Next Question with Katie CouricResisting, Elevating, and Humanizing with Laverne Cox
More than a decade ago, Katie asked a question she now regrets—one that sparked a meeting with her guest today, Laverne Cox. In this deeply personal conversation, the two revisit that moment and the friendship that grew from it. Laverne shares why she believes transformation is still possible–even under the Trump administration—if we’re willing to be uncomfortable and to listen. They also tackle the rising wave of anti-trans legislation, the right-wing propaganda machine, and how fascism takes root. It’s part masterclass, part catch-up, and a powerful reminder that teachable moments can change more than one life—they can change the culture.
Trans people were more visible post Orange and New Black. We had transparent Caitlyn Jenner a year after I was in the cover Time magazine choosing the cover Vanity Fair and Caitlyn's transition wise international news in a way that shook the world.
And we had a few.
Good years of progress, like more, a little more representation, more influencers, more trans people feeling comfortable coming out.
And this is the inevitable backlash to that.
Hi everyone, I'm Kittie Couric, and this is next question Laverne Cox. I'm so happy to see you again. I've run into you on a couple of occasions, but I'm always so thrilled and delighted to talk to you because I learned so much from you every time we meet. And I thought we should probably give a quick synopsis of our backstorre because for people who are listening or watching, you and I met Gosh. I think it was in twenty thirteen. Perhaps, yeah, it was twenty thirteen. I think we shot the show. I feel like it was the day before Thanksgiving. Wow, I know I remember because I had just gotten back shooting a documentary called Free CC, and i'd just gone back from Saint Cloud, Minnesota, and I visited CC in prison. She's a trans woman who was incarcerated at the time, and I was shooting Oranges a New Black, and it was the story I wanted to cover before I booked Oranges and New Black. It was for a show called In the Life that was a PBS show. We're going to do a segment on CC.
And then they lost their funding, and then I booked Orange and I was like, I think we may have an opportunity to tell CC's story because of this show.
And then it happened.
And so I had just gone back from Saint Cloud, Minnesota, and I've been doing a college lecture tour. So that time, though, I just think about all the stats that I listed because I was doing I was triving the country like, so all of that was fresh in my mind. So everything I said on the show, I'd been saying on the road. So I remember all of that. And I also remember that Todd was your booking agent at the time, and he emailed me directly and he told me, I don't know why I remember. I know why I remember this. He emailed me directly and said, we do come on the show.
Karma Career.
It is going to be on and then I was like absolutely. And then he's like, we were so sad you were unavailable the first time. And I was like, what do you mean, Kate, because you'd had a few other people from Orang John earlier in your season, think in September Jason and I think I'm Taylor and tats it your Katie's favorite character.
And I was like what.
And I hadn't heard anything about like not being available, and I was just like Netflix and asked me, you know about any of this, and so I was just sort of like, Okay, that's weird.
And so I remember that.
But then what is so beautiful about it is that I think things happened way they were supposed to.
Can I talk about how the show went, because I think it's so important and you really saved my bacon in many ways. So this is what happened everyone. We had Carmen Carrera on, she's a trans woman, wanted to be the first Victoria's Secret Model, and.
There was a petition.
I've changed that org petition to make sure that first trans Victoria's Secret Model.
Yeah, so I had not done I had had little exposure. I would say, I mean probably more than the average place you had interviewed.
I mean, you had interviewed a number of trans children, transfers.
Right right, right, I think I had done one other show on that, and Carmen came on and she was lovely, and I asked a really dumb question. I asked, what is happening? I'm embarrassed. I'm embarrassed even admit this. Now, what is going on with your private part? You said you have different private parts? Now I'll never forget it. Okay, all right, all right, okay, like I'm praying.
All so it's twenty twenty five, Like, how do you like, how do you feel like? I mean, you can't even say it now, so like now, like, how do you feel like all these years later?
Oh my god? Well, clearly I'm embarrassed, of course, and I was also embarrassed at the time, but this was my thinking. I asked this an appropriate question, intrusive in every way, and Carmen understandably rejected that question appropriately. Later you came on and we talked about it and talked about her reaction to the question and why that was so offensive. And I learned a tremendous amount from you, and you were incredibly loving and gracious about it, and my producers came to me later and said, do you want to cut that question out that you asked Carmen. Now, I've often thought about this, what I have done this again? But I said, do you know I'm a relatively well read person. I consider myself super open minded. If I ask a dumb question like that, or I want other people to understand why that's an offensive question, So I don't mind making me look clueless if it's instructive to the general population, So I say keep it in. It will be useful for people. It'll be a teachable moment. It was for me and hopefully it will be for people watching. Well after that episode ran the condemnation and the fury was unleashed social media. At the time, I guess it was primarily Twitter. It was horrible because I was so attacked and I knew there was a lot of anger and hurt in the trans community that I had asked that clueless question. I kind of tried to explain my thought process and keeping it in because it was taped, it wasn't live, and later I ended up doing a documentary to educate myself and to go on a journey of learning and discovery for myself that I hope would help other people learn and discover through it all. Laverne, you were so kind and compassionate to me and understanding. In fact, a few years after that, you presented me with an award for that documentary, and I also was recognized by Family Equality, an organization that supports all different kinds of faith.
Your Revolution is the name of the documentary. Yes, promote it. It's really wonderful.
It was quite a journey for me, but you were a constant throughout that journey, and I just so appreciate you and your support as a result of that situation, And so I think now I am quite educated about trans issues. I consider myself a proud ally of the trans community, and I wanted to have you on this podcast because I have been so upset about what's happening to so many people in our country, and to prepare for this, I asked my team to get a copy of your cover on Time magazine June ninth, twenty fourteen, so eleven years ago, almost to talk to you about what's happening, what has changed, and really to kind of explore why I thought it was so interesting that the transgender tipping point is what the cover said, America's next civil rights frontier. And I was so excited to see you on the cover of Time, and I thought it was such an important cultural moment. What do you think has happened, Laverne?
There's I mean, there's so much there. First of all, before we get to why we're here. And I have a lot of theories and I think you know empirical data about how we got here. But over the years, I've cited our friendship, your evolution, your willingness to be uncomfortable publicly, as a really important example of transformation that so often, particularly in the environment there we're in now, with predatory algorithms, with the profit motive having us sort of Atajose throats instead of in a space where where we can be educated and teachable, and we have so few examples of people having transformations where they truly become allies. I didn't even know you were making gender revolution. So when I found out that the documentary was done, I think I got an email or something.
I was like, oh my God, Like she's really serious, Like.
So she's not only because if you recall, it'd be the episode aired. I don't know why I remember all these details. The episode aired on a Monday. It's the first Monday of January.
And it was I think it aired on my birthday, the.
First Monday in January twenty fourteen. And then on Fridays you were having like a talk back, and so you talked about the backlash and how it was a teachable moment. And then like June, I think was after the time magazine covery, you had me back and we had seen each other at a few events, and we kind of remember being at the time one hundred and going to like a little corner and chatting about how hard it had been to receive that backlash and what was different about I think what's really really important for people to understand is that up until that moment, it was acceptable for interviewers to ask trans people about their genitalia, their surgeries, and their transitions, and it was to rigor actually on television talkships. I had been doing a presentation for a few years where I looked at the history of TV talk shows starting with Christine Jorgensen, and how the narrative about trans people had sort of developed from Christine Jorgensen into you know to like twenty twelve or so, and every single talk show Christine Jorgenson's story was so much about surgery and it was just acceptable Renee Richards, but every sing if you look at all these talk shows, and we have a little bit of this in Disclosure our documentary. Everyone asked about Genitalia. Even I noted an Oprah moment, and I live for Oprah, Live for Oprah.
So there's not a criticism of Oprah.
But a woman named Kimberly Reid Kimberly Reed Prodigal Son. She's an editor and documentary filmmaker. She had directed a film about her life story called Prodigal Sons, and in the telling of her own story as a filmmaker, the only thing she said about her transition is that it was like a second puberty. But when she was on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Oprah added that she had therapy, she had gender reassignment surgery. She added that because it's for Oprah at the time, it's like, this is what people want to know. People are curious, and we have to clarify, like what's going on in people's pants, because that's what people want to know. And what I theorized at the time is that even when there is a humanized and it was a very humanizing interview because that's what Oprah does, but even a humanized interview is undercut when we focus on surgery and transition, that the audience is like, oh my god, you know what happens in that surgery if it comes to humanizing, because that becomes the takeaway for audiences and it leads to a kind of misinformation, and so so much of how we've gotten here now is a lot of misinformation, but that we still haven't even with the work that you and I have done other trans people have done, a lot of journalists since then have not been going there. The right wing has done a really really good job of reducing trans people to medicalization and dehumanizing us like this, it's a dehumanizing process and they've done it in a lot of different ways right. So specifically, if we look back at twenty I think twenty sixteen was the big moment with HB two in North Carolina that infamously the bathroom bill that attempted to ban trans people from bathrooms. Well it did ban bathrooms to North Carolina. That bill was fought, it ended up being overturned there.
The NBA said that they wouldn't play games there.
Right, there was a movement where businesses in Ncuba, all these athletic groups divested from North Carolina and they were like, this is bad for business. So they were like, we're not going to do this. And bathroom bills had been tried and attempted in other states too. After marriage equality became the law the land, the Republican think tanks like mainly like Alliance Defending Freedom focus grouped trans issues and what issue will sort of galvanize or outrage Americans most, and it was transluple in sports. And so in twenty nineteen we saw the first anti trans girls in sports bill introduced are forgetting what state. It didn't pass, but the next year they introduced in another state and it did pass. And what we should know about this all the anti trans legislation now hath the country bands trans girls from sports. There is a national band now because of this current administration through executive order and some people are resisting, but all the executive words.
Are being folded in the courts. We should all know. But sports was the gateway.
They were like fairness and it was also in the language that they used. They language that they used is not trans women or trans girls in sports. It's biological men competing against girls. So it's not even like boys against girls, it's biological men. So the language again becomes dehumanizing, it's miss gendering, and so it's been a really effective propaganda campaign to dehumanize trans people. Say it's not fair, you know, trans people in sports, when now we know there's there's less than one hundred trans athletes in the country and the NC doublea of fifteen of or fifteen hundred, I think trans athletes there's less than ten, right, So we're talking about like trans people are less than one percent of the population, and trans people actually playing sports there's even fewer. There's this really genius. It just lives free in my head. He was the governor of West Virginia being interviewed by Stephanie will in MSNBC. He signed a sports bandage and he was like, you know, we don't want people taking advantage. You know this bill and dules, can you cite anybody you know taking advantage? Because the theory is like anybody can say that there are trans and then compete and dominate, you know, women's sports.
He could name an example.
And so there's laws being passed anti sports bands being passed in states with no known trans athletes. Maybe there's one trans athlete two who The right wing is really good at making something an issue that isn't an issue and then fear mongering around it and then making law and policy around it. And people say often say it's a distraction, and I don't think it's a distraction.
Took part of their overall agenda.
In my opinion, the big piece is that, I mean, we saw it with critical race theory, for example, and it's always a backlash. So I think that, like if we just stay on trans folks, we had a transiter tipping point right, trans people were more visible post Orange and New Black. We had transparent Caitlyn Jenner a year after I was in the cover Time magazine choosing the cover Vanity Fair and Caitlyn's transition was international news in a way that shook the world.
And we had a few.
Good years of progress, like more a little more representation, more influencers, more trans people feeling comfortable coming out. And this is the inevitable backlash to that. Whenever I think CRT emerged the year after critical rights theory emerged. The year after Black Lives Matter, the biggest, the largest mass protests in like American history, and that happened in twenty twenty. The next year, CRT is something that most of us had never even heard of, becomes the talk of America and the target and the target right. And so there is a really well funded, relentless right wing through the through thing thanks like Alliance Defending Freedom. They're at the heart of a lot of the anti abortion, anti LGBTQ plus legislation. They write a lot of the legislation. Sometimes state legislators copy their legislation verbatim. Alliance Defending Freedom and they started as an anti LGBTQ organization, but they've literally been at the Supreme Courts arguing against abortion, against gay rights, trans rights. They're really well did a lot and their global organization obviously they've worked with Heritage Foundation and all these other thing tanks as well. And if you read a document like Project twenty twenty five, so much of the agenda is this Christian nationalist agenda that's returned to traditional values. There's a unitary executive theory which is sort of about power.
And you know sort of executive branch.
The executive branch is stripping away the deep state and all, and we see that happening right that I think they're like forty nine percent completed.
If there's a project twenty twenty five.
Track, Yeah, I don't know.
I think they're like.
Forty nine percent the last time I checked. So it's part of like this Christian nationalist agenda. But there is this wonderful quote Jason Stanley, who has written a lot of wonderful books, but he's an expertal fascism. He wrote with specifically how fascism works. And actually just yesterday I was watching an interview with him and Chris Hedges and he said something that.
Really it was like I need to write this down.
And he said that whatever they target are the conceptual resources you need to see what's going on. Whatever they're targeting are the conceptual resources that you need to see what's going on. For example, the book bands right, so much of what fascism and when he talks about fascism, he talks about propaganda, misinformation. He lists he gives like ten components of it, and any one of these can exist without fascism.
But when they all exist.
We're talking about fascism, and so rewriting history, for example, is a huge part of that. All the books that are being banned, any history that might make white people feel scared or guilty about their past. All the book banning, I mean, banning Tony Morrison for example. It's just seems so egregious. But a lot of this, you know, Texasts in Florida have been like the kind of you know, incubators for a lot of the things that we're seeing on a federal level now. But banning books and changing history and our access to information is a huge part of this. And when he had a press conference to Santis banning AP African American history several years I think was twenty twenty two, he said, you know, they're not teaching AP African American history. They're trying to indoctrinate our children. They're throwing in things like, you know, prison abolition and queer theory. I mean, what does queer theory have to do with AP African American history? And then I'm sitting here, I sit there as like a black trans woman from the South, and I'm like, can I immediately think about Buyer Rustin who a lot of people now know because of the film. And I'm like, well, by a resident organized the legendary marsh on Washington, where Martin Luther King made that I have a dream speech that is often referenced by a Rustin was a gay man, and I think if you're teaching an African American history class, you kind of have to talk about the march on Washington, and so then you kind of need to talk about who organize it.
And I was a gay man, and that's.
And he was queer, So like queer theory like comes in because of intersectionality. And then literally in the next sentence he says, they're me including things like intersectionality.
What does that have to do with anything? I'm like, well, that's the answer.
So again, the things that they are attacking are the things that we actually need to understand what's going on. Because I know that I can't understand my life fully in its complexity if I only look through a gender lens. I can't understand it effectively. If I only look through a race lens or a class lens. I understand my life as a trans woman, as a transoman of color from a working class background who has raised religious who's an artist. There is an intersectional there's intersecting identities that are affected through power that help me understand not only my life but the world around me and how power works. Right, And so these are the things they want to ban because they don't want people to have an intersectional understanding. They don't want an educated population. I mean funding the Apartment of Education is there's a lot of reasons why they're doing that. Obviously a lot of it is about not wanting people to be educated, but I'll say, you want to privatize and make a lot of money. So the combination of like this predatory capitalism with miseducating people and other risings and other rising them us versus them as another component of fascism. But trans, when I think about that, then I'm like, trans people really are if we think about how, because I think trans people are beautiful. I started the hashtag trans is beautiful in twenty fifteen. It's been like millions of people have since used it. But we transiople in so many ways are really the answer to a lot of the gender stuff. If we look at the lived experiences of trans people, the reality of trans people through history, that there are different choices we can make around gender, and that's so much about what feminism has always been about, that we can make different choices as women. But another thing about fascism is that equality becomes a threat to the dominant group. The dominant group sees equality as oppression, and so then that has to be suppressed. So trans people, in so many ways are like, if I can live my life on my own terms and defind my gender on my own terms and be the person I want to be, anybody can do it right. And it's not easy. It's not like I haven't. There have been obstacles there. They have tons of policing of my gender, trying to make me a boy or a man, and all that stuff, and the ridicule and the physical violence and discrimination, all of that was real. But the joy on the other side despite all of that is incredible, like being true to who you are. So many of us, I think women who date straight men, I see so many of them in prisons. I see so many of them imprisoned by this idea of who they're supposed to be as that's not liberatory, that's like still based in domination, and so much of the anger. I think that when we see the MANI sphere on the Internet, these guys who are like pissed off at women and feminism, and they're pissed off because the world has told them that they should be on top.
Right.
They're raised to think that they should be providers and that women should be subserving it. Every boy is not raised that way, but the culture reinforces it, and then wages don't keep up with inflation. Most jobs have been shipped overseas, so they actually can't afford to be that bread winner, to be that patriarch that they've been told that they're supposed to be, and they're frustrated and they want someone to blame. And instead of being educated enough to blame predatory capitalism, corporations that have shipped jobs overseas, depleted manufacturing unions being just you know, death made it, et cetera, et cetera. Let's blame immigrants, let's blame trans people, let's blame women. And that's what fascism does. I think it's so important to call it fascism too, because when we don't, it's like we're equivocating and the fear. I love what Jason Stanley and this is another note that I made about Jason Stanley in his book How Fascism Works, names ten components the mythic passed. Right, So make America great again. There was a time when America was wonderful. There's a time when Germany was wonderful, and we should return to that. Many people have asked Trump when it was America great. Now he's saying, it's.
The Gilded Age. Girl. He's like, you've heard me. You're aware, so you've heard.
I'm sure you've heard him talk about how we were just so everybody was rich during the Guilded Age. I'm like, everybody wasn't rich, girl, Like there are about ten people who were rich and the rest of us were, like it was child labor and tenement housing. But he's been talking about the Guilded Age. Propaganda, the misinformation like that pivotal to a fascist state. We see that everywhere, and the extent to which they just lie to us, and they can with impunity because there's a whole media equosystem that's not challenging them. Right, So that way, Steve and Miller basically said that nine zero Supreme Court decision was actually in their favor, right, like that they would get up and lie about that that they blatantly lie about just kind of everything at this point, anti intellectualism on reality again lies steals like hierarchy, hierarchy again, I'm talking about that dominant class, that there is a dominant class, that there's you know, men are better, Whites are better, you know than Jews, you know historically, but like that hierarchy, right, and that like white men should be in let hararky, And if you read probably twenty twenty five, it sort of talks about God man patriarch in the family and those two first and then women and.
Right and women need to have more children and stay at.
Home exactly, victimhood and victimhood of the dominant class. Right, all of this conversation by reverse racism that white people are so being so the most discriminated against people right now are white men in America and they're so put upon and they're just such victims and we need to like fix that all of this anti white racism.
Well, how about the Africaners coming to America because they've been persecuted.
They've been persecuted in South Africa when seven percent of the population owns seventy percent of the land, but they're oppressed. Yeah, victimhood, law and order. So the law and order piece becomes in a dictatorial, authoritarian way. That law and order piece becomes like and we see it, and it's so sad. What the law is is what Trump says it is. I mean we see very clearly in that press conference with the Governor of Maine when he's like, is she here are you and follow our order to like band transits to see you in court. She says, see you in court, and she says, I'm going to follow the law. I'm going to file the state in para la. And he says, we.
Are the law.
And by the way, she won and.
She won, yeah, which is really beautiful.
But the way he's defied the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court enabled it obviously with the immunity.
Oh the Supreme Court. What a mess.
But the law and order becomes whatever he says it is.
Hi everyone, it's me Katie Couric. You know, if you've been following me on social media, you know I love to cook, or at least try, especially alongside some of my favorite chefs and foodies like Benny Blanco, Jake Cohen, Lighty Hoik, Alison Roman, and Ina Garten. So I started a free newsletter called good Taste to share recipes, tips and kitchen mustafs. Just sign up at Katiecuric dot com slash good Taste. That's a t I E c O U r ic dot com slash good Taste. I promise your taste buds will be happy you did. It also takes attention away from a movement that was gaining so much steam that resulted in Black Lives Matter, George Floyd and a true examination of bias in police departments and police brutality. And now nobody is talking about it.
It's been demonized so successfully and without any pushback. And I think that, like so many people like because he won, because they're in power, we have to capitulate to power, and so conversations about implicit bias, those conversations are like they're too woke. They make it unpopular, and then so the conversation is no longer, so no one wants to talk about it, and it's bad to talk about it, and then it's banned. It's actually banned to talk about it at Columbia University. Now, anything that suggests DEI, that suggests, I mean the way he's taken over Columbia University is atrocious.
And the way they've allowed that, it's horrible.
Sexual anxiety, the sexual anxiety piece is really about the trans folks. It's about the trans folks, it's about gay and lesbian people. It's about women being in their place. So if you think about vymar Berlin, right, but this very very liberal progressive society in Berlin, uninhibited environment, uninhibited environment that actually was very open and accepting to trans people and gay and lesbian people. Magnus Hirschfeld had an Institute for Sexuality and Berlin. It started in nineteen nineteen and then existed until you know, the Nazis. The first major Brooke burning that happened was of Magnus Hirschfeld's research was of trans research, research into gain lesbian folks. Magnet Schurst film made it possible for trans people to have an ID document in Berlin to like identify them as trans so they could like just have rights that other people could have. In the nineteen thirties, let's say so, Major and Hitler and his regime saw this as a huge problem, and that first book burning happened. And we know that with pink triangles that like gay folks and trans people were also in concentration camps, and I didn't know this until the Aides Movement Act Up reclaimed the pink triangle as a sign of persecution in the eighties. So all this sexual anxiety is also a part of fascism. Next, Sodom and Goamoor. When he talks about Sodom Moore, he talks about it's really cities versus rule. That in the cities, this is horrible Sodom and Gomora, awful things happening to the crime in the sties, when whenever we hear Republicans talking about, you know, crime Chicago, Baltimore, and you know black and black crime and all these things happening in like Democrat or blue cities versus like our safe suburbs and our rural areas. So that, like dichotomy between Solom and Golmore, is another a spect of fascism. And then the third one is it's a phrase I cannot say because it's in German. This last one I break mach free and I forget exactly what how he broke that one down. But all of these things are happening right now, and so I think like it's important because a lot of people, like even John Stewart was reluctant to call this fascism. And I think that when we look at not just a general definition of fascism, but what are the components of fascism, and we break them down and look at them in relationship to what's going on now, this is fascism. And so with that in mind, it's like then when we see you know, people like you know, Gavin Newsom or even thinking wit More, you know, sort of standing with Trump, these Democrats sort of standing with Trump, it's.
Well, they don't really stand with Trump. No, well, well, I mean when they need certain things for their.
State more I did do an event or something with him.
I think that from what I understand, they are trying to have some kind of relationship because a lot of their states welfare depends on federal dollars. And my understanding Laverne and I should check this was she had a meeting and she didn't realize it was going to be like a photo op, and I think she was sort of embarrassed about it. From what I read, How.
Do you work with when he is taking away state funding, if you know, capitulate when he's retaliating if you against journalists, against people who sue him, law firms.
Law firm exactly.
It's scary, and it's actually scary to actually speak up against what he's doing because he's very retaliatory in many ways. A streamer, Hassan Piker would just recently returned to the country and was pulled aside in Global Entry and asked all these questions about what he does, and he's controversy in live ways, but he's left to streamer and he was like, you know, detaining he's an American citizen. Eventually he was let go, but they, you know, stopped him and questioned this American citizen.
A lot of intimidation happening and death threats even from some followers for judges and things like that.
So the trans piece is part of it. It's part of a larger project. And for me, it's always been amazing watching the ambidextrous nature of Republicans once they get into power that they weren't just passing. I think this year is like nine hundred anti trans laws have been introduced in state legislatures.
I know there have been eight executive orders.
Eighty executive orders, nine hundred. I thought we had got to five hundred like last year. I was like, okay, that's but nine hundred anti translots is like, what what are we doing? But I think it's also important to note that when they couldn't get bathroom bands through in twenty sixteen, they've gotten them through now that sports was the trojan horse. Then they were like, they're attacking the children, and what about children, demonizing healthcare for children that the American Medical Association, of the American Academy of Beadrez, the INCANCIDE, every reputable sort of medical institution is said that gender firming care is the best course of action, and then they've demonized that. A lot of it is about misinformation about trans people. A lot of it is still when people think about trans people, they think about surgery. Right. They don't understand that gender firming care, particularly for a pre prevescent child, is just a name change, maybe growing out their hair or cutting their hair, and they wear different clothes. No one pre pubescent is having any surgery.
First of all, the very few people really under the age of eighteen are having surgery exactly.
And then hormone blockers are in fact reversible like these are in.
This they say've been studied enough.
They say that, but we mormone blockers have existed probably since the seventies or eighties for precocious puberty, so they actually have been studied. And literally it was an Arkansas They argued in court that hormone blockers for CIS kids for precocious puberty healthy fine, but for trans kids no.
So the same medication.
That would block puberty for precocious puberty is healthy for a CIST child, but it's not healthy for a trans child. Just defies logic and it's clearly bigotry. They don't want trans people to exist, have the ability to transition and live our lives authentically, period point blank. How are they safe for CIS kids and not safe for trans kids? You can't like, actually look up puberty blockers like online. It's everything's trans transtrands, So you have to look up prokosis puberty to actually do research on puberty blockers and progosis puberty. And when you do that research, a lot of it's about if you developed to early, you have a growth spurt, but then that growth spurt stops at like eleven twelve, and then a lot of kids want to go through puberty with their peers.
But then there is a bone issue if you go through puberty too.
Early, and so part of the work of into chronologists with proghosist puberty is studying like your bone growth of the child, and this has been happening for decades, right, And so when you go off the puberty blockers and you have the puberty there you're supposed to have at any age, the only issue is potential bone density loss.
But that's only if you're on them a really long time.
Usually it's you know, no more than four years, because you make a decision if you're trans, to either go on hormones or not, and you go off the puberty blockers and then you do hormone replacement therapy. And at the end of the day, though, for me, why is it anybody's business, Like, I think any left leaning person, obviously the Republicans and Conservists wanted to make this an issue, But any left leaning person that's that capitulated to saying that it's up for debate whether trans kids should have access to gender from and care, I think I've already conceded the argument, and we're having the argument on the oppressor's terms. When a kid has cancer and the doctor says we should be doing this care to save their lives. There's not a public debate about that. There's not, like, you know, from people who aren't healthcare professionals, who aren't like, what do I know about cancer research? What do I know about how to treat kids with cancer? Don't it's not up for debate. But when it's trans people, it's something we have to debate because you know, these trans people and I don't understand it, and what are they doing and and it's a dehumanization of trans people. It's a mis education and misunderstanding of us. But that's by design. When I was on your show, and probably for a couple of years after that, when they would talk about trans issues, they would actually bring on trans people.
For the past five years or so, tons of.
Conversations about trans people with narya transperson insight in the media. They don't want to talk to us because when we talk to trans people, we become human beings and not these sort of monsters or caricatures that they can kind of like make up things.
About forty percent of trans children now live in states that have banned any kind of intervention puberty blocker's hormone therapy, and it's made me wonder a lot since I've met a lot of trans families when I did my documentary in twenty eighteen, the impact this is having on these families. Can you talk about that?
This is when it gets hard for me, for you know, it was twenty it was two years ago.
I was in twenty twenty two after Dilomovany calls it beer gate in her vot. But when butt Light, you know, had that moment and kit Rock was shooting up butt lights and then target people were sort of terrorizing target workers because they had pride merchandise. I was like, We've lost We've lost the culture. I was like, We've lost the culture. And that year, close to half the country had banned de firming care for young people, and there were all these things are being challenged in courts, but there is so many families who were making decisions to flee states, to flee Texas, to flee Florida, to flee states, and then these were families who could afford to do it, And.
It just broke my heart.
I spent a lot of time crying and just and kind of feeling like as a public figure, like, what more could I be doing?
Have I somehow failed?
As this is my fault because we're so visible now and they were kind of ignoring us. So I've had a lot of feelings about it. But it's devastating, and you hear from these families and they relocate. There's some cities, like places like Minnesota that have become sort of sanctuary states for trans people. So if you can afford to relocate, right the whole family's relocating. Sometimes what happens is that like if there's a two parent household, like the mother and kids will go and then the fall will stay back and work, or vice versa if they have a better job. Because you have to get a new job in a new state, you have to be able for to do it.
A lot of people can't afford to do it.
And then even when you think about getting access to gender or firming care as a young person, it's actually a really privileged thing. A lot of insurance doesn't actually cover gender affirming care still for adults or children. They're actually supposed to cover it according to Affordable Care Act, but that's been challenged and so many different ways. But the devastation of a family having a move, and then if you do have to stay in a state that discriminates against you, then where you have to go to another state sometimes to get a gender firm in care. There was the main clinic in the South where young people were going to get gender firming care was actually the University of Alabama either Birmingham tessk Loosen.
I'm from Alabama.
When the band happened in Alabama, then that clinic was closed down. So all these people in the South who were going to Alabama to get gender firm in care for their kids don't have that resource anymore. There is a wonderful organization called Campaign for Souther Inequality that for many years has been raising money and if people can afford to donate to them, been raising money to give scholarships to families to get them to a state where their child can get access to gender firm in care, get them to a state to transport them either by car plane, get them a hotel state so they can just visit a doctor, and also to relocate if they need to. So this has been happening for years and the demand is really strong. And also what happens when people are migrating places like New York and California, the gender affirming clinics are overrun and there's long wait lists because so many people have migrated, and so the people who already are in New York are having hard times getting appointments, is what I'm hearing. Or in California or San Francisco, where you can get access to gender firming care, wait times so longer because so many people have fled states where they can get access.
What about those people love learned who can't afford to leave, who haven't been supported through the fund you mentioned or other resources. They are stuck in states that refuse to help them.
They don't have the opportunity to transition. They There's always been black markets for us.
Was just going to ask you about that.
It's always been black markets for gender firm and care.
And that's kind of where my focus is right now. Not necessarily a black market, but like mutual aid. And there's a history like when I started transitioning in nineteen ninety eight, there was a doctor that had access to here in New York and he retired like a year after I started with him, and before I discovered calm Lord. Then there was this guy named Ralph who had hormones for the girls. And he found out about Ralph and he would love it when we were all together, so we can sell to a lot of girls. And Ralph would come to my house and I'd buy hormones from Ralph. I don't know where he got them from. I wasn't getting blood worked. So like, these are the things you know that like, trans people have always gotten access to gender firm and care at various ages.
If you know trans.
Folks legal, illegal, we've always gotten access. There's a wonderful story that Susan Striker, who literally wrote the book on Transhi history. She's a professor in Arizona. She told me a story that she interviewed Miss Major Griffith Gracie, who was a Stonewall legend. She was also part of the Attaka Riots. And she's still alive. She's in her eighties, I think. And she was fifteen years old in Chicago in nineteen fifty five and told a story about the fifteen year old like the sex workers in Chicago's interesting sex work in nineteen fifty five and on the streets of Chicago, And she said the girls had hormones in nineteen fifty five and so when I think about that history, I'm like, this is a few years after Christine Jorgenson, and then hormones were possible, and the girls were like, we're getting these hormones, and so they found a way to get access to hormones to transition and earth control bills. But obviously you always want a healthier way to do it, like I since I've been on you know, it's been twenty seven years, Like I get blood work twice a year. You want to get your hypothalamus checked, you want to get make sure your blood closed. There are things you want to make sure that you're you're healthy with with your transition, and though when it's criminalized, you don't get that access, but trans people have always found a way. And so now what I'm interested in is like how we as a community come together and support each other in the face of a government that is really not going to be effectively there for us. And so we have to really look at infighting, at the ways in which that US versus them to pieces and another part of fascism that we don't allow divide and conquer tactics to divide us as communities within LGBTQ communities, there's this conversation happening now that's not new, but it's popularized again. I think because the Trump adminished as the Trump Administration is like left lg and B on different websites that have taken out the t It's like these conversations have been happening in LGBTQ plus community since civil rights has been an issue.
Is there infighting right now within the LGBTQ plus.
Oh yeah, a lot of There's a lot of people who are saying that the trans people have taken it too far with pronouns and the non binary people and they've messed it up for all of us. That conversation is happening now online, but that's not a new conversation. That is a conversation that's been going on for decades when it comes to those gay, lesbian, and bisexual people who are a little more respectable and have always felt like drag queens and trans people and non binary.
People were not.
Good looks, second class.
Yeah, I mean there's a there's I mean, historically, there's a there's an iconic video of Sylvia Rivera, who was literally their night.
One of the Stonewall rebellion.
Stem Wall lasted for like I think about five days for week where they were fighting the police because they were just tired of, you know, being criminalized as LGBTQ plus folks. She was there night one, Silvia Rivera and a founder as she founded Star Street, this organization called Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries.
She and Marsha P. Johnson.
They were doing direct a two trans people, housing them, they were doing sex work and getting like an apartment where all the girls can stay so they wouldn't be on the street at night, and getting them fed, just real basic stuff when they were incarcerated. When transfer were incarcerated, because it was illegal to be trans on the street, you had to have three articles of clothing, so we were routinely arrested.
They would go and bail the girls out of jail.
They were doing grassroots activism directly for the community, and she was one of the reasons that Stonewall in the modern LGBTQ civil rights movement happened in nineteen seventy four at the Pride Rally become Pride I think by this time and not just scale liberation movement. They did not want her to speak. They did not want her to speak on the station She had to fight her way onto the stage, and people booed her as she finally got onto the stage, and she's like, you need to quiet down. I've gotten my nose broken for gay liberation, she said at the time, I've been raped, I've been arrested, and you treat me this way.
Nineteen seventy four. So it's not new, girl.
I can go on about other examples of how kay and lesbian folks. If you think about SONDA, the Sexual Orientation on Discrimination Act that was passed in New York State, and think in two thousand and one that initially included trans people, and we're not going to get this passed if we include trans people. So it took the trans people out, got SONDA passed, and then we'll get to you later trans people. Eighteen years later, the Gender Expression Non Discrimination Act passed. I was going at almany like almost every year for Equality and Justice Day talking to legislators about gender and it took eighteen years for us to have legal productions in New York State. So this is not new, but it's a tactic that the Trump administration is like now that like people outside the community because they're dropping the tea and keeping L and B.
They're like, let's it's the trans people's fault.
And so again it's another divide and conqueror strategy that we should resist because at the end of the day, the Trump administration is coming for I think it's very important to understand that. When Dobbs was overturned, Clarence Thomas wrote a concurrent opinion. He said any decision that was made based on the Fourteenth Amendment and substantive due process should be revisited, including Lawrence v. Texas, which basically decriminalized gay sex, Griswold versus Connecticut, which decriminalized contraception for married couples, Obergefeld, which legalized gay marriage. He said, all of these decisions need to be revisited. And then late a few months later, cong Grace the Republicans, who had a majority in Congress at the time, voted whether there should be gay marriage, and the majority I think two hundred and fifty something Republicans in the House voted against gay marriage, voted against right to contraception, voted against the RATU and abortion. Obviously, they didn't have the Senate to do this, but if it's up to Republicans, they want to ban a right to contraception, to abortion and gay marriage. So it's really important that we don't succumb to divide and conquer strategies as diverse communities. And so when I think about this, I don't think about just LGBTQ plus or straight people or non trans people. I think about working people, and I think about like when I was on the View when it sort of went viral, Less said, I think they're worried about the wrong one percent. Trans people aren't the reads and you can't afford eggs, We're not the reason, like that your rent is too high, you can't, you know, buy a house. I think there's a different one percent. And I think that it's so clear with Doge. I think it's like it was just so clear with this billionaire, the richest man in the world, like gutting the Social Security Administration and instead of doing it through legislation, firing people, making it inefficient, making all these government agencies inefficient, to basically dismantle them.
That's part of part twenty twenty five.
And for years they wanted to privatize education so that they could like get vouchers so rich people go to school and then poor people a lot of it's about privatizations in this neoliberal kind of thing, to privatize everything so that they can make everything part of the stock market and make more money.
So much of it's about that.
Hi everyone, it's me Katie Couric. You know, if you've been following me on social media, you know I love to cook, or at least try, especially alongside some of my favorite chefs and foodies like Benny Blank, Jake Cohen, Lighty Hoik, Alison Roman and Inagarten. So I started a free newsletter called good Taste to share recipes, tips and kitchen mustaves. Just sign up at katiecurreic dot com slash good Taste. That's k A t I E C O U r I c dot com slash good Taste. I promise your taste buds will be happy you did.
If there's an US versus them, which I don't like to subscribe to, it's a it's.
Not a culture war, it's a class war.
So then if I think it's about if we are to come together, we have to find ways as working people. When I say working people, if your money is not made through the labor of someone else, you're a working person. If you have to show up somewhere to make your money. You're a working person, and so working people are being screwed over across the board.
And so I think if we can get broad coalition of workers.
Across gender, race, age, workers coming together because there's a tradition with labor movements that we can understand like that people should have. You know, we have a five day work week because of labor movement, right, coming together across these differences. But I think that it becomes difficult when a lot of people if don't want to work with someone who maybe hasn't like interrogated the ways in which they've internalized white supremacy or internalized transphobia, and we don't trust each other. And when I say this, so there's like this systemic piece that has to happen, but then there's a personal thing that has to happen, the individual thing and the interpersonal thing. I invite all of us to interrogate the ways in which we've internalized transphobia, patriarchy, white supremacy. I often say, if I a black trans woman, I'm mobile Alabama. I'm not automatically anti racist because I'm black. I grew up in the same culture I've internalized the same anti blackness, the same white supremacist ideas about myself and my people that other people have had that I've had to unlearn. I've had to decolonize my mind. It took me twenty six years to transition because I internalized so much transphobia as a child and was learned to hate the feminine part of myself that I couldn't transition until I moved to New York and met trans people and then start to unlearn that internalized transphobia, which is a continuing process. Internalized classism. I did an episode of my podcast where we shame poor people. We shame poor people in this country. I grew up with so much shame about being working class, and so we have to do this work to understand how we've internalized oppression, oppression that can hurt us and then hurt other people. That work has to happen, I think, so that we can come together, and there is a concerted effort right now to say that you don't need to do any of that work. That anybody's saying that like there's internalized bias, or there's you know, we are racist country, like they're lying to you and they're like, you know, saying America isn't great.
And it's not that America isn't.
Great because we have a racist history, that we were born on a genocide of a Native people.
Those are just facts. Those are facts. It's like, what do we do with that? How do we heal from that?
And we have never ever in the United States really fully reckoned with the legacy of that genocide.
A little bit more with reservations, but that's a mess.
You know. When I interviewed dot To Jeory degru who coined the term post traumatic slaves syndrome, she would say, after emancipation, there wasn't a mass movement to like do therapy for black folks who had been brutalized for hundreds of years and made to work for free, work for free to build this country, and the reparations that were allegedly supposed to have them from free labor, that that didn't happen. And then in the wake of emancipation and reconstruction, the klu Klux Klan emerged. Right, we have not been able to reckon with and it's every generation when we talk about racism, it's like, let's not talk about it, let's just move past it.
Let's let it go in the past.
That's in the and it's not it's it just isn't the effects of if you just look at housing. I'm Richard Rosstein's wonderful book Color of Law.
If you look at just My daughter loves that book.
It's so good. I interviewed him from my podcast too. It's so good.
And when you look at the areas that were redlined back in the day, if they haven't been gentrified, there's still quote unquote slums. There's still low income neighborhoods with bad schools that are dilapidated neighborhoods.
The areas that were redlined that were.
Black people bull couldn't buy homes, and so that legacy because even when I'm ross seen in his books says, well, they passed the Fairhousing Act in nineteen sixty eight, but they didn't do anything retroactively to fix all of the discrimination that it happened before that. Nothing, And so it just keeps happening. And then there's real estate agents now who don't rent. There was a football star who's from Alabama who wanted to buy a house in like a wealthy neighborhood in Alabama, and the real estate agent wouldn't even show him houses, you know.
So there's like so.
Many institutional things that are still happening with real estate agents. And then when we gentrify neighborhoods, real estate agents and colluding with mayors and police to get certain groups out of neighborhoods so they can gentrify them. There's structural things in place still to keep us segregated, to reinforce an inequality. And if you just look at the wealth gap between black and white people, there's just so there's like so much evidence that racism is still structural in this country, and we have not done the work to undo that because there's such a resistance to actually like talk about the problem, because I think part of it is power people in power who just want to keep that power.
But for those of us who are well.
Meaning and want to learn and want to evolve, it's the fight, flight or freeze thing. Instead of calling someone racist or transphobic, I prefer to like say this behavior is consistent with a history of transphobic behavior, because behavior can be changed, Racism can be unlearned. I've unlearned so to exist as myself now I've had to unlearn a lot of racism, a lot of internalized transphobia.
Be myself. I'm a work in progress. I still have to do that work, but that work is possible.
You are a great example of learning implacit bias or just misinformation about trans people and what's You are a great example of transformation. Someone who got it wrong publicly was publicly shamed. And I'm not a fan of publicly shaming people. I don't think that's effective. But you've transformed and you're now a fierce ally for our community, and I wish we had more examples of that, and we don't have a lot of them. The only way that we can have that is through that Oh my god, save space. And the reason we have to have safe space is because neurobiologically we are programmed.
It's just biological.
We feel threatened, unsafe, fight, fight fleas and once we're in that flight or freeze, we go into limpic brain. We're not in our prefrontal cortex. We can't hear. We're just in defense mode. So we have to create a safe space where there is love. I'm not going to attack you. Maybe it's going to be a little uncomfortable, but discomfort is not unsafety, right, So we have to also create a tolerance for discomfort, that distinguishing between being uncomfortable and being unsafe, so that we can have the conversations, have those transformative moments, so that we can get past this.
It was hard before the Laverne. I mean, it's almost impossible now. It feels like in the current climate, this was something that was considered almost radical ten years ago, and now there's so much silencing. How do you create that space and how do you possibly in this current environment change this narrative.
Well, for me, I think there's some people who are fascist and capitulating the fascism because they're afraid, because they just want to be alive with power, And I'm not convinced that those are the people we're going to be able to change.
Right, And so.
You can't meet fascism with like let's sit down and have a conversation. I'm so upset with Evin Usome sitting down with all these white supremacists because it's like he's like, let's sit down with Charlie Kirk, who is a white bandmisist, or Steve Bannon, who are white supremacist, you know, transphobic, you know, they don't think I should exist, Like, what's the conversation going to be? So I think, like you said, who are we having the conversations with? First of all, and I think we have to fight. It has to be a fight against fascism, and we can't capitulate. There's not a conversation to be had with a fascist.
And to your point, we need to bring all these diverse groups together and not do in fighting and not say, well, this is good for you, it's going to be bad for me, or you're going to hurt us in some ways in terms of the problem.
But it can't be like let's just agree on one thing and still be racist and transphobacan like that doesn't really work, I think in terms of building coalition because we don't trust each other.
Because we don't, we can't come together. So we have to be wary of in fighting, but.
Understand who the if stakeholders are, well the stakeholders are, who actually has power is Ultimately this is about power. There is the changing of hearts and minds, and there's the empathetic piece that's interpersonal and what we can do in our lives.
I wanted to mention that when my documentary came out, Doctor Oz, who's now working for the administration, said something to me. He said, it's hard to hate up close. So I think what you mean about that interpersonal that exposure, those conversations one on one or with a small group of people.
But then you know, the structural piece is requires you know, movements, and at this point, our government is captured, captured by fascists now, and they're capitulating the fascists. If in the midterms there could be some kind of reckoning, is there a benevolent billionaire who can fund and I and I've talked to expose this to Sam Seat or a few other people who could fund a fifty state ballot initiative to get money out of politics. That is the first order of business I think for structural change in the United States is to get money out of politics. The politicians still happening incentive to do this. Is it constitutional because it is since United These are questions I have. But if there's a Mark Cuban or Oprah, I don't know who the billionaire is. I believe in my heart that Republicans, Democrats independence, if they had a ballot initiative and had the clear information. I think they would vote to get money out of politics. I think most of us understand that our politicians aren't working for us, and that we vote people in and nothing changes because of special interest money corporations funding politicians. So I think on a structural level, that has to be a fundamental change first and foremost, and then maybe we can talk about healthcare and wages. I was salted with the Biden administration up front when they didn't fight for minimum wage. When Bernie dropped out, it said all he asked for and you should have asked for more, said fifteen dollar minimum wage, and Biden just said a Senate parliamentarian, had you heard the center parliamentarian before twenty twenty one? I mean maybe you have, you're in this business. I had not heard the Senate parliamentary. I was like, Senate parliamentary. What I do know now is that when the Senate parliamentarian challenged the Bush administration, they fired the c Intate parliamentarian got a new one.
So that is like there is a bully pulpit that you have when you're president.
And I just but at again, the business interest that fund the Biden campaign did not want to raise minimum wage so like, I think we got to get money out of politics and have structural change, but interpersonally, and then I think with as storytellers and the media, we have to do a better job of humanizing everyone. And it's the problem is that it's not the algorithm is not really set up for empathy and love. The algorithms are set up for like us being at each other's throats and fighting. So again resisting that in capitalism, how do we elevate voices that are loving, that are humanizing, and beware of dehumanization even when we disagree with people, And dehumanization happens primarily through words and images to put a certain class into a space of moral exclusion, meaning like we aren't as human beings hardwired to be violent against each other, to discriminate against each other.
But when we put this group into moral exclusion.
And dehumanize them, then we can take away their rights, then we can discriminate against them. We've done that with the dehumanization of immigrants. I mean, it's so clear how the immigrants have been dehumanized. They're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs. I mean that was like such a clear example of dehumanization. They successfully dehumanized trans people, like saying that, you know, calling us predator and so are you.
Seeing that as the most effective campaign commercial in twenty twenty four with Kamala Harris, you know Donald Trump, Kamala Harris is for they them, Donald Trump is for you.
Yeah.
And the trans prisoners, it was it was.
Trans immigrant prisoners. They like really brought it out.
They brought it brought yeah, and it was the trifecta.
And I was, you know, I have to say I was.
I had moments of being afraid to speak up too much during that campaign because I was like, well, my transigentity is kind of toxic right now. And I think Republicans thought about transit were more than Democrats did. Kamala said, out, follow the law, and instead of following up and saying that this is a policy under Trump as well, that like basically, if someone is in prison, then they are entitled to healthcare. It's inhumane that that is the law. And transalthcare is healthcare. And if a person is an immigrant and they're incarcerated, they're entitled to healthcare. And that healthcare can be trans healthcare or could be whatever. And so often when people need health care in prison diabetic if you're a diabetic. Yeah, but a lot of times, if it's really expensive, they'll release them. They'll do a compassion release. They don't have to pay for it.
But that is the law.
Do you think they were too afraid. Yes, they wanted to change the subject.
It was clear that Republicans had successfully dehumanized trans people. Any mention of trans people was like bad, and I think that was a misstep. Now, I think if she had addressed it and said this is the law, clearly, this is the law. It is cool and unusual punishment to deny people health care when they're incarcerated in the United States of America, and this is the law, and this is the law under Trump as well, and explain that and really leaning into we want equality for everyone, we want health care for everyone. And so she But part of the problem with Harris, I think and the words out that that would happen is that for me, what I saw, it's her triangulating between what the donors want.
The rollout was good, and Tim Walls with the weird was good.
We're not going back was good, and then typical Democratic consultants came in and said, you can't say weird anymore, which was really working. We need to appeal to the suburbs and get list chaining out those missteps and her not talking about price scouging enough, like there was a few issues, like the price scouging was great, healthcare and then standing up for trans people and just civil rights in general, picking a few issues because people like.
What is she about?
Would you ever run for office?
I always say that you are so smart, the upper research, the upper research would be fierce.
I own everything in my past. It's people have asked me that before.
And when I think about what they do to politicians like with AOC and how they've demonized her, it's so vicious and so mean, and I'm really sensitive. The answer right now is no, it's something I've thought. It's I thought about it a little bit more, but running a campaign raising money. I'm an artist more than I am like a politician. Like I've always loved and been intrigued by politics and followed it my whole life. But right now, no, there are other effective ways I think to make an.
Impact, and hopefully this is one of them.
Hopefully because I think that, like there's an inside strategy and outside strategy.
When AOC went in.
She's a good example because she came in with this mandate and then you saw Nancy Pelosi just like not have her own commit You have to be on the committees when you're in Congress right to actually have power. And then the outside game I have agitating using her followers. You just alienate the people there. And unfortunately the Democrats have this seniority thing too that they really need to let go of that the Republicans don't have. The Republicans are more responsive to their base than the Democrats are. But the problem with the Democratic base is that is progressive. It's tends to want healthcare for everyone and to check co operations, and that is against again, the corporate interests that the Democratic Party as well as the Republican Party is beholden too.
So that's why we need to get money out of politics.
That's why, and that's why when you look at a Bernie or an AOC, those are the ones that I don't trust any politicians really, but I trust more the politicians who don't take corporate money.
Whoo wow, Laburne, I'm exhausted and you must be too.
I've invigorated. Strangely enough, I'm invigorated. I love these conversations.
I love listening to you. I love sharing from you. Honestly, I always appreciate your perspective and your depth of not only knowledge, but sort of your bottomless compassion for people.
It's all about love, but I'm also learning. I'm a student, like I'm learning. I'm like, I got to learn about fascism. I got to learn about this. So being a constant student is really important to me. And then it has to be about love. This is wonderful video with Cornell West and Bell Hooks Fro nineteen ninety seven where they talk and they talk about like how Belle has disagreed with Cornell West big millionaire in March and other things, and it's hard. It's just hard to like, have I haven't seen you in a while. I still love you even though I disagree with you. And then they quote Martin Luther King's one of his speeches and the quote, I've chosen to love is the beginning.
I've chosen to love.
And I think that in this very cynical society and when politics, when people I remember joy and re laughing and Corey Booker's face when you talked about love, when he was running for a resident, literally laughing his face, and I was just like, oh, this is sad. There's a cynicism. And I think when we love and have empathy and rehumanize, those are the that's the work to love each other better, to have more empathy, and to rehumanize ourselves in each other, because when we dehumanize other people, we also dehumanize ourselves. And so how do we get into that space of rehumanization and empathy? And I think the love, love for ourselves, love for each other. Empathy. Sympathy is feeling for us. Empathy, It is feeling with and rehumanizing that everyone is a human being, deserving of rights, deserving of grace. People can do something wrong, maybe it needs to go to jail, but you're still a human being. Accountability punishment, yes, but you're still human.
Thank you Laverne, Thank you Katie, Thanks for listening everyone. If you have a question for me, a subject you want us to cover, or you want to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world, reach out, send me a DM on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. Next Question is a production of iHeartMedia and Katie Kuric Media. The executive producers are Me, Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz, and our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian Weller composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode, or to sign up for my newsletter, wake Up Call, go to the description in the podcast app, or visit us at Katiecuric dot com. You can also find me on Instagram and all my social media channels. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
