The Present Illness

Pope Leo takes on AI; Ashley St. Clair Spills Hot MAGA Tea

• Alyssa Burgart & Arghavan Salles • Season 1 • Episode 35

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Pope Leo takes on AI in first encyclical; Ashley St. Clair spills hot MAGA tea; UFC fight at the White House; Ronnie Chieng commencement speech


Pope’s First Encyclical:


Ashley St. Clair:


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Credits

  • Production by Arghavan Salles & Alyssa Burgart
  • Editing by Alyssa Burgart
  • Music by Joseph Uphoff
  • Social Media by Arghavan Salles
SPEAKER_02

As this Pope is trying to determine who he is going to be and where his focus is going to be, I think he is a realist in recognizing that AI is not going anywhere, but that we do need to get away from this idea of AI exceptionalism, this idea that AI is this inevitable thing that must continue the way it is, and that anybody who gets in the way of that mission is uh problematic.

SPEAKER_00

Hey there, fellow nerds. Welcome back to another episode of The Present Illness, the podcast where two physicians try to make sense of a world that is definitely febrile and also underdiagnosed. Um I'm Argavon Solas, a surgeon scientist and your friendly neighborhood Doom Scroller and Resident.

SPEAKER_02

And I'm Alyssa Berghardt, an anesthesiologist and bioethicist who tracks news and health while like their EKGs full of spikes and surprises. The present illness is where we dig into public health, politics, culture, and ethics with a scalpel in one hand and a meme in the other. As a note to our listeners, we often talk about tough topics that are intense, can be activating, and can be a lot.

SPEAKER_00

We wanted to give a big thank you to everyone who's listening and some extra love to our subscribers or those who follow us on any of the various platforms, uh, with a special warm welcome to anyone who is just stumbling in from listen, any of the many things happening, the um Ebola epidemic that's happening in Africa, and the US's unwillingness to allow any US citizens or green call card holders who may have been exposed to come back to the United States. Instead, they should go to Kenya, who knows why. Um, RFK Jr.'s exploitations, maybe not exploitations, adventures, I should say, with snakes that have been getting a lot of airtime in the last few days. Is he into snakes? He is into wrangling snakes, which seems really wise. Um, so there's a couple different videos of him nabbing snakes for who knows what reason. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I'm gonna be honest, I didn't need to know that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I didn't need to see videos. Uh honestly, uh, one of them was at apparently Dr. Oz's house. Um, and then there's another one that popped up that was at his home with um, but outside, by the way, not like inside the house, where like obviously you have to do something, but these were outside. Um, and so he's like gotten this the one with Cheryl Hines is actually the more disturbing one because he uses this like thing to kind of pin down the snake and then grabs it by its head. I don't know if that's what it's called. And he's like, oh, there's its fangs. I don't wanna, I don't really want to touch the I mean it's weird. Like, what are you doing grabbing a rattlesnake in any way, much less like by its head? What are you anyway? So that was that. Um, we also have the building of the UFC arena on the lawn of the White House, which is a spectacle. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So I saw I saw somebody alluding to this, and I thought it was a metaphor. Yeah. I thought it was a metaphor that there was that that the White House was like a UFC fighting ring. And then I thought, you know, I should check. And then I saw the images of those like giant, like that whole stage they built. And I was not prepared for that to be real.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it is. And he they said it last year. They said that they were going to have this UFC fight for um, I believe it's for Donald Trump's birthday. Um and uh and and they're really doing it. So, you know, even if you thought it was a joke last year, you were wrong. It's happening. Um, and then the last thing I wanted to add in this mix is um yesterday, Stephen Miller um made a comment about James Tellerico, who is a candidate um for office in Texas, um, where Stephen Miller said something, I don't have the exact words in front of me, but basically I'm saying that James Tellerico is transgender. Um, and the Democrats, like the official Democrat account, replied something like, Shut up, you ugly fuck. I think that's what it was. Um, yeah, which has gotten a lot of attention with people on the left clutching their pearls, going, what? This is going to instigate political violence. Uh never mind all the things that they are constantly um saying about people. Yeah, it was exactly that. Shut up, you ugly fuck. Um and then, and then Katie Miller went on, uh, I believe it was on Fox News talking about the person who was behind that account who's a looks like a lovely 30-year-old woman. Um, but Katie Miller was then attacking this person that, you know, she's a single win woman who's a liberal, you know, crazy cat lady, you know, that kind of thing. Um even though obviously she knows nothing about this person. And also she is married to someone who I don't like to talk about people's appearances, but he both inside and out, he's pretty darn ugly. Anyway, um, those are just some of the things happening out there.

SPEAKER_02

So, so you know what I thought you were gonna say about James Tallerico, which like, you know, certainly if if James is transgender, you know, wonderful, be whoever you're gonna be. Um, but what I thought you were gonna say is there were accusations earlier this week that he was a vegan. Oh, yeah, that he had to, he felt he had to vigorously defend his love of meat and barbecue, which I thought was really funny.

SPEAKER_00

I just I know that that was the worst thing they could say about him was that maybe he didn't like meat, although he does apparently like meat, but that was like the best they could come up with uh as a way to slander this man was to call him a vegan. But then of course, um Stephen Miller came up with something else, which is also not an insult, obviously, um, but is treated like one by the people who are behind all this um anti-trans rhetoric.

SPEAKER_02

That was a lot to stumble in from. And I I know that I personally have been feeling um, you know, it's so disorienting. There's just, and I think that's you know, it's the point for us to all be disoriented by the news. And uh it's it's something.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's so great to be a U.S. citizen at this point in time.

SPEAKER_02

All only good things happening. Well, folks, listen, we are glad you're here. We're happy to be back from our time, my time away in particular. Um we thought that today we would talk about, you know, the big news this week is Pope Leo, yeah, his new encyclical, his first encyclical um since becoming Pope. And for those of you who haven't heard of it yet, it's called Magnifica Humanitas, uh, so magnificent humans, uh, and it's all about AI. And so very interesting that he chose for his very first encyclical to be about this uh transformative and often nefarious uh technology that we're all just living through this big transition right now. Um but one of the things I thought was interesting is so when Pope Leo chose his name, he the popes generally choose their name in reference to a previous pope. There's a lot of excitement as a pope has been selected uh by the College of Cardinals, but before they announce what their name will be. And when he selected the name Leo, uh, this was really seen as that Pope, this Pope Leo would be similar to uh Pope Leo XIII, who was a Pope during the Industrial Revolution and really launched Catholic social teaching around um protection of workers. Uh, it's a little weird to talk about Catholicism as trying to be anti-capitalist, because I think that's a very, there's a lot of tension uh for anybody who knows about the history of the Catholic Church and its role in specifically colonialism and really pushing vast collection of wealth by stealing from other people. Um, but the Pope Leo XIII had a very uh powerful encyclical that was about protecting workers called Rerum Novarum, which is on new things. Um, and so it is also a tradition that when a Pope wants to release a new encyclical, they will oftentimes do it on the anniversary of another encyclical in which it's related to. So Magnifica Humanitas was released on the 135th anniversary to the day of Rerum Nov Novarum. Um so a very clearly a very purposeful choice to release it on uh on that day in particular and in uh direct reference to the previous Pope Leo. So I think this also brings out that this Pope is going to continue to be uh a champion for workers, a champion for the poor, which is how he very much lived his life before becoming Pope. Um I went through and watched the entire uh like the there was a API. Well, the pr there's a promo video, which we can put a link in the show notes, um, that actually ends with saying break the chains of digital slavery. Um, but the piece that I actually watched was there was an hour and a half, essentially, I'm gonna call it a launch party. Um, it was basically a uh sort of media, it sort of looked like a med school-sized classroom um where the Pope sits at a dais in the front with a number of uh scholars and other religious leaders. And it was the like kind of formal launching of this encyclical, which not this is not like typical. It isn't like all encyclicals get this kind of a launch party, if you will. Um, and so there were several people that spoke at it. Um a lot of it was in Italian, and I don't speak Italian, so I couldn't follow that. But um there were four different people who actually spoke in English, and one of them was um Anna Rowland, who is a scholar of social Catholic ethics from Durham University in the UK. Um, and so she gave uh remarks ahead of the Pope talking about the importance of Catholic social teaching and the importance of Catholic social teaching in relation to AI. Um probably one of the most surprising things was that Christopher Oloff, who is the co-founder of Anthropocopic. I was gonna say Anthropocene, which is that's a bit of a tongue-in-cheek. Uh, the AI is bringing the Anthropocene. But uh, that Christopher Olaf, the co-founder of Anthropic, was there and also gave gave remarks. Um it's an interesting choice. He was invited by the Vatican to participate in that. Um, I think in part because Anthropic had refused, at least as of several weeks ago, had refused to provide their uh data and training models to the U.S. government for acts of war. Since then, they have made a contract with uh the NSA. So I'm not really sure what that means in that context. We'll have to see. I'm not, I don't hold my breath that Anthropic is going to actually be some human-centered business, but I think it was important that they were willing to be part of that conversation and accepted that opportunity to go to the Vatican and be part of this. Um, one of the things that he said was uh some might believe that matters of AI are best handled by computer scientists like myself. They are mistaken. And so there at least was an open uh really attestation that you know, engineers are not the only people who should be making these choices and that we do need to have more holistic approaches to AI.

SPEAKER_00

I just want to say before we get too much further into this conversation, in case folks haven't um been following that the my impression from this excerpts that I've seen from the encyclical is that it's very anti-AI. I mean, the the Pope says himself that we need to disarm AI. Um go ahead.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it's interesting. I actually don't think that it's at all in opposition to AI. I think it's in opposition to negative uses of AI. Um, but it's very much not saying destroy AI. It's saying we need to reassess how AI is being used and not allow for AI to be used to make the lives of human beings worse.

SPEAKER_00

Um, and um but it's more than that because he he's talking about it's a lot, it's a lot more than that. Well, obviously, it's like 42,000 words. So yeah, I'm not you can't distill it down into one sentence. Um, but you know, the excerpts that I've seen are a lot about, and I'm just looking through a few of them, but they're a lot about centering human dignity. Um, and so I think there's certainly parts of it where it reads this again, these sections read to be pretty anti um, in my view, because there's things like like he brings up Hannah Arendt's writing about totality totalitarian regimes and says um the ideal subjects of such regimes are not so much those who are ideologically convinced, but rather people for whom this is a quote, people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, in other words, the reality of experience, and the distinction between true and false, in other words, the standards of thought, no longer exist, which I thought was him getting at this um kind of loss of truth and fact that we have going on even before this wave of AI, but also that when you're relying on AI-generated output, which we know is not reliable, then you no longer really have a strong sense of what's true and what's not true. Um, and so that doesn't go against what you were saying about like the focus being on how we use um this technology, but he also says um that reducing men and women to data and packages um is problematic. He says this reality deeply challenges the moral conscience of our time. It is not enough to invoke efficiency or to celebrate the benefits of innovation if they are built on a chain of exploitation that remains deliberately hidden. If technology promises emancipation, yet produces new forms of global subordination, it stands in contradiction to the fundamental principle of human dignity.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and I mean, and that's one of the things that you know, Catholic social teaching really focuses on human dignity. And I think that's in obviously in I've left the church, like I've said this before. I was raised Catholic, I've read many encyclicals, I've I desperately tried to stay Catholic when I was younger, and I just couldn't do it because of all of the things about the Catholic Church's behavior that are counter to what they claim the teachings are, um, such as the treatment of, of course, children who were sexually abused within the church and the church uh that covered it up. So I say this this Pope is clearly grounded in a liberation theology framework. And I think that the social teachings in terms of defending the poor and supporting the rights of workers is something that Catholic social teaching has really leaned into in the past. You know, you I personally feel that we see this much more strongly in Central and South America in the practice of Catholicism, which is where this Pope spent the majority of his time before becoming Pope. Um, I think this idea of a liberatory liberation theology framework is something that many US Catholics have not really been exposed to. So, you know, I think that the reason that I push back on this idea that it is anti-AI is that I think that this encyclical is saying the current trajectory that the use of this technology is on, that is capitalist framed, that is suppressing workers, suppressing workers' rights, hiding the negative aspects of it, um, impacts on the environment, et cetera, that that is not inevitable and that that is something that is not only within human control, but that it is our responsibility as human beings to demand that these uh technologies not be used in this way. I think that this Pope has been very careful in the wording of this encyclical to not come across as anti-progress. Um I mean, listen, the Catholic Church was not into, you know, Galileo. They don't have the greatest track record on a lot of uh social issues and scientific issues. And so I think that as this Pope is trying to determine who he is going to be and where his focus is going to be, I think he is a realist in recognizing that AI is not going anywhere, but that we do need to get away from this idea of uh AI exceptionalism, this idea that AI is this inevitable thing that must continue the way it is, um, and that anybody who gets in the way of that mission is uh problematic. He's trying to provide social boundaries around it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I mean, maybe a better way to put it is from than what I said earlier is that it's a very strong criticism, I feel, of um what's currently happening. As you said, what's currently happening, like how things these things are being rolled out. We saw just recently the thousands of people laid off at Meta. There was that leaked audio of um Mark Zuckerberg basically talking about how they're now, in case Fix hadn't heard, they they now monitor every keystroke of every employee. Um and he the way he explained it to the employees was that this is because they have such smart employees and they have such a large number of smart employees, that this is the way to build the most competitive AI, is to train their AI off of the behaviors of these very smart people. What he left unsaid was that he was doing that so he could replace these people with AI. It was a particularly vile um set of statements that he made. And I mean, not that he's not made other vile statements, but it was really disturbing, even as someone who's never worked at Meta, never will work at Meta, but it was disturbing to listen to. And so, like another section here from the encyclical that speaks a little bit to this is he says if the human being is treated as something to be perfected or surpassed, it becomes easier to accept that some lives are less useful, less desirable, or less worthy. Um, in the name of progress, necessary sacrifices may begin to be justified, placing the burden on the most vulnerable. Um, and then he goes on and says, um, it is one thing to integrate technology within a human-centered relational vision. It is quite another to be guided by an outlook that devalues human limits and promises a purely technical form of salvation, which is what I think a lot of these companies currently are doing. They're they're trying to sell this message that this AI is gonna magically make everything better, even though its very existence is the exploitation of humanity and all the work that we have done.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And, you know, having lived here on and off in the Silicon Valley for a very long time, um, you know, people who work at startups, people who work at these big companies, you know, they always say they're gonna change the world. And it's always this like wonderful utopian vision of a future. And, you know, obviously, time and time again, we see that that is not the case. Um so the other people I wanted to mention who spoke. Yeah, please. Oh, and I wanted the other you mentioned um Hannah Arendt, and there's a bunch of references in this piece that which is uh not typical, I would say. There's a bunch of sort of references to not only Hannah Arendt, who wrote specifically about the monality of evil um in response to World War II. There was reference to Victor Frankel, who is somebody who survived the Nazi concentration camps. Um, there was reference, uh, there's a Gandalf reference from uh J.R.R. Tolkien, who is a Catholic writer. Uh Pablo Picasso was mentioned, Beethoven, Maria Montessori, who started the uh Montessori educational programs. So lots of uh references to material sort of outside of the church that I think was very interesting and uh particularly used in a particularly effective way. And I think it also shows that, you know, certainly Leo didn't write this all by himself. Clearly, this is, I'm sure, a whole staff of people who helped to articulate these messages. Um the other people who spoke at this uh session, so I mentioned um uh Professor Anna Rowland from Durham University, and then uh Professor, and I and I apologize because I do not, I'm not certain how to pronounce her name, but her name's uh Leo Katie or Leo Cadi Lushombo. Um and she's actually here in the Bay Area. She's uh professor of theological ethics at um Santa Clara University, which is not too far from here. So she does a bunch of work on uh Christian social talk, specifically Catholic social teaching, economic globalization. Um, she herself is uh from Africa. I believe she's from the Congo. And so on this dais, I think to have two prominent women scholars speaking on this issue. They were both part of uh my understanding is they were both part of the group that was part of the advisory program to like prepare for this encyclical. Um, and then Cardinal Michael Cersei is a uh cardinal from here in the United States who also spoke. So there's I'll put a link to the full thing for folks who, if you really want to listen to it all, you Can the Pope actually also? I think this is important. So the Pope is multilingual. The Pope chose to give his remarks about AI in English. And I think that that is in particular to make sure that this is as accessible as possible to people in America who are the primary drivers of this technology at this time. And so now, versus, for example, when he gave his address when he became Pope, he did that in Spanish and he did that in Italian. And so that was seen, for example, as um a particular way of who it is that he's trying to speak to and using language in a way that sends an additional message.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, I think it's been if anyone for folks who've been online, you've probably seen a lot of chatter about this encyclical. Um, and I think in part because people are so frustrated. A lot of people are really frustrated with what's happening with these tech companies, um, right where we live in particular. And um, you know, I know you were traveling, but there I don't know if you saw these videos of commencement speakers like Eric Schmidt, who was the previous um CEO of Google, and then um this other woman who is lesser known who was giving a speech at University of Central Florida. And both of them were, you know, and there's a third person who whose name I I don't recall at all, but um, there's three different speeches I've seen that are commencement speeches where they are um touting AI and it's the future, and you know, kind of you gotta get on board messages that were very poorly received, um, with loud boos from the audience um in each of these cases because of, I mean, so many things. And we haven't done an episode breaking down like the environmental impact and um the we've kind of alluded to, but we haven't really talked about the ways that it um gives out false information. Um and you can tell that when you search, if you use one of these things to search on something you actually know quite a lot about, it becomes very easy to see how inaccurate the information is. And the the dangerous thing is that people obviously aren't using it to to learn about something they already know a lot about. They're using it to learn about things they don't know as much about, so they can't tell what is true and what is false. Um anyway, so there's and all these concerns that make it very unpopular. We've got the data centers that are being fought at almost every turn now because of the impact on the environmental pollution, the data centers are utilities, cost rising, et cetera.

SPEAKER_02

I mean, I think data centers are the new private prisons. You know, these are the ways that you can take.

unknown

Anyway.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I mean, I was saying all that just to say that I think part of the reason this has gotten so much attention, even though, you know, there are a lot of people, like I'm obviously not, well, maybe not obviously, but I'm not Catholic, never have been, never been part of any sort of organized religion. But I um really have seen a lot of different excerpts and comments um about what is said in this piece of writing, because I think a lot of people were looking for a leader who's not going to keep pushing the same message that we're getting fed all the time right now, which is as you were saying, that AI is inevitable, it is the future, you have to get on board. And this is the first time we've seen someone that prominent say, I'm not really necessarily on board with that. Like there's a lot of concerns, and we need to be centering humans, not centering this technology. Um, and I think there was just this big gap. Um, and people were looking for that. And that's why there's been such a response.

SPEAKER_02

Well, and I think it's also important to situate this for folks who aren't aware with um, you know, Google, when they started their AI development program, they had ethics. There was a period of time about 10 years ago where um a number of the tech uh corporations were, they specifically had ethics teams to really try to help them think through the downstream effects of some of these technologies to try to, I think that, you know, from a position where they thought that would be information that they would desire. And then when they did not like what was coming out, they fired all of those people. And this happened across the industry. Um, you know, Temnik Gabrew was obviously the most uh famous person to, and and thankfully she has, you know, continued to do her work speaking out against that. Um but as a I agree with you that there has been this, there have been many people talking about AI ethics, but it's it's people like me, right? Like we're like little nobodies at in academic centers, even if you're at a high-profile academic center, you know, we certainly don't have the profile of someone like the Pope who's really coming out to say, you know, to the over 1 billion Catholics in the world, here's your guiding principles for how you can think about this technology and how we as a society need to protect each other. And what is it that we owe each other as human beings in order to, um, as you said, you know, not to prioritize uh, you know, these sacrifices, quote unquote, in the name of progress.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and and this comes also at a time when I think we are starting to see a shift, and maybe this will facilitate that shift happening more quickly in the conversation around AI, in that um Starbucks recently said they're gonna stop using um generative AI for monitoring its um uh you know, it its stock of various items, like it was using that in some way and it was inaccurate, shocking. So they're they're gonna stop using that. Um Microsoft has said they're gonna stop leasing cloud licenses because it really was just too expensive to maintain for what they were getting out of it. So they're shifting their own employees to Copilot, which um is an interesting choice. Anyway, and then uh in the meantime, Uber CEO COO um has just said in the last few days that they are not really seeing the return in terms of productivity based on how much they're having to spend for these tokens.

SPEAKER_02

Um so well, because it's also like this is what's so dumb is like, you know, I have played around with a bunch of these AI tools because I really have to better understand in the context of healthcare what is being done with these, how do they work, how are patients using them, how are clinicians using them? And like the amount of work required to get some of these things to give you what you think you can get, like I can do that with my own brain much more efficiently. On a handful of my uh handful of MMs, I can run this bad girl up here. Exactly right.

SPEAKER_00

And Ronnie Chang, uh, you know, who's on the daily show, he's a comedian. He he just didn't steal my joy this week. Oh, that's your okay, I won't say it. I won't Don't steal my joy.

SPEAKER_02

Okay. Okay. Because when you were talking, well, I'll tell all of you my joy this week. I'm just gonna give you a little preview. It's all of the people who did commencement speech speeches that were in opposition to the ones that Argivan just talked about.

SPEAKER_00

I will I will I will stop right there then. Um But you know, people have been predicting that there's gonna be a bubble that's going to burst with AI because there's so much money that's been poured into this product, if you want to call it that, that doesn't really deliver. Um, and so I'm very curious to see where it's gonna go. But we also have, I mean, there's just been there were multiple studies showing that, for example, when students are trying to learn, that if they learn um using a generative AI system versus just Googling things and reading on their own, they don't learn as much. They might perform okay on a task where they have access to that tool, but then when they don't have access to that tool, they're not able to perform. Um, there was a study in one of the Lancet journals on colonoscopy and gastroenterologists. And when they use an AI assistant to help them identify adenomas, when that assistant was taken away, their adenoma detection rate, which is their um, you know, in case there's non-medical folks listening, their ability to find abnormalities in the colon, that that was lower after they took the AI away than even it was before they had the AI to begin with. So that's called de-skilling. So there's just lots of things that we see that are negative consequences, in addition to the environmental, you know, and ethical concerns. It doesn't seem like it's really delivering in the ways that these companies have have told us they would. And as more of the content that's available in the world becomes AI generated, it now starts to feed on itself and it's very limited in its capacity because it cannot think, you know, at least as it cannot create an independent and unique thought. No, it has no creativity. Um and and that and the thing is that that it does that it's really dangerous, is it m gives people the sense that they are learning and that they are gaining expertise, even though they're not once that information is taken away, they're not retaining. Um, I saw somebody, uh I think it was a professor might be. I want to just say, like, it's not an educational shortcut, it's an educational short circuit. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so there's a a professor I saw who's who online had said that they are now requiring handwritten essays because they're like, even if all you do is copy from your chat GPT, at least if you're copying it by hand, maybe you'll remember something. Maybe you'll get something out of it rather than copying and pasting into a Word document. Um anyway, that's a whole nother topic of AI in educational settings and how it's being used. Um you see, was it UC Berkeley's law school, I think, that put out a statement. I will fact check myself in the in the show notes that they put out a statement they're no longer allowing any AI to be used in any of their coursework. Anyway, it's obviously one of the biggest topics of the day. I'm sure we'll revisit this um at another.

SPEAKER_02

Well, I think and I think that's why the timing of this encyclical is really important. I think this document, um, you know, listen, it there's already accusations that this document was made with AI. Um, you know, there's we can talk in the future about plagiarism checkers and the fact that those will sometimes say something's plagiarized when, or say, pardon me, say something's generated by AI with, but we know that those are unreliable as well.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Um, so I think these are all interesting things that are going to come out of here. I also think that it's, you know, as somebody who no longer looks to the Catholic Church in general for moral clarity, I still find, you know, as a bioethicist, like I find Catholic moral teachings to be an interesting way to inform myself to be able to think more deeply about, well, if I don't agree with this particular statement, why? And under what circumstances would I accept this particular approach? Um, you know, certainly this is written, this is a document written for Catholics, but it's also written with an eye for the rest of the world. And so I do think it's interesting. I think that we're going to see a lot more religious leaders and moral leaders feel empowered to bring their own perspective to these. So I'll be kind of looking out for those as well. And, you know, I'm curious to see how this sparks additional conversation. Um we'll see.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. No, I'm very curious as well. And I do want to just say you alluded to this earlier, but I do want to just say because it's come up in my comment sections, that um our discussion here today is not an endorsement in any way of the Catholic Church or even this Pope. We're just talking about this very specific document and and how it relates to a very current issue, which is the use of generative AI. Uh, I think you and I are both well aware of the horrific things that the church has done and and we're not suggesting anything like those don't matter or anything like that. I'm just saying that because I've gotten a lot of comments from people being like, why are we why are we whitewashing the the harms of the church? I not. We're not. We're not.

SPEAKER_02

But this is a this is something that I I have to live in tension with. And um, you know, again, like as a as a former Catholic, like I left the church after a great deal of discernment. Like I, there was a lot of things about the church that were really important to my life, really important to my family. And in the end, I just decided that that was simply I could not live with the being part of an organization that couldn't stand up for kids the way that they needed to and has margin continued to marginalize um and repress the role of women. It's interesting seeing how um now I am again not saying that I think the church is doing a great job, but I did notice that uh the Pope did include a number, like I said, of female scholars on this um in this process, which is not something that we also typically see. So again, um I'm not looking, I don't think that people should expect for this pope to be some revolutionary force. Um I do not, it is clear to me already that this pope is not going to right all the wrongs of the past. The Pope just, I can't remember if it was last week or the week before, um, a group of German bishops uh really wrote, you know, they wrote to the Pope to say, we would like you to endorse us being able to give blessings to same-sex couples. And uh the Pope denied that request. And uh I just listened uh to a uh interview, it wasn't an interview. He was like talking to a group of journalists, and one of them asked them asked him about that. And I thought his um his response was very on-brand, if you will, for for a church that remains unfortunately fixed in its interpersonal ethics. So like the Catholic Church really has like kind of three kind of branches of uh teaching. And one of those is like, you know, what are the decisions and the thoughts that I have for myself? What is the discernment I do for myself? They have a lot of interpersonal ethics. So if you think about uh relationships, the ways and other things like that, especially in relation to um interpersonal decision making, I think that's an area where the church continues to be just way out of alignment with frankly the human dignity of many people who uh either are or would would have liked to have remained part of the church. So um, you know, versus the the social teachings, for example, I find that their social and interpersonal teachings are oftentimes too deeply in conflict uh for me to, I just don't think that they make sense. And um and I'm not, you know, obviously there's a lot of people who who have left the church for similar reasons. So um you will never hear me open-throatedly endorsing the Catholic Church. Um but living in that tension, the the tension of the fact that like you can have this organization that has many, many problems, that is absolutely must be reproached on a number of levels and can still find value in things like this encyclical, if anything, as a source of dialogue and as a source of you know deep reflection on what are our values as human beings.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, absolutely agree. Okay, with that, we're going to change to a very different topic. I can't wait because I want to talk about Ashley St. Clair, who I think is the most fascinating person on the internet right now. And um, people people may disagree, but I will push back because I really feel very I spent a lot of time on the internet and she is the most interesting person around.

SPEAKER_02

Well, so I want to say before you get started, so you texted me and you said, Do you want to talk about the encyclical and maybe Ashley St. Clair? And I was like, Well, I want to talk about the encyclical because I do not know who this person is.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Um, so I'm gonna tell you. So um, Ashley is a young woman. I believe she's 27 years old. So that's really, really important um to remember for this whole conversation. Um, she she starts most of her videos. Um, so she's been doing a lot on TikTok. That's where I'm I'm seeing her. Um, she starts most of her videos with acknowledging that she was a MAGA influencer for almost 10 years. And also since she was a teenager. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So she she talks about, well, I want to tell you her whole story, but the the basic premise is she was a MAGA influencer for a long time. She's no longer doing that. Um, and she um, you know, I don't believe in defining women by the men in their lives, but one notable thing about her is that she did have a child with Elon Musk. So that's probably what she's most known for. Uh, I'm sure, much to her chagrin. Now, what's happened is what a guy to have to co-parent with, huh? Yeah, I'm not sure there's any co-parenting going on, uh, to be honest. But um, but the reason I think she's so fascinating is that she is doing something that people don't really do. She is talking about what she has seen and experienced with some of the most powerful people in the world. And she is just coming right out and saying it. Um, like she I'll I have a whole, I want to tell you her whole story, but just some highlights. Like she had a video that got a lot of attention last week where she talks about Elon's role in the 2024 election, um in and alludes to some of the same things and the same suspicions that people have had about potential election interference um or fraud. And she's just saying that. Um, I mean, and not just saying, and she has her text messages, she has everything she's saying is backed up by documentation. Um, and she's revealing, for example, how the MAGA influencers how the whole machine kind of runs, how they coordinate their messaging, who's paying them for their messaging. I mean, again, things that usually we don't hear about because it is really not in her interest or in the interest of her safety or the safety of her children to be talking about all this. But she feels well, people can have different ideas and interpretations, but what she says is that she just feels very bad about the harm that she caused when she was part of this movement, and she wants people to know what is happening and how it's all working. So yeah, I mean, there are people who think it's all a show and she's still secretly working with MAGA. Um, I don't personally feel that way. Yeah, I've watched a lot of her videos, probably too many. It's kind of embarrassing, but I just find it really fascinating. So, so here's the basic story because a lot of times people are asking, but why? Like, why did you leave? What made you change your perspective? And so here's her basic story. Um, she was, as you pointed out, she was a young woman. She had gone to college, and she kind of pretty quickly fell into the um TP Turning Point USA, who we've talked about before. She fell into that circle. And um there was an event on campus very early on that like got her attention, and she just kind of I mean, just being honest, I'm not making excuses for her, but it's like she kind of just fell into that group. Like we all do, we all just fall into different groups. And this was the one that she ended up in. And she thought that people were were nerdy and interesting, and she was one of the only women, which made for an interesting mix of um, you know, how she related to these folks, but she felt special, right? Because she was so unique relatively in that group. And, you know, as a young, insecure person, that can be validating. Um again, not making excuses for her, but this is how she describes it that she kind of fell into this group and and then just leaned hard into it. Um, and she was posting on Twitter. And eventually what ends up happening is she dates this guy. I guess his name is DC Draeno, if anybody follows. I had never heard of him, but you know, right-wing um MAGA influencer who, when she was 20, convinced her to drop out of college and move to Florida with him. So she did, and she had been homeschooled. She mentions this and it helps people understand, I think, a little bit. So she had been homeschooled in high school and lived in a very small town. Then she goes to the University of Colorado. She's there for like two years. At age 20, she leaves to move in with DC Draeno. His name's Rogan. Um, and uh I'm sorry, did you just say DC Draeno? That's his like username, I guess.

SPEAKER_01

Hmm. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. It's a very online, like her, because she's a she was an influencer, like sure, everything revolves around like Twitter handles and Twitter chats and you know, a lot of that. Anyway, so she has this relationship with this guy, it doesn't last uh too very long, but he's the reason she left school. And then now she's left school and she's in these influencer circles, and that's how she's getting both um engagement and friendships and money. Like that's all she really has at that point. Um, and so she gets very involved in like she calls them the women of Mar-a-Lago, um, and like trips to Mar-a-Lago were like really important at that time. Um, yeah, it's just a fascinating look at like what's the social side of the these people who we don't we don't see that side of them. We see the the bigoted things they post, right? But we don't really see like what are they doing with their time and how are they relating to each other. So somewhere along the way, Elon starts following her on Twitter after he has bought the platform. And so that gets her a lot more social capital because not only is he following her, he's like interacting with a lot of her posts. So it's very public. Yeah, I know. So like, and how old is he at this group? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's he's like 30 years-ish older than her. Um, it's disgusting. But she describes that she, you know, starts getting all these accolades from other people in this MAGA circle because, like, oh my God, like Elon likes you, Elon's commenting, Elon blah, blah, blah, blah. She gets added to some chat with people who also Elon engages with.

SPEAKER_02

And yeah, it's like proximity to power is helping ramp up her social power and social capital.

SPEAKER_00

Right. And she's very young. Like at this point, we're talking she's in her early 20s. Okay. So if people can think back to what you were like then, I mean, I don't know what I would have done if some if the world's richest man were like commenting on my post. I I cannot predict how I would have handled that. Um, so I'm in no position to judge. Anyway, so then she then he starts DMing her and he he wants to know when she's gonna come to San Francisco. At this time, she's working for the Babylon B, and the person she works for had been trying to land an interview with Elon. So she said what is what is Babylon B? Babylon B is a um right-wing parody uh site. Oh okay.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, fake news you can trust. That's their tagline.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, right. Trust it as far as you can throw it. Anyway, so so she Elon is messaging her when's she gonna come to San Francisco? And you know, they've never met, right? Like he's just commenting on our posts and stuff. And she goes, Oh, well, we were we would come if you if we you want to do that interview that you know my boss has been contacting you about. And then according to her, he immediately then contacts her boss because she immediately gets a call from her boss saying, Elon wants us to come to San Francisco, let's go like in two days or something. This is doing real Harvey Weinstein vibes too. Very much, very much. It's disgusting. So so then very quickly, she and her team are going out to San Francisco to do this interview, and then he gets her number. And that night he texts her. I mean, she has screenshots of all these things. So he texts her and says, Do you want to go to Providence, Rhode Island tonight? And she's supposed to be like editing this interview and stuff, and she's like telling her team, okay, I guess I'm gonna go to Providence. So they fly in his private plane to uh Rhode Island, and I mean, just imagine you're like, I think she was 22 and 23.

SPEAKER_02

What's in Rhode Island?

SPEAKER_00

I don't know. That's where I was.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

That's okay. That's where he wants to explain. Okay. Um, and actually, okay, before I got I got dis I got carried away because I just think it's such a fascinating story, but I do have a clip that I want to show you or uh share with you um about this period of time with the Babylon Bee and and going to Rhode Island. So give me one second to pull it up.

SPEAKER_04

Mind you, simultaneously, I am working at the Babylon B where we're like scheduling this interview to do with Elon. Like our Slack channel for this project was literally called Elon Fest. Okay. So nonetheless, I Elon, as I said, he ends up DMing me and he's like, Are you ever in San Francisco? And I'm like, actually, I'm supposed to be there whenever you get back to Seth, my boss, about an interview. Within like 30 seconds, Seth calls me and he's like, Elon just get got back to me about an interview date. Like we need to book our flights to San Francisco right now. And I'm like, Okay. Now at this point, politically, Elon is like primarily talking about the free speech issue because he bought Twitter and you know, he's like dipping his toes in right-wing slot. But so we go to San Francisco, we do this interview, and basically the whole time, like anytime Elon tells a joke, he's like looking to me to see my reaction. I also have like footage of him like checking me out while we were there. It was like, it was insane, anyways. And I'm like 23, okay. And after the interview, I then get a text from Elon because at this point he had given me his number. And he is like, Do you feel like going to Providence tonight? Like as in Rhode Island. So I am supposed to be cleaning up with my fellow coworkers from this interview, and I'm like, Seth, I'm gonna leave my phone on the table. Um, I need you to look at it, and I'm leaving. Like, I gotta go. Uh I'm I'm gonna go. Um I was like, oh, a side quest, yay, an adventure. So right away, Elon is like, okay, well, wheels up at midnight, come to this like private airport, and I'm like, oh my god, what the fuck am I getting involved in? Like, am I about to be like Orvey Weinstein here? This is probably a bad idea, but I'm gonna do it anyways, okay? Like at this point, I'm like, I'm gonna do it for the plot, okay?

SPEAKER_00

And so I um so this is the level of transparency that I'm talking about that she's she's giving. Um, and and you can see that she understandably was concerned, but then again, it's the world's richest man. It's this guy who's highly revered in her social circle, and he's like, Do you want to come on my private jet and fly to Providence? And she's like, Okay, I mean, she's 23. So anyway, um, she later on in this video talks about um they do end up having quite a, as she calls it, on the plane. And he's asking her to pick a name for a baby. Um, now people may know that Elon Musk and his father both believe that it's their um their responsibility to have as many children as possible because they're like such great people that they need to um have, you know, populate the planet that will come back. Anyway, so um what I I do want to point out here is that in this section where she talks about that, and I'm I'm gonna skip that clip because there's some other clips we want to talk about, but she describes how he just is constantly texting her, DMing her, calling her, and it's very much love bombing.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Coming from someone who's so much more powerful in so many different ways than she is. Um, so you know, that's that part because a lot of people have questions about how she got together with Elon and how, and she does not, uh to be clear, she does not get pregnant at that time. It's months later that that she gets pregnant, and it's a mutual decision that they decide to move forward on that path. Um, and then so she gets pregnant. Um, and I want to share another um short clip where she's talking about um where she's talking about how his behavior changed after she got pregnant. Um so give me one second to get to the right spot on that.

SPEAKER_04

So that we can increase our output of babies here. Like it was just weird to me. He also told me that I should get a C-section, like what? Because it's better for the head and the brain size. What are you? No, I'm not signing myself up for a C-section. What? No, thank you. My portal works fine.

SPEAKER_00

Like her portal works fine, as she says. But isn't that sure? I mean, that was wacky to me, right? This guy who so who thinks that he's so smart and he thinks that delivering a child via a c-section is going to impact the size of the child's brain, which is just to be clear, absolutely not true. And also, she's again a young woman, she's like, Why would I want to have surgery? Like c-sections are major surgery. Um, okay, so they have this um relationship in the middle of somewhere in the middle of all this, he's also DMing another young woman asking if she wants to have his baby. Um, that young woman reaches out to Ashley. I mean, it's like lots of weird and terrible things with Elon, not surprising given everything that we know about him. But I think politically, the most kind of interesting things probably of what she's saying are one, the campaigns um that I was talking about, and then the the MAGA campaigns and how they're structured, and then also the election. So um I know we I know we're gonna run a little bit long, but let me play for you a short clip on the MAGA campaigns and how they coordinate their messaging. Um give me one second.

SPEAKER_04

Because this is able to fester through many loopholes within our own regulations and laws. Because since what they're promoting is messaging or petitions or campaigns and not a service or a product, they do not have to disclose that they are paid for this on social media. So they have these Republican operatives, some of which were former White House, who build out these platforms that these right-wing influencers can log on to and see active campaigns and sign up for and get paid for promoting certain messaging, uh, certain initiatives, certain petitions. Um, and this pay is typically, you know, per click. Sometimes it's a flat rate, but it is everything from hey, tell your audience to call their members of Congress and vote a particular way on this bill, or you know, have your followers sign this petition, promote this propaganda, uh, X, Y, Z. And the structure is indistinguishable from ad campaigns that you would do for traditional companies. So if you take, you know, Tarte, for example, or a cosmetic brand or what have you, typically when they get influencers, they will also have a company copy or things that they should say, a script.

SPEAKER_00

So, one more thing on this specific topic, and then we can talk about it. Um, because she goes on to explain. So, this is by the way, one of the things she seems most concerned about from what I've seen from her videos, is that we really need some reform so that this type of campaigning and advertising can't go on without people knowing that there's money exchanging hands. Um, this is a major loophole that that these right-wing influencers are exploiting.

SPEAKER_02

Well, and this is within go ahead. And this is within, you know, a decade plus, well, more than a more than a decade long um, you know, thing within conservative politics of like the the way that money from incredibly influential billionaires can be funneled through all of these sort of secretive path pathways so that it doesn't need to be disclosed and it can really hide where that money's coming from and what it's trying to achieve. So that sounds really on brand.

SPEAKER_00

No, and she and she talks about that. I don't think I pulled that specific click, but she talks about how um the way that these things work is like there's these platforms, and as an influencer, you can go on the platform and look for like a task that you want to do. But that, and then you can get paid. You do get paid for that work, and then that money is not, you don't have to dis you don't have to disclose that on your post. And that money is never tracked to you because the only thing that's reported to the FEC is that the company that owns that platform got money from the PEC or whatever. So that's the only tracking that's done, but the how that money then goes to the individuals is totally opaque, and that's a huge, huge problem. Okay, so one more clip on this specific topic.

SPEAKER_04

We also have these group chats with members of the administration and high-up officials that especially when a scandal or controversy breaks out, all of this messaging is coordinated. Hey, here's how we respond to the files, here's how we respond to the war, here is how we respond to everything. So there's this entire ecosystem of large influencers. All of the largest influencers that you have seen in the right wing, 99% of them are paid or compensated or having their back scratched in one way or another. And then this trickles down because the people under them, these smaller influencers, are not aware of this. So when they're looking to these larger accounts in response to controversies or messaging, what they're seeing is actually very coordinated and very sophisticated influence campaigns from the top. There is no free thinking here whatsoever. They are waiting.

SPEAKER_00

So that's a part that I think is really important because when we are consuming information online and we're seeing posts from various people, it can seem like it's organic, like this is really this person's opinion. Whether we agree with it or not, it can seem like that's their opinion. But not long after she posted that specific video, there was the White House correspondence dinner shooting. And immediately, immediately that night, there were tons of posts from right-wing influencers saying, see, obviously we need a ballroom. Like, how that's clearly like not a straight connection A to B. There's a shooting at a hotel that means we need a ballroom. But once you know that this is all coordinated via some back-end um group chat, basically, and they may or may not have been paid for those specific posts, but they were at least giving given marching orders, then you start to understand why there were it was a large number. She has them in a screenshot where she's like, all these different people saying almost exactly the same thing. Like, if you still deny the need for a ballroom, then you are anti-American and you know, all sorts of things, but all about the ballroom. It was not about anything else. Um, so I think that's really important for us to understand when we're taking in information and looking at what kind of prominent people are saying, that a lot of them are being fed these talking points and being paid to say specific things in specific um situations. So carrying on from there, um, she then talks about, and this is the most uncomfortable that I've seen her in any of her clips, is when she starts to talk about the election, the 2024 presidential election. Now, if we go back to that time, Elon Musk was offering people like a million dollars to go vote in the Midwest. He had already invested almost $300 million in the election. That's what we knew. But there were all these rumors, right, about the ballots, um, I mean, the the voting boxes, like what was happening with those, and was any of his technology involved in any way? And there was there were things like, you know, Trump said that he could never have won without Elon. You know, there's a lot of things that just built suspicion that there had been some fraudulent activity. Um, and so here's what she says about that. That's okay, you can just find it.

SPEAKER_04

And then October rolls around. Um and in October Elon tells me that he is ready to release his in his words, Anomaly in the Matrix. And I am like, oh, like who's that? And he says that he has 10,000 lasers in space, referring to his satellites. I say, because I am like rather uncomfortable and I know the gravity of what he's uh trying to tell me right now, I say, wow, finally a focus on the Jewish vote. Uh he keeps going and he says, you know, this is not something on this is not a piece that they'll see on the chessboard. And I I straight up tell him I say I would ask more, but I really don't want to be deposed, to which he says very wise.

SPEAKER_00

So there's that, and then fast forward, so she talks about the period prior to election night and information that Elon was privy to that she doesn't understand how he had access to, um, heavily implying that there was some election interference going on. And then we get to election night.

SPEAKER_04

And then on election night itself, Elon, you know, left Mar-a-Lago early. I was at Mar-a-Lago and he told he told me, he told me over text. He's like, Yeah, I knew hours ago that no Trump won. My team has the best real-time data anywhere. First of all, how the fuck do you have real-time data on elections? How how do you have real-time data? Um, I could not understand that. I don't know that I ever will. Um I um I just I I saw some shit, guys. Like I saw some shit, and I'm fighting really hard to keep my voice because I saw shit that impacts everyone. And if I was self-interested, I I have been offered the self-interested deal to shut up and not talk about anything. But I what I can tell you is I I've not been offered certain deals just because I know that he's weird, okay.

SPEAKER_00

So she elsewhere talks about having been offered roughly $40 million um to sign an NDA. Um, and what she's saying there is they're not offering me $40 million to stay quiet about a guy being weird. She's saying there's you know, the things that she's seen. Um, you know, you've now heard a couple of her other clips where she's talking very confidently and very clearly. And and this video, she has these pauses. She's very uncomfortable. Um, if people are watching this on video and you see the video, I mean, she is clearly uncomfortable and did not know how to handle that situation. Keep in mind, again, she was she's still very young, and that was three or two years ago. So she was even younger, having to deal with potentially hearing about election fraud from a guy who she had a baby with. Um, and I'm not sharing that to, you know, stoke the flames of conspiracy theories, but that that is what he said. I mean, she went on Hassan Piker's stream last weekend and she hands him her phone. She goes to the iMessage app and he's scrolling and reading like the words that she used are weird words because those are the words that Elon used in written communication, mind you. Like he this wasn't even like a face-to-face or phone conversation. It was in text messages on iMessage. Um, and I don't know what that means, right? These space lasers, uh, what his satellites have to do. I don't know how he would have how he would know hours before the election was called that Trump was the winner, um, that he had the so-called real-time data. Was it data that he was um pulling out from the voting booths because he had hacked into them or uh in other ways? Or was it because he had data that he fed into the voting booths? I don't know, but it certainly seems like someone should be investigating all of that. I mean, he himself has said that he has he's owed a lot by Trump. I mean, anyway, there's lots of rhetoric if we wanted to get into that. Um, but again, back to what I said earlier, like this is very risky for her to be saying this stuff. And so some people, for the people who are like, she's doing it for the clout or whatever. I mean, I don't think there's any man out that is worth the risk that she is putting herself in to see. There is no one scarier than a billionaire technocrat who feels jilted, by the way. Oh, absolutely. I mean, the first time that I became aware of of Ashley St. Clair was actually a while back, um, maybe like two years ago or so, when she was posting on Twitter about their baby. Um, and that he wasn't responding to her. So she was trying to get his attention on Twitter. Um, and Grimes has had to do that as well, by the way, tweet at him to get him to respond about their children. Um And then the last time she does not go on Twitter anymore. There's they have lawsuits now. It's a whole thing. But um the last thing that I remember seeing her having posted, because this people may be aware of this, was that she had co-authored a children's book that was um transphobic. And I have not read the book. I don't know, you know, exactly what was in the book, but she made a public apology. She removed her name from the book. She has said that she is, she does not have the power to take it off the shelves, but she is no longer in any way attached to the book. She has apologized multiple times. And no one is forced to accept her apology. I'm just sharing that this is what she has said to address that specific issue. Um, and she's also said that she read a lot after she decided that this movement was not. She, well, let me back up and say that she also did not appreciate the way the movement treated women. Um, and that was something that was very concerning to her, and that she has expressed privately to other people within MAGA her concerns for a long period of time. So there are people who she says can verify. Um, but when she decided to separate from this movement, that she started reading a lot of the things that they had told her not to read, um, like black writers and and um people who had written about slavery. I mean, really, that's what she said. God forbid you get educated. I mean, that's the thing, right?

SPEAKER_02

Is like all of this anti-education because intellectualism.

SPEAKER_00

Um anyway, so the last, the very last thing I want to share is a short clip. So she's now, as you can imagine, getting a lot of invitations to go on uh various podcasts and um talk about her experiences, how this happened, that she changed her views and um what what she's up to now. By the way, she has resumed college and is trying to complete her degree and intends to go to law school so that she can try to address some of these legal issues due to around um campaigns and financing. Um okay, so this is the the last clip that I want to show you. She went on the I've had it podcast, uh, which you and I are both aware of and fans of. Um at least to some extent, I can't say I've engaged with tons of their content, but the clips I've seen online have been very good. Um, so she goes on their podcast. Um, that was this week, and Jennifer Welch is asking her about the motivations of the people within MAGA. Like, what's their driving force? What are, you know, what's their deal basically?

SPEAKER_03

Racist is the movement. It's pretty racist. That's what I mean. I think it's just would you say that's at the epicenter of it? And then also owning the list.

SPEAKER_04

It wasn't so much before, but people like Stephen Miller have really like, you know, I have texts from Stephen Miller where he's like, We need white boys. What? Oh yeah. You have text from Stephen Miller? He used to text me every day during the election. He's like, share this. I don't I every time I've seen him, he's sitting down at the board with a drink. So don't know. He but what would he text you? We need what? He would ask for retweets during the election. Like what'd you say, white boy? White boy November. He's like, we need the white boys. This is gonna be white boy November. Like he's just a loser. And so like he's gonna retweets. He's like, we need to get the white boys. Hold on.

SPEAKER_03

So that guy is reaching out to you to read the white boys. Losers, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

I mean, I knew that, I knew all of this. That's why I don't care. I'm like, who am I? And how badly do they want to own the libs?

SPEAKER_03

Would you say that is the driving force, like the ethos that like bonds them together, owning the libs?

SPEAKER_04

No, I think they're just hateful racists. Like, I think like, no, I think that what bonds them together is hate and that they weren't cool in high school.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, that's her, you know, one woman's opinion, but that's based on her experience, um, again, for almost a decade of being part of MAGA politics. Um and as Jennifer Welch says there, like, that's not surprising. I mean, we see, especially now when you look at what they're what they've done with the Voting Rights Act and um the with many different attacks on black people um and healthcare, all sorts of things that they're doing that disproportionately affect um marginalized people in this country. Um but yeah, that's where we find ourselves today, May 28th, uh, 2026. That's so the majority of or a summary of what we've learned from Ashley St. Clair's journey and in what she has um disclosed publicly. Um I think it's fascinating. It's very hard to go up against power like this. Um, and is she making some money off her TikToks? I sure hope so. She has two children. Um, and she does have this lawsuit. So if folks recall, um in January, Grok, the AI chat bot on Twitter, was making, well, people were using it to make lots of inappropriate sexualized images of women and children. And she was one of the people who was abused in that way. And so she filed a lawsuit against XAI um because of that. And now they have a countersuit against her because they're petty like that. Um, and there are people on the right wing have accused her of making her one-year-old child trans and that Elon should have custody because of that to prevent her from transitioning their one-year-old, which is obviously absurd and just bigoted. Um, but yeah, that's that's the story. So I dare someone to tell me there's a more interesting story happening out there on the interwebs. Um, I'm very curious what else she's gonna share. She's she's obviously very smart and thoughtful and has um, just in case people are worried about her safety, she has stated multiple times that everything that she has is being held by someone other than her as well. All the evidence, all the screenshots, everything is not just living on her phone and in her head. Um, there are, she's made a couple videos about um people following her and her family and friends and intimidating folks, um, which I have no reason to doubt is happening. Um so yeah, that's that's the gist of the Ashley St. Clair story as of today. That was a lot. I know. Well, because she makes videos every day, and I'm summarizing a couple at least worth of videos for you, but um yeah, I don't know. What's your what's your reaction?

SPEAKER_02

I mean, as I mentioned before, you know, it's giving Weinstein vibes, so it was interesting to hear her say the same thing. The other thing that it made me think about is um like Henry VIII, you know, where like he was just sort of cycling through women and like you know, if you had the attention of the king and the money, you know, and like I think to a degree, I mean it sounds like she you know, certainly made some choices to spend time with Elon Musk. Um I I am really worried for her safety. Um obviously you you just talked about that, and um, you know, you and I both have to do a lot of things to keep ourselves safe, and we are like nobody's comparatively speaking. We're like nobodies. Absolutely. Um but you know, we receive a lot of uh, you know, hateful messages, uh, some of some of which are more um pressing than others. So I am very curious to hear where she takes it after this. Um, I really hope that she lives a long time to tell that story. Um, I was just thinking about um there's a journalist I follow, um, Elisa Valdez Rodriguez, who publishes a lot about the Epstein Files and recently made some claims grounded in her investigative journalism uh work related to Epstein and says that she believes she's been the been been attacked by a um, I feel like I'm gonna use the wrong word, but like a digital weapon basically. And, you know, now has to like suddenly move and has to change where she lives. And, you know, it's incredibly disruptive to for anybody who has the negative attention of these people with outrageous amounts of power and access.

SPEAKER_00

Um yes, and we see what I've been thinking a lot about too, as I've been watching her talk so openly about so much, is the things that she, the types of things she's talking about, we see in our workplaces. Like we see people who don't have Elon Musk power or wealth, but they are within this organization, any organization, um, more powerful, have more status, have more influence, and can get away with such awful behavior because people know that if they say anything about it, they're the one who's most likely to get punished, not the person who's behaving badly. And we see this in all sorts of different um bad behaviors, but it just made me think about the things that intimidate regular folks in our regular workplaces that we allow to continue because we won't speak up out of fear of retribution. And I'm not saying that we that's irrational, that's very rational. But then to see her say, you know what, it still matters. Like I'm still going to tell people the real truth here. Um, it just has me thinking about whether there are ways that people, regular people, can find more courage in our workplaces. Um, because if it's one person, it's very hard. But if there's multiple people who come forward, then it becomes a different story. Um anyway, I know we are we're very long. So I hope uh people enjoyed that conversation. I would love to hear people's thoughts um on Ashley. Uh, if you find us on any platforms, let us know what you think. Um, but with that, let's turn to our recommendations for folks. What's your take to in Call Me in the Morning, Miss Week?

SPEAKER_02

Well, as I already mentioned, Ronnie Chang's commencement speech. Uh, I also found another commencement speech. Um, I can't remember the person's name, but I'll put links to both of those in the show notes of them. Just it's the antithesis of the people who were, you know, just praising the future of AI. And it's total opposite and it's hilarious. And Ronnie Chang swears a lot, which I always love.

SPEAKER_00

Um, quality punches.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Well, I think the opening of his entire speech is fuck AI. And it's, you know, and he says it many times. Um, the other thing I didn't bring this up earlier, but because I was, you know, doing a bunch of research around the encyclical and all of that, um, and I like to go to go on YouTube and see kind of like who else is commenting on these things. And I was not aware, I will be honest with you, as someone who grew up around a lot of priests and nuns, I was not aware of Catholic YouTube to the degree of like um sort of young I I'm not gonna say good looking because I that's not for me, but uh young men who are priests or brothers or whatever who have these accounts where all they do is like explain Catholic doctrine and like um this is their I I presume hobby in addition to whatever work they're doing otherwise for the church. Um but it was it was uh not something I had been familiar with. Some of them are very well produced. Uh it's fascinating and I don't get it, but it's but I noticed it and I was amused.

SPEAKER_00

That's very interesting. Yeah, I don't I don't spend any time on YouTube, so I have no idea what's happening there. But I have something I'm gonna say for for next time. But one thing that I saw today that gave me a little chuckle is um I don't know if folks have been following. Um RFK Jr. has been on an anti-SSRI crusade. Um he recently said that um we need to take SSRIs away from young women who go through these crazy, this period of being crazy. Um, and then we need to just let them go through it. Anyway, so um these uh artists, um, Madeline Goates and Olivia Piccini, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing those names correctly, um, they have a series of cartoons for The New Yorker about RFK Jr.'s approved list of SSRIs. So one of them is stop stressing, relax instead. That's an SSRI. Um, sound baths, salt caves, red lights, and ice baths. That's an SSRI. Start skipping recommended inoculations. Um, anyway, I'll put a link to a carousel with that series um in the show notes so that yeah, we can all enjoy the nonsense that is our Secretary of Health and Human Services. Um and I think that's it for this week's episode. Um, if you didn't like what you heard, this has been the right response podcast. Uh, if you liked it, don't forget to subscribe to the present illness, leave us a review or rating, and tell other folks to check us out.

SPEAKER_02

We know that you all are not into podcasts by right-wing nut jobs. So we know that you've enjoyed this. So please feel free to follow us on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube at the Present Illness, and you can stay on top of all of our TPI-related news.

SPEAKER_00

We will be back next week with more headlines, hot takes, and zoom scrolling, hopefully wrapped in some laughs.

SPEAKER_02

Until then, agitate, hydrate, and take a nap. We will see you next time on the present illness. Production by Argivon Salas and Alyssa Berghart, editing by Alyssa Berghart, social media by Argivon Salas, original music by Joseph Uphoff. Don't take medical advice from random people on a podcast. This show is for informational purposes. It's meant to be fun, and it is certainly not medical advice. Please take your medical questions to a qualified professional. This podcast is our hobby, and it doesn't represent the opinions of our employers or anyone but ourselves.

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Alyssa Burgart, MD, MA

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Arghavan Salles, MD, PhD

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