Speaker 1: From the front lines of the mom Wars. Here's Bethany
Speaker 1: Mandel and Kara Kennedy.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of your favorite podcast.
Speaker 2: My name is Bethany Mandel, and I had to go
Speaker 2: through the editorial pages of The Free Press to find
Speaker 2: a replacement for my friend Kara Kennedy, who is still
Speaker 2: on maternity leave and just left me to podcast all alone.
Speaker 2: And I picked up one of my favorite columnists ever anywhere,
Speaker 2: and then I just suckered her into coming on, and
Speaker 2: for some silly reason she said, yeah, so here we are.
Speaker 2: I am joined by kat Rosenfield. She is a calumnist
Speaker 2: for The Free Press and the author of several novels,
Speaker 2: which I was admitting. I never have someone on the
Speaker 2: podcast that I haven't read their book, but I have
Speaker 2: not you read your book, but my husband has read
Speaker 2: all of your books, and so I feel like there's
Speaker 2: like an osmosis thing that happened.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I don't know, it's no, that's how that works.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no. But he's a big fan. He I
Speaker 2: I the first one he bought. I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: that was nice of you, and he was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's actually good. And I was like, oh, that's so nice.
Speaker 2: And then he just kept reading your books and I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, it must actually be if you are
Speaker 2: going back again and again to the same Well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is how I get people, you know. I
Speaker 1: write one thing they like and then they get hooked
Speaker 1: and you know, and then I get your whole family
Speaker 1: the same way.
Speaker 2: There you go. So how did you start writing like,
Speaker 2: what like novels?
Speaker 1: I mean, oh, I kind of fell backwards into it.
Speaker 1: It was two thousand and eight. The economy had imploded.
Speaker 1: I had been trying to move into being a copywriter
Speaker 1: and instead I ended up unemployed. And my husband knew
Speaker 1: that I had had a novel and a drawer, and
Speaker 1: he was like, why don't you finish that since you're
Speaker 1: not going to really have an opportunity to just work
Speaker 1: on something like that and be unemployed long term, you know,
Speaker 1: like this again, And so I did and that ended
Speaker 1: up being my first book.
Speaker 2: Amazing, amazing. And so how you've written three now or four?
Speaker 2: Shut up? Seriously? And I don't know if we own
Speaker 2: all of them, because I think we own three or four.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would guess that, don't. You don't own the
Speaker 1: early work because I was a young adult fiction writer.
Speaker 1: That was where I got my start, which meant that
Speaker 1: I was a fly on the wall when everybody in
Speaker 1: that community started to lose their minds, and I ended
Speaker 1: up starting to write about that a little bit. And
Speaker 1: I don't write young adult fiction anymore for that reason,
Speaker 1: but I do have an interesting career as a culture
Speaker 1: writer also for that reason.
Speaker 2: Okay, so that is actually why. That was the intended
Speaker 2: purpose of why I had you on, because I wanted
Speaker 2: to talk about your more recent culture writings. So but
Speaker 2: now I'm remembering all of this, so rewind back to
Speaker 2: being a young adult writer and having this all on float,
Speaker 2: Like what what happened? Because I've written so much about
Speaker 2: how the literature world for kids is just like insane.
Speaker 2: Someone posted today, actually my actually she was my nears
Speaker 2: just she was my book assistant, she was my research assistant,
Speaker 2: and she posted that. In Massachusetts, there's a website for
Speaker 2: the health classes and for fourth graders. There's a graphic
Speaker 2: photo of a man enjoying what the internet has to
Speaker 2: offer in his bed. Oh this and it's like full,
Speaker 2: it's very graphic, and it's for fourth graders.
Speaker 1: I assume you mean he's watching like cooking videos.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, Yeah, I try to keep this show like
Speaker 2: okay enough to keep in the background when kids are around.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't I mean, maybe it's just
Speaker 2: my kids. My kids have heard everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, cooking videos, yeah, enjoying them in bed as one does.
Speaker 1: What happened to this? So okay? The sort of TLDR is.
Speaker 1: Around twenty fourteen, people in One's publishing and young adult
Speaker 1: fiction got very obsessed with the kind of proto ideology
Speaker 1: of what would eventually become known as woke. And it
Speaker 1: was I think initially well intentioned. You know, they wanted
Speaker 1: to see a greater diversity of stories being told by
Speaker 1: a greater diversity of people. Ultimately, though, as you know
Speaker 1: so often happens with well intentioned social justice oriented movements,
Speaker 1: this became primarily a tool for extremely grasping, opportunistic people
Speaker 1: to try to eliminate the competition in order to promote
Speaker 1: themselves professionally. And this sort of crazy orthodoxy took over
Speaker 1: in the young adult fiction space around twenty sixteen and
Speaker 1: just became very all consuming. It was very conformist. I
Speaker 1: think there are a few different reasons for this, but
Speaker 1: one of the things that really spurned the kind of changed.
Speaker 1: The change in the content of the books was partly
Speaker 1: this desire to see very certain kind of political or
Speaker 1: politically correct, progressively pious ideas being promoted. The idea was that,
Speaker 1: like we were educators, we needed to be instructing kids
Speaker 1: properly morally, we needed to like get everyone on the
Speaker 1: right side of history. This was partly about politics, but
Speaker 1: it was also, in my opinion at least partly about
Speaker 1: the fact that a lot of the people working and
Speaker 1: especially writing in children's publishing were sort of maladjusted adults
Speaker 1: who wanted to write books for the unhappy kid they
Speaker 1: had been. They had this idea that, like, you know,
Speaker 1: when I was like a gay thirteen year old or
Speaker 1: you know, or confused or awkward, if I had just
Speaker 1: had a book, you know, that showed me what I
Speaker 1: you know, what I want, what I want as an adult,
Speaker 1: that I would have been less unhappy. I think that
Speaker 1: they projected a lot of their kind of like adult
Speaker 1: anxieties and issues onto children's literature, and the books got
Speaker 1: a little weird as a result.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and that's not conjecture. I have read so
Speaker 2: many interviews with child authors and young adult authors where
Speaker 2: they say that explicitly that this is written for twelve
Speaker 2: year old me, ten year old me, eight year old me.
Speaker 2: And I see a lot of this kind of theme
Speaker 2: in I mean across the spectrum. And I noticed it
Speaker 2: when I was first in college. It was like a
Speaker 2: physician healed myself. And so everyone in a nutrition class
Speaker 2: had an eating disorder. Everyone in a psych class had
Speaker 2: their own mental struggles that they were dealing with and
Speaker 2: they were trying to fix themselves. Everyone in a communications
Speaker 2: class was autistic and could not communicate to save their lives,
Speaker 2: and that's why they were a communications major. And so
Speaker 2: I definitely have observed this in the children's literature space
Speaker 2: that it decentered the story and you know, the beauty
Speaker 2: of literature and instead became like, this is my agenda,
Speaker 2: and I'm very open about it. And not only is
Speaker 2: that annoying from you know, if you don't share that agenda,
Speaker 2: but it also just makes for bad literature.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, to be a successful young
Speaker 1: adult fiction writer, you do have to have certain proximity,
Speaker 1: like emotionally and intellectually to the experience of being a teenager.
Speaker 1: But it is possible for that proximity to be healthy
Speaker 1: and that it is possible for that proximity to be unhealthy.
Speaker 1: And I think that you know a certain you don't
Speaker 1: really get to decide who gravitates towards literature for the
Speaker 1: unhealthy reason, but then their books end up getting produced,
Speaker 1: and that, yeah, is what it is.
Speaker 2: I have read, unfortunately, so much of this literature. It
Speaker 2: was funny. Actually, we were talking before we started about
Speaker 2: my cleaning lady. She's like cleaning out my counters right
Speaker 2: now and everything because it's very per past over. And
Speaker 2: she found a stack of children's books that I've used
Speaker 2: for work that I would never let my children read,
Speaker 2: and so it's funny. She found like Pride Puppy George,
Speaker 2: which was a young adult story about an individual who
Speaker 2: went from Melissa to George, or maybe it was George
Speaker 2: to Melissa, I don't remember which one. One of them.
Speaker 2: They had to change the name of the book because
Speaker 2: they dead named, and so the author apologized for dead
Speaker 2: naming her own character and making it the title of
Speaker 2: her book. Yeah, it's really painful, but I've read a
Speaker 2: lot of these books and I'm always struck by it
Speaker 2: doesn't seem like they've met a kid this age. Because
Speaker 2: George or Melissa whatever it was I can't remember was
Speaker 2: written for a kid my older two children's ages. I
Speaker 2: have my kids run the gamut from twelve down to three,
Speaker 2: and so I was reading George like, my kids would
Speaker 2: never get into this, Like has she ever read a
Speaker 2: children's book for this age? Rage Let alone met a
Speaker 2: twelve year old. I can't see my kids getting sucked
Speaker 2: in the same way they're sucked into JK. Rowling or
Speaker 2: Rick ryed In or like any of those kinds of books,
Speaker 2: because it's there's just it's flat, like it feels very
Speaker 2: prescriptive and preachy and annoying, and I wanted to shoot
Speaker 2: myself when I was reading it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is interesting how much those books tend to
Speaker 1: just not resonate with the children for whom they're supposedly intended.
Speaker 1: This was something that I thought was very interesting during
Speaker 1: the controversy surrounding gender queer Do you remember that it
Speaker 1: was like a big deal just a few years back,
Speaker 1: And that book is of course, I mean, objectively, it's
Speaker 1: pretty graphic, it's pretty inappropriate. It depicts cartoon sex acts
Speaker 1: involving a dildo. I'm sorry, we're trying to keep this
Speaker 1: family friendly and never it depicts really graphic cooking videos.
Speaker 1: It is something that was brought into libraries by adults,
Speaker 1: you know, saying, well, you know, we think it's important
Speaker 1: for kids to have access to this book. And that
Speaker 1: was really about the political anxieties of the adults who
Speaker 1: were in charge of deciding what was in the library.
Speaker 1: I mean, a big thing about so many of these
Speaker 1: books that were the subject of so much controversy, including
Speaker 1: gender Queer, is that not a single child had ever
Speaker 1: checked them out. They were just there, you know, and
Speaker 1: they were not interesting to their intended audience, and so
Speaker 1: they just became instead these kind of cultural flashpoints to
Speaker 1: do battle over, but nobody was actually reading them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just I just wrote a piece for the
Speaker 2: Washington Examiner this week about like an alternative library association,
Speaker 2: like who who could not get more exciting than that?
Speaker 2: But they in their mission statement they say, very plainly,
Speaker 2: like the America. I don't they don't call out the
Speaker 2: American Library Association, but effectively, this is what they're doing.
Speaker 2: They're saying, we believe unlike the other folks. They don't
Speaker 2: say that, but we believe that children childhood is a
Speaker 2: separate stage of maturity that needs to be treated as
Speaker 2: separate because one of the things that really disturbs me about,
Speaker 2: you know, the progressive takeover of libraries and the window
Speaker 2: that it gives us into this ideology is that like,
Speaker 2: they don't think that childhood is a thing. They don't
Speaker 2: think it exists. And so that line from like there
Speaker 2: to minor attracted persons is a straight through line, like
Speaker 2: there's just there's no do not pass, go, do not
Speaker 2: collect two hundred dollars. And I find it one of
Speaker 2: the most disturbing aspects of like this woke progressive ideology,
Speaker 2: that the total erasure of childhood as a distinct unit
Speaker 2: of maturity in life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I had a thought about that angle on things,
Speaker 1: so I can't really speak to it. But when I
Speaker 1: was writing about the sort of soft censorship that takes
Speaker 1: place in libraries through this process called weading, which is
Speaker 1: very like unilateral, you have a librarian who's just deciding
Speaker 1: what to remove from their collections or what to like
Speaker 1: remove from the display cases. And it was such an
Speaker 1: interesting thing because it had become this flashpoint. You know,
Speaker 1: we're always talking about book banning, like we're against banned books,
Speaker 1: we're for free speech, but so often the books that
Speaker 1: are being described as banned, I've never you know, there's
Speaker 1: never been any problem accessing them. They're just books that
Speaker 1: conservatives conservatives object to, whereas the books that you have
Speaker 1: trouble accessing are the ones that librarians object to. Librarians
Speaker 1: do tend to be liberal, and so there's this question
Speaker 1: of like what actually does it mean to ban a book,
Speaker 1: especially in the digital age where everything is infinitely replicable,
Speaker 1: And it's really about two things. One is, you know
Speaker 1: what is front and center at your library, which, of
Speaker 1: course you know, there's also this question like the battle
Speaker 1: for the soul of the library? Right you go in
Speaker 1: and if all you see is, you know, everything like
Speaker 1: Rainbow Pride for children in the kids section, you understand
Speaker 1: if you're a more conservative parent, more conservative person, that like,
Speaker 1: this space is not for you, which is an interesting
Speaker 1: development I don't think is great. But the other question
Speaker 1: is like, you know, what does it mean to censor?
Speaker 1: Who really has the power to censor? And my argument
Speaker 1: was that the people who are able to quietly remove
Speaker 1: books from shelves, you know, from library collections, to do
Speaker 1: so on an ideological basis, who aren't really accountable to
Speaker 1: anybody except for themselves, and who also increasingly are able
Speaker 1: to have a chilling effect on books like Back at
Speaker 1: the Source, to basically persuade authors to write differently or
Speaker 1: not write at all because they don't think that it's
Speaker 1: serving the proper political purpose. That's really where the power
Speaker 1: to censor lies in our contemporary era.
Speaker 2: I had that experience when we so Carol Markoitz and
Speaker 2: I wrote a book, Stolen Youth. It came out exactly
Speaker 2: three years ago, and so we were shopping at like
Speaker 2: four and a half years ago, like the book Proposal,
Speaker 2: And this was at that moment in time, like that
Speaker 2: snapshot where Abigail Schreyer's book was taken out of target,
Speaker 2: Ryan Anderson's book was taken off of Amazon, and then
Speaker 2: like Abigail wasn't able to advertise on Amazon as well,
Speaker 2: And we got knows from publishers that were completely understandable,
Speaker 2: like we don't think we will actually be able to
Speaker 2: have a storefront to sell your book, like your book
Speaker 2: is way more offensive than Abigail Shryer's book, and that
Speaker 2: I mean, that's the only way it will be good
Speaker 2: is if it's really offensive. It has to be a
Speaker 2: barn Burner and Abigail Schreyer's book was not a barn Burner.
Speaker 2: Neither was Ryan Anderson's. And so eventually the Daily Wire
Speaker 2: acquired it and we wrote it for the Daily Wire.
Speaker 2: And in my conversations with editors, writers, agents, everyone across
Speaker 2: the board, they said exactly what you just said, that
Speaker 2: chilling effect of like you have to fit the narrative,
Speaker 2: you have to fit the quota. One of the editors
Speaker 2: I spoke with at a major children's publishing how said,
Speaker 2: I cannot I have a literal quota system. I cannot
Speaker 2: publish a white straight man. I don't. I'm not allowed.
Speaker 2: And I think about like C. S. Lewis and all
Speaker 2: these like that, quality literature just would not exist. And
Speaker 2: so I wonder how many people just don't what we're
Speaker 2: missing in the literature world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, at this point, the question of where
Speaker 1: are the straight, white male writers is an interesting one,
Speaker 1: and I hope it's you know, somebody addresses it. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's being addressed somewhat. Jacob Savage wrote that good piece
Speaker 1: for Compact that kind of looked at some of the numbers,
Speaker 1: you know, the statistics who's being published. That's sort of
Speaker 1: outside the children's space. But it is interesting to think
Speaker 1: about how the landscape of who is being published now
Speaker 1: has changed, because there was back in twenty fourteen, which
Speaker 1: you know, it's like that was more than ten years ago.
Speaker 1: There was this sense of like, oh, well, white men
Speaker 1: had their day. You know, they they've dominated literature. It's
Speaker 1: somebody else's turn. And you know, I suppose if you
Speaker 1: go back to certain length of time you look at
Speaker 1: the American literatyah, sorry, literary landscape, you say, okay, who
Speaker 1: was being published at that time? Yeah, you're going to
Speaker 1: find a lot of straight white men. But that was
Speaker 1: like the sixties or the seventies, And at this point,
Speaker 1: the sins of the boomer literati are being visited on
Speaker 1: a generation of men who have never known, like, you know,
Speaker 1: a day in the sun. They've never experienced this sort
Speaker 1: of boogeyman of white male privilege. And I think that
Speaker 1: we're doing a little bit too much of punishing gen
Speaker 1: Z for the at this point probably like imagined sins
Speaker 1: of what men have came before them.
Speaker 2: We also don't even have to imagine that, like people
Speaker 2: are not writing these children's books anymore, because you're not
Speaker 2: writing young adult fiction anymore, would you I'll be writing
Speaker 2: this stuff if this was not the landscape, probably not.
Speaker 1: I got into Ya at a moment that I referred
Speaker 1: to as peak YA. It was right after Twilight broke
Speaker 1: out big, and there was just so much money and
Speaker 1: so much room in young adult fiction to do a
Speaker 1: lot of different stuff. And I was writing very literary
Speaker 1: fiction for young adults. So it was like basically, you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of like the prose quality and the themes,
Speaker 1: it was relatively dark, it was relatively adult. I just
Speaker 1: had teenage characters basically, and you know, it was great
Speaker 1: at that moment to be able to do that, to
Speaker 1: have the room to do that. But the landscape started
Speaker 1: contracting at that point in a way that I I
Speaker 1: don't know, I think that like because of the way
Speaker 1: things were moving, and also because of the way my
Speaker 1: interests were shifting. You know, I was already writing like
Speaker 1: basically like adult stuff fourteens, so it made more sense
Speaker 1: for me to just write for adults, even if I
Speaker 1: hadn't been pushed out, which of course I was.
Speaker 2: Hi. I'm Ben Sas and I'm Chris Steierwalt, and this
Speaker 2: is not dead yet.
Speaker 1: We're all dying, but some of us have been brought
Speaker 1: face to face with that reality.
Speaker 2: However long each of us have to do it though.
Speaker 2: We all want to live a good life, one with meaning,
Speaker 2: love and joy, and our guests are here.
Speaker 1: To help us do exactly that.
Speaker 2: Now available for download and streaming at ricochet dot com.
Speaker 1: Ricochet Yeah, join the conversation.
Speaker 2: So this podcast was basically a bait and switch because
Speaker 2: I asked you to come on to talk about Lindy West,
Speaker 2: and then we just spent half an hour not talking
Speaker 2: about Lindy West.
Speaker 1: That's okay, we can still talk about Lindy West. That's literature.
Speaker 2: Also, I know. So I think there's actually a through
Speaker 2: line here from the conversation we just had to the
Speaker 2: conversation that I intended to have, which is on Lindy West.
Speaker 2: I think it's the same Brooklyn Park Slope intellectuals who
Speaker 2: led the censorship regime NYA, who are the ones who
Speaker 2: are like I think Palliamory is great? Before we start
Speaker 2: talking about Lindy West, can you just give everyone a
Speaker 2: like cliff Notes explanation of who she is who hasn't
Speaker 2: been down the rabbit hole that you and I have
Speaker 2: been down.
Speaker 1: For the last Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's funny because
Speaker 1: for me, you know, like free speech liberal feminists who
Speaker 1: grew up in the nineties, Lindy West and I are
Speaker 1: about the same age, and so I have been familiar
Speaker 1: with her all my adult life. I've read her stuff.
Speaker 1: I used to really enjoy her work, I would, you know,
Speaker 1: makes it a little bit sad to see what's happened
Speaker 1: to her. She started out as a blogger at The Stranger,
Speaker 1: the Seattle All Weekly. She then published a memoir called
Speaker 1: Shrill that was made into a Hulu series. She was
Speaker 1: a writer at Jezebel. I just transposed those in the timeline.
Speaker 1: She was a writer at jezbel first, then she published
Speaker 1: her memoir, then the Hulu series. And she has always
Speaker 1: been like a fat activist. She's very fat. She's also
Speaker 1: very pretty. She's very unapologetic about, you know, saying that
Speaker 1: she deserves to have a good life. The end of
Speaker 1: her memoir Shrill was basically kind of the bringing that
Speaker 1: to fruition. She meets a very nice guy, you know,
Speaker 1: conventionally attractive, who marries her, and that's like her happy ending.
Speaker 1: Then she recently released this new memoir called Adult Braces,
Speaker 1: which kind of complicates that narrative, and it is all
Speaker 1: about this road trip she took in twenty twenty one
Speaker 1: after or her husband. Well we'll, you know, we'll debate
Speaker 1: did he, you know, like emotionally blackmail her into polyamory
Speaker 1: or in opening up their marriage? You know, was had?
Speaker 1: She always agreed to this and she was just being
Speaker 1: a brat about it. Who's to say, I think we're
Speaker 1: going to say. But so it's all about, you know,
Speaker 1: how she she did this cross country road trip to
Speaker 1: try to make peace with the fact that her husband
Speaker 1: wanted an open marriage. And then when she went back home,
Speaker 1: she and he and his girlfriend, who I think not
Speaker 1: coincidentally is thin moved into a cabin that her family owns,
Speaker 1: and they have been a three person marriage ever since.
Speaker 2: So I think the most important part of that part
Speaker 2: of it, the cabin, is that she sleeps in the guest.
Speaker 1: Rooms for the most part.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So, I first of all, I can't get
Speaker 2: enough of the story for several reasons. One, it's pure voyeurism.
Speaker 2: I just I can't get enough of how bizarre and
Speaker 2: weird this is. And I own the fact that I'm
Speaker 2: just being a gossipy, catty person. Number two. I think
Speaker 2: that it really speaks to something that progressive activists are
Speaker 2: trying to do in our society. I was first. I
Speaker 2: don't think I was really that familiar with her, but
Speaker 2: I was first, sort of. I got on the train
Speaker 2: of Lindy West because there was a Modern Love column
Speaker 2: about her. It came out about a week ago on
Speaker 2: the fourteenth. I want to read how the author introduces
Speaker 2: her interview with Lindy West, because I think it is
Speaker 2: very instructive of what they're trying to do here. And
Speaker 2: So this is a staff writer. Her name is Anna Martin,
Speaker 2: and she writes whenever non monogamy comes up in conversation
Speaker 2: with my friends. And we are thirty somethings in Brooklyn,
Speaker 2: so this is not infrequent. I always say, I always
Speaker 2: say some version of the same thing. I deeply admire
Speaker 2: the people who make it work, but I don't think
Speaker 2: I could ever do it myself. The truth is, I
Speaker 2: worry that I'm too insecure. Really, that's the lesson.
Speaker 1: I don't know why polyamory is the fetch that everyone
Speaker 1: is trying to make happen right now. This actually may
Speaker 1: be a good place to debut my conspiracy theory, which
Speaker 1: is that there is some guy just who has a
Speaker 1: lot of money and wants a harem and doesn't want
Speaker 1: to have to feel bad about it, and he's like,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to throw everything I've got at making
Speaker 1: harems socially acceptable even politically correct to have, and you know,
Speaker 1: and he's astroturfing this massive campaign, like in every mainstream
Speaker 1: legacy outlet, to make polyamory happen.
Speaker 2: So I think it's I think it's liberal kink. It's
Speaker 2: it's and it's to me because they would not be
Speaker 2: okay with it. Like if we were talking about Mormons
Speaker 2: and not not like the extremist Mormons, not LDS, but
Speaker 2: I think it's FLDS fundamentalist LDS, they would they would
Speaker 2: think that that's kooky religion. But this is, this is
Speaker 2: like their weird, kinky religion that they've decided, and it's
Speaker 2: weird because it's very biblical, like they're they're just stepping
Speaker 2: into a time machine and going back to when we
Speaker 2: had to have polygamy in order to repopulate the earth
Speaker 2: because there was one man and thirty women because all
Speaker 2: the other men died in a war. I think that
Speaker 2: it's part of just this overall effort to destroy the
Speaker 2: building blocks of civilization, the foundational aspects of it. And
Speaker 2: they're doing it with gender as well, like there's no
Speaker 2: such thing as a man or a woman. It's all
Speaker 2: you know, what you decide to be. And monogamy is another,
Speaker 2: you know, basic building block, and they've decided let's let's
Speaker 2: try to do away with that too, and childhood as well.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting theory. I'm not sure I agree with you,
Speaker 1: but that's really it is your podcast.
Speaker 2: Yes, No, disagree with me.
Speaker 1: I mean I I like well, I mean I obviously
Speaker 1: I like my conspiracy theory about the guy like maybe
Speaker 1: it's maybe it's maybe it's several men sitting in like
Speaker 1: a room smoking cigars, being like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not your scene. So we've got it. We've
Speaker 2: got to figure out who it.
Speaker 1: Is, you know, it could it could be whoever killed him. No,
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. I think he'd probably kill himself.
Speaker 2: No, I don't know. I disagree with you. There's not
Speaker 2: a conspiracy theory that I have not actually brought into.
Speaker 1: Oh I love this. I want maybe later to hear
Speaker 1: about what your favorite one is. But just to return
Speaker 1: to the topic of polyamory. What is interesting about this
Speaker 1: to me is that the way that it's spun, especially
Speaker 1: by West in her book, is that it is like
Speaker 1: the most politically progressive, perhaps even feminist thing, to have
Speaker 1: this open marriage. And that is specifically because she's a
Speaker 1: straight white woman, but her husband is is a person
Speaker 1: of color and now who now, I guess sometime within
Speaker 1: the past couple of years, decided to go by they
Speaker 1: them pronouns, you know, announced announced he was non binary.
Speaker 1: I don't do they them as a matter of like principle,
Speaker 1: so I'm just gonna keep calling him him. But and
Speaker 1: then the girlfriend, whose name is Roya, is like, in
Speaker 1: addition to being thin, I think she is Persian and
Speaker 1: also queer. And so the idea is that I mean,
Speaker 1: she says this in her book that basically the husband,
Speaker 1: when he initially talked to her about the polyamory conversation,
Speaker 1: persuaded her that her desire for monogamy was sort of
Speaker 1: somehow connected to like a desire to own him like
Speaker 1: a sleeve, Like she's a white woman who wants to
Speaker 1: own a black man. And she was like, oh, I
Speaker 1: never thought about it that way. Now I understand how
Speaker 1: it's actually really problematic that I don't want you to
Speaker 1: have sex with other people, and it's just I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like, on the one hand, I guess
Speaker 1: I have a grudging respect for this guy that he's
Speaker 1: managed to worm his way into a place where he
Speaker 1: can be the cad to end all cads and people
Speaker 1: are going to act like he's actually doing something amazing
Speaker 1: and progressive, but at the same time he's awful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, an odd dude. I get a lot of the
Speaker 2: same vibes from not the man that Lena Dunnam married,
Speaker 2: but her boyfriend before that, where he kept telling her
Speaker 2: we can't get married until gay marriage is legal, and
Speaker 2: then gay marriage was legal and he was like, I
Speaker 2: just don't want to marry you. And I feel like
Speaker 2: both men really victimized these young women because of their deep,
Speaker 2: deep seated insecurities about their weight. She wrote a piece
Speaker 2: Somebody found, an old piece that she wrote and about
Speaker 2: her wedding, and she said, as a body positive activist,
Speaker 2: she wanted to make a bold political statement at her way,
Speaker 2: and so she says, thin girls were chosen, treasured and
Speaker 2: treated like a prize. Fat girls were settled for at best,
Speaker 2: and we settled in turn for whomever would take us.
Speaker 2: And then she talks about, you know, marrying this guy
Speaker 2: who did that for her, and it is so sad
Speaker 2: now knowing that he's just cheating right in front of
Speaker 2: her face, with a thin woman in her bedroom, Like
Speaker 2: does she not have friends?
Speaker 1: It is so tragic. I mean, the fact that what
Speaker 1: you just brought up that article is actually, I think
Speaker 1: such an important piece of this puzzle, which is Lindy
Speaker 1: West really created both a brand and an identity around
Speaker 1: the idea of being a fat woman who married a
Speaker 1: conventionally attractive man and got her happy ending. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that was so important to not just like her professional persona,
Speaker 1: but I think to the story that she had been
Speaker 1: telling herself about herself. To admit that actually he's a
Speaker 1: bad man and a cheater who doesn't respect her, who
Speaker 1: doesn't love her the way that a man should love
Speaker 1: his wife, that has to be devastating in so many ways,
Speaker 1: I mean, And for that reason, even though like this,
Speaker 1: within this book Lindy West reveals herself to be a
Speaker 1: kind of a cruel person, I still really feel for her,
Speaker 1: Like I just I think that it's such a horrible
Speaker 1: thing that she ended up not just experiencing an objectively
Speaker 1: heartbreaking situation, but painting herself into a corner where she
Speaker 1: couldn't even say that it's heartbreaking. She can't call it
Speaker 1: what it is.
Speaker 2: And he did a bait and switch. He got married
Speaker 2: and and you know, they had their happy ending, and
Speaker 2: she wrote about it and she put it out there,
Speaker 2: and then he pulled it out from under her and said,
Speaker 2: if you want to stay with me, you have to
Speaker 2: be okay with me having sex with another woman in
Speaker 2: the room next door.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so supposedly this was something that he told her about,
Speaker 1: like he was like, I, you know, I'm not good
Speaker 1: at monogamy. I think, you know, I think monogamy is
Speaker 1: unreasonable and bad. Then the whole conversation about monogamy maybe
Speaker 1: being racist, like all of this supposedly took place before
Speaker 1: they actually got married. Oh but but there, but he
Speaker 1: also wasn't dating other people then, right, right, It's the
Speaker 1: timeline is a little bit hard to parse. The other
Speaker 1: thing that's hard to pars is they allegedly had like
Speaker 1: an agreement, but she didn't really want it. She never
Speaker 1: wanted it. She never wanted to be with other people.
Speaker 1: You know, she didn't want him to be with other people,
Speaker 1: but she like said okay to this because she also
Speaker 1: didn't want to lose him. I guess tell as old
Speaker 1: as time, right, But even within the con finds of
Speaker 1: this agreement they supposedly had, he still violated it. One
Speaker 1: of the things that you learn in the course of
Speaker 1: reading this book is he had not just the one
Speaker 1: thin girlfriend. He was also having an affair with a
Speaker 1: second thin girlfriend who lived like next door to them.
Speaker 2: And she's of course not dating anyone, right, Like, she's
Speaker 2: not taking advantage of this open marriage.
Speaker 1: No, no, I mean, except that she supposedly sometimes has
Speaker 1: threesomes with her husband and the other woman. But you
Speaker 1: do not get the sense reading the book that this
Speaker 1: is something that happens very often. I definitely do not
Speaker 1: think that she and the other woman are engaging with
Speaker 1: each other sexually when the husband is not around, right,
Speaker 1: So it really is kind of a harem situation.
Speaker 2: So what bothers me about this whole situation? My mother
Speaker 2: was an uber, uber feminist. She would my mother dad
Speaker 2: when I was sixteen, but she would be horrified at
Speaker 2: how I turned out like pro life conservative, like what
Speaker 2: did I do wrong? But I have the ability to
Speaker 2: like code switch and think as my mother as like
Speaker 2: the super duper progressive woman. And but my mom would
Speaker 2: be of the like JK. Rowling version of feminists, where
Speaker 2: she would be like, I'm sorry, you want a man
Speaker 2: who's convicted of rape to have access to a woman's
Speaker 2: locker room. I'm sorry? What she would feel the same
Speaker 2: about this because feminists have twisted themselves into a circle,
Speaker 2: into a pretzel rather to say like this is somehow
Speaker 2: acceptable for a woman to be treated like this. This
Speaker 2: is the epitome of abuse, and it is so disrespectful
Speaker 2: and sets us back, as you know, half of humanity,
Speaker 2: back to the bad things of biblical times. We got
Speaker 2: rid of the polygamy. It was bad, and now they're like,
Speaker 2: let's let's have let's take another look.
Speaker 1: I mean, what's interesting about this book to me also
Speaker 1: is I mean, I've actually not seen anybody saying that
Speaker 1: it's good feminist, just non feminist, liberal conservative. This is
Speaker 1: an astonishing achievement at a moment which we are more
Speaker 1: polarized than we've ever been. This is a cultural artifact
Speaker 1: that everybody agrees is bad and everybody has a different
Speaker 1: lens on it. I've seen oh God, like ten different
Speaker 1: pieces written from different angles, which I think is it's
Speaker 1: astonishing what a rich vein to mind this one book is.
Speaker 1: And you know, for that we should be grateful to
Speaker 1: Lindy West forgiving it to us. But it is amazing
Speaker 1: to me that everybody you know is reading this and
Speaker 1: getting angry about it for different reasons, but ultimately reaching
Speaker 1: the consensus that no, like this is bad. This is
Speaker 1: a bad book, this is a bad situation. It just
Speaker 1: feels so really sorry for her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean maybe this is like a watershed moment.
Speaker 1: Hi, this is a young Culter. Welcome to my Ricochet
Speaker 1: podcast and Coulter every week on Ricochet.
Speaker 2: You're home to Center Right conversation. Hey, that was pretty good.
Speaker 2: I just saw some interesting Pew research just a couple
Speaker 2: of hours ago that infidelity is the lone issue polled
Speaker 2: that a majority of both Republicans and Democrats believe is wrong,
Speaker 2: and it pulls very closely. Eighty eight percent of Democrats
Speaker 2: think it's wrong and ninety three percent of Republicans say
Speaker 2: married people having an affair is wrong. And that's essentially
Speaker 2: what this is. And it's just like a much more
Speaker 2: warped version because at least when you're having an affair,
Speaker 2: you have the respect for me to hide it. Yes,
Speaker 2: in this situation, you're just flaunting it in the bedroom
Speaker 2: that I own.
Speaker 1: That is the thing about it, that kind of I
Speaker 1: don't know that I guess maybe grinds my gears the
Speaker 1: most is you know, men have been cheating on their
Speaker 1: wives since time immemoriam, and I guess you know vice versa,
Speaker 1: the idea that like, you want to do that, and
Speaker 1: you also want to make it so that like she
Speaker 1: you can rub her face it and she's not allowed
Speaker 1: to be upset, and if she's upset, that makes her
Speaker 1: like a bad progressive and maybe a racist. That's the
Speaker 1: part of it.
Speaker 2: It's just like, oh, come on, it's really it's deeply cruel,
Speaker 2: Like he's not he's not just hurting her, he's trying
Speaker 2: to hurt her. What So you said in the book,
Speaker 2: which I'm wondering if you recommend actually reading the book.
Speaker 2: I was tempted.
Speaker 1: Everybody needs to read this book. Everybody in America needs
Speaker 1: to read this book just so they can talk about
Speaker 1: it with me personally.
Speaker 2: I would like to read one of your books before
Speaker 2: I read this book, so I'll faund it on my Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'll put it on my giant to read Pyle. But
Speaker 2: is there did she did she deserve it? Did she
Speaker 2: earn being so hated that he's just trying to hurt
Speaker 2: her like this?
Speaker 1: Oh God, I don't. I mean, who deserves this? It's,
Speaker 1: like you said, incredibly cruel. And I mean there is
Speaker 1: an argument to be made that this is a mess,
Speaker 1: very much of her own creation, and you know, especially
Speaker 1: since she has chosen in the wake of releasing this
Speaker 1: memoir to just double down and insist that everybody's misunderstanding it.
Speaker 1: But to me, that just is like, that's just sad
Speaker 1: on top of sad. You know, it just makes me
Speaker 1: feel worse for her.
Speaker 2: It reminds me of Eat Pray Love. Do you do
Speaker 2: you get that vibe at all from it?
Speaker 1: You know, I think that the hope was that it
Speaker 1: would be received is Eat Pray Love. But the thing
Speaker 1: about Eat Pray Love is that and about Elizabeth Gilbert
Speaker 1: in general, you know, you get the sense that she's
Speaker 1: not lying to herself about herself. You know, she's I
Speaker 1: think she's a very impulsive person and I have a
Speaker 1: theory she know, she recently wrote this book we're talking
Speaker 1: about Elizabeth Gilbert. Now, she wrote this addiction memoir called
Speaker 1: All the Way to the River, and my theory, having
Speaker 1: read that book, is that her actual addiction is to
Speaker 1: telling stories about her life, and she will just continue
Speaker 1: to do things to make content of her life, you know,
Speaker 1: so that she'll have a new story to tell, which
Speaker 1: is a kind of an interesting compulsion and of itself.
Speaker 1: But I think that she is truthful about all of this.
Speaker 1: I think that she's you know, and she's messy, and
Speaker 1: she's a hell of a storyteller. I mean it's her
Speaker 1: books are like being cornered at a party by somebody
Speaker 1: who's like had the most insane life experience you've ever
Speaker 1: heard of, and they've got you by the wrist and
Speaker 1: they're going to tell you and they're not going to
Speaker 1: let you go, and you're like, I'm here for it.
Speaker 1: Lindy West's book feels more like an attempt to persuade
Speaker 1: the reader, but really persuade herself that she's not unhappy,
Speaker 1: and I don't think she succeeds in doing either.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. When I read the interview in Modern Love,
Speaker 2: I thought to myself, Oh you are this is a
Speaker 2: You've put a lot of effort into trying to convince
Speaker 2: yourself you're okay and that you're happy. And it's that
Speaker 2: meme of the girl just sobbing and Messcara going down
Speaker 2: her face and she's like, I'm fine, I'm fine.
Speaker 1: That is literally the book's cover. Wait, seriously, yes, it
Speaker 1: is a are you kidding? It's a cartoon porter of
Speaker 1: Lindy West grinning through tears with mess Scara running down
Speaker 1: her face.
Speaker 2: I had no idea. Yeah, oh my god, oh my god,
Speaker 2: how did okay? So? I asked this as a rhetorical question.
Speaker 2: Does she talk about how she has friends? Like? Does
Speaker 2: she have friends? Because I have a group chat. We
Speaker 2: used to have a podcast. It was called Lady Brains,
Speaker 2: and a lot of the listeners to the show used
Speaker 2: to listen to Lady Brains, And so I have a
Speaker 2: group chat of my best friends who we've all been
Speaker 2: very close for like fifteen years. If I said that
Speaker 2: my husband had said a fraction of this, they would
Speaker 2: be on my front door. They would be like ready
Speaker 2: to go, like, yeah, a few cases packed, we're getting
Speaker 2: you out of here. Does she talk about friends?
Speaker 1: She does have friends, and I wonder, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to say, you know, is she in
Speaker 1: a position where she can be told what other people
Speaker 1: see about her life. I understand that, Like she certainly
Speaker 1: has spent a lot of time dismissing everybody who criticized
Speaker 1: her book thus far as being you know, a hater
Speaker 1: who doesn't understand, or maybe like, oh, these people are conservatives,
Speaker 1: so who cares what they think that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I don't know if anybody close to her has has
Speaker 1: tried to step in, or if she's in a place
Speaker 1: where she could receive that information and without just shutting down.
Speaker 2: I just want to say to her, you deserve better
Speaker 2: than this. Like it's not because I'm conservative, it's like,
Speaker 2: as a woman, like woman to woman, you deserve better.
Speaker 2: No one deserves being treated this way. And I feel
Speaker 2: the same about what Elizabeth Gilbert did to her husband,
Speaker 2: like she was the villain of E Pray Love. No
Speaker 2: one deserves what she did to him. But I that
Speaker 2: used to be like the feminist thing to do is
Speaker 2: to hype another woman and say you deserve so much better.
Speaker 2: I I mean, those people are not her friends. If
Speaker 2: they haven't said this, well.
Speaker 1: Everybody, I think this is what I will say my
Speaker 1: sense from the book is that she's very much in
Speaker 1: a bubble with people who are also on team polyamory
Speaker 1: as woke basically. And it's what is interesting to me
Speaker 1: about that is that so much of the story that
Speaker 1: Lindy West tells about her life is really only applicable
Speaker 1: to somebody who lives inside that bubble. Even this whole
Speaker 1: thing of like I'm a fat woman and I found love,
Speaker 1: you know, can you believe it? You go to like
Speaker 1: any rural area and like there's tons of fat people
Speaker 1: falling in love and getting married, Like it's we're a
Speaker 1: very fat country and we are coupling up, and you
Speaker 1: know that is it's just not strange for a fat
Speaker 1: woman to find love and to get married to a
Speaker 1: guy who values her. I think it is strange if
Speaker 1: you live in one of these kind of like coastal
Speaker 1: liberal enclaves where people tend not to be fat, and
Speaker 1: where you know, although nobody wants to talk about it,
Speaker 1: there's quite a lot of stigma around being fat, and
Speaker 1: people don't consider being fat to be attractive. And I
Speaker 1: don't know, I guess maybe that's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a tragedy. And she even actually writes in the book
Speaker 1: about being approached by men while she's on this solo
Speaker 1: road trip. I mean, she's got a very pretty face,
Speaker 1: and I think that she's not you know, she's not
Speaker 1: repulsive to men in general, but she's so grossed out
Speaker 1: when this happens because she reads the guys approaching her
Speaker 1: as likely conservatives or you know, or maga people, and
Speaker 1: so it's like, ew, how dare you? Which is I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's I guess maybe ironic is the right
Speaker 1: word to describe that.
Speaker 2: I think that one of the most one of the
Speaker 2: least conservative things about me is my soft spot for
Speaker 2: Lena Dunham. And this is this just reminds me so much.
Speaker 2: It's it's the it's the whole. It's the same ethos
Speaker 2: of like I accept myself but then I surround myself
Speaker 2: with Blake Lively and Taylor Swift and it makes me
Speaker 2: feel like crap about myself.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The thing is, Lena Dunham seems overall to me
Speaker 1: just as a casual observer, more well adjusted.
Speaker 2: I think she is at this point, yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean this is the thing is like,
Speaker 1: this is a very this feels this memoir feels like
Speaker 1: something that Lena Dunham would have written in her twenties
Speaker 1: as auto fiction. You know, it feels like girls, except
Speaker 1: its real life. It's real people, and it's middle age,
Speaker 1: which makes it I mean, it's certainly not cute. It
Speaker 1: also feels tragic for that reason.
Speaker 2: Didn't she write about how she when they got married.
Speaker 2: I'm almost certain I remember this correctly. When when they
Speaker 2: got married she pictured them having like a white pick
Speaker 2: offence and having a kid or two, like she had
Speaker 2: pictured a traditional quote unquote life of you know, being
Speaker 2: monogamous and having a child.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I wanted that she did. And I mean,
Speaker 1: whether it was reasonable to think that that would happen
Speaker 1: with this man who, at the age of I think
Speaker 1: twenty eight, was twice divorced with two children from his
Speaker 1: previous marriages.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: You know, we can debate whether that was a naive
Speaker 1: thing to imagine that would happen with him specifically or not.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, I think that is what she wanted.
Speaker 1: She's now convinced herself that it's not what she wants.
Speaker 1: She wants to be in a threttle where she sleeps
Speaker 1: in the guest room while her husband has sex with
Speaker 1: somebody else. Down the hall.
Speaker 2: Wow, it's so tragic. It's really very sad. I think
Speaker 2: it's comforting that you, at least in your observation of
Speaker 2: like reading everything that there is out there that there
Speaker 2: is it sounds like universal condemnation, because that was not
Speaker 2: what I would have expected, like, you know, living in
Speaker 2: my priors of like, oh, of course progressives love this.
Speaker 2: It's nice to hear that that's not the case.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think everybody just finds it sad, you know,
Speaker 1: again for different reasons. But there's really very little too
Speaker 1: like about this story unless you are a character in it.
Speaker 2: Right. I wonder what her what her family and you know,
Speaker 2: Roya's family think about, Like that's the that's the picture
Speaker 2: that I always want when you get these stories. I follow,
Speaker 2: and it's weird that I do because both my parents
Speaker 2: are dead. But one of my cultural things that I
Speaker 2: enjoy following is people who are estranged from their parents,
Speaker 2: And so I follow accounts of people from both sides,
Speaker 2: people who are estranged and who did the estranging, and
Speaker 2: I always want to hear the other side whenever, some whenever,
Speaker 2: like the doormat mom. This is like one of the
Speaker 2: Instagram accounts I follow whenever she posts I would like
Speaker 2: to see a tet. I'd like to see her daughter respond. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I really want to see what the other people
Speaker 2: in Linda Linda West's life think about this from their perspective.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there was So this was a very
Speaker 1: weird deep cut of short lived substack drama. The writer
Speaker 1: Meg Keen on her substack posted a review of the book.
Speaker 1: She wrote about how it was, you know, not feminist,
Speaker 1: and you know it was basically a depiction of abuse.
Speaker 1: And the husband showed up the comments and argued with
Speaker 1: a bunch of people for a while, and then I
Speaker 1: guess maybe came to his senses and deleted everything that
Speaker 1: he had said. Who But yes, I wild times out
Speaker 1: here on the internet.
Speaker 2: I love substack. I love it. I once had an
Speaker 2: ex boyfriend when I was working at Commentary Magazine. I
Speaker 2: ran the back end of the website, and I had
Speaker 2: an ex boyfriend who used to white night me in
Speaker 2: the comments section, and he signed up with his real email,
Speaker 2: but he would use a burner account as his user name,
Speaker 2: and he had no way of knowing that I was
Speaker 2: the person who ran the back end, and so I
Speaker 2: was like, dude, I know that it's you. It's kind
Speaker 2: of weird. We broke up a long time ago. I'm
Speaker 2: married now, Like, you don't have to white night me
Speaker 2: in the comments.
Speaker 1: Oh well, you know, but were you right?
Speaker 2: Like yes, I was right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know, maybe he's just on the side
Speaker 1: of truth.
Speaker 2: No, but him and I disagreed deeply about everything, and
Speaker 2: that was part of why we broke up. Also, he
Speaker 2: was a cheater and terrible guy.
Speaker 1: But I maybe this was his way of saying he
Speaker 1: was sorry.
Speaker 2: Maybe, But I'm I'm always interested, you know, as I'm
Speaker 2: interested in like the other side, hearing the other side.
Speaker 2: What frustrates me is when people are not as like
Speaker 2: transparent as you and I are, Like we are the
Speaker 2: most stalkable people on in America. Like you wonder what
Speaker 2: we think, Like, just log onto my Twitter and you'll
Speaker 2: find out. I'm my Instagram. Also, I'm updating my story
Speaker 2: several times a day. I think it's deeply unjust when
Speaker 2: people are not as stalkable, and I think it's I
Speaker 2: think it's not fair, And well that's what I have
Speaker 2: to say about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I'll go ahead and agree with you there.
Speaker 1: Although what's funny is also that you know, being an
Speaker 1: open book just seems to convince people that there's all
Speaker 1: of this secret, sinister like insane stuff that you believe
Speaker 1: and are not saying.
Speaker 2: Okay, so I want to end on this note. Actually, Okay,
Speaker 2: what is your favorite conspiracy theory that you believe? And
Speaker 2: then I'll tell you mine.
Speaker 1: Okay, My favorite conspiracy theory that I believe is that
Speaker 1: the Titanic that sank was not actually the Titanic. It
Speaker 1: was it was another ship called Oh, I can't remember
Speaker 1: the Oh sorry, my husband would know, but I'm not
Speaker 1: going to yell for him right now the phone. Yes,
Speaker 1: what was it called? The ship that sank that wasn't
Speaker 1: the Titanic. You don't remember, You're useless to me. I'm
Speaker 1: getting another boyfriend who would remember this. But anyway, so,
Speaker 1: the but the story is that there was this other
Speaker 1: ship that was going to be decommissioned after this voyage
Speaker 1: and they wanted, you know, for insurance purposes, to send
Speaker 1: it out, you know, tend that it was the Titanic,
Speaker 1: and the tragedy was not supposed to unfold the way
Speaker 1: that it did. But the reason that the ship sank
Speaker 1: had to do with it being this other older ship
Speaker 1: that was in a state of like disrepair.
Speaker 2: Got it? How mainstream is this conspiracy theory?
Speaker 1: I read about it in Popular Mechanics, so I think
Speaker 1: it's pretty mainstream. Okay, what's okay? What's yours?
Speaker 2: Dinosaurs?
Speaker 1: I think they were real?
Speaker 2: No, I think that there's something like a dinosaur. But
Speaker 2: the hubris, it's the hubris that really does it for me.
Speaker 2: We own a lot of dinosaur books because I have
Speaker 2: four boys, and the humors that they have when they're
Speaker 2: like they were this tall, this is what they look like,
Speaker 2: this is how fast they ran, this is what they ate,
Speaker 2: and all of that certainty, it sets off my alarm bells.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I don't I don't think. I don't think
Speaker 2: you know that much because you've got like four bones
Speaker 2: of that dinosaur, and you've constructed this whole pretense skeleton,
Speaker 2: and you think you know what it looks like and
Speaker 2: what it sounded like. And I just I think that
Speaker 2: there were like weird creatures that existed a long, long,
Speaker 2: long time ago, and we have we have no idea,
Speaker 2: we don't know anything about them, and I think I
Speaker 2: don't know why. I mean, I think that it's a
Speaker 2: lie that has spun out of control in big paleontology.
Speaker 2: But I don't know. I don't know of the I mean,
Speaker 2: your your conspiracy theory has like real actual validity when
Speaker 2: it goes to like the reasoning. I don't have the
Speaker 2: reasoning for my dinosaur conspiracy yet, other than it's just
Speaker 2: the hubris of the scientists. And I mean we kind
Speaker 2: of saw it with Are you familiar with what happened
Speaker 2: with Alzheimer's research?
Speaker 1: I did hear about this. It's yeah, I mean devastating
Speaker 1: really yeah.
Speaker 2: And so it was just everyone was lying, and everyone
Speaker 2: thought that everyone else wasn't lying, and so they would
Speaker 2: sort of push the ball forward with the lies about
Speaker 2: the research they were doing and you know, change the
Speaker 2: data and whatever based on this app this thesis that
Speaker 2: turned out to not be true, and everyone was lying
Speaker 2: and didn't know everyone else was lying. That's what I
Speaker 2: think about dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, that doesn't not make sense to me.
Speaker 1: I'm not necessarily sure that it applies to dinosaurs, but
Speaker 1: it does apply to science in general. If you don't mind,
Speaker 1: I will tell you my favorite story out of medical
Speaker 1: history before I let you go. In the early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: at an asylum in New Jersey. There was a man
Speaker 1: who ran the asylum, a doctor. His name was Henry Cotton.
Speaker 1: I love where this is going. He was convinced that
Speaker 1: he had found the cure for insanity. Then the source
Speaker 1: of insanity. This source was your teeth. Your teeth make
Speaker 1: you crazy, and so he would take people's teeth out
Speaker 1: to cure them of insanity. When that didn't work, he'd
Speaker 1: be like, maybe it's not your teeth, Maybe it's something
Speaker 1: else in the body, and he would start removing organs.
Speaker 1: He had this theory. It was called focal infection. There
Speaker 1: was an infection somewhere in the body that was causing insanity,
Speaker 1: and he would just remove things from people, things they needed.
Speaker 1: He killed dozens, if not hundreds of people at this asylum.
Speaker 1: And at the time, the New York Times covered this
Speaker 1: man and his practices, and they said the only tragedy
Speaker 1: was that he hadn't discovered the cure for insanity sooner,
Speaker 1: and then eventually they were like, never mind, and.
Speaker 2: Maybe all the dead people, who was also kind of tragic.
Speaker 1: By then he was dead, but not before he pulled
Speaker 1: out a whole bunch of his own teeth and also
Speaker 1: his wife's teeth and his children's teeth. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: so Cubris not even once.
Speaker 2: I love it. So this is what I love, and
Speaker 2: I think this is why I'm so drawn to Lindy West.
Speaker 2: I love just how crazy humanity is, every every form
Speaker 2: of it. I I love watching it as an observer
Speaker 2: who is not crazy, who has like a very conventional
Speaker 2: normal life that I've created because I grew up in
Speaker 2: a crazy house. But I just love I love looking
Speaker 2: at the just shit show. I mean, we we this.
Speaker 2: I'm going to just mark this as e explicit like
Speaker 2: we've talked about dildos, like the ship has sailed. It
Speaker 2: is such a shit show other people's lives, and I
Speaker 2: I have some enjoyment looking at it from afar.
Speaker 1: You know, good stories, true stories always always beat the
Speaker 1: you know, instructive graphic novel about dildos.
Speaker 2: There you go, thank you for bringing There you go.
Speaker 2: There you go. Where can people find you? Not that?
Speaker 2: I mean, like I You're everywhere and you're amazing.
Speaker 1: Yes, just don't don't come to my house. I am
Speaker 1: on Twitter slash x as kat Rosenfield. I am writing
Speaker 1: for the Free Press. I am right now in a
Speaker 1: bookstore near you with my new novel How to Survive
Speaker 1: in the Woods. You can find it in the thriller section.
Speaker 1: It's got a big old bloody knife on the cover
Speaker 1: and that's about it.
Speaker 2: I love it. And because we are the mom Wars,
Speaker 2: where can What are the names of your young adult books?
Speaker 2: Because I feel like, especially my older daughter would appreciate them.
Speaker 1: I thought you were about to be like, what are
Speaker 1: the names of your children? I was like, don't have
Speaker 1: any I'm wrapping the childless cat Lady continuent.
Speaker 2: And I didn't say it. I didn't say it. That
Speaker 2: was not the focus of our of our conversation.
Speaker 1: No, no, And I appreciate that because I don't really
Speaker 1: have a whole lot to say about being childless that
Speaker 1: is worth hearing. My young adult books are called Amelia
Speaker 1: and is Dead and Gone and Inland, and I will
Speaker 1: say they have mature themes in them. But if you
Speaker 1: have like a literary minded kid, I think they will
Speaker 1: enjoy them.
Speaker 2: Amazing. All right, Well, I can't wait. Thank you for
Speaker 2: joining us, folks. Don't forget to subscribe to the substack
Speaker 2: where you can watch us have this conversation. Cat looks
Speaker 2: at me. I have a cold. It's not as great
Speaker 2: and subscribe on on your favorite podcast services of choice. Amazing.
Speaker 2: All right, until next time. What do I say at
Speaker 2: the end of this satellite? There we go Satellite Ricochet
Speaker 2: join the conversation.