June 4, 2025 • 40 mins
Culture has always had the power to move people. To shift narratives. To shape politics.
Which is why when Bridget heard that one of Trump’s first moves after taking office was to take over the Kennedy Center — Washington D.C.'s premiere venue for performing arts — she had questions.
Why would Trump care about a cultural institution best known for theater, music, and the arts?
If you ask Carri Twigg — co-founder of Culture House Media, co-host of Twig and Jenkins, and a former member of President Biden’s Advisory Committee on the Arts that oversees the Kennedy Center — the answer is: a lot.
In her Rolling Stone piece, "Trump’s Cultural Power Grab: Why His Kennedy Center Takeover Matters," Carri breaks down just how influential culture is — not just in politics, but in shaping hearts, minds, and futures.
In this fascinating interview, Bridget and Carri talk about the enduring importance of cultural power, and how the left can reclaim culture as a force for justice and progress.
Read Carri's article in Rolling Stone: www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/trump-kennedy-center-cultural-power-grab-1235268600/
Subscribe to Carri's Substack: substack.com/@carritwigg
Follow Carri on Instagram: instagram.com/carritwigg/
Follow Bridget and TANGOTI!
instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/
youtube.com/@ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Politics is where some people are some of the time,
but culture is where everyone is all of the time.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
There are no girls on the Internet. As a production
of iHeartRadio and ungoss Creative, I'm Bridge Tad and this
is there are no girls on the Internet. Lately, I've
been spending a lot of time thinking about the power
of culture, how it shapes what we believe, how we vote,
and even who we grieve. So when I was a kid,
(00:35):
I didn't know anybody who had AIDS, or at least
I didn't think I did. But I do remember crying
when Pedro Zamora, the openly gay HIV positive cast member
from MTVS The Real World, died in nineteen ninety four.
History was powerful enough to move millions, including then President
Bill Clinton, who released a statement honoring Pedro for humanizing
(00:57):
the HIV crisis, especially for Latino communities, all from being
on our MTV reality show. Culture has always had the
power to move people, to shift narratives and shape politics,
which is why when one of Trump's first moves after
taking office, with the takeover the Kennedy Center right here
in my backyard in Washington, d C. I had questions,
(01:20):
why would Trump even care about a cultural institution best
known for music, theater, and the arts. If you ask
Carrie Twigg, co founder of Culture House Media, co host
of the podcast Pigan Jenkins, and a former member of
President Biden's Advisory Committee on the Arts, the answer is
a lot. In her Rolling Stone piece Trump's cultural power
(01:41):
grab why his Kennedy Center takeover matters, Carrie breaks down
just how influential culture is not just in politics, but
in shaping hearts, minds, and futures. So I asked Carrie
what her first thoughts were when she heard that Trump
was moving in on the Kennedy Center.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
I've felt like, oh, no, they have it together, way
more than I even thought that they did. I felt
like foreboding, which may be be more of the thing
that I felt because in twenty sixteen he largely ignored culture.
And culture is important for so many reasons that it
is how we determine what we consider normal, acceptable, and right.
(02:24):
It has also long been the sort of domain and
main tool in the toolbox, or the main weapon and
fighting back of the left. And so if Trump captures
American culture, you will It's a lot easier to convince
people if the culture is on your side. That what
(02:45):
is happening is normal and right and should be happening. Right. So,
if we have a culture in this country that healthcare
is an individual concern and not a government concern, whereas
so much of the rest of the industrialized world, Yeah,
considers providing healthcare a government a core government function. And
(03:06):
so if he goes through with this budget and we
see these massive cuts to Medicaid and Medicare and the
ACA is further stripped out of Americans' lives, but he
is able to propose and promote a culture that says
that that's both right and fair and just, and people
believe that, then they don't really know to push back.
(03:29):
They don't know that things could be better or different.
Like culture sets our boundaries in this really profound way.
And then also, so that's really problematic. And then also
like the left, whether that means democrats, so that means
something more revolutionary than democrats. Have always used culture, have
always used visual language, cultural language. I've always used protest
(03:52):
songs and protests, anthems, cinema, television, whether it's Mormon Lear
or Bob Dyllon. Use culture to to change America, to
push America, to make America more progressive, to more fair,
more equitable. The civil rights movement had a massive cultural
component to it. The gay rights movement has had a
(04:12):
massive cultural component to it. It is how we understand
and start to socialize ourselves around change. And so him
using those levers and using those tools and tactics is
really quite concerning.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Yeah, I mean it was easy for me to be like, oh,
it's just the Kennedy Center, like with everything going on,
that's so trivial. But in your piece for the Rolling Stone,
Trump's cultural power grab, why his Kennedy Center takeover matters,
you actually argue that this is not disconnected from this larger,
you know, power grab of democracy, and in fact those
(04:48):
things are like ultimately connected.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yeah, I mean, culture provides really powerful headwinds. And you
look if you you know, if you look at fascist Italy,
if you look at fascist Germany, you know, like arts
and culture and propaganda is a cornerstone, is like the
go to, Like fascism relies on spectacle because it actually
(05:12):
is quite hollow from an ideological perspective, and it's actually
quite hollow from a policy perspective, right, It's not truly
about making government work better for individuals, It is about
changing an individual's belief so that they are convinced that
government should just be wanton and do whatever it wants
(05:33):
and really only serve a tiny, tiny, select portion of
a population. And they are able to accomplish that through spectacle.
And so the Kennedy Center, the Nations are the iconic
beautiful building on the river in DC that we've seen
lit up in beautiful ways, that has the best view
of the fireworks in DC. Like that building being turned
(05:56):
into sort of a Maga parade ground is really will
be very potent, will be very powerful.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Something that you point out in your piece that I
love is that Trump has not really had any real
connection to the Kennedy Center. You're right, despite not having
attended any of the Kennedy Center's marquis events or any
event at all. In his first term or sense, Trump
installed himself as chairman of the board of the Kennedy Center,
promising to usher in quote the golden age of arts
(06:24):
and culture. And I guess part of me wonders, like,
why does it matter that he is taking over this
thing that he doesn't really have any kind of like
real connection to. He really, as you said, ignored it
in his first term, like do you think it's just
what you were saying? That He sees the incredible power
that culture has and sees what the Kennedy Center represents
(06:45):
to culture, so he's like, I gotta control.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
That, Yeah, I mean basically, and I have to stop
it from supporting a culture that is opposed to me,
and I have to move it into supporting a culture
that reinforces my value, my power, my centrality. I think
he has targeted the Kennedy Center because it's so successful,
(07:09):
because it's so powerful, because it is such an important
part of our national fabric, not because he doesn't think
it's important.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Culture is important, and it can be used to reinforce
or challenge power as part of culture health media. Carrie
produces television and film projects that connect pop culture to
political change, like Hairtails on Hulu and Ladies First, Netflix's
docuseries about women and hip hop, but her work goes
beyond producing. Carrie also collaborates with entertainment companies to help
(07:39):
infuse their content with a more authentic and nuanced cultural lens.
She got her start as a political organizer, and even
now working in Hollywood, that foundation is still central for
Carrie storytelling is just another form of organizing.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
I'm someone who, as he poorn out, like, started working
in politics really young. I've always been a big reader
still to this day, and I don't watch a ton
of stuff. But I, yeah, I know it's really dirty.
It's my dirty secret, as a very surprising to hear
as a film and television producer, to my dirty, dirty
secret that I don't love to watch things. I would
(08:16):
much rather read a script than like watch a show.
But I grew up on novels like so I would
read hundreds. I'm a total nerd and would just read
hundreds of books a year and just mostly all novels.
And I think that that's what made me good at politics.
I think my ability and the novel as a form
(08:37):
that ability to transport you into someone else's lived experience
and someone else's life in point of view, and their
struggles and their things that you would never have got,
like I will never have lived through the dustbel right,
but I can read John Steinbeck and have a visceral
experience about how terrifying that would have been, that hardship.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Right.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
And so then you go into an a line of
work by government and politics and policymaking and having all this,
having that ability to stretch yourself and your empathetic ability
and imagination to think about lives that are different from
your own but equally valid and equally valuable, makes you
(09:19):
a better policy maker. And so I think that is
something that directly influenced me. But then I also think
that being black and growing up in suburban Ohio and
not seeing myself reflected in broader pop culture, and then
the ways that you would really cling to the representations
that were occasionally offered to you, and the way that
(09:40):
that started to change over the course of the nineties
and the two thousands.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
In twenty thirteen, Cheerios released an ad featuring a young
girl who adorably misunderstands when her white mother explains that
cheerios are good for the heart. Wanting to help, she
pours a box of cheerios over her sleeping who was black.
It was a sweet, funny moment that unintentionally sparked a
national dialogue about mixed race families and identity in America.
(10:08):
Not all of that conversation was positive. Within days, General
Mills had to disable the comment on the AD's YouTube
because of a wave of racist backlash. But here's the thing.
General Mills also said that comments supporting the ad outnumbered
the hateful ones ten to one. Still, the victorial that
surfaced reflected a deeper racial tension and a country that
(10:29):
had just re elected its first black president, who notably
was himself by racial carrier remembers it well.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Like I even remember seeing the Cheerios commercial the little
biracial girl like pouring the cereal on her dad's heart
and just being like, oh my god, you know, like
I've never seen it, right, and it was so memorable
because you've never seen anything like that. I'd never seen
anything like that before, and so that those types of
moments are really really emotionally for me. And then finally
(11:03):
I think that there's just we've seen it. We've seen
the proof is in the pudding. We've seen it over
and over again. It's not a coincidence that the number
one show in television in the years preceding Barack Obama's
election was twenty four, where the president was a black
former senator basketball star with a with like a high
moral compass, and then years later, like you know, seventy
(11:27):
million people watch the show every week, week after week
for years and years and years, and then Barack Obama
shows up and people are like, oh, he actually seems
familiar to me. That doesn't feel like this massive departure
from something that exists in my life and in my world.
Will and Grace Rosie O'Donnell Ellen DeGeneres. When we started
(11:50):
trying to advocate for gay rights and for LGBTQ equality
and for all marriage equality, all of these things, there
was this cultural precedent that let people know what was
on the other sid side of the change that we
were asking them to make. And these the people who
loved these characters, were like, I want the best for them,
and therefore I would I refuse to deny the rights
(12:10):
any longer. And so culture shows up and allows us
to imagine what is possible and why should what our
values that truly are or could be, and then we
can legislate and policy make around them. So I think,
both from my own personal experience, but also what I've
seen in governors, like from serving governors, off if we've
(12:32):
been in the White House, if there is a cultural
precedent to something, it is a lot easier to create
laws and legislation around it than it is if you're
asking people to embrace a change that they don't know
what's on the other side of. Right, there was all
this sort of white space and the cultural imagination around
(12:52):
what the ACA could be, what Obamacare could be, what
national health care could be. And so the right filled
that white space up with like, say, we are pale
and talking about death panels. And that was so easy
to do because people didn't know what it was. There
wasn't It wasn't like er was do. It was like,
you know, what, we should have nationalized healthcare. All of
these problems would be solved that Da Datta Dug Gray's
(13:14):
anatomy isn't about that, like if but if they had been,
maybe that would have been a little bit easier and
less contentious of a policy to implement.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Well, I've never really thought about that before, but that
makes so much sense that really the job of culture
can be to help people imagine a future that it's
better than the future that we have now, and what
it might look like, what it might look like to
have marriage equality, affordable healthcare, like all of these things
that we want, but maybe it's a little hard to
(13:44):
imagine what it would actually look like or be like
or feel like if we had these things, it's about
future like world building and future looking.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Or the opposite. Right, Like, one of the most popular
shows in the country right now is Yellowstone, and that's
been true for years and years, And what does that
show about? That shows about a patriarch who runs for governor,
who operates outside the law, murders people, does whatever he wants,
but still gets to be the hero, right, And like
that's a hell of the show. I love Yellowstone, I've
(14:12):
seen every episode. But is it good for society? Probably not.
I mean it makes figure Donald Trump and figures like
him seem familiar, seem reasonable, seem like the hero when
they are not it's all fun and games on a
cattle ranch in Montana. But like we're talking about real
people's lives, and yet we are allowing the John Dutton
(14:34):
and not even a good as good of one to
be the president. Like what are we doing? But again,
like that culture allows us, like normalizes and kind of
really passively sets the parameters for the political outcomes that
we see in the country.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
Let's take a quick break at our back.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
A few years ago.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
It was kind of a given that people who made
and cared about culture the kind of culture that anybody
was really paying attention to anyway, were not people on
the right. But today things have really changed. They may
not have Beyonce or Taylor Swift, but from podcasts to streaming,
a lot of the most powerful voices at the forefront
of culture are right wing internet personalities that you might
(15:33):
not have ever heard of. Tell us about this new
cultural celebrity ecosystem, because I feel it, I see it.
It's hard to it's hard to verbalize, but like, you
know it when you see it, and you feel it
when it's there, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yeah, I mean so like Trump is actually not even
particularly individually responsible for this. But ages ago, not ages ago,
fifteen years ago, twenty years ago, the best and brightest
sort of thinkers in the conservative movement understood that the
things that made Democrats powerful and meant that they would
(16:10):
win elections was culture and the cultural narrative of the
country and people and so storytelling and unions basically, and
they systematically have tried to either dismantle or take over both.
So unions have never been less potent in American life
(16:30):
than they are right now. And then two they started
making these massive investments in culture that they understood that
culture reinforced progressive values that leaned more towards democrats, and
so they started creating their own distribution platforms. They started
(16:51):
creating their own stars and farming talent and investing in
people like Ben Shapiro in The Daily Wire, who then
built these massive audiences for and shifted consumer demand. We
know that the average American spends four to six hours
watching video content today, and so the right started meeting
(17:13):
that demand and giving them content that would bring them further,
bring your generalized audience further and further and further to
the right. And we've seen it work extraordinarily while as
young men, but we're also seeing it in things like
tradwives and like very kind of conservative takes on how
women should be and how we should dress and makeup
(17:34):
desorrows and all of this stuff. And so they did
it over digital, and then it really sort of created
the self fulfilling, the self feeding machine, where Hollywood, which
is a commercial enterprise, Hollywood is not a social good,
like none of these television studios care about social good.
They care about making money. And they saw that there
was this demand for these more kind of conservative esque
(17:57):
worldview types of shows, programs make talent, and so they
started getting into the game as well, and we started
seeing it show up in TV and movies. And so
that Donald Trump, because he's such an entertainer, say what
you want. I have a lot of critiques and criticisms
of this man, but like, he is entertaining, and he
seems fun, and he seems like he's having a good time.
(18:20):
And so he understood very quickly and very intuitively the
power of these entertainers. And he always has. He was
always on WWF or WWE. He was always He's on
the Apprentice, right, the massive, massive television star. He was
doing the cameos in Home Alone. Like, he understands the
power popularity and the power of sort of mass media
(18:42):
and pop culture to ensure a particular outcome or at
least vastly increase the likelihood of a particular outcome. And
so he really doubled down, and his campaign really doubled down.
They recognize that his celebrity and his ability to be
like Johnny good Times on a four hour lives was
this massive strength of his and so they had him
(19:04):
out there, they had him showing up, they had him
really participating in the rules of the game, of the
digital sphere and sort of broader culture and entertainment, and
they just understood it a lot better than we did. Right.
Andrew Breitbart, who's again like this like kind of founding
father of the modern conservative movement, understood culture in a
(19:27):
really potent way. And they have very quietly, over the
course of the last fifteen years been taking over culture
in a way that we have not. We have on
the left been really passive about right for so long,
culture was just inadvertently on our side without there having
to be much interaction or intervention on our part, and
(19:51):
so we just sort of allowed it to happen. And
so now you see these guys with these massive platforms,
the Logan Paul, the Joe Rogan's, the Neelk Boys, all
of these guys, THEO Vaughn, right, and they're all like,
they're all really really good at what they do, the
aiden rosses of the world. It might not be your taste,
(20:13):
but they are incredibly good at what they do, and
they operate incredibly so incredibly sophisticated ways they platform each other,
they interact with one another. They seem like they're having
a great time. And President Trump is just like, I
will give you all the time and attention you want.
You can come to the inauguration, you can come to
(20:33):
these parties, you can fly around on the plane. It's
gonna be great and it works.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Right. I am in the middle of a research fellowship
at Harvard's Brookman Klein Center studying exactly this phenomena, right,
Like I'm a podcaster. You're a podcaster. When you go
on Apple Podcasts, the top fifty podcasts are all the
shows that you've just mentioned. And the thing that gets
me is, and I could tuckle day about this is
(21:00):
I do think that, specifically in podcasting, we let these
voices and these platforms grow to be astronomical in size,
in reach, and influence while simultaneously being like, oh, well,
what happens in these spaces doesn't really matter. It's just
two guys in a garage talking.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Who cares.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Meanwhile, I would argue that some of those some of
those guys with microphones and their garages are in their
dorms or whatever. Are the reasons why being out another
Trump presidency. Right during the inauguration, That's who Trump's team
exupplicitly shouted out. It was people like THEO Vonn want to.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Bet the note Boys, Aiden Ross Uh, THEO Vaughn Bottle
with the Boys, and last but not least, the mighty
and powerful Joe Rogan.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
What do we do with that?
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Like, there are still people who don't recognize the massive
power that these platforms hold while they continue to build
that power and influence.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Wait, if you're not recognizing the power of these guys
and like, you're just not a serious person, Like I'm sorry,
you don't know what's going on. You're out of touch,
or you're naive, or you're you're just in a closed
loop of information. Because it's incredibly obvious and very serious people,
and there's all the data to support it. Like it's
not my intuition, this, it's it is fact. And so
(22:21):
if people aren't taking that seriously, then like because they're
not serious. Oh, I mean I don't know what to say. Sorry,
you can send me an email, we can talk about it.
And so, but you're right, I think that for too long,
and I'm guilty of this too. A couple of years
ago I would have been like, who cares about any
of this? But about a year and a half ago,
(22:42):
I was like, oh my god, it's a disaster, you know.
But that's but we all want to you know, liberals
want to read the New York Times, in the Washington
Post or whatever semaphore and overly rely on journalism and
really poop poo culture and really poopoo entertained. And that's
just where that's where everyone is like, I don't. It's
(23:04):
been a massive judge, it's been a massive wrong choice
that we have made around how we how we think
about how information moves through the country and interacts with individuals' lives,
and to be perfectly honest, even when we do quote
unquote get it, we don't, we still don't.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
As a podcaster, I was deeply fascinated watching the role
that podcasting played in the last presidential election. People even
called it the podcast election, and I kind of agree.
Trump recognized the power of podcasts early on, from Joe
Rogan tot Theovonn's This Past Weekend to the Nelk Boys's
Full Send podcast Say what you Will about Trump, and
lord knows I do. He used the podcast ecosystem effectively
(23:48):
to get himself out there. Vice President Harrimis got points
for an appearance on Alex Cooper's super popular Sex and
Relationships podcast Call her Daddy a smart move for sure,
but call her Daddy's listeners who call themselves the Daddy
Gang have come to expect certain things of the guests
of the podcast. For instance, guests usually share an emotional
(24:08):
story about their romantic lives. Host Alex Cooper usually wear
sweatpants and now did the shows let's call it relaxed style.
So how did Harris show up to this platform?
Speaker 1 (24:20):
One of my sort of pet peeves from the of
which I have several, but one of my pet peeves
from the Harris campaign in twenty twenty four was the
was not even just that I'm happy that they did
call her daddy, but like the manner in which they
did it right. And so if you compare and you
can trash, I think I think Kamala Harris did an
(24:44):
extraordinary job. She was given a totally raw deal. She
was not served well by that campaign, and we can
have that conversation in a different way. But even when
they would do thing I call her daddy right, they
make Alex come to her. She doesn't wear a hoodie,
(25:07):
she doesn't talk about sex or doug or it's not
a particularly like intimate or warm conversation, there was no
airing of an insecurity, and she broke the format of
the show. Alex Cooper has built something extraordinary and she's
(25:28):
done it on purpose, like call her Daddy? Is that
way on purpose? Because it works because that's what the
audience wants, because that's what Alex wants. And so Kama
came on and she broke the form. She made the
show conformed to her. She went on Charlemagne and didn't
obey the rules of the show. She made the show
(25:50):
fit her rules. She went she talked about talking points
and Charlemagne tried to get hers Like you called her
out for it, and like she gave a peppy, sassy answer,
I get it, Like that's called this discipline. I get it.
You're right, and you are not actually doing yourself any
favors by going on a show that viewers have an
(26:11):
anticipated operates in a certain way, that has rules about
how it is governed, that has a structure about how
it works, and then breaking that form. It actually makes
it much more difficult for people to hear what you're
trying to say, and they're not turning into sharpes tuning
into Charlemagne for a policy lesson like people know where
(26:32):
to go if they want a sermon, they know where
to go if they want a lecture, and it's not
Charlemagne the Gods Show, and it's not called her Daddy.
And so that was really, i think, really poorly executed
on behalf of the campaign. She got bad strategic advice
about how to appear on those shows, and it did
her a real disservice because we know she's that girl.
(26:53):
We know she loves talking about dud we know she
can ki key, we know she can sit with the
girls and do the thing. We know she can sit
with the brothers and do the thing. And they didn't.
She didn't. She did not give the advice to do that.
You can trast out with how Donald Trump showed up
and he would show up. I've listened to him on
the Nolf Boys, I've listened to him on Aiden Ross. Right,
he shows up, He's like, what are we doing here?
(27:13):
You tell me how we're gonna do this? Am I
here for three hours? Okay? I do?
Speaker 4 (27:18):
Like what are And he's just like kiking and having
great time, and he's showing up with some respect and
consideration for these massive things and these massive entertainment properties
that these individual talents have built, and is like, I
will do what your audience has said that they want
by tuning in every week, and I will, I will
(27:38):
conform to the to the boundaries.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
Of the form.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
And it works. And that's why his appearances on these
things are so much more successful. Not only did he
do volume, he did way more than she did, but
he also did it in the right way. And we
have got to be training our candidates and our leaders
and our people to do a better job of this.
AOC spectacular that she gets it. She's intuitive, She's like,
(28:06):
is she gonna show up on something? She shows up appropriately,
show she knows what the audience wan, she gives, she
understands the assignment, and she aces it right, but that
she can't do it by herself, Like she can't put
the Democratic Party on her back and climb us up
the hill. Same with Jasmincrockett, same with Senator Chris Murphy.
So the small number of people who get how this works,
(28:29):
like needs needs some more help. And I know that
people are trying. I know that you see a bunch
of influencers going to the hill and trying to get
these Congress people to get it together, which is great,
but yeah, at least for this round, it's too little,
too late.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Yeah, And I think you're really onto something about how
it shows a further devaluing of or misunderstanding of the
power of this of culture and the power of these
spaces because call her daddy for instance, the platform that
she has built has so much power. What do you
get from going on the show and leaning away from
(29:06):
the power of that platform being like, oh the little thing,
Like like, what do you get from that?
Speaker 1 (29:11):
I don't know. I don't know, as if anyone like
because I think there's this this this obsession that Democrats
have that is really I mean, I remember this in
the Obama era.
Speaker 5 (29:24):
It was just like this this continued path, a logical
belief that if only people understood the policy better, they
would know that we were the right pick.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
And it's like if anyone get cared, if the American
voter cared about policy, or enough American voters cared about policy,
Elizabeth Warren would be president. Like what are you talking about?
So why are you putting her on these shows to
deliver policy talking points? Like that the political reporters at
Politico or The New York times might care about that,
(29:56):
but like voters don't. Obviously they care about having a
president that seems like they're like them. And that's not
what we were doing.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
And I get why it might be tempting to kind
of dig in your heels and plug your ears and
say lah la lah, that's not true, but it's not
getting us anywhere.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Like it or not true.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
But what you just said is the truth. And so
like I do sometimes get frustrated that I feel like
they are trying to serve something that does not align
with the reality that you just articulated, which I agree with.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Yeah, And it's like it doesn't come from a mess,
it comes from the right place. I get it. People
should care about this stuff. We want them to care
about this stuff. The problem that they don't, And so like,
play the game that's actually on the table, not the
one that you wish was on the table.
Speaker 5 (30:48):
More.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
After a quick break, le's get right back into it.
Everyone is talking about the role that culture can play
in shaping politics for better or worse now, but Carrie's
been talking about it for a really long time since
(31:10):
she was in the Obama White House.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
And it's those.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Conversations that seated her newest project, the podcast Twig and Jenkins,
It really sits at this very interesting intersection of politics
and culture. Are through the show, are you trying to
sort of shape both?
Speaker 1 (31:27):
I mean, I guess honestly, Brad Jenkins and I shared
an office at the White House for five years, and
so he's the homie, you know, like that's the that's
the that's my big dog. And so he and I
just yap all the time anyway and terrorize each other
with our opinions, and so we just sort of inflicted
up decided to inflict it on the on the public.
(31:49):
And I think in these times when there isn't there's
so there's very very few binary right wrong answers in
this moment, right There's a lot of analysis, a lot
of data, a lot of ways of interpreting what's going
on in a country this big and this complex often
almost doesn't have a right answer. And so I think
(32:09):
a huge part of what Brad and I are doing
on the show is as much for us as for
anyone else, which is just like teasing out what some
of those different ways of interpreting what's going on are
and then meaning making of them, like trying to make
sense of what's actually happening, and then also sharing a
(32:31):
perspective that doesn't get a ton of a ton of play, right, Like,
I'm pretty upset, or not upset, it's not the right word,
but I feel pretty underwhelmed and unserved by political coverage.
I feel incredibly poorly served by cultural coverage. And so
(32:54):
the I think there are just obvious realities to both
Brad and I because we both said we both were
in politics, serve in the Obama administration, left and went
into culture work. And so there are things about politics
that feel really obvious to us but don't seem super
obvious to people who don't come to it from a
cultural lens. And then there's stuff about our culture that
(33:16):
seems really obvious to us that isn't obvious to people
in culture because they're not coming to it from a
political lens. And so I think we just are trying
to almost serve as a bridge between the two. It's
like the people over here, like people in culture, you
guys need to be paying attention to like this particular
part of politics and this particular thing. We recognize that
(33:39):
no one's paying attention to all of it, But like
here's something we want to point and signal to something
that you shouldn't miss or that you should be flagging.
And then in politics we want to do the same right,
so like serve as a bridge to culture. It's too
much to try and follow all of it. You're not
going to We all have a limited ability to think
about every thing when you're trying to like live your
(34:01):
life and drink your water and get your electrolytes or
whatever you're doing, plus do your career, plus you know,
plan for fascism. So like, here're the handful of things
that you should be paying attention to that are showing
up in culture that you're going to have to interact
with at some point down the road. So I think
we very much think of ourselves as like a bridge
(34:22):
between the two, just to bring them a little bit
closer into dialogue and or be a cheat sheet if
you're further on one end of the spectrum than the other,
and just sort of like, here's a couple of things
that you should be paying attention to.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
I love that term a bridge, because I do think
for a long time there was this attitude where culture
was over here and like politics was over here, and
the reality of how people live their lives is that
it's it's like a then diagram or that then diagram
is a circle where culture and politics are borrowing from
each other and there in a lot of ways are
like the same thing. And I think you're right that
(34:58):
we don't have a lot of media that refer that
in the way that I think that it needs to
be reflected, like unserved. Something about that word really speaks
to me because it's like a hole in my diet.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
That I didn't even kind of realize needed to be filled. Yeah, totally,
totally and yoc Sergent, we had him on the podcast
a couple of weeks ago and he said something really interesting,
which is, you know, politics is where some people are
some of the time, but culture is where everyone is
all of the time. And I think we lose sight
(35:33):
of that, especially those of us in politics full time.
I think we really lose sight of how much anyone
is paying attention anything related to politics. I remember I
grew up in Ohio and I was working when I
was in the White House at the time, and I
was home for something, and you know, ran into somebody
I knew, or was talking to one of my girl's boyfriends,
(35:54):
or something, and they were like, so what do you do?
And I was like, oh, I worked for the president
and they're like, the president of what? And I was
like right, like that doesn't mean any like and I
was like, oh, President Obama and they were like, oh cool.
Like I usually get a different response, you know, I
usually get a little bit more feedback, But that's because
(36:16):
I'm usually telling people that in DC, right, right, and
that means something, But it doesn't mean anything to people
in Columbus, Ohio, like not really other than like, oh God,
is she gonna talk to me about politics? So I
think we underestimate how how little we're how little they're
thinking about us when it comes to cultural impact.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Is it over for us? Have we given up too
much of the game when it comes to culture? Do
you see us gaining any ground here?
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Well, there's nowhere to go but up from where we are,
so yeah, I mean they are running the board. We
don't live in a monoculture, right, and so there's no
one there's no one winner at any given point in time.
But I think that the trend lines are trending towards
them and have been for a while, much longer than
(37:06):
we've been comfortable or willing to admit. And I think
they have a lot of momentum in trajectory on their side.
That said, trends change really quickly, like I'm wearing baggy
pants again, you know what I mean? And like side
eye people and skinny jeans, so like check a picture
of me from five years ago. It's like who knew
(37:26):
that was? Trends can change really really quickly, but not
on accident. Like we need to start investing way more
cash into these cult into culture makers, into platforms beyond
TikTok and Instagram. We need to be investing in podcasters
like you, like Twig and Jenkins. We need to be
(37:48):
making sure that we're all appearing on each other's shows,
that we're all representing and digging each other up, that
we're working on big projects together, that we're paying attention,
like getting rid of the like hold my nose and
be sanctimonious and uppity about other about what they've done
on the right, like if any I don't care if
(38:11):
a podcast has seven hundred subscribers, Every single elected official,
every single person that cares about anything to do with
making the world a better place should be doing two
three hours of podcast time a week. Like, if you're
a senator, there is someone in your state that has
(38:33):
a podcast about what happens at the grocery store, I
want you on it. Like, what are you doing, baby,
You're in call time trying to raise all this cash?
Do two to three hours of podcast time per week?
Don't want to hear about it? TIK, don't pixt me,
don't DM me in October asking for some shit. I
don't want to hear it, you know what I mean? Like,
(38:55):
none of that dig the well before you're thirsty. It's
really basic, and so like all of that has to happen.
I don't know, you know who's doing it. There should
be a podcast studio in the DNC building. The whole
thing should be turned into a content studio. You don't
know what they're doing over there. It's like we're so
far behind, but now it's just about our cat like
(39:17):
it can change. We will, of course have trajectory. Again,
these are fads, These are things that go in and
out of fashion. But again, you have to build it.
You have to take advantage of the opportunities that exist
and invest in talent and invest in people who want
to participate in this infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech. I
just want to say hi. You can reach us that
hello at tegody 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, which It's had.
It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed creative Jonathan Stricklet
as our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our pretty and
sound engineer. Michael Amado is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
(40:04):
Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
and review.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
Us on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Politics is where some people are some of the time,
but culture is where everyone is all of the time.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
There are no girls on the Internet. As a production
of iHeartRadio and ungoss Creative, I'm Bridge Tad and this
is there are no girls on the Internet. Lately, I've
been spending a lot of time thinking about the power
of culture, how it shapes what we believe, how we vote,
and even who we grieve. So when I was a kid,
(00:35):
I didn't know anybody who had AIDS, or at least
I didn't think I did. But I do remember crying
when Pedro Zamora, the openly gay HIV positive cast member
from MTVS The Real World, died in nineteen ninety four.
History was powerful enough to move millions, including then President
Bill Clinton, who released a statement honoring Pedro for humanizing
(00:57):
the HIV crisis, especially for Latino communities, all from being
on our MTV reality show. Culture has always had the
power to move people, to shift narratives and shape politics,
which is why when one of Trump's first moves after
taking office, with the takeover the Kennedy Center right here
in my backyard in Washington, d C. I had questions,
(01:20):
why would Trump even care about a cultural institution best
known for music, theater, and the arts. If you ask
Carrie Twigg, co founder of Culture House Media, co host
of the podcast Pigan Jenkins, and a former member of
President Biden's Advisory Committee on the Arts, the answer is
a lot. In her Rolling Stone piece Trump's cultural power
(01:41):
grab why his Kennedy Center takeover matters, Carrie breaks down
just how influential culture is not just in politics, but
in shaping hearts, minds, and futures. So I asked Carrie
what her first thoughts were when she heard that Trump
was moving in on the Kennedy Center.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
I've felt like, oh, no, they have it together, way
more than I even thought that they did. I felt
like foreboding, which may be be more of the thing
that I felt because in twenty sixteen he largely ignored culture.
And culture is important for so many reasons that it
is how we determine what we consider normal, acceptable, and right.
(02:24):
It has also long been the sort of domain and
main tool in the toolbox, or the main weapon and
fighting back of the left. And so if Trump captures
American culture, you will It's a lot easier to convince
people if the culture is on your side. That what
(02:45):
is happening is normal and right and should be happening. Right. So,
if we have a culture in this country that healthcare
is an individual concern and not a government concern, whereas
so much of the rest of the industrialized world, Yeah,
considers providing healthcare a government a core government function. And
(03:06):
so if he goes through with this budget and we
see these massive cuts to Medicaid and Medicare and the
ACA is further stripped out of Americans' lives, but he
is able to propose and promote a culture that says
that that's both right and fair and just, and people
believe that, then they don't really know to push back.
(03:29):
They don't know that things could be better or different.
Like culture sets our boundaries in this really profound way.
And then also, so that's really problematic. And then also
like the left, whether that means democrats, so that means
something more revolutionary than democrats. Have always used culture, have
always used visual language, cultural language. I've always used protest
(03:52):
songs and protests, anthems, cinema, television, whether it's Mormon Lear
or Bob Dyllon. Use culture to to change America, to
push America, to make America more progressive, to more fair,
more equitable. The civil rights movement had a massive cultural
component to it. The gay rights movement has had a
(04:12):
massive cultural component to it. It is how we understand
and start to socialize ourselves around change. And so him
using those levers and using those tools and tactics is
really quite concerning.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Yeah, I mean it was easy for me to be like, oh,
it's just the Kennedy Center, like with everything going on,
that's so trivial. But in your piece for the Rolling Stone,
Trump's cultural power grab, why his Kennedy Center takeover matters,
you actually argue that this is not disconnected from this larger,
you know, power grab of democracy, and in fact those
(04:48):
things are like ultimately connected.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yeah, I mean, culture provides really powerful headwinds. And you
look if you you know, if you look at fascist Italy,
if you look at fascist Germany, you know, like arts
and culture and propaganda is a cornerstone, is like the
go to, Like fascism relies on spectacle because it actually
(05:12):
is quite hollow from an ideological perspective, and it's actually
quite hollow from a policy perspective, right, It's not truly
about making government work better for individuals, It is about
changing an individual's belief so that they are convinced that
government should just be wanton and do whatever it wants
(05:33):
and really only serve a tiny, tiny, select portion of
a population. And they are able to accomplish that through spectacle.
And so the Kennedy Center, the Nations are the iconic
beautiful building on the river in DC that we've seen
lit up in beautiful ways, that has the best view
of the fireworks in DC. Like that building being turned
(05:56):
into sort of a Maga parade ground is really will
be very potent, will be very powerful.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Something that you point out in your piece that I
love is that Trump has not really had any real
connection to the Kennedy Center. You're right, despite not having
attended any of the Kennedy Center's marquis events or any
event at all. In his first term or sense, Trump
installed himself as chairman of the board of the Kennedy Center,
promising to usher in quote the golden age of arts
(06:24):
and culture. And I guess part of me wonders, like,
why does it matter that he is taking over this
thing that he doesn't really have any kind of like
real connection to. He really, as you said, ignored it
in his first term, like do you think it's just
what you were saying? That He sees the incredible power
that culture has and sees what the Kennedy Center represents
(06:45):
to culture, so he's like, I gotta control.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
That, Yeah, I mean basically, and I have to stop
it from supporting a culture that is opposed to me,
and I have to move it into supporting a culture
that reinforces my value, my power, my centrality. I think
he has targeted the Kennedy Center because it's so successful,
(07:09):
because it's so powerful, because it is such an important
part of our national fabric, not because he doesn't think
it's important.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Culture is important, and it can be used to reinforce
or challenge power as part of culture health media. Carrie
produces television and film projects that connect pop culture to
political change, like Hairtails on Hulu and Ladies First, Netflix's
docuseries about women and hip hop, but her work goes
beyond producing. Carrie also collaborates with entertainment companies to help
(07:39):
infuse their content with a more authentic and nuanced cultural lens.
She got her start as a political organizer, and even
now working in Hollywood, that foundation is still central for
Carrie storytelling is just another form of organizing.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
I'm someone who, as he poorn out, like, started working
in politics really young. I've always been a big reader
still to this day, and I don't watch a ton
of stuff. But I, yeah, I know it's really dirty.
It's my dirty secret, as a very surprising to hear
as a film and television producer, to my dirty, dirty
secret that I don't love to watch things. I would
(08:16):
much rather read a script than like watch a show.
But I grew up on novels like so I would
read hundreds. I'm a total nerd and would just read
hundreds of books a year and just mostly all novels.
And I think that that's what made me good at politics.
I think my ability and the novel as a form
(08:37):
that ability to transport you into someone else's lived experience
and someone else's life in point of view, and their
struggles and their things that you would never have got,
like I will never have lived through the dustbel right,
but I can read John Steinbeck and have a visceral
experience about how terrifying that would have been, that hardship.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Right.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
And so then you go into an a line of
work by government and politics and policymaking and having all this,
having that ability to stretch yourself and your empathetic ability
and imagination to think about lives that are different from
your own but equally valid and equally valuable, makes you
(09:19):
a better policy maker. And so I think that is
something that directly influenced me. But then I also think
that being black and growing up in suburban Ohio and
not seeing myself reflected in broader pop culture, and then
the ways that you would really cling to the representations
that were occasionally offered to you, and the way that
(09:40):
that started to change over the course of the nineties
and the two thousands.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
In twenty thirteen, Cheerios released an ad featuring a young
girl who adorably misunderstands when her white mother explains that
cheerios are good for the heart. Wanting to help, she
pours a box of cheerios over her sleeping who was black.
It was a sweet, funny moment that unintentionally sparked a
national dialogue about mixed race families and identity in America.
(10:08):
Not all of that conversation was positive. Within days, General
Mills had to disable the comment on the AD's YouTube
because of a wave of racist backlash. But here's the thing.
General Mills also said that comments supporting the ad outnumbered
the hateful ones ten to one. Still, the victorial that
surfaced reflected a deeper racial tension and a country that
(10:29):
had just re elected its first black president, who notably
was himself by racial carrier remembers it well.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Like I even remember seeing the Cheerios commercial the little
biracial girl like pouring the cereal on her dad's heart
and just being like, oh my god, you know, like
I've never seen it, right, and it was so memorable
because you've never seen anything like that. I'd never seen
anything like that before, and so that those types of
moments are really really emotionally for me. And then finally
(11:03):
I think that there's just we've seen it. We've seen
the proof is in the pudding. We've seen it over
and over again. It's not a coincidence that the number
one show in television in the years preceding Barack Obama's
election was twenty four, where the president was a black
former senator basketball star with a with like a high
moral compass, and then years later, like you know, seventy
(11:27):
million people watch the show every week, week after week
for years and years and years, and then Barack Obama
shows up and people are like, oh, he actually seems
familiar to me. That doesn't feel like this massive departure
from something that exists in my life and in my world.
Will and Grace Rosie O'Donnell Ellen DeGeneres. When we started
(11:50):
trying to advocate for gay rights and for LGBTQ equality
and for all marriage equality, all of these things, there
was this cultural precedent that let people know what was
on the other sid side of the change that we
were asking them to make. And these the people who
loved these characters, were like, I want the best for them,
and therefore I would I refuse to deny the rights
(12:10):
any longer. And so culture shows up and allows us
to imagine what is possible and why should what our
values that truly are or could be, and then we
can legislate and policy make around them. So I think,
both from my own personal experience, but also what I've
seen in governors, like from serving governors, off if we've
(12:32):
been in the White House, if there is a cultural
precedent to something, it is a lot easier to create
laws and legislation around it than it is if you're
asking people to embrace a change that they don't know
what's on the other side of. Right, there was all
this sort of white space and the cultural imagination around
(12:52):
what the ACA could be, what Obamacare could be, what
national health care could be. And so the right filled
that white space up with like, say, we are pale
and talking about death panels. And that was so easy
to do because people didn't know what it was. There
wasn't It wasn't like er was do. It was like,
you know, what, we should have nationalized healthcare. All of
these problems would be solved that Da Datta Dug Gray's
(13:14):
anatomy isn't about that, like if but if they had been,
maybe that would have been a little bit easier and
less contentious of a policy to implement.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Well, I've never really thought about that before, but that
makes so much sense that really the job of culture
can be to help people imagine a future that it's
better than the future that we have now, and what
it might look like, what it might look like to
have marriage equality, affordable healthcare, like all of these things
that we want, but maybe it's a little hard to
(13:44):
imagine what it would actually look like or be like
or feel like if we had these things, it's about
future like world building and future looking.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Or the opposite. Right, Like, one of the most popular
shows in the country right now is Yellowstone, and that's
been true for years and years, And what does that
show about? That shows about a patriarch who runs for governor,
who operates outside the law, murders people, does whatever he wants,
but still gets to be the hero, right, And like
that's a hell of the show. I love Yellowstone, I've
(14:12):
seen every episode. But is it good for society? Probably not.
I mean it makes figure Donald Trump and figures like
him seem familiar, seem reasonable, seem like the hero when
they are not it's all fun and games on a
cattle ranch in Montana. But like we're talking about real
people's lives, and yet we are allowing the John Dutton
(14:34):
and not even a good as good of one to
be the president. Like what are we doing? But again,
like that culture allows us, like normalizes and kind of
really passively sets the parameters for the political outcomes that
we see in the country.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
Let's take a quick break at our back.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
A few years ago.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
It was kind of a given that people who made
and cared about culture the kind of culture that anybody
was really paying attention to anyway, were not people on
the right. But today things have really changed. They may
not have Beyonce or Taylor Swift, but from podcasts to streaming,
a lot of the most powerful voices at the forefront
of culture are right wing internet personalities that you might
(15:33):
not have ever heard of. Tell us about this new
cultural celebrity ecosystem, because I feel it, I see it.
It's hard to it's hard to verbalize, but like, you
know it when you see it, and you feel it
when it's there, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yeah, I mean so like Trump is actually not even
particularly individually responsible for this. But ages ago, not ages ago,
fifteen years ago, twenty years ago, the best and brightest
sort of thinkers in the conservative movement understood that the
things that made Democrats powerful and meant that they would
(16:10):
win elections was culture and the cultural narrative of the
country and people and so storytelling and unions basically, and
they systematically have tried to either dismantle or take over both.
So unions have never been less potent in American life
(16:30):
than they are right now. And then two they started
making these massive investments in culture that they understood that
culture reinforced progressive values that leaned more towards democrats, and
so they started creating their own distribution platforms. They started
(16:51):
creating their own stars and farming talent and investing in
people like Ben Shapiro in The Daily Wire, who then
built these massive audiences for and shifted consumer demand. We
know that the average American spends four to six hours
watching video content today, and so the right started meeting
(17:13):
that demand and giving them content that would bring them further,
bring your generalized audience further and further and further to
the right. And we've seen it work extraordinarily while as
young men, but we're also seeing it in things like
tradwives and like very kind of conservative takes on how
women should be and how we should dress and makeup
(17:34):
desorrows and all of this stuff. And so they did
it over digital, and then it really sort of created
the self fulfilling, the self feeding machine, where Hollywood, which
is a commercial enterprise, Hollywood is not a social good,
like none of these television studios care about social good.
They care about making money. And they saw that there
was this demand for these more kind of conservative esque
(17:57):
worldview types of shows, programs make talent, and so they
started getting into the game as well, and we started
seeing it show up in TV and movies. And so
that Donald Trump, because he's such an entertainer, say what
you want. I have a lot of critiques and criticisms
of this man, but like, he is entertaining, and he
seems fun, and he seems like he's having a good time.
(18:20):
And so he understood very quickly and very intuitively the
power of these entertainers. And he always has. He was
always on WWF or WWE. He was always He's on
the Apprentice, right, the massive, massive television star. He was
doing the cameos in Home Alone. Like, he understands the
power popularity and the power of sort of mass media
(18:42):
and pop culture to ensure a particular outcome or at
least vastly increase the likelihood of a particular outcome. And
so he really doubled down, and his campaign really doubled down.
They recognize that his celebrity and his ability to be
like Johnny good Times on a four hour lives was
this massive strength of his and so they had him
(19:04):
out there, they had him showing up, they had him
really participating in the rules of the game, of the
digital sphere and sort of broader culture and entertainment, and
they just understood it a lot better than we did. Right.
Andrew Breitbart, who's again like this like kind of founding
father of the modern conservative movement, understood culture in a
(19:27):
really potent way. And they have very quietly, over the
course of the last fifteen years been taking over culture
in a way that we have not. We have on
the left been really passive about right for so long,
culture was just inadvertently on our side without there having
to be much interaction or intervention on our part, and
(19:51):
so we just sort of allowed it to happen. And
so now you see these guys with these massive platforms,
the Logan Paul, the Joe Rogan's, the Neelk Boys, all
of these guys, THEO Vaughn, right, and they're all like,
they're all really really good at what they do, the
aiden rosses of the world. It might not be your taste,
(20:13):
but they are incredibly good at what they do, and
they operate incredibly so incredibly sophisticated ways they platform each other,
they interact with one another. They seem like they're having
a great time. And President Trump is just like, I
will give you all the time and attention you want.
You can come to the inauguration, you can come to
(20:33):
these parties, you can fly around on the plane. It's
gonna be great and it works.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Right. I am in the middle of a research fellowship
at Harvard's Brookman Klein Center studying exactly this phenomena, right,
Like I'm a podcaster. You're a podcaster. When you go
on Apple Podcasts, the top fifty podcasts are all the
shows that you've just mentioned. And the thing that gets
me is, and I could tuckle day about this is
(21:00):
I do think that, specifically in podcasting, we let these
voices and these platforms grow to be astronomical in size,
in reach, and influence while simultaneously being like, oh, well,
what happens in these spaces doesn't really matter. It's just
two guys in a garage talking.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Who cares.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Meanwhile, I would argue that some of those some of
those guys with microphones and their garages are in their
dorms or whatever. Are the reasons why being out another
Trump presidency. Right during the inauguration, That's who Trump's team
exupplicitly shouted out. It was people like THEO Vonn want to.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Bet the note Boys, Aiden Ross Uh, THEO Vaughn Bottle
with the Boys, and last but not least, the mighty
and powerful Joe Rogan.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
What do we do with that?
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Like, there are still people who don't recognize the massive
power that these platforms hold while they continue to build
that power and influence.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Wait, if you're not recognizing the power of these guys
and like, you're just not a serious person, Like I'm sorry,
you don't know what's going on. You're out of touch,
or you're naive, or you're you're just in a closed
loop of information. Because it's incredibly obvious and very serious people,
and there's all the data to support it. Like it's
not my intuition, this, it's it is fact. And so
(22:21):
if people aren't taking that seriously, then like because they're
not serious. Oh, I mean I don't know what to say. Sorry,
you can send me an email, we can talk about it.
And so, but you're right, I think that for too long,
and I'm guilty of this too. A couple of years
ago I would have been like, who cares about any
of this? But about a year and a half ago,
(22:42):
I was like, oh my god, it's a disaster, you know.
But that's but we all want to you know, liberals
want to read the New York Times, in the Washington
Post or whatever semaphore and overly rely on journalism and
really poop poo culture and really poopoo entertained. And that's
just where that's where everyone is like, I don't. It's
(23:04):
been a massive judge, it's been a massive wrong choice
that we have made around how we how we think
about how information moves through the country and interacts with individuals' lives,
and to be perfectly honest, even when we do quote
unquote get it, we don't, we still don't.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
As a podcaster, I was deeply fascinated watching the role
that podcasting played in the last presidential election. People even
called it the podcast election, and I kind of agree.
Trump recognized the power of podcasts early on, from Joe
Rogan tot Theovonn's This Past Weekend to the Nelk Boys's
Full Send podcast Say what you Will about Trump, and
lord knows I do. He used the podcast ecosystem effectively
(23:48):
to get himself out there. Vice President Harrimis got points
for an appearance on Alex Cooper's super popular Sex and
Relationships podcast Call her Daddy a smart move for sure,
but call her Daddy's listeners who call themselves the Daddy
Gang have come to expect certain things of the guests
of the podcast. For instance, guests usually share an emotional
(24:08):
story about their romantic lives. Host Alex Cooper usually wear
sweatpants and now did the shows let's call it relaxed style.
So how did Harris show up to this platform?
Speaker 1 (24:20):
One of my sort of pet peeves from the of
which I have several, but one of my pet peeves
from the Harris campaign in twenty twenty four was the
was not even just that I'm happy that they did
call her daddy, but like the manner in which they
did it right. And so if you compare and you
can trash, I think I think Kamala Harris did an
(24:44):
extraordinary job. She was given a totally raw deal. She
was not served well by that campaign, and we can
have that conversation in a different way. But even when
they would do thing I call her daddy right, they
make Alex come to her. She doesn't wear a hoodie,
(25:07):
she doesn't talk about sex or doug or it's not
a particularly like intimate or warm conversation, there was no
airing of an insecurity, and she broke the format of
the show. Alex Cooper has built something extraordinary and she's
(25:28):
done it on purpose, like call her Daddy? Is that
way on purpose? Because it works because that's what the
audience wants, because that's what Alex wants. And so Kama
came on and she broke the form. She made the
show conformed to her. She went on Charlemagne and didn't
obey the rules of the show. She made the show
(25:50):
fit her rules. She went she talked about talking points
and Charlemagne tried to get hers Like you called her
out for it, and like she gave a peppy, sassy answer,
I get it, Like that's called this discipline. I get it.
You're right, and you are not actually doing yourself any
favors by going on a show that viewers have an
(26:11):
anticipated operates in a certain way, that has rules about
how it is governed, that has a structure about how
it works, and then breaking that form. It actually makes
it much more difficult for people to hear what you're
trying to say, and they're not turning into sharpes tuning
into Charlemagne for a policy lesson like people know where
(26:32):
to go if they want a sermon, they know where
to go if they want a lecture, and it's not
Charlemagne the Gods Show, and it's not called her Daddy.
And so that was really, i think, really poorly executed
on behalf of the campaign. She got bad strategic advice
about how to appear on those shows, and it did
her a real disservice because we know she's that girl.
(26:53):
We know she loves talking about dud we know she
can ki key, we know she can sit with the
girls and do the thing. We know she can sit
with the brothers and do the thing. And they didn't.
She didn't. She did not give the advice to do that.
You can trast out with how Donald Trump showed up
and he would show up. I've listened to him on
the Nolf Boys, I've listened to him on Aiden Ross. Right,
he shows up, He's like, what are we doing here?
(27:13):
You tell me how we're gonna do this? Am I
here for three hours? Okay? I do?
Speaker 4 (27:18):
Like what are And he's just like kiking and having
great time, and he's showing up with some respect and
consideration for these massive things and these massive entertainment properties
that these individual talents have built, and is like, I
will do what your audience has said that they want
by tuning in every week, and I will, I will
(27:38):
conform to the to the boundaries.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
Of the form.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
And it works. And that's why his appearances on these
things are so much more successful. Not only did he
do volume, he did way more than she did, but
he also did it in the right way. And we
have got to be training our candidates and our leaders
and our people to do a better job of this.
AOC spectacular that she gets it. She's intuitive, She's like,
(28:06):
is she gonna show up on something? She shows up appropriately,
show she knows what the audience wan, she gives, she
understands the assignment, and she aces it right, but that
she can't do it by herself, Like she can't put
the Democratic Party on her back and climb us up
the hill. Same with Jasmincrockett, same with Senator Chris Murphy.
So the small number of people who get how this works,
(28:29):
like needs needs some more help. And I know that
people are trying. I know that you see a bunch
of influencers going to the hill and trying to get
these Congress people to get it together, which is great,
but yeah, at least for this round, it's too little,
too late.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Yeah, And I think you're really onto something about how
it shows a further devaluing of or misunderstanding of the
power of this of culture and the power of these
spaces because call her daddy for instance, the platform that
she has built has so much power. What do you
get from going on the show and leaning away from
(29:06):
the power of that platform being like, oh the little thing,
Like like, what do you get from that?
Speaker 1 (29:11):
I don't know. I don't know, as if anyone like
because I think there's this this this obsession that Democrats
have that is really I mean, I remember this in
the Obama era.
Speaker 5 (29:24):
It was just like this this continued path, a logical
belief that if only people understood the policy better, they
would know that we were the right pick.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
And it's like if anyone get cared, if the American
voter cared about policy, or enough American voters cared about policy,
Elizabeth Warren would be president. Like what are you talking about?
So why are you putting her on these shows to
deliver policy talking points? Like that the political reporters at
Politico or The New York times might care about that,
(29:56):
but like voters don't. Obviously they care about having a
president that seems like they're like them. And that's not
what we were doing.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
And I get why it might be tempting to kind
of dig in your heels and plug your ears and
say lah la lah, that's not true, but it's not
getting us anywhere.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Like it or not true.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
But what you just said is the truth. And so
like I do sometimes get frustrated that I feel like
they are trying to serve something that does not align
with the reality that you just articulated, which I agree with.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Yeah, And it's like it doesn't come from a mess,
it comes from the right place. I get it. People
should care about this stuff. We want them to care
about this stuff. The problem that they don't, And so like,
play the game that's actually on the table, not the
one that you wish was on the table.
Speaker 5 (30:48):
More.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
After a quick break, le's get right back into it.
Everyone is talking about the role that culture can play
in shaping politics for better or worse now, but Carrie's
been talking about it for a really long time since
(31:10):
she was in the Obama White House.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
And it's those.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Conversations that seated her newest project, the podcast Twig and Jenkins,
It really sits at this very interesting intersection of politics
and culture. Are through the show, are you trying to
sort of shape both?
Speaker 1 (31:27):
I mean, I guess honestly, Brad Jenkins and I shared
an office at the White House for five years, and
so he's the homie, you know, like that's the that's
the that's my big dog. And so he and I
just yap all the time anyway and terrorize each other
with our opinions, and so we just sort of inflicted
up decided to inflict it on the on the public.
(31:49):
And I think in these times when there isn't there's
so there's very very few binary right wrong answers in
this moment, right There's a lot of analysis, a lot
of data, a lot of ways of interpreting what's going
on in a country this big and this complex often
almost doesn't have a right answer. And so I think
(32:09):
a huge part of what Brad and I are doing
on the show is as much for us as for
anyone else, which is just like teasing out what some
of those different ways of interpreting what's going on are
and then meaning making of them, like trying to make
sense of what's actually happening, and then also sharing a
(32:31):
perspective that doesn't get a ton of a ton of play, right, Like,
I'm pretty upset, or not upset, it's not the right word,
but I feel pretty underwhelmed and unserved by political coverage.
I feel incredibly poorly served by cultural coverage. And so
(32:54):
the I think there are just obvious realities to both
Brad and I because we both said we both were
in politics, serve in the Obama administration, left and went
into culture work. And so there are things about politics
that feel really obvious to us but don't seem super
obvious to people who don't come to it from a
cultural lens. And then there's stuff about our culture that
(33:16):
seems really obvious to us that isn't obvious to people
in culture because they're not coming to it from a
political lens. And so I think we just are trying
to almost serve as a bridge between the two. It's
like the people over here, like people in culture, you
guys need to be paying attention to like this particular
part of politics and this particular thing. We recognize that
(33:39):
no one's paying attention to all of it, But like
here's something we want to point and signal to something
that you shouldn't miss or that you should be flagging.
And then in politics we want to do the same right,
so like serve as a bridge to culture. It's too
much to try and follow all of it. You're not
going to We all have a limited ability to think
about every thing when you're trying to like live your
(34:01):
life and drink your water and get your electrolytes or
whatever you're doing, plus do your career, plus you know,
plan for fascism. So like, here're the handful of things
that you should be paying attention to that are showing
up in culture that you're going to have to interact
with at some point down the road. So I think
we very much think of ourselves as like a bridge
(34:22):
between the two, just to bring them a little bit
closer into dialogue and or be a cheat sheet if
you're further on one end of the spectrum than the other,
and just sort of like, here's a couple of things
that you should be paying attention to.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
I love that term a bridge, because I do think
for a long time there was this attitude where culture
was over here and like politics was over here, and
the reality of how people live their lives is that
it's it's like a then diagram or that then diagram
is a circle where culture and politics are borrowing from
each other and there in a lot of ways are
like the same thing. And I think you're right that
(34:58):
we don't have a lot of media that refer that
in the way that I think that it needs to
be reflected, like unserved. Something about that word really speaks
to me because it's like a hole in my diet.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
That I didn't even kind of realize needed to be filled. Yeah, totally,
totally and yoc Sergent, we had him on the podcast
a couple of weeks ago and he said something really interesting,
which is, you know, politics is where some people are
some of the time, but culture is where everyone is
all of the time. And I think we lose sight
(35:33):
of that, especially those of us in politics full time.
I think we really lose sight of how much anyone
is paying attention anything related to politics. I remember I
grew up in Ohio and I was working when I
was in the White House at the time, and I
was home for something, and you know, ran into somebody
I knew, or was talking to one of my girl's boyfriends,
(35:54):
or something, and they were like, so what do you do?
And I was like, oh, I worked for the president
and they're like, the president of what? And I was
like right, like that doesn't mean any like and I
was like, oh, President Obama and they were like, oh cool.
Like I usually get a different response, you know, I
usually get a little bit more feedback, But that's because
(36:16):
I'm usually telling people that in DC, right, right, and
that means something, But it doesn't mean anything to people
in Columbus, Ohio, like not really other than like, oh God,
is she gonna talk to me about politics? So I
think we underestimate how how little we're how little they're
thinking about us when it comes to cultural impact.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Is it over for us? Have we given up too
much of the game when it comes to culture? Do
you see us gaining any ground here?
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Well, there's nowhere to go but up from where we are,
so yeah, I mean they are running the board. We
don't live in a monoculture, right, and so there's no
one there's no one winner at any given point in time.
But I think that the trend lines are trending towards
them and have been for a while, much longer than
(37:06):
we've been comfortable or willing to admit. And I think
they have a lot of momentum in trajectory on their side.
That said, trends change really quickly, like I'm wearing baggy
pants again, you know what I mean? And like side
eye people and skinny jeans, so like check a picture
of me from five years ago. It's like who knew
(37:26):
that was? Trends can change really really quickly, but not
on accident. Like we need to start investing way more
cash into these cult into culture makers, into platforms beyond
TikTok and Instagram. We need to be investing in podcasters
like you, like Twig and Jenkins. We need to be
(37:48):
making sure that we're all appearing on each other's shows,
that we're all representing and digging each other up, that
we're working on big projects together, that we're paying attention,
like getting rid of the like hold my nose and
be sanctimonious and uppity about other about what they've done
on the right, like if any I don't care if
(38:11):
a podcast has seven hundred subscribers, Every single elected official,
every single person that cares about anything to do with
making the world a better place should be doing two
three hours of podcast time a week. Like, if you're
a senator, there is someone in your state that has
(38:33):
a podcast about what happens at the grocery store, I
want you on it. Like, what are you doing, baby,
You're in call time trying to raise all this cash?
Do two to three hours of podcast time per week?
Don't want to hear about it? TIK, don't pixt me,
don't DM me in October asking for some shit. I
don't want to hear it, you know what I mean? Like,
(38:55):
none of that dig the well before you're thirsty. It's
really basic, and so like all of that has to happen.
I don't know, you know who's doing it. There should
be a podcast studio in the DNC building. The whole
thing should be turned into a content studio. You don't
know what they're doing over there. It's like we're so
far behind, but now it's just about our cat like
(39:17):
it can change. We will, of course have trajectory. Again,
these are fads, These are things that go in and
out of fashion. But again, you have to build it.
You have to take advantage of the opportunities that exist
and invest in talent and invest in people who want
to participate in this infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech. I
just want to say hi. You can reach us that
hello at tegody 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, which It's had.
It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed creative Jonathan Stricklet
as our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our pretty and
sound engineer. Michael Amado is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
(40:04):
Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
and review.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
Us on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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