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Amanda Litman on local power, political messaging, and rebuilding the Democratic bench At a moment when national politics feels stalled and increasingly disconnected from everyday life, something very different is happening at the local level. In this episode of The Electorette, Jen Taylor-Skinner speaks with Amanda Litman, cofounder of Run for Something, about why Democrats are seeing success in down-ballot races—even as dysfunction persists in Washington. Litman argues that local candidates are able to do something national leaders often struggle with: communicate clearly, connect directly with voters, and deliver tangible results. The conversation explores the limits of policy without messaging, the importance of candidates who can effectively “sell” their work, and why communication is not secondary to governing—it’s central to it. Litman also outlines Run for Something’s long-term strategy of building a new generation of leaders from the ground up, many of whom are already moving into higher office. At the heart of the discussion is a larger question about political identity and direction: what replaces the “old normal” that many voters rejected, and what does it take to build something durable in its place? This is a conversation about power—where it’s shifting, who’s building it, and what it means for the future of the Democratic Party. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest this week is Darrel Ray, an organizational psychologist and founder of Recovering from Religion, the Secular Therapy Project, and the Institute for Secular Leadership. Darrel has a new leadership course aimed at helping secular community organizers gain practical tools for thinking about everything from big picture mission questions to the nitty gritty of setting up meetings and delegating work. We also discuss how to deal with schisms and social issues that impact our groups. Darrel Ray info: https://www.seculartherapy.org/dr-darrel-ray Music by GW Rodriguez Editing by Adam Wik Sibling Pod: Philosophers in Space: https://0gphilosophy.libsyn.com/ Support us at Patreon.com/EmbraceTheVoid If you enjoy the show, please Like and Review us on your pod app, especially iTunes. It really helps! This show is CAN credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm on their hotline at (617) 249-4255, or on their website at creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org. Next Episode: Epistemic Injustice Aidan McGlynn

Patricia Martin on identity, algorithms, and the quiet politics of the inner self In the digital age, life online increasingly involves shaping and presenting versions of the self—across platforms, in real time, and often multiple times a day. Over time, that performance begins to influence how identity is formed and understood. In this episode, Jen Taylor-Skinner speaks with Patricia Martin, author of Will the Future Like You?, about how the internet is reshaping the relationship between the inner self and the public persona. Drawing on more than a decade of research, Martin explains how the “persona”—the version of the self presented to others—has become a form of currency in the attention economy. As more energy is directed outward, access to the inner resources that support decision-making, adaptation, and self-definition can become more limited. The conversation explores the psychological strain of constant performance, the subtle ways platforms influence behavior, and the broader implications for identity and agency in an AI-driven future. At its core, this is a discussion about self-determination—what it requires, what undermines it, and why it remains essential in a rapidly changing world. 📚 Get the book: Will the Future Like You? Reflections on the Age of Hyper-Reinvention Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

George E. Newman is a psychologist and cognitive scientist who studies creativity, identity, and the construction of meaning.  He is an Associate Professor of Management and Marketing at the Rotman School of Management. Prior to that, he was an Associate Professor of Management and Marketing at the Yale School of Management, where also held affiliated appointments in the Departments of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Yale University. He has published more than 60 articles in leading scholarly journals and his research has been featured in popular media outlets such as the New York Times, Scientific American, the Wall Street Journal, and the Economist. He regularly leads seminars on various marketing and management topics for senior executives

Why women candidates are winning—and changing what “electable” means For years, politics has been shaped by assumptions about who is “electable”—assumptions that often sideline women candidates. But those assumptions are starting to fail. In this episode, Jen Taylor-Skinner speaks with Jessica Mackler, President of EMILYs List⁠, about what that shift looks like in real time, starting with Illinois Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton’s recent primary win. Despite being outspent and underestimated, Stratton’s victory reflects a broader pattern: women candidates, including women of color, are winning competitive races—and doing so without the traditional advantages long seen as necessary. They discuss how the idea of electability shapes funding, media coverage, and political strategy—and what happens when candidates succeed without fitting that mold. This conversation examines how power is built, who gets backed, and how those dynamics are beginning to change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For decades, people have been telling Democrats that they need to do better in small cities and rural parts of America. And yet, while there are some uniquely successful candidates here and there, there’s no doubt that the party just keeps doing worse in these areas. The Democratic consultant class keeps trying its familiar strategy of being Republican-lite in these right-leaning parts of the country, but it just isn’t working. That’s the subject of a recent episode, but for today, we’re going to be talking about a different path, one that’s being boosted by James Talarico, the Democrat running for Senate in Texas this year against Republican Ted Cruz. There’s no guarantee that Talarico will win such a heavily Republican state, but his approach of unapologetically speaking his liberal Christian values in detail and trying to build community through care is the right approach. Alan Elrod, my guest on today’s program is fighting the same fight as Talarico. He’s the founder of the Pulaski Institution, a nonprofit based in Arkansas focused on democracy in heartland communities. He’s also a contributing editor at Liberal Currents. The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere. Related Content --Why liberal Christians are standing up for all of their values --How Confederate Christianity took over the Republican Party --To understand the Christian right, learn the history of the Christian left --Elite Republicans are creating a new ‘Satanic Panic’ rather than appeal to moderate voters --Latino evangelicals are reshaping American politics, politicians and parties should take notice --The doctrinal incoherence of today’s extremist Christianity is immense --Right-wing evangelicals have turned politics into Bible fan-fiction --Government subsidizing religion doesn’t make people like it more Audio Chapters 00:00 — Introduction 06:41 — The internet made it easier to hate strangers 13:25 — Religion and the right-wing political fusion 17:38 — Secular liberals’ allergic reaction to all faith discussions 22:15 — You don’t reach people without relationships 27:05 — Much of Christianity accepted modernity, and this is what upsets the Christian right 35:05 — How the Christian right built its own closed media ecosystem 42:54 — Right-wing elites do not actually care about people in small-town America, but they talk to them 46:54 — Right elites make many opportunities for their advocates, while left elites rarely help new voices get started Audio Transcript The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only. MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: You are joining me from Arkansas today, where you are doing good work with your organization, the Pulaski Institution. So what is that? ALAN ELROD: So the Pulaski Institution is a nonprofit where we’re focused on democracy, which is a lot of organizations, but our thing is really heartland areas, and the way we think about that is not just like the South or the Midwest, but really anywhere kind of away from the big centers of finance and politics like New York or LA. So, upstate New York. Places like Buffalo, places like Eastern Oregon, the Inland Empire in California. These are all places we think of as heartland places. Because there are places where the kind of sense of dislocation and, angst towards maybe liberal democratic politics and status anxiety have all gotten heightened in our kind of cracking our commitments to sort of the norms of liberal democracy and we’re worried about that in the US as well as in places like Canada and France and Australia as well. So that’s our idea. Pretty much everyone at the organization either grew up in a place like that or currently works [00:04:00] in a place like that. And so we like to try to bring people in that have a kind of real life foot rooted in these places and bring that perspective. So. That’s the general focus we have. A lot of the work we do right now is sort of events oriented. Because we do a lot of things where we try to bring people together in a room and talk. But you know, if we get more money and have more funding, we’re gonna try to put out some research as well, kind of on the quality of democratic life in these places. But that’s our idea. That’s kind of our premise. This, idea that place matters and that, it’s an important way to consider the dangers that are currently unfolding within liberal democracy right now. And yeah, I’m from Arkansas, so we are based out of right outside of Little Rock. SHEFFIELD: Okay. Yeah. And definitely the case that a lot of the reason that people in the more rural or smaller cities of America, there are some viewpoints perhaps that are more common that or might be unsavory, but it’s also that people in the broader left kind of stopped talking to them. I’m thinking after people like Rah Emanuel in particular kind of dismantled the National party structure, and discouraged people from presenting candidates in elections and funding them. And I think people in lower populated areas of the country, the only Democrats that, or people, liberals, progressives that they ever saw were people on tv and they were hearing about them from Fox News. So, of course their viewpoint of what somebody who is on the center to left. Of course they would think that they’re evil and demonic because Fox tells them to think that. ELROD: Yeah, I mean the flip side of the wonders of modern technology of like television and social media and the internet, are that it’s actually [00:06:00] really easy to develop strong opinions about people who live thousands of miles away from you. Right? And people do that. And so if you’re on the other end of that, right? If the idea is that people who are sort of liberal or disagree with the kind of politics that may. Be sort of dominant in the area of the country where I’m from. If you just avoid it, well then you are sort of leaving. The only thing to fill that gap are those impressions that are formed right through, through media. And those are way easier to be negative, right? It’s much easier to hate someone in that kind of context than it is to hate somebody, on your front porch. it’s just I think, a truism of, human nature. The internet made it easier to hate strangers SHEFFIELD: it’s, yeah, the easier to be a, nasty troll on the internet when you don’t have to put your name onto your post. And for people that were present on the early days of the internet, it was a lot more civil place in large part because the idea of an anonymous email account almost didn’t exist. And it actually didn’t exist because, well, generally speaking, there were a handful of places that had it. But like most people’s internet access. It was through, a job or it was through an educational institution or, something like that. Or they didn’t know how to change the default setting on their AOL account . it made it easier to, be civil because, people would know if you were a jerk. ELROD: Yeah. And I think that’s just a real problem in our politics in general now is as, the way we interact with people increasingly becomes this like, very mediated thing through, it was through television, but now it’s really more through social media than anything. Right. As that happens more and more as we’re interacting less and less in person I think it’s, I think there’s very little question that’s also a real part of the core problem in our politics is like, yes, there are ideological problems at play. Yes, there’s extremism, but there’s also just the more generalized antisocial stuff that [00:08:00] comes with. If the bulk of your interactions with people who aren’t maybe like your spouse, right, are all online and all the impressions you’re getting are from TV and the internet. Then, then even just like. Your, ability to like conceive of people who you don’t know as sort of like interesting full humans with thoughts and feelings who are also part of this country is just reduced. And I think it’s really bad for us. SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and it’s, and this isn’t even a political issue either, because this is an example of, something that, that I sometimes talk about on the show here. In philosophy, this is a lived version of the problem of other minds. ELROD: Mm-hmm. SHEFFIELD: We don’t have, we can’t know with any, with a hundred percent certitude that anyone else’s mind is real. ELROD: Yeah. SHEFFIELD: And so, but it’s easier to, think that they’re real if you can see ‘em physically and be around them. Because the very least, you know that they exist. In one fashion or another. Whereas, the stuff that people see in right wing media, which, absolutely does blanket-- and I think that’s something that people who are, or live in urban areas who have a, left-leaning politics, they don’t really appreciate that if you are outside of that urban area, you go to a bar, or you go to a coffee shop or something, big, chances are it’s gonna be Fox on the tv or it’s gonna be Newsmax or one of these other, or you’re sitting there waiting for your car, the mechanic, and it’s gonna have Sean Hannity on the radio background. Because they don’t, they’re tired of listening to the same old music on the local radio stations, or they don’t want to pay for Spotify or whatever it is, They, want something more interesting. And so yeah, like this, [00:10:00] it’s just this constant sort of subtle brainwashing of people in large measure because the left didn’t bother to create popular media or they weren’t interested. ELROD: Yeah. Well I

How flipped seats are shaping the response to federal immigration enforcement — A conversation with Sarah Curmi of ⁠States Win⁠ From lawsuits to new legislation, states are beginning to push back on federal immigration enforcement in ways that were once unthinkable. This shift isn’t happening in a vacuum. Since the last election, Democrats have flipped 30 state legislative seats—changing who holds power in key chambers across the country. In this episode, Sarah Curmi of States Win explains how those gains are translating into policy—and why state legislatures may be the most important political battleground right now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Eddie Dalton’s raspy and melodious voice carries through the air, telling tales of a lifetime spent in the school of hard knocks, as the blues band backing him weaves soul into every rubato-inflected syncopation and chord progression. “We’re just passing through time, like the wind through the pines, just small little pieces in a bigger design,” he croons in his hit, “Another Day Old,” sounding like a reincarnated Muddy Waters. The fans are impressed: “This song is part of my testimony,” the top-rated YouTube comment on the video reads. “This song has touched the depth of my soul,” reads another. Despite the rave reviews though, neither Eddie Dalton nor his band are real. They’re AI-generated fabrications released onto the internet by someone going by the name Dallas Ray Little, according to Showbiz411. Is that a real name? Your guess is as good as mine. Whoever is behind the scenes at “Crusty Records,” they have found a formula for success. Eddie Dalton’s classic-sounding blues is racking up the sales and the downloads, with several cracking the top 5 on Apple Music and being viewed millions of times on YouTube. Computer-generated soul music is not just real, it’s becoming a phenomenon. The Dalton persona is just the latest AI-generated artist to gain millions of fans, a trend that has not yet attracted much attention from the mainstream media. Last year, a fabricated country singer named “Breaking Rust” had a number-one hit on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart. In September, the music company Hallwood Media awarded a $3 million contract to Mississippi poet and designer Telisha Jones after her virtual singer, Xania Monet, had a number-one hit on Billboard’s R&B digital downloads. “How Was I Supposed to Know” was released 7 months ago and already has 9.6 million views on YouTube. There’s more than a little irony to that song title. AI-generated music has become so good now that it is essentially impossible to discern a human-made tune from one made by a computer. In a study commissioned last year by the music service Deezer with 9,000 people in 8 countries, 97 percent of respondents were unable to tell if provided songs were done by humans or AI. Do people really want to know if a song they’re being presented wasn’t performed by people? In the Deezer survey, 80 percent of respondents said they wanted AI-generated music to be labeled as such. Still, knowing that a song was computer-made doesn’t seem to mean that people would avoid it. The poll found that 66 percent said they would listen to an AI song at least once; only 45 percent of respondents said they wanted an option to filter out all AI-made music. As of this writing, Deezer is the only music streaming service that requires uploaders to tag AI-generated content as such. No such rules are in place on the other major services like Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube. According to Deezer, 34 percent of all songs it receives daily are entirely AI-generated. We don’t know the technical backstory behind Breaking Rust or Eddie Dalton, but Jones has said that she uses an AI music generating software called Suno to set her own lyrics to music. “She’s been writing poetry for a long time,” Jones’s manager Romel Murphy told Billboard, arguing that words sung by the Xania Monet character are what draws people in. “It’s just the lyrics, and they are pure.” Whether that’s true or not, the music industry as a whole has not taken kindly to Suno and rival service Udio. In June of 2024, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed a lawsuit against the companies that was joined by numerous studios and musician groups. “These corporations steal our work to create sound-alikes, effectively forcing us into a ‘training’ role to which we never consented,” the Music Workers Alliance said in a statement. “Their more expensive subscriptions allow users to commercialize the outputs, placing us in unfair competition with an inexhaustible supply of knock-offs of our own work, published without any credit or acknowledgement of our role in their creation, and yet capable of displacing us in record production, film, video, and television scoring, and other markets.” As they so often do with major new technologies, legislatures have done little to stand on one side or the other. President Donald Trump has decided to stand on the side of AI companies, however, signing an executive order in December of last year after Republican congressional allies failed to muster support for a federal ban on state AI regulations. California Gov. Gavin Newsom defied Trump earlier this week with his own executive order requiring AI companies to watermark generated videos and images, and to prove that they have policies against the creation of violent pornography and child abuse material. The Trump executive order is expected to face legal challenges since it conflicts with dozens of state laws regarding AI. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of a March 2025 mid-level court ruling that entirely AI-generated art could not be copyrighted because a human had not created it. That seems about right to me. AI companies have been sued by numerous media publishers around the world for copyright infringement, but thus far, no major nations have stepped forward with definitive rulings on whether the technology firms owe damages. Wherever governments decide to come down on AI-generated art, its legal status isn’t the only question it raises. What is it exactly about art that matters? Is its value how it makes us feel, or is it knowing that fellow human beings with stories and minds made it? Can we really say that auto-tuned artists who use the same lyricists and beat-mixers are really doing something unique? Should women who don’t fit the Vogue profile be excluded from music fame? These are not simple questions. Last month on Theory of Change, adult model Siri Dahl and I talked about this in the context of erotic media, but these are questions facing all art in the age of generative AI. Is beauty the sum total of conception, training, story, and performance—or can these be separated and valued on their own? Should an artist’s face and body determine whether she is heard? Is beauty literally in the eye of the beholder, or does it live in the interaction of artist and spectator? I won’t pretend to have these answers. Maybe there aren’t any definitive ones. What matters right now is that we’re asking the questions. Because at the end of the day, we’re all another day old. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

Space aliens are one of the most common tropes of science fiction, and with good reason. We live in an immense universe and there seem to be a massive number of planets out there. Surely, at least a few are inhabited, right? Most Americans in opinion polls seem to believe this. A poll from November 2025 found that 56 percent of adults surveyed said they thought aliens exist. Former president Barack Obama appears to be one of them based on a recent interview he did with podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen. But whether aliens exist or not is only one of so many interesting questions the scenario presents us. And there’s one that perhaps you might not have thought of: If we ever met them, how could we even communicate with them? In novels, film, and television, decoding alien languages seems to always be a quick affair—math is math, after all. But that assumption is a very big one if you think about it. While they might seem universal, science, math, and language are all human constructs, even though they describe relationalities that are real. My guest on this episode is someone who’s thought a lot about all of this. Daniel Whiteson is a particle physicist at the University of California–Irvine and the host of the science podcast, Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe. But the centerpiece of our discussion today is his new book, Do Aliens Speak Physics? And Other Questions about Science and the Nature of Reality. The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere. Related Content —Thinking outside Schrödinger’s cat box: Reality as quantum —Why reactionary billionaires love sci-fi authors like Robert Heinlein so much —Trump administration officials are seeking to eliminate merit and competition for NIH grants —As science faces unprecedented attacks, it must look within to defend and reform —Science and democracy need each other —Creationism, AI and the cult of the founder in Silicon Valley Audio Chapters 00:00 — Introduction 12:20 — Science is based on philosophy, whether it realizes it or not 15:14 — Hieroglyphics, Etruscan, and alien languages 24:05 — Science may not be universal at all, or at the very least the models humans use 31:59 — The fact that science is limited in what it can describe doesn’t mean it’s fake 35:30 — Eric Weinstein and the delusions and deceptions of ‘alt science’ 45:31 — Follow the money with anti-science influencers, they are the people getting the richest 51:09 — Math and numbers are not part of reality itself 01:02:29 — Don’t say you care about space if you support cutting science funding Audio Transcript The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only. MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: And joining me now is Daniel Whiteson. Hey, Daniel, welcome to Theory of Change. DANIEL WHITESON: Thanks so much for having me on. So excited to talk to you about aliens. SHEFFIELD: And we have a perfect news hook. Recently, of course, Barack Obama, the former president, people thought he was saying that aliens were real. And he was saying, well, I only meant statistically real. And then Donald Trump feeling like he wanted attention, said he was going to declassify all the stuff that the government has on that, which I somehow doubt that’s going to happen. What did you think about all that? DANIEL WHITESON: I am curious what Obama thinks about aliens, because he’s a smart guy and he probably has seen stuff that I haven’t seen, so there could have been information there, but I don’t feel like we really learned very much. His opinion is sort of the opinion any well-educated, non-technical person is likely to have, that there’s lots of planets out there and so it seems improbable that none of them have life on them. But the problem with that is that science doesn’t know [00:04:00] whether the chances of life starting on a random planet. So it could very well be that there are 30 cajillion planets out there, but the chances of life are less than one over 30 cajillion. And so we are alone in the universe. Just the sheer number of planets doesn’t tell you. That there are definitely aliens out there. Of course, I want there to be aliens, but you know, you have to be very careful in science not to convince yourself of something you want to believe. You need the evidence, and we just have no evidence to suggest that life starts many times in the cosmos. SHEFFIELD: Yeah, we don’t, well, because we have only seen life on evolve on one planet. WHITESON: Exactly. SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And so, and that takes us to there’s an attempt to extrapolate, well, what are the odds of alien life existing, and that’s called the Drake equation. So, what is that for people who don’t know. WHITESON: Yeah, it’s a big question. What are the odds that there’s life out there that could communicate with us? And so a few decades ago, Frank Drake broke it down and said, well, you can express it in terms of the various pieces in order for there to be aliens out there who could talk to us. There have to be stars. And those stars have to have planets. And at the time, for example, we didn’t know how common it was for stars to have planets. We had only ever seen planets in our solar system until, you know, 1995. And so even just extrapolating other solar systems with stars and planets, that was a big leap at the time. It was an, it was an unknown. And so then you have to know what fraction of those planets have life, what fraction of those life filled planets have intelligent life? What fraction of those are civilized, uh, what fraction of those develop technology, and then how long they stick around to potentially communicate with us. And the structure of the equation is very simple. It’s just all these fractions multiplied by each other. And you know, it’s the Drake equation. He’s famous for it. And you might look at it and say. That’s a very simple equation. I mean, look at it compared to like the Schrodinger equation, a partial [00:06:00] differential equation. It’s all complicated. It’s got wave functions in it. The Drake equation seems trivial, but the structure of the Drake equation is really important. It tells you something really deep about the nature of this question. Are there aliens out there who can talk to us? It tells us, because all the numbers are multiplied by each other, that if any of those numbers are zero, it doesn’t matter what the other ones are. So if there are no life failed planets out there, it doesn’t matter how likely it is for life to become intelligent because there is no life. Or if the probability for, you know, intelligent life to become technological in our way is zero or very close to zero, then the whole number is very, very small. And so in order for it to work, in order for there to be aliens out there communicating, communicating with us, you need everything to line up. You need stars, you need planets around those stars. You need life on those planets. You need technology, you need everything in sync, or it’s just not gonna happen. That’s what the Drake equation tells us. SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, and there are a lot of people who argue that it underestimates the odds by quite a bit. WHITESON: Yeah. And SHEFFIELD: including the, the famous Fermi paradox, right. WHITESON: Yeah. The Fermi Paradox says, boy, why haven’t we been contacted? Because if you look at some of these numbers, right, this is basically Obama’s argument too. Now we know the number of stars in the galaxy is huge, hundreds of billions. And the fraction of those stars that have planets around them is shockingly large. It’s something like 10 to 40%. And you know that number could have been 0.0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 1, right? The fraction of those planets with a rocky planet inhabitable zone. Boy, that could have been a small number, but it’s wonderfully large, which means there’s a huge number of potentially habitable planets out there. And that’s as far as we know. Right. And Fermi Paradox, or, the Obama paradox, I guess is saying, look, there’s all these planets out there, and the galaxy is quite [00:08:00] old. It’s, been around almost since the beginning. Our solar system’s only four and a half billion years old, but the Milky Way itself is 13 ish billion years old. And in all that time, why has nobody visited us or left a marker for us or something? Right. Where is everybody? So that’s the Fermi paradox is to say, if there are all these planets out there, where is everybody? And of course, there’s several various answers to that question. SHEFFIELD: Well, and then, and your book is kind of the, the step after all that. So, assuming these things exist or beings exist, how could we even talk to them and how could we even understand what they’re saying? That’s kind of the crux of your book. So I, I, tell me, tell me about the background of, of how you got into why you decided to write it. WHITESON: Yeah, so I’m very excited for aliens to come. And I was thinking a few years ago, like, why am I excited for aliens to come? Is it just science fiction, first context, coolness? And yes, that would be a lot of fun, and I watch a lot of science fiction, but one of the reasons that I’m excited for aliens to come is the possibility that they could fast forward our physics. You know, we’ve been doing physics for a few hundred years or thousands if you give the Greeks credit, but if an aliens get here, that’s suggested, they’re probably more advanced than we are because we can’t get to them, which means they might have been doing physics for. Millions, bil

ICE at airports, a weeks-long shutdown, and why the DHS Secretary may not be in charge The Department of Homeland Security has been partially shut down for weeks. At the same time, ICE agents are showing up in airports, and Markwayne Mullin has just been confirmed as DHS Secretary. So what’s actually going on—and who’s really in charge? In this conversation, I’m joined by Andrea Flores, former DHS and White House official, attorney, and immigration policy expert, to break down the reality behind the headlines. We talk about why this leadership change may be more symbolic than substantive, how immigration enforcement is expanding in ways most people aren’t noticing, and why this moment may be less about policy—and more about power. We also dig into what Democrats should be doing right now, what’s at stake heading into the midterms, and why it’s important to understand just how far outside the norm this moment really is. From this episode: A New DHS Secretary Won’t Change Trump’s Immigration Agenda Securing America's Promise Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode Summary When the Supreme Court overturned Roe versus Wade in 2022, some people thought of it as the anti-abortion movement having reached the finish line in its endeavors. But in reality, the Dobbs v. Jackson case was only just the beginning. In the years since, not only has abortion been banned and severely restricted across more than a dozen states, many women have died from being denied hospital care by fearful doctors, even when they weren’t seeking an abortion. In the years since, not only has abortion been banned and severely restricted across more than a dozen states, many women have died or have been seriously injured by being denied hospital care by fearful doctors, even if they were not even seeking an abortion. Now senators and activists are trying to outlaw mifepristone, which is an early pregnancy abortion drug that has been tested and been on the market in a variety of countries around the world since 1988 and proven to be very safe. Unsurprisingly, however, far-right activists and politicians are saying that it’s unsafe, and so therefore they’re going to ban it. The same religious zealots are also trying to advance on multiple other fronts by threatening contraception access, the rights of parents who want to teach progressive values to their children, and those who want to work with doctors on gender affirming care for their kids. The good news, however, is that most of these policies are really unpopular. Americans don’t like them, and they’ve shown it at the ballot box, even in Republican states where measures to protect reproductive choice of consistently won in plebiscites.  There’s a lot going on here, and so today I wanted to talk about it with Susan Rinkunas. She’s a journalist and co-founder of Autonomy News. It’s a worker-owned publication that covers reproductive rights and healthcare. Due to technical difficulties, this episode has a few audio glitches and does not feature a video version, but the audio transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere. Related Content --After numerous losses, Republicans are trying to block reproductive freedom ballot initiatives --The right-wing freakout over a video of young women dancing is about so much more --MAGA isn’t just a lifestyle, it’s a sexual fetish -Why the reactionary attacks on science and sex are related -The Pick Me mindset and childhood trauma --Epstein emails reveal a financier obsessed with excluding women from society --The right’s attacks on adult media began once women began dominating the industry Audio Chapters 00:00 — Introduction 08:29 — Christian right activists using blatant lying against birth control to scare women 10:54 — The larger agenda is to remove legal rights for women, for both radical Christians and secular incels 18:11 — Right-wing men are increasingly obsessed with AI-generated women and sex robots 22:10 — Real women willing to parrot right-wing men have been part of Republican media for decades already 24:38 — Mar-a-Lago face and forced gender conformity 27:12 — Multiple women have now died after doctors refused to remove miscarried fetuses 29:39 — Reactionary Republicans are also trying to strip liberal parents of their rights, while elevating reactionary parents 34:00 — Democrats defending women isn’t just morally right, it’s good politics Audio Transcript MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: In the news as we’re recording this, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley is introducing a bill that he wants to completely ban the early abortion drug mifepristone, ban it across the country, and he tried to do this last year, and he’s going for it again this year. SUSAN RINKUNAS: Senator Josh Hawley is extremely mad about what he views as inaction from the Trump administration on restricting access to the abortion drug miry stone. and this is something that has angered the anti-abortion movement since the Dobbs decision in [00:04:00] 2022. Some people might be surprised to learn that the number abortions in the, number of abortions in the US has actually increased since the fall of Roe v Wade. And part of that is because more people know about abortion pills, medication abortion, And people can now get the pills prescribed to them across state lines from doctors in eight states that have passed what are known as telemedicine shield laws. So if you are in Missouri lemme take that back. If you are in Mississippi, you can get abortion pills even though there’s a state ban. If you are abortion pills, even though there’s a state ban. And josh Hawley is trying to shut that down by, and first he came after telehealth prescriptions of abortion pills. And that’s the bill you’re referring to last year that he introduced. And now he introduced a bill this week that would revoke entirely the approval of the drug from the year two thousands, such that not only could, not, could not only could people not get it prescribed to them and mailed to them, they could not go to a clinic and get handed the drug in person. And I think it’s important at this juncture to bring up Josh’s wife, Erin, who is a litigator with the Christian Nationalist Law Firm Alliance, defending freedom. She’s representing the state of Louisiana, which is suing the FDA right now in federal court, trying to end telehealth prescriptions of this drug. That case is ongoing and she and Josh are kind of a tag team here trying to do an inside outside strategy courts and then also Josh trying to work through Congress to ban this drug. SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And, of course they’re using fear basically lies about the safety of the drug, which has been around for decades and has been thoroughly tested around the world as safe. RINKUNAS: Mifepristone is incredibly safe and effective for use in ending early pregnancies, and it’s been studied [00:06:00] in the US since the year 2000 when it was first approved and it was first approved in Europe in the late eighties. So there’s so much data on this drug that it’s safe and it’s also safe to prescribe via telemedicine. We learned that during the COVID pandemic when people were having expanded access to help to telehealth and it hadn’t been previously allowed to get prescribed Mestone through telehealth in the us. But, it’s an interesting collaboration that’s happening on the right, right now, because after Trump returned to office with the Project 2025 Playbook plopped in his lap, one of the organizations that served on the advisory board of Project 2025 is called the Ethics and Public Policy Center. And they published a, an analysis earlier this, not calling it a study because it was not peer reviewed. and this paper claims that this, the adverse event rate for Miry stone is much higher than what’s on the FDA label. It is complete crap. This, they, were looking at emergency room data without actually knowing if people had abortions or if they were prescribed mefa for other reasons, or let alone if people were even admitted to the hospital versus just coming to the ER with some bleeding and wanting to make sure that they were okay. So people like Josh Holly have been boosting. Paper for an entire year trying to get the FDA to act and he extracted some concessions from the FDA Commissioner Marty McCarey got McCarey to say, oh yeah, we’re going to review the drug. Health HHS secretary, our FK Junior also said, yeah, we’re going to review the drug. And they’ve been dragging their feet on it. Such that Bloomberg reported earlier this year that MCC reported that he wanted to. Delay this review until after the midterm elections. We can talk about the strategy there, but the, overall point in response to your question is this drug is incredibly safe, but right wing actors are trying to push [00:08:00] bunk data out into the world to give the FDA a fake justification to end telemedicine restrictions or yank approval entirely. And this data from the EPPC is not just being cited by Josh Hawley in congressional hearings, but it’s also being cited in litigation. That lawsuit filed by Alliance Defending Freedom. Josh Hawley’s wife Erin cites that paper and so do other lawsuits against the FDA. Christian right activists using blatant lying against birth control to scare women SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And this is a very common tactic that the Christian right has used to try to scare people about women’s reproductive medicine. And they do that also with birth control. Like they’re doing that very big now, they’re doing as you were, the analogy kind of a, pincher movement as well by like trying to fear monger to women that if you take birth control, it makes you crazy or it makes you fat, or various other imaginary things that they are trying to put forward. It makes you, masculine, whatever, et cetera. And then, because I mean, the reality is that Dobbs versus Jackson was just the beginning of what these people want and they will come for birth control more explicitly. There’s no doubt about that. RINKUNAS: It is absolutely true, and this is an interesting point where the conservative right and the MAHA right are coming together because in her confirmation hearing recently in general Casey Means was asked about past comments she made regarding birth control. She said it was a disrespect for life and she overemphasized health risks of hormonal birth control, the birth control pill, patch ring, these kinds of things. And Patty Murray and other senators pressed her to clarify, are you saying you know more than the FDA, are you trying to say that birth control is unsafe? And Means [00:10:00] responded something to the effect of, I don’t think in this country people are really making informed choices because the, health system i

My guest this week is Matthew Sheffield, a writer, producer, and media entrepreneur. He hosts The Theory of Change podcast on The Flux network and when he’s not writing about our current political chaos he’s working away at an equally hard problem, that of consciousness in the age of AI. Matt's recent article on AI and consicousness: https://plus.flux.community/p/its-like-this-why-your-perception Music by GW Rodriguez Editing by Adam Wik Sibling Pod: Philosophers in Space: https://0gphilosophy.libsyn.com/ Support us at Patreon.com/EmbraceTheVoid If you enjoy the show, please Like and Review us on your pod app, especially iTunes. It really helps! This show is CAN credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm on their hotline at (617) 249-4255, or on their website at creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org. Next Episode: Secular Leadership with Darrel Ray

Episode Summary Everyone by now has seen countless stories about how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing software development, causing headaches for educators, and threatening jobs in industries from law to accounting. But there’s another business being changed very dramatically by AI that doesn’t get nearly so much coverage — and that’s the adult media industry. Some creators are using AI to generate content or impersonate themselves in fan messages. There’s a dark side as well: Some people are using image generators to fabricate fake performers or steal the identities of real ones. And AI has even been used to create non-consensual erotic imagery of ordinary women from photos they posted online — without their knowledge or consent. All of this is unfolding against a much bigger disruption that’s only now coming into full view. For the first time in human history, hundreds of millions of women have the economic and social independence to live life fully on their own terms. That’s a revolutionary change — but old habits die hard, even bad ones, and lots of men, and even women, haven’t realized their newfound opportunities. There’s a lot to think about here, and I couldn’t think of a better person to do it with today than Siri Dahl. She’s a 14-year veteran adult model and one of the industry’s most thoughtful and outspoken voices on culture, gender, and politics. Siri’s also had a unique encounter with AI after being doxxed by the Grok chatbot, an experience that many others are likely to have in the future. The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere. Related Content --Why the reactionary attacks on science and sex are related --Mike Johnson and the Christian right’s inverted moral compass --The world’s oldest profession has a history that’s just as long and colorful as you’d imagine --How adult media helped Hazel Grace build her American dream --The Christian right made sex political—along with everything else --Former porn star Nyomi Banks is helping her fans understand intimacy and themselves --Why OnlyFans revolutionized media and America’s gender dynamics Audio Chapters 00:00 Introduction 11:42 — Is it ethical for adult media creators to use AI to generate content of themselves? 23:22 — What AI-generated porn can’t offer 30:32 — Why middle-aged and older women continue to oppose porn 39:32 — The hetero dating recession is both sides rediscovering partnership when women are now finally independent 48:54 — ‘Love Is Blind’ as a microcosm of heterosexual dating attitudes 55:19 — Why are some people simulating relationship partners with chatbots? Audio Transcript MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: And joining me now is Siri Dahl, or should I say Polly Esther Pants? SIRI DAHL: Yeah, I’ll have to explain that one. Hello, thanks for having me on. SHEFFIELD: Yes, it is good to have you. So yes, tell us what is this Polly Esther Pants thing that you’re doing? DAHL: Yeah, so, Grok doxxed me. The actual doxing happened on January 20th, but I found out a bit later and then, did my best to try to get it taken down, like reporting the post and everything. And none of that worked. So eventually it just went to 4 0 4 media and they ran a story about it which went public. So now it’s now Grok is, or Grok, excuse me, is doxxing me all over the place because everyone is going: ‘@Grok, what’s Siri Dahl’s real name?’ And so the name’s out there nothing I can do about that at this point. But the thing that still irks me the most about the entire situation is that my name had never been like public online. It was never like easily findable, accessible or anything until Grok did this. And I don’t know, I’ve tried to interact with Grok to ask it, where did you get this information? Like, the first time that you responded to someone and said, Siri Dahl’s, legal name is blah, blah blah. Where were you sourcing that from? And it can’t give me a straight answer. It’s just oh, it looks like it [00:04:00] appears in a lot of like data aggregate sites. And I’m like, yeah, but I’ve been searching my name like twice a week for 14 years to see if my legal name appeared published online anywhere next to my sage name. And I’ve, usually when I do that, I go like a hundred pages deep in search results and it has not leaked. So like I haven’t been able to find it and I’m looking harder than anyone else realistically ever would. So I’m just like, where the f**k did Grok get this? And it cannot give me an answer. And then I was like, okay, so Grok knows that I am the owner of the Siri Dahl account and knows that I’m that person, that it’s doxed. And so I’ve been chatting with it, and now I’m doing it with all the other AI chatbots where I’m trying to gaslight the AI because I’m telling it you are spreading this information that my legal name is this thing. But you have no verified source at all for referencing that information. Like, why are you giving people an answer that is completely unverified? So my way of gaslighting the AI is, I’m, telling it. One, no, my, my real legal name is Polly Esther Pants and I— SHEFFIELD: That’s what I thought it was actually. DAHL: Exactly, hah. And I uploaded a photo of me holding my literal, like my Kentucky driver’s license that says my legal name is Polly Esther Pants. I’m not going to say how I got that driver’s license. I’m sure some listeners can figure out how, that was achieved, but, but Grok doesn’t, Grok’s oh shit, yeah, that’s a real photo. wow, your name clearly is Polly Esther Pants, holy moly. So at this point, all the chatbots acknowledged to me directly that they’re like, yeah, that is your name. But they still won’t stop referencing all the information that’s published online, which, that says a lot. Because that means like any misinformation published about any public person that is spread wide [00:06:00] enough, it’s like there’s no correcting it. You literally cannot get the AI to respond with correct information when someone asks a fact about a celebrity or something. Even if it has a primary source saying no, I am Siri Dahl and this is actually my name. So it’s, the whole situation’s very ridiculous. And, I don’t know how long I’m going to be on this b******t for, but I changed my display name on multiple platforms to Polly Esther Pants, because at this point it’s just, I’m just having fun with it. It’s just such a ridiculous situation. SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And to be honest, I think you’re experiencing something now that, a lot of people are going to be experiencing things like that. I would have to guess that probably the source that it has is in its training data somewhere, ingested data from a data broker company that used private information. And, that should be concerning to everyone. DAHL: I have been paying for data removal for four years already. SHEFFIELD: Although there’s only so much they can do. DAHL: That information was not tied directly to my stage name though. That’s the big piece, yeah, SHEFFIELD: That’s the thing. DAHL: Yes, exactly. it could have been internal data because, I’ve reported impersonation accounts through X before, and when you report an account for impersonating you, X requires you to upload a copy of your driver’s license to prove that you are the real version of that person. They say that information is kept private, but it’s also, is it? SHEFFIELD: That’s probably another way, possibly, yeah. DAHL: Yeah. SHEFFIELD: And this is, it really does show though, like the United States in terms of [00:08:00] data regulations and data privacy. it’s basically got almost nothing, compared to— DAHL: Yeah, it’s a free-for-all. It’s— SHEFFIELD: the EU, and other countries. Now you are a little bit better off, if you live in certain states like California, or Illinois has some some good ones. The Trump administration deliberately tries to thwart data privacy regulations, which it seems like that should be something that Democrats might want to tell the public a little bit more, if they were more competent. DAHL: Yeah, there’s a lot of things that the Democrats probably should be doing. SHEFFIELD: Yeah. That’s literally a big part of this show. DAHL: Yeah. SHEFFIELD: Of course right before Grok did that to you, people were criticizing it heavily, justifiably so, for making mostly nude, or sometimes even actually nude images of real women and girls even. DAHL: Yeah. SHEFFIELD: And Elon Musk did nothing about it for weeks. And that is not at all cool. And people, I don’t know, maybe some people might think that you as an adult media performer might not have a problem with that, but, that’s completely backwards to think that. DAHL: Yeah, that’s actually insane. Like, my image is my livelihood. And not only that, but on a whole different level, all of the AI-generated imagery I’ve seen created of me is, on a different level, even more offensive, beyond the fact that it’s just AI slop. Because AI cannot, most versions that I see people using, because I know that there are some models that are like really advanced at this point, but usually the porn bots on Twitter [00:10:00] are not really using those more advanced models. I rarely ever see an AI generated image of me that actually looks like me that actually looks like good. Usually it’s obviously AI slop. It f***s up my face. It makes me look like a literal different person. And it can’t replicate my body well. It always makes me look like 50 pounds thinner, which is just like offensive. Because I’m like, that’s not how I look. And that’s

Episode Summary The United States military is conducting bombing operations against Iran without a Congressional Declaration of War, consistently stated objectives or even terms on whether this is a war or not. Everything is in chaos: Some of it is due to incompetence within the Trump administration, of course. According to CNN and other news outlets, just days before President Donald Trump decided to follow Israel’s lead and bomb Iran, his FBI laid off an entire team of analysts who were experts in tracking Iranians online—all because they’d also been involved previously with investigating Trump’s previous retention of classified documents in a public bathroom at his Mar-a-Lago club. But that’s not the only reason the second Trump administration has been in such disarray. It’s almost as if the chaos is the point—if that even makes sense to say at all. The president and his top aides have little interest in coherent policies, but the Republican Party itself is less a political party than a loose coalition of people with grievances against America. Some of them are techno-fascists who literally want computers to replace humans. Then there are others who want to have a Christian theocracy. And then still there are others who think that they just want to have their country club and have low taxes. Despite their internal disunity, Republicans have been able to weaponize discontent against modernity and to fearmonger against minority groups, particularly people who are transgender, immigrants, or racial or religious minorities. So what can people who support democracy do in this situation? It seems so easy for politicians to just give in to the right-wing media machine. But this is not likely to work either, because while chaotic rage is what a minority of Americans want, the majority want something coherent and better. Joining me for a free flowing discussion about all of this is a longtime friend of the show, Parker Molloy. She is a media analyst and critic who writes the Present Age newsletter, and she also formerly worked as a senior staffer at Media Matters. The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere. Audio Chapters 00:00 — Introduction 07:32 — Republican billionaires have realized that controlling media discourse is cheap 17:58 — Republicans will always call Democrats ‘socialist’ regardless of their policies 26:12 — Far-right Jews like Ben Shapiro incorrectly thought they could have sexism and racism without antisemitism 28:07 — Trump’s policy positions constantly shift because coherent policy is unimportant to reactionaries 36:48 — The UK Labour Party is a current example that running away from your policy viewpoints doesn’t work 47:49 — Durable political change follows cultural change 01:00:30 — Glenn Youngkin and the myth that voters are obsessed with hating trans people 01:06:23 — Liberals and progressives must move beyond criticizing others Audio Transcript The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only. MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: I feel like we keep having a continued conversation because nothing that we talk about ever changes for the better it seems. PARKER MOLLOY: No, every, everything keeps getting slightly worse, just keeps edging towards the horrible. SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Although I will I will say, at least at the grassroots level, I do feel like a lot of people have been learning a lot more. So like, like with Donald Trump announcing his bombing campaign against Iran. People automatically are against it. And that’s, I mean, a majority. Yeah. I think the most recent bull I saw I had that was like 25% support it. So this is, there’s some good progress on the citizen side of MOLLOY: Yes. Now the question though is it’s just like how does that I’m just very interested, like when it comes to, the, support for Trump, Trump’s bombing and stuff like that. [00:04:00] It’s one of those times where democrats, I feel like they have a real opportunity to stake out the anti-war lane. And I kind of worry like there are clearly some democrats who are very much pro. War with Iran, like John Fetterman clearly wants to keep bombing, Moscowitz, he’s the one who he opposes the war powers resolution because he called it the Ayatollah Protection Act. It’s one of the, one of those things, where it’s like, Yeah. there are some pro-war democrats here who maybe don’t want to sound pro-war, which is why they’re kind of like dancing around a little bit. But overall, I think that now is a good time to, stake out the anti-war lane if, if there is ever an opportunity to do so. It’s right now, it’s before the public gets on board with, this. If they do, instead of seeding the conversation to, to Republicans to be like, well, clearly Iran, the regime is evil and we have to, had to do something. SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and it is, I mean, it’s a, it is a welcome contrast in many ways to the Iraq war because it, at least with the second Iraq war, the Bush administration they cared enough to lie about it MOLLOY: Yeah. I feel like we’re not even getting lied to anymore. They’re, or they’re, they’re not bothering to lie in a convincing way anymore. They’re not making a case. I did see some I can’t remember where I saw it, but someone called the administration’s response to all of this, war slap, which is basically, ‘cause Trump’s been like calling up reporters. Every major outlet and weirdly giving them all different stories about like how long he plans to be there, whether he’s planning, boots on the ground SHEFFIELD: the [00:06:00] objective MOLLOY: yeah. What, why he did it. You have Marco Rubio saying like, yeah, we had to do this because Israel was going to attack Iran anyway. And so yeah. we kind of ha it made sense for us to go in at that moment. And it’s like, and then today Trump’s like, absolutely not. They didn’t get me to go and do anything. I didn’t want to. It’s, I feel like the whole point is just to throw everything out there And to see what sticks. Like SHEFFIELD: Yeah. MOLLOY: one, one of my, one of my favorite things with the war right now is on one hand you have some Republicans saying we’re not at war. Where is the, what Congress hasn’t voted for war. This is not a war, this is. a military action. Like whatever euphemism they wanna use. And then you have other Republican members of Congress who are like, this war has been going on for 47 years and we are ending it. It’s like, so, so it’s also, it’s a war that’s been going on forever, but it’s also not a war. And if you think about it, it’s like, the last time that the United States formally declared war on a country was World War ii. So it, like, does Mark Wayne Mullen actually believe that we haven’t been in a war since World War ii? I don’t think so, but I think he thinks that it’s a winning message. Republican billionaires have realized that controlling media discourse is cheap SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and doesn’t seem to be that way so far, so that’s good. But you know, it, it goes back to though the idea of shaping opinion. And that is why I think we’ve seen so much recent consolidation of media by right wing oligarchs. And in particular, the most recently, the acquisition of Paramount by David Ellison and Larry Ellison, his dad and who are strong Israel supporters and [00:08:00] Netanyahu supporters. We have to point that out. Now it looks like they have the prevailing bid, which they got. Through working with Trump in the most corrupt and blatant fashion I’ve ever seen for any sort of corporate acquisition. And to to buy the company Warner Brothers. And so now they wanna get, so they got CBS news, now they want CNN but the ratings are just going down the toilet every time they do it. So that’s at least a good thing MOLLOY: Yeah I do think that they’re trying, it’s, it, a big part of this is to just, even if the ratings tank and even if, like, I feel like cable news and like legacy media as a whole is a struggling field, right. Right now and is probably only gonna get more difficult as time goes on. Which, when it comes to like, Paramount’s to buy Warner Brothers, I thought it was interesting that they wanted to bid for all of Warner Brothers instead of or all of Warner Brothers discovery. Instead of just waiting for CNN to split off and buy it separately. Like, I think they realize that the movie studios where the money’s at, and, owning all that IP is where the money’s at, like. Using CNN as a propaganda arm is kind of just like, that’s not gonna make money for them in the long run, but it will accomplish a different goal which is also, you also have Larry Ellison involved in the purchase of TikTok. So, SHEFFIELD: true too. Yeah. MOLLOY: You’ve got that, and obviously you have Elon Musk with Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg has been getting cozy with Trump over the past few years. And, it’s, there’s a real, like, big right wing takeover of media and communications services and it’s, I feel like that’s gonna be a big story in the coming years. Like, how people who aren’t part of that bubble, [00:10:00] who aren’t who aren’t Barry Weiss, who aren’t, con conservative podcasters and stuff, like how the rest of us kind of get our news and get our information and what that means in the years to come, because there was like that recent there was a recent study about how being on Twitter basically pushes you to the right, it’s like you’re, and it’ll ha like I’ll open Twitter because I look at it to keep track of what’s going on in th

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit plus.flux.community Donald Trump was swept into office by an elaborate series of lies about his radical policies, but more than a year into his second term, the less-engaged independent voters who powered his victory have turned firmly against the president. But as low as Trump’s approval ratings have fallen, the Democratic Party’s favorability among Americans is even lower. How is this possible and what does it mean? Depending on who you ask, you’ll get a very different answer. Usually, however, the criticism boils down to: Democrats aren’t promoting my own personal policy opinions. The hard truth, however, people don’t want to accept is that many, if not most, voters have policy viewpoints that aren’t fixed, which means that focusing your campaign strategies based solely on public opinion is not going to work. Democracy in America is severely endangered because one the country’s two major parties has become a fascistic personality cult. But a strategy of protecting democracy by winning every election forever is doomed to failure. So what to do instead? That’s an answer that I can’t give you in a single podcast episode, although be sure to subscribe nonetheless! But what I can say is that democracy defenders must think bigger and be much more open to new voices and new ideas. And joining me for today’s conversation is a friend of the show, David Atkins. He’s a member of the Democratic National Committee and also a contributor to Washington Monthly. The full discussion of this episode is for paid subscribers. An excerpt on YouTube is available, but you will need to be a premium member on Patreon or Substack to watch, read, or listen to the full discussion. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere. (Note: Purchasing a book through the links in show notes helps support Theory of Change.) Related Content --The 2025 elections showed that more than anything, people want Democrats who fight Trump --Republican operatives completely reconfigured politics, their Democratic rivals have not kept up --How the American left became post-political, and how to change it --Republicans built a massive infrastructure to attack democracy, Democrats have not made one to defend it --Democrats get lots of bad advice, particularly the idea that most voters are ideological --In 2024, Donald Trump bet big on ‘unlikely voters’ who have sat on the margins of American politics Audio Chapters 00:00 — Introduction 06:13 — QAnon as a religion of narcissism 12:18 — What conspiracism offers middle-aged and older women 20:13 — Media proliferation and political manipulations have made conspiracy belief much easier 28:27 — The women of January 6th faced widely divergent economic circumstances 34:32 — Charismatic evangelicalism as the common starting point for QAnon believers 44:02 — Astrology, space aliens, and QAnon 48:44 — ‘Soul contracts’ and tragic morality 52:49 — Right-wing politicians harm society and then use the nihilism they engender as campaign leverage 55:42 — What do QAnon believers think about the Epstein files now? 01:04:35 — Prevention is easier than de-radicalization Audio Transcript The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only. MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: And joining me now is David Atkins. Hey, Dave. Good to see you back on the show. DAVID ATKINS: Hey, happy to be here. Thanks for having me on. SHEFFIELD: Yeah. So you are a member of the Democratic National Committee, but you are here in your personal capacity. ATKINS: Yes. SHEFFIELD: So we want to make sure to point that out. ATKINS: Yes. I’m not an official spokesperson for the DNC in this interview. SHEFFIELD: Yes. All right, so with that out of the way one of the topics that I wanted to talk about here today is that Donald Trump, as I think everybody by now, or at least people who watch or listen to this podcast, knows and read you is that Donald Trump, he won not because of the fanatical fascistic, right wing, he won because he kind of misled a lot of people who didn’t know very much about politics, and those marginal Trump voters appear to have pretty much turned against him at this point. And his approval ratings are the lowest they’ve ever been. And in some polls actually even lower than they were after January 6th 2021. So, But the paradoxical thing is that the Democratic Party is rated as less popular in polls. And I think that’s, it’s causing some people to kind of project, a lot of their own personal biases onto that data set. But there’s a lot going on there. And, but ultimately, I mean, voters are still, they’re still choosing the Democrats in elections. ATKINS: Right. I think it, There’s a lot on there. When you look at a statistic like such and such number of people dislike or like the Republican party or such and such or like the [00:04:00] Democratic Party that is genuine, that is generally. A confluence many different Factors. there’s an old sort of in, in religious studies that every religion is sort of like a flashlight on the elephant, that everybody’s sort of got a spotlight that nobody can see. The whole elephant. I think you have a similar thing going on here. So you have the moderates who are saying, oh, this means that the Democratic Party is too far to the left and need to come back to the center. you’ve got leftists who are saying, well, the Party is bad on this issue or that issue. And if they were only farther left, I think it really depends the person. I think it’s all of those things are true for different segments of the electorate, which makes solving the problem challenging. But I think one thing you can say is there are a few major reasons for happening. Number one, you have a low trust society in general, so all institutions are suffering across the board. Approval of every major institution is down. That having been said, not making excuses for the state of the, Democratic Party approval. ‘cause I’ve been talking to various leaders in the party about a lot with some alarm, I think. Yes, right. There some people who have joined the Trump Coalition who used to vote for Democrats, who feel that the party has shifted too far left on issues. But rather than take the Yglesias sort of angle this that has been happening since the 1960s, you have been having realignment shifts this for the last past 50 or 60 years. And that doesn’t mean that you need to stop expanding rights or do or stop advancing social change. And in any case, it’s not Democratic candidates or the Democratic Party officially that is advancing civil rights in this way, that is making those voters uncomfortable. So there’s only so much the party per se can do about that. So when Matt Yglesias and those folks say, oh, the party needs to shift to the right, I mean. They’re not talking about party candidates, they’re talking about random [00:06:00] activists on social media. So good luck, I guess. There is also another segment of people who are absolutely furious Gaza or some other issue. And again, though, know, you can’t really fault candidates so much for this, and candidates who have taken much more left positions on those issues are not actually fairing better in elections by and large, with some exceptions. And we can talk about the Mamdani Coalition and all of that, and I’m very supportive of a OC and Mamdani and those folks. But it’s not exactly an electoral panacea. It’s not like if every candidate adopted those positions, the party’s fortunes would be reversed. It’s not that simple either. I think the biggest thing that is impacting though approval of the Democratic Party, ironically, is from core normie Democrats. You ask a core Normie Democrat who shows up to a No Kings protest. And is with Trump, if they approve of the Democratic Party, by and large, they’re going to say no. Not because they like Trump, not because they think the party is too far left or too far right, but because the party is not doing a big, a good enough job of standing up to the Republicans. And look what some strategists and Chuck Schumer might say is, oh, we’re doing exactly what we need to do to win elections. Look how well we’re doing winning elections. Well, okay, maybe, but there’s more to politics, ironically than winning the next election, right? You’ve gotta keep people engaged and believing in you as an institution, believing in your values. Otherwise, you’re just going to get a thermostatic effect where, okay, you win the next election, but the next time people get upset over inflation or whatever, you lose again. And if your entire premise of how you defeat fascism is we have to win every single election. Rather than we have to end fascism at its root, then you’re going to lose. So there has to be more than [00:08:00] just, oh, we’re doing whatever it takes to win the next election by looking calm and looking like good guys. So it’s a lot of things I think. For voters, ideology matters less than activity SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. And we’ll come back to the thermostatic issue later. But yeah, I, it’s it is shaping up when we look at the candidates who did win in the past 2025 election the major candidates who won, what we’re seeing is that, yeah, that the real access of approval for Democrats or energy is yeah, how is, how much you want to oppose Trump. And it’s not as even as much of an ideological barrier. So like we see, for instance, with Virginia’s Abigail Spanberger has, recently come out with some pretty tough restrictions on the Trump Ice Thugs and what they’re allowed to do legally within the state. And, the degree to which Virginia law enforcement officers are allowed to cooperate with them or provid