Transcript of bonus epside -

Why TANGOTI?

Bridget Todd:                     00:04                     There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd. And this is, There Are No Girls on the Internet. This is Bridget Todd, host of There Are No Girls on the Internet. It's been about a month since we started this podcast and it's already been through the challenging and fun experience. To celebrate, I sat down with our contributing producer, Michael, to give you all more information about who I am and why I make this show.

Michael:                               00:33                     Well, hi Bridget.

Bridget Todd:                     00:34                     Hi Michael.

Michael:                               00:35                     Thanks for making time for me today.

Bridget Todd:                     00:37                     Thanks for being willing to sit down and talk.

Michael:                               00:40                     Sure. So Tangoti. Critically acclaimed podcast. How do you feel about how the launch has gone?

Bridget Todd:                     00:49                     It's been good. For folks who listen to my previous podcast stuff, I've never told you, y'all probably know this has been a long time coming, so I'm really happy that it's finally in the people's earbuds. And the response has been really great. It's been very fun. It's been very challenging. It's been really cool to tell the stories of people that I think deserve more attention. And just to center marginalized folks. Women, people of color in conversations about what it means to be on the internet.

I remember seeing these awful instances of public acts of violence, like mass shootings and things like that. And the thing that so many of them had in common was that the perpetrator, in most cases, men, they had a history of violent rhetoric online, rhetoric about women

Michael:                               01:18                     Why was that important to you to tell these stories?

Bridget Todd:                     01:20                     Well, when I first got the idea for Tangoti, there was a lot of different things going on. I remember seeing these awful instances of public acts of violence, like mass shootings and things like that. And the thing that so many of them had in common was that the perpetrator, in most cases, men, they had a history of violent rhetoric online, a rhetoric about women. And it seemed to me that anybody who was paying attention would think like, oh, this is a warning sign we should take seriously.

                                                                                And I thought, if only somebody had taken that seriously, if only somebody had thought about what this person was writing online about women and looked into it, maybe this wouldn't have happened. Then I remember hearing about this woman, Shafiqah Hudson, who had been making noise about the fact that somebody on social media was impersonating black women in her online spaces. And then I remember hearing that story and thinking, oh, okay. And then flash forward a couple of years to the election, seeing a Senate Inquiry that confirmed that those same tactics had happened and that they were an attempt to shift our election.

                                                                                And I thought, if only anybody had taken her seriously when she talked about her experiences online, maybe the election could have been different. Maybe things could have been different. I saw those two big things happening, but in my own life, even though I was someone who had worked in tech spaces, spends a lot of her time online, I still was sort of compartmentalizing my own space, my own experiences in tech. I thought of myself as someone who wasn't really involved in the internet, wasn't really involved in tech, despite the fact that I worked at tech companies.

                                                                                And I released all those things as related. The fact that these experiences that marginalized people have online were so overlooked and so ignored and that the consequences for ignoring them were so huge. But then in my own life, I still was having trouble sort of centering my experiences online. I still thought like, oh, well what rights do I have to say anything to attack leader? Or what right do I have to make an argument about the online experience? And so, one of the reasons why I wanted to make Tangoti is that I want people to stop doing that. I think that, as marginalized people, it's so easy to internalize that our stories don't really matter and that our experiences don't really matter.

                                                                                And I just want to be part of a cultural paradigm shift that says, no. We are the experts of our own experiences. If you use the internet every day for listening to this podcast, you have a right to demand accountability from tech leaders, from tech platforms. You have a right to expect that the experiences that we have, and by we I mean other marginalized people, are going to be told thoughtfully and centered because that's what makes being on the internet great. The internet is so much richer because there are so many different identities that make the experience that much more rich.

Michael:                               04:23                     So these stories need to be told to make us all richer by hearing them, why are you the person to tell these stories?

I've spent most of my life amplifying the stories of marginalized people, specifically black women

Bridget Todd:                     04:30                     That's a great question. I've spent most of my life amplifying the stories of marginalized people, specifically black women. But also other marginalized identities. I think that I'm the right person to tell these stories because for so long, I yearned for them. Tony Morrison has this quote that she became the writer that she needed when she was younger. And for all the experiences I've had online, I just wished that there was someone who was compiling them and archiving them and amplifying them. And so why not me?

Michael:                               05:04                     You've been making podcasts for a while now, right?

Bridget Todd:                     05:07                     Oh yes. So I've been a long time podcast appreciator, but my first job in podcasting was back in 2011. This until, if you know anything about podcasts, you know that the big sort of shift in podcasting, what we thought about podcasting is like a real medium, was when Serial came out. But my time in podcasting predates that. So I have to think of myself as like the old guard, the OG. Yeah. My first job in podcasting was working as a producer on a show called The Flaming Sword of Justice. It was a podcast about activism and organizing and yeah. I've loved it ever since then. I've been a long time podcast appreciator.

Michael:                               05:52                     What are some of the foundational podcasts that you've listen to? If you had to name two, maybe three.

Starlee Kine, in my mind, she's like the Beyonce of podcasting

Bridget Todd:                     05:59                     Okay. Well, number one will always be Starlee Kine's, Mystery Show. Unfortunately it was short-lived. There's only a handful of episodes, but if you're looking for an episode to start with, the episode about Brittany Spears, I think is the pinnacle of what the medium can be. When I first heard it, I thought, this podcasting is going to change everything. I had never heard storytelling like it. And so the idea is that Starlee Kine, the host and producer, she gets a new mystery every episode. A mystery that can't be solved by just Googling it. And so she has to go through these deep dives of solving these mysteries. And it really is just something really special. And unfortunately they're no longer making new episodes, but Starlee Kine, in my mind, she's like the Beyonce of podcasting. She's just so good.

Michael:                               06:53                     You said you'd never heard stories told like that. What is it about podcasts that you think is different from other medium?

It was podcasts that really kind of saved my life. If it wasn't for podcasts, I don't know how I would have gotten through that time.

Bridget Todd:                     07:01                     That's a great question. When I first got really into podcasts, so this is going to sound kind of depressing and also extreme, but I mean it the way I say it. When I first got really into podcast, I had moved from the East Coast to San Francisco and I moved there for work. And I moved their sight unseen. I had never visited. I never been before. And I moved there for a job, a kind of tech adjacent job at a mobile phone company called CREDO Mobile. And shout out to CREDO Mobile. And it was a tough time in my life. I had a really hard time meeting people. I had a really hard time making friends.

                                                                                I spent every day thinking like, did I make a mistake moving out here? Also this was San Francisco. This was like the beginning of San Francisco's tech boom really changing the landscape of what San Francisco was. And so I grew up thinking San Francisco was this like hippie wonderland and I was excited for that. But when I got there, it was something very different. And truly the sounds, very over the top and maybe it is, but it was podcasts that really kind of saved my life. If it wasn't for podcasts, I don't know how I would have gotten through that time.

Michael:                               08:22                     What podcasts were you listening to then?

Bridget Todd:                     08:24                     So at that point in my life, the podcast I was listening to the most was one called, Uhh Yeah Dude. Full disclosure, it is purely a comedy podcast. I mean, there's more than that.

Michael:                               08:39                     They're documenting their own American experience.

Bridget Todd:                     08:43                     Exactly. Exactly. This is like when you ask somebody, "Oh, what's your favorite movie?" And they feel pressured to be like, "Citizen Kane." But really it's Clueless. So it was not like a very highbrow show. But something about it made me feel like I was talking to friends and I would go to sleep listening to this podcast in headphones. After work, I would rush home to my empty apartment to listen to this podcast, right? It was the thing that made me feel connected to the world and made me feel like I wasn't so alone.

Michael:                               09:19                     Why? What is it about podcasting that makes that connection?

There's something about hearing people's voices on a podcast, hearing someone grappling with a new concept for the first time

Bridget Todd:                     09:22                     There's a lot. I think it's a very intimate medium. I think, for me, there's something about hearing people's voices, hearing someone grappling with a new concept for the first time. And hearing all the ums and uhs and likes and weird sounds that come with that. I really, really liked that. Not everybody likes it. I try to edit. Luckily, as you know, we have a superstar-

Michael:                               09:51                     We have Tari.

Bridget Todd:                     09:51                     We have Tari. Shout out to Tari, whose name you hear in the credits. Luckily we have a genius editor who makes everybody on the show sound like they're just brilliant and they just like rolled out of bed. Brilliant. And everything they say comes out brilliant and perfect. And I appreciate why people are like that. For me, it's the exact opposite, right? I love the awkward pauses and the throat clearing, because I feel like those are the signals that you're hearing someone really have a real conversation.

                                                                                I also think I like podcasts a lot because I've been a fan of them for a very long time. And I feel like when I first fell in love with the medium, it was so new and so different. And even when I was working as a podcast, we didn't know what the fuck we were doing. We were like a ragtag group of people who really just were making it up as they went along. I'll never forget sort of like fibbing on my resume about knowing how to edit audio, and then being like, "Oh fuck, they're going to expect me to know how to do this." Having to learn to do it.

                                                                                So there's something about the podcast landscape when I first got involved in it back in the 2000s or early 2000s, it just felt like the Wild West. And it just felt like you were hearing conversations that you would never hear any place else. And even though that's changed as the medium has gotten more slick and more professionalized, I still feel that. I think at the end of the day, it'll always be a medium for weirdos. And I think of myself as a weirdo. So it feels like home.

Michael:                               11:32                     Yeah. Your interviews, you do a good job connecting with people and getting them to not just open up, but express themselves and say things that they want to say about their own experience but maybe don't always get the chance to just like sit down and talk about it. How do you approach that, the interviews that you've done for this season, what's your strategy?

Bridget Todd:                     12:00                     Well, first and foremost, as women, as people of color, as people who are marginalized, it's not a given that someone's going to thoughtfully deal with our stories, right? Until someone is down to sit down with me for the podcast or for an interview, the first thing that's most important to me is making sure that I treat their story with care and intention. Because unfortunately, that's not always a given that someone that we're talking to is going to treat our story with that kind of care. And I take it very seriously. I take it very seriously.

                                                                                Listening to someone tell their story, for me is a real privilege. And the fact that people trust me to put their stories into the world, to new audiences, to package the ideas that they're spitting. And the things that they're saying, the package [inaudible 00:12:58] folks to consume, that's a lot of trust. I take it very seriously. It's a lot of trust. So really it's about that. I think I've also been very lucky that all the people on the show so far, all the guests we've had this season are brilliant and so interesting. And just have such an interesting perspective and they introduced me to new concepts that I didn't know. They helped me understand myself better. And so I'm very lucky that everybody is so smart. It's hard to not make people sound interesting and smart when they are legitimately interesting and smart.

Michael:                               13:31                     Treating people's stories with respect and care and listening to them, it reminds me of something Claire Evans talked about in the first episode of the season about, a culture of care. And if you want to look for a place on the internet where there is care, look where women are or something like that.

Bridget Todd:                     13:46                     Yeah. She says you should look for the women. And I think that's true, right? I think, no offense to the men out there listening, but the stories that I love the most are the ones that are told by marginalized people. Because I can just tell that they're told from a perspective where you aren't sure if you're going to get that care, the kind of care that Claire Evans talks about in our first episode. And so people who share their stories, even when they're not so sure how the reception's going to be, I see such a bravery in that.

Michael:                               14:16                     Yeah. And that's kind of a common theme across a bunch of the episodes this season.

Bridget Todd:                     14:20                     Oh, definitely. The people that we've talked to this season, people like Arwa Mboya who, in our second episode, spoke up when she was just a grad student at MIT, against the director of MIT's media lab. That takes bravery. And that kind of takes knowing that people are going to hate you for speaking your truth. People are going to malign you. You don't even know if you are physically safe. Let alone, people are going to be mean to you on the internet or whatever.

                                                                                Her physical safety, she was taking great risks. And yet, as grateful as we all are for to Ronan Farrow for bringing that story to light, I don't like the fact that he wasn't risking anything to do that and it kind of comfort. And that he is the one that's remembered as sort of breaking that story as opposed to Arwa who was taking great risks, great personal risks and did it first. I think it really is mainly about culture shift. About just remembering that for every big story you hear, there's probably someone who's part in that is going overlooked or unheard, and we should hear them.

Michael:                               15:31                     What's something that you think we're not talking about enough today?

Bridget Todd:                     15:34                     Oh, I'm so glad you asked. I have a very clear answer. We are recording this right after Biden named his running mate, Harris. And I would say, especially in light of that, but also just in general even before that, we need to be talking about disinformation on online and how it impacts marginalized communities. We did a whole episode about Shafiqah Hudson, how she tried to blow the whistle on bad actors using classic disinformation tactics to sow chaos online. A Senate Inquiry now confirms that those kinds of bad actors from Russia were trying to do the same thing to influence the 2016 election.

                                                                                We see it in Latinx communities. We already know that when black women running for public office, they deal with a disproportionate amount of disinformation and harassment online. And I think that because we don't really talk about race, we don't really talk about the internet or technology in a way that centers marginalized voices. It's just going overlooked. And one of the reasons why the show was called, There Are No Girls on the Internet, it's sort of an inside joke with myself a little bit to like, I'm the only person who is cracking up about it. But the phrase, there are no girls on the internet, has a lot of different meanings. But one of the meanings that it has is this idea that, on the internet, there is no such thing as gender. Everybody's genderless.

                                                                                And it would be great if that was true, but it's not true, right? It's the same thing when people try to say that, people are colorblind. It would be great if that was true, but it's not true. And when we obscure the ways that our identities show up online, or we're like, "Oh, there's no such thing as identity on the internet." We're all the same. That just erases what we already know is true. That people's identities make their online experience different. And I think that because we're not comfortable talking about race. We're not comfortable talking about gender, sometimes. We are allowing for these very targeted attacks on marginalized groups online, to just go sort of like unscrutinised. And we should be talking about the role that people's identities, race, gender, all of that have in this, but we're just really not.

Within hours of Kamala Harris being declared the VP there were race-based attacks, and attacks on her character as a woman. Biden isn't getting the same level of attacks. Trump isn't getting the same level of attacks. And so we need to be talking about what that means.

Michael:                               17:55                     Within hours of Kamala Harris being declared the VP. There were attacks that were race based about her character as a woman. And I'm sure they had a stockpile of heckles to release against whoever the nominee was, but the fact that she was not just black and not just a woman, but a black woman, there's so many more opportunity for them to use those sort of stereotype based attacks.

Bridget Todd:                     18:30                     Absolutely. She's a black woman. She is a child of immigrants. There are so many aspects to her identity that we already know. People study this. We already know we're going to be used disproportionately to attack her online.

Michael:                               18:43                     [inaudible 00:18:42].

Bridget Todd:                     18:43                     Yeah. And so Biden isn't getting the same level of attacks. Trump isn't getting the same level of attacks. And so we need to be talking about what that means. In one of my day jobs aside from hosting this podcast, is, I work for a women's group called UltraViolet where I lead up our work in the disinformation space. And I think in absence of the leadership of tech companies and tech platforms to take this seriously, it's really up to just everyday folks like me to create resources and create tools to make sure that we're at talking about this kind of misinformation and disinformation and that we can curb it. Because we can't wait for these tech leaders to do the right thing. We're going to have to step up and do it ourselves.

Michael:                               19:27                     It's a serious thing.

Bridget Todd:                     19:28                     It's a serious thing.

Michael:                               19:29                     Well, thanks for doing that work and thanks for making the show and letting me be part of it and help amplify these stories.

Bridget Todd:                     19:39                     Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello@tengodi.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoti.com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.