Diabolical Lies

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.diabolicalliespod.com In 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 w...

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...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.diabolicalliespod.com This 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....

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 readin...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.diabolicalliespod.com In 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...

In this conversation… Caro & Katie dive headfirst into the “male loneliness epidemic,” “the boys are not all right,” “feminism hurts men” discourse to understand which right-wing think tank’s research suddenly indicates The Men™️ are struggling, its curious timing, and the frustrating tendency of all the coverage to completely gloss over the core problem. References in this Episode Of Boys and Men...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.diabolicalliespod.com In this conversation… Caro & Katie engage in a close read of the viral Free Press debate TikTok that stars a young woman angry she can’t live on a homestead, and accidentally discover it’s uniquely emblematic of the sort of right-wing radicalization we’re witnessing en masse in the United States.

In this conversation… Caro & Katie talk about abortion in America, starting with leaders in the evangelical church recognizing it as a political tool in the 1970s with which to gain power in the face of unwanted desegregation, to the profound discomfort that modern politicians across the spectrum express about the subject—that is, until maybe, right now. It turns out that American women have never...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.diabolicalliespod.com Our first bonus episode! The first 40 minutes of this conversation are available to everyone, but if you'd like to become a subscriber, join us on Substack or Apple Podcasts. In this conversation… A critique of work that best illustrates different elements of the, “I used to be a liberal, but…” media personalit...

In this conversation… Two pre-menopausal females break down the replacement theory panic disguised as Reasonable! Political! Concern! and why it’s completely unnecessary and counterproductive to entertain the pronatalist conversation on their terms: that is, litigating the validity of having (or not having) children. It is not, and has never been, about the kids. Bonus Reading The Dawn of Everythi...

In this conversation… The picture heard ‘round the Reddit Popular page has reignited the internet’s favorite form of is-that-misogyny? debate: Ladies, are we allowed to talk about what may or may not be happening on Taylor Swift’s face? Plastic surgery speculation is an online sport in its own right, but the real story is what it tells us about our culture’s attitude toward cosmetic procedures (an...

in this episode: caro & katie debrief on the bama rush / rushtok phenomenon, through the lens of katie's experience going through alabama rush 10 years ago and the deconstruction process that followed. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.diabolicalliespod.com/subscribe

101s on the latest gender panic event at the Olympics “ The Right-Wing Campaign to Purge Women from Women’s Sports ” —  The Intercept “ Boxer in Controversy Over Eligibility Lets Her Gloves Do the Talking ” — New York Times “ Imane Khelif and Western Delusions of White Innocence ” —  Al Jazeera “ Imane Khelif Fights The World's Greatest Boxers—and Bigots ” — Qasim Rashid Substack some helpful 101s...

In this conversation * What even is free will? * What the follow-up article means about the response * The Venn diagram between fundamentalist Christianity and white supremacy is a circle * Where we go from here We’ll be releasing these types of conversations as the zeitgeist allows. Subscribe for more! Resources Primary cited sources  Meet the Queen of the ‘trad wives’ (and her eight children) My...