0:00

Okay, so I am back with

0:02

Broad Palombo brought in. I recorded

0:04

or episode last Thursday. And.

0:06

Then on Saturday. To. Of

0:09

the media magnates we discuss

0:11

saw not episode very rudely.

0:14

Dropped. An unexpected you to collapse

0:16

of Taylor Lorenz Times Or is

0:18

it times or acts? Taylor and

0:20

Eggs lives of tic toc. This.

0:23

Was our generation's Nixon versus

0:25

Frost. Except. Or to

0:28

greatest public intellectuals were doing and

0:30

out over cold brew at sidewalk

0:32

cafe. In. Los Angeles and this

0:34

was obviously enough of a podcast

0:36

emergency to bring brought back. so

0:38

he's here. We're going to discuss

0:40

this historic events. If your premiums

0:42

schreiber Primo, you're going to hear

0:45

the whole the whole conversation. And

0:47

if you're free subscriber for email,

0:49

you're going to get a generous

0:51

preview. And if you want to hear

0:53

the whole thing, you can join us a blocking

0:55

reported.org and get access to all of our extra

0:57

content. Brad welcome back. Yanks but I don't know

0:59

how much for number of me see this truly was.

1:01

I think you were just looking for an excuse to

1:03

hang out with made. Maybe

1:05

I don't know. I was. Personally, I was shocked

1:08

when I saw this drop. What did you think?

1:10

Know I was shocked because on

1:12

blown off on both ends I'm

1:14

I'm surprised that each of them

1:16

did it right. So this is

1:19

oh totally. This is an interview/conversation

1:21

between two Iran's you know, the

1:23

liberal journalist who covers everything online

1:25

and lives of Tic Toc creator

1:27

Chaya right? Check. Oh wait, we.

1:30

Have to do a correction first. I got a

1:32

bunch of corrections after I put out the last

1:34

episode on our primo feed. it is higher not

1:36

share. We don't speak Hebrew obviously. We'd

1:38

allergies, That was an anti semitic a. Micro

1:41

aggression on our prefer to Michael

1:43

aggressions. So Higher

1:45

and Taylor actually got together, And

1:47

I'm surprised. I was kind of

1:49

surprised by this on two counts.

1:52

One, Taylor is the type that

1:54

complains about like platforming extremists, right?

1:56

But. in her view i mean lives of

1:59

to talk in her view was certainly

2:01

an extremist. And not only did she

2:03

interview her, but she just dropped the

2:05

full thing unedited, which shout out to

2:07

her, I actually think that's like the

2:09

best thing to do not like deceptively

2:11

edited or post it

2:13

with an accompanying fact check, but just

2:16

let viewers decide for themselves. I'm just

2:18

surprised that Taylor did this. And I

2:20

wonder how it's going over with her

2:22

fans and supporters. Okay, we're gonna get

2:24

back to that. But before we get to that,

2:27

did you notice, Brad, that these are

2:29

two greatest public public interest shows. They

2:31

are fucking twins. Are they not? They

2:34

do look kind of similar, but also it might

2:36

have helped in that

2:38

association that Hya was wearing

2:40

a t shirt with Taylor's face on

2:42

it in an odd position. Yeah,

2:44

not just any picture. This was this like

2:47

famous now meme photo of Taylor. She didn't

2:49

interview with I think one of the cable

2:51

networks or maybe it was like NBC or

2:53

something about online harassment and

2:56

she starts crying. And so there's

2:58

this unflattering photo of Taylor

3:00

that you know, has been turned into

3:02

a meme and highest shows up to

3:04

the interview with that on a fucking

3:07

t shirt and unboxed. It

3:09

kind of like so mean girl hilarious.

3:11

It's truly and mean spirited obviously, if

3:13

it's kind of hilarious, but it reminds

3:15

me of the Dr. Phil episode where

3:17

this dude showed up dressed as Dr.

3:19

Phil, shaved his head, copied

3:22

Dr. Phil's exact suit, put on

3:24

a fake mustache or whatever. And

3:26

then he responded to Dr. Phil's

3:28

attempt to interview him by impersonating

3:30

Dr. Phil back to Dr. Phil.

3:32

Okay, if Hya wanted to do

3:34

that, she would have had to wear it

3:36

in 95 on her own because yes, Taylor

3:38

is also wearing it in 95 during this

3:41

outside mask outside on a sunny day in

3:43

Los Angeles. What did you think of

3:45

that? Well, I think it's

3:47

kind of ridiculous and absurd at the same

3:49

time. Like it's her life and her body.

3:51

So if she wants her body, her choice.

3:54

Yeah. And I think she might have some

3:56

sort of immune condition or something that has

3:58

her immune system compromised. I'm still not sure.

4:00

that there's much scientific basis to be wearing

4:03

a mask outside when you're sitting six feet

4:05

away from somebody. But it's

4:08

the kind of thing I'd roll my eyes

4:10

at, but ultimately, she's not hurting anyone, I

4:12

guess. I do find it a little bit

4:14

indicative of her vibe.

4:17

Right. Well, the thing about Taylor in the

4:19

masking is, and thank God Jesse is not

4:22

here. He would just be like, say, you're

4:24

like nervously chewing on his hands. So

4:26

the thing about Taylor masking is she has

4:29

made such a big deal out of masking.

4:31

And a lot of her Twitter presence in

4:33

recent months, maybe even years, is

4:35

not, it's not even like her beat,

4:37

her online beat. She's really just talking

4:39

about COVID about she's really concerned about

4:41

long COVID because she says she's immunocompromised.

4:44

See, I wouldn't know because I've been

4:46

blocked since like 2019. Yeah. And

4:48

the thing that I find interesting about

4:50

this is like, at some point, I

4:52

wonder if she's going to give it

4:55

up because it's very performative at this

4:57

point, she masks to it seems like

4:59

almost every event. If she's on stage,

5:01

she'll be massed, although there is a

5:03

famous photo of her floating around with

5:05

all of these celebrities like Kathy Griffin,

5:07

like resistance, Lib celebrities, Kathy Griffin, Rosie

5:10

O'Donnell, Chrissy Teigen, I think

5:12

is in the photo and she's not massed. So

5:14

maybe she makes exceptions for eight listers. Or maybe

5:18

those are B or C listers. Anyway, so but I

5:20

do wonder, like, is she going to do this forever?

5:22

Is this it? Is she going to

5:25

be 80 years old continuing to mask because

5:27

she will not give it up?

5:29

She's not the only one though. There's an entire pocket

5:32

of TikTok that uncritically argues that

5:34

the pandemic never ended and never

5:36

meaningfully subsided, which of course is

5:39

like just belied by looking at

5:41

any graph of hospitalization or deaths,

5:43

but they take it. It's almost

5:46

like they're vaccine deniers. Like, no, the vaccine really

5:48

didn't work. They almost are. And

5:50

they're also just it's the same kind

5:52

of like vibes over facts thing

5:55

and they get down their own form

5:57

of conspiracy rabbit holes. And

5:59

it intersects. sex with kind of like

6:01

their rhetoric about marginalized identities oftentimes. So

6:03

oftentimes it's like disability tick-tock talking about

6:05

why you should still be masking in

6:07

2024. Now, of course, they're

6:12

just, they're speaking as if it's still March

6:14

of 2020 and the facts have changed, but

6:17

they've clung to this. And I think there's

6:19

probably an interesting psychological analysis to be done

6:21

as to why, like, why

6:24

do people cling to these things the same

6:26

way that I think, why do

6:28

we continue things that don't actually work in

6:30

terms of like TSA, right? Where, you know,

6:33

nine out of 10 things of contraband get

6:35

through, but we still take our shoes off

6:37

because it makes us feel safe. And I

6:39

wonder if some of this is

6:42

the same. Yeah, I would argue TSA is

6:44

because TSA is getting very generous funding.

6:46

But anyway, okay, so let's get to

6:48

the interview. We're going to play a

6:51

bunch of clips here, but before we get to that, what

6:53

was your overall impression of the interview?

6:55

My actual overall impression was that

6:57

Haya didn't come off well. And

6:59

actually this is an example of

7:02

how platforming an extreme figure, which

7:04

is something that some in progressive media

7:07

think shouldn't be done. Actually,

7:09

sometimes this is kind of the more

7:11

classic free speech position that I hold.

7:13

Sunlight can be the best form of

7:16

disinfectant. And I think that when Haya

7:18

was pushed even modestly on some of

7:20

her positions, she couldn't really explain things

7:23

or what it, it just

7:25

revealed her to be kind of

7:27

a surface level outrage activist without

7:30

much substance or nuance or

7:32

thought behind her arguments to me in

7:34

a way that I think isn't

7:37

shocking, but all has hasn't happened when

7:39

she's just done super friendly short form

7:41

interviews on Fox news or whatever. And

7:43

in that sense, I think Taylor came

7:46

off better for sure. Oh, absolutely.

7:48

Haya has never done a difficult interview and it

7:50

shows. Like she did get a few jabs in

7:52

and we'll get to those in the clips, but

7:55

no matter what you think about Taylor

7:57

or her journalism or her ethics. She

8:00

knows how to conduct a difficult

8:03

interview. She was prepared with difficult

8:05

questions. And aside from a few

8:07

moments, I thought she largely succeeded

8:10

in deflecting highest attempts to pull

8:12

a gotcha on her. Should we roll the first clip here? Okay,

8:14

yeah, let's roll the first clip. How do you kind

8:16

of square – I feel like you – or

8:19

at least I feel like you've spoken about free speech before

8:21

and the need for free speech and sort of

8:23

supported Elon Musk's sentiments in that area. Would

8:26

you say that you're a free speech supporter? Yeah. So

8:29

how do you serve being a

8:32

free speech supporter with wanting to

8:34

ban literature? What kind

8:36

of literature? Any kind of literature. I mean,

8:38

I would think that – What kind of literature am

8:40

I trying to ban? Oh, I thought you were just

8:42

trying to say that you've made an effort to get

8:44

books removed from school. What kind of books? Books

8:48

dealing with LGBTQ people and sex-logic media. No, that's not what I

8:50

said. Oh, so you're not trying to get any books banned from

8:52

school. That's not what I said either. Okay, so why don't you

8:54

explain to me how you're thinking about this? You just accused me

8:56

of wanting to ban books. What kind of books am I trying

8:59

to ban? You tell me. I'm

9:01

not trying to ban anything. You're not trying to ban any books. You

9:03

said I'm trying to ban both. How do you kind of remove books from libraries? From public

9:05

libraries. Okay. So

9:08

how do you

9:11

square your notion of free speech and

9:13

free expression and allowing all of that

9:15

stuff with wanting literature removed and wanting

9:17

access to information removed? What kind of

9:20

literature? You tell me. Porn. Gay

9:23

porn. Uh-huh. Yeah. So

9:25

first of all, Haya is trying

9:28

to ban books. I mean, I looked up

9:30

the definition of a book ban according to

9:32

PEN America, and that's any action to limit

9:34

access to a book that was previously available,

9:36

and that is absolutely what she and other

9:38

people are doing. And the books that she's

9:40

talking about, books like Genderqueer, I

9:42

happen to agree with her that that book

9:45

in particular is not appropriate for elementary and

9:47

middle school libraries, and it never should have

9:49

been there in the first place. I

9:51

am in favor of banning that book. I

9:53

will admit that. Like, Genderqueer was never intended

9:56

to be YA literature. It

9:58

is adult literature for adult... grown-ups

10:00

with graphic illustrations of

10:03

sex acts. It doesn't belong in elementary schools,

10:06

but Haya is denying that

10:08

she wants these book banned, which is false. Like, out

10:10

of one side of her mouth she's saying that she

10:13

doesn't want the books in schools, and on the other

10:15

side she's saying she doesn't support book bans. It's just

10:17

very confusing. And then she's pretending

10:19

that the books are gay pornography, which

10:21

is also false. The intention of pornography

10:23

– unlike I'm quoting from the dictionary

10:25

here – the intention of pornography is to

10:28

stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings.

10:30

So even if some of these books are

10:32

inappropriate for schools, and I think they are,

10:35

that's not what these books are.

10:37

They aren't gay porn, but she's

10:39

trying to act like schools have

10:42

copies of like, Caulkenballs magazine in

10:44

the library. No, they don't.

10:46

And that's actually a pretty good point,

10:48

because a book can simultaneously be sexually

10:50

explicit and contain, for example, one of

10:52

these books has like a diagram of

10:54

a blowjob, and

10:57

yet not be porn at the same

10:59

time. Because if it's meant to be

11:01

in there for story purposes or educational

11:04

purposes or something like that, then that's

11:06

not technically pornography. Now, you can still

11:08

argue it's inappropriate. That it's too sexually

11:11

explicit to be in a middle school

11:13

library or even a high school library,

11:15

but to call it gay porn is

11:18

obviously hyperbolic and misleading. I mean,

11:20

trust me, that's not what gay porn

11:23

looks like. But I can, on

11:26

the first point, I can kind of see,

11:28

I think this is a good example of

11:30

where the left and right are speaking past

11:32

each other, because it all depends on what

11:35

you define as a book band. If you

11:37

accept Pan America's definition, then absolutely, she's advocating

11:39

for book bands, I think the rights reluctance

11:41

to concede that framework is around the fact

11:44

that like, when we think book bands, we

11:46

think like Soviet Union legal restrictions on the

11:48

publication and distribution of a book, we don't

11:51

think that, you know,

11:53

if you can buy a book on Amazon and have it

11:55

on the next day delivered to your doorstep, is

11:57

it really banned just because it's removed from

11:59

a library? To me it's kind

12:01

of a semantic or language question.

12:04

It is unquestionable that Haya is

12:06

trying to remove books from school

12:08

libraries that she thinks is inappropriate.

12:10

But I don't know if I

12:12

view that. Look, to

12:14

some degree, a lot of

12:17

what Lives of TikTok does is

12:19

inconsistent with free speech advocacy, but

12:21

I'm not sure that inherently is

12:23

completely out of line with free

12:25

speech because basically everybody, including the

12:27

most diehard free speech supporters, would

12:29

agree that some books aren't appropriate

12:31

for middle school libraries. Then it's a

12:34

question of curation and drawing the line.

12:36

And I think Haya and

12:38

people in her camp draw the line

12:40

in an unreasonable place and mischaracterize a

12:42

lot of the material. But I don't

12:45

know if I view the entire endeavor

12:47

as illegitimate or hypocritical in the same way

12:49

that Taylor's trying to paint it. But at

12:52

the same time, I also have to say

12:54

that she was not able to

12:56

defend herself very well in this club, Haya.

12:58

She really couldn't respond

13:00

to these questions well. And it really

13:03

did seem that once she got poked

13:05

a little bit, her arguments

13:07

didn't really have a second layer to defend

13:10

herself. I don't think she's used to this

13:12

kind of scrutiny. No, I don't think

13:14

she is, which is because she spends her

13:16

time tweeting. And then every

13:18

once in a while she does a

13:20

friendly interview on Fox News. She's

13:22

an independent journalist, Katie, an independent

13:25

journalist. Okay, books come up again

13:27

later in the interview. I think we

13:29

should give kids porn in school, the

13:31

images of gay sex.

13:33

So I went to

13:35

public school. And in public school, at least

13:38

when I was growing up, we were absolutely

13:40

given literature, explaining

13:42

sex, educating people. You had pictures

13:44

of anal sex? Oh, absolutely. And

13:47

it actually talked about condom use.

13:49

What, great? God, I

13:51

mean, I don't remember,

13:53

but certainly probably middle school. I

13:56

think that's when we have sex. Okay, Taylor

13:58

and I are the same age. Contrary

14:00

to public opinion, she is not 57 years

14:03

old. She is in her late 30s. There

14:06

is no fucking way her Connecticut

14:09

public school showed

14:11

images of anal sex

14:13

to middle school students in sex ed. There's no

14:15

way. Sex ed was a huge... Brad, I know

14:17

that you were a zygote in

14:19

the 90s, but sex ed was a huge part of the

14:21

culture war in the 90s with battles

14:24

taking place all over the country

14:26

about comprehensive sex ed versus abstinence

14:28

based sex ed. If

14:30

Taylor said that she was taught to put

14:32

a condom on a banana in high school,

14:34

I would believe that. Even though

14:36

that shit, that didn't happen where I lived. But

14:39

pics of anal in middle school, no fucking

14:41

way. I asked around just

14:43

to make sure that maybe my school

14:46

wasn't the outlier here in schools outside

14:48

of rural North Carolina. We're showing middle

14:50

schoolers images of gay

14:52

sex or anal or straight

14:54

anal. No, no, this didn't

14:56

happen anywhere. Maybe in the

14:58

70s, but not the 90s. Anyway,

15:01

I just don't believe her when she says that. I'll

15:03

take your word for it. I was born in 1997, so

15:06

I don't have a lot of

15:08

insight to offer on that. I will say

15:10

my sex ed experience was... Let's

15:12

see, this would have been 2013, 2014

15:16

in high school in the suburbs

15:18

of Boston, basically. We

15:20

had basic sex ed in terms

15:23

of heterosexual sex. I don't really

15:25

think anything gay was

15:27

covered, but it

15:29

was like STD, pregnancy prevention, all

15:31

that. What I found interesting was

15:33

that Haya went on in the

15:35

interview to say not just that

15:37

she wants the books depicting gay

15:40

sex acts or other things removed,

15:42

but actually that all sex ed should

15:44

be removed from public schools because she

15:46

said she doesn't trust public school teachers

15:48

to do it. That maybe after they

15:50

remove it all, they can... They

15:53

can implement it again someday in a more reasonable

15:55

form, but in the short term, just

15:58

get rid of all sex ed. reasonable

16:00

form, like you have people like Haya appointed

16:02

to the board, and he wanted to include

16:04

it in sex ed. Well, what I find

16:06

a little head scratching about this, and to

16:08

be clear, this isn't like a Haya take,

16:10

this is kind of a

16:12

somewhat widespread in the religious

16:15

right take, like get sexed ed out

16:17

of public schools. But what I find

16:19

bizarre about this is that these are

16:21

the pro-life crowd, right? And what causes

16:23

abortion, unwanted pregnancies.

16:26

So one of the best things you

16:28

can do to reduce unwanted pregnancies is

16:30

to educate people about the different forms

16:32

of birth control and how procreation works.

16:35

I mean, you'd be surprised, you'd

16:37

kind of think that everybody has Google

16:39

at their fingertips, everyone would understand these

16:41

things. No, you'd be surprised by how

16:44

uninformed some of the public is, or

16:46

how they think the pullout method is

16:48

a legitimate form of birth control or

16:50

other kinds of things. So

16:54

even before Roe was

16:56

gone, even before changing in abortion laws,

16:59

we saw declines in the actual rate

17:01

of abortion, absent changes in the laws.

17:03

And a big reason, I suspect, was

17:05

the improved education and sex ed and

17:08

access to birth control. But

17:10

it is interesting that the same

17:12

people who are pro-life and involved

17:14

in that side of advocacy are

17:16

also anti-sex ed. It's never quite

17:18

seemed to make much sense to me that

17:21

you could hold both of

17:23

those positions simultaneously and not see

17:25

a contradiction. Well, yeah, I mean, this

17:27

has always been the tension in that, or the

17:29

contradiction in that argument that the

17:32

pro-life camp also wants abstinence-based education

17:34

because if you're teaching abstinence-based education,

17:36

you're not giving people the tools

17:38

that they might need in order

17:40

to safely have

17:42

sex. But that's because they don't want people

17:45

having sex. They don't want teenagers having sex,

17:47

which I, it's a position I think is

17:49

absolutely fine. I don't

17:51

think teenagers should really be having sex either,

17:53

but the problem is they're going to do

17:55

it. Yeah, it's just naive though.

17:57

It's just naive. It's totally naive. Overall

18:00

point is that Sex said the is

18:02

that the people who should be deciding

18:04

what is taught in sex said are

18:07

the experts sex Ed experts and a

18:09

high keeps pushing her and killers like

18:11

I can. I don't even have an

18:13

opinion on this because I'm not a

18:15

sec. Said experts are which I just

18:18

like. Come on, like you don't have

18:20

to have a certificate or a degree

18:22

to have an opinion on what schools

18:24

should be teaching kids about sex. Or

18:27

or players. Are going to have opinions on

18:29

us? The our aim and that's one of

18:31

the things that I don't I don't

18:33

like is sometimes I think you see

18:35

the salon and liberal or progressive media

18:37

is a overzealous appeal to experts and

18:39

then on the right you often see

18:41

kind of a total disregard for expertise

18:43

or an inherent suspicion of expertise. And

18:45

I think the best approach is probably

18:48

somewhere in the middle I think we

18:50

saw in the covert area. You can't

18:52

just take everything the experts say as

18:54

gospel rights, but you also had disbelieve

18:56

everything they say and believe everything. That's

18:58

a podcast burrow. With a microphone. Has

19:00

to say eyes or you'll end up

19:02

injecting. I broke his arm or bleed

19:04

seats. So

19:06

I agree with you. I don't think

19:08

that's like the whole, well, what qualifications

19:11

you have to say that this book

19:13

depicting a blow job isn't appropriate. I

19:15

mean, that's a little bit of a

19:17

silly argument because we all kind of

19:19

have an idea like common sense about

19:21

what's appropriate for kids and what's not

19:23

and just appealing to expertise. Is it

19:25

really going to convince anybody? But I

19:27

do find it interesting that Taylor. Is

19:30

is. Pending. To of pinning

19:32

higher down on taking these positions to their

19:35

logical extreme which is then get rid of

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all sex at I does so I don't

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know that that's something I had thought about

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that deeply before being pressed upon it and.

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It's. Or a that

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saw you get to listen to the

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rest of our conversations and to hear

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high response to the question of what

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to do about the transgender menace. Subscribe.

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At Blyton reported.org Hope you

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enjoyed. The previous.