Show Notes
In this conversation… Who could’ve foreseen when we started this podcast nearly one year ago to discuss the Times of London Ballerina Farm profile that today we’d be publishing a two-hour episode about the most stereotypically “controversial” geopolitical “dispute” in modern history? There’s one thing you’ll hear repeatedly in conversations about what’s happening in Gaza: It’s complicated. Or, you might hear that “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East,” or that it’s the only country in the region that “shares our values.” (No objection there; Israel certainly shares American values, though probably not the values you think.) Unfortunately, the story of Israel and Palestine is a deeply American story—and it’s only through confronting it that we’ll be able to understand not just the past of American right-wing extremism, but its present and future. Even though we want this episode to be free for all to access, we want to extend a heartfelt “thank you” to the paid subscribers who make conversations like this one possible. $35,000 of the $66,000 in subscription payments we’ve donated so far this year have gone to food aid in Gaza. As Caro said, this episode is for—and exists because of—you, Dirty Little Liars: Thank you, and let’s fucking go. To become a paid supporter or access a full list of references and citations for this episode, head to diabolicalliespod.com.
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.diabolicalliespod.com
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.diabolicalliespod.com
A quick heads-up: Around 1:34:00, we discuss postpartum psychosis, depression, filicide, and the Lindsay Clancy trial (no graphic descriptions). If that’s not something you’re up for today, take care and skip ahead to 1:40:00. It only felt fitting to wrap up our pre-maternity leave regularly scheduled programming with a conversation that brings our very first episode full circle. Skeptics of the tradwife shtick have long observed that tradwife influencers aren’t actually exposed to the risks of the conservative, traditional lifestyle they’re aestheticizing, because they—presumably—have access to their own money and, with it, some degree of autonomy and optionality. This summer, the years-long discourse has finally landed where it started, with the accusation—you actually have a job—being wielded effectively as a defense—yeah, this is a job, why is everyone calling me a tradwife? The result is a discursive ouroboros. Many fellow Discourse Vultures have perceived Nara Smith and Hannah Neeleman’s disavowal of the tradwife label in recent interviews whilst wearing top-to-bottom denim as proof that this brand of motherhood is no longer in vogue, and that the reality of Smith and Neeleman’s family dynamics (50/50 partnerships, being a CEO) serve as evidence of that shift. The personal is political, as they say, but how effectively does personal experience really serve as a political defense? Can it nullify the ideological associations of powerful aesthetics, when those aesthetics are already central to American culture? This episode is a close read of three eerily similar themes that appeared across both recent interviews with some ~lite feminist theory~ layered atop them. THEORY Of Woman Born by Adrienne Rich (1977), the original source from which the “mothering as experience” and “motherhood as institution” framework was pulled “A review of Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution” by Alice Braun (2019) “Institution of Motherhood” from Encyclopedia of Motherhood, edited by Andrea O’Reilly, Andrea (2010) “Mothering and Motherhood: Experience, Ideology, and Agency” by Min Jao from Comparative Literature Studies (2019) “Racism and Patriarchy in the Meaning of Motherhood” by Dorothy E. Roberts from Journal of Gender & Law (1992) “Filicide in the United States” by Phillip J. Resnick from the National Library of Medicine (2016) Blue: A History of Postpartum Depression in America by Rachel Louise Moran (2024) “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference” by Audre Lorde (1984) CLOSE-READ INTERVIEWS “Nara Smith: Stop Calling Me a Tradwife” from Call Her Daddy (2026) “Ballerina Farm is Happy with Her Choices” by Stephanie McNeal from Vulture (2026) OTHER REFERENCED PRESS HITS “Tycoon or Tradwife? The Woman Behind Ballerina Farm Makes Her Own Path.” by Julia Moskin for the New York Times (2024) Alyssa Grenfell, the ex-Mormon YouTuber referenced “The Un-Trad Rise of Nara Aziza Smith” by Bianca Betancourt for Harper’s Bazaar (2024) “How Lucky Blue and Nara Aziza Smith Made Viral Internet Fame From Scratch” by Carrie Battan for GQ (2024) “Meet the queen of the ‘trad wives’ (and her eight children)” by Megan Agnew for The Times (2024) “Ballerina Farm opens its door to visitors” from ABC News (2026) “The ‘trad wives’ leaving high-control Christian nationalist communities” from CNN (2026)
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.diabolicalliespod.com
The Democratic Party was facing an identity crisis when Donald Trump began his second term in January 2025. Just two months later, Democratic media Thinkboiz Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson published Abundance. Their theory of the case: We could “solve our problems with supply,” and that to do so, we needed to pursue “a liberalism that builds,” an idea that meant aspiring to “more than redistribution […], more than parceling out the present.” The text of Abundance focuses almost exclusively on examples of government proceduralism and self-defeating obstruction, while at times quoting books like Fully Automated Luxury Communism and even Karl Marx. There’s just one difference between the productive capacity imagined in Fully Automated Luxury Communism and Abundance: only one of these books sees this vision as compatible with capitalism. Over the months that followed its publication, an “intra-left” fight emerged between the “populist left” (represented by figures like Bernie Sanders and the DSA) and the “abundance left.” For a while, it looked like Abundance would set the vision for the future of the party. What happened? Diabolical Lies investigates. All citations and references can be found at diabolicalliespod.com.