March 12, 2025 • 45 mins
Researcher and journalist Molly Conger’s new podcast Weird Little Guys uncovers the worst people you’ve never heard of, how they’re trying to take over our country, and what it all means.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you let this fear sort of like spin out
of control and let them become these like larger than
life figures in your mind, then you do feel disempowered
to do anything about it. Like if these are these
aren't just some fucking guy, right, It's just some fucking guy,
and some guy can be defeated.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridgid Todd, and this
is There Are No Girls on the Internet. Molly. Thank
you so much for being here, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Thank you so much for having me, Bridgid.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
It's been pretty tough to know just how to respond
in this moment. I've been personally spending a ton of
my time really trying to zero in on what it
is I want to be doing and why and how
I can use my specific skills to create the change
I want to see in the world. It's the kind
of thing that Molly Conger has built an entire career of.
She's a researcher and journal who focuses on the far right,
so she's been pretty busy lately. Mollie's hit new podcast
(01:06):
is called Weird Little Guys. And on it she explores
who she calls quote the worst people you've never heard of,
and how the hate mongers standing in the way of
progress and equality are well, in a lot of ways,
just weird little guys. But before all this, Molly was
working in an office job at an early childhood ed tech company,
and then the Unite the Right rally that left thirty
(01:28):
two year old Heather Higher dead happened in her town.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
I've lost my job unexpectedly in the summer of twenty seventeen.
It was, you know, it's a huge bummer. I'd been
working there for a long time. It was my first,
like big girl job, and I guess maybe my last
one because I have another job since. And so I
was just adrift, right, I was just at home trying
to figure out what to do next when Unite the
(01:53):
Right happened here in Charlottesville. And I was not someone
who was politically engaged at that time. It was not
I didn't know anything about that world, and I was
bewildered by what happened here, like why did Nazis come
to where I live and kill a woman who was,
you know, around my age. Right, This Streles' is not
(02:15):
a big towns to college towns, but fifty thousand people.
It just didn't seem like something that could happen here.
And I didn't. I just didn't understand, and I had
the time to waste trying to understand.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
And I never stopped when this was happening where you like, Oh,
I am carving out a lane of work for myself.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
No, And I didn't ever intend for it to become
a career or you know, become a subject matter expert
in anything. I just I guess I don't have asked anything.
My whole asked it.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
I know your work has been instrumental and identifying extremists
to sometimes have committed actual crimes in the name of
their ideologies. How did this come to be something you
realized that you had a knack for.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
I've talked about this, I think, you know, like I
did a workshop last year in a local bookstore about, like,
you know, internet safety and sort of reverse engineering how
to keep yourself safe by talking about the ways that
I make other people less safe online, you know, less
safe being you know, a hater in secret. And I
think I think all women have this ability. It is
(03:17):
a laden ability that all women of our generation have
right that, Like you've stayed up all night trying to
find your ex's pictures on social media? Like what is
what are they up to? Did they get married? You know,
we all have that skill set, and I think in
another universe, I'm just a fucking menace on nextdoor. But
I found a way to channel that like aggressive nosiness
(03:39):
into something that's good for society.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
I love that. I love that being your superpower. I
have said that on the show. Nobody is like smarter
than like a group of girls with Instagram. They will
find anything anyone you cannot hide from them.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Like a scorned woman is more powerful than the FBI.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Absolutely correct. By now, I'm sure you've seen that horrifying video,
a woman later identified as doctor Teresa Bornpole is forcibly
dragged out of a public town hall meeting and zip
Tide for speaking up. There was a time where town
hall meetings were just the boring process driven Greece that
kept the wheels of local government turning, not necessarily the
(04:19):
hot beds of discontent we know them ass today. But
Molly was someone who identified that town hall meetings were
going to play an important role early on in twenty seventeen,
she started live tweeting government meetings in Charlottesville after the
deadly Unite the Right rally. You know something else that
I really have to lift up about your work is
that I feel like you're one of the early people
(04:40):
who recognized the power of things like public town halls,
public meetings, especially happening in Charlottesville. Today, we know that like,
those are big flash points where you know, you might
get dragged out by hired goons for saying the wrong thing.
But I feel like there was a time where you
thought of public town halls or town meetings as the
(05:00):
like boring things that they were, not the flashpoints that
they are today. What was it about those spaces that
made you feel like I need to start tracking what's
happening in these spaces.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
They should be boring. First of all, they should be boring,
but no, so that when my sort of early quest
for personal understanding, one of the first places I went
was I went to the first city council meeting that
happened after Unite the Right. So it was, you know,
the week after this happened here, I didn't know where
to start looking for answers, So I went to city
Hall and it was this very explosive meeting because there
(05:31):
was a lot of anger here. There's a lot of hurt.
And over time those meetings, you know, fewer and fewer
people showed up over time. I think Charles Fillson more
engaged locality than most and we have remade that way
over the years. But you know, over the over the months,
people stopped showing up. But I was interested. I was
interested in the way these decisions are getting made. And
(05:54):
I guess once I committed to that, I couldn't stop.
But it wasn't something I started doing for anyone else, right,
I live have been. I fell off in the last
couple of months because I'm busy with the show. But
I spent seven years live tweeting city council meetings. And
it wasn't something I was doing for people, because like arguably,
there should be no audience for that. It's not interesting.
(06:18):
But I learned a lot about about local government, about
the kinds of people who show up to make themselves heard.
You know, there are I don't know, I think because
it is boring because it is time consuming, because it
is hard to do, you know, six o'clock on a
weekday evening, you have other stuff to do, you're still
at work, or you're making dinner for your family. The
kinds of people who show up are often people who
(06:41):
have not great motivations, and so we shouldn't seed that
ground to that one weird lady who wants to ban
all the books at the library.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Do you feel like that's a big part of how
we got to where we are now? Sort of? You know,
I understand the temptation of focusing on president national politics
what's happening federally, But while we were doing that and
sort of not paying attention to the boring city council
meeting or whatever, the lady who wants to ban all
the books in the library really amassed a lot of
(07:12):
power and now has goons, right.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Because that's been an explicit organizing strategy of like right
wing interest groups for a long time, is running city
council candidates, running school board candidates. They've been filling those
rooms with their goons for a long time, and you know,
it varies locality to locality. I don't want to say
there are no people pushing back against that. There are
a lot of good people pushing back against that. But
(07:36):
I think on average, we have seeded that ground to
people who you know, you know at the Federalist Society
or whatever, who understand that they can build power locally.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
I'm curious, are you from Charlottesville, Like originally I.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Moved here in two thousand and seven to go to Uba,
and so I never left.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Yeah, I'm from Virginia. I grew up in Richmond. And
you mentioned how Charlottesville people there are like perhaps a
little more engaged civically than your average place. I totally agree,
And I think that Charlottesville. I love Charlottesville. I grew
up going there, Like I had a lot of friends
that went to UVA. Like that was like the good
when I was in high school. That was like the
(08:17):
good college that you hope that you got into.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Public.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yeah. Yeah, in Virginia you might know this. They just
call it the university. They don't even call it the
University of Virginia. Like that's how ubiquitous it is. And
I do think like in a place like Charlottesville, where
folks are pretty like plugged in, it's like a unique place.
Do you think that that that that strategy of quietly
(08:42):
taking things over, does that work in a place like
Charlottesville where folks are pretty plugged in.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
It doesn't work here. It doesn't work here Antonin Scalia's
granddaughter did not successfully run for school board here. She
tried and it didn't work. So I think, yeah, you
have to be in that space and know what's going on.
Run your own people, because I think, especially now that
I guess the law doesn't matter at all at the
(09:09):
federal level, that our local government is going to be
our last line of defense. That when you know these
terrible directives come down from the federal government, or you know,
in Virginia we have a terrible governor who's going to
cooperate government, your local government is your last line of defense. Like, like,
are the regional jail board here makes decisions about whether
(09:31):
or not the jail cooperates with ice, right, Like these
local decisions have a very real impact on people's state
to day lives.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Well, it's interesting that you say that, because I personally,
Bridget am going through a little bit of a I
guess you could call out a tails a despair tailspin.
Everything going on reasonable, Yeah, And I think I constantly
finding myself kind of oscillating between just being like I
(09:59):
need to with my job and dedicate myself to the
calls full time. I don't have kids, my parents are
dead like this like this is it is time to
like lock the fuck in and being like I need
to check the fuck out, I need to like disengage.
And it almost and I bet a lot of people
may be your feeling that way, and it almost sounds
like what you're saying is that the antidote to the
(10:22):
feeling right now of feeling like I can't do anything,
I can't change anything is being like it checked in,
engaged and formed, like even at the hyper local level,
because that's where you actually could build up the build
up the qualities that like make that strategy of taking
over of extremists taking over your local government less likely.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Exactly, And it doesn't have to you know, this push
and pull of like I can't do anything or I
have to do everything is overwhelming. But you don't have
to do something big. You don't have to do something big.
Just join a community group and be part of something
that could be big. But it doesn't have to be you, right,
and you don't have to have you know, in character syndrome.
But stopping fascism, yeah, I don't think it.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
I don't think me personally nobody's gonna cut it.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
But there's this this feeling like if I don't do
something enormous, if I don't put my whole life into this,
then I am not contributing. And that's not true. I
think you go to a school board meeting, talk to
your teachers' union.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
I really like that, and I think, especially right now,
it is I mean, I feel overwhelmed. I think everybody's
feeling overwhelmed. The idea that like, you don't have to
do it all. You certainly don't have to do it alone.
If you, you know, thought somehow that you were gonna
be the main character of stopping fascism, like disavow yourself
with that notion. And it actually is like helpful to
(11:38):
feel that way, to think of it that way, right that.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Like I don't know, your own insignificance can be a
comfort to you that you are just one person in
this this larger operation of people coming together and doing
a little bit at a time. That's more manageable.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
I have to say, like my own show has sort
of been off the air for a while, like in
part because of personal reasons and family reasons, but also
part of it is just like straight up not really
knowing how to show up in this moment. Like I
have sort of struggled with my own kind of north
Star because I want to provide to my listeners, like
(12:18):
content that is valuable, that is useful, that educates them,
that helps them understand what's happening, and how to get
plugged in. But I don't want to be alarmist. I
don't want to be you know, doom and gloom all
the time. But what the moment that we're in right
now is genuinely alarming, right, And so like part of
me is like, well, if I don't want to be alarmist,
I guess I can't say anything because like, we're in
an alarming moment. Is is this something that you have
(12:40):
dealt with, struggled with and have you managed to find
a balance there?
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Gosh, So the last couple of weeks, actually, I've been
really grappling with that exact thought. Right. So when the
show launched, in the first few months of episodes, I'm
telling these stories about history, right, I'm looking at sort
of a specific incident or individual from the past, you know,
guys from the eighties, crimes from the seventies, like crimes
that are sort of discreete package stories of like look
(13:08):
at this, Look at this little fucking guy, look at this,
Look at fucking weird Nazi who had child porn on
his computer. Right, it's just these like little vignettes of
creepy little Nazis. But the last couple of weeks the
episodes have really focused on tying together, like here's this
thing that happened in the past, and here is its
direct correlation that is ruining your life now. And it's
(13:31):
I feel like there's a responsibility that I have to
tie these things together. You know, I'm not just talking
about you know, the American white supremacist movement as this
interesting anecdote of history. It is something that has led
us to this moment. So tying like not just like
this is an echo of this, This is a direct
consequence of this particular man's actions and words. And here's
(13:54):
the clear through line that got us to today. It's us,
It's not Stow.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
I wanted to write, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
At our back.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
On her podcast Weird Little Guys, Mollie isn't just rehashing
old stories of extremists from the past. She's connecting how
these stories led to our current moment. For instance, when
Don Logan, Scottsdale, Arizona's former diversity director, opened an office
of diversity back in nineteen ninety eight, it was bombed.
Six years later, Don Logan almost died, but the office
(14:41):
stayed open. But the story didn't in there because even
after surviving a dangerous bombing decades earlier, just recently the
city government voted to shut the diversity offices doors. Well,
in one of your episodes, you're talking about the diversity
office in Arizona that was like bomb in two thousand
and four, and you know the person who opened it
(15:03):
survived that bombing only for earlier this year, a few
weeks ago, that office to close when you know they
voted to, as the Phoenix New Times put it, for
no apparent reason or justification doing so other than for
the council to align itself with Donald Trump's baseless culture
war crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Like that
(15:25):
seems exactly like I read this piece and it broke
my heart. The person who was like, yes, I had
opened the package that had a pipe bomb in it,
a little bit differently, I would be dead today and
now this office is shuddering in some ways. It does
kind of feel like when you are threading that needle
of these stories, that like we're moving in the wrong direction.
(15:47):
And I guess I wonder, like, how do you, as
somebody who tells these stories for a living and threads
that needle for a living, how do you deal with that,
this feeling that like we are going in the wrong direction,
like we simply are not moving forward.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Yeah, that story, in particular, I think really it instilled
in me this idea that I have a responsibility to
be clear that these stories aren't over right, Like I
spent I spent two full months chronicling the life of
Dennis Mahon, that klansman who built that bomb in two
thousand and four, Like I followed him for decades. I
dug through archives and court records and transcripts and old
(16:23):
clanned newsletters and watched videos of sermons given at the
Arian Nation's compound. And you know, I spent months writing
this story, and I thought, Okay, it's over. He's in prison,
his trial was very interesting, he was convicted, and that
story is over. And then not a month after I
finished writing it, the city council shut down the office
(16:43):
that refused to shudder because of a bombing, right like
he sent them a bomb. Don Logan almost died, and
the city said, No, diversity is important to us. Diversity
is important to us. Klansmen don't get to decide that
it's not. And then twenty one years later, some Republican
mayor with too much botox decided that no, actually, diversity
(17:04):
sucks and we hate it, and so we are moving
in the wrong direction.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
And I don't know.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
I was speaking to an undergraduate class at EVA the
other day about the show. A professor invited me to
talk to the students about the show, and a lot
of their questions for me were like, well, what do
we do? What do we do? What does the future
look like? And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know.
I'm not a political organizer, I'm not a prognosticator. I
don't I'm just trying to tell a story and hopefully
(17:38):
it can inform the organizing work of people who are
good at that kind of thing. But all I have
are these old clan newsletters.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Well this might sound wild, but like, stay with me here.
So I love Tony Morrison, I love Angela Davis, and
they were close friends. And Tony Morrison was working as
an editor at Random House, right, and she was very
clear that like her during the you know, black political
movement of the sixties and seventies. She was like, oh,
(18:07):
my role is like being an editor writing blah blah blah.
And Angela Davis, who of course was like this amazing organizer,
an activist and bet arrested and like, you know, was
really in the streets and in the struggle. Tony Morrison said,
you need to write an autobiography, a memoir. You need
to write the story of your struggle in the streets
so people can read it. And Angela Davis was like, no,
(18:28):
I'm too young. I don't I'm too young for a memoir.
Maybe I'll do it in ten years. And she said
that Tony Morrison was the kind of person who had
a way of telling people to do things where they
understood they really ought to do it. And she wrote
that memoir and you know it, it went on to
inform an entire generation of political organizing and social movement
(18:48):
and theory and practice. And Tony Morrison was very clear
that she wasn't going to be in the streets, but
her gifts. The thing that she was good at was
editing and getting people, like identifying the person whose story
needed to be told and making for that story got
out into the world. And I really see that as
like a similar thing, right of Like you know, you
were saying, like I'm out an organizer. I can't tell
(19:09):
people like how you push back, but you know where
your gifts lie, right, Like you know what you're good at.
You're good at pouring over research archival. I mean, part
of me almost wonders if if the thing that we
should all be thinking about is like, what is the
skill that we're good at that they can't take away
from us? And how can I lean into that in
this moment? And yours is clearly like going over the
(19:30):
meticulous you know, archives and telling a story, making a story.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Out of it, right, and like giving people sort of
the language to assist them in understanding the moments such
that they may take the action that they're good at. Right, Like,
you know, people are like, oh, these you know, it's
a fascist government, it's the you know, we're experiencing fascism,
and then there's this pushback of well, you can't just
that's such a big word. You can't say that, but
if I can give you the information that you need
(19:55):
to say. No, I know where this idea came from.
I know whose mouth those words came out of last
time they were spoken. You know that this isn't just
normal Republican politics.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
This is.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
This is something you come from an old clan newsletter.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
How much of your work is like digging into old
clan newsletters or like looking through speeches that are archives
and things like that, things that like maybe read as boring,
but help us understand this.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
It's not boring to me. It's not boring. It's like,
I guess that's you know, we all have our special interest.
This is the research is my favorite part. I love it.
Like I spent most of last week trying to translate
a blurry PDF of a thesis that was written in
the nineties in Afrikaans, like and ocr does not like
the AI does not want to read this to me,
(20:48):
it is I'm like line by line because I know
there's golden there and I'm gonna get it.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
You know something that I appreciate about Weird Little Guys
is that is the part of the show that's like
that you've never heard of, Like that part I think
is very important. You know, there are so many of
these names that folks might know, like Richard Spencer, who
I always you know, I have. I had to give
him a special shoutout because he was punched in my
hometown of DC. And it's like a claim to fame
(21:16):
that I love to mention. But you're talking about people
that like extremists that people might not know right or
might not have heard of. And you know, I live
in d c. Into. Like you've talked about Aaron Hoffman,
who was a police officer in nearby Prince George County,
who you identified as a Proud Boys member, you know,
who was advocating for violence against as a Supreme Court
(21:38):
chief justice. And I guess I wonder, like, why do
you think it's so important that people don't just know
the sort of like big name extremists that get fancy
write ups in the Times or whatever about their haircut,
but also the people in your hometown, on your police force,
on your school board.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Yeah, I guess the idea. You know, the name of
the show is Sophie's actually Sophie's brainchild. Weird little guys, right,
It's like it's not just the splashy big names that
you've heard of. It's there's the whole networks of these.
It's like you pick up a rock and there's all
these roly pollies under there, right, there's never just one
bug under that rock. And they're just these terrible little losers. Right,
(22:19):
They're not these larger than life incomprehensible figures, these you know,
great men of history quote unquote, right, it's it's just
like a bunch of fucking losers who are mean to
their wives.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Yeah. So I was once behind the bastards and I
was talking to Robert about this and I forget, I
forget who we were talking about. But he had a
very whoever it was, had like a very messy interpersonal
life and that was his undoing. And I was like, dang,
imagine being like this like high up figure and extremist
movement and you're undoing is like your interpersonal messiness with
(22:52):
your girlfriend. And he was like, bitch, it's all of
them like that.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
It's like yes, Like there's there's a a white nationalist
group that does not exist anymore because it fell apart
after the leader caught his best friends slash father in
law sleeping with his they were God, okay, so Matt
heinbuch It's married to brook and Brooks stepfather Matt Parrott
(23:19):
was having an affair with Oh god, oh the diagram
is escaping me.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
You need like the like stringboard, like there is no
Pepe Sylvia, like no, like we call it.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
We call the Night of the Wrong Wives, right, because
this Nazi group collapsed because they were like they were
fucking each other's wives.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Yeah, people with the moral high ground, for sure, these
are the people that we want architecting.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Are like traditional values.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Yes, I mean that is that a strategy here? Like
really exposing the ways that these are just like small,
weird losers and that they're not larger than life figures,
and that like we are smarter than them. There are
more of us than there are of and that like yeah,
and like we need to remember that that like we
(24:04):
can defeat them. They're not like big, smart, savvy people.
Is that is that a strategy here? Yes?
Speaker 1 (24:11):
So it's like you know, I'm not saying they're not
scary or they're not dangerous. It's absolutely not the message here.
But like if you let this fear sort of like
spin out of control and let them become these like
larger than life figures in your mind, then you do
feel disempowered to do anything about it. Like if these
are these aren't just some fucking guy, right, It's just
(24:32):
some fucking guy, and some guy can be defeated, right,
this the idea of the monster is much more frightening
than the weird guy.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Yeah, after watching I mean that horrifying video of a
woman being dragged out of a meeting in Idaho, I
when I saw the video was like this is I mean,
it is terrifying, right, But then you hear you read
about the sheriff who you know speaks to her initially,
and everybody is like, oh, you want to know more
(25:05):
about this guy. Here's his history of like weird, shitty,
terrible behavior, And part of me is like wow, like
he read like, first of all, if somebody with that
kind of a background, I'm like, you probably should not
have put yourself out here to be publicly scrutinized on
a national stage. But also it's like, these are people
with so many frailties and skeletons in their closet and like,
(25:28):
I don't know somebody about that story. I found very
empowering of like yeah, get them, Like I'm glad we're
all talking about like whether or not he's pulling some
kind of a disability scam right now? Like do you
know what I'm saying? Like like who decided that the
who put these assholes in charge? Like who decided that
this person knows better about how to run anything than me?
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Exactly? Like they they all have just something terribly humiliating
in their background, right Like, oh, you may be the
guy who wrote the book that inspired of you know,
dozens of mass murderers to commit accid, unspeakable terror. But
like I've read your bankruptcy filings and I know you
got fired from Walmart, Like.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Yes, yeah, weird little guy. I mean like that really
that title really does say it all. These are weird
little guys.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
They're small, They're small in you know, they're mentally small,
Their minds are small, their hearts are small, and we
can defeat them.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
You know, there's been a lot of talk about this
really being a time where folks should be leaning in
and staying checked in and showing up at town hall
meetings or meetings in their local communities to demand accountability
from elected officials. Do you have any advice for folks
doing that, maybe for the first time meaningfully in their lives.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Oh gosh, just go, just go to the meeting. And no,
I don't know, Oh gosh, me think it's been so
many years. There's this steep learning curve, Like you know,
when I first intern showing up to these meetings, like
they seem overwhelming, it's confusing, Like there's a very specific
language of the wave bureaucracy is conducted. You know. It's
(26:56):
so don't be afraid to just sit quietly for a
meeting or two until you figure out the space that
you're in. You know, read the agenda online. You can
watch old meetings online if you want to. If there's
local groups in your area that go to these meetings
in an organized fashion, talk to them, ask them questions.
I'm sure there's someone there who will talk to you
about it. I know you're rights. I think there's a
(27:20):
lot of intimidation that goes on, right like you, if
you don't know that you are allowed to be there,
you might be bullied out of that room. Like when
I first started going to not just city council meetings,
I started going to every public meeting I could find
because I was very unemployed, and there's all these boards
and commissions in my town. I would go to these meetings,
and it was obvious in some of these rooms that
(27:42):
no one had ever come before, that no member of
the public had ever walked into that room and watched
them have their meeting. Because they would say things like, oh,
you can't be in here, and I would have to say, well, no,
I'm familiar with the law, and yes I can. The
law says you have to let me be in this room.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
To gaslight you into making you think that you were
like trespassing essentially.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Like that you're oh, you're not supposed to be in here,
we're having a meeting. It's like, yeah, I know, that's
why I'm here. I'm here to watch you have this meeting.
And it changes their behavior, Like even if you say nothing,
just the act of witnessing them have their government meeting
changes their behavior. And so I think, even if you
have no intention of making a public comment, go be
in the room, make them look at you, make them
(28:26):
know that their constituents are aware of what they're talking about.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Do you think that, especially now that it seems like, oh,
I mean, when I think about what's happening federally. I
just it's very hard to find anything hopeful to grab
onto you.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Yeah, I'm not looking there for hope.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Yeah, I mean maybe it's local. Maybe, like that's where
like that's where you can actually like grab on to something.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Right, Like I have no like, you know, calling my
congressman's not going to do anything. He was at January sixth,
like he looks like a haunted Marionette doll and he
loves fascism. Like I'm not called him, but I know,
but I know that, you know, when it comes up
for a vote at my school board. You know, a
couple of years ago, they voted to take the cops
out of our local schools, right, because having cops in
(29:10):
schools is proven. There's academic studies proving that it like
worsens outcomes, particularly for black students. It increases the level
of violence in the schools. It does not make anyone safer.
So they took the cops out. They did the right thing,
and they took them out. But now they're talking about
putting them back. Right, So like, I can't make my
congressmen do anything about fascism at the federal level, but
(29:32):
I can be in the room to make sure that,
you know, black kids at my local middle school aren't
terrorized by a school resource officer. That's something I can do.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
I mean that that actually feels a little like that
feels real to me, Like that, Like that feels like
a like a change that like you could see you
can feel in your commune, like in your town.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
And it's not meaningless, right, these small things they feel insignificant,
you know, in the face of the horrors that are
that are inundating us every day. But it's not meaningless
to the people whose lives it touches, right that, Like
you know, one fourteen year old black boy gets arrested
by the school resource officer, that's the rest of his
life ruined, right, Like that is a life changing act
(30:17):
of violence for a child. And that's something that you
can have an impact on.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
More.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
In all of this work, I mean, I have to ask,
Like we talk about this on the show kind of
a lot, like a lot of the sort of dangerous
work of chronicling extremists, pushing back against extremists is being
done by marginalized communities. Women. You know that I think
that that's not a coincidence. And all. So women are
(31:01):
like uniquely targeted for this work. Like it's usually not
just us, it's like us in our family, us and
our partner. How do you, how do you how how
has that been for you? And how do you keep
yourself sort of fafe and like okay to show up
and do this work.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Dissociation number one Number one, just I don't I don't
live in this body. I'm not a here. I mean,
that's laughing, that's not funny. Although I will say I
haven't gotten a death threat in months, and that's the
first time in years that I can say that. Like
it used to be like every week I was getting,
(31:37):
you know, a message from some guy who's like, I'm
gonna shoot you in the chest and then fuck the
whole you know, like weird stuff.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Lord, Like.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Okay, Dad, I think they're afraid of being on the show.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Oh my god, if they were a weird little guy,
it's like today, I'm weird little guys. Listen to that
voicemail that Chad left me and then it's played in
its entirely entirely.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Yeah, I think they're afraid of being on the show.
But no, I think this is something that especially you know,
the female colleagues that I have. That is something we've
been talking about for years, right, is that there are
you know, white men with well paying staff jobs in
newsrooms who do similar work and they don't really get
(32:19):
the same threats I want say they don't get them.
I mean, I'm you know, not stealing valor or you know,
diminishing the threats that we all face in this work.
But it is different for women. It is different for
people of color, It is different for Jewish anti fascists,
like it is it is different for people who are
not white men. The level of a triol is much
(32:39):
more appalling. The amount that people care when it happens
to you is significantly less. And I think we know
why both of those things are true. God, I will
never forget this. Years ago, but a white man who
makes a living writing about the far right told me
(33:01):
that he was jealous about how many threats that I
get because it just seems so interesting to him and
if that's never happened to him in his work, that
it was just he was a little bit jealous, Like
why would you say that to me?
Speaker 2 (33:16):
My god, I mean.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
People are calling the hospital where my mom works to
like say gross stuff and you you like that? Do
you think that would be fun?
Speaker 2 (33:26):
I mean this might sound like a silly question, like
I think I know what you're gonna say, but I'm
gonna ask it anyway. What like fills your cup? What
brings you joy? What nourishes you to keep you checked
in here?
Speaker 1 (33:37):
I mean the show is called Weird Little Guys because
I genuinely love finding a weird guy, and so like
Sophie came up with the name because like in the
in the work chat, like I'm constantly coming, coming, you know,
coming to everyone and being like, look look at this,
Look at this fucked up thing I found. Look at
this weird guy that I found. Right And like you
know when your dog finds like a really nasty dead
bug outside and he's like so excited to show it
(33:57):
to you, Like that's me. I love it, like I
made I made a little discovery last week that that's
going in next week's episode, like over the Moon, just
like out of control, excited. I found something crazy.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
So I thought, what we're gonna say, you're dogs, But
I was even more.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Yes, of course, my precious dogs.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
I will tell you one time I was walking down
the shoe with my partner and there was a guy
walking to Doccins and my partner looks over and says,
look at those two double look at those double d's.
And it was the funniest thing I've ever heard. And
every time you post a picture of your dogs, I
think about it, like it's like double d's, so double d's, Oh.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
I mean looking at a Docson, I think is just
an unparalleled experience. I mean I love to look at
any dog. I love to look at a dog. I
love to see a dog, love to pet a dog,
love dogs. But something about a weeder dog is like,
I mean, you think I'd be over it. They're like
eight and a half years old now. But every time
I look at them, it's like, why do you look
like that?
Speaker 2 (34:58):
They always look like they're worried about something. It's like
what should be worried about? Like Buck.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Buck looks like he works two jobs and can't make rent,
Like he looks so pressured by the world. Otto does
not He's never and it had never in his life,
had a single thought in his head. It's so beautiful,
like he's he's fine. All he prefaces by saying he's
fine now, but he was completely paralyzed. In twenty twenty one,
(35:27):
he had a spontaneous rupture of one of his discs
in his back, which is unfortunately something that kind of
happened to Dodson's, like he had no existing injury. It
just happened, and all of a sudden he was completely
paralyzed and he had to have back surgery and the
prognosis was bad. And so after the surgery, he was
home and his back legs didn't work and he was
wearing a diaper. He was drugged up and like and
(35:49):
so he couldn't This bladder didn't work. So I had
to manually express his bladder by like squeezing on it.
And the that was like, dogs, really don't like this.
He's probably gonna bite you, And I was like, it's not.
And for two weeks paralyzed, miserable, having to have his
bladder manually expressed every three hours around the clock. He
never he did not care. It didn't even seem to
(36:12):
register with him that anything was wrong.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
He was just vibing, not a thought in that doggy head.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
And I think we can all learn a lot from Otto.
Don't think yeah by just.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
By I aspire to be like Auto. I mean, as
I say, like, the the joy that you get out
of researching and breaking down these weird little guys is
palpable when you listen to the show, and I do, like,
I mean, it sounds weird to say, but like you
can tell that it is very much a labor of
(36:47):
love when you listen to the podcast. And is that
Is that how it's better for you?
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Yes, And I'm glad that that comes through because I
you know, if it stops being a thrill to you know,
to hunt and find and seek and dig, and if
it stops being you know, emotionally crushing to tell the
stories of harm that was done to people, then I'll stop.
Then I'll stop if I can go, you know, if
(37:13):
there's not an episode where Rory has to edit out
the takes where like I'm audibly crying, then like it's
time to go, because I think that matters.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
You know.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
I started telling these kinds of stories for my own community,
right like I had. Don't look it up. It's still
on the internet somewhere. It's not good. But years ago.
It was twenty eighteen when the man who murdered Heather
Hier went on trial. I was able to attend the
entire trial, and many people were not because it was
the courtroom was so full of like, you know, fucking
(37:44):
ghouls from out of town, like you know, CNN reporters
doing their nightly hits. And so I during that trial,
I made this like little podcast that my intention was
it was just for my community, right, So I started
telling these stories for my own community, and even though
that's not what I'm doing anymore, right, I'm telling them
for these broader audiences. I just got an email the
(38:06):
other day from a listener in Scottsdale who said, you know,
I heard the way that you talk about Charlottesville, and
it's obviously very personal for you, but you talked about
my city the same way, and that meant a lot, right,
And so just being able to carry that sort of
care with me that I'm telling these stories that affected
real people's lives, that are continue to affect real people's lives.
(38:28):
And if I can't do that with care, then I
shouldn't do it.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
I am so glad that they haven't made us stop caring,
Like I'm so good, Like they throw shit at us
every day, but the fact that you still care and
it still connects, and that you're still moved by these stories,
I think really says a lot. And I'm just very
glad that that passion and real empathy is still there,
(39:02):
because like I wake up every day worried that like
if today the day we're like I turn it off
or I'm like I've stopped feeling, I'm numbed out, I
don't give a fuck, like do what you're gonna do,
like going down with the ship. I worry about that
in myself, and it's just very clear that, like you
have a vast reservoir of that inside, and I'm very
glad for that.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
But it's an active practice, right, Like it's something I
cultivate with intention, right that it's something I have been
saying for years, Right that, like I work very hard
every day not to become hard. Right that, Like I
don't wish harm on even even the worst of these monsters, right,
Like I don't. I don't sit here thinking, oh, I
(39:42):
hope something really bad happens. I don't. I don't fault
you if you do. I think that's perfectly fine, it's understandable.
But like what I want is for them to stop
hurting people. And I don't know that wishing harm on
them is good for my heart?
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Do you? Maybe the answer is no, But do you
have any advice on how we can kind of protect
our softness and not lose that when things feel so awful?
Asking for myself?
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Yeah, asking for a friend.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
I don't know, And I have found myself in telling
these stories, trying to make sure to include parts of
the story that are not about the monster. Right, Like,
there was an episode months ago about Verry Black, who's
a clansman from Pennsylvania who challenged Virginia's cross burning law
(40:39):
and won many years ago, got all the way to
the Supreme Court, and you know, it's this terrible story
about a terrible man winning. But within that story there
was the story of this older, straight couple that ran
the only gay bar in world western Pennsylvania. And like that,
they had the courage of their convictions and they stood
(40:59):
up to the class and fire bombings and people shooting
at the bar, and like it just it mattered to
them that gay people had a place to go. Even
though they were straight. They didn't have gay kids, they
had no connection to this community. It just wasn't something
that mattered to them, and just like finding someone in
these stories who was so good in a way that
(41:21):
is I don't know, it's just special because in every
story of a monster, there is there is a Pat Kramer.
You know, there is someone in all of these stories
who did the right thing when they didn't have to.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
I usually end these conversations asking like, what keeps you
hopeful or what are you hopeful in this moment? I
feel like it might be that like that, like that,
even in these stories of like monsters, there are regular
folks who want to do the right thing, regular folks
who challenge these monsters and win.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
And some times the person in the story who did
the beautiful thing doesn't win. Sometimes they die. There was
an episode of few weeks ago about the story of
the Portland Max train stabbings in twenty seventeen where three
men were stabbed defending these two teenage girls from a
Nazi and two of them died. They didn't win, right,
(42:23):
but like what they did was beautiful and hopeful and tragic,
And I guess that's you know, in times where we're
all looking for hope and it's hard to find it,
the knowledge that maybe you don't win. Maybe I don't win.
Maybe we in this moment are not winning, but we will,
(42:43):
Like even if you and I don't get to be
the ones who do it or see it, we will,
and there's there's hope for future people like us.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Sorry, really beautiful, I'm like tearing up. I feel like
I needed I needed to hear that.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
You know, we don't. We don't do it for ourselves.
We do it for all of us.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
Mollie, that show is weird, little guys, Where can folks listen? Is?
It is so needed right now? How can folks check
it out?
Speaker 1 (43:15):
You can listen to it wherever you get your podcasts.
Every podcast app I think Cooler Zone Media subscription is
not yet available for Android, but you can get it
on Apple if you want to listen to it ad free,
but anywhere you get your podcasts, download it on all
of those apps and listen to it on all of
them so by get more downloads, so Sophie will be
proud of me.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
Give Molly all the downloads. Y'all please listen it is.
It is a fantastic, phenomenal show. Congratulations on it. Anything
that I did not ask that you want to make
sure it gets included.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
Gosh, I don't think so, go to your next school
board meeting and download my podcast and petadoxin.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
Yes, in that order. Mollie, thank you for being here
and thanks for all you're doing. I'm like, genuinely so
happy that that there are people like you in the
world and in this fight and in this thing.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Thank you so much for having me. I had a
good time. Sorry I made usppose cry.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
No, this was I need. I needed this. Got a
story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want
to say hi. You can reach us at Hello at
tangody dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's
episode at tengody dot com. There Are No Girls on
the Internet was created by me Bridget Todd. It's a
production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed creative Jonathan Strickland is our
(44:36):
executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer.
Michael Almado is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd.
If you want to help us grow, rate and review us.
Speaker 3 (44:46):
On Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 4 (45:00):
Why Wait
If you let this fear sort of like spin out
of control and let them become these like larger than
life figures in your mind, then you do feel disempowered
to do anything about it. Like if these are these
aren't just some fucking guy, right, It's just some fucking guy,
and some guy can be defeated.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridgid Todd, and this
is There Are No Girls on the Internet. Molly. Thank
you so much for being here, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Thank you so much for having me, Bridgid.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
It's been pretty tough to know just how to respond
in this moment. I've been personally spending a ton of
my time really trying to zero in on what it
is I want to be doing and why and how
I can use my specific skills to create the change
I want to see in the world. It's the kind
of thing that Molly Conger has built an entire career of.
She's a researcher and journal who focuses on the far right,
so she's been pretty busy lately. Mollie's hit new podcast
(01:06):
is called Weird Little Guys. And on it she explores
who she calls quote the worst people you've never heard of,
and how the hate mongers standing in the way of
progress and equality are well, in a lot of ways,
just weird little guys. But before all this, Molly was
working in an office job at an early childhood ed tech company,
and then the Unite the Right rally that left thirty
(01:28):
two year old Heather Higher dead happened in her town.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
I've lost my job unexpectedly in the summer of twenty seventeen.
It was, you know, it's a huge bummer. I'd been
working there for a long time. It was my first,
like big girl job, and I guess maybe my last
one because I have another job since. And so I
was just adrift, right, I was just at home trying
to figure out what to do next when Unite the
(01:53):
Right happened here in Charlottesville. And I was not someone
who was politically engaged at that time. It was not
I didn't know anything about that world, and I was
bewildered by what happened here, like why did Nazis come
to where I live and kill a woman who was,
you know, around my age. Right, This Streles' is not
(02:15):
a big towns to college towns, but fifty thousand people.
It just didn't seem like something that could happen here.
And I didn't. I just didn't understand, and I had
the time to waste trying to understand.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
And I never stopped when this was happening where you like, Oh,
I am carving out a lane of work for myself.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
No, And I didn't ever intend for it to become
a career or you know, become a subject matter expert
in anything. I just I guess I don't have asked anything.
My whole asked it.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
I know your work has been instrumental and identifying extremists
to sometimes have committed actual crimes in the name of
their ideologies. How did this come to be something you
realized that you had a knack for.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
I've talked about this, I think, you know, like I
did a workshop last year in a local bookstore about, like,
you know, internet safety and sort of reverse engineering how
to keep yourself safe by talking about the ways that
I make other people less safe online, you know, less
safe being you know, a hater in secret. And I
think I think all women have this ability. It is
(03:17):
a laden ability that all women of our generation have
right that, Like you've stayed up all night trying to
find your ex's pictures on social media? Like what is
what are they up to? Did they get married? You know,
we all have that skill set, and I think in
another universe, I'm just a fucking menace on nextdoor. But
I found a way to channel that like aggressive nosiness
(03:39):
into something that's good for society.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
I love that. I love that being your superpower. I
have said that on the show. Nobody is like smarter
than like a group of girls with Instagram. They will
find anything anyone you cannot hide from them.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Like a scorned woman is more powerful than the FBI.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Absolutely correct. By now, I'm sure you've seen that horrifying video,
a woman later identified as doctor Teresa Bornpole is forcibly
dragged out of a public town hall meeting and zip
Tide for speaking up. There was a time where town
hall meetings were just the boring process driven Greece that
kept the wheels of local government turning, not necessarily the
(04:19):
hot beds of discontent we know them ass today. But
Molly was someone who identified that town hall meetings were
going to play an important role early on in twenty seventeen,
she started live tweeting government meetings in Charlottesville after the
deadly Unite the Right rally. You know something else that
I really have to lift up about your work is
that I feel like you're one of the early people
(04:40):
who recognized the power of things like public town halls,
public meetings, especially happening in Charlottesville. Today, we know that like,
those are big flash points where you know, you might
get dragged out by hired goons for saying the wrong thing.
But I feel like there was a time where you
thought of public town halls or town meetings as the
(05:00):
like boring things that they were, not the flashpoints that
they are today. What was it about those spaces that
made you feel like I need to start tracking what's
happening in these spaces.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
They should be boring. First of all, they should be boring,
but no, so that when my sort of early quest
for personal understanding, one of the first places I went
was I went to the first city council meeting that
happened after Unite the Right. So it was, you know,
the week after this happened here, I didn't know where
to start looking for answers, So I went to city
Hall and it was this very explosive meeting because there
(05:31):
was a lot of anger here. There's a lot of hurt.
And over time those meetings, you know, fewer and fewer
people showed up over time. I think Charles Fillson more
engaged locality than most and we have remade that way
over the years. But you know, over the over the months,
people stopped showing up. But I was interested. I was
interested in the way these decisions are getting made. And
(05:54):
I guess once I committed to that, I couldn't stop.
But it wasn't something I started doing for anyone else, right,
I live have been. I fell off in the last
couple of months because I'm busy with the show. But
I spent seven years live tweeting city council meetings. And
it wasn't something I was doing for people, because like arguably,
there should be no audience for that. It's not interesting.
(06:18):
But I learned a lot about about local government, about
the kinds of people who show up to make themselves heard.
You know, there are I don't know, I think because
it is boring because it is time consuming, because it
is hard to do, you know, six o'clock on a
weekday evening, you have other stuff to do, you're still
at work, or you're making dinner for your family. The
kinds of people who show up are often people who
(06:41):
have not great motivations, and so we shouldn't seed that
ground to that one weird lady who wants to ban
all the books at the library.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Do you feel like that's a big part of how
we got to where we are now? Sort of? You know,
I understand the temptation of focusing on president national politics
what's happening federally, But while we were doing that and
sort of not paying attention to the boring city council
meeting or whatever, the lady who wants to ban all
the books in the library really amassed a lot of
(07:12):
power and now has goons, right.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Because that's been an explicit organizing strategy of like right
wing interest groups for a long time, is running city
council candidates, running school board candidates. They've been filling those
rooms with their goons for a long time, and you know,
it varies locality to locality. I don't want to say
there are no people pushing back against that. There are
a lot of good people pushing back against that. But
(07:36):
I think on average, we have seeded that ground to
people who you know, you know at the Federalist Society
or whatever, who understand that they can build power locally.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
I'm curious, are you from Charlottesville, Like originally I.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Moved here in two thousand and seven to go to Uba,
and so I never left.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Yeah, I'm from Virginia. I grew up in Richmond. And
you mentioned how Charlottesville people there are like perhaps a
little more engaged civically than your average place. I totally agree,
And I think that Charlottesville. I love Charlottesville. I grew
up going there, Like I had a lot of friends
that went to UVA. Like that was like the good
when I was in high school. That was like the
(08:17):
good college that you hope that you got into.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Public.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yeah. Yeah, in Virginia you might know this. They just
call it the university. They don't even call it the
University of Virginia. Like that's how ubiquitous it is. And
I do think like in a place like Charlottesville, where
folks are pretty like plugged in, it's like a unique place.
Do you think that that that that strategy of quietly
(08:42):
taking things over, does that work in a place like
Charlottesville where folks are pretty plugged in.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
It doesn't work here. It doesn't work here Antonin Scalia's
granddaughter did not successfully run for school board here. She
tried and it didn't work. So I think, yeah, you
have to be in that space and know what's going on.
Run your own people, because I think, especially now that
I guess the law doesn't matter at all at the
(09:09):
federal level, that our local government is going to be
our last line of defense. That when you know these
terrible directives come down from the federal government, or you know,
in Virginia we have a terrible governor who's going to
cooperate government, your local government is your last line of defense. Like, like,
are the regional jail board here makes decisions about whether
(09:31):
or not the jail cooperates with ice, right, Like these
local decisions have a very real impact on people's state
to day lives.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Well, it's interesting that you say that, because I personally,
Bridget am going through a little bit of a I
guess you could call out a tails a despair tailspin.
Everything going on reasonable, Yeah, And I think I constantly
finding myself kind of oscillating between just being like I
(09:59):
need to with my job and dedicate myself to the
calls full time. I don't have kids, my parents are
dead like this like this is it is time to
like lock the fuck in and being like I need
to check the fuck out, I need to like disengage.
And it almost and I bet a lot of people
may be your feeling that way, and it almost sounds
like what you're saying is that the antidote to the
(10:22):
feeling right now of feeling like I can't do anything,
I can't change anything is being like it checked in,
engaged and formed, like even at the hyper local level,
because that's where you actually could build up the build
up the qualities that like make that strategy of taking
over of extremists taking over your local government less likely.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Exactly, And it doesn't have to you know, this push
and pull of like I can't do anything or I
have to do everything is overwhelming. But you don't have
to do something big. You don't have to do something big.
Just join a community group and be part of something
that could be big. But it doesn't have to be you, right,
and you don't have to have you know, in character syndrome.
But stopping fascism, yeah, I don't think it.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
I don't think me personally nobody's gonna cut it.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
But there's this this feeling like if I don't do
something enormous, if I don't put my whole life into this,
then I am not contributing. And that's not true. I
think you go to a school board meeting, talk to
your teachers' union.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
I really like that, and I think, especially right now,
it is I mean, I feel overwhelmed. I think everybody's
feeling overwhelmed. The idea that like, you don't have to
do it all. You certainly don't have to do it alone.
If you, you know, thought somehow that you were gonna
be the main character of stopping fascism, like disavow yourself
with that notion. And it actually is like helpful to
(11:38):
feel that way, to think of it that way, right that.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Like I don't know, your own insignificance can be a
comfort to you that you are just one person in
this this larger operation of people coming together and doing
a little bit at a time. That's more manageable.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
I have to say, like my own show has sort
of been off the air for a while, like in
part because of personal reasons and family reasons, but also
part of it is just like straight up not really
knowing how to show up in this moment. Like I
have sort of struggled with my own kind of north
Star because I want to provide to my listeners, like
(12:18):
content that is valuable, that is useful, that educates them,
that helps them understand what's happening, and how to get
plugged in. But I don't want to be alarmist. I
don't want to be you know, doom and gloom all
the time. But what the moment that we're in right
now is genuinely alarming, right, And so like part of
me is like, well, if I don't want to be alarmist,
I guess I can't say anything because like, we're in
an alarming moment. Is is this something that you have
(12:40):
dealt with, struggled with and have you managed to find
a balance there?
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Gosh, So the last couple of weeks, actually, I've been
really grappling with that exact thought. Right. So when the
show launched, in the first few months of episodes, I'm
telling these stories about history, right, I'm looking at sort
of a specific incident or individual from the past, you know,
guys from the eighties, crimes from the seventies, like crimes
that are sort of discreete package stories of like look
(13:08):
at this, Look at this little fucking guy, look at this,
Look at fucking weird Nazi who had child porn on
his computer. Right, it's just these like little vignettes of
creepy little Nazis. But the last couple of weeks the
episodes have really focused on tying together, like here's this
thing that happened in the past, and here is its
direct correlation that is ruining your life now. And it's
(13:31):
I feel like there's a responsibility that I have to
tie these things together. You know, I'm not just talking
about you know, the American white supremacist movement as this
interesting anecdote of history. It is something that has led
us to this moment. So tying like not just like
this is an echo of this, This is a direct
consequence of this particular man's actions and words. And here's
(13:54):
the clear through line that got us to today. It's us,
It's not Stow.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
I wanted to write, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
At our back.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
On her podcast Weird Little Guys, Mollie isn't just rehashing
old stories of extremists from the past. She's connecting how
these stories led to our current moment. For instance, when
Don Logan, Scottsdale, Arizona's former diversity director, opened an office
of diversity back in nineteen ninety eight, it was bombed.
Six years later, Don Logan almost died, but the office
(14:41):
stayed open. But the story didn't in there because even
after surviving a dangerous bombing decades earlier, just recently the
city government voted to shut the diversity offices doors. Well,
in one of your episodes, you're talking about the diversity
office in Arizona that was like bomb in two thousand
and four, and you know the person who opened it
(15:03):
survived that bombing only for earlier this year, a few
weeks ago, that office to close when you know they
voted to, as the Phoenix New Times put it, for
no apparent reason or justification doing so other than for
the council to align itself with Donald Trump's baseless culture
war crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Like that
(15:25):
seems exactly like I read this piece and it broke
my heart. The person who was like, yes, I had
opened the package that had a pipe bomb in it,
a little bit differently, I would be dead today and
now this office is shuddering in some ways. It does
kind of feel like when you are threading that needle
of these stories, that like we're moving in the wrong direction.
(15:47):
And I guess I wonder, like, how do you, as
somebody who tells these stories for a living and threads
that needle for a living, how do you deal with that,
this feeling that like we are going in the wrong direction,
like we simply are not moving forward.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Yeah, that story, in particular, I think really it instilled
in me this idea that I have a responsibility to
be clear that these stories aren't over right, Like I
spent I spent two full months chronicling the life of
Dennis Mahon, that klansman who built that bomb in two
thousand and four, Like I followed him for decades. I
dug through archives and court records and transcripts and old
(16:23):
clanned newsletters and watched videos of sermons given at the
Arian Nation's compound. And you know, I spent months writing
this story, and I thought, Okay, it's over. He's in prison,
his trial was very interesting, he was convicted, and that
story is over. And then not a month after I
finished writing it, the city council shut down the office
(16:43):
that refused to shudder because of a bombing, right like
he sent them a bomb. Don Logan almost died, and
the city said, No, diversity is important to us. Diversity
is important to us. Klansmen don't get to decide that
it's not. And then twenty one years later, some Republican
mayor with too much botox decided that no, actually, diversity
(17:04):
sucks and we hate it, and so we are moving
in the wrong direction.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
And I don't know.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
I was speaking to an undergraduate class at EVA the
other day about the show. A professor invited me to
talk to the students about the show, and a lot
of their questions for me were like, well, what do
we do? What do we do? What does the future
look like? And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know.
I'm not a political organizer, I'm not a prognosticator. I
don't I'm just trying to tell a story and hopefully
(17:38):
it can inform the organizing work of people who are
good at that kind of thing. But all I have
are these old clan newsletters.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Well this might sound wild, but like, stay with me here.
So I love Tony Morrison, I love Angela Davis, and
they were close friends. And Tony Morrison was working as
an editor at Random House, right, and she was very
clear that like her during the you know, black political
movement of the sixties and seventies. She was like, oh,
(18:07):
my role is like being an editor writing blah blah blah.
And Angela Davis, who of course was like this amazing organizer,
an activist and bet arrested and like, you know, was
really in the streets and in the struggle. Tony Morrison said,
you need to write an autobiography, a memoir. You need
to write the story of your struggle in the streets
so people can read it. And Angela Davis was like, no,
(18:28):
I'm too young. I don't I'm too young for a memoir.
Maybe I'll do it in ten years. And she said
that Tony Morrison was the kind of person who had
a way of telling people to do things where they
understood they really ought to do it. And she wrote
that memoir and you know it, it went on to
inform an entire generation of political organizing and social movement
(18:48):
and theory and practice. And Tony Morrison was very clear
that she wasn't going to be in the streets, but
her gifts. The thing that she was good at was
editing and getting people, like identifying the person whose story
needed to be told and making for that story got
out into the world. And I really see that as
like a similar thing, right of Like you know, you
were saying, like I'm out an organizer. I can't tell
(19:09):
people like how you push back, but you know where
your gifts lie, right, Like you know what you're good at.
You're good at pouring over research archival. I mean, part
of me almost wonders if if the thing that we
should all be thinking about is like, what is the
skill that we're good at that they can't take away
from us? And how can I lean into that in
this moment? And yours is clearly like going over the
(19:30):
meticulous you know, archives and telling a story, making a story.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Out of it, right, and like giving people sort of
the language to assist them in understanding the moments such
that they may take the action that they're good at. Right, Like,
you know, people are like, oh, these you know, it's
a fascist government, it's the you know, we're experiencing fascism,
and then there's this pushback of well, you can't just
that's such a big word. You can't say that, but
if I can give you the information that you need
(19:55):
to say. No, I know where this idea came from.
I know whose mouth those words came out of last
time they were spoken. You know that this isn't just
normal Republican politics.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
This is.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
This is something you come from an old clan newsletter.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
How much of your work is like digging into old
clan newsletters or like looking through speeches that are archives
and things like that, things that like maybe read as boring,
but help us understand this.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
It's not boring to me. It's not boring. It's like,
I guess that's you know, we all have our special interest.
This is the research is my favorite part. I love it.
Like I spent most of last week trying to translate
a blurry PDF of a thesis that was written in
the nineties in Afrikaans, like and ocr does not like
the AI does not want to read this to me,
(20:48):
it is I'm like line by line because I know
there's golden there and I'm gonna get it.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
You know something that I appreciate about Weird Little Guys
is that is the part of the show that's like
that you've never heard of, Like that part I think
is very important. You know, there are so many of
these names that folks might know, like Richard Spencer, who
I always you know, I have. I had to give
him a special shoutout because he was punched in my
hometown of DC. And it's like a claim to fame
(21:16):
that I love to mention. But you're talking about people
that like extremists that people might not know right or
might not have heard of. And you know, I live
in d c. Into. Like you've talked about Aaron Hoffman,
who was a police officer in nearby Prince George County,
who you identified as a Proud Boys member, you know,
who was advocating for violence against as a Supreme Court
(21:38):
chief justice. And I guess I wonder, like, why do
you think it's so important that people don't just know
the sort of like big name extremists that get fancy
write ups in the Times or whatever about their haircut,
but also the people in your hometown, on your police force,
on your school board.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Yeah, I guess the idea. You know, the name of
the show is Sophie's actually Sophie's brainchild. Weird little guys, right,
It's like it's not just the splashy big names that
you've heard of. It's there's the whole networks of these.
It's like you pick up a rock and there's all
these roly pollies under there, right, there's never just one
bug under that rock. And they're just these terrible little losers. Right,
(22:19):
They're not these larger than life incomprehensible figures, these you know,
great men of history quote unquote, right, it's it's just
like a bunch of fucking losers who are mean to
their wives.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Yeah. So I was once behind the bastards and I
was talking to Robert about this and I forget, I
forget who we were talking about. But he had a
very whoever it was, had like a very messy interpersonal
life and that was his undoing. And I was like, dang,
imagine being like this like high up figure and extremist
movement and you're undoing is like your interpersonal messiness with
(22:52):
your girlfriend. And he was like, bitch, it's all of
them like that.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
It's like yes, Like there's there's a a white nationalist
group that does not exist anymore because it fell apart
after the leader caught his best friends slash father in
law sleeping with his they were God, okay, so Matt
heinbuch It's married to brook and Brooks stepfather Matt Parrott
(23:19):
was having an affair with Oh god, oh the diagram
is escaping me.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
You need like the like stringboard, like there is no
Pepe Sylvia, like no, like we call it.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
We call the Night of the Wrong Wives, right, because
this Nazi group collapsed because they were like they were
fucking each other's wives.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Yeah, people with the moral high ground, for sure, these
are the people that we want architecting.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Are like traditional values.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Yes, I mean that is that a strategy here? Like
really exposing the ways that these are just like small,
weird losers and that they're not larger than life figures,
and that like we are smarter than them. There are
more of us than there are of and that like yeah,
and like we need to remember that that like we
(24:04):
can defeat them. They're not like big, smart, savvy people.
Is that is that a strategy here? Yes?
Speaker 1 (24:11):
So it's like you know, I'm not saying they're not
scary or they're not dangerous. It's absolutely not the message here.
But like if you let this fear sort of like
spin out of control and let them become these like
larger than life figures in your mind, then you do
feel disempowered to do anything about it. Like if these
are these aren't just some fucking guy, right, It's just
(24:32):
some fucking guy, and some guy can be defeated, right,
this the idea of the monster is much more frightening
than the weird guy.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Yeah, after watching I mean that horrifying video of a
woman being dragged out of a meeting in Idaho, I
when I saw the video was like this is I mean,
it is terrifying, right, But then you hear you read
about the sheriff who you know speaks to her initially,
and everybody is like, oh, you want to know more
(25:05):
about this guy. Here's his history of like weird, shitty,
terrible behavior, And part of me is like wow, like
he read like, first of all, if somebody with that
kind of a background, I'm like, you probably should not
have put yourself out here to be publicly scrutinized on
a national stage. But also it's like, these are people
with so many frailties and skeletons in their closet and like,
(25:28):
I don't know somebody about that story. I found very
empowering of like yeah, get them, Like I'm glad we're
all talking about like whether or not he's pulling some
kind of a disability scam right now? Like do you
know what I'm saying? Like like who decided that the
who put these assholes in charge? Like who decided that
this person knows better about how to run anything than me?
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Exactly? Like they they all have just something terribly humiliating
in their background, right Like, oh, you may be the
guy who wrote the book that inspired of you know,
dozens of mass murderers to commit accid, unspeakable terror. But
like I've read your bankruptcy filings and I know you
got fired from Walmart, Like.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Yes, yeah, weird little guy. I mean like that really
that title really does say it all. These are weird
little guys.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
They're small, They're small in you know, they're mentally small,
Their minds are small, their hearts are small, and we
can defeat them.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
You know, there's been a lot of talk about this
really being a time where folks should be leaning in
and staying checked in and showing up at town hall
meetings or meetings in their local communities to demand accountability
from elected officials. Do you have any advice for folks
doing that, maybe for the first time meaningfully in their lives.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Oh gosh, just go, just go to the meeting. And no,
I don't know, Oh gosh, me think it's been so
many years. There's this steep learning curve, Like you know,
when I first intern showing up to these meetings, like
they seem overwhelming, it's confusing, Like there's a very specific
language of the wave bureaucracy is conducted. You know. It's
(26:56):
so don't be afraid to just sit quietly for a
meeting or two until you figure out the space that
you're in. You know, read the agenda online. You can
watch old meetings online if you want to. If there's
local groups in your area that go to these meetings
in an organized fashion, talk to them, ask them questions.
I'm sure there's someone there who will talk to you
about it. I know you're rights. I think there's a
(27:20):
lot of intimidation that goes on, right like you, if
you don't know that you are allowed to be there,
you might be bullied out of that room. Like when
I first started going to not just city council meetings,
I started going to every public meeting I could find
because I was very unemployed, and there's all these boards
and commissions in my town. I would go to these meetings,
and it was obvious in some of these rooms that
(27:42):
no one had ever come before, that no member of
the public had ever walked into that room and watched
them have their meeting. Because they would say things like, oh,
you can't be in here, and I would have to say, well, no,
I'm familiar with the law, and yes I can. The
law says you have to let me be in this room.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
To gaslight you into making you think that you were
like trespassing essentially.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Like that you're oh, you're not supposed to be in here,
we're having a meeting. It's like, yeah, I know, that's
why I'm here. I'm here to watch you have this meeting.
And it changes their behavior, Like even if you say nothing,
just the act of witnessing them have their government meeting
changes their behavior. And so I think, even if you
have no intention of making a public comment, go be
in the room, make them look at you, make them
(28:26):
know that their constituents are aware of what they're talking about.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Do you think that, especially now that it seems like, oh,
I mean, when I think about what's happening federally. I
just it's very hard to find anything hopeful to grab
onto you.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Yeah, I'm not looking there for hope.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Yeah, I mean maybe it's local. Maybe, like that's where
like that's where you can actually like grab on to something.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Right, Like I have no like, you know, calling my
congressman's not going to do anything. He was at January sixth,
like he looks like a haunted Marionette doll and he
loves fascism. Like I'm not called him, but I know,
but I know that, you know, when it comes up
for a vote at my school board. You know, a
couple of years ago, they voted to take the cops
out of our local schools, right, because having cops in
(29:10):
schools is proven. There's academic studies proving that it like
worsens outcomes, particularly for black students. It increases the level
of violence in the schools. It does not make anyone safer.
So they took the cops out. They did the right thing,
and they took them out. But now they're talking about
putting them back. Right, So like, I can't make my
congressmen do anything about fascism at the federal level, but
(29:32):
I can be in the room to make sure that,
you know, black kids at my local middle school aren't
terrorized by a school resource officer. That's something I can do.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
I mean that that actually feels a little like that
feels real to me, Like that, Like that feels like
a like a change that like you could see you
can feel in your commune, like in your town.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
And it's not meaningless, right, these small things they feel insignificant,
you know, in the face of the horrors that are
that are inundating us every day. But it's not meaningless
to the people whose lives it touches, right that, Like
you know, one fourteen year old black boy gets arrested
by the school resource officer, that's the rest of his
life ruined, right, Like that is a life changing act
(30:17):
of violence for a child. And that's something that you
can have an impact on.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
More.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
In all of this work, I mean, I have to ask,
Like we talk about this on the show kind of
a lot, like a lot of the sort of dangerous
work of chronicling extremists, pushing back against extremists is being
done by marginalized communities. Women. You know that I think
that that's not a coincidence. And all. So women are
(31:01):
like uniquely targeted for this work. Like it's usually not
just us, it's like us in our family, us and
our partner. How do you, how do you how how
has that been for you? And how do you keep
yourself sort of fafe and like okay to show up
and do this work.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Dissociation number one Number one, just I don't I don't
live in this body. I'm not a here. I mean,
that's laughing, that's not funny. Although I will say I
haven't gotten a death threat in months, and that's the
first time in years that I can say that. Like
it used to be like every week I was getting,
(31:37):
you know, a message from some guy who's like, I'm
gonna shoot you in the chest and then fuck the
whole you know, like weird stuff.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Lord, Like.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Okay, Dad, I think they're afraid of being on the show.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Oh my god, if they were a weird little guy,
it's like today, I'm weird little guys. Listen to that
voicemail that Chad left me and then it's played in
its entirely entirely.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Yeah, I think they're afraid of being on the show.
But no, I think this is something that especially you know,
the female colleagues that I have. That is something we've
been talking about for years, right, is that there are
you know, white men with well paying staff jobs in
newsrooms who do similar work and they don't really get
(32:19):
the same threats I want say they don't get them.
I mean, I'm you know, not stealing valor or you know,
diminishing the threats that we all face in this work.
But it is different for women. It is different for
people of color, It is different for Jewish anti fascists,
like it is it is different for people who are
not white men. The level of a triol is much
(32:39):
more appalling. The amount that people care when it happens
to you is significantly less. And I think we know
why both of those things are true. God, I will
never forget this. Years ago, but a white man who
makes a living writing about the far right told me
(33:01):
that he was jealous about how many threats that I
get because it just seems so interesting to him and
if that's never happened to him in his work, that
it was just he was a little bit jealous, Like
why would you say that to me?
Speaker 2 (33:16):
My god, I mean.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
People are calling the hospital where my mom works to
like say gross stuff and you you like that? Do
you think that would be fun?
Speaker 2 (33:26):
I mean this might sound like a silly question, like
I think I know what you're gonna say, but I'm
gonna ask it anyway. What like fills your cup? What
brings you joy? What nourishes you to keep you checked
in here?
Speaker 1 (33:37):
I mean the show is called Weird Little Guys because
I genuinely love finding a weird guy, and so like
Sophie came up with the name because like in the
in the work chat, like I'm constantly coming, coming, you know,
coming to everyone and being like, look look at this,
Look at this fucked up thing I found. Look at
this weird guy that I found. Right And like you
know when your dog finds like a really nasty dead
bug outside and he's like so excited to show it
(33:57):
to you, Like that's me. I love it, like I
made I made a little discovery last week that that's
going in next week's episode, like over the Moon, just
like out of control, excited. I found something crazy.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
So I thought, what we're gonna say, you're dogs, But
I was even more.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Yes, of course, my precious dogs.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
I will tell you one time I was walking down
the shoe with my partner and there was a guy
walking to Doccins and my partner looks over and says,
look at those two double look at those double d's.
And it was the funniest thing I've ever heard. And
every time you post a picture of your dogs, I
think about it, like it's like double d's, so double d's, Oh.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
I mean looking at a Docson, I think is just
an unparalleled experience. I mean I love to look at
any dog. I love to look at a dog. I
love to see a dog, love to pet a dog,
love dogs. But something about a weeder dog is like,
I mean, you think I'd be over it. They're like
eight and a half years old now. But every time
I look at them, it's like, why do you look
like that?
Speaker 2 (34:58):
They always look like they're worried about something. It's like
what should be worried about? Like Buck.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Buck looks like he works two jobs and can't make rent,
Like he looks so pressured by the world. Otto does
not He's never and it had never in his life,
had a single thought in his head. It's so beautiful,
like he's he's fine. All he prefaces by saying he's
fine now, but he was completely paralyzed. In twenty twenty one,
(35:27):
he had a spontaneous rupture of one of his discs
in his back, which is unfortunately something that kind of
happened to Dodson's, like he had no existing injury. It
just happened, and all of a sudden he was completely
paralyzed and he had to have back surgery and the
prognosis was bad. And so after the surgery, he was
home and his back legs didn't work and he was
wearing a diaper. He was drugged up and like and
(35:49):
so he couldn't This bladder didn't work. So I had
to manually express his bladder by like squeezing on it.
And the that was like, dogs, really don't like this.
He's probably gonna bite you, And I was like, it's not.
And for two weeks paralyzed, miserable, having to have his
bladder manually expressed every three hours around the clock. He
never he did not care. It didn't even seem to
(36:12):
register with him that anything was wrong.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
He was just vibing, not a thought in that doggy head.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
And I think we can all learn a lot from Otto.
Don't think yeah by just.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
By I aspire to be like Auto. I mean, as
I say, like, the the joy that you get out
of researching and breaking down these weird little guys is
palpable when you listen to the show, and I do, like,
I mean, it sounds weird to say, but like you
can tell that it is very much a labor of
(36:47):
love when you listen to the podcast. And is that
Is that how it's better for you?
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Yes, And I'm glad that that comes through because I
you know, if it stops being a thrill to you know,
to hunt and find and seek and dig, and if
it stops being you know, emotionally crushing to tell the
stories of harm that was done to people, then I'll stop.
Then I'll stop if I can go, you know, if
(37:13):
there's not an episode where Rory has to edit out
the takes where like I'm audibly crying, then like it's
time to go, because I think that matters.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
You know.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
I started telling these kinds of stories for my own community,
right like I had. Don't look it up. It's still
on the internet somewhere. It's not good. But years ago.
It was twenty eighteen when the man who murdered Heather
Hier went on trial. I was able to attend the
entire trial, and many people were not because it was
the courtroom was so full of like, you know, fucking
(37:44):
ghouls from out of town, like you know, CNN reporters
doing their nightly hits. And so I during that trial,
I made this like little podcast that my intention was
it was just for my community, right, So I started
telling these stories for my own community, and even though
that's not what I'm doing anymore, right, I'm telling them
for these broader audiences. I just got an email the
(38:06):
other day from a listener in Scottsdale who said, you know,
I heard the way that you talk about Charlottesville, and
it's obviously very personal for you, but you talked about
my city the same way, and that meant a lot, right,
And so just being able to carry that sort of
care with me that I'm telling these stories that affected
real people's lives, that are continue to affect real people's lives.
(38:28):
And if I can't do that with care, then I
shouldn't do it.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
I am so glad that they haven't made us stop caring,
Like I'm so good, Like they throw shit at us
every day, but the fact that you still care and
it still connects, and that you're still moved by these stories,
I think really says a lot. And I'm just very
glad that that passion and real empathy is still there,
(39:02):
because like I wake up every day worried that like
if today the day we're like I turn it off
or I'm like I've stopped feeling, I'm numbed out, I
don't give a fuck, like do what you're gonna do,
like going down with the ship. I worry about that
in myself, and it's just very clear that, like you
have a vast reservoir of that inside, and I'm very
glad for that.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
But it's an active practice, right, Like it's something I
cultivate with intention, right that it's something I have been
saying for years, Right that, like I work very hard
every day not to become hard. Right that, Like I
don't wish harm on even even the worst of these monsters, right,
Like I don't. I don't sit here thinking, oh, I
(39:42):
hope something really bad happens. I don't. I don't fault
you if you do. I think that's perfectly fine, it's understandable.
But like what I want is for them to stop
hurting people. And I don't know that wishing harm on
them is good for my heart?
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Do you? Maybe the answer is no, But do you
have any advice on how we can kind of protect
our softness and not lose that when things feel so awful?
Asking for myself?
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Yeah, asking for a friend.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
I don't know, And I have found myself in telling
these stories, trying to make sure to include parts of
the story that are not about the monster. Right, Like,
there was an episode months ago about Verry Black, who's
a clansman from Pennsylvania who challenged Virginia's cross burning law
(40:39):
and won many years ago, got all the way to
the Supreme Court, and you know, it's this terrible story
about a terrible man winning. But within that story there
was the story of this older, straight couple that ran
the only gay bar in world western Pennsylvania. And like that,
they had the courage of their convictions and they stood
(40:59):
up to the class and fire bombings and people shooting
at the bar, and like it just it mattered to
them that gay people had a place to go. Even
though they were straight. They didn't have gay kids, they
had no connection to this community. It just wasn't something
that mattered to them, and just like finding someone in
these stories who was so good in a way that
(41:21):
is I don't know, it's just special because in every
story of a monster, there is there is a Pat Kramer.
You know, there is someone in all of these stories
who did the right thing when they didn't have to.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
I usually end these conversations asking like, what keeps you
hopeful or what are you hopeful in this moment? I
feel like it might be that like that, like that,
even in these stories of like monsters, there are regular
folks who want to do the right thing, regular folks
who challenge these monsters and win.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
And some times the person in the story who did
the beautiful thing doesn't win. Sometimes they die. There was
an episode of few weeks ago about the story of
the Portland Max train stabbings in twenty seventeen where three
men were stabbed defending these two teenage girls from a
Nazi and two of them died. They didn't win, right,
(42:23):
but like what they did was beautiful and hopeful and tragic,
And I guess that's you know, in times where we're
all looking for hope and it's hard to find it,
the knowledge that maybe you don't win. Maybe I don't win.
Maybe we in this moment are not winning, but we will,
(42:43):
Like even if you and I don't get to be
the ones who do it or see it, we will,
and there's there's hope for future people like us.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Sorry, really beautiful, I'm like tearing up. I feel like
I needed I needed to hear that.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
You know, we don't. We don't do it for ourselves.
We do it for all of us.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
Mollie, that show is weird, little guys, Where can folks listen? Is?
It is so needed right now? How can folks check
it out?
Speaker 1 (43:15):
You can listen to it wherever you get your podcasts.
Every podcast app I think Cooler Zone Media subscription is
not yet available for Android, but you can get it
on Apple if you want to listen to it ad free,
but anywhere you get your podcasts, download it on all
of those apps and listen to it on all of
them so by get more downloads, so Sophie will be
proud of me.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
Give Molly all the downloads. Y'all please listen it is.
It is a fantastic, phenomenal show. Congratulations on it. Anything
that I did not ask that you want to make
sure it gets included.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
Gosh, I don't think so, go to your next school
board meeting and download my podcast and petadoxin.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
Yes, in that order. Mollie, thank you for being here
and thanks for all you're doing. I'm like, genuinely so
happy that that there are people like you in the
world and in this fight and in this thing.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Thank you so much for having me. I had a
good time. Sorry I made usppose cry.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
No, this was I need. I needed this. Got a
story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want
to say hi. You can reach us at Hello at
tangody dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's
episode at tengody dot com. There Are No Girls on
the Internet was created by me Bridget Todd. It's a
production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed creative Jonathan Strickland is our
(44:36):
executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer.
Michael Almado is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd.
If you want to help us grow, rate and review us.
Speaker 3 (44:46):
On Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 4 (45:00):
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