Ho Ho Ho? Or Ho Ho... NO! That's right, it's almost Christmas which means GRAB YOUR GUNS LIBS LET'S HUNT. Lydia takes us through the history of this extremely stupid Fox News Panic. Feel free to email us at lydia@seriouspod.com or thomas@seriouspod.com ! Please pretty please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/wherethereswoke !...
Part 7 of We Shouldn't Name Anything for John Stennis Brewer was victorious at the Supreme Court. So... hurray? Kemper County throws a parade for our freed victims and ushers them home? NOPE. The Kemper Trio remain in jail, with no idea what the future holds. Brewer's fight isn't done. Find out how this all concluded, and the Animal House ending for everyone! Content warning: old timey racist language
Part 6 of We Shouldn't Name Anything for John Stennis We meet our hero! And he kicks ass. How in the world did he beat all the odds and take this case to the Supreme Court? Find out! Content warning: old timey racist language Feel free to email us at lydia@seriouspod.com or thomas@seriouspod.com ! Please pretty please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/wherethereswoke !...
Part 5 of We Shouldn't Name Anything for John Stennis Our last stop in present-ish time before we go back to 1930s Mississippi. In researching the ways our modern jurisprudence is barely better than the 1930s, I came across a death row story so compelling I had to tell it. A man was convicted of a horrible, horrible crime. The rape and murder of a 4 year old girl, his girlfriend's daughter. He always professed his innocence. I tell the story of his decades long fight for freedom, the twists and ...
Part 4 of We Shouldn't Name Anything for John Stennis The trial has ended. We start the aftermath. The Kemper Trio are due to be murdered by racists as fast as possible. We take a look at the legal landscape of the time, and then have to take a quick detour as it turns out things are actually WORSE now in many ways. Don't believe me? What if I told you the Supreme Court ruled that being innocent is not a good enough reason for the state to not kill you? What if I told you that happened in 1993 n...
Part 3 of We Shouldn't Name Anything for John Stennis At long last, we hear the real story from the defendants themselves. And we meet Satan. Content warning: this episodes contains mention of horrendous racial violence. Feel free to email us at lydia@seriouspod.com or thomas@seriouspod.com ! Please pretty please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/wherethereswoke !...
Part 2 of We Shouldn't Name Anything for John Stennis. What really happened in the trial of Ed Brown, Yank Ellington, and Henry Shields? Well, since this is WTW we can't just tell you that small bit of information and have a 3 minute episode. Instead, we've got some historical context, a detailed look at the state's case (argued by Stennis), and then some... more historical stuff. Then finally, some speculation on what might have really happened to Raymond Stewart! Content warning: this episodes...
This line of research has turned up SO much. Have we got a series for you! This goes so many places. First, we look at John Stennis's pre-Senate life. He eventually white privileged himself into being a Mississippi prosecutor. In that role, he went after 3 black men for a murder they almost certainly didn't commit. The case was so bad it became a landmark Supreme Court case. Content warning: this episodes contains mention of horrendous racial violence. Feel free to email us at lydia@seriouspod.c...
It's a SPOOKTACULAR!!! Lydia takes us through an evolution of Fox News vs. Halloween costumes over the last several years. They're for sure having a normal one. Then, Lydia has a top secret even worse thing than Fox News that she won't spoil. Don't miss it! Feel free to email us at lydia@seriouspod.com or thomas@seriouspod.com ! Please pretty please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/wherethereswoke !...
And you thought we were done campaigning to get stuff at NASA renamed! Well, so did we, to be honest. But then one line in Space Karen's emails we FOIAed changed everything! These next two episodes are a fascinating look at an old Dixiecrat and how effing racist people like that were able to be while still being not just accepted, but HIGHLY regarded and honored within our political institutions. Lydia has lots of archival material for us that paints a very vivid and troubling picture. But, you ...
WTW submitted its first FOIA related to the Jelliscope Welliscope a while back, and we received responses from NASA to share with you all! Thomas cluing in on one email thread in the midst of hundreds of pages from Nature's FOIA kicked off this quest and we learned a whole lot more about this Space Karen as a result. We also get into more of why Sean O'Keefe is a piece of work with a story Lydia stumbled on in the process. For our amazing patrons, we're attaching the emails themselves as a treat...
You might have seen the recent viral TikTok of an unmarried, child-free woman spontaneously deciding to make shakshuka for breakfast after sleeping in a bit the morning after going to the Beyonce concert - or the backlash from conservatives and the anti-woke that promptly followed. So did we, and we've invited none other than unmarried, child-free man Heath Enwright on the show to break down the Fox News reaction. It somehow involves Ancient Rome??? Is one happy unmarried woman the end of all of...
Jason Kilborn Part 6: The Grand Finale Folks. You must listen. Seriously. This is too good. It's too good. I can't believe I found this. Kilborn has an incredibly weird, salacious, shocking, but also eerily similar event from his past. In this episode, I take you through the story as told by court documents. Then, get ready for some major context debunking and soap boxing as we bring this thing to a close. Please pretty please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/wherethereswoke !...
In this penultimate part, we go through why thefire.org is a fucking joke. Sorry, why they are a joke in relation only to THIS case. There are about a billion other reasons they're a joke but we'll have to cover those at a later date. Then from there, we go through the legal stuff. Kilborn SWORE he'd defeat the fascistic tyrants of UIC in court. How did that prediction hold up? Please pretty please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/wherethereswoke !...
Jason Kilborn Part 4: Hey Maybe He's Just An Asshole? It just keeps getting so much worse. Just wait until you hear unfiltered Kilborn and his Jesus complex. There are also some incredibly embarrassing details about the "settlement" he and the school came to. Not only embarrassing for Kilborn, but also for thefire.org. If you didn't know, thefire.org actually sucks. Not only will you hear some of that, future parts contain way more about how much The Fire sucks! Please pretty please consider bec...
Jason Kilborn Part 3: Fucking Duh. Here's What He Really Got In Trouble For In this part, which was FIVE HOURS PLUS of raw audio, I go through the investigation report and several other authoritative documents and we discover what Kilborn actually got in trouble for. I did edit this down a lot, but this monstrosity still turned into two parts so expect the next part very soon! Please pretty please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/wherethereswoke !...
Jason Kilborn Part 2: A Sally Sitwell Side Quest Lydia takes us through the Sally Satel artisanal coffee fiasco. It's a story that was referenced by Jason Kilborn in his Campus Reform interview. Does the anecdote hold up? Or is the complete opposite true. We also get our first preview of thefire.org being an absolute joke. There's so much here. There's also some yelling. I firmly believe it's justified, but apologies if you don't like yelling. Please skip forward rather than turning it off becau...
Part 1: Anatomy of a Bull Shit We begin a new series at last! UIC Law Prof Jason Kilborn was BANNED from campus due to the woke left not being able to handle seeing a redacted racial slur in an exam question. He was forced to undergo sensitivity trainings and write essays. At least... that's how Bill Maher and every anti-woke clone present this one. But is it true? Well, you'll have to wait for that answer, but in the meantime, we go through the origins of this wokelore. And we see how it spread...
It's an Ample Sample (tm)(butnotreally) of the August Bonus which goes out to 2nd tier patrons and above! Pledge at that level to get the whole thing, but I wanted to share a large chunk of it with everyone, because we put our hearts into it and want to share it widely! This was a massive recording. You'll hear, I originally thought it was going to be episode 7, but it went on so long and we couldn't avoid playing a TON of Ben Shapiro, so I called an audible and it became the August bonus! I hop...
This is the second (and final!) part on Michael Powell's first NYT story, which left out crucial context and fundamentally misled people about Title IX and about Trump/DeVos's policy changes. Folks. There are 2 major bombshells in this one. There's also disturbing resemblence to the NASA JWST story in terms of how Powell bungled this one. 'Bungled' is actually too delightful a word for what is more accurately described as blatant lying. Please pretty please consider becoming a patron at patreon....
Michael Powell is the (former) NYT journalist who completely botched the JWST coverage, as previously discussed at length here. But did you know before that he also completely botched some Title IX / Campus Sexual Assault coverage? We've got his asshole origin story here and it's every bit as terrible as you'd expect. This is a two-parter, and I promise you the payoff in later part 2 is worth the slow burn. There is a paragraph in his story that is some of the worst journalism I've ever seen. Pl...
It's a Woke Monster of the Week! Jordan Peterson and Richard Dawkins take turns giving each other public handies while they debate the most important question of 2014. That is - Has the Left gone too far? Dawkins lies about the one thing he should be an expert in in order to outdo Peterson's transphobia. Fortunately we have the Richard Dawkins (Eli Bosnick) to read his own shitty Substack and get to the bottom of this whole thing. Please pretty please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/wh...
Oh god this one was so much fun. Join me, Lydia, and my brother Sam Smith as we debunk and roast a delightfully stupid but pathologically dishonest Fox News segment! Wait... that could describe literally all of them. But THIS one was about New York Pizza Ovens! Please pretty please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/wherethereswoke !
It's the 4th and final part of the #RenameJWST series! In this episode, we finally delve into the actual history of James Webb and the Lavender Scare. How much can we hold him accountable? What does the evidence tell us about his role? And how do the defenses of his character hold up to scrutiny? There is so much in this. I've never worked even half this amount of time on another show before. I hope you enjoy!
This is part 3 in the NASA James Webb Telescope naming controversy! Make sure you've listened to the first two! When NASA decided to keep the name James Webb for their telescope, the decision was so abruptly made and hastily communicated that not just one but several journalists submitted FOIA requests to see what actually happened. This trove of emails is the result of that. I take you through the highlights and lowlights. There are SEVERAL smoking guns in these emails. Not only were those not ...
It's part 2 of when the woke came for James Webb. Featuring Lydia Smith! If NASA higher ups are willing to defend the status quo tooth and nail, you'd think there must be a good reason for that status quo, right? It's not just something incredibly dumb that they inherited? Something that may have even violated their own policy? It couldn't be that, right? Then Lydia comes on and takes us through some other NASA projects and how they were named. She also uncovered a bombshell or two!
This is the big one. The thing that pissed me off so effing much that it spawned an entire new project. Ok fine I admit it, Where There's Woke is a spite project. The NYT Daily Podcast did an episode on the James Webb Telescope name controversy called "When the Culture Wars Came for NASA." It's fucking terrible journalism. Just awful. Already with just the title. How about "When the Entrenched Powers at NASA Refused to Budge in the Face of Very Reasonable Concerns from the LGBTQIA+ Community It ...
Welcome to Where There's Woke! This first episode is about the time a woman expressed an opinion on the internet and throngs of men never got over it. Wait that's... nowhere near descriptive enough. This was the one involving the skeptic and atheist movement. Still not enough. Ok. It was when Richard Dawkins lost his mind at Rebecca Watson. THERE we go. Support the show at patreon.com/wherethereswoke to gain access to tons of great stuff and to keep this project going!...
