Was featured in a premium episode back in May.

Hi all,

I'm on paternity leave for the next week and a half and I'm spending a lot of time in the living room with my baby, so I have lots of time to listen to podcasts. I just discovered BARpod thanks to the Last Ditch bar story and I'm hooked.

What are your recommendations for the best episodes ever?

Relevance: Piker has been the focus of numerous episodes.

As I prepared for the interview by researching his commentary, I realized that Piker is right to complain that the handful of frequently repeated controversial statements fail to accurately represent his worldview. In fact, it’s much worse than those quotes suggest.

Paywall bypass: https://archive.ph/VPNg8

BaR relevancy: about identity, definitions of indigenous, Etc.

As I'm sure everybody knows Christopher Columbus Day has been officially canceled and if you live in any blue state it is now Native American day. In Seattle I noticed all the politicians were posting about activities and grants and one of the groups they mentioned was Hummingbird indigenous services. I heard the mentioned a lot when it came to city grants so I took a look.

The organization staff all mentions their tribal background and there didn't seem to be anybody who is actually from a tribe in our city. Or in close proximity to our city. In fact a lot of people were not actually indigenous to the Continental us. You had Filipinos, Native Hawaiians, Fijians, Mariana Islanders, Samoans. Most of the others were in different states. A lot of people were part native but mostly of several other non-native ethnic groups.

Then I'm looking at their service goals:

That abundance and generosity are a community responsibility

In the validity of traditional knowledge

In centering Indigenous people in all our work

In the importance of providing culturally relevant care

Certainly people from a multitude of different ethnic / cultural backgrounds can come together and form a community. But there is no ethnic community formed over people from all over the world who consider themselves indigenous and are often also a mix of several very different cultural backgrounds.

The value of traditional knowledge. Who's traditional knowledge? We are in the Pacific Northwest. About none of these people are from this region. Every culture has traditional knowledge. Considering pretty much everybody on the staff has a vastly different cultural background there's pretty much no cultural similarities going on here. Centering indigenous people. Who exactly are indigenous people? How is a native Hawaiian, a Samoan or a Fijian indigenous to seattle? The importance of providing culturally relevant care. How are staff of such a diverse group cultural backgrounds able to provide culturally relevant care given the overwhelming majority of seattle-based tribes are not even represented in their staff. The staff might learn about the tribes in order to provide them with culturally relevant care, but how is having that administered by somebody from Tonga different than having it administered by somebody like myself from Southern California?

Anyway, it just gets me thinking about how the word indigenous has kind of stretched out in the same way queer. A lot of queers are not gay. And a lot of indigenous people are not North American natives.

It also reminds me of how the identity of Asians stretched to enclose dozens of ethnic groups that have nothing in common including geographical proximity. There is nothing somebody from Pakistan in Japan have in common and there's nothing somebody from Samoa and a Midwest tribe have in common. If I was a native of the pnw I'd be furious to see that enormous amount of money was being poured into services that seems as though they would be probably going to my people but instead diverted to folks from a zillion different ethnic backgrounds that were completely foreign to this region too. It's also very strange how minorities don't push back on that. Like you see all these photos that show the AANHPI crowd and they're all smiling as though traditionally they've all hung out and they're like somebody from afghanistan, Chinese dude, somebody from Sri Lanka, someone from cambodia. It's hilarious because everybody talks about colonization but when white progressives give minorities to group themselves into categories that erase their differences and falsely try and make it seem like there's a common culture it feels really disrespectful and it seems kind of cringe how quickly they fall in line adapting to progressive classification I guess in order to get the benefits, mostly monetary and being allotted a seat at the table.

Article: "How the Unitarian Universalist Church Became a Racial, Political, and Social Bubble"

Podcast relevance: Blocked and Reported Episode 159 from 2023 was titled "How The Unitarian Universalist Church Melted Down"

I've always why Ana Kasparian has turned right wing and completely turned against the left. She always struck me as a very intelligent person but now it just seems like she's always angry all of the time. She also seems to be even more critical of Religion than she ever was before. It seems like she's become a hardcore Atheist. I've always wondered why her views have changed so much over the years. She also looks completely different now too Do you think that she has totally lost it? What do you think of her Political Views? Do you agree with any of them? She's also Childfree as well and she also doesn't support abortion either. Do you think that she's completely gone off the deep end? Do you think that she's gone completely crazy? Or do you think that she's just becoming more mature and has changed her views since she's gotten older?

Friend of the pod Helen Lewis gives her perspective on the Cornell controversy.

This review is a great example of how deliberately not coming in hot makes for a more interesting take. Instead of fulminating about the fabrications in Arday's story, this substacker really pays attention to Arday as a character and perceives something insightful: "He did not like his job. He liked being known as a person who was a professor, but he really did not like being a professor." She reports that he is evidently "not interested in teaching or research, even as he goes into education as a career." This bit I found especially interesting:

"At best, I got the vague idea that Arday, in and of himself, was supposed to be the lesson—his students were meant to learn that a black person could become a professor. The next link in the chain—the idea that students could learn that a black person could become a professor and also learn from said black person’s hard-earned expertise—went unaddressed."

This seems like an inevitable result of the kind of thinking that reduces people to identity markers: not just the labels of race or disability, but also the label of "professor." It spreads from race to profession, so that "professor" becomes something that you are, rather than something that you do. The reviewer also points out that Arday's favorite movie was Rocky, which he apparently writes about a lot. Rocky goes through hell to win a fight, and then he's a "winner," but what does that really mean for the rest of his life? Getting a chair at Cambridge was a kind of trophy for Arday, not a job that he actually wanted to do.

Katie is joined for a live chat with Sarah Hepola about her new book, her old book, drinking, sex, consent, and more. The entire two-hour conversation is available for Primos only.

Hi, I'm searching for a Discord link if people are still using discord. And are people still meeting up IRL?

Thanks!

This is a fantastic piece related to the episode about the Cornell 7.

A friend of mine who is a drag queen in Portland announced his group will no longer be doing drag brunch at Clarklewis, which was one of my favorite restaurants when I lived there. Looks like some protestors showed up and broke some windows, alleging there was a nazi gathering. Scary stuff.

Here's your usual space to post all your rants, raves, podcast topic suggestions (please tag u/jessicabarpod), culture war articles, outrageous stories of cancellation, political opinions, and anything else that comes to mind. Please put any non-podcast-related trans-related topics here instead of on a dedicated thread. This will be pinned until next Sunday. And may you all be inscribed, and sealed, in the book of life.

Last week's discussion thread is here if you want to catch up on a conversation from there.

We also have a comment of the week nomination.

This post argues that trans activism has been failing, and it's not because of the trans people, but rather that it's been taken over by the critical-social-justice wing.

It advocates for a liberal activism, where it doesn't try to get the desired changes by shouting people down, shaming them, and shunning those who disagree. But rather via open debate and trying to reason with the other side.

She’s been popping up in my feed frequently spouting conspiracy theories and some rather colorful antisemitic impersonations. She was most recently rambling that the FlyDubai incident was an Israeli false flag. She seems like a completely different person than the interview Katie did with her where she was setting up for an anti-radicalism redemption arc. Have Katie or Jesse mentioned her since that interview? She’s completely nuts now so a follow up tracking her descent would be interesting .

Katie on CitizenMcCain discussing the masked lesbian bar story and how she believes the reaction to it on both sides of the aisle shows a cultural shift.

From articles by Roxane Gay indicating her chip on her shoulder when it comes to white women is still present, to hysteria over rape allegations that are unclear as to the merit, to people losing their jobs because they made a racially insensitive post 10 years ago when they were 15, to neurosis about being biracial, to white people getting fired for having cornrows. It feels like woke 1.0 came back this week with a vengeance. It's like a flu that you think went away and then slams you in the head and you are out cold again.

I wanted to note though about the New York Times article about a woman who said that when people found out she was not white, but biracial, it put her life in danger. In this article she claims different treatment between her and her brothers are proof of racism. I am white as was my brother. We were treated differently. Males and females usually are. Especially when young, males are seen as more of a threat, more dangerous, and less needing emotional support. I'm not saying it's impossible that race accounted for any of this. But this is a great example of confirmation bias. I remember one nyt comment a long time ago stated that she knew racism in America was bad because she was an elderly white woman and she doesn't think George Zimmerman would have shot her like he did Trayvon. Yeah clearly being elderly and a woman has zero to do with that. Something tells me your average 30 year old guy can pretty easily fight off an 80 year old woman without much trouble.

Nikole Hannah Jones being back would also warned mention if it wasn't for the fact her article showed a little bit of humility which differentiated her from her previous inception.

This week on Blocked and Reported, Jesse and Katie discuss a former Cornell student’s claims that seven fraternity brothers drugged and raped her in 2024. Plus: Nkechi Diallo (née Rachel Dolezal) weighs in on the latest race faker, a Philadelphia teacher who is definitely not Palestinian.

Show Notes:

Two Drinks with . . . Rachel Dolezal—The Free Press

A Philadelphia teacher pretended to be Black and Palestinian, ‘a betrayal’ of the activists she supported—The Philadelphia Inquirer

Philadelphia teacher and activist admits to lying about race, heritage—6abc Philadelphia

Jane Doe v. Cornell University et al. (complaint)—NYSCEF

The ‘Cornell 7’ Have Not Been Proven Guilty—The Free Press

New video of text chain from night of alleged Cornell gang rape—CBS News New York

How a Cornell student went from shame to seeking justice—The New York Times

District Attorney Public Statement, Sept. 28, 2026—Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office

Jane Doe in Cornell University case told campus police, “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped,” transcript shows—CBS News New York

Feminist Campus Kangaroo Court Nets Female ‘Rapist’—Cathy Young, Medium

Men Accused in Cornell Sex Assault Suit Give Varying Accounts of Night—The New York Times

New text messages from days after alleged gang rape at Cornell University—CBS News New York

https://x.com/mtracey/status/2104755040577790255

https://x.com/CHSommers/status/2104992448250556589

The Institutional Failure at the Heart of the Cornell Rape Case—Calm Down with Ben Dreyfuss

https://x.com/NewYorkStateAG/status/2104696012619305306

Does anyone know if there's a Barpod meeting in Eugene OR? Anybody interested in one?

https://x.com/jessesingal/status/2105802807143973279

Pod relevance: Jesse posted it