What is a Woman? The Shifting Gender Aesthetics of the "New Right"
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit diabolicallies.substack.comIn this conversation…A woman’s appearance has always been inseparable from her message in politics. So what does this latest, conspicuous shift signal? In this episode, we’re taking a question the New Right is obsessed with—what is a woman?—and answering it by analyzing the aesthetic transformations of the women they tolerate becoming prominent and visible within their coalition.
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30:30
A Tale of Two Algorithms
A few days ago, shortly after the TikTok ban was lifted, we recorded this conversation about the dueling algorithmic histories of TikTok and Facebook, the strange mirror world they provide for us to understand US vs. China sentiment, and the crack-in-the-universe moment that RedNote offered the world.In the time since we recorded, a few major news stories have broken:* TikTok users are reporting that TikTok is now removing comments including #freepalestine and labeling them as “hate speech”* Meta is under fire for allegedly requiring people to follow the POTUS and VP Instagram accounts, as well as blurring images that relate to abortion care resources* A new trend on TikTok called “cute winter boots” is being utilized to share information on how to resist the Trump administration (the admin’s anti-immigration efforts in particular)* A Chinese start-up, DeepSeek, released an insanely advanced open source AI model that 1) absolutely trounces American AI efforts across all benchmarks, 2) was funded on a fraction of the resources that American companies claim to require, and 3) flies directly in the face of extensive US efforts to limit Chinese competition in the space via chip export restrictionsFortunately for our new audio engineer (and unfortunately for just, like, the general state of America right now), these new developments did not require any last-minute edits—if anything, they reinforce the arguments underpinning this conversation. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit diabolicallies.substack.com/subscribe
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1:33:00
Luigi Mangione & the Making of an American Terrorist
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit diabolicallies.substack.comThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit diabolicallies.substack.com.Since the passage of the US PATRIOT Act in 2001, the culture of anti-terrorism in the United States has proven fertile ground for at once legitimizing a threat as extreme and delegitimizing the context which produced it. So what does it mean when it’s a label deployed more often for college protestors and disgruntled Florida moms than murderous white supremacists?
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How "Reactionary Feminism" Infiltrated the Mainstream
Feminism is in the midst of an identity crisis: What is feminism? What does it mean to “be a feminist”? The gap has created an opening for a few media-savvy writers and thinkers to refashion the movement in their own image: a “women’s rights” movement that uses anti-capitalist language to make things like unprotected sex and unpaid labor look like liberation.For notes, citations, and bonus reading, check out diabolicallies.substack.com and select this episode. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit diabolicallies.substack.com/subscribe
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2:22:28
Evie Magazine, Ballerina Farm, & the Yassification of Christian Nationalism
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit diabolicallies.substack.comIn this conversation...Evie Magazine bills itself as a “Cosmopolitan for conservatives,” but is that the best description for this editorial mission? Spoiler alert: No! Today’s sprawling conversation explores every nook and cranny of this dumpster fire of a “media company,” as well as the… uncanny, let’s say, timing of Hannah Neeleman becoming an Evie cover girl and the beneficiary of a glowing NYT puff piece, all in a matter of days.