Grifty

Episode Summary Welcome back to Grifty Pod. If you are listening to this episode without a helmet or a seatbelt, you are far braver than we are. This week felt like the entire nation had a stroke while standing upright. The Epstein documents dropped and inside that cursed file dump we discovered the soul bending phrase Trump and Bubba which was not on any of our bingo cards. Marjorie Taylor Greene tried to pick a political fistfight with Trump and it looked like two malfunctioning Roombas colliding in a hallway. Every headline seemed to be written by a bored demon trapped in a newsroom. So today we are taking you on a tour of American unreality. First we slide back into the nineties to revisit the DARE program which gave entire generations a deeply misplaced sense of safety. Then we blast forward to the current moment where right wing influencers are turning on their own in something called transvestigation which is exactly as deranged as it sounds. The circus is in town. Let us begin. What You'll Learn in This Episode The DARE Program and the Comforting Lie That Posters Fix Everything Charlie and Erika Kirk and the Digital Fever Dream of Transvestigations Is it A Grift? Real News or Fake Grift Fever Dream? The DARE Program and the Comforting Lie That Posters Fix Everything What DARE Was Selling The DARE program arrived in Los Angeles in 1983 and quickly metastasized into a national tradition. A smiling uniformed officer would walk into an elementary school classroom and deliver a series of highly scripted moral lectures about resisting drugs, alcohol and peer pressure. Children signed pledges. Children received neon yellow T shirts that glowed like irradiated dandelions. Children were assured that they were now fortified against the evils of the world. By the mid nineties DARE had infected more than seventy percent of school districts across the United States. It was not a curriculum so much as a branding operation. Parents adored it. Politicians bragged about it. The police treated it like a goodwill tour. The problem is that the entire thing did not work. Multiple meta analyses found that DARE had either no measurable effect on future drug use or effects so small they barely registered. A few studies found that students who completed DARE even experimented more possibly because children are curious, confused and easily entertained by forbidden concepts. The program was built on slogans rather than science. It substituted good intentions for meaningful intervention. It made addiction look like a moral failure instead of the complex social crisis it is. DARE was America in miniature. A shiny T-shirt pretending to be a solution. Why This Matters Today DARE is a perfect case study in institutional showmanship. It demonstrates our national desire for easy answers. It teaches us that if something feels helpful enough people will stop asking whether it is actually helpful. This is how grifts survive. This is how nostalgic myth becomes public memory. ⸻ Charlie and Erika Kirk and the Digital Fever Dream of Transvestigations What Transvestigation Actually Is Transvestigation is a conspiracy subculture devoted to claiming that public figures are secretly transgender. The reasoning is not medical, psychological or scientific. It is forensic fan fiction. These groups analyze photos of celebrities and politicians and apply invented rules about jaw shape collarbone angle shoulder width rib cage length wrist thickness and something they ominously call skull markers. There is no science behind it. There is no method behind it. There is only paranoia amplified by people who believe they are citizen detectives protecting the world from a conspiracy that does not exist. For years this fringe movement targeted women on the left. Michelle Obama was their white whale. They also went after celebrities like Taylor Swift, Meghan Markle, Serena Williams and Adele. Any woman with a strong jawline or athletic build was declared part of a secret gender agenda. The harassment has been relentless. But now the movement has turned inward. They have run out of enemies and begun pointing their microscopes at their own heroes. What They Are Saying About Erika Kirk According to the THEM article and recent digital surveillance here are the claims: They say her jawline fits what they insist is a male coded shape. They circulate side by side photos comparing her face to older images of male celebrities and trans women in transition even though none of the comparisons are coherent. They insist her collarbones sit too high and too straight. They point to photos where her shoulders look square in certain angles and treat this as biological evidence. They claim her wrists appear too thick in one photo where she is holding a water bottle. They argue that the way her thumb rests on a plastic bottle is masculine. This is considered a smoking gun in transvestigation circles. They point to her rib cage and claim it is too long for a woman which is a concept that has no scientific foundation but is treated as gospel by these content creators. Some go further. They say Erika Kirk is part of a hidden elite trans infiltration network. They call it the trans deception agenda. They never define it. They just insist it exists. What They Are Saying About Charlie Kirk The conspiracists accuse Charlie of similar fabricated markers. They say his shoulder to hip ratio aligns with what they consider feminized skeletal patterns. They claim his skull structure shows traits they have decided indicate a trans woman who transitioned early in life. They circulate old photos of him and create imaginary transition timelines like they are solving a case on CSI That Makes No Sense. They say his face changed shape over time and they treat normal aging as a covert biological anomaly. Why They Are Doing This The THEM article explains that this is what happens when you cultivate distrust as a political currency. The right wing has spent years fueling suspicion of trans people. They turned gender into a battlefield where everything is a clue and everyone is a suspect. Now the machine they built has turned back toward them. This is not about Charlie or Erika. This is about a conspiracy algorithm that can never be satisfied. When you reward content creators for uncovering hidden enemies eventually they will manufacture enemies from your own supporters. The Broader Crisis Transvestigation is not just ridiculous. It is dangerous. It treats gender identity like scandal material. It promotes body shaming disguised as detective work. It turns the public into unpaid inquisitors. And now the movement is eating itself alive. This is the logical endpoint of conspiracy thinking. When truth stops mattering the accusation becomes a spectacle. ⸻ GRIFTY GAME - Real News or Fake Grift Fever Dream? Three stories. One true. The other two were born from the national imagination which is not exactly a safe place to be. ⸻ That concludes our weekly descent into the archives of American absurdity. We covered nostalgia that never worked and conspiracy thinking that never will. The past is clownish. The present is unhinged. The future is unclear. Thank you for staying with us through the fog. Kendrick Lamar take us out. Resources & Mentions First Segment: Public Books - "DARE Is More Than Just Antidrug Education It Is Police Propaganda" https://www.publicbooks.org/dare-is-more-than-just-anti-drug-education-it-is-police-propaganda/ Teen Vogue - "The DARE Program Tried To Reshape the Image of Police Officers for Children" https://www.teenvogue.com/story/dare-program-reshape-image-police-officers Reason Magazine - "DARE Did Not Make Kids Say No To Drugs" https://reason.com/2024/04/02/dare-to-fail/ Bureau of Justice Assistance - Research and evaluation on DARE outcomes https://bja.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh186/files/media/document/cci_dare.pdf WOSU Public Media - Coverage of Ohio districts ending the program https://www.wosu.org/news/2014-02-26/many-ohio-schools-dropping-drug-resistance-program Wikipedia overview- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_Abuse_Resistance_Education Second Segment: THEM Magazine - "The Right Is Now Transvestigating Charlie Kirk and His Wife Erika" https://www.them.us/story/charlie-erika-kirk-transvestigator-trans-transvestigation Yahoo News - "MAGA Has Lost the Plot and Is Now Transvestigating Charlie Kirk" https://uk.news.yahoo.com/maga-lost-plot-now-transvestigating-181426105.html Tyla - "Transvestigating Explained as Conspiracy Theorists Target Erika and Charlie Kirk" https://www.tyla.com/news/transvestigating-explained-erika-charlie-kirk-conspiracy-theory-843901-20251114 Timestamps [00:00] Introduction [05:15] It's DARE [25:00] the Fever Dream of Transvestigations [40:00] Grifty Game Connect With Us Follow Us on Social Media: Instagram: @griftypod Twitter: @griftypod Bluesky: @griftypod.bsky.social Follow Azi @the.wellness.therapist Follow Aaron @mrneuropolitan Follow Rebelle @therbellewriter Follow Sierra @itsabitcomplex Follow Taryn @thefoxandtheowl Subscribe to the Podcast: Substack Apple Podcasts Spotify Email Us: griftypod@gmail.com Support the Podcast Thanks for reading! Grifty runs on real people like you. Not corporations, not billionaires, not the faux-rebels funding their "truth telling" with hedge-fund money. We're here because the world is loud and full of grifters who think a ring light makes them philosophers. Our job is to cut through the noise, call out the scams, and make sense of the mess. If you want analysis that isn't bought, polished, or PR-approved, subscribe free or paid. Every sign-up keeps this work alive. And while you're here, listen to our new episodes wherever you get your podcasts, follow us on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky @griftypod, and show us some love by subscribing, commenting, and sharing. For anything else Grifty, visit our website. Thanks for being here with us in the chaos.

This week on Grifty, we are heading north… way north. where climate change, government chaos, and corporate greed have collided at once. Alaska is in free fall. A typhoon has slammed the western coast, wiping out villages and food stores that took generations to build. The federal government is shut down, freezing aid and cutting off SNAP benefits for tens of thousands. While people are trying to keep their families fed, the Trump administration is approving new oil leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This is not about the weather. It is about what happens when a government built on extraction leaves its people to fend for themselves. It is about sovereignty, survival, and the politics of pretending the climate crisis is still up for debate. We are joined by Dr. Brian Heaslet, a lifelong Alaskan who knows what it takes to keep food and supplies moving across the most isolated parts of the state. Also joining is our own Sierra Montoya, bringing her sharp Alaskan insight and humor to unpack what life in the Last Frontier really looks like when disaster meets politics.

This week's episode dives straight into the No Kings protest, where nearly eight million people took to the streets to push back against Trump and the creeping rot of authoritarianism. It was the largest protest in American history, a moment that felt like the country briefly remembered what collective power looks like before the morning hangover set in. And on the other side, we had the tankies those chronically online, do-nothing leftists who spent the weekend insisting that protest is pointless. The same self sabotaging geniuses who told people not to vote in 2024 because "it wouldn't matter," which sure helped Trump slide right back into power. They call it radical theory and praxis. We call it performative nihilism and contrarianism with WiFi.

August 31, 2025 Welcome back to Grifty, the podcast where cult wellness, corporate greed, and authoritarian politics meet at a potluck dinner nobody wanted. Tonight's theme is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Make America Healthy Again plan, better known as MAHA. The Trump team is branding it as a health revolution. But peel back the organic avocado sticker and it looks more like the same old MAGA project: pretend to fight for wellness while quietly dismantling the science and institutions that actually keep people alive. Let's dig in. ⸻ Segment 1: The Food Fight Nobody Ordered Robert F. Kennedy Jr., serving as Trump's Health Secretary, launched MAHA to target ultra-processed foods, artificial dyes, and chemical additives. Big food corporations such as Kraft Heinz, Mars, and Kellogg have already pledged to remove synthetic dyes by 2027 under mounting pressure (Axios (https://www.axios.com/2025/08/31/rfk-robert-kennedy-maha-food-plan)). Supporters frame MAHA as consumer protection. Critics see Kennedy using it to market himself as America's wellness crusader while sidelining medical professionals and spreading distrust in vaccines and science. Questions: 1. Is this food reform real progress or just wellness-washed authoritarianism 2. Should we be celebrating slightly cleaner Pop Tarts while the CDC is gutted behind the scenes ⸻ Segment 2: Polls Love Food Reform, Hate Science According to an Axios Ipsos survey, 87 percent of Americans support stronger food safety rules, with bipartisan backing (Axios (https://www.axios.com/2025/08/31/rfk-republicans-gop-business-make-america-healthy-again-maha)). Nobody is begging for more Red Dye No. 40. But vaccines remain a dividing line. Gallup found that Republicans are significantly less supportive of childhood vaccinations than Democrats, leaving MAHA as a unifying food crusade that simultaneously deepens America's science divide (Axios (https://www.axios.com/2025/08/31/rfk-republicans-gop-business-make-america-healthy-again-maha)). Food For Thought: 1. Does this prove people only support science when it is about snacks 2. What does it mean when food safety unites but basic vaccines divide ⸻ Segment 3: GOP Breaks Up With Big Food The Republican Party has suddenly distanced itself from Big Food. Instead of defending corporations, GOP leaders are aligning with suburban parents worried about chemical exposure and warning labels on junk food (Axios (https://www.axios.com/2025/08/31/rfk-republicans-gop-business-make-america-healthy-again-maha)). But corporate donors are not walking away quietly. Agricultural giants like Mountaire and Reyes Holdings are resisting regulation, and their financial influence means the fight is just beginning. Questions: 1. What happens when Republicans break up with Big Food, and who is their rebound 2. How long before Fox News says Biden wants to ban Oreos ⸻ Segment 4: MAHA's War on Science The Trump administration is using MAHA to undermine public health. The CDC is being overhauled and senior scientists are resigning in protest of political interference and Kennedy's rejection of mRNA technologies (The Hill (https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5475599-trump-administration-overhauls-cdc/amp/)). Experts warn this is not temporary. Cutting research programs and pushing conspiracy rhetoric risks decades of progress in medicine and public health Questions: 1. What does America look like when essential oils replace vaccines 2. How do we measure the long term cost of this brain drain from the CDC ⸻ Segment 5: Killing Cancer Research While Posing As Wellness Saviors While Trump and Kennedy promote MAHA as a children's health movement, they are simultaneously dismantling federal programs designed to find cures for cancer, Alzheimer's, and ALS (House Appropriations Committee (https://democrats-appropriations.house.gov/news/press-releases/trump-team-dismantles-efforts-find-cure-cancer-and-other-deadly-disorders-and)). The cruelty is in the timing. The New York Times reported promising breakthroughs from a new pediatric brain cancer trial group just this week (New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/well/pediatric-brain-cancer-trial-group.html)). While researchers bring hope to families, Washington is choking off the funding that sustains them. Questions: 1. How do you square calling yourself pro child health while cutting cancer research 2. Is this just political theater that uses kids as props ⸻ Segment 6: MAHA 2026 Political Weaponized Wellness Kennedy and Trump are positioning MAHA as a key wedge issue for the 2026 midterms. The strategy is to woo suburban women, independents, and younger voters with promises of food safety and wellness transparency (Axios (https://www.axios.com/2025/08/24/rfk-jr-maha-strategy-2026-midterms)). The contradiction is glaring. They say they care about your family's health, yet they are dismantling the very systems that could save your family from disease. It is not Make America Healthy Again. It is Make America Hypocritical Always. Questions: 1. Is this wellness movement just MAGA wrapped in Whole30 branding 2. How do Democrats fight back against a political cleanse disguised as health reform ⸻ OUTRO That is MAHA in all its kale washed glory. A movement pretending to save you from Lucky Charms while cutting off cancer research and gutting public health. This is violence with branding. Trump and Kennedy are not protecting families, they are using wellness as a mask for authoritarian power. Kendrick Lamar. Please take us out.

Alana Zeitchik, an Israeli American advocate and the executive director of the Narrow Bridge Project, shares her compelling journey in advocating for communication within the Jewish community amid the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She discusses the intricate ties of identity and societal divisions, underscoring the need for empathy and dialogue. The emotional toll on families of hostages and the transformative activism that arises from personal tragedy are also explored, revealing the shared humanity that transcends political divides.