00:00:49.980If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:00:55.400Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:01:04.060Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
00:04:14.840Now, importantly, these tics are involuntary.0.93
00:04:18.780People with this condition are not in control of them.
00:04:22.320So while the cast of Sinners, Delroy Lindo and Michael B. Johnson, were on stage at the BAFTAs presenting an award, Davidson had one of these uncontrollable tics and screamed out the N-word twice.0.91
00:04:37.260Delroy Lindo and Michael B. Johnson are Black.
00:04:39.680They were there celebrating the film Sinners, which is historic in the way that it has been nominated for awards and really is just a phenomenal piece of Black art.
00:04:49.420So there is video of this happening that was circulating on social media. It's horrible. There's no other way to put it. You can see Michael B. Jordan and Lindo's faces drop, and they're clearly—it's just a tough moment.
00:05:06.360And Sinner's production designer, Hannah Beachler, a Black woman, said the same thing happened to her backstage, but it was not televised.
00:05:14.100Side note, Google even had to apologize after a news alert about what happened actually used the N-word, spelled it out in the news alert.
00:05:23.360Google sent out a push notification linking to a Hollywood Reporter article about the situation, which had the headline,
00:05:29.280How the Tourette's Fall Out Unfolded at the BAFTA Film Awards.
00:05:32.680the alert then invited people to see more on n-word but it spelled out the actual word so
00:05:39.960yeah no bueno not great not great that is pretty wild that that happened like i don't
00:05:47.900it's this is just like a side digression from like the main story but it's like amazing
00:05:52.720that google would do that you know like it's google you would think they would have a list
00:05:59.500of words that they weren't going to print it's it it's like an interesting story in itself but
00:06:04.920it's a side story so back to the main story yes the google thing reminds me of a much lighter and
00:06:11.160brighter day on social media which was the day that yahoo tweeted about the n-word navy
00:06:16.780they were trying to say bigger navy but they slipped an n in there and if you if you were on
00:06:22.800that was like a og black twitter day that was probably my i don't think i happened while i was
00:06:27.860at work i don't think a single lick of work got done that day i mean you're also burying the lead
00:06:34.080of like the headline was obama wants a the headline they were trying to say was obama wants a bigger
00:06:43.040navy and instead of a b they used an n and the whole black internet just was cutting up that day
00:06:50.120And it was it was hilarious. About the Baptist situation, I went through a real evolution on this as I feel like I kind of took you along on my evolution in the passenger seat. I did not love a lot of the reaction to what happened online.0.98
00:07:07.860I had to do my own looking into this. And something that I learned that I did not know is that coprolalia is not just the involuntary shouting of random swears. The brain actually gives you a sense of what the absolute worst thing to contextually say in any given moment would be to say. And then that's what the tick can be.
00:07:29.960And so it's not just random swears. It's the absolute worst thing that you could say in any given situation. That could be the tick. That was new information to me. And it does, it is hard, not to mention just incorrect, to see people say, oh, well, this person meant what they said.
00:07:48.040I have seen some of that reaction. To be clear, it is not as if having this condition means that a person can't also be racist or an asshole on top of it. But someone's tics are not representative of how they actually feel. And that's just the bottom line. That's all there is to it. So I really feel for Davidson that people are essentially saying that he must be a racist because of this tic.0.98
00:08:12.880So that's one piece of it that I think is important to sort of ground the conversation in. The other piece of it is that I think some of the big reactions that this sparked is really just a function of the baseline difficulty of being a Black person, let alone a Black creative, when you have to endure so much disrespect in a field where you're already marginalized and treated as less than.
00:08:39.620You know, Delroy Lindo, who is in Sinners, I saw a video from a different red carpet earlier this month where he was being interviewed on a red carpet.
00:08:50.900And the person interviewing him essentially said, how does it feel to be older and be having this newfound success in Hollywood with Sinners?
00:08:59.920And anybody who knows anything about Black film will tell you that Delroy Lindo has had a decades long career.
00:09:08.320He is one of our elders. I first saw Delroy Lindo as the father in the Spike Lee movie Crooklyn, which it's a Spike Lee film that does not get the celebration that it should because it's beautiful.
00:09:21.500It's like one of my favorite movies, probably my favorite Spike Lee film, which is saying a lot.
00:09:25.440He was in that movie in like 1994. Right.
00:09:28.920So saying, oh, you're new in Hollywood just shows you don't know who I am because you are doing a red carpet interview and you've not bothered to learn the history of the Black talent that you're going to be interviewing, which is disrespectful.
00:09:46.140So I think that it's just a sensitive issue on top of it being a super sensitive and delicate time.
00:09:53.700There are just so many pain points for our community right now.
00:09:57.100I think that is why we are seeing such a reaction. And so I really don't like a lot of the reaction that I've seen that basically suggests that Black folks are sort of overreacting to the impact of what happened, because I simply cannot express to you how mortifying this must have been for the sinners team.0.66
00:10:17.700And I just don't accept the reaction that says, oh, Black people have to be okay with hearing slurs at a ceremony. Because ultimately, that's not fair to the Black talent that's there. And it's not fair to Davidson either. Because I don't believe that, that's not inclusion to me.
00:10:38.000I think it is great that Davidson was included in this event. But you know that saying, you know, diversity is being invited to a dance. Inclusion is being asked to dance at that dance. I feel like the BAFTAs invited him to a dance and then did not dance with him. And real inclusion does not pit different marginalized groups' needs against each other.
00:11:01.680And the thing is, ultimately, it does not have to be this way. And who made it that way? It was not Davidson because Davidson has a condition where he is not in control of the ticks. It's obviously not that Sinner's cast. It's the BAFTAs. And it's the BBC, the company that aired the BAFTAs.
00:11:23.560That is who we should be angry at. That is who let everybody in that room down because this was an institutional failure of the highest level. And I think people should be fired. I cannot believe that we are not seeing, you know, groveling fucking apologies on television for this monumental failure to the point where, I mean, it might sound like a conspiracy theory.
00:11:48.660And I have I have no inside information. I've just done a lot of reading about what happened here. And I might be wrong. And if I'm wrong, I will eat my words. I think the BAFTAs set Davidson up. I think this was. You were actually the one that kind of called this.0.96
00:12:06.540I don't know if I would say I was giving them the benefit of the doubt. I thought maybe the BAFTAs were trying super hard to include Davidson and were making the mistake of saying the way that we include Davidson is just to invite him and have no other support mechanisms in place for whatever that might result in.
00:12:31.060you were like, I wonder if this was intentional to get eyeballs and attention. And I thought that's
00:12:37.980that couldn't possibly be. You've made a truth or out of me. I believe that this was intentional.
00:12:44.220I mean, I didn't know. Again, I didn't know anything about the BAFTAs, the
00:12:48.060the people who are producing this, but just like the facts that are reported in newspapers
00:12:54.660paint a pretty damning portrait. Let's talk about it. So here's what we know.
00:13:01.060We know that the BAFTAs warned the audience that they might hear outbursts.
00:13:06.220Per Variety, prior to the start of the ceremony,
00:13:09.300floor managers warned guests and attendees sitting around Davidson of his condition
00:13:13.040without specifying what kinds of outbursts they may hear.
00:14:16.380So that right there suggests that, of course, there are going to be a lot of people planning, thinking about all aspects of the production, right?
00:14:30.140Like there's probably dozens, maybe over 100 people whose job was coordinating the production of this thing.
00:14:38.420So it gets so much worse. In a profile for Variety immediately following this incident, Davidson reveals that the BAFTAs and the BBC essentially gave him the impression that any ticks would not be heard by the people on stage.
00:14:56.600he was set 40 rows back from the stage and initially he did not even realize that people
00:15:02.720on stage could hear him he says that he was also given the impression that any of his tics would be
00:15:09.020cut out from the broadcast because it's on a tape delay he said that he has worked with bbc a lot
00:15:14.460in the past they're super familiar with what his tics can sound like in that variety profile he
00:15:19.880says studio canal the production company that made the film he was there to celebrate had worked
00:15:24.820closely with BAFTA, and BAFTA had made us all aware that any swearing would be edited out of
00:15:29.760the broadcast. I have made four documentaries with the BBC in the past and feel that they
00:15:34.100should have been aware of what to expect from Tourette's and worked harder to prevent anything
00:15:38.360that I said, which after all was some 40 rows back from the stage, from being included in the
00:15:43.680broadcast. Now, we know that wasn't done. Everything up to this point, you can be like,
00:15:49.820well, okay, you know, mistakes were made.
00:19:03.280If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:19:09.600This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:19:22.060I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:19:29.180I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:21:14.340So the broadcast did cut some of his tics from the broadcast.
00:21:20.620He apparently shouted pedophile at the Baptist host, Alan Cumming, and that tick was not included in the broadcast.
00:21:27.340The broadcast also just made clear editorial decisions about things that were cut and things that were left in.
00:21:33.940A Canola Davies Jr. said Free Palestine during his speech after winning Outstanding British Debut for My Father's Shadow.
00:21:40.980So this is what was cut out of Davies' speech.
00:21:42.960To the economic migrant, to the conflict migrant, to those under occupation, dictatorship, persecution, and those experiencing genocide,
00:21:50.020You matter. Your stories matter more than ever. Your dreams are an act of resistance to those watching at home. Archive your loved ones. Archive your stories yesterday, today and forever for Nigeria, for London, the Congo, Sudan, free Palestine. Had to cut that out of there. Who would want that message in their broadcast of an award show? So that was that was not acceptable to be heard. But the N-word being shouted, that's fine. Make it make sense.
00:22:16.640Yeah, I mean, the only way it makes sense is somebody made the active, deliberate decision that they were going to keep it in. I would love to see evidence that something else happened, but that's the only thing that makes sense to me.
00:22:34.260Paul Thomas Anderson won Best Director for One Battle After Another, and part of his speech says anyone that says movies aren't any good anymore can just piss right off. They bleeped piss out for social media in the clip that was shared on both the BBC and BAFTA YouTube pages. They removed that sentence entirely. So you can't piss off. That is too strong of language to be included. The N-word, totally fine. Make it make sense.
00:23:00.540Again, I know a lot of folks online were really focused on Davidson, and I read a lot of interesting takes from Black folks with Tourette's.
00:23:08.720However, Davidson had nothing to do with the editorial choices of the BAFTAs.
00:23:12.640Like, I am keeping my foot on the neck of the BAFTAs and the BBC, and I just have to wonder what the hell happened here.
00:23:20.520And even more damning, The Guardian reported that Warner Brothers, the studio behind Sinners, said immediately after the slur was said that they requested the Baptists edited out from the broadcast, which was on a two hour delay.
00:23:32.380So given that, I do believe that this was left in deliberately.
00:23:37.660Afterward, the Baptists put out a statement apologizing for the error, saying that their production team didn't hear the slur because they were, quote, working from a truck.
00:23:45.880okay make sure I just don't believe this and I I mean I I don't know I I know I sound like a
00:23:57.760conspiracy theorist I read I've read takes that oh I did read a take that initially I thought oh
00:24:04.100that's not true where it was like oh maybe they were doing this to take the heat off of the news
00:24:09.860that Prince Andrew was arrested in connection with the Epstein files um and I was like well
00:24:14.640that's really silly then i did find out that the president of the baftas is prince william so i
00:24:20.320was like oh interesting i mean i'm just saying just asking questions like so to me that feels
00:24:26.920like a step into conspiracy territory right because we don't have any evidence of that but
00:24:31.460like the idea that this was a deliberate decision to leave it in that i think is supported by a fair
00:24:39.500amount of evidence here and i mean we can only wonder why maybe it was a conspiracy to like
00:24:47.680create some news to distract from prince andrew's epstein connections that seems a little complicated
00:24:55.520to me i want to be clear i'm not endorsing that as a conspiracy as what i think is going on i just
00:24:59.960wanted to note that that is one of the things people are saying yeah i mean i think a much
00:25:04.980simpler explanation is just they they just wanted some controversy you know something that's going
00:25:09.380to generate buzz generate engagement and whoever made that decision didn't care about who they had
00:25:19.320to throw under the bus to get it which in this case involves everyone involved right involved
00:25:24.580the sinners team and involved Davidson himself and you know you make a good point that people
00:25:31.720were some of the discourse online was focused on davidson the guy who said the slur
00:25:38.280first of all yeah he has threats it was an involuntary thing but even if that weren't true
00:25:46.160even if he was like a racist person who wanted to say this slur that's just like one guy
00:25:56.120The fact that the BAFTAs and the BBC, these like massive institutions who have so much public trust, decided to air it is such a bigger story, in my opinion.
00:26:08.280Decided to air it, but thought the word piss off.
00:26:18.980This may sound like a small thing, but in that Variety profile, he describes sort of the moment of shame and horror and mortification of realizing that his tics were being heard by the folks on stage.
00:26:32.560He says, I was trying to calm myself down to breathe, but ultimately I made the decision to leave to not cause any more upset.
00:26:40.220BAFTA found a private room with a monitor where I watched the rest of the awards.
00:26:44.400And to me, that small thing reveals a lot because, as we said, this is a huge production.
00:26:51.660Why was there no support plan in place ahead of time?
00:26:55.280The fact that they knew that there was a possibility that he would experience tics and that the whole movie that he says the BBCs and the Baptists are so aware of his story, they have worked together before, is that when this happens, he experiences shame and mortification.
00:27:10.100the fact that they did not have a plan in place for what would happen if he experienced deep shame
00:27:16.680and deep mortification while at this ceremony says a lot to me why did they have to why did
00:27:21.680they have to find a room why was there no plan in place a contingency plan that's like okay if you
00:27:27.480experience a tick and it's you are feeling the things that we are aware you know we know goes
00:27:32.800into it when you experience these ticks here's what we're gonna do here's where you're gonna go0.99
00:27:36.440here's how we're going to support you I just think it's a bullshit I really think like the0.83
00:27:41.760BAFTAs have really done such a disservice to everybody in that room and yeah I I this is not0.82
00:27:50.580how you support anybody this is not how you support people that you've invited to be in1.00
00:27:54.380community with you at an award ceremony 100% if you organize a party throw a party invite guests
00:28:01.840to come to your party you have the responsibility for making sure that it is a safe experience for
00:28:08.740everybody there and they really failed everybody involved and this guy was their vip guest yeah
00:28:16.440like imagine i mean it just has to make you wonder about what sort of care they would take for other
00:28:24.160people who were not VIP guests. Yeah. You know, I've never been to England. I was watching this
00:28:32.400interesting take from a comedian who's from there, London Hughes, and she made the point that,
00:28:39.660listen, there are just not enough Black people in England for there to be the same kind of
00:28:48.700outcry that you've seen in the United States. There is a generation of Black people my age for
00:28:57.860whom Delroy Lindo is like a stand-in for our father, or reminds us of our father. I would
00:29:05.860have a hard time picking another pair of Black actors right now that the Black community has
00:29:15.180have more fondness for than Delroy Lindo and Michael D. Jordan. I really I'm maybe Denzel
00:29:20.960Washington, maybe Samuel L. Jackson, but like Delroy Lindo is ours. We are not going to forget
00:29:27.620this. Right. And so London was saying how in in England, they just have a different vibe around
00:29:35.320these public moments of racism where they don't really complain the same way. They're not as
00:29:41.580vocal the same way. There's like a cultural attitude about sort of stiff upper lip that we
00:29:47.520do, our loud asses in the United States do not share. And yeah, she was like, I hope that Black1.00
00:29:53.700Americans stay on the BAFTA's net about this and the BBC's neck about this. And I can tell you one1.00
00:29:59.240thing, this Black American is going to stay on the BAFTA's and the BBC's neck about this because1.00
00:30:03.000I need answers. I need to know who is being fired. I need to know whether or not the president of0.90
00:30:08.840the Baptist, Prince William, will be stepping down. I need to know who made this decision,
00:30:12.720how it happened, what accountability looks like, how are they atoning, where are they giving money?
00:30:17.080Like, I need the action plan. And I'll tell you something else. Black folks are not going to let
00:30:21.220this shit go. It's Black History Month. We have a fascist in the White House who was, like,1.00
00:30:25.840calling Black people all kinds of apes and monkeys. We're not standing for this. And I think1.00
00:30:30.540I don't see us getting over this anytime soon. I know I won't be.
00:30:36.280And truly, I just think that not only do Black people deserve better, Michael B. Jordan deserves better, Delroy Lindo deserves better, Hannah Beechler deserves better, the entire Center's team deserves better, every Black person in that audience watching at home deserves better, and Davidson deserves better.
00:30:53.980The trans community deserves better. Like, it's such an institutional failure that if they think we are stupid enough to look at Davidson, who is not in control of these ticks, and expect accountability from him and not them, if they think that we're going to fall for just like throwing him under the bus when he cannot control these ticks, they're wrong.0.97
00:31:18.720And I'm really happy to see the sort of conversation shift to the institutional failure that the BAFTAs and the BBC are responsible for in this.
00:31:28.720Well, speaking of institutional failures, what's new with Meta?
00:32:31.460So according to the New York Times, it would let anybody who owns Meta's smart glasses
00:32:35.520identify people in the real world, instantly pulling up their information through Meta's AI assistant.
00:32:41.160What's even more troubling to me is that these documents show that apparently the company had these plans to sort of soften the public rollout by framing it as a accessibility tool for the disabled community.
00:32:54.940The idea, which didn't really materialize, it sounds like, seemed to involve debuting at a conference for blind users before releasing it more broadly, essentially using the disabled community as a kind of PR shield.
00:33:09.880like oh nobody can say this is facial recognition technology it's to help visually impaired users
00:33:15.740we on we unveiled it at a a conference for people with visual impairment now they didn't actually do
00:33:22.960this but yeah ghoul yeah god i i love these stories about meta where it's like okay we're
00:33:30.340we're rolling out this terrible awful new feature that's gonna like ruin everyone's lives
00:33:36.720how could we also sneak in some other harm to like just just screw over some other unrelated
00:33:44.540community in the process and how can we spell all of this out in shocking detail in a written0.99
00:33:51.400document that will at one point be part of a new york times expose hey they love putting this shit1.00
00:33:57.040in writing i will i love it never stop love it please continue to write this shit in document0.99
00:34:03.460so that i can read it later and be like oh my lord that is incriminating0.96
00:34:07.200yeah i think it was unwise i think that's gonna be let's let's phase that in as a saying on the0.98
00:34:18.180show i think it might have been unwise like have these people ever heard of a fucking phone call0.76
00:34:24.720like has it ever occurred to anybody to be like should we put the evil plan in writing or should0.96
00:34:28.440we just talk about it face to face. So those same internal documents also show that they had this
00:34:35.140plan. They knew that this was going to be unpopular. They had this plan to roll it out
00:34:40.920during moments of political turmoil. One of the moments that they floated was when Trump started
00:34:47.340sending federal immigration troops to cities. They were like, oh, that could have been a good0.99
00:34:51.400time to roll this out because the public will be too burnt out and distracted to notice or care.
00:34:56.940When you are trying to roll out a technology,
00:34:59.980you know it's going to be good when you need to phase it in
00:35:02.740during a time where people are distracted and won't notice.
00:35:05.780So we have already talked about how this technology
00:35:08.040is already being used to target women.
00:35:10.880Now the Independent is reporting that domestic abuse organizations
00:35:22.560They say that this technology poses a direct and serious risk to survivors by placing them in harm's way and enabling abusers to locate and track them, which, to be fair, I think is just common sense.
00:35:36.440I'm glad these organizations are saying, hey, you know who's not going to be real chill in this technology scenario?
00:35:44.340Survivors who have been abused and women who are definitely going to be harmed.
00:35:50.360i'm glad they're stepping up to say this but it's like kind of obvious to me that that would be the
00:35:56.620case yeah that's an obvious one and also there's like so many reasons why it would be bad to just
00:36:06.420have everybody walking around with facial recognition cameras on their face just tracking
00:36:14.160everyone's movements all the time without their consent right these are these organizers say that
00:36:19.640it threatens all of our safety but especially the safety of women and girls in public by giving the
00:36:24.420wearers the ability to access information about them without their consent like whatever happened
00:36:29.240to some sort of consent based system when you're just out and about living your life you're not
00:36:34.080consenting to whoever looks at you to have any kind of information about your whereabouts or who
00:36:39.800you are and you know we talk a lot about consent in technology and this is just a very good example0.96
00:36:45.720the fact that these people don't give a shit about consent yeah can you know consent to be0.94
00:36:51.480identified and then consent to have who knows what other information shared with the people0.98
00:36:59.720who are wearing these glasses right because maybe the glasses just tell you the person's name
00:37:05.700but meta sure knows a lot more information about everybody than just their name right and
00:37:11.640like is there going to be a premium feature
00:38:07.980and it's all this information and data and demographic stuff about people.
00:38:12.140Like, that's how I'm imagining it in my head.
00:38:14.320Let me not give Mark Zuckerberg more horrible ideas for his technologies by saying that.
00:38:20.260Some people are fighting back, though, because 404 Media first reported that
00:38:24.200there's this new app called the Glasses Nearby app
00:38:27.620that is meant to help people know when somebody is using metaglasses nearby.
00:38:32.000The developer of the app, Yves Jean Renaud, told 404,
00:38:35.720I consider it to be a tiny part of resistance against surveillance technology.
00:38:39.700That's an interesting app. We should look into that.
00:38:41.900Yeah. And I don't even think we need to pretend that we don't know how this is going to end if Meta does this.
00:38:48.840One of the anti-domestic violence organizations that spoke to The Independent is quoted as saying,
00:38:54.680time and time again, we see what happens when devices go to market without proper consideration for how they might be used to harm women and girls.
00:41:44.200Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.0.98
00:41:48.740I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:41:53.320I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:42:00.760They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:42:04.700But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:42:08.140They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:42:11.280Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:42:20.240If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:42:26.180This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:42:38.640I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:42:45.760I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
00:42:49.340From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:42:55.280It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:43:02.760Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:43:12.380Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:43:27.700this is not usually the kind of story that we cover here but i did want to just quickly talk
00:43:35.180about what's happening with anthropic and the pentagon because to me it's a pretty big deal and
00:43:41.360i i just want to make sure that it gets included in our conversation so anthropic the makers of
00:43:47.000the very popular chatbot claude they have kind of a reputation for being one of the more safety
00:43:52.240minded big AI companies. I know that is not saying a lot, especially when your competitors are
00:43:58.540helmed by folks like Elon Musk, who we know that that his AI is being used to post child sexual
00:44:05.680abuse material all over the Internet. And folks like Mark Zuckerberg, who we were just talking
00:44:10.280about, his entire dark digital empire is premised on the idea that harming people is OK if it makes
00:44:16.880money. In that landscape, it is pretty easy to be considered kind of the safety-minded
00:44:22.940one of the group. And so I want to be clear that I know that that is not saying much,
00:44:29.080but that is the case for Anthropic, right, Mike?
00:44:31.660Yeah, that's right. Their CEO does seem like a little bit of a different type of guy. They've
00:44:36.840really gone out of their way to brand themselves as more safety-minded and also put in place,
00:44:44.260I think procedures that they follow with the development of their AI to make it, to ensure that it is more safe than what we see from some of their competitors.
00:45:00.400Of course, earlier this week, they walked some of that back, you know, but that's neither here nor there.
00:45:07.940uh yeah and it's you know it's super complicated with ai because all of these systems burn
00:45:14.800tremendous amounts of energy and are prone to like a lot of issues uh but all that said uh
00:45:23.800yeah i agree i think you know of the the group anthropic is known to sort of stand out as being
00:45:32.280more concerned about safety yes and we're not i want to be clear that i don't think either of us
00:45:37.340is like endorsing Anthropic, but just contextually, that context is important to understand what's
00:45:43.320going on. Anthropic also has, I would say they're notable for having more transparency around how
00:45:50.780its models work. A lot of other AI companies are much more opaque about this. Anthropic has been
00:45:56.020more transparent. And I think that that transparency is one of the reasons why Claude was the first AI
00:46:01.520chatbot that the Pentagon adopted in its own systems, including cases where it processes
00:46:06.840classified information. This was obviously a major PR win for Anthropic, as well as came along with
00:46:14.640a pretty lucrative contract deal worth $200 million. So that contract with the Department
00:46:21.280of Defense is now in jeopardy because Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth says that he is unwilling
00:46:27.500to accept restrictions that Anthropic has put in place over what its AI can and cannot be used for.
00:46:34.080Now, there are two specific restrictions that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodi has insisted on.
00:46:41.680One is that Claude's AI cannot be used for autonomous weapon systems.
00:46:49.420And this is important because we're really seeing more and more increasingly sophisticated
00:46:55.000and increasingly autonomous drones being used in military conflicts.
00:47:00.940The second restriction is that Anthropic does not want its AI to be used for mass surveillance against Americans.
00:47:07.820Now, I don't know about you, but these seem like very reasonable restrictions to me.
00:47:13.880If anything, they do not go far enough.
00:47:15.840People in democracies should resist mass surveillance of any kind, I think, out of principle, regardless of citizenship.
00:47:22.940And the prospect of AI systems making decisions about targeting people with deadly force is just terrifying for multiple reasons.
00:47:32.800Not the least of all is the fact that we know that AI is more likely to make mistakes when people from marginalized backgrounds are involved.0.61
00:47:39.860So, yeah, pretty reasonable, two pretty reasonable restrictions from Anthropic.
00:47:45.180So Anthropic has drawn a hard line against its AI being used for either of those two applications.
00:47:53.300I think most people would agree, not Secretary Pete Hegseth.
00:47:57.700Secretary Pete Hegseth feels so strongly about it that he is threatening to use the Defense Production Act to force Anthropic to allow him to use its AI for whatever he wants.
00:48:09.160The Defense Production Act allows the government to take over industrial processes and goods if it's necessary for national security.
00:48:16.560And Hegseth is arguing that it would be necessary for national security.
00:48:20.560The Defense Production Act, if that sounds familiar, it's because it was most recently used during the initial years of the COVID pandemic to ramp up production of medical supplies like ventilators and PPE.
00:48:30.260Now, Hegseth is saying that any restrictions on what the Pentagon is allowed to do with Anthropics products are a threat to national security.
00:48:37.760So he should be allowed to seize those products if Anthropic will not provide them willingly.
00:48:43.460And if he does, this would be a pretty novel, not to mention unsettling use of the Defense Production Act.
00:48:50.180Talking to The Washington Post, a director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies for Industrial Base Issues named Jerry McGinn said that they weren't even sure if that law had ever been used that way in the past.
00:49:01.680Yeah. Hengsteth has been very open, including during his confirmation hearings and his time on Fox News before that, that he really views things like rules of engagement or any other restrictions on military force as like woke nonsense that he doesn't have time for, thinks is bad for America.
00:49:21.800One of his first actions when he became the Secretary of Defense was to fire a bunch of military lawyers because he thought they were going to get in his way for doing things, which prompted people to ask, what sort of things is he planning on doing that having lawyers around would be problematic?
00:49:42.180So that's just like his baseline attitude. And it's not terribly surprising that he doesn't like the idea of Anthropik's restrictions here.
00:49:52.000Yeah, it is not surprising. So the latest here is that Pete Hegseth has given Anthropik a deadline of 5 p.m. on Friday, February 27th, the day that this episode comes out.
00:50:03.620As of us recording this episode on February 26th, the evening before that deadline,
00:50:10.160Anthropica said that they are not going to cave.
00:52:49.960You basically go to bed and you wake up and your driver's license is invalid.
00:52:55.960You are not legally permitted to drive your car.
00:53:00.020Not that it would make it better if there was a grace period, because it absolutely wouldn't.
00:53:03.900But just to give you a sense of how haphazard, which I think is intentional, this policy change has been.
00:53:11.240So this new law, which contains multiple provisions aimed at making life difficult and dangerous for trans folks, was initially vetoed by the governor only to be overridden by the legislature.
00:53:22.320It was called the bathroom bounty bill because one of the things it does is essentially set up a bounty system that encourages members of the public to sue trans people for entering bathrooms that match their gender.
00:53:33.980So that's bad enough. But as Aaron in the morning points out, the driver's license provisions are a part of a broader national push by anti-trans activists to deny trans folks access to accurate legal identification documents.
00:53:48.660It follows federal actions made by the Trump administration that prevent trans folks from getting passports that reflect their gender and new rules under the Social Security Administration that prevent people from updating their gender.
00:54:00.980Florida, Texas, Indiana, and other states have similarly taken steps to prevent folks from
00:54:05.700changing the gender that's displayed on their driver's license. Just side note, Erin in the0.79
00:54:10.580Morning is an invaluable resource for journalism about attacks on trans folks. We'll put the link
00:54:15.360in the show notes, but I highly recommend that folks sign up for the newsletter and support
00:54:20.260their journalism if you're able to do that. These efforts to deny trans folks accurate1.00
00:54:25.300identification, it's not just inconvenient. It is dangerous. Y'all might remember Brittany
00:54:30.840Stewart. She's the attorney that we spoke with a couple of weeks ago in an episode about the
00:54:35.820trans Oklahoma grad student who was relieved of her teaching duties at her university after
00:54:41.220giving a student a bad grade on a paper. Brittany is also a trans woman, and I asked Brittany for
00:54:47.440her thoughts, and here's what she had to say. This week in Kansas, the state legislature
00:54:53.620overrode the veto of Governor Kelly of a bill that affects trans people's use of restrooms,
00:55:00.800creating a private bounty if people use a restroom that matches their gender identity
00:55:07.400rather than their sex assigned at birth. But it also went further, and the new law actually
00:55:15.080requires that trans people have their sex assigned at birth listed on their Kansas driver's license
00:55:23.880and identification cards. In 2005, I came out fully to my family and began hormone replacement
00:55:33.260therapy. At the time, in Oklahoma, they did not allow updating the sex marker on driver's licenses
00:55:41.260unless one had had permanent surgical changes.
00:55:45.740So for a time, I carried a driver's license with my name is Brittany
00:55:50.720with a photo of me looking like a woman, but with a sex marker of M for male.
00:55:57.880It was terrifying driving, especially outside of Oklahoma City,
00:56:03.040where I worried that a small-town cop might pull me over,
00:56:07.300see that my sex marker doesn't match my appearance,
00:56:28.760and Oklahoma allowed me to update my birth certificate and driver's license after that,
00:56:34.260so it's been almost 20 years since I've had to live with that fear.0.99
00:56:38.240But today, Trans-Kansans, regardless of if they've had those documents updated for decades, will now have to either carry identification that outs them or flee to another state.0.97
00:56:55.200And because of the Supreme Court decision this past summer that dissolved the injunction that had stopped the U.S. government from doing the same thing on passports and providing the reasoning that sex assigned at birth can be listed because, quote, it's just a historic fact, there will likely not be an easy way for courts to stop this.
00:57:19.960These policies won't stop in Kansas0.97
00:57:23.500This is the beginning of the transgenocide0.96
00:57:27.060I have resisted using that word for a while
00:57:30.700Because it can sound hyperbolic, especially when used too soon
00:58:16.680I'll end this with some hope and joy, though.
00:58:19.960In 2017, I married my best friend and the love of my life,
00:58:25.120a straight cis guy from the working class who was willing to stand proudly next to his woman,
00:58:31.860who was not just a trans woman, but a trans woman who was well-known
00:58:35.720and out and about and open about my life,
00:58:40.440having been the first out trans candidate for public office in Oklahoma.
00:58:45.760He risked family and friends to marry me, so I know there are good cisgender folks out there, and we need you now more than ever. Thank you.
00:58:57.880Brittany is not the only voice that I've heard appealing to cis allies to really make a lot of noise about this, because these escalating attacks against trans folks are simply unacceptable.
00:59:09.020And we need to make that clear to everyone, elected officials and everybody else.
01:01:07.960Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a
01:01:12.440community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to
01:01:17.580Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:01:23.080See you between the pages. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine
01:01:30.040months. I survived and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed
01:01:36.420them i'm elizabeth smart and these are the survivor files i just remember this low taunting
01:01:43.980voice next to my ear saying shut up don't say anything every week i'm with survivors who live
01:01:51.820through the unthinkable i knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt me i started
01:01:59.040feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and i just started screaming they are
01:02:06.140abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's
01:02:11.700taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The
01:02:17.540Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
01:02:23.580get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it.
01:02:32.120just a quick heads up this segment talks about murder so back in 2022 there was a very high
01:02:42.320profile tragic murder of students at the university of idaho and it was one of those situations where
01:02:48.460people were using social media platforms like tiktok to weigh in which is often the case in
01:02:54.360our sort of true crime obsessed landscape where whenever something tragic happens strangers
01:03:00.940follow it like it's a television show and not the tragedies of real people who you don't even know.
01:03:09.040One of the people weighing in was a Texas woman who says that she is psychic
01:03:13.040who used TikTok to accuse a University of Idaho professor of the murders. So the Idaho
01:03:19.060statesman reports that Ashley Gouliard, a TikTok personality who claims to have psychic abilities,
01:03:24.480is due in federal court in Boise this week for a scheduled trial to finally resolve the three-year-old
01:03:30.200civil suit brought by the professor that she accused of murder, Rebecca Schofield. Now, to be
01:03:35.700super clear, Schofield, the chair of the University of Idaho History Department, has never met or taught
01:03:42.540any of the four students who were murdered. She wrote this in her denial. She was also out of town
01:03:48.300in Oregon when these students were killed. So she just genuinely had nothing to do with it. I just
01:03:54.420want to make that super clear. Back in June of 2024, a judge ruled in favor of Schofield and now
01:04:01.420it is up to a jury to decide what the financial damages will be. Schofield previously asked for
01:04:06.500more than 1.8 million dollars. Now this TikTok psychic, her behavior is wild. She published more
01:04:15.240than 100 videos that made erroneous allegations against Schofield. The accusations included that
01:04:20.680the professor had a romantic relationship with one of the four victims, which, again,
01:04:24.760she never met them, had no contact with them, and ordered their deaths to prevent the affair
01:04:29.480with a female student from becoming public. Again, that's completely made up. The professor
01:04:34.520sent her cease and desist letters, but those letters were ignored. And understandably,
01:04:39.500the professor, Schofield, says that the allegations have led to PTSD and considerable
01:04:46.160professional hardship, which I have no trouble believing that. Yeah. Allegations that she was
01:04:52.520having an affair with one of her students and then like murdered four of them. I can see how
01:04:58.660that would be, you know, a challenging professional context around the old university.
01:05:06.920Now, Gilliard, the TikTok psychic, her defense is First Amendment based. According to the Idaho
01:05:12.700statesman. She has maintained that the defamation lawsuit infringed upon her First Amendment rights
01:05:18.140and her free expression of religion. She says that because she reads tarot cards, she argues that
01:05:24.040it's a spiritual practice that led her to, quote, uncover the motive and details that led to the
01:05:29.840murder, even though this woman had nothing to do with the murder. So her tarot and like spiritual
01:05:37.440alignment is leading her in the wrong direction you should not be able to use your platform to
01:05:44.680accuse a random stranger of a brutal crime they did not commit on a public platform and honestly
01:05:50.920i think this case is kind of a sign of the times because when platforms won't really police this
01:05:56.320kind of thing and the law hasn't really caught up i think increasingly the only tool that we're
01:06:02.520what we're seeing people have is to just sue like a defamation lawsuit is sort of becoming the new
01:06:07.680cease and desist. Because I think with social media, we have this climate that anybody can say
01:06:13.000anything about anybody and it's OK. Right. And like I think more and more people are like,
01:06:18.100actually, it's not OK if it causes me hardship or makes me lose money. I'm going to sue you.
01:06:23.820And like for what it's worth, these lawsuits are expensive and slow. It takes years like this civil
01:06:29.240case actually outlive the actual criminal trial for the murders. But I do think it's kind of
01:06:35.480becomes people's only real recourse when somebody with a platform just decides that they're going
01:06:41.660to ruin their life via accusations that are just like fan fiction, not grounded in any kind of
01:06:47.500reality. That's right. We've seen that lots of times and stories that we've talked about on this
01:06:52.580show where yeah defamation lawsuits are one of the seemingly few tools available for
01:07:01.120uh these harms that that occur when people just say patently untrue things on social media
01:07:09.740yeah and i i do hope i've done an episode about this before i do think this is related to the
01:07:16.560rise of true crime and the rise of social media platforms in the episode that we did about true
01:07:23.820crime we'll put it in the show notes I talked about how and I know that you know this about me
01:07:29.360but when I was young one of my good friends was murdered by a serial killer and it was like
01:07:37.600I mean before my parents died this was the thing that kind of separated my life
01:07:43.880in phases of like before this happened and then after this happened like that that's how much of
01:07:49.540a that that's how that's how much it shattered my world and I remember when it happened my friend
01:08:01.240for a time was before before she was found dead she was missing right and so the presumption was
01:08:09.660that she was still alive there was a man a search for her and her story was all over the news and1.00
01:08:15.100i will never forget watching that bitch nancy grace basically go on television and essentially1.00
01:08:22.520blame my good friend for her own murder by highlighting the fact that my friend was kind1.00
01:08:33.840of a punk rocker and went to a lot of punk shows was an artist had an alternative look about her
01:08:39.360She did not fit the persona of, you know, she was white, but she did not fit the persona of a, you know, angelic looking white girl who has gone missing and essentially made it sound as if my friend was probably involved with seedy people doing seedy things.
01:08:57.360And that's why she was missing. My friend was murdered by a serial killer who she had never met, was completely unknown to her, snatched her from a fucking parking lot.0.99
01:09:07.180And I will never forget what it felt like to have a stranger offer their unasked for, based in nothing, pulled out of her ass opinion about what might have happened to my friend based on fucking fabrications and nothing else.0.99
01:09:28.740And so I think that when tragedies happen, because we listen to a lot of true crime, because it feels good to, like, turn other people's pain into content.0.94
01:09:44.540And I think it's easy for people to be divorced from the fact that these are real people and real communities and real loved ones and real families.
01:09:53.580I think it emboldens people to get on TikTok and just say whatever because it's just content.
01:09:58.220It's not real people. And it's so hurtful and so harmful and so damaging. And yeah, I don't like that we're in a climate where the only real recourse folks have when this happens to them is to sue. But people shouldn't be allowed to do this. It's so harmful and so damaging.
01:10:16.640And I hate that we have an internet landscape that rewards it because nothing gets engagement and clicks like someone getting on TikTok and saying absolute nonsense about a tragedy that happened to people they don't even know.0.98
01:10:30.700Just a quick heads up, this segment talks about Nicki Minaj and her hard right wing pivot.
01:14:55.200Yeah, I wonder, could it be one of her many beefs who commissioned that report?
01:15:00.680Could it be Cardi B or Meg Thee Stallion?
01:15:02.900Imagine that you're working as a disinformation researcher and Cardi B calls you and is like, I need you to put together a report on Nicki Minaj's social media.
01:15:12.320That would be the greatest day of my life.
01:15:14.140I don't know that I'd be able to keep it anonymous.
01:15:18.740OK, so the report found that inauthentic accounts repeatedly amplified Nicki Minaj's post with praise that used, quote, highly similar language, particularly in response to posts where authentic accounts were criticizing Minaj.
01:15:34.820Quote, supportive comments generated by fake profiles were predominantly brief, repetitive, and low in semantic complexity, consisting largely of praising keywords and positive hashtags rather than original or substantive engagements the report found.
01:15:50.080Other inauthentic activity surrounding Minaj included longer, more detailed comments designed to appear organic.
01:15:57.600Saebra identified one day, December 26th, when fake profiles made up 56% of all comments on
01:16:04.120political posts made by Nicki Minaj. The founders of Saebra said, we don't really see a lot of high
01:16:10.060volume, high impact orchestration of bad and fake actors within that intersection of geopolitically
01:16:15.680driven and music culture. It is scarce in our field to see the combination of the bad and the
01:16:20.660fake online world with the entertainment world. So some of the comments on social media that they
01:16:26.840deem to be fake say things like, Nikki, you are brave for living your truth. People might not
01:16:33.120always agree with what's being played out, but as an artist and watching your growth as a person
01:16:37.860is inspiring. And this came from user LAX76283656, which I feel is like a little bit of a giveaway.
01:16:46.860yeah they couldn't have made the name sound like i don't know but like barbs maybe barbs
01:16:56.460underscore and then the number but like a shorter number something like try a little bit or just
01:17:02.860like some words not just a string of letters and numbers i mean i guess they i think they use the
01:17:11.640people who are running these bot networks i think they like reuse them across different campaigns
01:17:18.860so i i can understand why it wouldn't be like barb lover 69 or whatever yeah but like
01:17:27.640you got to do better than just a string of letters and numbers
01:17:32.020talk about low and semantic complexity yeah seriously something that we learned from the
01:17:40.980folks who put together the Taylor Swift bot report, is that it's not just the bots operating
01:17:47.860in a silo. The point is to integrate into genuine, authentic conversations to increase credibility
01:17:54.660and visibility. And that's exactly what the people who wrote this report about Nicki Minaj's
01:18:00.260online content also saw. Interestingly, the report also says that Nicki is taking advantage of how
01:18:05.760algorithms boost toxic content. This is from Politico. When accounts boosting Minaj posted
01:18:11.400content that researchers identified as toxic, the algorithm drove her posts even further.
01:18:17.220Companies like Sybra determined toxicity by assessing not just the positive or negative
01:18:21.940words used in a post, but the apparent intent behind them. Personal attacks, slurs, threats,
01:18:27.540or comments that seemed designed to deter a reasonable person from engaging in conversation
01:18:54.880in the context of Minaj's online activity
01:18:57.440within and relating to the music industry.
01:18:59.780So basically, unfortunately, as we always see on social media, the toxicity is part of why this content is amplified across platforms.
01:19:12.120And it doesn't surprise me that they were looking at X, where Minaj is increasingly more prevalent.
01:19:19.520I think that at least temporarily she deleted her Instagram account after the whole kind of right wing pivot with Trump.
01:19:26.420Even though Nicki Minaj has been like this for a long time, like, I'm fascinated by her, but, like, this didn't come out of nowhere.
01:19:34.000This has been, if you've been paying attention to Nicki Minaj, this is not surprising that this is kind of what she's doing now.
01:19:39.660But X, it doesn't surprise me that that is where she's really spending a lot of her time.
01:19:45.560That's what this report is focused on.1.00
01:19:47.220Because it's just a platform where the shit rises.0.97
01:19:51.960I don't know if you've spent any time on X recently, but I go there like once every three months to weeks too late retweet when somebody tags me in something like a like a podcast appearance or a guest spot I did.0.98
01:25:43.520You can go to loveatfirstprompt.com to pre-order it.
01:25:46.720It would mean the world to me if y'all did that, but no pressure. If you pre-order it and send us a screenshot of your pre-order, you can email it, you can post it on social, whatever you want to do. We will send you, I will write you a handwritten thank you note, one, and we will send you a sticker. If you already have a sticker, maybe a magnet, well, we'll send you something cool. We love you so much. The reaction has been tremendous. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate it.
01:26:12.400If you want to be part of that, please pre-order the book
01:26:15.260and we will send you something, we promise.