A fascinating discussion with my first-ever conservative guest, Bryce Eddy of The Bryce Eddy Show! We covered a wide range of topics including religion and atheism, gender expression and gender roles, sexuality, endocrine disruptors, AI, climate change, and nutrition (including veganism and seed oils). This episode is unique in that it contains a lot of takes that I simply don’t agree with and even some that I find abhorrent, but I think it is crucially important to talk to people with different beliefs and perspectives than ourselves and look for common ground, as this is the only way we can build empathy and understanding rooted in our collective humanity rather than tear each other to shreds because of ideological differences. I encourage you to listen to this episode with an open mind, but also to engage critically with the material and think about where you stand. I could have been a lot more argumentative than I was, but I chose to make this more of a dialogue rather than a debate, because I think being at each other’s throats the whole time and picking apart every little thing he said would have not only taken like ten hours, but would have left us both feeling more polarized and incensed than before. Instead, I think we both walked away having expanded our horizons and gained some insight into the thought processes on the opposite side of the proverbial aisle, and that was the goal. I do want to specifically warn my audience that this episode contains comments regarding Islam, queer relationships and queer sex, trans rights (including gender-affirming medical care and trans athletes’ participation in sports, and self-harm (including disordered eating), that could be triggering or offensive to hear (although I edited deliberately to avoid explicit content). I want you all to know that I am absolutely not co-signing these positions by including them in this episode. By allowing a conservative voice on my platform and lending my voice to his audience, I hope to defuse some of the growing animosity between conservatives and liberals/leftists, because we really have more in common than we think, and this is the first step of reaching a mutual understanding. And I mean, hey, I did get him to correctly gender Hunter Schafer and he denounced the negative environmental impacts of corporations as well as critiquing Big Ag’s poisoning of the food system via monocropping and other destructive practices, so there is some based stuff in here!
