I’m Here to Ask the Important Questions
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Cheetah girls, cheetah sisters. What a week. Let's just say it. What a week. What a century. Yeah. I'm Sam Sanders. I'm Saeed Jones. And I'm Zach Stafford. And you are listening to Vibe Check. And this week, we are going to talk about what's happening in the Middle East.

We're going to talk about Palestine and Israel. We need to. We have to. And I've been itching to have this conversation with my sisters. We're going to get deep into all of the misinformation we've been seeing online about this conflict. But we'll also discuss just how it feels to watch all of this through our phones and how people are getting through.

It's going to be a heavy conversation and a heavy episode, but it's a conversation that needs to be had. And I'm honored to get to have it with Zach and Saeed. And to say, you know, listeners, we took...

a week to pour into each other, to read, to listen, to talk, and to figure out the best way to have this conversation. Because we were having it with ourselves. And, you know, the show, Saeed always reminds us perfectly that, you know, it's our group chat. But we know with our group chat, you know, we have to be considerate of how we bring it to life. So we've been taking that time. And, you know, we're really happy that you're willing to be on this journey with us today, kind of explore this very complicated topic that we will be diving into. Yeah. And I

I think we realized that the only way we could really have a candid conversation, which is to say for us to speak freely, confidently without constantly kind of politicking our way through every clause and phrase, was to focus on what we responsibly feel confident talking about.

So, this is not going to be comprehensive. We're not going to be able to talk about the full history of what has transpired and brought us to this particular moment in the Middle East. We're not even going to be able to talk about everything that's happened in the last week or so. We're going to talk about what we feel we can productively offer to you. And we just say that, one, out of humility.

but also in the sense that there is more you and we all need to be getting in terms of clarity and context. And unfortunately, you're not going to get it all from us, just like we're not all going to be able to get it from any one source. And so we'll be sharing people and resources that we've been turning to, but I hope you can think of us as part of a broader mosaic of humane understanding of what's going on. But before that,

As we always do, I want to check in with Zach and Zaid and myself and just check our vibes and see how we're feeling. Zach, I think your vibe is particularly haunted this week, like for real. It sounded spooky ooky over there, bitch. Spooky ooky. As I was walking back into my apartment building this morning, I was on high alert because...

I am going to report today that I'm being haunted by a ghost, I think. We've arrived at this conclusion. I love the casual, I think. I was about to say, I think. You know, there are ghosts, and then there are ghosts, I think. And I really like that second category. So...

I have been watching a lot of horror movies. It is October. Well, that's on you. That's on you. I know it's on me. I have been to the classics. I watched Friday the 13th the other day. I've seen Blair Witch. I saw The Exorcist. Oh, there's a new Exorcist? Which I hear is not great. Which is not great. So my state of mind has been a lot of horror and watching it every day. This weekend, I am walking to the car with Craig and

And as we're walking, next to my building is an abandoned building that's being torn down. And there was a man standing in front of it. It's boarded up. He's standing in front of it, shoeless, in a tank top, long hair, glaring at me. It wouldn't break his eye contact. And I kept trying to get Craig's attention. And Craig wasn't noticing. Craig didn't notice. He was looking around. Didn't see him. And this guy, it went on for like minutes. And he wouldn't stop. And his head just kept following me, following me.

So I got in the car. I was like, did you not see that guy? Why didn't you say anything? He's like, there was no one there. What are you talking about? I was like, no, I could draw him. I could paint him. I could do all this stuff. You didn't like shake Craig in the moment? I like tapped him, but he was like, wasn't paying attention. It felt like a horror movie where you're like, hey, hey, there's someone. Oh my goodness. Nope. Okay. So two points here. One, you know, I've been to your apartment and that building next to your apartment is actually spooky. And like broad daylight is just kind of...

Yeah. Eerie. It's at the top of that hill and all that. Second, was he hot? No, sadly. Oh, okay. Well, you know, I'm here to ask the important questions, girl. If he had been hot, this haunting would be very welcome. It wouldn't be a haunting. It would be a welcoming. Possess me. Yes. A welcoming, an embrace. But no, that's not what's happening. So anyway...

That happens, I move on with my day. The next day, I'm walking by myself and this building has a lot of glass. As I'm walking parallel to it, he's walking with me but not looking at me and just looking straight. And he's just walking very slowly. - How does he walk? Does he walk like a person or like a ghost or like a zombie? - No, very zombie-esque, very slow, very slow. - Ooh. - Is this daylight or nighttime? - This is daylight too. This is not nighttime. So anyway, I now can't sleep.

When we go to the car, we're on edge. We're like, is the guy jumping out? What's happening? It's going to be so sad when we find out that it's just like a ghostly departed construction worker on the picket line.

You know, he was staring at you looking for astral labor solidarity. Yeah, he was walking back and forth like girl, you know show your fist, you know, like people Yes, so anyway, so that's been my week of am I haunted or is this just like a person who's on house living in the building? I don't know cuz I'm definitely not gonna call I'm gonna call the police on them don't look into it. You know say hello. Oh

Girl, no. That's how people die in the movies. I've been watching these horror movies and you die when you engage. You have to get away. Anyway, that's my vibe. Haunted, pray for me. I should probably stop watching horror movies. I love that because I've been watching the Netflix adaption of The Fall of the House of

Usher, which is in my genre of I call it comforting horror because it is all about rich people being called to task. Love it. Their final judgment kind of way. And it's like, oh, finally, you know, real justice only happens in the horror movies. It's really good. It is not subtle. If you're looking for subtlety, not there. But if you're there for the dramatics and certainly if you love Edgar Allan Poe, you'd like it. Zach, watch it with your ghostly friend. You know, set up a little laptop on the hood of the car. I'm not going to advise that. Oh, God. Zaid, what's your vibe?

My stomach's in knots. I'm stressed out. I'm really... I'm stressed out because I care about what's going on here and abroad, but also I care about having a responsible conversation. So, yeah, I...

Both have been not looking forward to this conversation, but looking forward to the earnest work of it. But it's difficult, and I've been stressed out. And then also, I went to Washington, D.C. this weekend for a friend's birthday. We had a great time. Shout out to the girls at—there's a gay bar that apparently you remember, Sam. I sure do. The Green Lantern. The Green Lantern.

You got to walk through an alleyway to get there. And back in the day when I was going there, undercover of night, they'd have some nights where you could just drink free or get a free drink if you were shirtless. I don't know if they still do that. It's still there. I think it's like Thursdays. Oh, okay. So you've partaken of the Green Lantern experience. I have partaken. Well, Green Lantern is not just standing, honey. It's thriving. It's good to hear that. I haven't been there in years.

It was so fun. You know, we were just going to go because it was our last night in town and we really wanted to go and twirl. But it was pup night. Is that what they call it? Yeah, it was pup night. Anyway, they were there. It was their night, but they didn't mind us being there too. Lovely group of people. Love it. But the one thing that I loved is a friend pointed out, he was like, you know, room full of men dressed as dogs, but every time we heard them bark...

They were barking? They all sounded like little dogs? They were barking? Well, because all the bark... What was so interesting, he was like, no one was barking like a Rottweiler or a Doberman. It was all like the little high-pitched, like just a room full of terriers, honey. The only men I trust to bark, and they're very problematic, are Omegas, the Q-Dogs. Oh. Oh. This is the black... You trust Q-Dogs? Well, okay, you still gotta heal. I don't trust their bite. Okay. I don't trust their bite. Okay.

But all of this is my long, bizarre way of saying I had a great weekend, but then it's like you get home and just that sense of when you are cognizant of how you're pulled across different realities, you know? So it's like you're on the dance floor and you're like, should I be on the dance floor? You're having a good time with your friends on a road trip singing Stevie Wonder songs, you know, at the top of your lungs. And you're like, should I be doing this? And then you're like, well...

Is life fully supposed to stop? And I was thinking about a poem that was written a decade ago by Ukrainian poet Ilya Kaminsky titled "We Lived Happily During the War." It's shared often, and he happens to be from Ukraine, so it was shared a lot when that particular war started, but it's kind of resurfacing and I revisited it. And I was like, yeah, that sense of having to acknowledge that chaos is unfolding and it is costly and really scary.

But also your friends are there. Your friend's birthday is happening. Are you going to not acknowledge your friend's birthday? You know, like just having to like make space inside of yourself, even though it can be stressful for these different truths, you know, and that sometimes all of this is going to be going on at the same time. I don't know. That's what I've been thinking about a lot. But I've got to say at home by myself, I've been exhausted and stressed out and like literally walking around kind of, you know, playing with my necklace is what I do when I'm stressed out.

I totally understand that. I think that speaks to how complicated grief is. And you write so much about grief, but you may be going through something, but the world continues to go. And how do you sit in those two things at once? It's hard. It's complicated.

I'm sure a lot of people relate to that this week. Absolutely. And I think this is probably going to be threaded throughout our conversation because it's threaded throughout my thoughts. One thing I've learned from grief is I think, you know, one of the choices you have to make is are you going to allow grief to isolate you from your humanity and certainly from other people? Or are you going to allow grief to be an opportunity for you to have more empathy and deeper connection with other people, you

Because I get it. It's intense and scary. And often we want to withdraw. But I think we're being reminded in such a pointed and costly way that we have to. We have to embrace one another. So, yeah. But that's where I am. Sam, sister, how are you doing? I'm okay. I'm like of two minds. It's been a really hard week to have a phone in your hands. Watching the catastrophe, watching the disaster, and watching so many people be mean to each other in the midst of it.

So I have all that going on. But also just by turn of events, and this has been planned for a while, I'm supposed to go to Vegas this weekend to go see U2 with some friends at the Sphere. I'm not the biggest U2 fan. Just catastrophe on top of catastrophe. But I'm excited to see the Sphere. Y'all have seen the visuals, right? So for folks who haven't heard about it yet, it is this performance venue in Vegas that's on the Strip, but it is a humongous dome.

like a humongous dome. And every inch of the dome, inside and outside, has programmable LED lights. So there can be these light shows during the concerts and light shows on the outside of the sphere that you can see from the street. It's kind of wild. I've seen some videos of it. It looks trippy as hell. I'm excited for it. But I'm also just like really, really torn up about the state of the discourse right now around what's going on. And I've been feeling this angst

and also sorrow around events. And a good friend of mine, a former classmate, and their name is Jericho Vincent. They posted something on Instagram that really spoke to this moment for me that we're all dealing with. They wrote, somehow, unfathomably, daily life goes on in the middle of catastrophe. Are you making time in the middle of all of this to cry?

And I've just been holding that. It's sacred, right? I think we are a little overwhelmed right now for many reasons, all of us.

And understanding that expressing that pain isn't a thing to be ashamed of, but that it's sacred. I found that helpful right now. So that's the vibe. That's the vibe. Thank you, Jericho. That's beautiful. Also, the sphere scares me. I think I would like have an anxiety attack. I'm afraid I'm going to get vertigo or dizzy. Sensory overload. Will I fall over? Too much. But we'll see. I'm so hyped for it. Yeah. And that's before U2 comes out. You know, it starts to turn.

doing whatever it is they do. Oh, all right. Well, before we get into the episode, we just want to remind all of you listening that we have our first book club episode coming up very, very soon. As a reminder, we are reading Poverty by America by Matthew Desmond. We'll be having a conversation with him for that episode. So join us, send us questions, send us your thoughts, send us what you want us to talk about, all that good stuff. But definitely read the book and do it all before November 6th.

Read the book, y'all. I'm so excited to discuss that book with y'all. And of course, we want to thank all of you for sending us fan mail, reaching out on social media. We absolutely love reading your messages. Keep them coming at vibecheckatstitcher.com. But for now, my girls, my sisters, my ladies, let's jump in, shall we? Let's do it. All right. Okay, as we said to y'all earlier, we're going to talk for a good bit of time about Palestine and Israel. We want to speak to this conflict.

with humanity and as clear-eyed as we can. To start, we must acknowledge the health ministry in Gaza said on Tuesday of this week that about 3,000 people had been killed and more than 12,500 wounded. In Israel, the death toll from the attacks has reached at least 1,400 or so killed. And then some 289 Israeli soldiers have been killed since October 7th and afterward, Israeli officials have said.

Also, about 1 million Palestinians have been displaced after an evacuation order for northern Gaza and the run-up to an expected ground invasion from Israel. As we start this chat, I want to say our hearts are with everyone adversely affected by these multiple humanitarian crises. And it's gut-wrenching to see.

We are taping this, dear listeners, before Joe Biden is set to travel to Israel. That's supposed to take place Wednesday. We're taping this Tuesday, October 17th. All right, with that,

I want to set up a free-flowing conversation where we all can share our feelings and thoughts and perspectives on this conflict. But I want to start by acknowledging the overwhelming amount of misinformation that we're all seeing online around this conflict. Following this conflict has been incredibly difficult because it's really hard telling what's real and what's fake.

We have talked before about the decline of Twitter as a reliable breaking news source since Elon took it over. We've talked about newsrooms across the country being gutted.

And now we're seeing just about every social media platform having to deal with irresponsible, if not dangerous, misinformation on their platforms concerning Palestine and Israel. I want to open up the floor to our conversation. But first, I want to just highlight some of the most egregious examples of misinformation we've seen in the last few weeks.

Last week, far-right figures and lawmakers took to social media urging their supporters to push back on what they believed would be a, quote, global day of jihad this past Friday, October 13th.

Marjorie Taylor Greene even said that she was planning to, quote, buy ammo. Listeners, there was no global day of jihad. Ex-users widely shared a fake White House news release claiming that the U.S. was sending billions of dollars in new aid to Israel. Also on X, Elon Musk himself recommended an account known for spreading misinformation.

There was an account also impersonating the Jerusalem Post, which then shared a fake report that Netanyahu had been hospitalized. There were videos reporting to show Israeli hostages, but they were actually showing separatists in Azerbaijan being detained. There were even posts and videos and memes falsely claiming that Hamas and Israel were colluding on these attacks.

If you look at celebrities, there was even more misinformation. You saw celebrities like Justin Bieber and Jamie Lee Curtis both mistakenly share images of what they thought was Israeli suffering on their social media accounts. It was actually Palestinian suffering. Even Representative Ilhan Omar posted misinformation about children's deaths.

After that, though, a senior advisor from Omar's office said that Representative Omar, quote, immediately took down the retweet when she learned it was not from Gaza. Then perhaps the biggest piece of misinformation that we've all been dealing with these past few days are these unfounded reports of 40 babies being beheaded in the conflict.

Even Joe Biden kind of fell for that one. There's been some more clarification around this, but it's still a ton of questions and misinformation. All this to say, I want to set all this up to ask you both, Zach and Saeed, in the midst of that, how are y'all making sense of everything, trying to find the right info, grappling with it, period? I...

I have been thinking about this saying I learned, God, over a decade ago within my journalism career. And I did see someone tweet this. But there's a saying in journalism that is, if your mother says she loves you, check it out. There you go. And it's this idea that journalists should always question any information that comes in. And Black Lives Matter has come up a lot, which we'll maybe dive into in this conversation. But, you know, that was the big thing that Black Lives Matter has been fighting for is that you just can't believe state officials, city officials at first blush with anything.

So I say that to say is that with this conflict, we have to be really cautious as news starts flying out via platforms like X, which currently has no real trust and safety team. There's no moderation really happening. Elon laid them all off. Yeah. Elon laid them off and he's put that responsibility on users like all of us. Well, this whole new community notes thing, it's basically asking users to police it ourselves. Exactly. Exactly.

not there that's just not and we at this moment to push against what elon's thinking this kind of radical i think democratic approach to information he has is that we do need people who are very well sourced who are very reasoned resourced all this stuff to get to the heart of the matter and and currently with our news apparatus you know the outlets that i'm really looking to are the wire services that have global networks like reuters or the ap who have been doing this work for decades

And have had boots on the ground in these areas for decades, too. And who have also lost journalists. You know, Reuters editor-in-chief put out a statement yesterday, actually, that one of their videographers was killed in the midst of shooting across the border. So, you know, it's just a lot of caution, a lot of breathing, a lot of reading something and taking a moment, understanding where it's coming from, who's saying it, and how it's rolling through the internet at the moment. Don't trust everything in your phone. Yeah. Syed, how are you dealing with this? I think what's...

made it so difficult in terms of ascertaining accurate information is that social media is infrastructure, like an electrical grid, like plumbing. It's infrastructure. It's not just that Twitter is a problem. Elon is a horrible problem. We have a literal...

been a factor of an apartheid state now making decisions about how to cover a crisis like what's going on in Israel and Palestine. It's that even if you are not on Twitter, even if you deleted your Twitter account months ago and make a point of not participating in that particular infrastructure, your life and the information you are using to build your real-time context is still being

impacted by it. I haven't been on Facebook since 2016. That does not mean that Mark Zuckerberg and his various decision makers have not impacted my reality. And I think we're seeing it. And to me, it's a striking contrast, even just compared to the last war we've seen in this particular social media age, which is, say, the beginning of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. That's what, a year and a

Yeah, it didn't feel this full of misinformation. Yeah, even that is different. And, you know, there's various reasons for that, but it's really striking. And I also just want to underscore that, you know, Hamas itself is taking advantage of this. Like Hamas has threatened to. And I believe as of today has actually started. I think they've released at least one video of a hostage. And we should clarify here. They have.

taken control of the israeli hostages social media accounts and are posting to their accounts them being detained and even tortured and notifying the israeli families of these hostages

That it's going to be on the feeds. It's really just, oh. So we have what I would say good faith miscommunication, which is like, you know, someone just like they take something and they assume because it's framed as something that's a trusted news source. And then they run with it and then they're like, oh my gosh, this is wrong. But then also, yeah, we of course have bad faith access.

from Hamas down to, I think, what we would just call maybe chaos agents on the internet who just want to make such conflict. And then one other thing that I would point out, I think something else Elon is doing at X is it feels to me that he's, in addition to, I think he's literally suppressing news. I mean, it feels significant that, what, two weeks ago they decided to share a news article link, right? You just see a photo.

Yeah.

you're going to be seeing the most inflammatory versions of that statement, the most unproductive, designed to drive outrage from both sides. Yeah, there was a reality just a few years ago on social media where I knew...

which blue checkmark verified accounts to go to for relatively unbiased factual information. That is no longer the case. And it's even worse now because anyone can become verified. So we've seen people impersonate authorities on Twitter right now to spread lies.

It is a wild, wild west out there. And we know that Hamas is very aware of the lack of infrastructure within social media currently, and they're taking advantage of that. So we, because this has been widely reported, what we're seeing happen today isn't actually that new. It's been part of a growing behavior that we're seeing on social media that we see here in America a lot. So live streaming, mass shootings or violent events,

really took root with shooters that enter into public spaces, schools, or churches, and they would live stream it due to the launch of live stream on Facebook, et cetera. Facebook got really smart about that and sort of investing and sort of Twitter investing in mechanisms to stop that. But in the past few years, all of that's been divested and Hamas and other groups that are bad actors have noticed and now they're able to take advantage of that. So there's no longer to the points we're making here, the safeguards within a lot of these tech companies anymore. They're no longer protecting us. You can't trust everything.

We've been talking a lot about the public discourse around this conflict online. But there's a whole other side of this, which is the private discourse. Both of y'all know it. You post something and then people hop in your DMs and then people are angry about what you said. Do they want to talk about that? And I want to get into that for a little bit, the personal of all of this. You know, it's hard enough.

to make sense of current events with all the misinformation. But in moments like this, you also want to use social media to grieve these things. It's hard to watch. It's painful to watch. And what I found in the midst of this is that

I'm afraid to share anything because I don't know who's going to pop off in my DMs. I posted something a few days ago and basically made the point that it's never a good thing to call human beings animals. Felt like a pretty straightforward statement. Someone was very mad at me, a stranger who I don't know. I know you both have been involved in some conversations behind the scenes around who's posting what.

How is that working out for y'all and how are you feeling about it? And what does that say about the state of our discourse? Over the weekend, I shared an essay from the editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents, which I will say is a source that I would recommend. I've been reading a lot of their work recently. And just here's an excerpt of what I shared. This was on my Instagram story. They write...

And the writer continues. Mm-hmm.

I shared a screenshot, basically, of that paragraph with a link encouraging people to read it. I didn't offer any context. I didn't say, this is it. This person really gets it. And also, you don't have to. Yeah, you just shared it. Well, of course. I was struck by someone who I don't even know well. Someone who I would think of as kind of like a friend of a friend situation. I haven't talked to them even just on Instagram in months.

Pops up, this person is Jewish and says, you know, please don't get mad at me for saying this, which that's never a great way to start off a conversation. Says, don't pretend to know anything about Jewish grief.

And I was just really struck by the fact that I am sharing an essay by the editor in chief of Jewish Currents. And that is even somehow being regarded, I guess, as inappropriate. Like, I don't even have the right to. And again, I didn't say this is the truth. I just said... Here is a perspective. Right. That says a lot about where we are. This is what I'm struggling with so much. Whatever place we've gotten to collectively in our social media existence...

No one is willing to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. No one is willing to assume that people are acting in good faith. No one.

I mean, I would push back on that. It's not that it's no one. It's that there are very—like, I think a lot of people are trying to engage in good faith. I just think that there are some very vocal people who are like— Because again, it's striking to me. I'm like, damn, I haven't heard from you in months and months and months. And I post about politics all the time. But oh, here you are looking for, you know, chasing down like your confrontation. So I think actually a lot of people are trying. A lot of people are maybe being quiet.

Because they don't. But it's like there's a vocal contention of various demographics that are, I think, looking for an opportunity to tell people, you don't even have the right to talk about this. And to me, it feels like a bit of misplaced anger. I can't fix this problem. Let me fight with Saeed over a post on Instagram. I don't know what the fix is. Let me argue with a stranger online. I...

I'm over here when the conflict is over there. What can I do to feel something? It just feels misdirected to me, Zach. I don't know how you feel about this. No, 100%. I think people are overwhelmed with grief, dread, lack of agency. And the quickest way for you to feel a semblance of control is to lash out. And there's this saying, I heard this once. What was this? We hurt the people we love most sometimes because we don't think they'll leave. And I've seen a lot of that.

where friends of mine who are going through immense grief, and I'm trying to find a way to be there for them, no matter what side of the issue they stand. And through all of that grief, it just is becoming such a burden to them that they can't see past the anger. And it just becomes this reddening and this lashing out, and it makes them feel in some way in control.

And that's why I've got to say, I found it so powerful. A beloved Hollywood actor, Wallace Shawn, you might remember him from the Princess Diaries, for example. Monday, he was in front of the White House in Washington, D.C., speaking to reporters, and he held up a sign that said, quote, my grief is

is not your weapon. And I almost burst into tears because one, I think that's true for all kinds of situations, but you're right. Grief is energy. And it's sometimes it feels like you have more grief in your body than your body can literally contain. And so I think it's a very natural human response to want to do something to, like you said, Sam, to displace it in some way. But I think if we are not trying to make space for connection for humanity, it can be weaponized.

And to that point, what I think is being really illuminated for me as a citizen of the world living on the internet is that when we talk about histories of the world, histories of violence, histories of oppression, the interconnectedness of all of us, that this moment is really highlighting that.

that while you may not be personally connected to the Middle East in terms of your ethnicity or your religious background, you do find your own identity entangled in the way in which power has shaped and molded the world. And we don't talk about that. We've seen a full-out attack on critical race theory, quote-unquote, or other humanities-focused studies afterwards.

at high school and college levels, which the whole point of those studies is to show how power connects all of us and we are shaped and moved by it all. So I think right now what people are confused with is they're like, whoa, the conflict in Israel and Palestine and Gaza specifically does exist.

echo into my life here in Arkansas in a way that's complicated. It doesn't make sense. And so I think what people should take from all this is that, you know, this sounds really cheeky, but we all are living on this planet together and all connected in some way. And at moments in which we face tremendous grief, we get confused at like, wait, you are my neighbor, you are my friend, but how do I live in this complicated place with you?

And that's the thing, and I love that you can do that. Complication. This is complicated, and what I find most troubling is how the social media conversation around this flattens that nuance and totally strips it from the conversation.

If you just followed the most egregious tweeters, you'd think that all Israelis support Netanyahu and that all Palestinians support Hamas. That's not the case and it can't be the case. And this flattening of identities that's happening right now is extremely problematic because that flattening then allows you to call entire communities animals. We don't need that.

That is not helpful. And I'm just wondering, particularly in the run up to the 2024 election, which could be plagued by even more misinformation. How do we get out of this rut that we're in, this discourse that is inflammatory and flattening? I don't know what any fixes are, and I'm not sure if this is the chat where we offer fixes, but I'm thinking about it.

Let me tell you what I do know now. I suspected, but I know for sure did not happen a couple of years ago. Remember there was like a little tidbit at one point. I remember a bookseller, it was like a year ago, said, can I be really honest? All of those books that people were buying for their anti-racism book clubs. Do you remember this detail? A bookseller, I can't remember where, was like,

you would be surprised how many people ordered books on critical race theory, diversity, what's it, DEI, all that kind of stuff, and didn't even bother to pick up the books. And this bookseller, yes, yes, girl. And this bookseller was like, you know, because when you order books, they kind of stack them up either at the back of the bookstore or behind the counter. They were like, we're running out of room because so many people have ordered books and did not come to get them. And the proof

I think we're now seeing they didn't do the reading, they didn't do the work. You cannot wait until the crisis, until the news literally breaks to learn how to navigate the crisis. And I think we're seeing this. It is complicated. We're talking about a history of what? At least 75 years on the conservative side. Well, thousands before. Bringing us to this particular moment. But I also think, frankly,

A lot of people try to use the phrase, and because they do this with white supremacy, it's complicated as a stopping point. It's so complicated, or I'm just so sad, or oh, just as a white person, I feel like any time I speak up, and thus I don't even pick up the book.

And so I do want to say, we've got to acknowledge that it's not all on Twitter. I guess that's what I'm trying to say. As much as I want Elon to be attacked by the Raven from the fall of the House of Usher, I very much do. I also want us to acknowledge that even in our book clubs, even in our little community groups, even in our little work DI groups in different offices that have since been dismantled, a lot of that work has not been done. And now we're seeing what it manifests as. And so much of the work

I'm seeing play out or not play out semantically.

I've been noticing the way, even outside of Twitter, just in conversation, the words we use to describe these things and the words we use to describe the players and actors involved says a lot about what we think about these groups. I have been noticing when newscasters or people will refer to a death toll and say X amount dead or they were killed, you know?

You know, they died or they were killed. The active voice versus the passive voice says a lot about who you want to hold accountable or not hold accountable for starters. Second thing I've noticed that I find really problematic is

is to act as if a government or a leadership apparatus or a spokesperson or a politician speaks on behalf of an entire citizenry. That's not how it works. We gotta stop acting like Netanyahu speaks for all of Israel and like Hamas speaks for all of Palestine. That is not how it works. Every person in this region is an individual who has their own perspective on what's happening.

And I think a thing that we could all do right now is really, really, really critically ask ourselves what language we use when we discuss this conflict because it says a lot about what we feel. Yeah.

Yeah, and a point in example, it feels significant to me that an information minister in Netanyahu's government in Israel is trying to, I don't know if they're enforcing the regulations, but he's at least suggesting that essentially any people within the Jewish state of Israel who negatively impact the morale, which is to say basically kind of speaks out against

IDF or the Israeli government could risk having property taken away, maybe be faced with jail time. That's really scary, right? But to me, there's another point of significance to this. It underscores that there are many people in Israel who obviously have a problem with Netanyahu, who obviously

Who will say it?

pinkwashing and what's been going on in Palestine for decades. So yes, it's important for us to not flatten. Don't buy into that rhetorical trap of flattening people who you think disagree with you. And I also want to take a moment right now to specifically reference that Sarah Schulman essay, which Zach first shared in the group chat. I think everyone needs to read it. It's called Explanations Are Not Excuses. It's a New York magazine written by Sarah Schulman. She is a visionary and her words are worth your time.

And can I actually just share just a few sentences from it? Sarah Schulman writes, selective recognition is the way we maintain our own sense of goodness. Today, we see this process of denial in every aspect of our lives. And I think, again, that's an important point that don't allow your confirmation bias to cut out other people's humanity.

And if it feels like it's too simple, too easy, it is. There's some complexity there. Go find it. Listeners, we got to take a quick break right now, but stay tuned. We're coming back to this topic right after these ads.

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We're back and we are continuing this conversation on the situation in the Middle East. Zach, I want to talk about a thing that you had been bringing up in the group chat as well. On top of all of the misinformation that's floating online, we're also seeing, foolishly, I know it's not just the Instagram account for Israel, but they have been particularly egregious in the last few days and how they've been lashing out at random celebrities. What's going on there, Zach? Silver.

So we're seeing a lot of pushback from Israeli-run social media platforms, particularly targeting celebrities or public figures. So two of the most high-profile examples have been Gigi Hadid, who is half-Palestinian, the very famous model, sister to Bella Hadid. And they're facing a lot of backlash from the state of Israel itself, kind of condemning their, I would say, pretty...

diplomatic approach to the situation. People were watching them really closely because they've spoken out against what's happening in Gaza really publicly in March. So we're seeing the State of Israel is really using social media to bring a lightning rod into their lives, to use them as an example. Even the Pope too, right? They like clapped back against the Pope. Exactly. I think what was interesting to me was to see a minister in Netanyahu's government push back against the Pope's comments by saying it was inconceivable.

And he was essentially calling for peace. And in a statement, I mean, please read it. It's, you know, it's pretty nuanced. I mean, he references Israel, Palestine. He also references Ukraine. He was basically like anywhere. We should not have innocent people dying anywhere. And the Israeli government said it was inconceivable to receive this. They called it criticism when we are still burying our dead. And I'm like,

Aren't all of y'all bearing your debt? Like, what's going on? Are only one group of people allowed to grieve? And if only one group of people is allowed to grieve, only one group of people is also allowed to behave in this? You know, it was just, it's just really striking. It just feels like one of those moments when you're in high school...

And you're looking at going through the propaganda from World War I or World War II and you're like, loose lips sink ships. And you're like, that worked? Really? And now I'm like, oh, I see exactly how propaganda works. So much of this feels like an echo of how unmoored I felt after the Twin Towers fell.

You were in this moment that had not been touched by social media yet, but where there were inflamed emotions all around and certain people trying to take advantage of that. And it's hard. And what's really, really, really troubling to me is to see some people online...

act as if America and other places should mirror their 9-11 response right now. And it's like, I'm not sure that approach worked out then. I'm glad you're bringing this up because this ties to the flattening of everything. There has been an interesting amnesia around using 9-11 as a focal point for what happened in Israel. And

people think that 9/11 happened without any protests, without any pushback. But all I remember that time was that the anti-war protest. I think it was like 36 million people globally went out and like protested against it. It was like such a vast amount of anti-war sentiment. And that's what made it so complicated is that we have the US government just launching missiles before we can even process what happened and connect the dots here. But that's what makes it even stranger to me or surreal to see is

Yes, after 9-11, all of that kind of stuff happened. But the shock and awe campaign, that's 2003. At least two years take place. And a lot of things that I think about the war on terror that really freaked me out actually happened in 2006. Because of where we are, it's not just social media, but social media is a broader context in which things are just happening so much faster. The rate, it feels like we've sped up.

So it's as if last week was 9-11 and then somehow we've already made it to 2003. You know what I mean? Which is very scary. Instead of slowing things down and trying to be more patient, we're moving even faster than we did then. Yeah. I would feel remiss if we left this chat not acknowledging that.

the reality of anti-Semitism in all of this. In all these conversations, it is a real and present danger. You know, before the events in Palestine and Israel the last few weeks, anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish attacks were on the rise everywhere.

And so I do not want to act in any way as if this conversation is us ignoring that reality. But what I want for us to do and what I hope this conversation inspires others to do is to have conversations that deflatten all this stuff and seek context and get the hell out of your freaking phone. People are trying to litigate all of this through their devices. It's never going to work that way.

We are real people who know how to communicate with other human beings and we should do more of that. And I don't even know how to say, how to go about doing it, but I want to see more of it. But it must be done. It must be done, right? It must be done. I mean, whenever this happens, I worry about the rise of antisemitism. And again, Twitter is, you know, just the way

Gosh, Elon is I think he's made agitating anti-semitism one of his pet projects But we're also seeing you know just in the last few days a six-year-old boy of Muslim descent in a community in Illinois was murdered and his mother was attacked she lived fortunately, but he was killed by a Landlord who was like I'm afraid these Muslims are going to come get me. Yeah, you know so for everyone involved It's just we know this we know how this rhetoric is

Turns into violent action so quickly. And just because these conversations are difficult, maybe we take the difficulty as a sign of its significance, of its importance. You're right. The stakes are high. These are difficult conversations and thus we must have them.

And if the stakes are so high, if it's so significant, what makes you think that you can do all of that work on your phone? You can't. Yes, exactly. You can't do it that way. And to close us out, for a while, years during BLM, people thought, why post? It doesn't do anything. Or they said the opposite. They do it because this is how you show power. This is what my activism looks like.

I think what we're seeing happen in the region right now has kind of escalated social media's role in warfare in ways that we've never really seen before. We're seeing literal social media, the accounts of Israelis who have been taken hostage, who have been killed, who are being tortured.

are now being live streamed on their own personal accounts, which is horrendous and awful. But this is a first. This is the first time this has been happening in war. And I share this not to only, you know, send my sympathies to families directly impacted by that because I could not imagine getting a Facebook notification and seeing a loved one go through that.

It's terrible. But I want, I bring it up to point to the fact that your posts and how social media is used has become so powerful. These things scale so fast. They can go global. They can inspire people to get a gun, can do lots of things. So I think we have to have a lot more consideration in what we're posting and take a breath and think about things before we post them or we share them more now than ever before, I would say. Yeah. You know, I think the beauty of this podcast, and I've told you all this before we even started,

we can use this as a space and a place to model our ideals of conversation. What I admire so much about what we get to do every week is that we learn from each other and we talk with each other in ways where we make the others smarter without making anyone feel stupid. And I think we need more conversations like that. So as we're leaving this chat, I just want to urge all of our listeners to, if they can, when they can and where they can,

Have constructive dialogue, IRL, and don't just be an activist from your phone. It's not doing nearly as good as you think it is. We are real humans who need to be around real people talking this shit out. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, I mean, I think...

Sit down with someone. Sit down with someone. I mean, because the thing is, I don't think people are trying to be active with their phones. I think the simple truth is that it is easier to communicate when you were typing on a small device in your hands. It's just easier. You're a little bolder. You speak with a little bit more volume when you're just tap, tap, tap, tap. But when you have to...

Sit down with somebody in the face, look them in the eye. You know, it changes very quickly. But that is that is worthy work. And I think we would all benefit from. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to wrap now. Listeners, we're going to share some of the readings that we've cited this conversation today in the show notes.

And trust that we will most likely talk about this topic again. We are a work in progress. This show is always a work in progress. And we are not Middle East scholars. We're trying our best. We appreciate y'all for listening. But let us know with your emails what you want to hear more of and how we can be helpful to our listeners in this moment. Okay, we're going to take another quick break, but don't go anywhere. When we come back, we'll be sharing some recommendations, hopefully to help you keep your vibe right.

This message is brought to you by McDonald's. Did you know only 7.3% of American fashion designers are Black? Well, McDonald's 2024 Change Leaders Program is ready to change the face of fashion. The innovative program awards a monetary grant to five emerging Black American designers and pairs each with an industry professional to help them elevate their brands.

I know specifically and distinctly how McDonald's can support and empower not just black Gen Z, but black people. My first job was McDonald's. I learned a lot there about customer service and how to relate to people. I still love that place and go there very often. Look out for the change of fashion designers and mentors.

at events like the BET Awards and the Essence Festival of Culture. And follow the journey of the 2024 McDonald's Change Leaders on their Instagram page, WeAreGolden. You were made to travel the world and the seven seas and countless lakes and innumerable rivers and one perfect pond. Get travel ideas from Chad GPT on Expedia. Made to travel.

Alright listeners, we're back and it's that time of the show where we like to share things that are keeping our vibes right this week. To kick us off, I'd love to throw to Sam Sanders and talk about what's keeping his vibes right. I am going to recommend a most wonderful distraction from who I think it's fair to say, and y'all know this,

Maybe my favorite white lady author. I just love her. I love this woman. Taffy Broaddus or Ackner. She wrote Flashman is in Trouble and wrote the TV show version of it. But she's also, I think, the most incredible magazine celebrity profile writer that the world has ever seen. I've mentioned her celebrity profile of Melissa McCarthy from a few years ago, which was literally the impetus for my take on this idea of modern scriptures. I love her work that much. Recently for the New York Times Magazine, I've

Taffy profiled the Taylor Swift tour, but not by talking to Taylor, by going to the nosebleed seats of a Taylor show in Santa Clara, I want to say, and embedding herself fully in nosebleed section 301. And she weaves this beautiful story of eras and what it means and Taylor's version of womanhood, but through the very specific and distinct, um,

eyes of the people that she was sitting with at this concert. If you need something to take you out of the shit that we're living in right now, read this piece. It's 20 to 30 minutes of wonderful prose, beautiful ideas, and Taffy's just amazing writing. Even if you don't like Taylor Swift, this article is so good. It'll be in the show notes.

Taffy's really great. I wanted to say my favorite piece of journalism from her actually isn't a profile. It's a kind of like investigative journalism, I guess, more of that genre about Zales. Do you remember that? Oh, yeah.

And it is so good because it's about like, you know, scandal and, you know, stuff that's going on at this company. But also because Taffy always finds this other nuance to bring to things. It's also about diamonds. It's about love and the way diamonds and jewelry, you cheat on your wife, you get her, you know, a tennis bracelet. Like all these ideas about marriage, heteronormativity also come up. And so it's kind of like how love is kind of sold to us. Yes. So good. This is the thing, Taff,

Safi knows how to write about symbolism and meaning. And so she'll start these things. We're like, it's just about a current thing. It's about a current event. It's about a celebrity. And then she takes a turn and she's like, this is actually about the symbols that we use to define who we are. And you're like, damn, girl, you took me there. I love it. I just love it. She's amazing. She's amazing. Sayid, what's keeping your vibes right? It's keeping my vibe right, especially today. I had to read some poems to calm myself down.

You know, I love just living in conversation with other people. And so for me, my recommendation is A Book of Poems, of course, by Frannie Choi, a wonderful queer Asian writer that I am grateful to know in real life. The title of this book is...

The world keeps ending and the world goes on. And hello. And something I love about this book, particularly as someone who wrote like Alive at the End of the World, is I feel that Franny productively and effectively leans into the so what.

in a way that I frankly wish I had done more in my last book and committed to doing more in my writing because it's not enough to say that the world is ending. The world does go on, so where do we go from there? This poem is Celebrate Good Times. The regime is having a birthday party.

So we turn off the lights and pretend we're sick. All night, happy Americans honk their horns. We did it, they scream into our window. In the morning, we is all over the floor. We sweep we into a paper bag and label it emergency. The good news is that things will go back to the way they were, which is also the bad news.

Meanwhile, I cut an onion and it's onions all the way down. And that's a fine reason to cry at the sink on a Monday after the empire congratulates itself on persisting again. No, thank you. I'm stuffed. I couldn't possibly have more hope. I haven't finished mourning the last tyrant yet. I haven't said enough goodbyes to, oh, what was her name and hers? How many wheeze did they cut out of me?

And whose country was I standing on the last time we survived?

Thank you, Franny Choi, for that poem. Wow. I love that. I love that. That is whose country we're standing on the last time we survived. Jeez. Zach, what's your rec? My rec this week is a film called Out in the Dark by Michael Mayer. It came out in 2012. It's a film that is about a Palestinian man and an Israeli man falling in love. It's pretty radical. It was made in the region by an Israeli filmmaker, Michael Mayer. But why I'm recommending it...

is for two points. One, people have been sharing Queering the Map, which is an incredible, incredible digital tool that you can see a literal map of the world where users can put in geographic locations their own stories about place, about being queer. It's a really, as someone that loves geography, it's an amazing tool that you should be checking out.

It's actually an example of social media and technology that's given me a bit of hope. Exactly. And this week, we've seen a lot of screenshots go viral of Gazans who are queer because there is a queer community in Gaza posting about loved ones lost or their own feelings around grief and what's happening that have really struck people.

So with that, I thought, oh, there's a movie people can watch if you're wanting to dive into this deeper from someone from the region. And the movie's really beautiful. It has a really interesting ending that's not typical for most romances because it has to talk about the issues at hand. But it's just a great, it's a wonderful, wonderful movie I rewatched last night. I remember seeing it 2012 and really just being struck by understanding that

love, even in times of grief and devastation, continues to find a way and that we still don't want to be alone at the end of the day. Not being alone can look like a lot of different types of relationships. So definitely check it out if you're interested in learning more about what it means to be queer in the region and dealing with the complications. And the characters, I should note, the Palestinian character lives in the West Bank and the Israeli character lives in Tel Aviv. So that's how they're able to be close to each other.

I really appreciate you mentioning Queering the Map and this film that I will go watch because, again, just like I was saying, seeing grief be weaponized, it's been striking to see people...

different parts of the spectrum tried to weaponize queer politics. How dare you sympathize with those people? Don't you know they would kill you? Or don't you know marriage equality is not legal in Israel? You know, back and forth, back and forth. And I just, it makes me think again, to go back to the 2000s, the way in which people used feminism to

to justify invading Iraq. Did you know what they're doing to women there? They got them in burqas over there. We gotta free them. We must. And then 20 years later, here we are. And obviously I care about women's equality. Obviously I care about queer rights and I want people to be able to get married and to live their truth safely and loudly. I will not, however,

I will not, however, allow anyone to use my care for those issues to justify violence. I will not. There you go. Yeah. I will say one more recommendation. I'm going to beat this horse because I can. Might I recommend talking with your good friends? My stress level has been diminished so greatly just by having this time with y'all. I want to say clearly here so our listeners hear it. I appreciate y'all. I learned from y'all.

being in conversation with you both is good for my soul. So I hope that our listeners hearing us have this conversation today in this episode can go find their circles and their people and get some of the same. That's my recommendation. And to be clear, if it's any consolation, the three,

of us do not agree we are not exactly in unison not at all because how could we be we're three people but we're constructive yeah yeah it's not just that we found two people that we absolutely agree with on every facet of this and thus we had a great conversation no it's thinking about what kind of conversation we want to have and how can we deepen our humanity together that's

That's it. It's not on you to solve the crisis. It's on you to deepen your humanity. I want to build and be part of a community where we talk about difficult things constructively. Listeners, what are you feeling or not feeling this week? What recs do you have for us? Send them all to our email at vibecheckatstitcher.com.

Truly, listeners, thank you all so much for checking out this week's episode of Vibe Check. If you love the show and want to support us, please make sure to follow the show on your favorite podcast listening platform. Subscribe, review, rate, tell a friend. All of these things help us out. Truly, they do. Huge thank you to our producer, Chantel Holder, engineer Sam Kiefer, and Brendan Burns and Marcus Humphrey for our theme music and sound design.

Also, special thanks to our executive producers, Nora Ritchie at Stitcher and Brandon Sharp from Agenda Management and Production. Also, thank you to Julia Russo, who joined us today to help us keep this train on the rails. Thank you, Julia. And of course, we want to hear from all of you. Don't forget, you can email us politely.com.

That part. At vibecheckatstitcher.com and keep in touch with us on Instagram at The Ferocity, at Sam Sanders, and at Zach Staff. You can also find me on Blue Sky where we have started a book club about sheep. It's a whole thing. Look, me and Tressie are setting it off on Blue Sky. Y'all aren't ready. Join the party. We're into sheep now. Wow. Find us there. This is where Saeed admits that one of his investors is Blue Sky. Bye.

Ah, bitch. Okay. But for now, stay tuned for another episode next Wednesday. Stay safe out there and failing that. Stay humane. Bye. Stitcher. Every day, our world gets a little more connected, but a little further apart. But then there are moments that remind us to be more human.

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