Weekly Wrap: Government Takes On Big Tech, What 'Intersectionality' Means, RIP iTunes
AUNT BETTY: Hey, y'all. This is Sam's Aunt Betty.
AUNT DONNA: And Sam's Aunt Donna on the West Coast.
AUNT BETTY: This week on the show, Washington Post technology reporter Tony Romm.
AUNT DONNA: And NPR congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell. All right. Let's start the show.
AUNT BETTY: All right. Let's start the show.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THAT'S THE WAY IT IS")
CELINE DION: (Singing) Yeah.
SAM SANDERS, HOST:
Hey, y'all. From NPR, I'm Sam Sanders. IT'S BEEN A MINUTE.
KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: That was great.
TONY ROMM: (Laughter).
SANDERS: Double the aunties. So Aunt Betty came to California to visit me and other relatives.
SNELL: I saw the pictures. Did she bring treats to the whole newsroom?
SANDERS: She brought a pound cake to NPR West.
ROMM: What?
SNELL: (Laughter).
SANDERS: She was a hit. And then she went to visit my other aunt, Donna, in San Diego. And they both announced you this week. It was really sweet.
SNELL: Aw.
SANDERS: I know. I know. Speaking of sweet things, (laughter), happy weekend to our listeners and to my guests, Tony Romm, reporter at The Washington Post covering technology policy, and Kelsey Snell, who covers Congress for NPR. Both of you are old friends. I'm happy to have all of this friendship in studio with me.
SNELL: Very exciting.
ROMM: Why we got to be old? Why we got to be old?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THAT'S THE WAY IT IS")
DION: (Singing) When you want it the most, there's no easy way out.
SANDERS: Speaking of forever young, we're joined this week by the voice of Celine Dion.
SNELL: I know. I've been dancing over here.
SANDERS: As you should be. Pump it up.
ROMM: (Laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THAT'S THE WAY IT IS")
DION: (Singing) Love comes to those who believe it, and that's the way it is.
SANDERS: This is a Celine Dion classic, "That's The Way It Is." And I'm playing it this week to honor her as her long, long run with her Las Vegas residency comes to a close.
ROMM: Wow.
SANDERS: This weekend, it ends. Her last show at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace will happen this weekend. And did you guys know that she first went to Vegas in 2003?
SNELL: I was just going to ask. It's been a long time.
ROMM: Right.
SANDERS: Yeah. So she began 16 years ago. She's basically been doing the same job for 13 of those 16 years.
SNELL: Holy cow.
SANDERS: And she really changed the way that artists handle touring and their careers by doing what she did. So when Celine first went to Vegas in '03, no one was doing it. Like, the big headliners were, like, Tom Jones.
SNELL: Really?
SANDERS: But Celine went and was really successful, and she made it a cool thing to do. And so now everyone goes to Vegas. I'm sure you know this.
SNELL: Yeah. Like, Britney's there, right?
SANDERS: Yeah. Britney's there. Gaga was there. J.Lo, Boyz II Men, Toni Braxton, Mariah Carey, Drake, Janet Jackson. Everyone does it now, and Celine Dion made that happen.
SNELL: I mean, it's, like, a quick flight, right, from LA to go out there and perform? So if you lived in LA, you could, like, have a pretty humane life instead of traveling all over the world.
SANDERS: Exactly. And so that is a thing that artists love. You can have the crowds come to you in Vegas and not have to travel the country or the world for them. And also, as the industry has changed in the last 10 years or so with the rise of streaming, all of them sell less albums, and so their money is in playing shows for people.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THAT'S THE WAY IT IS")
DION: (Singing) When you want it the most...
SANDERS: And so Celine made this model that is really easy and really lucrative if you're big enough. And, like, she changed the game.
SNELL: Well, cheers to Celine.
ROMM: Right?
SANDERS: Celine, kudos to you.
ROMM: (Laughter).
SANDERS: I'll miss your show. It was nice just knowing that she was there.
SNELL: But your heart will go on.
SANDERS: (Laughter). Yes, it will. It will, it will.
ROMM: (Laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THAT'S THE WAY IT IS")
DION: (Singing) And that's the way it is.
SANDERS: You can check out Kevin Fallon's story in The Daily Beast this week. It's all about Celine Dion and her exit from Vegas. All right. Now it's time to start the show as we always do. We ask each of our guests to describe their week of news in only three words. But all of our three words are going to focus on one big news story of the week. I am talking about the potential regulation of big tech companies. The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission have both taken early steps to investigate Google and Apple and Facebook and Amazon. And lawmakers in the House in D.C., they plan to look into Facebook and Google and other tech companies to see if they're too big.
So Kelsey, Tony, you're both covering this this week. And I want you to give me three words on this topic. But first, both of you, catch me up. Catch us up on what all happened this week 'cause it seemed like a lot of things came together at once.
ROMM: Yeah. A lot of things did come together all at once. But it's sort of been simmering for a long time now, right? Like, people are just sort of generally annoyed with Facebook, which is, like, the Exxon Valdez of the tech industry...
SANDERS: (Laughter).
SNELL: (Laughter).
ROMM: ...With some of these other companies, like Google and Amazon and Apple and so forth, for various reasons, too. But really, there were two chunks of news. The first was that we finally got word that the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice have essentially divvied up oversight of these tech companies on antitrust grounds.
SNELL: And at the same time, Congress decided that they want to start having a conversation that they've essentially been avoiding entirely for decades.
SANDERS: Yeah.
ROMM: Like most things.
SNELL: Right (laughter).
SANDERS: (Laughter).
SNELL: And it's always a little surprising when Congress actually volunteers to begin a process of looking into something they actively don't want to look into, like tech. So it's just been kind of one of those weeks where the worlds are kind of colliding and kind of all surrounding tech.
SANDERS: I want us to break down what these investigators and what these agencies mean when they talk about antitrust, this idea that these companies are too big and that they should possibly be, like, broken up. What are the things that could be broken up, and what reasons do folks have to say they've become too big?
ROMM: Right. I mean, it takes many forms. It kind - and it depends on the company you're talking about. So Google is the company that's come up in this conversation most. And the Europeans have sort of sketched out what this looks like. The company has been under fire for giving preferential treatment to its services over rivals in search results. So, you know, you'll go type in whatever, and Google's version of that product will come up before its competitors, which folks in Europe saw as a major issue. And they fined the crap out of Google for having done it because people don't click to, like, the third page at Google. So like, why...
SANDERS: I do.
ROMM: Do you?
SANDERS: Yeah, because I know that they're going to give me all their stuff first.
ROMM: Yeah. Well, there you go. So...
(LAUGHTER)
ROMM: So like...
SANDERS: I'm an outlier.
ROMM: Right. So for Google, it's stuff like that and the fact that they're just buying up all these competitors. For Facebook, it's the reality that there really is, I think in the eyes of most consumers, like, one social network. And then people say, oh, well, you know, let's just go use Instagram instead of Facebook. Well, Instagram is owned by Facebook. The feds let Facebook buy Instagram. It's, like, that kind of stuff that's really on the minds of folks here. Like, whether - like, was all that good for the country, for the economy, for people?
SANDERS: Was there a thing that one of these companies did that made everyone say, this is the week? Or it was just kind of about that time.
ROMM: It was really the latter. The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission had been talking about this for quite a long time, and we really only got word of exactly how they were going to break this stuff down with respect to potential investigations over the weekend. That was sort of a coincidence, I would say. With respect to the House, again, lawmakers there have been talking about some sort of antitrust probe for a bit, but I think they sort of sensed the momentum - the political momentum. And that's why we saw the announcements.
SNELL: Yeah, I would say that there was a lot of pressure from the 2020 candidates - Democrats running for president - who are starting to talk about this in a more direct way. Particularly, Elizabeth Warren is talking about it a lot. And...
SANDERS: Does she have a plan for that?
SNELL: Not really.
ROMM: She's got a medium post.
SNELL: Yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
ROMM: I didn't mean that to be as shady as it sounded.
(LAUGHTER)
SANDERS: Whenever you say medium post, it's shady.
(LAUGHTER)
SNELL: But, I mean, just the fact that 2020 candidates and viable 2020 candidates are talking about it, we're going to see that push Democrats...
SANDERS: Yeah.
SNELL: ...In Congress to take action anyway because that's kind of the way things work.
SANDERS: Yeah. So we're all caught up now on what exactly happened. Kelsey, you have three words on this news topic. What are they?
SNELL: Yes, my three words are OK, now what?
(LAUGHTER)
SNELL: So...
SANDERS: Wait. Referee, umpire, is OK one word? It's one word.
SNELL: (Laughter).
ROMM: Ooh.
SANDERS: It's two letters.
SNELL: Oh, yeah, I was going - I - when I wrote it out...
ROMM: O-K-A-Y.
SNELL: ...It was just OK.
SANDERS: OK...
SNELL: (Laughter).
SANDERS: ...With an O-K-A-Y. OK, perfect.
SNELL: Yeah.
SANDERS: OK, now what? Go ahead.
SNELL: So the reason I ask that is Congress says they want to do something, but doing something could mean a whole lot of things. Do they want to actually regulate? Do they want to break up the tech companies? Do they want to go back to ignoring the tech companies? Are they going to think better of this once they realize that tech companies give them a lot of money...
(LAUGHTER)
SNELL: ...And employ a lot of people all over the country?
SANDERS: Yeah.
SNELL: This is a really vague conversation that we're having. And I hate the word conversation in general because the word is vague. But that's where we are...
(LAUGHTER)
SANDERS: Yeah.
SNELL: ...Is - nobody has really been able to identify what it is they want to do. They just are acknowledging a problem. And I would say in this conversation, Tony is definitely the expert on the policy that happens. And I'm the expert on Congress not really doing anything. And...
(LAUGHTER)
SNELL: In this case, I want to see what they're actually going to do before I start to have a really strong sense of where things are going.
SANDERS: Yeah. Yeah. So, Tony, what are your three words?
ROMM: Yeah, my three words are one more thing, which...
SANDERS: OK.
SNELL: (Laughter).
ROMM: ...Y'all might remember is the thing that Steve Jobs used to say when he, you know, was unveiling iPhones and people would fangirl...
SANDERS: Oh...
ROMM: ...During the iPhones...
SANDERS: ...Yeah.
ROMM: And there would be something else that they would have. But one more thing doesn't just describe that. I think it actually just describes where the tech industry is right now, politically speaking. Kelsey kind of alluded to some of this. It's not just antitrust and these concerns about bigness and what bigness means for competition and consumers. It's also disinformation. It's privacy. It's YouTube not doing enough to take down hate speech, which we saw play out over the course of this week, as, once again, the company was under fire for failing to act fast enough to take down repulsive stuff online.
And I think for a while, if you talked to a lot of these companies, what they would tell you is, this is just a blip, right? It's people in Washington doing Washington things, just getting really loud about stuff because it generates headlines. And eventually, it'll blow over. But the reality is that that's not the case. Like, people here are frustrated with the industry. The conversation has only gotten louder in the course of the past year or two. And it's a marked change from where we were 10 years ago when I was covering this stuff, when tech was, like, the darling of everybody here. You could do no wrong. And now I think the threats are serious. So, you know, to Kelsey's point - now what? Like, we'll see if Congress actually does something with this. But the conditions, the pieces are there for some serious regulations targeting the tech industry.
SANDERS: Yeah. I wonder if the GOP has precedent to possibly pursue this kind of stuff because when you think about the government breaking up big corporations, you don't think of the Republican Party wanting to do that. Could they be a part of that now?
SNELL: Well, they're - I mean, that's a tough question at this point because we don't know how much the Senate is engaging on it. They aren't engaging as much as the House is. And the House is, frankly, run by Democrats.
SANDERS: Yeah.
ROMM: Yeah. That being said, the Republicans are going after the tech industry for a much different reason than the Democrats are.
SNELL: Yeah.
ROMM: And you hear this come up in a lot with the conversation around anti-conservative bias.
SANDERS: Oh, yeah.
ROMM: There are all these Republicans, right up to the president, who say that Facebook and Google and whatnot limit the reach of conservatives and delete their content to make it harder for them to reach folks, even though the president has - what? - like, 60 million followers or something on Twitter right now.
SANDERS: Yeah.
ROMM: And so they use that as an attack vector against these companies to say that they've become too powerful. It's much different than the Democrats, which are out there talking about corporate power in a different capacity.
SANDERS: Yeah, which brings us to my three words, which are about that issue of speech. My three words on this whole tech debate are Section 230.
ROMM: (Laughter) Is that three words?
SANDERS: Yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
SANDERS: Section T-W-O T-H-I-R-T-Y.
(LAUGHTER)
SNELL: Very technical (laughter).
SANDERS: I am obsessed with varying interpretations of this section of the Communications Decency Act - Section 230. It says, basically, two things. One, tech companies can't really be sued for what other people do on their platforms. And two, it gives these companies the right to censor content and to kick people off their platforms if they want. But the left and the right have very differing interpretations of this law. Tony, how confusing is this?
ROMM: You know, it - on some level, it's kind of not. The government...
SANDERS: OK.
ROMM: ...Said tech platforms, like a Facebook or whatnot, should not be held liable for the content posted by their users. And the effects of that are twofold. First, it allowed the development of services that accept user-generated content, like photos and videos or whatnot and - without which the tech companies say they never would have offered social networks because they would have faced too many lawsuits. It would've been impossible in the early days of the Web. And the second is that it gave those companies the power to enforce their own terms of service without facing additional lawsuits and stuff.
SANDERS: Yeah.
ROMM: So there's a lot of misconceptions about 230 on Capitol Hill, but there's this feeling that, like, something is busted, right? Like, when videos of white supremacy go viral on YouTube, when hate speech and anti-Semitism goes viral on Twitter, when attack videos from the two Christchurch mosques in New Zealand go viral on the Web, you know, those companies face no repercussions for that outside the court of public opinion here in the United States. And to a lot of lawmakers and to a lot of regular users, that's just fundamentally wrong.
SNELL: Well - and that's part of what has gotten the attention of Democrats in the House too is that - Nancy Pelosi was actually just on the radio in California, talking about how she thinks it's unacceptable that Facebook wouldn't take down a video that was doctored to make her look drunk.
SANDERS: Oh, yeah.
SNELL: And there were people inside of the president's circle who were retweeting this and spreading it.
ROMM: Right.
SNELL: And Pelosi basically said we let Facebook just kind of get a pass for too long.
SANDERS: Yeah. What I find so fascinating is that the very politicians who are railing against a company like Facebook, saying, get it together; they still have to use Facebook...
ROMM: They're using it.
SANDERS: ...To reach their constituents.
ROMM: It's true. And my favorite story of this week is Ted Cruz is out there, you know, making some noise again this week about how conservatives are being biased on Facebook. Ted Cruz is also running ads on Facebook pointing out his fight...
SANDERS: (Laughter).
ROMM: ...About anti-conservative bias. Like, literally, he's raising money using the tool that he claims is not allowing him to, like, reach conservative voters. And...
SANDERS: Oy.
ROMM: He's not the only one who's been doing something like this.
SANDERS: Oh, yeah.
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SANDERS: Time for a break. You're listening to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR. Coming up, we're going to talk about a word that everyone seems to be using but few folks actually get right - intersectionality. It is loved by the left, hated by the right. We'll tell you why after the break. You're listening to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR. We'll be right back.
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SANDERS: We're back. You're listening to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR, the show where we catch up on the week that was. I'm Sam Sanders here with two guests - Tony Romm, who covers tech policy at The Washington Post, and Kelsey Snell, who covers Congress for NPR. Do either of you use AirDrop?
SNELL: I don't. I turn it off...
ROMM: Oh, no.
SNELL: ...On my phone.
ROMM: No, I turned it off because I know exactly where this is going.
SNELL: Yeah.
SANDERS: Yeah.
ROMM: (Laughter).
SANDERS: So tell folks who don't know yet what AirDrop is and how it works.
SNELL: AirDrop allows somebody to move something from their phone to any phone that they can see, essentially, right around them, right...
ROMM: Yeah.
SNELL: ...Tony?
ROMM: Yeah, you have to have an iPhone to do it...
SNELL: Right.
ROMM: ...Or an Apple device to do it.
SANDERS: But if you're in a public space and you have your AirDrop turned on...
ROMM: Yup.
SANDERS: ...Any other rando (ph) with an iPhone can, like, send you a photo or a gif...
ROMM: Right.
SANDERS: ...Or whatever. It's kind of awesome but kind of scary. It's really scary to me. I have mine turned off all the time.
ROMM: As you should.
SNELL: Yes.
SANDERS: Yeah. Apparently, there's a lot of stories out this week that are saying that the kids are using AirDrop to just, like, dump memes and stuff on anyone around them. But there's also this, like, dark underbelly to the AirDrop where, like...
ROMM: (Laughter).
SANDERS: ...A lot of folks on the New York subway will get AirDropped (ph) pictures of bodies.
ROMM: For all the money and smarts in Silicon Valley, you'd think they would have realized by now that if you build it, they will find a way to send dirty pictures using it.
(LAUGHTER)
ROMM: Like, it does not matter what the technology is, what the platform is, people will find...
SNELL: The "Field Of Dreams" of tech.
(LAUGHTER)
SANDERS: I love it. All right, we got to talk now about a word that has been creeping its way into the culture over the last few years, and it's become - politically, at least - really divisive. The word is intersectionality. It turns out a lot of folks are using this word, especially online, without really knowing what intersectionality means.
JANE COASTON: So the clearest definition of intersectionality I can give you is that people are complicated, and...
SANDERS: (Laughter).
COASTON: People are not just one thing at one time.
SANDERS: That is Jane Coaston. She covers politics for Vox. And she just wrote this opus on the word intersectionality. It's basically this idea that people can have overlapping identities and be treated differently because of them. So she's saying that you can be a woman and Latina at the same time. You can be gay and Asian American at the same time. And so today politicians use the word intersectionality, even candidates for president. It's being tossed around on Fox News as well, but not too many folks know where the word comes from. And so when you trace it back, the word intersectionality dates back to 1989 when a civil rights professor named Kimberle Crenshaw used the word in an academic paper.
COASTON: Right. This originated in critical race theory, which was a group of legal scholars in the '70s and '80s who were thinking critically about how...
SANDERS: (Laughter).
COASTON: ...Race and identity intersect with the law. And their argument was that the structures that undergird our legal principles in some ways gave credence to racism or, in other ways, you know, were themselves racist.
SANDERS: Well, because there's this case that she's writing about. And it's basically - and fix me if I'm wrong on this - this group of women, black women, are trying to sue their employer for discrimination.
COASTON: Right.
SANDERS: But all of the legal precedents before that basically looks at those kind of suits as you're black and that's it or you're white...
COASTON: Yeah.
SANDERS: ...And that's it. And they...
COASTON: Right.
SANDERS: ...Prescribe remedies based on single identity. And what...
COASTON: Exactly.
SANDERS: ...The women were saying and what Crenshaw was saying is, wait. You can be more than one thing at once, and that gives you a...
COASTON: Precisely.
SANDERS: ...Different outcome.
COASTON: Exactly. Exactly. And so in the - you know, in the case she was talking about, there were specific hiring practices that meant that black women received the brunt of discriminatory action that black men didn't get in that same workplace and white women didn't get in that same workplace. And they were - you know, the intersection of their identities, as being black and being women, was what was enduring discrimination. And, you know, the law wasn't able to see that.
SANDERS: Yeah. Well, and, like, I love how simple the example of these black women is in this case. Basically, the rule in a lot of workplaces is, you know, last hired, first fired.
COASTON: Right.
SANDERS: But in this workplace, for the longest time, they didn't hire women as managers. And they also didn't treat black people fairly. So by virtue of that system, all of these black women managers were, of course, the last hired.
COASTON: Exactly. And so that is a specific form of discrimination that male managers didn't face, white female managers didn't face. It is specifically experienced by black women on the virtue of them being black and being women.
SANDERS: Exactly. So then, all right, intersectionality as a word - it's part of legal theory for a very long time. And something really weird begins to happen a few years ago. And all of a sudden, the word intersectionality is on the Internet and on college campuses and on conservative message boards. What happened?
COASTON: So it's been interesting to track that because, you know, it enter - intersectionality enters the Oxford English Dictionary in, I think, 2015. It starts being kind of the subject of conversation by activists or on college campuses because I think that you saw, you know, the word diversity, you know, didn't - stopped meaning anything in a lot of ways.
SANDERS: Oh, yeah.
COASTON: You know, I think a lot of people - you know, when it's weapons manufacturers bragging about their diverse hiring practices...
SANDERS: (Laughter).
COASTON: ...You know, like...
SANDERS: It's like, really?
COASTON: Especially at a time when - you know, I think 2014, 2015, that's, I think - you start seeing the efforts of Black Lives Matter when you just saw a lot of people who were thinking, OK. What can we be doing here that would make this conversation easier or better or more fruitful? - because clearly, just asking, you know, for a more diverse workplace isn't really getting the job done here.
SANDERS: Yeah. Well, then, also, what's happening at the same time is that the environment and the climate around issues of speech on lots of...
COASTON: Yup.
SANDERS: ...College campuses is just getting...
COASTON: Yup.
SANDERS: ...More heated. And then you see the right glom onto the word intersectionality to kind of push back against those campus climates, right?
COASTON: Right. Exactly. And again, I think the right is responding to how activists or how they perceive activists to be using the term intersectional or intersectionality on college campuses. You know, when I sent a number of conservative writers Kimberle Crenshaw's original paper, you know, they - no one had a problem with it. People were like, oh, yeah. You know, that...
SANDERS: Well, you mean, like, Ben Shapiro and David...
COASTON: Yes.
SANDERS: ...French, like, leading...
COASTON: Yup.
SANDERS: ...Conservative voices said, oh, this theory, on its own...
COASTON: Yup.
SANDERS: ...Is rock solid.
COASTON: Yup. They were like, well, that makes sense. Like...
SANDERS: Wow.
COASTON: ...That sounds fine. Well - and because, I mean, it also is - like, it's breathtakingly simple to argue, in a sense, people are complicated. People have multifaceted identities. But I think it was really this idea that, like, OK. You know, the term isn't bad, but how it's being used is bad.
SANDERS: So then let's talk about that then. How is the left using this term? How is the right using this term? And what do both sides dislike about how the other side is using this term?
COASTON: Well, I think, on the left, intersectionality has been a means by which, you know, you could talk about a lot of different issues that would all impact...
SANDERS: Got you.
COASTON: ...Not a lot of different people but, a lot of times, the same person.
SANDERS: Yeah.
COASTON: You know, I'll use myself as an example. You know, I'm a biracial, gay person. You know, that means that I'm impacted by racism. I'm impacted by sexism. I'm impacted by misogyny. I can also be impacted by homophobia.
SANDERS: Yeah.
COASTON: And all of - it's not as if, you know, people are like, aha - like, you know, people don't divide up your identities when they're being...
SANDERS: Yeah.
COASTON: ...Mean to you.
SANDERS: You are Jane, and all of those things are in you. Yeah.
COASTON: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so - but I think that something I find fascinating about how the right thought about intersectionality was this idea that it is creating a hierarchy that, you know, at the top of the hierarchy would be - I don't know, hypothetically...
SANDERS: Lesbian black women.
COASTON: ...Black trans women, which would be...
SANDERS: OK, yeah.
COASTON: ...Which would be big news to a lot of black trans women...
SANDERS: (Laughter).
COASTON: ...And that, you know, the victimized will become straight white men - straight cisgender white men, which I found fascinating. And, you know, one - it's kind of acknowledging that there already exists a hierarchy and that you - any effort to eliminate the hierarchy is seen as an effort to simply reverse the hierarchy.
SANDERS: Yeah. So we've talked about how the right has run with this word, but it seems like the left has made the word now almost a religion, almost a belief system. And like, it is - it's spiritual almost.
COASTON: Well, I would say that I think that that is a bit of a canard. I think that for folks who are working on anti-discrimination efforts, they want to use intersectionality, you know, almost in some senses as a signal that makes it clear that they take all forms of discrimination and hate seriously.
SANDERS: So it's like a virtue...
COASTON: And...
SANDERS: ...Signaling.
COASTON: Well, I think virtue signaling would imply that they don't actually think that and that they're doing this just to show people. I think they actually do think that. I think they actually do take discrimination across the board very seriously and are using intersectionality as a means of indicating that, you know, diversity isn't enough, that, you know, this is where we're going to take our stand.
SANDERS: Yeah. My question in this moment, where, like, there's more knowledge available to all of us than ever before, yet people on the left and the right seem to make no effort to really truly understand a word like intersectionality - like, I wonder why that is the case. I would bet that most people could not point to the roots of this word in legal theory.
COASTON: Right.
SANDERS: Is there something about the culture right now or our politics right now that keeps our understanding of these buzzwords so shallow? What is it about us?
COASTON: Well, I think that as our culture has widened to include more voices and more people, how we talk about those voices and people hasn't been. You know, there are a lot more people who have heard Ben Shapiro talk about intersectionality than even, perhaps, I've heard Kimberle Crenshaw talk about intersectionality.
SANDERS: Yeah.
COASTON: And so I think it's when, you know, these kind of secondary actors get to redefine terms. And I'd argue that, you know, the left does this as well, where, you know, you may have heard intersectionality more from college students than you've heard from the original source or if - you know, you may have thought that this is a term that literally just came up in 2015...
SANDERS: Yeah.
COASTON: ...When it most certainly didn't.
SANDERS: Yeah.
COASTON: And so I think that it's when - you know, when secondary actors are able to define terms in our media or to define what something looks like or sounds like, I think that's where that confusion can come from.
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SANDERS: Thank you, Jane.
COASTON: Of course. Thank you very much.
(SOUNDBITE OF FLEVANS' "FLICKER")
SANDERS: Thanks again to Jane Coaston of Vox. You're listening to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR. I'm Sam Sanders here with Tony Romm, who covers tech policy for The Washington Post, and Kelsey Snell, who covers Congress for NPR. What do you make of that?
SNELL: You know, it - the thing that I thought was really interesting about this is it reminds me of the conversation we have a lot about the word feminism - is it's...
SANDERS: Ah.
SNELL: ...Another word where you get into a - it's a complex word that isn't really all that complex, right?
SANDERS: (Laughter) Yeah.
SNELL: People create definitions for it based on - you know, because it's shorthand. And...
SANDERS: Exactly.
SNELL: ...The problem that we run into in politics here is that people want shorthand because it's a way to connect with voters or with people who they're talking to in a very condensed period of time. But it doesn't actually express the complex feelings that they're having about the topic at hand. And that's where things get difficult.
SANDERS: Yeah.
ROMM: The challenge for us is to figure out how to have that conversation in a way that works for other people while, at the same time, dealing with the fact that there are lots of others with gigantic followings on social media who can kind of co-opt a debate around something like intersectionality to promote a very radically, you know, different or incorrect view of it.
SANDERS: Yeah.
SNELL: When you have these kind of conversations, do you get a lot of feedback from people about their feelings about the word?
SANDERS: Well, like, I find with all these conversations, you have to spend 10 or 15 or 20 minutes stripping away the semantics and the jargon from the way people talk about this stuff...
ROMM: Yeah.
SANDERS: ...Because you come to conversations around race and gender with talking points. And it just takes a certain conditioning to strip that back and be really honest about how you feel and what you want. And I think that's what's missing in our politics. And the way that this word has just kind of floundered speaks to that if that makes sense.
SNELL: Yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF FLEVANS' "FLICKER")
SANDERS: Time for a break - when we come back, my favorite game - Who Said That. You're listening to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR. We'll be right back.
SNELL: We were both already terrified about this game.
ROMM: Yeah, we're going to do terribly.
(LAUGHTER)
SANDERS: I don't know why people get so worked up about it.
(SOUNDBITE OF FLEVANS' "FLICKER")
SANDERS: You're listening to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR, the show where we catch up on the week that was. I'm Sam Sanders, here with two guests - Kelsey Snell, who covers congress for NPR, and Tony Romm, who covers tech policy at The Washington Post. Y'all, it is time for my favorite game - Who Said That.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF ATLANTA")
KANDI BURRUSS: Who had been saying that?
PORSHA WILLIAMS: Who said that?
SANDERS: The game is really simple. I share a quote from the week. You both have to guess who said that or at least get the story I'm talking about or a keyword from the story. Per usual, the winner gets absolutely nothing.
SNELL: Yes.
ROMM: Nice.
SANDERS: Shall we begin?
SNELL: Let's do it.
ROMM: Let's do it.
SANDERS: No buzzers - just yell it out, all right? First quote is, "the question I started out with was - how do people perceive what's difficult, and how can we train a computer to make those same types of predictions?"
SNELL: A game?
SANDERS: A game show.
ROMM: A game show.
SNELL: "Jeopardy!"?
(SOUNDBITE OF VICTORY TUNE)
SNELL: Yeah. OK. There you go.
SNELL: Oh, really?
SANDERS: See. Yeah, yeah. So that was a quote from Emma Boettcher. She's a new "Jeopardy!" champion. And she...
ROMM: Oh, right.
SANDERS: ...Beat the guy who had won millions with the expertise he gained from being a sports gambler. And she got her expertise in "Jeopardy!" by writing her master's thesis on how to beat the game.
SNELL: Wait. I've...
ROMM: See...
SNELL: ...Been spending my time all wrong (laughter).
ROMM: I could've gotten a master's in game shows?
SNELL: Yeah.
SANDERS: Yes, you can.
ROMM: Why did I do journalism?
SNELL: (Laughter).
SANDERS: Yeah. Yeah. She wrote a 70-page master's thesis called "Predicting The Difficulty Of Trivia Questions Using Text Features." And she basically found out that you can figure out how hard these questions are or how easy they are or how to guess the right answer based on how it's worded.
SNELL: Wow.
SANDERS: Yeah.
ROMM: She wouldn't struggle at this show. She...
(LAUGHTER)
SANDERS: She'd win it...
ROMM: All of it.
SANDERS: ...Hands down. All right, Kelsey. You're up one - zip. Next quote - you ready?
SNELL: Yeah.
SANDERS: "We have decided to launch a campaign to educate the public, politicians and civil servants about the unique problems we face."
SNELL: Oh.
ROMM: That could be anything.
SNELL: Yeah. I was going to say.
SANDERS: What marginalized community announced this week that they were going to have a march to celebrate themselves?
SNELL: Oh.
ROMM: Is this the straight pride thing?
SNELL: Straight pride?
(SOUNDBITE OF VICTORY TUNE)
SANDERS: Yes.
ROMM: Oh, Jesus.
SANDERS: I'll give that to both of you.
SNELL: (Laughter).
ROMM: Oh, no.
SANDERS: So as we know, June is LGBTQ Pride month, and there are parades and celebrations and honoring of that community all month. But in response, a group called Super Happy Fun America wrote a blog post this week announcing that, in the Boston area, these guys are planning a straight pride parade.
ROMM: What's in it?
SANDERS: I don't even know - cargo shorts?
SNELL: Socks and sandals.
(LAUGHTER)
ROMM: I have no words.
SANDERS: All right. Final quote - I think the game is - well, the game is whatever. It doesn't matter. Final quote...
(LAUGHTER)
SANDERS: Here's a quote. "Tonight's the night. Let's live it up. I got my money. Let's spend it up." Y'all know that quote.
SNELL: I...
SANDERS: It's from a song.
SNELL: It is from a song.
ROMM: Yeah, I know. And I'm like - I'm going to embarrass myself.
SNELL: I love - no.
SANDERS: Let me do it again. Tonight's the night.
ROMM: That's what it sounded like to...
SANDERS: Let's live it up.
SNELL: Oh, it's...
SANDERS: I got my money. Let's spend it up...
SNELL: I know this. The...
ROMM: Black Eyed Peas.
(SOUNDBITE OF VICTORY TUNE)
SANDERS: Yes. Oh, my God.
SNELL: Gosh. We're dragging over here.
ROMM: Oh, my God.
SANDERS: Why was it so hard?
ROMM: I don't know.
SNELL: What really happened there is Tony and I totally knew the answer.
SANDERS: Uh-huh.
SNELL: We just wanted to hear you sing again - twice.
SANDERS: Uh-huh.
ROMM: Twice, yeah.
SNELL: (Laughter).
SANDERS: So I was reciting some of the lyrics of the Black Eyed Peas' classic "I Gotta Feeling" because, to the best of our knowledge from what Apple has revealed, that has been the best-selling song on iTunes.
ROMM: Oh.
SNELL: Really?
SANDERS: And iTunes is in the news this week because Apple is kind of killing iTunes. iTunes is over.
ROMM: Yep. RIP.
SNELL: I'm not going to be sad about that.
ROMM: RIP, iTunes.
SANDERS: Basically, iTunes allows you to, like, download songs. Now we've all moved to streaming. Right?
ROMM: Yeah, yeah. I mean - and also, that software is terrible, and nobody likes using it. Whenever it opens up your laptop, you're like, damn this thing. It's like (laughter)....
SANDERS: Yeah, yeah.
SNELL: I mean, I'm pretty sure I still have a phone somewhere that has that U2 album that they made you get from iTunes on your phone.
ROMM: Oh, my God.
SANDERS: God.
SNELL: Remember that?
SANDERS: So annoying.
ROMM: Right.
SANDERS: So annoying.
ROMM: Yeah. But they're, like, splitting it up into multiple things now. So it's like sort of gone but not gone.
SANDERS: Yeah. So like, you can still use iTunes and download the song. But it'll be hidden, and Apple's going to prioritize streaming. But this is just a sign that, like, the industry has changed. You know, when iTunes came out, everyone wanted to download their songs and have them on their device. And now we've moved to streaming, and people just download this stuff less. So RIP.
SNELL: Maybe they should just download podcasts more.
SANDERS: Ba-da-ba (ph).
SNELL: NPR plugs.
(LAUGHTER)
SANDERS: All right. Anyways, the game is oh (ph) - who won?
ROMM: Not me.
SANDERS: I really don't know.
ROMM: (Laughter) Celine Dion won.
SANDERS: That's right.
SNELL: At the end of the day, Celine is the winner.
(LAUGHTER)
SANDERS: Now it's time to end the show. Usually in this segment, we ask our listeners to share with us the best things that happened to them all week. We encourage folks to brag. We listen. It's always great. But this week, want to try something different. We have been asking listeners to share with us the strangest, weirdest, quirkiest parts of their week. We wanted folks to give us that audio. So we've put it together.
Brent, Anjuli - hit the tape.
IAN DOESCHER: Hi, Sam. This Ian Doescher (ph) from Portland, Ore. Here's the weirdest thing that happened to me this week. My sons and I were on vacation in New York City. And while we walked through Central Park, we overheard snippets of conversations. One person said, and then if you accidentally eat the child...
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
DOESCHER: ...Not sure what that was about.
(LAUGHTER)
SNELL: OK.
(LAUGHTER)
MAGGIE RINEY: Hi, Sam. Maggie Riney (ph) here. Something weird that happened to me this week is that I was returning from a local amusement park in Santa Claus, Ind., actually named Holiday World when a bald eagle swooped down, talons blazing, and almost landed on the hood of my car.
MELINDA: I was sitting on a bench on my patio with a cup of coffee in one hand and the hose in the other watering the plants, and a skunk walked across my feet. I think it was the weirdest thing that happened to the skunk, too.
(LAUGHTER)
JASMINE: I recently started watching "Sex And The City" because I had never seen it. And last night, I came across the episode where the Russian hands Carrie a banana and tells her to put it in her purse. Today as I was walking to dinner, I said hello to my fruit stand guy, and he gave me a big hug, said hello and then gave me a banana to take with me. And since I was on my way to dinner, decided to save it for later by putting it in my purse.
(LAUGHTER)
SAMANTHA: Hey, Sam. This is Samantha (ph). I had something really weird but special happen this past week. It was about my dad. He was a nurse, and I followed in his footsteps. This past week, there was a day I was feeling really down because I thought about how he wasn't around to trade crazy nursing stories or give me instructions on things. But when I was asked to start an IV on a patient, I thought about the instructions he'd given me a really long time ago - how to look for a site, how to approach it. I got the IV in one try and started talking with the patient only to realize that she had known my father once upon a time because he had hired her to work with him in the surgical department 15 years ago. She shared with me how well-liked he had been and how he always liked to laugh. She was right. He always liked to laugh. And that was the weird, special and awesome thing that happened to me this past week.
JASMINE: Thanks so much. Have a good weekend.
DOESCHER: Thanks for everything you do, Sam.
SANDERS: My goodness.
SNELL: I'm also still a little hung up on, A, Santa Claus, Ind., and, B, a local amusement park. Like, there's a lot going on in that story.
ROMM: I want a fruit stand guy.
SNELL: (Laughter).
SANDERS: Our listeners are pretty great. Oh, my goodness. Thanks to all those listeners - Ian, Maggie, Melinda (ph), Jasmine (ph) and Samantha. We listen to and read everything you send us, so keep it coming. Send me the sound of your voice. Send me an email or a note. Email all that stuff to samsanders@npr.org - samsanders@npr.org. All right. That's a wrap. The two of y'all were the best parts of my week.
SNELL: Aw.
ROMM: Aw.
SANDERS: Thanks to Tony Romm, who covers tech policy at the Washington Post, for being here this week and Kelsey Snell, who covers Congress for NPR.
SNELL: Thanks for having us.
ROMM: Yeah, thanks.
SANDERS: This week, IT'S BEEN A MINUTE was produced by Brent Baughman and Anjuli Sastry. Steve Nelson is our director of programming. Our fearless editors are Jordana Hochman and Alex McCall. And our big boss is NPR's senior VP of programming Anya Grundmann. All right, listeners, till next time - thank you for listening. I'm Sam Sanders. Talk soon. Keep channeling your inner Celine.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THAT'S THE WAY IT IS")
DION: (Singing) That's the way it is. That's the way it is. Don't give up on your faith. Love comes to those who believe it, and that's the way it is.
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