Thanksgiving Tips, Why America is Good, and the Gift of Friendship, w/ Rachel Bovard & Inez Stepman

Summary

Podcast Summary: After Party with Emily Jashinsky – “Thanksgiving Tips, Why America is Good, and the Gift of Friendship”

Episode Date: November 27, 2025
Guests: Rachel Bovard (Conservative Partnership Institute), Inez Stepman (Independent Women’s Forum)
Host: Emily Jashinsky (MK Media)

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Episode Overview

In this special Thanksgiving edition of After Party, host Emily Jashinsky hosts a lively, insightful, and often humorous conversation with friends and fellow commentators Rachel Bovard and Inez Stepman. The episode weaves together big-picture reflections on American gratitude, the meaning of Thanksgiving for immigrants and conservatives, the health of our institutions, and practical tips for making the holiday delicious. The conversation is marked by warmth, genuine affection, and a willingness to engage in meaningful disagreement—with plenty of candid advice about wine pairings and sustaining friendships across ideological divides.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. American Gratitude: Is It Still Okay To Be Thankful?

[07:06–20:34]

• Emily introduces polling data that shows many young women would like to leave the U.S. She frames Thanksgiving as a time to reconsider gratitude for living in America, despite its flaws.
• Inez Stepman underscores the psychological and practical necessity of gratitude:

  "It's not just. It's good, it's necessary if you're going to enjoy anything in life. I think gratitude, I mean, people have had gratitude in far worse circumstances also, frankly." (08:43)

• Inez and Rachel both reflect on a recent “slide” in American well-being and the challenges facing the country politically and culturally.
• Despite existential challenges and historic moments (referencing the “Rubicon” before the 2024 election and the difficulties under Biden), Inez maintains hope for the future and credits Americans for "pulling the yoke out of a dive." (19:37)
• Rachel points to a new vibrancy of debate on the right, emphasizing that the ability to discuss ideas openly is itself something to be thankful for.

  "When I came to D.C. it was a very like narrow, windowless room. And now I just feel like oxygen is being let in." (11:35)

• Both agree that, for all of America’s problems, the options elsewhere are not better:

  "There is nowhere else to go. I think that was, that's something...when I looked at that poll, that really jumped out at me. Oh, all these people want to leave. Okay, where?" (Rachel, 12:52)

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2. Immigrant Perspectives on Thanksgiving

[13:23–17:53]

• Emily asks Inez about Thanksgiving's unique resonance for immigrant families given her Polish roots.
• Inez describes how her family quickly "grabbed onto" the holiday as "a tradition that we've joined and have been able to join wholeheartedly as Americans." (15:42)
• She contrasts historical waves of highly individualistic immigrants with more recent, economically motivated migration, suggesting that attitudes toward gratitude—and assimilation—have changed.
• Soviet immigrant backgrounds create a particular sensitivity to American freedoms:

  “There is a frustrating piece of that experience which is certain elements that you recognize in common. I know my parents, especially my father has had this over the years. You know, certain elements that you recognize...you know the tune and you know the direction of the tune.” (17:03)

• Inez further elaborates how “soft totalitarianism” (career threats, informal controls) can be as insidious as hard oppression, drawing analogies to recent American political culture.

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3. Trust in Institutions & The Challenge of Rebuilding

[22:07–33:41]

• Discussion centered on Gallup polling showing younger American women’s plummeting trust in institutions.
• Rachel expresses deep concern about this trust gap:

  “That is what I worry most about recovery. Because you cannot, you know, going back to sort of the philosophical roots of conservatism, which are rooted in gratitude for the traditions that have gone before, for the people that have gone before, for how far we've come. Part of that is a respect for the mediating institutions…” (22:50)

• She argues the right abandoned cultural and educational institutions, making them vulnerable.
• Inez suggests that knee-jerk skepticism, though once necessary, may now inhibit actual reform and governance.

  “I think now we've probably become on the right so reflexively contrarian that that in itself is becoming a little bit stupid in all honesty...” (28:05)

• Both agree that the restoration of humility and accountability in institutions is essential to regaining trust.

  "What's lacking in so much of this and why I think we're struggling to find to any sort of kernel to rebuild on for institutional trust is the lack of humility or just an acknowledgement that you have to have it at all because it's the corollary to gratitude." (Rachel, 29:59)

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4. Thanksgiving Food & Drink: Tips and Traditions

[36:25–54:45]

Wine, Cocktails, and Pairings

• Rachel, a certified sommelier, offers a practical Thanksgiving wine guide:

  • Start with champagne (“Start everything with champagne.” 38:42)
  • Serve both white and red wine:
    • Red: Pinot Noir or Burgundy, Beaujolais/Beaujolais Nouveau (“It's a very like young, sort of fruity tasting wine, not sweet... goes really well, pairs across the table.” 39:37)
    • White: White Burgundy or a slightly off-dry Riesling, which stands up to various flavors.
  • Dessert: Tawny Port for pumpkin desserts, or Sauternes.

• Inez’s family also starts with champagne, then offers both red (Pinot) and white wine for dinner guests.

• Cocktail Recommendations:

  • Inez shares punch and batch cocktail ideas for gatherings, including a “flannel shirt” punch:
    • Ingredients: Scotch, apple cider, Averna amaro, lemon juice, brown sugar syrup, allspice dram, bitters. (45:55)
  • For something smaller, Inez likes a banana liqueur twist on the Old Fashioned.

Memorable moment:
Emily and Rachel joke about “white wine moms” and “champagne moms,” while recalling how Boomer/Millennial drinking habits contrast with Zoomers’ relative sobriety.

Food Traditions & Leftover Tips

• Inez’s Family: Keeps to pilgrim-era recipes and tradition; strict about repeating dishes from a historic recipe book. She suggests a leftovers tip: top reheated turkey with cranberries, balsamic vinegar, rosemary, thyme, honey, and crumbled goat cheese. (50:01)

• Rachel’s Family: Her Sicilian-American family eschewed turkey for Italian staples like eggplant parm and ziti. Now, married to a Thanksgiving traditionalist, she makes American and Italian feasts side-by-side.

  • “Dang, I really hate turkey.” (52:37)
  • Rachel plugs caponata (Sicilian eggplant dish) as a worthy alternative to stuffing.

• Cute moment: Inez shares excitement about her baby having Thanksgiving food for the first time, showing the personal resonance of family traditions.

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5. Politics, Religion, and the Art of Civil Disagreement

[54:45–66:08]

• Emily pitches against the common wisdom not to talk about politics or religion at Thanksgiving—"as these topics occur naturally...if you are around people you love and trust, you should be able to have these conversations." (56:09)

• Rachel stresses the danger when “contempt replaces curiosity,” warning of the dangers of bringing social media combativeness into family life.

  "What fails us is when we allow contempt to come in...it replaces curiosity about why they believe what they believe. It replaces the enjoyment that you have of the many other things that define people other than their politics." (57:28)

• Inez agrees:

  “I think that politics and faith are probably some of the only interesting topics.” (59:21)

  • She cautions that not everyone truly wants to confront real disagreement, and reminds that the stakes—ideology vs. personal loyalty—are significant in an age of political polarization.

• Both suggest that addressing these topics with “humility, empathy, and respect” is good for personal relationships and civic health.

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6. The Gift of Friendship and Thanksgiving Reflections

[64:57–68:30]

• Emily closes by sharing gratitude for friendship, especially with Rachel and Inez during a turbulent time for the conservative movement.
• She references the assassination of Charlie Kirk, expressing empathy for those affected and the importance of humility, asking questions, and not taking oneself too seriously.
  • Advice for difficult conversations: "Come at every conversation with abject humility...ask questions, questions, questions. So thankful to all of you." (68:30)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• Inez Stepman: “It's not just. It's good, it's necessary if you're going to enjoy anything in life. I think gratitude, I mean, people have had gratitude in far worse circumstances also, frankly.” (08:43)
• Rachel Bovard: “When I came to D.C. it was a very like narrow, windowless room. And now I just feel like oxygen is being let in.” (11:35)
• Rachel Bovard: “There is nowhere else to go...where do you want to go?” (12:52)
• Emily Jashinsky: “If you are around the people who you love and respect and trust...and you can't power through a conversation...about the things that matter most...then the relationship is not what it would be.” (56:09)
• Rachel Bovard: “It's when you start to revile the other person and you have contempt for them, and that replaces curiosity about why they believe what they believe.” (57:28)
• Inez Stepman: “Politics and faith are probably some of the only interesting topics.” (59:21)

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Timestamps for Noteworthy Segments

• Gratitude & American Identity Discussion: 07:06–20:34
• Immigrant Experience of Thanksgiving: 13:23–17:53
• Trust in Institutions & Rebuilding: 22:07–33:41
• Thanksgiving Wine, Cocktails & Food Tips: 36:25–54:45
• Handling Politics & Conflict at Thanksgiving: 54:45–66:08
• Friendship, Humility & Closing Reflections: 66:08–68:30

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Tone & Atmosphere

The conversation is warm, self-deprecating, occasionally irreverent (“white wine mom, but no kids”), but always thoughtful. All three participants balance seriousness about culture and politics with gratitude, affection, and a generous sense of humor.

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Summary Takeaway

This episode reminds listeners that Thanksgiving offers a chance to reflect on gratitude—in life, in friendships, and even in politics. While the United States is experiencing significant challenges, the hosts and guests argue that meaningful debate, civic humility, and familial bonds are worth celebrating. They deliver concrete (and delicious) advice for the holiday table, and reaffirm the necessity—and the joy—of connecting with loved ones, even (or especially) across different views.

Transcript

[Inez Stepman]

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[Emily]

Welcome to a special holiday edition of afterparty. It's not a party, it's a podcast. But we do all have drinks tonight because I'm joined by Inez Stepman and Rachel Bovard and we are going get into all kinds of wonderful, wonderful Thanksgiving conversations. Why not? I know that's what you want from the show. You know, people have been demanding. My inbox is just overflowing with demands for our particular thoughts on Thanksgiving. So of course by popular demand, we will be having a long Thanksgiving conversation. But actually, you know what? I'm excited about this episode because when I bring them in in Just a Mom, Rachel and Inez both have particular expertise in wine cocktails. Inez is an amazing cook. I actually don't know if Rachel's a good cook. We'll get into it, but they're both very good at this type of thing. I am not. Which you probably guessed and we'll make the conversation even more fun. But we will, on a serious note, also discuss some of, you know, the difficult parts of the holidays. We'll discuss American gratitude as a concept, where it stands, how we are doing, on a scale of 1 to 10, 10. When it comes to gratitude as the American people, we're going to get into all of it. So make sure you stay tuned, make sure you subscribe. We're excited to have you here on this Thanksgiving Eve. Thank you. Thank you for helping us. Just while it's Thanksgiving, I want to say thank you for helping us get to over a hundred thousand subscribers in a few months. That was amazing. I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful to everybody who's listening to us on the podcast version. There are a lot of you and you're like me, you're podcasters. So everybody who's also tuning in live and chatting in the live chat, love it. And we are very grateful to you, grateful to the whole team here as well, to producer Kelly, to everyone who makes this show possible. So on that note, another thing that I am grateful for, as you know, if you listen to the show, that would be Masa chips. Of course. I really love Thanksgiving and the holidays. It gives us all a chance to kind of get back to the basics and eat really good food together. And when I say really good, I mean real food together. Today's sponsor, Masa is part of the real food movie movement, bringing back snacks made with ingredients our grandparents used to eat. Masa chips contain just three ingredients. Organic corn, sea salt and 100% grass fed beef tallow. No seed oils, no chemicals, just incredible flavor. You know I love that flavor. With Masa you'll feel satisfied, light and energetic with no crash bloat or gross sluggish feeling afterwards. My favorite flavor of Masa, I have a hard time choosing. I really like lime. I like the carbonaro but I also like the trail flavor as a nice dessert. But if you love Masa then you'll love Vandy Crisps. I feel so ridiculous saying this, but I really also love Fanc so much. Vandy is Masa's sister company and they make the most delicious three ingredient potato chips I have ever tasted. Truly, I have never tasted butter chips. My favorite is of course Smokehouse barbecue. And if you're looking for the best Black Friday deal on Masa, Masa always offers our audience a Black Friday level offer of 25% off their first purchase. Use code AFTERPARTY for 25% off your first order at masachips.com or vandycrisps.com or simply click the link in the video descript or scan the QR code to claim this delicious offer offer. And if you don't feel like ordering online, we have good news. Masa and Vandy are now available nationwide at your local Sprouts supermarket. So stop by and pick up a couple of bags before they're gone.

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[Inez Stepman]

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[Emily]

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[Inez Stepman]

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[Emily]

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[Emily]

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[Inez Stepman]

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[Rachel Bovard]

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[Emily]

See mint mobile.com I'm joined now by Rachel Bovard, Vice president over at the Conservative Partnership Institute, and Inez Stepman, who is legal analyst over at the Independent Women's Forum, where in full disclosure, I'm also a senior fellow. Welcome to both of you.

[Rachel Bovard]

Great to be back. Thanks for having me.

[Inez Stepman]

It's always good to be here.

[Emily]

I like that Rachel said me and not us. She wanted to speak only on behalf of herself.

[Rachel Bovard]

I would never dare to speak furnace.

[Emily]

That's a good point. So Rachel is swilling red wine out of a United States Senate wine glass from her work studio. I have the good old Raw Campari here in a Mason jar. Inez, what are you up to?

[Inez Stepman]

That's hardcore, Emily. Actually, you didn't even put like, soda water in that.

[Emily]

No, RC Raw Campari. That's what I do.

[Inez Stepman]

I have a kind of variation on a Old Fashioned that includes this weird banana liqueur that I discovered and it tastes very good. So instead of the sweet part of the Old Fashioned with the sugar, you just put this banana liqueur in it. It's good.

[Emily]

I'm obsessed with what you just talked about. All right, we're going to get into that in a second. I had an A Negroni with banana liquor the other night that was incredibly good. First, though, I wanted to get your guys's temperature on this Gallup polling that found record numbers of younger women want to leave the United States. Sort of depressing. You can put a headline on just about any poll. But since we're all women, I'm a young woman. I don't know about you guys. I mean, I do know about you guys.

[Inez Stepman]

Oh, Emily, Emily, you're part of the Crone caucus. Now you got to.

[Emily]

All right, so in all seriousness, I do think Thanksgiving is a nice time to pause and reflect historically on the scope of human existence and realize that the United States of America, as depressing as it is right now, is depressing because we're experiencing what feels like a slide. But it's a slide from like the highest experience humanity has ever had living on this earth in terms of comfort, material privilege and, and actually like spirit well being too. One of the things that Arthur Brooks has written about is that as America's material wealth has grown, literally the sizes of our houses have increased. We have material well being in spades, even if it doesn't feel like it all of the time, just relative to the scope of human history. Our happiness is declining. So we can get into that in a moment. But Inez, I'll start with you on this question. It's still okay to be thankful to live in the United States of America in the year of our Lord 2025? Yes.

[Inez Stepman]

Yeah. It's not just. It's good, it's necessary if you're going to enjoy anything in life. I think gratitude, I mean, people have had gratitude in far worse circumstances also, frankly. I mean, I know that it's been, we've had infighting, we've had, you know, we've had setbacks within the right recently. But I also wanted to take a step back and think about just over a year ago, right before the 2024 election, where I feel like I said the word Rubicon every day.

[Emily]

No, you literally did.

[Inez Stepman]

I, like there was no other way to describe what was going on. And you know, Rachel was getting surveilled by the FBI, rightfully so. That one might have been.

[Rachel Bovard]

It was always going to come to this.

[Inez Stepman]

Anyway. I think we have actually Trump administration's accomplished a lot. And I know that there are longer term trends, some of them economic, some of them cultural, that are really difficult to reverse. But I feel like prior to a year and a half ago, especially under the Biden administration, but going back longer in both sides politics, I think a lot of the problems that people were facing were actually just not showing up in our politics. Whether those were long term cost problems with housing or anything else, they just weren't showing. Our immigration wasn't showing up in our politics at all. And now they are. Right now they're fights. They're fights that we're taking on. Some of them were winning, some of them were not winning as fast as we would like. But I don't know. I still feel quite hopeful about the next three years and the movement that put Trump into office for the second time. So I don't know, I'm not as doom and gloom even stepping off the complete cosmic 10,000 foot perspective where we're all exceedingly lucky. I'm not, I'm not as pessimistic as I was a year and a half ago. And I think that is in itself something to be grateful for.

[Emily]

Well, and Rachel, I'll toss that to you with an interesting point from Inez, which is basically a glass half full take on where we are politically and we can talk more broadly as well. But if anyone has a right to be doom and gloom, it would be you folks over at the Conservative Partnership Institute, which, Rachel, you were in the Senate when a lot of the Arctic frost surveillance was happening, but easy to be kind of black pilled, I imagine, over at sea cpi when you saw the revelations from Arctic frost whistleblower documents that we covered here extensively. And I know both of you have, you know, been very clarion voices on over the course of the last month and yet, and yet there is a glass half full take to be had. Looking at the awareness compared to where the awareness was to inez Point about 10 years ago. Were we even talking about the mortgage disaster, the housing disaster on the right 10 years ago? Not really.

[Rachel Bovard]

Right. And I think that, that, you know, even despite sort of all the stakes of the debates it feels like we're having on the right in particular. I've spent my career working in right wing politics and Republican, you know, politics more generally. This is the best time to be working on the right as an intellectual matter in my whole career. The debates that we're having are interesting. They're relevant. They're again, they're not washing over or passing over all of the fault line that we had in the past. We are actively discussing mistakes that the Republican Party made, conservative politicians have made. You know, we're talking about accountability for things like bank bailouts and not doing that again. We're talking about, you know, American empire building as, you know, maybe something that we could, you know, cling to. We were trying to defeat global communism. But now, you know, is this still something we need to be doing? These are very interesting debates. When I came to D.C. it was a very like narrow, windowless room. And now I just feel like oxygen is being let in. And we're able to discuss these things, you know, and discuss the future of the movement, the future of the party. But I think more broadly, you know, yes, in the wake of Arctic Frost, in the wake of all these revelations, this is still the country where the people rule.

[Inez Stepman]

Right.

[Rachel Bovard]

And there is nowhere else to go. I think that was, that's something. You know, when I looked at that, at that poll, that really jumped out at me. Oh, all these people want to leave. Okay, where. Yeah, right. Where you, where, where do you want to go? I think it said like the top spot was Canada. Well, Canada is not doing so great on a, on a host of metrics. And I think the other countries were like Italy, Japan, sclerotic economies. Basically.

[Inez Stepman]

We are still the immigrating to Japan.

[Rachel Bovard]

They're the people rule. And you're not going to get anywhere better than that for all the problems that we have.

[Emily]

Oh, my gosh, Rachel, that was so beautiful. And as. Calm down while we're on that 30,000 foot view. I heard you last earlier this year actually at a commemoration at the victims of Communism Memorial Museum of Solzhenitsyn, and you give some really beautiful remarks. And I was wondering if coming from an immigrant family, Thanksgiving has kind of an even more powerful resonance just in your own life.

[Inez Stepman]

Yeah, I think definitely it's something that my family grabbed onto with two hands because it is a holiday that allows all Americans sort of to exactly feel gratitude for what I think at least immigrants that we should want to have in this country feel every day, which is that gratitude for the differences and the way that America is different from where they came from. And obviously that's changing not only because I think there are two halves to that problem of immigration changing in this way and why people sense, rightly I think, that our immigration battles are different than they have been in the past. One is, of course, we have different people coming here, but.

[Emily]

You mean non Polish people coming? Yes.

[Inez Stepman]

Oh, yeah. I'm a Polish supremacist. No. I might crack a glass. No, I think America acted a very certain type of person and that oftentimes did not fit a very individualistic type of person who would leave community, would leave family to come to America. And Emily, you and I have talked ad nauseam about some of the limitations of that individualistic ethos of America. But I think it really attracted some of the people who are most willing to set aside their old lives. Once migration became primarily economic and then came in such numbers all over the world, I think it started changing the type of person who was attracted to coming here and people who were just doing okay, but were just jockeying for a higher salary or who, you know, were not doing well or Their whole, you know, come from truly third world countries. And anyway, this is going pretty far afield from what you asked with.

[Emily]

No, it's not.

[Inez Stepman]

But I, yeah, I do. In answer to the direct question, Yeah, I mean, I think Thanksgiving has a particular meaning in my family as a tradition that we've joined and have been able to join wholeheartedly as Americans. And you know, we do, we do the whole corny thing of going around the table and saying what we're grateful for. And you know, every year one of the things that we're grateful for is America. So, you know, maybe that's too corny for this crowd.

[Emily]

No, no. Well, I do, I do actually have one more question for you on that, which is, I don't know how much you want to talk about this, but your parents, we just mentioned Polish. That's an experience that involves the Soviet Union, obviously. And freedoms in the United States of America are easily taken for granted by people, especially people my age. I wasn't going to say our age because I think both of you were born before the wall fell. Am I right? Yeah. I'll take your silence as a deafening. Yes. All right. What you just said there, especially my age, you know, not even having like pop cultural context of what it was like for the foil of the Soviet Union to exist. And as I think that's also worth reflecting on because there are, there's generations of immigrants who came here from the Soviet Union who, who just have so much gratitude for what they experience in.

[Inez Stepman]

The US Yeah, Soviet immigrants felt pretty right wing, I think. No, there is a frustrating piece of that experience which is certain elements that you recognize in common. I know my parents, especially my father has had this over the years. You know, certain elements that you recognize and you, you know the tune and you know the direction of the tune. By the way, I think Americans from super left wing states have this as well. Like, I think there's a reason that all the Californians, my husband is a fifth generation Californian, the Californians all have this too. They just, you know, your, your ear is attuned to where the left is going to go because you've heard that song before. And when people sort of scoff at, well, like we were nowhere close to the Soviet Union. Well, first of all, I mean, I think people think about high Stalinism when they're thinking about the Soviet Union. The time that you were sent to a gulag for criticizing the meant.

[Rachel Bovard]

Right.

[Inez Stepman]

By the time you get into, you know, the 60s, 70s, 80s, it wasn't so Poland was In the Warsaw Pact, there. There are certain, like, differences between being, you know, behind one side of the actual Soviet republics and. And Poland and just being in the Warsaw Pact. But it was behind the Iron Curtain, and a lot of the same things applied, but, like, it wasn't actually, you know, you say the wrong thing, you go to the Gulag. It was all the exact things that we started to see that kind of soft totalitarianism that we saw develop America in, let's say, 2020 to 2024, really, which, of course, surveillance, a huge piece of this. You know, look at the former gdr, for example. One in six people were informants for. For the secret police there. But. But also just kind of all of these informal nodes and institutions that are. That make life and work possible. You know, the. The guild where that would qualify you to work, for example, as. As an artist. Well, you had to be in good standing with the party to be part of the guild and then at one point even to purchase paint.

[Emily]

Right.

[Inez Stepman]

So you. If you were a painter, you couldn't purchase paint at one point if you didn't have the correct. Like politics and you had not been verified by the party. So I think a lot of those soft structures, you know, you don't need a gulag to keep 99 of people. There aren't a lot of soldier needs in. In the world. You don't really need a gulag to keep people in line in that sense. You just need to threaten their career, their social contacts, their ability for their children to get ahead in life. And I do think those were all elements that were very much so. I'm just showing. I'm not. Like, when I say I'm optimistic now, it's not because I wasn't pessimistic before. I. I think I had a clear idea.

[Emily]

Oh, you were?

[Rachel Bovard]

Yeah.

[Inez Stepman]

Of where we were going. And that's part of the reason I'm optimistic is, like, it seems to me that America, The American people have done. Have done the. Like pulling the. The yoke of the plane up out of a dive. And where we're going now I'm not sure, and there's still plenty of bumps to be had. But. But it seems to me that we've. We've pulled back on the.

[Emily]

What do you.

[Inez Stepman]

What do you call it? Like, the yoke or the thing that. I don't know. I say. I'm not a pilot. They pull back on. On the.

[Emily]

You're speaking Polish.

[Inez Stepman]

Yeah. Yeah. They pull back on the dive that we. We were definitely in. In, you know, sort of orbit to do. So I'm mixing all the metaphors now. Outer space flights, whatever it makes. It makes me think I'm grateful. I think Americans basically rejected it in such a sound way that even all of those institutions could not stop that rejection wholly. And now. Now the barbarians are inside the tent, and. And we'll see what happens.

[Emily]

Dasha is like the last casualty of a war that her theater of conflict hasn't yet realized. It's. It's over. Like the last battle of the Civil War. Like, people didn't know Appomattox had happened. That's what's going on with Dasha Necrosover right now. Hopefully. Hopefully, that's how we'll look back on all of this. But, Rachel, that reminds me, apart from you being, you know, an ungrateful white girl from upstate New York who has no particular immigrant background that I'm aware of, that might make you appreciate what you have a little bit. You also. One of the ways that, you know, the three of us started to get, like, much closer as friends was when the three of us were on a podcast called natcon Squad. And this was, like, during Peak Cancel Culture. And this is still on natcon Squad, But I just remember not that long ago, all three of us felt like the country had slipped away, and we would be looking back on the time sort of before Peak Cancel Culture as the end of an empire. That's what I genuinely felt like. And we talked about it in that framing all of the time, but it does seem distant right now.

[Rachel Bovard]

Yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't. You know, I agree. I share Inez's optimism in the sense of, you know, I do think we were, you know, really careening toward a cliff.

[Inez Stepman]

We've pulled.

[Rachel Bovard]

Pulled ourselves back, but we're still sort of staring down a little bit into the. Into the unknown and into the abyss. And I still see remnants of it.

[Inez Stepman]

Right.

[Rachel Bovard]

Cancel Culture is not fully gone. I do see this sort of roving mob mentality playing out on the right and on the left. And this is what happens when I think politics are reorienting themselves. Right. Everybody is trying to sort of assert themselves, make sure their view is in charge and dominant. And a little bit of that is just our political system and is designed for this kind of clash and clang and conflict. And I'm fine with that. But I think, you know, what really worried me, going back to the, you know, the Gallup poll originally, was the lack of institutional trust.

[Emily]

Yes, we can put this on the screen. This is F4 younger American women have lost more confidence in institutions than any other group in the past decade. That is a 17 point drop. Thanks for bringing it up, Rachel.

[Rachel Bovard]

Yeah, it's a 17 point drop. And compared to men who have only lost 1% trust in institutions like that is a huge gap. And that is what I worry most about recovery. Because you cannot, you know, going back to sort of the philosophical roots of conservatism, which are rooted in gratitude for the traditions that have gone before, for the people that have gone before, for how far we've come. Part of that is a respect for the mediating institutions and the role they play in society, the role they play in building, you know, families and building a virtuous people, in building a society where you can have little platoons and a smaller government. The right, in my view, has abandoned a lot of those mediating institutions. And by that I'm talking about, you know, public schools and universities and libraries and all these areas that are now like peak culture war terrain because the right walked away from them. They said, oh, you know, whatever, it'll take care of itself, the market will solve it, whatever. It didn't. And now these institutions that have supported society for a long time are crumbling. And this also goes toward our government institutions, right? We rightly do not trust the FBI and we are finding out in great detail why, you know, speaking from our personal experience, being, you know, harassed and subpoenaed and all these things by our own government with my tax dollars in my name, right? This was done to the organization that I helped to build. How do you restore that trust? Because you cannot move forward, I don't think as a collective small r republic, if you do not have that trust. And I think a lot of that goes toward this demand for transparency. This, this is not a partisan demand anymore. I think it's a, it's a demand for survival. Right? You have to unpack everything, let everybody see what was done, have a sort of a national reckoning over these things. That's the only way you're going to rebuild this trust. And that's the thing I think I worry about the most, you know, how we move forward is, is how to reconstitute, I think a little bit of that, that trust that you, that you need to have a, you know, democratic societies.

[Emily]

And as the 17 point drop. Sorry, I was just gonna say that's among 15 to 44 year old women, men of that age bracket dropped like 1%. Older men dropped about 15 points, I think, on the trust. But what we're not seeing is younger women becoming necessarily more conservative. And that's interesting because as trust plummets in institutions, you would think, okay, so maybe you're drifting rightward, but we haven't seen that. What do you make of this dynamic?

[Inez Stepman]

Look, I mean, I think I disagree with Rachel a little bit in the framing, I think, but I do agree that ultimately the goal here and the problems that we're going to face in our politics now are going to be the problems of restoring institutions and trust. And that is a much harder thing. As people on the right have always known, it's easier to tear down institutions than it is to build them. I think that conservatism really became useless to a certain extent because so many people on our side believe that so strongly that they embraced wholly corrupt institutions that were only conserving essentially the ideology of the left. And then the famous critique of conservatism as liberalism going the speed limit was absolutely apt and true. I think we've kind of come to a point here and I just take for granted, I think a lot of the things that Rachel is pointing to about the change within the conservative movement, like for example, on university policy, on K12 policy. I don't think people are walking away from these institutions anymore. I think the right is very, very comfortable with using the levers that are available to them by winning a democratic election to, to transform these institutions in ways that they need to be transformed. I think everything the Department of Education has done under Trump is evidence of this. The, you know, Carme Dhillon over at DFJ enforcing the Civil Rights act, finally against all groups, whether the left favors them or not, is, is evidence of this. And I think that that project is, is going very well. Defunding these leftist institutions is going very well. None of this is to say that we are over wokeness. I don't believe that at all. This is still very powerful in the institutions of this country and I don't rely on the so called vibe shift to drive it out. But I think that the challenges here are now exactly in rebuilding that institutional trust, rebuilding institutions that are worth trusting. And frankly, like that's the challenge of governance. And it's going to take and I think now we've probably become on the right so reflexively contrarian that that in itself is becoming a little bit stupid in all honesty, where the sort of reflex to criticize everything that every institutional actor does instead of actually evaluating what that position is. I, I feel like if I use the phrase crossing the Rubicon 10,000 times under Joe Biden. I feel like I'm now graduating to the phrase a stop clock is right twice a day. Like you shouldn't put your entire like you shouldn't outsource your thinking to a reflexively disagreeing with the institutions.

[Emily]

Right.

[Inez Stepman]

That is also a silly form, form of certainly a silly form of governance.

[Rachel Bovard]

Right.

[Inez Stepman]

It may be a way to get like, you know, good clicks or something on, on X, but it's not a good form of governance. And, and then finally there is really this problem and I said, said this even when we, when we were oriented against the institutions. And I know, I've talked to Emily about this when back when I used to have a podcast so good. But I There are real costs to, there are real costs to only being able to trust the circle of people that you trust. Right. Only being able to build information and conclusions from the people that you personally can verify. That might be the better way to be than to have lying institutions. I agree, but that is all. Collectivizing knowledge and like passing it on in a trustworthy way to the next generation is literally how we left Kate Waves. So it is an important human function and we need to get it back. We can't just like continually be in this skepticism mode. I think, I think it's gone frankly. I think it's now becoming a barrier to actually building, rebuilding those institutions. But I do agree ultimately with Rachel that the only way out is through. Right. You have to actually have these arguments. You have to have them with evidence. You have to release in some cases you have to release information. We can talk about the Jeffrey Epstein files. I sort of disagree in that that, that instance because it's like me too to me, like, you know, the DOJ should not be releasing people of interest and like docudumps like I, I, I think there's a due process problem there, a Kavanaugh problem there. But anyway, I do think it's going to, it's going to require a lot more transparency. It's going to require something more difficult than transparency, which is a certain amount of humility from the people who run these institutions and understanding that they're starting from the absolute rock bottom when it comes to people's trust and trying to earn that back back.

[Rachel Bovard]

That was exactly what I was going to say is you've hit it right there is I think a big part of this and what's lacking in so much of this and why I think we're struggling to find to any sort of kernel to rebuild on for institutional trust is the lack of humility or just an acknowledgement that you have to have it at all because it's the corollary to gratitude. Right. You have to understand, I think as a conservative, when you look back, you're humble in the face of the mistakes people have made before you that you don't want to repeat, but you're also so grateful for what gone before. What I think we're seeing now, and this is true on the right as it's true sort of across the country with the institutions, is just the inability to acknowledge error. And it doesn't, you know, need to be this sort of attack mode, like you messed it up and you must acknowledge this. It's just like, yeah, you know, we did our best, we were very well intentioned. We thought it was going to work out this way under these policies. It didn't. Let's have a conversation about how to move forward. And you know, I talk to a lot of, of young conservatives all the time and I think this is the biggest turnoff I think they have and the struggle they have in sort of listening to their elders.

[Inez Stepman]

Right.

[Rachel Bovard]

And coming back to the institutions. It's this idea that if they feel like they are pointing out legitimate critiques of policies or legitimate critiques of institutions and they're told, you don't know what you're talking about, you are ungrateful, eat less avocado toast and you can afford a house, like all these things. And it's just again, this attitude of humility that all of us are imperfect, right. Well intentioned as we may be, not everyone did everything correctly. Can we at least begin to establish a dialogue about how to fix it that is, I think, missing in a big part from this dialogue.

[Inez Stepman]

Well, I think what Rachel's talking about, there is a third word here, accountability. There hasn't been accountability. It's not just that. There's no humility. There's no accountability either. So I mean, I. Rachel's very nice and she's using very nice terms, but like, if you use your power in the federal government to illegally spy on Americans, you should be prosecuted. Accountability is again part of rebuilding that, that trust. So it's, I'm not saying this is like some kind of like squishy kumbaya thing, but like this is a very real problem. Just like educating yourself outside of, for example, if there is a purpose to the university, believe it or not, and no one is harsher on universities and what they've become than, than I am, but a purpose to the university and Even the smartest autodidacts often find that they, you know, basically that the first book they read on a subject frames the entire field for them. Right. So if you, you imbibe all the biases from the first, like serious person to actually like tell you about a subject is. Right. And that's where a teacher can come in, who's, who's, who's read all the books who has like kind of this survey view of a particular field and says, you know, hey, like why don't you read this other book that balances this and then you tell me what, what you think. Like there is a real role in passing on knowledge. And I'm talking about universities specifically here, but I think it applies to our politics more generally. Right. There is that role. It's been abdicated and worse than abdicated, it's been, you know, maliciously weaponized and abused. But that doesn't mean that that role is not valuable. And I think what I'm seeing our politics now is, is what happens when, when the teacher leaves the kindergarten. Like I, I think it requires us all to grow up to continue that. It requires both the people to stop treating us like kindergartners and it requires us to stop acting like them.

[Rachel Bovard]

So that's a high bar.

[Emily]

I don't know. I'm not so confident in that one. Let's take a quick break. We'll be back with, with Rachel and Anz in just one moment. First though, over the years I've been clear about this. I'm not just pro birth, I am pro life. And being pro life means standing with mothers not only before their baby is born, but long after. And that's exactly why I partner, partner, partner very proudly with preborn. Thankful for preborn this Thanksgiving. Preborn doesn't just save babies. They make motherhood abundantly possible. They provide free ultrasounds and share the truth of the gospel with women in crisis. And then they stay with real practical help, including financial support, support for up to two years after the baby is born. That is what true Christ centered compassion looks like. Not just for the baby, but for the mother too. And here's where you can make a difference. Just $28 provides a free life saving ultrasound. One chance for a mother to see her baby. And when she does, she's twice as likely to choose life. Incredible. Preborn is trying to save 70,000 babies this year. Amazing. So don't just say your pro life, live it. Help save babies and support mothers today. Go to preborn.com emily or call 855-6. That's preborn.com. emily.

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[Emily]

All right, we are back with the group chat. Rachel Bovard, vice president over at the Conservative Partnership Institute, and Inez Stepman, legal analyst at the Independent Women's Forum. I'm going to do a seriousness sandwich with today's show. So we started seriously this. I'm going to move on to food and drink, and then we'll end a little bit serious, a little bit sentimental once more as we near the finish. Yeah, I know. Classic. Classic. No, I'll get you to stick around. Don't worry. So, Rachel, people may not know is actually a certified. Is that the right word? Sommelier. Why? Why did you do that?

[Rachel Bovard]

It was my get out of politics plan that clearly failed. But now I have a cool doggy.

[Emily]

So well done, Rachel. And Inez was very particular that she didn't want me to introduce her as someone with expertise on the topic of cocktails. Inez, I don't think you have a bartender certification, but I do think you have, at this point, enough hours of experience put in to have a drinking certification at this point.

[Rachel Bovard]

Don't we all have a drinking certification?

[Emily]

Maybe it's genetic. I mean, yeah.

[Inez Stepman]

By the way, that is, by the way, whether you. How. You know, if you're part of the Crohn caucus, Emily, or the. The base zoomer caucus is because you, on occasion, imbibe also. And we all know that they're aggressively sober.

[Emily]

It's so weird. It's so weird. I mean, listen, I actually think there's a very serious topic to. Or very serious conversation to be had About Millennial. Like, white wine culture was insane. There was a season of Modern Family where Julie Bowen's character was, like, in almost every single scene. I meant to count it at one point, carrying a glass of white wine, like, it was ridiculous. This was, like, somewhere around there. Just. Just classic. If you go back to, like, betches and barstool during those days, it was a little bit outrageous. But anyway, Zoomers, well done. Happy for you. Maybe not total abstinence, but we'll see what happens as you age. Now, Bovard, tell us about. I want to hear your. Your wine pairings for turkey, but also tell us a little bit about how you think about wine on Thanksgiving.

[Rachel Bovard]

Yeah, so Thanksgiving is a little bit of a challenge with wine, because, you. Let me just put it. Everyone should drink what they like.

[Inez Stepman]

Right.

[Rachel Bovard]

But at the same time, you know, you want to pick some wines that are going to pair across the table, not just with the turkey, but you have a lot of different flavor profiles.

[Inez Stepman]

You.

[Rachel Bovard]

A lot of sauces. You have a lot of, you know, a little sweet, some kind of savory. So you want to pick wines that kind of match that across the spectrum. Pair as well as possible with everything. So I always start. You know, you can start with cocktails. I like gin gimlets to start Thanksgiving, but I always start with champagne.

[Emily]

Okay.

[Rachel Bovard]

Champagne is going to get you where you need to go, but then you need to have a couple bottles on the table.

[Emily]

And why start with champagne?

[Rachel Bovard]

Because why not start everything with champagne?

[Emily]

Okay, fair enough.

[Inez Stepman]

Like, this is for the record, my family does in Thanksgiving, so they'll be very pleased to hear this. My dad always was vindicated. Nice bottles of champagne.

[Rachel Bovard]

So, I mean, champagne at the beginning of most days would probably be helpful, but that's just the old millennial in me, I suppose. Yes, but you should have a white and a red.

[Inez Stepman]

We're not white wine moms. Okay, Emily? We're champagne moms. We're much fancier.

[Emily]

I'm a white wine mom, and I don't have kids.

[Rachel Bovard]

Well, so start with your champagne. But you should have kind of white and red. Open my go to on. Reds are usually a Pinot or a Burgundy. Right? They're both Pinot Noir, but Burgundy, you're drinking Pinot Noir from France, or Pinot Noir will get you where you need to go. But also, Beaujolais is kind of a fun little add to the Thanksgiving table. If people are familiar with this, people may be familiar with Beaujolais Nouveau, which is.

[Inez Stepman]

It's a.

[Rachel Bovard]

Out of the Lyon region. Of France. And it's released the third Thursday of November. It's a very like young, sort of fruity tasting wine, not sweet. So you could have Beaujolais nouveau or there's Cru Beaujolais. So there's just Beaujolais from the actual region. That's not this young, frothy wine. It's a little bit more of a standard red, goes really well, pairs across the table, and then white Burgundy. So French Chardonnay is also a standard, but I like slightly off dry Riesling because it'll give you nice flavor profiles with your turkey, your stuffing, everything else, the off dry is a little bit sweet, and it kind of stands up very well to a lot of flavors.

[Emily]

I really like that. Do you do a dessert wine?

[Rachel Bovard]

Always. I have a wine for every course.

[Emily]

Go on.

[Rachel Bovard]

Usually if you're having pumpkin flavored desserts, my go to is tawny port. People are familiar with this. Port is a fortified wine. So be a little careful here.

[Emily]

Here.

[Rachel Bovard]

Fortified wine usually means it's made with a little bit of brandy. So the alcohol content tends to be a little bit higher, closer to 20%. But Sauterne is a sweet wine out of France as a dessert wine. Also delicious. Lower, you know, more standard wine alcohol content. So like 12%, 13%. But those two are wonderful.

[Emily]

Good to know. And show us your Senate wine glass and explain to us why you have a U.S. senate wine glass.

[Rachel Bovard]

Right. Well, one, one, because I'm recording this from my office. And these are the, you know, why wouldn't you have standard office wine glasses? And these are.

[Emily]

It would be rude not to.

[Rachel Bovard]

Yeah. But actually they were given to me as a gift from someone who used to work for me in the Senate. And I was like, wow, totally on brand. And the funny thing is she was leaving the Senate to go become a.

[Inez Stepman]

Nun, so she wasn't gonna need the.

[Emily]

Senate wine glass anymore.

[Inez Stepman]

No.

[Rachel Bovard]

People joked that I was such a terrible boss that she became a nun to get away from you.

[Emily]

So, I mean, sounds like a really funny joke that is not rooted at all in reality. Okay, Ness. And as correct me if I'm wrong, I always have looked at you as somebody with a particular affinity for cocktails. And I feel like you maybe this is because you have your own twist on the apparel, and I always associate that with you.

[Inez Stepman]

But what is your Campari? So that was the twist, by the way. It was. The grand twist was just that I preferred Campari and the kind of spritz.

[Emily]

Spoiler alert. And it is actually lovely. I've had it with Inez before. But what's your. What's your cocktail menu look like on Thanksgiving?

[Inez Stepman]

Well, my parents don't like cocktails, so I. We don't really. We don't really do cocktails for Thanksgiving. We do kind of what Rachel did, but with much less sophistication. We just have. We start with champagne, and then there's half a table that likes red wine. So we usually do a pinot, like a nice Pinot. And then there's another. There's a white wine, usually to follow up with the champagne for the half of the table who likes white wine. And I'm not a big white wine person, so I don't even know what that is because they choose it. But yeah. So we do wine on Thanksgiving. And actually it's interesting. You think I'm like a cocktail. I think it's just because we overlapped in D.C. in that height of the cocktail era, the cocktail boom. I totally. I totally have a recommendation if I were to do cocktails for Thanksgiving.

[Emily]

Yeah, please. And it is because what I will say, you also do know, like, you do care about. About your cocktails. Like, you think about them. You're drinking banana liqueur at 5pm yeah.

[Inez Stepman]

Yeah. My husband actually. So I usually cook, and if we're gonna have cocktails, then he makes cocktails most of the time. So I'm really.

[Emily]

But he makes you cook? He's like, yes, please, enough of your talking. Get in the kitchen.

[Inez Stepman]

Exactly. No. So I actually do have a recommendation for this, and it's perfectly aligned with that spike in. In time. Like, we know that the hipsters, as mockable as they were, made the best cockt.

[Emily]

They really.

[Inez Stepman]

They made it into like an art which is easy to mock and talk about the. The handlebar mustache or whatever. That being said, when a guy with a handlebar mustache made you a cocktail, it was usually really.

[Rachel Bovard]

Aesthetics were off the chart.

[Emily]

I trusted that institution. I trusted that institution.

[Rachel Bovard]

Yeah.

[Inez Stepman]

So this is a perfect. Actually a perfect cocktail to recommend for Thanksgiving. I think if especially we have a big, big table. We have a small family. So this. This is not really for us. But like, it would be perfect if you had a big table. You want to make something ahead of time, like a punch and it's called the flannel shirt for like, obviously it came from that hipsters here. Actually, I have a friend who is far and away the best cocktail mixer that. That I know in private life. It's like his thing. He makes these incredible cocktails. I asked him what would be good? Good that looks innocent enough at a child's first birthday party in a park. Oh, I heard about this, this cocktail recipe and it's called the flannel shirt. It's got scotch, it has about an equal part of apple cider. It has a Verna amaro in it, fresh lemon juice, brown sugar, simple syrup, which is really easy to make. I mean, really being okay at cocktails is just being willing to make different kinds of simple syrups for your. I mean, that's like 90% of the. And half a teaspoon of allspice dram, which you should totally buy for the holidays because it'll work with everything. It's like a very Christmy thing. And then two dashes of bitters. So this is something that should be watered down. You can make it in bulk in a batch ahead of time. And then you put a bunch of ice in it. And it is a very fall like taste because the scotch has a little bit of smokiness. There's a little bit of bitter, lemon, brown sugar flavors. And then of course that like, basically that spice blend that is the crossover between fall and Christmas. Right. So a little bit of like allspice and everything in it. I thought it would work real well. If you have, especially if you have a table with 10 or 12 people at it and you don't want to be mixing drinks for people. You just make this in advance. You can throw it in a big punch bowl, you know, put it, put a few ice cubes in it. If you feel really fancy, you could freeze things in the ice cubes. I am not an Instagram, am Pinterest perfectionist. So that is. I would never go the extra mile for. But if you are, you could do that.

[Emily]

Okay, so this actually sounds really good. And the banana liqueur. Now this isn't an Old Fashioned, you tell me.

[Inez Stepman]

Oh, yeah. So this is another Jarrett concoction that he drank at a bar one time and was tried to replicate at home. But yes, it's just an Old Fashioned, meaning it is bourbon or rye, depending what you like. But I think for this drink, bourbon, Bourbon. And then you put in some kind of sweetener. Usually in. In your Old Fashioned, it's either muddled brown sugar or a sugar cube or something like that. Instead of doing that, you put this sweet banana liqueur in it. A little bit of that, not too much. And then you balance it with bitters and the same way you would with an Old Fashioned. So it's like a banana Old Fashioned.

[Rachel Bovard]

I Like banana flavored everything.

[Inez Stepman]

I like, like, banana flavored candy, banana flavored ice cream. I love, like, banana. Oh, man. Like, just baked banana, really good banana bread, everything with banana.

[Emily]

So the banana milkshake at Potbelly. It's so funny to me that you just also. The banana runts are the best. But it's funny to me you just said old fashioned. So it's, you know, either a bourbon or whiskey. And in my head. Or no, you said bourbon or rye. Yes. And in my head I'm like, that's hilarious. Because in Wisconsin, you get a big old plastic liter of Canadian whiskey and you pour that in a water glass, you put a whole bunch of Sprite in it, you're halfway to a great cocktail. One of my favorite things about Thanksgiving actually is going to one of the local bars with my friend.

[Rachel Bovard]

That sounds very upstate New York to you, by the way.

[Emily]

Well, you know, this is the crossover between, like, Buffalo, Milwaukee, Upper Peninsula. It's all similar accents. Yeah.

[Inez Stepman]

It's like I didn't realize until, you know, that Albion seed book and then the different tribes of America and. And the different, like, split up in a lot of those maps. The Midwest includes parts of New York, which I never understood. I'd only been to New York City and then I spent more time neck of the woods. Like, actually there is, like, this is first of all the tail end of the rust belt, which I didn't from.

[Rachel Bovard]

Western New York, too. So it's like, really bad in Buffalo.

[Inez Stepman]

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Rachel Bovard]

That I have to explain that to people when I go, you're from New York. And I say upstate, and they're like, Westchester. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.

[Emily]

Not quite upstate. Yes. Yes. Okay, so before we leave the Thanksgiving food and drink segment behind, what do you guys have for us food wise? And as I'm going to go backwards this time based on starting with Rachel first time around, because you invoked kindergarten rules earlier in the show and how we should all be better kindergarteners as stewards of this great country. So. So what food recommendations? What is it? What's your favorite food tradition on Thanksgiving? Share with us, Inez.

[Inez Stepman]

My mom is super traditional, and my mom is not letting go of the wheel of Thanksgiving. She is in it to win it, and my mom is not letting go. But my mom read this pilgrim's Thanksgiving book, I don't know, 20 years ago. And so we are condemned in some way, but also so blessed to repeat what's in the Pilgrim's book every single year. So, of course, there is the turkey. There's a green bean dish. There is, you know, the mashed potatoes. Just traditional Thanksgiving things. And that's all good. It's, you know, my, my dad and I have expressed on occasion that perhaps a nice game hen would be. Be a good alternative or do both. But, but no, I mean, it is, it is a nice thing about the holiday that it's. My mom is very careful to try to keep exactly that American tradition of Thanksgiving and try to like, really go back to the pilgrims. And she uses recipes from this book that was apparently.

[Emily]

Wow.

[Inez Stepman]

Recipe books from the 1700s. So it's, it's, it's very good and it's very traditional. It's really nice. It's a marker for the year. That being said, I, I have a tip that I'm going to try to do this year for after, for the leftovers, because while it's very nice to have this tradition, there aren't enough of us to finish the big turkey. And then my mother jams the leftovers down all of our throats for the next three. Three days. And by that time I have really ended my love affair with turkey. So I did this recipe with chicken and I thought it was amazing. I think it would be amazing with, with turkey as well. And that is to put cranberries again, this, this kind of crossover period between fall and the Christmas season transitions nicely. Cranberries, a little bit of balsamic vinegar, rosemary, thyme, honey, salt and pepper. Make that into basically like, like a little mix that you can pour over when you bake the. Either the chicken or when you're in this case where you're just heating up pieces of turkey in the, in the oven. You pour that over and then right before it's done, throw on some crumble, groat cheese and let it melt. So you have like cranberries, honey, goat cheese. I think I'm going to try to do that with the leftovers because as I'm condemned to eat them, I think that's going to be like a really tasty way to eat them.

[Emily]

That sounds incredibly good. I bet you could.

[Inez Stepman]

Full disclosure, I've only done this with chicken, but it was delicious bovard.

[Emily]

What about you?

[Rachel Bovard]

Well, to pick up on your baseless allegation that I have no immigrant ties, my mother is actually in 1492.

[Emily]

Okay, go on.

[Rachel Bovard]

Well, my mom's actually second generation Sicilian and we just like never ate traditional Thanksgiving food growing up. Like, I don't even like turkey, which is like straight up ate Italian and Sicilian food like like eggplant parm, ziti, caponata, a lot of fish. Like, that is what we ate. And I sort of thought that was completely normal for a long time. And now I'm in this situation where I married a D.C. native who is a complete Thanksgiving normie.

[Emily]

Oh, yeah.

[Rachel Bovard]

And is, like, very into turkey and stuffing and sweet potatoes, and I just. It is like, punishment.

[Emily]

And so we.

[Rachel Bovard]

We have this, like, food standoff where, you know, he cooks what he's going to have and I cook a bunch of other stuff, and we host Thanksgiving and we just see what people want to eat. We end up with a ton of food, but, like, dang, I really hate turkey.

[Emily]

Okay.

[Rachel Bovard]

Does.

[Emily]

Does your husband fry the turkey? Is he into that? I feel like the DC Area is very big on the frying of the turkey.

[Rachel Bovard]

Oh, yeah, he's.

[Inez Stepman]

He lives. People lost frying turkeys and just like, what's it over under.

[Emily]

It's a little. Go ahead, Rachel.

[Rachel Bovard]

Yeah, I. I sort of let him handle it. He. I make him do it outside.

[Emily]

So. Yeah, that's. I think that's a good way to do it. That's a good way to do it. It's kind of nice to be out there with like, a cold beer, frying the turkey in the crisp fall air. I think that's a good thing to do.

[Rachel Bovard]

Yeah. He's big into, like, the Brussels sprouts, the sweet potatoes, all that stuff. And I just really. It's not my jam, so, you know, know, it's the interesting thing. We'll see which allegiance our. Our children end up having.

[Emily]

Yes. And I, I bet it's going to be with your husband because, I mean, there's just something about good American Thanksgiving food once a year that feels. Makes you feel like you're part of a lovely community, unlike your anti assimilation Italian food tradition, which I find to be a personal affront. I will add, though, I am, like, just. I jealously guard Thanksgiving traditions. It's the same thing with Christmas. I just need things to be seasonal. I need things to be as they should, the kind of platonic ideal of. Of Thanksgiving and Christmas. So I come down on the side of Inez's mom hard on all of these questions. Okay, before we move on, any final food recommendations or ideas or thoughts and music musings?

[Inez Stepman]

Only that my daughter is going to be actually eating food for the first time. She was around giving, but she was a potato, and I'm really excited to see what she like.

[Rachel Bovard]

She's.

[Inez Stepman]

She's. She loves all food at this point. She's very, like, ecumenical, but I think it's going to be a holiday that she's going to be really excited about because she's, she's gonna love, she's gonna love all the turkey and the things that we're sick of and everything else. Like, she's gonna love it because it's her first time, so.

[Emily]

Well, I love that.

[Inez Stepman]

Yeah.

[Rachel Bovard]

I'm just gonna put in a plug for caponata. It's like a sweet, savory, eggplant vegetable dish. I'm just saying, if you don't like stuffing, try caponata. You might be totally converted.

[Emily]

I mean, I'm sure I would love it. It's really nothing better than Italian food as far as I'm concerned. But there is a time and a place, Rachel, and that time and place is just about any time except for Thanksgiving. Yes. All right. Now, before we wrap up today's special holiday edition, I do just want to acknowledge that the group chat chat has endured a difficult three or so months now as we approach the holiday season. And remarkably, we are all here. The conservative movement itself seems to be teetering on the brink. But without getting into any of that, I do just want to give a little bit of my pitch for discarding with this bizarre conventional wisdom or perceived conventional wisdom that you should not talk about politics or religion at the table over the holiday holidays. You guys will probably disagree with me. I don't know. We'll see. The reason I say that is you should never, ever be needlessly provocative or polemical, of course, at Thanksgiving. But as these topics occur naturally, which they do in the course of conversation, if you are around the people who you love and respect and trust, meaning your close friends and family, and you can't have a, a decent, you can't power through, through a conversation that arrived naturally at a point about the things that matter most to us in life, which in many cases is faith, or in some cases, it is what people's fundamental values are, as Jimmy Kimmel's wife put it like a month ago when she said she just can't with her Trump family, because it is a matter of fundamental values. Well, it is. And if it's so fundamental, you should be able to with the people you love and trust the most, most practice your empathy, compassion, and respect. And I feel like that's actually what's getting lost. It's not that, you know, what's actually getting lost in all of this is that people are just becoming way more reflexive. They're taking what happens with the algorithm on social media and bringing it into in person conversations where we've been conditioned and programmed by these algorithms to jump to extreme emotions, because that's what the algorithm priority prizes to say things which the algorithm also prizes. You don't win unless you get. Unless you post at all. And so I feel like that's what's really being lost. It's not just, you know, it's not just that I agree you shouldn't be polemical or provocative on these issues, but I feel like when these conversations naturally arise, you know, you shouldn't do the whole, oh, well, we don't talk about politics and religion. You actually should practice, like, being empathetic. If there's a natural point in conversation that brings you to some of these important fundamental questions. What do you think, Bovard? Am I crazy?

[Rachel Bovard]

No. And it's something, you know, that I try very hard and I think I try to be very intentional about, you know, recognizing that I work in a very specific, you know, set of ideas and set of ideologies, and it can become an echo chamber. And so I work very hard to make sure I still prioritize relationships with people that don't agree with me, whether that be in my family, but also friend group. You know, my. One of my best friends in the world, who was my roommate for a long time, is completely on the other side of the aisle on these questions. We have political divisions in my own family, and I think, you know, when I watch these conversations, we have become disoriented by disagreement, I think, because we. It's naturally uncomfortable for some people, but I think what we let seep into these, you know, personal conversations is. And what fails us is when we allow. Allow contempt to come in. Right? It's one thing to disagree, and you can disagree vehemently and you can disagree strongly, but it's when you start to revile the other person and you have contempt for them, and that replaces curiosity about why they believe what they believe. It replaces the enjoyment that you have of the many other things that define people other than their politics. And I think that's when the humanity seeps out of, of these disagreements. So I do think, you know, I don't shy away from these conversations. They don't. They're not always comfortable. But I do think it's, you know, again, going back to, like, rebuilding trust and, and all of this. It's something that, you know, my family really works hard at, and it goes back to something Mother Teresa said. Right. We can't Forget that we belong to each other. And at the end of the day, that's what makes, you know, that's a fundamental virtue of America, is remembering that we belong to each other. And that has to seep back into our discourse, too.

[Emily]

Inez, do you hate Mother Teresa? Do you disagree with Mother Teresa? Do you dare?

[Rachel Bovard]

The Catholic in me is coming out.

[Inez Stepman]

I. I think that politics and faith are probably some of the only interesting topics.

[Emily]

That's right.

[Inez Stepman]

I agree. Now, if you're talking about, like, you know, who's up In Ohio, District 4, no, of course, those are easily avoided. But when you are talking about your perception of truth, your perception of morality, of ethics, of, you know, your view of the world, and you want to cabin that. I mean, I. I think you can do it, if you must, to save a relationship, but the relationship is not what it would be. If you have to do that. It necessarily can't be a deeper relationship if you can't share what you think about the world in some such a fundamental way. So that, you know, that question. I'm definitely on the yes, pro talking about politics and religion at the dinner table. And of course, you have to be able to do that without being needlessly contemptuous, as Rachel said.

[Rachel Bovard]

Yeah, I think there is a line, too. You don't let yourself be bullied. And I don't tolerate that from other people.

[Inez Stepman]

Right. I mean, there are a lot of people in the world who want to talk politics but can't handle talking politics. Politics. This.

[Emily]

This is so true.

[Inez Stepman]

This has been a. A common thread, especially among some of my left friends. Right. Is.

[Emily]

Is.

[Inez Stepman]

I am happy to talk politics, but not everybody. Everyone wants to talk politics until someone actually fundamentally disagrees with them. But that leads me to my second point, which is that actually these divides are very real and they have consequences. So it's not just a, you know, mix up of intellectual views. It's not just like, happy, fun time. We're all, like, joshing together and bouncing ideas off the wall. That can be the vibe of a conversation or a dinner. But that's not always the case. Obviously. Ultimately, we live in a democracy. These ideas have consequences. It's even more true when you're talking about people like us who are involved in politics. What, you know, in some small way, what we say, like, does go out to people, so we have even more responsibility in that sense.

[Emily]

And I think.

[Inez Stepman]

I think loyalty is a very, very both important and very difficult concept to navigate. We all know, for example, people in what we might call the establishment of Washington D.C. who cannot criticize certain. Like what they can say and criticize starts to shrink and shrink and shrink because they know everybody involved in every single debate. And at some point you become so true say anything about without offending somebody that you know personally. And that's a real problem. I think it's happening in the new right as well. It's happening in the new. A new establishment, as it were. And that's something that is difficult to navigate. Loyalty has two poles of, I think two poles of traps on each side, right. And I'm going to use the most extreme examples. On the one hand, you have ideologies above personal loyalty to such an extent that you become the infamous kid Pavlick, right, Who reported his parents. It was probably apocryphal story that Stalin was fond of the kid who reports his parents in the cultural Revolution for being insufficiently committed to the revolution. And this is obviously monstrous. And this is what we've seen time and time again as our politics have heated up in America, where you have have people who were reporting their family members for being a January 6, not even knowing if they had actually broken the law, but just merely being at that rally outside the Capitol, you had people reporting their family members, right? So there's obviously this extreme. Which is morally condemnable in. On the other extreme, I would say that like it's Third Worldist, right? When you have too much loyalty to the clan or to the particular people that you know and there's no. No like thread of ideology, ideological principle that runs through anything that you believe and you just have loyalty to the people who are loyal to you. Like that is. I mean, that's Afghanistan, right. So there, there are dangers there.

[Emily]

I thought you. Did you say Minneapolis. You said Afghanistan. Too hot. Too hot for social.

[Inez Stepman]

Yeah, that's obviously ethnic clan, but I think it can become true in a personal sense as well. So I mean, I think these questions are really difficult to navigate. I think they do matter. I the way that I've. And I of not laying out myself at all as an example on this. I think I've struggled with it myself, but I have come down on the side of criticizing in specificity ideas rather than. I do not like the dynamic of abjuring people in part because I think those personal relationships and loyalties are often the peg that brings people back from the most extreme ideological positions. When you have to look somebody that you care about in the eye eye and defend those extreme ideological positions. Oftentimes that is a moderating factor for a lot of people. And so, I mean, I don't know. I think it's a very difficult thing. I've been thinking about a lot. I think it's something that we are all navigating, but that's where I've come down on it. I think we need to be. We can be very, very clear and vociferous on ideas without creating this dynamic where everybody's pointing at each other and trying to us out on which side of the line they are. We can leave that to people's consciences. I think that's.

[Emily]

That is very, very well said. I appreciate both of you just in general, I guess I have to say that here on the Thanksgiving episode. Grateful for both of you. But you know what? Especially grateful for both of you in all seriousness, over the last few months, after, of course, what happened to Charlie Kirk, broad daylight assassination on the campus of Utah Valley University in the midst of practice practicing political speech. And it's been a difficult time for a lot of people on the right. And I appreciate both of you very much. Your. Your intellect, your humor and your depth. So, gosh, that was. I don't feel right about that. That was too nice.

[Rachel Bovard]

Yeah, we met. We. We care about your development as a youth.

[Emily]

Thank you.

[Inez Stepman]

We're gonna build one of those centers, you know, that the left was always built building. Like have you. If you've read Mao. Maoing the flat catchers.

[Emily]

Yes.

[Inez Stepman]

You're gonna build Emily a youth center. Have her play some midnight basketball.

[Emily]

Yeah, there's like streets. Yep, yep. Yeah. And now it's my nap time, so. Thank you guys. Seriously. Rachel Bovard, VP over at Conservative Partners Partnership Institute and stepman over at the Independent Women's Forum. Appreciate you guys very much.

[Inez Stepman]

Appreciate you, Emily.

[Emily]

Oh, that was so beautiful. Okay, all right. Before I get too sappy, I'll have to do my liqu Gold impression. Recently I learned about Colostrum. It's the very first milk. It's known, of course, as liquid gold that babies receive. I hope you're all grateful for that, by the way, since it's the Thanksgiving episode that babies receive from their mothers after birth. Packed with proteins, natural growth factors, antimicrobial peptides that work to enhance your immune response, reduce inflammation, repair and balance gut lining, reduce bloating, and make your hair and skin look amazing. Today's sponsor, Cowboy Colostrum, offers the highest cow colostrum available in the US 100% made in America from 100% American grass fed cows. They don't over process or strip their colostrum leaving it whole, full fat and high protein for ultimate nutrient density. It is the highest quality bovine colostrum you can buy. And Cowboy is easy to drink, made with delicious natural ingredients and no artificial flavors. You just have to add a 3 gram scoop of either their chocolate, Madagascar vanilla or strawberry into your coffee or smoothie. And for a limited time, our list was get up to 25 off their entire order. You just head to cowboycolostrum.com afterparty and use code AFTERPARTY at checkout. That's 25 off when you use code [e-mail] AFTERPARTY and after you purchase, they're going to ask you where you heard about them. So please support our show and tell them our show sent you.

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[Emily]

Okay, before we wrap up this special holiday edition of afterparty, I just get a lot of emails. Genuinely, I kind of joked about this at the beginning, but if there's, if there's a category of email that I get most from all of you over@emilyevilmaycare media.com I do actually get a lot of questions about what it's like talking to so many people who disagree with you because you've seen this on our show. You know, we of my friends, Ryan Grimm, Matt Taibbi, Anna Kasparian, people on the left coming through and then also people on the right coming through. My friends on the right coming through. And I disagree with my friends on the left and the right about plenty. I'm of course more on the right. But we have a lot of really deep disagreements and I think it actually makes for very rich friendships. So before I let you go, go. Because I do really believe in having these conversations at Thanksgiving when they occur naturally. I don't believe in being provocative or polemical and interrupting, like, pleasant conversations about your family, catching up on someone's soccer tryouts or whatever else with Zora is a jihadist, to quote Eli Stefanik. But I do think you can have very rich, deep relationships, even richer and deeper relationships with people, if you're willing to kind of push through. And my advice, since I get asked, this is not unsolicited, since I get asked, is to come at every conversation with abject humility. People are just as smart as you are. They are. They're just, in most cases, as decent as you are. They want to be good again. We know there are exceptions to this, but nobody sees themselves as the villain. Very few people do. There are a couple people who do genuinely see themselves as the villain in a given story or plot, but most people don't. Most people don't see themselves that way. Most people aren't actively trying to do bad. People have their own reasons for coming to the beliefs that they have. And, you know, I think a lot of them are wrong, of course, and you probably think a lot of what I say is wrong and that's okay. But in these conversations, this is not a concerted effort, but I found myself just asking questions a lot. I always say the reason I'm in journalism is because I have more questions than answers, which is frustrating sometimes when people say, well, why don't you do this? Condemn that. I'm honestly more curious about why people think X, Y or Z. And I'd rather ask questions and try to understand where other people are coming from. And I think that's something that comes from. From I heard Nick Gillespie over at Reason use this term one time, epistemological humility. Just always having. Being humbled by people, other people's opinions and experiences and beliefs. And so I just really recommend asking questions. You know, when you're tempted to make a statement, I recommend pushing yourself to ask a question. Why do you think that? Where did you hear that? Why did you go to this news source? What do you think is good about this news source? Okay, what about this counterpoint? Isn't this an interesting thought? What would you say to this? Just. Just asking questions, I find is a great way to stir up conversation, go in interesting directions. And that's one of. I just think that's one of the most helpful and interesting ways to have conversation. The other thing is don't take yourself too seriously. Have a, a little bit of humor about all of it. And that comes with honestly humility. But you know, when you start being, being so self serious like you have all the answers, that's where you start to I think, build this brick wall between yourself and another person. So really the best like practical advice I can give people is just to ask questions and then that kind of abstract advice is to have some humility and some, you know, sprinkle some self deprecating humor but humor into things overall practically. I just like the idea of saying ask questions, questions, questions. So thankful to all of you. Thinking certainly about Charlie Kirk, his family and his friends and his colleagues on this Thanksgiving, everybody who was so deeply affected and traumatized by what happened to the students who had to witness that at Utah Valley University. I know this has been a difficult couple of months and will be a very difficult day, especially if you are at the Kirk Thanksgiving dinner. God bless you guys. Guys, thank you so much. We'll see you back here with more afterparty soon.

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