00:02:41.660Molly's hit new podcast is called Weird Little Guys.
00:02:44.500And on it, she explores who she calls, quote, the worst people you've never heard of,
00:02:49.340And how the hate mongers standing in the way of progress and equality are, well, in a lot of ways, just weird little guys.
00:02:56.580But before all this, Molly was working an office job at an early childhood ed tech company.
00:03:01.980And then the Unite the Right rally that left 32-year-old Heather Heyer dead happened in her town.
00:03:09.760I lost my job kind of unexpectedly in the summer of 2017.
00:03:13.400It was, you know, it's a huge bummer. I'd been working there for a long time.
00:03:16.480It was my first like big girl job. And I guess maybe my last one because I have another job since. And so I was just adrift. Right. I was just at home trying to figure out what to do next when Unite the Right happened here in Charlottesville.
00:03:31.840And I was not someone who was politically engaged at that time. It was not, I didn't know anything about that world. And I was bewildered by what happened here. Like, why did Nazis come to where I live and kill a woman who was, you know, around my age, right?
00:03:49.540Charles is not a big town. It's a college town. It's about 50,000 people. It just didn't seem
00:03:54.700like something that could happen here. And I didn't, I just didn't understand. And I had the
00:03:59.180time to waste trying to understand. And I never stopped. When this was happening, were you like,
00:04:06.780oh, I am carving out a lane of work for myself? No, and I didn't ever intend for it to become
00:04:12.420a career or, you know, become a subject matter expert in anything. I just, I guess I don't
00:04:18.540half-ass anything. I whole-assed it. I know your work has been instrumental in identifying extremists
00:04:23.760who sometimes have committed actual crimes in the name of their ideologies. How did this come to be
00:04:29.000something you realized that you had a knack for? I've talked about this, I think, you know, like
00:04:33.500I did a workshop last year in a local bookstore about like, you know, internet safety and sort of
00:04:38.780reverse engineering how to keep yourself safe by talking about the ways that I make other people
00:04:44.460less safe online you know less safe being you know a hater in secret and I think I think all
00:04:51.960women have this ability it is a latent ability that all women of our generation have right that
00:04:57.920like you've stayed up all night trying to find your ex's pictures on social media like what is
00:05:02.480what are they up to did they get married you know we all have that skill set and I think in another0.87
00:05:07.160universe i'm just a fucking menace on next door but i found a way to channel that like aggressive0.96
00:05:15.320nosiness into something that's good for society i love that i love that being your superpower i0.97
00:05:21.600have said that on the show nobody is like smarter than like a group of girls with instagram they
00:05:27.460will find anything anyone you cannot hide from them like a scorned woman is more powerful than
00:05:33.040the SEI. Absolutely correct. By now, I'm sure you've seen that horrifying video. A woman,1.00
00:05:40.860later identified as Dr. Teresa Borenpol, is forcibly dragged out of a public town hall0.57
00:05:45.720meeting and zip-tied for speaking up. There was a time where town hall meetings were just the0.55
00:05:50.760boring, process-driven grease that kept the wheels of local government turning. Not necessarily the
00:05:56.360hotbeds of discontent we know them as today, but Molly was someone who identified that town hall
00:06:01.400meetings were going to play an important role early on. In 2017, she started live-tweeting
00:06:06.760government meetings in Charlottesville after the deadly Unite the Right rally.
00:06:10.760You know, something else that I really have to lift up about your work is that I feel like you're
00:06:15.360one of the early people who recognized the power of things like public town halls, public meetings,
00:06:21.140especially happening in Charlottesville. Today, we know that, like, those are big flash points where,
00:06:26.920you might get dragged out by hired goons for saying the wrong thing. But I feel like
00:06:32.820there was a time where you thought of public town halls or town meetings as these boring
00:06:37.260things. They were not the flashpoints that they are today. What was it about those spaces that
00:06:42.020made you feel like, I need to start tracking what's happening in these spaces?
00:06:46.020They should be boring. First of all, they should be boring. But no, so in my early quest for
00:06:52.620personal understanding, one of the first places I went was I went to the first city council meeting
00:06:57.620that happened after Unite the Right. So it was the week after this happened here. I didn't know
00:07:02.620where to start looking for answers. So I went to City Hall and it was this very explosive meeting
00:07:07.520because there was a lot of anger here. There was a lot of hurt. And over time, those meetings,
00:07:14.100fewer and fewer people showed up over time. I think Charlottesville is a more engaged
00:07:17.600locality than most. And we have remained that way over the years. But, you know, over the over the
00:07:23.000months, people stopped showing up. But I was interested. I was interested in the way these
00:07:28.820decisions are getting made. And I guess once I committed to that, I couldn't stop. But it wasn't
00:07:36.060something I started doing for anyone else. Right. I've been I fell off in the last couple of months
00:07:42.480because I'm busy with the show. But I spent seven years live tweeting city council meetings. And it
00:07:47.560wasn't something i was doing for people because like arguably there should be no audience for
00:07:51.820that it's not interesting um but i learned a lot about about local government about the kinds of
00:07:59.480people who show up to make themselves heard you know there are i don't know i think because it is
00:08:05.480boring because it is time consuming because it is hard to do you know six o'clock on a weekday
00:08:09.800evening you have other stuff to do you're still at work or you're making dinner for your family
00:08:13.180the kinds of people who show up are often people who have not great motivations.1.00
00:08:21.720And so we shouldn't cede that ground to that one weird lady who wants to ban all the books at the1.00
00:08:27.080library. Do you feel like that's a big part of how we got to where we are now? I understand the
00:08:34.020temptation of focusing on presidential race, national politics, what's happening federally,1.00
00:08:39.020But while we were doing that and sort of not paying attention to the boring city council meeting or whatever, the lady who wants to ban all the books in the library really amassed a lot of power and now has goons.1.00
00:08:50.960Right, because that's been an explicit organizing strategy of like right wing interest groups for a long time is running city council candidates, running school board candidates.1.00
00:09:01.060They've been filling those rooms with their goons for a long time.
00:09:04.720And, you know, it varies locality to locality. I don't want to say there are no people pushing back against that. There are a lot of good people pushing back against that. But I think on average, we have ceded that ground to people who, you know, at the Federalist Society or whatever, who understand that they can build power locally.
00:09:24.640I'm curious, are you from Charlottesville, like originally?
00:09:28.100I moved here in 2007 to go to UVA, and so I never left.
00:09:32.740Yeah, I'm from Virginia. I grew up in Richmond. And you mentioned how Charlottesville, people there are like, perhaps a little more engaged civically than your average place. I totally agree. And I think that Charlottesville, I love Charlottesville. I grew up going there. Like I had a lot of friends that went to UVA. Like that was like the good, when I was in high school, that was like the good college that you hoped that you got into.
00:09:56.220Yeah, yeah, yeah. In Virginia, you might know this. They just call it the university. They don't even call it the University of Virginia. Like, that's how ubiquitous it is. And I do think, like, in a place like Charlottesville, where folks are pretty, like, plugged in, it's like a unique place. Do you think that that strategy of quietly taking things over, does that work in a place like Charlottesville, where folks are pretty plugged in?
00:10:26.220It doesn't work here. Antonin Scalia's granddaughter did not successfully run for0.93
00:10:30.860school board here. She tried and it didn't work. So I think, yeah, you have to be in that space0.87
00:10:38.660and know what's going on. Run your own people. Because I think especially now that I guess the
00:10:44.420law doesn't matter at all at the federal level, that our local government is going to be our last
00:10:49.800line of defense. That when, you know, these terrible directives come down from the federal
00:10:54.340government or you know in virginia we have a terrible governor who's going to cooperate
00:10:58.020don't even get me started government your local government is your last line of defense like
00:11:02.880like our the regional jail board here makes decisions about whether or not the jail cooperates
00:11:09.320with ice right like these local decisions have a very real impact on people's day-to-day lives
00:11:14.440well it's interesting that you say that because i personally bridgette am going through a little
00:11:20.540bit of a i guess you could call it a tails a despair tailspin yeah fair everything going on
00:11:26.620reasonable yeah and i think i i constantly finding myself kind of oscillating between
00:11:32.800just being like i need to quit my job and dedicate myself to the calls full time i don't have kids0.96
00:11:41.400my parents are dead like this like this is it is time to like lock the fuck in and being like i0.96
00:11:47.500need to check the fuck out i need to like disengage and it almost and i bet a lot of people maybe are0.98
00:11:52.680feeling that way and it almost sounds like what you're saying is that the antidote to the feeling0.91
00:11:59.180right now of feeling like i can't do anything i can't change anything is being like it checked in
00:12:04.280engaged informed like even at the hyper local level because that's where you actually could
00:12:08.860build up the build up the qualities that like make that strategy of taking over of extremists
00:12:15.460taking over your local government less likely. Exactly. And it doesn't have to, you know,
00:12:20.400this push and pull of like, I can't do anything or I have to do everything is overwhelming,
00:12:24.820but you don't have to do something big. You don't have to do something big. Just join a
00:12:29.740community group and be part of something that could be big, but it doesn't have to be you.
00:12:35.280Right. You don't have to have, you know, main character syndrome about stopping fascism.
00:12:39.460Yeah. I don't think, I don't think me personally is going to cut it.
00:12:42.980But there's this feeling like if I don't do something enormous, if I don't put my whole life into this, then I am not contributing. And that's not true. I think, you know, go to a school board meeting, talk to your teacher's union.
00:12:53.720I really like that and I think especially right now it is I mean I feel overwhelmed I think
00:13:00.540everybody's feeling overwhelmed the idea that like you don't have to do it all you certainly
00:13:04.400don't have to do it alone if you you know thought somehow that you were going to be the main
00:13:10.500character of stopping fascism like disavow yourself of that notion and it actually is like
00:13:14.560helpful to feel that way to think of it that way right but like I don't know your own insignificance
00:13:21.540can be a comfort to you that you are just one person in this this larger operation of people
00:13:27.200coming together and doing a little bit at a time that's more manageable you know I have to say like
00:13:32.680my own show has sort of been off the air for a while like in part because of personal reasons
00:13:38.260and family reasons but also part of it is just like straight up not really knowing how to show
00:13:44.000up in this moment. Like I have sort of struggled with my own kind of North star because I want to
00:13:52.180provide to my listeners, like content that is valuable, that is useful, that, that, that educates
00:13:58.020them, that helps them understand what's happening and how to get plugged in. But I don't want to be
00:14:02.460alarmist. I don't want to be, you know, doom and gloom all the time, but what the moment that we're
00:14:08.140in right now is genuinely alarming. Right. And so like part of me is like, well, if I don't want to
00:14:12.060be alarmist i guess i can't say anything because like we're in an alarming moment is this some is
00:14:16.220this something that you have dealt with struggled with and have you managed to find a balance there
00:14:20.400actually the last couple of weeks actually i've been really grappling with that exact thought
00:14:26.200right so when the show launched you know the first few months of episodes i'm telling these
00:14:30.720stories about history right i'm looking at sort of a specific incident or individual
00:14:36.160from the past you know guys from the 80s crimes from the 70s like crimes that are0.79
00:14:41.500sort of discrete package stories of like look at this look at this little fucking guy look at this0.97
00:14:46.780looking fucking weird nazi who had child porn on his computer right it's just these like little0.99
00:14:50.400vignettes of creepy little nazis but the last couple of weeks the episodes have really focused0.99
00:14:56.220on tying together like here's this thing that happened in the past and here is its direct
00:15:03.020correlation that is ruining your life now and it's i feel like there's a responsibility that
00:15:10.240i have to tie these things together you know i'm not just talking about you know the american
00:15:14.540white supremacist movement as this interesting anecdote of history it is something that has
00:15:21.040led us to this moment so time like not just like this is an echo of this this is a direct
00:15:26.960consequence of this particular man's actions and words and here's the clear through line
00:15:32.560that got us to today um it sucks that's not the show i wanted to write
00:19:23.240And, you know, the person who opened it survived that bombing only for earlier this year, a few weeks ago, that office to close when they voted to, as the Phoenix New Times put it, for no apparent reason or justification doing so other than for the council to align itself with Donald Trump's baseless culture war crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
00:19:46.400like that seems like exactly i i read this piece and i it broke my heart the person who was like
00:19:54.340yeah if i had opened the the the package that had a pipe bomb in it a little bit differently i would
00:19:58.940be dead today and now this office is shuttering in some ways it does kind of feel like when you
00:20:05.100are threading that needle of these stories that like we're moving in the wrong direction and i
00:20:10.120guess i wonder like how do you as somebody who tells these stories for a living and threads that
00:20:14.700needle for a living how do you deal with that this i this feeling that like we are going in
00:20:18.980the wrong direction like we simply are not moving forward yeah that story in particular i think
00:20:25.020really instilled in me this idea that i have a responsibility to be clear that these stories
00:20:32.260aren't over right like i spent i spent two full months chronicling the life of dennis mahon that
00:20:38.380klansman who built that bomb in 2004 like i followed him for decades i dug through archives
00:20:43.420and court records and transcripts and old clan newsletters and watched videos of sermons given
00:20:49.080at the Aryan Nations compound. And, you know, I spent months writing this story and I thought,
00:20:53.240okay, it's over. He's in prison. His trial was very interesting. He was convicted and that story
00:20:58.540is over. And then not a month after I finished writing it, the city council shut down the office
00:21:05.880that refused to shutter because of a bombing, right? Like he sent them a bomb. Don Logan almost
00:21:12.180died and the city said no diversity is important to us diversity is important to us clansmen don't
00:21:17.720get to decide that it's not and then 21 years later some republican mayor with too much botox
00:21:24.260decided that no actually diversity sucks and we hate it um and so yeah we are moving in the wrong
00:21:32.440direction and i don't know i was speaking to a an undergraduate class at uva the other day
00:21:37.420about the show a professor invited me to talk to the students about the show and a lot of their
00:21:41.980questions for me were like, well, what do we do? What do we do? What does the future look like?
00:21:46.780And I'm thinking like, I don't know. I don't know. I'm not a political organizer. I'm not
00:21:52.320a prognosticator. I don't. I'm just trying to tell a story. And hopefully it can inform the
00:22:01.620organizing work of people who are good at that kind of thing. But all I have are these old Klan
00:22:07.280newsletters well this this might sound wild but like stay with me here um so i i love um tony
00:22:16.040morrison i love angela davis and they were close friends and tony morrison was working as an editor
00:22:21.460at random house right and she was very clear that like her during the the you know black political
00:22:28.040movement of the 60s and 70s she was like oh my role is like being an editor writing blah blah
00:22:33.000blah. And Angela Davis, who of course was like this amazing organizer and activist that arrested0.84
00:22:37.820and like, you know, was really in the streets and in the struggle. Toni Morrison said, you need to
00:22:43.400write an autobiography, a memoir. You need to write the story of your struggle in the street
00:22:48.040so people can read it. And Angela Davis was like, no, I'm too young. I don't, I'm too young for a
00:22:52.640memoir. Maybe I'll do it in 10 years. And she said that Toni Morrison was the kind of person who
00:22:57.020had a way of telling people to do things where they understood they really ought to do it.
00:23:02.360And she wrote that memoir. And, you know, it went on to inform an entire generation of political organizing and social movement and theory and praxis. And Toni Morrison was very clear that she wasn't going to be in the streets, but her gifts, the thing that she was good at was editing and getting people, like, identifying the person whose story needed to be told and making sure that story got out into the world.
00:23:24.920And I really see that as, like, a similar thing, right, of, like, you know, you were saying, like, I'm not an organizer. I can't tell people, like, how you push back. But you know where your gifts lie, right? Like, you know what you're good at. You're good at pouring over research, archival. I mean, part of me almost wonders if the thing that we should all be thinking about is, like, what is the skill that we're good at that they can't take away from us? And how can I lean into that in this moment?
00:23:50.480And yours is clearly, like, going over the meticulous, you know, archives and telling a story, making a story out of it.
00:23:57.940Right. And, like, giving people sort of the language to assist them in understanding the moment such that they may take the action that they're good at.
00:24:05.960Right. Like, you know, people are like, oh, these, you know, it's a fascist government.
00:24:09.340It's the, you know, we're experiencing fascism.
00:24:11.160And then there's this pushback of, well, you can't just, that's such a big word.
00:24:14.960But if I can give you the information that you need to say, no, I know where this idea came from.
00:24:20.100I know whose mouth those words came out of last time they were spoken, you know, that this isn't just normal Republican politics.
00:24:27.880This is. This is something you come from an old Klan newsletter.0.78
00:24:34.200How much of your work is like digging into old Klan newsletters or like looking through speeches at our archives and things like that, things that like maybe read as boring, but help us understand this.
00:24:46.680it's not boring to me it's not boring it's like i guess that's you know we all have our special
00:24:52.360interests this is so the research is my favorite part i love it like i spent most of last week
00:24:57.380trying to translate a blurry pdf of a thesis that was written in the 90s in africans like
00:25:04.760an ocr does not like the ai does not want to read this to me it is i'm like line by line
00:25:13.180um because i know there's gold in there and i'm gonna get it you know something that i appreciate
00:25:20.120about weird little guys is that is the part of the show that's like that you've never heard of
00:25:24.780like that part i think is very important you know there are so many of these names that folks might
00:25:30.820know like richard spencer who i always you know i have a i have to give him a special shout out
00:25:35.000because he was punched in my hometown of dc and it's like a claim to fame that i love to mention
00:25:40.160But you're talking about people that like extremists that people might not know, right, or might not have heard of. And, you know, I live in D.C. and so like you talked about Aaron Hoffman, who was a police officer in nearby Prince George County, who you identified as a Proud Boys member, you know, who was advocating for violence against a Supreme Court chief justice.
00:26:01.780And I guess I wonder, like, why do you think it's so important that people don't just know the sort of like big name extremists that get fancy write ups in the Times or whatever about their haircut, but also the people in your hometown, on your police force, on your school board?
00:26:18.160yeah i guess the idea you know the name of the show is sophie's idea actually sophie's brain
00:26:23.300child weird little guys right is that like it's not just the splashy big names that you've heard
00:26:29.420of it's there's whole networks of these it's like you you pick up a rock and there's all these
00:26:34.060roly-polies under there right there's never just one bug under that rock um and they're just these0.65
00:26:39.780terrible little losers right they're not these larger than life incomprehensible figures these1.00
00:26:45.660you know great men of history quote unquote right it's it's just like a bunch of fucking losers who1.00
00:26:51.220were mean to their wives yeah so i was once on behind the bastards and i was talking to robert1.00
00:26:57.020about this and i forget i forget who we were talking about but he had a very whoever it was0.98
00:27:02.540had like a very messy interpersonal life and that was his undoing and i was like dang imagine being
00:27:08.400like this like high up figure in an extremist movement and your undoing is like your interpersonal
00:27:14.340messiness with your girlfriend and he was like1.00
00:39:38.540It is different for Jewish anti-fascists.
00:39:40.180It is different for people who are not white men.0.81
00:39:44.840The level of vitriol is much more appalling.
00:39:48.300The amount that people care when it happens to you is significantly less.
00:39:54.160And I think we know why both of those things are true. I will never forget this years ago, but a white man who makes a living writing about the far right told me that he was jealous about how many threats that I get because it just seems so interesting to him.
00:40:16.620And if that's never happened to him in his work, that it was just, he was a little bit jealous. Like, why would you say that to me?
00:40:41.940What nourishes you to keep you checked in here?
00:40:45.020I mean, the show is called Weird Little Guys because I genuinely love finding a weird guy.0.70
00:40:49.920And so, like, Sophie came up with the name because, like, in the work chat, like, I'm constantly coming, you know, coming to everyone and being like, look at this fucked up thing I found.
00:40:58.360Look at this weird guy that I found, right?
00:41:00.960And, like, you know, when your dog finds, like, a really nasty dead bug outside and he's, like, so excited to show it to you.
00:41:28.600I have to tell you, one time I was walking down the street with my partner and there was a guy walking two dachshunds and my partner looks over and says, look at those two double, look at those double D's.
00:41:38.600And it was the funniest thing I've ever heard.
00:41:40.760And every time you post a picture of your dogs, I think about it.0.65
00:41:45.680i mean looking at a dachshund i think is just an unparalleled experience i mean i love to look at
00:41:54.740any dog i love to look at a dog i love to see a dog love to pet a dog love dogs but something
00:41:59.560about a wiener dog is like i mean you think i'd be over it they're like eight and a half years
00:42:03.180old now but every time i look at them it's like why do you look like that they always look like
00:42:07.660they're worried about something it's like what would you be worried about like how stumpy your
00:42:12.480buck buck looks like he works two jobs and can't make rent like he looks so pressured by the world
00:42:19.600otto does not he's never life and never in his life had a single thought in his head it's so
00:42:26.420beautiful like he's he's fine now he prefaces by saying he's fine now but he was completely
00:42:32.380paralyzed um in 2021 he had a spontaneous rupture of um one of his discs in his back which is
00:42:39.800unfortunately something that can happen to dachshunds like he had no existing injury he just
00:42:43.860it just happened and all of a sudden he was completely paralyzed and he had to have back
00:42:48.020surgery and the prognosis was bad and um so after the surgery he was home and his back legs didn't
00:42:53.720work and he was wearing a diaper he was drugged up and like and so he couldn't you hear this
00:43:00.480bladder didn't work so I had to manually express his bladder by like squeezing on it and the vet
00:43:04.540was like dogs really don't like this he's probably gonna bite you and I was like he's not
00:43:08.760and for two weeks paralyzed miserable having to have his bladder manually expressed every three
00:43:14.320hours around the clock he never he did not care he didn't even seem to register with him
00:43:21.000that anything was wrong he was just vibing not a thought in that doggy head
00:43:27.660and i think we can all learn a lot from auto don't think yeah just vibe just i i aspire to be
00:43:37.000like auto i mean i would say like the the joy that you get out of researching and and breaking
00:43:45.940down these weird little guys is palpable when you listen to the show and i do like i mean it
00:43:51.460sounds weird to say but like you can tell that it is very much a labor of love when you listen
00:43:56.360to the podcast and is that is that how it's been for you yes and i'm glad that that comes through
00:44:01.460Because, you know, if it stops being a thrill to, you know, to hunt and find and seek and dig, and if it stops being, you know, emotionally crushing to tell the stories of harm that was done to people, then I'll stop.
00:44:19.220If I can go, you know, if there's not an episode where Rory has to edit out the takes where, like, I'm audibly crying, then, like, it's time to go.
00:44:29.580You know, I started telling these kinds of stories for my own community. Right. Like I had don't look it up. It's still on the Internet somewhere. It's not good. But years ago, 2018, when the man who murdered Heather Heyer went on trial, I was able to attend the entire trial.
00:44:48.340And many people were not because it was the courtroom was so full of like, you know, fucking ghouls from out of town, you know, CNN reporters doing their nightly hits.0.65
00:44:57.000And so during that trial, I made this like little podcast that my intention was it was just for my community.0.98
00:45:02.580Right. So I started telling these stories for my own community.
00:45:07.580And even though that's not what I'm doing anymore. Right. I'm telling them for these broader audiences.
00:45:11.800I just got an email the other day from a listener in Scottsdale who said you know I heard the way
00:45:18.540that you talk about Charlottesville and it's obviously very personal for you but you talked
00:45:23.980about my city the same way and that meant a lot right and so just being able to carry that sort
00:45:29.520of care with me that I'm I'm telling these stories that that affected real people's lives that are
00:45:35.160continue to affect real people's lives and if I can't do that with care then I shouldn't do it0.91
00:45:41.800i am so glad that they haven't made us stop caring like i'm so like they throw shit at us
00:45:52.080every day but the fact that you still care and it still connects and that you're still moved by
00:46:00.140these stories i think really says a lot and i'm just very glad that that passion and real empathy
00:46:08.960is still there because like i wake up every day worried that like is today the day where like i0.93
00:46:14.660turn it off or i'm like i've stopped feeling i'm numbed out i don't give a fuck like do what you're0.76
00:46:19.220gonna do like going down with the ship i worry about that in myself and it's just like very0.97
00:46:24.760clear that like you have a vast reservoir of that inside and i'm very glad for that but it's an
00:46:29.520active practice right like it's something i cultivate with intention right that i it's
00:46:35.080something i have been saying for years right but like i work very hard every day not to become hard
00:46:41.060right that like i don't wish harm on even even the worst of these monsters right like i don't
00:46:48.600i don't sit here thinking oh i hope something really bad happens i don't i don't fault you
00:46:53.960if you do i think that's perfectly fine it's understandable but like what i want is for them
00:46:58.940to stop hurting people and I don't know that wishing harm on them is good for my heart
00:47:05.140do you maybe the answer is no but do you have any advice on how we can kind of protect our
00:47:15.480our softness and not not lose that when things feel so awful asking for myself yeah asking for
00:47:22.720a friend um i don't know i don't know and i have found myself in telling these stories
00:47:29.120trying to make sure to include parts of the story that are not about the monster
00:47:37.080right like uh there was an episode months ago about um barry black who's a clansman from
00:47:43.520pennsylvania who um challenged virginia's cross-burning law and won many years ago
00:47:48.340um got all the way to the supreme court and as you know it's this terrible story about a terrible man
00:47:52.720winning um but within that story there was the story of this older straight couple that ran the
00:48:01.220only gay bar in rural western pennsylvania and like that they had the courage of their convictions
00:48:06.800and they stood up to the clan and fire bombings and people shooting at the bar and like it just
00:48:12.840it mattered to them that gay people had a place to go even though they they were straight they
00:48:17.720didn't have gay kids they had no connection to this community it just was something that mattered
00:48:21.120to them and just like finding someone in these stories who was so good in a way that is I don't
00:48:30.680know it's just special because in every story of a monster there is there is a Pat Kramer you know
00:48:38.700there is someone in all of these stories who did the right thing when they didn't have to
00:48:42.740i usually end these conversations asking like what keeps you hopeful or what or are you hopeful
00:48:52.060in this moment is i feel like it might be that like that that like that even in these stories
00:48:58.840of like monsters there are regular folks who want to do the right thing regular folks who
00:49:04.660challenge these monsters and win and sometimes the person in the story who did the beautiful
00:49:11.320thing doesn't win sometimes they die there was an episode a few weeks ago about um the story of the
00:49:17.540the portland max train stabbings in 2017 where um three men were stabbed defending these two teenage
00:49:23.820girls um from a nazi and two of them died um they didn't win right but like what they did was
00:49:32.900beautiful and hopeful and and tragic um and i guess that's you know in times where we're all
00:49:39.340looking for hope and it's hard to find it, the knowledge that maybe you don't win, maybe I don't
00:49:45.380win, maybe we in this moment are not winning, but we will. Like, even if you and I don't get to be
00:49:53.640the ones who do it or see it, we will. And there's hope for future people like us.
00:50:02.100sorry really beautiful sorry i'm like tearing up i feel like i needed i needed to hear that
00:50:09.440um you know we don't we don't do it for ourselves we do it for all of us
00:50:14.280molly the show is weird little guys where can folks listen is it is so needed right now
00:50:22.020how can folks check it out you can listen to it wherever you get your podcasts um every podcast
00:50:27.240app um i think cooler zone media subscription is not yet available for android but you can get it
00:50:33.400on apple if you want to listen to it ad free um but anywhere you get your podcasts um download it
00:50:38.920on all of those apps and listen to it on all of them so i get more downloads so sophie will be
00:50:43.660proud of me give molly all the downloads y'all um please listen it is it is a a fantastic phenomenal
00:50:50.700show congratulations on it um is there anything that i did not ask that you want to make sure
00:50:56.820gets included gosh i don't think so um go to your next school board meeting and download my podcast
00:51:03.720and pedodoxin yes in that order molly thank you for being here and thanks for all you're doing i'm
00:51:12.000like genuinely so happy that that there are people like you in the world and in this fight and in
00:51:18.320this thank you so much for having me i had a good time sorry i made us both cry no this was i needed