DSA Candidate Slams "Proximity To Whiteness," and Tennis Star SUPPORTS Women, with Matt Taibbi, Plus Roland Orzabal of "Tears For Fears" | Ep. 1373

29:52okay i don't know why that's funny that's actually really fucking scary okay you found it and there's a huge impetus of why i left I will say this too. One of the reasons why it's in the news is the Republicans have until tomorrow if they want to replace him as their candidate. Wednesday is Ohio's deadline to trigger a special election to replace Miller on the ballot. Republicans, reading here from Axios, could still fill a vacancy through a party committee, but would have to certify a replacement by August 10th. If he withdraws after August 10th, Republicans cannot replace him. The AP reporting Democrats see Miller could be vulnerable in a district he won two years ago with just over 51 percent of the vote.

30:42So it wasn't exactly a runaway. His Democrat opponent is union iron worker Brian Poindexter, who the Democrats selected as like a manly man who might be able to win crossover voters because they're realizing now that they've gone to a feat in their selection of especially male candidates. So there are stakes involved. The Republican Party has a decision to make here about how badly this is going to blow up in their faces if they stick with this guy. And there's a lot more either in Emily's, you know, coffers or somebody else's. So do you stick with the one who's got the name recognition who they did vote for already?

31:25Or do you replace him and put yourself in a situation like they're in the Dems are in Maine where you might pick somebody who married or at least had sex with and had children with their second cousin? I don't know. I mean, if you got to pick the guy who thinks it looks good to release a tape of him denying that he had, or not even denying that he had needles next to his bed. I don't know. I mean, I guess the quality, the general quality or pool of possible candidates must be so low out there that they just can't find somebody who isn't crazy to run for higher office. That's the only conclusion I can draw from that.

32:07But certainly listening to that. I think it is. about my own marriage and count my blessings, I guess. But totally, totally. And also, I've reinforced my own conclusion, which is the solution to all of our problems is not in Washington. You know, it's in private industry. It's in ourselves. It's in our schools, which does require us to vote in local elections, especially. But those nimrods in D.C. are not going to get us out of any of the jams we're in. Sadly, it's up to us. Sorry to break it to us, but it is. You're not, do not rely on any of these people as the answer. Okay, let's keep going because there's a lot of other news.

32:46Now, you've been following the saga of this Cambridge professor, and every day we get about 20 new pieces of his alleged bio that are either under attack or actually are falling apart. And today it's not a great update for him. I don't think you can dispute that he's, like by the day, suffering credibility problems. Here's the latest. The UK Telegraph is reporting that this charity, WaterAid, is now throwing water on his account of volunteering for them. His bio on the website of his speakers agency, the Simon and Schuster Speakers Bureau, because he's coming out with a book, stated until recently that this professor at Cambridge, again, they tout him as the youngest black professor ever at Cambridge.

33:45And all these allegations, plagiarism and others that we're going to go through, he has dismissed as racism, racism, racism. This is about an ableism. He also added that lately too, because he claims that he was autistic and nonverbal for the first 11 years of his life and he had to do sign language and then miraculously went on to become a PhD and defended his PhD after having just gotten brain cancer and also, I think, some lung issue. Okay, anyway, just want you to know he says it's all racist. So here's what Simon & Schuster's Speakers Bureau, his bio said until recently, that this Professor Arday, Jason Arday, has also undertaken and completed relief work in South America and West Africa with WaterAid.

34:36That's the name of the charity, installing water points which provide drinkable and clean water. This is the UK Telegraph reporting. WaterAid, however, says it never sends volunteers abroad. Again, he said he's undertaken and completed relief work in South America and West Africa with WaterAid. They say we never send volunteers abroad. The name of WaterAid has now been removed from his bio on the website. Then there's Glasgow University, where on the Cambridge Faculty of Education page, Professor Jason Arde claims that he is a visiting professor at Glasgow School of Education. However, this was denied by the university spokesman at the University of Glasgow.

35:22Well, I can confirm that Professor Arde is not a visiting professor here and was never. Now, back in 2021, I believe he was a sociology of education professor there, but their point is he left, moved to Cambridge in 2023 and has no ongoing affiliation with the university and was never a visiting professor, which is yet another thing that's on his bio, but it's not true. One more for you from today. uh, Cambridge per independent journalist, Benjamin Ryan, who's been doing a good job on this Cambridge quietly edited his college bio sometime between January 1st and August 2nd of 2026. Uh, our days title changed from professorial fellow of education to fellow of education.

36:17They got rid of the professorial and an MA in education studies from Liverpool, John Moores vanished from the list of his degrees. It was up there and now it's gone. And sorry, Matt, the final thing is we get word today that he was supposed to sit down with the New York Times. He canceled yesterday, decided he did not want to do that. query why, but he did state that there is a well-documented playbook for discrediting black academics in high-profile positions, and it's been used to devastating effect in the U.S. And now with me in the U.S., my greatest hope is that what is happening to me now will serve to further expose these actions and forces.

37:08Okay. So anyway, right now, Cambridge is standing by him. Simon & Schuster is standing by him. There's an online petition by all these woke, young, white women to make sure we all stand by him. But the bloom is coming off this rose and fast. This is an unbelievable story, Megan. I mean, this is so devastating, not just to this one professor, but to all of academia and, frankly, other industries as well. I mean, think about that Speaker's Bureau. We all have public personas online now. In the Internet age, everybody has to check what they say to make sure that it's true before you put it online.

37:52It's just a reflexive thing nowadays. You don't make a claim on social media or on Twitter without making sure that something's there. But you see all these institutions are willing to put their own names behind the claims of a professor like this without checking first. Clearly, someone didn't check with that charity. The Speakers Bureau didn't check with the charity before they put that up on their site. the university, Cambridge, has all kinds of things that they're now taking down, which means that they didn't check them in the first place, which is incredible, especially when you look at the writing of this person.

38:34You know, when I first read about this plagiarism scandal, I always try to check it myself because you never know what people are calling plagiarism. Sometimes it's language that's close, and sometimes it's only a few instances, and sometimes it's a failure to cite or something like that. In this case, it's absolutely clear that there's no doubt whatsoever. His writing is filled with borrowed passages wholesale so much that there's an error with a possessive apostrophe, like in the title of one of his papers that he's, you know. Many, many errors. And by the way, that mistake by itself should be discrediting for a senior academic.

39:17I mean, if you if you put teachers with a an apostrophe on it and you, I guess, think that that means that it's plural or something like that, you wouldn't get it past the high school. Listen to this one, Matt. Chris Burnett, Brunette, independent journalist who helped Chris Ruffo expose Claudine Gay at Harvard. He he says, OK, Jason, our day has published 34 academic publications. I'm too lazy to check them all. He writes, I pick two at random. Number one, understanding race and educational leadership in higher education. Number two, what are the issues for black and ethnic minority students?

39:55I'm just starting to get a feeling for why they love him so much at places like Cambridge. OK, here are some funny mistakes I found. This is quoting our day. Increasing diagonalisies of mental illness. He was attempting to write diagnoses. Will enviably impact attainment outcomes. Of course, he meant inevitably, not enviably. Mental illness supposedly destabilizes individuals, apostrophe, mental facilities. He meant faculties. Heightens feelings of sensibility and vulnerability. He meant sensitivity. and there are few opportunities available for them gain these types of opportunities. Them gain.

40:45Matt, this guy just picked random two and they want us to believe this guy's there. He's up there on his own merit. He deserves it. The claims of plagiarism are completely unfounded. This has been investigated. He was exonerated, which does not appear to be true that he was exonerated. It looks to me like he did commit plagiarism in multiple instances and they're willing to overlook it. And this is the point that's really the central thing. I mean, think about what's happened in journalism in the last 15 to 20 years, really more the last 10. We've seen this phenomenon of really terrible, serious mistakes that are overlooked.

41:27And the newspapers don't go back and either admit it or change the mistakes. Because, you know, as it turns out, once upon a time, the most important thing was getting it right. Now, the most important thing is the content directionally, politically in the place that we want it to be. So all the wrong Russiagate stories, they're still out there because people want that to be true. Even the publications do. The same thing is happening in academia. As long as the person is preaching the right gospel, they're willing to overlook a complete lack of scholarship, a lack of literacy, an inability to communicate.

42:06This is a person who's supposed to be teaching other people how to write and think and can't do it in Cambridge. At Cambridge, at one of the great universities of the world. What message are you sending to people with this? You're telling them that it's okay to not be able to write, think, spell, use grammar. What's the point? Yeah. Soft bigotry of low expectations being applied in real time on this guy. Got a couple more for you here. So first of all, he claimed that he ran 600 miles in six days, and then he changed it to 12 days. Took him 12 days to do. Okay. Like this would make him one of the great runners in the world, but no one knows his name.

42:50Okay. I mean, many people have questions, but then we hear him, um, also talk about how when he got his PhD, he had to, you know, you have to defend it whenever you, um, you have to, you have to submit a dissertation and defend your PhD orally verbally. And now he claims that he had to do that while battling a brain tumor and some sort of lung issue. Um, it's in this sound bite take a listen to this i'm sorry but patently ridiculous claim he makes in a 2022 interview with welcome sanger institute it's about 29 i would say the most defining moment or some of the real moments when i got my phd so i completed my phd in two and a half years working full-time so like i i killed myself to do it but the reason why it was really significant which I've said publicly now, so I might as well say it.

43:51But at the time, I had a brain tumor. And I had my brain tumor removed two weeks before I had my Viva. So I didn't remember anything. So I had a stroke straight after. So passing that was really, really significant. Okay. So you had a brain tumor and there was some other lung issue that he's claiming he had as well. Two weeks before he had to defend his dissertation, but it went swimmingly, Matt. I got like 600 miles and brain tumors and lung issues and defending your dissertation, which you completed your Ph.D. in two and a half years, which is extraordinary after being nonverbal for, you know, until age 11.

44:31And you've also been doing this all alleged work overseas with this group, water, whatever, which now maybe you did. Maybe you didn't. Unclear. And what we get instead of like, you know, condemnation. Like, let's get off of this lily pad. OK, there's plenty of lily pads we can jump on where we support black or in some way challenged individuals who had autism. But this is instead what we get from places like the Good Law Project, SOT 28. You might have not heard who Jason Ardae is. Jason is the youngest black professor in Cambridge's history. And to the surprise of literally no one from the start, newspapers like The Telegraph and the times have been calling him a diversity poster boy and just overall annoying him but now they're taking it a step further and they're trying to smear him with accusations of plagiarism a baseless smear campaign against a distinguished black academic isn't just a personal attack it's an attempt to shut down a black person who has a platform and they keep doing this again and again if you want to join us comment jason we'll send you a link to add your name to our open letter to stand in solidarity with Jason and to help us tell right-wing newspapers that, again, they can't say and do whatever they want, not on our watch.

45:51Your thoughts on it, Matt? So, look, if you want to be progressive, and I certainly think of myself as, you know, wanting to be racially progressive, you're hurting the cause by defending a person like this and standing on wrong facts and saying a person is not guilty of plagiarism when they are anybody is going to be able to go and check for themselves and they're going to find it out and they're going to conclude that you're lying not just about this but about everything they're going to question every person that you support um so this does tremendous damage to their own movement uh and that's why i don't understand that i mean for all these institutions to stand behind this person You know, I think about what I was taught.

46:36I was taught that if a source tells you a story and you find that they've lied about anything ever, never to use anything that that source tells you because that's the only way to protect yourself. Here they have a person who's lied about all sorts of things and they're lifting him up to one of the most prestigious positions in academia. It's just not worth propping up the lie. I don't understand what they have to gain from it. I new lily pad, new lily pad, a couple more for you. Um, the UK times, uh, did an in-depth article and one of the, one of the points that they raised, I thought was interested, interesting.

47:15They said, um, he gave a webinar in July, 2020 about an upcoming paper on mental health issues for black and minority ethnic staff and higher education. In that webinar, he referred to a participant who took their own life and read out their quote, detailing the quote, violence of these racialized cultures in the academic world. Very powerful example. You would think that, you know, he would stay on that. They write, although Arde's paper accepted in September 2020, which is after July of 2020, and published in January 2021, used near identical quotes attributed to a male mixed heritage academic, there was no reference to this person taking their own life.

48:01Certainly seems like that would have been a relevant detail to include in your paper that was written about this. He later told the paper, I have no reason to fabricate or exaggerate black people's suffering in academia. All researchers within reason tend to be selective. It's not possible to use every single bit of information. That's one thing. Okay, I want to keep going. Then there was the business of running all those miles, allegedly for charity. They point out he claimed that doing these runs raised five million pounds for charity. When asked if that figure was accurate, Arde clarified to the Guardian that the money was raised, now it's with the help of many fundraising collectives over a two-decade period.

48:46Oh, so now it's not the runs, it's two decades with a lot of people, not just him. When asked to identify other people who took part in these efforts. He said he had signed NDAs preventing him from disclosing that information because you know how they all want to keep quiet their charitable works. The Guardian also asked Arde about his claim to have run 600 miles in six days as an achievement that would make him one of the world's most gifted endurance runners. He said that because of the cumulative wear and tear of training from his previous running challenges, he had to put rest days in between the running days just to finish the 600 mile challenge, which was actually completed over a 12 day period.

49:25Again, not not six. And then finally, Matt, this now is claiming he's been the victim of all these alleged racist attacks because of mean, mean people like the Telegraph and the Guardian. The Guardian, is that pretty sure that's not a left wing publication saying he's been threatened with a knife, physically assaulted and spat on. He's had rape and death threats being made to him and his family, bananas and bullets being posted to him via the university campus, poison and mutilated animals sent to his family home. When asked what was the mutilated animal, he told the guardian it was a severed pig's head delivered in a large cardboard box to his parents' home.

50:05They immediately threw it away. He couldn't produce it. He said he told the police several months later and there was an investigation. Then the guardian checked with all the butchers and the cops, none of whom knew anything about this and ardently denied having done an investigation into this. So you tell me, Matt Taibbi, where does this story go now? Well, first of all, this is a pattern. If you've ever done any kind of stories about people who are fabulous, once you find the first thing that they've lied about, you'll suddenly discover that there are all kinds of other stories out there. And this kind of person just can't they can't help themselves.

50:47They always if they told the story one way the first time, they want to add something the next time. Oddly enough, Joe Biden is a little bit like this. If you go back and look at his speeches and his explanations about his speeches, he he always seems to want to add something to it. He's not nearly this bad, but that's the pattern with this kind of person. But, you know, But all of these institutional defenders, it's a little bit like the Anthony Fauci story. You cannot penetrate a myth for people who are determined to believe. And no matter how much evidence you throw at them, they will they will still believe it.

51:21And that's a myth. Yeah, that's that's the trap they're stuck in. Thank God we're free. Matt Taibbi, great to see you. Don't go away. We'll be right back. Every season change seems to come with the same realization. a closet full of clothes and absolutely nothing to wear, right? Haven't you been there? Between work, travel, family commitments, and everything else, you might not have the time or frankly, the desire to spend hours and hours shopping. That is why I'm so excited to tell you about Daily Look. You've got to check these guys out. It is the number one highest rated premium personal styling service for women.

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53:10A couple of things we have to get to. House cleaning after yesterday. We talked all about the trans issue yesterday on this show. As you know, that's going on in the WNBA and beyond and beyond. And the usual suspects ran to their corners and started calling the usual names. whatever. I don't, I don't have time for it. Um, but I did want to take this on. Okay. This is just one example. I mean, this woman's in, she's a nobody. I've never heard of her before. Neither have you. Her name is Stephanie Calloy, K-A-L-O-I. And she writes for an industry publication called Mediaite, where they do little write-ups of what's in the news, whether it's podcast or a TV show, what have you.

53:50And she did a write-up of my, uh, talking about how I wish Caitlin Clark had come out and said something in Sophie Cunningham's defense as she twists in the wind. She's always got Caitlin's back, but Caitlin didn't have hers and how she really whiffed on an opportunity to lead in her league. Not like Colin Kaepernick, who injected whether police are racists into NFL football games, but on an issue that directly affects little girls and younger women in her sport, of which she's the queen, right? Why wouldn't you? It's become an issue. It's not her fault it became an issue. It's not Sophie Cunningham's fault either.

54:30She was asked about the men and women's sports thing in, if I'm not mistaken, an ESPN written article. She answered it honestly. And then it came up a week later in a podcast she was doing where they followed up on what she had said to ESPN and she stuck by what she said. And then it burst out into all of the NBA or WNBA arenas where they're now having protests at all these games. The activists are outside protesting her. She's getting booed nonstop whenever she's on the court. So look, I'm not, Megan Kelly did not make this an issue in the WNBA. And frankly, Sophie Cunningham didn't either. ESPN did.

55:09So that's how we got here. Kaylee and Clark may not like it, but it's there. and she punted on it. She chose not to comment, even though it's raining down all around her. And there are young girls in basketball at the high school level, ages 13 to 17, across this country who I'm sure would have loved to have seen her speak out on it, but she didn't have the guts. It's unfortunate. In any event, this nobody who I mentioned in this media publication, Stephanie, took issue with my commentary yesterday that there are, little girls who are getting the shit kicked out of them in their sport, meaning basketball.

55:53She writes, there are none. There are none. Not due to transgender women playing the same sport. In 2022, Leah Thomas became the first openly transgender female athlete to win a Division one title. Thomas was later stripped of her awards in 2025. I'm sure that was a big comfort to all the women whose medals she took and records she took. This person's just wiping it away. It got taken away because Trump won. Trump raised the issue. Trump crammed this down the throats of places like the University of Pennsylvania, threatening all of them. He lived up 100 % to his campaign promise on this. And then they bent the knee because they were forced to.

56:28So let's not pretend, Stephanie, that somehow the University of Pennsylvania just did the right thing by Riley Gaines and the others who were devastated by Leah Thomas's participation in their sport, walking around with his penis out while they had to change completely nude in front of him, not to mention the taking of their medals and their places on the podium. So just stop, okay? Now, as for whether it is true that girls are getting the shit kicked out of them by trans athletes playing in their sports, I'm sorry to inform you, Stephanie, that's true too. Okay? And you might want to do just a little bit of research before you mouth off on this subject rather than getting your talking points from John Oliver.

57:11That never steered anyone right. And we're going to go through a few of them since I get the feeling you're not big on research, sweetheart. I got you. I'm here for you. All right, let's go through a few of them. Massachusetts. We mentioned this yesterday because it's the case we were talking about when I talked about the young girls getting the shit kicked out of them. You didn't really have to look hard, Stephanie. You should have just watched the segment you were ripping on because we played this video yesterday. And here you see a high school player someplace between the ages of 13 and 17, writhing in pain on the ground after the six foot tall trans player yanks the ball away from her so hard that he caused obviously a back injury that kept her on the floor, unable to get up.

57:57This is at this happened in 2024. It is the collegiate charter school of Lowell. It's the girls basketball team. It happened in February of 2024 and the injuries were so severe and multiplied that the team decided to forfeit because the other players were terrified. Okay. It's not ancient history. 2024. So, yeah, that's what I'm referring to. But that's not all. Of course, our audience is very familiar with Peyton McNabb, who was in a North Carolina volleyball match at which a male player spiked the ball so hard into her face that she suffered permanent damage. Her injuries included significant long-term physical and mental effects, impaired vision, partial paralysis on her right side, balance issues, anxiety, and depression.

58:53She was not unconscious by the ball because what happens in volleyball is the net is, I think, seven and a half inches shorter, shorter, lower in women's volleyball than it is in men's volleyball because men have a natural height advantage. Advantage. I think the average height for an American male is like five, nine or five, eight and a half, believe it or not. And for women, it's five, three. Uh, so that's accounted for. And obviously volleyball players on in both sexes tend to be taller. It's one of the things that makes you great at volleyball, but they're both taller. So in any event, they lower the net for women's volleyball.

59:29And when you have a biological male there, you see, uh, he has a natural inborn advantage, not to mention what the testosterone does to his muscles. And it endangers the girls and it endangered Peyton McNabb. And for what it's worth, this guy had zero, zero regrets or apologies to her for hurting her. Peyton's been on our show a few times here. She is describing the impact of her injury to Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented her and so many others who have been hurt by these players in SOT24. I had to wear sunglasses everywhere I went the lights were all really harsh and I couldn't really understand or comprehend my work as well at school so I had to get extra help and accommodations to help with testing and tutoring and stuff and that's never been the case for me and of course the headaches and I was having to have someone with me at all times I couldn't drive for a few months it was really bad at first, but thankfully I've grown a lot since then.

1:00:39I still have to get help now that I'm in college. My body is just in shock and it's still trying to recover. There's still things I'm having to deal with today and it's just completely aggravating because it was 100 % avoidable. If only my rights as a female athlete had been more important than a man's feelings. Honestly, where where's her story? All these activists out there saying, how big of an issue is this? This doesn't even matter. It was only Leah Thomas. Where do your homework? Do your homework. I'm not here to teach remedial reporting to you. When you're going to make a sweeping comment like that without doing a modicum of research to find out whether there are any claims, shame on you.

1:01:29Let's keep going. Callie Keeler. She was a sophomore at Rogers High School in Pulliup, Washington. Forgive me on the pronunciation. Not sure how you say that. She alleges that her transgender opponent jammed his fingers through her spandex and penetrated her. According to the 74 page lawsuit filed this week. this happened a couple like a month ago by her and her mother who filmed the December bout. This is a boy pretending to be a girl. She did not realize she was wrestling against a biological boy. Keeler was only 15. Is that young enough? Sorry, Stephanie, is that young enough for you? Not sure if does that qualify to get back to me?

1:02:11She shouted to her mother on the sideline that her opponent's fingers were in my coochie, she yelled. She let herself be pinned just so that it would stop. It was only later she learned she had been assaulted by a biological male. Her complaints were ignored by the school, and that lawsuit is ongoing. Let's go to field hockey. I mentioned this yesterday too. Do your homework. I mentioned it yesterday. Back to Massachusetts, where a high school student athlete had her teeth knocked out and suffered, this is November 2023, significant facial injuries when an opposing male player shot a field hockey ball at her face during a playoff game.

1:02:50Watch the soundbite.

1:03:12You hear the screaming? Do you hear the screaming? Go F yourselves. People who are denying this girl's existence and this problem's existence and asking questions about, yeah, how many are there? Fuck off. Enough. There's this girl screaming after all her teeth were knocked out by a male player posing as female in Massachusetts in 2023. Watch it again.

1:04:05And it's infuriating. It's infuriating to see this denialism by these absolute know-nothings. If you know nothing, then you should at least look into these sweeping claims of non-existence of any of these players. You disrespect every young woman and girl who has been hurt and endangered by doing that. Shame on you. Shame on you. You call yourself a journalist. The players on the field were visibly distraught over the injury. It happened during a playoff match. The male player was seen winding back his stick to take the shot, but instead he drills the opposing female defender directly in the face.

1:04:55Swampscott Public Schools Athletic Director Kelly Wolfe confirmed the player who took the shot was a male four-year varsity student and co-captain. Imagine, imagine. Let's keep going. This is a Dutch story, happened in 2025. Elena King's knee. She was 20, not a young girl, but a young woman. Her knee was torn from its socket when she was tackled by a male player identifying as a woman in a Dutch premiership rugby match. She was told that she will have lifelong knee pain and needs to endure months of physiotherapy before she can run again. She told the Sunday Times that a woman, quote, could not have pulled my leg out of its socket, adding this could have been prevented.

1:05:40Last year, the year prior, the same man who hurt her knocked unconscious another female rugby player in a match. That person was still undergoing tests for suspected brain injury and could no longer use a helmet due to migraines. So now we have two with brain damage. And these are rugby players. Last I checked, that's a very tough sport. Those women are not easy to hurt. They are not pushovers. They do not complain a lot. But brain damage is kind of a bridge too far. Your leg being ripped out of its socket, that can upset a woman. That can radicalize other women who actually do pay attention to these issues, unlike some of the know-nothings out there, into speaking out against this issue.

1:06:28Okay? So that's just a few. I want to keep going. This isn't all. This is just stuff I pulled together this morning. Let's go to Canada. This is via Rebel News. One of three women injured by Ash Davis last month has said, I've never been hit like that before. This is rugby. again. Look, here we have video. You don't have to imagine it. You're going to get to see Ash Davis, who is not trying to look like a woman. He has male pattern baldness setting in. He has an Adam's apple. And look at his legs. This is a man not even posing as a woman, just participating on the woman's team, and they allow it.

1:07:11Rebel News reporting he tackles hard. Just asked the three women players who suited up for the Stony Creek Camels last month who had to be removed from the game thanks to Ash's debilitating tackles. Again, one of the women said, I'd never been hit like that before, even at the competitive women's level. There was so much more brute force. There are women who are bigger than him, but no girl hits like that. This is a strong human. That is almost verbatim what the women who were forced to box against Imane Khalif said in the Olympics when they allowed that biologically male boxer to participate in the women's competition and he walked away with the gold.

1:07:50That's almost verbatim what they said, that no woman could hit like that, that these women can take a punch. They are Olympic level boxers. There is a difference when you get punched by a woman versus a man. Let's keep going. While we're up in Canada, mentioned Melody Wisehart yesterday. Now, I wonder whether this would count. Does this count for the naysayers? Because the 12-year-olds in the swim league up there, they weren't physically, they didn't have their legs ripped out of the socket so that maybe it doesn't rise to your level. I mean, you'll have to get back to me on whether you consider this injury, but they were, quote, terrified.

1:08:33Terrified, according to one of the parents of the teenagers, uh, 12 and 13 year olds, but girls as young as eight were forced to be in a locker room with melody wise heart who once competed under the name Nicholas Cepetta, um, and decided to compete as a girl in Ontario, Canada, uh, and in particular, a league with these very young girls. Uh, at one point it, as I said, he was in the locker room against girl with girls as young as eight. Weishart, who was a professor, is a professor, I believe, up there at York University, participated in several events over the first three days of December in 2023, including the women's 1500 meter freestyle for athletes 16 and older.

1:09:19Melody placed second. Melody has reportedly been competing against girls since 2019. Rebel News caught up with Melody after one of Melody's big accomplishments, beating the young 12 and 13 year olds. And here's how that went. In the meantime, we're going to watch him swim. Just will you see the perverse visuals of a 50 year old man lining up against 13 and 17 year old girls?

1:10:03We finally have a definitive answer to where Nicholas Cepeda changes and showers. It is in the girls' dressing room. I saw it myself with my own eyes. He didn't go into the male dressing room. He didn't go into the family dressing room. Mr. Cepeda, what is your deal? Why are you swimming with 13 year olds? Why are you breaking world aquatic rules? Why are you a coward? Do you have a record of sexual perversion? Protect me from these people. Protect us from what? Where are you going?

1:10:51Protect me from these people. The nerve. Protect me. By the way, Melody, if you identify as a 13-year-old girl, why are you driving a car? Truly, you should be asking the alleged furries in your school communities the same question, by the way, people. If they identify as a cat or some animal, why are they sitting in the cafeteria eating a peanut butter and jelly, sipping out of a juice box? Why aren't they licking milk out of a saucer? truly if you actually identify as this thing why aren't you behaving like this thing 12 year old 13 year old girls cannot drive melody sorry so i don't know does psychological injury of terror qualify as injury to you naysayers about where's the injury how many people are doing this is not a thing okay um i for me it qualifies maybe i'm an outlier i don't know my audience will let me know.

1:11:49Here's another one. This is, this one actually happened out of, standby. This is via this, this is out of Australia. 2023, a male soccer player who identifies as transgender injured a female player during a semi-professional women's league. The trans, look, we have video. The transgender player's aggressive shoulder check sent the female player to the ground where she lay unmoving. She was unable to train until later in the week. When she did, it was only very lightly. Maybe that doesn't count, right? Because a semi-professional where she must've been about like 20. I guess, do we, do we count them?

1:12:29Did the 20 year olds get to complain or they just have to fucking take it? You take it too bad. If you're, if your career is on the line, just shut up in the name of tolerance. God, you whining ladies, sick and tired of your bitching. That's really what these people are saying. STFU, because we need to be inclusive. No, we don't. You want your daughter's leg ripped out of the socket? You want your daughter getting fingers up her vagina while she's doing a wrestling match? What in the actual? Speak up. Don't let these know-nothings silent you, male or female, trying to jump into this debate because they want to defend Caitlin Clark or they want to rip on Sophie Cunningham.

1:13:16Shame on all of you. Shame on you. Do your damn homework. There have been countless males participating against females, stealing medals and scholarships and joy and a feeling of safety and security for years now, for years. This is just a few. OK, just a few. Literally, We could be here all day. There's Leah Thomas. There's Terry Miller and Andrea Yearwood. Those are the ones who ran in the Connecticut track meets without doing anything to lower their testosterone. At the state level, Terry Miller was the high school state title, state title winner in Connecticut with fellow trans girl Andrea Yearwood finishing second and also were the regional New York champions.

1:14:05There was a player, the player against Peyton McNabb, as I mentioned, who wasn't sorry at all. There was Veronica Garcia, who won back-to-back state high school championships in Washington in the 400-meter run. She told the anti-trans detractors after the state meet, get a life. There's A.B. Hernandez, who's still competing in girls track and field in California, blew away the competition at the Ontario Relays and Invitational, beating the second place finisher by eight feet, a shocking margin just this past May. The long jump result, Hernandez posted 20 feet, four and a half inches. The next closest finishers reached 19 feet, one and a half inch, more than a foot separated first from second.

1:14:45Aiden Gallagher, May of 2024, won a high school girls track and field state championship in Oregon in the 200 meter. J.C. Cooper won the women's 2019 national championship for bench press in the super heavyweight division. Laurel Hubbard, the Olympic weightlifter, won two Oceana championships and two Commonwealth championships against many gold medals amongst many gold medals that she won during her competition years. I mean, they go, it goes on for pages and pages and pages and pages. All right.

1:15:14I can't help Caitlin Clark if she can't find the courage to speak out against this. maybe she wants another girl to get injured in high school basketball just like those three girls in Lowell Massachusetts okay I guess she doesn't care Sophie Cunningham does good for her you know who else cares Sabalenka who's number one she's the number one women's player in women's tennis where thanks to Martina Navarrola and some other outspoken advocates They have now passed a rule for U.S. women's tennis that they will only accept biological females. God bless you. God bless you for doing that. And Sabalenka, who is a current player with a lot to lose, which is what we've been waiting for.

1:16:02Sophie Cunningham, yes. But again, with respect, she's not a household name like Caitlin. But Sabalenka is, if you know anything about tennis. And she did it. God bless her. And I applaud her. Here it is. Hi, the WTA recently announced that the players will take a one-time gender test. How do you feel about that? The first pro league to go in that direction? I think it's really important to keep the fairness in our tour. It's obvious that biologically the men are way stronger than women, so I feel like it would be not really fair for the women to compete against biological men. so it's i believe it took them a little while to make the decision and um yeah i i support it but for me i'm focusing on myself on my goals you know whatever it takes if they want to test us all i'm happy to do that it's pretty fair and let's keep it that way look how simple that is it.

1:17:06She's just saying what we all know is true. It's not that hard. It's it's honestly, it's not even political. It's just acknowledging biological reality and the reality of sport. It is not fair. I mean, truly, will Caitlin Clark say something of LeBron James or somebody like him joins the WNBA? I wonder, would she be OK competing against such a person? What if somebody that size joins high school basketball with the up and comers into college athletics or college basketball, the up and comers into the WNBA? Will she speak out then? What will it take? Does somebody need to have permanent brain damage?

1:17:45Will that do it? No, I guess not, because that's already happened. And she doesn't want to talk about it. She said the league should work it out with their players. You're one. But it's not even about Caitlin Clark. It's about everyone who is shitting on the notion that this is a danger. OK, that there's something wrong with you people. You have ideological blinders on. Girls are being hurt in multiple ways. That's beyond dispute at this point. And last but not least, I've got to get to Seth Moulton. Seth Moulton, remember this guy? Democrat out of Massachusetts, congressman. After the last election, 2024, he decided, since the Democrats got their asses handed to them on this issue, it was the number one issue in the swing states, according to a large survey done by a Democrat firm trying to figure out what the hell happened, why they lost so badly.

1:18:34And he decided in the wake of that to come out and try to speak sense. And he said, you know what? I have two daughters. I wouldn't want them competing against males on the soccer field. It's not fair. It's a question of fairness, I think he said, and maybe he mentioned safety. and we said, oh my gosh, that's wonderful. That's great. Okay, first you think, good for him. And then shortly thereafter, we had a vote on the Save Girls Sports Act and he voted against it. And he was called out here among other places. And now he is in a political debate for his political future in Massachusetts and was asked about those comments in the debate, and this is how he answered it here in SOT 22.

1:19:22Congressman Molden, in your last debate, you said when you were asked about student athletes who are transgender, to anyone out there listening tonight, anyone in the LGBTQ community or anyone else, I stand with you because I've always stood with you. But after the last presidential election, you said, I have two little girls. I don't want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete. Congressman Moulton, which is... To the trans community, feeling the weight and the pain of the Trump administration policies, I deeply recognize your trauma. And I'm sorry if my comments hurt you.

1:20:04Do you still have a fear that your daughters could be run over on a plane by a biological male or formerly male athlete? my kids are young. They play co-ed sports. But the point I made is this, Democrats, we can't have that debate. That was my full quote. And I think we should have, I think we should be willing to talk about these issues, but I stand 100 % with the trans community. Coward, utter coward, dishonest, feckless, dickless coward. That's, I mean, forget it, right? He's running, he wants to, he wants a promotion. He's running to get the Democratic nomination for Senate. He wants his opponent's seat.

1:20:44Ed Markey, who's no better. I mean, he was out there openly saying, oh, no, we got to trans the kids. Not exactly. But he's in favor of trans athletes and girls sports. So those are your choices. And it's not lost on me that both these guys are running for the U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts. sits. That's where those girls got hurt. Playing basketball, writhing in pain. That's where we heard this from the field hockey player who got smashed in the face by a trans athlete. Tell it to her.

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1:24:16Shinsky, Jesse Kelly, Real Clear Politics, and many more. It's bold, no BS news, only on the Megyn Kelly channel, Sirius XM 111, and on the Sirius XM app.

1:24:31Joining me now is one half of one of the biggest bands of the 1980s and beyond. Here's a hint.

1:24:56Ah, one of the greatest ever. Yes, tears for fears gave us Mad World, Shout, Head Over Heels, and the iconic, everlasting, Everybody Wants to Rule the World. Now, Roland Orzabal is telling the story behind the music, and he does not hold back. He writes about the band's extraordinary rise, his painful split, and eventual reunion with his partner, Kurt Smith, surviving an addiction that nearly killed him, and much, much more. His new memoir is called Welcome to Your Life, Love, Death, and Tears for Fears. Roland, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Oh, it's an honor to meet you.

1:25:38I'm a huge fan as a child of the 80s, of course. I know all the music and have admired you. You're very kind. From many, many years. So why now? You're still a relatively young man. Why the memoir at this point? Well, I have a literary agent in New York called Mark Gottlieb, and he was taking a book of fiction I'd written called Truthwall around to various publishers. And every one of them was saying, what about a memoir? what about a memoir? And Mark said to me, how do you feel about it? I wasn't particularly interested at all, because I didn't think the story was finished. But I had a hankering of writing a book on astrology, which might sound a bit strange to people.

1:26:31So I wondered if I could but combine the two so I could write about my life and tears of fears, which are intimately connected. And that might have been enough, but I wanted to sew in an extra thread of understanding, which I think I've done. So hopefully it's an interesting story, but you might learn something about this subject, which a lot of people do not understand. A lot, a lot about this subject, actually, about multiple subjects. I mean, astrology, I actually, I admit I'm into it. I don't know that much about it, but whenever I talk to somebody who knows what they're talking about, I'm completely gripped.

1:27:16By the way, you're 64. So as I said, you're really not that old. um so but it's fine i wrote a memoir at age i think 46 so it can happen um if if you've had an interesting life and you certainly have so before i want to talk a little bit about the band and when i get your personal story as well but let's just start with you and your partnership with kurt smith your your partner in crime and cheers for fears how did you two find each other and what was your background in music that made you consider you know being in a band professionally we had a mutual friend and um i was staying with this guy his name was paul noble in bath i was living in canesham just outside and he said to me one morning um let's go and meet my friend kurt and um so we went across to what are called the snow hill flats in bath it's a big bath stone tower of council flats, state housing, or like the projects you would have here.

1:28:15And we knocked on Kurt's door. His mother answered and said, you know, shouted to Kurt, he came to the door, but he wasn't allowed out because he'd thrown someone down the stairs. now i oh yeah i was i was um a relatively conservative kid doing all the school work um being trying to be a good boy and get on at school and here was a what i considered to be a ruffian and um but what eventually happened was um i was in a band with paul it was only guitar bass and drums and we heard Kurt singing along to a Blue Oyster Cult song in his bedroom and I was I thought wow this guy can sing he was certainly um conveyed all the emotions that the song had and so we asked Kurt to be our lead singer then we were a four-piece all of a sudden so that's how we started but then we were in it didn't last very long then then we were in another band when we were 18 and that was when we formed tears for fears out of the the skeleton of that band um i am happy to call richie sambora of um bon jovi a friend and he was there of course lead guitarist and he wrote a lot of their he wrote most of their songs um not all but a lot of them how did it work in tears for fears was one of you the main songwriter did you was it a collaborative effort?

1:29:47No, I wrote all the first album on my own and The Hurting and Songs of the Big Chair. I wrote with our producer and keyboard player, Chris Hughes and Ian Stanley, but I still wrote most of the songs. All the lyrics and melodies have been mine, yeah. Are you one of those guys who now cannot stand to hear songs like Everybody Wants to Rule the world because you've played it so many times i don't mind that song at all i mean there are other songs i can't listen to you know you know like um like which one like shout i love shout too yeah i'm tired of playing that song because it's so it's so repetitive you know it's so loud we've been in the show we can't we have never managed to fit it in at the beginning or middle you know um what on this on the on the subject of everybody wants the role to rule the world i know that it had a different name when it first started yeah but i have to say the lyrics they're so beautiful they really are beautiful it's it's kind of a haunting song and you knew that when you were writing it can you tell us what the original title was and what you were trying to say with it?

1:31:01Well, there was a lot of, you know, war talk at that time. Russia and America and all nuclear weapons proliferation, mutually assured destruction. And the original title was Everybody Wants to Go to War, which I struggled with very much. And that was one of the reasons why I didn't like the song. But our producer, Chris Hughes, had us play it every day. And it came together very naturally. And it was a eureka moment for me where I changed the title to Everybody Wants to Rule the World. Then all of a sudden, we were off. We're looking at video of you and Kurt playing and singing and rocking out.

1:31:55And I wonder if you look back at that period when you were touring and in huge demand with all the screaming girls and miss it or are glad you survived it or both? I didn't really notice to be honest with you. I mean, hysteria is something that you can manufacture by the way you behave to an audience. So I give an example. In 1985, we were doing a TV program and there were a lot of screaming girls outside. And I thought it was a bit strange. And so I went out the door and spoke to them all. And then the hysteria died. You know, that's just by showing them that you're a normal person. Just by showing them you're a normal person.

1:32:42Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Does that get extremely heady? You know, you hear a lot of stories from bands who make it big about how they lost their connection with reality and they got drunk on their own wine, started to think that they were godlike figures. What happened to you? well as you read in the book i we started tears for fears to get rich get famous and get therapy we were inspired by the writings of arva yano and um all i cared about was doing this thing called primal therapy to go into myself and understand myself and try and exercise some of the demons from my childhood. So when we made it really big, that's all I had in the back of my mind.

1:33:33I knew that what was going on with all the success was lovely. It was beautiful. But that wasn't exactly what I had intended. So after all that incredible period of big chair and the success, I then started primal therapy on my own in london yeah eventually as happens with so many great bands you and kurt broke up uh and this is you know every every fan's nightmare that one of their favorite bands is going to break up and we saw it happen you know with another great duo i'm i realized that it wasn't just the two of you but uh hall and oates at each other's throats what happened between you and Kurt?

1:34:21Well, it was quite simple. I think Seeds of Love maybe was sort of my child, maybe a bit more than it was the pair of us. And I got Alita Adams involved. Suddenly there were three singers. The stage show completely changed from what it was when we were at our commercial peak.

1:34:55And our manager at the time, Paul King, I didn't realise, but he was also a promoter and he made a huge punt on a Genesis show, which lost money. So he was financially in peril. We also took four years to make Seeds of Love, which made him even more in peril. And then when we were touring, I found out by the swimming pool via our lawyer that Paul King had taken all the profits from the tour and put them into his own bank account. So he wouldn't go bankrupt more than a million pounds. If he had, he would have not been able to do business ever again. So that for me was more than a red flag. I never liked the guy.

1:35:50I thought I don't want him to be our manager. And the problem was Kurt was his friend. So we really split up because of our manager. It's a tale as old as time. Oh, yeah. But you did find your way back to one another. Oh, yeah. And released another album. And now you guys are on good terms, which we're happy to hear. Very much. From afar, you always want to see that, especially given everything that you've been through together. But all of that drama would pale in comparison to what was happening in your personal life. You were married to a woman named Caroline. Yeah. And while you were touring and a big success, she was struggling mightily.

1:36:35and she met with an with an early death so explain the effect that arc had on you because watching a loved one suffer is not easy and then there was a level of guilt because you would meet your next wife while caroline was still alive yeah well yeah she had alcoholism and um stage four cirrhosis of the liver. So whatever happened, that was going to be the cause of her death. And for the last six, seven years of her life, I became her carer,

1:37:26and which wasn't easy, because she was very good at using the menopause as a smokescreen for her alcoholism. And we saw a lot of doctors, neurologists, hepatologists, psychiatrists, that kind of stuff. But it got really bad, and to the point where it was a form of dementia, a form of alcohol-induced dementia. And, you know, our whole circle of friends was shrinking rapidly. Incredible. And she was antagonistic to them. She was at one point sectioned. She went into a psych ward for the elderly. Not that she was elderly, it's just that she was so fragile. She was young, 50s. Yeah. and I spent almost every day visiting her in the cycle which was three months and once we had to postpone the tour because we almost lost Caroline I was told she might die that very weekend because she wasn't eating she was very, very light and she didn't know what was going on and it was when the tour began again in October of that year.

1:38:58Caroline was out of the psych ward and for a little while was recovery and I was in Denver leaving a restaurant with Cheers for Fears and the whole crew and I looked behind me and I saw a young woman and I've seen a lot of beautiful women on tour But this one, this coincided with a voice in my head saying, that's my wife. And, yeah, and I didn't understand it because I'm not a very psychic person. But there was just something about her and the chemistry. And, yeah, there's no doubt about it that, well, it was right, actually. That voice in my head was right because, you know, when Caroline died many years later, Emily became my wife.

1:39:57Emily became your wife. It's actually, you write about it very honestly in the book about had the choice I'd made to be with Emily, to not go, to be with Caroline, determined the outcome of Caroline's life. That's right. Or was it just a coincidence or synchronicity? Perhaps I had simply let her go so she could leave this earthly plane of loneliness, addiction, and degradation. Yeah. Very honest. I know you struggled yourself. You eventually went into a rehab program on your own. Yeah. And the astrological journey piece of it has also been big for you. And people can hear all about it, read all about it by buying the book.

1:40:43It's called Welcome to Your Life, Love, Death, and Tears for Fears. Roland, that's his astrological memoir. And honestly, if you have any affinity for Roland's music, you will enjoy this. I thought you were extremely raw on it, Roland. And I am happy to hear that you're happily married now. You have a little girl and still making music. And I'll be there at the next concert. Hopefully, Kurt will be there too. I'm sure he will. Good luck with it all. You take that. You as well. Again, welcome to your life. Love, death, and tears for fears. Check it out. And before we go, I want to make a programming note.

1:41:25You can go to youtube.com slash Megan Kelly and you can hit join. Okay, there's a little button there that says join. And that's our members only club, group. I don't know what we're calling it, but you will see some content that nobody else will get to see. and we are beginning with a documentary behind the scenes of our show, our staff, our tour, our guests, which I think you will enjoy very much. So check it out and we will see you all tomorrow. Thanks for watching and for listening. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.