SPECIAL EPISODE: “Wait, Is This Really Happening?” A Candid Check In From Inside the Moment

No guest today, no polished lesson, no neat ending. Just Dr. Shawna Gann and Rachel, one of last year’s co-hosts, sitting down for an unfiltered, unscripted conversation about what it feels like to be alive in this moment. They jump from media to power, faith to language, survival to community, and the constant mental whiplash of trying to stay grounded while everything feels loud. The through line is voice, not the perfect kind, but the kind that helps you name what you’re noticing, process out loud, and remember you are not the only one holding this tension in your body.

Together they talk about how we got here, how information gets curated, how language gets manipulated, and why proximity to wealth and authority has never been proof of intelligence or morality. They reflect on growing up in church, the ways religion and politics get tangled, and how systems shape what we believe about gender, race, and who is seen as human. It’s funny in places, heavy in others, and above all honest. A reminder to protect your voice, protect your energy, stay connected, and stay engaged where it counts, especially locally.

Content note: adult language and discussion of politics and current events. This is not a news report or definitive analysis, it’s two people thinking out loud in real time.

If this is your first time with OTC, check out EPISODE 1: START HERE for more background on the show. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram!

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Transcript

Intro: Hey friends, welcome back to our true colors. I am Dr Shawna Gan your host, and I am really pleased to bring you today's episode. It's a little different from our usual format. There's no guest, no tidy takeaway. It's more like you're walking into the room while a conversation is already happening, it's me and Rachel, one of my co hosts from last year, and together, we're talking through what it feels like to be living in this moment right now here in 2026. in this conversation, we jump around, we connect dots, we vent a little, we laugh, we name the things that have been sitting in our bodies and our brains lately, whether that's media, power, faith, language, or just the general feeling of Wait, is this really happening? Voice has been on my mind lately. Maybe you've been catching my mini series on the Bill of Rights. It's been on LinkedIn and also on Instagram, on the outer colors podcast account I was texting with a friend who has laryngitis. I'm sorry, bud, I hope you're feeling better now, by the way. And we were talking about how frustrating it is to literally lose your voice. But it also got me thinking about voice in a bigger sense, like how important it is to be able to speak, to process out loud, to say, Yo, this is what I'm noticing, even when you don't have all the answers. No one here is going to ever claim to always be right or have all those answers. Feels really good to be able to discuss things. Basically. That's what this conversation is. Rachel and me just voicing our thoughts, no script. It's just us being honest and human in the middle of a lot. Quick heads up before we start. There is adult language and we talk about current events in politics. This isn't meant to be a news report or a definitive analysis. It's two people thinking out loud, showing up as we are. All right, let's get into it.

Shawna Gann (00:00)
Rachel, thank you for coming back for this. I'm so excited. this is gonna be a really real episode,

Rachel (she/her) (00:02)
Of course.

Shawna Gann (00:07)
I was like, I know who's going to talk with me for real, for real, for real. Not that my current co-host wouldn't or other folks wouldn't, but Marcel, who's my season six co-host, lives in the UK. So there's going to be lots of discussion throughout the season with him his perspective on things. But I think it feels different when you're like here. And I haven't even said what the "it" is yet, but I think listeners probably even know what the "it" is.

Rachel (she/her) (00:18)
Uh-huh.

Yeah, and in it.

How can you not know what "it" is? How can you? I mean, in the today of things, can you not know?

Shawna Gann (00:38)
There's a lot to the it.

Rachel (she/her) (00:38)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Disney did this to us. Disney said good people are beautiful and White and pretty and all these things. And bad people are fat and ugly and typically presented in some sort of darkness representation, right?

are having a hard time not understanding that just because people are in positions of power and authority does not mean that they are intelligent, kind, good, or deserving of those things. All a crap shoot of birth and privilege, but they have constructed language to make us believe that they earned it. And we have to earn it because they did, but like you were at the right place at the right time. I'd say you didn't work hard at some point.

But your proximity to the people who have these things ushered you into this not a signal of your morality. That's just proximity.

Shawna Gann (01:29)
That's true.

But in today's where we access to information, and I'm not gonna be naive and say that everybody in the United States has same access to information, because that wouldn't be true. But there's enough access to information to know better, to not lean on ignorance anymore.

Rachel (she/her) (01:43)
Right

Shawna Gann (01:50)
said this before, okay, back in the day, because I grew up in the time when there was like four channels on television and people read the actual print newspaper

Rachel (she/her) (01:58)
Mm-hmm, wow.

Shawna Gann (02:01)
Whatever newspapers you subscribed to and actually read that were folded and delivered on your The three channels and then fourth when Fox came along that you on your television access was so limited

that the television went off, like the airwaves went off, they did the Star Spangled Banner and said, good night, y'all, go to bed. That was the end. So then, when people talked about what was happening in the world, what was their reference? They all referenced the resources we had, which were those newspapers, the...

Rachel (she/her) (02:15)
Mm-hmm.

That was it. Take your last bit.

Shawna Gann (02:31)
information that you might have gotten from the television and then after that it was hearsay like whatever people heard from somebody else. So we all kind of had the same sources. Now our information is so curated because of all the streaming

We haven't even started talking about social media, the basis of our information to form our opinions also is quite curated. But we do have the ability to change the channel or to read something else. We just don't want to.

Rachel (she/her) (02:51)
Mm-hmm.

What you said made me think about like TV went off, whatever, but also, the government had a stake in fair and balanced news up until I think it was Reagan got rid of the fairness doctrine.

where news stories had to present a fair and balanced account of news by

Shawna Gann (03:19)
1987, the Reagan administration voted to abolish the doctrine, arguing it stifled free speech and did not serve the public interest. An attempt by Congress to codify the doctrine into law was vetoed by President Reagan.

So it says the doctrine required broadcasters to cover controversial issues of public importance and ensure that the contrasting viewpoints were presented in a balanced manner. So you're saying that got gone and now we have this...

Rachel (she/her) (03:46)
did Fox News come into the picture? Like hardcore, is there a correlation between the elimination of that and the rise in Fox News? Yeah,

Shawna Gann (03:54)
Ooh, that's a chat GPT question.

chat said this Short answer. Yes. There's a strong correlation,

First, the Fairness Doctrine, and it talks about the 1987 stuff, so I'm gonna skip that, because we already talked about it. And it says, oh, this is important, that doctrine, the Fairness Doctrine, applied to broadcast TV, not cable.

Rachel (she/her) (04:16)
across public. Okay.

Shawna Gann (04:17)
ABC, CBS, Fox Channel, but not

the cable, CNN, MSNBC, is now MSNOW, and News Channel. But 1996 is when the Fox News Channel, which is cable, launched.

Rachel (she/her) (04:23)
⁓ Interesting.

brain has been trying so hard to intellectualize how we got here in the today of things, right? So we have the fairness doctrine in my academic opinion based on research. I feel like this started Brown v. board of education. So when schools integrated and the pushback that was so violent to that and the government was like, look, y'all.

Shawna Gann (04:36)
Yeah.

Rachel (she/her) (04:54)
The whole world is not doing this segregation thing. We kind of got to get on board and this was like 1950s. So we are talking about someone's lifetime that this has happened. So then you saw a political in what can we get our base excited about if we can't get them excited about racism anymore? We're still going to do that, don't legal apparatus in place to support.

racism anymore.

Now we got to be sneaky, shady about our races because we still want the same structures. We still want the same privileges and permissions. So now we got to get y'all upset about something else.

So that's when you started to see a marriage between religion and politics around the time of Brown v. Board of Education.

where now we got to sit next to these Negroes in class and on a bus and everything. We can't talk to them any type of way. And where are we going to put all this vitriol that we've been taught to have? We have to put that somewhere. And then when you interweave that with the principles of Christianity, if you follow some of these principles in the ways that like your Southern Baptist do, that is an authoritarian religion.

Shawna Gann (05:45)
you

It is. I don't know if people ever think about that, but I have a memory of, I was like six or seven maybe, and my mom sang in the choir. And I don't know, you grew up in church, I remember, right? Yeah, so I don't know what kind of church, but I went to Shiloh Missionary Southern Baptist Church, okay? All right.

Rachel (she/her) (06:12)
Sure did.

Yes, ma'am, Southern Baptist all day.

Shawna Gann (06:21)
So, and you know what that means. You had to have the fan. You know what the clap is like, the ushers. Yes, you are, because you had to start Sunday school. Then you got to go to church. Then there was all the fellowship. Anyhow, here's the thing. After church, I wanted to see my mom. And like you said, it's 12 hours, freaking long day. And I...

Rachel (she/her) (06:25)
You're going to be there for 12 hours.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Shawna Gann (06:42)
was little and I was like just sitting there I don't even know like maybe my grandmother wasn't there with me that day or something so after church I would like run up to see her because she's in where the choir sat behind pulpit but I made a terrible mistake and to go see her I ran through I passed behind it and this deacon was like young lady you may not pass through here and that's because women (females)

Rachel (she/her) (06:52)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Shawna Gann (07:10)
were not be behind the pulpit in those days. I got chewed out for going to go see my mom. I'm like six because I was a girl. Yeah, yeah.

Rachel (she/her) (07:13)
These are-

⁓ I'm a baby. I have

not lived before. How do I know that, sir? And when adults yell at kids about things like a kid's supposed to know that, how the hell would a child know that?

Shawna Gann (07:29)
That was him teaching me, I guess. But here, I was gonna say it taught me something else. I think that's when I became a feminist.

Rachel (she/her) (07:31)
through that's violent, though. That's violent.

⁓

Shawna Gann (07:38)
Like I get it if you want to yell at me for running, don't run inside. But you yelled at me for a girl and going behind the pulpit. I think that's when I learned that the rules were not the same on your gender.

Rachel (she/her) (07:41)
Mm-hmm.

that makes me think about, especially in Baptist Pentecostal-esque, because they want you, especially Pentecostal denomination, they want women to wear dresses and skirts typically, and they give them a, like a cloth or a blanket so that the pastor does not get distracted by Sister Earlene kneecaps, Sister Earlene kneecaps, done seen the Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, John Lennon.

Shawna Gann (08:01)
Yeah.

for modesty.

Rachel (she/her) (08:20)
But pastor's going to be distracted by them kneecaps. So she got to wear a blanket in a front row. And this is codified into our belief system that something that is needed to be covered so that men can be in sanctity. like you could just not look down there. You could just be a normal human being and be like, Oh, those are body parts that serve a purpose. Not for like a boner in church, like be so for real. It's so annoying.

Shawna Gann (08:20)
Bye!

Yeah. Yeah.

Right. Right. ⁓

Rachel (she/her) (08:49)
You

Shawna Gann (08:49)
It's the truth. But

also not just that, but like it's putting women in a place and who decides that. And that's why, I've got a friend, I got a girlfriend who kind of just recently started watching The Handmaid's Tale. And she's like, Shawna, have you noticed that some of this stuff seems to be, I'm like girl, look, that show is eight and a half years old. People.

Rachel (she/her) (08:57)
Mm-hmm.

traumatizing.

The book older than that.

Yeah.

Shawna Gann (09:12)
Well, the book is way older than that.

when did it come out 80s, 90s? Margaret Atwood. like, honey, this Tell me.

Rachel (she/her) (09:16)
Yeah.

an aside,

some real shit like Margaret Atwood, great, but also Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower. Go. Girl, I have to put it down. Thank you, she is a seer.

Shawna Gann (09:23)
I can't that is some freaky shit. She has in there make America great again

I

am saying that blows my mind. Listen, My friend had me read it. I had never read her. right. And I, she's always been on my radar, right? was like, all right. So I the parable of the sower and whatever the second one is.

Rachel (she/her) (09:45)
Parable of the Sower, Parable of Talents.

Shawna Gann (09:48)
Mm-hmm, yeah. When I saw the Make America Great Again that...

I don't even have the there.

Rachel (she/her) (09:55)
The fact that that's

his tagline, the current tagline for the administration. Yes. If you listen to her, if you listen to her talk, like if you go on YouTube, Octavia Butler is a seer . when you talk about religion and gifts of the spirit, right? That's something that we allegedly believe. This is a gift of seeing a prophecy. the Handmaid's Tale is horrible, but that is like White women horrible.

Shawna Gann (09:58)
Yes, yes, for the politician there.

Rachel (she/her) (10:19)
These are the things that White women can't imagine because it's never been thrust upon them to the degree that it has women of color. So Octavia Butler wrote this from the perspective of what is going to be happening in the world with all people. So there's a lot of like trigger warning. There's a lot of like sexual assault murder and violence and what is actually going to happen if shit hits the fan. Whatever they show you on TV, it's going to be worse than that when people need to survive. What do people do?

Y'all football team win, you go tear people's stuff up. You know what mean? Like y'all soccer team win, you tear the whole city up. So imagine if we have no food and we have no water and we have no medical supplies. Things will go so far to the left. And that book, yes, there's no place to go.

Shawna Gann (10:58)
People are squatters in houses because there's no place to stay because we already know there's a shortage right

with the way the economy is, all that Girl, listen.

Rachel (she/her) (11:08)
What becomes

currency? Sex becomes currency, goods become reverts to a very animalistic side of folks, but it also represents how far people will go to survive. While also, yes.

Shawna Gann (11:19)
Well, humans are animals. We can't

deny that, we We just are supposed to be intelligent beings that have reason and intelligence as well. I said supposed to. Don't look at me like that. I said supposed to. Right.

Rachel (she/her) (11:29)
supposed to be supposed to be.

was watching something on I think it was Instagram when they were talking about remember back in the day when you went to like visit your grandma and the neighborhood had like fruit trees. So my grandma's neighborhood lady had a peach tree. ⁓ that's right. You grew up in the barren land of snow. So sorry. ⁓

Shawna Gann (11:42)
Well, I grew up in Alaska, so.

I'm just saying, nope, I don't remember that.

Rachel (she/her) (11:51)
Well,

the rest of us land dwellers, non-ice dwellers, can remember a time when we were kids, you go through the neighborhood. ⁓ You are your ice age flow from like such a young age. Like, no, bitch.

Shawna Gann (11:59)
Do you remember back in the day when you crossed the tundra?

Wait, wait, just

But tell me about the fruit trees that I missed out on, please.

Rachel (she/her) (12:10)
you. Okay. So I

recall when I was in like eight, nine, 10 years old, visiting my mom and her family, there were people that had, well, my grandfather had a garden and a lot of people developed gardens as a, after like the great depression, world war one and two, because you know, food was so scarce. So that's why a lot of our grandparents had gardens and so forth. But people would have peach trees or there would be.

a plum tree or some type of trees in the neighborhood where you can just pick stuff off of it. And nobody minded because there was so much like, yeah, the neighborhood kids are picking fruit off the trees. I have not seen a neighborhood since I was maybe in my late teens where there's just fruit around and. That well, there's not many there's not many trees in the hood. Yes, so.

Shawna Gann (12:41)
Yeah.

Well, there's not really many trees. All the housing developments, don't you think, that kind of changed?

Rachel (she/her) (12:59)
do talk about environmental racism, where the temperature

Shawna Gann (12:59)
Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Rachel (she/her) (13:02)
in affluent neighborhoods is lower because they have trees and vegetation. they architecture and buildings in low income areas.

But there's no place where you can go and just grab food for free because everything in our country is tied to capital. So if you're hungry, theoretically like, well, okay, I can grab a couple of peaches and I'll be straight. if you take away that,

theory is that there's an intent only plant male trees they inseminate the female trees. Female trees produce fruit. People could eat fruit for free so that they don't have to go to work. That's the thinking. And so that's why we have, it's, yes, because of racism and capitalism, everything goes down to those two things. It is intentional. When you talk about how granular,

Shawna Gann (13:39)
You're saying that people did it on purpose?

Rachel (she/her) (13:50)
things get to be able to control capital, it is that granular.

they are these, when I say they, I'm referring to the, whether you're talking about government or government and private industry, I think are in collusion. Clearly, clearly, y'all let the richest man in the world play in our data. The man got his, my social security number is fucking back pocket. And he, who is he? Who is Elon Musty? Who is he? And why does he, why could he have my things?

Shawna Gann (14:05)
Now, yes.

Well, right now, he's in

Rachel (she/her) (14:18)
this is a random man. That's just rich. Now he got all our data because y'all think that's okay. So any, that's what I talk about today. So the idea is that how do we make people spend as much money as possible? It's the same thing with algorithmic pricing. So all this AI and pricing. So you and I look at the same thing. AI knows I'm going to pay this. You'll pay that. So to get

Shawna Gann (14:21)
Yeah.

Rachel (she/her) (14:38)
the most nickels and dimes out of us. No, we can't give these brokeies peach trees, because then they won't work to go get actual peaches.

Shawna Gann (14:48)
Wow.

Rachel (she/her) (14:47)
and the peaches that have been in our

families for generations, how long have those trees potentially been here, right? Like, this is a generational provision of sustenance that now the state is taking away because they want us to pay for everything. And that's not a conspiracy theory. There's like actual research that you can go and look at how cities are designed, like how we put interstates through Black and brown cities and Black and brown areas.

how things are designed with race in mind, with social economic status in mind to disadvantage one group for the betterment of another one.

Once you go down this rabbit hole, it is so hard to come back out of it. But yes, of the Parable of the Sower.

Shawna Gann (15:31)
Because one of the things in Parable, this has now become a Parable of the Sower episode. Okay. So in the book, we're talking about all of the, I don't even want to say just like lawlessness, because it's beyond lawlessness at that point, right? People are just trying to survive. The police are all crooked and corrupt. The money you have to have to bribe them just to even investigate a murder.

Rachel (she/her) (15:44)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Shawna Gann (15:55)
Can I just bring us to where we are right now? The fact that the federal government does not want to investigate murders that they caused. I heard on the radio today they described it as a shooting death. I was like, we're gonna call it a shooting death. Okay.

Rachel (she/her) (16:04)
And when you

The way this administration changes, it's like 1984 all over again, like the meaning of words. Like now we got to say things differently. Yeah, yeah. And then like the telling you things aren't, you know, what they are. So he gets up here. the economy is great, bro. Eggs are 49.99. What do you mean? The economy is

Shawna Gann (16:20)
Newspeak is it Newspeak? That's what they call it Newspeaker. Yeah

Right, and we just talked

Rachel (she/her) (16:33)
Yes, it's bonkers to me that we are allowing, we are letting the dumbest people on the planet ⁓ remake language that has taken us thousands of years to come up with.

Shawna Gann (16:35)
I'm not laughing because I think it's funny. I'm like...

Rachel (she/her) (16:44)
Imagine giving the dumbest person you know in your neighborhood, imagine giving one of the people that like barely passed school all the money in the world and letting them do fuck all with it.

Shawna Gann (16:52)
Okay,

We have been conditioned that if you have a little something, you must be smart, because the world taught us that if we get an education, that would lead to us having a little something. So if you got a lot of something, you must be really smart. Ignoring the fact of generational wealth that's helped with that.

Rachel (she/her) (17:04)
Yes.

Really smart.

Shawna Gann (17:13)
social capital, rubbing shoulders with whomever that helped with that, backdoor deals and shenanigans and whatever bullshit has happened the scenes that are illegal, immoral and all of the things helped with that. So if we just say, hmm, the world taught me if I have an education or they have an it's gonna lead to all this wealth and success and they're wealthy and successful, they must be really smart.

Rachel (she/her) (17:17)
Hmm.

Shawna Gann (17:39)
So I'm gonna put all my chips on them.

Rachel (she/her) (17:42)
Yes.

I people in my life that, for example, think Elon musty is really smart. Elon musty is really rich. That's it. He had, he comes from like his family moved from Canada to South Africa to participate. When you have that in your DNA, that your family is willing to move countries because they want to subjugate a group of people so bad. And then you have money from that.

and now you bring that over here. You're not even from here. You don't go here. You bought your citizenship just like Nicki Minaj just did, but it's cool because you're rich and White.

And if you look at old pictures of Elon Musk, he looked like the dork that he is. He's a fucking dork He's not smart at all. He's just rich and knows how to

play the game and pay people to do his bidding. didn't discover, first of all, Tesla, Tesla was a whole person that discovered those things. You bought it and bastardized it. Cause now you think of Tesla. I don't think of great innovation.

Shawna Gann (18:27)
I know, I know, yep.

But you see what happened? People don't know that, because they don't do their research, they don't listen, they don't change the channel and read shit. So they just assumed that he has brilliance. And so they're like, hell put the guy with the chainsaw on the stage that's high all the time, put him in of slashing everything or whatever, because yeah. And look where we are,

Rachel (she/her) (18:59)
We don't have free healthcare. We don't have childcare. We don't have clean water. We don't have clean air. We don't got this. We don't got that. But we have enough money to pay Elon Musk to machines in the air.

Shawna Gann (19:09)
That's

Bezos

Rachel (she/her) (19:10)
Musk in Texas with SpaceX sending space trash up. He is Texas so bad that people can't sleep. Their foundations are cracking because all of those things up into space.

Shawna Gann (19:18)
Bye.

That's the core of what's kind of happening with the government right now, don't you think? is nobody,

Rachel (she/her) (19:22)
He

Shawna Gann (19:26)
don't know if they're scared, I don't know if it's because they got something on them. Like what are you worried about for reelection? people the room, country. Like people are not down with this.

Rachel (she/her) (19:33)
Yes.

I have friends that are Democrats and you me it's all political theater in some way, or form. But the Democratic establishment is still the establishment. They're still paid by the same people.

If you are funded by some of this money, these people are not playing with you when it comes to legislation. If it don't get done, you suffer, your family suffers.

And difficult when you get into that space to kind of remain pure because money and influence disrupt it.

Shawna Gann (20:03)
So do you think that's

I mean, I'm certain money has so much to do with it. just like, damn, doesn't morality like here's the And I know I'm definitely so far from being the first person to say this. The Christian values thing just pisses me off like

Rachel (she/her) (20:05)
it's, yeah.

Shawna Gann (20:22)
I grew up in church as we know, we talked about that. And I believe in God and I love God and God and I have our own relationship. I am not a churchgoer, not even close to one. can't do it because I'm like, look,

the hypocrisy is so disgusting. When I lived in Italy, I went to this church. It was a missionary church. It was a pastor out of Arizona. He and his wife were supposed to be missionaries to Italy to witness to Italians and the immigrants into Italy. But this church was pretty close by with a military installation where I And they would have

military community there at this church, but then also local folks that people from Ukraine, people from Ghana, and so on. And Chad and I were going on vacation. We were going away for two weeks. And there was a family that I used to drive to church. And I went to him. was like, Pastor Rob, listen, we're going to go away. So and so is going to need a ride. She lives close to you

can you give her a ride or find a way to get her a ride? And he goes, okay, we'll take care of her. I came back, found out nobody picked her up for two weeks, nobody. Also, they used to do this thing called like life groups, life cells, whatever. It was like Bible study once a week at somebody's house, okay? And she wanted, same woman wanted to And one that I went to,

Rachel (she/her) (21:32)
Interesting.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Shawna Gann (21:46)
kind of far away. But again, she lived right by him. He hosted one of these life groups or whatever they're called. And so I was like, she would like to go, can you make arrangements so that she can go? She lives near you. And again, ⁓ we'll find a place for her. No, never did. He hosted all of the from the military. So he wanted all the fighter pilots, the Black Hawk pilots. Like he wanted that, I'm doing air quotes, y'all, power.

Rachel (she/her) (22:12)
Mm-hmm.

Shawna Gann (22:13)
around

him, this pastor who's there to be a missionary to the locals. Okay. So the third example, there is this woman from the Ukraine. one of her daughters had a very difficult birth and so has severe developmental difficulties.

Rachel (she/her) (22:15)
Mm-hmm.

Yes. Yep.

Mmm.

Shawna Gann (22:31)
She really can't do anything on her own. Her mother cleaned houses for a living and would have to leave her daughter at home In Italy, at least in the, this was like 20 years ago-ish, we didn't have air conditioning in our homes. You would basically shut the shutters, but it was so hot. When I tell you it's so hot, okay? And I was like, Rob, so this family,

Rachel (she/her) (22:33)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Shawna Gann (22:55)
Here's the situation, her daughter cannot get up to close anything. She basically has to sit there till her mom gets home. Can we find a way to get them like a window unit, something she needs air conditioning, she can't wipe herself off, nothing. He said, we'll pray for them. The next week, and listen when I tell you this, this church was in was an old like furniture.

Rachel (she/her) (23:09)
Yeah.

what?

Shawna Gann (23:21)
So, you know, The sanctuary would have been upstairs and then the lower part would have been like a showroom. That's where the lobby was and where off to the side would be like Bible rooms or the offices. I walked in the building. The week after I said, can we get them something? And he said, we'll pray for them.

Rachel (she/her) (23:23)
Okay. Mm-hmm.

Shawna Gann (23:41)
brand new furniture, freshly painted, new artwork.

Rachel (she/her) (23:47)
top of the line things I'm sure. Oak mahogany. Yeah, yeah.

Shawna Gann (23:49)
leather furniture because it's Italy, you have to have leather.

So you can see why I'm a little jaded. Okay, but these are the same people who are telling us that we have to have women back in the kitchen and pregnant and married. Did you know that they're trying to do a Project 26 and in this Project 26 there's supposed to be marriage camps?

Rachel (she/her) (23:59)
Yeah and yeah.

Or is that part of Project Esther too?

Shawna Gann (24:16)
Well, I think it's a continuation of it.

Rachel (she/her) (24:18)
great. Well, the de-skilling of certain women centered jobs like nursing and things like that, they're they have de-professionalized them so that you can't get federal money because those are traditionally jobs held by women and people of color. So now if you can't get federal funding for school, you can't go to school. You're stuck in low wage work. So that's another way that goes with Project 2026 is how do we get women back from the workforce? Because research. It precise. Listen,

Shawna Gann (24:25)
Yeah, yep. Yep.

Mm-hmm, but these are the Christians telling us this that you know, I'm trying

to say

Rachel (she/her) (24:45)
Jesus, Yahshua, okay? The Yahshua, Christ, ⁓ Elohim, okay? Was in Bethlehem. And if you look on a map, my dear friends, you will see that is in a place where people are what? Brown. And then you will see that they was like, no, Mary girl, which probably won't her name, cause Mary.

Shawna Gann (24:53)
El Shaddai El Shaddai.

Brown.

Rachel (she/her) (25:13)
You cannot give birth to your child that don't belong to this man you are with here. So you gotta go outside in the back and give birth to your baby with the donkeys and shit. And y'all don't see the parallels to this?

Shawna Gann (25:24)
Also...

Also, I love that she had to get married. They were like, yo, Joseph, come here, come here, bro. She can't be.

Rachel (she/her) (25:32)
Bro, Joseph was like,

yo, Joseph's like Shorty says she ain't been with nobody, but she's pregnant. And I got to take Shorty at her work right now because she's been pregnant. And the Lord said I got to deal with it. Can you imagine it?

Shawna Gann (25:44)
You

Michael said, Michael

said, I got some news for you homes. What's your insurance look like because.

Rachel (she/her) (25:59)
Not sure he sure is. Bruh, he couldn't even get a co-pay out of them. Y'all got it sis in hay. Have y'all seen hay? Hay giving birth to the savior of nations on hay? And he was like, he was just like, hey y'all good. Look, hey, don't do this again. Don't do this to people. had the, I was in the trenches. The Lord was like, don't do it. And what the fuck are you assholes doing? Dead.

Shawna Gann (26:15)
Yeah, I mean.

You

You

Rachel (she/her) (26:30)
Because the people are what? Brown. That is the long and short of it.

Shawna Gann (26:31)
Yep.

And speaking of the brown people and giving

birth I Saw where people women aren't going to the hospital to give birth because they're scared of ice because they're taking them

Rachel (she/her) (26:43)
The lady went out the

other day to warm her car up for her children and I snatched her up. Kids are watching from the, I heard it yesterday, she went to wash her, because it's cold, it's ice outside, like actual ice. And she went out to warm the car up and they took her and her babies was inside. It was like elementary school kids. and then the Christian people be like, the what about-isms are the, you should haves. And it's just like,

Shawna Gann (26:48)
my god, I didn't hear that one.

Yeah, I know, right.

Rachel (she/her) (27:10)
The way that you don't understand the type of life that you are fleeing to come to a place like knowing that this is going on here knowing that we have had issues with immigration for decades the The way the things you are fleeing

Shawna Gann (27:23)
But not like this, though.

Rachel (she/her) (27:26)
So to take your baby, a brand new baby you just gave birth to or a toddler or a six year old to trek across a country in hopes to find a place where you can be safe and fed only to be met with this. It's like, where's where's your humanity in the idea of somebody else seeking refuge?

Shawna Gann (27:48)
Well, here's my thoughts on that. They don't think everybody is human. They've already been calling people animals. They already didn't count all of us back in the day. Yeah. How can you say We can't see humanity if you don't see everyone as a human.

Rachel (she/her) (27:55)
So the language we talked about earlier matters. Yeah, we're one third of what.

we even talked about work that I do that pays my bills. talk about medical racism and women and Black people are thought to have a higher pain threshold.

one of my students was like, that's written in my textbook. said, what, what do you, what do you mean? She said, in the textbook we have for class, it says that African-American people have a higher tolerance for pain. And that is not true.

Shawna Gann (28:30)
they're only just now starting to correct,

no, it is so not they're beginning to make some corrections. There was something about medical journals were suggesting different medications and dosages based on race because of that belief. so the, correct, correct, correct.

Rachel (she/her) (28:46)
belief that was not backed up by research.

Shawna Gann (28:51)
but you know how it goes once it is right air quotes around that So that's we're up against is The scientific community and me being a part of that community because I do social science as do you yeah? Right so being part of that community. It is so important to realize that because somebody puts some numbers down on a paper

Rachel (she/her) (28:54)
Then it's the truth. Then it's the truth.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Shawna Gann (29:14)
doesn't it mean it's true? And one of the things that I argued, not to get like, I'm not trying to go too academic here, but just for a when I had to my defense for my paper, of the things I pointed out was that we as students who are working on either masters or doctoral degrees and have to do theses and required to do literature reviews, which means we are required to use research has been published previously.

Rachel (she/her) (29:22)
Mm-hmm.

Shawna Gann (29:38)
to kind of set the stage for our work, but we need to remember a lot of the work that we're being asked to base on doesn't include all populations.

Rachel (she/her) (29:40)
Mm-hmm.

Shawna Gann (29:48)
they would take the results and then generalize it to all populations. of that is failing to a generalization when it came to medical things like pain thresholds and so on, then deciding to make the difference and saying, but they have a higher threshold or but they do this and that.

Rachel (she/her) (30:06)
is that biological determinism where like there, there was this idea that cranium size determined And there was attempt to make a scientific for racism that White people are intellectually superior because of or whatever biology. So you will say that, but then you can't back it up.

Shawna Gann (30:14)
⁓

Rachel (she/her) (30:27)
I wonder if somebody has tried to back it up and failed or because it is such a misnomer that we have just accepted as a scientific fact because a bunch of White dudes said it, that we're just not gonna question that and bring it in. we don't need to test something because somebody said it's true.

Shawna Gann (30:41)
Well, wasn't it the Genome Project that changed everything? Because they did believe it, but when they figured out like, actually we're kind of all the same. That there is Let me

Rachel (she/her) (30:50)
When was that?

Shawna Gann (30:52)
The Human Genome Project was a landmark international research effort between and 2003 that

Rachel (she/her) (30:58)
Yeah.

Shawna Gann (30:58)
So that whole

essentialism thing where we think that because of your race, you're more inferior, you're more superior, And that's when it was like, Maya Angelou, we are more alike my friends. It's more like that.

Rachel (she/her) (31:09)
Yeah, yeah, there's

I saw another thing in one of my classes where when kids looked at DNA and you have more in common with somebody that's a different race than you than someone who's the same. So that that that track but it's even 1993 that's still soon I was like that should have been something we should have thought about in like the 60s or 70s but now.

Shawna Gann (31:21)
Yeah, it's true.

Well, I don't think,

I mean, I think people, some people thought about it, but I don't think we had the science. So that was the science to prove it, to say like, we are, yeah. So that has spurred, I don't know. I'm saying up to this point, there is the belief of all these things like the pain threshold and all that But now have science to say, ⁓ that would you call it biological, what'd you say it was called? Biological determinism. Yeah, it is actually.

Rachel (she/her) (31:33)
Hmm, that's fair. Yeah, that's fair. So that you're saying up to this point, there was an

Mm-mm-mm.

Is it biological determinism? Is that what it is? Okay.

Shawna Gann (31:56)
Yeah, so that whole biological determinism thing can now be debunked because we have the science to debunk it.

Rachel (she/her) (32:00)
Mm-hmm.

but we have not given that memo. Like we don't all have an internal memo system. We're not all on Slack. We're not all on Slack. To get it. So the fact that in the year 2026, there are students, Black students that are learning, quote unquote, and this is my whole thing with the educational research I do.

Shawna Gann (32:07)
Girl, not everybody done read the memo. Okay, that's right, right, right, right. Exactly.

Rachel (she/her) (32:27)
Who gets to determine what we're learning? Because PragerU is now invested in the administration and our education. PragerU is not, it's gross, don't look it up. But they've already got stuff in schools, but now they want to make that nationwide.

Shawna Gann (32:33)
I can't... Is it even actually a real you?

It's so gross.

Rachel (she/her) (32:44)
them. And we talk about the idea of biological determinism, it makes me think of epigenetics, where all this is in our DNA, trauma is in our colonizing is in your DNA. And that does not go away after one or two generations. We're only what, two, three generations removed from that.

Shawna Gann (33:01)
I think that's what people forget too, is it in their minds? It's so long ago. And you're like, y'all, it isn't that long ago.

Rachel (she/her) (33:11)
the same people that say get over slavery, cause it was a long time ago are still pitching a fit about the election that Cheeto keeps saying he is suing the IRS for $10 billion he said they are colluding with overturn the That was what six years ago.

Y'all still pissed about that? Your man's the president now. He tearing up the White House right now. He got so much tacky Temu shit in the White House presently, but y'all still pissed and bitching about this alleged stolen election that was six years ago, but you enslaved Black people for 400 years and then you had Jim Crow and then you had the civil rights and y'all are still lynching people. somebody was lynched a week ago. Y'all are taking and terrorizing brown people.

Shawna Gann (33:55)
right now.

Rachel (she/her) (34:01)
Today this minute, but you want me to get over an election that has been proven to have not been stolen multiple times by multiple courts of justice. Now you got this petulant asshole up here talking about he want 10 billion American dollars.

Shawna Gann (34:13)
It's because he's a child though. Like he just can't get over, well, again.

Rachel (she/her) (34:16)
And y'all are okay with it. Y'all are okay with

it. How, how dare you tell me to get over slavery, Like y'all, y'all alleged that it was stolen. You tore up the Capitol. You tore up the people furniture. Did you know that most of the furniture in the Capitol is made by imprisoned people? Did you know labor makes furniture for the So y'all went and tore up the Capitol,

But then the furniture that you tore up, now Black and brown people gonna have to fix that furniture and put it back. For free, because the only way you can be enslaved in this country is through the 13th Amendment, which means that you could be incarcerated and then have to do slave labor.

Shawna Gann (34:50)
I'm sure that you've heard this sort of comparison before too, kind of going back to ICE for a second, but not just ICE, like all these federal agents that are helping out with this, the CBP and so on, compared to slave catchers, right? The whole idea of why policing even came to be. And it's just there's nobody's doing anything legally.

Rachel (she/her) (35:05)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Shawna Gann (35:11)
But then there's no enforcement of the law because they don't want there to be enforcement of the law. And so have to know what our rights are. then it's like this catch 22 because even knowing them if they're not enforced anyway, you know, we've got to figure that part out. That's a puzzle we got to get to. But the way that they are going about people, people who are citizens also, by the way, they don't care. so

That being compared to slave catchers is an interesting thing, not

Rachel (she/her) (35:38)
And the fact

not hiring the best and brightest. Even though Hegseth called all the generals into that one room to tell people not to be fat, But then you let the most, you know, like people with criminal records that can't pass a fitness test.

that can't get a job anywhere else, we can give them a job here and money because these people are poor. That's what I talked about earlier. There was a documentary on Amazon, which I'll find for you in a minute, because I was curious too about the whole idea. Like, how do people get to where they vote for this? How do they get here? And it was about rural Americans and how their situation has not progressed and how people

Shawna Gann (36:08)
Yeah.

Rachel (she/her) (36:17)
All politicians have forgot about them until Trump came into the picture. And that helped me understand it because I was so angry. I was like, I can't understand this. And the first thing is. And never made good on it and will never make good on it. And it's so it's so sad because you see these people, these are Americans, these are people that are trying to make it. They're poor and disenfranchised and their government has forgotten about them.

Shawna Gann (36:21)
Yep.

He sold them, promise.

He sold him a promise. Yeah, no.

Rachel (she/her) (36:43)
And there's a stereotype, just like there's a stereotype attached to being ghetto. There's a stereotype attached to being a redneck or a hillbilly. And that they, that's prideful to them. That's like, if somebody's like, yo, yo, I'm a hood. And right. Like that's, they're proud of that. They're proud of being rednecks. They're proud of being hillbillies.

Shawna Gann (36:57)
But also, some of them see

it as another success story. but he made it. So that means I can make, well, I'm just saying.

Rachel (she/her) (37:01)
right, but he lied about it. Exactly.

lied about it. This man came out and lied about everything else. He's come into office. Everything has skyrocketed since he's been in office.

So when we look at that trajectory and we think of the TV and how it has devolved, there's also another documentary on Netflix And it talked about how Jerry Springer ushered in on this new mode of reality TV that opened the door for someone like Trump, yes,

Shawna Gann (37:12)
Yeah.

the violence.

Rachel (she/her) (37:26)
first of all, Jerry Springer wanted to be a politician and nobody liked him. So then they put them on TV and they put them on late and nobody watches TV that late. So he had hired this guy that was like, I know how to get you viewers. You have to have sensational clips that make them want to come back to the show that are good commercials. And that catapulted them into prime time, but it that bullshit violence on that started the dumbing down, I think of our television

Cheeto Benito is the reason because he is the, well, some pastors said he is the avatar of White grievance. It's wild to me that people follow him because he is the epitome of privilege. He did not work for anything he had. work all, he hasn't worked a day in his life.

Shawna Gann (38:03)
absolutely not, absolutely

not.

Rachel (she/her) (38:05)
I think he went to those places and spoke to those people that Obama and Biden forgot. That's what that documentary said. They didn't even go to those places.

Shawna Gann (38:14)
⁓ I think it was Hillary Clinton. Yes, that ignored them. Because remember, he didn't go up against Obama. He went against Clinton, Hillary Clinton.

Rachel (she/her) (38:17)
that ignored them or went there?

I get, but they

were saying that even during his administration, nobody, they didn't feel like people came to talk to them

Shawna Gann (38:30)
I

from my understanding, the criticism was Hillary. Because she was like, we already got those states in the bag, we don't need to go there. And people were also pissed, just a side note, because they didn't even want Hillary, they wanted Bernie, who's an independent. And the DNC backed Hillary. But Bernie, you follow Bernie Sanders, he is always for the people that have been ignored.

Rachel (she/her) (38:32)
Mm-hmm. Okay.

I see what you're saying. Okay.

Yes, the working class.

I don't know how people thought that a Hillary would win against like a Trump. Like I don't know who's, what, strategy was that?

Shawna Gann (39:02)
Well, I don't know, but if I had to theorize without looking it up, I would say because she was secretary of state, because she was a senator, and because she was married a former president. So they probably thought she had more social clout, more, that's my guess, you know, but Bernie has always, always been for the people, for all the people, for the most vulnerable people. And so I think that's where things got twisted because she

Rachel (she/her) (39:17)
Hmm.

Yeah

Shawna Gann (39:31)
has been criticized for being the one to ignore the people.

Rachel (she/her) (39:34)
I would like to see a complete overhaul of it with I would like to see like an AOC, your Zohran Mamdani's I'd like to see like the squad stay, your Stacey Abrams, even your Cory Booker's to a degree, I guess.

Mitch McConnell was being held up by spite and duct tape. Like, come on. Let it go. Y'all have been here forever fucking things up. Like it is done. There needs to be term limits and age Like, cause

Shawna Gann (39:47)
yeah.

I can't with Mitch.

Limits,

say age caps

because I think every person's gonna be different.

Rachel (she/her) (40:05)
I mean, I think there's an aspect of ageism in it. Well, they make you be a certain age to be president. You got to be like 40 or something that was it. OK, so there's that. They want your frontal lobe fully developed. But then when you look at,

Shawna Gann (40:10)
35.

I mean, I support that.

Rachel (she/her) (40:17)
I'm like, if I, if you're running a country that means you got to go to meetings. It's like a very stressful high-page job. Y'all age Barack Obama two years. He went in with Black hair, came out with gray. Like y'all age that man. Yeah, it's stressful. So you think somebody 80 years old.

Shawna Gann (40:27)
⁓ My man, I know I heard somebody

talking about that with Trump. People were like how come he has an age, you know, they always show that before and after a president's and how they age and I mean Why would he be stressed? I'm just saying

Rachel (she/her) (40:39)
He's not stressed out.

You don't get for fun. That man is he has enough time

to to apparently run the country. He wants to run Greenland. Now he want to run the West Bank. And he got time to sue the people for 10 billion dollars and tweet 500 times in the middle of the night. Apparently like you have a lot of time.

Shawna Gann (40:59)
and talk about Venezuela,

get up in the middle of the meeting with all the oil people, talk about, look at that ballroom.

Rachel (she/her) (41:04)
Yeah,

you got time to run the Kennedy Center and you got time to do the Council of Peace You got a lot of time on your hands, my guy.

Shawna Gann (41:12)
⁓

and promote his Boo's movie.

Rachel (she/her) (41:16)
God

damn it.

I don't even want to talk about that bullshit right now. I really cannot do it. That was just a blank check to film Melania. That was it. was $40 billion or whatever the fuck it was just to follow this bitch around with a camera and make her relevant.

Shawna Gann (41:32)
Bezos said,

let's do it.

Rachel (she/her) (41:34)
Golly. Okay. If y'all look at that, even don't even hate watch it. I swear to God,

Nobody asked for this. Did you know that she came over here on like a genius grant or a genius something visa? That was like a visa for really smart people. That's what she came over here on. she got here. Because I don't know, get, my brain never stops and I am curious. Like,

Shawna Gann (41:42)
You don't care.

like a visa? No.

How do you know all this stuff?

Rachel (she/her) (41:59)
Did you know the Trump crest was stolen? Did you know that Rachel Maddow told this story? was a great story. The Trump crest.

Shawna Gann (42:03)
Is

Rachel (she/her) (42:04)
So apparently When ⁓ trump bought marlago, he bought it from some other lady whose husband had died and their family crest was on the wall Number one, he got the the property for like below value because he threatened to buy the property next to it and fuck up the the sight line So they sold him to the they sold him the property below value. So anyway, he got the property I know So their family crest was on the wall I can't remember what their name was and trump was like, that's dope

Shawna Gann (42:04)
What do mean the Trump crest was stolen?

He's such a bully, he's such a

Rachel (she/her) (42:28)
Put Trump on it.

Shawna Gann (42:30)
Well shit, he put his name on the Kennedy Center.

Rachel (she/her) (42:31)
That's somebody.

Yeah. Yeah. But I'm saying that's somebody's actual family crest that has been in their family for generations. that shit is on coins. That shit is on a Somebody's family crest that Trump stole is on coins that we are currently printing. To buy. Stole it.

Shawna Gann (42:44)
I did not know that. Well, who is? Not we,

Rachel (she/her) (42:48)
this is such a dystopic conversation.

Shawna Gann (42:52)
Can you believe

that all of it's happening though? What's the word for when it's a little bit like metacognition, when you're like realizing like, oh my God, like I am present in this moment right now, and is happening. But you know what I'm talking about, right? Like where you're like, whoa, the time is present, I'm in this space.

Rachel (she/her) (43:03)
Mm-hmm. I don't know that word and I need to, because I need to know that word. Yeah. Yeah. Like, this is

actually happening right... Every time I open Instagram and Aaron Parnas is like, we got some big news, like Aaron Parnas!

Shawna Gann (43:19)
Aaron

you only see his forehead like I have some news for today ⁓

Rachel (she/her) (43:22)
My homegirl said me she's like yo Aaron look tired. Yes

We are Aaron ⁓

Shawna Gann (43:34)
What are we gonna do? I don't

Rachel (she/her) (43:36)
Bed

y'all!

Every time I turn around and open this app is Like you know what I'm saying? Like you are not doing presidential things. I have a real job and I had a project recently that took up every bit of my time for my real job that is not running a country and destroying the American Empire. How do this man got time to do all them tweets or true socialing things that he's doing to sue people, to try to run other countries, to make his wife a damn documentary?

to gaudy up the White House. What about the damn, ⁓ the ballroom? We heard nothing about that. by the way, they have plans to like make bunkers under the ballroom, by the way.

Shawna Gann (44:20)
⁓ Yeah, think I talked about that in one of my posts or I did something about it because Having lived in Germany in Berlin, know, there's the whole like there's a history of that in in Berlin the bunkers being under ballrooms and shit It's not a surprise. ⁓ speaking of which We're going to go to Hulu for a minute

Rachel (she/her) (44:37)
Let's go.

Shawna Gann (44:39)
Paradise, the second season is coming out. when all this shit started happening again with the ballroom and I was like, that's paradise, paradise.

Rachel (she/her) (44:47)
Yo, they are,

they are soft launching the bunkers, they're soft launching it. I really feel like, yo, that one of them alphabet agencies in the government is working with Hollywood to get us psychologically accustomed to these things. So we don't all freak out. Yeah. So like now when there's like, there are bunkers that were like, shit, we've seen that on TV. So we, our brains are already normalizing it.

Shawna Gann (44:59)
We have to be de- what do they call that? Desensitized?

Rachel (she/her) (45:09)
They also feel I told my friends the other day. I was like, they're bringing back the gladiators type shit and they're going to bring back murdering people on TV. You mark my words on this day, they're going to do it. Oh yeah, we have, we're having a hunger game. y'all I forgot about that.

Shawna Gann (45:17)
You know about the Trump games?

Yeah, tell the people, tell the people about the Trump games.

Rachel (she/her) (45:24)
the Trump games is where we top boy and girl from each state and we have them compete for our prize. And it's going to be this summer.

Shawna Gann (45:30)
And that's for the 250th

anniversary and birthday celebration of the United States of America.

Rachel (she/her) (45:37)
You know, we're always

gonna, we're also gonna, because Dana White with the UFC is now capitulating with MAGA, we're gonna have UFC on the front lawn of the White House. And I am dead ass serious. They want a UFC match. Well, you turned to your, yeah, your used car dealership. Y'all selling used cars on the front lawn of the fucking White House?

Shawna Gann (45:46)
I mean, the Tesla was already there. We was already, we already had a, what does the,

what does the White House mean anymore? a third of it's gone.

Rachel (she/her) (46:00)
yeah, y'all tore

it up. Y'all didn't even take it up with nobody. That's like there's preservation laws around that because the shit's been around since the dawn of time. Who cares?

Shawna Gann (46:07)
And again, I'm back

to the laws exist but are so not enforced. It's so like.

Rachel (she/her) (46:13)
No, the laws exist

for us, unless you're rich. If you're rich, fuck all with laws.

Shawna Gann (46:16)
Well,

Rachel (she/her) (46:18)
that's cool with y'all. That's cool. Caroline Levitt talks to the press like she's talking to a child. She talks to every member of the press like she is talking to a petulant child. Girl, first of all, don't take that time with me. I'm asking you a professional question. You need to have some real reporters. First of all, Ms. Caroline Levitt, don't talk to me like that, number one. Yes, somebody's auntie.

Shawna Gann (46:24)
She does. She is so, so disrespectful.

Did you just Miss Anne her? You just Miss Anne.

Rachel (she/her) (46:41)
and we were talking about the decorum. Yeah, the decorum is just like the way these people talk to everyone is the way these people want to be able to talk to

Shawna Gann (46:42)
You need a hard candy?

so there was something you said earlier that I thought of and I forgot about it and that makes me think of this. when we were talking about like, folks being ignored and that's why they kind of went for him. A lot of people will say, like when they do those little street interviews with people like, why are you for Trump and everything? And they're like, he's so real. Like they talk about his authenticity. What kills me is

Rachel (she/her) (46:57)
Mm-hmm.

Shawna Gann (47:09)
Like why would you want an authentic asshole just because you're authentic? I get it. I am so for authenticity. I love when people can be themselves yourself, if your real self is being a huge jerk, I don't want a part of that. Like why do you, why do you want a part of that? Why does that make it feel?

Rachel (she/her) (47:16)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Shawna,

you're trying to the fact that White people want to say the N-word. They want to be able to call you boy. They want to be able to talk to you any type of way, just like their papas did, and have you just like, ⁓ yes, sir, no, sir, whatever. Like, you the laws where you have to walk across the street so a White woman wouldn't see you. That's just it. To me, I think that's the bottom line.

Shawna Gann (47:44)
I know what you're saying, like they... ⁓

fortunately, we're not to that point yet where people are being so bold that that's happening again. But I think I'm not saying it doesn't happen. How do I want to say this? Maybe that's what I'm trying to say, right? Like it's not a normalized thing right now. That's what I really mean.

Rachel (she/her) (47:58)
We're not.

widespread. don't know. Mm hmm. Yet,

Shawna Gann (48:09)
not ignorant, I'm not naive. I know we sadly could get there, but we're not to that point, because they're still scared. They're still scared to be that bold, right? I even think Gregory Bovino, who just got his ass fired from ICE, like or whatever he was in charge of. I don't even think him, the dude walking around in like a Gestapo coat.

Rachel (she/her) (48:12)
Mm-hmm.

I don't-

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

Shawna Gann (48:32)
doing Heil Hitler salutes, He hasn't even been so bold to just straight out come out and call people the N-word and all that stuff. But what I'm saying is even people who I think, they do want that, but they praise him for just being an ass. They think that he's funny. They think that the...

offensiveness, all of the making fun of people with disabilities, like all that shit. They praise him for that. They think it's amazing. And I'm saying, I'm for authenticity, but why is that the flavor of authentic you want?

Rachel (she/her) (49:00)
Mm-hmm. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

because It is the epitome of how they could operate. They could be, if they wanted to be an asshole, they could be that with reckless abandoned. They didn't have to worry about losing a job or being canceled or being held accountable for those things. You could just say and do whatever and nobody cared about it.

Shawna Gann (49:15)
It's the license.

Alright, I'll buy that. The lack of accountability piece. Not being held to account. Not being held responsible for the shit you say and do.

Rachel (she/her) (49:29)
Mm-hmm. There's no

Mm-hmm,

and it's like if he talks like that and if I kind of talk like that and he can get to a place and be on TV then maybe I can it's all the idea that like

Shawna Gann (49:42)
Or

maybe I can't be shamed for being that way.

Rachel (she/her) (49:46)
because the president is that way. So now we're not, that's not a shameful behavior. And I mean, all of that is like, there's, it's rooted in a lot of different things. And like research has actually shown you can get like staunch racist people in a room with other races and like just have one-on-one conversation and they start to change their ways because of that individual connection that they don't have. So like these people that we're talking about, they live in rural areas, they don't live around people of color. The only image of people of color they have is based on TV and media. So if,

Shawna Gann (49:50)
Right.

Rachel (she/her) (50:15)
people of color are presented by your Fox News or your OAN network as criminals and thugs, then that's what they are. And you have no frame of reference for reality. So that's who these people are.

Shawna Gann (50:20)
They're always in, yeah.

What about,

okay, so I know this is hard to do, but setting race aside for a second. I mean, we don't even have time today to talk about Epstein way he is and has been with women is completely horrific and disrespectful, but the women, what about the women who are still are like, yeah.

Rachel (she/her) (50:32)
Mm-hmm.

Men want to do that. Men want to do that to women.

Those are the women that romanticize their own oppression. So it's this idea that, okay, if you see an oppressive system, as long as I am in proximity to the center of power, I can survive here. So how do I placate power to ensure my survival? back to the 50s and 60s, where the wife was taken care of and all she had to do was take care of the kids.

Shawna Gann (51:04)
Mm.

Rachel (she/her) (51:11)
marriage then was like, you didn't have to be decent. You just had to have a job as a man. And women could not get a job typically. And they're like, no, we want to take care of you. You all you have to do is cook and clean. But the reality is the majority of women were married to men who were abusive, who were absent.

Shawna Gann (51:16)
Well.

Rachel (she/her) (51:28)
who didn't do anything but go to work and came home. So they were raising their kids and their husband. You didn't have to be a decent human being to be a partner. You just had to be a man and have money.

Shawna Gann (51:33)
or whatever else they were doing.

Yeah.

Right.

Rachel (she/her) (51:39)
So now they want our survival tied to the institution of marriage. And especially for.

Shawna Gann (51:44)
And if you ain't married,

don't worry. Marriage Camp is coming.

Rachel (she/her) (51:47)
Oh, marriage camp's coming. They're going to make me put me there first because I'm unmarried and ain't having kids. I don't want to have kids.

Shawna Gann (51:53)
Girl listen, will you come back?

Rachel (she/her) (51:57)
I will always come talk to

Shawna Gann (51:59)
so much

there's so much more. We didn't even get to talk about

Renee Nicole Good. We didn't talk about Alex Pretti didn't talk about baby Liam, There's so much.

Rachel (she/her) (52:07)
today they said they were mandating

will always come back and talk my shit with you friend.

Shawna Gann (52:11)
I hope you will because I have a feeling got a little bit more of this stuff to navigate. so much more.

Rachel (she/her) (52:18)
we have like

central nervous system can't take it.

Shawna Gann (52:21)
By the way, y'all, if you are eligible to vote, please make sure you're registered and please show up.

Rachel (she/her) (52:25)
Mm-hmm.

is like all down ballot elections. Down to your sheriff.

Shawna Gann (52:29)
All, all, local,

is running for the school board? You need to pay attention. Don't be lazy. Please don't be lazy. You have to

Rachel (she/her) (52:37)
I would love, I need a

hat that says make politics boring again. I want to go back to where it's like, I know who I'm voting for. I know who I'm voting for at the local level, but it's like, I feel good about what they are doing despite, I feel like I got to keep tabs on this, on this government situation. Like I'm keeping tabs on like a kid that's out in the street. Like where are you at? What are you doing? What time are you coming? I really do. And it, stresses us out so much.

Shawna Gann (52:49)
Yeah.

It is like that. It is like that. You have to be paying attention. to hurt all of us?

Rachel (she/her) (53:03)
Yeah.

most we had

to worry about with Obama was the suit situation.

Shawna Gann (53:08)
my God. And the beer summit. And

Rachel (she/her) (53:12)
Not giving

homeboy who bought your election, who's doped up on ketamine access to everybody's social security number and information, not.

Shawna Gann (53:17)
Jesus, not getting

rid of Education.

Rachel (she/her) (53:21)
Not

making your favorite TV show host the secretary of the Department of Defense.

Shawna Gann (53:27)
Not

making podcast hosts, FBI Not buying the ICE queen, her own private jets. You know?

Rachel (she/her) (53:32)
not.

Not letting

Cash Patel run his boo thing across the United States and on the jet that Americans pay for.

Shawna Gann (53:42)
not accepting a jet as a gift for being Air Force One that has to have billions of dollars done to it because it came from a foreign entity?

Rachel (she/her) (53:45)
Woo!

not hiring the wife of a owner who has also allegedly been participating in PDF situations to run the Department of Education for your country.

Shawna Gann (54:04)
but don't worry, because she's going to tell us all about A1.

So, if y'all need some help picking out your steak sauce, you can't choose between Heinz 57 and A1. Don't ask, Chat GPT.

Rachel (she/her) (54:14)
Mmm.

And

that, gentlemen, days, thems, and other, however you want to describe yourself in this show is why I always say, drink your water and mind your

Shawna Gann (54:24)
You

All right, I better close this but this is amazing. I love talking with you. I knew you were gonna be real and Yeah, please come back. Please come back.

Rachel (she/her) (54:40)
Yeah, thanks so much. I appreciate you.

Shawna Gann (54:43)
Be safe out there. Watch out for the ice, all of the kinds of ice and be well.

Rachel (she/her) (54:46)
Yes.

Catch y'all next time.

Shawna Gann (54:51)
All right, thank you, Rachel.

Closing: Okay, y'all so that was a lot, and also that was real. If this episode hit you in the chest, you're not alone. If it made you laugh, same I laughed out loud when I reviewed it before publishing it, if it made you want to throw your phone into a lake, well, okay, valid, don't do that, though, but here's a reminder for you, protect your voice, protect your energy. Stay connected to the people who help you. Stay sane and when you can stay engaged where it counts, especially locally, the big headlines get all the attention, but your daily life is shaped by all that stuff that just is kind of happening, seemingly in the background, except it's not in the background. If you want more special episodes like this, tell me, and if you have a friend who's been feeling like they've lost their voice, check on them. You can reach out to me at true culture consulting.com on Instagram, at our True Colors podcast online, at LinkedIn, all the ways. Also you can reach out to me right from this show. Look in the show notes, and there's a link to send me a DM. I want to hear from you. We're all out here doing this thing in the meantime. Stay curious, stay connected, and keep embracing your true colors. Spread the Love y'all. I'll talk to you soon.