Exit 38

It's the summertime crunch for Emily, but she found time to talk to Sean anyway. Emily has been teaching Hannah Arendt's "We Refugees", which is pretty timely. It's important to add personal testimony to facts in order to persuade people. Which reminds Sean of Varlam Shalamov the Soviet author who was published after his death. Sean talks a little about his service in Iraq. Then we pivot to Orwell. We hear it a lot these days and do we really know what it means? Totalitarianism does not belong to a political party, but should be avoided at all costs. And this conversation brings up for Sean - why the outrage against Trump that he didn't feel about Bush?

Ok, so what should the President have said in Helsinki? Sean takes a stab at it. And then what happens if collusion is found? Does it invalidate the election? What happens next? At what point is it a constitutional crisis? Sean and Emily tackle a lot of questions in this short but sweet episode.

Trump's Supreme Court nominee pick leads to a deeper conversation about abortion, Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, and how we are collectively debating the wrong part of the equation.

Introducing a new podcast from The Other 50% network - The Kiss My Age Show. This is a forum for women to talk about anything and everything - all the things that matter.

This conversation is around civility and asks the question: how are we to behave? Sean and Emily discuss the incident of The Red Hen. Emily explains the smokey eye joke. What is the right way to dissent? If the desired outcome is to have the people in power change their perspective, what is the best way to do that? Sean is concerned at how quickly things turn into violence, and he wants the democratic process to work. Michelle Wolf gives Emily life.

Where Emily and Sean discuss border security, family separation, immigration policy and the political backlash that resulted.

This is the episode where will drill down on where Sean and Emily are coming from. What are their core values? Do they fit into a political box? Do they identify with a label? What informs their political perspectives?

Sean has a full bar, a double-decker couch, and a ball pit at his house. All parties will be there from now on. Sean also has a foundation for parents of special needs kids called Care 4 Us, which he explains. The conversation wound its way to campus assault and reporting, Woody Allen, beach badge checkers, football, and cheerleading. All the things. Apparently, Sean was a dominant force for the Ventnor Pirates in the late '80s. And Emily cheered her fanny off. They circled back to go deeper on last week's racism conversation as well.

Eric Greitens has resigned in disgrace. This is antithetical to the person Sean knew and worked with in the Navy's Special Ops. This sent Sean into a bit of a crisis of cognitive dissonance. Greiten's PHD thesis was on ethics and refugee studies. Among other things, the mental gymnastics that had to happen for him to embrace the Trump administration was really troubling to Sean. Emily has more experience with sociopaths and is less surprised by people. Sean feels like he understands less about the world than he thought he did. And he calculated presidential algorithms in his book. That tells you everything you need to know.

Emily, the rabble rouser, was kicked out of the Ventnor Facebook forum. Find out why. This episode discusses the arc of systemic racism in America. How has it improved and how is it still a mess? Emily and Sean put monuments into context and talk about what we should do. Is it ever ok to discuss the question of economic benefits of slavery in an academic setting? And should someone get fired if they do? Sean believes as a nation we are less racist than we were at the beginning. Emily believes we are every bit as racist as we were in 1863. Sean is talking about racist feelings, Emily is talking about racist systems and institutions. What is racism vs what is implicit bias? Your pre-work for this episode: look up "Hegelian Synthesis"

A discussion about the Oscars leads to a war strategy discussion about Abraham Lincoln. Naturally. Can movies be still be successful and meaningful? Sean knows the Marvel universe is real. Emily has an opinion about that. Emily ruins movies for Sean by explaining the Bechdel Test. They can agree on the fact that "When Harry Met Sally" is great, even though it is a hetero-normative patriarchal film. Your pre-work for this episode: go look up "cone of empathy." The episode would not be complete without discussing the genius of Donald Trump, and of course, the female orgasm. But, not in relation to each other.

Let's start with school shootings. Emily is terrified of guns and has no experience with them. Sean has lots of experience with guns, likes them and has great respect for them. But, he's not sure the NRA is representative of most gun owners. Then, is gun interest gendered? And why? Let's go down the path of Freud and talk about female agency over their own bodies. The white male body is the standard, and anything else is considered "other." Which naturally leads to the elusive female orgasm and the politics therein. If it was someone's job to eliminate school shootings tomorrow, what might that look like?

This is a show where Emily VanDuyne, a Women Studies professor, and Sean Patrick Hughes, a Vet, Conservative, Christian, political blogger, find common ground while discussing the issues of the day from opposite sides of the fence.