Podcast appearances and mentions of Parker Molloy

For episode 31 of Staffcast Sean, Tom, and Richard are joined by writer Parker Molloy to talk about cars getting hit by trains, using sports as an outlet, the magic of attending games, ASMR walkup songs, Sean Doolittle Giving Up Absolute Bombs, betting with Literally Fanatics, pitching with intrusive thoughts, and more! Subscribe to Parker's The Present Age newsletter! Follow your incredibly cool hosts and guest: Parker Molloy ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sean Doolittle⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Trevor Hildenberger⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Richard Staff⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tom Hackimer⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Episode art by Abigail Noy (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠sympatheticinker.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠) Edited by Italian Dave (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠twitter.com/theitaliandave⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠) Intro: Dear Coach's Corner - Propagandhi Outro: Shooting Stars - Bag Raiders

News outlets aren’t mincing words about the offensive and racist remarks featured at former President Donald Trump’s rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday. We’ll talk about the media backlash to the event, which was intended to be a part of Trump’s closing argument against Vice President Kamala Harris. Then, we discuss reports of ballot drop boxes on fire and give tips on how to ride out the last few days before Election Day. Plus, a story that has us waltzing through our emotions. Here’s everything we talked about today: “Hundreds of Ballots Damaged in Drop-Box Fire in Washington State” from Bloomberg “No More Euphemisms: Media Gets Real on Trump's MSG Hate Rally” from Parker Molloy on Substack Post about the 2024 U.S. presidential election’s impact on Europe from Benjamin Haddad on X “Hear a Chopin Waltz Unearthed After Nearly 200 Years” from The New York Times We can't do this show without you. Send us your questions, comments or wild suggestions at makemesmart@marketplace.org or leave a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART!

News outlets aren’t mincing words about the offensive and racist remarks featured at former President Donald Trump’s rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday. We’ll talk about the media backlash to the event, which was intended to be a part of Trump’s closing argument against Vice President Kamala Harris. Then, we discuss reports of ballot drop boxes on fire and give tips on how to ride out the last few days before Election Day. Plus, a story that has us waltzing through our emotions. Here’s everything we talked about today: “Hundreds of Ballots Damaged in Drop-Box Fire in Washington State” from Bloomberg “No More Euphemisms: Media Gets Real on Trump's MSG Hate Rally” from Parker Molloy on Substack Post about the 2024 U.S. presidential election’s impact on Europe from Benjamin Haddad on X “Hear a Chopin Waltz Unearthed After Nearly 200 Years” from The New York Times We can't do this show without you. Send us your questions, comments or wild suggestions at makemesmart@marketplace.org or leave a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART!

News outlets aren’t mincing words about the offensive and racist remarks featured at former President Donald Trump’s rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday. We’ll talk about the media backlash to the event, which was intended to be a part of Trump’s closing argument against Vice President Kamala Harris. Then, we discuss reports of ballot drop boxes on fire and give tips on how to ride out the last few days before Election Day. Plus, a story that has us waltzing through our emotions. Here’s everything we talked about today: “Hundreds of Ballots Damaged in Drop-Box Fire in Washington State” from Bloomberg “No More Euphemisms: Media Gets Real on Trump's MSG Hate Rally” from Parker Molloy on Substack Post about the 2024 U.S. presidential election’s impact on Europe from Benjamin Haddad on X “Hear a Chopin Waltz Unearthed After Nearly 200 Years” from The New York Times We can't do this show without you. Send us your questions, comments or wild suggestions at makemesmart@marketplace.org or leave a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART!

An important theme of this show is the role of rhetoric in politics. It's not just the arguments we make that matter, but when we choose to make them, and how we talk about political issues. And we can learn a lot about the people who disagree with us not just by parsing their arguments, but by paying attention to when and how they make them. This is critically important in a political environment as charged, fraught, and arguably on-the-brink as ours in the days before a presidential election. And the fact is, with the acute threat from the right to the very foundations of our liberal, open, and democratic society, much of our journalism has fallen into a particularly worrying rhetoric, one that downplays these threats, while stirring up resentment towards vulnerable groups. I can't think of anyone better to talk with about these issues central to our political life than Parker Molloy. She's a Chicago-based writer and author of the indispensable The Present Age, a newsletter about communication in a hyperconnected world. Want to listen to new episodes of ReImagining Liberty two weeks early? ⁠⁠⁠Become a supporter⁠⁠⁠ and get early access and other perks. Produced by ⁠⁠⁠Landry Ayres⁠⁠⁠. Podcast art by ⁠⁠⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠⁠⁠. Music by ⁠⁠⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠⁠⁠.

Nonfiction writer Jeff Sharlet joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss how mainstream media outlets sanitize Donald Trump's rhetoric in their reporting rather than straightforwardly describing his words and behavior, an approach recently dubbed “sanewashing” by The New Republic's Parker Molloy. Sharlet analyzes the term's usefulness and also its limitations; talks about the need to describe fascism using the word itself; and reflects on who is now at the center of political discourse and who is at the fringe. He also considers whether popular new media influencers like the MeidasTouch Network and YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen are really filling the need to describe Trump as he is. He reads from his book, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War. To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/ This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf. Jeff Sharlet The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers Sweet Heaven When I Die C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power Others: "This genius website captures Trump's weirdest debate quotes," by Grace Snelling | Fast Company Lenny Bruce The White Album by Joan Didion The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert O. Paxton Rick Perlstein Brian Tyler Cohen MeidasTouch Network Jeffrey Ruoff Susan Faludi Lane Kirkland Dietrich Bonhoeffer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Parker Molloy joins Danielle for a long-awaited conversation about How the Media Sanitizes Trump's Insanity.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The New Abnormal, hosts Danielle Moodie and Andy Levy reflecton Trump's disaster of a debate performance. Plus! Founder and author of The Present Agenewsletter Parker Molloy joins us to talk about the media's efforts to “sanewash” Donald Trumpand why people might not be falling for it. Then, we talk to The New York Times tech reportersKate Conger and Ryan Mac about their upcoming book, “Character Limit: How Elon MuskDestroyed Twitter.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi. Parker Molloy joins Katy and Cody to talk about the DoJ indictment which found that Tim Pool– er, sorry, Commentator-2– and other right-wing influencers (unknowingly!) took money from Russian state media. They also discuss the media double standard in covering Donald Trump vs. anyone else, and the GOP ticket's nuanced policy on lowering the cost of child care. 00:00 - Intro and Chat With Parker 11:30 - Tenet Media indictment 32:37 - Media Failures Even More News listeners get an exclusive 50% discount on a new SimpliSafe system, plus a free indoor security camera, with Fast Protect™ Monitoring. All you need to do is visit https://simplisafe.com/MORENEWS to claim this discount. We've worked out a special offer for our audience! Receive 15% off your first order of ARMRA Colostrum at https://tryarmra.com/MORENEWS or enter MORENEWS to get 15% off your first order. Coffee at home, made better. Head to https://drinktrade.com/MORENEWS to receive your first bag free! Nobody does selling better than Shopify. Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/morenews ALL LOWERCASE. Watch this podcast on YouTube: https://youtu.be/MtgwnwJ8424 Check out our MERCH STORE: https://shop.somemorenews.com SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh Subscribe to the Even More News and SMN audio podcasts here: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA

John is still on vacation this week. Democratic strategist Max Burns guest hosts again and he talks about President Biden's heroic Oval Office speech explaining why he chose to give up his bid for reelection. Then, he speaks with Christina Reynolds of EMILY's List which is an American political action committee (PAC) that aims to help elect Democratic female candidates in favor of abortion rights to office. Next, Max talks with the Vice President of Politics for Crooked Media - Shaniqua McClendon on how the media plays an important role in politics. And lastly, he interviews political blogger Parker Molloy. They discuss the persecution and politics of trans people.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

President Joe Biden had a rough night Thursday at the debate, but CNN moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash also turned in an abysmal performance of their own, according to The New Abnormal co-hosts Andy Levy and Danielle Moodie. Then, Parker Molloy, writer of the Substack The Present Age, joins the program to talk about the fact checking site Snopes' recent determination that Donald Trump actually didn't call the white supremacists and neo-Nazis at the infamous Charlottesville rally “very fine people”—and why the site is wrong. Plus! Investigate reporter Katya Schwenk, a reporter at investigative site The Lever, discusses a particularly egregious Supreme Court ruling recently which allows politicians to accept monetary gifts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thanks to Jules Gill-Peterson (jgillpeterson.com) and Julia Serano (patreon.com/juliaserano) for help researching this episode and Evan Urquhart, Parker Molloy and Katelyn Burns for fact-checking!Support us:Hear bonus episodes on PatreonDonate on PayPalGet Maintenance Phase T-shirts, stickers and moreWatch Aubrey's documentaryBuy Aubrey's bookListen to Mike's other podcastLinks!Origins of "Social Contagion" and "Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria"The "Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria" Controversy at AACAP's Annual MeetingMethodological Critique Of The Cass ReviewMethodological Critique of Littman (2018) Parent reports of adolescents and young adults perceived to show signs of a rapid onset of gender dysphoriaA critical commentary on ‘rapid-onset gender dysphoria'.Foundations Of The Contemporary Anti-LGBTQ+ Pseudoscience NetworkRapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria: Parent Reports on 1,655 Possible CasesOpinion: England's Anti-Trans Cass Review Is Politics Disguised As ScienceTavistock v BellActually Nothing: The Non-Starter Non-Story of the WPATH FilesAs anti-trans legislation proliferates in 2024, community fears erasure from public viewStates Passed a Record Number of Transgender Laws. Here's What They Say.Thanks to Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!Support the Show.

Panic! At the endocrinologist.Thanks to Jules Gill-Peterson (jgillpeterson.com) and Julia Serano (patreon.com/juliaserano) for help researching this episode and Evan Urquhart and Parker Molloy for fact-checking!Support us:Hear bonus episodes on PatreonDonate on PayPalGet Maintenance Phase T-shirts, stickers and moreBuy Aubrey's bookListen to Mike's other podcastLinks!Origins of "Social Contagion" and "Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria"What does the scholarly research say about the effect of gender transition on transgender well-being?Mental Health Outcomes in Transgender and Nonbinary Youths Receiving Gender-Affirming CareFresh trans myths of 2017: “rapid onset gender dysphoria”Rapid Onset of Gender Dysphoria in Adolescents and Young Adults: a Descriptive StudyThe Detransitioners: They Were Transgender, Until They Weren'tHow the idea of a “transgender contagion” went viral—and caused untold harmMental Health Outcomes in Transgender and Nonbinary Youths Receiving Gender-Affirming Care'Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria' Is Biased Junk ScienceA careful step into a field of landminesDetransition, Desistance, and Disinformation: A Guide for Understanding Transgender Children Debates Recognizing and responding to misleading trans health researchThanks to Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!Support the Show.

https://patreon.com/westernkabuki This week we are joined by Parker Molloy as we bid adieu to the presidential candidacy of Ron Desantis, and look back at his inhuman facial expressions, his nasty little pudding fingers, and of course his shoe lifts. You can find Parker Molloy's work at http://readtpa.com And of course you can subscribe to our patreon at the link above! If you'd like to read any of the articles referenced in the episode you can find them in this Google document Caleb compiled. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mzPt6HeuI8r2KHxQhEaf5NE77q6777wveyKwE2RNG8Q/edit?usp=sharing  

Parker Molloy from The Present Age joins Addy and Jesse for the first Casual Diehard of 2024, and they're wondering who non-alcoholic White Claw is even for. Also on tap: Stephen A. Smith vaporizes Jason Whitlock, football's coaching carousel in overdrive with the retirements of Bill Belichick and Nick Saban, godspeed to Yankees fans with the Marcus Stroman experience, and instant reaction to the Cubs' latest disappointing offseason move that happened during the show!Today's cover art as a Chicago Beers t-shirt? You got it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit willetspen.substack.com

Over the last several months a concentrated media campaign to oust the president of Harvard, Claudine Gay, found success. But in the last several weeks, one of its primary figureheads, Bill Ackman, has come into focus on social media.Returning guest Parker Molloy joins us to break it all down and get into some of the underlying power dynamics behind the controversy. If you liked this episode, consider supporting us on Patreon! Links: Bill Ackman's celebrity academic wife Neri Oxman's dissertation is marred by plagiarism - Business InsiderAckman Escalates Attack On Business Insider—And Musk Eggs Him On  - ForbesGoogle search of New York Times Harvard President articles - GoogleBill Ackman addresses wife Neri Oxman's ties to Jeffrey Epstein, Brad Pitt - New York Post (sorry for Murdoch-posting)Parker Molloy links: The Present Age, Social Media links

This episode I was joined by Journalist and writer Parker Molloy [@Parkermolloy on Twitter] We discussed Free Speech ‘hero' Elon, suing Media Matters, Ben Shapiro's recent self-own of a movie “Lady Ballers”, the conflation of anti Zionism & anti semitism, various moral panics about the left, is TikTok really turning young leftists into Bin Laden Supporters? All that and more, right here. Check out Parker's newsletter at: www.readtpa.com —— If you enjoy the show pls consider supporting via patreon.com/nicemangos and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

Trans people are under attack in the United States, both literally, through violence and threats of violence, and figuratively, in the form of anti-trans legislation and discrimination. This can be depressing for trans people and can make them anxious. So what does it mean for people who happen to be trans and already deal with depression and anxiety disorders? We find out one person's experience in this interview with Parker Molloy, writer of the newsletter The Present Age. Hear about Parker's early onset of depression and anxiety as well as the dawning realization that she was, in fact, female. And learn why she's still on Twitter despite the growing noisy hatred on the site.Subscribe to Parker's newsletter by visiting www.readtpa.com. You can also subscribe by visiting Substack and following substack.com/@parkermolloy.Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun.Check out our I'm Glad You're Here and Depresh Mode merchandise at the brand new merch website MaxFunStore.com!Hey, remember, you're part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at depreshmode@maximumfun.org.Help is available right away.The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988 or 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALKCrisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlinesThe Depresh Mode newsletter is available twice a week. Subscribe for free and stay up to date on the show and mental health issues. https://johnmoe.substack.com/John's acclaimed memoir, The Hilarious World of Depression, is now available in paperback. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250209566/thehilariousworldofdepressionFind the show on Twitter @depreshpod and Instagram @depreshpod.John is on Twitter @johnmoe.

Juniper of Western Kabuki joins us to discuss Vivek Ramaswamy's “change of heart” on TikTok after meeting with Jake Paul. We explore the broader GOP's rhetoric on China and especially Mexico, with increasingly militaristic threats being waged by 2024 hopefuls. We also get into MSN's grim AI-generated obituary for a former NBA player, Brandon Hunter, and what a future of “AI art” would actually look like. You can follow Juniper here: https://twitter.com/junlper/ | Our most recent premium episode for our beloved paid interns is with Parker Molloy. We discussed Aaron Rodgers' injury, the most bizarre 9/11 tributes and much more. You can listen to that episode here: https://www.insurgentspod.com/p/ep-207-a-911-youll-never-forget-ft#detailsTo become a subscriber (paid intern!) to the Insurgents and gain access to an additional episode every week, you can subscribe at InsurgentsPod.com/subscribe or by clicking the button below: https://www.insurgentspod.com/subscribe This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.insurgentspod.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.insurgentspod.comParker Molloy, media critic and author of The Present Age, joins Jordan to discuss Aaron Rodgers' injury, the most hairbrained “tributes” on 9/11, the Washington Post's bizarre opposition research piece about a House candidate who streamed on Chaturbate, how the media can be more responsible in 2024 and much more. This was a fun one.You can subscribe to…

Max Burns filling in one more time for John on his long extended vacation. He discusses Vivek Ramaswamy's rhetoric as he ramps up his presidential bid. He talks with Steven in Kentucky on Vivek and gun safety legislation and Norm in Tampa on Ramaswamy and slavery. Then, he speaks with Parker Molloy who is the writer and author of The Present Age, a newsletter about communication in a hyperconnected world. Between 2018 and 2021, Parker was editor-at-large at Media Matters for America, writing about the role right-wing media played in the rise of Donald Trump and the creation of alternate perceived realities. They talk about the life and death challenges facing transgender Americans. Next, he talks with Mike in Michigan on Trump's indictments and he plays a clip of Vivek on TV telling what he would have done on January 6th. Then, he talks with Brian in Oregon on how to fight gerrymandering and Bill in New Jersey on the lunacy of Ramaswamy. And then finally he discusses the freezing up of Mitch McConnell.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Political Strategist Max Burns continues to fill in for John. He speaks with Parker Molloy who is the writer and author of The Present Age, a newsletter about communication in a hyperconnected world. Between 2018 and 2021, Parker was editor-at-large at Media Matters for America, writing about the role right-wing media played in the rise of Donald Trump and the creation of alternate perceived realities. They talk about the life and death challenges facing transgender Americans. Then he chats with Brian in Oregon about piercing the right-wing narrative. Next, he interviews reporters for Rewire News Group - Garnet Henderson and Jessica Pieklo on their new article The Grift of So-Called Crisis Pregnancy Centers. They discuss the anti-abortion movement and new abortion laws in red states. Then finally, Mark in Portland calls in to talk about how to regulated right-wing Crisis Pregnancy Centers.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Parker Molloy is a Chicago-based writer and author of The Present Age, a newsletter about communication in a hyperconnected world. Between 2018 and 2021, Parker was editor-at-large at Media Matters for America, a non-profit progressive media watchdog. There, she wrote about the role right-wing media played in the rise of Donald Trump and the creation of alternate perceived realities. Her work has also appeared in places like The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, and VICE. The Present Age was the 2022 winner of New York University’s American Journalism Online Award for Best Media Criticism. Judge and former CNN host Brian Stelter called The Present Age “an essential part of an informed citizen’s media diet.” The First Time is hosted by Jenn Sodini. Produced by Bobby Evers, Andy Vasoyan, and Julie Mueller. Podcast produced by Andy Vasoyan. Recorded by Tony Baker.

Hi. Parker Molloy (@parkermolloy) joins Katy and Cody to talk about the Screen Actors Guild going on strike, the ultra-rich media CEOs who want your sympathy, and why there's no reason that social media companies have to show you everyone's awful opinion all the time. SAG-AFTRA on strike: https://apnews.com/article/hollywood-actors-strike-ca3e3eddc910f1e52d618e5e3c394554 Disney CEO Bob Iger says writers and actors not being "realistic": https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/bob-iger-writers-actors-strike-disney-ceo-1235669169/ Hollywood studios "endgame" is to let writers go broke: https://deadline.com/2023/07/writers-strike-hollywood-studios-deal-fight-wga-actors-1235434335/ Here's Parker's newsletter on social media curation: https://www.readtpa.com/p/against-the-eat-your-vegetables-approach Twitter starting to pay creators in their replies...as long as they're Twitter Blue subscribers: https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/13/23794189/twitter-blue-monetization-ad-revenue-sharing-payments And here's that stupid Elon Musk tweet about being on a deserted island: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1678805016189235200 Check out our MERCH STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh Subscribe to the Some More News and Even More News audio podcasts: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1 Follow us on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenews

This week, we are joined by Jared Holt, who researches domestic extremism at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, to talk about how Congressional Republicans are using their power and your tax dollars to harass and attempt to silence those who study and attempt to mitigate dangerous disinformation.Then Joshua Holland welcomes journalist Parker Molloy to consider whether the political press has really failed to learn any lessons about how to cover Trump and his authoritarianism movement over these past eight years. PlaylistCornershop: "Brimful of Asha"Paul McCartney: "Live and Let Die"The Bangles: "Hazy Shade of Winter" 

After months of teasing voters and reporters, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has finally launched his presidential bid. He did it on an unusual platform: Twitter Spaces. The launch was widely viewed as a bungle because of its small audience and many technical glitches.Even if was a fiasco, it was significant as an example of Elon Musk trying to remake himself as a right-wing media mogul, a Rupert Murdoch of the digital age. To better understand what DeSantis and Musk are up to, I talked with Parker Molloy, who runs the fine newsletter The Present Age.Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/podcastsubscribe. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

After months of teasing voters and reporters, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has finally launched his presidential bid. He did it on an unusual platform: Twitter Spaces. The launch was widely viewed as a bungle because of its small audience and many technical glitches.Even if was a fiasco, it was significant as an example of Elon Musk trying to remake himself as a right-wing media mogul, a Rupert Murdoch of the digital age. To better understand what DeSantis and Musk are up to, I talked with Parker Molloy, who runs the fine newsletter The Present Age.Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/podcastsubscribe. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Erin Ryan and Alyssa Mastromonaco start off by discussing the Texas abortion pill hearing, where Judge Kacsmaryk wants so badly to ban mifepristone…get a life, dude. Then, Parker Molloy comes on to talk about anti-trans legislation, the coverage of it in the media, and finding hope in outspoken trans kids. Next, Hysteria fave Akilah Hughes joins Kiran Deol in the panel to discuss the various definitions of “woke.” To finish things off, some praise (shoutout, Alyssa's jam!) and complaints (people in LA canNOT drive in the rain) in Sani-Petty.Show NotesThe Present Age, Parker Molloy's newsletterThree Dancing Bears, Alyssa's jam For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.

You knew the United States was an outlier when it comes to gun violence but Joshua Holland kicks off this week's show with a look at a study that found truly eye-opening disparities. Then we're joined by AR Moxon to talk about Dilbert creator Scott Adams and other bigoted right-wingers who claim that they're being silenced when their real problem is that we can hear them quite clearly and reserve the right to judge them by their words and actions. And then we speak to Parker Molloy about the challenges of criticizing the often slanted reporting from legacy media outlets like the NYT from the left given how deeply entrenched the right's ubiquitous claims that they are "biased" against conservatives have become after decades of working the refs. Playlist:CeeLo Green: "The Way"El: "Mysterioso"Love: "Always See Your Face"

The nation's most prestigious newspaper insists on asking a very stupid question. So for this month's bonus episode, we decided to answer it. To hear the rest of the show, support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPodAs we mentioned at the top of the episode, we're donating this month's support to three of our trans journo-friends! They've been unbelievably patient with Mike as he's navigated the science and politics of this issue over the last year. Here's where to find and support their work:Parker Molloy (readtpa.com) Katelyn Burns (patreon.com/katelynburns)Evan Urquhart  (assignedmedia.org) 

Whatever we don't understand we fear. That has been the norm in this country and around the globe. This idea that somehow people who don't look like us, love like us, or identify the way we do are to be feared or worse contained. The latest group to be targeted are transgender Americans. People who want nothing but the dignity, protection and respect that we all want--yet their desires are put up for debate and entire campaigns and policies are created to keep them othered. In this episode of #democracyish Danielle and Wajahat chat with writer and trans advocate Parker Molloy about we the media gets wrong about the trans community Hosts: Danielle Moodie & Wajahat Ali Executive Producer: Adell Coleman Senior Producer: Quinton Hill Distributor: DCP EntertainmentSupport the show: https://www.dcpofficial.com/democracy-ishSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Justin hosts writer Parker Molloy for a conversation about the American news media. They discuss the state of cable news, print outlets, and digital distribution platforms. Should we listen to columnists and commentators for any reason at all? What is 'bothsidesism'?Read Parker here: https://www.readtpa.com/Subscribe, rate, and review if you enjoyed the conversation.

Jen and Noam return after a weirdly offline week to do their best to explain the FTX situation, the journalist exodus to Mastodon (and who has already been kicked off a server) and the two big Trump announcements    We will be on Callin this week Tuesday the 22nd at 8:30pm Eastern to discuss…well who knows at this point but maybe Jen's big move and our thoughts on Wakanda Forever    Show Notes (normally Jen gussies these up but she is extremely tired after this week's adventures) : Coffeezilla on FTX https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWfuDeO9thk Foldable human on Crypto/NFTs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g Effective altruism is nonsense, SBF edition  https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23462333/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-cryptocurrency-effective-altruism-crypto-bahamas-philanthropy But the NYT still loves SBF https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/technology/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-crypto-bankruptcy.html As does WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/16/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-pandemic-prevention/ Forbes' Caroline Ellison profile https://twitter.com/forbes/status/1593615727512227840 The whole Ukraine - FTX situation  https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-ftx-ukraine-democrats-laundering-996663874380 Elon is doing a terrorism or something  https://twitter.com/neontaster/status/1593975501445599232 Parker Molloy complains about the mods, the mods kick her off the server https://twitter.com/jbarro/status/1594035527166341120 Journolist (if you're too young to know what this is) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList Tavistock, or the English gender reassignment clinic that was shut down due to concerns over the efficacy of gender reasignment in minors  https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-62335665 Mike Pesca explains "transphobic content” or as we know it, a NYT article  https://twitter.com/pescami/status/1594009632145494017 NYT article in question:: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/health/puberty-blockers-transgender.html Elon did a poll https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1593952814534991873 Wittes WILL NOT GO QUIETLY INTO oh wait he kinda is  https://twitter.com/benjaminwittes/status/1594143594020995074

Joshua Holland kicks off this week's show with a look at research into why even the most ludicrous propaganda is still so effective. And then we are joined by Parker Molloy, who writes The Present Age newsletter, to talk about what it's like for transgender people who are just trying to live their lives at a time when their very existence has become a right-wing moral panic. PlaylistAaron Frazer: "Can't Leave It Alone"The Civil Wars: "Billie Jean" 

Mea Cupla podcast host Michael Cohen, drops by to talk his new book, Revenge: How Donald Trump Weaponized the US Department of Justice Against His Critics. As well, Greg Sargent of the Plum Line blog at The Washington Post, talks to us about our descent into MAGA madness. If that weren't enough we're lucky enough to be joined by Parker Molloy of the newsletter The Present Age to talk Elon Musk taking over Twitter and more. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Parker Molloy of The Present Age newsletter joins Scam Economy with Matt Binder to discuss the death of CNN's little known NFT project, the CNN Vault. Parker and Matt take a look at how bizarre it was, the NFT collectors who spent thousands of dollars on a now-dead project, the Associated Press has an NFT marketplace too, and how the mainstream media irresponsibly covers emerging technology like the "Metaverse," crypto, NFTs, and more! Check out Parker's newsletter: https://www.readtpa.com Visit http://www.ScamEconomy.com Support the show: http://www.patreon.com/mattbinder

Writer and trans activist Parker Molloy joins host Andy Levy on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal pod to talk about Tucker Carlson's awful obsession with making trans people look absolutely batshit—and the serious implications of that which are already happening around us. Plus! Molloy and Andy discuss the GOP's hypocrisy when it comes to anti-trans legislation, why the right's outrage with pronouns is “fake,” and the latest in the Elon Musk Twitter saga. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Katelyn and I talk to Parker Molloy in the wake of the first Alex Jones trial and unpack how traditional and social media fueled his rise to become the conspiracy theory grifter he is today. To keep up with Parker's work, check out readthepresentage.com. Today's episode comes with a special thanks to our Patrons Megg, I, Adrienne, Diego and Siobhan who subscribe at the Cancelation List and above tiers. You can join our community and support Cancel Me, Daddy at www.patreon.com/cancelmedaddy

There's been a number of pieces of anti-trans legislation introduced around the country, with more than 300 bills proposed this year. In this episode, host Roy Wood Jr. sits down with ACLU Deputy Director for Transgender Justice, Chase Strangio, and author of “The Present Age” newsletter, Parker Molloy, to discuss the motivation behind these bills and how the attacks from conservatives have evolved from bathroom bans to women's sports and now to gender-affirming care. Parker and Chase also discuss their own experiences, challenges, and joys of being trans in America.    Watch the original segment:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynfnfhBJ51c&t=633s See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's become a familiar pattern that mass shootings are often exploited by the right to scapegoat marginalized groups. The tragedy in Uvalade, Texas is no exception. Within hours of the news of the school shooting breaking on social media, trolls were fabricating a story that the shooter was trans, a fiction that was picked up by at least one Republican politician.Parker Molloy, who followed this story in the newsletter The Present Age, joins this week's episode of the Time of Monsters podcast to talk about not just this fabrication but the wider problem of sorting fact from fiction in a news story. We also take up the issue of police dishonesty, as displayed in shifting stories and the too credulous acceptance of other social media reports.Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/podcastsubscribe. Credits:Hosted by Jeet HeerExecutive Produced by Ludwig HurtadoProduction Assistance by Sophie HurwitzOriginal Music by Micah WittmanAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

A live audience interviews Parker Molloy, writer, speaker, and author of “The Present Age,” on Joe Rogan, bigotry, misinformation, and so-called "cancel culture."Find more (including how to join us live) at PM101.live or on Twitter at @PoliticsNMedia.Our next episode this Monday will feature Erick Erickson.Subscribe, rate, and review if you like what you hear!Read Parker's piece on Joe Rogan here: https://www.readthepresentage.com/p/joe-rogan-spotifyFind more about Parker here: https://parkermolloy.com/Join our e-mail list for "best of" delivered directly to your inbox, twice per month, at PM101.live

A live audience interviews Josh Barro, host of the Very Serious podcast, about the economy, inflation, government spending, and how those things impact voter attitudes. Find more (including how to join us live) at PM101.live or on Twitter at @PoliticsNMedia.Our next episode this Monday will feature Parker Molloy.Subscribe, rate, and review if you like what you hear!Hear Josh' podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/very-serious-with-josh-barro/id1601727251Join our e-mail list for "best of" delivered directly to your inbox, twice per month, at PM101.live

Vote YES for a brand new episode of Go Fact Yourself!Kevin Allison is best known as creator and host of the podcast “RISK!” The show is all about encouraging people to tell stories that they never thought they'd share in public. He'll tell us why people want to share some of their biggest secrets – and how more than one person's secret involves cannibalism.Parker Molloy is a writer, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast and more. But she's also been described as “Everyone's first Twitter follow.” She'll tell us where that moniker came from and explain why she has so much love for her life in Chicago.Our guests will answer questions about princes, new girls and boxers.What's the Difference: All WetWhat's the difference between a liquid and a fluid?What's the difference between a submarine and a submersible?Areas of Expertise:Kevin: The Tao Te Ching, ADHD, and Prince's House Party Playlist.Parker: Musicians on the Saddle Creek Records label, Chicago Cubs baseball from 1991-2021, and U.S. Senate 2000-2021.Appearing in this episode:J. Keith van StraatenHelen HongKevin AllisonParker MolloyWith guest experts:Dave Finkel, executive producer and show-runner of the TV show “New Girl.” Steve Welch, editor of the Prince episode of “New Girl.”Senator Barbara Boxer, representing California in the United States Senate from 1993 to 2017.Go Fact Yourself was devised and produced by Jim Newman and J. Keith van Straaten, in collaboration with Maximum Fun. Theme Song by Jonathan Green.Maximum Fun's Senior Producer is Laura Swisher.Associate Producer and Editor is Julian Burrell.Vaccine-getting by YOU.

For this year's last episode, Katelyn & Oliver dive into the War on Christmas with the one and only Parker Molloy, author of The Present Age Newsletter and former editor-at-large of Media Matters. In this episode, we discuss Fox News' burning Christmas tree, the historical origins of the so-called War on Christmas, and how the right-wing talking point relates to the ongoing conversation around cancel culture. Plus, we have our very first Cancel Us segment, where we invite you to cancel us for our spicy takes. You can support Cancel Me, Daddy on Patreon to join our community and help us become a weekly show: https://www.patreon.com/cancelmedaddy Check out The Present Age Newsletter: https://www.readthepresentage.com/ Follow Parker on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ParkerMolloy

Welcome to the Present Age podcast [and transcript]. I’m your host Parker Molloy. Joining me today on the show is Aaron Rupar, the author of the new Public Notice Substack. Let’s get started.Parker Molloy: Hey, Aaron. How's it going?Aaron Rupar: I'm good. Thanks for having me on the podcast.Yeah, of course. As soon as I heard that you were starting your own thing, I wanted to get you on here to talk about it, so that anyone who's listening to this can go read your new Substack. Can you tell me about it?I appreciate that. Yeah, I'm viewing my Substack, which I'm going to call Public Notice, as basically an extension of the sort of coverage I've been doing for four or five years now, I guess maybe six. Boy, I started, well, early 2016, so five and a half, going on six. Which is basically coverage of Trumpism, right-wing media, and where they fit into the broader sphere of American politics. As with any of these Substacks, I think things have a tendency to evolve as you go, and you get a sense of what works with your audience, what doesn't work, what sort of things people are interested to read more about. And so I'm viewing it, at least initially, as a more conversational and iterative version of the sort of writing I'd been doing at Vox, with at least three newsletters a week to begin with. Actually, to begin with, it'll be more. I think I'm going to be doing a daily one for the first couple weeks and then scaling it back to more of a normal schedule after that.But, yeah, I'm hoping that it'll be a place that people can go to get up to speed on what the big media stories of the week are, how right-wing media in particular is covering the broader picture of American politics. And a lot of good stuff that you're familiar with too, from your background at Media Matters. So that's how I'm viewing it going in. Like I said, I'm sure things will evolve. And it's always daunting when you're at the beginning stages of something like this. But I'm hopeful that a lot of the audience that I've developed over the years will come with me and check out the newsletter, and hopefully enjoy it. So we'll see how it goes.Yeah, definitely. Most people, if they're not familiar with your writing at Vox, they're probably at least familiar with the videos you post. You post constantly. Videos from all sorts of political events, Trump rallies, et cetera, et cetera. One question I had about that was, are you still going to be posting videos, and is your Twitter feed going to change at all?I don't think it's going to change at all. It took a lot of outlay, in terms of money, to get some of the services that previously I had organizations paying for, whether that's SnapStream or TVEyes, things that I rely on to be able to do live posting and media monitoring. Again, all stuff that I'm sure you're familiar with from Media Matters, which also is very active in that space. But that's the idea, is to keep Twitter pretty constant. And so for people who just enjoy the video tweets and the video threads, not too much should be changing on that front. But then for people who do enjoy my writing, I'll be doing at least a couple of free newsletters a week, and then one paid one that I'm imagining at this point will be a summation of the most buzzworthy segments and news stories from media. More of a media-focused newsletter than the other two, which I'm thinking will be more focused on politics.But I know that that's been a huge thing for me in terms of developing an audience, has been Twitter. And so it's expensive. And that was kind of a thing as I was leaving Vox and planning this next stage of my career. I felt kind of exhausted from all of the negotiations that I had to do just to try and strike deals with SnapStream, TVEyes, places like that. But I think I'm pretty geared up at this point to have all the same services that I've come to be used to, and to come to rely on to some extent, to do the type of media coverage that I do. So, for people who are just interested in my tweets, I think people, even if they have that level of interest in my work, and that much shouldn't be changing too much.Cool. And also anyone who's a fan of your tweets should probably subscribe to the newsletter, which I'm not sure if you mentioned, it's called Public Notice, right?Yeah. I thought Public Notice, it works for the type of stuff I'm going to be doing, trying to surface stories that are in the broad public interest, kind of in the sense that a public notice, as we historically think of it, is like a broadsheet that you'd see in a town square or something like that. I thought that dovetailed nicely with the idea that I have for this newsletter being a broadsheet summarizing, again, the things that I'm paying attention to in the sphere of media and politics.It's like trying to name a band. I've played in enough bands where the band name can always be kind of a fraught item to agree on, to come up with. And so for a while, I was just going to go with the Rupar Report, and I still may incorporate that as the name of the paid newsletter that I do, or I might use that as a section of the newsletter. But yeah, I like the ring of Public Notice. I think it works for the type of work that I'm going to be doing, and so, yeah. That's going to be the name of it.Oh, yeah. Whenever I hear one of these really good names, I'm just kind of like, "Dammit, why didn't I think of that?" You know?Yeah.I like mine. I like The Present Age, but also-Yeah. I like it too.I kind of wish it was something that felt... Because in my mind, I pictured it like, "This would be a great title for a magazine," or something like that. But then as time goes on, I'm just like, "Man, I wish it was just something that was like, boom, here's what you're getting," that sort of thing, instead of having to be like, "So if you read some philosophy, blah, blah," having to go into detail on that sort of stuff. But, yeah, Public Notice is just a great name.Thought so.And is that going to be at publicnotice.substack.com? [ed. note: the address is aaronrupar.substack.com]Yes, that is what it's going to be. So, for many, many years I owned aaronrupar.com. I was just paying for it in case. And then I ended up just earlier this year letting that lapse. And of course it was snapped up. I no longer own it. And so that is still actually, as we record this here, that is still a little bit unclear exactly what the URL is going to be. But I believe it will be aaronrupar.substack.com to begin with. I'm still debating if I want to pay for the aaronrupar.info, or something like that. Yeah. One of those things where, for many, many years for GoDaddy, I just had money going out the door to hold this URL. And then, I don't know if I was trying to cut costs or something, but I let it lapse about a year ago, and here I am. I went back to see if I could purchase it and it's been snapped up, it's no longer available.So, yeah. It'll probably have Substack in the title to begin with, but from what I understand those are things that are pretty easy to change down the line. The main place to find me will just be check out my Twitter account, I'll have a link there. But I'm guessing that for people who are listening to this who maybe aren't on Twitter or something like that, aaronrupar.substack.com should be the place to go to find that.Absolutely. Yeah. God, that sort of reminds me of, a while back I was looking for an email address or something like that. And I was just like, "I am going to sign up for a Gmail address that's just my name, Parker Molloy." And it was taken, and I'm like, "Who the hell took this?" I kind of want to send an email to it and just be like, "Who are you? Why'd you take my name?"Yeah. Well, there might be another Parker Molloy out there.It's possible. I-Yeah. There's an Aaron Rupar in Wisconsin. My last name is fairly... There's a few of us, but... I mean, with all of the people out there, odds are there might be another Parker Molloy.Yeah. Yeah. One thing kept coming up on searches, something like an 18th century Irish immigrant or something was named Parker Molloy. I'm like, "That sounds about right. That's perfect."I don't think that person would've opened a Gmail, but-No, probably not.Unless they did some time travel or something like that.Who knows? Who's to say? So you were recently in Chicago. Right?I was, yes.I saw on your Twitter.Yeah. It was amazing. Right now, I've been spending a lot of time during the pandemic here, I'm in Minnesota, presently. And so we, my two younger brothers and myself, decided to go to Chicago for... The main thing we were going for was the AEW All Out show, which was amazing, and actually worked out quite well for us because it was in Hoffman Estates. Which, for people who aren't familiar with Chicago, was way in the northwest of the metro. But if you're coming from Minnesota, it lopped an hour off of the drive, so it made it actually even an easier drive. When you're in Minnesota, a five hour drive is actually... seems like not that of a deal, because we're so isolated here in terms of other metros.But yeah, we ended up making a really fun weekend out of it. We did a Cubs game and we hit up the barcade in Wicker Park and all that fun stuff. And my family, we've been quite diligent about COVID stuff, so we were kind of worried about that. But when we got back we did the rapid test just to make sure that everything was on the up and up. And now at this point it was weeks ago, so I think we're in the clear. But one of those things that we had planned, in the very bright and sunny days of June, when it seemed like we were kind of pulling out of this pandemic. And then of course by the time the trip actually happened, COVID was much more of a concern. But it was actually, given how much time we've all spent at home over the past year and a half, it was really fun to get out there.I'd never really done a trip like that with my brothers either. So to do a brothers road trip, and we saw some really fun wrestling, and of course Wrigley is always a joy as well. So, it's always fun to get to Chicago. I've done that trip from Minnesota when I was living here permanently through college and then a little bit beyond, I used to travel to Chicago quite regularly. But it had been a bit since I had been there. So, kind of reminded me how vibrant and fun the city is. And it was a great time.Yeah. Because I saw this, I saw that you came to Chicago. First, well, it was on your Twitter. But besides that, the Washington Free Beacon decided to write about you. Did you see that?Oh, God. Yeah. Well, what happened was... And I don't know if people follow @RedSteeze, but he and I... he was kind of needling me over... I posted a photo from one of the wrestling... We went to two wrestling events, but the first one that I was at. And we had gone to the wrestling show and we were back at the hotel and I had had a couple of drinks. So I was feeling just feisty enough to engage. And so it was sort of good-natured, at least on my end. But it's kind of that pipeline of people, right-wing media figures, where it went from @RedSteeze to the Washington Free Beacon, and it became kind of this... Again where people on the right love to own the libs for being hypocritical or not practicing what they preach.And so the idea was that I was a huge hypocrite because I was in this indoor setting. And granted, the mask compliance at AW was actually pretty good. It seemed like people generally, with exceptions of course, but when they were sitting down in their seats were masked up. But yeah, it kind of just became one of those things where whenever you're kind of a prominent liberal online and right-wingers have a chance to shame you for being a hypocrite, or not following the rules that you profess to find important for people in society to follow, it's kind of a fun thing for them to do, I guess.So. Yeah. I'm sure you've experienced that sort of thing too, where you kind of become the story. And at this point I've been enough times where I can just shrug it off and it's not a big deal. But yeah, that whole weekend I was kind of... My Twitter notifications, I was getting notifications that, oh, this or that right-wing figure was teasing me or trying to shame me for the fact that I was out and enjoying life, at least for that weekend.Yeah. Every time that happens with me it's usually one of those sites, Free Beacon. Or Twitchy, that's another one.Ah, Twitchy, oh my goodness.witchy, when they put me in headlines, they don't qualify it or say who it is. And I'm just like, guys, no one knows who I am. If you're going to write an article about a movie star, you can just say their name and people will know who you're talking about. But if you're just like, "Parker Molloy said this on Twitter," it's like, who the f**k is Parker Molloy?Right. Because your title, I think, at Media Matters was editor at large. Is that right? So yeah. I mean that... Oh, Media Matters editor, people kind of understand what Media Matters is. But that's kind of the case now for me too, where it's like... When I was at Vox that was always... People love to own Vox, so it was like, oh, this Vox person. And now, it's so new that I'm independent that I'm not quite sure how that's going to work, if I have enough... If my brand is strong enough where people will still care or not. But yeah, when you're just doing a newsletter, it's kind of like, newsletter writer so and so. It doesn't quite have the same kick that, oh, Vox person or Media Matters person has.Yeah. Sometimes I miss being part of the target that is Media Matters on Twitter. Like when Lara Logan had like-Oh my God.Last week, where she was like, "They're like the Taliban," or something like that. And I was like, I've been gone for like two months, and if they turned into a paramilitary organization, I don't know. That seems a little out of character, but okay.Well, that's kind of... Because, yeah, Media Matters is interesting in that respect because a lot of it, including yourself when you were there, but Bobby Lewis or Andrew Lawrence, people who have such voice on Twitter, but then you read the posts on the Media Matters site and they're so straightforward. They're very factual and quotes. And that's like for me at Vox, Media Matters stuff on your site, and on Twitter too but especially on the site, was such a great resource because it was very factual. And so yeah, whenever you see people portraying Media Matters as this rogue... like a paramilitary organization or something like that, it's so over the top that you just kind of roll your eyes at it, but I don't know.Some people, I guess, are kind of ashamed of things that they say on TV or they don't want people... That was kind of always the thing that I felt with the long-running feud that I've had over many years now with Glenn Greenwald, which kind of the origins was me just calling him out for being on Tucker and posting video clips. And obviously, other people at Media Matters have been targets of him as well, where he kind of... I think the term that he's used is we're hall monitors or something like that. Like we're narcing on him or something. But oftentimes you're just conveying things that he's saying on Tucker Carlson's show, and if that's enough to set someone off, then I think the problem is probably more with them than anything else. So it's a little bit of people like Lara Logan telling on themselves with stuff like that.Yeah. See, now that could be one way to get your Substack off the ground. You could just start a big fight with Greenwald.Oh man, I'm kind of drained.That might be the path. Just be like-Yeah, I mean, I've tried to rise above, I guess. Yeah. Over the years you mellow out a little bit. And I don't know, there was a time where Twitter fights were a lot more appealing than they seem to be to me now. I think maybe part of that was just being at Vox, which obviously doesn't really want their staffers engaging in bare-knuckle combat on Twitter. But I still think it's worth calling these people out at times. But with someone like Greenwald, I think it's become so normal for him to go on Fox News, it's not really newsworthy anymore. There was a time where he was getting a lot of grief because he would proclaim that the idea was that he was going on Fox and telling viewers, sharing perspectives that they wouldn't see normally.But any pretense of that is so far... it's become so absurd to even claim that something like that is going on that I just don't see a lot of news value in highlighting that stuff. And that's sort of the thing, more broadly, with Tucker Carlson's show, which I still try and keep an eye on most nights. But I find myself grappling with just the extent to which it becomes kind of self-perpetuating, where if you make a big event out of every one of his shows, does that help create this perception that they're big events? Because a lot of what he says is so predictable at this point. Obviously he has millions of viewers. And so you can't discount that nor can you really understand what's going on on the right if you ignore people like Tucker Carlson, or if you ignore the Trump rallies.I don't think that's really a hugely constructive way to approach them, but... And obviously people at Media Matters, that's their job is to document. But for someone like me who is kind of dipping in and out to try and get a sense of what people are talking about on the right, if you're live clipping every one of his monologues there is a sense in which you're kind of promoting him or validating him to your audience as well. And I don't have any great answers for that, but it's something, as I'm kind of immersed in right wing media, that I find myself almost on a daily basis wondering what the correct way to handle situations like that is.Yeah. I totally agree. I find myself grappling with that same sort of, okay, is this really important to focus on? Is it not? But when it comes to someone like Tucker Carlson, for example, he is essentially setting the platform for the Republican party moving forward. On his show he pushes Great Replacement theory kind of stuff. And then you'll see a member of Congress on Fox and Friends talking about that. That's the same thing that the Charlottesville Nazis chanting that they won't be replaced. That's the same thing. We've come that far to where now that's mainstream.Or the El Paso shooter. And there's a dynamic where you get kind of numb through the sheer repetition of it, where the first time you hear Tucker Carlson invoke Great Replacement theory, it's this big news event, because it's like, wow, this is a far-right talking point that's made its way onto Fox News. But then after like 10 broadcasts of that, it becomes kind of numbing where it's like, okay, this is just another bit on his show. And you're right. There was a congressman from Texas who was on Newsmax, pretty much word for word saying a lot of the same things that Tucker Carlson says on his show about how the Dem immigration policy is to bring immigrants in who vote for Dems. And this idea that it's this conspiracy to change the electorate in a way that dilutes the power of traditional, with air quotes, American voters sort of thing.And yeah, it's a tricky thing to know how to handle that, because again there's kind of a novelty the first few times you hear something like that. I think back, the El Paso shooting, which happened, I believe that was in 2018. And at that time, Trump was really hammering the caravan talking points and this notion that immigration was tantamount to an invasion of the country. And that came out in the manifesto that the shooter released at the time of the shooting. And now that we've fast-forwarded three years and it's just kind of a normal Republican talking point. And so there are consequences to things like that, but it also is just a difficult thing to cover on a day in and day out basis because it's kind of exhausting.And again, it loses some news value. So that is where I think that it's the type of work that Media Matters does is so vital in terms of just shedding light, to a largely progressive audience, of what people are talking about on the right and raising awareness in those ways. But you hear, and I noticed this recently with Chip Roy, who is on Tucker Carlson's program. And I clipped this because it, to me, kind of rose to the level where he was saying that Democrats are sick and twisted individuals, and this sort of dehumanizing and incendiary rhetoric. And that's kind of like a nightly thing on Fox. And so you try and imagine if you're someone who's earnestly watching this stuff, what your views about politics would be.And it's not a pretty picture. But it's part of the complication of being a journalist covering media at this point. Political media is just knowing how to handle these very difficult subjects in a responsible way that doesn't perpetuate problems. And so, Trump had a rally just this past weekend in Georgia that I live clipped and added some commentary on Twitter. And I got a number of DMs from people who were like, you're part of the problem, you're promoting them. And I try to be sensitive to that. I think there is news value in knowing what Trump is talking about, because he's the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee at this point and obviously he's setting the agenda for the Republican party.So I don't really think ignoring is the way to go. And again, I don't have any perfect... You could probably teach classes on this stuff, but it's difficult. And these are kind of new problems because we live in such a media-saturated environment now that it's just inescapable. And you have to find a way to cover this stuff if you're going to cover politics, and it's dicey. So I don't pretend to be perfect, but these are things that I am going to try to continue to grapple with in the newsletter as well.Great. Yeah. I think for me, one of the points that pushed me into trying to do this newsletter and doing a Substack thing, just like you are, is the fact that when I was at Media Matters there were several times where I watched something happen and then I was like, I'm going to write about that. And then I'd write about that. And then I'd watch the same thing happen six months later. And I'm like, I'm going to write about that. I've already written about that, but I'm going to write about it again. And then the same thing would keep happening and nothing was changing. And I'm just like, okay, maybe I'm not writing this correctly. Or maybe I'm not getting through to the people I need to get through to. Or maybe I just need a change of scenery.And I think that that's been helpful for me. I still think political media is kind of a disaster at the moment. But you also have all of these new sorts of outlets to go to, and to try to... One thing I like about Substack, or email lists generally, is the fact that you don't have to worry about what some algorithm is going to do or what some... Like if Twitter shut down tomorrow, they could do that, and then I would lose everything. I wouldn't have anyone in my contact list. With this, people sign up, and they get emails directly from me.And Substack can fall apart and I would still have those email addresses to be able to continue to communicate with people. And I think that as time goes on it's going to be more important to be able to reach people directly. And so that's one reason that I thought, yes, this is the path to go for me. This is the chance to get out of that. And also, a chance to just write about whatever I wanted. Sometimes it's on point. Sometimes it's just, here's something I've been thinking a lot about. The most recent piece that I wrote had to do with just kind of this general feeling of dread that's going on. And that's not something that Media Matters would've published, because they'd be like, this is nothing to do with our mission. I'd be like, I know. But it's a chance to express myself in a more personal way without having to... There's a level of not necessarily bad self-censorship, but just staying on topic at a job.Yeah. And you still do some media analysis on your Substack. So it's not like that's completely gone away. But I totally hear you with the sort of banging your head against the wall aspect of covering these recurring issues in right wing media that never seem to improve. And that can be very frustrating because it's like, well, why am I even bothering? And obviously it's important that people do that sort of reporting, because not everyone, like myself, people can't spend hours each day immersing themselves in right wing media. And so it's important that there are trusted sources who can report on what's going on there. But I think you're also right, because one of the things that I was debating, whether or not to do this newsletter that I was thinking about is, oh maybe I should just go the route of doing the Twitter super follow thing. But, as you were just touching upon, ultimately I concluded that putting that many eggs in the Twitter basket might be a bad idea.We've seen this with Facebook and the whole pivot to video thing that it's good to not become too reliant on one platform for your professional livelihood. And so obviously Substack is a way to diversify and to also leave space to do more writing than threads, or 280 character tweets, that sort of thing. So yeah, there were a couple different considerations with that, but I do think having a home for your work off of Twitter is probably a good and healthy thing overall.Oh, absolutely. Anything that gets you a little bit further away from Twitter? Probably healthy.Probably healthy. I have kind of a hard time with that because Twitter has become... I have it broken up into lists now where I have a news tab and a sports tab and a friends tab. But it really has become kind of my pipeline. Back in the day, 15 years ago, it was like, okay, I'm going to go read the newspaper to get up to speed in the morning with what's going on. And now Twitter has become my entire gateway. And that might change a little bit as I get more immersed in Substack, or as I spend more time on Substack. Because there's a lot of stuff across a wide range of topics going on, on Substack.So I'm sure I will incorporate that more into my information consumption routine. But it is kind of amazing how all of us as working journalists have, for the most part, been sucked into this vortex of Twitter, for better or worse. And I do think there are a lot of good things about Twitter, but just how ubiquitous it's come and kind of inescapable, when you take a step back, it's like, wow, I do spend a lot of time on it. So, for better or worse. Probably for worse.It's one of those things where I look at the usage stats on my phone and it's just sad. It's like, hey, your screen time for this week. And I'm like, don't tell me. I don't want to know.I'll get the ones where it's like your screen time, your average per day, is seven hours per day, down 40% from last week. And it's like, I guess that's progress. But yeah, I've even gotten bad enough in recent years, now I read books on my phone or my computer. Even at night I'm trying to unwind with my family and I've got the multi-viewer to see what's on Fox News and Fox Business and Newsmax. Definitely I'm overstimulated constantly, and I'm sure that does have... it affects you. But again, I view that as part of my coverage area as well as just sort of being aware of what's happening, not just on TV but on the Hill.And so I'm watching C-SPAN all the time too. But yeah, it does kind of lead to... Even when I'm reading a book on my computer, I usually have a multi-viewer in the other half of the screen where I'm paying attention to everything on cable news. So, 50 years ago that would've been kind of unheard of, I guess, but there are upsides to that too. But yeah, I definitely feel very overstimulated all the time.Yeah. That's the general theme of my newsletters, just we're hyper connected and at the same time, so I don't know. Sometimes I feel like I just can't relate to any other human being. But I'm like, it's so weird that at this moment I can send out something to 200,000 people, but still not be able to actually feel like I'm communicating with anyone.It's interesting to think about if we would've lived through a comparable pandemic 50 years ago, before there was the internet. To me, I feel like it would've been a lot more isolating, just in the sense that we use... Like you and I can do this video call and talk, and granted we could have talked on the phone back in the day too or something like that. But even though we basically spent like a year of our lives holed up at home, I never really felt starved for interaction, although it's a little bit more of a shallow interaction than actually hanging out with people or getting together with friends, that sort of thing. But so I don't know, I guess I kind of view that as a upside to this hyper online world that we live in, that I do feel like... I have relationships with people... You and I have never before today, even though I feel like I know you, we've never really talked ever.We've DM'd and stuff like that, but we've never hopped on a call together or anything like that. So, it does lead to these kind of strange relationships or sort of different sorts of relationships with people. So, I think in some ways to me, I feel like I would've had a harder time enduring the sort of social conditions that in some ways we still are enduring, but this kind of like... the separation that we've all had from each other. Although just before we got in this call, I was talking with Casey Michel. I'm not sure if you're familiar with his work, but he's a political journalist who just sort of book on kleptocracy. And I was doing a Q&A with him for the newsletter, and he was kind of like... I was just congratulating him on finishing his book and stuff. And he was like, oh yeah, my wife likes to say that's how I spent the pandemic was writing this book. And I was like, man, that's so much more constructive than getting into drinking whiskey and daily fantasy sports that I did.I was going to say, I started collecting baseball cards. That's what I did during this. That's how I spent my pandemic, just picking up random hobbies here and there. I was like, yeah, baseball cards again. I did that when I was like 12. Let's bring that back. That's a thing now.I have a mutual friend who's really... I don't know Phil Hughes, the former major league baseball player at all, but I have a friend who's really good friends with him. And Phil has become on Instagram, kind of a baseball card celebrity. He does this thing on Instagram where he opens packs of cards. And so I've kind of vicariously... Because at my parents' house, we still to this day have boxes and boxes and boxes of cards from when we were kids, myself and my brothers. And actually one of my brothers recently went through them. And I guess there really weren't that many cards that are worth anything, because even back in the day you needed to buy the premium packs or whatever. And that was totally lost on me. I thought all cards were kind of the same or you could get good cards in any pack.But you know, everything is so digital now that I guess it kind of... Baseball cards have kind of become this transgressive analog physical item. And so I think it's kind of cool that they're back in vogue now. So I guess, I don't know. We'll see, if this pandemic goes on for another six months, I guess the next variant wave that we have, maybe I'll cave in and buy a box of cards too, but I haven't quite gotten there yet.Yeah. I'm definitely going the baseball cards and video games route to pandemic survival.Oh, I love your tweets. Yeah. I absolutely love your MLB The Show tweets. I have friends who are into that game, as well.It's fun!Yeah. It's cool that you're savvy enough to post little videos and stuff.Yeah. So when I was working at Media Matters, I had a separate Twitter account set up that was just following all of the right-wing accounts, just so I can keep up with whatever nonsense they're up to. And so that's the one I connected to my PlayStation. So the feed, the only thing in it is just... Because I never tweet from it, but that's where I have all the photos and videos sent to, to pull from. So yeah, the feed over there is just all of my PlayStation things and nothing else. So it's pretty great. But yeah. You know what, thank you so much for stopping by to talk about your newsletter. Is there anything else that people should know if they're on the edge about whether or not to... Well, first off, if you're on the edge about whether or not to subscribe for sign up for free, you should totally do that. That's without a question. Worst case scenario, you just ignore the emails.I'm guessing if you made it this far into this podcast, you're probably willing to sign up for free. And so I encourage people to check it out. I've got a couple... As we sit here, I'm a week out from launch, as Parker and I are talking, and I already have a couple posts that I'm excited about that are ready to go. And so I'm hoping that ultimately the content will speak for itself. So yeah. Check it out. Like I said, aaronrupar.substack.com, and check out my Twitter account. I'll certainly be tweeting things out from there as we go. And appreciate you having me on. And at some point we'll have to return the favor. I'd be interested to talk with you about your personal immersion in right-wing media and coming out of that. And perhaps the scars that that left.Oh, and there are many.You were at Media Matters maybe three years, right? So you were there a pretty good chunk of time.Yeah. About, about two and a half years, I guess. Because it was right before the 2018 midterms was when I started over there. And then was there for the midterms, there for the 2020 election. And I was under the impression that after the election there might be a couple weeks of chill-out time. No, of course not.No. God, no.It just went right on, right on being crazy.I've been kind of thinking because yeah, it did kind of calm down there. After Biden's inauguration, there was a brief moment, I guess. Then there was the impeachment though, but I felt like I was breathing easy about how things were going for a couple months, I guess, as the vaccination rollout was kind of successful and things economically seem to be going pretty well and stuff. But now that we're approaching the midterms and there's been Biden's approval numbers are kind of shaky where it seems... And his agenda is somewhat imperiled at this point. I feel some of the old anxiety creeping back here a little bit. So I guess you probably got out at kind of the right time. I'm still planning on covering the same old stuff for the newsletter.But I guess I do at this point... I've been doing it long enough where I feel a sense of almost duty to cover this stuff. I'm sure it's leaving some scars on me too, but I guess I'm willing endure it a little bit longer to... Because I feel like the story of Trumpism and the struggle to protect the integrity of elections here in the States, it's still an ongoing and very active story. So at least for now I kind of feel obligated to continue to see it through.Absolutely. And people should 100% follow your newsletter for more on that. Thanks. Thanks again for stopping by. Get full access to The Present Age at www.readthepresentage.com/subscribe

Welcome to another episode of The Present Age podcast. I’m your host Parker Molloy.Joining me on this week’s episode is writer and podcast host Molly Jong-Fast.Parker Molloy: Oh, hello, Molly! Molly Jong-Fast: Hi, Parker. It's so fun to get to meet you!Yeah, I know! We followed each other on Twitter for, what? Four or five years or something?I don't know. It feels my entire life, but I know it's not.Yeah. Well, I mean, it's just the past several years have been a lot. So, but yeah, this is the first time we're actually talking and seeing each other. That's right. The people listening cannot see us, but…No, but we exist. Yeah.So thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me for this, for my fledgling little podcast. Oh, I'm honored. It is nothing compared to yours, I'm sure.I mean, I would say, the thing with podcasts is you just, you do it. And then people, I mean, unless you have the suspension of disbelief, then you can't do ... you know what I mean? So just, why won't it be fabulously successful?Yeah. It'll be great. It'll be great. Well, so basically with this, so I started, I made the decision to leave my old job and start writing a newsletter, which we'll see how that works out. And then-Bari Weiss is making $8 million a year.I am not making $8 million a year.Honestly, how is she making ... She's not. She's making ... supposedly what the reporting was $800,000, but I was like, "It's possible."It's possible. I do not doubt for a second that there are people making millions of dollars a year with Substacks. But I am not at that point.Me neither, but yeah. But yeah. So when doing that, I was just like, "What else can I do?" And one of the people at Substack who they run my website or not run it, but power it, they were like, "Well, we just added podcasts." And I was like, "That's cool. That's an interesting idea." It's my way of doing podcasts without having to dive too far into it. So here I am trying a podcast, but one thing I always tried to do is I tried to get a transcript of every episode made in full, which is either extremely time-consuming or very expensive, but I think it's worth it.I mean, transcription services are my nemesis and you will see why when you transcribe me, because I have one vocal cord. So I sound very weird. And then I have all sorts of weird affectations that are not necessarily fancy. Some of them are just saying “like” or verbal ticks. And so I come off ... You'll see.Okay, we'll see. I'll send this through the service and we'll see how it goes. But yeah. So when I invited you on, I was just like, "I'm sure she'll write something amazing that I will then be able to be like, 'Yes, let's talk about that.'" So luckily for me, you did, you did recently write something amazing.Oh, thank you.So I want to talk about your new piece for Vogue that's titled, “What our new age of pandemic anxiety looks like and how to deal with it.” Is that okay with you?Yes.Awesome.I am like, this is a topic that I am so well-versed on, I hate how well versed I am.Oh, same, same, which is the thing. So I really related to it, especially in this idea of health anxiety, which isn't actually a term that I've heard before, which you described as the conviction that even though you don't have any symptoms you know deep down that you're sick, and that is just me to a freaking T. Can you talk a bit about your experiences with that?Please. So I had an interesting, I had ... a very anxious, I was very anxious always in my life. And my aunt told me once that my grandmother had said, "I am not religious. I am just profoundly superstitious," which I feel points to a family that has long suffered from anxiety. And I always think you don't get to be the Jews who left Europe in the 1800s without being very stressed. Because not only were you ... you were like, "We're out of here. They're going to murder us." And a lot of my ... on my grandmother's side, I had great grandfathers who had died in the pogroms, and so I do feel like really, the anxious people got out early and because they were like, "We're all going to get murdered." So in some ways it was a good adaptation, right? Anxiety. It saved all our lives. I see a kid here.The kids have no ... they come in and come out. Teenagers. But so in some ways it was good. My grandmother was like, she had worry bagels. She had worry fish. She had when you got on an airplane, you got on with your right foot, you knocked on the side of the plane three times and you got ... right? So I am coming from a very crazy bunch of people. And growing up I traveled a lot with my mother. She would always be crossing herself. I mean, we're Jews, but crossing herself, we get on an airplane, praying, rosary beads, was raised by a Catholic nanny who had lots of rosaries. I had rosary beads on my bed. The craziest stuff in the world.So when I got to be about early thirties, so I had always been very neurotic and I went through a period where I didn't fly, which was complete ... people were like, "What are you in lunatic?" And I was like, "No way." I mean, yes and no. So, but then when I got to my early thirties, I had this best friend who, she was like all of us a complicated person, but she had ... and she had this terrible story where her mother had gotten murdered and then her husband had divorced her. And it just been this terrible story. And then she had gotten this brain tumor. And as soon as she got it, we sort of knew it was like ... I mean, brain tumors already, you don't want one. And this was like the worst one. And it just ... So for a year and a half, she fought and fought and fought and fought, and it was the worst thing I've ever seen. She died right after she turned 40. She was on a walker. I mean, it just was, she couldn't talk. I mean, it was just awful. And basically, the minute she died, I was like, "I have one too." And it was because I just couldn't process that this could happen and that this is just the way life is sometimes, and so I became obsessed that I had one too. So I went down this road of health anxiety. It's funny because if you look at the statistics, it's 5% of all ... it's about half of all anxious people suffer from health anxiety. And if you think about it, so the statistics are 10% of the American public suffer from anxiety.I can't imagine it's that low. I mean, if it is then everyone I know is in that 10%, you know what I mean? And so I went through a period of being convinced that I just needed one more scan. I just needed one more of this. I just needed one more of that. If we could just get through this. Also, during that time I got a melanoma on my back, and it was a zero stage. It was fine. They caught it very early, but that also triggered my ... I was in my mid-thirties, and I said to my dermatologist, I was like, "I can't believe this happened to me." And she was like, "You're totally pale. You grew up in that generation that never used sunblock. And you're 33. I can't believe you didn't have a 10 years ago."But that was good for me because I get stuck in my own head in a very kind of ugly way, so to be able to get someone who says stuff, "Come on, man," to quote Joe Biden, is very helpful for me. So I got the melanoma taken out. I'm very careful about getting a check, but yeah. So it's interesting too, so that was how I got into it. I hope I answered the question.Absolutely. Okay, good.Absolutely. It's just something that I really relate to. And just at the beginning of the pandemic, I used to joke around to myself that this was kind of my Bain in the Dark Knight Rises moment. By that point, I'd been working from home for several years. I was like, "Oh, you're worried about catching a deadly virus every single time you step outside? Welcome to the club." And part of why I kind of struggled so much with health anxiety is that deep down I know that there will come a day where my worries aren't unfounded, where I really am sick, where I really will get worse and where I really will die. And that sort of this idea that floats through my head constantly. You always get better until one time you don't.But the thing that I learned a lot from a lot ... I stopped going to regular therapy and I got this behavioral as to really focuses just on anxiety. And most of his patients are either flying or health or agoraphobia or something. And the thing that he always says is, "With anxiety, it's the inability to live with uncertainty."Ooh. Yeah. That's an interesting way to kind of think about it. And that is again, tragically relatable for me because it's this, I don't know. And I feel I have worked in the wrong industry to have this sort of feeling because I was ... a lot of that kind of carried over to fears of things like getting fired or being laid off and not being able to pay my bills. For instance, I used to sort of worry that I was constantly on the verge of losing my job and then I would convince myself, "Oh no, it's all just in my head. I need to overcome this, and watch, everything will be fine." And it usually is until one time it isn't fine. And one time I did get laid off at a job that was just downsizing.And then I had another job where they laid off a bunch of people and I kept making the cut, and then finally one surge of layoffs I did not. And these things rather than see them as rare occurrences that we just sort of have to deal with and roll with, I kind of kept ... the negative things would reinforce all of my bad habits and all of my bad thoughts. And that was kind of something that sort of played into it with the pandemic, especially as a plays out. Because when in early 2020, there was ... remember back when they were like, "Don't buy masks. You're fine. You don't need masks." And then I went in, decided, I was like, "Screw them. They're lying to us, I'm getting all the masks I can." Which I know that's not helpful. I know that only fuels the toilet paper shortage stuff that we had going on. But I also had a lot of toilet paper because I was "No, screw you guys. You're not telling us the truth." I'm very distrustful of the government generally.Yeah. Well, the toilet paper was a good call because we couldn't get toilet paper. I mean, it was just ... but I would say the cycle ... so one of the things that was problematic for me was that I was in a cycle of reassurance seeking. So I wanted to know that everything was going to be okay and that we were going to be okay. And that you were going to ... that the turbulence didn't mean the plane would crash or ... and what I had to do for me, and I even got into it with my shrink and he was like, "Stop it. I'm not going to reassure you. I am not going to text you back," which is that I had to say it's not that ... even the question of, “Is it going to be okay?” is problematic.I don't need to answer questions. I have thoughts that are going to come into my head that are going to be like, "Will I be laid off?" And I just say, "That is an anxious thought, this is part of my anxiety." You know what I mean? And just, but I don't fight it. I mean, because that's the problem is if you fight it, it gets worse. So I don't fight it. I just merely ... wait, hold on. I got a dog here. I just merely ... here we go. This is Leo.Hello, Leo!Let the record reflect that a very adorable rescue puppy has come into the chat. How is your guy?Oh, he's great. He's currently at the dog park.He's so cute. Yeah. He's just the best. He's tiny and adorable. I feel like he'd be easy friends with Leo.Oh yeah. No, they would love each other. But yeah. So yeah, so to not engage with the thoughts, but not to fight them, which is very hard because even now still a long time later, I want to fix my thoughts or I want to fight with them. I want to say, "That's not true." And the more I can just see the thought, not engage with it. Just be like, "This is the anxious thought." It's an unwinnable proposition because we don't know what the future is going to look like. We don't even know if they're going to be jobs. We could all be Substack millionaires. Yeah. We could.Yeah. Like Bari Weiss.And maybe someday I will. Who knows.Right. I mean, so yeah. So the idea that you can't win a thought.Well, and that's a great point. I mean, because I ... so going into the ... right before the 2016 election I was working at Upworthy at the time, which was a very weird, weird fit for me, but it was fine. And there was someone, one of my coworkers was just, his whole thing was he set up a slack channel and was just like, "Go in here and I will reassure you about the election. I know everyone's worried that Trump's going to win, but let me reassure you. He won't, he won't. It's fine. It's fine. Don't worry. Look, here's what the odds show."And he would even point at 538 or something, and then election night happened and it was like, "How could this happen? We've been reassured repeatedly." And that's the thing it's like we can't be sure of anything in the world. And I feel like this need to be reassured probably does contribute to it. And your piece really hit that point home in a way for me that I haven't been able to kind of ... I hadn't been able to kind of come up with on my own before reading it. So that's why I really enjoyed that.Oh, thank you. And I spend a lot of time thinking about anxiety because it's such a root of my life and my mother's and my children. There's just a long ... So I really do find it ... I don't know. I relate to the struggle with it and I just think about it a lot. So the other thing I would say that I ... just about the 2016 election was I was at an election watching party and I was watching the needle go from blue to red. And I was like, it felt turbulence on an airplane. I had that same feeling of we're going through extreme turbulence, all flight attendants sit.I was like, "Oh," I felt it in my chest. And I couldn't. And usually, I don't have that feeling unless I'm at a doctor's office and they're like, "We're going to want to biopsy this," or something. But and I couldn't ... it was the first time in my life where I thought, "Oh my God, this election." Because you know, Mitt Romney. I mean, no one likes Mitt Romney, but he wasn't going to arrest all Mexicans. And it was the first time in my life where I thought, "Oh, s**t."Yeah. I mean, I had kind of the same sort of idea. I was never one of those people who was very like, "Oh, Trump can't win. He won't win." I always think the worst possible thing that can happen will happen. So going into election night, I was like, "He's so going to win. It's going to be terrible." I was not one of those overcome people. I was sitting there just shaking on edge waiting to see how it worked out, and after the 2020 election when everyone was celebrating and streets and stuff, I'm like, "He's still in office. Give it time. He might try to find a way to stay in there."I wrote a piece that went up at Media Matters the morning after the election, and it was basically, "Now watch, he's going to try to do something." And then they tried-And he did.So I was like, "This thing isn't over as much as we all want it to be," but…Yeah, he never ever, I mean, they got him out, but he never, ever was like, "Okay, I lost."Yeah, no. To this day he still talks about how he won. And I think he's going to run in 2024 and I think he might win, and if he wins after the past, after the four years of being out of power, he's going to be mad and it's not going to be-It's going to be terrible.It's not going to be okay.It's not going to be okay. That's right.I'm trying to take it day by day. And step-by-step and hoping that I'm not ... because there's nothing I can say or do that will change these outcomes. I mean, I may have my tiny little sphere of influence, but anyone who's listening to me is not a Trump voter. I've talked to people who have voted for Trump had constructive conversations because I think those things are important, but I don't think that those are people who take advice from me, which is kind of the challenge here. It kind of brings me to the one other thing I wanted to kind of talk to you about was that for a while you wrote some stuff at, was that The Dispatch or The Bulwark, or?The Bulwark!The Bulwark. I constantly confuse those. Yeah.You can't confuse the two, because The Bulwark is anti-Trump right. And The Dispatch is anti-Trump right. They're the same. Yeah.But at the same time, one thing that I found so interesting about your work there, your writing tended to have this very like someone who is to the left of their usual reader base, trying to kind of get in there and kind of explain where you're coming from and where a lot of people are coming from. And I think that that's extremely helpful stuff. It resulted in a lot of backlash from the pro-Trump folks.Oh, they were mad. I mean, I have never made anyone madder than when I tweeted about this. What's interesting is I come from such a bubble because remember I live in New York, I've always lived in New York, so when I went to CPAC and I heard this anti-choice thing, I was like, "These people are loony." I couldn't even believe. I was like, "This isn't pseudoscience. This is pseudo insane. These people are insane." And people were so mad at me. They were like, "How dare you be pro-choice." I was like, "You guys were ..." I didn't even know.I mean, I sort of knew this, but I don't have any friends who are anti-choice. I mean, it's a basic ... most of the population is pro-choice. I mean, with some caveats, but so when they were so upset about that, I was like, "You guys." And even, and what's interesting is at The Bulwark, and I love them. I'm friends with all of them to this day. I love them. And they're very, some of them are some of the smartest writers and thinkers, but a lot of them are pro-life or anti-choice. I mean, and a lot of them grew up Catholic and that's very something they learned when they were young and they're very attached to it.To me, it strikes me as just ... and it's funny because it's like, I never had an abortion and I never, but I never had strong ... but I did have this one kid who had this ... who we thought I was going to have to abort. And I wrote about this for The Journal, which got people crazy too. But before the Wall Street Journal opinion page lost his mind, which is about four years ago.But I talked about how I had this chance of having a baby that was going to die of this degenerative disease. And it was not even a question to me I would have an abortion. It's like, I'm not going to bring into the world a child that's going to die of a degenerative disease. Life is f*****g hard enough. And they were like, "It's eugenics." And I mean, so it is you're dealing ... and I mean, I'm sure you have you think about this too. It's like you're dealing with a group of people who have no sense of how any of this works.Yeah. I mean, that happens a lot, especially when it comes to trans issues, that's always fun when there are people who are like, "It should be illegal for trans people to get medication and stuff." And it's like, "Wait, why?"Yeah. And I honestly think trans issues, they're so obsessed with it because they were just, they think they can get their people excited about it. Yeah.Well, and that's ... I think it all kind of plays into that. And one of the things that ... I used to try to do more of this, which was just kind of be the like, "Hey, look, I'm the trans person, the big, scary trans person. I am not eagerly sneaking into locker rooms and whatever." The locker room thing. It's so insane.Yeah, well it's first off, locker rooms and bathrooms are disgusting. I mean, that is a problem in itself. But the obsession was always so weird and it's always so frustrating because there's nothing you can say that will change people's minds on a lot of this stuff, which is frustrating. And what always just gets me is that how the people who are weighing in often are the people who have no stakes, no skin in the game when it comes to, "Hey, should your trans kid be allowed to see a therapist, or should a trans adult be allowed to ... should Medicare cover surgeries?" And you know, stuff that.And it's like the people who are very loud, inserting their opinions here, they don't have trans kids, they are not trans themselves. They are just like, "I don't this. It's icky to me. And so it should be illegal." And that's kind of the same sort of thing with abortion that comes up a lot where it's a lot of dudes or a lot of people who not only wouldn't want to have an abortion themselves, which is a very legitimate position. That's totally fine, but want to go out of their way to make it illegal for other people to access whatever.Yeah. Well, the abortion issue is like, I am not radically and profoundly pro-choice for my daughter because I know that I can get her an abortion if she needs one. I am radically and profoundly pro-choice for the woman who lives in Leadville, Texas, or whatever. Wherever, Texas, who can't take a day off work and has to drive 48 miles to get an abortion. You know what I mean? Or really hundreds of miles to get an abortion. I mean, I'm pro-choice for her because those are the women who end up suffering. It's not the woman in the blue states. It's the women in the red states who are underrepresented, who can't ... and that I think is really the important thing. But just to get back to the debate for a second, I had someone come to me earnestly and say to me, "It's all about women's sports." And I was like, "What? When have you guys ever cared about women's sports?"Yep. That happens so much. Well, so the funny thing is, so back in the 70s, there was a tennis player named Renée Richards, she was trans and she wanted to compete in the US Open. And she did, and she won a court case in New York and that was the whole thing. And so she competed in the US Open and the big concern was, "Oh, this person's going to dominate because blah blah blah. Grew up testosterone this, that whatever." And then she lost. And then she was a mediocre tennis player, which there are certain situations where sure, yeah. A trans athlete might have an advantage, but the response is always ... which is my response, which is always super unsatisfying to everyone, is it depends.Oh, do trans athletes have an advantage? Sometimes. Depends on what the sport is, how long they've been on hormones, what their age is. All of these things factor in there, but the people who are arguing the other side of this pretend to care so much about women's sports. They're like, "No, no, we need to make sure that eight-year-old trans kids who haven't gone through puberty," so they very clearly do not have ... puberty is the moment when you start to see it [inaudible 00:27:50] one way or the other. And it's like, if someone hasn't gone through puberty and you're still blocking them, you don't care about fairness. You're just being a jerk. You just want to exclude these people or to force them into a gender box that doesn't quite work for them.And I think that, I don't know, just again, it's something that, I mean, I love sports. I am not very good at sports, and I have no intention of trying to go on to the Olympics or whatever. But I care about this issue because I know a lot of people who do want to compete in sports, and especially when it comes to high school or even college, just people who want to find something that they can make friends, where they can make friends. That's what the point of school sports generally is. Most people don't go on to become pro athletes. And in this most recent Olympics, there was a-Right, I was just thinking about that.Yeah. There was a trans woman who from ... I think she was from New Zealand. She was a weightlifter, and I saw that she qualified. My initial thought, which I felt horrible about was, "Oh God, I hope she loses."Yeah, and she did.And she did, but I couldn't stop thinking about just sort of chaos it would be if she won a gold medal and instead she just didn't even finish. She was not ... but still it was something that there was this anxiety within me and I was like, "Oh God, am I rooting against this person?" And so then I just made a point of not watching her thing, because I didn't want to feel any attachment to the results in that. And then of course in the end, it didn't matter that she lost, they still said, "Well, it's still proof. She took a spot from someone who would have deserved it." And it's just like, "You can never win. They just move those goalposts right along."Right, but the obsession is, I mean, it is proof that a lot of these conservatives are bad-faith actors.Yeah, and it's so frustrating to try to have actual substantive conversations with people where it's, "Okay, let's find that middle ground." I'm always happy to talk with someone who's like, "I have concerns about trans issues. Can you kind of talk me through them?" And it's always like, when I do have conversations with people who maybe aren't on board with all everything in the world or whatever, but I will kind of have it and hopefully we will have a conversation [inaudible] come away thinking, "Okay, I may not agree, but I understand this a little bit better," which is all I asked for when I-I still think you're asking for too little, I mean, f**k them. I mean, like you don't agree with what I want to do with my body? F**k you. I mean, it's like gay marriage. If it offends you, don't go to the wedding. I mean, I don't know. This is like, they're the party of personal responsibility and limited government, and yet they want to make sure that you use the bathroom they like.Yeah, which is always interesting when it's like, "Okay, how would you enforce this?" And they're like, "Oh, we haven't thought that through." Right. Because the only way you can enforce that is if you're looking down people's pants as they're going into the bathrooms, which is extremely weird and definitely not small government.Right. I mean, it's funny because it's the people who rail against the nanny state are the nanny state. I mean, great example is DeSantis fighting with the cruise ships and the schools because he doesn't want schools to be able to make a decision for themselves. Yeah. I think that there's just something in politics that really ... there are so many blind spots there that I don't think are necessarily intentional, but they exist where people go, "Oh, cancel culture's gone too far." And then it'll be, "Oh, okay. Well also we are going to boycott to this channel for airing a show," or whatever. That's one of those issues that's kind of just made me just think, "What universe are some people living in, where they're like, 'Oh, the left cancels everything.'" Well, I just read a story about some church Pastor who got fired for talking about the vaccines being safe, or Tomi Lahren got fired from her show on Glenn Beck's The Blaze channel because she went on The View and talked about how she was pro-choice and they were like, "That is inconsistent with our values. Goodbye." And so hypocrisy, just in the sort of, in terms of politics, it's everywhere. I mean, but I think, given the I'm on the left, I notice it on the right a lot more. But it's something that I don't know if it's intentional, but I also know that pointing out the hypocrisy doesn't seem to do much, which is frustrating, which is something that I want to try to ...I don't know, but the general theme of this newsletter and podcast is communication, and I want to understand communication better. I want to understand how to come back to a single shared reality, at least. We don't have to agree on things, but can we at least agree on the facts of existence [inaudible]. Not tell ourselves these sort of stories that make our side look great and their side look bad. [crosstalk] exhausting.Molly Jong-Fast:I agree. I mean, that is really important. I mean, the idea of a shared reality, and we see because of the media is so siloed and there's this conservative media that is operating in its own, as you know, I mean, you have worked for the sort of pros of this. So you really know what this is about, but I agree. I mean, it's really, it's so ... it's just distressing, and you wonder ... I'm shocked at how bad it's gotten.Yeah. It seems to be getting worse too, which is-Yeah, I'm shocked. Yeah. It's grim, and that's something that hopefully it gets better, but I don't know. I try not to let the anxiety that fuels every part of my life also fueled this part, but it's hard.It's true. That's a good point. And I do think it's like we can only do ... I mean, that's the thing with my anxiety sometimes. I suffer from really bad anticipatory anxiety. So the night before a plane ride, I'll be checking the weather and feeling sick and not wanting to ... And one of the things I'll do is I'll be like, "Where am I right now? Am I in an airplane right now? No. I'm in my house. Am I okay? What number am I in anxiety right now?" I mean, I've literally had to do every basic anxiety trick in the book, which has helped me with the pandemic. I mean, I also think being sober has helped me because I can go to AA meetings and I can talk about my anxiety, but that is really helping. All the mental health stuff has really ... I've had to really use it.Yeah. Same. It's the same way with me if I get ... back before the pandemic if I get a speaking gig scheduled. In the days leading up to, like my flight, I'm like, "Oh no, I think I'm getting the flu. Maybe I should cancel." Then I get there and I get on the plane the whole time I'm going there I feel sick to my stomach and all of the physical manifestations of anxiety just kind of build up, build up. And then I go and do the thing. I give the speech and then it's fine. It's over. It's like, "Oh wait, no, I was fine. Oh, it turns out I wasn't sick. This was all in my head." But being in my head can become real, which is why I think a lot of the distinctions between, "Oh, this is just in your head," and, "Oh, this is just on the internet." Those sorts of things are kind of cop outs from acknowledging that things like your mental health affects your physical health. The internet is part of real life. It might not be all of real life, but it's still there.The internet, there are two things that really get me agitated. The idea that the internet is not real life, and the idea that Twitter is bad. You are lucky. You get to interact with people. It is a privilege. If you don't Twitter, then don't go on it. But there is incredible ... you get to read a book and then find the author and tell them their book is great. It's amazing. It's so cool.Yeah. I mean, I'm 43 now. So when I was ... 20 years ago, you couldn't do stuff that. You'd write a letter to the New York Times and maybe someone would see it and probably they wouldn't. And so this is so cool. This is the coolest thing ever. So if you don't like it, don't go. That thing where people say how much they hate Twitter and also how the internet isn't real, like, "Okay, it doesn't have to be real for you."Yeah. You can step back from it. And I think that part of what gets built into that, then they complain about, "Oh, the internet makes me sad and makes me angry." Which, I mean, that happens to me definitely a lot.True. Yeah, yeah.But they'll at the same time, don't want to log off because there's this sort of fear of being ... if you don't exist online, do you exist? That sort of thing where it's this hyper-realism of the internet that kind of sticks around. But, Molly, just thank you for doing this.Thank you.Please come back sometime. You were amazing.Yes, are you kidding? Anytime. And I'm excited to get this out there too. I'm sure people will really enjoy this crossover.Yeah. This'll be fun.Yeah, and I'm glad, I love ... getting to talk about mental health stuff, especially right now is, I'm thrilled. Thank you.Then I was excited to be able to chat with you about this, because it's just, you know, I think lot of the time people who tend to write about politics a lot, whether it's me or you, we both do that, that there's this feeling that our lives center around this and that there aren't other factors, but I mean, this is a nice, human, surreal conversation and things that we're all kind of dealing with. Maybe that is the key to getting people on the same page, is just to find these weird, little, tiny commonalities cling to, or not. I don't know. Anyway, thank you.Well, have me back. Thank you.Absolutely. All right. Get full access to The Present Age at www.readthepresentage.com/subscribe

Welcome to the Present Age podcast. I’m your host Parker Molloy.Joining me on today’s show is animator and crypto art creator Bryan Brinkman. His work has appeared at places like The Tonight Show, Saturday Night Life, and even Sesame Street. Today, he’s going to teach me a bit about NFTs.Parker Molloy: So, joining me today on the podcast is Bryan Brinkman. Hello.Bryan Brinkman: Hello, Hey Parker.How's it going?It's going very well.So, I wanted to have you on the podcast to talk to you about your art and your work, which I really like and enjoy. And also the one thing that I don't understand, but I want to understand, NFTs. Can you help me understand what an NFT is and how that applies to the art world, basically?I can do my best to try.All right.Because it's an ever-growing description because every week there's something new happening in the space. But just to start out, I would say an NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token. Kind of the idea behind it is that you can authenticate digital assets through the blockchain. And so, as a way of storing imagery or content. It's a way of saying, "Hey, I possess this digital asset," and that gives you the ability to trade it and resell it or do whatever you want with it. And so that's kind of the basic idea around what an NFT is, but then what that asset can be is exploding into a million possibilities.Yeah, I was reading something the other day about how people have other applications of the same blockchain technologies. Someone was saying, "Oh yeah, one day we could have contracts and deeds to houses and stuff like that on there". And that's really interesting. And I think that part of the issue is that a lot of people just struggle to understand the concept, because for instance, like in NFT might be something like a video or a GIF, or just a still image. Right?And people might think, okay, well, why would I buy this when I can just look at it anytime I want, I can make my own copy of it. I could just pull up a website that has this on it and look at it. For people who are thinking about trying to kind of explore that space as either a creator or someone who just wants to get involved and support artists. I guess that's another big thing, which I understand that that is definitely one of the reasons someone would want to pay for something as opposed to just looking at it on the internet.I think that's a good question. The first thing that comes to people's minds, when they say it is, why would I pay for JPEG when I can just download it or screenshot it? And I think that same idea can be applied to a lot of art. Why does any art have value? It's because there's a group of people that all agree it has value, and that gives it value.I think you can kind of look at the NFT collectible art market as being similar to what baseball cards were in the 90s. Those cards are printed for probably a penny on a piece of cardboard paper, but the value is whether a lot of people altogether go, "Hey, this Michael Jordan rookie card is worth more than this other card."And so I think it kind of falls into the same thing as that the NFT is just a medium and a canvas for people to create on. And the idea of I could just screenshot that, well, you can't go and sell a screenshot, but you can authenticate that you own the original copy of an NFT and someone will want to buy that.And that's really interesting. And that's a good point. I mean, the only real differences, the fact that there's a physical object to hold onto with, for instance, with baseball cards, which funnily enough, I was recently thinking about maybe getting back into collecting baseball cards because every once in a while, when the world gets too chaotic, I try to pick up a new hobby. So I don't just explode on Twitter or something like that.And a few years back it was comic books. I was like, I'm going to just get really into comic books and that's been helpful. And then it was video games, and it's all these like going back to my childhood kind of things. And so I think baseball cards is the next kind of going down and just looking into the state of that industry right now is really interesting as well. I don't know, I remember growing up and it'd be like, here's this one card, this is the card for this player for this year.And now it's like, “Well this one, if it has a blue border, it's worth more than if it has a multicolored.” And I'm just like, man, it's so complicated now.Well, the sports card, yeah. The sports card industry's kind of changed a lot recently too. I've been looking at like, they have like column like penny cards. When you buy these boxes and they have pieces of jerseys and autographs and all these amazing hand drawn pieces of cards and stuff, they've really upped the trading card game to keep up with kind of the collector mentality in recent years. Which is something I wasn't very aware of until like the past year.Yeah. And just the day I was looking at Topps, the trading card company. They have a section on their website that's now just Topps and NFTs. And it's kind of that same idea of trying to be like, yeah, you can own this rare whatever. And then there are some people who sell like a penguin or something. And I'm trying to understand that. And I don't know, I feel like I'm just like a million years old.No, I think there's, in my mind there's kind of two worlds of NFT collecting right now. There's the art side. And then there's the kind of the collectible side and the collectible side falls into that kind of sports card mentality where there's high volume and there are big communities backing it. And with the penguins, there's 10,000 of those penguins. And so having a feature in the New York Times will give all these people excited and the prices fluctuate, and it falls into more of like kind of a stock market mentality where there's kind of this liquidity to these collectibles. Whereas the art side falls into a slightly different category where it's more of like artists building communities around their work and their style. And that falls into kind of like the auction house world and the New York gallery world versus kind of like the sports card collectors.So there's all these different entry points. And I would say like a lot of the space grew because of a website called NBA Top Shot that came out about a year ago and kind of brought that sports card, collecting mentality into the space. And then all these people did it. They kind of got a sense and they started to wrap their minds around, "Hey, these digital assets hold value". And then they started looking elsewhere. And so that they kind of branch off into what else there is, because I think it was [inaudible] who's an artist in the space. He made a tweet the other day. That was like, "When you used to meet a celebrity, you'd ask for an autograph, but now you ask for a selfie," and that mentality of what has more value to people these days? Is it the digital experience or is it this physical thing you hold? I think that's changing rapidly, especially with video game skins, and how you manage your digital content and video game worlds. For instance, I think translates very one-to-one with NFT world.That's yeah. That's a good point.Kids, these days. They care more about digital assets than putting paintings on their wall. They, they want to show paintings on their phone that they can show their friends.Yeah. And that's really interesting. And I mean, one way I have been trying to wrap my head around that over the past several months. And one thing that I've seen as a criticism of NFTs and just things that involve crypto generally is like the energy consumption of that. But it, everything seems so unclear when it comes to the environmental effect of any of this. Do you have any thoughts on that? I mean, I'm sure you have thoughts on that.Yeah. I mean I think it was around January, after I'd been in the space for a year, that article kind of came out written by this guy named Memo and it was kind of this jarring account of how much energy could be consumed at a maximum amount, if everything travels all these places and burns all this energy. And there's certainly different blockchains that consume different types of energies. And there's these arguments of kind of proof of work versus proof of stake. Ethereum is not the best at it. And they are actively trying to move to this new Ethereum 2.0, that will reduce this all by like 99%, but it's a slow process. So in the meantime, there's a lot of these kinds of like, they call them side chains where people can kind of mint on these layers, two solutions that take up less energy.But after that article came out, a lot of the NFT websites made commitments to offset their carbon emissions. So, I mean I've seen in the six months or so I guess it's been maybe eight months since that article came out, that has been a key point of almost every project is to offset that as artists. I did my calculations and offset it and I've done charities to raise money for that. And so there's a lot of ways you can kind of work towards that in the short term while they're kind of finding solutions in the long-term.And then a lot of artists that really feel strongly about it have moved to other blockchains, like Tezos, there's a website called hic et nunc, which is a very silly name, but I consider it to be kind of like the Brooklyn indie comic NFT site. So there's a lot of really cool art there, that's a lot more affordable and they call it clean NFTs. And so there's a lot of different ways people are kind of working to get around that in the short term, but there is certainly a lot of criticisms that are, I think are valid about Bitcoin and other blockchains that aren't working towards solutions in the longterm.Yeah, that's it, it's one of those things where I feel like the backlash to it was so swift where it was, if you buy an NFT, you're destroying the planet and you'd be like, whoa, I don't think that that is necessarily fair. Just saying that to people. I feel like that kind of scared a lot of people away from like really participating in this as either a consumer or an artist. And hopefully, that kind of over time will-I think the math and the calculations were all based on worst-case scenarios. Looking at it, the idea that miners are only going to consume pure energy isn't necessarily true because they're going to want to be using renewable energy just for their own profits’ sake. And a lot of mining happens on kind of solar power and renewable energy consumption. So I think there was a swift backlash and then people started to kind of understand that minting one NFT isn't the equivalent of an entire day of London's energy consumption. Yeah. So I think people started to kind of look into it, figure out what the accurate amount was. I mean, I had places reaching out to me asking me to help them like figure out calculations. Like I'm not a math scientist, but I can do my best to help, but yeah-“Please animate this and also do a bunch of very complicated math equations for it.”But yeah, I think in the end, I think it's somewhere in between the two, it's not, it's not urgent issue and it's also not a non-issue it's somewhere in between and you have to kind of work towards doing your best to address it as you can.Yeah, definitely. And so one of the things I wanted to kind of ask you about was just all of your other work that you've done over the years. I mean, just looking at your website, you have Tonight Show, Saturday Night Live, Sesame Street, a music video for The Good Life, one of my favorite bands, which is-We're both big Tim Kasher fans.Yeah. That's very, very cool. Cause I totally forgot you did that one, which it's a good video it's for "The Troubadour's Green Room", right?Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that was such a fun one to do because they basically reached out to me and they were like, do you want to do this video? Here's three songs from the new album. And I just kind of sat and closed my eyes and listened to the songs until imagery came about. And they just let me kind of dream up visuals and kind of make something on my own. And so they were very hands-off and they just let me have fun with it. It was a blast cause I'm such a huge fan. I'm originally from Omaha, Nebraska, so I grew up a big Saddle Creek Records fan.I mean, I'm from Illinois, so it's not too far away, but also grew up a big fan of Saddle Creek. Every band that was on there, I would go out and buy their albums as soon as it came out. Any of the bands that Tim Kasher would be in or Connor Oberst or any of the guys from The Faint, all of those bands are so good.I love The Faint, that they were my entry point to Saddle Creek when I was young, seeing those concerts were such a blast. I mean, they still are, anytime they come around town, I try to see them. But yeah, I think that kind of career path I took, I kind of went to school for animation. And then I found work kind of working in advertising and TV. I worked on some animated series, like the Life and Times of Tim, which was this very small, HBO cartoon, but it was a lot of fun to work on. So I kind of did all these paths before eventually kind of working. I worked at The Tonight Show for like eight years, but in my free time, I would try to do music videos. I would try to do posters for concerts. I would do these pop culture, art gallery shows in LA.And I was always trying to kind of like find ways to be creative because it was just like, that's my hobby. That's what I love doing. And then once kind of NFTs came around, it was like, oh, I no longer have to worry about turning my digital work into physical work to sell. This is a perfect platform for me to create animations. And I don't have to make short films for film festivals anymore. I can just make little short things that tell stories. And I found it to be just like the perfect amalgamation of all these things I've been trying to do for years. Cause I mean, I'm going to date myself, but when I was in high school, I was creating little flash cartoons for newgrounds.com, uploading them and then getting excited when people would be like, I like this one or I get upset when they say I hate this one, but it was that same concept where it's been years later I'm still doing the same thing where I'm just kind of making whatever I want to make and then I put it out there and I see what people think.Yeah. And it's really cool. And I love your style just generally speaking. The colors that you use, the really weird-ass kind of... I mean, just on your website under on the crypto page, there's one of the animations is like a person being ripped in half, but it's weird because it's not in this really gruesome way. It's just sort of like, Hey... unzip, zip back up kind of thing. And I just really enjoy that. How would you describe your art style? Also, just anyone listening to this, you can go over to my website, readthepresentage.com and I'll be sure to include some of your Tweets that have your images and stuff in there, so they can see what on earth we're talking about.Giselle Flores recently said I was a conceptual cartoonist, which I thought was very funny and kind of fitting, but I think the concept behind when I joined the NFTs was I had been doing these kinds of gallery shows and a lot of curators and people in the scene kept telling me "If you want to be a successful artist, you have to do the same style over and over because that's what galleries expect you to do when they put you in a show, they want you to do the work that you're famous for, because that's what sells". And I was kind of hated that mentality of like putting yourself into a corner, especially early on in your artistic career. I mean, I was living out in LA shortly after college and I just thought that's the worst way to get stuck in a style like so early.And so when I started doing NFTs, I kind of wanted to break away from that. I saw it as an experimental area to do whatever in. And so my thesis behind my art was I'm just going to stick with a color scheme and then I can do whatever style I want. I can do 3D, I can do 2D cartoons, I can do paintings. As long as they have those colors in it, it all ties together into this overarching style that I can claim to have. And so that's been kind of my through-line, but then that allows me to do dark neon animations or colorful, bright poppy animations.And that was kind of my way of breaking out of that trap of getting stuck, doing the same thing over and over. Even though a lot of artists do that and they make a great living off doing the same thing over and over, I just found it to be a little... I didn't want to get trapped in that too early. But now a year and a half into it, I'm starting to revisit the same themes and visuals and stuff, because now I've kind of developed a style through this experimental journey.Yeah. The colors that you use are just some of my favorites basically, they all work so well together, it is a really neat throughline for so much of your work. And even though, as you were saying, the style kind of shifts around and whatnot. It's always so interesting to learn about something that I just am so totally clueless about. And that's what this is kind of been, which is great.Yeah. And that's kind of the fun of like NFTs is like, I started doing it as just kind of making GIFs, because back when I started the NFT space, you couldn't even upload videos to the blockchain, the technology wasn't ready yet. And so everyone was kind of making these short looping GIFs, because that's how you could get a lot of mileage out of like a 50 megabyte file size limit. And so that's like kind of where I started. It was like, how can I make things? How can you make it loop nicely so that it keeps going, and it doesn't feel like you're only making three seconds of animation kind of stuff, but then over time, you start to get comfortable with that. And then you find new platforms, whether it's, I did a release on a website called art blocks, which is a generative art where you create art entirely with code.And then when people create it, they get a randomly generated piece of art. And so I did that in January and now that's becoming one of the most sought after platforms and styles of art, because it allows an artist to make an unlimited supply of art, but each one's unique. And I think that's a really cool thing that NFTs can do that can't be replicated outside the space very easily. And then also I did a piece for a platform called like async music, which allows you to sell music in a way that the album art changes and the audio changes based on who owns different layers of the track. And so for instance, you could have a band and you, as an owner of the guitar stem, you could change how the guitar sounds in the song. And when people listen to it, they have to listen to the version you choose as the owner of that guitar track. And then that also changes the visuals of the album. And so there's so many cool ways that like, the technology is creating new mediums altogether for like how music and stuff is released.Yeah. That last thing just sounds so interesting to me, it sounds like a total nightmare for artists to have to be like "Here you go, good luck. Let's be what happens with my work", like that sort of thing. But it's really just cool and different. And I don't know I'm always excited to just see new ways to... I hate saying consume, but enjoy, appreciate work and that's so, yeah. Is there, is there anything else that you want to make sure that people hear or anything you want to plug or talk about, or you know, whatnot.Yeah, well, I think as much as I don't necessarily care to talk about the money of the space. There is a lot of pluses for artists and creators to join the space. And one of those is that with the blockchain technology, as a creator, you can use the smart contracts of NFTs to benefit yourself longterm. And by that, I mean, when I sell a piece of art, you sell it for X amount of money, but through the contract, when it resells down the road, you get 10% royalty in perpetuity. And so something I sold for $200 a year ago could resell for thousands and I'll make more on the secondary royalty than I did on the primary sale. And so that incentivizes this kind of ecosystem of collectors and artists to both want each other to succeed because if someone buys my stuff, I want to grow the value for them, and they want to grow the value for me on the secondary.And so this is kind of symbiosis of support. And so the connection with artists and collectors is a lot deeper in this space than it was in the traditional art world where someone would buy my work. I would have no idea where it went. If they sold it on eBay or something, that's their thing and I've no part in that. But in this, I'm very hyper aware of every transaction, because a little bit will funnel back to me at some point. And I want to see the people that support me early on to succeed later on. And so it's a really a wonderful community of people that are kind of supporting each other.Interesting. I had no clue that that was the thing, because that's how I was looking at it with anything art related or related to collecting things. Once it's out of the original artist's possession, it's kind of like "If I pay for this, I'm not supporting the artist, I'm supporting the person who bought this from the artist", but that's different. And that I did not know. So that's interesting.Yeah. It creates a fun, passive income over time as you continue to grow. And it also incentivizes you to sell things at a cheaper rate early on and build up your community of people, because if it grows, then you benefit from that growing longterm. And so it's really kind of a wonderful solution that they figured out with the space. And a lot of the platforms are really good about including that, but it took years. I mean, I joined the space in January 2020, but space has been building for many, many years before that. And the efforts of all those artists pushing for those royalties and the collectors also that supported the artists early on, I've kind of like helped build this platform now that, in the past year has kind of exploded. And so it's been really awesome to see some of these artists that were making stuff three years ago, sold it for $5 seeing itself for hundreds of thousands of dollars. And then they get tens of thousands of dollars on that. Yeah, Absolutely. Now, if someone wants to, I guess I'm kind of both ends of this, if someone is like, okay, I listened to this and I'm interested in NFTs as a creator, how do you get started with like, if someone is a total beginner in this space, total novice, where do you go? Because there's so much out there that is just so I don't know. It's just seems it's very, if the crypto feels complicated and that's been kind of my experience in trying to like move things back and forth between wallets and stuff. And I'm just like, I don't even know what the hell I'm doing.Yeah, no, it's definitely tricky. There's a lot more resources now than there was when I started, when I started, I kind of got intrigued because an artist I collected named Killer Acid was putting stuff out. And I was like, what is this? I don't understand what this etherium symbol is. And I kind of spent a couple of weeks kind of Googling and looking at Twitter and kind of figuring out what this all was. Now there's a lot more resources on YouTube and Google, School of Motion has some great articles on how to get started and set up a wallet. The thing I would say is, there is an entry fee barrier now that wasn't there when I started because of etherium and the currency of the space is worth a lot more than when I started. It cost me like $40 to like get started.Now, I think it would cost a lot more. So I would say when I mentioned earlier, like hic et nunc, Tazos, that's a much cheaper way to get started, build a community before you then branch over to like etherium, which is more expensive right now. So I would recommend new artists kind of look at that. Join Discords, start following people on Twitter. Really spend some time looking at the space, seeing what people are buying, because I think the problem we see right now is everyone kind of sees these headlines about NFTs are worth so much money. And then they kind of dive in, they try to sell something that they haven't been able to sell elsewhere. And they're not really creating for the space necessarily. They're just kind of shoehorning in something they've been trying to sell in another form, whether it's like physical or something else. That is tough.New artists, you have to build trust with collectors that you aren't going to just sell something to make a bunch of money and then leave. And that takes time, you have to continue to put out work. So if, if you're a new artist, I would say like create four or five pieces of art that you feel good about selling and then start to see if people like it, see if it's connecting with people, share it. And then you don't even have to mint and pay the money to make it first. You can just put it out there, see if people want to buy it. And then once you have people that are willing to kind of help fund your initial output or... is that the word? Your initial launch, it's a lot more helpful. And there's also some organizations that will help artists with their first mint. I think it's called Mint Pass. I'll send you the link later, but there's a bunch of these kinds of organizations that help artists that can't afford to get started kind of put out their first pieces of art, which are very wonderful resources.Cool, Cool. This has been so interesting to me and just thank you so much for coming out. I'm so glad we were able to finally get this scheduled cause I reached out two weeks ago and then you said yes. And then my world became crazy for a little bit. So I'm glad we were able to make this work.I really appreciate you having me on here. And yeah, if anybody has questions about NFTs or whatever, feel free to reach out to me. I'm pretty available and I'm happy to help some people understand the space because it is confusing. Get full access to The Present Age at www.readthepresentage.com/subscribe

Welcome to the Present Age podcast. I’m your host Parker Molloy. Joining me this week is meteorologist and climate scientist Eric Holthaus. Eric operates The Phoenix, a Substack about humanizing the climate emergency.He’s the author of The Future Earth: A Radical Vision for What’s Possible in the Age of Warming, and he founded Currently, a free subscription weather service.Parker Molloy: Joining me today is Eric Holthaus. So what I wanted to ask you was, after the IPCC released its most recent report, there were a lot of really downer headlines about it. And when you sent me a copy of your book last year, one thing I liked about it was the fact that it was hopeful and that's not something you really see or hear too much on this topic anymore. Yet it was realistic. Can you tell me a little bit about why it's important to not embrace climate nihilism, I guess?Eric Holthaus: Thank you so much for inviting me. I think that we don't really have a choice anymore. Honestly, if we are going to do what we need to do in the time we have left, we have to change the narrative. We have to really unlearn that climate change is an inevitable disaster and that we're all going to die, and instead think about it as a justice issue, just like other justice issues, and get angry. And that comes with the realization that a better world is possible, that there are systemic changes that need to happen in every aspect of society anyway, and that's literally what the climate scientists said this week was we have to change every part of human society at a rapid scale in order to get down to the emissions goals that we need to do to preserve the habitability of our planet. What's more important than that, than being able to live on a planet, right? We don't have anywhere else to go. We have to do this.One thing about that, which the past year has messed with my head a little bit on I guess, is the fact that we're in the middle of this pandemic where you have people who aren't taking these super simple, easy, mild inconveniences to their life, to go get vaccinated or to wear a mask or to stay six feet apart from someone. And I keep thinking to myself, if people won't do that stuff, which feels like the bare minimum, I just don't know how we can expect people to get on board with doing the big things necessary to tackle climate change or tackle any of these larger problems that are facing use, these existential problems, which is something that I've been thinking a lot about lately as it comes to just places that I know that I've lived that have changed for reasons not related to climate.I just wrote a blog post about how my favorite baseball team is the Chicago Cubs and how Wrigleyville, the area right around the stadium, has changed so much in the past decade that it's just almost unrecognizable and there's this sadness that comes with that. In your book, you've written about how that sadness is applying on a global level. A sort of... I forgot. There was a word you used for it. It's escaping me right now, but it basically this idea that nostalgia for a loss...Solastalgia.That's it! That was it. Do you think that we can actually address this? I want to believe that humanity can come around and address these issues, but at the same time, I feel maybe I'm a bit cynical as far as the politics of any of this goes because a lot of my work has been in monitoring media and that has left me jaded.Yeah. First off, there's no parallel or precedent for the kinds of change that we're seeing in the entire really existence of humanity. That's what another thing the report said this week was it's been 150,000 years since temperatures were this high. It's been two million years since we've had this much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Human civilization is about 100,000 years old and modern humanity, our species is only about two million years old. So we are seeing changes that our species, humans, have never seen before at a rate that is not something that we're built to process. So it's normal for us to feel really weird and uncertain about this time. It's not something that we're built to process to have geological scale change happening in the span of one human lifetime.So it's normal to feel those weird conflicted feelings because we're trying to make sense of it all in the base back part of our brain as well. It's not just wondering what are we going to do about it, how are we going to motivate people, but it's like we're trying to survive and thrive as animals at the same time. So I think that one way that I've been thinking about is that it takes a lot fewer people than you might expect to create that rapid large-scale change. It's not like... What's it called? The critical mask of vaccination or mask-wearing the herd immunity. We don't have to get 90% of people on board with any particular climate action for it to be effective. We just need really honestly to destroy the fossil fuel industry. That's just the largest, richest, most powerful, most profitable industry in human history.Simple.Yeah. So we need to do that, but we also need to embrace the anger and embrace the courage that comes with reading reports like this, knowing that climate change is not something that's just passively happening, it's something that's being done to us. It's an injustice. And right before COVID, we were hitting those critical social movement tipping points of national governments were starting to respond to people in the streets and saying, "Okay, we're going to get on a rapid climate change action trajectory because you're going to shut down the country if we don't." They were afraid, the leaders were afraid, I think for the first time on this issue. And I don't know what it's going to take to get that to happen again, but I know that it will happen again because that is the most effective way of creating rapid change is demanding it. Honestly, in a democracy, that's what we need to do.Do you think that the answer is in government policy or is it in trying to just encourage companies to do better? That's where I'm always lost when, when it's okay, be angry, push for change, but how? Just your average everyday person, if they want to create change, what should we be pushing for? What sort of policies or actions or attitudes? I mean, because I understand that one thing we have going for is on the side of people who want to prolong humanity is the fact that fossil fuels, the profitability just keeps ticking down as compared to some of the renewables. But what should people like me or anyone listening to this do? What's the policy to argue for it?That satisfying answer is that you just need to do whatever will get you up in the morning. Honestly, there are so many parts of building this new society that is not extractive, that is focused on regeneration and resilience. So care work, education, public safety, public health, anti-racism, all of those things have to happen in order to do the slow society-changing work, regardless of whatever, carbon tax or whatever is passed. I'm not personally very motivated by calling a senator or protesting or any of that kind of stuff, because it feels too abstract to me. For me, I enjoy teaching my kids about nature or I enjoy taking a break from the screen and going on a walk outside and just thinking for a little bit as what do I want my neighborhood to be like? What feels achievable?And having conversations with friends, just keeping my motivation up, honestly, because as someone who works on climate change every day, that's a major challenge that I have. I'm in therapy. I couldn't do this without really knowing that there is some hopeful change that's possible. I know everyone needs their time to process and acknowledge what's happening, and there's a place for everyone in the climate movement, you don't have to consider yourself an activist to be someone who's creating effective climate action, but I feel like we have to demonstrate to each other that we can help each other through this time. Because I think for the last couple of 100 years, it's been this every person for themselves mentality in broader society.And that is something that really doesn't match with a more ecological approach, which is the way we're going to have to restructure all parts of society. So the more that you can get yourself into the mindset I'm part of a network, I'm part of a system, I'm part of an organic thing that can respond and be flexible rather than it's just me on my own. Climate change is not your fault. Climate change is not something that you are personally liable for, but you do have a responsibility to show up, just like you have a responsibility to show up to be anti-racist or you have a responsibility to show up to be a part of broader society. You have to pay your taxes, you have to follow the rules of being a pedestrian. You still have a responsibility to each other. That's what happens in being a member of society, but you don't have to do it all yourself.I think that one of the problems seems to be the sense of rugged individualism, that I can lift myself up by my bootstraps and if someone else can't, that's their problem. And that's something that we've seen over and over with the pandemic and why that approach has not been a good one because there are a lot of people who I don't quite understand how, but they just don't seem to care about anyone else. And there was an old Huffington Post blog that someone had that was...I love that.I don't know how to...Explain to you that you should care about other people.I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people. That was it. It's something that just sits in the back of my head. Just thinking about that and how true it is. And I think that that's why when you see people angry about the concept of intersectionality, for instance, which is just this understanding that there are all sorts of factors in life pushing in all sorts of different directions. And really the only way out of it is to care about things that don't directly impact you. I'm white obviously, and racism, it doesn't personally harm me in fact. Being white, there are many times in my life without even knowing it, I've probably benefited from racism. The structure of society and so on. But at the same time, I do feel a personal responsibility to push back on that and fight back against that because that's not the way the world should be just because that's the way the world is.And that's the...Basic human rights matters.Yeah. So, that's my view on climate. And I think that that's hopefully a good one. It's hard to tell. It's hard to know what the problems are. Is it that we're living in a world where everyone wants a big yard and they want to spread out and take up as much land and use as much resources as possible or the existence of Exxon? And it's probably more the latter, but all of it plays in together, but sometimes I feel like there's just the sense of okay, I'm doing this to make myself feel better because I can't do anything else. This is the most I can personally do.It feels like it goes with what you were saying about doing whatever helps you get up in the morning to move forward. And God, I don't know. It's so depressing, but I want to feel optimistic. And I know that it's just one of those topics, it's beyond frustrating, but on a totally... Not totally different topic, but a slightly different topic, I wanted to ask you about Currently. Can you tell me a little bit about that? What it is, how it came to be, what you do, et cetera.Yeah. So Currently we're building as a weather service for the climate emergency. So a service in the broad sense of that world word in the sense that we're organizing around the weather, we are talking about the weather because the weather is something that's a least common denominator for people to talk about. But also, the weather is political now. The weather is something that connects us to each other in really important and tangible ways. And it's also a very practical thing in the sense that the weather is the main way that we interact with the climate emergency. If there's extreme weather happening, where we are, or if we hear about extreme weather on the news, that's happening somewhere else, we can directly aid each other. We can also help keep ourselves and our family safe if we are informed about the weather. So my idea is that we're partnering with Twitter on this to create conversation spaces and we're doing daily weather newsletters written by a real person that goes beyond what you can just get in your phone app.It's a real person talking with you about the weather each day. We're also launching an SMS service where in many countries without super well advanced, well-developed weather service like we have in the West, SMS, and WhatsApp are the main ways that people communicate with each other about breaking news or about the weather. So we are in the process of rolling out an SMS weather service for anywhere in the world. You can sign up and we will send you automated messages about if there is an event, some weather alert that's happening where you are, and you can text back to us and we will have a meteorologist respond to you, that will answer your questions. And we're going to do all of this in the context of climate change. So we're partnering with Climate Central, which is a nonprofit that's focused on understanding the connections between weather and climate.Climate science has advanced to the point where we can in real-time attribute climate and weather disasters to climate change to say, "This event was X percent more likely because of global warming." And also have that scientific understanding of how that connection happens and in this week's IPCC report, was the very first time that was traced back to fossil fuel burning activities. So we know that there's a direct causal link between fossil fuels and extreme weather now. We can literally blame hurricanes on Exxon. That's a scientific fact now, which wasn't necessarily the international consensus as of last week. So this is a major advance in terms of building political movements, building communities organizing around climate, but also just informing us of reality, that factual reality now is that the weather is something that can bring us all together and help us to imagine a better world.That's my goal with Currently. You can sign up at currentlyhq.com. All the weather newsletters are free. To get access to the SMS service, as well as... We'll send you a gift basket of merch. You can join at $5 a month. And this is a completely independent thing. We're not funding by Twitter at all. We're trying to prove that independent climate journalism can re-imagine what a weather service could be. We're not going to try to compete with a weather channel or anything like that, we're going to add to it this climate service that currently doesn't exist.It's really interesting to me because one thing I like about it, I guess, one way of saying it, is that places like the weather channel or your evening news telling you the weather, there always seems to be this hesitancy to tie events to climate change because that makes people feel like oh, it's injecting politics into this, but it's not politics. I think that's probably part of the problem, that there's been this reluctance to discuss these things openly in the news. Fox News is going to start its own weather channel now, I guess, that'll be interesting, I suppose.So we'll be the opposite of the Fox News weather channel.You will be the factual opposite there, but I really appreciate the work you do and I think that it matters. It's all depressing, but it matters. And I feel like we all have to fight these fights together. And that's why I'm always interested in hearing new ideas, hearing what I can do personally, what we can do collectively as a country or a planet. And I've found that following you on Twitter is a good way to stay up to date with that sort of stuff.And that's one thing that we're going to try to do with Currently too. We did a couple of reader surveys and the number one thing that people wanted was calls to action, was saying if there's this weather thing that's happening, how can I help? How can I get involved? What can I do? What will actually really matter? What will really make a difference? So, that's going to be one of the main things that we're already doing actually is sending out little prompts to say here's how you can support the Pacific Northwest heatwave. We did a story about farmworkers and Eastern Oregon and how there was a unionization effort that was trying to get cooling centers for farmworkers in Eastern Oregon. So, that was one of the calls to action we had, was support these workers who are literally out there creating our food for us and dying on the job because there's no heat protection. So, that's the kind of stuff that we want to tie into the weather report, which I think is really relevant.Sure. Several years back I worked at the website Upworthy, which is very odd. I was an awkward fit, but one of the things that would happen would be... And this was in the post you'll never guess what happens next phase of that site, it was when they were trying to do more tangible, original stuff but one thing we found when we were writing about tragedies was that people didn't just want to hear about tragedies. People want to go, "Okay, how can I help? What can I do?" And I think that that's a big part of it, that people want to help...People care.Yeah, that gives me hope. The fact that people want to help, but for the most part it's just trying to figure out what to do, where, where should I send money or what should I donate or where should we volunteer? Those are all questions that different people want to engage on different levels. And so that's why I really appreciate that that's what you guys are trying to do.We have 25 cities right now and we have a mix of meteorologists and poets and artists that are writing about the weather every day in those cities. They live in the communities so they can tell us here's the mutual aid network that has just popped up because the guide on my block is the one that's running it. They have that insight, that local insight, which to me has been fascinating as a weather nerd. I'm learning about the weather all over, understanding how the heat index is different in Vancouver, BC, versus in New Orleans, for example. The thresholds that will impact someone who is unhoused in Vancouver is a very much lower threshold than what I am used to. Because there's no air conditioning in Canada because they don't need it. Historically it doesn't get hot there. So that's really been fascinating to learn the ties and to justice in terms of weather. It's really interesting to me.Definitely. I'm really excited to see where Currently goes, because what you guys are working on is so cool and so different that I feel like different is what we need generally. But the last thing I just wanted to ask, is there anything else that you want to add that you want to make sure anyone who's listening to this will actually hear?It's just that everyone has their place. I know it's all depressing and hard to understand and happening too fast, but it's just like COVID, I think, that we were faced with this really shocking, striking change to every aspect of our lives and then we just rolled with it as people were dying around us, we were grieving that, we were loving each other, we were doing all of that work that was necessary as well as learning how to buy the right kind of mask and learning all that stuff. Climate change is that, but for the rest of our lives. It's going to be very hard but it's also very important to understand that we're not doing this just for ourselves, we're doing it because it's the biggest justice issue of our time. It ties in together everything, food, housing, racism, all of that stuff.This is one way that intersects all of it and supporting each other through that. If you're listening to this, you're probably that climate person in your friend group. You are asked these difficult questions and it's okay to not have the answer, and it's okay to struggle through all of this because I do and this is my job. The only thing I would say is that just ask for help when you need it. Send me a DM if you have to, I'll try to chat with you and encourage you. If you're on any path, then you're on the right path.That's a good line. If you're on any path, yeah. I mean, unless you're planning to start an oil company, in which case you are on the wrong path.Exactly. Get full access to The Present Age at www.readthepresentage.com/subscribe

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Present Age podcast. I’m your host Parker Molloy.Joining me on today’s show is the man behind what I’ve long referred to as “the only good government Twitter account.” His name is Joe Galbo, and he’s the social media specialist at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.Parker Molloy: Joining me today is Joe Galbo. Joe, what is it that you do?Joe Galbo: Sure. Well, I make memes for the government. No, so yeah, I am the Social Media Specialist at the Consumer Product Safety Commission. We're a small, federal agency, about 500 employees, with a budget of about $137 million dollars, and we regulate consumer products, so everything from ATVs to toaster ovens, to children's clothing, basically thousands and thousands of things people use every single day, and we're the agency that makes sure those things are safe.It's not just product updates. It's not just recall updates, it's a lot of awesome memes. That is what drew me to the account, not my love of product recall.Sure. You have a bunch of characters in these memes. Can you tell me a little bit about how that got started? How did you pitch the idea of creating Quinn the Quarantine Fox, and your various other ...Handsome Ron.Handsome Ron, yeah.Copernicus Jackson, yeah sure. Right from when I interviewed at the agency, back in, it was June 2016, which is basically a lifetime ago for everyone at this point. I explained to my supervisors at the time, "Hey, I want to join the agency. I want to do public education campaigns, but it's not going to look necessarily the way you all have been doing things." They were cool with that, to their credit. Right from the get go, there was an understanding that, "Hey, we're going to do something and it's going to look a little bit different."I don't think they anticipated so many talking animals at the time, and to be fair, I don't think I anticipated that either, but as I explored the agency's messaging and the types of things we were trying to educate people about, it became very clear to me that our guidance to people, how people could live a little bit safer, all came across very standard, and a little bit boring, so again, wear a bike helmet, when your message is wear a bike helmet, or don't plug your space heater into a power strip, that's good advice, but it's not necessarily the most exciting advice.When you're out there on the Internet, and you're up against celebrities and influencers, and every brand is trying to be funny, if you just go out there and start telling people to make sure they clean their dryer vent lint, the lint out of their dryer vent, you're not going to be very successful. I think the strategy really came out of looking at what our messaging was, and then again, seeing how simplistic it was, and saying, "Okay, if this has any chance at all of making it out there online, we're going to have to go big and bold, and we're going to have to do things in a super fun way."Now, as far as pitching characters individually, it's one of these situations where if I have a good idea for a new character, I'll go try to find a stock photo that supports that. With Copernicus Jackson, who's one of our cat characters, I knew I wanted a great cat character, and it really was just a matter of finding a good stock photo that represented a cat, that looked excited and interested in something, but not terrified of something. That was a lot of time searching through a stock site to find it, and then once I did, coming up with the name, again it's, a lot of times it's about, "Hey, have I heard this character name out there before," and if the answer is no, then okay, can we try it. It's a lot of Googling to make sure I'm not reusing character names that exist anywhere else.Yeah, it is a little bit, I want to say ad hoc, because there's definitely strategy there, but it's very organic. Again, I'll try to leverage training topics a lot, so if there's an animal trending or something, I'll try to come up with a character in that moment. Yeah, it's a little bit a mix of method and then all over the place madness for sure.One of the reasons that I really just love the account, generally, and this is a big part of what I'm trying to do with this newsletter, and this podcast. I'm really focused on the way that we communicate, and yours is one of the most interesting communication strategies I've seen, especially when it comes to something that comes from the government. You really expect, when you think government Twitter account, you think it's sterile, straightforward, just telling you what you need to know. Meanwhile, it's, "Hey, here's an ATV and a T Rex." All of that stuff that really just, it gets people drawn in, the response to your Tweets is just phenomenal.It's always funny seeing people who are encountering it for the first time, going, "Did you get hacked?" Oh no.We do get that one a lot, yeah. I think things have changed. Communication has changed, and I don't want to sound like a cliché, but the past decade, forget about it. Everything's different, and even the past five years it feels, to me, it feels like things are very different. The government, just the way it operates, where everything has to be by the book and by the law. By its nature, it is slower than the private sector. A functional government will be mostly slower than the private sector moves, and in communication, again where things move twice as fast in every other industry, yeah it can feel like, again, a lifetime. I think one thing that we really struggle within government, and I've had a chance to speak to a lot of people in government at this point, who do communication, there is that constant tug of war between, "Hey, we have to be an authoritative voice, and people have to trust us, and we have to get the message out there in a really clear way." What you were just speaking to, which is it's also very boring when you just do that, straightforward. The Internet is not designed for boring content, which I guess is not a thing that people meditate on very often, but I think part of it too is at a small agency like CPSC, where our budget is, again, only about $137 million, which in government money is not a lot at all, compared to the FDA or the CDC, where you're talking billion-dollar budgets and more. You just can't do it the boring way online, you just can't.I do think government helps itself when it’s very relatable to people, and I think that's one thing that we hear a lot about this strategy is that it's not preachy. It's not coming at you in a way where, from a place of high authority. Again, it is advising you on a better way to live your life a little more safely, but it's not doing it from a pulpit. It's not going it from an ivory tower. It's down here with the regular people, where regular people like talking dogs, and regular people like robots that go on picnics with their friends. Again, I don't know, at least those are the things I think regular people like.Like you said, it seems to be working so far, and we're just very grateful for that, honestly.Yeah, of course. I'd say for about a year or two I'd see your Tweets and just be like, "What is going on inside this person's head?" It's great to actually talk to you, and to be like, "Oh look, this is a human being, who seems to share the same sense of humor as me," and other people seem to be into it as well.Yeah. I guess one thing about me, I love working in communication. Back in the day, I wanted to be a journalist, but I graduated from college in 2008, where being a journalist would have been very difficult at the time. I fell into this government communication thing through advertising. In my heart, I always fantasize about being a TV showrunner, like on an animated series. That, to me, is the most fun you could probably have in a job. In some ways, what people are seeing here is the Joe Galbo version of what a TV show might look like.Right.A lot of these memes could easily be turned into PSAs or video products, and that's not an accident. My passion lies in visual storytelling, and I do try to inject a lot of narrative into these things, to a point where sometimes it's like my supervisors are like, "I don't know, is this one maybe too complicated for people?" I'm always like, "No, trust the audience, they're going to get it." More often than not, they let me go that route.Again, it is a delicate balance, and I think one of the things I like about the, I guess you could call it a template we use now, is that at the top there, where we have the narrative or the crazy visual, you can almost do whatever you want at this point, and then as long as at the bottom you're delivering that safety message that's going to help save lives.Yeah.That's one thing that's been super fun, and now it's really just trying to push us in new and exciting ways. We just started doing LGBTQ graphics a short time ago, and that's been very exciting. It's one of these things where, again, not that we've pushed the envelope in government communication, how do we keep pushing it, and how to we keep making sure we're getting these messages in front of people, on an Internet that is constantly more fractured by the year.Yeah, and everything is constantly changing, and what works today might not work next year, next month, or next week. I don't know, have you watched the Netflix show, I Think You Should Leave?No, not yet. I haven't yet.Okay, you should watch that, because it's like the TV show version of what you do, just weird, out there. What you do is a combination of that show and Portlandia, which I mean as a compliment.Thank you. No, you're actually ... One of my very best friends told me to start watching that show, so you are totally in line there. Now I'm going to definitely have to watch it.Yeah, I think you'll like it. I think it will be right up your alley.That's awesome, thank you. I think, again, it is that fine line of being referential to things that are going on in pop culture, because you always, and this is just something everybody's online trying to do, you always want to see you're on top of what's going on. You want to see, again, of the world that people actually live in, and that in itself is a new idea for government.I think a lot of government agencies are just, "Hey, we're important and here's our stuff, and you shall appreciate it because it's coming from us." That's not my, our approach at all. In a lot of ways, it's the exact opposite, where I very much feel like every day we have to prove our worth, and prove our value to the public, so every day people are going to get the best of what we got from a creative perspective.Then yeah, again getting back to how different things are, just trying to keep up with it all. Looking out, I know we should be on TikToc right now.Oh yeah.I know we're going to need a really great video strategy like yesterday, but on a small team it's like, "Okay, what do we do?" There's one person at CPSU who's responsible for producing the social media, and we do have a video production specialist, thank God. They're going to, hopefully, play a big role in what our short-form video strategy is someday. Yeah, it's just, again, thinking about how government tends to move just a little bit slower than the private sector, keeping up is just a constant battle.Well yeah, and with government generally, there's always this sort of worry that you're not getting through to people, that you come off as sterile. Totally.That you come off as preachy and telling people how they should live their life, what they should do, with the exception of, "Hey, maybe you shouldn't have this dresser that's not anchored to the wall," that's fair.Yeah, exactly. Especially at a regulatory agency like us, so we are very similar to the EPA or the FDA, or the CDC in that there are things that we are responsible for making safe. Some agencies don't have that, like NASA doesn't regulate anything. The Interior Department and the National Park System, they don't regulate anything. When you look at the history of interesting government social media accounts, the grandfather of it all was the TSA account, who was run by ... TSA Instagram account, that was run by a gentleman by the name of Bob Burns, who has sadly passed away.I remember reading Bob's captions on the TSA Instagram photos back in 2013, 2014, and at the time it was super innovative for government, because it was super fun and super ... Again, it was for people.Oh yeah.It wasn't a government agency being on social media because it was the thing to do. They were really trying to do something different there. I remember distinctly sitting, I was at the Liberty Stein Center in Jersey City, New Jersey at the time, doing social media there. I remember very distinctly sitting there and reading an article about their Instagram, and thinking, "Oh wow, you can do interesting work in government." Funny enough, just a few years later, I'd be at CPSC, walking into a room, pitching a unicorn, talking about fire alarm safety. Yeah, it's been a lot of fun.There's a lot of other great government social happening now. I do hope, I see it sometimes where people will find our account, and then they'll say like, "Oh well this looks like the IRS Instagram," or "This kind of looks like ..." There's a lot of great local government, social media happening. You could do a whole podcast just on that.Oh yeah.Yeah.Well that was one thing I wanted to ask, was what other agencies are doing social media in a good way, I guess?There's interesting stuff happening all the time. You have agencies like NASA, where they are comparable to any of the giant brands you see out there. Their reach and their social media power is just as good as any ... Name any Fortune 500 company and NASA's right up there. Their stuff is very good, obviously. They have a ton of resources. They have a ton of great people who work there. I think the IRS, some of the lesser-known ones, so the IRS has a really fun Instagram account. Another lesser-known one, there's a COVID-19 response committee that was set up to make sure that money being spent through the COVID programs that the government is putting together is being spent wisely and legally. They have a very fun Twitter account, and I'll try to remember the name of that, or I'll send it to you, and maybe you can put it in the newsletter somewhere.Oh yeah.The Interior Department's been doing fun stuff for a long time. They do Fat Bear Week, which is like, again, some of the most fun you can have with government social, where they just have people rate very large grizzly bears. There's other great stuff out there. I think no one's really as absurdest as we are, and I think that's the thing that we brought. Again, when we talk about how we've moved things forward, a lot of people say this is like just a total, they call it a vaporwave, or shitposting, or that type of thing. I guess it does feel like that to people sometimes. Talking about, just to go back to something you were talking about earlier, I'm a big proponent of doing what works, because things do change so quickly, so what I say to people all the time is, "We're doing this strategy now because it works now, but the day it stops working, we will just do something else," because that's how you stay effective in communication. Again, I do think that's the only way to approach it, because things change so quickly.Yeah, absolutely. I have two final questions for you that I wanted to jam into one super question.Sure.That is one, if you could take over any government Twitter account, and implement your own kind of strategy, what would it be, and two, which of the characters that you've created is your favorite, if you have one?Sure, so I'll start with the second question first. Favorite character is tough, because I love all of them, which is a weird thing to say. I think over time, the Pets United for Human Safety, which includes Potato the Dog and Copernicus Jackson, and I think Handsome Ron, over time those three have really emerged as my go-tos, and I guess my most, our most reliable partners in this communication strategy.Some of our older characters, Barks McWoofins was a character we used a few years ago, that retired officially to Hawaii, and I'll always have a special place for Barks McWoofin. Quinn the Quarantine Fox, who again was really not meant to be around this long, but is about to have a rebirth, or have to come back in a bigger way, because of just what's going on these days with the Delta Variant, so yeah. I think those three, Copernicus Jackson, Potato the Dog, and Handsome Ron. If I had to pick three that I'd want on a team at all times, it would be them.Yeah, it's a good choice.Yeah, and then to your first question, CPSC has played a role in the pandemic in making sure consumers are aware of the issues and the things that could hurt them in their home, and obviously with people spending more time at home, that became a very important thing for us to focus on, and we're still very much focused on it. Again, nothing has really changed for us, as far as the pandemic goes. We're still operating in a pandemic first sort of mentality.I think if I could pick any other account, it would be a government account and I probably would pick either the HHS account or some of the CDC accounts. I would like to see what this meme strategy could do with pandemic messaging in a more broader sense. I think that would be, that would be an interesting experiment to me. Again, the people over there are doing amazing work, and I know some of them. I've met a bunch of them at this point, and I have so much respect for everything they've done to date, and I think they're doing an incredible job, so again, it's not, that wouldn't be coming from a sense of like, "Well what they're doing hasn't been effective." I think it's been incredibly effective, but again, I would love to see, if we had some more talking animals around here, with the pandemic, would we win the conversation war in a more resounding way? I think that would be something I'd love to try.“Quinn the Quarantine Fox is very disappointed in you for not getting vaccinated yet.”Exactly, or hey, here's the wild animals united for human safety to tell you about how the vaccine is safe.Yeah.I think that's something that, again, I haven't even seen it at local health departments, but some of that old-fashioned stuff, some of that like, "Hey, here's a friendly animal spokesperson that's going to calmly ..."Yeah, like Smokey the Bear and stuff.Yeah, I think there's still a place for that, and it's funny because so many of our characters almost came out of me wanting to poke a little bit of fun at those traditional characters, like Smokey the Bear, who again is still around. The content they're creating is still very good, if you ever engage with it, but I do think people still have a soft spot for that, and they still like it on some level. I guess it just goes to show you, the more things change, the more they stay the same sometimes. Yeah, so ...Well yeah, I mean in the case of Smokey the Bear, for instance, you have this ... Smokey the Bear, that stands out. That has burned itself into all of our collective memories, everyone knows Smokey. I wonder if 10, 15 years from now people are going to be like, "Man, remember Handsome Ron?" Yeah, oh man I could only hope so. It's one of those things, we have this collaboration with the Library of Congress now, where I send them our memes and the memes get archived in the Library of Congress with descriptions that I've written, that get into the strategy behind them. I do hope, and every creative person hopes that their work has longevity, past their lifetime, and obviously if that were to happen for these characters, that would be incredible. I don't expect that, just to be clear, but I do think when you look, again, Smokey the Bear, that was a campaign created with the Ad Council, one of the best advertising groups in the world, all these years of funding, and especially with climate change affecting things. Smokey the Bear is prime to become much more important in the future than they ever were in the past, which is crazy to think about.Yeah.That's what government can do. It's the longevity of your characters. It's the longevity of commitment of an issue where government can really shine. I do hope that we have some of that. I do hope that, at some point, my time at CPSC will come to an end, and I do hope that people, at least appreciate these characters and keep learning from them after I'm no longer here.Yeah, that's a ... I think that's probably a good way to wrap it up. Is there anything else that you'd like to add to this?Oh, I guess I would just encourage everyone, if you haven't, to subscribe to get recall emails. You can do it right on our website. It's free. It's very easy. Again, if you're not following us on social media, please consider following us on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook. We do have an Instagram account where we don't repost things as much. One of the complaints about our Twitter account is I don't constantly repost things. It's just because I'm one person folks. It's not because ... It's not laziness, it's just the ability of one person to come up with stuff on a daily basis.I would definitely encourage you to follow us on Instagram, or Twitter, or Facebook, and again, just hope everyone ... One thing we talk about all the time is that we do a very serious thing at CPSC, and on social media it's presented in a very fun way. I do hope folks just take a minute to think about their safety in their own lives. These are small things that you can do that could really, really be lifesaving. Having a fire extinguisher in your kitchen, making sure your carbon monoxide batteries are changed regularly. There's a lot of common sense stuff here that, when you're busy or you're stressed, which we all have been over the past year, if you just take an extra second to think about it, it could save your life down the road. I just really encourage everyone to take those things seriously, and revisit our messaging as much as you need.Yeah, I'm going to be sure to ... I really want to encourage anyone who's listening to this, to go and check out the transcript that I'm going to have in the newsletter itself, because I'm going to be sure to include all sorts of links, all sorts of embedded Tweets in everything, just because this is really one of those things you have to see to understand what on earth we've been talking about today.Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Parker, I do want to thank you for your support over the years. You've been, again, even in my darkest moments, I always thought, "Oh, well at least Parker's out there re Tweeting our stuff sometimes.”Of course, it's always fun. I tried to make a habit of quote tweeting and just being like, "Only good government Twitter account," even though it's not the only good one.Which I very much appreciate. Yeah, thank you, truly. Truly, thank you. Really, we're just so grateful, so thank you.Yeah, thanks so much for joining me today, Joe. Get full access to The Present Age at www.readthepresentage.com/subscribe

A huge part of why American politics is so messed up today is the country's for-profit media ecosystem that prioritizes controversy, eschews policy discussions, and has no understanding of how important Christian fundamentalism is to conservative ideologues. In the first video stream episode of Theory of Change, Matthew Sheffield speaks with Parker Molloy, founder of The Present Age about how bad things are and how it happened. Parker Molloy is an independent writer and podcaster who previously wrote at the progressive media watchdog group Media Matters. Follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/parkermolloy Video version of this episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FMmKJqzqyA Theory of Change Twitter: https://twitter.com/theorychange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help!