried to at least mask it, but now it's completely mask-off [00:13:30] in terms of how extreme the group has become.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. It was worth talking about some of the rhetoric that was in that prayer, specifically in the context for it.So it was at the recent conference that they had, which you attended and reported from. And the prayer was given at their award ceremony on the final night of the conference. The name of the awards were called “For Such a Time as This.”And that phrase might not mean anything to most people, but in the fundamentalist Christian circles in the United States, it is a very important meme in right-wing Christian circles.It refers to a verse in the story of Esther in the Hebrew Bible in which a character tells Esther, who was this Jewish woman who was captured along with many other Jews and made to become the sex slave of this foreign ruler. And her Jewish friend tells her, ‘maybe God has raised you up for such a time as this.’And in the right-wing evangelical culture, they've kind of made that their mantra that they are God's personal servants. And you saw that also in the prayer that, God's, her repeatedly saying, God has designated us. And she used the phrase again “for such a time as this.”I mean, this is some rhetoric I think that maybe a lot of times, Julie, maybe you can jump in about the fact that a lot of mainstream reporters don't seem to be aware of a lot of these code words that are being used?MILLICAN: Yeah, I would say that's right. If they are aware of it, it's [00:15:00] certainly not being included in the coverage. I don't think the context of the religious extremism that's underlying a lot of the advocacy that we're seeing on the right these days is really being spelled out to people.I don't know, sometimes it seems like there's an aspect of it where the media is just generally reluctant to talk about religious extremism, especially when it comes to Christianity, especially when it comes to religious extremism on the right, they certainly didn't have a problem talking about religious extremism when it was coming from other religious groups.And we see the same type of reluctance when it comes to talking about acts of terror that are committed by people on the right or like that are inspired by issues on the right that not being described as acts of terrorism, whereas they would have been if they were religiously motivated from Islam, for instance.So I think that there has been this general reluctance to either see the signs or at least contextualize the signs to a more mainstream audience. That is doing a disservice to people fully kind of understanding, the different codes that are being spoken, but also, it's not like we're really so much in code anymore.I mean, pretty explicitly embracing a very right wing and work stream that I think, most would realize version of Christianity these days than they used to in the past. Like Fox News, for instance, I mean, their Fox Nation platform has an entire prayer show. They've had segments on their weekend [00:16:30] programming.They have a Faith and Friends concert series that was sponsored by the Museum for the Bible. They have on Fox Business; they'll sell airtime to like Christian nationalist pastors to give sermons on the weekends.They've been pretty open, I think, in a way that I don't think you have to worry about being accused of being biased or anti-religion by reporting on what these people are actually saying and doing. But I do think that this aspect is being lost.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it is important for the people who are outside of that worldview to understand this is what's coming for you, especially if you are somebody who is LGBTQ, or somebody in your family or your friends who are, that these are people that are being directly viciously attacked, pretty much 24/7 by right wing media now and—MILLICAN: By demonic forces, as you would say. It's like they're literally being compared to demons. And it’s not just fringe people who are saying this, like we have Donald Trump himself, like regularly appears on the Victory Channel, for instance, as do many other mainstream Republican politicians.And this is a network that openly embraces Christian nationalism. And this is the type of thing that they have a plan for what they will do when they retake control of the government, and they're pretty open about it.And for some reason, this just doesn't get covered and people, broadly, I would say who don't live their [00:18:00] lives paying attention to what these right-wing figures are doing or don't live their lives surrounded by people who are more fundamentalist in their religious beliefs, they don't have any idea that this is going on, or that this exists. And it's just kind of happening right under everybody's nose.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I think that's right. And, and I think a lot of political reporters who came up before the Christian right was completely liberated by Trump, Julie, I think they may not know how right-wing media is so much more important and significant than progressive media is on the left. What do you think of that?MILLICAN: Oh, that's absolutely the case. First of all, the right-wing media infrastructure is just massive. It is enormous. It is extremely well funded, and it's extremely well-established. And they've also done a really good job in being able to take advantage of the opportunities that social media has presented, as far as being able to spread and shape a narrative.The right-wing media is particularly good at making a lot of noise around issues, and they are in lockstep in their messaging often and how they're talking about things and the things that they want people to be upset about. They spend a lot of time knowing first of all, that fear and anger drives engagement. And they play on that. They keep people angry. And they keep people fired up and that keeps people engaged and it keeps them motivated to want to act.And so I think that the right has spent decades, very successfully [00:19:30] building up an infrastructure that could take advantage of the fact that they have a very engaged base that may be smaller, it may be a smaller group, a portion of the population, but they're extremely engaged.They're extremely active, and they're very influenced by what they hear, and they don't trust anything that's coming outside of their circles. They very much are not going to trust information that's coming from a mainstream news source.They're certainly not going to trust anything that a liberal or a progressive or a Democrat has to say about anything. And so they are all listening to one very loud group speaking from the same hymn book, more or less. And that has a lot of influence on how people behave and act.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, for sure. And actually to illustrate that point, we're going to go into another clip. This one is featuring Charlie Kirk, who is the founder of Turning Point USA, which is this extremely well-funded, I think over a hundred million dollars across all of his organizations, group that targets young people for right-wing radicalization, particularly young Christians.(Begin video clips)CHARLIE KIRK, Turning Point USA president: What changed is that an outgrowth of modernity, and we're living in this postmodern, post-structuralist, everybody gets to decide their own truth for themselves. This social contagion that is spreading the country at a rapid pace that disguises itself as “transgenderism.”MICHAEL KNOWLES, Daily Wire host: This is yet another reminder that science is mostly fake, not, not that [00:21:00] scientism or the politicization of science or whatever other squishy language, the, the more I don't know, centrist kind of people want to grant, but the whole endeavor, the whole endeavor of the scientific revolution, the premise of which is that reality is fundamentally physical, that is flawed.It's not true. The modern scientific culture has given us certain nice things, but it's given us a lot of bad things as well.(End video clips)SHEFFIELD: So Charlie Kirk, he's basically telling his audience and we'll get into the other guy as well, who was there. So Charlie Kirk is telling his audience of, basically white evangelicals and hardcore Catholics that. They are at war with modernity, that everyone is out to get you.And then you saw in that second clip there Michael Knowles, who is a podcaster with another very well-funded organization, the Daily Wire telling his audience that science is fake.Olivia, you've written about some of these people over the years tell us about Charlie Kirk's group and the Daily Wire.LITTLE: Yeah, of course. So Charlie Kirk is behind Turning Point USA, which is a libertarian right-wing organization that is directly recruiting and trying to radicalize young people. It targets both students in college. They now have TPUSA [00:22:30] groups that are in high school as well.And the organization exists to create a next generation of right-wing radicals, essentially. It's an organization that promotes far right, right-wing indoctrination and, again, intentionally targets young people so that they're able to spread that message through the years.And then the Daily Wire is a conservative news outlet that Media Matters monitors as well, and the Daily Wire was started by Ben Shapiro, so the right-wing media outlet that has a number of shows that preach the same sort of sentiment of anti-science or culture war nonsense constantly to viewers.MILLICAN: Yeah. And to your point, they've increasingly embraced, especially over the last couple of years, Charlie Kirk has been bolstering his connections to faith leaders and have started to increasingly embrace a far-right Christian message. I mean, even if you look at his presentation, frankly, like when I watch that video, I'm struck by the fact that he just looks like he a televangelist, like he is—his tone and his presentation. Just all of that is very clearly nods to an audience that is primed to receive a message in this very specific way.And he's recognized that, and has taken advantage of that, I think, to build a bigger following.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and the other thing also about Turning Point is that they've been under a lot of pressure from the [00:24:00] even further right. From this guy named Nick Fuentes, who is an open Hitler admirer and self-proclaimed fascist who says that he wants to, basically, eliminate non-Christians from America and to drive out Jewish people seemingly, that had talked about maybe not directly about killing them, but hasn't said that was wrong or something that he would oppose.MILLICAN: And he calls for, yeah, he calls for a holy war all the time. So I mean—SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and he's targeted TPUSA because he knows that the people who are going to these conferences of Charlie Kirk, they actually are very susceptible to his type of message. The metaphor that I use for this process of what's happening here with the right is that as their numbers shrink, when something is evaporating, that it becomes more and more concentrated over time, even much more of the essence of that thing, but also in the worst possible way. And that's really what we're seeing.And in order to kind of counteract that, Kirk has become more and more extreme, much more Christian nationalist and apocalyptic in his rhetoric. What do you think about that Olivia? Do you agree with that analysis?LITTLE: Yeah, I definitely agree with that. And I think it also aligns with what we're seeing from a number of groups like TPUSA and Moms for Liberty collaborate often. They were a sponsor or one of the nonprofit sponsors at this past summit, but [00:25:30] in the same way, we're seeing this increased radicalization because actors on the right themselves are becoming more radical.They're keeping up with that or following lead to a point that we don't know where it's going to end because everyone is getting more radical and they're just following other right wing figures' lead. And that's both organizations and individuals.SHEFFIELD: Did you want to add anything on that, Julie, before we move on?MILLICAN: Sure. I would actually I think one of the things that I find interesting, but also disturbing about that trend is that it seems like it's really accelerated over the last couple of years, particularly since the pandemic. How quickly people have become radicalized and how quickly they then push these organizations and these movements and these figures to be further and further to the right.It's not this type of—it's not a slow creep to extremism. It's really fast and it's heading to a place where I don't think any of us really want to think about what the end-game is. Because it almost feels like there's no bottom because at one point, some of the stuff that Charlie Kirk is pushing now around, demons and satanic influences and stuff like that, would have not been considered something that would be embraced by a well-funded right wing organization and the political infrastructure that supports it.But now not only is it embraced, but he's chasing the lead of Nick Fuentes. Is that what's next? Is that what's on the horizon? Is there just going to, kind of [00:27:00] keep going down that path because they feel like they are increasingly responding to a base that's more and more radicalized, and so they have to continue to go that to maintain their power and influence.I think the trend that we're looking at is really disturbing, and it's really disturbing how quickly everything seems to be moving in that direction.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. And to that end we've got another package of clips here that show them talking explicitly about some of these demonic things that they're telling people.And it's easy for somebody, if you're not superstitious yourself, to look at this and just be like: ‘Oh, that's so absurd. It's so stupid. No one could believe that stuff.’ And you need to realize that's wrong. A lot of people believe this stuff. And it's really concerning that that is the case.(Begin video clips)ALEX JONES, Infowars owner: But in this world, we're told men that who dress like women are women, and that women should act like men, and that really masculine men, that are real men, are a bad commodity.And that's because an alien off-world force, it's spiritual, it's interdimensional. It has a transmission. It has a spirit, but it also has agents, aliens, demons. And they are working against us around the clock because they know we are about to go from our embryonic level to birthing into the next level. [00:28:30]ERIC METAXAS, right-wing radio host: You were talking about something extraordinary, and I just love you to touch on, on that subject, because—ROGER STONE, Republican consultant: True.METAXAS:—it's, it's at least very interesting.STONE: I think that there has, that, that a, a portal, a demonic portal opened above the White House around the time that the Bidens moved in. This was brought to my attention by a Christian who lives in North Florida who sent me a bunch of photographs and a bunch of documents and also some notations in the in the Bible about portals.MICHAEL KNOWLES: Isn't it odd how depictions of demons, how depictions of weird, ghoulish, devilish, demonic figures are always androgynous? They're never super-duper hypermasculine chads. They're never beautiful, truly gorgeous women with classical proportions and representations of beauty. They're always androgynous. They're always trans.And the reason for that is that the devil hates human beings. And sexual difference is at the, basically at the very core of human nature. The difference between man and woman, the complementarity of man and woman, is right there at the heart of human nature. And the devil hates humanity, and so he tries to cut away at the very core of humanity.CHARLIE KIRK: Witchcraft and the occult is a real thing.JACK HIBBS, far-right pastor and political activist: Yeah.KIRK: And there are portals to darkness, and you have to be vigilant about this. [00:30:00] And that I believe that there are leaders—HIBBS: Wait, they made fun of that?KIRK: Oh, the mockery, Jack! ‘Who are you to say all that?’ Because, well, it's kind of interesting, they make fun of it because no one actually wants to say that out loud that we're in the midst of the high, most consequential spiritual war, I think—HIBBS: Absolutely!KIRK: Of a millennia, right? No one wants to say that out loud.(End video clips)SHEFFIELD: So, in that first clip, these people are telling their audience that trans people are demons. And it's almost unbelievable. Julie, when you have talked to people outside of work about some of these things, do they find it hard to believe that these things are being said in American politics by major figures?MILLICAN: It depends on who I'm talking to. I come from a background where I actually have family members who have gone down the Christian nationalist path and tend to espouse very similar things.But I also have people who have no exposure to any of this in my life. And then for them, it's absolutely just mind-blowing. They think it's a joke. They think nobody seriously, actually says this. And anybody who does say this is just in a frenzy. And anybody who would be listening to them would obviously see that this is nonsense.And it's just not true. I mean, there is, there's an audience for this. There's a lot of people who believe in this. Spiritual warfare has become an extremely [00:31:30] common talking point among mainstream right-wing political figures and right-wing media figures. As I mentioned before—SHEFFIELD: And what is, what is spiritual warfare?MILLICAN: It depends on again, who you're talking to or whose definition of it is, but essentially there is this battle for your soul and the soul of humanity, the soul of America, because it's often very much framed around this idea that we are agents of God. We have been put here. God has given us the power.Government does not have the ability to control. We are fighting these satanic forces of evil who are putting the LGBT community and on the map who are, supportive of abortion rates who are not, traditional women who are not at home, et cetera. Like there is this a spiritual battle for your soul and the soul of America that these people are waging every day, or they see evidence of this every single day. And that is what's driving a lot of the political conversation. It's also driving a lot of the actions that we see. I think Olivia could speak to some of this, even just how it manifests itself on a very local level.Moms for Liberty has adopted a lot of this kind of spiritual battle framework in their messaging. And you would See this come up, even when people were going to their local school boards to protest mask mandates, even you would hear them invoking God in this and saying, this is, you don't have the right, it's just God's will and God would never do this and all this stuff is fake.So I think Olivia could speak to some of like how this plays out on the ground. But it's very much become an extremely [00:33:00] mainstream position within the right and way of rallying their base and their community.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and actually you gave a perfect segue to the clip the next part of the clip here that I'm going to play, which is from a Moms for Liberty convention speaker.(Begin video clip)KRISANNE HALL: I'll tell you why this is happening. Satan hates the image of God stamped on every human being. Therefore, Satan hates women because women bring forth the image of God.Now we shouldn't be surprised by this, whether it be our Christian, our Jewish brothers and sisters, because the Bible tells us this is how it will be! Genesis 3:15 reads: “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman. Between thy seed and her seed, it shall bruise thy head and [thou] shall bruise his heel.”We are not only bringing forth the image of God, Satan knows it's through us that comes his ultimate destruction!(End video clip)SHEFFIELD: So Olivia, who was this woman that was in the clip there?LITTLE: Yeah, so that's [00:34:30] KrisAnne Hall who is a far-right Christian nationalist, she was speaking at one of the general sessions at the Moms for Liberty Summit in Philadelphia, but her rhetoric was sort of mimicked by other speakers at the event.As you heard, both by her and the video we watched prior to that these people are positioning their opposition as satanic, right? So anyone or anything that is opposed to them, or their ideology is satanic. And what they're also doing in that is positioning the members themselves as divine, as carrying out God's will and creating this sort of war of good versus evil and trying to convince these individuals that they're on the side of God and godliness.And again, in the case of Moms for Liberty. They have framed public schools as something evil. Like there's some evil demonic force in schools that's trying to corrupt your children. And by doing that, they're not only scaring parents, but they're mobilizing them.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And it's important also to note that Fox News also is involved with this radicalization as well. Like these are not just, internet people or podcasters or whatever.These are Fox News figures. And we saw that Jesse Waters, who is now the centerpiece of the Fox primetime lineup is pushing these demonic war allegations and whatnot.(Begin video clip)JESSE WATTERS, Fox News Channel host: So parents already have to deal with high crime and inflation and now they have to worry about demonic teachers turning their classroom into a drag show? [00:36:00] You'd think Biden, who's almost 80, would know better. But he doesn't. Maybe that's why they call him "Creepy Joe."SHEFFIELD: But also, you have Tucker Carlson. He was probably the biggest proponent of satanic panic rhetoric before he was fired at Fox.(Begin video clip)TUCKER CARLSON, former Fox News Channel host: The trans movement is the mirror image of Christianity, and therefore its natural enemy. (Cut in clip)Trans ideology claims dominion over nature itself. We can change the identity we were born with; they will tell you with wild-eyed certainty. Christians can never agree with this statement because these are powers they believe God alone possesses. That unwillingness to agree, that failure to acknowledge a trans person's dominion over nature incites and enrages some in the trans community.People who believe they're God can't stand to be reminded that they're not. So Christianity and transgender orthodoxy are wholly incompatible theologies. They can never be reconciled. They are on a collision course with each other. One side is likely to draw blood before the other side. Yesterday's massacre happened because of a deranged and demonic ideology that is infecting this country with the encouragement of people like Joe Biden.(End video clip)SHEFFIELD: But you know, other people out there, Harris Faulkner has been who filled the spot for him a little bit. She kind of copied a lot of his rhetoric as well. You want to talk about the [00:37:30] role of Fox in this a little bit, Julie?MILLICAN: Sure, I'd be happy to. So Fox has had a longstanding narrative around. They like to push this idea that their viewers are being persecuted in some way.And that all these liberal forces are out to get them, et cetera. And that has really been translated into this like Christian persecution narrative. Like Christians are being discriminated against the people. They're the ones that are losing their first amendment rates.When other marginalized communities gain rights that they don't think they should have access to gay marriage, for instance, equality under the law, et cetera everything always goes back to well, my religious freedom should Trump, X, Y, Z. And that it's really Christians who are being persecuted against.So when you have that backdrop, this is not a new narrative on Fox. This is a narrative that Fox has been pushing for quite some time, but like everything else has just become more blatant and more extreme and more embracing of a. far right religious ideology. You have the Tucker Carlson's, when he was at his peak, with millions and millions of viewers every night pushing this idea that, transgender people are the work of the devil and that there is, Liberals are demons and like everything that has been framed in this way that anybody to Olivia's point earlier, who is in opposition to you is not on the side of God and therefore you only have to answer to God.I think the kind of troubling part about this embrace as well is that there, there is no room for dissent within the right [00:39:00] around some of this rhetoric. And I think you could probably speak to that a little bit as well, based off of your own background and experiences, but it feels that if you try to challenge the religiosity and the message that they're sending and how extreme it has gotten, you're against God at that point. And you're part of the problem and you've been corrupted by the devil. And like, when you don't have the ability to have open and honest conversations about what's happening, it drives the conversation even further to the extreme, I believe as well.So Fox has been pretty influential in mainstreaming a lot of what we had seen that had maybe been more contained to a more Christian media audience, because let's not forget, there is a massive Christian media infrastructure as well. Obviously, Pat Robertson was the vanguard of that, but it has expanded enormously.But a lot of those conversations kind of stayed there. They weren't brought to a more mainstream audience. And Fox has really served the bridge, I think, between. Those two worlds and it's increasingly blurred together as just being part of the right-wing media narrative and conversation ever since.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And it's also the Fox itself has been under pressure as well from far-right rivals like OAN and Newsmax. I guess maybe not OAN as much, but like, Right Side Broadcasting Network. You see a lot of these new streaming internet streaming services that they basically all compete to be who can be the most [00:40:30] pro-Trump, who can be the most alarmist, who can, I mean, Newsmax regularly shows people praying these, really extreme Christian prayers. And there was a woman who I saw on right side broadcasting network who was outside of Trump's recent indictment in Florida. And she was talking about all of the same stuff.(Begin video clip)UNIDENTIFIED TRUMP SUPPORTER: Yes, he's our president. Loves America. Loves the people of America. And we have to fight. We have to help him and support him. All of this is lies from the deep of hell. These people are from hell. Okay. It's evil. Yes, it's evil. We have the devil reigning right now. I just want to cry.(End video clip)SHEFFIELD: As you were saying earlier, Julie, that, people who are sort of in the center left need to understand this is happening and that there is probably no limit to what the right wing media and political elites are going to tell their followers like, and it's, it's scary to contemplate that, but we need to, we need to.MILLICAN: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: So I'm going to play the last clip here.This clip is featuring it starts with some women in a school board meetings. What we'll do is I'll play the clips and then you guys can react to whichever ones you want to react.(Begin video clips)UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: I'm from Oakland Park, and I'm here for the children. There is zero evidence that COVID 19 exists in the world. [00:42:00] PCR tests are recalled. This is a plandemic. Fake virus. Bioweapon jab. Fake president.You will not experiment on my children. It's always been about the children. We know you're coming for the children. We will not comply. We only answer to God.People are waking up. Nothing can stop what is coming! You vote yes, you will all be tried for crimes against humanity!UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: These are demonic entities, and we need to stick together. Remember, we have authority in Christ Jesus!These are demonic entities in all the school boards of all the United States of America. And all of us Christians will be sticking together to take them all out!All the police officers that kick us out for our First Amendment right will also be going down with them. Do you understand?I'm a nurse. Infectious disease. 13 years. Masks don't work. These doctors that sit up here that were sneering at us and looking at us like we're scumbags, they need to go back to f*****g medical school!UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #3: Ma'am, you're out of order. This is your last warning.UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: (audio difficulties) Turn my mic on!UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #3: Communications?UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: They need to remember: Natural immunity is best. You are all [00:43:30] demonic entities! You are going to be taken down. The Lord--UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #3: Excuse me ma'am, you've already had your first warning, and this is your last. She cannot speak anymore.TIFFANY JUSTICE, Moms for Liberty: I don't know what to say to you. There is always a bridge. There is always a reason. There is always a reason why something happens, right? One of our moms in a newsletter quotes Hitler—AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Woo! Woo!JUSTICE: I stand with that mom!LARA LOGAN, Far-right media figure: So the next time you read somewhere, or hear on one of your shows or something, that the secret to everlasting youth is young blood.Why don't you ask, whose blood? How many? How much? Is it a baby's blood? How much of a baby's blood do you need? Whose baby? What happened to that baby? How do you get the blood? It's not the hard questions. It's the simple questions. Because the devil is always in the details. Always in the details.ALEX JONES: I think instead of them getting full satanic control of the planet and doing this, and turning us into lab rats, I think it's just best, God, I'm on it. God, go ahead and vaporize it if that's the right thing to do. Seriously.In fact, I'm asking, and I'm not praying to God to vaporize the earth. I want to fix things. I want to turn it around. I'm saying if it [00:45:00] gets to the point where we're not going to turn it around, and God knows that, and we've chosen wrong, I ask for the children's sake that God not allow the earth to continue on to produce children for this thing to feed on.I ask God, respectively, to blow the planet up immediately. Seriously, I mean, I want God to blow it up now instead of doing this, okay?SHEFFIELD: That's really horrible stuff. Do you want to give us the Alex Jones overview, Julie, of what's been happening to this guy over the years. He's gotten even crazier, it seems.MILLICAN: Yeah. Alex Jones is a really, really well-known conspiracy theorist who has managed to build a massive audience for himself and frankly made a ton of money advancing conspiracy theories and then selling products that conveniently help promote, the types of things that he's saying.So, for instance, he's been a big doomsday er about the end of the earth and makes a lot of money selling, prepping, meals and things like that. He has herbal supplements that he will sell to increase your vitality and masculinity; and essentially is just preying on an audience of people who maybe don't have the best critical thinking, but don't trust mainstream news sources, have a kind of tendency towards spiritual thinking in the first place.And he has built a huge name for himself. So he's probably most famous, I would think in most circles for attacking the children who were killed in Sandy Hook as being crisis actors, the parents [00:46:30] whose children were murdered or faking it and he got sued for that by the Sandy Hook families.It was a long, protracted legal battle. But ultimately, they prevailed and were able to get massive awards from him. But I think what people maybe don't recognize is that, as he's needed to keep his own influence and to keep his listenership engaged and to gain more influence, he's embraced more and more extreme forms of conspiracy theories, but it's become a lot more religious in his rhetoric to do it.He's also become more mainstreamed, frankly, like, Trump administration figures were, very, very interested in what Alex Jones was saying back during the 2016 campaign. Roger Stone, who is extremely close to a very close advisor, longtime advisor for Donald Trump.He's a regular on, I mean, he was employed by Infowars Alex Jones's media entity. And he had been on this network for years. He pushes the same conservative and right-wing conspiracies. It's very cynical. I don't think they believe, well, at least Roger Stone doesn't believe any of this.He's a man who's famous for having Nixon tattooed on him. back. This is people who started to get more and more mainstream embrace by the right.He's good friends with Joe Rogan. He's been on Joe Rogan's podcast, has been influential in pushing Joe Rogan down a more and more explicit conspiratorial bent with his own thoughts and broadcasts. He is Joe Rogan is a [00:48:00] podcaster who really came from the MMA fighting world was, kind of started off, he was very famous for that, talking about sports and kind of started down this path of, I'm just asking questions, questioning authority to openly hosting and calling into Alex Jones's show. I think he even called him during the January 6th insurrection, talk to Alex Jones. I mean, it's pretty it's pretty disturbing that this is the type of rhetoric that so many people are listening to, but it's also influencing like more national, like conversation and position.And I think the thing that that clip demonstrates to the main, the biggest, problem with all of this, is that it's really laid the groundwork and created an environment where it's acceptable for followers to be openly advocating for, or potentially even engaging in violence. And that, that is something that we have been seeing time and time again.Obviously, it's been a lot of, lone, wolf with a gun, going in and committing atrocities. They're being inspired by of the Alex Jones is of the world and people who are pushing that type of rhetoric and it's only going to get worse, the more extreme that they get.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and it's important to note also that yeah, like you mentioned these mass murderers motivated by right wing beliefs that, within the kind of even further to the right of Nick Fuentes, you have people that they venerate these mass murderers and call them saints, just like, seeing themselves as sort of the early Christian [00:49:30] crusaders against the evil, demonic forces.That's really what they're doing and there is no sort of centrist base of media or political power in the Republican Party. All the energy, the gravitational force of the right is on the far right. And so what they want filters into everything, even people who may not agree with that and may have never heard of these people.Like, I think that's something that, having been, come up in my own experience as a former conservative media person, a lot of people that I knew didn't really, including myself, had no contact with these extreme right-wing figures. And so they thought that they didn't matter.And that was ultimately what led me to leave the right was that I realized, oh my goodness, these people, they set the agenda for the Republican party. They're the ones who have the base. That's where the base of the voters is.And it's really awful stuff. And Olivia, you found the clip there that we were playing there with the from the Moms for Liberty there. You and I had some got some new friends on the internet after, after that clip came out.But what that, so tell us about that clip and what was going on there.LITTLE: Yeah, so that clip is from the final night of the Moms for Liberty conference. And that is Tiffany Justice, one of the Moms for Liberty co-founders going on stage and saying, everything happens for a reason.And then goes into, [00:51:00] saying that like one of the moms from a chapter quoted Hitler, someone like cheers in the audience, and she's like, I stand with that mom. But I thought it was really jarring that instead of apologizing and saying it was a miscommunication from the chapter they doubled down on using an uncritical quote from Adolf Hitler on the front of a newsletter. And so that was Tiffany Justice, once again, like doubling down on that use and failing to admit any sort of wrong, which is what we're seeing over and over and over, is that they are becoming more extreme because they fail to acknowledge that something is wrong within the group or, like, that they've made a mistake.So instead of rejecting it, they just accept it and move on, which has increasingly radicalized the group. Yeah,MILLICAN: if I may jump in there, Matthew, I was going to say just to add to that, to get back to your point, very much at the beginning of all of this about, Donald Trump taking everything further and further to the extreme, I think that lack of accountability, lack of apologizing and just going full force, like there is no Ability at this point for the right to back down on anything, and that I think also is something that, you see play out time and time again.What Olivia was just talking about they can put Hitler quotes out there and it's going to be defended because anybody who criticizes them is obviously the enemy and we will not back down to the enemy and that is an adjustment. That is a change that I think has played a huge role in just how much more extreme and how much works from the voices are that are coming out of the right at this point when there's no accountability at all, and there's no [00:52:30] shared sense of what's just regular decency at this point, that that's going to create a lot of problems. And that's what we're seeing play out time and time again. To your point and to Olivia's point about this earlier.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and it's that they feel like that apologizing for something awful that someone said is wrong, that in and of itself is the wrong act and Olivia, there was a panel at the Moms for Liberty event, and I guess you were not in that one, if I remember right.You guys weren't there for that. But it was like, there was this panel where they discussed the idea that you should never apologize for anything. Can you tell us about that a little bit, please?LITTLE: Yeah, and the speaker at this panel was actually Christian Ziegler, who is the husband of one of the Moms for Liberty co-founders, Richard Ziegler and also the chairman of Florida's Republican Party.And he basically told the audience that, never apologize, never apologize. Because it, I mean, obviously for a number of reasons, but I think for them, they think it shows weakness. is one part of it, but two, they just never want to be wrong. And I think that's caused so many problems, not just within the organization.But I think it's a tendency of different right wing. Individuals and organizations to not apologize and it's just sort of like spiraling out of control at this point, because again, this is like a Florida, like political operative it's someone who was Trump's digital surrogate in [00:54:00] 2016, telling people don't apologize and something that Trump does as well.Like, it's just a strategy that they're using, And I think it's really alarming, especially in the context of uncritical Hitler quotes, too. That's, that should be a no brainer of an apology. And even then, they can't do it. Or instruct mom to do it.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and also that several of the audience members, just at the mere mention of Hitler, she hadn't even gotten to the point about I stand with that mom, or whatever quoted Hitler.Woo! I mean, that's, that to me is the most shocking part of that clip. Yeah, that they were applauding such a thing.And, and it's, and there is also another religious aspect of this and, as somebody who was born and raised and as a fundamentalist Mormon, like there is this very strong tradition in reactionary Christianity that it would be, you have to regularly contemplate dying for Jesus, you personally need to think about that.And Jenna Ellis, who, who was one of Donald Trump's election heist lawyers she has as her pin tweet up there that if they try to cancel Christianity, I will not bend, I will not break they will have to kill me first.Like they really do see themselves as being—they glorify at this idea of having to die for their beliefs.And we saw in the, in the Alex Jones clip that, here we have him saying, God, please destroy humanity rather than [00:55:30] let Democrats beat Republicans. That's basically what he's saying there. I mean, it's really horrible.And yet these, this rhetoric is not something that we see featured in news coverage, whether it's on TV or, like a lot of the reports that came out of the Moms for Liberty summit, they didn't mention this stuff, and they heard it being said, like that prayer that we showed earlier, all of these reporters were at this event, they didn't mention that she had said that, they didn't mention it.There was a reporter for Mother Jones who was there who did mention it in an article, the video that you captured, Olivia, with Tiffany Justice, but that was it. You and that Mother Jones reporter were the only people who mentioned it. And yet, they had probably at least 30 or 40 people, you can tell me the number, Olivia, but they were there. They saw all these things happening, and it was a real failure of journalism, in my opinion.What do you think?LITTLE: Yeah, I absolutely agree. And it's something that we've seen from the beginning, and I think mainstream media has long platformed Moms for Liberty and un inaccurately covered them.By letting them get away with extremist activities or harassing school board members giving or sending violent threats against school officials and in, framing them as just moms, which is sort of, which is what we've seen mainstream media do. They've allowed them to get away with so much [00:57:00] extreme activity While keeping, well, while sort of, wearing this mask of respectability, or this mask of just being mothers and, yeah, so, so this inaccurate coverage, whether it's at the beginning or at the summit I think, is dangerous for one because it again, lets them try to frame themselves as a respectable, like rational group when that's not the case at all.And omitting those things allows them to maintain that false image. And so they're actually doing them a service, right? Or giving them good publicity, which is just absurd given what they're saying, what they're doing and what they've been doing for years, frankly, at this point.SHEFFIELD: As we're getting to the end here, we've gone through all the clips here. What's the message that you would have, Julie, to people who are just regular viewers or listeners that, what can they do about all this stuff?What would you, what would you say to them?MILLICAN: I think one of the things that I would say to them is to pay attention to what's happening in your own community. Because a lot of this organizing is happening on the ground locally. They're able to take advantage of like elections that people don't tend to pay a lot of attention to, I think particularly on the left, people are very fixated on national politics and don't pay as much attention on what's going on in their schools, for instance, and they don't pay attention to school board races.They maybe don't have children, and so they don't think about it. They also are not paying attention to what's happening in the local state houses. And there's also coupled with that [00:58:30] really a dearth of local media. Local media has been gutted. There's not a lot of places where people can get good information about what's happening on the ground.And I think that's how these types of movements are able to gain, take advantage of that and gain a foothold. So the thing that I would say people should do is get involved with their own community and find out where is this activity? Is this happening? I promise you this is real they are a very, again, well-funded and well organized movement but they're not in the majority and the ways that you need to start to counter is to get involved with what's happening locally in your own community and start to take this on and don't be afraid to hit it head on so that, that's where I would say people should start to focus their attention and their efforts.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah, no, I think that's great. All right, well, Olivia, what were there any aspects out of Moms for Liberty that when you went there that that you think we haven't talked about here that might be worth knowing?LITTLE: Well, I think we've covered a lot from the summit, but just to jump off of Julie's point and something I even observed there is that they're not as big as they say they are.And we know that like an early Washington Post article had one of the co-founders talk about how they include Facebook likes and Facebook members in their group totals. Which is just a totally inaccurate and inflated number which, it makes people on the ground feel sort of powerless, but there is hope because they're really not that big, they're just really loud and have a strong political [01:00:00] infrastructure backing them.But combating them or pushing back against their frankly, bigoted policies and advocacy is not insurmountable. It's something that you can do, and you shouldn't be intimidated by them because they lie all of the time. All of the time.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, that's a great point. And also, yeah, you're, what you said about not being intimidated as well. That's the goal of these groups is to so pollute the political discourse to make people who have, who are decent and normal and support human rights to just be so disgusted that they leave that they see the battle to these radicals, and we can't do that, we can't do that.MILLICAN: Yeah. That’s a hundred percent right.SHEFFIELD: All right. So, this has been a great discussion. I appreciate both of you being here for it.So, Julie Milliken is on Twitter at JMillzDC. That's J-M-I-L-L-Z-D-C.And then also Olivia, you are on Twitter as well, and yours is OliviaLittle. So, I don't have to spell that one out for people, hopefully. But, yeah, thanks so much for being here. It's been a great discussion.LITTLE: Thanks.MILLICAN: Thank you for having us.SHEFFIELD: Alright, so that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody for joining us. And if you liked what we're doing, please go to theoryofchange.show where you can subscribe. We have free options on [01:01:30] Patreon or on Substack. And then if you are a paid subscriber, you get full access to the archives with video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes.And then I also encourage everybody to go to flux.community for more articles and podcasts about politics, media, religion, and technology, and how they all intersect with each other. So please check that out. And I thank you very much for being here and I'll see you next time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

Episode SummaryAfter two years of a global pandemic, most people have no interest whatsoever in COVID-19. And that's completely understandable, given all the hardships and inconveniences that everyone faced as a result of the pandemic.Almost everyone is ready to move on from covid, but there is one subset of people who are obsessed with still talking about it. And that is the same paranoid activists and politicians whose weaponized ignorance prolonged and exacerbated the pandemic to begin with, making it so much worse for everyone even as they insisted it was no big deal.How the pandemic was prolonged by ignorant and wishful thinking public policy is a story that still deserves to be told, even as almost everyone would just like to get back with our regularly scheduled lives. And it especially deserves to be told because the covid contrarians who made things so much worse are trying to rewrite the history of what happened.And for that reason, I was very pleased to learn about the new book of today's guest. His name is Jonathan Howard, and he is an associate professor of neurology and psychiatry at New York University. And the book that he has written is called “We Want Them Infected: How the Failed Quest for Herd Immunity Led Doctors to Embrace Anti-Vaccine Movement.”He's also a blogger at the great medical blog, Science Based Medicine.Transcript MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Welcome to Theory of Change, Jonathan.HOWARD: Hey, thanks so much for having me, Matthew. I sure appreciate it.SHEFFIELD: All right. So before we get into the book, let's maybe discuss there's kind of two different categories of people here that I think you're correct to sort of differentiate [00:03:00] between each other on some of this wishful thinking, public policy and covid.Tell us what these two groups are and what your focus is here.HOWARD: Yeah. So I have been studying the anti-vaccine movement for about a decade. And the first group of people were, and I've always been fascinated by anti-vaccine doctors in particular, to me they're sort of like arsonist firefighters spreading the very thing that they're supposed to prevent.And the first group of doctors would be anti-vaccine doctors. In 2019, for example, these would be doctors who were opposed to the polio, measles, HPV vaccine, all of the routine childhood vaccines. Some of these names became a little bit famous during the pandemic.You may have heard of some of them. Dr. Sherry Tenpenny, for example claimed that vaccines made people magnetic. The only doctor in the book who I know, my old friend, Dr. Kelly Brogan, who morphed into one of the country's most outspoken anti-vaccine doctors during well before the pandemic and during the pandemic. And these people are for the most part [00:04:00] doctors who you and all of your Now, for those of you who of recognize as not trustworthy sources.They are germ theory deniers. They do not believe that HIV causes AIDS, for example, in all sorts of crazy stuff. And you will not find them in hospitals treating sick people. The second group of doctors, these are the doctors who I talk about the most and call them contrarian doctors. These are doctors who were widely respected, some of them before the pandemic as paragons of evidence-based medicine.I even discussed a Nobel prize winner. So these are people who are definitely not quacks before the pandemic, and they mixed good advice with bad advice. So the good advice would be covid is very dangerous for grandma and very dangerous for someone with obesity and a lot of medical problems, but it's harmless for the vast majority of young people, for example.And these doctors were very famous and influential during the pandemic. They advised President Trump. They advised Glenn Youngkin in Virginia. They advised [00:05:00] Ron DeSantis in Florida. They were ubiquitous in the media. They have very large social media presences. They were in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, the Atlantic, really just downplaying the pandemic and spreading misinformation about it in a way that was very hard for people to pick up, again, because they mixed good advice with bad advice, and they didn't say obviously crazy things that covid is all a 5G hoax, for example.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and it is important to note that, because the mainstream media, it wasn't just the right-wing media that was platforming some of these people. So let's, for some of these mixed advice doctors, maybe let's talk about some specific people that you do discuss their work and some of the things that they were doing.HOWARD: Yeah. So one of the doctors who I talk about the most and start the book with is a man by the name of Dr. John Ioannidis, [00:06:00] who is a world-famous researcher. He works out of Stanford University. He's an epidemiologist, and he wrote a paper called Why Most Published Research Findings Are False, about 15, 20 years ago, which is one of the most famous papers in the history of medicine.And he really made a name for himself, calling out bad science and promoting better science, wanting medicine and doctors to do better, so that we make the right decisions for our patients.And he's someone who I famous favorably quoted in some of my earlier writing. And during the pandemic, starting in March 2020, he really underestimated the virus saying that it would cause many fewer fatalities than the flu, for example, and he was a ubiquitous media presence, and he made all sorts of statements that three years later turned out to be wildly underestimating the virus, but they were obviously wrong at the time.I will give you an example. On April 9th, 2020, he gave an interview [00:07:00] to the Washington Post in which he predicted that 40,000 Americans would die of covid this season. By April 9th, 2020, 20,000 Americans had already died and 2,000 Americans were dying every day. So unless covid vanished, his prediction was going to age very poorly, very quickly, which tragically is what happened within eight days. His estimate of 40,000 deaths this season was surpassed.And what did he do? Was he chastened? Did he revise his estimates? He did not.He gave an interview to right wing Fox News firebrand Mark Levin, in which he said that the fatality rate of covid was one out of a thousand Americans. Or one out of thousand people who contracted it.And that too was pretty obviously false. By that point in the pandemic, 10,000 people here in New York City had died.If the fatality rate was one in a thousand, that would require 10 million New Yorkers to have already been [00:08:00] infected with the virus when in fact only 8. 3 million people live here in my city, New York City. So it was just this obviously mathematically impossible claim. And how did he get around this?Well, he started spreading what I can only describe as conspiracy theories that have become gospel truth amongst the QAnon set that people were dying with covid, not of covid. That it was the lockdowns that killed people. That doctors killed patients through premature intubations, that death certificates couldn't be trusted.And the people who did die of covid, they were just 80-year-olds with multiple medical problems who were just about to die anyway. So it's really not that big of a deal. And rather than admit that he underestimated the virus, he just started spreading these conspiracy theories, and these became very popular, and his ideas were taken to the White House by probably the most famous of all the doctors I write about, Scott Atlas.And the title of the book, We Want Them Infected, comes from the plan [00:09:00] that some of these doctors developed to purposefully infect hundreds of millions of unvaccinated young Americans in the hopes that spreading the virus would get rid of the virus.And obviously that didn't turn out to be the case, unfortunately.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and Ioannidis, he also was involved with this controversial antibodies study that was done very early on in the pandemic, which claimed that many thousands of people had already, or tens of thousands, had already contracted the disease in the San Francisco area. And that turned out to be completely bogus research.And it's important to note also, though, that people at the time were questioning this research. So it isn't that people got it-- because here's this, we're in this kind of strange after effect, which I did talk about in the introduction here, where that the people who had said [00:10:00] it was no big deal, that they want everyone who was engaging in a more scientific approach to the pandemic, they want them to be liable for every mistake that they made. But the let's do nothing or we want them infected crowd, they don't want to have accountability for their own mistakes.And I guess that's part of what got you interested in this, right?HOWARD: Yeah, what got me interested in this is, as I said, I've been interested in the anti-vaccine movement for a decade after my old friend, Dr. Kelly Brogan, the only doctor who I mention in the book, who I know personally, or knew personally, I haven't spoken to her in 10 years morphed into one of the country's most outspoken anti-vaccine doctors, and it was a real shock. It took me a while to realize this, but it was a real shock to realize that everything she said about the HPV vaccine and the MMR vaccine, for example, was being plagiarized by famous doctors from UCSF, from Stanford, from Harvard, from Johns Hopkins, top universities in [00:11:00] order to discourage young people from getting the vaccine.And let me just, I'll defend Dr. Ioannidis a little bit in that he didn't completely downplay the pandemic. He recognized that it was a big threat to nursing homes and to older, vulnerable people. But in some ways, in my opinion, that made him a little bit more dangerous is because he was mixing the good advice, we have to protect nursing homes, with the bad advice, which is for everyone else it's no more dangerous than driving to work back and forth. And one infection will lead to permanent immunity.But yeah, these doctors who declared the pandemic over from day one, essentially are very, very eager to beat up on Fauci and all of his mistakes.Any one of his mistakes, any one of his misstatements. The man who spoke thousands and thousands of words on the pandemic got a few things wrong, and he shouldn't be given a free pass. But you're absolutely right that they feel they want to be absolved of their mistakes and they don't really, don't seem to feel that they've made any.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And it is [00:12:00] important though, I think to acknowledge that a lot of the people who are criticizing a sound medical approach to dealing with the pandemic, that they don't understand that science, the literal process of it is trial and error and that it's inevitable that you will have some things which might not end up proving very effective. Was it weird to see so many people who did have scientific training kind of forget this basic tenant of scientific reasoning?HOWARD: It was weird again precisely because of the doctors who I write about who I had heard of I admired them all and I, they have excellent pedigrees and some of them are famous, and it took me a while to realize that they were kind of just making it up as they went along. I didn't really consider the fact that they were just kind of.How do I say this in a non-vulgar way, but you know, just. Talking out of their ass, essentially. And I'll tell you why, because one, one thing that I have that [00:13:00] basically none of the doctors who I write about have is experience working with covid patients. I worked throughout New York city's covid experience.And during the first three months of the pandemic, we probably had it worse than just about anywhere else in the world. I think the next three years after that, we had it relatively. Easy compared to a lot of the rest of the country. But as I was witnessing our hospitals being deluged and overwhelmed with covid patients, and as I was witnessing more people dying a single day than in my entire career, I was simultaneously reading these smart doctors from Stanford and Johns Hopkins and other places, essentially saying that the whole thing was overblown, and I couldn't quite put two and two together because I figured that these smart.World famous scientists and epidemiologists must know something I don't. And I remember when that Santa Clara antibody study came out enthusiastically telling my wife that, hey, we might be closer to the end of this pandemic than the beginning and wouldn't that be wonderful. So [00:14:00] I certainly wanted. Everything that they had to say to be correct.And it was only after a few months passed that I really began to revisit some of their earlier work and try to meld it with what I had seen in front of my own eyes and realized these things were totally incompatible. And they were just making these statements based on their own wishes, not reality.The Santa Clara antibody study that you talk about was led by researchers from Stanford. John Ioannidis being one of them, another one, Jay Bhattacharya, and. They used that to claim that covid was 50 to 80 times more prevalent than was already known, and they spoke about covid as a disease that was mild for the vast majority of people.They said that the vast majority of people probably don't even know that they had been infected. This is what they were saying in April 2020. Yet these same doctors in March 2020 we're saying that the virus wasn't going to spread very quickly, very far because it was only spread [00:15:00] by close conduct. Post contact.So whether they thought the virus was not going to spread very far or that it had already spread very far. They were very consistent. Don't worry about it.Doctors preaching a "do-nothing" about covid message got richSHEFFIELD: Yeah. And I do want to get into the kind of larger framework that a lot of them seem to have been operating from. But let's before we get to that, go focus on your earlier research about anti-vaccine advocates.How did you get interested in that as a topic, and what was, I guess, what were some of the you, you mentioned Kelly Brogan,HOWARD: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Matthew Remski discussed her too, a few weeks ago on your show. It was interesting.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah, and so you mentioned her as somebody who you had known, but you've seen this up close from both a sort of research perspective, but also a personal perspective.There seems to be a very large demand, a market for a doctor who [00:16:00] will tell people that vaccines are terrible and evil. I mean, let's talk about that.HOWARD: Oh, yeah. No, I absolutely could have gotten world famous this pandemic and probably been flown all over the country and the world giving speeches and my social media profile would have exploded had I come out against vaccines.But there's always been a small number of doctors who have been opposed to vaccines. This is hundreds of years old, as old as vaccines, and I never really thought about vaccines much until my old friend, Dr Brogan, started posting messages on Facebook shortly after she left NYU where we trained together against vaccines, and I've never really been interested in vaccines per se as much as I have the anti-vaccine movement, and this actually goes back to my fascination with how people think with neurology and psychiatry, what could lead a doctor to take medicine's most amazing achievement and trash it.And Kelly Brogan is not stupid. She went to MIT. She went to Cornell. She trained with me. [00:17:00] So, so what fundamentally went wrong with her after she no longer had to care for sick patients in the hospital, she decided viruses and bacteria don't even cause disease. I don't really know that I have the answer to that, but the very first few times I started reading her Facebook posts about the anti-vaccine movement and about her anti-vaccine ideas, I couldn't really refute them.I wasn't super familiar with the history of measles or pertussis or this sort of thing. It was only reading some of the, my fellow co-authors on science-based medicine, Steve Novella and David Gorsky, and a bunch of other people that I really began to see the flaws in, in her ideas. And in 2018, I wrote a book chapter with Law Professor Dorie Reese, and a book called Pseudoscience.And the book was about the fallacies and flaws of the anti-vaccine movement. And prior to the pandemic, my interest in the anti-vaccine movement was kind of seen as a quirky thing. And, but it really prepared me for this moment. I was really [00:18:00] ready to see and to recognize all of the covid minimization and recognize that it's parallels to pre pandemic minimization of measles and other vaccine preventable diseases.So unfortunately, I was ready. But even I vastly underestimated its scope and its influence. I did not predict that hundreds of thousands of Americans would refuse vaccination. Well, millions did, but hundreds of thousands refused it and paid for it with their lives.How Trump's conspiracism has brought anti-science people of left and right togetherSHEFFIELD: Yeah, they did. And it's unfortunate. And it's also the case that all of this sort of, well, let's step back because originally there were people who were Democrats, Green Party, who didn't like them and there were hardcore Christian conservatives who didn't like them, and there were secular libertarian types who didn't like them either. It was kind of spread out over time.And that's one of the [00:19:00] political manifestations of the covid pandemic is that because Donald Trump was the president—and I think that's probably the main reason this happened—is that he did kind of draw this conspiracy-oriented thinking over into the Republican Party such that, and I've talked about this on some other episodes.And so maybe hopefully you have seen this graph before. Do you recall this at all? I don't want to. I'll cut this part out if you don't know it..HOWARD: I've seen versions of this. Yes.SHEFFIELD: Okay. Yeah. All right. So, so on the screen that basically the way that the political system kind of originally work before coven before trump was that conspiracism disbelief in sort of non-evidentiary based thinking it was a system that kind of pervaded both the right and the left and then over through coven and trump.Things basically, conspiracism has sort of metastasized into a specific right-wing ideology. And Trump [00:20:00] has done that. And that's why you do see now a number of people who had some sort of identity as vaguely left wing. Are now engaging in full scale, super Trumper love stuff. And people who before were like somebody like Jimmy door, who was made his career as a left leftist political commentator now is out there saying how great Trump is.How terrible vaccines are, and the Democrats should just leave him alone.HOWARD: I think he made a video specifically about me, to my credit.SHEFFIELD: That's right, yeah. Yeah, and of course we've got the presidential candidate, Robert Kennedy, that is kind of basically recycling all of these things as well, and I maintain that he basically is The Trump 2. 0. That's him. 2. 0 and you've got to be careful.HOWARD: Or maybe he was even Trump 1. 0 in that he's been doing this for a long time. He got his start in the anti-vaccine movement in 2005 and has just for [00:21:00] the past 20 years almost been America's leading anti-vaccine voice with tragic consequences wherever he goes.Measles follows the most famous and deadly being a measles outbreak in Samoa in 2019, where I think 83 people ended up dying and including 50 or so children under the age of four. And he just has a long record of being sort of the Pied Piper of viruses and bacteria. Is that the right analogy? Maybe the Pied Piper takes was, maybe he was the person who took the snakes out of Ireland.Anyways, he's the Johnny Appleseed of virus and covid. So, so maybe even he was really Trump 1. 0.The Hoover Institution at Stanford University as an incubator for far-right viewpointsSHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, I think that's a fair point. That's a fair point there, Jonathan. And well, so, but I guess beyond Trump though, there, there was. There were preexisting right wing political institutions as well that all of this anti vax [00:22:00] stuff and covid, covid contrarianism fit into and originated from as well.So, like the people we've been discussing, especially Jay Bhattacharya, they all predominantly were affiliated with not just Stanford University, but also the Hoover Institution, which Is a Republican think tank, which I guess sort of ended up being established there under the sort of the custodian of Herbert Hoover's presidential papers after he left the office and it's basically sort of been kind of a.Well, an incubator for right wing fanaticism on the campus of one of America's best-known universities. And they played an enormous role in promoting a lot of these ideas, including getting them directly to The Trump White House. Let's talk about that.HOWARD: Yeah. So Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was one of two authors of three authors of a document called the great Barrington declaration.The others were Martin [00:23:00] Kuhldorf, who was an epidemiologist and vaccine expert at Harvard at the time. And the third is a woman by the name of Sunita Gupta. who is at Oxford and these doctors, none of them treated covid patients and they came up with this document, which again was published on October 4th, 2020.called the Great Barrington Declaration because that's where it was signed. And this was basically a town in Massachusetts, correct? Those who don't know. And this was basically the idea that the best way to get rid of covid was to spread covid. So I'm going to present their idea as, as kindly as I can.So they Noticed as did we all that covid was very dangerous for a certain subset of people, again, older people and people with underlying medical conditions. And it was relatively mild for the vast majority of healthy 10-year-olds and healthy 20-year-olds, although some healthy 10-year-olds and healthy 20-year-olds have died of covid.And they felt that if there was mass [00:24:00] infection of hundreds of millions of unvaccinated young people in all, in October 2020, that herd immunity would arrive. And all we had to do was establish a wall between vulnerable people and non-vulnerable people. Vulnerable people would live in a world of zero covid and not vulnerable people, meaning you and I, would live in a world of pure covid.And once enough of us were infected, they estimated that it would take three to six months. Herd immunity would arrive, vulnerable people could leave their isolation and the pandemic would be over. And they use that language. They spoke about the pandemic being over and the three-to-six-month timeframe comes from directly from their frequently asked questions page.And it's still on there. They assumed that one infection led to permanent immunity. They assumed that vaccines were potentially months or years off when in fact they turned out to be two months off and they did not consider any negative outcomes other than death. [00:25:00] So either you survived covid or either covid killed you or you emerged just fine.And by this point in the pandemic, they had already met with Donald Trump. They were given an Oval Office meeting with him in August 2020. And they, the day after the great Barrington declaration was signed, they met with health and human services director, Alexander Azar, I think at the white house. So, so they were very influential, and Donald Trump and the Trump administration started echoing their language of protecting the vulnerable and trying to achieve herd immunity to mass infection.But there were a lot of problems with it. Namely that wallowing off vulnerable 70, 80 million vulnerable Americans from not vulnerable Americans. It is very easy to say, but very hard to do, and they never came up with any sort of plan for this. You can go to their Frequently Asked Questions page, and what was their plan to protect old people living at home during the pandemic?And it was four sentences [00:26:00] long, and it said things like, Feed older people should have groceries delivered to them. Okay, that's not a bad idea, that sounds nice, but setting up a food delivery program for 80 million Americans for months on end, that’s a little bit easier said than done. And as I said, vaccines became available two months later in December 2020 vaccines are not a panacea.They're not perfect. We all know that I don't want to oversell them, but it made their declaration become obsolete within months. Despite this, they continue. to be and still continue to be anti-vaccine for young people. They still prefer that young people get natural immunity, even though thousands of young people have died from the virus.And they minimize their deaths by saying it's more dangerous for grandma. And so these people, I think did a lot of damage and they were definitely some of the inspirations behind the headline we want but. Behind the title, we want them infected and at every stage they minimize the pandemic. So [00:27:00] Jay Bhattacharya wrote an article in March 2020 in the Wall Street Journal called Is the coronavirus as deadly as they say?And he felt it wasn't. He said that the coronavirus likely had one tenth the fatality rate of the flu. He predicted that it would cause 20 to 40,000 deaths. And even he at the time said That if it's true, the coronavirus would kill millions without quarantine and shelter in place orders, then such drastic measures are surely justified.That's not a direct quote but close enough. So they just wildly underestimated covid at the start. They minimized all of the variants they repeatedly declared the pandemic over and were completely sheltered from the consequences of their world, of their words.And since, since I know you want to focus on some of the right-wing ties, the Great Barrington Declaration was signed and written under the watchful eye of a man by the name of Jeffrey Tugger, who [00:28:00] is this sort of anarcho-capitalist type person, and I'm going to make him sound a little bit like a cartoon villain because it's true. He is and was overtly pro child labor. In 2016, he wrote an article called Let the Kids Work, and the title gives it away. He wanted children to drop out of school and join the workforce. He suggested that at least some children, he suggested that Walmart and Chick fil A would be wonderful places for children to work.He also felt that children should smoke. He thought that smoking was cool. And teenagers could look cool and smoke and they could enjoy it, and then they could quit by their early 20s before it did any damage. He did not believe that cigarettes were addicting, and he also had some ties to racist organizations 20 years ago, something called the Sons of the Confederacy.So these people who wanted children to work and children to smoke had a profound influence on our course of the pandemic, and especially with regards to [00:29:00] children and young people.How creationists worked with Republican donors to oppose sound Covid-19 policiesSHEFFIELD: Yeah, and another aspect, and unfortunately, I guess you hadn't seen my article when you were writing your book, was that these people, Jeffrey Tucker and his colleagues at the American Institute for Economic Research, as they call it, are also strongly and closely affiliated with the Creationist.HOWARD: I did not know that.SHEFFIELD: Well, you remember I sent it to you and you actually, you read it and you said, oh, I wish I had seen this. Yeah, yeah, no, I didn't know that at the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, but no, I'm like, because so I, so basically. This Jeffrey Tucker actually comes from a political tradition called paleo libertarian, and it's like it's older than kind of the modern day libertarians who are might, you know, not be religious and might have some more centrist social viewpoints like they might support same sex marriage or transgender rights, for instance, he's from the paleo libertarian tradition, [00:30:00] which What basically is their viewpoint is that the government, the best government is what's in the Bible, the Bible is the only government book you need, and they don't explicitly, they don't wear that on their sleeve a lot, these guys, but they also employ some of the top creationists.Advocates are people who were working closely to get this Great Barrington Declaration passed. And Scott Atlas had been on the podcast of the Hoover Institution guy named Peter Robinson, who has just been a kind of relentless creationist propagandist over the decades. I mean, like, I am guessing that people who are, were trying to affiliate with these guys who had some inkling of science, they probably didn't know that they were getting in bed with creationists to push this stuff, but they were.HOWARD: Who knows what they knew? I certainly haven't seen any of the authors of the Great Barrington [00:31:00] Declaration. Expressed disgust with Mr. Tucker's pro child labor, pro smoking views, the number of them went to work for him after the pandemic or a few years later, and something called the Brownstone Institute, which has become one of the major spreaders of medical misinformation and even Threats against frontline healthcare workers.Mr. Tucker published an article called who will be held responsible for this devastation with a picture of a guillotine on it. And that was retweeted by Martin Kuhldorf, one of the doctors who helped author the great Barrington declaration. So they don't seem particularly uncomfortable with some of this stuff that I think would horrify most normal people and normal Americans.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, it's, it is really disturbing, but it, and that's why it is important to, to highlight this information because, like, the closeness between reactionary right wing extremism and conservatism, people who have conservative viewpoints, they are, I think there's a [00:32:00] temptation, and I can say that having been one earlier in my life, that there's kind of a temptation to think, oh, well, those guys are just harmless.They don't, they're not relevant, people don't pay attention to them, but that's not reality. Like, these people are significant, and as we've been talking about here, they had direct ties into the Donald Trump White House and were setting policy. And a lot of that policy basically, it kind of boils down to that, I mean, if you look at the kind of the right-wing viewpoints about sort of public policy, generally, a lot of the thing is, a lot of the sentiment is just simply, well, we can't do anything about it.Let's just leave it how it is. These are problems that are unsolvable like racism or poverty or. Things like that are already in other countries. Let's build a wall. Let's keep them out. Let's not try to help them with their own country or their law enforcement. Like, that's the default approach is to do nothing.And people were just [00:33:00] sort of applying that carte blanche to something and they had no, I mean, Jeffrey Tucker spearheading A medical response in a lot of, and Scott Atlas, I mean, he has a neuro, he is, if I remember right, an x ray technician, like that was his job. He's a neuroradiologist.HOWARD: He's a neuroradiologist, so he looks at MRIs and CTs, which is also my sort of secret passion.I love doing that too, but no, he had no expertise and he was discovered by Donald Trump because he was on Fox News saying what Donald Trump wanted to hear and what the great Barrington declaration proposed and what these people proposed was, as I said, it was this idea of mass infection of unvaccinated youth by getting rid of all attempts to stop the spread of the virus.Except this sort of mythical protection of the vulnerable. So they wanted everything open. They wanted everyone to lead a normal life. And they spoke about it almost as [00:34:00] an obligation. So Martin Kuhldorf wrote about how our grandparents went off to World War two to fight and they sacrificed themselves for the good of their country.And that's how we spoke about young people getting covid. He said, you essentially have a duty. To contract the virus before you're vaccinated so that it will, you can protect grandma and it will go away.What's interesting is they speak about themselves as the sort of heroes of the working class. They feel that the lockdowns were just as utter devastation of working-class people. They say it was the worst assault on the working class since segregation in Vietnam. So comparing lockdowns to those historical horrors, I think is a little overwrought. I do want to say that no one claims the lockdowns were harmless. Everyone knows that the lockdowns did have a lot of harms, and the same way I call out these doctors for being sheltered for the [00:35:00] consequences of their words, because they did not and do not treat covid patients.I'm always trying to be careful to recognize how I was privileged, and I never missed a paycheck. I never was lonely because I was at the hospital every day. My children's schooling was obviously affected, as it was everyone else, but I was protected from the harms of the lockdowns for the most part.And I just want to be open and honest about that. But I think if you were to Go to some factory today or are certainly some meat packing plants and ask people, do you feel that the lockdowns were the worst part of the pandemic for you? Most of them will probably say no. It was someone who lost a loved one that I lost.The conflicting messages of covid contrariansSHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and then, of course, the same people who were there, their approach is completely incoherent as well, because. They were simultaneously saying that covid was no big deal, but then also it was a Chinese bioweapon. And it's like, well, if you're going to make a bioweapon, that's probably not a very good one.[00:36:00]And it doesn't even jive with China's response to covid either, because the country that stayed in lockdown and re engaged it repeatedly and extremely, you know, viciously in a lot of cases, unfortunately, was China. So like they unleashed a bioweapon to destroy their own economy. That's basically what they're saying, but it's no big deal.HOWARD: Yeah. That was one of my science-based medicine articles, a satire article called let's repeatedly expose unvaccinated children to a virus that came out of a Chinese lab. So it was essentially the, these sorts of things that Chinese are to blame. For this virus, which is just the cold.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it doesn't make sense.And but, and they're continuing this approach. A lot of these people as well by going after the coven vaccines now currently. And now they've a lot of them. I wouldn't say all of them, but a lot of them have also kind of shifted into larger [00:37:00] anti-vaccine. Advocacy against other diseases and the public opinion surveys, actually I'll put a link into the show notes for those who want to read it, but actually Republicans became more anti vax for MMR vaccines than they were before covid.And it's directly related to all this misinformation. I mean, but what's, so like, I mean, guess the, their big thing now is carditis. What is that? And what, what are they saying? And what's their response?HOWARD: Yeah, so before I talk about that, let me just talk a little bit about pediatric covid and covid for young people in general, because Myocarditis predominantly affects young men.So, if you look at how many children have died of covid, the exact number isn't entirely clear. There are reasons that some cases may be missed, and maybe some cases have been over counted as well. But around 2, 000 children have died of covid so far, maybe a little bit more. And hundreds of thousands of children have been hospitalized and millions of children have been made [00:38:00] sick by the virus.And some of these children get very sick. About one third, depends on which variant is circulating, but about one third to 20 to 30 percent of hospitalized children need to be in the ICU and about five percent of those need to be intubated. And some children have had seizures and strokes or amputations or lung transplants.plans. And these outcomes are very rare, but rare outcomes multiplied by 73 million American Children. Has it added up to a lot of sick and injured and dead Children? The toll covid's toll easily equals or exceeds that of many other vaccine preventable diseases. And I want to be very clear that all of these numbers would have been much higher had we listened to these doctors and allowed 70 million American Children.None of whom were vaccinated to contract covid all at the same time in the spring of 2020 as they want, as they wanted. So the vaccine [00:39:00] came around. The first children were vaccinated in, I believe, May of 2021. And soon after that, reports started coming out of myocarditis. Initially, the initial response or signal for this, I believe was from Israel.So myocarditis. is inflammation of the heart, and it can be serious. It can be a fatal condition. And when we're talking about vaccine myocarditis, we need to talk about two things, how often it happens and how severe it is. So if you're talking about children under the age of 18, and it mostly occurs in males between the ages of 12 to 25 or so, it does not occur in younger children, fortunately.So how often does it occur? Well, the numbers are a little bit all over the place, but the most recent meta analysis, which is the sort of study of studies, pegged the rate at about 1 in 15, 000 males after their second vaccine dose. So if you run the numbers of how many males were vaccinated here in the United [00:40:00] States, again I'm speaking just 18 and under at this point, there are probably about 700 to 1, 000 cases of vaccine myocarditis here in the U.S. And then we need to discuss how severe it is. Well, fortunately, it seems to have a very favorable and benign, mild course in the vast majority of children who get it. That's not 100%. There have been some cases of fulminant myocarditis in children. It has sent some of them to the ICU. I'm aware of one child in the entire world who plausibly died of vaccine myocarditis, someone in Japan.There may be others out there, but catastrophic outcomes seem extremely rare, fortunately. In the latest series from Canada, as doctors have learned about the condition, most they, they sent most children home from the emergency room and those who spent the night in the hospital only stayed one day.So I don't want to minimize it. It's a big deal whenever a [00:41:00] child gets sick and whenever a child is sent to the hospital and these Children will have to be followed over the long term to make sure that there's no cardiac scarring. So it's a real side effect. And other vaccines have caused myocarditis at around this rate as well.But compared to what covid has done to children, it's just not even close. As I got done saying, thousands, two to two thousand children have died of covid, and hundreds of thousands have been hospitalized. And my, the virus causes much more severe myocarditis at a much higher rate. Especially in this post infectious autoimmune condition called MIS, multi system inflammatory syndrome in children, which has affected about 10,000 American children and killed about 80.And about 80% of children with this condition have myocarditis, which has caused hemodynamic collapse in some children. Most children with this condition go to the ICU. Fortunately, seems to have vanished with most recent variants, so we're not seeing a [00:42:00] lot of myths these days. But a lot of the doctors who were very, very, very, very worried about vaccine myocarditis would speak about literal death from covid as vanishingly rare, not something to fear. So doctors spoke about this rare, usually mild vaccine side effect as a fate worse than death. And I mean that very literally and that's the definition of what it means to be anti-vaccine.And the vaccine for children, it's not perfect, especially with some of the newer variants, just like for adults, but there have been 25 or so studies from around the world showing that it's very effective at limiting rare but grave harms in children. And the world would be in much worse place off had no children have been vaccinated.The impossibility of "shielding" seniors from covid while allowing everyone else to take no precautionsSHEFFIELD: Yeah, no question. And the other issue with that sort of, we want them in technical approach is that. Not only is there no way to [00:43:00] sort of get food to elderly people or protect them in nursing homes or whatever, but like a lot of children live with their grandparents in one way or the other. And so if you're forcing those children to go to school, you're literally taking them and delivering a virus to their parents or grandparents that you supposedly want to protect from.And they never, that was something that I did see people. Try to ask the advocates of this idea. Well, what are you going to do about those kids? Oh, well, we'll figure it out. Like, they never, ever had any sort of response to specific scenarios and that is highly likely. And recently--HOWARD: They did have a response, but it was the wrong response.They said, children don't spread covid. They said children pose no risk to teachers and children pose no risk to older, their older relatives at home. So they had her as wrong. Yeah. It's hard to the extent that it was [00:44:00] true early in the pandemic. It obviously isn't true of newer variants. And that's one of the things these doctors did is they treated this brand-new virus as this old predictable friend that we know everything about and they can totally minimize variance.I will say one thing since school closures are probably the most controversial aspect of the pandemic and one of the most hated and I didn't like it for my children. They had remote schooling for a year, and it really set one of them back quite a bit, I think. And. No one likes school closures. We were all.Didn't want that to be true, but it's important to realize that the virus closed schools too. So once schools reopened, especially during the delta and during the omicron waves, a lot of them had to close again because there were not enough teachers there to teach the students or a couple of times schools were officially open, but students were just sent to [00:45:00] classrooms taught by National Guardsmen are.I know one of my One of my kids just spent the entire day sitting in the auditorium during the Delta wave because there weren't enough teachers there. So I do just want to push back on the idea, not that you said it, but that schools were closed just by overly cautious Democratic politicians when in fact it was the virus that closed schools.And here in New York City, during our first wave, we lost 74 educators, including 30 teachers. And 70 out of those 74 educators were in schools. I don't know. I can't prove that's where they contracted the virus. But had we done nothing, how do we just let all students and all teachers get infected? There would have been more dead teachers, and that's not good for Children have to recognize.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and that's assuming a lot of teachers wouldn't have just quit.HOWARD: Oh, yeah, of course, of course.SHEFFIELD: Because that's what would happen is that a lot of people would have said why would I risk my life for this job? I'll go get another one or be [00:46:00] unemployed or go live with someone.HOWARD: Right. I don't want to come off as in favor or opposed to school closures.I really voiced no opinion on the topic. Other than to say we should be honest about what would have happened had we never closed schools and just let the virus run rampant there. And you're absolutely right. Teachers would not have shown up to work and a lot of parents wouldn't have sent their children once.One child died in the school that would have an effect on every parent at the school, or they wouldn't want them to bring the virus home to their grandparents. So I think the idea that everything could have been just fine if it only wasn't for teachers, unions and democratic politicians.It's evidenced by the fact that the virus did close schools in every single red state as well, even after politicians tried to open them. So we don't have to ask what would have happened. We know, we know what did happen in schools couldn't stay open when there were zero [00:47:00] mitigation measures in place.Herd immunity is real, but it requires vaccinesSHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good point. And I guess another thing that is important, I think, to note here is that the idea of herd immunity, it is a real medical term, but it's not improper to speak about herd immunity and usually, I mean, often it's used in the context of a vaccinated population being resistant to disease, but it is the case that natural herd immunity can In existence, some scenarios, right?And so these guys weren't just completely making stuff up like a completely imaginary concept, but they were misapplying it to the circumstances.HOWARD: Well, humanity has never before eliminated a virus by spreading that virus. Humanity has never achieved herd immunity to a virus without a vaccine. The biggest problem being newborns.So if you look at measles in the 1950s and sixties, before there was a vaccine. What would happen is cases [00:48:00] would, like a giant jigsaw upper, kind of jigsaw shape. Anyways, peak and trough, peak and trough, up and down. So one year there would be 4 million people infected. And then the next year there would be 300,000 people infected.Then a new crop of babies would be born, and they would be infected. So we do have herd immunity to measles. We have herd immunity to chickenpox. We have herd immunity to polio as well, because those vaccines and those diseases induce. very long-lasting immunity. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be the case with our current vaccines in this current shape shifting virus.So the idea that we could have achieved herd immunity through the mass infection of unvaccinated young people Absolutely turned out to be a fantasy and people who still claim otherwise. I mean, what restrictions do we have to drop today in order to achieve herd immunity and end of the pandemic, as we were promised, I want the pandemic to end, [00:49:00] too.Why most doctors won't debate anti-vaxxer Robert Kennedy Jr.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, okay. So, but going back to the kind of their general anti-vaccine advocacy. Now, I have one of the, it's been a topic in recent weeks where Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Has kind of launched his presidential campaign on an anti vax line and is his great ally, Joe Rogan, the podcaster and former Fear Factor host boosting him and saying, you guys need to debate Kennedy.And of course, a lot of people look at that and they say, well. Bobby Kennedy is just some mentally ill lawyer. I'm not going to debate him as a medical professional. I'm not going to debate it in that job. And I think as somebody who has, if that's your viewpoint, you're certainly entitled to that. I mean, what's your response to that?You've written about it.HOWARD: Yeah, so this invitation to debate Robert Kennedy was extended to Peter Hotez, who is a, expert in tropical diseases in [00:50:00] pediatrics in Texas and developed a patent free vaccine, which is, I think I read 100 million doses of it have been given in India. So he's a real hero of this pandemic.He hasn't been right about everything either like everyone else. And I can understand how a lot of people felt he should have debated Kennedy, right? If the science is on your side and the facts are on your side, why not just humiliate Kennedy during a live debate? But there's several reasons why Dr.Hotez refused and why he made the right decision. The first of these is that by agreeing to even show up, he kind of elevates Kennedy, right? When you think about something to be debated, you tend to think about each side really brings something to the table here. But this would be the equivalent of NASA scientists debating a flat earther, right?You really don't need to do that. The second of these is that live debates tend to reward the best speaker, not necessarily the person with the best information. For example, I am so well versed in anti-vaccine [00:51:00] arguments. I am sure I could win a debate. against 99% of doctors if I was to take the anti-vaccine side.I could probably humiliate them and win the debate, but I would be wrong. The third reason is that it's impossible to fact check claims in real time. It's very hard on anti vaxxers and Robert Kennedy in particular, are known to just spew a fire hose of lies and misinformation that are very difficult to fact checked in real time.I'll give you an example of this. When I first encountered the anti-vaccine movement, one of the first documents I encountered was something called 200 evidence-based reasons not to vaccinate something like this. And this was written by Sayer G, the head of a pseudoscience website called Green Med Info, who was recently on a conference call just last night with Robert Kennedy.And he was named as one of the disinformation dozen during the pandemic as people who spread some of the worst and most information, misinformation online. Anyways, [00:52:00] so he collected 200 articles that he felt proved vaccines were dangerous and unnecessary. And one of them was titled a measles outbreak and occurred in a highly vaccinated population.Okay. That doesn't sound good, but when you actually read the article, what it said is that in this city, I think it was San Diego, a measles outbreak occurred, even though 95% of children were vaccinated. Because the 5% who are unvaccinated clustered together and created this sort of pocket of vulnerability, so it was really a very pro vaccine article, but he just rearranged the title and rearrange the words to make it seem like vaccines didn't work.It would be close to impossible to be able to refute all of the misinformation in real time. And I am for debates, and I extend an invitation to anyone here to go to Science Based Medicine if they wish to [00:53:00] debate me, pick an article of mine and let me know what I got wrong. So I'm not afraid of debates.I don't think Dr. Hotez is necessarily either. But I prefer to do it in writing, and I'll say this too, Dr. Hotez agreed to go on Rogan's program, he was a guest at the start of the pandemic, and just answer questions without having to share the stage with a crackpot who has left dead children in his wake, and he was right to refuse to do that.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it's also worth pointing out that there are a number of people who, I guess, are, what people are now calling science communicators. Who did say, well, okay, he doesn't want to do it, but I will debate Kennedy on your program. Why don't you invite me on, Joe Rogan, and Joe Rogan has completely ignored these people.And because I, because you are right that people in a live debate type format, you can do things like filibusters or delay or just take up all the time and use, yeah, as you were saying, [00:54:00] just this litany of nonsense arguments and then say, Oh, well, you didn't refute, you know, I made 20 arguments and you only refuted one of them.And of course the logical answer to that as well. Because you made so much nonsense that I didn't have time to refute all of it.But on the other hand, somebody who has a debate background or a rhetorical background could call out such techniques. And in fact, that technique that we're talking about here is sometimes called a "Gish Gallop" in debate parlance after a creationist, there we go again, who would use it as a way of saying, see, this proves that the Bible creation story is true because I made these 50 points, and that's not reality.But Rogan has a record of doing this, that he doesn't invite people onto his podcast who disagree with, and then at the same time, we'll very rarely try to call out people and try to demand that they appear on his program [00:55:00] when they may have any number of other things going on in their lives or whatever it is, like people have a million correct reasons not going this guy's program at his command, but he doesn't invite people who disagree, right? The record is indisputably true in that regard.HOWARD: So he had on Dr. Hotez at the start of the pandemic, but before there were any vaccines. And to me, the whole thing bothered me in a different way, just in that live debates are performances, they're spectacles. And that's what people wanted.People wanted to see Kennedy own and dunk on Hotez, like it was some sort of WWF competition, wrestling competition. And then, given what I saw during the pandemic, and the number of people I saw die, it just seems kind of an inappropriate thing to do.And it wouldn't have changed anyone's mind. Everyone who was on Hotez's side before the debate would have been on [00:56:00] Hotez's side after the debate, and same with Kennedy. So people just wanted a show, and that's all that Rogan cares about. He just wants entertainment, he just wants eyeballs, he wants to be seen as heterodox or controversial, which is why he won't have someone on like Dr. Hotez, these days at least, just to answer questions.SHEFFIELD: Because he doesn't want his questions actually answered. What he wants to do is hector and berate someone that he doesn't like for saying mean things, as he defines them.HOWARD: Correct.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And the other thing is, though, even on their own standard, they don't even meet their own standard of that.They will not engage in the debate. And your point about why a written dialogue is probably the ideal for this type of interchange of beliefs, because that is how the scientific world works right now.If you have evidence to show that vaccines cause some condition or whatever, and you have real [00:57:00] definable, replicable data that was soundly constructed and interpreted, there are people who will engage with your point, if you have it written out. And it is extremely, I think, notable that these anti vax doctors and whatnot, they confine almost everything they do to just blathering on a podcast and they're not writing research papers, by and large, or if they do, they're on just a little tiny sliver of their argument.And it's like 99% of the argument is not in the paper, but 1% is, and so therefore you should believe the part that they won't actually try to prove.HOWARD: Yeah. And so there's an internet adage called Brandolini's Law. Hopefully I'm saying this right, but it says. Essentially, the amount of effort it takes to refute b******t is an order of magnitude greater than the energy it takes to create it in the first place.And one of my more recent articles on Science Based Medicine was discussing this principle. And someone did agree to debate me, a [00:58:00] businessman by the name of Steve Kirsch, who has become one of the Twitter's most outspoken anti-vaccine advocates. And he's a complete not job for lack of a better word saying that vaccines have killed hundreds of thousands of people and only saved a handful of lives.And he's very inappropriate. He was gambling. He put up some sort of wager about whether this child who died of covid was actually had underlying conditions or not. I mean, just speaking in a wildly inappropriate way, treating dead children almost as sport.But anyways, I said anyone is always welcome to debate me. Like I said, my articles are there, and anyone can write a rebuttal to them. And he did. And it was full of basic factual errors and omissions.And I wrote a response to it. Just based on three sentences of his where we talked about vaccine myocarditis and I went through all of the studies regarding vaccine myocarditis, all of the studies showing that the virus causes myocarditis at a [00:59:00] much higher rate and a more severe myocarditis.And again, emphasizing that which causes more myocarditis isn't the point. Even the question because of what the harms of covid are not limited to myocarditis and that article was about five pages long. I suppose if you printed it out just based on three sentences of his and it never could have been done during a live debate unless you gave me half an hour to just sit and read the article. So live debates reward the best speaker, the slickest speaker, the most charismatic speaker, not the person who is right.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, that's, I think that's definitely true. All right. Well, let's see. Are there any other aspects of the book here that you think are worth getting into? I want to make sure.HOWARD: Oh, I think they're all worth getting into, but yeah.SHEFFIELD: Well, that you want to make sure the audience will come away with.HOWARD: Just that it was 99% of doctors comported themselves with honor and [01:00:00] bravery this pandemic, and it was just really sad to see a small number of sheltered, very influential doctors spread gross misinformation, and the last chapter of the book is sort of about what to do about it, and I think we just need to do what you and I are doing today, which is not tolerate gross misinformation.We need to leave space for people to have different ideas, and not everyone who questions vaccines is anti-vaccine and we need to not label people who disagree with us as misinformation necessarily. But people who just spread wildly fake statistics or repeatedly declared the pandemic over, they need to be called out for the bad actors that they are.So I'm grateful to you for doing that and having me on to allow me to do that as well. I appreciate it.Covid contrarian doctors don't seem to have much actual experience with covid patientsSHEFFIELD: Okay, great. And I guess, well, maybe let's have the last topic. I think, and you talk about it in the book somewhat, that there does seem to [01:01:00] be a distinction between people who actually treated with patients and their approach to the virus.The people who were pushing these non-actions basically had no experience, direct experience with covid. Were any of these people, did any of them have covid treatment experience? And did it affect them if, I mean, do you think that's relevant?Why do you think that's relevant if they did?HOWARD: So I think a handful of the doctors who I mentioned did treat covid patients in one way or another. But for the most part, very few of them did, and most of the ones who did treat covid patients worked out of San Francisco, relatively well-off environment. I don't think that they saw some of the nightmare scenes that we saw here in New York City.And elsewhere throughout the country and I, the doctors who I write about say things that no doctor who treated covid patients who worked in the [01:02:00] hospital would ever say things such as hospitals were being overwhelmed by the worried well, by people who are just showing up to the hospital in a panic, convinced that they were going to die. They were overwhelmed by people who were dying and were very sick.And when you read the accounts of some of the doctors who worked here where I worked at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, we didn't even have it nearly as bad as some of the hospitals in the outer boroughs. Elmhurst Hospital in Queens was really the epicenter neighborhood called Corona, ironically enough.But it was like a war zone there. According to the descriptions, just people dying in hallways. People stumbling outside of the hospital. And this was just not unique to New York City. This was in Italy, and Spain, and Iran, and India, all over the world at various points of the pandemic.And I think that my experience with it didn't allow me to predict the course of the pandemic any better than anyone else. I made erroneous predictions, which I include in the [01:03:00] book. I want to hold myself to the same standards that I hold everyone else, but it really gave us a lot of humility. I think about what the virus can do.I did see some young, healthy people suffer and some young, healthy people die of the virus. Not many, but it made me realize that young people weren't totally immune from covid's worst effects. And there's something about having skin in the game that's valuable, meaning if I successfully convinced large swaths of my community to reject the covid vaccine, I would be creating more work for myself and more risk for myself.The doctors who successfully did convince large swaths of the country to reject the covid vaccine, they never had to see someone express vaccine regret. They never had to see someone with their last breath, say goodbye to a family member on zoom saying, I really should have gotten the vaccine and so, there's something to be said for having skin in the game.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I think so. I think [01:04:00] so. All right, well, this has been a great conversation. We've been talking today with Jonathan Howard. He is the author of the new book, We Want Them Infected: How the Failed Quest for Herd Immunity Led Doctors to Embrace The Anti-vaccine Movement and Blinded Americans to the Threat of covid.And you are also on Twitter. You've got the number 19 in your username. What's what is covid 19? Is that what that is? What is that?HOWARD: No, no that's always been my lucky number. I wore that. I played baseball and 19 was always my number. So, okay. Well, superstition.SHEFFIELD: All right. Well, so for those listening, it is 19 J O H O. So Joe Ho, presumably your nickname. Yes. Okay. All right. Well, great, Jonathan. It's been a good conversation.HOWARD: Thanks for the questions and thanks for having me. It was great to be here. I really appreciate it.SHEFFIELD: All right. So that is the program for today.I appreciate everybody for joining us. And of course you can go to theory of [01:05:00] change. show to get the full. Audio, video, and transcript of this episode. And if you are a paid member or subscriber, you can get complete access to every episode in the archive. So I appreciate everybody who is doing that. And I strongly encourage you to do it if you are not.And of course, if you can't, I understand everybody has a different financial situation, but you can support the show just by giving a nice review on Apple podcasts or Spotify or subscribing on YouTube, that's another important way to support the show as well. So I appreciate everybody who is doing that in one way or another.Thank you very much. I'll see you next time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

Episode SummaryThis episode of Theory of Change is the second in our "Why I Left" series featuring Lance Aksamit. He is an associate editor at Flux, and the author of a new autobiography about life in the missionizing evangelical sub-culture called Youth Group: Coming of Age in the Church of Christian Nationalism.Beyond telling his story of being born and raised in a homeschooling evangelical family that preached the gospel in Latin America, Lance also talks about how the beliefs he was taught derived from the larger far-right Christian supremacist tradition which began in the former Confederacy.It's a very necessary book because it shows just how mentally and emotionally dominating extreme Christian viewpoints can be, so it's worth reading, especially for those who don't have direct experience with totalitarian Christianity.You can watch the video of the conversation or continue reading below for the transcript or read it on the web.Membership BenefitsThis is a free episode of Theory of Change but the deep conversations we bring you about politics, religion, technology, and media take great time and care to produce. Your subscriptions make Theory of Change possible and we’re very grateful for your help.Please join today to get full access with Patreon or Substack.If you would like to support the show but don’t want to subscribe, you can also send one-time donations via PayPal.If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on Apple Podcasts. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. You can also subscribe to the show on YouTube.About the ShowTheory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield about larger trends and intersections of politics, religion, media, and technology. It's part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet.Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChangeMatthew Sheffield on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffieldMatthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffieldTranscriptMATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Thanks for being here, Lance.LANCE AKSAMIT: Thanks for having me, Matt.SHEFFIELD: All right. So, your book is a memoir about your time growing up in a fundamentalist evangelical environment. Tell us where the setting begins and let's maybe go from there.AKSAMIT: Yeah, so it starts a little bit with me already deeply entrenched in evangelicalism in youth group, but as far as me personally and my interaction inside of, Evangelical, very strict evangelicalism.My parents were missionaries in Panama in Central America. We were in the depths of the Davian jungle when my parents were deported during the war with Noriega. From there we moved all the way over to [00:03:00] Wisconsin where my parents started training other missionaries in getting them ready for going to the field.We worked for an organization called, at the time it was called New Tribes Mission, which the whole point was to put as many people in as remote of locations as possible. And it was a non-denominational organization, which is just pretty much codenamed for strict evangelical organization.And from there, we kind of moved back and forth between being, missionaries on the mission field in Panama and Nebraska, eventually, where I ended up and where my youth group years really started.SHEFFIELD: For a lot of Americans or people living in the more industrialized world. They don't see a lot of missionaries from evangelicals running around the place. You basically see Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses.AKSAMIT: Yeah, yeah, the evangelical missions generally don't spend too much time in the United States except for on like reservations as well as to the Amish. I actually have had a few friends who were missionaries to the [00:04:00] Amish, which is an interesting endeavor, if you ask me, but yeah, so NTM, New Tribes Mission, was I think still is the second largest missionary organization from the United States and they, like I said, specialize in sending into remote locations but interestingly enough, primarily they were sending people to Already evangelized locations so, for example, where we were, the Catholics had already come through, almost a hundred years prior, and a lot of the people were already Catholic, so we were being, we were evangelizing to Christians, ostensibly except for at that time Catholics were not considered Christians by our organization so, from all across the world.Tricking locals into ChristianityAKSAMIT: I think a good example that I have in the book is in Papua New Guinea, where there is a small group of people, and they were being evangelized to by New Tribes Mission. They had been Catholics for a very long time, but some missionaries showed up and [00:05:00] essentially kind of, kind of tricked the people into becoming Christians, but they wouldn't even call themselves Christians.They would call themselves followers of the New Tribes Mission, which is I think a good indicator of how that went. They show up with a Bible, and in this culture, they had a local deity called if I'm pronouncing it right, Tiki Loko. And this local deity was a god that had many different personas, many different faces.And during World War II, one of those personas Ended up being one that came from America because it kind of transitioned into a bit of a cargo cult. And when the New Tribes mission showed up, they used that history and saying, oh, look, your God is just, this is the same God, but he goes by the name Jesus here.And look, he's in this book, he's in this book and pointing to the Bible. And they're like, Oh, our God's in your books. That must be, how we that must be the right book. And then they essentially became followers of the New Tribes mission via that kind of persuasion.SHEFFIELD: And that, and that's an interesting tactic because [00:06:00] it is like, it is, if you actually look at the history of missionizing Christianity, like it was a very common technique.Yeah. They did. I mean, it's in the Bible. Paul, Paul does it in the book of Acts. And curiously enough there's a parallel with Mormonism because they actually have done that with an Aztec god called Quetzalcoatl. Yes. Who they claim is Jesus because in the Book of Mormon there is a story of Jesus after he's resurrected coming and visiting the ancient Jews who lived in America.And according, and then, so basically, they use the Quetzalcoatl. Story to tell people, see, this was our guy, you should join up. So it's an interesting it's, sometimes people, so the term for this, the scholarly term for this is syncretism where you take a piece of one religion and stick it into another one, and sometimes people who are in the culture we're talking about here, they don't— [00:07:00] I don't like to think that that's what they're doing when it comes to their more basic beliefs, but, in terms of their evangelizing, they absolutely are doing this.AKSAMIT: Yeah, absolutely. And I, it's so disingenuous on the part of a lot of the missionaries because I'm not speaking for Mormonism here, but I do know for a fact inside of our mission field, they did not believe that was the same God at all. Like, they did not believe that this This person was Jesus.In fact, it was something that was, is actively discouraged by the mission. I must give them that. They say, don't do this thing that these missionaries that did. The interesting part is that my later after, about maybe 40 years after that whole incident took place, my father, who he actually worked on video productions for a while, he created a video about the evangelizing to this people group and I grew up watching this video.And when I was researching for this book I came to mind and I was able to reach out to an anthropologist Who like the only anthropologist who worked with this group of people and talked to him about it and getting those two viewpoints Between the anthropologist and what you know [00:08:00] My viewpoint of watching this video and my dad's for making this video and a few other missionaries and it was You know kind of a fascinating personal connection to that group of people all the way across the worldSHEFFIELD: And so now the name New Tribes, what's the derivation of that?AKSAMIT: Yeah, so New Tribes Mission was essentially the idea, like I said, to send people into the most remote locations. It was essentially, when a man, when someone accepts Jesus to become a new creation. Just that with tribes. So New Tribes Mission. And they have changed their name to Ethnos 360, which is I guess trendy branding. Also because New Tribes Mission has in the last 20 years found itself in a lot of scandals sexual abuse, scandals, physical abuse, scandals, all sorts of things across the globe as mission organizations are what to do.SHEFFIELD: And we'll talk about some of that a little bit later. But what age were you when your parents [00:09:00] decided to go and do that?Father Deported from Panama to FloridaAKSAMIT: I was born in Panama. So I've you know got dual citizenship, which is nice, but I was born there. I was about one and a half years old. I don't remember the whole deportation that's recounted in the book. That was from interviewing my parents. Essentially, they my, during that time, anyone who was kind of in a sensitive area for Noriega, the dictator of Panama at the time was suspect for being an American spy, especially if you were American.And so they kind of showed up at our house and said that we had an illegal radio, which we didn't at the time. I mean, we did have one, but not then. And then they took my dad, left the rest of us there in the jungle. And We heard back from him a week later. He was in Florida. Apparently they had questioned him thoroughly and were either too afraid that he might actually be a spy or that he wasn't a spy and either way, they didn't want to just make him disappear because it might, they were kind of in a precarious position with the United States at the [00:10:00] time.So they decided the best thing apparently was just to put him on a plane to Florida. And then he called us called the mission and the mission told us that we, he was alive in Florida. Then we've gotten a plane in the following week.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, so the time frame here. What was this?AKSAMIT: The yeah, that would have been that would have been in 1989.SHEFFIELD: Okay. Yeah, so just for people who don't know who Manuel Noriega was, maybe you can tell us?AKSAMIT: Noriega was a dictator that was a CIA puppet for the majority of his career. He ran afoul of George. H. W. Bush when his name kept coming up inside of some kind of clandestine files so anyone who knows anything about Bush senior knows that he was the head of the CIA, but apparently, he was the head of the CIA.Just spontaneously. He had no affiliation with the CIA before he led it, which is a little bit irregular. It's come out more recently that he was likely part of the [00:11:00] CIA before that point. But yeah, so when that started coming out, it was a little bit embarrassing connections to Noriega. Noriega had a lot of drug dealing, a lot of different, he was essentially a thug of Panama.He had come into power. Via his CIA connections and also writing a r of kind of a wave of popularity from his predecessor Omar Tor Torrio. Torrio was a, not necessarily a Democratic hero, but he definitely was a hero of Panama. He represented the people in ways that no other leader at that time had, and he died in suspicious ways and, The CIA was indicated in that.So, Noriega, when he came into power, and then his CIA connections kind of came out into Panama, the Panamanian citizens didn't really like him, and then the U. S. didn't really like him, and it kind of ended with his ousting in 1989.Living in missionary compounds and going to church-run schoolsSHEFFIELD: so your father's sent back to Florida. What happens after that?AKSAMIT: Yeah, so at that point they were trying to sort out what's they [00:12:00] could do, they didn't, they were still inside the mission the mission placed them inside of a missionary training boot camp, is what they called it, up in Wisconsin.It was a compound, essentially a commune, a Christian commune, everybody worked, they had gardens, it was self-sustaining. And my parents helped train other missionaries to go to, did they call it a commune? No, they did not. They did not. It was a bootcamp, very militaristic, it was a bootcamp.And yeah, so they had classes teaching theology, all these things. Women were not allowed to teach any of the classes. Women weren't allowed to wear jeans for the first part. It finally switched over towards the end. They're able to wear. pants. They had to wear dresses at first. You weren't allowed to play cards.We weren't allowed to go to the movies. Very much, strict fundamentalism ideology and theology. As a kid, I grew up, being taught about the end of the world from like a very strangely young age, right? I remember my sister and I—I write [00:13:00] about this in the book—we were convinced that my dad might be the Antichrist.Because our kindergarten teacher had told us that the Antichrist would be somebody that everybody liked, who was really nice, and, but then turns out to be evil. And so I'm like, wait a second. The nicest person we know right now is our dad. He's probably the antichrist. So yeah, there was a lot of those sort of things I would wake up every morning and like go down to the window to look out the window to see if Jesus had come back yet Because that was, the thing that we were all supposed to be looking forward to I would, I was constantly terrified of Going to hell because like I didn't fully understand, it's impossible to explain Theology to a child and I didn't understand any of it.I just knew that hell existed, and it was a terrible place. I didn't want to go there. And so like, I would have like panic attacks as a child, like for years being like, I don't know. This is a bad place. I don't want to go there. And my mom would have to explain it. We don't believe you will like that kind of stuff.So it was it was an interesting upbringing in that area, but we were there until [00:14:00] 95. And in 95, we were able to go back to Panama because all my dad. Apparently, his records had been, had disappeared.Seeing Satan everywhere as a childSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and so to just go back to what you were saying about this end of the world obsessions I think, having had some of those same things inculcated to me when I was born in fundamentalist Mormonism.I think a lot of people haven't really seen that up close, and that's part of why I was glad to do a blurb for your book and to support you here because I think a lot of people, they don't really understand like this is a totaling worldview. Yeah, yeah. Talk about that a little bit if you could.AKSAMIT: Yeah. Yeah. There's It's something I think that I was definitely on the more extreme end of what children received inside of, evangelicalism, the more fundamentalist not everybody inside of, who went to Sunday school where [00:15:00] it was taught about the antichrist or that demons could possess anything.That's one. Another fear that we had was that our stuffed animals were possessed by demons because, they could possess anything. So, we had lots of fears, all entirely based upon things we were taught inside of our Sunday schools and preschools and kindergartens, because we, they were all inside the same area being taught by the same people.And the very prominent amongst all of the teaching was that the end of the world was coming. And I think, I believe that most people personally believe that the end of the world was probably going to happen before they died. I know that's, that was conversation that I would pick up on a lot was like, it's a fallen world.We need to do our best to reach all these. That was part of the whole point of missions was that they believed that by contacting all these, law, all these tribes around the world, all these remote. Places was that then the, and then Jesus could come back because Jesus said that every tongue will speak, and everybody's confessed that Jesus Christ is [00:16:00] Lord.So they can't do that if they have never heard about it. So missions were essentially to bring about the end of the world.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And, I mean, it is, I can't emphasize enough that, we're, we live in a country where there are literally millions of people going around every day and they think about this stuff every single day.AKSAMIT: And I do think that something is kind of lost on some people when they see, I mean, and there's millions of grifters out there, don't get me wrong, but when they see these people. Spouting what seems to be nonsense. They assume that they're grifting. They assume that they're trying to take advantage of people's fears.But, in my experience, the reality is that while there are some very prominent grifters, a huge number of them truly believe this. This is something that they are doing because of a heartfelt conviction. This is something that is like, I was one of those people. I was trying to, gain influence through my, my Christianity.It was because I thought that people I cared [00:17:00] about were going to go to hell forever and the world was ending. And that. Which all ties into, like, why global warming doesn't matter, or any of these things. A lot of it's tied into this belief system that, the world's ending, it's a fallen world, why are we concerned about these things? We should be concerned about saving people's souls, not feeding them.Why many fundamentalists don't care about actual government policiesSHEFFIELD: Hmm, yeah. Well, yeah, and that is, that really does fit into a lot of republican policy ideas now that they, especially in regard to the environment. I mean, you see that a lot that, well, it doesn't, none of this stuff matters because Jesus is going to come back and fix everything.So yeah. Who cares?AKSAMIT: Yeah. And he promised you'd never flood the world again. Right? So we don't have to worry about that, ice melts or anything.SHEFFIELD: Oh, yeah. Good point there. And another kind of example of this sort of nonchalant attitude about terrible and tragic things and sort of a refusal to plan or even respond to them in [00:18:00] any way was during the COVID 19 pandemic in 2021. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves said something that was extremely revealing, and I'll just put it up on the screen for those watching and then read it off here.He said, I'm often asked by some of my friends on the other side of the aisle about COVID and why does it seem like folks in Mississippi and maybe in the Mid-South are a little less scared, shall we say, when you believe in eternal life, when you believe that living on this earth is but a blip on the screen.Then you don't have to be so scared of things and. So he caught a lot of flak for that, but not enough. I don't think. I think to this day, most people have, outside of people who do cover this stuff in journalistically like you and I do, I would say most people have never heard that quote.AKSAMIT: Yeah. And I think it is I think it's indicative of how the majority of American press deal with any sort of religious. [00:19:00] Anything they give it a pass in a way that doesn't exist for anything else like They can say people can say the most obscene and ridiculous things, but as long as it's coded in biblical language, they're able to just be like, okay Yeah, that's, that's okay.Like, and it happens all the time. The most ridiculous things are uttered by pastors from the pulpit. Pastors who have massive, massive followings and not just like fringe ones, politicians, like they say these things and then the media either just doesn't cover it or they even cover it in almost a positive way.Like, well, that's a one way of thinking of it kind of deal.SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm. And you, do you think that that's because they've just got this sort of, I don't know, reflexive, braindead well, we have to respect everybody's religion. Is that what it is?AKSAMIT: Yeah, I think that's part of it. But I do, that definitely does what it does exist.I think also a huge part of it is just the civic relate, Civic religion of America, being Christianity [00:20:00] and everyone's kind of grown up in it in some aspect or another. And so when you hear these things that would be outlandish to anyone from like, the Netherlands to us as Americans, we hear like, Oh, yeah, like, like, we don't even We don't even question why people are saying this or how this is a belief that exists in the 21st century.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I think that's a good point and some people who do kind of write about far-right movements and sort of, neo fascism to them, they want to check everybody and put everybody into the Hitler Mussolini box. And the reality is, most of these people have never read anything from Hitler or Mussolini.Might not even know who Mussolini was. So to say that this, so like I some people, I think are kind of ignoring it in another, for that reason as well, that it's it doesn't have the language, this explicit Germanic and, neo I don't know, sort of, Nietzschean [00:21:00] overtones, and so it's hard for them to see the authoritarianism as a one off thing.AKSAMIT: Yeah, it, they, and I think that, like, we've come to see authoritarianism. As not as dangerous as it is. Like, we think of In America, at least I think a huge percentage of the population thinks authoritarianism and communism are the same thing, right? And they don't think authoritarianism, like, even, they're excusing so much, so many forms of authoritarianism that exist outside of Stalinism.It's like, that they're, don't even have a problem with it. And it's also we also have the quote of United States of Amnesia, right? We have a very limited. Historical knowledge. I we're very much like, oh, the past doesn't matter. It doesn't influence us in any way.The only thing that matters is what we're doing right now. And we're not influenced at all by the, the fact that Franco and DeSantis have a lot in common. Like, there's not like these things don't matter to us in a way that if we were a little bit more.Historically literate, I think we would be a bit more on edge, a little [00:22:00] bit more ready to act when these things are thrown up, these clearly damaging ideas and these clearly, like, dangerous propositions are put out there.Roaming the jungles of Panama as a childSHEFFIELD: Alright, well, so you moved around a bunch and so you, when you were back in Panama as much as they, as, you, you write in the book about how you So, while you were sort of curricula was strongly controlled your sort of personal time really didn't involve a lot of supervision.AKSAMIT: None.SHEFFIELD: Tell us about some of those stories.AKSAMIT: Yeah, it's kind of interesting. So my personal time had very little supervision unless those times were us being out with like local people. There was very much a fear of being too close to the Panamanian citizens, like there's too, a fear of being too chummy with our neighbors because there was a [00:23:00] different, culture between obviously evangelical missionaries and just everyday people living in the community that we were, our compound was placed into.And that, so there was very much supervision when we were with these guys, because they didn't want to, their sinful nature rubbing off on us. But as far as if we were just to go out, like my friend and I, we would go oh, we would stay out all day. We'd bike to this river, which is this river, this place has a special plate, I think a lot of people have like a special spot in their mind that they go to, if they're trying to like, maybe calm down or whatever I think it was where Herzog, he talks about his, is this waterfall in in Germany, but mine is this river.In Panama that I would take, it was several miles from where I lived. You'd have to cross these cow pastures with these really angry bulls who would always chase you. And if they ever got to you, they would wreck you. Like one time one got to me, and I had to throw my bike at it and just destroyed my bike.But I got through it, and we get to this river and the rivers got is full of came [00:24:00] in these little, crocodiles and there's toucans everywhere. There's these, beautiful wildlife. And I would spend my entire day there. To hunt these crocodiles, which I was a kid thinking I could do that.I never obviously got one. We would make these wooden spears out of sticks, and we'd throw them at them, and it just bounced off their backs. But one time I did try, and I came up with an idea where I had a dead bird and I was caught, climbed out over a branch over the water and my friend was with me and we're, dipping the bird into the water, trying to get the alligator, the crocodiles attention.And they all kind of came. There were about 30 of these guys in the water and they're all underneath us. When my friend said, I think this branch is a little a little unstable and it cracked. It cracks between him and me. And I was on the branch that fell into the water, and he was still up in the tree.So I fell about, I don't know, maybe five or six feet into the water, tangled up in this branch, holding a dead bird while these alligators are even more interested in all the commotion kind of came even closer. And my friends ended up shouting, throw the bird. But I had just spent the better part of the day.Trapping and killing this bird to use as bait. And so I didn't want to throw [00:25:00] it, and it held onto a really long time until I could see the eyes of these guys, like, in my eyes. Tossed it, and I swear I ran on water. Back to shore, managed not to get eaten, but yeah, that's where I, that's where I spent all my time and in my as far as special places go, that's always got a special place in my heart, that river.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and did you tell your parents what had happened?AKSAMIT: I think probably like a few days later, yeah, and it didn't influence their decisions at all on whether or not I should go back to the river. Just kind of like a bit of admonishment. You got to be careful, Lance. I guess it worked out.But yeah, no, I like as far as supervision goes and I remember we would have access to a crazy amount of like fireworks because there's fireworks a big deal down there and I would one time I cut open a firework, got all the gunpowder out to, like, just blow random stuff up. And unfortunately, I wasn't very careful.I had a sandwich bag full of gunpowder in my hands that went off. And it just burned all the skin off my hands. All of it. I had to go to the hospital every other day for, like, 12 days for them to, like, [00:26:00] cut the dead skin off. It was terrible. Again, very little change in my oversight after that as well.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, so hopefully that should give people an idea of how it works.Attending home schoolSHEFFIELD: Yeah, I think that's a good point. Alright, so you, so, you were doing this, you were brought up and, so not only were you living in these facilities and basically in the middle of nowhere you were also extensively part of the homeschool culture.And I think that that's another aspect of, this extremist evangelicalism that a lot of people haven't really seen a lot and maybe they're getting a little taste of it with Some of the recent documentary about the Duggar family.AKSAMIT: I haven't seen that yet. Actually, I'm going to watch it eventually.I've got it. It's on my bucket list. I got to get to that.SHEFFIELD: Okay. Yeah. Well, it's So, I, but, I mean, that's part of the idea of this being a totalizing ideology, that, that not only are they giving you [00:27:00] constant you have to go to religious, explicitly religious instruction all the time, but then also your, they control your secular learning as well, and basically turn that also into religious instruction.Tell us how that worked for you.AKSAMIT: Yeah, so like, I transitioned from either private school to homeschooling to private school, and by private school I mean private Christian school. I didn't go to a public school until one year in middle school, and then again in 10th grade in high school. So those were outside of those timeframes.It was all either homeschooled or religious private schools. And my friends were homeschooled. My best friends, they were homeschooled. It was very much a belief that education, the public education system's entire endeavor was to indoctrinate us to, it, convince us that God wasn't real and that [00:28:00] evolution was.Essentially, I think that's, if I could boil down what I thought the problem was as a kid was that like they wanted me to believe in evolution and that if evolution was true then God wasn't. And so It's an interesting ecosystem that you get put into inside these private Christian schools, like I think there's a lot that can be said for, for homeschooling, there's, I got some, a good education out of it, but it is a, definitely a form of making sure that you believe what your parents do. And, I was taught inside the private schools, the private Christian schools, that for example, that people and dinosaurs lived at the same time. In fact, I had a coloring book as a kid that had dinosaurs. It was like a Christian coloring book.It had Noah's Ark, all that stuff. It had dinosaurs with saddles on them. So that way you could, like, people rode dinosaurs. That's, that was because they had to exist at the same time, so people had to interact with them, so I guess they wrote them at some point. We were taught inside of my school that the earth had a large ice [00:29:00] shield around it at one point, which trapped in higher levels of oxygen, which was what allowed lizards, which all dinosaurs are lizards that grow really big and the higher amounts of oxygen cause the lizards to grow into dinosaurs.And that's all that they were. And that was all, 6, 000 years ago. Very, very recent, and the flood is what caused them all to be buried in layers that are, not at all uniform, I guess. There's some hazy logic that takes place there, but the science was definitely one of the most difficult things to start taking when I went to public school.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I think, people, again, so many people, like, this is such an insular subculture that people who haven't seen it themselves or known someone who was in it It's almost impossible, as you were saying, it's impossible to believe that people in the 21st century have these ideas.Like, you don't want to think that, because, I mean, it's like they, it's [00:30:00] like they thought the Flintstones, you thought the Flintstones were a documentary.AKSAMIT: Yeah, essentially, like, that's what it was like, there were people and, pre flood, that's probably what life was like for most people.How Biblical literalism prepares people for political conspiracy theoriesSHEFFIELD: Yeah, and, and it's related, though, because this type of, deliberate delusion because like, I think, and I don't want to speak for you, but like for me, I knew, I didn't believe necessarily in the 6, 000 year old earth idea, but I did believe that, somehow or another, it was-- I never tried to completely make it make sense because I just couldn't.But there's always that tension though and that everybody who is brought up in these beliefs has, that science debunks your beliefs. But you also know that your beliefs have to be true because they're based on the Bible and the Bible is true because the Bible says it's true.And, and [00:31:00] it's like it created the environment, like this type of, kind of messed up epistemology, like Donald Trump is the perfect person for this. Like when people say, well, how can people really believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 election? How can they really actually believe that?And it's like, well, talk to Lance.AKSAMIT: No, for real. Like I, I think that's what I write about. I was like, when you grow up in an ecosystem where believing the most bizarre things is counted unto you as righteousness, right? Like, that your faith in the most obviously untrue things is a good thing.When you're brought up to believe that, then believing other random BS is not hard to do. Right? It's not just not hard, it's second nature. Which is kind of why, like, when, Trump did, like, I expect, when I saw him on there, I was, I expected him to get the Republican nomination when I saw him running, I was like, he seems like, he's saying all, like, [00:32:00] all the things that captures the grievance culture that I grew up in, like, I, this was like, yeah, he's going to get, I was surprised when he won I thought the Electoral College was going to, go with Hillary.I was convinced of that, but I was surprised by that, but that he was the nomination. I was like, of course, like that, that makes tons of sense.Switching to public school in 10th grade and going to youth group activitiesSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, so, so you went to high school for your 10th grade year public high school. How so science was hard for you.What else, what other sort of culture shocks did you have?AKSAMIT: Like, that my school had gay kids, that was like, like, cause that was something that I was completely unfamiliar with, so it was really interesting cause I went there and I was weird enough that like, nobody was really, like, Nobody was really my friend at first and the first group of people to like accept me were like the goth kids and Most of the goth kids were the term didn't really exist at a time as far as I was aware and any of them were Aware, but they were probably like, we would call like non binary kids [00:33:00] today Like and they were super accepting of me and super kind and I just immediately fit in with that group of kids And that was a really hard thing because like these guys were like really awesome.I really liked them. And so the, I remember one particularly cringeworthy event where I was, because it was my duty to proselytize and get these kids to church because that's what youth group was all about, was getting the lost sheep back to the flock trying to get these kids into church.And so I, I would invite them to youth group all the time and a lot of them would go with me and, they would be like, okay, that was fun and not come back. And so like, I got a lot of them, and I remember one conversation I had with this girl that I really liked. I had this huge crush on and she, like, she was bisexual, and I knew that, and I was like, I love you, but I hate the sin.Like I had that, I literally had that conversation with her and I, looking back on it, it's still like, I like clenched my teeth. Like, it's just so painful to try and remember that. And she was. [00:34:00] incredibly gracious with me. She was just like, okay, all right. And just like, kind of just let it roll off her back.And we still hung out and we're friends. Like I, I wouldn't have been friends with me, but she still was. And like that was something that like, just recognizing that these, people that weren't. Evangelical Christians. They weren't even Catholics. They were good people, right? And like that was kind of like hard to reconcile.And then I think also it was inside of a classroom. This is when like I think the very first like real crack in my belief system happened was When we were having a debate, like I had a really great teacher, an English teacher Miss Sarah Skeen, who I love to death. And at the end of the year, she would have these debates and we pick different ones.And one of them was whether or not creative design should be taught in the classroom. And of course I was in the pro, creative design argument. And I started having, we had this debate with this other kid, and he brought up. Kangaroos, which I had never heard of at the time. He's like, okay, well, [00:35:00] kangaroos only their skeletons only exist in Australia.They never found kangaroo skeletons in Europe or North America. And if they were all over the world, like in the world was all one thing that recently how and why are the bones only there? And I was like, like, it's weird that that simple, silly little fact was the first thing to just like, just it hit me so hard that for like the rest of the day, I remember just kind of like.running over it in my head a million times and just being like, I don't know. Why is that? Why is that the case? And I think that was like a kind of a keystone moment for me. And from that point forward, I definitely every bit of factual evidence, every sort of thing that kind of came my way, that just.I considered it at a deeper level than I had ever before, and when you get enough of those things, it's just, it becomes impossible to, to maintain the this these two worldviews in your head at the same time, it's, it, and you have to select one at some point.SHEFFIELD: Hmm. Yeah. [00:36:00] Well, and so the title of the book is “Youth Group.”AKSAMIT: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: So you started going to Youth Group. So, I think maybe people might have some general idea of what these are, but tell us about the ones that you went to.AKSAMIT: Yeah, so, yeah, I went to lots of youth groups, because it was one of the few opportunities for like unsupervised between me and other people were.So like mostly like, that's where girls were. I was, I'm, a high school boy. And like, that's where the only time I was able to see other people that weren't inside of my religious clique mostly. And so I went to youth group the primary youth group I went to every single Tuesday night, but then I went to another church's youth group every Wednesday, I went to one, which was in the mornings, at my school every Wednesday morning, and then another one. So, essentially, at one time, I would go to five different youth groups a week. And they were all, these If anyone who went to these things kind of knows what I'm talking about when I talk, when I say that they are just kind of [00:37:00] glitzy, lots of, like, lights, trying, the whole idea was to try and get kids.And so they would have the most ridiculous events, like, I had a goldfish eating competition where, like, you'd eat live goldfish? Like, that was a thing that just happened in a church. Like, they would have, like, these bizarre events to try and get lots of kids. into these things. And these youth groups were very, I mean, still are but were very, very popular across my experience was mostly the Midwest.And they would, they, in these groups, once they'd have kind of like a cycle, right? They'd start off with at the beginning of the year, just talking about the basics of Christianity and these different things. And then as the year progressed, they would eventually always get back to the end of the world, which is always something that we would discuss with.Just a bizarre amount of like levity which like when you talk about like it was really a deep and heavy conversation But we were all super excited about it like kind of like, Yeah Jesus is going to come back and he's going to Kill every everybody like everybody's going to die who's not a Christian and they're [00:38:00] going to go to hell for forever.But we were excited about it. But we knew we weren't supposed to be, and these conversations would come up all the time and we would just talk about, like, that's, that's why our, my church I went to, which was a Christian Missionary Alliance Church one of their big things was missions. And so, like, our church youth group would go to, we went to Haiti to, on a missions trip to try and, I don't know what we were trying to do there but try and save people.Getting brainwashed about sex in youth groupAKSAMIT: But yeah, these youth groups, the whole intention was. It's essentially an evangelism tool to make sure, one, that the church kids stayed in the church, and two, for the church kids to get outside kids who weren't in the church into the church. So that was the whole point of youth groups. And they would circulate some of the most oftentimes sexist and awful messages, misogynist messages when it came to like, like purity culture and all those things.As a guy, I was lucky enough to kind of be on the male end of that, which was bad enough. Like I would meet every Thursday morning at a Burger King at 6am where we would discuss the [00:39:00] last time we watched internet porn or masturbated, like, and we would be like, I called it an accountability group, and this was something that we had to do.And we'd read every man's battle, which was a terrible book. And this was like constantly guilting, like, guilting us into like. Just feeling terrible about ourselves was, which was not the point they would say, but essentially it was because every single bit of it was like, you should feel really bad.And that's why you shouldn't do these things. And if you do these things, God's really upset with you. And then obviously girls had it really terrible too, because their entire value. Was placed upon purity culture like if they were impure they had no value to God or to their future husbands Which they of course wanted so like it was it that was probably I think if you talk to anybody inside of youth groups in That time frame that's probably one of the first things that they might you know come to mind.SHEFFIELD: And just to step back. So in case people were casually listening to what you just said, your church group [00:40:00] was requiring teenage boys to get together and tell on each other if they were touching themselves.AKSAMIT: Yes. Yes. That was I should say it was a soft requirement. You could still go to the youth group, but it was very much like the leadership team was required.Like, it was, I don't remember them saying you have to go, but like, yeah, you had to go. And I was in the leadership team, and it was about five or six guys every Thursday morning. And that's what we did. And it's interesting because later, much later on in life, I started reading Jeff Sharlett’s book C Street, and he talks about how the Family, the Fellowship, they actually did the exact same thing. They talk about where they have these accountability groups.SHEFFIELD: But adults, who are government officials. Government officials.AKSAMIT: And I doubt they met at a Burger King. But they would have the exact same accountability groups about the exact same things.And I was just like, wow. [00:41:00] Alright, like, I, it was kind of I don't know, that was kind of eye opening for me as well. I thought it was just kind of something they were able to pull on unsuspecting teenage boys, not grown government officials.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, but on the other hand, if you were born and raised in that environment where being asked questions about, such a personal nature, that that's okay.Then you can be asked that at any age.AKSAMIT: Right. Or if your entire housing, like in the case of C Street, is being paid for by the people asking you to go to these things, then there's also that. .Traveling the world as a young adult and beginning to lose faithSHEFFIELD: And so, alright, so you somehow survived your childhood. Somehow. Yeah, and so, you start, you're thinking about college. How, what, let's get into that experience for you.AKSAMIT: So I again, I was in high school, and I was in youth group, and it was pretty much a given that I was going to go into the mission field at some level.Like there was one was I couldn't, the way that I grew [00:42:00] up, being free to like wander around in the jungles and catching snakes and spiders and everything like that was very much influenced what I wanted to do. And I knew that I didn't want to just go to. Didn't want to just go to college.Like that wasn't for me. I couldn't envision myself going through what I thought to be just another four years of high school. So I was like, I could go to the mission field, like that would be okay. So I was going to go to Bible school. So I went to visit a couple of Bible schools. I went to one in Wisconsin which was New Tribes Missions Bible school that they, train all of their people in non—I believe at the time, non-accredited school, I'm pretty sure it still is non-accredited school, hermeneutics or whatever, and then send them off to the mission field.And I went there and it was such a strict like, the rules there, I remember even for me, like, I was like, oh my goodness, I can't do that, like, the boys and girls, weren't allowed to interact without supervision of chaperones, and it was like [00:43:00] the buildings were completely different where the girls and boys could interact at all, like, and there were always very strict rules on what you could and couldn't do, and I was just like, I don't know if that's for me either.But I knew I wanted to go, I wanted to be in the missionary. I want to be a missionary. That's, cause that's the only thing I could think of that was even close to being what I grew up with and what I wanted to. Wanted to do with my life, so I was really lost. I was like, I didn't know what to do So eventually I just was like, you know what?I'm going to travel like I'm going to I'm going to take pack a bag buy a ticket I'm going to just I'm going to travel the world so I end up working really Crazy amounts like around 80 hours a week at multiple jobs saving every penny And then I bought, as soon as I had enough money, I kind of ran a little bit of a scam on the U.S. Mint. I don't know if that's a story you want to get into here. It's in the book. And bought a ticket to Vietnam. Because like, that's what I wanted to do. At this time, my evangelicalism had been cracking enough that I knew I wanted, I couldn't [00:44:00] fully dispose of these old beliefs that I had, but I knew that I couldn't exist inside of that same, inside of the same frame of mind and do what I wanted to do.So I kind of was shifting to more of a kind of bland spirituality. Like, there's God loves everyone that kind of, kind of. Vibe I didn't want to think about, like, what my views were on hell were, because I knew I had, like, in my mind, I had to believe in hell if I believed in God, so I just kind of was like, I just kind of stopped thinking about it, and just was like, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to travel, and so I packed my bag and went to Vietnam.SHEFFIELD: Do you want to get into the Vietnam stuff, or do you want to like, I don't want to spoil the book for people. No, no.AKSAMIT: Yeah, the book itself, I mean, it is it's more than just my life.It also has, like, the historical foundations of Christian nationalism in America through, four timeframes of the Great Awakening the Civil War, the Russian Counter Revolution and Ronald Reagan. So there's a lot in there that I don't know if we're going to jump into any, much of that.But as far as mine I'm more than happy to talk about [00:45:00] yeah. So like Vietnam was something completely unexpected for me. So when I got there, I immediately felt like there wasn't room. In me for like what I was encountering and experiencing and for who I was at the time when I arrived.I kind of, I came across so much, up to that point, I had essentially what I think of as two religions. I had, Christianity, Evangelicalism, and then I also had American Exceptionalism. And my view of American Exceptionalism completely shattered. In Vietnam and Cambodia when I was, like, confronted with, like, the war crimes of Henry Kissinger or what took place in Vietnam and, like, what America had done in Southeast Asia and the realities of those situations of seeing still orphanages full of children with deformities from Agent Orange and, like, seeing these things And putting that into like my belief system of like, America is the [00:46:00] city upon the hill.Discovering atheist thoughtAKSAMIT: It just didn't work. And so that I think shattered my, my, my first religion, which was, American exceptionalism, the first religion to shatter, I should say. And when that broke the remnants of Christianity. Wasn't far behind. So traveling throughout Southeast Asia, I eventually worked in Laos, which is ostensibly a communist country. And kind of realizing that the strict lines between good American capitalism, bad communist any form of socialism that, that kind of, that was done away with.And in, in short order, I kind of started, I did kind of a Benjamin Button of Christopher Hitchens actually, which is something I don't really write about, but I started kind of looking into things, started reading things, and, of course, I came across a lot of the debates with Christopher Hitchens and those guys, and that kind of started having me reevaluate my religion, and I started following his stuff backwards towards, [00:47:00] towards socialism because at the time, I was still a proponent of the Iraq War and all these different things, and so was he.And so it kind of got me in there, and I wanted to read more, so I read back, and then I started disagreeing with him, and kind of, dovetailing kind of splitting away from that, but it was kind of, I've recently come across a lot of people who have had a very similar reverse growth when it comes to Christopher Hitchens and how they kind of helped break out, break them out of their religious fundamentalism but then starts parting ways when it came towards more of the American interventionism.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And after that happened and you kind of began pulling away from how you were raised, you also you write toward the end of the book about you got sucked into another subculture on the internet which unfortunately has become a lot more prominent since you experienced it and tell us about what that culture was and your, how it was for you. [00:48:00]AKSAMIT: Yeah, so that was at the very beginning of the Christopher Hitchens phase. So Christopher Hitchens, I started watching his debates there, anyone who's watched them, he's an eloquent speaker. Very persuasive, even if he's not the most in depth as far as his actual critiques go as, as far as Christianity goes.So I was like looking for a bit more. So I started finding Harris and the other what do they call them, the four horsemen all those guys, and I was like, okay, this is interesting. Kept reading and watching it, but very quickly the new atheist line is because, this is YouTube knows what it's doing to get views would really shift you into white genocide.Like you would go from like watching something about. How all the religious fundamentalists in the 20th century were primarily fascists, like fascism and religious fundamentalism. And that was almost equitable throughout a huge period of time. And also the next video was like, yeah, there's a white genocide.And you're like, what there is. And so like, you're watching this, and you start watching things like [00:49:00] Auschwitz had swimming pools. Like there's all these videos that just are shot at you. And. Luckily enough for me, when that I had met, my wife at that time, she was a big help with like, cause I would, a lot of times the people who are watching these things are single dudes and they don't have a whole lot of people to talk to who aren't outside of that sphere.And so, like, I had somebody to talk to that was like, some of these ideas were like, like, oh did you know this? And she's like, oh, that sounds right. And I personally, I hate being wrong, like I absolutely hate being wrong about stuff, and so I did more research, but there was a time frame for about maybe two years where I think it was borderline.I could have been, I could have been at January 6th on the wrong side of things very easily. Because the conspiratorial thinking that, that is so prevalent amongst this group of, QAnon guys and stuff. I never, this was before that, so I never was introduced to that. But this conspiratorial thinking [00:50:00] is something that I was very familiar with, right?It smelled like hope in a lot of ways. So like the conspiratorial thinking that was introduced to me, through YouTube when it comes to whether or not the, Nazis were actually that bad, or whether there's an actual white genocide or the Great Replacement taking place in America. Those conspiracies, these ideas that there was a powerful elite, a powerful group of people trying to keep the truth from me, and That was a very familiar sensation, because, that was essentially what I was told as a kid, that, the truth is what I'm being taught from my parents and my church, and that there's a whole powerful in the public education system, the government trying to force feed me propaganda, and I need to not listen to it, make sure I only listen to the truth, but like, so that, that conspiracy thinking, that conspiratorial thinking was something very much familiar, and I almost, almost bought into it.There's a period of time for about two years where I think that I was on the edge there, and if I didn't have my wife, or I didn't have [00:51:00] the disposition that I have of—I love research and I love reading and I hate being wrong. And every idea that I come across, I have to find the opposite idea.Like, just because I want to weigh them, I want to balance them. I was like, okay, does the opposite idea make more sense than this one? And if it doesn't, I generally go with whatever the one that makes the most sense. And I think without those sorts of things, that we would've been having a much different interview or no interview at all. I don't know.How personalized content recommendations can radicalize peopleSHEFFIELD: Yeah, probably not. But there's two things about that experience for you that do strike me one and maybe we'll talk about them sequentially here the first is that I think people again, the internet as you see it and as I see it is different than the internet that Somebody watching this right now or listening to it right now.We don't see the same internet especially in social media platforms. And so, [00:52:00] again, this is another example of how these insular cultures can be invisible to people who are not, who are not around them or inside of them because, You, you wouldn't, if you weren't watching the, if you were not watching, let's say, a Jordan Peterson video or something.He was thankful, yeah. Yeah, you're not going to see, YouTube is not going to send you, oh, and also let's talk about, how the Nazis weren't all bad or something like that. You're not going to see those. You're not even going to know that they exist. And it's a very serious...Responsibility and problem for the people who own these platforms and for the public to shame them for what they're doing.AKSAMIT: Yeah, it's a hard thing. It's because like the Allure of secret knowledge is something I think we all have, right? I mean we all want to be in the know We all want to like And we all have an innate sense of justice of like, it's there and there [00:53:00] has been, and that's, I think that's one thing that on the mainstream and more left, we don't want to, we don't acknowledge enough is that the enemies that a lot of times that these crazy conspiratorial people the QA non people are angry at, there is a lot of things that they have done wrong.Like there's a real, there's a real problem here and yet they go with the most bizarre. Our left field crazy answers to these problems, like instead of being like, Oh yeah, Oh, like the most common one I just ran into while visiting in laws was this guy talking about how Barack Obama's wife is actually a man and they had stolen kids and it's like, there's plenty of wrong things that Barack Obama, his drone program killed thousands of civilians.But yet this is the thing that you're like, so there's a real issue that isn't being talked about inside of mainstream very much. So, the drone programs, these things, but instead of going with the things that are, actual, they go with the most bizarre conspiratorial things. And I think a lot of it is like what you're saying the feed that they get on these social medias, [00:54:00] the internet's not the same.Then, when you start clicking on these things, it's like, oh, you like this, you like this, you like this, keep, keep on, keep on feeding it to you. And then how to fix that. And that's, that's a whole. We'll know the conversation, but I do think that there needs to be a conversation around the reality of bringing somebody out of that. I think there has to be an acknowledgment of that you're right, a lot of these enemies that you see, there are enemies out there, but you're going to a crazy direction with this.Like, Big Pharma, that's the big thing right now, right? Big Pharma has done lots of terrible things to everybody.The government's done lots of terrible things. Why are you going with this most obscure thing? We have well-documented cases right here. Let's read about these. Let's try and fix the real problems. And the real problems, I think, are being swept under the rug by both sides because they're both responsible for them. Whereas the bizarre ones, they're allowed to flourish. [00:55:00]SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good point though. Their right to see that there are problems in society. And one area where this is especially true is that the Republican Party does not actually represent the people who vote for it. And so their voters do rightfully feel like their concerns are not heard by society.But the problem is, they're blaming the wrong people for this. And they should be looking inward, and looking to the people who lead them as the people who did this.AKSAMIT: Yeah, that's something I write about a little bit is how the Republican Party shifted from having a platform of policies to a platform of values as a way of being able to get their base to not recognize that what they're doing is harmful to them. So like when the [00:56:00] Republican Party shifted to essentially being the party of evangelicals.They had a problem. So for up to that point, the Republican party was a party of wealthy business owners and wealthy business owners. The thing that mattered the most to them was obviously policies, taxes, all those sorts of things. And there's holdovers obviously for that. But when they became the party of evangelicals for the most part at the time, it, With Carter and then into Reagan, they, even though they didn't have money, they weren't wealthy individuals, so they couldn't maintain the same platform of being like, Yeah, we're going to actively hurt you guys, but vote for us.So they switched over to, Oh, we're the party of family values. We care about these things. And they're vague enough to be able to get people like, yeah. I'm going to put whatever meaning I want to that and this is what's, this is what we're going to vote for. I want to vote for the party that is all about America, right?Like whatever that means. So they were able, because they knew that what they were doing wasn't going to help their base. [00:57:00] So they had to shift it to a whole new thing to be able to maintain the evangelical base."New Atheism" as a vector for reactionary ideasSHEFFIELD: Yeah, I think that's right. And the other thing though about like your process, personal process that I think is illustrative of another larger trend is that they're the sort of emergence of online atheist activism in the—so we're talking about in the period of like the mid-2000s and 2010s or so.AKSAMIT: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Like let's say 2007 roughly to like 2013 or something like that.AKSAMIT: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's probably right. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: And the thing about that though is that this community that kind of emerged, it actually was sort of the resurgence of secular conservatism. But they didn't understand that that's what they were doing.So in other words, they took the same epistemology that they had had when they [00:58:00] were religious, but they just changed the justification, like the starting point. The thinking processes were all the same, everything is about the elites coming out to get you, to suppress you, and the hidden knowledge, and I'm the lone person who's the only smart one, the only rational one.That's really ultimately what these content creators on YouTube and elsewhere, and you can see it now manifesting with Sam Harris recently, who just made a comment in which he said that he favored getting rid of civil rights laws because the market, the free market will determine whether businesses that discriminate against black people that it will eliminate discrimination all on its own. And that’s Barry Goldwater right there.AKSAMIT: Yeah, I stopped listening to Harris so I did not hear that bit. I think that that's one reason [00:59:00] that for me at least, like, Christopher Hitchens early on was such an attractive person for me was that he always spoke of these classic authors like Spinoza and all these different guys. And that's what got me into reading those people.Whereas I feel like Harris and these other guys they were always talking about, it led to obviously like the rise of Jordan Peterson and others. Essentially these self-help gurus that were libertarian leaning. Like the atheist part of it was kind of a hook to get into libertarianism, right?Where that wasn't Hitchens; he was an old school socialist, even though he turned into pretty much a neocon. But that libertarianism was something that I had come out of by that time. I was a libertarian forever. Libertarianism and evangelicalism, to me, were the same thing, like in my mind. Not the exact same thing, obviously, but they were paired.So, like, I had been a libertarian since forever, so when introduced to those ideas, it's like, I think this, obviously, like, to me, [01:00:00] it just smacks of just failed philosophy, whereas when I started reading Hitchens and started going back and reading his socialist stuff, I was like, oh, this is something new to me, at least. So, that's what is more interesting for me.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. I mean, maybe for you, were you kind of thinking that, oh he's having me rethink not just my religious beliefs, but also my political.AKSAMIT: Yeah, because I mean, at that time, I was very much still, like I said Hitchens was, diehard Iraq war guy and all this stuff.And I was too. So like that was because, I, from everything I knew, like, yeah, we totally should have invaded Iraq. Saddam Hussein, bad dude. So, I think that was a way of, like, easing me into it, and then him introducing, like, it was literally reading backwards through time. Like, I would start reading his stuff from, like, The nineties and then into the eighties and I was just like, okay, it started making more sense as we went further back [01:01:00] and like, and then his ideas kind of led me to other authors as I read them and then I start really realizing all the people that he used to like Noam Chomsky and all these other guys, which there's other issues with, but like all these other guys now disowned him.And I'm like, why are the people that he used to be, Super chummy with why are they now disowning him? And so that's our reading them and the more recent stuff and like it oh, okay this starts to make sense. And that's I think even though like Southeast Asia and stuff had really broke my American exceptionalism I hadn't really connected that with the present political state of the wars and different things, I was kind of all over the place with the cracking of my personal religious beliefs, my belief in America, all these things that are kind of broken and they're being re-put together.And there's still all sorts of remnants in my brain that I haven't really thought about, like, oh why do I think that? Those sorts of things are still, I find every so often.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I, I think that's definitely true for a lot of people.How friends and relatives have responded to leaving the faithSHEFFIELD: And so, Let's maybe end here with: So you made these transitions for [01:02:00] yourself, religious and political how has it been for you with your relatives? How did they feel about it all?AKSAMIT: When it comes to how I relate with my family now, my dad and I used to get into arguments a lot about like. All of these things. And I think since we had our last big kind of blow up about religion. We kind of, it's become a bit of a truce. We’re just going to just exist with each other.I love my parents. They're great parents. Despite all their faults, in spite of all their faults they are still incredibly loving. And my family is an incredibly loving family and they just they bought in really hard because they came from a very poor fam, both of them were very poor they both came from very rough families, and for them, their youth groups, which is interesting, it was youth groups that got them into And Evangelicalism were places that were healthy in comparison and [01:03:00] so that brought them into the fold.And that's kind of what religion saved them in a lot of ways. And so they're not going to give up on that. And I can respect that. And they, I think they have come to a point where they can respect that they're not going to be able to really change my mind. And luckily enough for them, they believe in a theology that once you're saved, you're always saved.So I'm still going to heaven. So it doesn't really matter, I guess. But yeah, they have, I don't know if they've read the book. So I'm visiting them on the 4th of July. I guess we'll see.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, hopefully it goes well for you. Now I guess like, so what's your, I mean, For the future, I think, when you look at the demographics, younger people seem to be walking away from a lot of these fundamentalist beliefs and I think that is something that even the evangelical fundamentalists and other stripes, they can see that's happening, and this is why they're so [01:04:00] angry, because they feel like, that America, they are supposed to own it, and they're seeing that they won't ever be able to.AKSAMIT: Yeah. And I think what I'm a little worried about is that what's going to replace it will be more dangerous. So right now the, like you said, churches are losing their congregations, but what's growing are these parachurch organizations, these parachurch organizations that have large youth. Components. For example, there's an organization called The Send that had Jair Bolsonaro speaking at it in Brazil, had like 200,000 people, like an insane amount of kids and these guys are, in a way, post-ideological in their own conception of things, like they don't really care if the world's 6,000 years old they, these things aren't important to them, they're very much the Seven Mountains Mandate, N.A. R., like the New Apostolic Revolution like these guys.These guys [01:05:00] are kind of everywhere, and they're growing in numbers, and while I do think it's about power, it's about power, it's about power, exactly, so like, they don't need, they don't need these, the trappings of evangelicalism.It's very attractive for some people, like Benny Hinn, for me, like my parents thought Benny Hinn was like this lunatic, crazy person, and now Benny Hinn is speaking at these groups to kids, and kids are buying into this.I don't quite understand, it's essentially, I guess it's what I grew up with, but with magic, so like, it's pretty popular and they're having huge conferences and they're taking over even the Southern Baptist convention, you see like these seven mountain mandate stuff in there. You see it it's coming into a lot of different aspects of mainstream religion, because they see how successful these guys have been and they're trying to import whatever they can from it, seems like without trying without changing their ideologies too much. [01:06:00] But I don't think they'll be able to maintain that so what's going to happen next after these fundamentalists are out is going to I don't know. It might be even worse.SHEFFIELD: Well, hopefully not. I mean, but I guess we don't know.All right. Well, let me put the book up on the screen here for the viewers. So, the book is called Youth Group: Coming of Age in the Church of Christian Nationalism. And Aksamit. Thanks for being here, Lance.AKSAMIT: Thank you, Matt. It's been a lot of fun.SHEFFIELD: All right, so that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody for joining us, and you can go to theoryofchange.show where you can get full access to all of the episodes, and if you're a paid subscriber, you get the video, audio, and transcript of everything, so I do encourage everybody to do that. You are making this show possible.Thanks very much to those who are already doing it, and if you're not, I encourage you to sign up. You can do that [01:07:00] on Substack or on Patreon, whichever one you prefer. So thank you very much for that. And if you are not able to subscribe now for whatever reason, please do share the episodes with your friends and family or colleagues.In the podcast world, what they call discovery is the number one barrier to getting a large audience to make things sustainable. So I need your help to do that, to share the episodes, and tweet them, or put them on Facebook or wherever else you may happen to be. I really do appreciate that, and I will see you next time. This is a public episode. 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Episode SummaryThis episode is the first of a new ongoing series called “Why I Left,” which is going to be based on conversations with people who left political or religious movements. And the first are going to be free to everyone, but going forward, most of this series is going to be an extra benefit for paid subscribers.We're going to start the Why I Left series with a conversation with my good friend Ty Ross, she is an author and journalist and podcaster who is the cohost of the “Pardon the Insurrection” podcast, and she also wrote a book called The Power of Perspective under the pen name T. R. Armstrong.More importantly for this conversation, however, Ty was born and raised as a Black Republican and has a lot of personal insights on that experience and how, at least in her case, her political identity was just as much a matter of psychology as it was ideology.The video of our conversation is available. A machine-generated transcript of the edited audio follows the show information. You can access the transcript via this episode's webpage as well.MEMBERSHIP BENEFITSThis is a free episode of Theory of Change. But in order to keep the show sustainable, the full audio, video, and transcript for some episodes are available to subscribers only. The deep conversations we bring you about politics, religion, technology, and media take great time and care to produce. Your subscriptions make Theory of Change possible and we’re very grateful for your help.Please join today to get full access with Patreon or Substack.If you would like to support the show but don’t want to subscribe, you can also send one-time donations via PayPal.If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on Apple Podcasts. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. You can also subscribe to the show on YouTube.ABOUT THE SHOWTheory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield about larger trends and intersections of politics, religion, media, and technology. It's part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet.Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChangeMatthew Sheffield on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffieldMatthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffieldTRANSCRIPTMATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Welcome to Theory of Change, Ty.TY ROSS: Hi, thank you for having me, Matt.SHEFFIELD: All right. Well, so let's [00:02:00] get started at the beginning here. So you're originally from North Carolina.And your father was a preacher, but I'll let you take the story from there. Tell us, how did your parents meet and what was their background and all that?ROSS: Well, my parents, they met when they were young.They were both teenagers when my mother had me. They didn't stay together. My father got together with my stepmother shortly after. My grandfather was a pastor in Charlotte. So he had founded two churches. And at that point, my father had, was born again and got saved and went into, into the profession and married my stepmother.So his views were separate from my mother's in that instance, because my father was so involved in the church.SHEFFIELD: And what denomination was this?ROSS: Pentecostal. Pentecostal.SHEFFIELD: Okay, just non-denominational Pentecostal?ROSS: Pentecostal is it's like Baptist, but a bit more extreme. This was just straight up Pentecostal. I guess maybe the closest would be what they consider to be a holiness church. Similar to COGIC [Church of God in Christ] kind of, but it was church almost seven days a week in a sense.There was Bible study, there was children's church, there was regular church, there were revivals. When we weren't at our home church, we visited churches or other churches were visiting us. So it was just everything revolved around the Bible, the church-- very strict, we couldn't listen to secular music, so popular.As I got older, popular bands and groups, I had no idea when my friends were going to concerts or singing popular songs. I'd never heard of them, so I was kind of looked at a little bit as a freak, because I had no idea of what was going on in popular culture.SHEFFIELD: Now, did you know that yourself that people thought you were weird because you didn't know that stuff?ROSS: Well, yeah, because kids [00:04:00] are cruel and kids don't really hold back.And I did have other friends whose fathers were pastors, but they weren't extreme. Like they, they drove flashy cars and they were, they kind of had everything that they wanted. And I, in my mind, I remember thinking, well, like. They worship God. So like, what's the, what's the difference? Her father's a pastor. Like, why is it that, women shouldn't wear pants? Or why is it that listening to this song and, and they weren't songs that were explicit or anything like that. Just, they just weren't singing the gospel.It was under the reasoning that if you're going to sing, it needs to be to praise the Lord. If you're going to dance, it needs to be dancing for the Lord. So that was the whole, everything revolved around God. Your life was not your own. It belonged to serving the Lord. Everything that you, everything that you do.SHEFFIELD: And that was on your, with your dad's environment. Now, how was your mom? What was her sort of viewpoint on all that stuff?ROSS: My mother she was Methodist. So there was church and there was service on Sundays. There was, you pray before you eat, you pray before you say your prayers before you go to bed.And I was thinking about the prayer the other day. I don't know why it was just going through my head. And I was like, why am I thinking about this? But. That, but that was the extent of it because they love to listen to music and have a good time and, mingle with people have people over.So it wasn't, it was strange because I couldn't really understand, there was no one to explain to me the difference between Methodist and Pentecostal. And if you all believe in God, Islam. And you're a good person, then everyone should be going to heaven. It shouldn't matter what pants I'm wearing and what, and just kind of my questioning that didn't make my dad very happy.And it was rough when [00:06:00] I had to live with my father. It was really, it was hard, but it left a really big impression on me.SHEFFIELD: Because how old were you when you did for that time,ROSS: Was I eight or nine, eight or nine years old? And, for myself, I didn't have a lot of friends. I think I had like one, one friend, like I said, everything revolved around the church, but I did have questions because I did have two different influences in my life.So I had something to compare it to. And I've always been kind of inquisitive and just kind of wanted to know, but also as a child. You want to please your parents and you want to be accepted. So I found myself going through the motions of things when I was with my father, learning when they would do things like altar calls.And that's when they would say, okay, if you're a sinner and you're ready to give your, come on up here to the altar. And they would put their hands on your forehead and tears streaming down people's faces and falling to their knees. And I was the daughter, the granddaughter at that time, my father was then just a minister in the church.So every week I felt obligated to go up there, and pretty much put myself up there in front of the church. And I remember once trying to just sit and see what happens. Like maybe they'll just kind of forget about me. And my stepmother was in the choir. So she's looking down and then, my father's sitting up on the men's side I was like, yeah, I've got to get up.I've got to get out. But that was my way of just kind of staying in the family's good graces and being the good, the good daughter, so to speak, because I mean, literally my father, my stepmother, my grandparents, my aunts, my uncles, everyone was in that church. So there was really no [00:08:00] nowhere to go, nowhere for me to kind of voice my concerns or just really ask questions without being chastised because it was basically, if you're asking questions, you're going to hell because you don't have faith in that, that was it.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Okay. Well, so that was your childhood kind of being torn in both directions in some ways and a lot of confusion sounds like, right?ROSS: Yeah, absolutely.SHEFFIELD: So, okay. So once you became an adult, what happened next with that?ROSS: Well, when I became an adult, I, well, my stepfather was Catholic.And I found solace in the Catholic church. It wasn't as crazy and wild. And I, it's so I clung to the Catholic church, and I'd still consider myself a Catholic, but. It was like I was running away from the extreme nature of my father's church. And I felt some, a more forgiving church in the Catholic church.So I held onto that. And at one time I was actually very devout as an adult. I went to daily mass in the mornings. I went to mass on Sundays. I went to retreats. I would do all of the high Holy days. I wanted to be the best Catholic that I. Could be. And I threw myself full, full force into that.It was kind of also a part of like where I was with my political views at the time. Just starting in high school was where I started to formulate more opinions about things going on in the world. Like, Ronald Reagan had a profound impact when he was elected as somebody who's been in debate and student council.As an orator, he draws me in, and he was a brilliant [00:10:00] speaker. He had a way of speaking and it felt like he was speaking to me. And we didn't have social media at the time. We just saw what we saw on our non-cable, TV news and whatever came on. And he seemed to be someone that wanted to continue to move this country forward, and I wanted to be a part of that.And I was not impressed with the Jesse Jacksons and the Al Sharptons. I felt, they felt clownish to me. Now, I had a tremendous amount of respect for Thurgood Marshall. I was very proud that he sat on our, on our Supreme Court. And I know that he was a, an advocate for social justice, but I also know that he was a conservative man.He wasn't some crazy, crazy liberal. And I know that my mother went to see Reagan speak. So that validated my following and him like, okay, my mom supports him and her not being very extreme. It was easy, easier for me to kind of slip into that. And then I just kind of found myself gravitating towards conservative views.And just kind of mixing my background, all of it, just all of it kind of coming together. Just kind of mixing my background and. I didn't realize that I was a Republican, but I knew that I liked certain people and certain what certain people said more than others. And they tended to be of a particular, and then that was just, yeah.SHEFFIELD: Now, did you have any political discussions with your high school friends or anything like that? Or not really?ROSS: When I got into high school and I got into student council and debate, I did, and I would.SHEFFIELD: And was your school like, what was it primarily White or primarily Black or kind of a mix?ROSS: Well, I was here in El Paso, [00:12:00] which is predominantly Hispanic, but I did have the school that I went to because of a lot of military parents, there were more Black people there.And I found myself not agreeing with a lot of what the Black people had to say about things. And I would just kind of listen to them. I was a supporter of the Second Amendment, and I really spent a lot of time focusing on the Second Amendment. Looking back now, I was probably a bit irrational about it, how I clung to it.And I don't even know why I've never held a gun. Never seen one in person, but for some reason I felt like to be a good American and I needed to support that, that the Second Amendment, it was like, I was indoctrinated that you had to support that above. Every other amendment to be a good American, if that makes any sense.And not as extreme as the GOP is today but was a part of who I was. And I don't want to say branding, but I did in a sense, brand myself, I guess you can say for lack of a better word, I had branded myself, this is what I feel. This is what I believe, but I had conviction in the things that I was saying.I would read about them. I would read about people in history, and I wanted to know, and I wanted to be firm when I was having discussions with people. And when I was on the debate team, there was a girl who was really militant, like Black militants. And we were partners when we did cross sex debate.So that was interesting because she was completely opposite of me. And she was like the person that introduced me to Nikki Giovanni. And she, she was really, really like Black Panther, but looking back, she was really fascinating, but, [00:14:00] like I said, I was very strong in what I believed in I believed in the right to life, I believed in the Second Amendment, I followed the guidelines for what I thought was going to be the path that was going to separate me so that I wasn't lumped in with every other Black person at that time.I remember wanting to run as far away as I could from Jesse Jackson and a lot of it. Also, my father couldn't stand him. My father hated him, and he never had anything nice to say about him. And though I was not as extreme as my father, I still wanted to have something. That was something that we had in common.So my father and I, as I got older, we would talk about politics, if there was a speech when I remember when Jesse Jackson was running for president my father and I would have conversations and whatnot. And so it really, it shaped me more my political than my religious with my father in that aspect, because that was something I couldn't join him on the religious thing because it was just too, too much for me.But on the political aspect, we bonded and that was something that I wasn't able to have with him when I really couldn't understand. It felt fake when I lived with him because, like I said, I was going through the motions. But not really feeling it in his church. So, there wasn't really the kind of connection that I wanted to have with him.So, with the politics thing, we had a real true something in com truly something in common. A real bond, and I clung to that as well. And that could also be, me not, living with my mother most of my life. And her moving around, and we moved around. So that was my way of being my father's daughter, [00:16:00] something he could be proud of,SHEFFIELD: know, connection with him.Yeah,ROSS: yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, so the idea though of kind of being different or differentiating yourself from the other Black people that you knew, like that was a, there was an impulse, something you felt very strongly. Why did you feel that way, do you think?ROSS: It was, I think it also had to do with, I was bullied a lot, when we were growing up and we lived in, of course, at that time there, I mean, there's still segregation, but you know, I went to a predominantly White school, but I live in a predominantly Black neighborhood.And my grandfather had a third-grade education. He grew up in the tobacco fields in North Carolina. So for him, reading was really important. And I like dinosaurs, as a kid, and he said, for every book you bring home on what you like, you need to bring home a book on like Black history. And I learned about Jim Crow and for me, I saw how far we'd come, and I had some pride in that, but I had in my In my mind, I felt like we could go so much further.It was kind of an assimilation mindset for, I guess, if that makes any sense. Like, because I was bullied, because I liked to read, because I didn't speak slang or, what have you, and kids would say, oh, you speak be White. You sound White and this and that. And when I would get on the bus and go, 45 minutes to my predominantly White school, I was accepted.I was celebrated to a certain degree. My teacher, Oh, you're so smart. I started getting awards and this, and that felt good. It was a validation that I wasn't getting from my own community. And. That was like, I don't want to [00:18:00] be in this community, had to be treated this, to be treated this way, it didn't really make sense to me.So I just kind of started drifting more and it wasn't that I wanted to be raped or anything. I mean, that, that can't happen, even if I wanted to, but I wanted to be in a space that I considered to be safe. And I wanted to be where someone wasn't going to beat me up, take my lunch, knock me around or whatever.When I was at home, I couldn't really play outside a lot of times because the kids were chasing me around and wanting to fight me all the time. But when I was at school, I'd go have recess and no problems at lunch and my teachers were great and, and everything. And so started shaping my thought process on community acceptance.And I opened my mind and made myself more susceptible to going down that road as a, as a conservative. And I found that when I would tell people that I was, they seemed impressed. And that was another validation. It's like, okay, they like this and they're being nice to me and I'm getting special treatment.Or better treatment. Yeah, this is, this must be the way to go. And because I was Black and conservative, most of those spaces were White. So that would be who I gravitated my friendships to. That would be who I gravitated my friendships to as well. And so, and that just kind of, just said it became second nature to me.If they said this, then I would say that, well, no, and it was just a kind of that kind of thing. But I did believe it though. It wasn't, I wasn't acting, I wasn't playing. I really did in my heart of hearts, believe the [00:20:00] things that I was saying. And I remember in college, I had started at community college, and I had this hippy dippy teacher and she had gone through some marriages.Just got her degree and so she was really proud of herself, and I was proud of her too, but I remember we had to do a paper on the movie The Unforgiven and I wrote my paper about what I thought about it, and it was really heavily pro two way. I didn't really think about that at the time, but there was a lady in Texas who she had, she was a teacher and she had been like carjacked or something. And she was taken into the woods, and she had a tape recorder, and they recorded the whole thing. And I remember saying in the paper, well, if she was packing a gun instead of a tape recorder, she'd still be alive.And I probably just sounded like Lauren Boebert right now, a little disgusting, but that was what I put in the paper. And I didn't think anything about it. And we're in class and the teacher's walking around and she's giving papers back out. And then she looks at me and she goes, you, and she points at me directly.And she goes, you, you are a militant. And I remember being, and everyone looks at me. I went through this phase where I would wear these. Texas style, big bangs with a big bow and like these flower dresses, like Little House on the Prairie style. She goes, you come in here with your bows and your hair and your flower dresses.She goes, you are a militant. And she's pointing and everyone just turns and looks because I was pretty quiet in classroom, in the classroom. And they're like, what? Her? Like they couldn't wrap their head around that. At that time. At that point, I knew I was a Republican because someone told me in high school when we were doing a mock court in DC, it was like the Congressional Youth Leadership Conference.And we got to meet our senators and we got to do like a little fake debate and like to make a bill and [00:22:00] legislation and stuff. And I've just remembered us debating and one of the guys who goes, you're a Republican, right? I was like, cause you're a Republican. And from that point, I realized that I guess I am, and then I identified as such.And, when I first registered to vote, I registered Republican. My first vote was for Bob Dole. I really didn't know a whole lot about Bob Dole, but I knew he wasn't Bill Clinton, and he wasn't a Democrat. So I was a Republican. So I needed to, vote Republican.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and now one thing that you and I have talked about before this was the idea of colorism.ROSS: Yes.SHEFFIELD: That might have played a role in your political view formation as well. So for people who don't know what colorism is, maybe define it first and then talk about it in your own experience, please.ROSS: For me, What colorism is which is prevalent in the Black community. It's the uplifting of those that have features that are closer to being White, even if you're not White, even if you're a brown skin like myself, but you know, your cheekbones are a little higher, your hair's a little straighter, your nose is a little skinnier.That's considered more attractive, even if that person isn't more attractive, it's the color of their skin that's attractive. And as I got older, and I was able to listen to secular music and it was reinforced in the rap videos. It was reinforced in the magazines. It was reinforced on the television, et cetera.And I was a lot darker when I was younger than I am now. Looked more like my father. My nose was a lot broader. I had a gap in my teeth. I was always considered a pretty girl, but my mother was considered beautiful. My mother had lighter skin. My mother had a really thin nose and like [00:24:00] perfect lips.And my friends would always say, how attractive my mother was, how attractive my mother was, and it really already as a young girl, you have issues with self-esteem and self-worth. And so when you're not being validated for who you are. In all spaces, like not just in one space, but literally every space you go, you internalize that and that makes you feel like, okay, then I guess this is what is the standard, this is what, but short of bleaching my skin I will never, I can't have that.So I clung even more to, I want to say, like, just kind of my beliefs and setting myself apart because that was validation for me. Validation that I got from the outside for my wise political views. I was applauded for, wow, you're so smart because I was cosigning their points of view.SHEFFIELD: You were repeating back to them the things that they believed.ROSS: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it probably played a role in my first husband was a White man, from Arkansas, like a town of 2, 000 people. He'd never seen a Black person till he went in the army, like in person.But he was in the, he had, he was in the military. He'd just gotten back from the Gulf war, but he found me attractive. And because living on the border here, you have a lot of mixed relationships. You have White and Black, Black and White, and also military. So you also have a lot of Hispanic, Hispanic, White, Hispanic, Black. So a lot of the girls that were in my school were half Hispanic, half Black.So they had the aesthetic that Black men found attractive that had been reinforced in their mind of what they should find attractive. A lighter skinned woman whose hair is different. Yeah, exactly. And so I got looked over [00:26:00] a lot and I think now, I'm pretty confident in myself. I think I'm okay.But when you're 14 and you want to go on a date, I threw myself into the bait and the, and other things too, but he found me attractive. And so that was nice. So that, that was another. Reinforcement of, okay, you are on, okay, this is your, and he was a conservative person. He didn't believe in abortion.He didn't believe in divorce. I mean, his mother cried when we separated, like they really put the full court press on me. And it's so, it's like looking back because his sister lived in Oklahoma and I will never forget, we took a drive up to see her genie. She's from the home of Garth Brooks, actually is where she lived.And her husband was a truck driver and I'm pretty sure a racist and, but we went bowling and we hung out with them, and they were really, really pleasant and welcoming. And even they didn't want us to get a divorce, and I realize now that I have some perspective and clarity. I can look back and see they didn't see me as Blackand it was easier for them to accept me because I shared. their views. So they could accept their brother marrying a Black girl because I wasn't a Black girl.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah, because basically, I mean, the framework seems to be that you, you can be White, you can be Christian, or you can be a Republican, or all three of those things.Like, you have to be one of those, at least one.ROSS: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: In order to be okay. Or to be a real American in the views of a lot of people, it seems like.ROSS: [00:28:00] Absolutely. And I found that my Republicanism allowed me to move in spaces that I might would have experienced more, not that I hadn't experienced any discrimination, but might would have experienced more had I not been.Because I was able to have a conversation if there was a news event and I learned how to start a conversation with someone. A White person, if I was somewhere and there's, the TV in the cafe or whatever, and a news story or commercial or something comes on and I make a comment that resonates with them.And then all of a sudden, they perk up and they want to have a conversation with me and they, someone that maybe never have ever talked to a Black person before or even wanted to, I thought we won't have anything in common.Which is a lot of judgment of people, and it goes in all aspects, all races, all cultures that I wouldn't have anything in common with them. So I'm just not going to bother.So when there was a discovery that there was something all of a sudden, I was more desirable. I was more attractive to them. And I attracted a lot of White men in my life with my Republicanism a lot. And I started, you start to notice those types of things. You start to realize, and if you're in a situation that's maybe uncomfortable, you learn how to get yourself out of it.Well, if I say the right things, I say this, I say that I'll be able to finesse my way out of this uncomfortable situation and let them know that I'm not a threat. And that was another thing. It was really important for me not to be seen as a threat. I never wanted to be [00:30:00] seen as so that they would be on their guard.I didn't want any barriers. I wanted to have an open opportunity to really do whatever I wanted, go where I wanted and have the best experience possible. I didn't want to be mistreated. I didn't want to be discriminated against. So how can I, what can I do, what can I say to ensure that I won't be mistreated?SHEFFIELD: And then of course there was another experience that you had that was a lot more horrible that probably had an impact on you as well. You want to talk about that?ROSS: Yeah. Yeah, we can talk about that. When I was 12 years old, I, around 11 or 12, I started to grow into my looks a little bit, I guess you can say. And people started finding me more attractive in some aspect. And you could tell by the way that they looked at me. Men, grown men in particular.And I wanted to be attractive, like my mother was, and it was nice. It was uncomfortable, but it was, it also felt good, if that makes any sense. And I would be invited places with some of the older kids and I would hang around and what have you and going house parties and stuff like that.And I remember 1 day, I went to a little house party, I guess, something like that. And a kid that was in my class, well, I wouldn't even call him a kid because he was like 17.And he was in like 7th, 8th grade. But his name, I'm not going to say it. I don't want to get you sued.[00:32:00] He said, hey, come here, I want to show you something.And so I go, and there was like a room in the back, and I go in and there's another guy who I saw in the neighborhood. He was older. He was 23. I won't say his name either. And they grabbed me, and they threw me down on the whatever bed couch. I can't remember. And one was holding my arms down and the other was pulling my pants down to have sex with me.And it was painful. It was rough. There was not full penetration, but it was still rape. But someone started coming down the hall and then I remember them just kind of like throwing me off to the side and then running out. And here I am pulling up, pulling up my pants, trying to process what the hell just happened to me and what was going on.And when I went back to school, things were different. I was being treated differently. Unbeknownst to me, the rumors had spread that I had sex with two guys. That was what they went around like, like I hadn't even had the chance to tell anybody, a friend or anybody what had happened to me. And like I said, I was still processing this.And then all of a sudden, my entire life had changed, like literally overnight for something that was beyond my control. So then the eating disorder started and that kind of became my release to try to get a handle on things. But. It also, the lack of power that I felt, I didn't want to feel anymore. So I wanted to grasp at things and, looking back, whether it was [00:34:00] my politics or whether it was a, whatever it was, I was looking for something to separate me from that person.I needed to rebrand myself, so to speak, even at that point.SHEFFIELD: You needed to be in control.ROSS: Yeah, absolutely. And I had no control. I was a teenager, I was a teenage girl. So yeah, so it would lead me in a lot of ways. I was searching. So, like I said, looking back in retrospect, I can really tie everything, every choice that I made into that person I was and looking for control.I didn't want my community to control who I was. You can't tell me I have to like Jesse Jackson just because I'm Black. I'm going to like who I want to like, and I like Ronald Reagan, so I'm going to like Ronald Reagan. Or you can't tell, everything became that. You can't tell me that I have to go to your church, Dad.I'm going to be Catholic, because I like being Catholic. So I'm going to be Catholic, and I'm going to be the best damn Catholic, and I threw myself, into that. I don't have to marry a Black man. I can do what I want. I'm going to move in these spaces and what have you. So that's it.Just that one experience. It shaped the rest of my life because every choice that I made was predicated on me not wanting to feel like I wasn't in control of my life and myself.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and yeah this-- yeah, it's deep. And I appreciate you having the courage to be able to talk about it at this point. It's still very personal.ROSS: Yeah, yeah, I almost teared up a little bit. But yeah, it is.SHEFFIELD: Yeah well, and it's and I think that that's it is something that people who haven't had an up close contact with a lot of people who are Black Republicans, that they don't get that that there are a lot of things that are different and [00:36:00] make you want to be different, to differentiate yourself from everybody else.And it can be something that is exploited by political consultants at the top end of things, all the way down to just regular people who are just like, well, this is a Black person who is actually a real person because she's Republican.ROSS: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You become; I remember.And I think I told you this, when I was working at a club that I was hired at, and they had never had a Black girl and I was actually recruited from a previous club that I worked at, because they didn't have any Black girls and they saw me and they're like, she's Black but she's not really Black.And they literally said that to my face, he goes, well, the girls that the Black girls that come in here and audition, they're like, they're real Black girls with like big butts and stuff. But I was kind of, I was small then, didn't have much up here or down there, but you know, but I spoke the way that was acceptable to them.I looked in a way that was acceptable to them. And they wanted to have me there. And I was eager to be there. It was nice to be wanted. It was nice to be considered deserving. But it sounds sad, and it was looking back, but that's exactly the word it felt. It was good to feel deserving of being asked there.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.ROSS: I didn't have to go and apply there. They came looking for me. They came looking for me. So being chosen in that aspect. And then of course, these were clubs that were predominantly White customers as well.[00:38:00] They still, North Carolina, they discriminated then, it was early, early nineties, what, like 93.But they seem to get a kick out of my vocabulary and my vernacular, because I didn't speak in slang, but nobody in my house did. And we lived in the hood when I was growing up, but like I said, my education was important for my grandfather and just being well read and everything. And I loved books.So, you pick up what you're around. And I wasn't around a lot of that. So, but yeah, but they seem to really get a kick out of it and now I'm embarrassed, but then I didn't think they were denigrating me.I thought they were complimenting me, when my manager said, come here, come here. And that's, well, then I went by the name Dallas, Dallas. I was like, I'm from Texas. So went by the name Dallas, but it was like, hey, and they would ask me to repeat a sentence or say something. And I'd say it and they go, see, she puts the G on the end of her words. And then they were--SHEFFIELD: Almost like you were their pull-string puppet kind of.ROSS: Yeah. And there was a Black person that worked in the club besides me. My apologies, the shoeshine guy. No b******t. And the shoeshine man was Black, and there was me, those were the two, the two Black people in the entire club.But I learned to stay away from Black men that came inside the club because it didn't matter if the guy was a hundred years old, if a Black guy came in and I sat and talked to them, it was, 'That's your boyfriend, is that your boyfriend? I don't want to get in trouble here. I don't want your,' that was just an automatic thing.So I had to wanted to talk to everybody. And I remember I would get comments [00:40:00] from Black guys that would come in and them not really understanding, like, this is my living that I'm making here, and it's really not about you, but it's about my livelihood.And this is how people think and this is how, so I can't, I just can't, spend time with you for 10 or 20 sitting and chatting, even if the conversation is great, because it may cost me 2 or 300, so. That became kind of awkward and it just kind of, I got a lot of side eye, and I deserved it, but I was being practical at the time.And like I said, you, you, you calculate things, you watch, I'm a watcher. I watch how people engage, how people interact. I watch what people say. And I modify my behavior accordingly so that I can get done what I need to get done, regardless of, of what that is, but I've also been on the receiving end of that same thing.I worked at beauty control cosmetics in Dallas, and I was a receptionist and the only other Black person in the company was the vice president. And he used to work for Mary Kay. He worked in research and development, and he would not talk to me. He would kind of ignore me there. And so I, I kind of picked up on that.He was probably going through the same thing that I was being the only Black person in a White space and also being in his executive position as well. But I was getting asked to lunch all the time by. The old perverts, the White ones, in the company that worked upstairs to him. I actually went to lunch with a couple of them.But they'd come down and they'd chat. Just the, just the chat with the pretty Black girls sitting down at the desk. And they would come, and they'd talk, and they'd go by my desk. I don't know how many times. Times a day and [00:42:00] whatnot, but I mean, I didn't, I didn't fault him, what have you, but also if he had spoken to me, I guarantee everyone in that company would have thought we were having an affair.Like if he was spending the kind of time with me, he's Black and I'm Black. I have zero doubt that would have been the natural assumption.SHEFFIELD: Because all Black people know each otherROSS: Exactly.SHEFFIELD: And so, and, and they also know each other in the Biblical sense.ROSS: White guys, they're not thinking they're in their mind. Well, she's Black, then he's not attracted to her because some people think like that too, because like when I was working in clubs, I remember girls getting upset if I was making money and they were just like, you're the only Black person in here.You're making all the money. And I'm like, yeah, that's kind of the point because some guys kind of like Black women. It's kind of their kink, their fetish or whatever. So that also put me in a position to kind of have my own customer base because there were those that that was their way of kind of, because in their mind, they don't know where they're going to run into a Black woman or want to, so they were able to come and talk and, and that would always be the same thing.SHEFFIELD: And things also were different in the early 90s with regard to interracial dating. It was just extremely uncommon, even back then. I mean, hell, they even made a movie about it in the late 90s called something, I guess it was early 2000s or late 90s, I forget called Something New, where there was a Black woman and a White man who got together, and it was something strange.That was the subtext of that movie. It was that everybody thought it was weird.ROSS: Well, you know what? Because when, when people think about interracial relationships, it's been historically Black man, White woman. So while there have been, of course, we wouldn't have Loving v. Virginia if not, but there have been, but not, they've been rare.Not as common.SHEFFIELD: So, seeing and that, by the way, statistically speaking, sorry, [00:44:00] was, is that when you look at people who do date outside of their own race heterosexually, male, female, Black men are the most likely to date outside the race, and then Black women are the least likely to date outside of their race.ROSS: Yeah, Black women would rather be single than a lot of them. Because they're just not, my friend Stephanie, my best friend, she just is not attracted to White men. Or Mexican, she's not attracted to any other race but Black. That's it for her. And I know a lot of women like that that if they can't find that Black man of their dreams and they would just be single date, whatever and then hang with their girlfriends.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And there are some Black feminists who argue that that's another example of racism in that Black women are expected to stay home and keep the fire burning, but Black men are not expected to do that. It's like sexism and racism combined.ROSS: Yeah, it is. a lot of Black men I've had tell me that they don't date Black women.I've had a lot of friends that are Black that are male that tell me why they don't like Black women or why they don't date Black women. They feel comfortable to tell me because they know that I don't care number one, and number two that I date outside of my race, but I date all races, but they'll have these conversations, and they feel so comfortable having these conversations with me about how awful Black women are.And, but they don't, as same as, like I said, they, the White people didn't see me. They don't see me as the typical Black girl in their minds, which is what they would say, though we were not dating. We were just real, just close friends or whatever, but they don’t see me that way. And there's a lot of that in the Black community.So like he gave me that, he gave me that vibe of when somebody, there's [00:46:00] something they don't, they like, but they don't want to like it. And it makes them mad. So they get mad at the thing that they like that they don't want to like, like that was, that was how I felt, that was how I felt. And, but it was so, it was, and, and I kept in my mind, I had to go inside because I was like, I don't feel safe around this guy because something just, he just, that kind of energy, that kind of aggressive energy, I was like, I would never be alone with this person like ever, ever, with this person.And then having been being a survivor of sexual assault, I'd like to keep my space if I feel some uncomfortable or aggression, especially from, or really from any man, but particularly a Black man too. Yeah.But it's, it's so incredibly, I don't know. I think about so many things now. And I, and it's like, I can pinpoint things along the way.It was like, yeah, I can see how that played a part, like leading me up to where I am now, which is I'm almost on the opposite extreme end of the spectrum. My ex-husband said when Rush Limbaugh died, I remember you would listen to him every single day. Which I did.And he was on the EIB network, and I'll never forget because of their stupid commercial. That's what he called it.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. It was literally just his show.ROSS: It was Rush because he was in the, like, when I was going to call it, like in the afternoons, but there was a judge, Dr. Laura. Laura Schlesinger.My dad loved her.SHEFFIELD: Who was racist.ROSS: Absolutely. My dad thought she was the greatest thing since sliced bread. He had all her books. He had, he really did. But it was G. Gordon Liddy, and then it was Rush, and then it was Dr. Laura. And I would listen all day. I would listen to all of their blogs. Every day, because [00:48:00] I remember.G Gordon Liddy had this calendar packed and stacked, and it was girls in bikinis with guns because he was always hawking it on, on his thing, on his show. And I can't believe I'm Jesus. But yeah, I listened every day and I thought, and that was the first time I remember the first time I ever heard Rush say feminazi.When he would talk about Hillary Clinton and he would talk, and I was, and it's, and it's so weird because I could go inside and into my classes and have an open mind, like I really enjoyed, but I was also an economics major. So it wasn't a whole lot of, but yeah, I,I did it. My grandmother listened to Rush until he died, even when he went. All the way off the deep ends, like, because, he used to be a fricking radio, the host. So, when he first started, he had his right wing, but it wasn't as crazy as when he really got, crazy. When it was like, yeah, I can't to this guy, but my grandmother, my dad would say.Rush said today, or I was listening to Rush today, or my grandmother, Rush mentioned Fox stayed on 24 seven at my dad's house. If they weren't watching like a movie or something, it was on Fox all the time.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and unfortunately that is how a lot of elderly people's television is set to.It's almost like, yeah, if, if they had a cathode ray tube, the old-style TV would have like the Fox logo burned in the corner when they turn it off.ROSS: Yeah, yeah. But you know, even like way, way back, Fox. wasn't that bad. [00:50:00] Like I was watching a segment that they did on Black history that wasn't mentioned and they were bringing up all of these things and having an actual real discussion about why those things weren't taught.And, and I was like, this is Fox. Wow. They were, they were kind of sane then, but I think that was the hook is that it was a little. More conservative for the more conservative folks and Blacks included because like I said, it is the South and then the religious people, but the little upticks in extremism kind of go unnoticed.It's like I can look at my son now and see, wow, he's so tall, but it didn't happen overnight. He started small and, but he was always growing, it was just kind of, Like that. And then before you know it, you're radicalized. Even if you are Black, you can find yourself getting to that, to that point.And it wasn't even until my dad, until my dad got COVID. Well, really it was after George Floyd's murder because my dad, he called me and he goes, Oh, your stepmother and I are going to a protest. And I remember thinking, what? protest. He was like, yeah, we're going to a George Ford. And I was floored because I had started to in 2020.Well, even before that, a little, I'm going to say maybe 2018 started to evolve in my views a bit. And so when I would talk to my dad,SHEFFIELD: Trump related at all; do you think was that Trump related?ROSS: Not instantly. Because I thought he was a whole mess and when he was elected, I thought we would suffer through it with his idiocy, but the people that he would surround himself with good people, and we [00:52:00] would be okay. And then he would get to say, I was the president and just move on and go back to, hosting beauty pageants or whatever. But when I started to see certain things, when I started to see him rolling back certain legislation. That, even though I was a Republican and I was, pretty staunch in my beliefs, but I did still have my own mind.I knew Newt Gingrich was trash. I was cognizant enough to know that Jesse Helms was a racist. I didn't make excuses, but I knew he was a racist. I knew that. So I was still cognizant.I also knew that Clarence Thomas, I believed Anita Hill. I watched those hearings. I thought he was a horrible choice to replace Thurgood Marshall.I, I just I knew, and I believed Anita Hill and I was glued to the television, and I thought, God, what a disgrace for Thurgood Marshall's memory, memory. And now where we are with like whitewashing and erasing of history, there are going to be people who don't even know that Thurgood Marshall was the first Black person to sit on the Supreme Court.They're going to think that Clarence Thomas was, and it may sound hyperbolic, but they really, they, there probably are people right now who think that he was the first Black person to sit on the bench, but I started to look, pay attention more The Kavanaugh that I think that was the main turning point for me.I think no, I'm not made a major because I believed Blasey Ford and I remember crying because I remember what it felt like to have been sexually salted and also having not shared my story and it just brought back a flood of memories. And that just kind of washed over me and I, I [00:54:00] was sexually assaulted again in college.A stranger had come through the patio door at my friend's house. We went out drinking. I went, I was asleep on her bed, and they came in and it went to trial. He got 10 years. But it was. Blasey Ford brought up both of those and I remember thinking how strong she was when she was testifying and thinking when I was on the witness stand testifying, I wasn't just testifying for me.Then I was testifying for 12-year-old me who had no voice and it just really, it shook a lot of things loose in me that I had maybe been clinging to to avoid dealing with a lot of things in my life, including my politics. And it made me really look inside myself.And I was always a Never Trumper, but like, if you're going to support this and support this party, like do it with sincerity do it because it's still in lines. And I still consider myself like I listened to right wing, like right leaning, not right wing, right leaning. Like, I like the dispatch, I like The Bulwark.But I discovered the Young Turks on accident. They came up in a Facebook feed, and what Cenk was saying made sense. And Ana was saying, and I go, God, that makes so much sense. So I started listening to them more, but I still didn't pull the trigger on my party yet. I still didn't leave.But I started to listen to what they were saying, and it made me start looking in, and I was like, is this really what's going on? Because I wasn't active on, on Twitter. I'd had my account since 2009, but I wasn't. So then it made me want to go on Twitter to see what they were talking about. And then I would hear people say they went to Twitter for news, but I didn't really know what that meant.And so then I'm, I'm getting this information. And so I'm, I'm at the time it wasn't as [00:56:00] trolly and because I didn't have a couple hundred followers, so I wasn't getting bombarded. So I was able to. Search for the things that I wanted. And then when I search for those things, like minded things would come into my feed and I found myself really, I was like, wow, that makes sense.That makes sense. And not from a party standpoint, but just from just common sense and, and just government, and then Trump started to do things and I started paying attention to the hatch at violations and who he had, installed in his cabinet who I didn't really pay attention to in 2016, so then I'm looking into bits and like, these are terrible people.Like, these are, how are they doing this? Like, how are, like, my mother did the mail. She was over the entire peninsula. She was the, and in Germany and then in South Korea, like she qualifies that she could be in postmaster general. But, and then the ramped-up shootings. That really started to get to me like that really, especially as I'm now looking at I have now I have a Black son.I didn't think about that before. I mean, I knew that what happened in the Rodney King situation was bad. I knew that he got beat. I didn't understand how the jury could have let them go. I knew the riots were out of anger. I felt bad like that was the but now it was like, but that seemed so few and far between.Back then, though it probably was happening all the time like it is now, we just didn't have the smartphones for it, but there's then just started to be more and, and, then you have like the Ferguson's and, it, it came to a head, like in 2020, it was just, it was so much and then to see how people were starting to change people in my Party were changing.I knew that Reagan wasn't [00:58:00] perfect. I knew that, but I could appreciate him speaking with the NAACP. I could appreciate him implementing the earned income credit, which helped lift millions of families, especially families of color out of poverty. Even Nixon and the EPA, like I could appreciate that when they knew something was the thing that they needed to do, they, they did it regardless, and their views on, on immigration, because being here on the border, that's an issue that's important to me because I know so many mixed families where some are documented and some aren't are some might be first generation and some might be three generation or or what have you.SHEFFIELD: And you see the people who are caught up in the system.ROSS: Yes.SHEFFIELD: And are failed by it.ROSS: Exactly. And things are not getting better. And I was like, this isn't. No, no, we're supposed to be getting better.We're not supposed to be getting worse. Where's that Republican Party that wanted things to be better, at least, at least they would say it out loud, even if it wasn't always what they and they would still do legislation that didn't move us forward, even if they were, snatching with one hand and, but it's still, it's still gave hope that we were moving on a positive trajectory.And then. Trump started to see like the whole MAGA thing just got weird. Like after he won, I didn't realize why people still needed to run around with those hats on and these flags and stuff, it was like, people put their little things in their yard. You might go by and back in the day, you might see Obama sign. You might see a McCain sign. Every other house is different. But it didn't matter.SHEFFIELD: And then they would take it down!ROSS: After the election. But you were still neighbors. [01:00:00] That neighborliness started to go away. And then there were people in play that were really, really extreme. And the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and then his kids in the White House and, and just I was like, this isn't, this isn't the government that I really respect and love, like I can't, and I registered independent in 2020.And then here in New Mexico, you have to have, you have, you can't vote except for the party you're registered. So I had to register like the day of, I had to register Dem so that I could vote. And then I just, Dem down ballot.SHEFFIELD: And how did that feel doing that?ROSS: Like a loss, like a loss because I had held on to, even when personally, like when they got more extreme with the second, I didn't mind the assault weapons ban. I didn't mind. Like I was never like, everybody should have a machine gun, you're going to take my rights away. Kind of. Even when I was a little bit extreme with the Second Amendment defense, I didn't mind those things and the more school shootings and stuff and, and I started saying, and I go, this doesn't common sense, this doesn't have anything to do with being a Republican.At least from what I knew for 30 years. Like this isn't what being a Republican's about. Like we are still human. We just lean a little conservative and we believe a little bit of this or a little bit of that. And When I was my sexual assault that I had in college and had the rape kit in the hospital, they wanted, they offered me the morning after pill and I refused to take [01:02:00] it, I mean, I've never been one of those crazy, like, wanting to burn anybody at the stake or whatever, it's a personal, it's a personal choice, but I didn't, I didn't take it because I, I'm Catholic and I can't,I mean, thankfully I didn't get pregnant, but that was my, that was my mentality, but it was also my, it was my choice, but I'm, I, I'm also older now and I'm also a parent and I think that has played a lot because now I'm not, I'm not just living for myself. It's easy for me to believe in certain things when I just have myself to worry about.But now I have to worry about how the people I support, the choices and decisions and the legislation they make are going to affect my children. And when I see these people on the news and then my, now I have a Black son. Crap. Now I have a Black son and he's, he's really brown, so what is, this isn't getting better, there's a, there's not even a Rodney Cain worse than Rodney Cain like every other day.SHEFFIELD: And some people applaud private citizens for taking action.ROSS: Yeah, the Trayvon Martin thing, though. So it was a little, it was a process of a lot of things, like, Trayvon Martin thing, because that horrified me how people didn't agree with this child.Like, he was a kid. And supported this man. And I go, that, that shouldn't be partisan. Because everyone thought that, I thought the beating of Rodney King was terrible. Everybody, no matter what, we were like, what the heck? This is awful, and them getting off. We're like, man, how could we all saw it, but we dealt with it.And then, of course. Whenever there are riots, it always makes it easier for them to [01:04:00] then just go back to not being shocked anymore at it and, throwing us away again. But it was just a culmination of things through the years, I think, that were chipping away at me and making me think twice. And when I'm listening, really listening.So if I'm listening to the radio and someone says something, not accepting it just because I have an R on my registration. But like, no, that's not a very human thing to say. At the end of the day, I consider myself a human. I mean, I honestly, kind of wish, which I had made a tweet about, that they would kind of do away with the parties, in the sense of making people run on who they are and how that would affect.Those people that go, well, I've always voted Republican, but that doesn't mean you always have to. I always had always voted Republican too. And then you don't when it's no longer in your best interests as a citizen, as a human, period. That's what growth means.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, exactly. Now, how has it been with your family members since you have had your political transformation?ROSS: Well, my father, he passed away. So my father was kind of the glue that kept everything together. And though my grandmother doesn't really talk about politics, she's 90 something, but I need to call her to, thanks for reminding me.But I don't really talk to her that much, I'm not as close. My dad was the glue that kept everybody together. So I haven't even really talked to my sister, like I haven't talked to her since my dad died, but my dad, my dad took care of my sister. And so my sister's has full sickle cell, so she spent a lot of time in and out of the hospital.And so my dad was always there. My [01:06:00] stepmother wasn't very, she wasn't the most loving stepmother. So when you talk about a mother, you know the relationship between mothers and daughters. My stepmother based— I didn't realize it, but my sister opened up to me because my sister's gay, but my sister was in the closet until six months before my dad died.She came out that Thanksgiving. She came out finally, but my sister, she would get extensions and get nails done because my grandmother would say she looked like a boy because my sister, my sister's she’s a stud. The short hair and she wears the Timberlands and the white t-shirts kind of stuff, but she started wearing dresses and like dating guys because she wanted to please, my stepmother when she found out that my sister was gay, my sister hadn't come out yet.My sister was in college and had someone. And when she, her stuff came home for the semester, my stepmother being nosy, went through and found these love letters. For a month, my sister said my stepmother took a taxi to church because she wouldn't ride in the same car with my sister.That's how, so if you want to know how extreme my, that side, my dad's side of the, yeah, that extreme that she would take a taxi to not ride in the same car with my sister as if she was going to catch the gay or something. Because she was worried of how it was going to make her look as the first lady of the church.that her daughter was a lesbian. Yeah. Because she took great pride in that, that was all she knew her and my father were together since they were like 18, 18, 19 years old. They were together for 42 years. So she's always been Mrs. Stanley Pettis. And then it was lady Pettis. And then it was that, and then when she ascended to, my grandmother's throne when my father was, became a bishop and was installed as the, the bishops met and [01:08:00] chose my dad to take over the church.So she relished her position. And so she takes appearance is very, it's very important. And I remember. My sister saying that she had these pictures on her desk with like no pictures of my sister, like on her desk at work and stuff and that she would always say things like, and, and like, why can't you be cultured like your sister, like your sister's cultured.She speaks other languages. She's traveled the world. Like she was always being compared to me and I didn't, I had no idea that that was going on. I thought I was the prodigal daughter, but apparently they, so my sister. was feeling like she lived in my shadow, even though I wasn't there. And she was doing all the right things.She played drums in the church. She was there. She was doing everything that she could to please my parents. And it wasn't good enough. And here I was doing whatever the hell I wanted to do out in my life. And they were like putting her in, in that position. So, but yeah, but I haven't really like much talked about them, but My mother is a bit horrified that of my extreme on the other side now, so to speak, on my Facebook, because my Facebook is a bunch of maggots.All of my friends, all of the White people in El Paso pretty much voted for Trump. It's not an exaggeration and it's not being racist. My ex-husband, he put it perfectly. He was like, they feel like they finally get their chance because this town, like I said, it's 80% Hispanic. There is no majority for them.So, and they feel a bit kind of like nothing caters to them here, so to speak. Empowered, yeah. Yeah, and yeah, exactly. And so, and then, and the people that do, like we have a [01:10:00] small but thriving Jewish community. And we have a small but thriving Arab community. And the Arabs. The Arab and Jewish communities pretty much built all of El Paso.They own everything. They own all the commercial, well, except Jordan Foster. I mean, Paul Foster. Jordan Foster's his company, but he's a billionaire. And he moved here. We got like five billionaires here, but they literally own everything. And I remember when I was growing up, people would always say, oh, I couldn't get that job because I don't speak Spanish.I didn't get that because I don't speak Spanish. Well, why don't you learn Spanish? This is America. My youngest son, they have dual languages free for anybody can join. My son is the only non-Latino of, of, of not of Latino heritage in those classes. And he's been since kindergarten. He can read, write, and speak fluent Spanish.His books are in Spanish, his social studies, his, and it's free and it's right here available. But it's like just out of stubbornness, they won't do it. It's like a, just because this is America or, or what have you of that kind of thing. But every, yeah, but every here. And so on my Facebook.It's like the only way I can really kind of disseminate information. So I will aggregate some of the best stuff from Twitter, like debunking or fact checking, and I'll make a tweet. I mean, I'll make a, I'll make a post and then I'll, I'll leave it at that. And then I'll make a, so it's kind of, I'm trying to subliminally put in their mind, these commonsense things, especially with.The indictment because there's just so much misinformation. And then my friend, Maricio Quinones. Had just changed his profile picture like three or four days ago to American Black, American shredded flag. And is it Trump [01:12:00] 2024? And I'm like, your dad lives in, in what is like Mauricio, like your sister's a first generation of, coming here, like your whole family, whenever I'm at the house, it's mostly only Spanish speaking. And I'm like, what, what in the absolute world? Do you think that this man is going to do for you? Like why? It's absolutely insane. But I never engage on any of their posts.Like I never jump on them. I never jumped, but I try to put things that I think will like, like the Loving v. Virginia case was like, this has been 50, 56 years since loving the Virginia was. The SCOTUS decision in that, because I know a lot of interracial people here. Damn near every relationship is interracial on the border.And because I'm trying to get them to understand, like, this is what woke looks like.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it actually looks like you if you think about it.ROSS: Exactly. Because, I have my friends and she's blonde haired, blue eyed and her husband is Latino and he's, he looks very Latino. And I'm like, if not for some one person, you and your husband would not be together.And it's so easy for them in our bubble here in El Paso. But I go, I want you to drive from here to Dallas now. And I want you to do it at night. And I want you to have to stop in Midland on the way to get a room. And we're going to see how that works out, or you're going to have to stop, let your husband go in and get this room, with some lunatic ass, like, [01:14:00] yeah, because El Paso, we are so diverse and everybody is so open, but even my friends.Lizette, she goes, but you can feel it, friends. She goes, it's just so ugly. And Lizette was a Republican her whole life too. Her husband, he was going to get me a job working for George Bush when he was governor because he was really good friends with George Bush because they would spend a lot of time at the governor's mansion.And then when he was elected president, they would spend time at the White House. He was, he had a lot of money.He was, he was a wealthy real estate developer. But yeah, but she's like, it just, she, cause her kids were going to Montessori school and they, she's got, the country club and all that, that stuff. But she's like, it just, it feels a little bit darker here. People that you just kind of don't look at the same, the same way.But I try because I don't really go out much anymore. What I really hate is most of my LGBTQ friends, when I do go out with them, they're very low information. So I try to put stuff about legislation that's being passed. Because I really want them to be more involved. Because there's absolutely no reason.The reason that Beto lost to Ted Cruz, was it in 2018? Was because of El Paso. El Paso turned out for Cruz. They didn't turn out for Beto. They were holding on to grudges from frickin 40 years ago, 30 years ago because of Beto's parents or because whatever they think he did or didn't do or his dad did or didn't do.But it had nothing to do with who he is and because he didn't lose by that much, it was so close in those votes were here because we El Paso is very, for the most part, we are very blue after people got caught up in that [01:16:00] Trump wave. So they elected a Republican mayor, DeMargo (sp), and that was when we were, then COVID hit, and he was trying to do the Trumpy thing when the judge was putting mandates and we were ground zero and we had bodies piling up.The guy who was mayor before him, Oscar Leaser, he's like, I want my job back. He won 85% of the vote, of the vote. So El Paso is not El Paso, we can do it. That personal grudge they were holding on to. I just don't, that just things could have gone a lot different, but I try. So I know that there are people that are reasonable because I have for, I have a friend who voted for Trump.She voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. She, but we're but I, I know her heart as a person, but she stumped for Oscar Lisa to remove DeMarco. So I know that she has an open that she's a gettable person to reason with of this is why you know what I mean to when I drop things that and even some, of course, they won't say or won't like, but I know that for some of them, it's at least sinking in one because they haven't blocked me.I mean, I had one friend block me after like 10 years, but being friends, but she was also posting about adrenochrome. So she was far gone.That was, that was a wrap, but yeah, I'm pretty comfortable now.SHEFFIELD: This has been really great Ty, and I appreciate your time and your willingness to be vulnerable and to really delve deep into your own situation and your own thinking. What's kind of the parting thought that you have for the audience after all this?ROSS: I would just like to say that we need to really, we need to kind of come, we need to come [01:18:00] together.On the left. I mean, I mean, there's some fracturing going on. There are a lot of bad actors out here who are insidious. We saw what happened with Tricia Cotham in North Carolina. What's happened with Kirsten Sinema. We need to really pay attention. We need to support our candidates; we need to stay on top of the DNC.We need to be more vocal. We need to combat the misinformation as much and as hard as we can. And when it comes to our MAGA friends and family, relatives, whatever, we may need to do it a little lighter. Like I said, like maybe just, making a little post that aren't attacking, but just dropping a little truth bomb or something, just to kind of those, at least.That are not completely far gone, they're not on the Q side, but you know, still leaning right and they're only getting one side of information. So there's nothing to combat it and that's where we come in. That's where we have to be willing to say, I don't want to talk to them. We have to be willing to talk because right now everything is at stake.It's not just a little bit. Everything is at stake, our, our future, our present, right now I wake up every day dreading to pick up the phone because I don't know what's transpired over the last 24 hours. And I'm hoping that the world hasn’t fallen off the edge of flat earth completely, but yeah, but yeah, but we, we need to be willing, but we also have to be vigilant.And we have to be willing to stand our ground, we have to do more about the domestic terrorism, stochastic terrorism that's going on. If you have friends and family in the LGBTQ community, you need to be vocal, you need to show them that you're there for them, and you need to,[01:20:00] if you hear someone using slurs or talking in a way, don't be silent.Because that's, that's how they're able to do it is because now, instead of them being afraid to say the N word, you're afraid to tell them not to, and it should be the other way around, it should be the other way around, but we need to get back to that. They can still think it. I don't really care, but.Let them do it under their, under the rocks they used to live under.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and, and it's important to educate people on both the left and the right, because there, I think there's a lot of people who are on the left that are just, they sort of habitually are against, a lot of this right wing stuff, but they don't know why, and they don't know what, what they should do about it, and what's at stake.ROSS: Yeah. No, I, you're absolutely right.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, Ty, this has been great. I really appreciate you joining me today.ROSS: Thank you for having me.SHEFFIELD: By the way, you're on Twitter at cooltxchick, but you pronounce it “Cool Texas chick.”ROSS: Yes.SHEFFIELD: So people should definitely check it out, and follow you on there. I highly recommend it. Thanks so much.ROSS: Thanks. Bye, Matt.SHEFFIELD: All right. So that is the program for today. This is the first part of our Why I Left series, and I hope you enjoyed the program here. And as I mentioned at the beginning the first two episodes of this series are going to be available to the public. But going forward after that, they are going to be premium benefit episodes for paid subscribers. So you can go to theoryofchange.show to sign up on Patreon or Substack, whichever one you prefer.And I really do appreciate your support. Everybody who is already a paid subscribing member. Thanks so much. And I would encourage everybody else to do that as well. And that enables me to keep making shows like this.And if you have any ideas for content that you would like to see, or guests that you would like to see interviewed please do let me know. Reach out on the Flux website, flux.community, or you can find me on various [01:22:00] social media places as well. Thanks so much, and I'll see you next time. This is a public episode. 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Episode SummaryThe cable news industry is in crisis. It is part of a larger crisis known as cord cutting, which is a phenomenon of people realizing that they really don't need to pay for 500 channels when they only watch 3 or 4. Across the country, millions of people have decided they don't want to pay for cable or satellite TV. That has made a crisis in the cable news industry as well, where CNN, Fox, and MSNBC have faced a number of years of declining ratings.Even though there have been some blips here and there with the 2020 election or the initial election of Donald Trump in 2016, the long-term ratings trend is downward. As a result, there is a perpetual need for the executives of the companies that own the major cable news channels to manage the decline.How they do that has been very interesting to watch over time. Recently, there have been big changeups within CNN, which was bought by a larger company called Discovery which subsequently brought in a new CEO named Chris Licht, who drove away much of the audience and created friction with staff by trying to make the network more pro-Republican.On the Fox side of the dial, the network is in turmoil after choosing to settle a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems over false allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election publicized by then-president Donald Trump and many Fox personalities.Despite settling the Dominion lawsuit for $787 million, the network is still facing another case from a voting company called Smartmatic. On top of that, Fox just settled a lawsuit by a former producer of Tucker Carlson for $12 million who had alleged she'd witnessed racism, antisemitism, sexism, and claimed that she had been forced to lie in the Dominion lawsuit before it was settled.In response to losing all this money, Fox has completely overhauled its primetime evening lineup. Tucker Carlson, who was the centerpiece of the schedule at 8 PM Eastern time was fired.Some people have argued that the firing of Carlson is going to permanently offend the Fox viewership base, and it is true, no doubt, that the ratings have been lower after all this turmoil, but there are indications that Fox is back on the upward path now.Will CNN ever figure out what it wants to be? Will the far-right return to watching Fox? How much more money can Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch afford to lose?There's a lot to talk about here. In this episode, we're featuring Colby Hall, he is the founding editor of Mediaite.com and a longtime observer and participant in television news.The video of our conversation is below. The transcript of the edited audio follows.TranscriptMATTHEW SHEFFIELD: It's good to have you here. Welcome to Theory of Change, Colby.COLBY HALL: Thanks for having me. I'm thrilled to chat with you.SHEFFIELD: All right. So let's kind of set the table here with some larger context. I think when people have discussions about cable news ratings, a lot of times they don't really understand how the industry works, how it's measured, and also how cable news fits in the larger rubric of cable paid for television. So, overall, I think the number one thing for people to understand about this is that cable news just actually isn't that popular.People like any given show that somebody is watching, even the most popular one, like we have a country of 330 million people and the top-rated show, if they're lucky, is 3 million.HALL: Right. Right. I'd say on a good day, maybe over 3 million. And if you look at the target demographic from which sponsors actually pay for which cable news gets paid, it's much, much smaller.So, you're really talking to less than 1% of citizens are actually watching any given show, but I would say their influence far outweighs that. Because. Really? I'm old enough to remember when there were three channels plus PBS, and it was a big deal when cable came to town and Hutchinson, Kansas, where I lived at the time, we had 13 channels and now, [00:06:00] there's endless numbers of television channels but more importantly, there's.social media, there's smartphones, there's streaming services. But still, even though cable news viewers are declining in size to the degree that I'm not sure I would say it's crisis, but that's not an unfair word to use. They're still making a lot of money off of subscribers from cable set top boxes, 80% of the revenue comes from subscribers.And only 20% comes from advertising. But it's still the loudest voice in the room to steal a phrase. Cable news is the most concentrated political media outlet. And so if you are a politician and you want to speak to your constituents, if you're left of center, you most likely go on MSNBC. If you're right of center, you definitely go on Fox News and or Newsmax.And. What's happened over the last 10 years or so is it's not just the people that are watching the linear viewing of that cable news. It's that which is excerpted the aggregation of third-party video content, which has been shared by websites like Mediaite, or clipped and put on Twitter, or shared on Reddit, or any number of outlets, right?So, these two things can be true. Cable news viewers as much smaller than people think. Yeah. There is something self-selected about the audience, but its influence, I think, has never been more powerful in part because politicians have sort of, I don't know, lessened their voice. I guess the best metaphor I'd say with regard to Fox News is there was a time where it looked like Fox News was working for the GOP, per Roger Ailes design, and suddenly over the last five years [00:08:00] that dynamic seemed to switch, whereas it seems like very often, Republicans are working for Fox News.And I think that's not just a hit on Fox News or Republicans, the same dynamic exists on the left, just it's less efficient. It works less effectively. So cable news is declining in viewers, but at the same time, its current influence on the national dialogue, I would argue, has never been stronger.I think a lot of these talking heads, the Tucker Carlsons and the Sean Hannitys, those people have sort of filled a vacuum created by political figures who are more into getting deals done and promoting their brand than they are in actual leadership or policy. So it's a very complicated idea summed up as pitifully as possible.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and I guess maybe the analogy I would use for this is before television times and before radio, it was a huge thing in the American South to do what they called a tent revival. And so basically cable news is sort of the tent revival of the political scene. But not very many people can fit into these tents or watch whoever is showing up to speak in that given moment. But on the other hand, they're part of a larger culture than ours. They're sort of like the main event in any given moment.HALL: It's a perfect metaphor, because a lot of times, the people are preaching to the gospel, right? So the viewers of cable news, opinion driven cable news, primetime, Fox and MSNBC are going there. They're tuning in to have their preexisting beliefs reaffirmed, right? So, and the talking heads are literally preaching to the choir.And it's not just that the, what the broadcast programs are, [00:10:00] the impact isn't limited to just what's being said at that moment. There, people that view it, then cite this stuff and literally spread the gospel. So your revivalist tent metaphor is, I think, very, it's perfect. So kudos. Well, well done.Oh, thanks.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. So, and we talked about it a little bit, just briefly for a second there about the industry itself. Cable paid for television subscriptions that actually is in a crisis the larger cable industry and through what, what people have now called cord cutting, where they just don't feel the need to pay for.Constant stream of shows they'd never watch, channels they're not interested in. And so as a result, a lot of people are taking that money that they were spending and they were, they're spending it on things like Netflix or Hulu and, those are not news and sports services.So, and people are finding also. You know that there, I mean, there just has been a declining interest in sports and sort of, and news itself has inter, people who are interested in news have gone online, as you were saying, that if you, are interested in, let's say, what a given host has to say about something, chances are you can watch that on Twitter or somewhere else.Somebody has put it there in part to say that it was notable to them, and I mean, hell, there's people on YouTube who literally specialize on taking the full shows from, TV news and just plopping the entire thing out there and getting ad dollars from other people's stuff.So it is, yeah, it's, I mean, that's it's been kind of a bifurcation that on the low interest viewers in news have kind of drifted away entirely. And then high interest viewers have been like, well. This is, I already knew about this stuff yesterday or,HALL: yeah. And I think one of the things that doesn't really get talked about enough [00:12:00] is because we're sort of living through it as we speak, but it wasn't that long ago that we had a shared experience as a society either through reading articles in newspapers or watching one of three broadcast news.Or a miniseries. I mean, I'm old enough that when Roots was a miniseries on TV, a broadcast TV, everyone watched it, and everyone talked about it. Cut to today and everyone has their own custom interests and views, either through streaming service or Twitter or social media or online. It's very difficult to find people that sort of align with you.And when you do you tend to sort of circle around that community. So we have these much smaller and yet more passionate. Affinity groups, and some of which is, I think you referenced there, a line around political media, whether it be, right of center or left of center. And these are people who feel a sense of community by consuming nonstop coverage of that's focused on how bad it is.and pernicious Trump was to America or how bad and pernicious and what a horrible president Biden is to America, depending upon the network that you choose to watch. So the size of the viewers has become smaller, but it's become a lot more intense, a lot finer cut. And I think that's part of the reason why we as a society are kind of.divided in the way that we are. And these cable news outlets, many of them know where their bread is buttered. And so they, the red meat that they throw, typically appeals to the fringiest elements of either side of that [00:14:00] dynamic of news or traditional journalism as we grew up with, like the capital J journalistic schools standards isn't supposed to be entertaining, right?It's typically pretty boring and that's not what cable news is. Yes, there's, CNN has arguably one of the best news gathering teams in the world. Like they really have a good news gathering team, but much of their programming isn't just news. It's nonstop analysis. Same with Fox news. It's an entertainment program that really sells outrage and anger packaged in a news format, but particularly prime time, it's all opinion analysis and people. I think a lot of viewers do not necessarily think critically enough about what they're consuming to realize that what they're getting on either side across the board is the propagation of political jargon.A lot of it is propaganda, and I don't mean in a fascist sense, but it's political-speak that is less about informing. And more about angering or fear and creating passionate viewers that will tune in for the next breaking news alert, which half these networks have breaking news banners up as a default.And rarely is it truly breaking news.SHEFFIELD: Oh, sorry, I was going to say just before you got into another point that, one of the you had mentioned the constant. Idea of analysis but in many cases, it's also featuring the exact same people who told you what they thought, an hour ago about the same topic and so it's almost, and, like in the case of Fox, they have some people who are on their show, the five, who also have other shows.So Dana Perino being one, Jesse Waters being another one, Greg Gutfeld being one. So like literally you've already heard [00:16:00] what these people had to say about the news of the day, right? In enormous detail. And CNN is, does the same thing that they will, in 2020, I think they, they became infamous for basically only almost showing like 10 people.Ever only interviewing like 10 people across their entire network for months on end, in Brady Bunch style format where no one could actually hear what anyone really thought for more than five seconds. And so it is, it's not, it isn't about news as much and, but it isn't even about analysis either.It's almost more like a soap opera in some sense.HALL: I think it's tribalism. I think it's people I mean, what are the genius? The genius, Roger Ailes genius in The Five is the way he casts that with specific archetypes. Like, you have, Jesse Watters plays the part of the smug, frat bro who cracks wise.Dana Perino is sort of a, Smart, calm, big sister slash mother type. Then you have the liberal who is just Tarlov. You have the firebrand in, in, sort of older woman in Jean Pirro. And Gutfeld, you have kind of the snarky, jerky, New Yorker and people watch because they can identify with that.And that show is the top rated, it's the most successful show on cable news. And when it launched, people mocked it because people forget that Greg Glenn Beck was. Was the original Tucker Carlson. He was the original bad boy of Fox News. He said crazy things. He got pushed out and replaced by the five and people laughed and thought it was going to be like a horrible, get canceled and it's now the most influential show.And it, it created stars that like Jesse Waters is going to be the 8 PM host replacing Bill O'Reilly, who was his mentor and Greg Gutfeld has his own show as well. So, yeah, [00:18:00] I think people tend to, and by the way, getting back to what we said earlier, between total viewers and demo, demo is much, much smaller.So the majority of viewers That are logged on to cable news are much older. They're over 55, right?SHEFFIELD: And that's true. And by the way, a lot of people lefties will rag on Fox about that. That's also true about MSNBC as well. It is an older audience. Sorry. They have the oldest audience. But everybody's audience is old.HALL: Well, that's why Tucker Carlson was such a goldmine for Fox News when Tucker Carlson replaced Bill O'Reilly. And his ratings initially weren't that great. And that was at the time when Alex Jones and Infowars It was getting a lot of attention and a lot of negative attention and deservedly so.He was saying like over the top crazy kind of like outlandish conspiratorial things that were really offensive. And good journalism, all of it, Oliver Darcy and CNN basically ruined his career by getting him deplatformed because he was saying crazy stuff by—SHEFFIELD: Actually telling people what this guy was saying.HALL: Right.People who weren't regular viewers of Jones, they had no idea what this guy was talking about, right? It's like he's a nut job. I don't care. I don't listen to him. He's irrelevant.HALL: So but what Tucker Carlson did is when his ratings weren't so great when he initially replaced O'Reilly He clearly my reporting tells me that he decided to Turn harder right and go more conspiratorial and sort of chase the, what was the Alex Jones viewership and his ratings went way up and he got a ton of attention and the viewers that he had, the incremental viewers were all much, much younger.And they really monetized the demo viewers. [00:20:00] And so not only were more people viewing his show, but the number of in demo viewers went way, way up. And so then that really was the golden carrot that Tucker was able to see. He was like, oh, so the more, the most inflammatory stuff that I say, the more people talk about, and the more people need to tune in.So. He's no dummy. Tucker Carlson is sort of a genius with his sophistry because if you look at his essays, he sort of appeals to a highbrow side where he's kind of speaking in a very arch tone where he's not being literal. But it also appeals to a very sort of like deep sense anger to those who may not necessarily see that ironic detachment from what he's saying.And so as a result, he would look at sort of the rundown of what people were talking about, and it was almost as if he was saying to himself what is the thing that's, that is the most forbidden thing for me to talk about it? Let's talk about that. Let's do that. And I, I took the bait myself, when I was, top editing media, I, He said crazy stuff.And after a while it's a sort of weird dynamic where, are you promoting and amplifying his stuff by calling him out? And then I think he just got too big and was unmanageable by Fox News. And eventually They decided that no one is bigger than the brand and there was other stuff that is still yet to come out, I think.But I thought it was better for everyone if they parted ways. Yeah,SHEFFIELD: well, and I guess that's a pretty good segue there. You did into the more specific parts that I wanted to discuss here today. So. We're going to, today we're going to be kind of focusing on Fox and CNN primarily in terms of some of their recent changes, because both of these networks have an audience that's in flux, and then also a leadership that, kind of doesn't know fully what it wants and they're trying to position themselves amid some really new competition that they don't understand and executives who have [00:22:00] mandates that are also very different in some regards than in the past.So yeah, let's since you, you mentioned Carlson so Carlson, of course, as I would assume everybody who's an American watching this or listening to it would know is yeah, was some rarely let go from Fox. But and that, it's, it is interesting because even though it's been months now since that happened, there hasn't been, there has yet to be any sort of definitive report that says this is what did it.And what that suggests is that, in fact, there were multiple reasons that he was let go. And one of them, I think, very clearly was this lawsuit that was launched against him by a former producer of his. For creating a hostile work environment. She said they engaged in all types of sexist and racist and anti-Semitic behavior behind the scenes.That certainly was a huge part of it, no doubt. But as you were saying, it isn't only that. And then, yeah, I guess we'll let's go from there. And we'll talk a little bit more about Tucker.HALL: Well, I think for the most part, people understood that Tucker Carlson had become such a cash cow that he was sort of able to do and say whatever he did with impunity at Fox News in that he really, I think, saw himself as only really reporting to Lachlan.and Rupert Murdoch which I think made for a very tough dynamic. My colleague at Media Aiden McLaughlin wrote a story that was deeply reported about how Tucker Carlson was the rogue individual there. And, in the middle of their existential lawsuit against defamation lawsuit against Dominion Voting Systems, Tucker put out this, a series of stuff that talked, that was, [00:24:00] provably false about January 6th.And so they're on trial, the network's on trial about defamation against libel claims. And there was clearly a direction across the network to effectively chill on that sort of programming. And Tucker totally flouted that and kind of went harder. And I'm sure that that did not endear him to executives across the board at Fox News.He wasn't making their lives any easier. In fact, he was making them, he was willfully making them more difficult. And that was because he was sort of acting like. The teacher's pet, or spoiled brat, who only cared about the affection that he had from the Murdock family to the degree that it became an untenable situation, right?And all the details of him using the c word against executives and the Abby Grossberg lawsuit, which was just settled for 12 million dollars. I think all of that was sort of, not an excuse, it was evidence, but it was, it was the reasons that were given. To cover the full panoply of his transgressions against the networks at the end of the day, any creative corporation, whether it be Marvel Comics, or CNN, or anything is going to be a little bit like a junior high middle school cafeteria table, there's knives out and there's backstabbing.It's just that's just the way there's alliances. And at some point, Tucker just refused any sort of facade of being a team player. And was only going for himself. And, at the end of the day, I think Fox News and Rupert Murdoch were ultimately like, Bro, you can't, this isn't Tucker Carlson, this is Fox News.And yes, this will be controversial. And yes, this will hit us. But we'll endure. And we'll get it back. And time and time [00:26:00] again, that’s proven to be true when Glenn Beck was dismissed. Everyone's like, well, this is the end of Fox News. It was not when Bill O'Reilly was dismissed again after Trump was lost the election in 2020 and Trump viewers went and drove to Newsmax and just turned off the cable news.They were in third place. Guess what? They came back stronger than ever, in part because they were playing ball with this sort of false idea that the election had been stolen. They never really came out and quietly asserted, like, the former president is falsely claiming the election was stolen.It was not. They never really said that. They sort of really played footsie around that idea. That's kind of how they got their viewers back. Yeah. But so, and so then Tucker, I think he just, he flew too close to the sun.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and you make a good point there with the Beck and O'Reilly comparisons because, I mean, both of them over the years of their time at Fox engaged in all kinds of.Controversial and actions, the actions, which, caused very serious problems monetarily in the case of a Riley where they were paying out, millions of dollars multiple times to women that he had sexually harassed and in the case of back he was just saying completely crazy things about, Barack Obama is a MarxistHALL: and a racist against white people.He said that Barack Obama hates white people, which is shocking.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, especially odd considering that his mother was white, and then he was raised by his white grandparents.HALL: Well, the truth, the truth really matters. The truth really matters in this sort of like anger outreach driven. And by the way, it's not solely Fox News.I mean, there's a lot of. And that's NBC people that like know that they keep shoveling coal when the Trump is evil. How many times can you say that before we get it, right? So, whether you believe that or not.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, I guess I meant it in the sense though of talking about these guys [00:28:00] that, their actions were kind of Seen as a part of a cost of doing business at Fox over time, but then, after a while, Rupert Murdoch, he'll tolerate seemingly anything but only, a certain number of times, it seems like, and that was, yeah,HALL: I think to that point, just quickly, I think a lot of people that I know are surprised when I tell them that a lot of people that I know that work at Fox News, Fox News.are not true believers, meaning they're not, they haven't dropped the political Kool Aid. It’s mostly a marketing business, right? And it's done very often without a superego over what's right or wrong because as long as you're selling soap and getting ad revenue to the degree of like billions of dollars of revenue a year, it almost doesn't matter.So to the point you just said about Rupert Murdoch, cost of doing business, I think there's a bit of a shoulder shrug. It's on his end. It's like, hey, well, it rates, people watch. Yes, he's conservative, of course, but he's more in love, I think, with the massive revenue from Fox News that drives the Murdoch Empire.The Murdoch Empire is not doing very well, other than Fox News. So, yes, he's conservative. Yes, he abides by all this. But I, my gut tells me that most of the people there are more interested in making a lot of money than they are the true political beliefs, which I think surprises a lot of people. Of course, there's plenty of people that are true believers, but you get past the showrunners and the hosts and the talent.Most people there just have jobs, and they get paid well, and that's business.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, I think that's true, and it does, I mean, my background, my own background in, in conservative media, I mean, what I saw very frequently was that, and was that, the, the people, my colleagues, they were very aware that, [00:30:00] The audience that was consuming their content was much further to the right than they were.And so they were always trying to kind of fit themselves into, well, how can I give them what they want? Without looking like a complete jackass. And so, and I mean, in essence, that is what Tucker Carlson did with his show, because I mean, it's been documented that he was taking stories from, he had a producer who was taking and posting on sites like 4chan, which is this race, racist website.And that they were, and if you look at various neo-Nazi type. Websites they all love tucker Carlson and they said he's mainstreaming our ideas American political system, his people read our sites and we're grateful that they read our sites and they're doing what we want.Like we love this guy. And whileHALL: at the same time he was mocking the idea of being called racist, like he often would ridicule like, oh, and so that's where he would sort of like thread this needle of outrage between, I didn't really say that. But of course, everyone knows that. It's like, well, first of all, none of that is journalistically sound.But also, how can you talk out of both sides of your mouth? Are you these racist dog whistles are out there. And you can flatly, that's not what I meant. But of course. If that's not what you meant, then why is it resonating so much within that audience that you refuse to distance yourself and very often defend?So I think he was a very toxic force, and I don't think his leaving Fox News is going to Change much because I think Jesse Watters is going to replace him is among the very You know, he's a very dishonest analyst. He makes stuff up out of whole cloth, and he oversimplifies things. And so I think Jesse Waters will soon be the new Tucker Carlson because he'll say crazy stuff in much the same way and do it probably less nuanced [00:32:00] if you can call what Tucker did.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and I think, the fact of O'Reilly, then Carlson, and now Waters having that 8 p. m. Eastern time spot, it's, Murdoch has made very clear, this is who my audience is. They are people who are like these guys. And they all are the same in that, toxic male a*****e.HALL: Well, I mean, I'm going to. Stand up for Bill O'Reilly, because O'Reilly was sort of the progenitor of the forum. But people forget this, O'Reilly's DNA, he was rooted in journalism. And Bill O'Reilly ButSHEFFIELD: He got worse over time; I think that's fair to say.HALL: And he knew when to pump the brakes a little bit, and I think it benefited O'Reilly that he was there under Ailes, and Ailes had the same approach.He knew that every now and again you have to create your own limits, because therefore when you make an outrageous If all you do is Scream wolf, people are going to stop believing you, right? Believing you. So, but Bill O'Reilly was looked out for the folks. He was more center right than far right.Tucker Carlson and Jesse Walters are more far-right, more palatable to making America great again. And O'Reilly, I think, was more of an establishment GOP.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I think that's fair. I guess I meant more in the personal sense rather than political. Well,HALL: They're white guys who come from a, a frat bolo archetype, and I myself have the same archetype, so I don't know. But that's definitely, you know what Fox News is putting out there.They're not going to put a woman of color or a man of color at that APM or at least they haven't. So, other than interim moments. So, white womenSHEFFIELD: has never been thereeither.HALL: Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's true. And I'm not suggesting that they're flatly racist. I just think that they're serving their viewers getting back [00:34:00] to what they used to earlier. Right. And that was what they really struggled with and what really came to light during the Dominion lawsuit was Fox News was Opting to serve their viewers what they wanted to hear instead of harsh truths, harsh truths being that Trump lost the election and instead they sort of played pussyfoot with, they played around with this idea.Well, maybe there was election fraud—is it wrong to investigate election fraud? No, but if you keep saying you're investigating it over and over and over again. It suggests that it really existed when there wasn't near enough evidence to show other than isolated examples. So, yeah, that's not what a journalistic outlet does.CNN is a much better journalistic outlet, but you could argue that they're guilty of similar things to a much, much lesser degree. At least under Jeff Zucker, there was sort of this kayfabe pro wrestling idea where good guys versus bad guys, which I think under Jeff Zucker’s leadership, CNN kind of fell prey to in a way that didn't appeal to a ton of viewers.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, we'll get into CNN in a second here, but let's maybe wrap the Fox idea here with that you recently wrote a piece, and I'll have the link for people to check it out, about Carlson's post-Fox attempts at finding an audience, and they haven't really gone that well for him as despite what a lot of His, terminally online fans want to believe right.His Audi, the Fox as you were saying they, people wrote them off and said, no one's going to come back and watch him. But the reality is Fox is their soap opera.HALL: Right.SHEFFIELD: For a 70-year-old person whose kids never call them, and they're retired, and they're a deeply aggrieved evangelical or something and angry at the gays [00:36:00] and the atheists, Fox isn't just news for them. It is a window to the world.HALL: It's companionship. And if you're older and you don't like the way the world has evolved and you're feeling left out and or maybe a bit afraid of this scary new world that we're living in.And there are reasons to be concerned about the us living in the future. Right now, this is that tonic. This is that comfy blanket that says, yes, it's very scary out there, but we, you, we're the same people. And if you watch us, we see the same thing you do.SHEFFIELD: And we're going to tell you that you're right.HALL: Exactly right. It confirms the bias that it's not biased because it's true. I mean, I watch “Fox and Friends” every morning because I'm sort of fascinated by the rhetorical flourish and how they cover news and it's stunning. Every segment is about focus on why the viewers should be mad, angry or afraid, whether it's crime, or something that Biden said or did, or someone in his administration said or did, it's never really positive.I think it really attracts people who want that dark view, their own dark view confirmed by that. And it's a vicious cycle. And I think they'll age out, but, yeah, sorry to jump in on it.SHEFFIELD: Oh yeah, no problem. Well, and so, yeah, but so they basically, tuning to Fox is, watching Fox is a lifestyle. It isn't something that's for news, because it isn't news. Fox very clearly, explicitly Refuses to report things that make Republicans look bad. I mean, the Dominion lawsuit made that crystal clear that not just on the election, they made it, you could see it in a number of different stories, they refuse to talk about it.HALL: Well, they do some journalism. I mean, they were, I think the situation at the border is a crisis and no one's. [00:38:00] And, do they overly politicize it? Maybe. Yeah, but it's still a story. And they, when they did good journalism on that, and others have followed suit. So, yeah, I mean, we're after that, right?They're not completely bereft of journalistic standards. They are just editorial decisions. Some of the best decisions are deciding what not to cover, right? And I make that decision every day at Mediaite, because someone foolish like Candace Owens or Charlie Kirk says something crazy over the top, I don't want to give that person that attention because what they're doing is they're trying to troll for attention.And I think Fox News, when they see something, Trump's document stuff has barely, hasn't gotten nearly the coverage. Whereas CNN, it's 24 7. And it's a huge story.SHEFFIELD: Well we can get it later, but let's get to back to Tucker here though. So in your essay, because I do want to make sure that we talk about it, he's gotten lots of views, but they're not as real as people might think.HALL: So the thesis, just to reset, is that two months after his departure, it's clear that Fox News is way more important to Tucker Carlson than Tucker was to Fox.Which sort of flouts what a lot of conventional wisdom was, especially because Tucker has a very intense base of online fans. But you know, he did this deal with Elon Musk, and he has put out, I believe, eight episodes about 12-minute essays where he's, I guess, in his cabin in Maine.And the initial the first one listed like 150 million views and a lot of people like, look, this is the future and Tucker's getting 150 million views. That's way more than all of Fox News shows combined. And of course. It doesn't take much of a genius to do a little bit of reporting and realizing those viewers, those views are just the most [00:40:00] charitable number.It's like literally if that tweet shows up in a feed and it's clicked or auto-plays for a couple of seconds, it gets credit for the views. So it's not, that's not a legit number to compare to his television viewers. And by the way, I think his eighth episode has only like 10 million of those views.So that’s 5% less or so than it was his first one. But the larger point that I made, I think, which resonates more is that Carlson doesn't affect the dialogue now that he's not on Fox News. The people that watch, even if it's a lot of people watch his videos, it’s people that really are just huge Tucker fans who will agree with him no matter what he says.And the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, media, I, we don't cover it in that way because he's not on Fox News. And there's a viable business model and he'll, he's already worth millions of millions of dollars and doesn't need a ton of money. He'll be successful. And he's starting a media company, apparently.But monetary success will be easy for him, but being an influential commentator that drives a narrative and drives a conversation I think is more important to him. And it's not clear that he's got a path to regain that. Maybe he will I think the jury's out, but so far six months from now Jesse Waters will be getting all the flack that Tucker Carlson relished six months ago.That's just, that seems like a pretty easy projection to make andSHEFFIELD: But in terms of influence, yeah on the political system I mean, lots of people watch Joe Rogan or this podcast. When Joe Rogan says, I want this thing to happen. It doesn't happen. I want a bill about X, Y, or Z, or you should vote for politician Y.[00:42:00]It doesn't happen. And because he's just a guy talking on the internet. Well, so JoeHALL: Rogan, right, what he, I mean, what makes kind of Joe Rogan interesting, and I don't think he's nearly as bad as others think he is. I mean, he's just a guy talking crap who's an outsider. And is he irresponsible? Very often.But he sometimes asks good questions, and he's intellectually curious in some way that I think deserves a level of credit. The idea about Tucker Carlson is that he loved to rail against D.C. lifers and D.C. insiders, and talk about how bad they were for America, and they were not looking out for regular Americans.He was precisely what he was rallying against. He was the, his son's work in congressional offices. He comes from that very world which he used to rail against. And that was this weird kind of He's got four names, for God's sake. Right. He's an heir and, like, I don't want to criticize him.He didn't choose the life that he was born into. His father was a massive player in, I believe, the radio industry. And he went to St. George's prep school. And he had every—SHEFFIELD: His stepmother was—HALL: Swanson's first heiress. Yeah. Right. Exactly right.SHEFFIELD: So he grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth and did all the things that he says are now terrible.HALL: Well, but you know, he also has some populist ideas where he thinks that the corporate America is screwing out the little guy, which totally resonates, and it's kind of delightful, but he packages this in this other framing where he wrote a thing, he did an essay about Don Lemon when he was on CNN, who had written a book about civil rights, and Tucker made the argument that because Don Lemon lives in Sag Harbor, which is this lovely fishing village sort of in the Hamptons, That, that sort of, he, because he lived in a wealthy area that was mostly white, that precluded [00:44:00] Don from being a voice of what it was like growing up as a black man in America.And he used all sorts of dog whistles that were just flatly racist, and So Tucker did a lot of divisive and bad and very ugly things that I think was toxic and polluted dialogue. And I think the world, I don't think the world's going to suddenly heal with him off the air, but I do think the world's a better place without him spewing such toxic stuff regularly on Fox News.SHEFFIELD: Oh yeah, I think that's definitely true. Yeah. All right. Well, so I think we've Kind of hit all the bases on the Fox side of things, I think. So let's maybe turn to the CNN question here. So CNN has kind of been in an identity crisis for 20 years. Would you say that's fair? And yes, hiring different presidents to do one thing or another and it just doesn't quite work.HALL: Well, CNN is probably the closest cable news outlet. It is by far the closest cable news outlet that we have. to a proper journalistic outlet. They have an unparalleled team of reporters, not just on the Capitol, but around the country and Middle East and Ukraine and, London, European bureaus as well.They gather and report the news as well as any outlet out there. Save maybe the New York Times, Washington Post AP, Reuters BBC, maybe. I think what happened before Jeff Zucker became president, it, they were really tied to traditional journalism, and they realized that didn't, wasn't, people don't want to tune into news unless it's a big story.An impeachment or January 6 or Tiananmen Square. I remember when Tiananmen Square happened in was it 88, 89? And I remember we were glued to CNN when that happened. And so [00:46:00] CNN is still like a big news destination. When a serious news event happens, people go to CNN because there's a reason it's the most reputable and they do really good journalistic work.But as the appetite for political analysis shifted, Jeff Zucker came in and made it more about takes and punditry. And when Trump came to the political game in a serious way, CNN kind of got all in on that, and in an outraged, sort of, they were a little, I think, overdid a little bit, to the degree that when, before he was elected, he'd hold a rally, and there would be just a camera shot of an empty podium waiting for Trump to speak, which is not news, and that's promotion.I think Jeff Zucker's one of the smartest guys I've ever met, and I think his intentions were pure, and he probably would admit that he sort of overplayed that, in hindsight. But it did work for him 2020, earliest weeks of 2020 or 2021 when the second impeachment was going on, CNN, like the month before Zucker was pushed out was the top-rated cable news outlet and Fox News was third, which was like crazy to consider that being an option.It was perfect timing, a perfect storm for CNN to benefit from. There was the election, there were Trump's claims of the false election, there was the first impeachment was still sort of processing. Then of course there was January 6th. All these things were perfect fodder for CNN to cover.And then Zucker was pushed out, I think, for corporate reasons, the pretext of having an undisclosed relationship was, much like what we said earlier with Tucker Carlson, that was the letter of the law, but I think he was pushed out because the new corporate ownership in particular, David Zaslav and John Malone were like, we want CNN to evolve to a place that's more dispassionate about [00:48:00] parties, less Trump focused.We needed to make it a friendlier place where reasonable Republicans can come on the air. And so that's what Chris Licht was put in charge to do and—SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, sorry, let me just say that David Zasloff doesn't technically have a title if I remember right with CNN, but—HALL: No, he's the CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. But he also is a major donor and Republican donor.HALL: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: And so, it is this weird dynamic that he did interpose because on the one hand, I actually am kind of sympathetic that I did think that CNN was obsessed with Trump under Zucker and made everything about Trump, whether it was not really related to him necessarily at all. All the shows, every single block almost was about Trump, and I think, people and the ratings generally speaking on a day-to-day basis, kind of were showing that people were not as interested in hearing about him all the time.And so, I'm sympathetic to that. But then on the other hand, they also, I think it's clear that you've got all these channels out there that, are saying, well, we're doing mainstream journalism, right? We're not trying to take a side or whatever.And you've got one channel, MSNBC, that's like, no, we are taking a side on the left. And we're pursuing a left audience. Now whether they're trying to get maybe further left, I don't think that's, they actually kind of go against that type of, socialist type stuff sometimes.But there's kind of this mad rush, weird rush to get these mythical Republican viewers who don't exist. Like there are people out there who are, sort of [00:50:00] tangential Republicans, moderate Republicans. They don't watch the news, though.They're the person who's working 60 hours a week at a law firm or something. They don't have time for TV.HALL: So, I just, a good friend of mine from college was in New York, out of the blue. They met him for a drink. We ended up having dinner. He is what you just described. He works 60 hours at a law firm, and he lives in suburban Kansas City.And we talked a little bit about politics and he just sort of said, honestly, I can't do it anymore. I feel like it doesn't matter. And it's just this game. And I just kind of checked out.And that's not just a moderate Republican, Rockefeller Republican point of view. I have dear friends here in Brooklyn and in Brownstone, Brooklyn, who are active Democratic donors and pretty progressive. And they're probably center-left. They have the same exact take and they're like, it's so exhausting and I can't.And so again, I go back to what I said earlier, currently what's broken, I think, is that the cable news industry is fomenting, is trying to draw viewers by appealing to the extremes, the most passionate viewers, but are also driving away people that are sort of the most reasonable.My dear friend and colleague Dan Abrams calls it the minimalized, moderate majority. And I think that's a real thing. I think there's a big swath of people in the middle on both sides, but are centrist on both sides that don't feel that they're served well. I mean, News Nation is where I'm a contributor at News Nation. That's our mission. And what I like about it is you never know what you're going to get.Back to CNN, when early in the Trump administration, it was actually really good, because they would have Republican officials that now you only really see on Fox News, but you'd have Lindsey Graham or John Kennedy or even Ted Cruz would be on CNN.And [00:52:00] being interviewed by really top tier interviewers like Chris Cuomo or Alison Camerota or John Berman. And it was a really thoughtful, meaningful discussion that made everything better. And then Trump went ham, went off on CNN and said it was fake news. And all of those reasonable Republicans who love to be on TV and get their message out and raise donations, they stopped going on CNN.And I wrote a column when Chris Licht replaced Jeff Zucker to say the first most important thing you can do is get reasonable Republicans back on the air because I think we miss a meaningful dialogue between two sides, because right now, as we had said earlier in the podcast in this interview, that rarely do you get a thoughtful conversation between two different points of view.And Fox News does that on occasion. They've done it less. MSNBC almost never has anyone from the right on their network. Which I think is a shame.SHEFFIELD: They won't go on it.HALL: Well, I mean, again, I mean, correct. I wish they would. I think Ari Melber has had some success with some people on and he gives a good, fair interview.SHEFFIELD: But there's a reason they don’t go. When they show up on his show, he actually makes them answer the questions. And they don't want that.HALL: Well, but he, who did he have on that I thought the interview was just a tour de force? He, I can't recall who it was, but I remember recently watching it and it was like, it was Peter Navarro.And it was just like, it was just a fascinating conversation. I'm not a Peter Navarro fan. But Ari Melber cross-examined him in a way that I thought served everyone very well.Another example, Gavin Newsom, governor of California, was on with Sean Hannity, and it was The most fascinating interview that I'd seen on cable news in years and it was mutually respectful It was thoughtful both Hannity and Newsom [00:54:00] came out of that looking better, which was like a miracle in today's landscape So back to CNN, I think they I think Chris Lick was trying to Reclaim some of that magic.I don't think the CNN staff bought what he was selling them, and it did not end well.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, there was resistance to it, but I mean, a lot of it is rooted in the fact that, people who might have in the past been more willing to criticize, let's say the Republican leader when it was George W. Bush, under Trump, if you do that you're canceled as a Republican. Your career is over. He will personally come and endorse and campaign against you. You're dead.And I will say the best example of what I'm talking about here is that almost every Republican who has an active influence in the party, none of them will say the 2020 election was obviously not stolen, there was no evidence of criminality by anyone other than a handful of people.And this is just nonsense to continue belaboring that. If you say that, your career is over. But then at the same time, CNN would sometimes book these people and they would ask them that question but then nothing would follow after that, and they would be bogged down on just trying to answer this simple, obvious, stupid question, but never point out, well, why is it that you won't answer that?Let's talk about that. They wouldn't do that either.HALL: Well, people are afraid. Trump is like this abusive father to the Republican party and they're afraid of angering him.Trump did his first journalistic interview in three, like a proper journalistic interview with Brett Baier Fox News, and Brett Baier did an [00:56:00] amazing job, and Brett Baier told him he did lose the election.And this happened in June of 2023.Three years after, like two and a half years after the election actually happened.And that was the first one, I mean, I guess Caitlin Collins said the same thing to his face during that town hall. But it's shocking to me how few—and Trump had been on with Hannity a number of times. He'd been on with Tucker Carlson; he'd done countless interviews on Newsmax. All of them just sort of pretended that his baseless claim of a stolen election was crazy.And it was like an emperor's got no clothes thing. Like it's, it was like really like how are you, how are we not yelling that the leader of the GOP is still bat guano crazy? Like Jonah Goldberg said it on Fox at the end of 2021. He said, Trump was trying to steal the election by claiming that the election was stolen. And shortly thereafter, Jonah Goldberg was shut—the door at Fox News because Fox didn't want to tell the viewers what they didn't want to hear. And in this case, it was the truth. And it shows that in that instance, Fox News was truly a political marketing entity and not a news one.And I'm sure Fox News executives would say are what we're doing any different from what MSNBC and CNN do. And I would argue yes and no. Yes, they are different, but also, they're not as effective as they are. So Fox News is maybe just better at it.SHEFFIELD: Well, but it's also that, when you look at the ecosystem across left and right there are no outposts of moderate Republicans. They don't exist. They don't exist.Whereas there are plenty of people with lots of money, lots of power on the center left who have no problem publicly attacking Bernie Sanders or AOC, or any of these other Progressive Caucus [00:58:00] members and saying they're nuts or, they're making it easy for the Republicans, like there actually is real intra-left debate.It's pretty vigorous and there is no intra-right debate because you get canceled if you try to do it.HALL: I mean, the GOP civil war is the slowest burning war ever, and it's something, there's been first it was the Tea Party versus the sort of establishment GOP, and then the Tea Party sort of was coopted by corporate PACs and really sort of evolved into the Make America Great Again movement, and Trump, we kind of coopted that the tension is still there, right?You look at the current slant, I mean Chris Christie is as close to a moderate kind of Rockefeller Republican as we've seen in a long time. Mitt Romney, as governor of Massachusetts, was very much a center-right governor. But to get the nomination for president, he had to throw so much red meat to the far right that when he was running for president, he was effectively painted as a way more conservative than he was. I think he was proven to be both as governor and as he served as a senator, and I think a pretty strong voice of reason on a lot of issues. So he's kind of an iconoclast.And so, should there, my father was a proud Rockefeller Republican, my mother was a big campaigner for Carter. And I've long joked that the most effective Republican president we've had in recent memory was Barack Obama, who was only slightly better than Republican President than Bill Clinton.Of course, they were Democrats. They governed in a way that was probably more similar to moderate Republicans on a lot of issues than I know a lot of progressive Democrats were not very pleased with, especially with foreign policy. So, yeah, but I think the partisan spectrum is all screwy. It's upside down.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I mean, we are basically [01:00:00] in this environment where the Democratic Party contains basically the entire political spectrum and the Republican Party contains this reactionary Christian faction that is sort of loosely aligned with nihilistic libertarian types who just hate everything and think nothing's, I mean, There's this podcast out there that is now kind of receded into its own little world, the No Agenda podcast, Joe Rogan these people, they don't, they don't believe anything's real.And so that's basically the Republican electorate is those two groups of people, and there are people, there still are, percentages of people with moderate Republican viewpoints, but they don't stand up for themselves. Chris Christie is the first person to actually be saying, look, guys, we have a serious problem here. Not just with Trump, but we need to actually be willing to have policies and tell the truth to the public.HALL: I think future historians are going to be very kind to Chris Christie because he's clearly strapping on a suicide vest and going in to take on Trump. Because he's a litigator, and he's going in, and he's saying all the things that he's basically claiming the emperor's got no clothes.And the only way Trump can contend with that is to try to avoid him and pretend that he doesn't exist and not engage in a debate. So it'll be very interesting to see how the GOP debates unfold.I think there's a decent chance. I don't know if it's a likely chance, I think there's a decent chance that the winner of the next election will be neither Trump nor Biden.I think Biden is old, and I think Trump is damaged goods for a ton of reasons. And it doesn't, I don't know who it would be, but it could just as easily be Tim Scott with a positive message as it is Gavin Newsom coming up from behind. Who knows? I mean, most likely I think it'll be Biden versus Trump, but you know—SHEFFIELD: [01:02:00] It's not going to be DeSantis though. Because I mean DeSantis is basically, some people before he really started campaigning on the national stage, they were like, oh, this is Trump 2.0, and my response was no This is Ted Cruz 1.1.HALL: That's exactly right.SHEFFIELD: And when you look at who was hired, that's who he hired, all these people who ran Ted Cruz's loser campaign that went nowhere and just was mocked across the political spectrum. And Ron DeSantis thinks those people are smart.HALL: That's right. Yeah. I mean, I think it's early to say, but I don't, I don't think DeSantis, I'm going to keep my powder dry, but I do think that concerns that he may not have charisma are founded and it's one thing to attack reporters, but I think if he's going to try to be a kinder Trump, that's going to fail and a younger Trump, I should say. And so we'll see, we'll see.SHEFFIELD: It’s also that his strategy is just completely incoherent as well, because what they don't understand is that you cannot get to the further right of Trump because the far right, like literal Nazis love Trump.So basically in order to get further to the right than Trump and get to get those people on your side, you're going to literally have to say, I'm going to create concentration camps for immigrants and put them there and, and then throw them into the ocean. That's basically the only way you can get further right.HALL: Well, so we saw that just this week when the war room DeSantis’s war room campaign put out this anti-Trump, anti-LGBTQ video that tried to outplay Trump's position on LGBTQ rights on the right.And it came across as pretty hateful and homophobic. And [01:04:00] Republicans were even saying this is bad. And they were trying to do it in a clever, like mean, funny, like Trumpian internet meme way. And it totally backfired.And by the way, I think his anti-woke messaging is effective. I think there's a lot of people out there who think that we've gone too far with how we've politicized identity politics. I think that resonates with a lot of moderates, but to do it in the way that he did it, that came across as sort of hateful and otherizing these people, it wasn't good.And I assume that he saw it and said, that's great, let's go with it. So yeah, I don't think he has great judgment.Trump is a performer and a charmer, and people forget that more than anything else. I'm not saying that I'm charmed by him. I'm just saying that he knows what he's doing because he's been in front of the camera for a long, long, long time.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I think people on the left, they do underestimate that about him, that Donald Trump actually can be funny, like there's no question about it.HALL: Oh, he's a marketing genius. He's a media genius. I think he's an evil genius in a lot of ways. I think he uses his powers for bad, or rather he uses his power for self-gain, right?SHEFFIELD: But he's also self, he's self-deprecating as well. Ron DeSantis definitely is not that. And I think, in a lot of ways, because Trump is both an outrageous self-promoter, but he also makes fun of himself, that's like his secret power.HALL: He's in on his own joke. He's in on his own joke. Not when he's speaking to a rally, but yeah, he's a performer. He knows when he's performing. And I think that's, he's no dummy. That's for sure.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, so let's maybe just wrap with so CNN, they don't have a president right now as of this recording.Do they know if it even is possible for CNN to do to be number one in the ratings on a perpetual day to day basis? I [01:06:00] don't think it is.HALL: I don't think CNN's goal is to be number one in ratings. I think CNN's goal under Jeff Zucker and Chris Licht was to be the most reliable, trustworthy outlet.And I think both, I know Chris Licht in particular, his mission was to try to pull CNN out of what he called the ghetto of cable news. He took a network that he saw was a “gut reno” that he wanted to rebuild and get incremental ad dollars by making it a more reputable brand. Unfortunately, his staff did not buy it.And I think the staff at CNN are all very still much in love with the idea of the CNN that Jeff Zucker built before Chris Licht. And so the DNA of CNN is very much still CNN. And the collective of three or four co-CEOs, I don't think there's one person shining through that's going to give them the mission.I think they're just going to go back to the muscle memory of what we saw now to their advantage. We're entering a really great new cycle, right? We're entering the 2024 campaign. There's going to be debates. There's going to be more indictments of Trump. The Georgia indictment is a real one. I think Jack Smith probably has another trial trials that follow.And when real news happens and not just, pontificating about how, Dylan Mulvaney is ruining American beer and made-up outrage stories or gas stoves being outlawed, whatever it may be, CNN shines, right?That's where CNN does their best. So I think I could see them being kind of biding their time. They still have a ton of very talented people there, on-air producers all the way around. Are they sometimes a little bit in their own CNN bubble? Yes, of course. But that's no different than the MSNBC bubble [01:08:00] or the Fox News bubble.I mean, the bubbles are very, very different, but that's the way these companies work. And I'd like to think that CNN has a broader sensibility for an outlet that has a bubble. But I guess time will tell. And I personally would rather have reasonable Republicans on CNN debating then predictable Adam Kinzinger. I respect him and honor him a lot, but I don't need to know his point of view about every single issue because I already know it, right? Like he's going to blame Trump and he's going to blame the far-right Republican party.And there's nothing about that that's unique or scarce. And that's what I learned when I used to produce TV. Fred Graver [sp] was my executive producer of VH1's “Best Week Ever.” It's the scarcity. It's the unique, it's the close observation that people really tune into.And I think if CNN can sort of go back to what is good TV, they'll be very well served by that. And good TV will be a variety of voices and not just the same people saying the same thing over and over again, which, by the way, I feel like I'm the same person saying the same thing over and over again on this podcast.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, I mean, I think it's definitely true. Cable news needs to open up to a lot more different voices and people, because there are people who have a lot of interesting things to say, whatever their viewpoint is. But they don't fit into the traditional party coalitions, and so they don't get put forward. Like we don't hear much from, let's say liberal Christian viewpoint, and you don't have a lot of socialist voices, that you don't see those on the air, and these are things that are worth hearing from. Or like a secular conservative, these voices don't exist on the TV dial, but they are there in the country.HALL: As a thought exercise, I've always thought if Bernie Sanders had been able to reach Trump's audience, because Bernie Sanders’s message of populism [01:10:00] and helping sort of lower class people through like a democratic socialist approach, really should have appealed to the Trump base, just minus the nativism and the xenophobia, right?So, I do think that it's not just a flat spectrum, partisan spectrum, it's more of a circle. And I think, if the two ends of what we think is flat spectrum ever look the other way and connected, that would be a very powerful working class, socialist, populist voting bloc, right?And I think that if that whatever candidate figures out how to unlock that without being nativist and xenophobic. I think that's a futuristic approach that could be a third party. I don’t think a third party is going to exist because our system doesn’t really allow for that, but maybe that's what CNN should look into.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, there you go. They can, they'll get that idea.All right. Well. So it's been a good chat here, Colby. We've been talking today with Colby Hall. He is the founding editor of Mediaite and he's on Twitter at colbyhall, C-O-L-B-Y-H-A-L-L. Thanks for being here.HALL: Matthew, thanks so much for having me. This was really fun.SHEFFIELD: So that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody for joining us. And you can of course go to theoryofchange.show to get more. episodes. You can get the audio, video, and transcripts of all the episodes there. In order to keep things sustainable, some of the content is available only to paid subscribers. So, I appreciate everybody who is doing that. Thank you very much.And if you are a fan of the show, I do encourage you to go to the Flux website, that's flux.community. Theory of Change is part of that.And we're going to be doing several other new endeavors in the coming weeks and months, more podcasts and other projects that will hopefully be interesting things to you. So I encourage everybody to do that. So go to flux.community and I appreciate everybody who is subscribing to the show [01:12:00] and supporting us that way.And if you want to support in a non-financial way, you can go to iTunes or other places and give a nice review or subscribe on YouTube as well, if you're watching on there. Just click the notification or subscribe and notification so you can get notified whenever there's a new episode of this program.So thank you very much. And I will see you next time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

Episode SummaryHistory, as the old saying goes, repeats itself. There are many reasons why, but one of them is that philosophy is actually far more important than many people may realize.We live during a time in which search engines and AI have made it so that anyone has access to information on any field of human knowledge. But having knowledge available to you does not mean you understand it.Where we think knowledge originates impacts our ability to perceive the world. And we can't make sound conclusions about reality if our process of thinking is unsound. Unfortunately, a lot of people have broken epistemologies and as a result they practice a counterfeit form of skepticism in which they question everyone--except for themselves.Believe it or not, our current moment in which everyone claims to know everything about the world has some commonalities with the intellectual climate of ancient Greece. Then as now, lots of people called themselves experts on biology, astronomy, medicine, and a whole lot more—and many of their theories were simply incorrect.During a times of uncertainty, learning how to distinguish between ignorance and skepticism is a tremendous skill to develop.In this episode, we're featuring Richard Bett, a professor of philosophy at Johns Hopkins University and the author of a number of books on Greco-Roman skepticism, including "How to Keep an Open Mind: An Ancient Guide to Thinking Like a Skeptic," which is an edited translation of the works of Sextus Empiricus, one of the most famous members of the ancient Skeptic traditions.The deep conversations we bring you about politics, religion, technology, and media take great time and care to produce. Your subscriptions make Theory of Change possible and we’re very grateful for your help. If you’re not a member, please join today on Substack or Patreon to get full access.The video of this episode is available. A machine-generated transcript of the audio is provided below.TranscriptMATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Welcome to Theory of Change, Richard.RICHARD BETT: Thanks very much.SHEFFIELD: So I think a lot of the history that we're going to be talking about here today, it may be unfamiliar to a lot of people because, unfortunately, most universities and high schools do not require students to learn about ancient philosophy.So let's maybe start the discussion here with Socrates and the Sophists. Who were they and what were they about?BETT: Okay, well, so, the Sophists were a group of well, higher educators in some sense. They were the first people who taught grown men, it was only men in those days, and they taught beyond the kinds of basic subjects that you might learn just as a normal member of society. And they taught effective public speaking.But they also had a number of what you might call theoretical interests, especially about the nature of human society, often the origins of human society. And so in many ways, I think you can think of them as a kind of early kind of social scientist.And yeah, they are clearly interested in being able to make an effective case on either side of an argument. And thinking about opposing sides of arguments. That's an important part of what the Sophists are about.Socrates is around the same time. This is the late 400s BCE. And possibly stretching a little beyond that, which is a period before Plato. And Plato had a lot of opposition to the Sophists, but yes [00:04:00] Socrates was engaged in a lot of discussion of what things are good, what a good human life might be like, and so for him, a lot of discussion of a variety of different points of view. That was also part of what he was up to.Socrates seems to have been suspicious of the Sophists in certain respects, but he also had some things in common with them, I think it's fair to say.SHEFFIELD: Okay. And the signature form of discussion that Socrates engaged in is now known as Socratic dialogue. Tell us what that was.BETT: Well, I mean, this is as presented by Plato, mostly. And we have other sources of information about Socrates, but Plato's by far the most compelling. And in his version, it's questioning people about their assumptions, especially their assumptions about how a human life ought to be lived. What a good human life would be like.And, yeah, as we see it in many of the dialogues with Plato, it involves getting people to see that they don't really know about the things they claim to know about. And it seems like that's a kind of starting point for search for, better answers than one had before.Now Socrates in many of Plato's dialogues makes clear he doesn't know the answers to these things either. But he's interested in getting people into a in an attempt to figure that out. And so yeah, it's a kind of painstaking inquiry which more often than not leads to Inconclusive results but at least you've cleared away some kind of mistaken ideas that you might have had beforehand.That seems to be the method as depicted in much of what Plato gives us about Socrates.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and a lot of people had seen value in that type of instruction ever since that point.BETT: Sure.SHEFFIELD: And now, a lot of people who are [00:06:00] professors in a variety of fields be engaged in that themselves, right?BETT: That's right. I mean, that's always my attempt is to pose questions rather than, just lecturing. And with a larger class, you have to do some lecturing. But yeah, with a small seminar, it's great if you can, if most of what comes out of your mouth is a question, and getting the students talking and maybe getting them to reconsider some ideas that they were attached to before.So yeah, the Socratic method is much applauded. It's not always so easy to actually enact unless you're dealing with a small group.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, but I guess in a sense you could say that it's sort of an attempt to begin reasoning to come to higher, more well-formed conclusions about the world.BETT: That sounds right.SHEFFIELD: And ourselves. So that was the framework.But not everybody, of course, who was a contemporary of Socrates was fond of that type of inquiry. And as most people probably know, Socrates was sentenced to death for impiety, as he was alleged to be promoting unbelief and irreligion among the young men, right?BETT: Well, well, supposedly new kinds of divinity. It's different from the standardly recognized ones; that's the charge. But then yeah as it goes on in detail in the description it turns out some people think he doesn't believe in gods at all.SHEFFIELD: Before we get into sort of the rub of the charge against him, I think it's worth discussing a little bit how in polytheism, ethics and religion are not necessarily intertwined as they are in modern-day monotheism, right?BETT: That's right. Yeah. I mean, it's not that there's no kind of directives that you might think you get from the gods, but yeah, there's certainly no, there's no moral code that's written down in some equivalent of the [00:08:00] Bible, that there is no equivalent to the Bible. There are things you better not do against the gods; you better not get on the wrong side of them. But that has nothing much to do with how you treat your fellow human beings in society.I mean, of course, there are very highly developed ethical codes, but yeah, the connection between those and Greek religion was pretty loose, certainly.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and I think if you look at a lot of other polytheistic traditions around the world, that seems to generally be the case with a lot of them.BETT: I think that's right. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Maybe some exception on ancient Egyptian religion, depending on what time period you're looking at, but maybe that's a little--BETT: I'll take your word for that. I can't speak with authority about that.SHEFFIELD: Okay, so Socrates, though, he was accused of saying that he had within him what he called a daemon or people might nowadays pronounce a “demon” if they're British. And Americans, we, we would say, I don't know, a “dai-mone” probably, I guess. But this inner sort of soul or conscience of his, and he believed that that was the source of how he knew what was right. And that was not what some people agreed with or wanted to hear.BETT: Right. Yeah, I mean, it was not, it didn't speak to him all that often, but yes it gave him guidance on certain occasions as he understood it. And yeah, that, I mean, that seems to have been the source of the notion that he had nonstandard religious ideas or one of the sources anyway.So yeah, I mean, he took it quite seriously, as far as we can tell, according to Plato. Plato's version, it only ever told him not to do things that he was, considering doing. In another version, the author Xenophon, sometimes it told him to do things in a positive sense.But yeah, there was, it's not clear how it worked. I mean, was it a voice? Was it just a sort of a beep? (laughter) Who knows? But yeah, it was some [00:10:00] sort of guidance that he interpreted as having a divine origin. But yes, it was a voice, an inner voice that spoke to him in some way or another. And yeah, he was quite serious about it, but yes, that it, it seems likely that was, and there's several places in Plato more or less say that that was one of the origins of this charge of impiety or believing in nonstandard religious ideas.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. And somebody who lived around the same time as Socrates doesn't appear to have any sort of connection, as far as we know. We don't know a lot about him, was another philosopher named Pyrrho.BETT: Yeah, a few generations later, but yeah.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I mean, yeah, so, but I mean in terms of like, we don't know what he thought about Socrates, generally speaking. So give us a background on who Pyrrho was and how his ideas sort of became dormant after and then were revived multiple times.BETT: Right. Yeah. Okay. So Pyrrho yes, as I said, two or three generations later than Socrates, probably. And yeah he is the origin of the school of skepticism known as Pyrrhonism and yeah we are told that he went he was contemporary with Alexander the Great, and he went on Alexander's expedition to India and there encountered some Indian philosophers we don't know who they were, but they're just called "naked wise men" in the source that we're given on this, and supposedly came back from India with a philosophy that we now call skepticism.Now, I mean, the exact nature of Pyrrho's ideas is very hard to pin down given the lack of evidence. But in the later Pyrrhonism tradition, which, yeah, as you said, there's a gap. He had some immediate followers, and then the Pyrrhonist tradition, appealing to Pyrrho, was not started until the first century BCE, and then lasted for a few centuries after that.The one author in the Pyrrhonist tradition who has written extensive works that have survived, is a guy named Sextus Empiricus. And for him, [00:12:00] skepticism consists in suspending judgment. So you don't lay down the law about anything. You don't claim to have figured out the ultimate truth of things. Instead you contemplate all the opposing views on things and come to suspension of judgment because they all have equal credibility to you. And that is supposed to produce tranquility.And yeah, some version of those ideas or related ideas seems to have been what Pyrrho put forward. But exactly how similar is not so clear. But in any case, Pyrrho's ideas served as inspiration for some people later in antiquity who picked up that general strand of thought and promoted a philosophy making suspension of judgment central. So that's sort of a very short thumbnail sketch of one strand of Greek Skepticism. Now I should say another strand was in Plato's Academy, and they did explicitly appeal to Socrates as a kind of forerunner.But yeah, as you say, there’s no evidence to connect Pyrrho with Socrates, and I'm trying to remember if his disciple Timon wrote about quite a few other philosophers, mostly in a scathing negative way. I'm trying to remember if he ever refers to Socrates, but I'm sorry, I cannot remember right now, and I'd have to go do some research to figure it out.But in any case, yeah, there's no reason to think Pyrrho was identified himself as a follower of Socrates or a follower of anyone else for that reason, except for that matter, except perhaps these Indian thinkers that he encountered on his expedition with Alexander.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. I remember reading a long time ago a book about Sophists, and there was some discussion that perhaps there was some connections between sort of pre-Hindu thought in that tradition, those traditions as well, but it's not, it's so poorly documented, it's really hard to say so, okay, so, but, and I guess one of the other sort of And this is an interesting parallel, I think, between the ancient [00:14:00] Greco Roman world and today is that in those days, the realm of human knowledge was much smaller, and so places like the Academy or places like the various houses, the Pythagoreans and other schools of thought, they dealt with enormous breadth of the subjects that they talked about.So, and we're talking here kind of, we're going to be focusing, moving the focus to Pyrrho and Sextus, but in the case of Sextus Empiricus, he was part of-- the Empirical school was primarily a medical school of thought.BETT: That's right.SHEFFIELD: And so, but on the other hand, like when you look at the Academy founded by Plato and Aristotle’s Lyceum as well, and the Pythagoreans, they were doing things on mathematics, they were doing things on history, they were doing things on astronomy.And here's where I think it's interesting as a parallel to the present day, because we're now at this moment in human history where knowledge has actually collapsed back in on itself in a sense. Because of the creation of search engines, anyone can actually get true information and begin forming ideas about any particular subject because of the internet. You don't have to have a background in astrophysics or surgery to begin looking at these topics.And so in that sense, I think it's a really fascinating development that really is kind of, unparalleled in except for at that very moment that we're talking about here with the ancient skeptic environment. What's your thought on that?BETT: I'm not quite sure I see the parallel here.SHEFFIELD: In other words, anybody can sort of make a foray into a field of knowledge now.BETT: Oh, I see.SHEFFIELD: So the parallel that I would say between these ancient times that we're talking about here and the present day is that in both [00:16:00] cases, people are able to venture into fields of knowledge with which they had no direct experience and are able to begin forming conclusions.And in the same way, there were a lot of really stupid and terrible ideas about how things worked in the ancient world. And we're now kind of seeing that again, during COVID, everybody was an expert in biochemistry and public health, and in the same way that Aristotle thought he knew how women thought and--BETT: Right. Yeah. I hadn't thought of that parallel, but as you describe it, I see the point. Yeah, yeah, that's right.SHEFFIELD: And there's that phrase of, I think it was Karl Marx, that history repeats, first as tragedy and then as farce. Whether that of course is only once or twice, he's playing off Hegel there. But it is, I think it is the case that a lot of good ideas or modes of thinking also kind of have analogs in bad forms of thinking.And we're seeing that nowadays, especially with people like Joe Rogan and others who are practicing what I call the “Zombie Socratic Method,” where they're using the tools of knowledge to destroy knowledge. Would you agree with that?BETT: That sounds like a good way of describing it, yeah. I mean the interest in truth in some quarters just seems to have disappeared.SHEFFIELD: But speaking of Rogan though, the approach that he and a lot of his sort of imitators both more and less intellectually gifted, I feel like with them, they've kind of exposed the sort of the limits of the value of skepticism, especially when you lop off the latter part of the argument, which is this is skepticism about things which you cannot really know. And that they've extended it to say, no, this is about everything. And so therefore you can question everyone except for yourself. “Do your own research.”BETT: Right. Well, well, do your own research. That's [00:18:00] a very limited kind of skepticism, because, again, I mean, from the ancient perspective, skepticism is suspending judgment. And so, yeah, if you're suspending judgment about some ideas but not others, that doesn't really amount to skepticism. And if anything, that's the opposite. That's jumping to conclusions. I mean, doing your own research sounds fine, but being aware of competing points of view, being sensitive to the evidence, that's a crucial element in a genuine kind of open-minded attitude.And yeah, that's not what I see in the kinds of thinkers that you're talking about. It seems like they reject a whole lot of stuff and then unreflectively accept a lot of other stuff. And so, yeah, I mean, as I said, I mean, I don't think a full blooded skepticism is really viable today, but what the lesson that we can get out of it is the willingness to be open to opposing positions and willingness to admit that you might be wrong or that you might be able to learn some more.And yeah, that's the kind of thing that I don't see in the kind of dogmatic positions that the kind of thinkers you're talking about seem to adopt. So yeah, I mean, I think skepticism does have limitations, but the positions that you're talking about are not truly skeptical. If anything after a certain point, they're exactly the opposite.SHEFFIELD: And this is where the idea of skepticism and ignorance have, they do have a certain similarity in one sense, right?BETT: Well, sure. I mean, a skeptic would not claim to know things. I mean, that's, that's another way of putting the suspension of judgment that's central to skepticism. It's not that they think it's impossible, that, I mean, that would be a definite view in itself, but they don't think they've figured anything out, for sure.And so the thing that I think we can get out of that is the notion of keeping an open mind. I mean, maybe they push it too far. But yeah, the skeptic certainly [00:20:00] would claim to be ignorant of the kinds of topics on which they suspend judgment. That's pretty much a just sort of repeating the same point twice.SHEFFIELD: Well, and it's also that so I mean, you have dedicated a lot of your career to sort of explaining and examining the ideas of ancient Greco Roman skepticism. You wrote a book called How to Keep an Open Mind, which I think it's very relevant to what we're talking about here. Give the audience a little summary of what your book is.BETT: Sure. Yeah. Well, and so it's mostly translations from, of selections from Sextus Empiricus to sort of give a basic flavor of what his skepticism is like. But I chose the title because I think that's the kind of lesson that you can get out of it today that's still very much relevant for our times.And I mean, it's not an exact, I mean, that's not exactly just following what Sextus says, because as I say, I mean, I think maybe he pushes the suspension of judgment line too far. Suspension of judgment is the root to this attitude of tranquility. And so, he doesn't actually want to discover anything.What he wants to do is keep on balancing opposing ideas so that he's always in this state of suspension. But, I mean, I think we, we do actually know some things about the world. I mean, as you said, that in the ancient world, much less was actually known.And we, there's a lot of things we don't know, sure, but there's a lot of things we do. And so I think for us, whatever it was, whatever was the case in the ancient world for us suspension of judgment across the board is not really a realistic goal even if you would want it, which is another question too. But I think generally speaking, the idea of being aware of and alert to opposing points of view which is central to Sextus’s method, that's very much something that I think we can value and learn from today.And so yeah, that's why I called it [00:22:00] Keeping an Open Mind, even though in a sense, Sextus himself is not exactly open-minded, because he's got this sort of definite program of, maintaining his suspension of judgment. But yeah, if you take the sort of, the parts of his outlook that still have relevance today, keeping an open mind and being alert to alternatives—doesn't mean you never come to conclusions, but whatever conclusions you do come to, you should be prepared to revise in light of new evidence.That’s what I would think is a good empirical method to go back to that term again. And, yeah, as you said, there's a connection between the medical empirical school and the Pyrrhonists. They weren't all the same people, but a number of them were the same people.And yeah, Sextus Empiricus was, I mean, his title is because he was a member of the Empirical medical school himself. And yeah, the Empiricists thought that, I mean, they believed in cures for diseases and, they believed in medical procedures, but it was all based on experience. What had been seen, shown to work, it was not based on any, theory about the underlying workings of the body is just based on what procedures have been effective.And that kind of broadly empirical method, that's what I think you can get from skepticism. Without buying into 100% of what Sextus says, which I don't think is realistic for us today.SHEFFIELD: Well, and I think it's, I mean, maybe in fairness to him, that given that he was engaged apparently in some sort of medical practice he did, it seemed, to have beliefs that there were things that actually were true.BETT: Well, well, sure. Yeah, that's right.SHEFFIELD: No, I mean, he did not advocate this as an across-the-board thing.BETT: No, no, I mean, exactly. Suspension of judgment is about the real nature of things. And in your ordinary life, you go by what he calls the appearances. And so, things strike you in certain ways, and that is enough for your practical decisions.And I think, yeah, the medical Empiricists’ experience of what procedures work and what procedures don't work, [00:24:00] that would all come under the heading of appearance for him.The Empiricists, like the Pyrrhonists, didn't claim to penetrate beyond the appearances to some sort of theory, ultimate theory of how things function. In the case of the Empiricists, how the human body functioned, in the case of the Pyrrhonists, much broader views about the nature of the world. So yeah, there's plenty of resources for practical purposes and that applies to medicine just as much as it applies to regular life.So yeah, I mean, Galen, the doctor Galen says that the Empiricist's attitude to medicine is like the Pyrrhonist's attitude to life as a whole. And it's that broadly empirical method that I think is the common ground.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and just to go back to the present moment, in the present moment now, a lot of, there's this misbegotten term called the culture war. And I think it's very inaccurate, because really, we're seeing with this widespread active weaponized ignorance, we're in a crisis of epistemology, right?BETT: That sounds fair. Yep. Sure.SHEFFIELD: And I mean, in the sense that how you understand where knowledge comes from, how it can be found, these are the critical questions of this moment, because now we're the world in which we live was kind of created by people who believed in empiricism and empirical reasoning. But they created a world in which also there were people they didn't bother to convince of these ideas.And we were talking before the recording here that, I see that there was, that we're kind of living in a post-Christian world, we’re kind of reliving a lot of the crises that engulfed Islam in the 1970s, 80s, 90s, in which you had a populace who had no real contact with modernity and they were suddenly [00:26:00] kind of forced into that world by virtue of the world changing so drastically. And it became very enraging to a lot of people and we're seeing that continually nowadays, and I think it's important for people to get that. I mean, is that something you've thought about or written much about recently?BETT: I don't, I haven't written about it but that, I mean, that seems like a good description of our times. And yeah, I mean, in universities, we try to push back against that and teach people ways of discovering things and, ways of reasoning. But that's a relatively small segment of the population that's going to be exposed to that. So, yeah.SHEFFIELD: Do you think though that that there is kind of an underappreciation for the thinking, the thought processes that created modernity? Like John Maynard Keynes, he's known for talking about how dead economists rule people, but actually the phrase before that is more accurate, and I'm just going to read it here so he said, “the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right, and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.”What's your take, you want to riff on that?BETT: Well, I mean, I'm not sure. I mean, maybe it depends which ideas we're talking about. But yeah, I mean, the ideas that have been around before certainly percolate without people realizing them. That's certainly true. But, yeah, I mean, one might wish some ideas had more impact than they actually do.And others perhaps less. So, yeah, I think it's sort of two edged. I'm not sure if I'd go along entirely with that quote of Keynes.SHEFFIELD: Do you see that kind of turning around [00:28:00] though, that people who do have a better understanding of sound thinking are beginning to realize, look, we've got to explain this stuff to people?BETT: I think there's in universities, at least in my experience, there's a realization that, yeah, this is a real issue. Whether how much effect that can have across society? That's another question. I'm much less optimistic about that, but I mean at my university just a few years ago, there was this institute founded that it's kind of political science, psychology, sociology, designed to kind of investigate the foundations of democracy and what we can do to make it more robust.And a lot of really interesting things have been hired in for that institute. But yeah, how far that's going to impact the broader society remains to be seen. And yeah, at the very least it would take a long time to make any kind of difference. So yeah, I mean, I'm, there are certainly people who realize that the importance of this how far change can be affected and how quickly.If at all that's another question.SHEFFIELD: Would you agree then that we do kind of have segment, a minority segment that is kind of, at war with modernity? Do you think that's an adequate expression of what we're talking about here?BETT: Yep, that's a fair way to put it, I think.SHEFFIELD: And how do you think Donald Trump sort of fits into that?BETT: Well, I mean, he's a symptom of it, but he's also had quite a lot to do with pushing it along, I think. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I have touched on these things a little bit, I suppose, in sort of thinking about this theme of open mindedness.And yeah, I mean, I wrote a paper that, that kind of explored this a little bit in around 2014. And yeah, I remember giving it, presenting it a few years later, and I thought, oh my god I can't imagine I wrote this before Donald Trump made appearance on the national stage, but now what I'm saying is so much truer than I could have imagined at the time.SHEFFIELD: So [00:30:00] Specifically, like, what were you saying there?BETT: Well, that I mean, this general idea that open mindedness is the message that you can get from Sextus, and that's something that has some value, and there are powerful forces pushing against that and yeah, they were already there before Trump came along, but I think, Trump has been a big sort of magnet and, or a big force making it much more prominent in society more broadly. Or just make it more obvious, perhaps, I mean, maybe it was happening anyway. Well, it was happening anyway. So, yeah, so I think he's both a symptom and a cause, I would say. And that's not an original idea.SHEFFIELD: Sure. Now, what about outside the United States? Do you think there are similar trends?BETT: There's some of the same things. Yeah, I mean, it, it was no accident that I mean, I'm from Britain, as you can probably figure out the vote on Brexit in the UK happened in the right around the same time when Trump was running for president. And I think that's, some of the same phenomena are involved there as well.A lot of English people seem to be regretting that decision now. So yeah, I think there, there are elements of it elsewhere. And yeah, I mean, there are far right movements in Germany. I mean, I'm not a political theorist or scientist, but yeah, from my reading of the news, my sense is, yeah, it may be in a particularly extreme form in the United States, but it's certainly, there are parallels a lot of other places in the world and, well, and including, as you said, I mean, Islamic fundamentalism was a kind of precursor in, in many other countries.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and related to that, I think also is that when you look at the work of Or at least when I've looked at the work of a lot of present day fundamentalist religious apologists, they kind of are using the tools of skepticism to question things like biological evolution or question things like the age of the earth and, and say things like, well, you weren't there.When the earth the oceans evolved, [00:32:00] form. You weren't there when life was coming out of the sea. So how do you know that that happened? And so therefore we can, we have this other narrative here, which says that, hey, God made everything in seven days.And so therefore, let's suspend our judgment here. We could be just as right.BETT: Yeah, well, and I mean, the answer to that is study some science and I mean, the trouble is to be able to respond to that effectively, you've got to actually understand the mechanisms of evolution, which of course we don't understand 100%. That's what science is like. But I think we understand quite a bit.But to get to that, and I'm no biologist, but you need to really get into detail. And that's where this kind of attitude falls short, I think. But yeah, again I mean, teaching people the full details of the theory of evolution, that's not something that is going to happen in a widespread fashion.So yeah, I mean, it's tough that the appeal of that kind of easy answer is quite understandable, given the difficulty of actually responding effectively to that kind of pseudo skeptical challenge, I would call it. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Well, and yeah, and the idea behind, the other idea behind skepticism is that you come to that suspension of belief only if these ideas can seem remotely plausible.BETT: That's right.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. You have to interrogate the ideas first.BETT: Yeah, exactly.SHEFFIELD: And if they cannot survive scrutiny, then you do not suspend.BETT: Yeah, that's right. And in fact, the word skeptikos in Greek means inquirer. So, I mean, that's what Sextus says is, these other people, they think they figured out the nature of the world and, well, and some of them think they figured out that's impossible. Well, I'm not either. I'm still inquiring. I'm still investigating.And that involves, yeah, looking at all the opposing points of view. Now, as I say, I mean, I think Sextus has a too rigid [00:34:00] attitude himself that's always going to lead to suspension of judgment. But the idea of examining opposing points of view, examining the evidence on either side, that's something that is painstaking, difficult, long process and that's what serious discovery is like. And so, yeah, I mean, the scientific attitude and the skeptical attitude have quite a bit in common.And any good scientist has a measure of skepticism about their own theories, meaning a willingness to go where the evidence leads, which might involve reformulating your own ideas and well, not just in science. I mean, any good thinker in any subject will have that willingness to revise their opinions in light of new information.And that, yeah, that's not what you see with these right-wing movements, as far as I can tell.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And I think that part's relevant, if we jump further ahead in history after sort of the end of antiquity when some of these French philosophers began sort of rediscovering the work of Sextus and kind of, the, I mean, when you look at the history, like, it was this idea that, because again, it's like these ideas people forget how knowledge works and how you can form it, over time. It seems like this is a lesson humanity has to learn over and over.And so, with the beginning of the Enlightenment quote unquote Sextus's work played a major role in that.BETT: That's right. Yeah, and yeah, I mean, and new movements of skepticism came along there, but then at that point, skepticism became a much more theoretical attitude.And it was accompanied, but I mean, Descartes is the person who's usually thought to really put skepticism on the map in the early modern period. But Descartes was also a very serious scientist and a very serious inquirer. So yeah, I think that connection is a real one.And yeah, Sextus was forgotten about, [00:36:00] largely not 100%, there was a medieval Latin translation of some of him. But he largely dropped out of sight for at least a thousand years after the end of antiquity and until 1500s, 1600s. Montaigne, a little earlier than Descartes, is aware of him.And Montaigne's an interesting sort of skeptical thinker. Most not so much on scientific questions. But yeah, I think that connection is a real one.SHEFFIELD: Let's get into Montaigne for a second here because it's also, the ideas that he was applying it to with regard to religion.And knowledge of, the ultimate nature of reality and things like that and what knowledge is, those kind of became the basis of kind of a lot of the works in favor of religious toleration by John Locke and of course, David Hume basically used those ideas as well to really make the case that, look, you cannot prove these things that you say you believe.And that the idea of trying to describe a philosophy, as he famously said, the idea of deriving ought from is. Right, you can't do that.BETT: Right, yeah. And so he, yeah, he's, well, as you say he's one of a longish tradition there. I mean, you've covered a couple of centuries with that list of names.And yeah that, those are important figures in the modern enlightenment, broadly speaking. And yeah, I, Hume didn't, I think, fully understand Pyrrhonism, but yeah, he certainly echoes a lot of its key moves.But yeah, I mean, speaking of religion, I mean, Sextus already had the notion suspend judgment about whether there are any gods doesn't mean you shouldn't go through the religious practices like any normal person would in those days.But yeah, as for the ultimate questions, what are gods really like? As with everything else, there are a whole bunch of opposing opinions and [00:38:00] that's what should lead you to suspension of judgment.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and I think what's kind of interesting to me is that when you look at Hume or Thomas Hobbes or, let's say Edward Gibbon, These you know, Scottish enlightenment philosophers, as they're commonly called now, in a lot of ways they were creating a conservative tradition that was based on skepticism and that tradition has basically been thrown into the trash can by today's reactionaries.BETT: That's a good point. Yeah, I mean, conservatism, yeah, I mean, originally what that means is being reluctant to change things. And because, radical change can lead to all kinds of consequences you didn't expect. And, that that's a reasonable point of view.And, yeah, it has quite a bit in common with this kind of broadly empirical attitude that we've been talking about in different periods. And, yeah, that, that's. I mean, people may call themselves conservatives today, but that is nothing to do with that original notion of conservatism.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, that is a really important point because, the, these, movements pushing Trumpism or, from national in France or, some of these other groups or, what's his name?Victor Orbán, in Hungary, or Vladimir Putin in Russia. These are not conservative traditions that we're dealing with here, and it's a grave mistake by people who, teach mainstream philosophy or political theory or engage in journalism. They shouldn't call it conservative.BETT: Right, and I think this is, yeah, I mean, just in regular politics, I mean, there's been a radical shift just in the last 10, maybe 15, 20 years. I mean, it used to be there were actual conservatives. Around in, in, in the national political [00:40:00] discourse and I mean, I didn't necessarily like everything they, they put forward but, that it was a serious point of view.And now it's very hard. I mean, you can see, you can find one or two, like in the op ed. pages of the Washington Post or something. But in terms of actual politics in Washington, it's disappeared. And it's a radical shift. And yeah, not a comfortable one, I think.SHEFFIELD: To the extent that people are aware of some of these ancient Greco Roman ideas like the concept of skepticism or like what they think the Sophists said, or what they think the Cynics said or whoever, I think it's kind of distorted.But you're a professor of ancient political thought. Do you think people generally, to the extent they're aware of these ideas at all, do they have a good impression in your view? Or what do you think?BETT: Well, I mean, the word skeptic is out there in ordinary language. And, in normal discourse it means, a skeptic is someone who's inclined to be doubtful about things. Someone who is not going to accept nothing without a good deal of persuasion.That has something genuinely in common with the skeptical outlook in the ancient world. And same thing with Stoic. I mean, Stoicism was a very specific and detailed philosophy. And, yeah, Stoic in ordinary language means putting up with things and to maybe to an extreme again, that's a real element in the Stoic philosophy.So, I mean, just the normal kind of usages of some of these terms do answer to the ancient forms of thought to some extent, but to get really clear on it, you'd have to read the material and look at it in more detail.So, yeah, I mean, it's not aSHEFFIELD: You don't have a lot of quibbles with it.BETT: Well, there isn't a complete misunderstanding as far as I can see. Yeah, I think that that's fair enough.Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Okay. Well, so I guess maybe let's [00:42:00] get further into your How to Keep an Open Mind--BETT: Okay.SHEFFIELD: Book here a bit here.BETT: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: One of the key points that you make in how to keep an open mind is that skepticism or the skeptical posture is an ability. And that's something that Sextus says--BETT: That's right,SHEFFIELD: Rather extensively. Let's maybe talk about that as well.BETT: Sure.SHEFFIELD: What does he mean by that?BETT: Yeah. So, so it's not a, it's not a theory. It's not a conclusion. It's not a set of statements. Skepticism is a practice. And so yeah, it's an ability to produce suspension of judgment.And so it's an activity. And yeah, the ability is being very good at lining up opposing ideas, opposing arguments, imposing impressions, imposing theories in such a way that they have this kind of equal force on either side, which leads you to suspension of judgment. And yeah, with the result of tranquility, as he says.So yeah, and so yeah, skepticism is a way of life. It's not just a sort of intellectual posture. Although it is that too. So yeah, as a skeptic you go about looking for opposing opinions, opposing ideas, and that's what will generate or maintain your suspension of judgment. And, yeah, as I said, in ordinary life, you go by the way things appear, but you don't abandon your generally skeptical attitude towards ultimate questions about how things really are.And so, yeah, it's not, I mean, in, in modern philosophy, skepticism is often thought of as this sort of purely ivory tower kind of thing, where, it's something you could, and in fact, I mean, David Hume says he can discuss skepticism in his study, but when he goes out into the world, well, he forgets all that stuff. That's, it becomes irrelevant.Well, that's not the ancient attitude at all. For Sextus, [00:44:00] skepticism is something that you maintain in your ordinary life and it's a way of improving your life as far as he's concerned. And yeah, I mean, as I've said I don't think we can follow that entirely these days, but yeah for him, it's an attitude that pervades your life and makes, improves your life as far as he's concerned.Because yeah, you stop worrying about things that you otherwise would be worried about and that's a very important benefit as far as he's concerned.SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm. Well, and the proper way of practicing it as well, like that's also part of the ability, which is the--BETT: That's right, yeah, I mean there's--SHEFFIELD: You cannot arrive at suspension of disbelief until you have completed the process.BETT: Suspension of belief, not disbelief.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, that's right. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Suspension of belief. Yeah. I'm sorry.Yeah, that is the end point of a process. It's several steps before that.BETT: That's right, yeah. So it's a technique that you need to develop and, Sextus writings are endless. And it's kind of overwhelming to go through them all, but they're all, I mean, they're examples of doing this on one topic after another.And so, yeah, I mean, he has, he has certain sort of recurring moves that he makes but yeah, it's clearly a technique that he thinks you have to develop, and yeah, it'll certainly take time. And yeah, not everyone, not everyone has it.And maybe that's okay as far as he's concerned. But he and his friends find this to be an improvement in their lives, and I mean, his attitude in his writing seems to be, you might like to try it too. Maybe you'll find the same thing. Yeah, so that's the general idea.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and sometimes I think people have, there's that colloquial phrase, don't have a mind so open that your brain falls out.BETT: Yeah, that, that's right. And, I mean,[00:46:00] Yeah, in Sextus's case, yeah, I'm not quite, I'm not sure I'd use quite that same metaphor, but the effect in some ways is maybe the same, which is he's always aiming for suspension of judgment, and he thinks he's very good at it. And yeah, as I've said, I mean, I think that that's an unrealistic goal for us today.And, I mean, someone who does have an open mind where ideas go in and come in and go out. I mean, that's not going to be in a very effective, a very productive member of society, probably. And so, yeah, again, the thing I think you can learn from Sextus, well Not buying into him 100% is the notion of being alert to new sources of evidence.But I'm not a practicing skeptic myself. What I think is valuable about it is, yeah being alert to new sources of evidence. And yeah, being willing to come to conclusions sometimes. And, deciding that the evidence supports a certain conclusion.But. Again always being willing to revise your views in light of new information and not being closed off to the possibility of changing your view. Yeah. And that's what I think is missing in a lot of these movements that we've been talking about today.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, now so I am interested, when you've taught this material to students are there some students who kind of resist this mode of thinking?BETT: Some of them will say, well, this just goes too far, and this is ridiculous. And, to a point I'll say, well, yeah, I agree. From our point of view it does go too far because, yeah, as I've said I mean, I think we do actually know some things about how things are in the world. And in, in those days as you said, I mean, the knowledge base was just way more limited.And so, in those days, it was possible, it was reasonable to suspend judgment about a lot more things than it is now. Not that there aren't a lot of things even today that we can and probably should. It probably should suspend judgment about. So yeah, I mean, that, that's one reaction I get.[00:48:00]Another reaction is often, well, this is just not a basis for making serious decisions about things. And there's something to that again. I mean, yeah, as I said, you, according to Sextus, you live your life based on the appearances. And that, that doesn't give you any very sort of, full developed, fully developed structure of fully developed basis for deciding things.You go with how things strike you, but maybe that's more realistic than some people would like to think. I mean, yeah, I mean, in that respect, maybe I am more sympathetic to skepticism and personally, yeah, I tend to try to avoid rigid theories of what one ought to do and be just sort of sensitive to how it strikes me at the time.So yeah, I mean, those are two sort of common, of those who find it, not so appealing. Those are two sort of common reactions that I get from students. But a lot of times people do think, find it quite attractive. And, by comparison with, studying Plato, whether all these elaborate views that no one.today would believe for a second. Sextus seems like, a much more appealing form of thought. So yeah, it often goes over quite well at least until you get into the details where it gets kind of mind numbing with all the theories being juxtaposed with one another and led to suspension of judgment.But yeah, I mean, Sextus's best known work outlines a Pyrrhonism, especially the first part of it is. Quite intuitive and not too technical and so that that's what I usually teach and that's what mostly is in this book how to keep an open mind.SHEFFIELD: All right, well and then now in terms of the contemporaries of the Pyrrhonists, there's not too much that we know of what they were thought of, but there's some, right? So, I mean, what was the response?BETT: Well, we're talking about several centuries. I mean, the view that Sextus finds most important [00:50:00] to kind of combat, to attack is the Stoics. Well, and actually that's true in the Academic side of skepticism as well. Cicero has the same kind of attitude.So Stoicism was the most dominant non-Skeptical philosophy broadly speaking in the period of Pyrrhonism and yeah, I mean, the Stoics had this very highly developed view. I mean, it's very interesting.And yeah, we have some writings from Roman Stoics: Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, the emperor. But the original development of the view in the Greek Hellenistic period, we only have reports and fragments, but there's enough there, I think, to be able to reconstruct it fairly well.So yeah, the Stoics thought that there was a divine providential being that controlled everything. They thought that everything was fated by this divine providential being. They thought that, I mean, they had an ideal of the wise person who understands the nature of the world and has achieved various human virtues.And that true wisdom is almost impossible to attain, but you can work towards it, and some people are closer to it than others. So the ideal of the wise person is understood to be almost never actually achieved, but that it still can be valuable as an ideal. And some people will get closer to it than others, and Stoicism is designed to help you move along that path.And so, yeah, there's a whole lot of complicated ideas about the nature of the world, about the place of human beings in the world. Stoics had a lot of complicated views and logic as well. It's a highly developed, intricate philosophy. And this is the view that Sextus finds that he's most inclined to combat, although he talks about a lot of other ones too.Another view that was around at the same time is Epicureanism. And that's interesting because they share the same practical goal as the Pyrrhonists, that is, freedom from disturbance, ataraxia is the Greek word. But they thought [00:52:00] you could get it, not by suspended judgment, but by coming to understand how things really are.And in their case, their view of how things really are is the world consists of atoms and void, and if you understand the atomic theory, then you will not be bothered by all kinds of worries that religious people are worried by, that is of divine punishment and divine wrath if you do something that displeases the gods, all that's just fiction as far as they're concerned.There's a question whether the Epicureans actually did believe in gods at all, but if they did, they were beings that had no concern about human life whatsoever, and so you don't have to worry about them. And so that gives you freedom from disturbance. So, yeah, Sextus talks about Epicureans sometimes, but yeah, Stoics are the ones he's most concerned to rebut and show the limitations of their views.And yeah, those are two sort of main alternatives to skepticism in the period when skepticism was active.SHEFFIELD: And in terms of, like, the responses that they had, though, to--BETT: Well, okay, so, yeah, a common, yeah, a common objection to Pyrrhonism, or actually skepticism of the academic tradition as well, is nobody can live like this.If you suspend judgment about everything, then you have no basis for decisions. And, yeah, as I said, I mean, Sextus is well aware of that charge, and he answers it by saying, sure we can, we just follow appearances, without committing ourselves to the real nature of things.But yeah, the, both the Stoics and the Epicureans, I think, would say, well, no, you to have any sort of serious basis for deciding on what to do, you do need to have some understanding of the nature of things, and so that, that's a fake answer.But, yeah, I mean, to my mind, I mean, Sextus has quite a strong position there.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and it's an interesting point that you make there because I think that sort of accusation [00:54:00] against the skeptical posture, that's really kind of what is going on right now with this reactionary right wing that we are seeing worldwide with Trump and others.They want people to be forced into the idea that you have to understand that the world is according to what the Bible says. And if you don't accept the nature of how we see things, well, then you're evil.BETT: Yeah, no, right. I mean, there's a kind of yearning for certainty, perhaps. And, yeah, a perception that, contemporary culture has abandoned certainties and yeah, so that could be a perception of there being too much skepticism, perhaps. So yeah, I think that's a fair point. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Now, and I guess, I think overall though, as we discussed, this the revolution of empiricism in the Enlightenment revival of Sextus's work and it created a foundation for a lot of technological and religious and political progress, both for toleration and for scientific inquiry.BETT: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: But it does seem like a lot of people haven't really-- they appreciated these ideas nowadays and some of that, a lot of that does have to do with education, and I think, I mean, what's, like, to me, I feel like that's why there is so much resistance among these reactionary types like Ron DeSantis, to, try to ban--BETT: Right.SHEFFIELD: Various teaching of things. Do you see any sort of concordance there with some of these ancient criticisms, or what's your response to that?BETT: Well, I mean, Epicureans were not trying to sort of impose a view across society. I mean, the, they were, small groups of people themselves.So in that sense, I wouldn't see a parallel. But, I mean, the general frame of thought, perhaps, is similar, yeah, I mean, the feeling that something, you've [00:56:00] got to stick with some ideas no matter what.And, yeah, I mean, the idea of an ancient philosophical school is, you make a certain set of commitments to one of these views or the other and you stick with them. I mean, not everyone did that. Some, I mean, some people occasionally would change schools. But yeah, in that sense, I do see sort of a parallel with this kind of yearning for certainty.SHEFFIELD: Even if it's certainty that they know is wrong or might be incorrect. No, I'm saying in the modern day. In other words, like, for instance, like we've seen with I mean, just the cavalcade of information of biology and history and paleontology showing that the world wasn't made in seven days and is not six thousand years old.So, the people who hold these views in the present day, they know that they're discredited, but they want to continue to believe them because, there is a fear of uncertainty with a lot of us, right?BETT: Sure. Yeah, that's right. And so, and I mean, I think Sextus himself tends to suggest the kind of default position of human beings is towards dogmatism. And he's presenting his philosophy as a kind of recipe for getting away from that. So, yeah, I think that's right.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, so, I mean, ultimately, though, I mean, for people who do have those perspectives, like, I think they view the suspension of belief not as a place of enlightenment, but as a place of fear.And let's maybe end on that point. How does Sextus, and how would you, make the case that, look, not being 100% sure of the world, that's actually a good thing.BETT: Well. Yeah, I mean, it can be scary. So, yeah, I mean, I mean, they're not responding to nothing. But maybe it depends on different [00:58:00] temperaments of different people, but I mean, one temperament that I think there needs to be a lot of in society is willingness to reconsider your ideas.But yeah, it comes with risks. There's no question about that. And I mean, in my own profession in universities. I mean, people embarking on new research projects, I mean, who knows if you might not know how well they're going to succeed. And that's risky and in all kinds of ways.I mean, it might be risky for your career, so it might make you nervous in all kinds of other ways. So, yeah, I mean, that's a response to a real phenomenon, but some difficult things are good to confront for the sake of the outcomes that result.And yeah, I mean, as I've tried to emphasize all through this, I mean, the lesson I think we can get from Sextus is the notion of being sensitive to new evidence, to being willing to reconsider your ideas. And that's how discovery gets made.And it's never a final decision for all time. But that's how intellectual progress occurs. And that can only be good for society in the long run.But for the practitioner of inquiry, that can be uncomfortable sometimes. But there are uncomfortable things in life that are nonetheless worthwhile.SHEFFIELD: Well, and I guess maybe in the personal level, though, he does say that he does go pretty extensively, that when you believe that you know everything and the nature of things, and what constitutes all good behavior, that that actually is incredibly stressful.BETT: Well, that's right. I mean, it's especially what he focuses on especially is beliefs about some things really being good and other things really being bad. So, sort of value decisions.And yeah, his notion is, well, you're, if that's your idea, that some things are really, really [01:00:00] good and other things really, really bad, well, then you're going to be obsessed about getting or keeping the good things and avoiding the bad things.I mean, I think that's one of the less convincing parts of his view. I mean, sometimes it, in some contexts it makes sense. In other contexts, it makes less sense. But the, but I mean, but his, his attitude is getting away from that and that will give you tranquility. Well, again, sometimes yes, sometimes no, perhaps.And so, yeah, I mean, that's another part where I think maybe I wouldn't agree with Sextus entirely because, yeah, I mean, I think the notion that it's uncomfortable, uncertainty is uncomfortable. I think that's a real thing. And what I would say is, well, Yeah, it is, but deal with it because the, the benefits of having that mindset broadly distributed across society is potentially very great.SHEFFIELD: Well, and I guess this is kind of a thing he may have in common with the Epicureans is that he's saying that if you become obsessed with attaining or obtaining that which you believe is really good and avoiding that which you believe is horrible, your life circumstances are never going to be such that that's always going to happen for you.BETT: Sure.SHEFFIELD: If you believe that this thing is the sine qua non of your life.BETT: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: And you can't get it, in a sense, accepting your circumstances, maybe that's an Epicurean mode of thought.BETT: No I think that's right. That's one of the key things that he wants to get away from. And to that extent, I think he has a point.But yeah, uncertainty has discomforts of its own, but that's the thing that I'm saying, well, too bad deal with it. Because the alternatives are more problematic. And that's been a major theme of what we've been talking about today, I think.SHEFFIELD: All right. Well, do you have any parting thoughts on the topic here to leave the audience with?BETT: Well, I mean, I think we've covered a lot of ground. But yes, I'm [01:02:00] all for keeping an open mind, and I hope as many people as possible are the same way. But yeah, keeping an open mind doesn't mean not believing anything whatsoever. Checking your beliefs every so often and making sure they still seem right would be part of the program.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and keeping an open mind includes doubting yourself.BETT: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's right. But not to the point of paralysis.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Okay. Awesome. All right, well, we've been speaking today with Richard Bett and he is a philosophy professor at Johns Hopkins University and also the author of the book, How to Keep an Open Mind.Thanks for being here, Richard.BETT: Thanks very much. I enjoyed it.SHEFFIELD: All right, so that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody for joining us, and you can get more if you go to theoryofchange.show. All of the episodes have video, audio, and transcript, and you can access them all if you are a paid subscribing member, and so I do encourage you to go to theoryofchange.show, and you can subscribe on Patreon or on Substack, whichever one you prefer, and I appreciate that very much. Thanks a lot. I'll see you next time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

Episode SummaryAcross America, and across the world, radical movements of far-right Christians are trying desperately to seize the levers of political power to force their religious opinions onto everyone else. And in many cases, particularly the 2016 election of Donald Trump, they have succeeded.Seeing the rise of reactionary Christianity has made some non-religious people recoil in horror to the idea that religion itself is the problem. But that’s not going to work, because not only is religion not going anywhere, religion is also like philosophy or politics. They’re tools that can be used for great evil, but also for great good as well. Just ask the thousands of Christian activists who have been mobilizing for racial justice and to end gun violence right now. Or ask the Christians who worked to mobilize to end slavery in the United States and Great Britain and other countries.The reality is that whatever your viewpoints are about religion or theology, it’s past time for people who oppose the fascistic politics that is emerging in the United States and elsewhere to come together in a shared purpose, not just to preserve democracy, but to expand it as well. I was pleased to talk about what that means with Tim Whitaker. He is a podcaster and founder of a non-profit organization called The New Evangelicals which works tirelessly to promote inclusive and affirming Christianity.VideoTranscriptMATTHEW SHEFFIELD: I’m glad to have you here today, Tim.TIM WHITAKER: Hello, Matthew. Thank you for having me. It’s awesome to talk to you again. We’ve been chatting for a while behind the scenes, so glad to have a conversation.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Alright, well, so, for people who haven’t listened to your podcast, just give us an overview of what is it, and how often does it come out, and what are you doing on it?WHITAKER: Yeah, sure. The podcast is called the New Evangelicals Podcast. It comes out at least once a week, sometimes twice, depending on what’s happening in current events.Most of it is me interviewing all different kinds of guests coming from some kind of like Christian perspective, but usually more liberal or progressive or scholars who are focusing on certain like focuses like Christian nationalism and just trying to unpack that for our audience. Most of the people that listen to us are people who have a history of growing up in Evangelical fundamentalist spaces. So, someone like John MacArthur might’ve been a leader that they were exposed to. That’s who I was exposed to as a kid. So as we kind of walked away from that, we still want to follow Jesus, but we’re not really sure how.So our [00:04:00] podcast helps introduce people to scholars and theologians and people like that who are thinking about and living in ways that are different than how we were brought up to think about the Christian tradition but are still faithful to Jesus.So that’s like the main crux of it. But we also do episodes where I’ll bring on someone who disagrees with me, like an actual Christian nationalist, or my podcast producer Noah will come on sometimes and we’ll just have a conversation.So it’s a pretty wide podcast, but usually it’s in some kind of interview form.SHEFFIELD: And how did you get into doing it or why did you decide to do it?WHITAKER: Well, I started it because I started the New Evangelicals on Instagram first. It was an Instagram page, and when that kind of exploded almost three years ago now I said to myself, I already have a podcast that wasn’t part of this work I was doing.And I said, I think I have to switch over and make a new podcast called the New Evangelicals podcast to have these more long-form conversations because this stuff is so complicated. So that’s why we started it, trying to get people a more long-form content than just Instagram stories or short posts or reels, because again, theology or social issues are really complicated and take a lot of nuance to unpack.So that was kind of the motivation behind it to give people something more long form than just that short 60 second hot take or, short tweet.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and of course you can’t even make a freaking link on Instagram.WHITAKER: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I mean, you would have to post it in the stories as a link and it’s a whole thing, but exactly right.So, so we just knew that long term, I wanted to have conversation with people. I mean, I like conversations. I like discovering different ways of thinking. And so it’s been really cool. We’re about 144 episodes in now, and we’ve had all kinds of amazing guests on the podcast, and it’s been really cool to be a part of it.SHEFFIELD: And all right. What’s so tell us about your background. You grew up Evangelical, obviously, but tell us.WHITAKER: Oh, yes. I grew up in the belly of the beast. So I did grow up in New Jersey, which people think is liberal, which overall it [00:06:00] is, but there’s still very many pockets of conservative, fundamentalist Christianity.And I grew up in one of them. I was homeschooled for nine years. Like I said earlier, John MacArthur’s style of teaching, he’s someone who would be considered very conservative and reformed. So the belief that God is predestining people to go to heaven or hell. The Bible’s absolutely inherently God’s objective truth. Just read it, that kind of perspective.That’s how I grew up my entire life. And I was committed to being a Christian in that worldview, because that’s all I knew. I was serving in church at age eight, handing out bulletins as an usher. So I’m someone who was fully inoculated in Evangelical culture, both in the church level and that like subculture level of just the Evangelical ethos, of the music, of the merch, of the conferences of the parachurch ministries. So organizations that did missions work in their local towns.I was someone who was part of all of that all the way in. So that’s kind of my background. And then over time, what I tell people is I took my faith seriously, like my leaders told me to do, they would often tell me, ‘Hey, don’t take my word for it. Read the Bible for yourself. Hey, don’t take this person’s word for it. See what the scriptures say.’So I did. They told me to follow Jesus wherever Jesus would take me. So I did. And it took me, long story short, out eventually of what I called the basement of Evangelical fundamentalism and into the broader tradition of Christian thought.So there’s a lot there obviously, but that’s the short form version.SHEFFIELD: Huh. And what was the, what’s been the reaction from some of the people that you’ve That you knew?WHITAKER: Well, I mean my church kicked me out when I started new Evangelicals, they–SHEFFIELD: Cancel culture.WHITAKER: You said it not me. But yeah, I mean they pretty much gave me an ultimatum, stop serving quote unquote, which means volunteering as a worship drummer.That’s what I was doing. I was playing drums in the church. I could either stop doing that and just attend services, which is [00:08:00] pretty much a death sentence because all of my relationships were built around music and being part of that team. Or I could stop doing the work I was doing online. So, I had to leave.So overall the reaction by a lot of people has not been great. I did lose a lot of friendships. A few of them still stuck around, and they’re great friends to this day, and they’ve made room for me. I made room for them, but I think overall, the general view– and it’s hard to know because people that I know don’t message me telling me this, but the perception I have is, Tim has just gone liberal. He’s just gone. He’s just not a real Christian anymore because A, B, C, D, and E. He’s changed his views on these things, or he can’t, he’s not going to vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020.Those kinds of things that I bucked against, I think, for those people were signs that I was giving, I was being handed over to the world, so to speak.SHEFFIELD: You began actually taking the faith seriously and reading it. Tell us more about that process, how it worked for you.WHITAKER: Yeah. I mean, so one example of this would be 2016, right? So I am someone who, again, like I grew up and believed that being a Christian was the quote unquote, best way to live. And I wanted to follow Jesus and my church tradition.I’ve been part of more conservative reform churches. I’ve been part of more charismatic spaces. So I’ve kind of been involved in all different flavors of the Evangelical tradition and there are some consistent themes, hey, Christians have integrity, and Christians don’t compromise, and Christians have this particular sexual ethic where essentially, you’re told don’t touch yourself or anyone else until you’re married. Right?So I’m like 21 like, okay, I believe this. I mean, I want to have integrity. I don’t want to compromise my faith. I don’t want to move closer to where the world is. I want the world to move closer to where I was. That’s kind of the perspective that you’re taught.And in 2016, when Trump comes on the scene, I’m like, okay, this is strange. And then when I see more and more Evangelical support and I’m still serving, I’m still conservative. Pretty much at this [00:10:00] point, I’m still serving at my Evangelical church. I’m still all in. I’m like, I don’t get it. This isn’t making a lot of sense.And then those “Access Hollywood” tapes came out. And I thought to myself, ‘Oh, this is a slam dunk full rejection of Trump by Evangelicals.’Because I knew how serious they took sexual ethics, let alone bragging on a hot mic crassly, by the way, about sexually assaulting women. So I, for a minute, I almost got giddy.I’m like, well, I know people can’t vote for Hillary. I wasn’t going to vote for Hillary. So maybe a third party, maybe like a legitimate Christian third party way is going to be birthed out of this because Trump is obviously so bad.And to hear so many people, both that I knew personally, or that I saw on the public stage say: ‘Oh, well, this is just locker room talk. We just need a commander in chief, not a pastor in chief.’And then seeing them mad at me for calling this out. I was like, guys, you taught me, you taught me these core values that apparently God was objectively resolute on, right? Like this is God’s objective truth. And all of a sudden, you’re throwing that out because this guy might give you more political power.And so that’s, that was for me the moment when I said, ‘Something, I don’t know what it is, but something is way wrong here.’ I didn’t have categories for a lot of what I know now. I just knew that something stunk to high heaven, and it made no sense to me because I wanted to be a Jesus follower.So that’s one example of like, I felt like I was forced to choose between compromising the way of Jesus, right? Compromising a way that advocates for honesty and truth and goodness.And the fruits of the spirit for your audience who knows that, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, all those things.I had to throw those away and say, yeah, Trump is sticking it to the media. Yeah. Trump’s our Goliath.And I’m like, I just can’t do that. So that was one out of many, a series of things that happened that made me say, I got to find better paths forward [00:12:00] here than whatever I’m a part of, because it’s no longer making sense anymore to call myself a Christian, but also be part of a culture that is increasingly advocating for more and more dehumanizing, cruel positions on the political spectrum.SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm. And what about the idea which is kind of articulated a bunch of times in the New Testament that Jesus’s kingdom is not of this world. Was that something that you thought of as well in that process?WHITAKER: Yeah, I think I definitely did. I think there’s a tension for me at least of I think it’s a fool’s errand to think that somehow, we can bring God’s quote unquote kingdom to earth necessarily a hundred percent at the same time.I do think that humans have a responsibility and have the ability to create heaven on earth or hell on earth. And I feel like Christians are, should be part of that conversation, trying to promote human flourishing, and empowering perspectives that lead to human flourishing.So I was always in this spot of like: ‘Hey guys, I don’t think that we have to become the empire. In fact, I think that’s a really bad idea, but we should be advocating for policies and for positions that hopefully help out all of our neighbors, not just the White Evangelicals.’So I kind of live in that tension of, yeah, I don’t think that I’m bringing quote unquote God’s kingdom to earth, but I still believe that as a representative of Jesus, I have a responsibility to advocate for things and for ways forward that, that give glimpses of a better world that’s possible.SHEFFIELD: What’s some of the pushback that you get from kind of the more right-wing Evangelicals? Like, what do they say?WHITAKER: Oh, well, I mean,SHEFFIELD: To the extent they make arguments at all. And I mean the actual argument, because, yeah, I’m sure they’re just triggered by you.WHITAKER: I mean, and we definitely take some, we definitely take shots on Twitter at them.I mean, we don’t believe in dehumanization, so we don’t name call. We don’t call people idiots. So we definitely kind of point out some of these blatant contradictions in their [00:14:00] own theology.I think one of the biggest themes I see is that it’s very evident to me that, for Evangelicals in particular, anything that can even be minutely interpreted as liberal is automatically a sign that you’re a godless Marxist who wants to destroy the country.And what is frustrating to me is that some of these things, I don’t know why they’re so devout. I don’t know why they’re so polarized. Like the fact that I would say anywhere: ‘Hey, as Christians, if we believe that God has given us the charge to steward the earth, we should be concerned about pollution and global warming.I mean, that should be a very, it’s a very easy connection, okay, for Christians to make. For Christians to make. For them to say like, Oh, that’s just liberalism. That’s just government control. That’s just a hoax. It’s like, where is this coming from? Because it’s not coming from the scriptures. It’s not coming from any kind of Christian ethic.Where is this coming from? So oftentimes I’m usually met with just rhetoric that is, I think, programmed into them by the people that disciple them, which is really far right media pundits. I mean, I grew up on Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh my entire life.I know, I know how damaging 3 hours, 6 hours a day of talk radio can be on the human mind, okay? But I do think that it seems to me that a lot of the arguments are very weak. They rely on rhetoric that has a hard stop.And then what it does is it loops itself, right? So like it doesn’t matter how much data you share with someone about global warming with that kind of like circular logic.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I mean, basically it is an intellectual framework which is anti-intellectual.WHITAKER: Yes.SHEFFIELD: And that’s how it’s able to be self-sustaining, because basically they’re telling people that we have created this idea set for you. And any other idea, any other ideas that are outside of it are false and you can know they’re false because we told you.WHITAKER: Right.SHEFFIELD: And they can’t prove it. That’s the thing that [00:16:00] these guys don’t get, is that they are actually destroying Christianity with their dogmatism, with their political activism. Most people who are religious, they want to go to church and feel uplifted, and they want to think about doctrines in their lives and how to improve themselves.That’s what they’re there for. Emotionally, from an emotional standpoint. They’re not there to try to become a political pawn for somebody. That’s not what, they didn’t sign up for that.WHITAKER: Yeah, and I think what’s so frustrating is that I think that inherently politics and religion, they are always kind of intermingling in some way, shape, or form.And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, I think about the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, his faith was a main fuel that motivated him to push for the civil rights that so many Black Americans deserve, but never got. So we can see really healthy expressions of how faith can be used to push things in a better direction.What is frustrating to me is watching my own tradition do the complete opposite, right? I mean, they’re using faith as a weapon to bludgeon everyone else into submission of their way or the highway, which I believe is inherently antichrist in nature.It’s definitely Christian. You can trace this stream of thought all throughout Christian history. So I don’t want to pretend that these people aren’t real Christians. I think that absolves people like me from responsibility.But what they’re advocating for, it’s not Christ-like. It’s not advocating for a world that is more inclusive. It’s advocating for a world that’s more exclusive and White Evangelicalism is at the center of that world.And that’s not democratic. That’s not pluralistic. That doesn’t love all of our neighbors. It doesn’t do any of those things. So I think for a lot of us, it’s not so much that we’re afraid of being quote unquote political. We’re seeing a right-wing tradition that is totally in allegiance to a particular political party and political leader named Donald Trump.Most progressives that I know, and I tend to shy away from using that label for myself or for our [00:18:00] organization, because I’m not always a fan of progressive people. I think sometimes they can be incredibly cruel.But for sake of this conversation, I don’t really see a sycophantic nature of like Joe Biden and the progressives, right? I’m never going to have a Joe Biden flag on my front yard. I’m not sure about you, Matthew, right? And the fact that Joe Biden’s running again, I’m not exactly enthused.I’m kind of pissed off, actually. I’m like, are you kidding me? 300 million Americans and we get Joe Biden again as a nominee. That’s frustrating to me, right?But that’s a very different position for those of us who might vote for Joe Biden, then like people who would vote for Trump, where Trump is draining the swamp, Trump is our savior. Trump is the person who’s going to make America great again.It’s a totally different perspective. And I think a lot of us look at that and we go, wow. I mean, it’s complete idolatry. And it’s really unhealthy for our nation.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and one of the other kind of interesting aspects about it is that it’s almost like Christianity outside of the south, the deep south got colonized by Confederate Christianity, because like you look at the history of the Baptist theology, like the theological group Baptists, it basically kind of invented religious freedom and pluralism in the United States.I mean, Rhode Island was founded on that principle that everyone should have the right to worship or not worship whatever they want. No religious tests for office, no trying to force Christian ideas in the law.These were the core tenets of Baptist theology in the beginning, and now you’ve got tons of people who call themselves Baptists who are literally 180 opposed to all of that.WHITAKER: Yes.SHEFFIELD: And John MacArthur explicitly has said himself, ‘I reject religious freedom.’WHITAKER: Totally.SHEFFIELD: I mean, it’s just amazing, but people don’t seem to know their own history it seems like.WHITAKER: Well, I think Evangelicalism is intentionally ahistorical, right? I mean, you’re looking at someone, you’re talking to someone who was all the way in that world, [00:20:00] and I didn’t know who people like James Cone were. That’s the founder of Black liberation theology.I didn’t even know he existed until like three years ago. I didn’t even know until three years ago that the Moral Majority was founded over really school segregation not abortion rights. So when you’re in that bubble, and you don’t understand the movement that you’re a part of and how its structures were built, you’re told a myth.You’re told that Evangelicals have always fought for a prolife position, and that’s why the Moral Majority got started. You’re taught that Evangelicals are the ones who are fighting for true freedom. I mean you’re just told this like almost Lost Cause type of narrative through a theological paradigm.And I think a lot of people like myself, when we start actually reading outside of the bubble that we’re given, and we start reading actual history from actual historians, we start realizing like, oh, the tradition we’re a part of actually has some pretty ugly skeletons in its closet.And the world that I was a part of never was willing to reckon with them and acknowledge them. And that is an issue.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and also that things that they constantly proclaim to be eternal truths were basically cooked up in the 20th century by some Americans.WHITAKER: Right! No, I mean that’s a fantastic point to make. Because a lot of us are just taught this is all there is, and these are timeless objective realities for all time.And you’re right, when you start reading the history of American Evangelicalism, you start seeing how some of these ideas are pretty new, some of these ideas are actually more a product of a colonial, capitalist society more than they are a biblical reality. So I totally agree with you there.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. The ahistorical nature as you were saying, which I think is a good description of it, that, it’s so flagrantly at odds with the facts that so many people are looking at this, they’re taking their faith seriously, they’re reading the books that people told them to read, like [00:22:00] C. S. Lewis or something, who was not an Evangelical– if you actually read his stuff, like parts of it are very anti Evangelical– but they never read his stuff, actually.But if you actually take it seriously, you actually read the books, you read about the, the origins of, the different aspects, the names of God and the different traditions in the Hebrew Bible, like, you start looking at all that stuff and you, I think if you took it seriously, then you start to come to the conclusion that it’s almost inevitable.I think that, well, these are, there’s something more than just this story here and it’s more than what these people have told me. And then, but these churches, they’ve created this system where you can’t ask questions. You can’t question authority. You can’t talk to anybody, and so basically, and it is the case now that, the Southern Baptist Convention has been losing members for, pretty much 15 years straight, if I remember right and it’s not just them.There, so people are either going to the mainline churches, which are now actually growing or they’re going to, kind of the ultra-fundamentalist route, the Pentecostal type churches, or they’re leaving. And, like, when you look at people under 30, like it’s now the case that it’s like one fourth, I believe, of young people under 30 say I’m not religious at all.WHITAKER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: And a lot of that’s the fault of these intolerant Evangelicals.WHITAKER: Oh, I mean, a thousand percent. And listen, the Evangelicals had the ear of most Americans at one point. Okay. I mean, statistically from the Barna group, there’s a book called Unchristian that they wrote maybe 15 years ago now. And they say that roughly in their polling, 75% of Americans say that they’ve made a profession of faith to Jesus that still means something to them today.So Evangelicals and the church had what they wanted. They had people flooding in their doors.Why do they lose almost all of those people? And why are their institutions sinking? [00:24:00] One of the things, and I can kind of give a maybe a more lighthearted example of this is you’re kind of taught in these spaces to jettison, like your reason and logic, and I think that sets people up to disbelieve actual reality.So let me give you an example of how this might work. In my tradition, I was taught that Genesis 1 and 2 were a literal account of how the world was formed physically. So literal six days, the earth was formed in six literal days. It’s a young earth and Adam and Eve were the first two people ever on earth.And we’ve all descended from Adam and Eve. I was like 13, 15 and I go to my church leader. Hey, I have a question. If Adam and Eve were the first two humans, does that mean that like they were sleeping with their kids or like their kids were sleeping with each other? I mean, a very logical question, right?And we all know today, obviously that incest is a very bad thing. Like I don’t, I’m not aware of anyone or most– overwhelming majority of society that would say incest is bad. Like, yes. And so whenever you talk to people and I asked my pastor that, the response is some crazy made up, like, well, sin wasn’t really as developed back then. So it was okay. Or God made an exception or all.And I’ve heard so many answers to this. Because this is a question I ask people today, and the answers are so lacking. But you’re told just to kind of suspend your reason. Well, just accept it, okay?So I found that I was allowed to ask questions as long as I arrived at the predetermined answers, right? Like, sure, Tim, let’s talk about this, but here’s the answer. And you can’t disagree.Well, when you’re eight years old and you’re, or you’re five years old and your neuron pathways are being formed, I think it sets the stage for people to disbelieve actual reality, when like, I don’t know, our election wasn’t stolen, but someone says that it was.Like you could imagine the connection between, well, if I [00:26:00] believe that a serpent literally talked, and Adam and Eve populated the entire Earth with their kids, and that was fine, certainly I can believe that the election was stolen, that vaccines are horrible.SHEFFIELD: And that the Earth is 6, 000 years old, and humans did not evolve.WHITAKER: Exactly. Right. So, so you can see how this kind of connects. So it’s just very interesting to me to watch people who love, especially on social media. I know you see this Matthew, right? God’s objective standard on biblical sexuality. God’s objective truth on biblical sexuality. They’re oftentimes the same people who have no problem admitting that, yes, the kids from Adam and Eve probably had to sleep with each other to populate the earth, but it was okay then, it’s not okay now.They completely jettisoned their own standard of quote unquote objective truth. And so when you bring this up, all they can rely on is their dogma. Or they just ignore it.So I do think that these systems have helped create a lot of people who are trying to trust themselves and their intuition again, for the first time, because we’ve been told to suspend it for so long.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it’s also a departure from what these stories were meant to be.WHITAKER: Yes.SHEFFIELD: They were not created to be the absolute truth. Because the people of the ancient world, most of them didn’t travel very far, but some of them did. And the reality is, they were picking up gods from like the Greeks were picking up gods from Egypt and bringing them over and like they had contact with other peoples’ origin story ideas.At the very least from the neighboring tribes, right? The Canaanites, and like, there was a bunch of this mish mashing around, and they knew that these things were, this is just what we think happened. It wasn’t something that was meant to be taken literally.This idea that the Bible is literally true, it was invented after the invention of science. People were like, ‘ Well, I’m discovering biology, I’m discovering astronomy, oh, and I’m going to have a science of the Bible, and everything in the Bible is literally true, and I’m going to calculate the exact year that the Earth [00:28:00] was created.’WHITAKER: Right, right.SHEFFIELD: And they did it, and they did it.WHITAKER: They did. I mean, this is the fundamentalist modernist controversy, which ironically fundamentalism draws from modernism. That’s what it’s doing, right? It’s taking those categories and saying Great. The Bible can also be the subjective truth thing in all ways.And that’s not fair to the Bible because the Bible isn’t claiming that, right? So you’re actually, I would argue treating the Bible less than what it was originally designed to function as. And once we do that, we actually have a pretty low view of the Bible where some, for some reason, the Bible has to fit into our nice, neat black and white categories, or else it can’t be the Bible.That’s very unfair to a book whose authors had no category for a modernist worldview. And that’s totally fine. I think that there’s so much wisdom in the Bible. There’s a lot of examples of what not to do as a human and also ways of going forward that really can be helpful for human flourishing, but it’s complicated.And when we start taking stories that were meant to point to a deeper truth literally, we get in a lot of trouble.I mean, no one, no one takes Lord of the Rings as a literal truth, meaning, oh yes, the orcs that existed a thousand years ago in the land of Mordor, that was a real place.It’s like, no, no, no, no. You’re missing the whole point, right? There are amazing truths in Lord of the Rings. I mean, amazing realities of power and in the human quest for it.But no one takes it as a literal objective. This actually happened. And that’s okay. Same thing with many of the stories in the Bible.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Have people contacted you as a result, have people decided that I didn’t like you at first, but I kept listening. Has anything like that happened, tell me.WHITAKER: Yeah, I think, we get a lot of DMs on Instagram because a lot of our work is on, is there.And we definitely got some DMs from people like, hey, at first, I was kind of on the fence or I wasn’t really a fan, but over time, you helped me see things differently.We make room for folks to disagree with us. I don’t think everyone has to have the view that I have on every single issue ever, and I have friends of mine who are way [00:30:00] more fundamentalist, so to speak, in their view of the Bible. But they can make room, right?And it’s like, hey, I can work with that. You and I can exist as good friends and have a different view on Genesis 1. Like I’m fine with that. So I definitely think that there are people who I’ve heard from who have kind of a story like that of, hey your stuff has really been helpful. It’s been helpful to think about things more broadly than what my Evangelical tradition taught me. So thank you.So yeah, I would say that that’s definitely the case. I’m not sure how often that happens, but it’s definitely happened.SHEFFIELD: Well, and I guess, one of the other things that I think is important about what you’re doing is that you’re showing people who are not Christians that not everybody thinks like these reactionary fundamentalists.WHITAKER: It’s funny, even when I was a conservative Evangelical, someone who was not affirming, which means I thought that homosexuality was sinful, even back then, I saw pretty early on how the church is treating people, groups, especially queer folks, is pretty bad.I mean, yeah, maybe we disagree on what the Bible says about this, but it seems like it’s a pretty big focus and I don’t know why. So I’ve always kind of been in that role of trying to disprove people’s rightful perception that Evangelical Christians are hateful.But I do think now more than ever, the word Evangelical means good news, I don’t think Evangelicals are bringing much of good news at all today.And so I think we’re just trying to bring some good news back that, Hey, you know what, there are Christians out there who want to work with other people of other faiths and in other ways of seeing the world to work together to find better paths forward for all of us, right?Like certainly we can all coexist, and we can make room for each other. Unfortunately, American Evangelicalism seems not to be the group who wants to play nice all the time, and we’re trying to change that.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, you’re obviously aware of kind of the spread of southern flavored Evangelicalism taking over the other traditions.I mean, is that something that you’ve seen other people complain about? Like they feel like that their local religious flavor has been sort of homogenized by this [00:32:00] corporate Evangelical southern stuff?WHITAKER: Yeah, I mean, there’s a reason why organizations like mine are reaching the people that they’re reaching, right?There’s a reason why we’re a nonprofit and people donate to this work, because a lot of folks have experienced this kind of like fundamentalist takeover, especially politically. I mean, a lot of people we meet were like, ‘Hey, I was on staff at a church for 10 years. I posted Black Lives Matter during the George Floyd protests and I was fired the next day.’And you’re like, what? I mean, those are, that’s a real story. That’s not an exaggeration. Or ‘Hey I’m a woman who was on staff at a church and I’ve tried to push for more equity, and I got kicked out.’I mean, so people see these stories, they’ve been part of these stories. They’ve been casualties of these stories.So yeah, I mean, like you said, Matthew, there’s a reason why the SBC just reported its largest ever decline ever in a year, right? Because a lot of us who were birthed by these institutions realize how absolutely corrupt they are.And we can’t mince words. The SBC covered up decades of sexual abuse. It took survivors years of pushing and even still, the results aren’t super great. I mean, in particular, Johnny Hunt, he’s a pastor who was named in the Southern Baptist Convention report for sexually assaulting another pastor’s wife. He’s back preaching at the pulpit at certain churches and is now suing the SBC for defamation.I mean, what world are we living in? This is the Christian ethic?So I think a lot of us see this and we go, ‘Yeah, I want out.’And then we find out, by the way, right, we start reading history and we go: ‘Wait. The SBC was founded over trying to maintain slavery? What?! I know I’m really happy here.’So I think a lot of people are waking up to that reality, but they’re not having a crisis of faith. They’re having a crisis of theology.I think that’s important. Some people they quote unquote deconstruct; they leave all faith behind. I respect it. I get it. I understand it. I have [00:34:00] many friends who are atheists. We have great conversations.I mean, I’m not here to convert people back to anything, but there are a lot of people who, like me, I can’t give up on this way of Jesus idea. I can’t give up on this resurrected Jesus. There’s something beautiful about that.So how do I now renegotiate it? How I relate to my faith in light of these shocking revelations of how corrupt these systems are. I think a lot of us are kind of more in that headspace right now.SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm. Yeah, and no, and I remember how when the Catholic Church, when they first had some of their pedophilia scandals emerged, that there were so many Evangelicals who responded to that as: ‘Ah, this is proof these guys are satanic. I told you they got the false theology. Then this is what you get. This is the fruits of their tree.’And, now that, yeah, kind of quiet now,WHITAKER: And not just quiet there. Some of them are loudly defending these people. And I think that that’s what makes me the most nauseous is to see, and not to go on a tangent, but you know, we see so much of this right-wing media, which really is a product of Evangelicalism so focused on quote unquote groomers, right? Which is code for trans people and drag queens.And they’re all concerned about how these people are coming after the kids despite the fire hose of stories of pastors in the same spaces they occupy molesting kids, being arrested for having pictures of child sex abuse on their phones.You don’t hear any of that, right? There’s no fire alarm happening in these spaces internally.It’s only an alarm happening externally about some perceived threat out there that might affect them inside. It’s incredibly backwards. It’s incredibly not true, right?The idea that drag queens are grooming children at drag queen story hour is literal propaganda.And then when we actually have real stories of actual faith leaders who are arrested, or who are found guilty of doing horrific, hell on earth [00:36:00] things to other people, the response is silence. And frankly, a lot of us were fed up with that nonsense, and that’s why we’re pushing so hard against it.SHEFFIELD: Well, and one other aspect of that is that so some of the theological roots you were talking about is that the QAnon conspiracy theory, it’s taking over SO many Evangelical churches. Like I’ve read so many stories of pastors saying: ‘I had a normal congregation, and then over a six-month span, they all came to love QAnon and wanted me to preach QAnon stuff from the pulpit. And I couldn’t do it because that was fucked up, and I’m not going to do that.’WHITAKER: Yeah. I mean, data wise, White Evangelicals are, or at least were, I’m not sure how much QAnon’s still in the system, but when it was at its real peak, I think it was like, the poll was like 35% or 30% of White Evangelicals were QAnon people on some level, which is the highest out of any group.So yeah, it is very frustrating to know that again, my faith tradition was behind such a nonsensical conspiracy. And by the way, I’ve read Q and I had their book. They wrote a book together called Where We Go One, We Go All.And I read like 20 pages. I couldn’t do it anymore. Too many spelling errors. It was just copy and paste from like their bulletin things on 4chan.But I look into this stuff before we critique it, and it is very frustrating to see that White Evangelicals, again, were some of the biggest proponents of pushing a lie while claiming that they’re standing on God’s objective truth.That is what is so difficult for me to reckon with. It’s like the language is so baffling, but they really believe it, and that’s difficult.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and it has an appeal with, I mean, it is just another reincarnation of this idea of Bible codes, secret prophecies that if you look at the first word of each verse, the first letter, it will spell out what the future of X, Y, Z.And it’s totally bogus nonsense, but if you had created this world for yourself in which nothing else is [00:38:00] true, and the Bible doesn’t say anything about America, or Joe Biden, any of these people, so they’re just desperate to look for any possible source of information in a book that’s not intended to be that, and wasn’t written for that at all.WHITAKER: No, a thousand percent. Yeah, I agree.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, so have you seen or encountered people either directly or indirectly that had kind of gotten sucked into some of this stuff?WHITAKER: Oh, yeah, I’ve had friends. I mean, I’ve lost friendships over this for sure. I mean when the election fraud narrative came out, I had friends that I actually lost who were sending me legitimately photoshopped pictures of newspaper articles.I’m like, dude. Here’s the original. Here’s your Photoshop that you sent me. This isn’t true.And I end up losing those friendships. So yeah, I mean I have experienced it firsthand. And listen, I don’t want to, I think in this conversation, you can easily sound elitist unintentionally. And so what I’m not trying to say is, Oh, like, I’m just so much smarter than my friends.But at the same time, what’s hard for me is it’s almost seems like a brain virus kind of comes over people, and you’re like, I don’t get it, dude. Like I’m giving you data over what you’re saying, and you just can’t seem to turn the corner on trusting the data over whatever your preconceived notion is of this situation.And so it’s very difficult to have conversations with folks who, again, I mean, dude, Donald Trump at that town hall meeting the other day still said that the election was stolen, right? He would not concede the election.How do you move forward in a society where the former sitting president after all the data by his own people in his own administration. Trump people saying, yeah, we knew it’s not stolen. Rudy Giuliani lost his license over this, right? Dominion voting machines essentially won the lawsuit with Fox News by making them admit, yes, we pushed fake news out there. Trump [00:40:00] gets on stage, says, I’m not conceding the election wasn’t stolen.Charlie Kirk that next day, 2020 election was rigged. How do you move forward in a society where we’re almost arguing a flat earth? We’re almost at that level, right?We’re like a good chunk of society believes that the earth is flat. And no matter how much data and stuff you show them, they just tend to cover their, their eyes and close your eyes, cover their ears and say, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. I’m not going to listen to you.I don’t know how to move forward when we’re in that position right now as a country.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. I mean, it’s a difficult question for sure, but one thing that is kind of interesting about it is that people have done polling about these perceptions. So like for instance how is the economy doing?And when you ask a Republican how the economy is doing and a Democrat is president, they will always say it’s doing terrible. Regardless of what the GDP growth rate is or the unemployment rate, they will say it’s terrible no matter what. Like 80%.And then when a Republican takes over, even if it’s the exact same numbers. They’ll say that it’s great. It’s going fantastic and it doesn’t matter even if the economy is terrible.So in some sense, and I’ll put a link in the show notes to this article, but basically there is some sense that people don’t actually believe these things, but they’re doing it for a couple of reasons.One is that their leaders are repeating these things. That’s number one.WHITAKER: Yes. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: And then number two is that they think that it’s kind of a tribal marker for themselves to say these things, which are not true.WHITAKER: Right.SHEFFIELD: Because the leader says it, so then therefore everybody else says it, so if I don’t say it, then I will be cancelled.WHITAKER: Yes.SHEFFIELD: And that fear of, at least for me when I was in Mormonism as a fundamentalist Mormon, Mormons they tell each other constantly you should not ever read anything that is critical of the church. Even if it’s written by church [00:42:00] members, you should not read it. It’s worse than pornography to read anything like this. It’s anti Mormon.And it doesn’t matter even if it’s true. Like one of their leaders literally said you shouldn’t criticize church leaders, even if the criticism is true.WHITAKER: Wow.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.WHITAKER: Wow.SHEFFIELD: That’s, I mean, it’s stunning, but that’s the mindset that we’re dealing with here.WHITAKER: I mean, the debt ceiling conversation is a great indication of this, right? There was no, as for, unless I’m wrong, I don’t think I am, more than I would, I don’t think when Trump was in office, Republicans ever made the debt ceiling this hostage situation. But now that Biden is in office, all of a sudden, the debt ceiling is a big deal. And spending is a big deal.I think statistically Trump spent just as much, if not more than any other president before him. I don’t think he was fiscal at all in that sense. And by the way, Democrats have no problem spending a lot of money on the war machine that we have, so I’m not a big fan of how Democrats always choose to spend things either.I think that there’s plenty of critiques to be made for that side of things, but on this topic, it’s interesting to always see the same issues come up whenever a certain party is in office and how they spin these narratives to make it seem like, well, things are worse than ever under this administration.And then once the Republicans, and you’re right, numbers be damned, we’re always going to spin a positive.This is your brain on talk radio, people. I don’t think people understand that talk radio laid the foundation and laid the groundwork for the fruit that we’re reaping now with far-right media.I mean Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Grant, Mark Levin, Michael Savage. I know all of them because I grew up on them.And I remember thinking when I was like 16 or 17, I had this moment when Glenn Beck was on the radio. Again I’m conservative, right? All I know is that Republicans good, Democrats bad.I was cheering at like age eight for Bill Clinton to lose the election in 1996 because that’s what my parents were doing. Okay. I’m listening to Glenn Beck on the [00:44:00] radio. He’s literally crying legitimate tears because Obama just got elected. And he says, we’re not going to be a country in four years from now. Our country is going to be gone. It’s physically going to not exist.So I’m like, wow, I guess that Obama is really a radical Marxist. Like he just wants to destroy the country.And then here we are. The country is still here and during his reelection, when Obama got reelected, Glenn Beck was trying the blues again, and I started waking up and saying, these people never give Democrats a fair shake ever.Like, obviously at the time I wasn’t an Obama person. I mean, I was 17. What did I know? But I wasn’t some, I did not grow up in a household that was pro- Obama. And I remember thinking Obama has to do something good considering that we’re all still here. He is a family man. He seems to have a really stable marriage, loves his kids. He has this father initiative. That’s great.But no, talk radio was always spinning things in the worst possible way. And that was the beginning of me being like, I don’t think these guys are really being honest. I think they’re just being more partisan intentionally to make one side always good and one side always bad.So when you have that foundation and people have 20, 30, 40 years of that in their head, it makes sense why we have far right media now creating an entirely different reality based on a completely different foundation, not of like data or facts, but on propaganda and rhetoric.So it makes sense why we have it, but we also see the consequences of that.SHEFFIELD: Oh, I agree, a hundred percent. And what’s very frustrating about this though, is that this reality has been out there for a long time. The movie Jesus Camp came out. People have been trying to get the left-wing elites, Democratic elites, to pay attention to this stuff, and to say look, tens of millions of people are being brainwashed daily by political activists who are filling them their heads with lies 12 hours every day. Do something [00:46:00] about it, please. Please do something about it.And they did nothing. They did nothing about it. And basically the reaction typically has been, well, we’ll run some advertisements on TV and tell them that Donald Trump is bad.And it’s like even if people did believe what they saw in advertisements, which they don’t, even if they did, those have no bearing whatsoever.WHITAKER: No.SHEFFIELD: A two-minute advertisement saying Donald Trump is bad is nothing compared to 12 hours of talk radio saying he’s great, he’s God’s servant, he’s Cyrus the Great.WHITAKER: Well, not only that, let’s take it a step further and that talk radio is telling people that Democrats want to ruin the country, and then the drive by media is state run media, and you can’t trust the media, right?So like they were chiseling away at any trust in any kind of mainstream news organization for decades. And for some reason, those organizations did not realize what was happening to them.And by the time they realized that, it was too late, right? Because Trump, I think, it was a final kick that just toppled the whole thing over. Because I mean, dude, did you see the poll that came out regarding how Democrats and Republicans trust their news sources?And it turns out that right wing people trust Alex Jones more than NPR. Now, there, it’s they, on the scale of positive to negative, NPR and Alex Jones are still on the overall negative, but it’s farther on the negative scale for NPR than it is for Alex Jones! Alex Jones, the guy who was found liable of slandering dead kids! Kids who were dead, who were killed during the Sandy Hook Massacre, who caused the parents an untold amount of emotional pain.That Alex Jones, who was then slandering the judge on the air the same day he was on trial.SHEFFIELD: He also admitted that he was lying and that he was wrong. He admitted it!WHITAKER: Right! So you have to you know, we’re not in a conversation of, oh [00:48:00] if we could just get people more data and facts, we’ll convince them.We have to think about different ways. There has to be, I’m sure there’s some psychologists out there who’s like, oh, you’re missing the psychological aspect. Okay. Help us understand because I’m convinced more than ever, we have to find better paths forward that include bringing people who think Alex Jones is a truth teller.We have to find ways to flip them because they’re not going to go anywhere. They’re going to exist in the country. We have to figure out how we’re going to move forward here.But my God, like it is only, I would argue it’s worse than ever. It’s not better.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And like, when you look at the newspaper columns or the books that are read by these left leaning non-profits, or voter turnout organizations, or donors, they constantly fixate on, we’ve got to get the right message. The message is what matters. If we just take a bajillion polls, we can come up with a one sentence message, and it will be perfect, and it will work forever.And it’s like, guys the medium matters more than the message.WHITAKER: Totally.SHEFFIELD: If you only say the message, in some TV ads or you get a story in the New York Times, you get an op ed in the Washington Post. Your job is not done at all. No one saw those things.WHITAKER: Right, you’re preaching to the choir in those spaces.SHEFFIELD: That’s right. And so, like, you could even have, like, and I had to learn this firsthand myself because, my deconversion from right wing media came as I started writing a book about here’s how Republicans can do better in politics. And I was a secular conservative at that point, and so one of the points of my book was to say look guys, this Christian nationalism thing, nobody wants it. Just let’s get over it, please.And I wrote, I had a publisher for it. I had like 60, 000 words written, and I got to the point where I realized I have the right message, but they think that they’re God’s servants and so I can give them all the facts. I can give them all the figures. I can give [00:50:00] them all the philosophy. I can give them all the history. And it won’t matter.It won’t matter because I don’t have any sort of power over them, so they won’t accept it.WHITAKER: Right. That’s why I’m convinced, I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I don’t have anything concrete yet, but people like myself, and maybe you as well, Matthew, who come from worlds like this, we have to figure out ways to re-flood the social media market with actual information, but also in language that people can hear it.Like I can communicate why we should take care of the planet in a very Evangelical way that probably won’t trigger a whole lot of people, but I can say it in a way that will kind of get us to start thinking a little bit deeply, more deeply about this.So I feel like people like myself and others who were birthed in this world have an obligation to now start talking to those people in their own language, to start planting those seeds, because listen, I changed, you changed, change as possible.I believe that people can change. I believe that people can find better paths forward, but you have to plant those seeds in ways that is not super combative or that won’t set off one of their trip wires that had been set in their brain by Tucker Carlson.So I really believe that now is the time more than ever to get coalitions of people to re flood the social media space of Twitter, of YouTube, Instagram, TikTok with actual stuff that is invitations to better paths forward, as opposed to ‘You stupid Evangelical Christian nationalists,’ which by the way, for the record, I haven’t said that bluntly, but I’m pretty hard on Christian nationalism, okay.I’m not saying you have to treat it kindly, but if you’re trying to persuade people, you have to be able to put things in languages that they can hear, and that can kind of take root somewhere in their psyche that makes them start watering that when you’re no longer in front of them. Does that make sense?SHEFFIELD: Oh yeah. It absolutely does. And I think that does bring another thing that I’ve thought about a lot, which is that when you look demographically, people who are not religious tend to be more on the political left. And a lot of them, these [00:52:00] sort of left wing non-religious people, they really think that what we just have to do is get rid of religion and then all our problems will be solved.WHITAKER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: And it’s like, number one, you’re not going to get rid of it.WHITAKER: Right. Right. , that’s never going to happen.SHEFFIELD: And number two, there are plenty of moronic atheists out there as well. I mean, Elon Musk. Elon Musk, the way he talks about politics. So, Elon Musk is an atheist. But the way that he talks about the woke mind virus and, all these conspiracies about China, this, well, actually he didn’t say China because he loves China, but no, like, the border and all this stuff.Elon Musk sounds like an exact standard issue White Evangelical. And he’s an atheist.WHITAKER: James Lindsay’s another one, right?SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So you’re not going to get rid of this reactionary mind virus by getting rid of religion. You’re not. And in fact, some people, if you take away their religious world view, they actually become more right wing.WHITAKER: Yes.SHEFFIELD: So like, what you have to do is do what the right has done, which is that the right wing is a coalition of atheist libertarians who hate the government and want to have sort of dictatorship control of the private sector running everything.And they’ve allied with Christian fundamentalists. And because the Christian fundamentalists hate the current system, and the atheist libertarians hate the current system. So, hey, that’s the thing they have in common, and they work together. And people who are against this stuff need to realize, look, hey, we have more in common than we have against each other.WHITAKER: Yeah, I mean, listen, to the people out there who are like religion is the problem. I mean, religion can be a tool used for liberation or for oppression. It’s way more complicated than just it being all good or all bad. Just like how you can look at specific atheists, right?I’ve met atheists who are fundamentalist atheists who will tell me things that are just really harmful. And just really like not good.And it’s like, hey, as long as people exist, [00:54:00] we’re going to have fundamentalists. This doesn’t matter what they necessarily believe. However, I understand why for a lot of people in our current political moment, we look at Evangelicalism and go, man, Christianity is just so corrupt.Yes, this expression definitely is, but there are a lot of Christians who are pushing against it. You might not see them, but they exist. I mean, I was just at a rally in Tennessee with over 400 actual clergy and a thousand something protesters who marched to the state Capitol to protest gun legislation, so there definitely are people of faith who see what we’re seeing and want to push things forward.But we need the funding. We need to organize; we have to get mobilized. We need some of those billionaire donors, if you’re out there listening, to fund some of these things.Because it’s very much an uphill battle, no doubt about it, but yeah, I mean, we’re not going to get rid of religion. I don’t think we should get rid of religion.And listen, we only have so much time on this earth. I don’t want to spend 30 years of my life trying to eradicate something that will never be eradicated. We’re a long way into the idea of God, and deity, and belief to think that somehow, we’re going to make major inroads to eradicate that again.I don’t think that we even should be. I think it’s a fool’s errand. I think we’re much better off, our time is better off spent trying to mobilize to do whatever we can now to push people in a healthier direction that advocates for human flourishing. That to me seems a much better use of our time.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I agree. And even if let’s say you’re not religious and you’re like, well, it’s just dumb and you’re making people vulnerable to this stuff to fundamentalism. I mean, I think that’s true on a certain level that you might that some people might come into contact with these ideas that they wouldn’t otherwise.But it’s also the case that, you know, if you look at the history of racism and race, that was a thing that came because of science, it came after science, because people started thinking that, well, these Black people that are in Africa, they’re monkeys, they’re a lower form of life on the evolutionary tree than we are, and so therefore, we can do [00:56:00] whatever we want to them.That was an outgrowth of science. So, religion is, you could think of it as a form of politics. You can’t get rid of politics. And in the same way, you can’t get rid of religion. Because both of these things can be horrible. They can be good.But they also are useful to a lot of people. They derive community from it. They derive a sense of self from it. And they actually get real tangible benefits. A lot of people get real benefits from this stuff.So you don’t even have to believe it totally. The reality is that it’s useful for people. Like if you have a shitty job and you have to work 14 hours a day as a carpenter for six days a week, but you get one day off and you go to church, and you hear some great music, and you have a good time, and people tell you that they love you.You’re going to take that away from people? You’re going to tell them, what a waste of time, man. Stop wasting your time with that, it’s all b******t. That’s the one thing this guy has to look forward to in the week. And you’re going to tell him, that’s b******t.WHITAKER: Yeah, I mean, for the record, first, yeah, I agree.People have a right to worship, but people have a right not to worship. And I want, I’m not sure the makeup of your audience, religiously, how they break down, but just to make it very emphatic from my perspective, as a Christian, I do not want the Ten Commandments in a classroom. I don’t want the Ten Commandments in our courthouses.I believe that people who don’t believe like I do have a right to be free from my religious beliefs in the public square. And there are a lot of Christians, the Baptist Joint Committee I think is one of them.And there’s a lot of Christians who see that and go, yeah, we don’t want Christianity plastered all over our public institutions or people who maybe are atheist, or agnostic, or we’re Muslim, or a Buddhist, right? We want them free from religion as well from our religion.So I want to, I just want to be very clear about that, to your audience. I’m not advocating for a Christian society. I think that as a Christian, I can find common agreement for, I don’t know, affordable healthcare with people all across the religious spectrum.We can all agree we have a mandate to love other people [00:58:00] and affordable healthcare could be a great way of doing that. So these are not, I’m not advocating for exclusive Christian claims to be upheld by everyone else. Like the resurrection of Jesus or the Trinity.But I do think that ethically we can find common ground to push for systems and policy changes and individual perspective shifts that advocate for human flourishing for all of our neighbors.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And that it doesn’t matter what your reason for agreeing with something is.WHITAKER: Totally.SHEFFIELD: It’s a good idea. And, and at the same time, but as long as you supporting the fundamental principle, which is we need to take away a lot of these disagreements out of the public space and let people have them in their private houses, in their churches, or let these be private sector debates if you want to have them.You don’t even have to have them. I mean you look in the world of academic philosophy, most academic philosophers, they don’t care about whether God exists or not, they don’t write about it. It is a question that they’re like, you know what, I don’t think religions are true, or whatever, I think a religion is true, but it doesn’t matter, ultimately, what matters more is this other stuff to me.WHITAKER: Right. Right. Live and let live, man.SHEFFIELD: That’s right, yeah. All right, maybe last question is, so one thing I do feel like is that there are a lot of Christians out there who, they think, ‘Oh, well, it’s not that big of a deal. I don’t see it in my church. My friends don’t have those beliefs. These are just some stupid people. No one cares what they say.’Have you run into that attitude?WHITAKER: That’s my most frustrating person to run into. Out of all the people that I run into that I might disagree with, that is the most frustrating person I run into.It’s the person who really thinks, it’s not a big deal, these people are fringe. I’m like, are you kidding me? Trump and the mob he incited with Jesus banners almost overthrew our entire democracy. I don’t want to hear about fringe. Even if they are statistically fringe, they’re incredibly powerful.So yes, I [01:00:00] absolutely I loathe the people who I would argue are just plain old ignorant. They don’t look at the data. They’re not aware of the power dynamics at play. They’re not aware. They can’t even answer the question, well, why would Matt Walsh have 1. 4 million Twitter followers if he was fringe?I mean, that’s not fringe, dude. That’s mainstream. 1. 4 million. And this guy gets hundreds of thousands of views on Twitter. Every single time he posts, he trends all the time for right or for wrong.So yeah, I get that view, and I tell people, I say, listen, you need to wake up, man. Like, you just need to wake up and you have to understand what’s actually happening inside your spaces.Look at what Charlie Kirk is doing with Turning Point USA Faith. Look at the recent PRRI data on Christian nationalism and how three quarters of Christian nationalists come from the White Evangelical space. Okay? Like you need to understand what White Evangelicalism is breeding inside of its ranks.So yes, I absolutely get that perspective, and it is by far the most frustrating one that I have to deal with.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. They definitely got to wake up. All right. Well, so where can people find your stuff, Tim?WHITAKER: Anywhere that The New Evangelicals are is where I am. So podcast, Instagram, TikTok, we have a private Facebook community. We have a website, thenewEvangelicals.com. We are on Twitter shooting out hot takes all the time. So, we’re on YouTube. So yeah, we’re pretty much anywhere.SHEFFIELD: Okay, cool. All right. Well, thanks for being here, Tim Whitaker.WHITAKER: Thanks for the time, Matthew. It was great talking to you again.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theoryofchange.flux.community/subscribe This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

EPISODE SUMMARYThe middle part of the twentieth century wasn’t that long ago and yet in some ways, it seems like it was an eternity ago. That’s particularly true in regards to the public branding of American Christianity, which nowadays is often associated with right-wing evangelicalism, including among Christians who disagree.In the Mid-20th century, however, American Christian public discourse was very different, and it was dominated by Protestants who were theologically liberal. Public intellectuals and leaders like John Foster Dulles, G. Bromley Oxnam, and William Ernest Hocking are mostly unknown to people today but, in their time, they were nationally famous.They often disagreed on the particulars with each other. But overwhelmingly, this group of ecumenical Protestants wanted interfaith dialogue and alliances, and they were some of the earliest white supporters of black civil rights.They also worked for the creation of global systems that they hoped would protect human rights and religious freedom, such as the United Nations. Nowadays, the only people who use the term new world order are far right conspiracy theorists, but it's worth understanding that the ideas that today's right wing activist rail against actually have a history of their own.And joining me today to talk about the religious left and how it came to play a major role in the creation of the political order of the 20th century, and what later came afterward with the religious right is Gene Zenovich, and he is the author of a new book called Before the Religious Right, Liberal Protestants, Human Rights and the Polarization of the United States. And he is also professor at the University at Buffalo.MEMBERSHIP BENEFITSThis is a free episode of Theory of Change. But in order to keep the show sustainable, the full audio, video, and transcript for some episodes are available to subscribers only. The deep conversations we bring you about politics, religion, technology, and media take great time and care to produce. Your subscriptions make Theory of Change possible and we’re very grateful for your help.Please join today to get full access with Patreon or Substack.If you would like to support the show but don’t want to subscribe, you can also send one-time donations via PayPal.If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on Apple Podcasts. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. You can also subscribe to the show on YouTube.ABOUT THE SHOWTheory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield about larger trends and intersections of politics, religion, media, and technology. It's part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet.Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChangeMatthew Sheffield on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffieldMatthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theoryofchange.flux.community/subscribe This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe