Yes, she said she had been with men before. I think the episode was from 2020, so you probably still find it. Lots of insight into her addiction years.
The discussion in the middle about “backsliding” on already won battles and why are people allowed to violate sanctified taboos, is literally a direct result of the left/“elites” omnicause bullshit and attempt to make any disagreement with their suite of policies a taboo.
If you tell me having the same behavioral standards for children regardless of race at schools is actually arch racism, well you start habituating me to not caring if I am called an arch racist.
IDK all of this was a very obvious and predictable endgame of like 2010-2020 twitter/universities/media.
I remember trying to broach this with friends back in the 2010s, and being told I was speaking from a place of privilege etc etc make space blah blah.
One of the things about woke we don't talk about enough is the way it encouraged people to be downright rude and confrontational with friends and friendly acquaintances. There's a social contract that "one should smooth things over": if somebody is angry or upset over something not immediately interpersonal, you're supposed to back down and placate.
The wokes discovered if they reneged on it they automatically won any confrontation, which must have felt great and intoxicating. But this is the cost.
Yeah, it’s the backlash to the extreme progressivism of the past decade. On Brad Polumbo’s show, he talks a lot about how remarkable it is that pro-LBG sentiment reached a majority among conservatives a few years ago and has since declined again. Normally this stuff doesn’t fluctuate. By becoming intertwined with the trans movement, homosexuality got saddled with all its baggage.
Gays were an openly oppressed minority in this country for a very long time. It makes sense that they would stand-up for their historical comrades, many who come directly from the gay scene, and similarly oppressed minority group.
Turning on gays for their support of another group would seem to indicate that support wasn't deeply felt but rather contingent on what was socially acceptable.
That’s true, and I think where Pete Buttigieg is coming from, but has been exploited by the other woke move of “you must support every new crazy position we can come up with”. Allyship cannot replace critical thinking.
I think a lot of the woke rhetorical strategy of never backing down was jealousy at the strategy being effective for the GOP since Reagan. What we see, though, is that on the sorts of things that people are unfamiliar with (child transitions; MtF in women’s sports), if you don’t talk about where your side is going off the rails, your opponents will.
Yes agreed that you have to actually talk about your positions.
Buttigieg is completely incapable of doing this though. The man is a complete reed and comes across as the straightest gay man you've ever met as a result. Like he'd definitely be ok with rescinding gay marriage if that meant votes. He'd understand the sentiment and just move on.
Klobuchar crushing him at the end of the primary... Just have to love her forever.
Yeah, I’m just using his recent public statement in support of (all) trans rights as an example of what you were saying about allyship to an adjacent group. He might fold for venal political reasons in the future, sure.
While I agree that the omnicause was on the whole Not Helpful, I think the batshit crazy neo nazis were gonna batshit crazy neo naz, whether or not we asked them to give their pronouns before a meeting. Half the shit the trump admin is doing is super unpopular but his admin is full of wild-eyed zealouts who are gleefully remaking american to suit their shitty vision. The Heritage Foundation wouldn't be moderating it's white nationalism if only the libs had not tried to have males in women's sports and not made people do land acknowledgements.
The right is in their own toxic media echo chamber that presents their own version of reality to them day after day.
All that is true, and yet Trump is not winning any elections and definitely not in 2020 and 2024 without the omnicause bullshit.
Yeah there would still be the 50,000 nazis or however many there are, and 5 million nazi sympathizers. But the other tens of millions who voted for Trump would have stayed away if they found the opposition remotely palatable.
But cultural stuff was so down on the list of things that voters named as their core issues. It was primarily the cost of living. People thought trump would bring down costs. The anti-woke stuff gave him a little bump, and given how narrow his victory was any bit helps, but I think cultural issues were much less important than all of us want to pretend.
Yes. There is a hard core of mostly female conservatives who will vote for anyone and anything that promises to “save the babies.” For these women, that means anything that will stop abortion—and for a subset of them, anything that will prohibit hormonal birth control, which they see as causing abortions.
These women also see the abortion battles as a referendum on a 1950s model of the family that would allow them to stay home and be full-time mothers. Abortion has been a proxy for this vision of the family and of women’s supposedly traditional roles for at least 40 years. There is solid non-ideological academic research by Kristin Luker on this last point.
This might be an interpretation that helps one handle the election loss without actually having to change ones position much on cultural issues. Personally I am fairly convinced that cultural issues had a larger impact than many want to give it credit for. In the area I live the cultural leaning political ads ran non stop. Doubt they would have unless they really resonated with uncertain voters.
The Democratic party's position on cultural issues are a real weight around their necks. It really only resonates really favorably with certain niche demographics and groups that have the party in a vice.
I am nearly desperate for solid, reliable research on whether the cultural issues were this decisive. I’m inclined to think they were.
I live in Ohio and remain a fan of former U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown. I saw hundreds of ads using the “Bernie Moreno is for you, but Brown it’s for they/them“ slogan. I don’t even consume much media that involves local ads! But anytime I opened YouTube, there was the they/them framing, paid for by pro-crypto groups that spent tens of millions to defeat Brown.
That would be good, although such research and surveys are always flawed to some extent. I doubt that people are that good in understanding why they vote a certain way. Saying it is the economy or inflation e.g. might be easier than saying immigration for many people. Anyhow, I am fairly convinced that the culture issues had a significant impact on how the election played out especially as the topic of trans issues is so lopsided in favor of the Republican's critical position.
Maybe they think those involved in the ‘backlash’ are adults with agency and can be held accountable for espousing appalling views, rather than just think it understable because wokeness….
It’s one thing not to be surprised by a backlash quite another to excuse objectively appalling views off the back of it.
Of course they understand how this works, but why exactly does that need to be repeated every time when responding to genuine racism, misogyny, anti semitism, homophobia?
Who was excusing anything? Its just the reality of humans and the world.
>why exactly does that need to be repeated
Because it is the MAIN FUCKING TEACHABLE POINT OF THIS WHOLE PODCAST AND LAST 10+ YEARS OF STUPIDTY!
Thinking "no the problem is we don't call out racists enough" is just badly misunderstanding what happened.
The Dems had unparalleled cultural/media/academic clout, and rather than be principled and judicious and using that to cement actual policy goals, they pissed it all away trying to force feed the fever dreams of activists down on an unwilling public.
You want to spend your time trying to scold and reform 24 year old HS dropout Cleetus in rural WV regarding his support of Nick Fuentes...ummmm...sure go ahead. I think the people who could actually learn something from this debacle and reform are not the Nick Fuentes supporters.
Yes of course, how silly of me or anyone else to think trying to dismantle the entire rules & rights based order of the past 70 years might be more consequential than taking Robin Di Angelo & Ibrahim X Kennedy seriously.
The irony of continuing to bag Democrats for their obsessions whilst thinking it’s really important to go over the same ground for the 5millionth time about the wokesters & the damage they caused, is quite something. Do you seriously think Katie, Jesse & Helen aren’t aware of it?
Just because the ‘everything is racism’ lot hogged the cultural bandwidth for a period is not a reason to be quiet about people who are genuinely appalling, have genuinely hateful views & are actively trying to roll back very basic and fundamental rights.
No one on the pod was ‘scolding’ someone called Cletus, they simply pointed out that regardless of left wing activists bs, it’s not a reason to give Jew haters, racists & misogynists a pass.
Once again no one is “giving them a pass”, at least in these threads. No one is like “actually I like nick fuentes”.
It getting your panties all in a twist because he appears on some podcast or whatever and thinking “oh if we can just get a bigger coalition to denounce him all our problems will be solved”
is LITERALLY exactly the type of thinking that got us into this mess.
IDK about you but if I was shooting to fix the country and its political discourse and forge a new path forward, I wouldn’t be placing my chips on the “let’s reform nick fuentes and his supporters/allies and if not demonize anyone associated with them” space.
I wouldn’t be trying to get the supposed adults on academia and the NYT and in the Dem party to actually come up with a program that isn’t so offensive to those people that it drives Millikan away.
The country really isn’t filled with arch racists, it’s shouldn’t be hard to suck the oxygen out of someone like Fuentes. But to do that you need an alternate message beyond “if you even talk to him much less like him you are irredeemably evil”.
I think the Jacob Savage article from Compact that’s been going around has convinced me that we haven’t talked about the failures of wokeness enough.
There’s an entire cohort of people in this country that wokeness invented new ways of dehumanizing, and the Savage piece meticulously details that yes, this actually happened, and it was incredibly widespread. Unless Democrats and liberals come to terms with this, and demand reform (accepting legal responsibility; reverting to standards of 2010. Really not asking much), you’re going to have “Kamala is for They/Them” attacks times a thousand, and they’ll stick because they’re true!
Is Milo really more popular now than he was at his peak? Back in 2016 before his cancellation he seemed everywhere, now I’ll occasionally see one of his rogue Tweets in the wild but culturally I don’t hear that much from him.
It’s funny, because leftists always bring up the Dixie Chicks when the right complains about cancel culture, but they never mention the one true cancellation they carried out, which was Milo.
If you're to the right of the middle of the Democratic party then they are seen as interchangeable, with some justification. But think Bernie Sanders (left) vs. Hillary Clinton (progressive). Progressives also tend to focus more on culture/signifiers vs. leftists focusing on economics/material conditions.
Another example: there was a rally in DC to support Palestine/imprisoned students*, which then went and protested in front of ICE headquarters, the same day as one of the anti-Trump rallies (don't think it was No Kings). All of the progressives were at the latter and the leftists at the former.
Progressives tend to lag behind the leftists on issues. We try to drag the Democrats leftwards in the same way that conservatives try to drag Republicans rightward.
*Hasan Piker spoke, briefly, was not prepared, and, as such, had absolutely nothing to say. I possibly booed him for this.
When Milo was a "gay man" who spoke against Trans and "fat acceptance" culture, I was a fan! I even have one of his merch T-shirts--the one that says "STOP BEING FAT". He peaked around the time of "Trigglypuff."
Since then he lost his mind. He was far more popular back then, at least among slightly older gay men.
Speaking of the need to simply document the madness of recent history so it’s there for historians in the future, that’s how I feel about David Zweig’s An Abundance of Caution about the madness of the school shutdowns. It was so detailed I don’t know how average readers would finish it. But fortunately it’s there for MPH students to read and learn from when they find it in the stacks of the library in 2057.
I'm reading it now and have had to break it up in chunks. I think it's a really important book and every MPH student should read it. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how many public health faculty members would assign it now or in the next five years. I think that the justified criticism deeply hurt a lot of public heath professionals and they're not really able to handle that criticism yet. But if public health needs to figure it out if they want the profession to regain trust.
To clarify, when Helen mentioned the BNP (around 42:08), she was referring to the British National Party, an extreme right-wing fascist political party in the UK (the real kind). She wasn’t talking about the French bank.
Years ago there were actually complaints to the BBC about broadcasting the French Open, because the courts were covered in “BNP” advertising boards. Some viewers genuinely thought a neo-Nazi party had bought huge amounts of ad space at Roland Garros, rather than it just being Banque Nationale de Paris.
Up to 65 would be fine, but I'm drawing the line there. For instance, just as an example and not a candidate, Jon Stewart will be 65 on next Inauguration Day. Fine. Tom Cruise will be 66. Sorry Tom, you're too old.
It's amazing but not so much since there was a huge baby boom in 1946 but Clinton, Bush, and Trump were all born that year. Trump is the oldest of the three funnily enough.
I somehow thought Helen Lewis was at least 10 if not 15 or 20 years older than Katie and Jesse. I thought she was maybe early 50s just based on her voice and vibe.
I haven't really heard her outside of BAR, but I do actually remember feeling awkward when K&J would talk about inappropriate topics in front of her because she kind of reminds me of my older family members and how proper British people are a bit squeamish.
I'm so glad I'm not the only one. I have only ever heard her voice on this podcast. I have never seen her before, so this is not a visual judgment. But yes, voice and vibe for sure. But is this a Helen thing or the fact that Jessie and Katie do not act their age (said with love)
I bet it would help sales if katie recorded her own audiobook. her voice and dry humor are one of the best parts of BAR. her podcast interviews promoting the book were great--because we got to hear her tell her own story! also maybe target audience (aud, sober curious, but kind of in denial) may not want to display "how to drink your way sober" on their bookshelf
In under a minute, we establish that Helen is the only one who might enjoy a threesome and that Katie has almost certainly had one.
Katie is gay and spent her 20s wandering around Portland drinking. It’d be more surprising if she hasn’t had one lmao
One of the many reasons that young men should cultivate a friendship with a soft butch lesbian, or two.
Booooo
I think we all just hope Jesse has a twosome.
😂
Katie revealed on Bridget Phetasy’s show years ago that she isn’t a gold star gay 👀
I don' know what gold star gay is but are you implyjng that Katie has at some point been with natal males?
(Asking for a hetero male friend seeking a glimmer of hope for his crush on Katie)
Yes, she said she had been with men before. I think the episode was from 2020, so you probably still find it. Lots of insight into her addiction years.
WHAT
Also, I immediately wondered if she was today when I heard her say the thing about threesomes, so thanks for answering that question.
It was from way back in 2020, I think.
I think we all just hope Jesse has a twosome.
BARpod goes into Helen Lewis Fangirl/boy meltdown.
Don’t we all?
The only kind of meltdown I fully endorse.
The discussion in the middle about “backsliding” on already won battles and why are people allowed to violate sanctified taboos, is literally a direct result of the left/“elites” omnicause bullshit and attempt to make any disagreement with their suite of policies a taboo.
If you tell me having the same behavioral standards for children regardless of race at schools is actually arch racism, well you start habituating me to not caring if I am called an arch racist.
IDK all of this was a very obvious and predictable endgame of like 2010-2020 twitter/universities/media.
I remember trying to broach this with friends back in the 2010s, and being told I was speaking from a place of privilege etc etc make space blah blah.
One of the things about woke we don't talk about enough is the way it encouraged people to be downright rude and confrontational with friends and friendly acquaintances. There's a social contract that "one should smooth things over": if somebody is angry or upset over something not immediately interpersonal, you're supposed to back down and placate.
The wokes discovered if they reneged on it they automatically won any confrontation, which must have felt great and intoxicating. But this is the cost.
Likewise, we used to all understand that you don’t attack, alienate, and demonize people who are 90% in agreement with you. Those are called allies.
And a rebel alliance is logically made up of different factions.
Yeah, it’s the backlash to the extreme progressivism of the past decade. On Brad Polumbo’s show, he talks a lot about how remarkable it is that pro-LBG sentiment reached a majority among conservatives a few years ago and has since declined again. Normally this stuff doesn’t fluctuate. By becoming intertwined with the trans movement, homosexuality got saddled with all its baggage.
Gays were an openly oppressed minority in this country for a very long time. It makes sense that they would stand-up for their historical comrades, many who come directly from the gay scene, and similarly oppressed minority group.
Turning on gays for their support of another group would seem to indicate that support wasn't deeply felt but rather contingent on what was socially acceptable.
That’s true, and I think where Pete Buttigieg is coming from, but has been exploited by the other woke move of “you must support every new crazy position we can come up with”. Allyship cannot replace critical thinking.
I think a lot of the woke rhetorical strategy of never backing down was jealousy at the strategy being effective for the GOP since Reagan. What we see, though, is that on the sorts of things that people are unfamiliar with (child transitions; MtF in women’s sports), if you don’t talk about where your side is going off the rails, your opponents will.
Yes agreed that you have to actually talk about your positions.
Buttigieg is completely incapable of doing this though. The man is a complete reed and comes across as the straightest gay man you've ever met as a result. Like he'd definitely be ok with rescinding gay marriage if that meant votes. He'd understand the sentiment and just move on.
Klobuchar crushing him at the end of the primary... Just have to love her forever.
Yeah, I’m just using his recent public statement in support of (all) trans rights as an example of what you were saying about allyship to an adjacent group. He might fold for venal political reasons in the future, sure.
I don’t think it was support as in being allies so much as accepting that this was the new normal and that they weren’t going to fight it any longer.
While I agree that the omnicause was on the whole Not Helpful, I think the batshit crazy neo nazis were gonna batshit crazy neo naz, whether or not we asked them to give their pronouns before a meeting. Half the shit the trump admin is doing is super unpopular but his admin is full of wild-eyed zealouts who are gleefully remaking american to suit their shitty vision. The Heritage Foundation wouldn't be moderating it's white nationalism if only the libs had not tried to have males in women's sports and not made people do land acknowledgements.
The right is in their own toxic media echo chamber that presents their own version of reality to them day after day.
All that is true, and yet Trump is not winning any elections and definitely not in 2020 and 2024 without the omnicause bullshit.
Yeah there would still be the 50,000 nazis or however many there are, and 5 million nazi sympathizers. But the other tens of millions who voted for Trump would have stayed away if they found the opposition remotely palatable.
But cultural stuff was so down on the list of things that voters named as their core issues. It was primarily the cost of living. People thought trump would bring down costs. The anti-woke stuff gave him a little bump, and given how narrow his victory was any bit helps, but I think cultural issues were much less important than all of us want to pretend.
Immigration was a huge issue, and remains one. Ditto crime, both of which are "cultural". Its not a long list, its not "way down the list".
The list was basically Trump voters:
Inflation/economy
Immigration (cultural)
Crime/Lawlessness (cultural)
Foreign Policy/Isolationism
Mix of various things pretty close at this point.
Harris voters:
Healthcare
Supreme Court
Economy
Abortion (cultural)
Climate Change
Mix of various things pretty close at this point.
And honestly you could argue the Supreme Court is primarily cultural.
Yes. There is a hard core of mostly female conservatives who will vote for anyone and anything that promises to “save the babies.” For these women, that means anything that will stop abortion—and for a subset of them, anything that will prohibit hormonal birth control, which they see as causing abortions.
These women also see the abortion battles as a referendum on a 1950s model of the family that would allow them to stay home and be full-time mothers. Abortion has been a proxy for this vision of the family and of women’s supposedly traditional roles for at least 40 years. There is solid non-ideological academic research by Kristin Luker on this last point.
This might be an interpretation that helps one handle the election loss without actually having to change ones position much on cultural issues. Personally I am fairly convinced that cultural issues had a larger impact than many want to give it credit for. In the area I live the cultural leaning political ads ran non stop. Doubt they would have unless they really resonated with uncertain voters.
The Democratic party's position on cultural issues are a real weight around their necks. It really only resonates really favorably with certain niche demographics and groups that have the party in a vice.
I am nearly desperate for solid, reliable research on whether the cultural issues were this decisive. I’m inclined to think they were.
I live in Ohio and remain a fan of former U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown. I saw hundreds of ads using the “Bernie Moreno is for you, but Brown it’s for they/them“ slogan. I don’t even consume much media that involves local ads! But anytime I opened YouTube, there was the they/them framing, paid for by pro-crypto groups that spent tens of millions to defeat Brown.
That would be good, although such research and surveys are always flawed to some extent. I doubt that people are that good in understanding why they vote a certain way. Saying it is the economy or inflation e.g. might be easier than saying immigration for many people. Anyhow, I am fairly convinced that the culture issues had a significant impact on how the election played out especially as the topic of trans issues is so lopsided in favor of the Republican's critical position.
Yeah obviously, so seemed odd they didn’t discuss and instead were musing like they didn’t understand.
Also I think Jesse is still fundamentally half on board that whole mode of thought.
Maybe they think those involved in the ‘backlash’ are adults with agency and can be held accountable for espousing appalling views, rather than just think it understable because wokeness….
It’s one thing not to be surprised by a backlash quite another to excuse objectively appalling views off the back of it.
Of course they understand how this works, but why exactly does that need to be repeated every time when responding to genuine racism, misogyny, anti semitism, homophobia?
Who was excusing anything? Its just the reality of humans and the world.
>why exactly does that need to be repeated
Because it is the MAIN FUCKING TEACHABLE POINT OF THIS WHOLE PODCAST AND LAST 10+ YEARS OF STUPIDTY!
Thinking "no the problem is we don't call out racists enough" is just badly misunderstanding what happened.
The Dems had unparalleled cultural/media/academic clout, and rather than be principled and judicious and using that to cement actual policy goals, they pissed it all away trying to force feed the fever dreams of activists down on an unwilling public.
You want to spend your time trying to scold and reform 24 year old HS dropout Cleetus in rural WV regarding his support of Nick Fuentes...ummmm...sure go ahead. I think the people who could actually learn something from this debacle and reform are not the Nick Fuentes supporters.
Yes of course, how silly of me or anyone else to think trying to dismantle the entire rules & rights based order of the past 70 years might be more consequential than taking Robin Di Angelo & Ibrahim X Kennedy seriously.
The irony of continuing to bag Democrats for their obsessions whilst thinking it’s really important to go over the same ground for the 5millionth time about the wokesters & the damage they caused, is quite something. Do you seriously think Katie, Jesse & Helen aren’t aware of it?
Just because the ‘everything is racism’ lot hogged the cultural bandwidth for a period is not a reason to be quiet about people who are genuinely appalling, have genuinely hateful views & are actively trying to roll back very basic and fundamental rights.
No one on the pod was ‘scolding’ someone called Cletus, they simply pointed out that regardless of left wing activists bs, it’s not a reason to give Jew haters, racists & misogynists a pass.
Once again no one is “giving them a pass”, at least in these threads. No one is like “actually I like nick fuentes”.
It getting your panties all in a twist because he appears on some podcast or whatever and thinking “oh if we can just get a bigger coalition to denounce him all our problems will be solved”
is LITERALLY exactly the type of thinking that got us into this mess.
IDK about you but if I was shooting to fix the country and its political discourse and forge a new path forward, I wouldn’t be placing my chips on the “let’s reform nick fuentes and his supporters/allies and if not demonize anyone associated with them” space.
I wouldn’t be trying to get the supposed adults on academia and the NYT and in the Dem party to actually come up with a program that isn’t so offensive to those people that it drives Millikan away.
The country really isn’t filled with arch racists, it’s shouldn’t be hard to suck the oxygen out of someone like Fuentes. But to do that you need an alternate message beyond “if you even talk to him much less like him you are irredeemably evil”.
I think the Jacob Savage article from Compact that’s been going around has convinced me that we haven’t talked about the failures of wokeness enough.
There’s an entire cohort of people in this country that wokeness invented new ways of dehumanizing, and the Savage piece meticulously details that yes, this actually happened, and it was incredibly widespread. Unless Democrats and liberals come to terms with this, and demand reform (accepting legal responsibility; reverting to standards of 2010. Really not asking much), you’re going to have “Kamala is for They/Them” attacks times a thousand, and they’ll stick because they’re true!
“Tough on mime, tough on the causes of mime” - BRAVO to Helen for this one
I kept waiting for the "Israel took their voices away!" joke that never came.
Is Milo really more popular now than he was at his peak? Back in 2016 before his cancellation he seemed everywhere, now I’ll occasionally see one of his rogue Tweets in the wild but culturally I don’t hear that much from him.
It’s funny, because leftists always bring up the Dixie Chicks when the right complains about cancel culture, but they never mention the one true cancellation they carried out, which was Milo.
Milo was canceled by people well to the right after he commented that teenaged gay boys having sex with adult men was kinda normal and okay.
Lots of people left of center tried to cancel Milo but none of them succeeded.
Progressives and liberals bring up the Dixie Chicks, leftists bring up Norman Finkelstein.
What’s the difference between a progressive and a leftist? Normally I see them used interchangeably.
If you're to the right of the middle of the Democratic party then they are seen as interchangeable, with some justification. But think Bernie Sanders (left) vs. Hillary Clinton (progressive). Progressives also tend to focus more on culture/signifiers vs. leftists focusing on economics/material conditions.
Another example: there was a rally in DC to support Palestine/imprisoned students*, which then went and protested in front of ICE headquarters, the same day as one of the anti-Trump rallies (don't think it was No Kings). All of the progressives were at the latter and the leftists at the former.
Progressives tend to lag behind the leftists on issues. We try to drag the Democrats leftwards in the same way that conservatives try to drag Republicans rightward.
*Hasan Piker spoke, briefly, was not prepared, and, as such, had absolutely nothing to say. I possibly booed him for this.
Yeah, he’s back on Twitter but barely anyone cares about him anymore.
When Milo was a "gay man" who spoke against Trans and "fat acceptance" culture, I was a fan! I even have one of his merch T-shirts--the one that says "STOP BEING FAT". He peaked around the time of "Trigglypuff."
Since then he lost his mind. He was far more popular back then, at least among slightly older gay men.
“Fishnet niqab”
“Sexy Halloween niqab”
Someone needs to make these.
It already exists. My friend and I stumbled across her dad's Arab fetish porn in the 70s. Cannot unsee.
Clearly these are for the "Official BAR Threesome Calendar". #newmerch
My aunt had a fishnet Covid mask so I’m sure that’s out there, too.
HELL YES
or rather HELLen YES
Hell’n is my biker name, in case I ever need one.
For all emergency biker name needs
Speaking of the need to simply document the madness of recent history so it’s there for historians in the future, that’s how I feel about David Zweig’s An Abundance of Caution about the madness of the school shutdowns. It was so detailed I don’t know how average readers would finish it. But fortunately it’s there for MPH students to read and learn from when they find it in the stacks of the library in 2057.
I’ve been reading it too! It’s good, but very bleak.
It’s a straight up text book.
I'm reading it now and have had to break it up in chunks. I think it's a really important book and every MPH student should read it. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how many public health faculty members would assign it now or in the next five years. I think that the justified criticism deeply hurt a lot of public heath professionals and they're not really able to handle that criticism yet. But if public health needs to figure it out if they want the profession to regain trust.
To clarify, when Helen mentioned the BNP (around 42:08), she was referring to the British National Party, an extreme right-wing fascist political party in the UK (the real kind). She wasn’t talking about the French bank.
Years ago there were actually complaints to the BBC about broadcasting the French Open, because the courts were covered in “BNP” advertising boards. Some viewers genuinely thought a neo-Nazi party had bought huge amounts of ad space at Roland Garros, rather than it just being Banque Nationale de Paris.
Every year I used to make the same terrible joke about the French openly supporting British fascists.
Correction: Obama was 47 when elected. Maybe he was 42 when elected to the Senate.
I think Bill Clinton was 42 when he became president.
No, not quite. If only there was an easy way to find out these things.
Youngest President was Teddy Roosevelt, but JFK was youngest elected
Correct. Roosevelt was 42, JFK was elected at 43. Obama was 47. This is roughly the age range we need for the next president.
Up to 65 would be fine, but I'm drawing the line there. For instance, just as an example and not a candidate, Jon Stewart will be 65 on next Inauguration Day. Fine. Tom Cruise will be 66. Sorry Tom, you're too old.
Vance is 41 lol
Haha obviously age is only one factor. But if we elect another octagenarian, it's on us.
Just saying "be careful what you wish for"
It's amazing but not so much since there was a huge baby boom in 1946 but Clinton, Bush, and Trump were all born that year. Trump is the oldest of the three funnily enough.
Nope, it will be on the boomers. Just like the last three elections.
I somehow thought Helen Lewis was at least 10 if not 15 or 20 years older than Katie and Jesse. I thought she was maybe early 50s just based on her voice and vibe.
I haven't really heard her outside of BAR, but I do actually remember feeling awkward when K&J would talk about inappropriate topics in front of her because she kind of reminds me of my older family members and how proper British people are a bit squeamish.
I had no idea she was only 42.
British voices are impossible to figure out the age of for us Americans
I thought for ages she was a gen Xer like me. She has a very gen X vibe somehow.
I was weirdly disappointed to learn that she's only 42, ha ha.
You should assume that this area of podcasting is only Elder Millenials. No Gen-Xers allowed.
But, you know, whatever.
I'm so glad I'm not the only one. I have only ever heard her voice on this podcast. I have never seen her before, so this is not a visual judgment. But yes, voice and vibe for sure. But is this a Helen thing or the fact that Jessie and Katie do not act their age (said with love)
Our annual Christmas treat!! My 2025 resolution was to be less online and so I'm hoping I know fewer of the quiz answers than in years past.
Great resolution! I truly hope you perform dismally
I bet it would help sales if katie recorded her own audiobook. her voice and dry humor are one of the best parts of BAR. her podcast interviews promoting the book were great--because we got to hear her tell her own story! also maybe target audience (aud, sober curious, but kind of in denial) may not want to display "how to drink your way sober" on their bookshelf
I literally did subscribe to the Atlantic last year just for Helen 😅🤣
Her story about the Saudi comedy festival was the best thing I read this year
I filled out the International Subscribers survey a couple of days ago, and I put down my main reason for subscribing was for Helen's articles.
Helen’s book is legitimately great and everyone should read it
It’s probably best in audio format when Helen reads it because her accent is delightful
Maybe Helen could read Katie's book for the audiobook.
I won't be able to listen until my run tomorrow, but I am so fucking excited!
So cool!
For a lecture on how social media distorts our perceptions of what other people believe, check this out from Jay Van Bavel from last month:
https://www.nationalacademies.org/programs/DBASSE-Ad%20Hoc-19-P-124/event/45948