Make Me Smart June 02, 2022 transcript

Note: Marketplace podcasts are meant to be heard, with emphasis, tone and audio elements a transcript can’t capture. Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting it.

Kimberly Adams: Oh, we’re ready. Hello, everyone. I am Kimberly Adams, and welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today make sense.

Samantha Fields: I’m Samantha Fields, in for Kai today. Thanks for joining us this Thursday. We are here to do the news, share a make me smile, and then leave you to the rest of your day. So Kimberly, should we get to the news?

Kimberly Adams: Yes, let’s get to the news. And I am not a huge entertainment celebrity news watcher person, and so when I kept seeing all of this Johnny Depp Amber Heard trial stuff pop up on social media, for like the first several weeks, I kind of dismissed it all as sort of the latest celebrity gossip thing, that just not my business, not my monkey, not my circus. But as this thing has gone on, it has really become just something else. And now that the verdict is out, where the jury basically ruled in favor of Johnny Depp in this defamation case, in almost all of the cases, and in Amber Heard’s favor in just one. There are a lot of repercussions that are fascinating and disturbing. So for people who haven’t been following this, Amber Heard and Johnny Depp, both actors, had a very tumultuous relationship, and both have accused each other of, you know, assault and domestic violence. In a UK case, there was evidence presented by Amber Heard and it was found that Johnny Depp had indeed been abusing her in that case. And there were photos and videos and interviews and all these things in that case went in her favor, but here in the US, it went the other direction. But more importantly than me standing here and debating the merits of the case is that, here in the US, the case really played out in the court of public opinion. It became like this social media – particularly on TikTok – phenomenon, that so many people were weighing in on and overwhelmingly in favor of Johnny Depp’s position on this, and overwhelmingly hostile to Amber Heard and her experience here. And wherever you land on who you believe there, a couple of things coming out of this that are really disturbing. So for one thing, this case for many people, marks a shift from the sort of MeToo perspective of, you know, believe all women, women should be able to speak up when they’ve been victims of domestic violence, to this woman speaking about her experience, everyone – at least on social media, dismissing her, mocking her, and saying that this experience is not real. And it revolves around this op-ed that she put in the Washington Post some years back, saying that she was someone who had experienced domestic violence. She didn’t name Johnny Depp by name, but he said that it ruined his reputation and ruined his career and the jury agreed with him. There are several pieces that have been written about whether this is going to have a chilling effect for other victims of domestic violence. Men, women, and intersex and all sorts of people who have a more powerful partner and are worried about speaking up about their abuse. In the era of MeToo, we had all of these women come forward under the threat of defamation lawsuits, and spoke out anyway, and only through investigations in journalism were their stories then vindicated or proven or were they able to get through their day in court. And so there’s a lot of concern now, that this case is going to make a lot of women less likely to speak out. There have been a bunch of people writing about this with a lot more nuance than I’m getting into here, and we’re going to link to those on the show page. But two pieces in particular, I’d encourage people to look at. One in Rolling Stone, and which really gets into what this means potentially for the MeToo movement and for other victims of domestic violence. And another piece in Vanity Fair, that was actually written by Monica Lewinsky, about how differently these situations play out in the modern era of social media, compared to in the past, because now, it’s not even that people are just watching the case streamed live on Court TV, they’re watching these curated clips on TikTok, with people who have these really strong agendas, and then overlay on top of it these really strong opinions, often mocking, often humiliating, or, you know, empowering for whichever side they’re on. And sure, you can make an argument that journalists do a version of this with news, but we also have our own standards and, you know, responsibility that we think of with it. And in this case, you have a lot of casual people just sort of jumping in and it’s, I’m still processing it honestly, it’s a lot. Have you been following this at all?

Samantha Fields: No, I was gonna say sort of when you started out by saying that you were kind of avoiding it at first, or just not really tuning in, that was the same for me. And at first, it was partly because of what you said about it feeling like, well, this is a sort of celebrity entertainment, and I’m not that interested. And then it became unavoidable. It was everywhere, online, in the news, on social media. So it did become unavoidable. And I still chose not to read a lot of it until the verdict came in, because I found that the tenor of pretty much everything I was seeing online pretty disturbing. You know, as someone who doesn’t have any particular feelings about Johnny Depp or Amber Heard, coming into this, I really found the vitriol directed at her and the support for him very very disturbing. I mean, there is evidence of abuse that was presented in court, there is no denying that. And even so, people were just – I mean, obviously not everybody, but a lot of people online were just really behind him, really against her, and not just saying I think she, you know, I think she was in the wrong hair. She defamed him. But like really mocking her in a way that was extremely disturbing and did feel sort of much bigger than her or this case. And I read those pieces that you shared, and you know what’s interesting is that it felt like during the coverage of the trial, a lot of it was really in support of him. And now, after the verdict, it felt like a lot of what I’ve been reading has been saying a lot of what you’re saying, and what I felt about it feeling pretty disturbing, and like a real loss for women and survivors in a lot of ways.

Kimberly Adams: You know, I have to admit that I got a little caught up in it, because since I wasn’t paying attention, and my main exposure to this was through TikTok and Instagram reels and sort of this mockery of Amber Heard, at the beginning, I was like, oh, was she really this abusive to him? And then I started actually looking into it. And I was like, wait a minute. This has already been to court in another country, and settled in the opposite direction. And then there was a really good episode of Today Explained, looking into why the internet hated Amber Heard so much, and it gets into sort of misogyny and what is an acceptable victim and this idea…

Samantha Fields: Right, you have to be the perfect victim or you are not a victim at all.

Kimberly Adams: Yeah. And it’s really, really disturbing. And it is fascinating that this is all sort of come up after it’s done, that this is when we’re having this discussion, as opposed to as it was happening, not that we’re on the jury. But anyway.

Samantha Fields: It’s also crazy, though, is the jury wasn’t sequestered, which I mean, I don’t know how. Nope, the jury was not sequestered in this case. And given how massive the coverage was, and how strongly biased it was, that seems problematic to me.

Kimberly Adams: Interesting. Well, I would encourage folks to read those pieces and I’d love to hear what other people think about it. What’s your news?

Samantha Fields: Slight pivot here. I wanted to do an update on the baby formula shortage. Because just before coming in to record this and talk to you, I saw a statistic that really sort of floored me, which is that 75% of the normal stock of baby formula is out of stock. So there’s about 25% of normal supply currently available on shelves and online. And the last time I reported on this shortage a couple of weeks ago, that number was 43%. And it’s just sort of shocking to me that are disturbing. That, you know, the government has been trying to do to take certain steps to alleviate the shortage, they’re making it easier to import formula from abroad, which is normally really hard. There have been flights of formula from Europe and Australia arriving here, they’re upping those. The Biden administration has invoked the defense production act to try to speed production here in the US. And yet, it’s getting worse. And I just can only imagine for families with babies that are still predominantly relying on formula, how terrifying this must be. You know, there are some states where there’s 90% of formula out of stock, like ten states, which is a huge number.

Kimberly Adams: I just really hope that we’re not going to see, you know, six months to a year from now, kids with major health effects because they didn’t have access to the nutrients they needed at this critical stage in their life.

Samantha Fields: Right, because I think a lot of parents don’t know what to do, you know. And I googled it because I was curious, right. And a lot of the advice that you find for parents is a lot of don’t do this, but not a lot of helpful what do you do. You know, there just aren’t a lot of options for people. And so, hopefully, you know, they are doubling the amount of formula that they’re bringing in from abroad. Abbott, which is one of the four companies that makes 90% of formula in the US, is going to restart one of its main plants, which has been closed, which is a big part of this problem. But it’s still going to be a while before, like probably weeks or a couple months, before that is back up and running at full capacity. So yeah, I’d be curious to hear if you’re listening to this, and you’re dealing with this, I’d be curious to hear from you. We’d love to hear from you about what your experience with this is and how you’re dealing with it.

Kimberly Adams: Phew. Two heavy things, we should probably move on to some smiles.

Samantha Fields: I’m ready for that.

Kimberly Adams: Okay, why don’t you go first?

Samantha Fields: Alright, well, honestly, thinking about this today, I was struggling. And so I posed the question to Twitter if there was any good news recently, because it certainly doesn’t feel like it to me. And somebody responded with a story that really did make me smile, which is that the Ukrainian soccer team beat Scotland this week in a World Cup semifinal game, and they’re just one win away from potentially going to the World Cup. And it was a really kind of amazing story. They were not expected to win. This was the first game they had played at all since the invasion. They had had to delay the game from March because of the invasion and trouble getting out of Ukraine. They had bused out of Ukraine to Slovenia and trained for a month and then gone into this game. There were 3000 Ukrainians in the audience and in the stands, including many refugees. And it’s just hard to watch highlights from the game without getting goosebumps. It’s pretty cool.

Kimberly Adams: Good for them. They really need this. Good for them.

Samantha Fields: Seriously. One more game against Wales on Sunday, and if they win, they’re going to World Cup.

Kimberly Adams: Yeah. All right. Well, good luck. Good luck, Ukraine. I feel sorry for the Welsh and Scottish because who wants to be that team in this environment.

Samantha Fields: But it’s hard not to cheer for Ukraine right now.

Kimberly Adams: It’s hard not to cheer for Ukraine. So oddly enough, my make me smile is yet another viral social media moment. Have you heard about Swedengate?

Samantha Fields: Not until I was reading through some of the things that you shared.

Kimberly Adams: Oh my gosh, this just has me floored. So it started in a Reddit thread, where basically they were talking about unusual experiences people had related to someone having a different culture. And somebody brought up how, they were over at a friend’s house, and they – the family went to have dinner and basically told them to wait in the other room while the family had dinner. Because apparently, in Sweden, there’s no expectation that you would feed your kids’ friends who came over to play if they were around at dinner time.

Samantha Fields: So the whole family just eats dinner and you just don’t eat dinner? You sit and hang out by yourself?

Kimberly Adams: Yes. Yes.

Samantha Fields: Fascinating. Why?

Kimberly Adams: It’s, it’s a cultural thing. And I think a lot of the internet had a similar reaction to what I have, which is like, how are you going to do that? Okay, I found the actual Reddit post that said, I remember going to my Swedish friend’s house. And while we were playing in his room, his mom yelled, the dinner was ready. And check this. He told me to wait in his room while they ate. And, and so everyone’s like, what? How is this actually possible? Surely this is an outlier. And the Swedes get online. And they’re like, no, this is what we do. This is fine. What’s the problem? And so it’s been this huge thing online about… you know, people are like oh, my gosh, that’s so rude, that’s so unkind. And it really reveals sort of things that you might think are foundational, hospitality elements, are not universal.

Samantha Fields: I kind of love that.

Kimberly Adams: So the Swedes are on there, like, look, family dinners are extremely important to us, and you have them with your family. And it’s considered bad manners to deny a family, like, you have to imagine this kid who came over to play with your kid, their parents made dinner and are expecting their child to eat dinner at their house. And if you spoil their appetite, that’s rude to the other parents. And likewise, it’s rude to impose upon the family of your kids’ friend without asking in advance that they would by default eat with you. And that’s like bad manners. And I mean, okay, but in my family, like, it would just be assumed that if you were around anywhere. I mean, first of all, you get a snack if you’re a kid regardless, or something to munch on. And, you know, if you happen to be around in the vicinity of lunch or dinner, oh, why don’t you stay for lunch? Or why don’t you stay for dinner? And that’s our version of hospitality. But it is not universal. And this was a good lesson of that. There’s been much discussion of this online, including maps.

Samantha Fields: I was just looking at that map that somebody made that says, a map of Europe. That says, will you receive food as a guest at someone’s house? And then it’s color coded for almost always, usually yes, unlikely to give you food, very unlikely to give you food. And it’s very funny. Now I have a lot more questions.

Kimberly Adams: I’m sure the internet will answer them for you because there are so many Twitter threads about this and think pieces and it definitely made me smile, but it also was a good reminder to sort of check your cultural assumptions across the board and not rush to judgment.

Samantha Fields: Absolutely.

Kimberly Adams: But we’ve already gone on a bit longer. And that is it for us today. But I would love to hear what people think of Swedengate and also what unique cultural experiences you may have been exposed to that taught you, that made you smarter about things that you may have thought were universal that aren’t actually. And I have a few of those myself. But tomorrow, Kai and I will be back for economics on tap, he will probably be drinking a beer. I will probably be not having a beer. But we will both be on the YouTube live stream starting at 6:30 Eastern 3:30 Pacific and so you can join us for news, a game, and of course those drinks.

Samantha Fields: And please do keep sending us your thoughts and questions. Our email is makemesmart@marketplace.org Or you can leave us a message at 508-U-B-SMART.

Kimberly Adams: Make Me Smart is produced by Marissa Cabrera. Today’s episode was engineered by Charlton Thorp.

Samantha Fields: Bridget Bodnar is the Senior Producer, excuse me Bridget Bodnar is the senior producer. The Director of On Demand is Donna Tam. Bridget I stumbled over your name, I’m so sorry.

Kimberly Adams: When I was living in Egypt, I ran into a real issue with my cultural assumption that it would be rude if you didn’t clean your plate. Man that was rough.