Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to okay F Daily with
Speaker 1: Meet Your Girl Danielle Moody, recording live from our plot
Speaker 1: Stream studios in Times Square. Folks. I'm really excited about
Speaker 1: today's episode with our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel.
Speaker 1: So we're doing something a little bit different today, which
Speaker 1: is that we're going to do a live show inside
Speaker 1: of doctor Jonathan Metzel's class at Vanderbilt University and the
Speaker 1: class that he is teaching right now. One of them
Speaker 1: is COVID in the media. Essentially, how has the media
Speaker 1: functioned in the midst of a pandemic and has it
Speaker 1: shifted forever. The conversation is interesting that Jonathan and I
Speaker 1: have and you'll hear him, as a turn of events,
Speaker 1: interview me instead of me interviewing him. They think that
Speaker 1: what's really exciting about this conversation is one I don't
Speaker 1: get to talk with young people very often about how
Speaker 1: they are experiencing the world that we're living in as
Speaker 1: they are learning about the world that we are living
Speaker 1: in in the context of a university. And then also
Speaker 1: just given the opportunity to talk about what it's been
Speaker 1: like to be on the air for the past eighteen months.
Speaker 1: You know, we've made a lot of shifts at WOKEF
Speaker 1: and thankfully many of you have made those shifts with
Speaker 1: us as we've moved from studios, moved into a different
Speaker 1: transition of audio, and then now get to be back
Speaker 1: in a studio with all of our wonderful vaccinated folks.
Speaker 1: But what is really interesting during this time is I
Speaker 1: think the importance of media. And I've been talking about
Speaker 1: this since forever, since back on serious days and to
Speaker 1: now that the media, in my opinion, has a really
Speaker 1: important responsibility, as a responsibility to tell the truth, not
Speaker 1: to be impartial and not to be neutral, but to
Speaker 1: tell the truth. And I think that what has happened
Speaker 1: over the core of the last several years is that
Speaker 1: we have lost the idea of what it means to
Speaker 1: tell the truth in the desire to show both sides
Speaker 1: of the story, and the reality is that not every
Speaker 1: story has two sides. Frankly, the media did a disservice
Speaker 1: to us one discussing climate change. Think about our climate
Speaker 1: change conversations and how they would bring in both climate
Speaker 1: scientists that are telling us the truth about how ice
Speaker 1: caps are melting, waters are getting warmer, storms are hovering
Speaker 1: longer and causing more damage, and how all of this
Speaker 1: is because our climate is changing. And then in the
Speaker 1: same segment sometimes they would have on climate deniers that
Speaker 1: are saying, no, this is normal. It's totally fine that
Speaker 1: it's fucking snowing in June in some places, and that
Speaker 1: it's totally okay that fire season now lasts for several
Speaker 1: months and burns, you know, hundreds of thousands of acres.
Speaker 1: And the reality is is that because of that both
Speaker 1: sides is um, we've gotten to a really dangerous place
Speaker 1: in our society where we don't all have the same
Speaker 1: set of facts. You know, we thought it was funny
Speaker 1: ha ha ha when Kelly Ane Conway said, well, there
Speaker 1: are facts and then there are alternative facts. Well, no,
Speaker 1: actually they're fucking aren't. There's one set of facts, right,
Speaker 1: Like we all agree that the sky is blue, we
Speaker 1: all agree that gravity exists, we all agree right that
Speaker 1: water is wet, that it's not. There's not an alternative
Speaker 1: to those real, known, hard facts and truths. But as
Speaker 1: we have gone on in the media, because of the
Speaker 1: desire to get ratings and to have clickbait, they turned
Speaker 1: what should have been thoughtful conversations about analysis about where
Speaker 1: our society is headed on a myriad of topics. They
Speaker 1: turned it into a food fight, and because of that
Speaker 1: we are led completely astray and everyone is now in
Speaker 1: their corners. Right. There are those of us who listen
Speaker 1: to wokaf and who listened to and believe in doctors
Speaker 1: and science and truth. And then there are others that
Speaker 1: are now ingesting I don't know, huffing hydrogen peroxide in
Speaker 1: a nebulizer because some quack on a QAnon network told
Speaker 1: them that that will get rid of COVID, or are
Speaker 1: threatening to blow up hospitals because they won't give you
Speaker 1: a horse tranquilizer or horse hormones that, of course they
Speaker 1: wouldn't have at a fucking hospital that treats human beings
Speaker 1: because it's not a vet. Right. But we have lived
Speaker 1: in a place for way too long that we have
Speaker 1: allowed these conversations to be normalized when they should have
Speaker 1: never been. Right, think back way back when when the
Speaker 1: Obamas were coming into office and you had the entire
Speaker 1: tea party led by fucking Donald Trump, who was debating
Speaker 1: on whether or not Barack Obama was born in the
Speaker 1: United States, or debating on whether or not. He wasn't
Speaker 1: the Antichrist. Like all of those things sounded crazy then,
Speaker 1: but they were not pushed back against hard enough, and
Speaker 1: you gave voice and gave space too crazy, And now
Speaker 1: crazy is dictating our policy. Crazy is what has produced
Speaker 1: the Marjorie Taylor Greens and the Laura Boberts of the
Speaker 1: world that are now sitting in our Congress. Right. Those
Speaker 1: were the nut job fringe folks that are now sitting
Speaker 1: on committees and deciding legislation for the rest of us. Right.
Speaker 1: And so we are in a very dangerous space. And
Speaker 1: one of the questions that you will hear Jonathan ask
Speaker 1: me is where do I think that media will be
Speaker 1: in ten years. Well, I'll be honest, I'll be surprised
Speaker 1: if we're around in ten years. And I say that
Speaker 1: very seriously. I mean, look at what we have dealt
Speaker 1: with over the last eighteen months. We have a global
Speaker 1: health pandemic that is killed over six hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand Americans right and shows no sign of stopping. Because
Speaker 1: now we're living in a space where at first COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen was ravaging blue state those that were highly populated,
Speaker 1: densely populated states that had a lot of international travel,
Speaker 1: which usually happens in blue states. But then once the
Speaker 1: vaccine came into being, we saw our numbers decrease well
Speaker 1: right now, right the New York Times is reported in
Speaker 1: a piece called red Covid that now the deaths are
Speaker 1: on partisan lines, the infection rates are strictly on partisan lines,
Speaker 1: and they're calling it red COVID. Right, so you know,
Speaker 1: we're at a place right now where this virus is
Speaker 1: going to persist for god knows how long. At the
Speaker 1: same time, we have seen superstorms like we have never seen.
Speaker 1: How many times have we saw over the course of
Speaker 1: the last several months historic flooding, historic hurricane, historic fires?
Speaker 1: How many times can you see the fucking word historic?
Speaker 1: Before we realize that this has become our new abnormal,
Speaker 1: and we look at the media and we say to ourselves,
Speaker 1: you know, tell us the truth. When weather people meteorologists
Speaker 1: are reporting on the weather, how come they aren't talking
Speaker 1: about climate change because they've been told not to because
Speaker 1: some of them will lose their jobs. Right it's Al
Speaker 1: Roker is one of the only people that you will
Speaker 1: hear talk about how climate change is devastating our country. Right,
Speaker 1: we talk about white supremacy. Donald Trump wanted to tell
Speaker 1: us that they were good people on both sides. We
Speaker 1: knew that white supremacy was on the rise in this country,
Speaker 1: but did you see it reported in mainstream media. Did
Speaker 1: you see conversations about what was going on with the
Speaker 1: Proud Boys and the Boogoaloo boys and these folks know right,
Speaker 1: every time with regard to the killing of unarmed black people,
Speaker 1: we would talk about, oh, that this cop is a
Speaker 1: bad apple, but the large majority of cops are good.
Speaker 1: And then we'd get a blitz on media of all
Speaker 1: of these good cops, stories of look at them playing
Speaker 1: basketball with the black kids. They wouldn't dare kill them,
Speaker 1: And next week. The reality is is that the medias
Speaker 1: had a way to shape our images of ourselves, of
Speaker 1: these pandemics of historic climate change, and they've had an
Speaker 1: opportunity to tell the truth, and instead they decided to
Speaker 1: go after ratings. They decided to go after the low
Speaker 1: hanging fruit, which was just how to make more money.
Speaker 1: And so now we are living inside of this reckoning,
Speaker 1: living inside of the problem that was created by media.
Speaker 1: I don't say that Donald Trump created alternative facts, but
Speaker 1: the media did because they allowed us to live inside
Speaker 1: of this both sidesism. They allowed us to think that
Speaker 1: neutrality was something where we took ourselves out of the story,
Speaker 1: when in fact, we are the story. So when asked
Speaker 1: the question where do I think that media goes in
Speaker 1: ten years, I have no fucking idea. And to be honest,
Speaker 1: I don't feel really hopeful about where media goes because
Speaker 1: I think that we are so far into our corners
Speaker 1: right now that I can't even imagine what a coming
Speaker 1: together will look like. But I know that we don't
Speaker 1: come together unless we come together around a shared truth,
Speaker 1: around values, around a shared understanding of what it means
Speaker 1: to be moral right. And I don't mean the religiosity
Speaker 1: of it. I mean to understand that no one should
Speaker 1: fear losing their life for passing a counterfeit bill. No
Speaker 1: one should fear or losing their life as they're driving
Speaker 1: down the street, or sending their black son to the store,
Speaker 1: or playing on a playground. Right that you know, these
Speaker 1: things that we have seen, these stories that we continue
Speaker 1: to hear, they could provide a sense of empathy and
Speaker 1: humanity if they were told in the right way. So
Speaker 1: where does media go? I have no, honestly, no idea.
Speaker 1: But I know that we need to challenge media more
Speaker 1: and not just take what they've been feeding us, not
Speaker 1: just ingest it and say that that is the way,
Speaker 1: because it is not, and it has never been until now.
Speaker 1: So I hope that you all enjoy this conversation, this
Speaker 1: kind of flipping of the script that doctor Jonathan Metzel
Speaker 1: and myself will do in this episode. So let me
Speaker 1: know on the comments section below what you think of
Speaker 1: our live in studio or I should say, live in
Speaker 1: classroom conversation with doctor Jonathan Metzel at Vanderbilt University. Folks,
Speaker 1: I am so excited for this edition of woke ffa
Speaker 1: daily with our friend, our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel,
Speaker 1: to be live in his classroom for the very first
Speaker 1: time at Vanderbilt University. So this is an exciting time
Speaker 1: to be talking about what it means to be covering
Speaker 1: a pandemic in the media, what it means to tell
Speaker 1: the truth, what it means to use our platforms for good. So, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: we're turning the tables today and you're going to ask
Speaker 1: me questions as opposed to the last eighteen months of
Speaker 1: me hammering you with the most important questions that the
Speaker 1: wokeaf audience gets to know. So I'm very excited to
Speaker 1: turn the tables today, so to you. Wonderful, wonderful, Well,
Speaker 1: welcome to my honored guest here, Daniel Moody, who's going
Speaker 1: to be interviewed by me, which is really really exciting.
Speaker 1: And we actually have a live studio audience, which is
Speaker 1: why I'm wearing. Man, I'm wearing a mask. You don't
Speaker 1: often to get to see yourself in a mask, but
Speaker 1: I'm wearing like a big ass pancake on my face here,
Speaker 1: which is weird to be on television and be doing that,
Speaker 1: but that's the way it goes. But let's just quickly
Speaker 1: have our studio audience say hi. Let's get a big
Speaker 1: cheer from the studio audience and they will be joining
Speaker 1: us very shortly. But Danielle, today we're talking about the media.
Speaker 1: The class that you're coming in on today is called
Speaker 1: COVID and Society, and what we do in the class
Speaker 1: is we just think about how is the pandemic changing
Speaker 1: and how has it changed the world as we know it.
Speaker 1: And so even though we have a lot of questions
Speaker 1: for you, and actually the students are going to come
Speaker 1: up and ask you questions on a little bit. Can
Speaker 1: you just tell us, first of all, what's it been
Speaker 1: like to be I mean, if we can even use
Speaker 1: the word the media, what's it been like to be
Speaker 1: in the media during a time like this? What's your
Speaker 1: what's your experience been like? Just to start, I mean,
Speaker 1: I will say that we've had to learn how to
Speaker 1: do a lot of things differently, right. I came from
Speaker 1: a radio and a podcast and then a radio background
Speaker 1: and then back into doing a podcast. And the reality
Speaker 1: was that before the pandemic, I'd been in studio, guests
Speaker 1: were coming in studio every day, and so you're building
Speaker 1: a rapport and you're having conversation, and now we had
Speaker 1: to transition to doing all of our interviews doing everything
Speaker 1: on zoom. I think that the basic way that I
Speaker 1: can say how the pandemic has shaped has reshaped me
Speaker 1: is that it has reflected to me just how important
Speaker 1: the media is. Like we had the nightmare that was
Speaker 1: Donald Trump because of the media. We have a completely
Speaker 1: and total breakdown and facts and science and truth because
Speaker 1: of the media. And so to me, I feel a
Speaker 1: huge responsibility as we are living in and will essentially
Speaker 1: until forever. Who knows living in this pandemic what it
Speaker 1: means to tell the truth and to use whatever platforms
Speaker 1: that you have in order to do that. So that
Speaker 1: to me has just been hammered home more so over
Speaker 1: the last eighteen months. And when you say the truth,
Speaker 1: I mean, is there a different relationship now that you
Speaker 1: have with the truth than you think you had before
Speaker 1: all of this? And you know, I think that initially,
Speaker 1: you know, when you're a commentator, you're being asked to
Speaker 1: come on television, You're being asked to do shows to
Speaker 1: provide your opinion, which your opinion is basically the information
Speaker 1: that you're taking in, and you're providing your analysis the
Speaker 1: world that you see with the perspective that you have
Speaker 1: through your work, through your ethnicity, your race, your religion,
Speaker 1: your geography, your gender, your sexuality, orientation, all of the
Speaker 1: things that help shape how we see and reflect back
Speaker 1: the world. And you know, now I have a lot
Speaker 1: more people on like yourself who are steeped in you know, facts,
Speaker 1: who are steeped in science, right like I am interviewing
Speaker 1: and talking with scientists and doctors more so than I
Speaker 1: would ever because I before it was just like, let
Speaker 1: me have another commentator on to get their opinion on,
Speaker 1: you know, on the state of the world. Where I
Speaker 1: don't really want people's opinions on this pandemic so much
Speaker 1: as I just want to keep people alive, right Like,
Speaker 1: I just want to give people the information that they
Speaker 1: need in order to keep themselves, their families, and their
Speaker 1: communities safe. And so it's not so much setting up
Speaker 1: thoughtful debates, you know, as we would on let's say,
Speaker 1: the reconciliation package or let's talk about, you know, the
Speaker 1: debt ceiling or these things. But it's more so this
Speaker 1: is about life and death. So I'm not looking for
Speaker 1: opinions so much as as much clarity as we can
Speaker 1: get in these times. But isn't it the case that
Speaker 1: facts themselves are so contested right now in a way,
Speaker 1: So I mean, how do you how do you navigate
Speaker 1: that out of There are examples you can think of
Speaker 1: during the pandemic where it's kind of like, what is
Speaker 1: a basic fact and how do I convey that to
Speaker 1: my audience? You know, I will say that for me,
Speaker 1: I have always trusted let's say, you know, the World
Speaker 1: Health Organization, the CDC. Aside from the Trump administration, I
Speaker 1: had trusted for the most times what was being delivered outside,
Speaker 1: you know, from the White House. And so you know,
Speaker 1: I trust the people who I believe have reputations of
Speaker 1: telling the truth and wanting to really do no harm.
Speaker 1: So the doctors and the scientists, the data analysts, the
Speaker 1: folks that I'm bringing on I have either worked with
Speaker 1: or I have had deep connection through work that I
Speaker 1: have done with people who are dedicated to upholding their
Speaker 1: oaths right to protect people and to provide you know,
Speaker 1: as much coherent, thoughtful information as possible to many people
Speaker 1: who haven't had a biology class since they were in
Speaker 1: middle school, right, And so you're trying to reach people
Speaker 1: where they are, and those are the people that I
Speaker 1: like to bring on Woke A f are people that
Speaker 1: are adept at reaching people where they are. You know.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because like, of course, I'm somebody who's a
Speaker 1: cultural critic. I you know, I happen to have gone
Speaker 1: to med school, but I study race and politics. And
Speaker 1: yet when I go on your show, I'm probably more
Speaker 1: of a doctor than I ever expected to be on
Speaker 1: television because I'm like, you know, because I'm like you know.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting because that used to be the role
Speaker 1: of everybody, right, getting out the information. And now there's
Speaker 1: such a hunger for information in a particular way. And
Speaker 1: so tell us about your audience a little bit, you know,
Speaker 1: is it your sense that your audience is also looking
Speaker 1: for they're looking for opinions, but they're also looking for facts.
Speaker 1: I think that in the beginning of the pandemic, I mean, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: the comments that we used to get from you know,
Speaker 1: our segments in the very beginning, when we didn't know anything,
Speaker 1: people were so desperate for you to come on and
Speaker 1: just tell us what we need to know, just tell us, like,
Speaker 1: you know, am I to be is this is this
Speaker 1: virus spreading on cardboard boxes? Is it? You know? Can
Speaker 1: I walk past my neighbor? Do I have to move
Speaker 1: to the other side of the street. You know, they
Speaker 1: were just so desperate in the beginning for any you know,
Speaker 1: any sense of how they can control right their environment
Speaker 1: and themselves. Now, so I think that it is also
Speaker 1: folks wanting your analysis, right, like wanting you know, why
Speaker 1: is there such a big gap? Right? Like you know,
Speaker 1: in the New York Times yesterday was the article entitled
Speaker 1: red COVID right where it's just like, why is this
Speaker 1: this virus that started out ravaging blue states, now ravaging
Speaker 1: red states, right when we have a vaccine and we
Speaker 1: have more information than we did this time last year.
Speaker 1: And so my audience are very you know, they're they're
Speaker 1: highly educated, they're multiracial, you know, span pretty much everything
Speaker 1: that you can think of. But the thing that they
Speaker 1: all have in common is the truth and is a
Speaker 1: dedication to progress, right, to progressive values and ideals. And
Speaker 1: you know, it's funny because because of course we're not
Speaker 1: just talking about COVID. COVID is also a reflection of
Speaker 1: American society, right, It's a reflection of our investments, or
Speaker 1: our lack of investments about race, about social justice and
Speaker 1: things like that. And so, do you feel like the
Speaker 1: pandemic has also changed how you talk about other social, political,
Speaker 1: racial issues, because I think, yeah, I think that everything
Speaker 1: has been colored in such a very distinct way because
Speaker 1: of the pandemic. Things that we had always talked about
Speaker 1: right before the pandemic. We would talk about racial disparities,
Speaker 1: we would talk about you know, mass shootings, we would
Speaker 1: talk about all of these things. We talk about hunger,
Speaker 1: we talk about education and public schools. Everything became so
Speaker 1: exacerbated over the course of this pandemic, the ills that
Speaker 1: we always knew we're facing our society now were blown up,
Speaker 1: you know, on a big screen in a way that
Speaker 1: we couldn't look away from it. I think that we
Speaker 1: in our society we love to excuse the faults that
Speaker 1: government and bad policies have created. We always put it
Speaker 1: on the people. Oh, there's something wrong with them, because
Speaker 1: they're low income, because they're poor, because they're because they're black,
Speaker 1: because they're Latin X, because they're this. It's always the
Speaker 1: problem of the community. But what we see through this
Speaker 1: pandemic is that no, this is it's the problems that
Speaker 1: we are seeing enlarged. Our societal problems right they are
Speaker 1: their policy problems. There are things that weren't fixed that
Speaker 1: we knew were a problem. For instance, in our public
Speaker 1: school system and public education. I'm talking K through twelve.
Speaker 1: We knew that a majority of children didn't have access
Speaker 1: to the internet, didn't have access to broadband. We knew
Speaker 1: that a majority of kids didn't have you know, decent
Speaker 1: computers and technology in their homes. We known that because
Speaker 1: reports had told us that for a decade plus, but
Speaker 1: we waited until now. We couldn't go into school, and
Speaker 1: now teachers were forced to teach on zoom, which they'd
Speaker 1: never been asked to do, or forced to teach on blackboard,
Speaker 1: or use technology in a way that we never asked
Speaker 1: them to do. And then all of a sudden, we're
Speaker 1: having to have public school buses with broadbands circulate neighborhoods,
Speaker 1: or kids go and sit outside of the McDonald's or
Speaker 1: a diner in order to do their work because they
Speaker 1: needed access to the internet. That wasn't the pandemic's fault.
Speaker 1: That's a failure of our public education system, right that
Speaker 1: we had ignored and continued to kick the can down
Speaker 1: the road until there was no more road. That's it
Speaker 1: for Today's Woke a f Daily podcasts To hear more
Speaker 1: from today's show, including my full interview with doctor Jonathan Metzel,
Speaker 1: support me on Patreon at patreon dot com Slatch Woke
Speaker 1: a F. Power to the people and to all the people. Power,
Speaker 1: get woke and stay focus. Fuck