What was the first day like?

So the first day was, it was 2018, and so the Me Too movement was kind of really in full swing.

Like, every single day it felt like there was a story of somebody famous who had been poorly behaved and was getting in trouble for it.

And covering, like, gender and politics and, like, sex in society was kind of my beat at The Daily Beast, and so I think part of the reason they brought me in was because I brought in a sort of, like, dimension of experience when it came to actually taking in a lot of these stories and analyzing these stories and speaking with people involved in the stories.

So it was the middle of Me Too, and they gave us a speech before that was like, [laughs] "So guys, we get a little rough in here sometimes." I mean, 'cause it's a...

It- you're pitching jokes.

Like, and it's a show about awful people doing awful things to each other, and it's written in a way that kind of takes glee in doing harm to these awful people.

What's the future of it?

Interesting.

And so while I- Think, I think for me, believe women means take it seriously when women make serious accusations.

But taking it seriously means seriously investigating it and looking into who is saying it.

What is, what would the purpose of this story...

Is there a possible negative purpose of this story? Like, we all remember when Joe Biden was accused of rape by a woman who turned out to be probably a Russian asset.

You know, like, there was, and there was a contingent of people on the left that are like, "I thought you said believe women.

I thought you said believe women." It's like, well, we can believe women and also acknowledge that there can be fishy stories.

Oh, boy

At this point, where does the Ovan fit into the manosphere?

Well, I think something that's different about Theo Vaughn that is both insidious and not insidious, because he's not like as toxic as some of the more extreme voices on the Manosphere.

I would never like group him with Andrew Tate.

know, he might interview Andrew Tate, but I wouldn't put them in the same category.

I think what is insidious about Theo Vaughn is, you know, I've listened to several episodes of his show.

It hurt my brain, but there's something very charming and he can actually be kind of funny on the fly in his interviews.

Like he sometimes has very funny comebacks.

And it's still just, no, I'm going to do the bare minimum path of absolute least resistance and just like let the shitstorm envelop me and become one with it.

And we're not going to survive without that, you know? Yeah.

Yeah, I once had this conversation with like a male editor of mine where I was talking about salary.

And I came into the conversation like asking for something and like talking about why I didn't deserve.

I don't know.

And he was like, you're acting like when Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.

Elmer Fudd gets tricked into like arguing against himself by Bugs Bunny.

And that was like a real teaching moment because everything that can be described in Looney Tunes is like easier for me to understand.

He loves a big

Like how do you de-escalate? How do you get people out of the cult? Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know.

And the thing about how Governor Shapiro responded to the infant's deaths felt very human to me.

Like, he's angry.

He lashes out a little bit.

But I also think that politically speaking, maybe that's not the move for a political communicator.

You know, like, I'm a podcaster.

Do you think it is a good strategy for Democrats to try and co-opt in some fashion? And is it possible for them to?

Yes

...

Merrill Lynch, uh, a- Merrill Lynch was purchased by Bank of America.

Uh, Lehman Brothers was allowed to collapse.

And on Monday, I went to work at Merrill Lynch with, to a headline of the newspaper that said Merrill [laughs] is bought by Bank of America.

It was very surreal.

But you know, both candidates suspended their presidential campaigns in 2008, and up until that point, it had been very neck and neck.

[laughs]

I'm curious to hear, Erin, what concerns you have about these events, both for the animals involved and for the messages they're sending to children.

You actually, you raised a really good point in your previous anecdote that ties in closely to this.

And my experience is that children are so much more intelligent and savvy than we give them credit for, and that they are more likely to have sort of a gut reaction to say this doesn't feel right.

But then, you know, either two things can happen is the adults in their lives can normalize it for them.

where they can check themselves and think, wait a minute, is this something that I've normalized? Is this a behavior I've internalized? But it's funny, I saw that a lot at a recent reptile expo that I went to, is that some, I would say probably the large majority of folks who were attending are reptile or exotic animal enthusiasts who are there with specific purpose or specific reasons for going, but then there are a lot of foot traffic where it seems like this is a fun outing for the family for the long weekend or something like that.

And what I saw is that, you know, even though there are signs everywhere saying that these enclosures are temporary and that's why they're so small, is that I would overhear both kids and their parents who maybe hadn't been to an event like this before that were saying, man, this doesn't feel right.

Those enclosures look too small.

Yeah,

seem like

a great recipe for a happy society.

It's not.

It's not.

It doesn't work.

And let's talk about the most extreme example of it ever being tried in recent history.

And that was in Romania in the 60s.

just

cook.

Let it cook.

Exactly.

Let the Texans take care of Texas.

I think anything we can do behind the scenes as like national media figures or if you're from out of Texas or you're a person who used to live in Texas, I think it's good.

You can be involved by like donating money, but I don't think we need like giant Obama Center donations.

like, launch-type events being like, everyone vote for James Tallarico.

How did this go in this direction? I mean, like, this is the president coming around to his base, not the other way around.

Yeah.

You have a book, and you're sitting next to a table of women that are having a lively conversation, and it's super interesting, and they're really smart, and you're just glad that you're sitting there to overhear what they're saying.

So that's kind of what I was trying to, to build and over the last ...

It- We launched in 2018, so it, over the last eight years, we've kind of become this place where we have me, a co-host, sometimes we have a panel, sometimes we have guests, coming together to talk about the ways that politics, the news, and social issues intersect with our lived experiences as women.

Classic.

And something that I noticed that really disturbed me was that before you get on the air, so you, you have to get there like hours early, and then you do makeup, and then you just sit there and you wait, 'cause TV is extremely inefficient and I kinda hate doing it.

But, um, you'd sit there and wait in a green room and you'd be in a green room with other guests.

Some of the guests are people that are gonna be on the show with you.

Oh, wow.

And they had this enclosure that was honestly not bigger than the home office from which I'm talking to you today, and it included, like, a concrete hiding area.

Like, basically a concrete box that they could retreat into.

But what this jaguar was doing was just standing on top of this concrete box, which was covered in feces, and they were just pacing circles around that box the whole time.

And even though that little box, in theory, is somewhere to hide, like, this enclosure's open to visitors on all sides.

And what really struck me was thinking about even, like, my house cat.

I myself have a miniature micro panther, a black cat, living in my home.

Mm-hmm.

[laughs]

Because it is too cold, and they cannot stand it and, and, and like, persevere into what's awesome about it.

That's the same thing for California.

There are things that require you to persevere, and once you do, you get to experience the fact that, like, every day you walk out of the house and you don't have to be like, "Am I gonna die from what the weather..." [laughs] Like, is, i- is it gonna rain on me? Is it gonna snow on me? The fact that you get the sun 300 days a year.

the man is trying, I've never seen someone try so hard to be cool, to be popular, to be anything, and just fail so fucking spectacularly every single time he opens his mouth.

I will say that the bright side version of this, though, is that JD Vance tries so hard to do all of these things, and yet at the moment that he has the best opportunity to achieve them, all of his physicality is turning against him.

I mean, I certainly don't think it's going away for the AG, even if it's Todd Blanche and especially if it's Todd Blanche.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

There's a scarlet E that everybody in that position is going to wear until and unless that is actually released and people feel satisfied that there has been some accountability for what is listed in the Epstein files.

I think we can't discount the fact that it might have been primarily Epstein, but there are other ways that Bondi was likely disappointing to Trump.

She failed to secure the indictments of his enemies that were pretty much like legal impossibilities, you know, but she still wasn't able to get people thrown in jail and perp walked the way that Donald Trump envisioned.

Yeah, Tish James is still out there.

Yeah, she's still out there raining havoc down on the people of New York State.

Available now on Spotify.

The sight of him evokes the feeling of opening up the kitchen trash the day after somebody cleaned out the fridge: like a giant broccoli farted in the bin (laughs).

(laughs) A face so punchable that he's not allowed to attend boxing matches lest he distract the fighters.

Like many subjects of This Fucking Guy, Miller is a Trump gadfly, but unlike many previous subjects, Miller seems to actually believe what he's saying, or at least he wants us to believe that he believes what he's saying, because as he's alluded to in at least one interview, triggering the libs with his bad opinions is the only thing that gives his life meaning.

But I cannot stress enough that despite the fact that he tries very hard to shock people, the overall effect is tiresome.

(laughs)

... met shortly after she got a job working for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and then the Department of Homeland Security, where she played a role in convincing her bosses to adopt the family separation policy, AKA, the policy that led to that footage of migrant children in cages, crying out for their mothers, uh, which I guess Katie found pretty hilarious.

By the time Katie had made it to DHS, she was already well-known for her shameless lack of scruples and for the unholy trinity of traits possessed by all the Trump comms minions: immaturity, arrogance, and utter incompetence.

I just- I can't.

I didn't- I- it was, like, seconds after it happened and, like, the video was posted and I sh- I watched it and it was horrible.

It was ju- it was just a horrible thing.

And my first thought was just, you know, we knew there was a shooting event, right? At- at a university, and I thought that there would be, like, a lot of people who had been killed.

And when I found out that only one shot had been fired and it was the shot that I saw the video of, it was just- it kind of- I was like, "What's going on?" Like, "Why would anybody do this?" Like, "What's the- what's happening?" I really feel for his kids.

His kids are exactly the same age as my kids.

Like, exactly the same age.

Yeah.