This debate came about after I wrote an essay, “Trans Women Are Trans Women,” in response to Matthew Adelstein’s essay, “Why I Think Trans Women Are Women.” I wanted to have the conversation for two reasons.

First, I’m a student of philosophy and former university lecturer of logic, debate, writing, and public speaking — basically, how to think and express those thoughts — so for me, civil discourse is a personal discipline much like chess or martial arts, two of my favorite pastimes. But it’s also a benefit to society because if more of us openly engaged in civil discourse over contentious issues by playing the game rugby-rough but, like all good ruggers, able to grab beers after — we’d be better off.

Second, because this slogan represents the most extremist form of woke ideology, alongside “math is racist,” and as I wrote, it’s profoundly dangerous:

Orwell had a word for the process of distorting basic truths in order to further some political agenda or enforce ideological conformity. He called it doublespeak. I often call it ontological gaslighting, like the scene in the book in which the Party finally gets Winston to accept that two plus two is five. This is how the book ends, because this is the final and greatest defeat of the human soul by an authoritarian regime. Namely, getting someone to deny an objective fact. As Winston writes in his diary early in the novel, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” To put that the other way around, slavery is the impulse to say that two plus two makes five. If that is accepted, all else follows.

Two plus two is five. Silence is violence. Math is racist. Men are women. Adelstein claims long hair or painted nails makes one more of a woman, and having enough feminine traits actually makes one a woman. But divorced from the female, such traits are no longer feminine and cannot confer womanhood. Samurai had long hair and Babylonian men painted their nails before battle.

He also defines “woman” socially but treats the phrase “A trans woman is a woman” in a vacuum. Yet trans writer Alyssa Ferguson, trans athlete Veronic Ivy, trans biologist Julia Serano, and trans philosophers Sophie Chappell and Talia Betcher claim trans women are female. Adelstein makes abstract assertions about a political slogan, like saying Sieg Heil simply means “Hail victory” or jihad just means “struggle,” but we all know that if we’d decided to call adult human females “apples” instead of “women,” we’d be here debating whether trans women are apples.

That’s because what trans women identify as only has meaning for them insofar as it denotes female. As I explain in the debate, trans women don’t identify as men who think they’re women. They identify as women who are women. Even Adelstein’s own definition of “woman” is fundamentally grounded in the female, as you’ll see. That’s why I said if we agree trans women are not females, as he and I do up front, the rest is definitional word play, which is where the debate immediately goes after that.

David Volodzko talks to former guest Kevin Ray about a disturbing experience he recently had on the New York subway, the pathology of woke activism, its influence in the arts and why things are getting worse rather than better, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s dystopian novel We, his experience with compelled speech, and the effort to turn educators into activist therapists.

Kevin Ray is a New York City theater director with over 20 years of experience as an arts educator. He produced and directed “Unearthly Visitants,” based on ghost stories by Edith Wharton, “The Machine Stops,” from EM Forster’s short story, and “We,” from Russian dissident Yevgeny Zamyatin’s dystopian science-fiction novel. You can find more on his website or find him on Instagram, YouTube and Facebook.

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David Volodzko speaks with Mia Hughes about the different waves of the trans movement, the DSM-V and gender dysmorphic disorder, how the trans movement operates as a cult, legal support for trans activism in U.S. states, prevalence rates, indicators of social contagion, the WPATH scam, how the Biden administration inserted itself into medical standards, autogynephilia, definitional creep of the term “trans,” politically Trans identity, and the science-based treatment for trans identity.

Mia Hughes is senior fellow at MacDonald-Laurier Institute, director of Genspect Canada, co-host of Beyond Gender, author of the WPATH Files, and former researcher on gender issues at Michael Shellenberger’s nonprofit Civilization Works.

David Volodzko speaks with Ross Benes about his upcoming book 1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted Our Bizarre Times. They discuss the political legacy of Jerry Springer and reality TV, what Beanie Babies and Pokemon can teach us about financial markets, the rise of WWE kayfabe in corporate culture, the dialectic of high and low culture, how porn drove tech adoption on VHS and streaming, Insane Clown Posse and the outsider effect from woke to MAGA, how media deregulation led to the dominance of trash culture writ large but notably in our politics, 1999 as a cultural inflection point, and the shape of moral panics from Mortal Kombat and Stone Cold Steve Austin to TikTok and ChatGPT.

Benes (X, website) is a journalist and market research analyst whose writing has appeared in Esquire, The Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian Magazine, and Entertainment Weekly. He is regularly cited by The Los Angeles Times, NPR, and Bloomberg. His previous books include Rural Rebellion: How Nebraska Became a Republican Stronghold and Turned On: A Mind-Blowing Investigation into How Sex Has Shaped Our World. Raised in Nebraska, he now lives with his family in Hudson Valley, New York.

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After President Trump announced “Liberation Day” on April 2, the Dow sank 350 points and the S&P 500 recorded a historic three-day loss.

But never mind the regional security risks, or the fact that this should’ve been done through negotiation with our allies rather than unilateral action, what’s perhaps most remarkable about this event is the way it has been received by the MAGA faithful.

David Josef Volodzko speaks with Ilya Shapiro about constitutional originalism, Supreme Court reform, political bias on the bench, DEI in our courts, Shapiro’s scandal at Georgetown Law, free speech on campus, the illiberal takeover of legal education — which is the subject of his new book Lawless — and much more.

Shapiro is a constitutional scholar and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute whose work focuses on free speech, higher education, and the justice system. He is also formerly the executive director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, vice president of the Cato Institute, and director of its Center for Constitutional Studies.

He writes the newsletter Shapiro’s Gavel, his work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, National Review, and is the author of Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court. His new book, Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites, came out in January.

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David Volodzko speaks with Katherine Brodsky about her book No Apologies: How to Find and Free Your Voice in the Age of Outrage—Lessons for the Silenced Majority.

Brodsky is a former guest on the pod, when she appeared to discuss civility and open discourse. She is also the author of the newsletter Random Minds and a columnist at Michael Shermer’s newsletter Skeptic.

In response to escalating Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping lanes, President Trump ordered large-scale airstrikes this week, targeting Houthi military infrastructure in the capital city of Sanaa. These strikes are intended to protect international maritime commerce as well as send a warning shot over the bow to Iran for supporting these pirates, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio called them yesterday.

David Volodzko speaks with Allin Kimbrough, who grew up in the Quiverfull movement and its famous branch the Duggar family cult, a group of independent Baptist fundamentalists whose lifestyle was celebrated on The Learning Channel show 19 Kids and Counting and who later became the topic of the grim 2023 Amazon documentary Shiny Happy People, involving the story of how their eldest son molested his own sisters as well as his child pornography conviction.

David and Allin also discuss the cult’s ties to Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Ted Cruz, Mike Pence, and Russia, as well as the day-to-day routine of growing up in a crazy Christian cult. For more, see David’s interview with cult expert Steven Hasan.

The White House press secretary recently called New York Times reporter Peter Baker a “left-wing stenographer” after he questioned Trump’s decision to bar AP for not using the term “Gulf of America.” But just how biased is the NewYork Times, and in what ways?