We're back with another edition of The Federalist or Radio Hour. I'm Emily Jasinski,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the
show at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr
LST. Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts as well. We
are joined once again by editor in chief of at the Babylon B. Kyle
Man, who helped put together a new book I have in front of me.
It's hilarious. It's called The Babylon Be Guide to Gender, the comprehensive
handbook to men, women and millions of new genders we just made up.
Kyle, Welcome back to Federalist Radio Hour. Thanks so much for having me.
You are incorrigible and will not stop committing hate crimes. What you mean?
This is a very this is a very inclusive book. So you know,
we talk about all kinds of genders in this book. I don't know
why you would why you would accuse us of a hate crime. Here dedicated
to Babylon Be Man of the Year Rachel Levi, and you start just before
page one even tell us about this book, the process of putting it together.
It really is hilarious. Yeah, So this is a third book in
our Babylon Beat Guide series. We've done the Babylon Beat Guide to Wokeness,
the Babylon Bee Guide to Democracy, and now the babylon Beat Guide to Gender.
It's certainly the most it was certainly the grossest of the guide books that
we've had to put together. It's difficult to write about a topic like gender
and trans issues and and you know, sexual identity and sexual orientation and all
this stuff without you know, I don't know, there's a line that you
have to walk there. That's trying to keep it fun and light and funny,
even though it is a pretty serious topic that you know, a lot
of us, sir, are just confronted with on a daily basis. But
hopefully we kept it fun and funny enough where you know, it's something you
can throw it on your coffee table when the liberal when your liberal relatives come
over. Yes, this will make many thanksgivings very fun this year. That's
the idea. But yeah, you know, we're putting this thing together and
it's it's a lot of you know, we have this great graphics department at
the Battle on Bea. As you can imagine, it's an absolute blast to
be a graphic artist at the Battle on Beat, from putting together crazy photoshops
for the website to working on books like this. So I wrote a large
chunk of the content along with my managing editor Joel Berry, and you know,
we're just typing words on a page and it's all black and white and
I don't know if this is funny or not, you know, and then
you send it over to the graphics department. Now we have all these notes,
like draw a man in a dress with a beard and you know he's
punching a squirrel or whatever the joke is. And then to see this,
to see it come alive on the page after the traffic department gets through with
that, it's just it's like it's like telling yourself a joke that you get
to laugh at a few months later, so that it's been a lot of
fun and giving a present to yourself. Yes, exactly, that's what I
say. Very generous, But it also at the point about how it was
one of the grossest books or the grossest book that you've put together so far.
There's something serious when you say that, because it gets to how gender
is this catch all subject that opens. It's kind of like the umbrella that
all of this like sexual stuff gets under for the left that when they're talking
or when they're they're teaching kids about something like very innocuous or that should be
very innocuous. You know, you're a boy, boys that penis as girls
are girls when they're you know, eight years old, whatever they are in
the classroom, it's now open up to this whole universe. Because they're they're
assigned with this basic task in a public school of making sure that girls go
to the girls bathroom and boys go to the boys bathroom. That becomes just
like catch all for all of these different like sexual topics. So, as
you were writing the book and as every day you're sort of covering these topics
at the Babylon B, do you find that to be the case that so
often just sex as the gateway to all of these different like issues of sexual
deviancy and nonsense. Once that doors open, Yeah, it's and it's kind
of intrinsically tied when you look at some of the perversions that that have been
ushered in, you know, in the name of equality and inclusiveness, and
you look at things like that, it just just think three years ago or
five years ago, if you thought we would be having a debate as to
whether kids should be going to drag shows and tipping you know, men with
fake bare boobs, and you know, like it's just insane, or that
it was the dude that was on the White House lawn, you know,
with his with his fake chest out there for everybody to see. And it's
like we have progressed so quickly off that cliff, and nobody on the left
is really willing to call it out. There are some obviously, there are
some voices on the left who call it out, but they're few and far
between, because I think once you've subscribed to this idea, that your main
motivator, your main your guiding principle is inclusiveness. You can't say no,
you can't shut it down, you know, because if that is your if
that is your guiding principle, if you have no, if you have no
strong foundation to kind of more your morality too and say no, this,
this is what we believe things are good and bad and objectively good and objectively
evil. If you don't have that kind of an objective moral compass, then
you're just going to progress because that's what they do. They progress, and
they progress it right off the cliff because that is the main thing, is
just moving forward all the time. So yeah, I think once you once
you kind of say, oh, well, inclusivity is our is our guiding
principle, You're opening yourself up to all kinds of craziness. HM. Correct
me if I'm remembering this wrong. But wasn't the reason you guys got blocked
on Twitter and have since developed a great relationship with the Elon Musk That was
over a Rachel Levine post, right, Yes, it was our We after
USA Today awarded Rachel Levine one of their Women of the Year awards. You
know, they named Rachel Levine Woman of the Year. We just thought it
was so absurd that we awarded Rachel Levine our man of the Year one.
It's it's a stupid joke, you know. It's like it's kind of like
this dumb lame, you know, just very dry parody of what of what
USA Today did. But it got us banned from Twitter, It got us
locked out of Twitter and uh, and they wouldn't let us back on unless
we kind of bowed the knee to their ideology at least an old Twitter.
There was like, but when you committed a hate crime on the committed hate
speech on the on the app, you you had to click through all these
screens that were like, yes, I acknowledge that I have committed hate speech
against this person, which includes harassment, intimidation, threats of violence. But
you know, we're like, what, you know? It was insane.
It was just insane those and we didn't. We didn't. It wasn't any
kind of like calculated response to this Rachel Leavin thing, to this Twitter thing
that we were gonna, oh, let's let's go ahead and uh not delete
the post and that way we'll generate a bunch of controversy and then and then
Elon Musk will see us and buy Twitter. It was literally just me and
the other owners of the battle on be getting together and we just said this
is insane. We're not We're not deleting it, right. I think I
think it was Seth our CEO maybe that said that was just like, we're
not deleating, are we And I just like, no, of course,
we're not like that. This just goes against everything that we believe, you
know. So it was it was just a principle and stand of like,
and we thought, we thought we weren't going to ever get our Twitter account
back. You know, that was just like, we may never be back
on Twitter again. So then when when Elon called and you know, started
asking us about it, and then and then bought Twitter, and then you
know, one of his first directives when he got into Twitter that November was
to free the Babylon be You know, that was an insane thing for us
to witness, unful just from taking a little stand of ordinary faithfulness. You
know, we saw the world change in a big way. That is such
an important and interesting point because I was going to ask how heavily now that
you have some insight into the process you think this or why this particular example
you kind of almost just answered this question, But I'm curious for your thoughts.
It seems like to me the reason this example weighed so heavily on Elon
Musk is that you guys did take a stand that like, would anybody have
even noticed in the long term, would this this would just be sort of
a footnote in the Babylonpie's history if you you had this one issue and then
you complied, deleted the tweet, got back on and just kept testing the
system. But it sounds like the fact that you guys stood strong is sort
of what was the catalyst for this to explode, or to be sort of
a spark for Elon Musk to start looking deeper into what was happening at old
Twitter. Yeah. Absolutely, Like you know, I think if we had
just done the typical thing of whining about it and then deleting the tweet and
then you're back on the next day, it's like, oh, it would
not have changed anything. And a lot of conservatives were facing similar things,
and of course you know, deleted their tweets or whatever, which I don't
I don't blame them. I mean, it was such a crazy time with
how much censorship there was. It's like, well, we could lose access
to our millions of followers. You know, that's a big deal, like
I could sink of, isn't it, you know? And And that's how
that's how powerful that the sensors were. But I talk a lot about like
what Alexander's soldier Hitson says in the and the Gulag Archipelago, you know,
which is that that he wished that his fellow Russians had, you know,
all stood up and he's just like if just one of us, you know,
and like at their apartment block or whatever. You know. He describes
these Soviet soldiers coming in and knocking on the door at the end of the
hall and then moving to the next door the next day, and the next
door the next day, and then none of them stood up. And he
said, like, if we had just made them fear for their lives,
the soldiers fear for their lives because they knew that we weren't gonna go quietly,
you know. He's like, the whole thing, the whole system would
have collapse on the first day, but everybody feared this, you know.
And I'm you know, I'm drawing an analogy from obviously something that's horrible like
Soviet Russia to just you know, cancel culture. But we are kind of
in the beginning stages of a lot of that that conservatives feel like they can't
speak up. And I don't blame I don't know, Like, on the
one hand, I understand conservatives that have their job and have to provide for
their family, like they're like, well, I could make a stand,
but then I can't feed my family. And so I understand that people have
a tough choice to make, but at the same time, a lot of
times, cancel culture only has power because we self censor. You know,
cancel culture only has power because we we we allow it to have power.
I think I think as conservatives, it's time to start standing up. And
you'd be surprised. You know. We get stories of people that will stand
up in their workplaces and say, no, I'm gonna I'm gonna take a
stand here, I don't believe this, and then more than half of the
workplace stands up with them, and it's like, yeah, but this is
ridiculous. You know, Jim and all of them were silent about it.
So yeah, I just encourage people too not take part in the lie,
because I think once we take part in the lie, we give a power
over us, and we give power to cancel culture that way, So feel
free to put the Babylon Big Guide to Gender on your coffee table. Over
all ten copies that you purchase, put them on your put them on your
copy too. And to another thing, you just said, it's not just
conservatives anymore, And I mean, of course, it never really was just
conservatives. I mean, I remember my college job was working for Christina Hoff
Summers, who was sort of canceled in the early nineties for having this heterodox
take on what was happening to feminism in like nineteen ninety four, And so
there was always this anti speech streak on the far left. It was mainstreamed,
and then people like Elon Musk were certainly not conventional movement conservative Reagan knights
gender. For some reason, sex and gender strikes and nerve. I want
to ask how why you think that is? Because the speech issue, I
think those are the two biggest gateways to sort of being red pilled. It's
free speech and sex and gender. A do you agree with that be?
Why is sex and gender something that seems so basic and obvious such a powerful
gateway to having your eyes opened up to kind of a lot of these structural
problems on the left. I mean, it definitely like strikes at the core
of who we are, Like their ontological questions, gender questions, you know,
and you have to be so you have to be swimming in the kool
aid so deep, you know, you have to be so immerged in the
kool aid to buy into to buy into the gender nonsense, and like it
denies the very basic reality of who you are, and I don't, like,
I do think that there's a lot of people on the left, or
would call themselves on the left, maybe in the Democrat Party, who you
know, balk at this stuff and say like this is this stuff is too
far, you know, because it is so basic from a biological perspective.
But the problem is that the Democrat Party and everybody on the left has really
been you know, co opted by this movement and something that it feels so
inorganic because it's something that was so fringe, you know, just a couple
of years ago. And like if you would if you had read a headline
from the future five years ago, that's like, you know, this man
dressed as a woman is now the spokesperson for bud Light or you know whatever,
you'd be you'd be like, what, what what is happening? You
know, I've read some headline the other day. I was reading and I'm
like, if I read this headline three years ago, I would not understand
a single word of it. You know, there's there's this there's this insane,
like hockey stick level progression when when it comes to the insanity on the
left. But yeah, I think it is. I think it is because
It comes down to such a basic question of being that every you know xx
or x y chromosome in our body screams and rebels against that. You're just
like, you know it's wrong, and you really have to, you know,
as the Bible says, like sear your conscience in order to in order
to fall for it. Hey, y'all, this is Sarah Carter, investigative
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at a page in the book right now that has an illustration of notable accomplishments
and inventions of men, medicine, automobiles, skyscrapers, and or plumbing.
This is just a taste of what you can expect with the Babylon Beat Guide
Degender. But it also strikes me that this was not partisan humor or ideological
humor like twenty years ago. We all and it's kind of like the Barbie
movie, which just over and over again, the joke is that men and
women are different. I don't think Greta Gerwig knew that when she was making
the movie, but over and over Aga it's like, oh, we have
to sanitize the Mojo Dojo Casa House to make it back into a Barbie Dreenham
house. Why because men are disgusting. Like this is used to just be
a basic thing that we could all joke about and make fun of. But
now I'm only finding jokes about men inventing these things, and the Babylon Beak
Guide degender nowhere else. Well that's it's funnily enough, the original pitch for
this book that we were working on when we were talking about doing our third
Babylon be Guide was the Babylon be Guide to Men and Women, Like we
just wanted to do kind of your old school Seinfeld men are like this and
women are like this style humor, and that's really you know, gender obviously
is a much hotter topic, and we were able to expand to making fun
of a lot more woke topics because we expanded it to gender. So we're
glad we did that. But we you know, and you've you've kind of
noticed those first few chapters were talking about men. There's a chapter on men,
chapter on women, and we got we do a lot of the stereotypical
jokes about those things, and that kind of humor is great because it is
and I don't know, another funny thing is like you see it on you
see those kind of jokes on TikTok all the time. You know, the
younger generation is making all these observations about men do this and w I just
do this, husbands do that, you know, and it's like, well,
why do you think that is? Because it's different, and so we
love that kind of humor, and I think it's been relegated to this like
oh, that's boomer humor, like oh what men do this? And wounded
know that's so you know, that's so passe or whatever. But but it
is like, like I was saying with the left and how you have to
deny your very biology in order to buying to the gender stuff. It's like
those kind of jokes really speak to us because every single person on earth has
experienced, you know, those kinds of differences, whether it's your wife,
you know, running into the curb in her car, or you know,
your husband wanted just as an example. It's not it's you're not saying that
women do that. I know, satshire. This is satsi. It's possible
women are worst drivers than men, but that's not what you're saying. Yeah,
right, odds are some of them are the question that I also was
thinking of when you were talking about that is the church in particular, is
what you guys started satirizing. And just along with you know, the new
Twitter versus old Twitter, you guys have exploded. There's some there does seem
to be something happening. They call it a vibe shift, whatever it is,
there is some real change. People are getting braver, some people maybe
getting less brave. Some people may be becoming more cowardly, but some people
really are becoming more brave. And I mean, I don't know the Elon
Musko ten years ago would have been taking some of the same would have said,
it's worth it for me to take some of the same stands on X,
Y and Z. Maybe that's a bad example, but there's something in
There's something afoot. Have you seen that in churches? Is it getting better
or worse in some of those those church spaces that you guys started satirizing.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I would say it's getting better
or worse beyond, but I would say instead like it is definitely becoming more
polarized. Like it really depends on your local church. Is your local church
in the Word of God and the truth of the Word of God? Do
you submit to the Word of God, because if you do, like I
don't think your pastor you will have any problems speaking up about these issues when
they come up. If your church isn't founded on the order God and it's
just whatever the whims of the culture are, then it's just going to progress
off the cliff even faster. And that's why we're seeing so many empty pews.
You know, it's because of a lot of the mainline denominations that just
he just sense that they desperately, desperately want to be liked by culture.
And maybe that was fine in the eighties and nineties when culture was relatively friendly
to Christianity or whatever, but now it's not. And so if that became
your if your goal was to appeal to seekers, you know, in the
eighties and nineties, and they were just generally normal families or whatever, then
maybe you couldn't notice much of a difference at that point. But now it's
starting that that kind of approach is starting to be exposed for what it is,
because you know, you just see insane stories coming out of these out
of these mainline churches that you never would have that would have been a babble
on the headline, a few years ago. You know, we we had
some articles a few years ago that was like, uh, you know,
a priest fired from an episcopal church because he reveals that he believed in God
or something like that. And then you know there's like true stories now of
these like atheist chaplains popping out that universities. It's just wild, like out,
how did we get here? You know? And I think it is
because a lot of churches weren't weren't taking seriously the word of God. You
guys do a really good job of and I guess partially because this is you
know, where you started, but you do a really good job of not
just giving the giving conservatives or Christians a past, but also not like relentlessly
just attacking conservatives and Christians, but also having a pretty like broad scope of
humor of things that you're like poking fun at. Is that intentional? Did
you guys try to keep a balance? Like how do you decide when you're
going to take a shot at the right versus of the left? Yeah?
Some people have asked like is it you know, do you like completely balance
it? And we made fun of democrats, So now it's time for a
joke about Republicans. I don't really think that that's a great approach. I
think I think it's more like we want a really interesting, healthy, and
funny mix of articles on the site, and on a given day, like
Democrats might be being a lot more ridiculous than Republicans. Not always, but
on a given day that might be the case, you know, so we
might make more fun of Democrats that day. And then if there's a day
where there's something insane happen happening on the Republican side, of course, we're
not afraid to call that out either. But I think it is like I
feel like the mlm B is this like a newspaper that's, you know,
just reporting on clown world. And so when you open up the when you
open up the homepage of the website, like you really want this feel that
you've received a newspaper from an alternate dimension that's like that's very very similar to
our own. But so we want that interesting, healthy article mix. Like
if if every joke is politics, or every jokes making fun of the left,
then it's just it's not gonna be interesting. Nobody's going to be kept
on their toes. I like reading, you know, the onion or whatever,
and you read a steal the article about the family dog or whatever,
and then the next articles making fun of me. You know, it's like,
oh, shoot, they got me. You know, you want that
moment or else or else. Comedy is not interesting, So we we definitely
try to spread out the targets as much as we can. But yeah,
well you know, and a lot of it's dictated by the headlines of the
day. You know, if if Republicans happen to be ridiculous that day,
then I guess we're making fun of Republicans today. I'm think you had a
page right now that it takes a somewhat veiled shot at Rachel Hollis a woman
with a copy of Girl Wash Your Face. And this is perfect to the
next question I want to ask, which is a bubble and b was kind
of and is still kind of. It has this niche down really really well
of Christian humor that you're not really going to understand if you're not a regular
churchgoer. And that's something that happens a lot in our culture now, is
that we kind of have these these cultural corners that are less penetrable to people
who are outside of that particular bubble, but are really really funny to people
who are inside the bubble. At the same time, you guys have expanded
to the point where there are tons of pop culture references in this book and
on the site regularly that everyone can They're like touchstone references Lebron James, for
instance, that everyone could kind of pick up on and have a laugh at
if they're able to laugh at these things. Do you find that to be
a problem as you guys are like coming up with jokes like is this something
that's like two, is this just a me thing? Or is this like
just a politics thing versus you know, is this something people will understand in
general? Well, I think I think with humor, there's like a there
are so many considerations less like this giant four dimensional matrix of like what what
is a joke trying to do? And what are the different dimensions of it?
And you know, so you're always like, it's really good to super
laser focus in on, you know, a dumb joke about uh, you
know, David Crowder or Jeremy Camp or some someone that only people in in
uh, within evangelicalism would understand. But it's like you want that I don't
know. I feel like that there's a context to the joke that people outside
can still get and they can read it and go like, oh, you
know, that guy must have a giant beer or whatever the you know,
or whatever the joke is. So there's a little bit of like, you
know, yes, we're making the joke for our little in culture, but
it should it should give a it should give a feel to the outside world
of what your sense of humor is, of what the tone is that you're
being lighthearted, you know, even if they don't get the specific reference.
Like one of my favorite articles is this really dumb one that I wrote that
was like five signs your husband is secretly looking at planes of pictures of World
War two planes on the internet, you know, and it's just like it's
not even super relatable, Like there's nobody like like who looks at just randomly
looks at pictures of World War two points. But that's like, you know,
obviously I do absolutely want you I'm in an accountability group for it,
but you know, we're trying our best. But you know, it does
kind of without being on the nose and without being at the risk of explaining
a joke and making it not funny anymore. I mean, you know,
it does kind of give you that feel of this Christian website that's like,
here's how not to look at porn or whatever, but we do it in
this lighthearted way that's like pointing out some of the symptoms, but it's World
War two planes. And then it kind of gives this weird I like when
you read an article and it's it's like strange, really specific, and you're
like, who wrote this and what we were they going through? You know,
So I think there's a so I think there's a balance, you know,
but we definitely we I mean, honestly, we've found that the way
that Facebook suppresses a lot of our political posts because we'll pust something on a
hot news item about Hunter Biden or something and it gets five shares on Facebook
because they just completely shut us down during the twenty twenty election. But then
we'll like post a silly joke about a worship leader and it'll get thousands of
shares because Facebook doesn't have it doesn't have any of those buzzwords that Facebook looks
for to try to shut an article down. So there's something to be said
for that. Really niche comedy that is just a laser focused in on your
one audience and hits it really well. Do you have a favorite gender of
all the genders, the inflant genders? Do you have a favorite of all
the ones we made up? I like I like Gumba sexual, which is
a little Mario Gumba. We made up all these gender symbols and they're all
they're all strenned throughout the book. And we have gender flags, you know,
so that's that's wonderful, all kinds of queer flags from California to the
Dallas Cowboys, and just a lot of great there's a lot of great gender.
The best thing in the Book of Horse is the is our genderator,
which is our weight that you can generate your own gender. So that's a
lot of fun. People get to do that in the book. So we
have fun interactive features like that. It's always my favorite part. I'll sit
there, big guys in the office make fun of me because I'll be sitting
on it in our little lounge area and I'm like, yeah, check out
this one, you know, and I'm like generating fake genders and they're like,
okay, I'll get back to work, but yeah, that's a lot
of fun too. Well, they say, get back to work, but
clearly what you're doing is work. It's work. Yeah, exactly, really
perfect, because I was just going to ask you to take us inside the
babble of the writer's room, which must be a mysterious place, a magical
place. What's it like when you guys are producing a book like this,
producing content like what you do on the side every day? What's the process
like? Yeah, so the headline writing process is not as much fun as
people would think it is because it's mostly just online chat, you know,
slack channel type pitching stuff. And I think the very specific kind of comedy
that we write with the headlines, that onion style, like the joke has
to be super contained and that those eighty characters or whatever. It's less collaborative
than you would think. Like it's very much like I have this idea,
I think this would do really well, and then like I'll just write it.
But but there's once in a while where like you have a kernel of
something and you're like, I'm not really sure if this joke works for AOC,
maybe it'll work for Lauren Bobert instead or whatever. You know, like
there's a little bit. There's a little bit of that of that collaboration where
someone says, oh, what about this or what about that? But the
real fun that people think of with like a comedy writer's room comes when we're
writing our sketches and also when we're writing these books, because there is a
lot of sitting in the writer's room punching up each other's show, and it
is just literally just like sitting with the funny, funniest people that you know
and choking around for a few hours, like have you ever been Have you
ever been with a group of you know, your closest friends and you're sitting
around and you say, oh, and what if this? And then the
guy over there is like, oh, yeah, but but but but this
also and on this guy and someone else throws in something else, and you
just make up this ridiculous thing. Like that is the feel. It's guys
sitting around now I'm joking around, which is which is just a blast.
And this this book, of course, is so funny because it's we're like
throwing it up on the screen, on this giant screen that we had and
we're like looking at And one guy came to our office and said, you
guys. You guys. You said you're your guys. Motto should be like
that you're serious about being funny, because I'm so like immersed in it that
I don't even realize how funny the conversations that we have are. But I'm
sitting there and I'm like, I don't know if this picture of Carl Marx
and address is that funny. I think we should I think we should change
his leg hair, you know. And I and I don't And I'm not
cracking at all. I'm not like thinking it's funny. I'm just like,
yeah, I think that would be funny, you know. And then there
we have some guests, visitors to the office while we were having this kind
of conversation. He's like, are you guys not cracking up all the time,
you know, And It's just like, what, I'm just trying to
write the best joke I can. I don't know, So hopefully I give
it a little to decide whether or not it's more or less funny that Carl
marks just like hair or not. Yes, yes, that's a serious question.
Do you have you found that people outside of like just the conservative space
are now regularly Babylon be readers you must. I mean the amount of just
the amount of followers that you guys have on social There aren't enough conservatives in
the world. You have to have a fan base. Do you have you
found that? Do you talk to people on the left too, like the
Babel and yeah, I talk to people on the left to the Batman,
I think most people in real life are normal and can laugh at themselves.
You know, I was laughing at you know, I laft at headlines from
the Onion. I laughed at headlines from Reductress, which is like a feminist
sat there. Like, I think most people can laugh at themselves. And
you know, humor is one of the ways that we can, you know,
reunite our country and save our country in a lot of ways, because
I think it is the thing that that unites us. You know, Humor
is this common language that transcend transcends language. Humor is Humor is universal in
a way. But like, I never want to judge the full movement of
the left or my political opponents based on some fringe crazy people online because obviously
there's a lot of people that hate the babilon be online. But I talk
to people in real life that disagree with me. Politically and follow the bablon
be you know, they're atheists or they're or there. I was talking to
a girl at one of one of the ladies sorry, at one of the
events. I don't know if that's I guess that's not politically correct, but
I mean she was a girl. I do I think that's that's how she
presented. But she was a she was a priest, and I got a
mainline, you know, Anglican church or something, you know, had the
rainbow frock and you know, came up and she asked me something about like
do you feel like sometimes you guys are too mean towards you know, like
trans issues, And I'm like, well, we're trying to be light hearder,
we're not trying to So we had a little conversation about it, and
she's like, well, thanks for talking to me and answering my questions.
She's like, I really do like most of your guys's jokes, and I
love your church jokes, and you know, so that's like, that's an
example of somebody that you would expect to be an insane person online and you
talk to them in person and it's not that you know, it's I do
think Humor has this power, and it has the power to get people in
their guards down a little bit. And if we had just written like screeds
against transgenderism or whatever, like, nobody would read our website, and then
nobody on the left would read our website, you know, but people do
because because it's humor and it's disarming in a way. I wonder if the
Onion hadn't become in some ways unwilling to fully engage with the modern left and
all of its excesses and hilarity is etcetera, etcetera. I mean, I
guess there would always be space for two of you, but that has had
to have helped the babble and be immensely that even in the comedy space,
there's been reluctance to to kind of poke fun at all of this stuff.
Yeah, I mean, to the Onions credit, they do make fun of
the Left. They do make fun of Biden and Democrats, and they always
have many fun of both sides, and they still do. But there was
there was kind of there's probably a noticeable tone shift maybe around the Trump era,
you know, post Obama, that shifted to like, I mean,
you all you saw it in the late night hosts most especially, but they
were they turned from like, our job is to get to the left and
the right together and laugh at things and make make the events of the day
look ridiculous. And because because because humor has this power to help take take
the anxiety out of out of the news, you know, because humor is
this way, like we're worried our World War three is going to happen,
and you would turn on you know, Johnny Carson or Jay Leno or whatever,
and they just make a joke about that. They will make you go,
Okay, it's gonna be okay, Like we can we can laugh about
this. It has this power to bring light in the darkness in a lot
of ways. And the late night hosts once Trump, once Trump came to
power, it was like, Okay, our job is no longer to make
fun of things, because that's platforming or normalizing. We cannot normalize this man.
Our job is now to lecture our audience on what's good. You know,
what's good and what's bad, what's right to believe and what's wrong to
believe? And they and that loses all that makes humor lose all of its
power, And yeah, I guess you did see some of that with the
Onion, But that's like, that is why the Babylon be exists, is
because we were reading all these headlines. The founder of the Babylon be Adam
Forbes, reading all these headlines about about all sorry, he was reading all
these headlines from the Onion that were from this left is slant, and he
was like, this is so funny, and yet it's making like the opposite
point of the truth, you know. And he's like, I really wish
that we had something like that because it's so powerful, you know. And
if the Onion had had been right in the middle and just making fun of
both sides, or you know, when after the left with the same ferocity
and frequency as they as they went after the right, then there wouldn't be
a Babylon Baby because we wouldn't have needed it, you know. So there
is there is some truth to the fact that them leaning super hard left led
to the Babylon b Yeah, and just as we're kind of wrapping up here,
it strikes me that the Dylan Mulvaaney and Target kind of so the bud
Light target boycotts. Then you had the whole controversy with the Dodgers and the
Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. This Pride Month was actually kind of a rough Pride
month for the Pride movement because a lot of those what average Americans would see
as accesses were on fold display, and it felt like even to people on
the left. I saw some analysis that this was kind of maybe a turning
point for the Pride movement, for the LGBT movement, that this particular Pride
month is when public opinion you started to backslide and you know, people woke
up to what was really happening. Do you think that's the case with these
sex and gender issues that we've kind of it's it's peaked, and now we're
going, you know, maybe not backed down the hill, but sort of
a point of broader consensus about men and women. Are we in the middle
of that process or do you think we're sort of yet to peek. It's
tough to say, and it's funny when people ask me that because I always
say, well, I'm just a dude who tells jokes on the internet,
Like, I don't know, I don't know the broad sweep of Western civilization
what it's going to do. But I always go back to Tolkien you know,
I'm doing my annual reread of Lord of the Rings right now, and
Tolkien talks about how like we don't have the power over what happens in our
age, in our era, because you know, there's the famous bit with
Gandolf talking to Froda, but there's other there's other pieces of the steams throughout
the books that we don't We can't decide what the weather is going to be,
but we can tell our we can till our earth, we can defend
our little farmstead. It's like, if Western civilization collapses, let's let it
collapse while we're laughing about it and being joyful warriors fighting for our little slice
of the earth. You know, I think I think there's something to be
said for that. And that's that's what we call people too. Is it's
such a funny balance being a sadder risk, you know, because it's like
you get to see like Western civilization collapse in real time in some ways,
but we do it while we're sitting in sitting on a lawn chair, drinking
a beer or a non alcoholic beverage, and we're pointing at pointing at the
world and laughing. And I think I think that's our role, you know,
as as comedians, is to say, well, I don't know,
I don't know what the trend is going to be. I don't know if
if this is going to come back. You see some signs of hope for
that obviously, like with all the pushback during Pride Month and stuff, I
don't know if that's gonna result in anything or not, or if people are
just gonna forget. I mean, the Dodgers sell out fifty five thousand seats
every game still, you know, so maybe people don't care about as much
as we hope they do. But maybe people's attentions fans are too short and
we're too far gone to save save America. But but we're going to keep
laughing because you know, we serve a God whose kingdom is has outlasted all
the other kingdoms, and a kingdom that will never fade away. You know,
as we read in the in the Book of Daniel, it's like,
and I think, sorry if I'm rambling, but I think that's what I
think. That's what gives Christians the right to tell jokes, you know,
a right that I don't know how atheists tell jokes because because they're like,
oh, life is meeting less. It's like, yeah, well that's horrible,
you know, Like we can we can joke about political things because politics
ultimately, ultimately in a grand scheme of things. Obviously it matters now,
but ultimately it doesn't matter because we serve a God is sovereign and in control
of all this stuff. So I can I can laugh about the things that
are going on in the news without any kind of like despair, you know.
So. I think Chesterton wrote about that that the satirist must have a
moral grounding. If he doesn't have a moral standard, he can't tell a
joke because there's no The whole point of satire is to say, you should
be acting like this, and yet you're acting like this, and you can't
do that unless you have this, unless you have some kind of a moral
backing and some kind of a hope beyond this line. What I took away
from all of that is if Frodo were a comedian, he would be Kyle
Man. That's it. Well, Sam Wise, you know, Sam Wise
was the comedian. There was this I just read the part where it's Froto
and Sam are climbing up to shelves lair and there's this giant spider attacking him,
you know, and Sam's telling jokes and singing songs, and that's our
that's our goal, you know. That's that's our job, is to be
the ones that's making up dumb songs while we're walking into into doom. My
female brain just turned off as soon as you start. Oh Man, got
them climbing up. Have you not read for have you not read Lord of
the Rings? I've read the Hobbit many times, but oh, highly recommend
that, even if you just do the audio books as sometimes I do the
audio books, and it's high recommend. I can't believe you just made me
in public on a conservative podcast. I've gotten through Lord of the Rings,
but it's a little crucifier. It's probably gonna happen. Kyle Man is the
editor chief over at The Babylon b and they have a new book out called
The Babylon be Guide to Gender. It's hilarious. Cow said to buy ten
copies, by twenty copies. It's that good. Kyle Man, thank you
for coming back to Federalist Radio Hour. Thanks for having me. Of course
you've been listening to another edition a Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Deshinsky,
culture editor here at The Federalist, will be back soon with more. Until
then, be lovers of freedom and anxious for the frame.