Maya Rupert: The Inauthenticity of Authenticity

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Maya Rupert: The Inauthenticity of Authenticity"

Podcast: Humans
Host: Hank Green
Guest: Maya Rupert
Date: August 6, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the layered concept of "authenticity"—how we understand it, use it, and misapply it online, in politics, and throughout culture. Drawing from Maya Rupert's new book, The Real Ones, Hank Green and Maya discuss privilege, representation, and the restrictions placed on so-called authenticity for people outside cultural defaults. They explore the term's slippery meaning, its consequences for politics and pop culture, and its connections to identity, race, and social movements.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Authenticity: More Than Meets the Eye

• Hank’s Opening Reflection (00:08–02:57):
  • Authenticity is a buzzword of the creator Internet, often conflated with credibility.
  • “I am not authentic because authenticity is not something I contain. It's something other people feel when they look at me.” (Hank, 01:22)
  • For marginalized creators, performing authenticity is much more laborious and fraught than for those who fit social defaults.
  • “I'm out here, a six foot tall man with a flat accent...it’s a heck of a lot less work for me than it is for other folks.” (Hank, 02:31)

2. Privilege, Visibility, and the Cost of Authenticity

• Privilege as Easier Authenticity (03:11–04:58):

  • The work of "appearing authentic" varies immensely depending on identity.
  • “Acknowledging that something can be easier is not acknowledging that it is the easiest thing in the world or that it comes with no effort.” (Maya, 03:19)
  • Privilege creates “feedback loops” in which normativity is rewarded—often invisibly.

• Science Communication Example (04:09–05:01):

  • Visual cues impact perceived credibility; being too "average" is penalized, but conventional attractiveness or distinctiveness are rewarded.

3. Authenticity in Politics: Vague, Biased, and Exclusionary

• Defining Political Authenticity (05:56–10:02):

  • Authenticity in politics is undefined, allowing bias to permeate assessments of candidates.
  • “Bill Clinton got called authentic even by people who thought he was dishonest. Donald Trump gets called authentic even by people who think he's dishonest.” (Maya, 07:04)
  • What counts as "authentic" differs radically depending on the candidate’s identity and perceived social proximity; authenticity is often conflated with "not being careful."

• Double Standards and Ideological 'Lanes' (10:02–15:53):

  • Candidates like Hillary Clinton are punished for both being “scripted” and showing emotion.
  • Authenticity is “not something that is equally available to everyone ... we are all being held to very different standards.” (Maya, 10:58)
  • Socially “default” individuals move with ease through many roles, while marginalized people are stuck with narrow, heavily policed lanes of acceptability.

4. Lanes, Representation, and Creative Constraints

• What Are 'Lanes'? (11:59–14:31):

  • Lanes are the predefined roles or narratives allowed for people based on social expectations.
  • “I have no problem seeing you [Hank] as all these things…there's no barrier that has been raised by the presence of this man's face.” (Maya, 14:24)

• Media Representation & Unequal Scrutiny (15:53–19:24):

  • Creators of color face higher scrutiny, pressure to fully represent their communities, and are critiqued more than their white counterparts.
  • “I'd rather an all white cast that grapples with, huh, that is interesting that none of us ever date interracially…” (Maya, 20:29)

• The ‘Burden’ of Diversity Initiatives (16:48–19:24):

  • Diversity is framed as a charitable act (“doing the right thing”), when it actually leads to richer, better stories: “We're telling better stories.” (Maya, 17:19)

5. Icons, Perfection, and the 'Effortless' Myth

• Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Racialized Lanes (22:53–29:58):
  • Beyoncé’s lane is “goddess”—revered but dehumanizing, requiring perfection and concealment of effort.
  • “Deification is a very pretty version, but it's still dehumanization.” (Maya, 25:44)
  • “If you make a mistake, if you're silly...that would destroy Beyonce in a way that it could contribute to someone else.” (Maya, 25:57)
  • For white women like Taylor Swift, the “girl next door” lane allows visible vulnerability and growth.

6. The Myth That Effort Kills Authenticity

• Trying Is 'Inauthentic'? (29:58–31:10):
  • Society penalizes visible “effort,” treating it as a violation of authenticity.
  • “If you have to try to be it, it's not who you naturally are. And that's not true.” (Maya, 30:37)
  • This myth discourages potential political candidates and creative voices who are not already “naturally” in the right place or mode.

7. Rewriting the Stories: New Frameworks and Possibilities

• Building New Stories (31:10–33:06):
  • “The purpose of building new stories is to build a whole new story. Not to take the existing box and layer on top of it.” (Maya, 31:53)
  • Cultural and political frameworks are being reassessed, offering an opportunity to create more inclusive, resonant narratives.

8. Communicating Complexity in Politics

• Complicated Stories vs. Simple Enemies (36:10–38:08):
  • “People vote on ideas and they vote on...something that you can do to make life better for me.” (Maya, 36:17)
  • Oversimplification (e.g., “corporate greed is the enemy”) doesn't address underlying, complex realities, but complexity remains hard to convey.

9. The Internet, Democratic Messaging, and Boundaries

• Online Outrage and Political Strategy (39:07–44:32):
  • Democrats may shy from controversy, trying not just to win but to be universally liked.
  • “If you only ever say things that people agree with...you're not going to get any attention.” (Hank, 38:55)
  • Collapse of boundaries between activist, academic, and electoral spaces due to online feedback loops muddles effective political messaging.

10. Identity, Reward, and the Limits of Systemic Change

• Navigating or Changing the System (47:15–54:08):
  • Marginalized individuals are rewarded for surviving inequitable systems quietly—not for organizing to change them.
  • “You are rewarded for just dealing with it...whereas a bunch of individuals getting together...it's like, no, no, no, that's very threatening and scary and radicalizing.” (Hank, 47:47)

11. Evolved Bias, Inclusion, and the Value of Diversity

• In-group/Out-group Dynamics (55:02–56:32):

  • Human capacity to sort “us” and “them” is powerful and easily exploitable.
  • “The technology that brought us a whole new level of human cooperation was figuring out how to define our group much more inclusively...” (Hank, 55:02)

• Diversity as Pragmatic Strength (55:48–56:34):

  • Diversity is not just an ethical imperative but an evolutionary and creative advantage.

12. Discussing Privilege and Evolving Public Discourse

• Privilege in Everyday Life (57:31–59:22):

  • Maya illustrates privilege using being left-handed as a low-stakes analogy, showing how systems are unintentionally exclusionary.

• The Difficulty of Nuanced Public Conversations (59:22–63:04):

  • Fear of social blowback and lack of public mechanisms for acknowledging personal growth stifle conversation.
  • “We expect people to...evolve to get past all of that, but then obscure the path behind them, to pretend that they always have.” (Maya, 61:14)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Authenticity is not something I contain, it's something other people feel when they look at me." — Hank Green (01:22)
• “Acknowledging that something can be easier is not acknowledging that it is the easiest thing in the world or that it comes with no effort.” — Maya Rupert (03:19)
• "Deification is a very pretty version, but it's still dehumanization." — Maya Rupert (25:44)
• “I hate that about authenticity, that we treat effort as though it's anathema to authenticity.” — Maya Rupert (30:37)
• “The purpose of building new stories is to build a whole new story. Not to take the existing box and layer on top of it.” — Maya Rupert (31:53)
• "If you only ever say things that people agree with, you're only going to say the same things as everyone else. It's not going to sound interesting. You're not going to get any attention." — Hank Green (38:55)
• “Diversity is our strength became a buzzword because that's the good thing to do. But it's also the smarter, the safer.” — Maya Rupert (55:48)

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Important Timestamps & Topics

| Timestamp | Segment Description | |-------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:08–02:57 | Hank’s opening meditation on authenticity and its complicated nature on the Internet | | 05:56–10:58 | Maya unpacks authenticity in politics; privilege and 'vibes' | | 15:53–19:24 | Entertainment industry, representation fatigue, and the myth of “doing the right thing” | | 22:53–29:58 | Beyoncé vs. Taylor Swift: public personas, deification, and racialized restrictions | | 31:10–33:06 | Rewriting cultural stories, building new frameworks | | 39:07–44:32 | Political caution, online outrage, and activist-politician boundaries | | 47:15–54:08 | Navigating systems vs. changing them; praise for survival vs. threat of organizing | | 55:02–56:34 | Human evolution, inclusion, and why diversity is a pragmatic strength | | 57:31–59:22 | Privilege as a framework: the left-handedness analogy | | 59:22–63:04 | Challenges of nuanced public conversation; accountability and forgiveness | | 63:17–64:37 | Maya’s final advice: even what seems inevitable often once felt impossible |

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Episode Takeaways

• Authenticity is relational and socially constructed; it’s not about an inherent essence, but about how legible and comfortable one’s persona is to others—often shaped by bias and privilege.
• Narrow "lanes" for marginalized identities restrict opportunities for both creative and political expression.
• The myth that effort is antithetical to authenticity does real harm, discouraging many from striving for public lives.
• Diversity initiatives must be reconceived as essential to better storytelling and stronger societies—not as charity or self-sacrifice.
• Building a more equitable culture and politics requires telling more complicated, honest stories, and finding mechanisms for public learning and forgiveness.
• Even small steps forward are built on long histories of skepticism and struggle—progress often feels impossible until it becomes inevitable.

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For further insight and practical wisdom on these themes, Maya Rupert’s The Real Ones and this conversation offer a nuanced, deeply engaging exploration of how we might build a more authentic and equitable society.

Transcript

[A]

This is humans, Humans, humans, humans, humans, humans.

[B]

I'm Hank Green. One of the main buzzwords of the creator driven Internet has been authenticity. People don't succeed by being otherworldly or remarkable. They succeed by being just exactly themselves and letting people see the cracks and the wrinkles and the charm and the humanity. I am often called authentic and I often refer to my behavior online as authentic authentic or attempting authenticity. But am I authentic? I have been, I think, understandably fascinated with this because it's just such a big part of how everyone talks about the career that I enjoy having and have been thrust into. And this has felt especially important as the Internet has become sort of a less healthy social environment. One thing that I've been saying a lot lately is that we have made the completely understandable mistake of confusing authenticity for credibility. They are not the same thing, but they sound like the same thing to our brains. But someone can authentically believe completely made up things, and they do all the time. But it goes deeper than this. Which is why I was so excited when I first got a copy of Maya Rupert's the Real Ones. This book unlocked something extremely important for I am not authentic because authenticity is not something I contain, it's something other people feel when they look at me. Authenticity really is simply whether all the little tiny components of my vibe are align legibly for the person perceiving me. Whether I am authentically being myself does not actually matter that much to my authenticity. What we mean when we say authenticity is not what is in me, it is what is in the person perceiving me. It is just like fame in the eye of the beholder. Authenticity, I am coming to understand, is largely about whether or not some bit of me pops out as distracting or unpleasant or confusing to the person doing the viewing or Maya Rupert's entire book is about this and it has answered a lot of questions for me that I have had as I have moved through my career about why those distractions or misalignments pop up and all the reasons why they pop up more often when it comes to people who are not immediately categorized in folks minds as being default because of their race or gender or other non default attribute. I'm out here, a six foot tall man with a flat accent and a wife working hard to appear authentic on the Internet. And it's not no work, but it's a heck of a lot less work for me than it is for other folks. So of course I want to talk to Maya about that. But she is also a political strategist who has run a presidential campaign and has been a friend of mine for some reason for quite a while. And when I'm mad about politics, she's often the first person I text because she knows Gobs more than me about that stuff. So we will also be talking politics some. But before that, Maya Rupert, author of the Real Ones. Do you think I did a good job of describing authenticity?

[A]

You did a fantastic job of describing authenticity. First of all, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited for this conversation. Friend.

[B]

Who is this that keeps making noise?

[A]

Okay, this is Crispin does really seem

[B]

like a very affectionate cat.

[A]

This is my darling little girl who loves to be with me whenever I'm at my computer. But secondly, I loved the way you said you're trying really hard to be authentic on the Internet. And it's not no work, but it's a lot less work than it is for other people. That to me is. It is such a great working definition of privilege that I just had to call it out because I feel like this discussion, we get hung up so much on it is that acknowledging that something can be easier is not acknowledging that it is the easiest thing in the world or that it comes with no effort. And I just appreciated how you said that so much.

[B]

I think about this all the time because of course, famously, I don't not work hard famously. But the thing is that it's almost easier for me to work hard because I am rewarded more for it than I would be if I did not look exactly like a science guy. I was born with this whole situation going on.

[A]

It works.

[B]

Yeah. There's actually been research in science communication of this got sent to me by a fellow science communicator. And there are two things that work. There's conventionally attractive, and then there's weird looking. And he's weird looking. Like he is actually a weird looking looking guy and I am conventionally attractive. And like, the fact that the middle doesn't work is so amazing.

[A]

Perfect. Wow. That is a stark realization to come to.

[B]

There is science done on this where they show people people's faces and they're like, that guy looks like a credible scientist. That guy looks like a credible scientist. But the one in the middle doesn't. He looks like too much of a normal guy. He's an accountant. I don't know what to say.

[A]

So much for authenticity. Yeah.

[B]

Privilege is like a bunch of feedback loops that are completely invisible to us. We're going to get into it, but first I just have to say that there's a lot of pretty heartbreaking moments in your book, and I really appreciate you being super honest. This authenticity thing has stretched way beyond Internet personalities into a lot of conversation these days about the viability of political candidates, which, after running Julian Castro's campaign, I'm sure is why you felt like you had to write this book. But I remember conversations kind of about this stretching back to my childhood about, like, Bill Clinton on the saxophone and George W. Bush is the candidate you'd want to have a beer with. It's almost like the language of Internet celebrities has given us the language to discuss this thing, but not the perspective to actually understand what this thing really is. You've taken, I feel, like, another step, and you hit me with your thesis of authenticity in politics.

[A]

I love how you just put that, because that's the thing. Authenticity has been this kind of invisible background feature in politics for so long, and we didn't have the words to articulate what was so sort of dysfunctional about it. But I think what you just kind of described was it. It's a vibes only brand, but it is incredibly important in politics. It's like the first thing when you talk to candidates, it's one of the first things they're gonna get, is you're gonna need to come across as authentic. But we don't define it. And when we don't define it, all of our bias gets to seep in. So what I really wanted to explore with this was when we talk about political authenticity, we basically say it's like it is an absolute necessity. It's like the baseline. You have to be able to have it. But we also. As soon as you start trying to unpack what it is, it becomes very clear that it means kind of everything and therefore nothing. And so what it winds up doing is just reinforcing our own already existing idea about who is electable and who isn't. Right. Bill Clinton got called authentic even by people who thought he was dishonest.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Donald Trump gets called authentic even by people who think he's dishonest.

[B]

Oh, yeah. This is so fascinating. Like, the Trump authenticity thing is, like, you can't really be an authentic con man, Right? Because that's what a con man is. It's a person who is pretending to be someone who they are not.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And yet in people's minds, they're like, yeah, no, that guy is an authentic con man.

[A]

Right?

[B]

And I'm like, I don't know, like, what? Okay, so we need a different word for what we're talking about we need a different.

[A]

And that's it. We need a different word. We're clearly not talking about authenticity because when you ask people, okay, well then you obviously don't mean that he's honest. You don't think it's. That he's genuine. You don't think that the image he's putting forward as one of the people is, Is consistent with him also being the billionaire who sort of like jokingly opulent, like, what is it? And what it seems is that there's a swagger, there is a like an unscriptedness. He's willing to say what isn't politically shrewd. And that makes me think he must really believe what he's saying.

[B]

I like that your cat had to have a little word in there.

[A]

She feels very strongly about some of this. You'd be shocked. I think that what we wind up seeing is people getting essentially rewarded for not caring about the consequences of what they say. Certain people, it's because only certain people do not have to pay for the consequences of what they say. Right?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's like, really? It feels very right wing coded to me, or as if it was pretty right wing coded, where it's like, yeah, that thing where you don't have to be careful about what you say, but like you should be careful about what you say, especially if you have a lot of power. And that's like, oh, that's a left coded idea. It feels a little like a tremendous. Because I've talked to a lot of, you know, left wing candidates over the years. It feels like just like a tremendous set of friction. It's almost like you can't participate in the politics of authenticity if you are careful and you can't be left wing if you aren't.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Did I say that right?

[A]

You said that perfectly. Okay. You're describing this exact trap.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If we just say authentic when we mean not careful, when we mean being willing to just say whatever and then figure it out later. The people who are not going to feel comfortable doing that are going to be people for whom, you know, being casually hurtful about big groups of people, about entire communities isn't something that they're going to be able to do either because their own personal values, because it's politically unfeasible, whatever it is, if we just mean. What I want from a candidate is for them to speak extemporaneously without caring about consequence. Not only is that not a very meaningful thing to say, I don't think Most people really want it.

[B]

Well, they especially don't want it when it comes to critiquing anything close to the dominant social groups, anything close to the high status social groups. Hillary Clinton didn't get away with. Some small portion of this guy's audience is a basket of deplorables. Like not even a little like it was. It will never be forgotten as a political gaffe.

[A]

And what's interesting about it is Hillary Clinton was infamous for being told she was too scripted. She came across as inauthentic. But when she had a moment of what felt like one single moment, her genuinely just. This is what I think.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

She has been punished for it over like a decade. For a decade and over the top for what was said. And so the challenge I think we keep coming back to is that authenticity is not something that is equally available to everyone because we are all being held to very different standards. We are being asked for very different things when we're told to be authentic.

[B]

Yeah. And I focused on ideology there when I was talking about like, you know, some people want to be more careful. We should be more careful when we have more power. But that isn't the only thing going on here. There are authenticities that are available to some people that are not available to others because it raises a flag. It puts you in a whole separate lane if you start out with some non default identity in society. Also narrows down what the lanes are because if you are sort of immediately segmented into a lane, that might not be a good lane. You know, you don't get to define your own lane.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I'm saying lane a lot here. I was talking about earlier. My vibe is like, okay, I'm a science. I kind of look like a science communicator. And I ended up as a science communicator. At the same time I've been able to sort of embody a lot of lanes and really enjoy that and have pride in that. Entrepreneur and stand up comedian and you know, touring musician and novelist. They never felt like, like any of these lanes were not available to me because there's lots of people like me who are doing all of these things.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And also I just, you know, I'm so default. You talk about lanes in the book and it really gave me a good frame, but I'm not entirely. It's such a, it's a really useful thing, but it's a really abstract thing. Do you think you can help me understand what lanes are?

[A]

Sure, yeah. I think, I mean, we'll take the political Example again, but I think we should sort of extrapolate out from there. But I think very often when someone says, all right, imagine someone who's presidential, right? You can close your eyes and conjure an image. And with precious few exceptions, based on our historical examples, you are going to get a white man. You are going to get a white man who can be the principled war hero or the like young policy wonk or the like professor vibe. There are all of these different ways you can be a presidential white man. There are significantly fewer. If you want to be a presidential woman of any race, if you want to be a presidential person of color. Right? Our imaginations haven't expanded as much, and as a result, you have fewer lanes that are available. And when politics can just be so trope driven, you need to be able to be a person. You're the this kind of figure. And when there are such limited examples, you either are going to get shoehorned into something that feels unfamiliar to you and perform it, and then be subject to accusations of inauthenticity, or you're going to resist that but run the risk of sort of never being accessible to people, and you get this amorphous, I just can't get a feel for her. I don't know what she's about. And it's because I can't map her onto something I've seen 20 times already. And so that limits then how some candidates are able to run for office. But then I think when we go outside of that, looking at culture and the way people create, you are the perfect example for this conversation because you do so many things and you do them well, but you also do them credibly. And the credibly part has to do with the fact that I have no problem seeing you.

[B]

I would have changed that word.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Because for me, credibly is like, I try really hard to get stuff right. I'll use the word legibly.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

I do it in a way where people are like that makes sense immediately.

[A]

That's exactly the right word. Yes.

[B]

There's no barrier that has been raised by the presence of this man's face, right?

[A]

Yes. Credibly. You do it well. That piece is unquestionable. But when I think about that as a path for other people, usually the same person who can be a science communicator and do it well is not also the person that can do stand up, that can also be a musician. Release out. You know, they aren't the same skill set, but we also don't tend to think this same person. I'm going to believe in each of the. Like, I could see that. And I have no. There's no preexisting idea I have that stops me from going, yeah, that makes sense.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. And that's the part that I think, for so many creators of color, people talk about this so often that it's like, you know, they want to write a show, they want to create something, and they want to do something that feels familiar for them and their community. And they get roadblocks along the way of people going, that doesn't sound authentic to me. And they're like, well, I'm telling the literal story of my family. It might be that you don't know that many families from this community. You might not know that many immigrant families. You might be basing this off of one image you've seen and asking everyone else to fit within it. And when that is our. That's how things get created. It does feel like we're gonna keep coming back to this very limited lane that is available to a lot of people in culture.

[B]

You talk in the book about how, because there are few, they're required to do every job.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And so they are still. Of course, they're gonna be critiqued in a way that, like, Yellowstone would never be critiqued. You know, it's like, oh, some white people are bad. It's like, well, yeah, I mean, some white people are bad. And there's shows about good white people. You know, the pit also exists, but when you have a show like Kim's Convenience or something, where it's like, okay, here's an immigrant family story. And it's like, well, what tropes are they leaning into? And is this for white perception? And we have all these conversations. If I'm. I gotta be honest, I'm a network executive, I'm like, I don't want that heat. I don't want that heat. Like, we're gonna try to do all this good. And what we're gonna get for it is more heat. That's crazy. But it all makes perfect sense. Like, mechanistically, we have to be thinking hard about this, and there aren't very many opportunities to tell these stories.

[A]

It's very hard. And I think that part of it. And I don't know how to get here. But what we have to do is get people out of the framework of seeing this as. Because I think what you just described is exactly what people are up against. They talk to network executives who are saying, listen, we're Trying to do the right thing. And it's going to be harder for us. Let's just do the easy thing. We have to get people out of the framework of this being the right thing, to stop having it be. We're doing this because we want to do something good. We're being magnanimous.

[B]

That's so good.

[A]

It has to become. We're telling better stories. There are better stories that get told when we get to focus on diverse communities, when we get to focus on stories we haven't seen a million times already. And when we do it in a way that is actually realistic, that is like adding conversations about identity to shows, to movies, can make them better, it can make them richer. It has to be. That's why we do it. Not as like a. Almost like a kindness. And I feel like, honestly, in a lot of the ways, that moment in 2020 where we had a lot of people, you know, really sort of looking at racial justice and the way that race and diversity and identity are still not issues that get enough attention as we're creating, we had that moment in 2020 where there were a bunch of commitments made and new people hired and we're going to greenlight new shows. And then we saw all of those slowly fall away. And I think that the biggest problem there was that people thought they were doing something good. They saw it as an extension of Black Lives Matter and a protest move. And I'm going to do this because I. I'm gonna do something. Right?

[B]

And not just doing something good, but like sacrificing.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

You know, Right? Yeah, yeah. It's like, I'm gonna take the hit.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And it's just like, no, no, like we, like, this isn't all about like self flagellation here. We're not like, oh, we did a terrible thing and so we must pay for it. No, that's not like. That's not helping so much as the world is unjust. Let's understand it, right? One, cause of course, like every society has injustices we've not yet done society where everybody comes out on top. And two, like the feeling of we must. It's almost like a self punishment.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That's not really the work. No, like the work is understanding it and then like celebrating it, like finding all the good stuff in the world that wouldn't otherwise be being found.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Because we're stuck inside of our one way of viewing the world. And like, America's a big country with a lot of different stories that are like good stories.

[A]

Right. And that we would be getting something from it, that it's a way of making everything better, not just more equal or more. Just taking it out of the realm of like, I'm doing this for a political reason and saying, we're doing this for art reasons. We're doing this because when stories are like this, they are better, they're richer, they're more nuanced. And honestly, you know, I loved Friends. Loved Friends, went to school on that show. Like, ridiculous. It's so funny because at the time, everybody did. And I'm now in so many conversations where people are like, you watch that show, like, there were no black people on it. And I'm like, I am not having this realization for the first time today. Yes, there were no black people on it.

[B]

There were no black people on it back when it came out. And there's no black people on it now.

[A]

Now, I grew up in the 80s and 90s. That was true. Often, like, you gotta move. But what's funny about it is there are so many people now that are like, well, you couldn't do that today and you would need to, like, have a more diverse cast. And I'm like, honestly, I would take an all white friends cast again if they would interact with the fact of being white.

[B]

Tell a white story in a world that contains racism and contains non white people. And yeah, yeah, I would rather that

[A]

a million times over. Just sort of throwing characters of color into a show that is written for characters that honestly should be white because they're not making any other adjustments to the storylines or the people or where they're coming from. To make it a true multiracial show, I'd rather an all white cast that grapples with, huh, that is interesting that none of us ever date interracially or we live here. Why aren't any of our neighbors, you

[B]

know, this show takes place in New York City. It's amazing.

[A]

And we. But the thing is, I know people in New York City who do not have an interracial friend circle. So it's not that it's like, it's so unrealistic, but they have some of those conversations and I'd rather see that. I think that the answer to our problem is not dealing with identity less, it's dealing with it more. And that includes white identity. I talk in the book about, you know, the fight that people had around, like, Doctor who when it was like, there's going to be a woman doctor, there should be a black doctor, and people's reactions to it. And I'm Like, I don't think it would be unrealistic if the show were to say, there's a reason this is

[B]

such a great point.

[A]

There is a reason that this entity that can take on any gender, any race, chooses to travel through time being a white man because it is the form where he is most likely going to be the safest.

[B]

Safest. He's gonna be listened to much more often.

[A]

Right. And that would be an interesting exploration for that character to deal with. It's especially if he has to deal with it in relation to women and people of color that he cares deeply for that don't get that privilege. I would rather see that than just girl boss, Doctor who, just to sort of shut everybody up. We can explore this stuff in a way that is a lot deeper and a lot less sort of superficially focused on diversity in theory, but not going any deeper than that.

[B]

Yeah. In your book, in addition to talking about Doctor who and how ridiculous it is that we would have a conversation about whether an interdimensional alien could or should not be a white man.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You talk about the actual riskiest thing you could do in 2026, which is comparing Taylor Swift and Beyonce.

[A]

I know.

[B]

In such a way that makes it clear that while you love Taylor, the hill that she has had to climb maybe isn't as steep as the hill that Beyonce had to climb. Great work. I saw this called out in, like, every review of your book. It was like, everybody. We found the salient point. It was the person's fiance. You're very careful to not make it that.

[A]

I swear I tried, but that is what it is. Like, it just. That's.

[B]

Yeah, no, you say that.

[A]

That is what it is.

[B]

I texted you a couple of days ago. And what did I say? I said, how often do you think about Beyonce?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You say once or twice a week, which is, you know, that's less than I expected.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So when we're talking about lanes, I'm fascinated by Beyonce because I would think that the lanes that society would choose for people. I mean, Taylor's makes perfect sense. You know, a little awkward girl next door. She's not 511 because she's a fashion model. She's 5' 11 cause she's gangly. And is she, like, one of the most conventionally attractive people in the world? Sure. But, like, she's still the girl next door.

[A]

She's just your dorky bestie.

[B]

In our society, black women are among the most marginalized groups. I would think, thus, then, that the lanes available tend to be, you know, more marginalized, feeling vibes. And yet Beyonce's lane is goddess.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And I am very interested in that, because my first thought is, is this a kind of respect? I think it is, but I actually think that if you, like, look deeper there, what we find is not great.

[A]

Yeah, look, it's definitely respect. The way people feel about Beyonce is, like, real, and it's deep.

[B]

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

[A]

But it is interesting that I feel like in order for a black woman to occupy that kind of space of an icon, she has to be without peer. It is. It's goddess. That's the lane available to her. So she has to be the peak, the sexiest, the most talented. She walks in the room, and it's, like, ethereal. There are a few challenges with that, some for her and some for everyone else. It is harder to be flawless than it is to be the girl next door. Right. Like, those are. Those are very different images. And again, I don't mean it is easier to be Taylor Swift. I think, like, that's.

[B]

It's hard.

[A]

But this is one of the tough things about black women who do get to this level is there's a deification that happens. And deification is a very pretty version, but it's still dehumanization. Right.

[B]

She is keeping the facade.

[A]

Yes. And I think we often let her effort be invisibilized. It's just. She's just sort of effortlessly that way.

[B]

And she wants that, I assume, because that's part of the lane.

[A]

That has to be a piece of it. But that means she can't have moments of vulnerability. It means she can't give as many interviews, because cracking the facade destroys the facade, as opposed to an image where cracking the facade adds to it. If you make a mistake, if you're silly, if you mess up and then come back, that would destroy Beyonce in a way that it could contribute to someone else. And that, I think, is the challenge there. And our willingness to believe that she is able to just sort of. She's just that way is part of, I think, what is challenging about black women. And the way we sort of see. It's like. We call it black girl magic, but at the end of the day, what it is is saying we expect this level of perfection, and we aren't willing to acknowledge the work that goes into it. That, in and of itself, I think, reveals some of the difficulty. It's that she needs to look this way, and she needs to hide all of the effort that goes into it.

[B]

Yeah. And, like, when something human happens to her, like when she gets cheated on by her husband, like, she has to handle that in, like, a goddess like way.

[A]

Yeah, we got to hear about it. When it was settled, when there was an album ready to go, when it was going to capture everyone's attention and mood, but it was settled. She's not going to show us the messiness, which, again, no one in that position is showing a gen. Right. There's performance that is a part of the conceit of all of this. But I think that the challenge there is that in order to get to that level as a black woman, her appeal has to be so beyond, like, it's undeniable. No one can question it. Otherwise, people will question it. Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I think that leads to why this image is so challenging for everyone who is not Beyonce, because Beyonce is Beyonce. Right. But there are a lot of other people who are trying to come up, who are trying to gravitate and pick a lane.

[B]

It's a terrible lane to have established,

[A]

because who else can do it?

[B]

Yeah, who else could do it?

[A]

And if the idea of a girl next door is available to you, why wouldn't you gravitate toward that? You get a chance to sort of prolong adolescence. You get a chance to be.

[B]

It's been hard. Like, I think that Taylor, like, growing up and getting engaged like that actually is a problem for her girl next door image, especially getting engaged to, like, a very handsome, large man.

[A]

Yes. It has been fascinating to watch that. As somebody who genuinely, like I said, I'm a big fan of Taylor Swift, so I see a lot of Taylor Swift creators responding to this moment. And there's this weird thing, I think, that happens with celebrities in general, but especially with someone like Taylor Swift, who her fan base does so much feel like, this is our friend, this is our girl. Like, she, you know, there was an effort to graft onto her. Like, people felt very strongly about her, you know, going through breakups and still being strong, that people felt a kinship there and almost a betrayal in her falling in love and wanting to get married. As though she owes the rest of us an indefinite. An indefinite state of adolescence so that we can live our lives and still use her lyrics as, like, a. Like, it's like, you know, people who are getting married are mad at Taylor Swift for getting married because they still need her to occupy righteous female rage in relationships. Like, we. We want people to be happy. Right? Like that. That's gotta be the end goal here. So. And I think this is a complicated Question. It's the reason it's so reductive to think Beyonce versus Taylor Swift, because I think they both deal with this thing that we do where we want you to be perfect and we vilify effort.

[B]

Yeah. Wild, right? Like, okay, you have to be perfect, but you can't try. You can't try.

[A]

Just do it. Don't let us in on it. And if we see it, we call you a try hard. We say it's too much. And that is a very difficult thing for anyone to occupy. And especially when, if sort of left to your own devices, you are not going to be exactly what we're asking for. You're going to have to try. And so I hate that about authenticity, that we treat effort as though it's anathema to authenticity, because if you have to try to be it, it's not who you naturally are. And that's not true. I'll talk to candidates sometimes who just sort of buy into this idea that we tell them that it's like, oh, well, you know, the stars just aligned and it's time to run. And I'm like, people wait years. People are plotting and planning and saving and deciding when to have kids because they might want to run for office in three years. The idea that you could just stumble upon it is actually scaring off some of the people we would want to run for office from running for office. So we've got to just. We've got to let go of this idea. That effort means it isn't real.

[B]

Yeah. I'm kind of realizing as we're talking about this that a lot of this is just like humans telling stories and what stories are legible and what stories we have heard before and what the characters and the stories are like and look like. Society is basically just a bunch of stories laid on top of each other. And so it makes sense that we're doing this, and it also makes sense that it's causing harm. Are we building new stories? Have you seen that improve or change in your life? And how is that work being done or if not being done, how do we do it?

[A]

We're definitely building new stories. I think that as we get more and new people, we build new stories. I think the challenge is that we still say there's still this impulse right where we'll go, she's going to be the next aoc. The purpose of building new stories is to build a whole new story. Not to take the existing box and layer on top of it. We'll build new stories, but on existing frameworks. I feel like we're having this moment politically. I also think we're having it culturally. I think those things are related, that people are actually starting to challenge the existing framework. The stuff that we say is just sort of, well, that's just the way things are done. We're willing to rethink that stuff. Those are the moments the big changes happen. Right. It's not just, well, okay, there has to be a slightly new, updated version of this thing. We're fundamentally saying maybe our politics are oriented toward the wrong thing. Yeah, right. Like maybe the way that we consume content is going to shift fundamentally and that's when new stuff happens. Because honestly, the newest stuff probably won't fit in the existing framework.

[B]

It is feeling like a lot of existing frameworks are not working for people. And it's, it's like stories have to be resonant no matter what.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But it feels like maybe now there are going to be like new ways to find the resonance. But that requires creativity. It requires work.

[A]

Yes. Yeah. I think Mamdani presents such an interesting example of this because I feel like everyone takes the weirdest lessons from that race because, Because I hear so many people go, you know, we need to do what Mamdani did. And I'm like, you probably don't like,

[B]

I'm just, yeah, yeah. First of all, are you a generational talent? Second, is your district like New York City?

[A]

Right, right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What he did that I think was so interesting was to reframe a question. For a very long time we have said, we know that it's true that a lot of people can't afford to live in the city that they work in, to live in the city that they live in. And that's just kind of the cost of doing business. It's what happens. And he got people saying, you should be able to afford your life. And just by reframing that, it was like all of a sudden there are people that are saying, wait, you're right, it's unacceptable if people are living here and working full time jobs and can't make ends meet for X, Y and z reasons. That shift shifted a framework and made a story that was not possible possible. He wasn't being taken seriously by, you know, he wasn't getting like cable news interviews. He was. So he figured out other ways to talk to his audience and that's where his audience was. And he's incredibly good on the social Internet and it worked for him. Everyone shouldn't do what he did, but they should take a similar Path, where are your people?

[B]

How do you.

[A]

Right. And so I feel like it's that. Where do you find your audience and go at that, even if it's not the way everyone is saying. Right. I feel like that's the lesson to come away from this with.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Cause like, politics at like the 30,000 foot view is like, okay, there are people who are going to help lead this society. And like, we do it in democracy here. And so you have to tell stories to people about you. And the easy, low effort way of doing that is just sort of embodying the image of the person who's always done it. You know, all of the politicians, Montana, yes. They're just like tall white men who paid for their own campaigns because they made money in California. They moved to Montana. I feel like the political strategist version of this is like, find the simplest story and get it into the broadest number of people, but then do a lot of sort of like weedsy fightings among the people who are, like, active. And what I keep thinking is, like, what you really want is to get a kind of complicated story to a lot of people's heads. Like, that would be the best thing. You tell a more complex story to a broad number of people, the people you really want to reach. And the Internet has provided a lane for that. You just have to be good at it, which is hard.

[A]

Really hard. I hear people say a lot of times, you know, well, nobody votes on policy. And I. And I believe that to some extent, like, no one is going to go read your white paper and then say, I really like this idea. And I understand how the government works enough that I see how we implement it. But people vote on ideas and they vote on. This is the thing that you can do to make life better. For me, where we are right now is. Is it's a much more complicated story than the one that we're allowed to tell. And I feel like it gets sort of boiled down to, well, you need an enemy. And there are some people who are really good at finding and pointing out an enemy for you. Well, it's corporate greed, and that's the. You know. But the truth is. Yeah, the reason why most people can't afford their lives is it's a very complicated series of things that are.

[B]

The enemy is disorder, Maya. The enemy is entropy. The enemy is how randomness will always take over if we let it. And the solution is bureaucracy. Does that work? Is that a good political message?

[A]

You want to run on this? Because I feel like we're onto something here. And that's the problem. The people that are going to be the most honest about it resist the simple answers. Again, we deal in tropes, and you've got to be the something guy. And if we can figure out a way to tell. I'm not even saying the most complex story, a slightly more complex story that

[B]

is like, more than corporate greed.

[A]

You can give me corporate greed, but then I need the next 10 sentences. Yeah, and obviously, again, I think these tend to be people I even agree with more because I think that there are people who are trying to convince us that our enemies are each other. Our enemies are our immigration system. Our enemy. That is a level of simplicity, but also cynicism. I believe people are smarter than this and care about it more than this. But we haven't cracked the code on how to get there. I refuse to give up the ghost on that.

[B]

Can I hit you with a thing I'd text you and not say on a podcast?

[A]

Bring it. Absolutely.

[B]

Are Democrats wusses? It feels a little bit like just really scared. One of the reasons why these sentences aren't being said well is because they are scared of being disliked and not just like losing, but of being disliked. And there will be a group of people who will be like, those are bad, and I will go after you for that. And I'm like, actually, what we may be finding is that if you want to get some attention, you have to say some things that people are going to disagree with. And so if you only ever say things that people agree with, you're only going to say the same things as everyone else. It's not going to sound interesting. You're not going to get any attention. So I think you have to say some things that. That you believe and that are correct, at least from your worldview, but are also going to cause some people to not like you.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I think that the Democratic Party.

[B]

No, no, this is supposed to be a 30,000 foot podcast, not down in the Weeds where. Maya, what's up with the dnc? What's wrong with him?

[A]

No, look, I remember right after, when Harris lost a lot of people, a lot of candidates started saying, we went too far, and we let the groups take us too far on this. And they started saying all of these things. It was sort of heterodox, but the idea was we should be able to stand up to the environmental lobby, we should be able to say the unpopular thing and even things that will make Democrats not like us. And I was sort of like, I thought what we saw was that people were saying things they believed. If you didn't believe it, then, no, you shouldn't have been saying it. I think that Democrats have fallen victim to I need to be the most popular person on the Internet.

[B]

Right. The Internet is what's speaking into your ear. Which is not like, I'm not saying that the Internet isn't real life. Of course I believe in the Internet is real life.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

But I do think that the Internet is good at getting the loudest, most crazy, outrageous voices into your ear.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Which is bad for society. Like, it's one of the things that I think has made society the most bad over the last 10 years.

[A]

And then those voices getting covered. Right. Like political media then goes, well, this person's getting skewered for blah, blah, blah. And so I don't think people are being illogical. It's just that there was a time in history, not that long ago when we would have a political strategy and we had an activist strategy and we had an academic strategy. People would be writing law review articles saying, hey, you can actually do this. And then some activists would pick that up and go, hey, we should be fighting for this thing to happen. And the activists would go into the community and they would move people, they would move voters, and then they would go to politicians and say, hey, look at all the people that would still vote for you.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You should take this position. It's in line with your values and it's politically popular. And then the candidate would say, okay.

[B]

And the lawyers say it's actually legal, which is a thing that we used

[A]

to care about, which is a thing we used to care about deeply. Someone could point to something in academia and say, yeah, somebody is like, run. And movement would happen. I think partially because of the social Internet, partially just because of everything, it became easier for activists to speak directly to the candidates. And I say this as somebody who spent my career in social justice politics and then went into electoral politics, recognize I am part of the problem. But when I'm working for a candidate, my orientation is, we need to get elected. I want to take this person's values and stake out a position that can get them to win in office. When I am working in social justice movement, my position is not to get anyone elected. It's to push things as far as they can go. At the end of the day, I'm a voter, and I'm going to vote for the person closest to how I feel. But my job as an activist isn't to run interference for The Democratic nominee for anything, right?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

These all used to be things that could exist separately, and we appreciated that. I think that when activists started being able to go directly to the leaders, activists and leaders started speaking in a language that was a lot more alienating. Alienating. It was overly academic. It was culturally exclusive, but it was in a language that both of these parties understood. So activists started being like, you need to do this and this and this. And the politicians would be like, okay. And no one was talking to regular people. We took the community organizing piece out of our organizing. No one went into the community. So then people would look around and go, well, wait, none of my voters moved. Because voters don't move based on their politician. Nobody is sitting going, oh, they can

[B]

if that person's making a very good, clear, legible case.

[A]

But yeah, they're not. Usually it's not the job of your congressperson to convince you that health care is a human right. We messed up the loop. Activists need to reclaim the mantle of community organizing. Like, there was a period of time where I would constantly hear people say, like, it's not my job to educate you among people that were like me. It's not just my job. Like, I. I fight really hard to be in a position to educate people on the stuff I care about. And so we need to reclaim that. But then politicians also need to understand the job of the activist community is not to get you elected. So if you say this position is not politically popular enough, My values are here, but I'm not willing to go here. Stand by it if that's what you believe. Don't later tell me that the groups took you too far. Don't be taken too far. Yeah, don't like. We have to react. Draw some of these boundaries that I feel like on the left, we have turned. We have collapsed all of these strategies in on each other. Politicians need to get elected. Activists need to be activists and community organizers. Academics need to be, like, laying the philosophical groundwork of what is going to happen. And all of those things can happen in concert, but they should not be the same strategy.

[B]

This everybody is why everybody should have Amaya in their phone where they could be like, are Democrats wusses? And then she can be like, well, Hank, let me tell you a thousand things that are going to help you understand the world better. Can I talk to you about Ben Shapiro? Is that allowed?

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

Okay, great. I want to get. Because when we're talking about Beyonce and Lane's and authenticity, we of course should also talk about The Beyonce of politics, Barack Obama. And there's this insane interview between Ben Shapiro and Ezra Klein. And Ezra asks Ben, as if you can have these conversations in a way that will connect to truth at all, but asks him when he was sort of radicalized against Obama. And I think that they do use the word radicalized in this conversation. And he gives some examples and they are all to do with race. And one is when Barack Obama says that Trayvon Martin could have been his son.

[A]

Yeah, if I had a son, he would have looked like Trayvon.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And one was this thing with a black, I think, professor who got harassed at his house by police officers and then proved indeed that he Skip Gates, that yes, he did live at the house he was at.

[A]

And they all had a beer.

[B]

Yeah. And then they had the beer summit. Yeah. Obama said the cops acted stupid and that became a fricking thing. Then they had the cop and the guy and Brock and Joe all had a beer in the garden. And that was very radicalizing for Ben Shapiro.

[A]

That must have been heartbreaking for Ben Shapiro. I don't even know.

[B]

And then there was another example. And what Ben Shapiro ends up saying kind of is that the deal he felt like he was making in having Obama get elected, and this is weird because of course Ben Shapiro did not vote for Barack Obama, but the deal he felt like he was making was that we would then be able to agree that we had moved past all this race stuff. And I just can't help but think that those are some like, of the blandest when I look at them. I know like ways to react to structural inequality that a black president could, and let's be honest, should do. And that was radicalizing for Ben Shapiro. And he just could not see how the Republican Party could ever, ever treat politics the same after that. We would have to sort of go scorched earth after such a divisive president. And so it makes sense that we would get a president like Donald Trump who literally just says that he doesn't care about the people who don't vote for him. And that's like, that's very authentic of him.

[A]

Right.

[B]

When we were talking about Lanez and we're talking about like me and Lanez and like I'm like, I just want to be very clear how much more limited the lanes are. And like in a way that is very hard to see when you are of a non default identity of some kind. This astounds me. So like I seethed, I seethed for weeks after I watched this. And here's my question, which is a bit of a left turn. I also heard you talking in your book about how some of the work you do, like code switching, for example, is just sort of a reaction to the weather. Like the world is the way that it is, and so we're going to deal with it. It's raining outside, I'm going to have an umbrella. But you're also an advocate and an activist. And so like, there's also this part of it that is like, we have to fix this. We can't just treat it like the weather. We can make it stop raining, like eventually we should get to that world. But when it comes to any individual making the choice, you have to just have the umbrella, you can't make it stop raining on your own, Right? But when it comes to the weather, like you could patch the roof so that it's not leaking into your house. And that's an individual action you can take to deal with the problem and actually maybe fix something that is causing a problem for you. And that's sort of widely respect if an individual can take an action to help fix a problem. But I tell you what, first, an individual can't take on a society wide problem. And second, when individuals get together to take on society wide problems, like structural inequality, they are not rewarded for it, they are punished for it. Whereas you are rewarded for just dealing with it. An individual just dealing with structural inequality and succeeding regardless, that's like, good job, they played the game and they won. Whereas a bunch of individuals getting together and being like, okay, let's actually fix the structural inequality. It's like, no, no, no, that's very threatening and scary and radicalizing. And thus it makes perfect sense that we would get Donald Trump as a result. And in your book you talk about doing both and you have to do both. You have to deal with the world as it exists and you have to try and fix it. But we, I should say marginalized people are rewarded for dealing with it. They are not rewarded for trying to fix it. Does that track?

[A]

It absolutely tracks. I have not listened to this conversation with Ezra Klein and Ben Shapiro, but I'm with you. I would have died in those moments too. Because I think that Barack Obama embodied such a perfect example of the bind you're describing that he was so trapped in what he was able to do and say anytime race came up, the leeway he was given was. I mean, it was non existent because frankly, if I had a son, he would look like Trayvon and then like, you know, patently refusing to say the words black lives matter because he couldn't. The black community felt like it was frustrating. I don't know that all the frustration got directed at him. It was. But people did not see Barack Obama as this person who in that moment took up the mantle and said to the black community, like, I get it, I'm gonna be. He couldn't. He was not in the position to do that. So the tiny thing he said to acknowledge essentially that as a black man, a black child being shot, he immediately thinks of, that's what my kid would have looked like and what my kid would have been dealing with. That became the most divisive thing in the world for a lot of black people. That felt so. So short of what we wish the first black president would have been able to say or do in that moment. The same thing with the beer summit. The same thing. Honestly, so many people talk about his race speech in Philadelphia. Barack Obama's race speech was for white people. It was not for the black community. Right. It gets compared to when John F. Kennedy had to give sort of his speech on Catholicism. That speech was to make people feel like, don't worry, you're not Catholic. This is not gonna be the defining thing of my identity. Barack Obama, he had a similar task. His goal with that speech was to make white people feel like, don't worry, this will not be the defining thing of my presidency. So it's so interesting that the smallest things that he did were read as so divisive to people who essentially just did not want to be reminded that he was a black man.

[B]

Mm. And don't wanna be reminded that race exists or that like structural inequality exists or don't believe it or something.

[A]

Right, right.

[B]

Or are actually like the natural order is for the white person to be subjugating the non white people.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I don't wanna, like carve off the actual on the face racists. It's also a part of it.

[A]

Absolutely. I think about that, though, because I think that in order for him to do what he did, he took those moments and he probably dialed back what he would have said. Maybe naturally or maybe he didn't. He might constitutionally just be built a little more. You know, he's not a radical. He's not it. Right. So, you know, the calculus that he made is a calculus a lot of people have made, which is, I'm not going to respond to these individual moments. I'm going to play the game with the goal of being able to try to fix more of the structural Issues. Now, again, I think he was in a tough spot because anytime he tried to do anything, he had a lot of people who were dead set on not letting him be effective.

[B]

Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that was. That was a misery.

[A]

My retroactive frustrations with some of the ways that that administration went aside. I never want to rewrite history and imagine that he could have done all of this stuff that would not have been politically. I always want to be very conscious of what he was up against and what he was dealing with. Yeah, he is an important study in this. My position on it tends to be. I can take on individual moments of discomfort. I've actually gotten pretty good at dealing with some of those, and I'm willing to do it if it means that I can be more impactful in getting us to a place where we can confront some of the structural stuff. I think that that calculus probably changes throughout life. I think I'm at a point in my life and career now where I'm comfortable. Okay, I can deal with this. I can deal with a microaggression here or there or whatever if it means I'll be in a room that can actually make a difference. I just have to keep in my mind that that was the trade off, and if I ever stop doing that, then I'm doing all of this for nothing.

[B]

So reading through your book, I worry that we are just evolved with such a tremendous power to be able to detect who is us and who is them. We are just so good at detecting differences in body differences and accent, differences in word choice, skin color, hair, but also etiquette stuff that you don't even know you can read. And almost we're so good at it, it makes me be like, oh, my God, did we just evolve this way? What I don't want to say is like, oh, this is the way that we are. And so if you're, like, mad at me for being a way that humans are, well, then screw you. Which is never, never are we letting our biology define us. And so we should not in this way either. But I do know that there's no society that didn't have in groups and out groups. And I want people to know that when a politician is trying to. To define an out group for them, that that is a manipulation.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And that we're Americans and, like, that's kind of the technology that brought us a whole new level of human cooperation was figuring out how to define our group much more inclusively so that we can benefit from all of that. So that we can benefit. Like, there's so much I can learn from your perspective that informs my perspective, not just on, like, the world, but on myself.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You know, like, having all of these different points of view, is it really like, diversity is our strength, Maya? But, like, it is. Like, there's a reason why people say that. Like, in evolutionary biology, it, like, absolutely is. Like, if you have a complete monoculture, any disease can come and wipe it out. You have to have a bunch of different perspectives in a society.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I don't know. What do you. Does Sydney, that make sense to you?

[A]

Yeah, it's kind of linked to what we were saying about it being true in art, too. Diversity is our. Is our strength became a buzzword because that's the good thing to do. But it's also the smarter, the safer. If we can stop this from being like, a kindness we bestow on each other or something we do not to hurt each other's feelings and rather because we're actually objectively better off. I feel like that's a shift there. And I'm with you. I don't quite know how to do it because it is something that has happened in nature over and over and over again. There's obviously something there and it is so impossible at this point to talk about it without there being so much.

[B]

There's harm. There's so much harm done.

[A]

There's so much harm done. So with that, there's so much defensiveness that's already built in that you almost can't have the conversation. I'm left handed. I love being left handed. I will not shut up about it. And August 13th is international left Handers Day. So I always make a thing and make people pay attention to it.

[B]

Yet another marginalized identity we've had to live with.

[A]

And yet it is the one that I have the most success getting people to talk about without immediately getting hackles rights. So it genuinely started. It was not like me trying to Trojan horse some discussion. I just liked being left handed and talking about it. And I would be like. And you know, like, when you say ambidextrous, it's like, it's basically like the Latin root for Dexter is right and Ambi is both. So you're saying you have two right hands. So really we should be saying bye dominant handed and just like, being silly.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But it got people going like, oh, my God, I never thought about that. I actually made headway with somebody once because he was left handed. It was a young white guy. He was like somebody who worked at another Organization that worked a lot with me. But he was, he was younger and he was, we had had this whole thing where he was talking about we did not believe in the concept of privilege. And I remember talking to him about being left handed. I made the joke, I'm like, yeah, well, you know, when we walk up to like public computers, the mouse is always on the wrong side. He was like, yeah, you're right. And I was like, you know, that's all privilege is. Like, it is the knowledge that you're going to walk up to a public computer and the mouse is going to be on the right side when you would have it be on the left. It's just the world being set up for other people who aren't you in the face of you existing. But this didn't make him feel attacked. It was a very innocent way of talking about some of this stuff. And I feel like every once in a while we can get to an important discussion on some of the ways that we talk about why diversity matters or why privilege is a thing. But it's always gonna be in these places where we don't already have all this built up. If I talk to somebody about race, unless they're also, I won't even say a person of color unless they're also black, there's going to be an immediate expectation that I am making an accusation. And honestly, it is, it is why sometimes I feel like these conversations then only happen within our own groups or privately when they can't really do very much good for a lot of people. And the people that are willing to talk about it are usually the people who are not concerned about offending people. So we end up having conversations about these issues that are honestly kind of by design useless.

[B]

I mean, the sense I get, I will say so, like, I love to learn things, obviously the sense I get in having conversations about race, always that I'm stretching, I'm like finding stuff and it's effort, but it's rewarding effort. There is, especially if it's being done publicly. There's always a little bit of sense of threat where it's like, oh, if I say this, how are people gonna take that out of context into a Twitter thread? And we were earlier talking about how, I just don't want that heat, let's just not do it. We can't let that be the reason.

[A]

We can't.

[B]

The stretch is really valuable. And yet I learn a lot from it. And I also feel like I'm doing, doing something a little bit uncomfortable and writing about this stuff. I never write about this stuff publicly, but I'll journal about it and stuff, or writing questions for this. I just feel like my brain's working hard because there's a lot of stuff that I have to think about that is normally just the air. It's just the water we're swimming in. And that's oftentimes finding out the attributes of the water you swim in is the most valuable stuff.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah, it really is. I wish there were a better way for us to publicly have some of these conversations. I wind up spending a lot of time thinking about, like, public forgiveness and how we. Like, I believe deeply, and I think a lot of people do, in concepts of justice. And that has to mean, like, you know, inclusive of, like, social justice that has, at its core, accountability and an ability to rehabilitate and sort of, in that, be sort of forgiven. We created this system that confuses me because I feel like we talk a lot about how complicated this stuff is. It's baked into our systems and our institutions, which means, without meaning to, we adopt a lot of really harmful ideas. And then we expect people to sort of evolve to get past all of that, but then obscure the path behind them, to pretend that they always have. Like, we all just woke up with 20, 26 sensibilities on all of these issues. And we know that's not true. And we also, I think, know that it would be really valuable for those of us who have evolved and can talk about some of this stuff both credibly and legibly, to admit the places we've evolved and how things have changed for us. But we don't have a mechanism to do that because we don't have a good way to admit this stuff, not have it get taken out of context, and to be able to say, I have moved from this. Like, I don't know how to create a public mechanism of accountability and forgiveness. But I think that in order for these conversations and learning about this stuff to work, we have to. Because I just know so many people that are like, I'm not getting into this conversation because I'm not going to admit when I used to think this, because there will be somebody who says, well, then you must still think it. And that. That scares me because I don't know how we get past all of this if we don't have a way of doing it.

[B]

I think it's not a great time for nuanced conversation.

[A]

When is it, though? I'll set a clock.

[B]

Yeah,

[A]

I will be there.

[B]

Yeah, that's a great point. I'm hoping for a future that the past does not contain, which is always tricky to do. But I really appreciate how in public and in private, I feel safe talking to you about this stuff. So thank you for that.

[A]

I'm glad.

[B]

And, Maya, if there's anything that you've learned from this work, all of it, all of the work you have done, all of the work that you wish everybody, everybody knew, what would it be?

[A]

I will often, when I'm working and folks are feeling demoralized, what I would often say to people is like, just remember that there was a point at which someone at the NAACP turned to someone else and was like, well, I think we're gonna lose Brown versus Board of Education. Because I don't think Thurgood should be arguing it. The things that we now consider almost laughable, that it's like, of course. Of course it was time for Brown v. Board. Of course we were ready to desegregate schools. Of course. Whatever. Victory now feels inevitable. There was a point in time that the people doing it felt like, guys, we might lose this. This might not be the right time. This might not be the right guy. Thurgood Marshall wasn't Thurgood Marshall yet. It is incredibly important, I feel like, in doing social justice work and working in electoral politics, to remember that the lifespan of everything that we care about, every issue that has ever made life better. There was a point it was impossible, and then it was a long shot, and then it was inevitable. If we can look at that as the lifespan of things that we care about, we did that. And if we can do that, betting on us is never gonna be a bad idea.

[B]

Maya, I believe you.

[A]

I'm really glad to hear that.

[B]

Thanks to all the humans who helped make this episode. Morgan Levy is the show's supervising producer, and Greg Rippon is our engineer. Peyton Mitchell manages our social media. Andrew Huang composed the music, and James Barnard designed the artwork. You can and should follow us wherever you listen to podcasts.

[A]

Let's do it one more time. Humans.