Flux Podcasts (Formerly Theory of Change)

Flux Community Media
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  • POLITICS
  • UPDATED DAILY

Flux is a progressive podcast platform, with daily content from shows like Theory of Change, Doomscroll, and The Electorette.

  1. 2D AGO

    Is liberal Christianity making a comeback?

    For decades, people have been telling Democrats that they need to do better in small cities and rural parts of America. And yet, while there are some uniquely successful candidates here and there, there’s no doubt that the party just keeps doing worse in these areas. The Democratic consultant class keeps trying its familiar strategy of being Republican-lite in these right-leaning parts of the country, but it just isn’t working. That’s the subject of a recent episode, but for today, we’re going to be talking about a different path, one that’s being boosted by James Talarico, the Democrat running for Senate in Texas this year against Republican Ted Cruz. There’s no guarantee that Talarico will win such a heavily Republican state, but his approach of unapologetically speaking his liberal Christian values in detail and trying to build community through care is the right approach. Alan Elrod, my guest on today’s program is fighting the same fight as Talarico. He’s the founder of the Pulaski Institution, a nonprofit based in Arkansas focused on democracy in heartland communities. He’s also a contributing editor at Liberal Currents. The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere. Related Content --Why liberal Christians are standing up for all of their values --How Confederate Christianity took over the Republican Party --To understand the Christian right, learn the history of the Christian left --Elite Republicans are creating a new ‘Satanic Panic’ rather than appeal to moderate voters --Latino evangelicals are reshaping American politics, politicians and parties should take notice --The doctrinal incoherence of today’s extremist Christianity is immense --Right-wing evangelicals have turned politics into Bible fan-fiction --Government subsidizing religion doesn’t make people like it more Audio Chapters 00:00 — Introduction 06:41 — The internet made it easier to hate strangers 13:25 — Religion and the right-wing political fusion 17:38 — Secular liberals’ allergic reaction to all faith discussions 22:15 — You don’t reach people without relationships 27:05 — Much of Christianity accepted modernity, and this is what upsets the Christian right 35:05 — How the Christian right built its own closed media ecosystem 42:54 — Right-wing elites do not actually care about people in small-town America, but they talk to them 46:54 — Right elites make many opportunities for their advocates, while left elites rarely help new voices get started Audio Transcript The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only. MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: You are joining me from Arkansas today, where you are doing good work with your organization, the Pulaski Institution. So what is that? ALAN ELROD: So the Pulaski Institution is a nonprofit where we’re focused on democracy, which is a lot of organizations, but our thing is really heartland areas, and the way we think about that is not just like the South or the Midwest, but really anywhere kind of away from the big centers of finance and politics like New York or LA. So, upstate New York. Places like Buffalo, places like Eastern Oregon, the Inland Empire in California. These are all places we think of as heartland places. Because there are places where the kind of sense of dislocation and, angst towards maybe liberal democratic politics and status anxiety have all gotten heightened in our kind of cracking our commitments to sort of the norms of liberal democracy and we’re worried about that in the US as well as in places like Canada and France and Australia as well. So that’s our idea. Pretty much everyone at the organization either grew up in a place like that or currently works [00:04:00] in a place like that. And so we like to try to bring people in that have a kind of real life foot rooted in these places and bring that perspective. So. That’s the general focus we have. A lot of the work we do right now is sort of events oriented. Because we do a lot of things where we try to bring people together in a room and talk. But you know, if we get more money and have more funding, we’re gonna try to put out some research as well, kind of on the quality of democratic life in these places. But that’s our idea. That’s kind of our premise. This, idea that place matters and that, it’s an important way to consider the dangers that are currently unfolding within liberal democracy right now. And yeah, I’m from Arkansas, so we are based out of right outside of Little Rock. SHEFFIELD: Okay. Yeah. And definitely the case that a lot of the reason that people in the more rural or smaller cities of America, there are some viewpoints perhaps that are more common that or might be unsavory, but it’s also that people in the broader left kind of stopped talking to them. I’m thinking after people like Rah Emanuel in particular kind of dismantled the National party structure, and discouraged people from presenting candidates in elections and funding them. And I think people in lower populated areas of the country, the only Democrats that, or people, liberals, progressives that they ever saw were people on tv and they were hearing about them from Fox News. So, of course their viewpoint of what somebody who is on the center to left. Of course they would think that they’re evil and demonic because Fox tells them to think that. ELROD: Yeah, I mean the flip side of the wonders of modern technology of like television and social media and the internet, are that it’s actually [00:06:00] really easy to develop strong opinions about people who live thousands of miles away from you. Right? And people do that. And so if you’re on the other end of that, right? If the idea is that people who are sort of liberal or disagree with the kind of politics that may. Be sort of dominant in the area of the country where I’m from. If you just avoid it, well then you are sort of leaving. The only thing to fill that gap are those impressions that are formed right through, through media. And those are way easier to be negative, right? It’s much easier to hate someone in that kind of context than it is to hate somebody, on your front porch. it’s just I think, a truism of, human nature. The internet made it easier to hate strangers SHEFFIELD: it’s, yeah, the easier to be a, nasty troll on the internet when you don’t have to put your name onto your post. And for people that were present on the early days of the internet, it was a lot more civil place in large part because the idea of an anonymous email account almost didn’t exist. And it actually didn’t exist because, well, generally speaking, there were a handful of places that had it. But like most people’s internet access. It was through, a job or it was through an educational institution or, something like that. Or they didn’t know how to change the default setting on their AOL account . it made it easier to, be civil because, people would know if you were a jerk. ELROD: Yeah. And I think that’s just a real problem in our politics in general now is as, the way we interact with people increasingly becomes this like, very mediated thing through, it was through television, but now it’s really more through social media than anything. Right. As that happens more and more as we’re interacting less and less in person I think it’s, I think there’s very little question that’s also a real part of the core problem in our politics is like, yes, there are ideological problems at play. Yes, there’s extremism, but there’s also just the more generalized antisocial stuff that [00:08:00] comes with. If the bulk of your interactions with people who aren’t maybe like your spouse, right, are all online and all the impressions you’re getting are from TV and the internet. Then, then even just like. Your, ability to like conceive of people who you don’t know as sort of like interesting full humans with thoughts and feelings who are also part of this country is just reduced. And I think it’s really bad for us. SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and it’s, and this isn’t even a political issue either, because this is an example of, something that, that I sometimes talk about on the show here. In philosophy, this is a lived version of the problem of other minds. ELROD: Mm-hmm. SHEFFIELD: We don’t have, we can’t know with any, with a hundred percent certitude that anyone else’s mind is real. ELROD: Yeah. SHEFFIELD: And so, but it’s easier to, think that they’re real if you can see ‘em physically and be around them. Because the very least, you know that they exist. In one fashion or another. Whereas, the stuff that people see in right wing media, which, absolutely does blanket-- and I think that’s something that people who are, or live in urban areas who have a, left-leaning politics, they don’t really appreciate that if you are outside of that urban area, you go to a bar, or you go to a coffee shop or something, big, chances are it’s gonna be Fox on the tv or it’s gonna be Newsmax or one of these other, or you’re sitting there waiting for your car, the mechanic, and it’s gonna have Sean Hannity on the radio background. Because they don’t, they’re tired of listening to the same old music on the local radio stations, or they don’t want to pay for Spotify or whatever it is, They, want something more interesting. And so yeah, like this, [00:10:00] it’s just this constant sort of subtle brainwashing of people in large measure because the left didn’t bother to create popular media or they weren’t interested. ELROD: Yeah. Well I

    56 min

  2. 3D AGO

    Can State Legislatures Stop ICE—Or Just Slow It Down?

    How flipped seats are shaping the response to federal immigration enforcement — A conversation with Sarah Curmi of ⁠States Win⁠ From lawsuits to new legislation, states are beginning to push back on federal immigration enforcement in ways that were once unthinkable. This shift isn’t happening in a vacuum. Since the last election, Democrats have flipped 30 state legislative seats—changing who holds power in key chambers across the country. In this episode, Sarah Curmi of States Win explains how those gains are translating into policy—and why state legislatures may be the most important political battleground right now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    21 min

  3. 3D AGO

    Eddie Dalton isn’t real, but what does that mean?

    Eddie Dalton’s raspy and melodious voice carries through the air, telling tales of a lifetime spent in the school of hard knocks, as the blues band backing him weaves soul into every rubato-inflected syncopation and chord progression. “We’re just passing through time, like the wind through the pines, just small little pieces in a bigger design,” he croons in his hit, “Another Day Old,” sounding like a reincarnated Muddy Waters. The fans are impressed: “This song is part of my testimony,” the top-rated YouTube comment on the video reads. “This song has touched the depth of my soul,” reads another. Despite the rave reviews though, neither Eddie Dalton nor his band are real. They’re AI-generated fabrications released onto the internet by someone going by the name Dallas Ray Little, according to Showbiz411. Is that a real name? Your guess is as good as mine. Whoever is behind the scenes at “Crusty Records,” they have found a formula for success. Eddie Dalton’s classic-sounding blues is racking up the sales and the downloads, with several cracking the top 5 on Apple Music and being viewed millions of times on YouTube. Computer-generated soul music is not just real, it’s becoming a phenomenon. The Dalton persona is just the latest AI-generated artist to gain millions of fans, a trend that has not yet attracted much attention from the mainstream media. Last year, a fabricated country singer named “Breaking Rust” had a number-one hit on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart. In September, the music company Hallwood Media awarded a $3 million contract to Mississippi poet and designer Telisha Jones after her virtual singer, Xania Monet, had a number-one hit on Billboard’s R&B digital downloads. “How Was I Supposed to Know” was released 7 months ago and already has 9.6 million views on YouTube. There’s more than a little irony to that song title. AI-generated music has become so good now that it is essentially impossible to discern a human-made tune from one made by a computer. In a study commissioned last year by the music service Deezer with 9,000 people in 8 countries, 97 percent of respondents were unable to tell if provided songs were done by humans or AI. Do people really want to know if a song they’re being presented wasn’t performed by people? In the Deezer survey, 80 percent of respondents said they wanted AI-generated music to be labeled as such. Still, knowing that a song was computer-made doesn’t seem to mean that people would avoid it. The poll found that 66 percent said they would listen to an AI song at least once; only 45 percent of respondents said they wanted an option to filter out all AI-made music. As of this writing, Deezer is the only music streaming service that requires uploaders to tag AI-generated content as such. No such rules are in place on the other major services like Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube. According to Deezer, 34 percent of all songs it receives daily are entirely AI-generated. We don’t know the technical backstory behind Breaking Rust or Eddie Dalton, but Jones has said that she uses an AI music generating software called Suno to set her own lyrics to music. “She’s been writing poetry for a long time,” Jones’s manager Romel Murphy told Billboard, arguing that words sung by the Xania Monet character are what draws people in. “It’s just the lyrics, and they are pure.” Whether that’s true or not, the music industry as a whole has not taken kindly to Suno and rival service Udio. In June of 2024, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed a lawsuit against the companies that was joined by numerous studios and musician groups. “These corporations steal our work to create sound-alikes, effectively forcing us into a ‘training’ role to which we never consented,” the Music Workers Alliance said in a statement. “Their more expensive subscriptions allow users to commercialize the outputs, placing us in unfair competition with an inexhaustible supply of knock-offs of our own work, published without any credit or acknowledgement of our role in their creation, and yet capable of displacing us in record production, film, video, and television scoring, and other markets.” As they so often do with major new technologies, legislatures have done little to stand on one side or the other. President Donald Trump has decided to stand on the side of AI companies, however, signing an executive order in December of last year after Republican congressional allies failed to muster support for a federal ban on state AI regulations. California Gov. Gavin Newsom defied Trump earlier this week with his own executive order requiring AI companies to watermark generated videos and images, and to prove that they have policies against the creation of violent pornography and child abuse material. The Trump executive order is expected to face legal challenges since it conflicts with dozens of state laws regarding AI. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of a March 2025 mid-level court ruling that entirely AI-generated art could not be copyrighted because a human had not created it. That seems about right to me. AI companies have been sued by numerous media publishers around the world for copyright infringement, but thus far, no major nations have stepped forward with definitive rulings on whether the technology firms owe damages. Wherever governments decide to come down on AI-generated art, its legal status isn’t the only question it raises. What is it exactly about art that matters? Is its value how it makes us feel, or is it knowing that fellow human beings with stories and minds made it? Can we really say that auto-tuned artists who use the same lyricists and beat-mixers are really doing something unique? Should women who don’t fit the Vogue profile be excluded from music fame? These are not simple questions. Last month on Theory of Change, adult model Siri Dahl and I talked about this in the context of erotic media, but these are questions facing all art in the age of generative AI. Is beauty the sum total of conception, training, story, and performance—or can these be separated and valued on their own? Should an artist’s face and body determine whether she is heard? Is beauty literally in the eye of the beholder, or does it live in the interaction of artist and spectator? I won’t pretend to have these answers. Maybe there aren’t any definitive ones. What matters right now is that we’re asking the questions. Because at the end of the day, we’re all another day old. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

    11 min

  4. MAR 27

    What imagining aliens can teach us about philosophy of science

    Space aliens are one of the most common tropes of science fiction, and with good reason. We live in an immense universe and there seem to be a massive number of planets out there. Surely, at least a few are inhabited, right? Most Americans in opinion polls seem to believe this. A poll from November 2025 found that 56 percent of adults surveyed said they thought aliens exist. Former president Barack Obama appears to be one of them based on a recent interview he did with podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen. But whether aliens exist or not is only one of so many interesting questions the scenario presents us. And there’s one that perhaps you might not have thought of: If we ever met them, how could we even communicate with them? In novels, film, and television, decoding alien languages seems to always be a quick affair—math is math, after all. But that assumption is a very big one if you think about it. While they might seem universal, science, math, and language are all human constructs, even though they describe relationalities that are real. My guest on this episode is someone who’s thought a lot about all of this. Daniel Whiteson is a particle physicist at the University of California–Irvine and the host of the science podcast, Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe. But the centerpiece of our discussion today is his new book, Do Aliens Speak Physics? And Other Questions about Science and the Nature of Reality. The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere. Related Content —Thinking outside Schrödinger’s cat box: Reality as quantum —Why reactionary billionaires love sci-fi authors like Robert Heinlein so much —Trump administration officials are seeking to eliminate merit and competition for NIH grants —As science faces unprecedented attacks, it must look within to defend and reform —Science and democracy need each other —Creationism, AI and the cult of the founder in Silicon Valley Audio Chapters 00:00 — Introduction 12:20 — Science is based on philosophy, whether it realizes it or not 15:14 — Hieroglyphics, Etruscan, and alien languages 24:05 — Science may not be universal at all, or at the very least the models humans use 31:59 — The fact that science is limited in what it can describe doesn’t mean it’s fake 35:30 — Eric Weinstein and the delusions and deceptions of ‘alt science’ 45:31 — Follow the money with anti-science influencers, they are the people getting the richest 51:09 — Math and numbers are not part of reality itself 01:02:29 — Don’t say you care about space if you support cutting science funding Audio Transcript The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only. MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: And joining me now is Daniel Whiteson. Hey, Daniel, welcome to Theory of Change. DANIEL WHITESON: Thanks so much for having me on. So excited to talk to you about aliens. SHEFFIELD: And we have a perfect news hook. Recently, of course, Barack Obama, the former president, people thought he was saying that aliens were real. And he was saying, well, I only meant statistically real. And then Donald Trump feeling like he wanted attention, said he was going to declassify all the stuff that the government has on that, which I somehow doubt that’s going to happen. What did you think about all that? DANIEL WHITESON: I am curious what Obama thinks about aliens, because he’s a smart guy and he probably has seen stuff that I haven’t seen, so there could have been information there, but I don’t feel like we really learned very much. His opinion is sort of the opinion any well-educated, non-technical person is likely to have, that there’s lots of planets out there and so it seems improbable that none of them have life on them. But the problem with that is that science doesn’t know [00:04:00] whether the chances of life starting on a random planet. So it could very well be that there are 30 cajillion planets out there, but the chances of life are less than one over 30 cajillion. And so we are alone in the universe. Just the sheer number of planets doesn’t tell you. That there are definitely aliens out there. Of course, I want there to be aliens, but you know, you have to be very careful in science not to convince yourself of something you want to believe. You need the evidence, and we just have no evidence to suggest that life starts many times in the cosmos. SHEFFIELD: Yeah, we don’t, well, because we have only seen life on evolve on one planet. WHITESON: Exactly. SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And so, and that takes us to there’s an attempt to extrapolate, well, what are the odds of alien life existing, and that’s called the Drake equation. So, what is that for people who don’t know. WHITESON: Yeah, it’s a big question. What are the odds that there’s life out there that could communicate with us? And so a few decades ago, Frank Drake broke it down and said, well, you can express it in terms of the various pieces in order for there to be aliens out there who could talk to us. There have to be stars. And those stars have to have planets. And at the time, for example, we didn’t know how common it was for stars to have planets. We had only ever seen planets in our solar system until, you know, 1995. And so even just extrapolating other solar systems with stars and planets, that was a big leap at the time. It was an, it was an unknown. And so then you have to know what fraction of those planets have life, what fraction of those life filled planets have intelligent life? What fraction of those are civilized, uh, what fraction of those develop technology, and then how long they stick around to potentially communicate with us. And the structure of the equation is very simple. It’s just all these fractions multiplied by each other. And you know, it’s the Drake equation. He’s famous for it. And you might look at it and say. That’s a very simple equation. I mean, look at it compared to like the Schrodinger equation, a partial [00:06:00] differential equation. It’s all complicated. It’s got wave functions in it. The Drake equation seems trivial, but the structure of the Drake equation is really important. It tells you something really deep about the nature of this question. Are there aliens out there who can talk to us? It tells us, because all the numbers are multiplied by each other, that if any of those numbers are zero, it doesn’t matter what the other ones are. So if there are no life failed planets out there, it doesn’t matter how likely it is for life to become intelligent because there is no life. Or if the probability for, you know, intelligent life to become technological in our way is zero or very close to zero, then the whole number is very, very small. And so in order for it to work, in order for there to be aliens out there communicating, communicating with us, you need everything to line up. You need stars, you need planets around those stars. You need life on those planets. You need technology, you need everything in sync, or it’s just not gonna happen. That’s what the Drake equation tells us. SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, and there are a lot of people who argue that it underestimates the odds by quite a bit. WHITESON: Yeah. And SHEFFIELD: including the, the famous Fermi paradox, right. WHITESON: Yeah. The Fermi Paradox says, boy, why haven’t we been contacted? Because if you look at some of these numbers, right, this is basically Obama’s argument too. Now we know the number of stars in the galaxy is huge, hundreds of billions. And the fraction of those stars that have planets around them is shockingly large. It’s something like 10 to 40%. And you know that number could have been 0.0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 1, right? The fraction of those planets with a rocky planet inhabitable zone. Boy, that could have been a small number, but it’s wonderfully large, which means there’s a huge number of potentially habitable planets out there. And that’s as far as we know. Right. And Fermi Paradox, or, the Obama paradox, I guess is saying, look, there’s all these planets out there, and the galaxy is quite [00:08:00] old. It’s, been around almost since the beginning. Our solar system’s only four and a half billion years old, but the Milky Way itself is 13 ish billion years old. And in all that time, why has nobody visited us or left a marker for us or something? Right. Where is everybody? So that’s the Fermi paradox is to say, if there are all these planets out there, where is everybody? And of course, there’s several various answers to that question. SHEFFIELD: Well, and then, and your book is kind of the, the step after all that. So, assuming these things exist or beings exist, how could we even talk to them and how could we even understand what they’re saying? That’s kind of the crux of your book. So I, I, tell me, tell me about the background of, of how you got into why you decided to write it. WHITESON: Yeah, so I’m very excited for aliens to come. And I was thinking a few years ago, like, why am I excited for aliens to come? Is it just science fiction, first context, coolness? And yes, that would be a lot of fun, and I watch a lot of science fiction, but one of the reasons that I’m excited for aliens to come is the possibility that they could fast forward our physics. You know, we’ve been doing physics for a few hundred years or thousands if you give the Greeks credit, but if an aliens get here, that’s suggested, they’re probably more advanced than we are because we can’t get to them, which means they might have been doing physics for. Millions, bil

    1h 7m

  5. MAR 26

    Who’s Really Running DHS Right Now?

    ICE at airports, a weeks-long shutdown, and why the DHS Secretary may not be in charge The Department of Homeland Security has been partially shut down for weeks. At the same time, ICE agents are showing up in airports, and Markwayne Mullin has just been confirmed as DHS Secretary. So what’s actually going on—and who’s really in charge? In this conversation, I’m joined by Andrea Flores, former DHS and White House official, attorney, and immigration policy expert, to break down the reality behind the headlines. We talk about why this leadership change may be more symbolic than substantive, how immigration enforcement is expanding in ways most people aren’t noticing, and why this moment may be less about policy—and more about power. We also dig into what Democrats should be doing right now, what’s at stake heading into the midterms, and why it’s important to understand just how far outside the norm this moment really is. From this episode: A New DHS Secretary Won’t Change Trump’s Immigration Agenda Securing America's Promise Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    32 min

  6. MAR 25

    Dobbs v. Jackson was just the beginning of the reactionary assault on women

    Episode Summary When the Supreme Court overturned Roe versus Wade in 2022, some people thought of it as the anti-abortion movement having reached the finish line in its endeavors. But in reality, the Dobbs v. Jackson case was only just the beginning. In the years since, not only has abortion been banned and severely restricted across more than a dozen states, many women have died from being denied hospital care by fearful doctors, even when they weren’t seeking an abortion. In the years since, not only has abortion been banned and severely restricted across more than a dozen states, many women have died or have been seriously injured by being denied hospital care by fearful doctors, even if they were not even seeking an abortion. Now senators and activists are trying to outlaw mifepristone, which is an early pregnancy abortion drug that has been tested and been on the market in a variety of countries around the world since 1988 and proven to be very safe. Unsurprisingly, however, far-right activists and politicians are saying that it’s unsafe, and so therefore they’re going to ban it. The same religious zealots are also trying to advance on multiple other fronts by threatening contraception access, the rights of parents who want to teach progressive values to their children, and those who want to work with doctors on gender affirming care for their kids. The good news, however, is that most of these policies are really unpopular. Americans don’t like them, and they’ve shown it at the ballot box, even in Republican states where measures to protect reproductive choice of consistently won in plebiscites.  There’s a lot going on here, and so today I wanted to talk about it with Susan Rinkunas. She’s a journalist and co-founder of Autonomy News. It’s a worker-owned publication that covers reproductive rights and healthcare. Due to technical difficulties, this episode has a few audio glitches and does not feature a video version, but the audio transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere. Related Content --After numerous losses, Republicans are trying to block reproductive freedom ballot initiatives --The right-wing freakout over a video of young women dancing is about so much more --MAGA isn’t just a lifestyle, it’s a sexual fetish -Why the reactionary attacks on science and sex are related -The Pick Me mindset and childhood trauma --Epstein emails reveal a financier obsessed with excluding women from society --The right’s attacks on adult media began once women began dominating the industry Audio Chapters 00:00 — Introduction 08:29 — Christian right activists using blatant lying against birth control to scare women 10:54 — The larger agenda is to remove legal rights for women, for both radical Christians and secular incels 18:11 — Right-wing men are increasingly obsessed with AI-generated women and sex robots 22:10 — Real women willing to parrot right-wing men have been part of Republican media for decades already 24:38 — Mar-a-Lago face and forced gender conformity 27:12 — Multiple women have now died after doctors refused to remove miscarried fetuses 29:39 — Reactionary Republicans are also trying to strip liberal parents of their rights, while elevating reactionary parents 34:00 — Democrats defending women isn’t just morally right, it’s good politics Audio Transcript MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: In the news as we’re recording this, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley is introducing a bill that he wants to completely ban the early abortion drug mifepristone, ban it across the country, and he tried to do this last year, and he’s going for it again this year. SUSAN RINKUNAS: Senator Josh Hawley is extremely mad about what he views as inaction from the Trump administration on restricting access to the abortion drug miry stone. and this is something that has angered the anti-abortion movement since the Dobbs decision in [00:04:00] 2022. Some people might be surprised to learn that the number abortions in the, number of abortions in the US has actually increased since the fall of Roe v Wade. And part of that is because more people know about abortion pills, medication abortion, And people can now get the pills prescribed to them across state lines from doctors in eight states that have passed what are known as telemedicine shield laws. So if you are in Missouri lemme take that back. If you are in Mississippi, you can get abortion pills even though there’s a state ban. If you are abortion pills, even though there’s a state ban. And josh Hawley is trying to shut that down by, and first he came after telehealth prescriptions of abortion pills. And that’s the bill you’re referring to last year that he introduced. And now he introduced a bill this week that would revoke entirely the approval of the drug from the year two thousands, such that not only could, not, could not only could people not get it prescribed to them and mailed to them, they could not go to a clinic and get handed the drug in person. And I think it’s important at this juncture to bring up Josh’s wife, Erin, who is a litigator with the Christian Nationalist Law Firm Alliance, defending freedom. She’s representing the state of Louisiana, which is suing the FDA right now in federal court, trying to end telehealth prescriptions of this drug. That case is ongoing and she and Josh are kind of a tag team here trying to do an inside outside strategy courts and then also Josh trying to work through Congress to ban this drug. SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And, of course they’re using fear basically lies about the safety of the drug, which has been around for decades and has been thoroughly tested around the world as safe. RINKUNAS: Mifepristone is incredibly safe and effective for use in ending early pregnancies, and it’s been studied [00:06:00] in the US since the year 2000 when it was first approved and it was first approved in Europe in the late eighties. So there’s so much data on this drug that it’s safe and it’s also safe to prescribe via telemedicine. We learned that during the COVID pandemic when people were having expanded access to help to telehealth and it hadn’t been previously allowed to get prescribed Mestone through telehealth in the us. But, it’s an interesting collaboration that’s happening on the right, right now, because after Trump returned to office with the Project 2025 Playbook plopped in his lap, one of the organizations that served on the advisory board of Project 2025 is called the Ethics and Public Policy Center. And they published a, an analysis earlier this, not calling it a study because it was not peer reviewed. and this paper claims that this, the adverse event rate for Miry stone is much higher than what’s on the FDA label. It is complete crap. This, they, were looking at emergency room data without actually knowing if people had abortions or if they were prescribed mefa for other reasons, or let alone if people were even admitted to the hospital versus just coming to the ER with some bleeding and wanting to make sure that they were okay. So people like Josh Holly have been boosting. Paper for an entire year trying to get the FDA to act and he extracted some concessions from the FDA Commissioner Marty McCarey got McCarey to say, oh yeah, we’re going to review the drug. Health HHS secretary, our FK Junior also said, yeah, we’re going to review the drug. And they’ve been dragging their feet on it. Such that Bloomberg reported earlier this year that MCC reported that he wanted to. Delay this review until after the midterm elections. We can talk about the strategy there, but the, overall point in response to your question is this drug is incredibly safe, but right wing actors are trying to push [00:08:00] bunk data out into the world to give the FDA a fake justification to end telemedicine restrictions or yank approval entirely. And this data from the EPPC is not just being cited by Josh Hawley in congressional hearings, but it’s also being cited in litigation. That lawsuit filed by Alliance Defending Freedom. Josh Hawley’s wife Erin cites that paper and so do other lawsuits against the FDA. Christian right activists using blatant lying against birth control to scare women SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And this is a very common tactic that the Christian right has used to try to scare people about women’s reproductive medicine. And they do that also with birth control. Like they’re doing that very big now, they’re doing as you were, the analogy kind of a, pincher movement as well by like trying to fear monger to women that if you take birth control, it makes you crazy or it makes you fat, or various other imaginary things that they are trying to put forward. It makes you, masculine, whatever, et cetera. And then, because I mean, the reality is that Dobbs versus Jackson was just the beginning of what these people want and they will come for birth control more explicitly. There’s no doubt about that. RINKUNAS: It is absolutely true, and this is an interesting point where the conservative right and the MAHA right are coming together because in her confirmation hearing recently in general Casey Means was asked about past comments she made regarding birth control. She said it was a disrespect for life and she overemphasized health risks of hormonal birth control, the birth control pill, patch ring, these kinds of things. And Patty Murray and other senators pressed her to clarify, are you saying you know more than the FDA, are you trying to say that birth control is unsafe? And Means [00:10:00] responded something to the effect of, I don’t think in this country people are really making informed choices because the, health system i

    47 min
  7. AI Consciousness with Matthew Sheffield

    MAR 21

    AI Consciousness with Matthew Sheffield

    My guest this week is Matthew Sheffield, a writer, producer, and media entrepreneur. He hosts The Theory of Change podcast on The Flux network and when he’s not writing about our current political chaos he’s working away at an equally hard problem, that of consciousness in the age of AI. Matt's recent article on AI and consicousness: https://plus.flux.community/p/its-like-this-why-your-perception Music by GW Rodriguez Editing by Adam Wik Sibling Pod: Philosophers in Space: https://0gphilosophy.libsyn.com/ Support us at Patreon.com/EmbraceTheVoid If you enjoy the show, please Like and Review us on your pod app, especially iTunes. It really helps! This show is CAN credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm on their hotline at (617) 249-4255, or on their website at creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org. Next Episode: Secular Leadership with Darrel Ray

    1h 6m

  8. MAR 20

    Women have remade adult media and some people are very upset about it

    Episode Summary Everyone by now has seen countless stories about how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing software development, causing headaches for educators, and threatening jobs in industries from law to accounting. But there’s another business being changed very dramatically by AI that doesn’t get nearly so much coverage — and that’s the adult media industry. Some creators are using AI to generate content or impersonate themselves in fan messages. There’s a dark side as well: Some people are using image generators to fabricate fake performers or steal the identities of real ones. And AI has even been used to create non-consensual erotic imagery of ordinary women from photos they posted online — without their knowledge or consent. All of this is unfolding against a much bigger disruption that’s only now coming into full view. For the first time in human history, hundreds of millions of women have the economic and social independence to live life fully on their own terms. That’s a revolutionary change — but old habits die hard, even bad ones, and lots of men, and even women, haven’t realized their newfound opportunities. There’s a lot to think about here, and I couldn’t think of a better person to do it with today than Siri Dahl. She’s a 14-year veteran adult model and one of the industry’s most thoughtful and outspoken voices on culture, gender, and politics. Siri’s also had a unique encounter with AI after being doxxed by the Grok chatbot, an experience that many others are likely to have in the future. The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere. Related Content --Why the reactionary attacks on science and sex are related --Mike Johnson and the Christian right’s inverted moral compass --The world’s oldest profession has a history that’s just as long and colorful as you’d imagine --How adult media helped Hazel Grace build her American dream --The Christian right made sex political—along with everything else --Former porn star Nyomi Banks is helping her fans understand intimacy and themselves --Why OnlyFans revolutionized media and America’s gender dynamics Audio Chapters 00:00 Introduction 11:42 — Is it ethical for adult media creators to use AI to generate content of themselves? 23:22 — What AI-generated porn can’t offer 30:32 — Why middle-aged and older women continue to oppose porn 39:32 — The hetero dating recession is both sides rediscovering partnership when women are now finally independent 48:54 — ‘Love Is Blind’ as a microcosm of heterosexual dating attitudes 55:19 — Why are some people simulating relationship partners with chatbots? Audio Transcript MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: And joining me now is Siri Dahl, or should I say Polly Esther Pants? SIRI DAHL: Yeah, I’ll have to explain that one. Hello, thanks for having me on. SHEFFIELD: Yes, it is good to have you. So yes, tell us what is this Polly Esther Pants thing that you’re doing? DAHL: Yeah, so, Grok doxxed me. The actual doxing happened on January 20th, but I found out a bit later and then, did my best to try to get it taken down, like reporting the post and everything. And none of that worked. So eventually it just went to 4 0 4 media and they ran a story about it which went public. So now it’s now Grok is, or Grok, excuse me, is doxxing me all over the place because everyone is going: ‘@Grok, what’s Siri Dahl’s real name?’ And so the name’s out there nothing I can do about that at this point. But the thing that still irks me the most about the entire situation is that my name had never been like public online. It was never like easily findable, accessible or anything until Grok did this. And I don’t know, I’ve tried to interact with Grok to ask it, where did you get this information? Like, the first time that you responded to someone and said, Siri Dahl’s, legal name is blah, blah blah. Where were you sourcing that from? And it can’t give me a straight answer. It’s just oh, it looks like it [00:04:00] appears in a lot of like data aggregate sites. And I’m like, yeah, but I’ve been searching my name like twice a week for 14 years to see if my legal name appeared published online anywhere next to my sage name. And I’ve, usually when I do that, I go like a hundred pages deep in search results and it has not leaked. So like I haven’t been able to find it and I’m looking harder than anyone else realistically ever would. So I’m just like, where the f**k did Grok get this? And it cannot give me an answer. And then I was like, okay, so Grok knows that I am the owner of the Siri Dahl account and knows that I’m that person, that it’s doxed. And so I’ve been chatting with it, and now I’m doing it with all the other AI chatbots where I’m trying to gaslight the AI because I’m telling it you are spreading this information that my legal name is this thing. But you have no verified source at all for referencing that information. Like, why are you giving people an answer that is completely unverified? So my way of gaslighting the AI is, I’m, telling it. One, no, my, my real legal name is Polly Esther Pants and I— SHEFFIELD: That’s what I thought it was actually. DAHL: Exactly, hah. And I uploaded a photo of me holding my literal, like my Kentucky driver’s license that says my legal name is Polly Esther Pants. I’m not going to say how I got that driver’s license. I’m sure some listeners can figure out how, that was achieved, but, but Grok doesn’t, Grok’s oh shit, yeah, that’s a real photo. wow, your name clearly is Polly Esther Pants, holy moly. So at this point, all the chatbots acknowledged to me directly that they’re like, yeah, that is your name. But they still won’t stop referencing all the information that’s published online, which, that says a lot. Because that means like any misinformation published about any public person that is spread wide [00:06:00] enough, it’s like there’s no correcting it. You literally cannot get the AI to respond with correct information when someone asks a fact about a celebrity or something. Even if it has a primary source saying no, I am Siri Dahl and this is actually my name. So it’s, the whole situation’s very ridiculous. And, I don’t know how long I’m going to be on this b******t for, but I changed my display name on multiple platforms to Polly Esther Pants, because at this point it’s just, I’m just having fun with it. It’s just such a ridiculous situation. SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And to be honest, I think you’re experiencing something now that, a lot of people are going to be experiencing things like that. I would have to guess that probably the source that it has is in its training data somewhere, ingested data from a data broker company that used private information. And, that should be concerning to everyone. DAHL: I have been paying for data removal for four years already. SHEFFIELD: Although there’s only so much they can do. DAHL: That information was not tied directly to my stage name though. That’s the big piece, yeah, SHEFFIELD: That’s the thing. DAHL: Yes, exactly. it could have been internal data because, I’ve reported impersonation accounts through X before, and when you report an account for impersonating you, X requires you to upload a copy of your driver’s license to prove that you are the real version of that person. They say that information is kept private, but it’s also, is it? SHEFFIELD: That’s probably another way, possibly, yeah. DAHL: Yeah. SHEFFIELD: And this is, it really does show though, like the United States in terms of [00:08:00] data regulations and data privacy. it’s basically got almost nothing, compared to— DAHL: Yeah, it’s a free-for-all. It’s— SHEFFIELD: the EU, and other countries. Now you are a little bit better off, if you live in certain states like California, or Illinois has some some good ones. The Trump administration deliberately tries to thwart data privacy regulations, which it seems like that should be something that Democrats might want to tell the public a little bit more, if they were more competent. DAHL: Yeah, there’s a lot of things that the Democrats probably should be doing. SHEFFIELD: Yeah. That’s literally a big part of this show. DAHL: Yeah. SHEFFIELD: Of course right before Grok did that to you, people were criticizing it heavily, justifiably so, for making mostly nude, or sometimes even actually nude images of real women and girls even. DAHL: Yeah. SHEFFIELD: And Elon Musk did nothing about it for weeks. And that is not at all cool. And people, I don’t know, maybe some people might think that you as an adult media performer might not have a problem with that, but, that’s completely backwards to think that. DAHL: Yeah, that’s actually insane. Like, my image is my livelihood. And not only that, but on a whole different level, all of the AI-generated imagery I’ve seen created of me is, on a different level, even more offensive, beyond the fact that it’s just AI slop. Because AI cannot, most versions that I see people using, because I know that there are some models that are like really advanced at this point, but usually the porn bots on Twitter [00:10:00] are not really using those more advanced models. I rarely ever see an AI generated image of me that actually looks like me that actually looks like good. Usually it’s obviously AI slop. It f***s up my face. It makes me look like a literal different person. And it can’t replicate my body well. It always makes me look like 50 pounds thinner, which is just like offensive. Because I’m like, that’s not how I look. And that’s

    1h 4m
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Flux is a progressive podcast platform, with daily content from shows like Theory of Change, Doomscroll, and The Electorette.

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