Hi everyone, it's Brian Kilmead here. Are you tired of those uncomfortable dress shirts, especially when they bunch up under a sweater? If so, then you must check out Collars Co., makers of the dress collar polo. Listen up. These shirts are four-way stretch, buttery soft polos with firm dress collars on them, so they give you the dress shirt look, but extremely comfortable polo feel.
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Of any purchase of $100 or more. That's promo code Brian. This episode is brought to you by Claude by Anthropic. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you.
Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter and finds connections you might have missed. For problems worth solving, get started at claude.ai/slash spotify. This, I think, is going to be a very interesting conversation. Tiana Lodesher is an economics columnist for the Washington Examiner. You can find her on exit Tiana the first.
Tiana, thank you so much for joining me. Hi, Mary. Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely.
So, an announcement was made by one Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Of course, she launches everything on social media, and here she is making her announcement. I have made the decision to start freezing my eggs. I think we need to show more depictions of women having full lives in every context and every choice.
So she is freezing her eggs, and then she did a longer video where she shows: you know, these are all the things that I have. I have to give myself these injections. And she made a point of saying, I've been saving up for this for a while. I'm like, yes, how about those student loans you haven't paid off? But so, you know, she's doing this.
She's saving her eggs so she can get pregnant later. A lot of women do it.
So, what is your initial take from this?
So look, it's at the end of the day, it's her body, her choice, but she chose to make this public domain and she chose directly to tie it to politics, right? She said in the video, you know, I know there's a political tax that women pay for sexist attitudes as men are asking about family planning. The real feminist win here would have been saying, screw you to that perceived political tax and having the baby anyway. Again, look. It's her life.
I'm not telling her what to do, but she is an almost 37-year-old Congresswoman. Forbes estimating her net worth at $125,000.
So she's at least in the wealthiest third of her peers. And she's been with her fiancé for a decade. I say, as a new mom of three months who also works full-time in a city. The goalie.
So, you know, she says in that clip, I think it's important to show women having full lives. Presenting this really interesting and very regressive false dichotomy. That you know, in her presidential campaign, that she's teasing but not fully announcing, in order for her to have that, she. To delay motherhood and now, you know, do this procedure that look, I think is wonderful if you are a woman who has not found Mr. Wright yet, but you know you want to get married and have children at some point someday.
Love that. I'm glad that this exists. But egg freezing is on top of being incredibly expensive, not a surefire guarantee, and also not comfortable for the woman. You're doing two weeks of hormonal injections, bringing your hormones up to like mid-pregnancy levels, and then you have a, you know, surgery that requires general anesthesia. And if she were doing this because she said, I don't have a partner yet.
I don't know who I'd want to have kids with yet, you know. Or some other valid re, but in this case, she seems to say, I'm doing it for politics. And that, to me, is is, you know, oh, maybe a little bit of internalized sexism. Maybe, yeah, okay. See, now I did not get that, so I'm so glad we're having this conversation.
My takeaway from it was: two things: I'm with you, I don't care what you do, it truly doesn't affect me at all. Have a baby, don't have a baby, whatever.
So, uh, but she's gonna be almost 37 years old.
So, whether she can even go through the procedure successfully or not, because it is considered a geriatric pregnancy, 36 is a geriatric pregnancy. It is hard being a woman, gentlemen, just so you know. You know, being 36 years old and being told, well, you know, you have a geriatric pregnancy. You're like, wait, what? But, but, so part of me was like, okay, well, Sandy wants to be a mom.
Like, I never saw that on her horizon. She's not married. They've been together forever, you know, not getting married, not doing the traditional stuff. But here she is. And To me, there was a mixed message in the sense of, okay, you want to do this, it's available to women, this is great, have it available to you.
Great. That's a good thing. This is an option. Make women aware. Fantastic.
But the other part of it to me said, well, women can't have it all. Women can't work and be pregnant, etc. But you can. And I understand it's hard. It is really hard for women.
It's very easy for men like Matt Walsh to say, she'll turn 37 in a couple of months. If she got pregnant now, it would technically be a geriatric pregnancy. This desire to start having children late in life is completely baffling to me.
Well, it's easy for you, Matt. You're not the one pumping and lactating and doing all this other stuff while trying to attend a board meeting.
Okay.
So, Matt just needs to be quiet on that. I get why I understand why women postpone their pregnancies because of the way life is structured. It's just the way it is. You can choose to participate in that or not. That's your choice.
And unfortunately, women have to make that choice. Men don't.
Okay.
That's the way. It is.
So I kind of took it two ways because I don't like the message. You can be pregnant and still work and then you get time off. I know plenty of women who have done it who have been pregnant, had the baby, took some maternity leave. Dad's got paternity leave now. I mean, when we were having kids, because I'm Gen X, we were having kids, there was no paternity leave.
You know, dad got a weekend. Oh, oh, is that my son? Let me see him. You know, like it's changed. I to me it was a very mixed message.
that that came out of it. But let me ask you this. Is it wise for Republicans like Matt Walsh to be dunking on her? I just think that's a really, really, really bad message. Are Republicans supposed to be all about, Yay, we're having babies?
Yeah, no, I don't love the way that people have responded. Again, she made this not only public, but also political. She didn't say, Hey, this is a video that has nothing to do about politics. It's about my personal life. She said, I'm doing this for political reasons, right?
So it's fair game to talk about. But no, I don't love the response. Look, I think in the conservative right, especially among people who are part of the pro-natalist discussion, Men who have 27 children are a bit overrepresented. And I'm not saying that isn't wonderful, right? I have so many men in my life who have a lot of children and are wonderful present fathers, and that's fantastic.
But, like, specifically, part of the reason why I feel fine weighing in here is, in a lot of ways, like, my life is not super duper different from AOCs. I'm 30, I live in a city, I have one child. I had my first child three months ago. I'm back at work. I love my career.
I also don't want to take a bunch of time off. And that's why I feel. inclined to say If you are an urban Kamala voting young woman who's on the fence and you have a supportive partner and you think you might like a child. You can have one and you can do it. There are so many reasons why it's a lot more manageable today.
I can't speak to if you want to homestead and have seven children and homeschool them. Yeah, I think that's going to involve a lot more concessions. But if you're college-educated and you make a salary like AOC does, and you can afford a part-time nanny and you have a husband who can work from home some of the time, it's a lot different than it was for, let's say, my mother's generation. My mother's a boomer. And that it was much, much, much harder for women to work.
and have a child because things were just very different back then. You didn't have Amazon and Instacart and able to outsource so many of the tasks of home rearing the way that thanks to capitalism do today.
So, you know, rather than focus, you know, I think Matt Walsh is speaking to a modal woman that also wants six children and maybe to be a stay-at-home mom and maybe to homeschool, which is a wonderful and great choice. But that's not what AOC wants. And more importantly, that's not what a lot of young women who are maybe on the fence politically, on the fence about having a child, that's not what they want to hear. They want to hear, okay, well, how would I be able to fit? the the the beauty and just fulfillment that is motherhood with my also full life, with my career, with you know, not being in a position maybe for a lot of these women, it's not a choice, right?
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, About 60% of all moms of babies under one years old work, and most of them work full-time, right? Don't just Without invalidating, without minimizing, or disrespecting what it is to be a more traditional stay-at-home mother. Also, recognize that there are tons of young women who maybe only want one or two children and to work full-time, and just point out that, like, You can do it. AOC is uniquely positioned to do it. I think her husband works from home.
I know that the Hill has a daycare.
So she doesn't even necessarily need to pay for a full-time nanny, right? It can be done. And right now, I'm living it. Right now, I work hybrid. I'm in the office in the TV studio a couple days a week.
I work from home a couple other days a week. We have a part-time nanny, and this is the most full my life has ever been. The last three months have been the best three months of my life. My life isn't. Over, it's optimized.
Right, exactly. And to your point, there's so many ways to do this. You could be a trad wife, whatever. If that makes you happy and you want to have six kids, God bless you. You want to adopt?
Good for you. All of that, I'm a big fan of. It's none of my business. I truly don't care. As long as you're not having 18 kids and expecting me to pay for them, right?
Then I have a choice. Then I think I have a say, right? If you expect me to pay for these children, you keep popping out.
Now we have to have a conversation. But you got a job. God bless you. Have eight. It's fine with me.
I truly don't care as long as you take care of them. I'm fine with it. I just don't think it helps Republicans to say a word on this. Keep your mouth shut. Don't say a word.
Do not have an opinion, please. Everybody just keep their mouths shut. Hi, everyone. It's Brian Kilmead here. Are you tired of those uncomfortable dress shirts, especially when they bunch up under a sweater?
If so, then you must check out Collars Co., makers of the dress collar polo. Listen up. These shirts are four-way stretch, buttery soft polos with firm dress collars on them, so they give you the dress shirt look, but extremely comfortable polo feel. You can wear them with anything under a sweater, with a blazer, or by themselves as an elevated polo. They work for any occasion.
These polos are perfect, whether it's in the office, on a golf course, or a night out. Collars Co. is exploding and have gone viral on social media thanks to the 1 million investment they received on Shark Tank from Mark Cuban and Peter Jones. You don't have to worry about collars that flop down and spread out. They stay firm and sharp all day.
It's an amazing array of sweaters, quarter zips, pants, and outerwear. If you're looking for the performance dress shirt or polo that looks great all day, check out collarsandco.com. Use promo code Brian for 15% off of any purchase of $100 or more. That's promo code Brian. This episode is brought to you by Claude by Anthropic.
Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you. Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter and finds connections you might have missed. For problems worth solving, get started at claude.ai/slash spotify. Very quickly, I want to go into one other thing before I let you go.
And that is what's going on in the WNBA. I am sorry, but these NBA players coming out. And saying that they're identifying as women because they've read the rules, like exactly how this works. And you had a Royce White doing an interview with a wig, a woman's wig on. And he says, I realized my fear of flying really wasn't a fear of flying.
It was the transgender trapped inside of me, caged inside of me. They are playing this for all its worth and making a total mockery of the WNBA, which I will posit here. Could be what saves the WNBA, which By the way, I Part of their funding comes from the NBA, the men. Yes. The hypocrisy is insane.
It's like a, but you're so twisted and notched like a slinky. It's crazy. But do you agree? This could be the saving grace of the WNBA because people would actually pay to watch this, their theology, their religion at which they worship and live their lives. Come and bite them in the butt.
Like, okay, let me see. I would buy tickets to games and trudge my butt up to Newark to watch this happen. Oh my goodness, right? It's first they're saved by what they thought was their worst enemy, a white woman from the Midwest and Caitlin Clark. And then they're saved by actual men.
That would be hysterical. Look, to quote the great H.L. Lincoln. The WMBA is getting what it voted for, good and hard. They're the ones that asked for this.
Not hurt to say. We are a league of biological women. And while we will respect pronouns and we embrace all of our fans of any sexuality or gender identity, you can't sit with us. You can't win with us because this is for biological women. They have to go all in on the woke.
They have to let, you know, Sophie Cunningham have the crud beat out of her. They have to let Caitlin Clark, you know, get brutalized. And, you know, they don't understand where their bread is buttered. Their bread is buttered by Caitlin Clark, and it's buttered by. Ideological men in the NBA.
And so, you know, if this is what it takes to finally crack down, and also, you know, final point, Mary, I don't want to hear, oh, Woke One was crazy. We're still doing Woke One. Yes. We are still doing Woke One and not just at the professional level, in high school leagues, in college leagues around the country. And that's why we still have to fight the good fight.
And may I say before I go off here, Dijanae Carrington, white people name, whatever, she graduated from Stanford. She has two undergraduate degrees. One is in African and African American studies, and the other is in psychology.
So I don't know, okay. But, you know, of course, she had to go make it about race. It's white privilege. May I point- Am I the only one who's pointing out the fact that she's wearing a blonde wig? Whereas if a white woman wears braids, it's cultural appropriation.
The. The number of ways in which this entire situation contradicts itself is can you imagine? It's fascinating. The flowchart alone would be like a wreath. I mean, look, what Caitlin Clark is going through, if you've ever, you know, been a middle school girl, you know what it is.
It's just bullying. I mean, use the woke language to, yeah. It's just mean girls. It's just being a caddy, you know what. And you can dress it up in woke, you can dress it up in white privilege and trans inclusion and feminism.
It's just. Being an exclusionary mean girl. It is no different than the middle school cafeteria.
So, last question, and I'll let you go.
So does is the WNBA going to be forced into drafting these two guys, choosing them? They're the best players. They're the most qualified. Are they going to be forced into it? Because If it is uh cantor freedom Right, and Royce White stays in it and they push this.
They're either going to be shown for the frauds that they are, which is going to destroy the league, or they're going to have to draft these two men. Are they not? Excuse me, women. That's, yeah, right. Don't misgender, excuse me.
We have to use their preferred, their them pronouns. I mean, I think the WNBA, at the front, has to bank on its own irrelevance and hope that people tune it out what they normally do. But I don't think they will because this is a cultural sticking point because the left is making it continue to be so. I do not want to have to think about gender identities or trans, mist, transit in any other normal social setting. If you tell me your name's Jane and you're wearing a dress, I don't really care, but don't show up.
In my daughter's locker room, don't show up in a women's sports load. And if you keep on doing that, then guess what? It's a winning point for the right because this is an 80-20 inches. Yep. Yeah, no, 100%.
And like I said, if it's on pay-per-view, I am paying to watch it. And if Clay Travis gets his team, what is it, the Nashville Balls? I'm so in. I am so invested. I'm buying shirts.
I'm in all the way. Tiana Lodosher, thank you so much for joining us. Follow her at Tiana, T-I-A-N-A, the first. Have a great rest of your day. Thank you so much for joining me.
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