Are Unicorns Real? + Phetasy Digest
Dems Have a Terrorist Problem | The Most Heckin’ Reddit Shooter of All Time | The Internet is Destroying Our Girls | Hate Speech for Profit | ‘Leave Me Behind’ | Sane Ladies, Stay Strong
“Are unicorns real?” asked my then-four-year-old daughter, at the height of her love for unicorns. She’d recently asked a relative, who told her, “Well, no.” And now I had to rebuild the little walls of her imagination. I balked at the question: “How could they possibly know that there are no unicorns?”
Then I grabbed a handful of sand. “Think about all the sand you’ve seen. Sandboxes, playgrounds, rivers, beaches. But also the desert. There’s sand in mortar and concrete. Golf courses, volleyball courts. For every single grain of sand, there are 10,000 stars in the universe. 10,000. And for every grain of sand, there are more than a billion planets. If you counted to a billion one number at a time, it would take you 31 years. Altogether, there are about 10 septillion planets up there in the sky, too far for us to see. That’s a ten follower by 24 zeroes. And that’s just the observable universe. And, I’m sorry, but I just think it’s ridiculous that anyone, any human, could claim to know the truth about all of it. You’re telling me that, in all that endlessness, there’s not at least one horse-like animal with a horn on its head and maybe the ability to fly? Absurd.”
She smiled—gums swollen because she’d lost a tooth at school that day—in the beautiful way of a kid enjoying the redemption of magic, then asked, “Are mermaids real?”
“The oceans aren’t as vast as the universe, but humans have still only explored about 15% of the oceans, and almost none of the deep ocean sea floor. Just last year, scientists discovered a whole new ocean. An entire ocean that we didn’t even know about. You’re telling me that there are definitely no human-fish hybrids in all that unexplored ocean? There’s a decent chance that humans evolved from fish, so who’s to say whether a subspecies of half-fish, half-humans didn’t say, ‘Nah, I’m good,’ and stay in the ocean?”
Then she glowed with another swollen-gummed smile and stared up at me: “What about the tooth fairy?”
DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #310
Democrats Have A Terrorist Problem
A gunman burst through the doors of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and opened fire — and somehow, within hours, Democrats were calling it a hoax. Bridget Phetasy breaks down the WHCD shooting, the shooter’s manifesto (which opens with “Hello everybody!”), and why his beliefs weren’t fringe at all — they were garden-variety left-wing media talking points. Also: why is the left so comfortable with assassination culture, and what does Trump building a ballroom have to do with any of this?
WALK-INS WELCOME - EPISODE #388
What the Internet Did to Girls | Freya India
Bridget Phetasy sits down with Freya India, British writer and author of Girls: Generation Z and the Commodification of Everything, to dig into why Gen Z women are struggling in ways previous generations didn’t. They discuss why it’s not simply a case of kids being soft, and how the mental health crisis among young women isn’t just about bad parenting or weak foundations, but predatory industries stepping into the vacuum left by family breakdown, community loss, and the decline of religion — and selling girls a simulation of everything they lost.
DUMPSTER FIRE - EPISODE #311
Anti-Hate Charity Got Caught Bankrolling the Klan
The Southern Poverty Law Center — America’s premier anti-hate nonprofit — has been indicted for secretly funding the KKK. If you donated to the SPLC thinking you were fighting racism, congratulations: you may have bought the Grand Wizard a new truck. Bridget Phetasy breaks down the most ironic scandal in nonprofit history and why the demand for racism apparently outpaced the supply, so they decided to manufacture some.
Leave Me Behind
Mar 29
I caught clips of Tucker Carlson interviewing Nick Fuentes, and the thing that struck me was the body language. Here was a man who had the biggest show on cable news, who once commanded an audience of 5 million adults, sitting across from a twenty-something New-Age shock-jock with the energy of a guy trying to impress his son’s friends.
A Love Letter to the Sane Women Holding It Down
Mar 22
I’ve been wanting to write this for a while because, more often than not, I find myself doomscrolling, screaming “NOT ALL WOMEN!” It seems like most of the women represented in media are, for lack of a better word, insane. I blame the algorithms for elevating the craziest of us. So this is for you—the woman reading this who has been quietly holding it t…
THE DAILY WIRE
America Tried To ‘Fix’ Men For Two Decades. Here’s What It Got Instead.
America spent two decades trying to “fix” masculinity. It nearly broke the country — and the guys who complained the loudest about it turned out to be the ones with the least ability to fix it. America needs manly men — not men who are afraid of their masculinity, and not men who only talk about it.
THE SPECTATOR
Meet the male Kardashians
What happens when the Internet’s Groypers gather in Miami Beach for a night of “slay gurl” partying? Reality TV, the likes of which have never been seen.
Well thanks for nothing. I raised my children not to believe in Santa, so now I'm gonna have to double back and start over! 😂
"Where have you been?" she cried. "Damn you, where have you been?" She took a few steps toward Schmendrick, but she was looking beyond him, at the unicorn.
When she tried to get by, the magician stood in her way. "You don't talk like that," he told her, still uncertain that Molly had recognized the unicorn. "Don't you know how to behave, woman? You don't curtsy, either."
But Molly pushed him aside and went up to the unicorn, scolding her as though she were a strayed milk cow. "Where have you been?" Before the whiteness and the shining horn, Molly shrank to a shrilling beetle, but this time it was the unicorn's old dark eyes that looked down.
"I am here now," she said at last.
Molly laughed with her lips flat. "And what good is it to me that you're here now? Where where you twenty years ago, ten years ago? How dare you, how dare you come to me now, when I am this?" With a flap of her hand she summed herself up: barren face, desert eyes, and yellowing heart. "I wish you had never come. Why did you come now?" The tears began to slide down the sides of her nose.
The unicorn made no reply, and Schmendrick said, "She is the last. She is the last unicorn in the world."
"She would be." Molly sniffed. "It would be the last unicorn in the world to come to Molly Grue."