[PREVIEW] The White House Baby Boom & 'Tell Me Lies' S3

This week, we’re diving into two topics that, somehow, both involve evil Stephens who want women to have their babies for nefarious reasons: the recent wave of high-profile, propagandistic pregnancy announcements in the Trump White House, and the current season of the dark teen soap “Tell Me Lies.” First, we get into the MAGA baby boom. Over the past month, three prominent Trump administration officials — Vice President J.D. Vance, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, and Chief Architect of Evil Stephen Miller — have announced that they are expecting babies. For Vance and Miller, these will be their fourth children; Leavitt, who is just 28, is expecting her second. Having a baby shouldn’t be a political act, nor should it be right- or left-coded. But it’s clear from how these officials, and the White House, have framed these announcements that a mini baby boom within their ranks is doing valuable political work for them: it’s not only a sweet and fuzzy distraction from the violence being wreaked on American communities by ICE, but an advertisement for their so-called “pro-family” policies. We also unpack the telling language used by the Vances and Leavitt to discuss their pregnancies, how these ideologically tinged announcements work to brand motherhood as inherently conservative, and how the right’s pronatalism and anti-child policies devalue the lives of actual kids.Next, we catch up on the first few episodes of “Tell Me Lies,” season 3, which finds our flawed heroine Lucy still emotionally entangled with her controlling and toxic ex-boyfriend, Stephen. We discuss the major narrative developments so far this season, including a reshuffling of the romantic deck that we didn’t see coming. We also try to figure out why this season feels like it’s really driving discourse; perhaps in part because its feminist lens on male toxicity and emotional abuse is more striking as the story continues unfurling and Lucy still can’t free herself from Stephen’s orbit of control.Meanwhile, Meaghan Oppenheimer, the show’s creator, has spoken in interviews about how critical the show’s audience is of Lucy’s bad behavior; the torment she endures this season, Oppenheimer says, is the punishment fans have been asking for. “I was posing a question to them with this season: are you happy now?" We unpack how the show and the discourse around it illustrate the reactionary desire to find female blame in a story of male abuse. We also discuss how the show’s 2008-2015 setting offers a bit of nostalgia for the Obama years, when we were still blissfully ignorant of the descent into fascism that lay ahead of us. Maybe flat irons and side parts will always make us think of simpler times. Timestamps for easy listening:0:00 — The spate of pregnancy announcements from Trump’s White House44:00 — Why season 3 of “Tell Me Lies” is hittingShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription