Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to will Kate f Daily
Speaker 1: with Meet your Girl Danielle Moody, recording from the Home Bunker. Folks, God,
Speaker 1: you know I have to say this that I know
Speaker 1: that it's Tuesday, but over the weekend, the news that
Speaker 1: came out about Donald Trump his hate rally and referring
Speaker 1: to immigrants and migrants as animals and saying that there
Speaker 1: is going to be a bloodbath if he's not elected,
Speaker 1: and it's like, folks, how much more information do you
Speaker 1: fucking need? That this man is a fuck the game
Speaker 1: like dictator, Nazi, you know, authoritarian in the making. He
Speaker 1: was caught on a hot mic saying, you know, Kim
Speaker 1: Jong UN's people like when he talks, like they listen,
Speaker 1: And that's what I want. He's a fucking dictator, a
Speaker 1: pariah on the world stage. But all you want is
Speaker 1: absolute fucking power and people kissing your ring and your feet,
Speaker 1: and you being thought of as the most intelligent, the
Speaker 1: best looking, the thinnest, the most athletic, right genius that
Speaker 1: ever walked the face of this earth. Except guess what,
Speaker 1: that would be a fucking lie, because for the rest
Speaker 1: of us that live on Earth two, that's not where
Speaker 1: we are. I'm calling it Earth two now, folks, because
Speaker 1: you know, I know that they'll say Earth one is
Speaker 1: the original Earth. Earth two. No, because I want to
Speaker 1: get the fuck I want them to have Earth one.
Speaker 1: Do you know what I'm saying. I want to be
Speaker 1: somewhere else because it is just getting to be so
Speaker 1: fucking much to take in, and the media is once
Speaker 1: again failing, failing, failing. I see headlines like, oh, Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: you know, uh speaks out of turn or goes off script. No,
Speaker 1: you fucking idiots, He's not going off script. Being an
Speaker 1: authoritarian is the script, that's the play, and to not
Speaker 1: call it out, to not say what it is, is
Speaker 1: fucking malpractice. I just I'm beside myself. I'm beside myself.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make any sense. It really doesn't. Continuing on
Speaker 1: the theme of Donald Trump and just, you know, not
Speaker 1: making any sense, is that, you know, basically he can't
Speaker 1: come up with the money that uh Tis James was
Speaker 1: awarded in the New York fraud case. He needs in
Speaker 1: order to be able to appeal the decision of four
Speaker 1: hundred and I believe fifty four million dollars. In order
Speaker 1: to appeal that you have to post the bond for
Speaker 1: that exact amount of money. Well, if you're keeping track
Speaker 1: at home, he already posted a bond of ninety one
Speaker 1: point whatever million dollars for the Egene Carroll case to
Speaker 1: appeal that, so that she wouldn't get that money, right,
Speaker 1: But he can't come up with the four hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty four million, and you sure as fuck can't go
Speaker 1: to the same people. And so his attorneys are saying, well,
Speaker 1: you know, they'd they've faced some considerable hurdles. Yeah, those
Speaker 1: hurdles are a whole bunch of no's. You know why,
Speaker 1: because he's not fucking good for it. So how is
Speaker 1: it that Donald Trump's attorneys at once walts into a
Speaker 1: courtroom and say that he is a multi billionaire, but
Speaker 1: you can't come up with half a billion? So one
Speaker 1: of these things ain't right.
Speaker 2: He's not a.
Speaker 1: Multi billionaire because even if it was tied up in
Speaker 1: other assets, you could essentially put up right something else
Speaker 1: as saying, well, this is the value of X, so
Speaker 1: I can put that up as a bod He don't
Speaker 1: have it, folks. It is just the place that we
Speaker 1: are in, right, like the place that we are in
Speaker 1: that we continually find ourselves. For me is just I'm exhausted.
Speaker 1: I'm exhausted most days. You know. It's like the weekends
Speaker 1: come and go. They feel like they happen within a
Speaker 1: blink of an eye. And I honestly, I would like
Speaker 1: to go backwards right Like I would like to just
Speaker 1: take a time machine. Which is why, you know, frankly,
Speaker 1: I'm excited for my next guest coming up. Uh Susie Banikarim,
Speaker 1: who is the Emmy Award winning journalist behind the podcast
Speaker 1: in Retrospec where each week her alongside New York Times
Speaker 1: editor Jessica Bennett, revisit a pop culture moment from the
Speaker 1: eighties and nineties that shaped them to try and understand
Speaker 1: what it taught us about the world and a woman's
Speaker 1: place in it. And I thought to myself, like, how
Speaker 1: fun is this? Right? Because who didn't love the eighties
Speaker 1: and the nineties and so many moments that like, when
Speaker 1: we look back at them, we're like, wow, this was
Speaker 1: like a moment. How do we think about it now?
Speaker 1: And through which lens are we actually looking at it with?
Speaker 1: So Susie and I get into really good conversation about
Speaker 1: her pod, but also about politics in general and the
Speaker 1: ways in which we look at things in the responsibility
Speaker 1: of journalism. So I'm really excited for you to hear
Speaker 1: that conversation, which is coming up next. Folks. I am
Speaker 1: very excited to welcome to OOKF Daily for the very
Speaker 1: first time, Susie Banakurem, who is the host of the
Speaker 1: podcast In Retrospect, who is an Emmy winning journalist and filmmaker,
Speaker 1: and also directed the twenty twenty documentary Enemies of the People,
Speaker 1: Trump and the Political Press. So, Sissy, first, I would
Speaker 1: like to talk about your documentary because I think that
Speaker 1: where we are right now, where my anger is and remains,
Speaker 1: is in what seems like the mainstream media's inability to
Speaker 1: handle a character, a figure like Donald Trump. And so
Speaker 1: talk to us about your twenty twenty documentary film and
Speaker 1: what you learned.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think that Donald Trump is a
Speaker 2: fairly unique figure in American history, and the press just
Speaker 2: really has never figured out how to cover him as
Speaker 2: a political candidate. In the beginning, they treated him like
Speaker 2: he was an oddity, like a joke. He was fun,
Speaker 2: he was good for ratings, so they gave him a
Speaker 2: lot of attention, thinking he wasn't a serious candidate, and
Speaker 2: once he became a serious candidate, they didn't really do
Speaker 2: a good job of adjusting, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: It's like they don't adapt in that era in the
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen election very quickly to the fact that now
Speaker 2: he's the front runner and they do have to treat
Speaker 2: him like a serious candidate, and they have to ask
Speaker 2: serious questions about the policies he's presenting, the way he's
Speaker 2: presenting them, And so he gets kind of this past
Speaker 2: in the twenty sixteen election, right, he gets to do
Speaker 2: a lot of things that no normal candidate would be
Speaker 2: able to do, which is like just give endless speeches.
Speaker 2: He gets tons of free airtime, he says lots of
Speaker 2: controversial things. But you know, when I made the film,
Speaker 2: the sort of premise of it is that I went
Speaker 2: back right after the election in twenty seventeen and I
Speaker 2: asked a bunch of people who had either covered him
Speaker 2: or who had made coverage decisions about them, what do
Speaker 2: they feel they might have done differently. So I interviewed
Speaker 2: Jeff Zucker from CNN. I interviewed Maggie Haberman from The Times.
Speaker 2: I interviewed people from The Washington Post, from all across
Speaker 2: the media, and you know, almost instantly they did say
Speaker 2: that there were things they would have done differently. But
Speaker 2: now we're watching this election and I think there are
Speaker 2: some things they're doing differently, but not enough. And the
Speaker 2: one that I find most frustrating, to be honest, is
Speaker 2: there's this thing that happens in media, especially on cable media,
Speaker 2: where a lot of Americans still get their primary news,
Speaker 2: which is that the news media feels like to be balanced,
Speaker 2: quote end quote balanced, they have to give equal negative
Speaker 2: airtime to both candidates. And because Trump is such a
Speaker 2: chaotic candidate, because he does so many crazy things in
Speaker 2: a row, nothing really sticks to him because no one
Speaker 2: can figure out what is it is he's doing. But
Speaker 2: then one narrative ends up sticking to his opponents in
Speaker 2: a way that kind of crushes them. So in the
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen campaign, that was Hillary's emails. They couldn't really
Speaker 2: think of a lot of other things to talk about
Speaker 2: with Hillary. There wasn't news breaking about her every day.
Speaker 2: She wasn't calling for a Muslim band one day and
Speaker 2: then you know, talking about, you know, the menstrual cycle
Speaker 2: of a Fox News host the next day. Right, she
Speaker 2: just wasn't doing these sort of really chaotic things, and
Speaker 2: so whenever they had to talk about her, they really
Speaker 2: only had this one issue to talk about. How much
Speaker 2: were the email is going to matter, how much was
Speaker 2: it going to stick to her? What was the FBI
Speaker 2: going to do about it? And what we're seeing in
Speaker 2: this cycle is that same pattern, but with Biden's age,
Speaker 2: so they don't know what else to talk about with Biden.
Speaker 2: He's not particularly chaotic, He's not doing crazy things. He's
Speaker 2: kind of a boring candidate if you're press person who
Speaker 2: wants like an exciting story to cover. So they're just
Speaker 2: hammering him on age when Trump is frankly showing a
Speaker 2: lot of the same you know issues that Biden is
Speaker 2: on age, right. I mean he's also forgetful and mixes
Speaker 2: things up, but they don't talk about that with him
Speaker 2: because every day he comes out and gives some sort
Speaker 2: of press conference, and every day there's a new court filing,
Speaker 2: and I think people can't keep track of it the
Speaker 2: way we do, right. People aren't as like plugged in,
Speaker 2: and so all they hear is that Biden is old
Speaker 2: and the Trump is just being chaotic like he usually is,
Speaker 2: and that is not a fair comparison of what's happening
Speaker 2: in the in the sort of political sphere.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the recent decision that came
Speaker 1: down from the Supreme Court and a nine to zero decision,
Speaker 1: which was the Colorado case that kind of started the
Speaker 1: domino effect of states removing Donald Trump from a ballot
Speaker 1: given the Constitution, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the participation in
Speaker 1: an insurrection. And the Supreme Court comes down and says, no,
Speaker 1: no states rights. And this is me at living States
Speaker 1: rights really only exist if you are a red state
Speaker 1: governor taking away people's rights right and flooding your state
Speaker 1: with guns. Outside of that, we get to decide what
Speaker 1: a state can and cannot do. And that is the
Speaker 1: decision that they made in Colorado that said no, Donald
Speaker 1: Trump is going to be eligible and be on the ballot.
Speaker 1: And Amy Coney Barrett, one of my least favorite justices,
Speaker 1: had the audacity to talk about in the decision that
Speaker 1: we need to bring America together, right, yes, and that
Speaker 1: this decision, you know, we need to be thoughtful about
Speaker 1: how we bring together America. Is that right?
Speaker 2: Amy?
Speaker 1: So here we are we're following that decision. Donald Trump
Speaker 1: got wall to wall coverage for his beach on interrupted,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, flanked by a bevy of American flags, talking
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of hot trash, right, that presidents deserve
Speaker 1: absolute immunity. They can't do their job otherwise. I don't know,
Speaker 1: because I'm pretty sure the forty four that came before
Speaker 1: him weren't abject criminals, right, yes, And so here we are,
Speaker 1: and I'm sitting back and I had to turn my
Speaker 1: TV off because I don't like to have that kind
Speaker 1: of negativity inside my home. Right, Like my blood pressure
Speaker 1: is I enough?
Speaker 2: Your TV is gonna be awful lot this same right, Right.
Speaker 1: So when I think about what the press has learned
Speaker 1: in that moment, I see that they've learned absolutely fucking nothing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely nothing. So it's a rough one. That one
Speaker 2: is a real rough one, right, because this is a
Speaker 2: perfect example of how Donald Trump knows how to manipulate
Speaker 2: the media. He knows that they have to take his reaction.
Speaker 2: He has found that they no longer take his political rally.
Speaker 2: They've sort of got his number on that they know
Speaker 2: he's just going to spat a bunch of lies. So
Speaker 2: unlike twenty sixteen, where he could just every time he
Speaker 2: did a political rally. He just got endless coverage on
Speaker 2: cable TV. This time, he's not getting that. So what
Speaker 2: he's figured out, though, is that if he does press
Speaker 2: conferences related to the court cases, the news media feels
Speaker 2: like they have to take those because they're newsworthy in quotes, right,
Speaker 2: They feel like it's a product of the news rather
Speaker 2: than a campaign rally. And you know, that's debatable because
Speaker 2: what Trump does with these speeches is not illuminate the trial,
Speaker 2: you know, decision in any way, or the court decision
Speaker 2: in any way. He just uses it as a campaign
Speaker 2: platform and talks about all sorts of things, Like on
Speaker 2: that day with the Supreme Court ruling, he was talking
Speaker 2: about migrant crime, which, as we know, you and I
Speaker 2: both know, there is no spike in migrant crime. In fact,
Speaker 2: migroant crime percentage wise, is less than the overall population.
Speaker 2: But he gets to put in these talking points that
Speaker 2: he knows actually resonate, right. I mean, I think the
Speaker 2: thing about Trump is is that he's you know, not
Speaker 2: all there in some ways, right. I mean, I think
Speaker 2: you know, he calls his wife by a different name.
Speaker 2: He confuses Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley, he's often referring
Speaker 2: to the president as Obama. But what he's always been
Speaker 2: really good at as a candidate is messaging and finding
Speaker 2: like a thing to say that sort of breaks through
Speaker 2: the noise, and he just says it over and over
Speaker 2: again until people on his side and also people in
Speaker 2: the middle right, who frankly are the ones who decide elections,
Speaker 2: start to believe the thing. And so migrant crime, this
Speaker 2: idea that there's a migrant crime wave. He's done a
Speaker 2: pretty good job of making people believe that that's a thing, right,
Speaker 2: And so when the news media just airs these speeches
Speaker 2: and doesn't interrupt them, or doesn't you know, wait until
Speaker 2: he's given them, and just air a couple of soundbites,
Speaker 2: they are playing into his games again. And I really
Speaker 2: don't understand it. I mean, and I think one of
Speaker 2: the worst examples of this was when CNN put him
Speaker 2: live on a town hall. You know, It's just was crazy.
Speaker 2: I was like, did you guys literally just not pay
Speaker 2: attention to the twenty sixteen election? Were you sleeping for that?
Speaker 2: And you know, the president who of CNN at that
Speaker 2: time is no longer there, so I mean, maybe he
Speaker 2: wasn't up for the job in more ways than one.
Speaker 2: But I was really shocked by that decision. And you know,
Speaker 2: no amount of fact checking changes the visuals that you describe, right,
Speaker 2: what you were just describing standing in front of the
Speaker 2: American flag like poly si one oh one, that the
Speaker 2: image you present, I mean, that's a real Reagan you
Speaker 2: know lesson, right is it almost doesn't matter what you're saying.
Speaker 2: Sometimes if the visuals are presidential, if they are validating,
Speaker 2: if they give him a sense of authority, that is
Speaker 2: huge for him. And I think that is really you know,
Speaker 2: something that if you're a political reporter you're not thinking
Speaker 2: about and you're not thinking about actively, you're not doing
Speaker 2: your job anymore. Like we know who this candidate is.
Speaker 2: It's time to really think about that in a clear way.
Speaker 1: And so my thing too is that I don't say
Speaker 1: don't air Donald Trump. What I'm saying is exactly what
Speaker 1: you mentioned, which is you know that he's going to
Speaker 1: give a presser, right, Yeah, So your job should be
Speaker 1: to record that presser, go through it with fact check,
Speaker 1: and then pair it down into the clips that people
Speaker 1: are going to take in with analysis. That's responsible journalism.
Speaker 2: And only to the things that are relevant to the case,
Speaker 2: like why are they airing things about all these other
Speaker 2: campaign issues he wants to talk about. He'll make a
Speaker 2: statement about the Supreme Court case he did at the top,
Speaker 2: and then everything else he said was just him enjoying
Speaker 2: his time in front of the.
Speaker 1: Camera exactly, you know, exactly.
Speaker 2: That, And I don't think it educates anyone or informs anyone.
Speaker 2: So if you think of your role as a journalist
Speaker 2: not just to entertain, which I think you know a
Speaker 2: bit of a danger in the twenty sixteen coverage, then
Speaker 2: you know you have a responsibility to do it differently.
Speaker 2: And I think what's hard for me is that I do,
Speaker 2: you know, have a lot of friends and colleagues at
Speaker 2: CNN who I respect, who I think do think about
Speaker 2: these issues deeply, But I think you know, either their
Speaker 2: voices aren't always heard or also, in the chaos of
Speaker 2: breaking news, lots of decisions get made that aren't thoughtful,
Speaker 2: and that really concerns me because, as we know from
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, it has a real impact on the country
Speaker 2: when the information people are getting is not high quality,
Speaker 2: and that's just not high quality content.
Speaker 1: What blows my mind about the decisions that are made
Speaker 1: whether it is breaking news or just segments in general
Speaker 1: for regular shows. Is that Donald Trump has outright gone
Speaker 1: after media. Right. There were pipe bombs that were sent
Speaker 1: to CNN, right, like we forget these things. He has
Speaker 1: said that president again that he is going to bankrupt
Speaker 1: or shut down MSNBC. Right. Free press has no place
Speaker 1: in a dictatorship. And so you would think that for
Speaker 1: your own self preservation media networks, that you would then
Speaker 1: cover this person as the real threat to our democracy
Speaker 1: and to your job, right, because it in dictatorships, in
Speaker 1: communist countries and authoritarian regimes. You know what channel they got,
Speaker 1: They got one, They got one state run television, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, And if it was up to Trump, we would
Speaker 2: just have Fox, and he would own Fox. I mean
Speaker 2: that's the truth, you know, And I think you know
Speaker 2: what's interesting about that is that, you know, I don't
Speaker 2: think that the press sees this in that clear a way, right.
Speaker 2: They don't see it as like, oh, this is a
Speaker 2: threat to us, because on some love, most people just
Speaker 2: believe in the norms, right, They believe in the institutions.
Speaker 2: They may not think they do, they may think they're skeptical,
Speaker 2: but the reality is we've lived in America a long time,
Speaker 2: and so you know, Americans tend to sort of just
Speaker 2: believe that things will somehow work out, that Donald Trump
Speaker 2: won't be able to prevail against these institutions. But you know,
Speaker 2: I come from Iran, so I don't have that kind
Speaker 2: of certainty, you know what I mean, Like, I was
Speaker 2: born in a country where things do fall apart, and
Speaker 2: so I know that countries do go through really like
Speaker 2: negative transformations, like it is possible for Donald Trump and
Speaker 2: as we've seen even the results of the twenty sixteen election,
Speaker 2: to have a really negative impact on democracy. But it's
Speaker 2: really hard, I think for people to wrap their head
Speaker 2: around that. Even well intentioned, good reporters sometimes struggle with
Speaker 2: that dichotomy because they are just used to covering things
Speaker 2: in a very traditional way and they don't know how
Speaker 2: to make this adjustment without feeling or being accused in
Speaker 2: a bad faith accusation of being biased. So it's this
Speaker 2: crazy thing where the idea of balance and lack of
Speaker 2: bias objectivity as we're sort of taught in journalism schools,
Speaker 2: is weaponized against journalists. So they don't know how to
Speaker 2: cover Trump because they're like, oh, I'm not objective if
Speaker 2: I call him a liar. I'm not objective if I
Speaker 2: say that he's having this mental decline, but that's just
Speaker 2: the reality of what they're seeing. Your job as a
Speaker 2: journalist is to tell people what you're seeing. You know,
Speaker 2: that's not biased, to call things what they are. And
Speaker 2: I don't know if you remember in twenty sixteen, it
Speaker 2: took them months and months and months to even call
Speaker 2: lies lies. There was so much debate about it, So
Speaker 2: we call a lie lie. The New York Times like
Speaker 2: came out with all this sort of like justification for
Speaker 2: why they didn't call them lies. And you know, now,
Speaker 2: at least, I guess we should be grateful we have
Speaker 2: that they at least say when he's lying. But even
Speaker 2: that they do pretty sparingly just wild kids. He lies,
Speaker 2: Like I'd say, he probably tells more lies than truths
Speaker 2: in any given speech.
Speaker 1: I want to go back to you mentioning your roots
Speaker 1: in Iran, and so that makes you understand the fact
Speaker 1: that countries lose their way, right like government doesn't remain staple.
Speaker 1: There is instability that happens. And I want to ask
Speaker 1: you one like, I'm not sure when you left when
Speaker 1: you left Iran, but you know, what we learned here
Speaker 1: in America through the protests that had been going on
Speaker 1: for over you know, well over a year, was that,
Speaker 1: you know, prior to the mid nineteen seventies, Iran had
Speaker 1: been a place that was flourishing right until religious zealous
Speaker 1: took over and completely destroyed freedoms there. Can you just
Speaker 1: give us like your thoughts on that and the lack
Speaker 1: of ability for Americans I think to have a madination
Speaker 1: beyond what it is that they know. Do you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying to imagine that something could end?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, listen, I want to be clear that
Speaker 2: Iran is a complicated country with a lot of geopolitical
Speaker 2: forces that are obviously very different from America. I don't
Speaker 2: want to make it sound like I don't know the
Speaker 2: difference between those two places. I left Iran when I
Speaker 2: was very young. I left at the revolution. My father,
Speaker 2: you know, was in a senior position and was put
Speaker 2: under house arrest. We had to sort of escape from
Speaker 2: Iran essentially. And I think you know, one thing that's
Speaker 2: worth noting is that Iran, even before this religious regime
Speaker 2: wasn't a democracy, right, There was still a king, there
Speaker 2: was a shaw, So you know, there were lots of
Speaker 2: issues with that government as well, but certainly far more freedoms.
Speaker 2: I mean the Iran my parents described to me as
Speaker 2: a child, like women did not have to wear a
Speaker 2: head job, which is a covering over their head. You know,
Speaker 2: women could drive, women could you know, I mean women,
Speaker 2: which I know these sound like basic rights, but those
Speaker 2: are rights that in a lot of Middle Eastern countries
Speaker 2: women do not have. Right in Saudi Arabia, women can't drive,
Speaker 2: et cetera. And so I think what I learned from
Speaker 2: sort of hearing my parents' stories about this life that
Speaker 2: they had that was like really fun and there were
Speaker 2: like parties and this very like Western life, and then
Speaker 2: all of a sudden they see the sort of stirrings
Speaker 2: of this revolution, and they don't take it seriously, right,
Speaker 2: They sort of do the same thing that I'm describing,
Speaker 2: which is they just sort of assume that this is
Speaker 2: noise and that the institutions will somehow survive them, whether
Speaker 2: or not those institutions were perfect to sort of beside
Speaker 2: the point. They just believed in the sort of momentum
Speaker 2: of life that if you're going a certain way, that
Speaker 2: things will continue that way. And they were genuinely shocked
Speaker 2: when the revolution resulted in this religious regime that completely
Speaker 2: tore the country apart. And listen, I don't know that
Speaker 2: I think America can become what Iran is. I don't
Speaker 2: think it can, right. I mean, that's a very specific thing.
Speaker 2: But you know, look, people said in the twenty sixteen
Speaker 2: election that there was no difference. There were people like,
Speaker 2: let's say, Susan Sarandon, who I know gets more heat
Speaker 2: than probably she deserves because she's not, like, you know,
Speaker 2: the person who decided the election. But there were people
Speaker 2: who said Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were the same,
Speaker 2: that voting for one versus the other wouldn't make a difference,
Speaker 2: that it was all the same, sort of like corporate politics. Well,
Speaker 2: we see that that's just not true, right. We see
Speaker 2: it in the reproductive rights issues that have come up
Speaker 2: since then. We see it in the way the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court is stacked to sort of push conservative issues. We
Speaker 2: see it in terms of, you know, the income disparity
Speaker 2: that grew under the Trump administration. So it does make
Speaker 2: a difference who you vote for. And I think that
Speaker 2: is really complicated for Americans because we believe in the democracy.
Speaker 2: The story of America so much or not necessarily we
Speaker 2: you and me, but people in general tend to really
Speaker 2: have faith in that people, especially who those systems have
Speaker 2: mostly worked for, So they tend to not have the
Speaker 2: imagination for what could come. And I think that's why
Speaker 2: so many of them were actually surprised when Roe was overturned,
Speaker 2: when people who'd been paying attention had been saying for
Speaker 2: years that that was going to be the result.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's just you know, I think that
Speaker 1: what I encourage, at least on this show is for
Speaker 1: there to be a level of consciousness and understanding about
Speaker 1: the possibilities, right, and to stop living in a place
Speaker 1: of assumptions that things will just hold. The systems. Oh,
Speaker 1: the systems held even though Donald Trump was president the
Speaker 1: first time. And I'm like, did the systems really?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Did they hold?
Speaker 1: Right? But who thinks that there was Like they held
Speaker 1: so much as a sieve holds liquid, right, Like, you know,
Speaker 1: so the buildings didn't crumble, like if that's what we mean.
Speaker 1: So I do think that it's important to have clarity,
Speaker 1: but to understand and to imagine the possibilities of you know,
Speaker 1: the directions that things can take. Susie with you know,
Speaker 1: last question for you, I just want to give you
Speaker 1: the opportunity to tell folks about your podcast, your iHeart
Speaker 1: podcast in Retrospect and what you discuss, what they can
Speaker 1: expect and why they should tune in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd love to talk about that, and I would
Speaker 2: love for people to listen to it. I co host
Speaker 2: the podcast with my friend Jessica Bennett. It is very
Speaker 2: different from what we've talked about today. It's not politics.
Speaker 2: It's pop culture, which is another thing that I really love,
Speaker 2: but it is media criticism. So there is a thread
Speaker 2: which is, you know, we look back at stories from
Speaker 2: the eighties and nineties, that's why it's called in Retrospect
Speaker 2: that we loved, you know, pop culture moments, and we
Speaker 2: re examine them to sort of ask ourselves, how did
Speaker 2: the media cover them at the time, What were the
Speaker 2: ways which we viewed them at that young, younger age,
Speaker 2: and how do we see them differently. So one of
Speaker 2: my favorite episodes is actually about Robin Gibbons and the
Speaker 2: sort of way in which she was really vilified by
Speaker 2: the press at that time. You know, there's this moment,
Speaker 2: this very famous moment where her and Mike Tyson given
Speaker 2: interviewed to ABC News, and she admits he's abusing her,
Speaker 2: and the result of that is not that he is
Speaker 2: sort of condemned, but that she is condemned, and that
Speaker 2: she is literally called on the cover of People magazine
Speaker 2: the most hated woman in America. So those are the
Speaker 2: kinds of things we're looking at. Some of them are
Speaker 2: more fun and some of them are a little more serious.
Speaker 2: We're doing one coming up on Miss America and Vanessa
Speaker 2: Williams and how she was the first Miss Black America
Speaker 2: and you know, she was dethroned essentially at the end
Speaker 2: of her reign. We did one recently on devil Ware's Prada,
Speaker 2: which is a movie I really love and in the
Speaker 2: two thousands, and about how ambition is part of that
Speaker 2: story and what it means about our ambission and how
Speaker 2: we saw it when we were younger, and how we
Speaker 2: think about our emission now. So it's a way to
Speaker 2: talk about sort of a broad set of issues through
Speaker 2: a pop culture.
Speaker 1: Lens love it so much, and the next time that
Speaker 1: you come back, I hope that we dive into one
Speaker 1: of those many topics because I love every single one
Speaker 1: of the episodes. As you just laid out, and I
Speaker 1: often think about films. I rewatch movies all the time,
Speaker 1: and so I'm looking at it through my present lens
Speaker 1: versus when they came out. As always like a really
Speaker 1: interesting way to see your own personal evolution, but also
Speaker 1: how society has evolved as well.
Speaker 2: Totally, that's very much sort of the premise of the show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you so much for making the time for
Speaker 1: Woke AF and I hope that you come back and
Speaker 1: join us again soon.
Speaker 2: Susie, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: That is it for me today. Dear friends on Woke
Speaker 1: a f as always, power to the people and to
Speaker 1: all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as
Speaker 1: fun