Elon Musk declares 'cis' a slur; Poll workers targeted by Trump+Giuliani exonerated; RFK Jr. and Joe Rogan say stupid things; Illinois bans book bans; Grammys are for humans; Zuckerburg vs. Musk cage match - NEWS ROUNDUP
00:03:28.800If you don't remember, Ruby and Shea Freeman are the Black mother-daughter duo who were
00:03:32.940poll workers in Georgia, who Trump and Rudy Giuliani baselessly accused of tampering
00:03:38.340with votes in the Georgia presidential election in 2020 that Trump lost fair and square.
00:03:43.340They have been officially cleared of all wrongdoing.
00:03:45.580An investigative report released this week by the Georgia Elections Board of the 2020 election found that all of the claims that they had mishandled votes, that they were moving votes, all of that stuff that Trump made up was all found to be false and unsubstantiated.
00:03:59.160The report also found that fake social media accounts and impersonation played a role, which is something that we talk about a lot on this podcast.
00:04:05.760As part of the probe, the Georgia Election Board investigators interviewed a social media user who
00:04:10.260admitted that they created a fake account and confirmed that the content that was posted on
00:04:14.580this account was fake. Vonda Boy, the attorney representing the women, said in a statement
00:04:19.340following the release of the report that this serves as further evidence that Ms. Freeman and
00:04:23.500Ms. Moss, while doing their patriotic duty and serving their community, were simply collateral
00:04:28.040damage in a coordinated effort to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election.
00:04:33.600We talked about this story kind of in-depth on the podcast.
00:04:37.100The women testified at the January 6th commission about how terrifying the harassment and violence
00:04:42.620that they faced got for them after Trump and Giuliani basically just lied about them.
00:04:47.560And their testimony really broke me because I think it put a human face on things like
00:04:54.060conspiracy theories and disinformation.
00:04:56.560This was just like a mother and daughter who wanted to serve their community.0.71
00:05:01.580The daughter had been working as a poll worker for a while because she really cared for the elders in her community and wanted to help those elders vote.
00:05:09.400These are people who are really, really motivated by their civic duties.
00:05:14.000And that motivation was turned against them.
00:05:16.560And so, you know, if folks have not heard their testimony, I definitely recommend checking out the episode that we did on them.
00:05:23.080But it is heartbreaking because it really puts a face on what ordinary citizens have to deal with when the president uses his office to target them, lie about them, and smear them.
00:05:35.740You know, right-wing blogs publish their pictures and their names and saying they were moving suitcases full of ballots from polling places.
00:08:16.260Hopefully they get some peace at this point.
00:08:19.580And yeah, I wonder if they're going to be suing people.
00:08:23.060You know, maybe they should get in contact with E. Jean Carroll's lawyers.
00:08:25.940Part of me hopes that this is the last time we talk about them on the show because they're
00:08:31.380able to just like step out of the public spotlight that they never saw and just like return to normal
00:08:38.340lives. But yeah, part of me wonders if maybe we will hear more from them. You know, they suffered
00:08:45.680a lot for no reason. Maybe they'll sue people. They probably should. It certainly seems like they
00:08:51.860could. I think they were where they had an active lawsuit against the Gateway Pundit, one of the
00:08:56.860right-wing blogs that first put their name and picture into the right-wing blogosphere.
00:09:01.420And it's funny that you bring up E. Jean Carroll. Something that I think about quite a bit is that
00:09:06.400E. Jean Carroll won her defamation lawsuit against Trump. The very next day, he went on CNN and
00:09:13.720continued to defame her. She said that she might actually sue him again. And obviously, the same
00:09:18.860as with Ruby and Shay, I am rooting for E. Jean Carroll. But here's the thing. She should be able
00:09:24.620to rest. Just like you said, she shouldn't have to be constantly gearing up for lawsuit after1.00
00:09:31.120lawsuit after lawsuit just to get some peace. And so I'm rooting for these women. I believe that1.00
00:09:36.080these women should get what they deserve for what Trump and these assholes put them through,0.99
00:09:40.920but they should not have to continually fight these battles against this person who continues1.00
00:09:47.260to lie about them. So I'm with you. I'm wishing them some peace, but always rooting for them.
00:09:52.000and I want them to take these assholes for everything in their work because they deserve it.0.99
00:09:56.520Yeah, absolutely. They deserve it. They deserve everything they can get.1.00
00:10:01.160And then also in terms of the bigger picture, one of the things we talked about at the beginning
00:10:04.340of this season is how it's starting to look like litigation and defamation lawsuits might be an
00:10:12.940important strategy in trying to rein in online disinformation in this time when it seems like
00:10:21.120a lot of platforms are actually going in the opposite direction of making it easier for
00:10:27.940people to just lie online and spread harmful misinformation and target people for coordinated
00:10:34.860attacks. As people are surveying the landscape of what is actually an effective way to try to
00:10:42.620rein it in, it does seem like these lawsuits might be an important piece of that.
00:10:47.520Yeah, I think we're going to see more and more of that. I think the episode we started,
00:10:51.040the season with Nina Jank with Swimming Fox News for Defamation. I'm curious to see what the future
00:10:56.620looks like for people who lie for profit. I hope it's not a good one because I don't think that
00:11:02.320serves anybody. Speaking of people who profit off of lies and harassment, let's talk about Elon Musk.
00:11:08.580I should say this episode, we're going to mention Elon Musk a few times. I feel like y'all have
00:11:13.240heard me say now, like, oh, I'm not going to talk about Elon Musk. I'm not going to bring him up.
00:11:16.620I'm just going to, like, ignore him. But then I talk about him every news roundup because he
00:11:20.180stays in the news. So trigger warning, this is a Musk-heavy episode, and maybe this should
00:11:25.800actually be a new roundup segment. What's Elon done now? Well, now Elon Musk has declared the
00:11:32.780words cis and cisgender will now be considered slurs on Twitter that can be punishable with
00:11:37.660suspension. Let's get into it. So Elon Musk has essentially invented two new slurs, cis and
00:11:44.100cisgender. So the word cis or cisgender is not some big, scary word. It simply describes someone
00:11:50.420who identifies their gender as the same as their birth sex. So how did this whole thing on Twitter
00:11:55.800start? Well, it started when James Essies, an Irish right-wing social media personality who
00:12:00.680writes articles about things like the threat of wokeness and trans inclusion, well, he complained
00:12:06.060that people were calling him sissy on Twitter, writing yesterday after posting a tweet saying
00:12:11.860that I reject the word cis and I don't wish to be called it. I received a slew of messages from
00:12:16.440trans activists calling me sissy and telling me that I am cis whether I like it or not.
00:12:21.320Just imagine if the roles were reversed. So Musk replied saying, repeated targeted harassment0.69
00:12:26.520against any account will cause the harassing account to receive at minimum temporary suspensions.
00:12:30.920The word cis or cisgender are considered slurs on this platform. Now, so this goes back to what
00:12:39.300we were talking about last week, how so much of Elon Musk's whole thing, not just his personal
00:12:44.720identity, but how he makes business and strategy decisions is grounded in transphobia. To put this
00:12:50.500in context with that GLAAD report that we talked about last week, finding that Twitter is by far
00:12:55.860the least hospitable social media platform for LGBTQ folks, and that Twitter had actually rolled
00:13:01.520back policies that did the bare minimum of keeping transphobia off the platform, while other social
00:13:06.320media platforms like Facebook or TikTok tried to do some things. Twitter was like, now we're going
00:13:10.560in the opposite direction. We're going to do less. LGBTQ users are reporting being threatened and
00:13:15.140harassed on Twitter. And Musk is not just allowing it, but amplifying it and encouraging it. So this1.00
00:13:20.880gets down to the question of whether or not cis is a slur. No. End of sentence, it is not. The
00:13:26.640history behind the word cis is actually like kind of techie and pretty cool, especially like if you're
00:13:31.800a word nerd if you're interested in the origins of words. According to history.org, the term has
00:13:37.300a long and contested history prior to its wider cultural adoption. The OED officially cites a
00:13:42.7201994 post to a Usenet news group, Alt That Transgendered, by user Dana Leland DeFossey
00:13:49.620as the term's origin. First established in 1980, Usenet was a precursor to the World Wide Web.
00:13:55.380It's a distributed discussion system where users posted messages to topic-specific news groups.
00:13:59.800Given its long history, Usenet is the origin point for a variety of terminology, providing the first use case for over 400 OED entries.
00:14:08.140Nevertheless, other origin narratives persist.
00:14:11.140Some sources, for many years Wikipedia among them, credit a Dutch transgender man named Carl Bausch as creating the term in 1995, a narrative he himself supports.
00:14:20.000Yet, examples of the cis-trans dichotomy in reference to gender nonconformity go back even further, beginning as early as 1914 in German sexological literature.
00:14:29.800This is really interesting. I know we were talking a bit off mic before we got started, but I actually had never heard of Usenet and you were like, oh, you don't know about Usenet? This is something that you were familiar with, right?
00:14:39.780Yeah, it was a little bit before my time. I wish I was cool enough to have been using it, but it's an important piece of like internet lore. I think all of the founding creators of the internet, they were using it to connect with each other and collaborate and share software and share ideas.
00:15:04.040And I think a lot of the ideas that we had in the early days of the internet about it, like being a force for democratization and equality and freedom and openness, I think a lot of those ideas really were incubated on Usenet, which was then eventually supplanted by services like America Online.
00:15:33.440And then the World Wide Web, I think, was a more similar sort of open, I don't even know what the World Wide Web is.
00:15:45.520But yeah, Usenet was just a critical, important place for early founders and creators of what we now think of as the Internet, where it all happened.
00:17:23.940It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:17:31.840Whether 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.
00:17:41.020Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:18:21.280So of all the moral panics, I find the ones around language and gender to be the most tiresome.
00:18:28.720You know, it's just like this panic around extremists getting bent out of shape from phrases like pregnant people.
00:18:36.020Extremists make it sound like it's some big, scary, nefarious plot when the reality is so much more boring, right?
00:18:43.540Sometimes you need to be able to refer to a group of people at the population level using precise language.
00:18:50.060And that's really all it is. The fact that they've been able to turn this into an attack on them, as opposed to just a humdrum particularity of language needs, is beyond me. It really just shows how they will use anything to weaponize and turn it into an attack on them.
00:19:09.500And extremists have been attacking terms like cis and also straight and even white for years to paint it as a pejorative meant to shame.
00:19:18.020I think there is this idea where, like, the only groups who have kind of special, quote-unquote, special words meant to define them are, like, the other, right?
00:19:29.960Like, the dominant group is, like, we're the dominant group.
00:19:34.320Other people, they get words attached to them to describe who they are, not us.
00:19:39.000And so I think there's this idea that if a word is being used to describe them, whether it's cis or straight or white, even if it's just a humdrum word, that is actually a personal attack on them.
00:19:51.680Yeah, that's right. And I think that's all correct. And not to minimize the importance of words and language, right? Because we know that words and language and labels are very powerful.1.00
00:20:03.880But yeah, there's like this hostility to labels like cis or white that apply to the majority group.0.53
00:20:17.320Like you just said, they're comfortable with words that refer to members of a minority group and in fact reinforce their otherness and their minority status.0.51
00:20:28.200Uh, but to then have a word like white or cis that refers to, uh, to them is like deeply0.60
00:20:37.420threatening because I think it implies that they are not the default.0.82
00:20:46.380And it like, yeah, the, the word cis, it does imply that trans people exist.
00:20:52.140And I think a lot of these folks like Elon Musk would argue that, in fact, they don't, you know, I don't I don't know exactly how that works in their brain, but like they seem to believe that like trans people aren't real. Right.
00:21:10.180You know, there was that law, I think it was in, I can't remember which state it was, but like an anti, one of these laws that denied gender affirming care to trans kids was struck down by a judge somewhere in like the deep south.
00:21:25.920I want to, I'm not sure which, I can't remember which state it was. And the judge like explicitly
00:21:30.520said in their ruling that, you know, gender identity exists. It's a real thing. Like despite
00:21:36.640all the vitriol and the huffing and puffing of these transphobes like Elon Musk, gender identity
00:21:44.740is real. They can pretend and perhaps wish that it weren't, but it is. Yeah, that happened in0.64
00:21:53.320Arkansas. And it kind of made me kind of cautiously optimistic that at a certain point, it doesn't
00:21:59.600matter if these extremists like it or get it or not. It's not their business, right? Like gender
00:22:05.480exists. It's a thing that can shape people's lives. It's the thing that can determine what1.00
00:22:10.180kind of medical care you need and what kind of care that you need to show up as your best self
00:22:14.420and your healthiest self. Even if transphobes and extremists don't like it, that is not their
00:22:19.780business. So that Arkansas ruling made me like cautiously optimistic that we can get to a place
00:22:26.060that's like, yeah, you don't have to like it. It's not your business. It's a real thing. And
00:22:31.220we need to make sure that people can get care that aligns with the care that they need. And
00:22:35.520it's really none of your business what that care is. Like if you don't like it, fucking deal with0.99
00:22:39.460it. Yeah, absolutely. I think Elon Musk has like a real problem with that, right? Like he spent1.00
00:22:44.48044 billion dollars to buy twitter so that he could be the guy who gets to decide what discourse is
00:22:51.980allowed and what discourse isn't uh hidden behind you know his i don't know veneer of being a free
00:22:58.800speech champion which he has revealed over and over again to just be a complete uh joke right
00:23:04.540like he's not in favor of free speech he's in favor of the speech that he likes and he does
00:23:08.900and speech that he doesn't like he wants to keep off of the platform right we've seen that a whole
00:23:14.340bunch of times. And now he's gone a step further to think that because he owns Twitter, he can not
00:23:22.120only decide which speech is allowed and which speech isn't, but he can invent new meanings for
00:23:27.540words. And he can't, right? Cis is not a slur. It's just a descriptive term to describe a phenomenon
00:23:35.260that exists in the natural world. Well, as awful as all of this is, and it is awful, at least it
00:23:41.020can be the final nail in the coffin of the idea that Elon Musk is a free speech absolutist,
00:23:46.680as he has often hilariously claimed. He explicitly said when he bought Twitter,
00:23:51.660he was using it as a platform to try to police and restrict the language of trans people and
00:23:57.240people that support them. And it's, I think, part of a larger attempt to erase and eradicate0.78
00:24:01.640transness and queerness from public and civic life. And so, yeah, I think that's what he's0.99
00:24:06.340doing at least we've like dropped the conversation about how he's going to turn twitter into a free
00:24:12.700speech utopia at least i mean i haven't even seen anybody really say that even any of his defenders
00:24:17.580say that because it's so obviously not true that you can't even continue to say it because it's
00:24:22.600like well look at all these examples of the ways that he hasn't done that yeah that's a good
00:24:26.780observation i haven't heard anybody say that in a long time because it's like obviously not true
00:24:39.520Speaking of hellscapes, let's talk about the mess over at Reddit.
00:24:43.000So the Reddit blackout continues as thousands of subreddits remain private.
00:24:46.960Longtime volunteer moderators who have always been the backbone of Reddit and the communities that it hosts have locked many popular subreddits in protest of the company's surprise decision to start charging third-party apps and individuals for access to the platform's API.
00:24:59.220We've talked about this in an earlier news roundup,
00:25:01.900but previously, API access has been free,
00:25:04.500which enabled the development of many third-party apps
00:25:06.860that made Reddit easier to use, easier to moderate,
00:25:09.400and more accessible for internet users with disabilities.
00:25:12.280But all of that ended earlier this month
00:26:13.660And so, I mean, I don't know if this is like a boring story or not, but I really see it
00:26:19.400as a battle for the soul and the future of the internet.
00:26:23.020One of the things that came up when we were talking about this, I think the week before
00:26:25.880last was that how many people type when they have a question or they need some information,
00:26:31.120they'll type the question into Google and then they'll add Reddit because they want to get
00:26:34.780like real good information curated by a human. And I was just like, oh, isn't that interesting?
00:26:41.000But then I thought about it more and I was like, well, why is that? And I think it's because
00:26:44.980we have just accepted that so much of our internet infrastructure is scams and ads and annoying
00:26:52.680posts. The experience of using the internet in 2023 is actually like an experience of wading
00:26:58.720through this minefield of scams and advertisements. And so the reason why people need to add Reddit
00:27:04.860to their Google search queries is because it was the only way to quickly get to information that
00:27:11.040was hand-picked and looked at by a human and not some kind of a SEO bot scam, right? I don't know.
00:27:18.100So it's interesting to me that I think that this Reddit thing is really a conversation about what the internet is for, who it is for.
00:27:27.360Is it for humans who need accurate information or is it for bots and scammers and advertisers and SEO hacks or something else?
00:27:34.860And so I think when we're thinking about this Reddit protest, I think so goes Reddit, so goes the internet.
00:27:42.120And I do think it's interesting that these Reddit moderators are not taking this lying down.
00:27:46.500If there's anything I know about Reddit, they are a vocal and passionate group of people.
00:27:51.480So you're seeing all of these kind of like roundabout protests where they were forced to, when they went, they took their subreddits private and then they were kind of forced by Reddit to open them up.
00:28:00.860And so now they're finding all of these cheeky ways to continue that protest, like a women's fashion subreddit that's pretty big that I follow.
00:28:08.140They are now only posting fashion from like the 1700s as a way to sort of get around it.
00:28:13.200I think one of the large photo subreddits is now only posting pictures of John Oliver.
00:28:19.700So there's all these little ways of like sticking it to Reddit suits in forms of protests that I think have been really interesting.
00:28:27.100But it is not surprising to me that users are protesting this decision by Reddit top breath because it's not good, right?
00:28:35.560It's not good because I think it makes the user experience worse, but also shutting down free API access also shuts out researchers.
00:28:43.200Researchers at universities, think tanks, government agencies, and other organizations have really relied for years on access to the back end of Twitter and Reddit to be able to do research about what's going on on those platforms.
00:28:55.700That includes keeping tabs on things like disinformation trends, conspiracy theories, timely monitoring of new disinformation spreading online, analysis of the networks behind disinformation and harassment campaigns, as well as studies on political discourse, health issues, and a whole bunch of topics, right?
00:29:10.700Like, how people are having discourse on the internet tells us so much about what's happening with us in the real world, what's happening to our government, what's happening in politics, what's happening in our civic world.
00:29:23.900And not allowing people who research and track and monitor trends in those arenas really puts us all at risk.
00:29:30.340Yeah, it's actually personal for me because I have used both Twitter and Reddit's APIs in my own research in the past. And it's such a valuable resource for researchers to be able to look into what is going on on the internet.
00:29:47.040And like you mentioned, there are some really like high stakes things like monitoring disinformation trends. It's been used in violent conflicts to alert people to when there is like some sort of attack happening so that people can get out of that space.
00:30:01.200But there's also this huge number of studies that have been done about things that are like
00:30:07.840somewhat lower stakes, but also valuable. For example, I was involved in a study a while ago
00:30:13.720that was looking at the subreddit Quit Vaping. And it was a subreddit of people who were trying to
00:30:19.360quit vaping. And so the researcher just wanted to look at like, what were people saying? Were they
00:30:24.660getting, were they exchanging accurate information? Were they, was there like misinformation
00:30:28.460happening there. And, you know, they, they found that for the most part, people were exchanging
00:30:34.240accurate information and social support. And, and it was great. And so it was just like a nice
00:30:38.260little study that contributed to scientific understanding of how people give each other
00:30:43.760social support for health behavior change online. So like, not super high stakes, but valuable
00:30:51.440information and also a really accessible way for young researchers and like grad students
00:31:00.000to do interesting, meaningful research without having a lot of funds. You know, often grad
00:31:05.280students get paid very little. They can often have little access to resources. And so using
00:31:11.480these APIs was a valuable, a way that they could do valuable research despite not having a lot of
00:31:19.820access to funds. And so now that these platforms are charging for access to these APIs, it's going
00:31:25.700to make it much harder, if not impossible, for a lot of that research to happen. And so these,
00:31:31.420you know, the army of grad students out there who really fuel a lot of the research that happens
00:31:37.420in this country and just across academia and across science, they are going to find other
00:31:45.200ways to do research in other areas. And so our visibility into what's happening on the internet
00:31:50.640is going to be that much darker. Yeah. Think about the grad students, people.
00:31:56.100No, you're right. And I think like it comes down to a conversation that I keep returning to that
00:32:01.700I had with Paris Marks about who it is that is designing the future of the internet for all of
00:32:07.280us, right? And like really look, really drilling down deep into who these people are and the
00:32:12.520internet and digital future that they want and that they're fighting for and who benefits from
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00:34:16.140I saw this really interesting thing online about this series of, I would say like not great interviews that Reddit CEO Steve Huffman gave to first The Verge and then NBC, where he was like really praising Elon Musk and basically saying that the way that Elon Musk is running Twitter is like how he wants to run Reddit.
00:34:37.340He's setting a good example of how he wants to run Reddit.
00:34:40.220We know that the way that Elon Musk has been running Twitter has been rampant layoffs,
00:34:45.820being pretty disrespectful to both users and staff.
00:34:49.640If that is what you see as a role model for how you run a company that is a big part of
00:34:56.580how the internet functions and internet discourse is, I think that we're all in trouble.
00:35:01.820Ben Collins at NBC called it CEO contagion, which I had never heard before and I thought
00:35:06.460Where executives have effectively rebranded hostility to customers and cruel worker exploitation as being like Elon.
00:35:14.360And apparently this phenomenon is everywhere in tech company boardrooms right now, whether they're making it explicit like the Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is in these interviews, or if they're just like keeping their cards close to their chest, saying like, yeah, we should start running our company the way that Elon Musk is.
00:35:30.220And I think you really have to call into question who these men are who have been given such
00:35:35.740outsized impact over the future of the internet, because the future of the internet really
00:38:37.320So on the show, RFK talked about the usual conspiracy theories about vaccines, 5G, Wi-Fi, and illnesses that have been debunked long ago.
00:38:46.760I honestly don't want to list them all here, but if you want to know what specific conspiracy theories these people trafficked in, Anna Merlin has a great breakdown in Vice, which we'll link in the show notes.
00:38:57.220She called the episode, quote, an orgy of unchecked vaccine misinformation, some conspiracy mongering about 5G technology and Wi-Fi, and of course, Rogan once again praising ivermectin and an ineffective faux COVID treatment.
00:39:10.520So I love the idea. I love the phrase, an orgy of unchecked misinformation. That's exactly what it is. Honestly, this stuff is just so boring. When I was going to, you know, write my outline for this bit of the show, I was like, we are just talking about like rehashing stuff that we have like has been done to death. The whole thing just feels very 2021. Like I was like, we're getting into vaccine misinformation again. We're talking about ivermectin again. Like, didn't we do this?
00:39:37.860It just feels very like early pandemic 2021. Merlin asked Spotify if they were going to take
00:39:44.560the episode down to align with their COVID misinformation policy. They basically kind
00:39:49.320of danced around it. Again, you can read their response on the Vice piece. You know, folks might
00:39:53.420remember that there was a whole conversation about Joe Rogan and misinformation when Neil Young and
00:39:58.480others removed their content from Spotify to protest him continuing to traffic in misinformation.
00:40:04.320information yeah it just feels like we're here again like i don't just feel i feel like this is
00:40:09.560like a real groundhog day of a story where it's like oh he's doing it again oh they're asking
00:40:13.740spotify again and they're like giving pr nothing speak and doing nothing uh so basically here's
00:40:19.300where it gets kind of interesting when an actual doctor peter hoats a vaccine scientist at baylor
00:40:25.000college of medicine took to twitter to rebut rfk's claims about vaccines joe rogan replied by
00:40:32.180inviting the doctor to come on the podcast and debate RFK. The doctor declined and he said,
00:40:37.780I'll come on for like a one-on-one conversation or an interview, but I'm not doing a debate.
00:40:42.900Then of course, Elon Musk, I'm sorry, this is the third time we've mentioned him,
00:40:46.960had to get his two cents in, had to butt in because Joe Rogan, RFK, Elon Musk, they're all like,
00:40:53.380like, we need a word for that group of people. Like, you know what I mean? Like,
00:40:58.140we don't have a good word for them. We need a word for them. But because his buddy,
00:42:00.040i feel like some form of jock should be in the name because there's like a very like internet
00:42:07.580jock or like social media jock or something i don't think i'm not good at coming up with names
00:42:12.700but like the whole this whole thing feels very like sportsy you know the idea that this doctor
00:42:19.980is uh afraid to debate because he he'll he knows that he'll lose like this guy is a he's a doctor
00:42:28.560He's a scientist, right? He's trained to use science to learn the truth about viruses and how they impact the human body. He's not trained in getting on the mic and having like a debate on a podcast that is a completely different skill set.
00:42:49.700And it also has, you know, winning a debate like that has very little to do with the actual truth of the thing, right? It's like we live in two different worlds from these people where some of us are interested in what is the truth about the world and the COVID virus and how it affects our bodies and things we can do to protect our bodies from being harmed by it.
00:43:15.340And other people live in a world where it's all just made up talking points where there is no truth and scoring points and winning the debate and getting clicks is the only thing that matters.
00:43:31.180And I don't know how we, like, talk with them.
00:43:54.800If anybody ever challenges you to a public debate in 2023, you should decline on principle alone.
00:44:00.580And I really like this tweet from The Guardian's Hamilton Nolan about this.
00:44:03.840He said, I know you did a PhD and wrote a book on this very complex topic, but if you don't debate my horse on stage at the county fair, why should I believe you?
00:44:12.680My horse can clomp his hoof once for yes and twice for no.
00:44:16.200And doesn't that really illustrate it?
00:44:18.880I mean, I think like in a lot of ways, we are in this era that is kind of beyond facts and beyond credentials. And there is no point in debating somebody who you cannot find a shared understanding of the facts, right? Like it's not going to be a worthy enterprise. It is not going to be something that is going to be going to serve anybody or make anybody smarter by watching two people, one of whom is a credentialed scientist in this, and the other is Joe fucking Rogan.
00:44:48.880who is completely making up his own facts
00:44:51.100and any kind of like institutional fact that you have
00:48:31.560But I think continuing to return to these thoroughly debunked conspiracy theories about health is something that really gets me. And also, there's something about RFK, and maybe to Joe Rogan to a lesser extent, but I think to people on the left who should know better, I think is kind of attractive.
00:48:54.380And so I think one of the reasons why I find this whole thing so upsetting is that I have seen folks on the left who should know better parenting this, amplifying this, saying things like, oh, he makes some compelling points, but it's like, no, he's making points that have been thoroughly debunked if you just did a Google search.
00:49:11.600It's not compelling voice. And so I'm concerned that the same way that people allowed Trump to spew nonsense and conspiracy theories and rather than calling them out, they said like, oh, well, he is asking some questions or like he is saying what people think or any number of things, excusing things that he would say.
00:49:31.220I worry that we have learned nothing and we're going to be doing the exact same thing in this upcoming presidential election as well.
00:51:04.360It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:51:12.260Whether 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.
00:51:21.440Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:56:01.780or to a human who is writing something
00:56:03.460or to a human who is making some sort of music.
00:56:05.340But I worry that in a society where we are so interested in exploiting and mining and taking for capital, I worry that it will, something that probably does have a use case for creativity and creating an entirely new cool thing that does need a human knowing how to use this technology to do, I worry that we're just going to rely on exactly what you just described, right?
00:56:32.160It's just like, how can we just recycle something that already exists to make more crap that
00:57:47.480This is what he said at a signing ceremony at a Chicago public library.
00:57:50.860We refuse to let a vitriolic strain of white nationalism coursing through our country determine whose histories are told, not in Illinois.
00:57:58.380which kudos to him. This new legislation takes place on January 1st, and it says that public
00:58:04.380libraries must adopt the American Library Association's Library Bill of Rights or their
00:58:09.760own statement prohibiting book banning to be eligible for any state money. The Association's
00:58:14.700Library Bill of Rights states that reading materials should not be prescribed or removed
00:58:18.340because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval or excluded because of the origin, background,
00:58:22.640or views of those contributing to their creation. And so it kind of goes back to what I was saying
00:58:27.300earlier about the Arkansas thing, this might be cautiously optimistic and I'm kind of, I want to
00:58:33.420choose my words carefully here, but I do wonder slash hope if this is a signal that the extremists
00:58:40.440who are trying to use marginalized people as a wedge issue are losing and they know they are
00:58:47.240losing because people don't want this in a democracy. People don't want books banned from
00:58:52.540public libraries, books about marginalized people. People want books about marginalized people.
00:58:58.120People are buying those books. They're flying off the shelves, as we talked about in one of
00:59:01.200our earlier newscasts. People don't want this. And I'm cautiously optimistic that this is a sign
00:59:06.940that the extremists who are pushing this, this very small but vocal number of extremists,
00:59:11.800know that they are losing and know that the rest of the public is not on their side.
00:59:15.400Yeah, I hope you're right in that optimism, because it does seem like the extremists is the right word here, right? The people pushing for these book bans are not middle-of-the-road Republicans who are trying to win elections.
00:59:33.260They are extremists with an extreme agenda, whether it's anti-gay, anti-trans, anti-sex, just straight out to lunch. It's extreme extremists.
00:59:50.560And for years, I think relatively moderate politicians on the right were more than happy to pander to these extremists to get their votes.
01:00:03.620And I am also cautiously optimistic that the bill is coming due and it's catching up to them about issues like these book bans.
01:00:14.040I think abortion is another issue where they are realizing that by catering to these extreme extremists who are so out of step with what the general population wants, it's a losing recipe electorally, and I hope that continues.
01:00:37.200A point that I make all the time as somebody who thinks about and studies disinformation is that the reason why I know these extremists are losing and aware that they're aware that they're losing is that they lie.
01:00:50.500If they had positions that were popular that people agreed with and liked, they would not have to lie.
01:00:55.760So when extremists, like the people who run the organization Moms for Liberty, who, by the way, just used a Hitler quote in their flyer recently, so saying the loud part loud, when they lie about the kind of books and the content of these books, when extremists lie and say that Target is selling chest binders for toddlers or tuck-friendly swimsuits for toddlers or shirts for children that have Satan on them, which they're doing no such thing,
01:01:24.480when anti-abortion extremists lie about their positions on abortion and they say, oh, this is
01:01:32.000just leaving it up to the states. We're not actually banning abortion. Or, oh, this is
01:01:35.840actually quite moderate. That's all lies. When they lie, it is because they know their positions
01:01:40.920are not popular. If they were popular, if people agreed with them, they wouldn't have to lie to
01:01:46.460get people on board. And so I think it really, I'm cautiously optimistic that people are waking up,
01:01:52.480they're saying, oh, these people, the things that they're positioning as, you know, just them
01:01:57.860moderately asking questions about society or trying to protect kids or whatever lie they're
01:02:03.040telling. I think that people are waking up to the fact that that is BS and that that doesn't move
01:02:08.020people, right? I think that we also for too long have had a media climate that is too afraid to
01:02:13.920talk about these issues for what they are. We saw the whole thing with the critical race theory
01:02:18.300panic, where the mainstream media was all too happy to do the dirty work of extremists for them
01:02:25.020by lending credence to the ideas that, yeah, kindergartners are being taught critical race
01:02:30.380theory, this high-minded collegiate level, you know, idea, when they weren't. They were way too
01:02:37.440happy to make it seem like, oh, these are just parents concerned about things like bathroom
01:02:43.540bills and, you know, protecting girls in sports. And now I think that all of that stuff is coming
01:02:49.640home to roost. And I hope that people remember this come election time, that I don't think that
01:02:54.520your average American is moved by this. I don't think your average American walks around in their
01:02:59.540day-to-day being really outraged about what Target is selling or what books about LGBTQ people or
01:03:07.640Black people are in their libraries. I really don't. And so I'm cautiously optimistic that
01:03:12.080come November, we will see that come to fruition. So one last thing, we've got to quickly talk about
01:03:19.140this Zuckerberg, Elon Musk. What is this, the fourth time you've brought him up? I'm so sorry.
01:03:23.880It's a Musk-heavy episode. This cage match that they're talking about. So Elon Musk recently
01:03:28.680tweeted that he would be up for a cage fight with Facebook meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg
01:03:36.420shot back with an image of Musk's tweet with the caption, send me your locations, which sounds
01:03:41.880like these two heads of major tech companies intend to have some kind of a cage match physical
01:03:49.740fight. And all I have to say about this is that this is what happens when men run tech companies.
01:03:56.740And that's all I have to say about that. I do have one more thing I want to talk about.
01:04:02.760I'm sure folks by now have seen the Ocean Gate tragedy where a billionaire and his kid and other
01:04:10.600folks went down to check out the ruins of the Titanic and did not make it. There have been so
01:04:15.980many conspiracy theories around how folks are talking about this tragedy and a really interesting
01:04:22.540question mark online discourse. So I want to talk about this, but this story is everywhere. So I'm
01:04:28.340going to save it for the Patreon. So if you want to hear my thoughts about the Ocean Gate tragedy,
01:04:35.100what conspiracy theories are sort of taking root? Because some of them are quite interesting.
01:04:40.100what conspiracy theories are taking root
01:04:41.480about how folks are talking about this
01:04:42.840and the online discourse around this tragedy