WTW2 part 1

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:16 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. Here it is folks, episode two of Where There's Woke. Over here on this feed, this is going to be a two-parter because it's very long, hour and fifty minutes, I think, something like that. But if you head on over to either the Patreon of WhereThere'sWoke, where you've already had this, or just the plain old WhereThereWoke podcast feed, search it anywhere. I just got word that it's finally up on Google Podcasts. I know those things take a little while to populate, so sorry about that. Hey, let me know anyone, uh, feel free to hit me up. Let me know if, if you're not finding this podcast where there's woke, if you're not finding it on any, if there's any pod catcher thingy, whatever that you're not finding it on, let me know and I can check on it. But anyway, if you head on over that feed, you can get this entire thing in one go. But now on this feed, here's the first half of it. If you'd like to support the show and get all the extra goodies, all the everything, that's patreon.com/wherethereswoke.

0:01:06 Thomas: If you'd like to just go listen, once again, just search "Where there is Woke" in any podcatcher thingy. One note, I know there's a lot to process and it's all so many moving parts, but this was the entire month's work of SIO for me. It was, it was nonstop. It was around the clock. So that's why this is getting posted on Serious Inquiries Only for the end of the month. If you're a patron or you're considering becoming a patron, you aren't being double charged, these are only being charged here, nothing's being charged on the Where There's Woke Patreon yet, until that July 1st split. So once we hit July in a few days here, it's going to be totally separate, everything's split off, there won't be any more mixing and weirdness and confusion. So, I, a bit weird. Hopefully that makes sense. And I really hope you enjoy this episode. I put so much into it. You can check out the first half here, or just cut right to the chase, cut out the middle pod and go to where there's woke. All right. Thanks so much for listening. Here you go.

0:02:00 Clip: What's so scary about the woke mob, how often you just don't see them coming.

0:02:07 Clip: Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism, and you see woke principles being pushed.

0:02:15 Clip: Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down. The woke monster is here, and it's coming for everything, everything, everything, and everything. Instead of go-go boots, the seductress green M&M will now wear sneakers.

0:02:38 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke. I'm Thomas Smith. This is episode two and we're getting into it. This is the actual origin story of this podcast. It all started when I was listening to The Daily, New York Times' The Daily podcast, as I do every day, I guess. And the topic for the day was the naming controversy over the James Webb Space Telescope. This was something that I really knew nothing about. I'd heard like years ago, I had heard someone, I think an astronomer, a scientist on a podcast mentioned like, oh, they shouldn't name it after James Webb because he actually sucked. I didn't, it's just one of those things I heard. And I kind of stuck with me because I love space. I love the James Webb Space Telescope. It's amazing. It is one of the coolest things. Obviously not the topic of this podcast or show, but you should check out the images that the telescope has gathered thus far if you haven't.

0:03:29 Thomas: They are beautiful. They're amazing. That much stuck with me. Like, ah, this thing I love is possibly named after, yet again, something named after a horrible old dead white guy who sucked. But I didn't look into it at all. It's been at least years since that happened. I don't even remember.

And so when I saw this podcast flash upon my player, The Daily covering this, I heard sort of the tone with which they were talking about it, came clear to me pretty quickly, even before they said so, that this was going to be something where they were would actually be defending James Webb and saying, look at these people who got this wrong and came after NASA.

And there are good reasons why that's already a bullshit thing to do to choose to cover on your incredibly important news podcast. We'll get to that in a minute. But as the episode went on, again, not having looked into it, not knowing the background at all, all just the obvious bias in how this journalist was speaking about it and how much there were internal contradictions within this episode this... there's phrasing that Michael Powell the reporter used that I recognized like word for word from some of the intellectual dark web people circa, I don't know, 2015, like, like leading up to that, to the point where I knew, like, that's no coincidence. I know that this guy, I just knew like he must be in those circles.

And there was so much in the episode made me so upset of how clearly wrong it was, how clearly biased it was. And so I posted about it and I was met with pretty much mostly confusion. I, like, don't remember too many people who had the same view of it. And these are people who were largely on my side politically. And so that just set me off even more.

0:05:04 Thomas: Nothing bothers me more than when I think I see something and other people don't. I have to find out, am I wrong or am I right? Like, I just have to know. Either way, I haveto know why is the thing I'm seeing not what other people are seeing. And so I started obsessing over it. And obsessing over it, I listened to it a bunch, I confirmed even more how internally inconsistent and terrible just the coverage on its face was. And then as I researched more and more, it became staggering how bad this reporting was. And I had heard on some other podcasts, You're Wrong About and If Books Could Kill, about how horrible the trans healthcare coverage has been in the New York Times. It's absolutely nothing new to complain about the New York Times or any outlet getting a story wrong. Happens all the time to different degrees.

0:05:49 Thomas: But when it's pointing to something systemic like this, like a different level of worry. And I think it's worthy of shining as big a light on as we can. And even though this is an episode from, gosh, by now, since it took me, since I went through this huge journey of like obsessing over that, obsessing over related stories, going like seriously, hours upon hours upon hours of research related to this later, and getting the idea to start this podcast, building everything for it, doing all that stuff, all that staff later, I'm finally talking about it's it. May 19th's episode called When the Culture Wars Came for NASA. And even though it's a month old, I think it's incredibly relevant in the same way that when I heard about how bad the trans healthcare coverage was, and that stuff dates back years, it was still very relevant. It is highly relevant. It's not just me griping about a month-old podcast episode because of the systemic problem that is going on there that I'm very worried about.

0:06:41 Thomas: And I think there needs to be way more attention on it. I want to do what I can to further provide the information on that and shine a light on it. May take me three hours to tell you how bad this is. Every single twist and turn of this got worse. For another thing I want to do with the show is really get down into the detail and names of who is actually responsible for this awful coverage. And it's not really entirely easy to know all the editorial decisions and who's making what decision and where stuff's coming from. But in the course of this research, interesting things. I found a smoking gun into what's happening at The New York Times that I think I'll get to in, I don't know, part three. We'll see. But I'll get there. And I really want to start putting names to it. Like, why is this happening?

0:07:26 Thomas: So even this is going to be a multi-parter and I think it will be fun and I think it would be effective to do this a bit, how I uncovered things to kind of take you through the journey. I want to just go through this Daily episode, show you how many ways even taking them at their word, this episode fails miserably and shows so much blatant bias in spectacularly obvious ways that the hosts, the people who've made it, appear to be just completely unaware of. And as luck would have it, just recently they put out another episode in which they showed quote-unquote fair and balanced and objective, it is a different target, how how careful they were to say, well, it's allegation, let's speculate, maybe. So I heard this episode June 12th called Nuclear Secrets and Tape Conversations. And I was going to play this after as like, ah, look at the difference.

0:08:20 Thomas: I think it's really useful to play it before so that we have this in mind when we listen to the NASA episode.

0:08:26 Clip: So you get from this tape very clear evidence that Trump and it sounds like an aide close by both understand that showing this document to the people in this room at Bedminster is illegal because they don't have the right credentials, the right clearance to see this stuff. Certainly that's the case that's made in the indictment. And I'm always hesitant to say what he knew was illegal or didn't know was illegal. But certainly what the indictment is laying out there is you're establishing his knowledge of the law. One of his central defenses all along is that, oh, I declassified these. These documents were mine. I declassified them. But you have them literally on tape saying, no, I didn't declassify this and I could have. And I'm not one to judge what a smoking gun is, but I bet prosecutors feel that that recording is as close as you're going to get.

0:09:18 Thomas: Yeah, I don't want to judge. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. They have a recording of him saying, yes, I did the crime. I know that it's a crime. I did the crime. Crime here, I am doing the do to do doing crime stuff, doing the crime, I know it's a crime, do you know it's crime, yeah, I know it's a crime, okay, we all know it's a crime, everybody, we know it's a crime. Cut to The Daily. Yeah, I'm hesitant to say, you know, what's on, what's in someone's heart, what's with someone new, but you know, certainly people, would prosecutors would say that the indictment said that, may, yeah, this is it, they can't even call something a smoking gun, like, this is a smoking gun, the soft link, well, prosecutors would say, they would say, like, if they're, this is the closest thing to a smoking gun, they're apparently not gonna say it's a smoking gun, but they would, they would, I wouldn't say this, they would, like, it's just so bending over backwards.

0:10:09 Thomas: I get maybe legal stuff or something, or or Trump, or I don't know what the reason for the sensitivity is, but I feel like it would be pretty responsible to just tell the facts what's going on here and then say, and look, this has definitely an an indictment and it's alleged and people are innocent until proven guilty, but they are saying they have a tape of this. So for this to be wrong, they would have to be lying about a tape. Like they would've had to go after the former president of the United States with more scrutiny than has been on any indictment in the history of time. And they would have had to do an indictement with a fake recording and just be like, well, we'll get away. Is it fine? Pretend we'll give it. I, you don't need the scare quotes, careful the language. I get you can say innocent until proven guilty and you can stay alleged. Sure. But like, us the context that for this to be not correct, they'd have to be fabricating a tape would be incredibly unlikely to happen.

0:11:02 Thomas: All right. So with that carefulness in mind, and maybe that is responsible. I actually don't know. I'm not like a real journalist. Maybe the way this is covered is the responsible way to do it. Okay. Well, let's contrast that with, with what happened on the NASA episode. The episode of The Daily is called When the Culture Wars Came for NASA. I want to note that The Daily is one of, if not the most popular podcast in terms of news that there is. It's frequently the top of the charts. The New York Times is obviously something you'd be familiar with. It's an institution, truly, people call it the paper of record. And some people, tongue in cheek, call this the podcast of record, which I think is kind of funny and is probably true.

0:11:48 Thomas: And I want you to take a second to think about you ought to expect in terms of journalistic integrity and rigor and all that from the podcast. Record. Not this is not me podcasting out of my spare bedroom, a shitty mic, in the time I have, opining. This is The New York Times. And I said opining, this is very important. The guest, one Michael Powell. And Michael Powell is not part of the opinion page. If Michael Powell were part of the opinion, I would be very annoyed at this episode. I would still pretty be mad about it, but I would at least think, okay, they've got an asshole with an opinion. Fine. It's incredibly biased. It misses a lot. It has a lot of blind spots, but it's one of their fucking opinion guys.

0:12:33 Thomas: All right, whatever. But no, no, no, this is not opinion. This is Michael Powell, who has started a new beat, as they discuss on the show, and the beat, he calls it, speech and intellectual debate. What it really is is shockingly close to things the intellectual dark web would be mad about, if you still remember what that is, can't wait to get to those folks, or things people who are like center or left, but hate woke people are mad about. That's basically the beat. And rarely does he stray away from his beat, and I'm going to cover more of it, rarely does he stray from the formula of, well, here's an instance of one person in the quote-unquote woke crowd being wrong. So already you have the classic issues with view-from-nowhere journalism. Right away, before we ever get to how well objectivity was modeled in this episode, the New York Times, before we get to that, there are so many problems with that endeavor in general that we can briefly touch on.

0:13:25 Thomas: There's the fact that balanced reporting, quote-unquote, may create a false equivalence, a classic example, for hey, we found a climate change expert and an idiot, and they are the two views.

0:13:37 Thomas: Let's hear what they have to say. And now you have given the impression that there is a 50-50 debate, and that is skewing the truth. There are so many ways that things that seem reasonable or objective aren't, and there is just no way, in my opinion, to truly be objective, because the minute you are deciding what to put in your newspaper or on your podcast, that is a decision with great consequence. It is not merely the case that were the words true or not true, that is not enough. It really isn't. If I had a newspaper or a TV channel where all I did every day was cover the details of a gruesome murder committed by a black person or something, and that's all I'd, every day, I just covered that.

0:14:23 Thomas: And I stuck to the God's honest truth on the details of that. That would be incredibly fucking racist. And it would give the viewers a very skewed view what's happening in their world. It's not enough to say, well, it's true, though. It all true, everything I said. And that's an extreme example, of course, but it's not as outlandish as you might think, given that Fox News exists. But that principle is important. You have to make some decisions. But you can at least do your best to provide proper context. That's all I knew. So when I saw this, I pushed play on that episode again, When the Culture Wars Came for NASA, very interesting. Wasn't sure what they'd be getting at with that title. And then I hear it's about James Webb. I, an idiot who still kind of trusted the New York Times and didn't know who Michael Powell was, thought, oh, well, this is interesting.

0:15:12 Thomas: I wonder if, if this will be one of those times where the quote-unquote woke mob, or what I consider, you know, progressive people who want to make the world better and more inclusive, I don't know if this'll be a time they were wrong. I thought, oh, great, this is going to be an asshole coming on rubbing it in our faces that there was an example where the progressives were wrong. Oh, actually, James Webb was fine. Even if this is an example of progressives being incorrect about a shitty person from the past and saying, naming things after shitty people. Even, even if Michael Powell were correct, if the thesis of this episode were correct, away by only reporting this, like just giving us, on, again, the podcast of record, a massive, massive podcast, taking the opportunity to say, "Ah, look at these progressive leftists, they're so dumb."

0:16:00 Thomas: They, they thought this guy was evil because his Wikipedia page said he was evil and a homophobe. And look at these idiots. They're so dumb. They were wrong about that. It's frustrating that they were wrong about a guy. Well, I would appreciate some context on that. How often are they right? How many really important things do We have in this country that are named after awful racists of different sorts? How many things do we have where people have fought tooth and nail to keep the name that is by some awful racist of some kind. Do we have a lot of those? Does that happen a lot? Does that happen a little? Is this the first thing? Give me the context. Give your listeners or readers the proper context in which to set this. And if you do, a more accurate way of couching this, even just right from the get-go.

0:16:48 Thomas: I haven't even gotten to word one of this thing. Right away, it seems pretty stupid to be like, well, one of the times though, the dead white guy was like, not that bad. One of the times. So if you think about it, it's... no, not even. If you think about it, this mob is always wrong. 'Cause this one time, one of the dead guys was like a C plus instead of an F minus.

0:17:12 Thomas: That's terrible. That is not the one time a climate scientist made, I don't know, an algebra error or something and had to like retract a paper and be on there. We're like, oh shit, messed up that one. Got to retract it. Let me put it back and just report it on that. Oh, they look at these climate scientists. They're just, boy, they're constantly retracting papers. No, that's not the right context. That's already, you've started on a terrible footing. Not only that, listen to the wording of the title, like sit with, again, this is reporting. This is not opinion. When the Culture Wars Came for NASA. Boy, that's a little bit of loaded language, isn't it? So NASA is a pristine place free of culture wars. The default of NASA is, well, we're fine. We're NASA. Everything we do up till now has been completely fine and no one complained.

0:17:57 Thomas: This is the first time the culture wars have sullied our sacred space stations or whatever. Pretty loaded. What if there was a report on racial bias in a given, I don't know, police jurisdiction or something? A report comes out and a bunch of people protest. They're like, "Hey, what the fuck, man?" Which frankly we could be doing every day. You wrote, "Boy, when the culture wars came for this police station." I mean, about the culture war of being racist? What, when you're in the position of authority, the racism, the bias you might have, the wrongs you might be committing, they're not the culture wars, quote-unquote. They're just NASA. NASA, any racism, homophobia, bias, gender, anything, anything.

0:18:44 Thomas: I'm not even alleging things. I'm just saying hypothetically, any of that, that gets to be NASA. That's all priced in, the mostly white leaders of NASA. There's, like, 14 official administrators and several, at least as many acting administrators, all but, and I'm just doing a quick visual check, looks like all but two have been white men. All of them have been men. Everything they do, that's NASA. Anytime anyone complains about that and says, I hey think you're doing something wrong here. You need to adjust what you're doing." That's the culture wars coming for NASA. Taking it at its word. So this first phase is going to be the New York Times, mostly at its word. There are a few places where I have to chime in with some of the research I've done.

0:19:31 Thomas: It's the only place it makes sense. Otherwise, I'll have to go back later. But after this first run, there's the research I've done. And boy, if you think it fails the first time, you'll be surprised the second time how much worse it fails. So, to be honest, from my end, I'm gonna have to go through this entire thing, and then I'll try to just like edit out any of the things I said or the parts of the podcast that didn't matter or something. But, like, just telling you from my perspective, I'm so mad about this thing, I literally cannot not go through this entire episode of The Daily and annotate it for you. But rest assured, I'm gonna, I'm going to try to trim as much as I can from the main show, but I will say, here's the thing, sure, many, if not most, of you listen to podcasts on higher, higher speeds and are probably listening to me on a higher speed right now. I am stuck in the real. I would need to play The Daily at one X speed so that you hear it the same speed with me.

0:20:21 Thomas: But I actually think I'll die if I do that. So here's what I'm gonna do. And apologies if this causes any trouble. I'm going to play it at 1.25. I think that's gotta be, you know, so if you're at 1.5 of me. Then we can do some, you know, do some math. It gets a little complicated. Get out a calculator. I think that'll be enough. So it doesn't sound like super duper duper fast, but I, if I play it at one X, I'm going to die. I just will. So, and maybe that'll help trim the time of going through this, but all right, here we go.

0:20:49 Clip: And you're here, Michael, to talk about how this kind of a battle came to, of all place, NASA, the nation's premier space agency. Recording going. So, where does that story start? Okay. Can you tell me your name and who you are? Yes, I'm Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi. It starts with this, frankly, very impressive man, Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi. I am an astrophysicist and I'm newly a research faculty fellow at Princeton's Plasma Physics Laboratory. So he's member of the small elite club of black physicists. In fact, he's the president of the National Society of Black Physicists. And he himself comes out of a background that really kind of made it unlikely that you'd ever see him as a scientist. Clean up. So he had this kind of itinerant childhood. His father was a drug dealer. His mother had a very tough time of it.

0:21:34 Clip: His parents divorced when he was only four years old, and he was never in the same place for more than a few years at a time. New Orleans, Los Angeles, Houston. Eventually, his family settles in rural Mississippi.

0:21:46 Thomas: All right. Frankly, very impressive, man. Truly a hero. And look, there's not necessarily anything wrong with that, but I just would like to note because it, take a guess right now if you're going to hear A, from literally a single voice on the other side of this, and B, if you did hear that, which you already know the answer is no, would they also be described as impressive? Because they very much are. If anything, the people on the other side of this have Hakeem's story plus more. They're like more marginalized. And I guarantee you, I actually know for a fact they have very interesting upbringings and histories. Right off the bat, I want to say, this may sound like nitpicking and it could be to some extent, but we've only heard the very first example. When you start to hear how many of these are, I think it actually becomes important. If it was one or two things, yeah, nitpiking, whatever.

0:22:33 Thomas: If it's 40 things, then no, I need to pick up part of the pattern. I need to establish the pattern, so right away, first thing, and it becomes a bit of a love story to Hakeem. I'll skip over this part. Inspirational music, inspirational story, not taking anything away from the story. It is inspirational, it has a profound psychological impact. Who you get to place with that underlying music and tell their inspirational story of their childhood, how they got into this, that has a profound impact on what your perceptions of this argument are going to be. I wish this podcast rose to the level of both sides journalism. That would be a step up from what this is.

0:23:16 Clip: And one day in 2015, he's reading this online article. You know, I'm doing my normal, you know, take a break between work and just go get lost on the Internet, right? Go down some rabbit hole. And he comes across this rather stunning story involving NASA's Deep Space Telescope, the most powerful such telescope ever made. And it's named after James Webb, former administrator of NASA during the whole moon launch effort. And the article argues that he is absolutely not deserving of that honor. In fact, the title of the article is The Problem with Naming Observatories for Bigots. Would you mind, kind of in a sense, walk through the accusations? Like, one by one, what's the bill of indictment against James Webb? They were pretty explicit. They said James Webb was a homophobe who ruined the lives and careers of gay federal employees in the 1940s 50s.

0:24:05 Clip: That article argued that before coming to NASA, James Webb had led purges of gay employees while at the State Department. And it quotes him saying really inflammatory things about getting rid of gay employees. And the writer, who's a journalist and a physicist, says that this is a sort of moral reckoning, that we cannot, in the 21st century, honor a man such as this by putting his name on a space telescope that is going to be used the world round. So, instance, this journalist writes, "It's easy for white male physicists like me to ignore the less savory aspects of our scientific heroes, but it's long past time we stopped." So James Webb is facing pretty serious allegations of discriminatory behavior that would not seem to make him a great candidate to have his name emblazoned on NASA's premier super telescope.

0:24:55 Clip: That's right. I mean, it looks on the face of it pretty bad. Right. And what does Hakeem Oluseyi make of these claims? You know, I'm appalled, right? I'm like, oh, you got to be kidding me. The James Webb Space Telescope? You know this is bigger than Hubble is going to be. Hakeem is completely taken aback. He's on a Facebook page with other black, Latino, and gay physicists. Everybody's worked up about this. I saw people in that Facebook group talking about how they felt about seeing this and how they felt about NASA and their nation. And what about the youth coming up, right. I felt like they too would even be more tortured by it, right? You're newly coming into this field, this is the latest, greatest data, and you have to deal with someone that you feel, you know, literally would hate you and persecute you if they were alive today. And there is a request, because he is a prominent physicist, that Hakeem join them in denouncing this and pushing NASA to do something to change this.

0:25:48 Clip: And that request is basically take Webb's name off the telescope. Off the telescope, yes. And Hakeem gives that some thought. So the first thing I do is I decide, let me research this, you know, not deeply, just do a Google search. And I found another article that had been written five, six months earlier by Dan Savage in Seattle that basically said the same thing.

0:26:07 Thomas: This is kind of minor, but also kind of not. The Dan Savage article he's referencing, yes, it repeats some of the same information, some of the same claims. The actual point of the article was Dan Savage, a gay man, saying we shouldn't care about this, literally him being like, yeah, we have bigger — by the way, I hate that fucking article and that same argument people use all the time, "Oh, we have bigger fish to fry, there's more to do, we really get distracted by this," setting up progressives who want to make something more inclusive and less shitty, setting that up as like, "Here, I'm gonna police your time, I'm going to tell you what you do and don't have time for," as though there aren't 11 billion people who could maybe take different jobs in this.

0:26:52 Thomas: Okay, well, how about we'll have two people who are really strong advocates, two gonna lobby hard for this, everybody else, hey, go do all the other stuff, that's cool. It's of any kind, do not work like nobody is ever like, "Hey, we all hey, look over here, hey, look at hey, you, you looking at the James Webb article, look over here." No, we all, every all millions of us, we're all we have to look in the same direction and we only do the same thing at all times, never, no, "Hey, you, come back, going to eat lunch," no, we will eat at the same time. Like, it's nonsense, it's just a fake dichotomy, which false dichotomy is one of the most common kind of fallacies and tricks that's indeed in not a lot of these fake controversies,

0:27:34 Clip: But I still know I don't know until I confirm for myself, right? But I'm certainly sympathetic to it because if it is true, this is terrible. And then he says to himself, know if I'm going to do this, I want to know what the real story is here. And so? So as fate would have it, he takes a job at NASA. He gets there, he goes into the office of some of his higher ups. And he says, look, you know, what do we make of this? I took it to the head of strategic communications. And I said, hey, are you aware of this ? And they said, no. Oh, my goodness. Let's go talk to Gregory Robinson, who basically led the James Webb Space Telescope to completion. He was concerned. He's like, oh, this is not good. Let'S look into this. And he said, Hakeem, please send me everything you have. And so I sent him the two articles. I sent him the Wikipedia article. And that's all I could find up to that point. So I had another meeting with him a week later.

0:28:21 Clip: And he said, Hakeem, you know, this does not provide any actual evidence of what happened. All I see here is accusations. Would you mind looking into it and finding out what actually happened? And I said, sure, I'd love to, right? Because I had the exact same curiosity and I love the research. So, you Know, that sounds great.

0:28:36 Thomas: So his story here struck me as a little weird. Did it strike you as a little weird, the way he took on the other side in a way that, to me, came across a little bit fake? "What about the kids coming up? They're going to have to see this." That by itself, not a huge deal, but contrast that with what he says the sequencing of that was. So, that article is from June 2015. He tells it, it's like this group of people that he was all kind of in with, like, "Yeah, no, they're talking about it, makes sense," they ask him, "Hey, Hakeem, can you join us, help us do" there's something, and it's not clear what that ask is. I mean, there have been different petitions, so they could have been like, "Hey, sign this petition," and there have ben, I guess, like, efforts to be vocal about it, could could have ben that, we don't know, because he doesn't tell us. He says, like, "No, I can't do that because I haven't looked into it." So goes from, like, "Yeah, this is oh, this, this is so concerning."

0:29:24 Thomas: Plus think of the kids, literally think of the children. And then people are like, do you want to do anything to help us with it? Oh, I haven't looked into it. I don't know. Which is like, okay, I guess. What you're expecting next, what I'm expecting next is, so I needed to research to get back to them. Like that was Wednesday that they asked me. And I'm like, hey, let me do some research and maybe, you know, a week, a month, whatever goes by. And then I was like, like, hey, no, I don't believe this, which, spoiler, is what's going to happen. But instead of that, he says, and then as luck would have it, I took a job at NASA. And surfing his LinkedIn profile, I see he joined NASA October 2016. So almost the end of 2016. So that is a year and four months later. So didn't that come across as a little weird to you? Oh, yeah, I saw this problem. Boy, what a big problem this is.

0:30:10 Thomas: Think of the kids. The people were like, "Hey, do you want to help us with this," he says, "Ah, haven't looked into it," which is that's already kind of weird, and then instead of then I looked into its, so anyway, a year and four months later, because apparently he just blew those people off, he starts a job at NASA, and he's so concerned, though, about this thing that he blew off, like, he's like, "I remember this from a year and four months ago," definitely, "I've been hanging on to this," not enough to research it, not enough to help the people who think it's a big deal, but I've just been hanging on to it. And and he gives this, the impression, he starts at NASA, and by golly, I need to clear this up right away. And one more thing that might make you suspicious, he talks to somebody, then they talk to another person, and then they say, "Hakeem, can you look into this?" And once you think just even as a listener, even knowing nothing about this, wouldn't you think, well, that's a little weird.

0:30:59 Thomas: Like, NASA wants to like hire a historian or like an expert or consultant? I mean, who knows? You know, federal agencies, government's kind of a weird place. Sometimes they're like, I don't know who would do whose job would this be? But I don't know, it still seems a little weird that they're like, well, why don't you go save us, even though it's not your job and you're not a historian, a trained historian at all. So I'm if like me, you were a little suspicious of this story at this point, turns out your suspicions are warranted because further evidence tells us that this is a bullshit story. So we'll talk about that when we get to it.

0:31:30 Clip: And according to Hakeem, they tell him, would you please take a look at it? So what starts as a kind of personal curiosity about who James Webb really was and what he did has now become kind of official business from NASA. Get to the bottom of this. Yes, at this point, it's Hakeem with certainly the help of NASA opening some doors and starting to really delve into the archives. So once empowered to carry out this inquiry, what does HakeEM find?

0:31:54 Thomas: Here's a little bit I can skip through. He just talks about the Red Scare and then the Lavender Scare in general in historical terms, and how James Webb was at the State Department at the time, etc., etc., and then here they get to like the allegations, quote-unquote, against James Webb.

0:32:11 Clip: And what specific evidence is put forward about Webb's role in this lavender scare? Well, it's twofold. One, there's this quote that he allegedly wrote in a government report, and it goes like this. It is generally believed that those who engage in overt acts of perversion lack the emotional stability of normal persons. As kind of a justification for forcing out gay workers. Precisely. The second is that Webb personally fired 91 gay employees from the State Department. Serious claims. Serous claims. And if true, you can understand very much why people today would look at that with a sense of horror. What does Hakeem find about all this? So he systematically goes about this.

0:32:51 Thomas: Systematically, by just peppering in little adjectives that I think tip off where you are.

0:32:55 Clip: He delves into the NASA archives. He Delves into the congressional archives. And after reading every piece of information on Webb, he still can't find any evidence that Webb wrote this damning, bigoted quote. But

0:33:07 Thomas: So that is Michael Powell, the reporter, representing that this guy he's talking to literally every single thing about James Webb, like every piece of paper. This time is not a Thomas exaggeration. That's what he said. He that's a pretty strong claim. And again, it sets up his protagonist the systematic guy, went through everything, every piece of paper,

0:33:30 Clip: Eventually he does. And this exact quote that was horrible that was put in his name appeared in a Senate report, not in James Webb's words. Webb didn't write it. It's actually from a report issued by the Senate that Webb had absolutely nothing to do with. What about the second accusation that Webb fired gay employees? It wasn't James Webb. Put simply, he didn't do that. So it was case of mistaken identity. That appeared to be the case to me. Everything was done by John Purifoyle and Carlisle Hummelstein, who were two other employees at the State Department. That's what Hakeem has found, is that the central allegations that first materialized in those articles he had read a few years earlier and drummed up all this anger at Webb, that those central allegations are basically not accurate. That's correct. And what's also particularly interesting is he finds in looking at Webb's tenure at NASA in the 1960s that Webb had played a key role in helping to racially integrate this massive agency, particularly at its famed research facilities in Huntsville, Alabama.

0:34:28 Clip: The South. The South, and here it's very important to understand historical context. George Wallace is the arch-segregationist governor of Alabama, absolutely opposed to any idea of integrating federal agencies on his watch in Alabama, puts a lot of pressure on Webb and President Johnson not to do this. And Webb says, no, we're going to integrate this agency. He even at one point threatens to move key parts of that facility out of Alabama, which is a strong shot across the bow to Alabama. Right. And to its extremely prominent and powerful segregationist governor. Right. And in the end, George Wallace backed down. So according to Hakeem's research, not only is Webb not a bigot, he is actively working to make the United States government more inclusive.

0:35:17 Clip: Yes. Once I had those two things together, oh, I love Webb now. And what does Hakeem do with this information that clearly undercuts everything that's being said in this moment about James Webb?

0:35:28 Thomas: Notice the language there, undercuts everything that's being said. In literally two slapdish articles, not by historians written in 2015, but this counters everything Michael that is being said about James Webb.

0:35:39 Clip: Well, first, of course, he goes back and he tells what he's found. And then he writes an article in which he lays out at some length all of his findings. And he's tough in that piece. I mean, he says, look, there have been accusations made by essentially people within my community, that is physicists, that he is a homophobe and it led this lavender purge. And he's saying that's all wrong. And in fact, his article was entitled, was NASA's historic leader, James Webb, a bigot? And

0:36:05 Thomas: So I want to ask you something based on what you've heard and the dates that I said, when do you think he wrote this article? I'm just curious. When do you think Hakeem wrote this article? We got a pretty streamlined story. 2015. These articles are out. Oh, big deal. Hakeem really cares. People ask him to help. He's like, nah, not going to look into it. A a job at NASA, goes in, it's like, hey, have you seen this? They're like, oh no. They set him on the task of researching. Cool, he researches. He looks, reads every piece of paper, clarifies everything, bam, clears James Webb's name. Again, for this first iteration, this first level of debunk, we're on debunk level one, I'm going to take them at their word for the most part, his name. Then he writes this article. So, when would you guess we are? And obviously, since I am asking the question, I am tipping you off. But pretend I have not tipped you off, let us just pretend like this is totally straightforward, no tip off.

0:36:54 Thomas: You're just thinking, okay, well, let's see. He's 2016. He started at NASA, went in right away, demanded to look into this. Okay. You know, he's got a J job. He is doing stuff. Maybe that research took a minute, I don't know. Maybe it's 2017. You know, like maybe it's mid 2017, maybe, maybe got real busy and like, okay, maybe it'S another year. This was written January 23rd, 2021. So, that was five years. So anyway, you might think I'm making a big deal about this. Well, okay. All right. Maybe. Maybe. But these were things that seemed weird to me. And, maybe, they weren't — further investigation that I've already done. Not for nothing. The way he presents it of like, I went into NASA, approached them. They're like, look into this. I wonder what they said when it's been five years. And he's like, hey, boss, got the report for you.

0:37:41 Thomas: And they're like, what? I don't even remember. This is, again, all of Trump happened in between when I apparently asked you this and when you're coming to me. So literally, who are you? I don't know. Have we met? I don't know. It seems a little weird. Nothing. Just took a long time there, if that's how you're presenting the storyline.

0:37:56 Clip: And can you read me your conclusion? In full disclosure, I have never met James Webb who died in 1992. I have no idea was in his heart and mind, But what I can say conclusively is that there is zero evidence that Webb is guilty of the allegations against him.

0:38:10 Thomas: What I can say conclusively, mind you, conclusively is that there's zero evidence Webb is guilty of the allegations, pretty expansive thing, a pretty bold claim to be just allowing to air on your podcast of record from the New York Times uncritically.

0:38:28 Clip: And he's very unequivocal about what he found. When you hit publish on that essay, what did you expect? Do you think there would be blowback? I did not expect blowback, not at all. I thought there would be a big sigh of relief from the astronomy community and we'd move forward. And what was the initial reaction? Well, the initial react was exactly that. There was like immediately, you know, 400 or so astronomers quote tweeted that article with, hey, now we can move on. It's not true.

0:38:59 Clip: But then a few days later, things changed drastically.

0:39:03 Thomas: Wow, what an ominous cliffhanger.

0:39:06 Clip: Michael, what does Hakeem mean when he says that the initial reaction to his piece changes drastically? At first, many physicists look at his article, look at the research, and there's a sense of relief. Oh, okay, we don't have to worry about that. We have not named this spectacular telescope after a homophobe. Then the criticism comes and it is aimed at Hakeem personally and it has historical research and one of my colleagues who I had known since 2008 published an article with the title "The Straights Are Here to Save Us" about me, and in this research, you know, and and I'm just like, person element boils down to, who are you, a, you a straight male physicist, to to tell us, queer, gay physicists and employees of NASA and other universities, what Webb was about. Who were you to tell our history?

0:39:54 Thomas: This was where I threw my phone in the fucking ocean, except not really the first time I was listening to it. This is where I already knew. Oh, okay. The game is up. Nevermind. Here's the thing. This is important, because this is a symptom of the problem I am trying to fix with my very modest podcast here. I found this part so fucking insane. I knew without even looking, I promise, Scout's Honor, without even Looking Anything Up yet, when I was first listening to this, I heard that little fucking exchange and I said, oh, that's bullshit. I have a lot of experience with social justice issues and progressive causes. And while certainly there are plenty of people within those movements who make shitty arguments like that, of course, like there's for any side of anything, especially issues where there's broadly two sides in the world, like left and right, for example, or some of those broad issues, you're on either side.

0:40:42 Thomas: You're gonna have people who argue terribly on either side, and if you only point to those people and only answer their arguments, boy, you're really doing an intellectually dishonest thing. I'm listening to this and I'm thinking, okay, you are telling me the response to Hakeem's article, well, you shouldn't even do the research, you can't even, you don't even. Because that would already be admitting you don't have anything. That would be a last-ditch effort argument of someone who has absolutely no response. And while you may find some screaming protester somewhere, some college student, as Fox News often does, anti-woke as people often do, you may fine one of them who would just say, like, you can't do this because you're not gay. And, like, that's their whole argument. You might find somebody like that to make that argument. It's a stupid argument.

0:41:28 Thomas: Nobody believes that argument, nobody on any side, except for maybe some really naive, thinking or woke people would think that, but nobody serious thinks that the causal argument of, okay, you have the better data, but not part of my identity group, so doesn't count. Nobody, nobody serious. And we are talking about, we are talking astrophysicists. Like, it would be one thing if you were describing a college freshman debate, then I might believe you. And then I may be like, oh yeah, I bet a college freshman might've said that. Yeah, sure. But me, you're going to have me believe, you were going to characterize the whole backlash, the counter to Hakeem, in that whatever that blog post was that's called "The Straights Coming to Save Us," going to say that they just said, how dare you look into this because you're not one of us, you're gonna, you're gonna, with a straight face, you're, you're gonna ask me to believe that debate in which both sides are astrophysicists? I know that that's never true.

0:42:21 Thomas: When we're talking about serious, we're not talking about kids, not talking about shouting people on YouTube videos or whatever. We're talking about serious people. That's never true. The argument never goes that way. It doesn't. But when your conception of the world has been badly affected by this propaganda, what I'm trying to fight with this podcast. By the constant barrage of, oh yeah, you know, the screaming people, they're always like, oh, straight white man, you, you can't do anything, like you've heard that a million times. And obviously, Hakeem is a Black man. I'm just using the typical, like, how that goes. You have heard, after time and after time, after time after time, faith, people represent the woke, quote unquote, argument, says that you've read that a million times. Oh, you're not allowed to look at it because you're not our identity group. That never is the case. But I know that, because I haven't been bombarded with years upon years of misinformation about progressives and what they believe and how they argue.

0:43:14 Thomas: But this reporter, and I guess Michael Barbaro has, or they're being instructed to or something by Mr. New York Times, I don't know. And importantly, this is exactly the kind of thing that broadly America is susceptible to. I think if you polled the entire US population and told them, hey, if you look at the progressive side, do they often tell you like, just wrong wrong because you're a white man or whatever. And then, and like, you'd get like 70% of people being like, yeah, that's all they do. They're just like, ah, white man, you're wrong. And that's never what it is at a serious level. If you're going to entertain the best arguments of the other side, or even like the average arguments of the other side. That's never what's happening.

0:43:54 Clip: This is basically a criticism that Hakeem is not qualified as a non-gay, non-queer person to even carry out this inquiry. Yes, not qualified by dint of his identity.

0:44:03 Thomas: The most annoying fucking part of that obviously bad faith representation of the other side is, you're setting up an obvious straw man, and then, like, faux treating it, it's like if I said, yeah, the other side's argument, they're just like, you're wrong because you're fucking wearing a blue hat, and then Michael Barbaro's like, oh, okay, so this would be, a this would a criticism that people, uh, with blue hats, um, who are you to tell us our history because you're wearing a blue hat, oh okay, hmm, taking that argument very seriously. Seriously, I will, make sure to set it up and with a tone like I'm respecting that fake argument I just made up. OK, yeah, so condescending.

0:44:38 Clip: Just like, whoa, first off, I thought we had a cordial working relationship. Why are you dissing me like this personally?

0:44:45 Thomas: So now we're just listening to one side of a Twitter feud. Hi, we're the New New York Times. Do you want to hear us air one side of a personal disagreement over Twitter as our news? That's our news now. This is not an opinion piece. This is news. Do we do a good news if I just play uncritically some guy giving his side of a Twitter fight? What Oluseyi didn't tell you about his blog post, that is the focus of this, that he was actually the one who was proactively a piece of shit toward colleagues, So in the 2015 piece by Matthew Francis, that's the one that's like, it's just a short little thing, a couple paragraphs, not really. I mean, it really is like five paragraphs. He credits Prescod-Weinstein as as the the one who, quote, first informed me of his anti-gay activities, unquote, obviously being James Webb.

0:45:32 Thomas: So then Oluseyi in his blog, conclusion where he's going to like name names as to who got this all wrong, he says, quote. The author of the Forbes.com article references a professional astrophysicist as his original source for learning of the allegations against Webb. This scientist propagated unsubstantiated false information as if it were true without performing proper scientific rigor to investigate its veracity. I don't know, did you perform proper scientific rigor to determine if this insult is really justified? Because, like, there's a lot of ways that this would be a fucking really, really unfair on a colleague. For real, Prescod-Weinstein could have just offhandedly mentioned one day to Matthew Francis, hey, I read this article that said James Webb, you know, was a homophobe.

0:46:20 Thomas: Look at this. Like, that could have been it. It's completely fucking disingenuous to pretend that astrophysicists have the sacred duty, a scientific obligation, to fact check every single like fucking article they ever see before sharing it with a friend. That's not how humans work. It's incredibly misleading. And just, brazen to, just out not only, the piece by Matthew Francis, but to also say, that author said that a professional astrophysicist was the original source for learning of this. That scientist propagated unsubstantiated... Shut the fuck up, man. Clearly there's something personal going on there. Now, mind you, the author of "The Straights Are Here to Save Us" is not Prescod-Weinstein's blog post. But to that, the next paragraph reads, again, it's really is like, like, he is listing off these grievances toward the end in, the community of astronomers and astrophysicists, the online and social media group who blindly accepted the allegations also piled on and were ready to confront NASA, although they did not apply proper rigor.

0:47:18 Thomas: Like, I'm just going to go ahead and say it. I'm not, I guess, a scientist, but I actually think it's okay to trust Wikipedia for this level of inquiry. Like at the level of, I think this guy like kind of sucked. Oh yeah, that guy did kind of suck. That's fucking fine. Like it, we're not, we're not all historians who have access. By the way, yeah, part of his investigation involves him being at NASA and having access to all this shit and going through every word we're to believe. And now he's like scolding scientists who, took on board a Wikipedia article and that had citations to books and et cetera, most of which are still completely valid. Admittedly, that quote may be wrong, misattributed. But yeah, OK, there's a lot else there, though. That kind of lecturing is obviously personal, in my opinion.

0:48:08 Thomas: It just is. Like, I could, look, there's nothing wrong with doing this research and uncovering, quote, shouldn't be attributed to James Webb. And also, well, the other stuff is a little fuzzy, but yeah, OK, maybe some, some other possible mistaken identity. We'll get to it in later episodes. Nothing wrong with doing that research, but, you know, like, this idea that you're, at the end of that blog post, you're going to list, going to list, like it's the fucking witch trials, everybody who didn't stand up to your proper scientific rigor standards, doing for not doing something, by the way, that seems as though they couldn't have done based on the resources you had that they didn't have, and then he has the temerity to be like, whoa, I thought we were colleagues, and say, I, I figured once I wrote this, everyone would be like, hey, you're a hero, we're all happy now. Like, no, you didn't. You didn't think that you would write this and everything would be great if you put those last two paragraphs in, chastising an entire community of, let me read that again.

0:49:02 Thomas: Quote, and astrophysicists in the online social media group who blindly accepted the allegations also piled on and were ready to confront NASA, even though they did not apply proper rigor. Come on. Are you kidding me? That is unbelievable. But we only hear him because he's the one on the fucking New York Times, the Daily Podcast. And he gets to say, well, where's this hostility coming from, people?

0:49:26 Clip: And what about the historical critique? Because from everything you've said, his research is pretty clear-cut and it's pretty compelling. Well, they say my research changes nothing. All I did was look at a quote and who actually said it, but that was it, right? Look, critics say he missed a few things, including something that happened in the early 1960s when Webb was chief administrator at NASA. A gay employee at NASA was caught in a sting by police in Washington, D.C., and was later fired by NASA. And the accusation was that Webb should have known about this, could have known About This, and should have stopped it. Because he ran. Because he run NASA.

0:50:06 Thomas: So, from what you just heard, I want to know, and again, obviously I'm seeding this for you, but pretend I haven't said anything. You heard him reference the blog, The Straights Are Here to Save Us, and you heard him characterize that and take very seriously the argument, ah, that's because you are not qualified. And then they transition to like, okay, what are the historical arguments? Well, critics say they missed a few things. I want to know something. Give me your view just as a listener to the daily. Pretend I'm not here. What do you think is the content of that blog, The Straights Are Here to Save Us? Based on their representation of it. Again, because this is all about how well, how accurately are the New York Times reporting facts? And what impressions are they leaving their readers, their listeners, are they leading you with an accurate idea of I know, many different factual components of the story.

0:50:55 Thomas: What do you think, based on that description, "The Straights Are Here to Save Us"? What do you think that says? Well, I would say if I was just listening to it and I was taking them at their word, I think it's like, okay, "The Straights Are Here to Save Us," it sounds like it's a personal attack where they're like, okay, fuck this guy. He's not queer. He has no business looking into this. Fuck you. I can't believe you did this to us.

You're not qualified because of your identity and no other reason. Don't even, he doesn't even throw in historian there, by the way. He could have at least, Barbaro, least thrown in historian to like kind of make it plausibly the counter-argument. That's what I would think that blog says. I would thing it's about, I don't know, four paragraphs. It's probably like, fuck this guy. How dare you do this? You're not qualified to do this because you're not gay. I don't care what any of your facts say.

Take your article and shove it. That's basically what I would be left with the impression of. And, then, they would transition to, well, okay, here's what some critics say, and there's some history involved. Would it surprise you to learn, then, that The Straights Are Here to Save Us on the science sub stack, which is a great name, by Prescod-Weinstein, is pretty long and comprehensive? I don't know, 20 paragraphs just by eyeballing it, and involves citations, the historians, citation, to PhDs who actually know what the fuck they're talking about.

A bunch of historical points to be made. And And then also, of course, includes in the beginning, sentence, this I'm extremely tired of straight people incorrectly explaining gay history to me for the purpose of justifying their own ends. And because the scrubbing of Webb's historical record does active harm to LGBTQIA plus astronomers in the field today.

0:52:31 Thomas: Would you have gotten that impression that actually what this blog post is, what this sub stack is, is here's a very detailed rebuttal of Oluseyi's points, citing historians? And furthermore, I'm very sick of straight people incorrectly explaining gay history to me. Boy, that sure seems a lot different than, what's their argument? Oh, well, you see, their argument is how dare you, a straight man, look into this. Really? That's it? That is their whole argument? Really? And I can't emphasize enough how instantly I knew this was fucking bullshit. Because I know that is never what the argument is. It never is. I can not resist doing a bit of an analogy here, but this seems to be a sticking point. Probably not for you listeners, but maybe, a little analogy. Let's imagine the world is different and, you know, it's a matriarchy, women kind of run everything. Let's imagine, and, and uh, just kind of roll reversal, just for fun, and let's pretend that often just kick men in the nuts, like like, just, just happens, just frequently, and as a man you're like, boy, that really fucking hurts.

0:53:28 Thomas: That, that really hurts when I get kicked in the balls. That is just unpleasant. I do not like it. It's painful. It'S incredibly painful. And then what happens is like time after time, a bunch of women, by the way, you said that in your blog, you're like, God, I'm so it's, it's really painful. I get kicking the balls, it hurts a lot. And like, nobody seems to care about this. And that's just a little blog that happens. And Then five books come out and several several main TV interviews and the New York times headlines are a woman's thing. Actually, it doesn't hurt when they get kicked in the balls. It's they like, they kind of pretend it does, but it doesn'T hurt. It'S actually completely painless. And then that happens for, I don'T know, centuries. And eventually you're like, Holy fucking shit. Imagine men. Cause this is honestly, honestly, this is like often white men are who needs to be convinced of these things.

0:54:16 Thomas: And now imagine in response that man goes to their blog and says, God, I am so fucking sick of women telling me that it doesn't hurt when I get kicked in the nuts. Like how, why are you telling me, why aren't women telling me how that feels? Like, why they, what, can you stop doing that? Like you don't know how it feels. And then, Oh, guess what? Then you get the second wave of New York times. By the way, all the while you're having to write in your little blog because you're not empowered. And And that's just how it works. And then all the responses are usually in way more privileged, powerful sources like books and TV and New York Times. And And then women respond. Look at this. Their arguments are terrible. Here they are saying, I, as a woman, cannot know if it hurts when they get kicked in the balls. And that is just logically not sound. I lots of things have never happened to me.

0:55:02 Thomas: I could tell you whether they hurt or don't hurt. I've never got my arm chopped off. I could tell you that hurts. And, I many of my best friends are men, and they tell me that it doesn't hurt when you get kicked in the balls. And this person is out there just telling me, because I'm a woman, I can't know. No, there's no way for me to know that it doesn't hurt when you get kicked in the balls. Well, they just don't have an argument. I, I have on my sources, I have the facts on my side, and these men over here, all they can, all they're left with, I have no argument, all they're with is, uh, how dare you, a woman, chime in on this. It's identity politics, and it's a sign of people who have no argument. That's essentially a perfect description in my mind of the dynamics that go on day after day after today, after day, with exactly these kinds of issues. That's what it is. And so when somebody, so I'll step out of my weird analogy, apologies, but I couldn't help it.

0:55:51 Thomas: It's a perfect, I'm sorry, it's a perfect distillation of what's happening. And imagine, though, that every time you hear this, they're saying, oh my god, I'm so sick, yeah, I'm so sick of people who don't know, that aren't a part of this, they don't, they don't, they're telling me who is a part about my own history, about my pain, about my, I'm just sick of that. That's what they're doing. They're not saying, therefore you are wrong and therefore I ignore your evidence. And yet, like, they set it up as though, well, yeah, okay, Oluseyi has perfect evidence, obviously, but like, forget that, like, he's not gay, so I'm not gonna listen. And it is downright journalistically fucking irresponsible to summarize this substack that way. Mean, come on, it's not a dissertation, but it's, it's well-written, a pretty long substack with references to history.

0:56:39 Thomas: The top line of it is, boy, this guy is fucking wrong and I'm tired of people like this coming in and telling me stuff they don't know anything about. Unreal.

0:56:51 Thomas: And that's where we'll cut off for now on this feed. Again, if you want to hear the whole thing, go to patreon.com/wherethereswoke. There's so much more. I can't wait to tell, I don't know, several more hours of this story. There's a lot. But thank you for listening, and we'll see you very soon for the second half of this.