What's A Conservative To Do? Undercurrents' Emily Jashinsky on Trump, DOGE, and how worried we should be

The Unspeakable Podcast

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.8 • 784 Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2025

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Journalist and political commentator Emily Jashisnky, host of Undercurrents and co-host of Counterpoints, is a 31-year-old Evangelical Christian from Wisconsin. She’s also (for my money) one of the sanest, smartest, and most principled voices in the information landscape these days. In this conversation, we talk about Emily’s philosophical and political roots, her college years during the height of the woke era, and her thoughts about the state of the Republican party (she considers herself a conservative but not a Republican), the perils and promise of the Trump agenda, and what’s driving Elon Musk—not to mention keeping him awake.

Emily Jashinsky is an American journalist based in Washington, D.C. She is the D.C. Correspondent at UnHerd and co-host of the show "Counter Points" with Ryan Grim on the Breaking Points channel, a Top 10 Politics podcast.

Housekeeping
Listen to my recent audio essays about the Los Angeles wildfires and (moving right along) the state of public discourse in the new Trump era.
Read my recent essay in The New York Times about accepting help.
Pre-order my new book The Catastrophe Hour: Selected Essays (which is unrelated to the current catastrophe). Either from you-know-where or (even better) directly from the publisher, Notting Hill Editions.
Visit The Unspeakable on YouTube.
The Unspeakeasy has new retreats for 2025. We’ll be in Texas, New York, Los Angeles, and beyond.
Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I really don't see Silicon Valley changing at all. I mean, I think we've seen good signs on
0:04.6	their speech policies, but the bigger problem with these platforms to me has always been,
0:10.0	I think, the biggest problem in American politics, which is that they are addictive. They are
0:14.6	basically gamifying our politics. It's like if we were litigating important political issues through a
0:22.1	digital casino. And that's so horrifying. Welcome to the unspeakable podcast. I'm your host,
0:32.7	Megan Down. I'm here in my makeshift studio. I'm still kind of finding my way back to life after losing my home in the wildfires
0:41.6	here in Los Angeles as I've been talking about.
0:44.0	This is a conversation with journalist and political commentator Emily Jisinski.
0:48.9	But before we get to that, just a few very brief notes of housekeeping.
0:53.1	If you want to become a paying subscriber to this podcast and find out more about what we're
0:57.6	doing, you can go to Substack.
0:59.6	You can get there directly by going to the unspeakable podcast.com.
1:04.0	You can also find out about the unspeak-easy, my community for free-thinking women,
1:09.8	and sometimes men.
1:10.8	We have a thriving online forum, as well as in-person retreats all over the country.
1:15.8	We're doing several this year.
1:18.2	So go to the unspeak easy.com to find out about that.
1:21.9	And now here's my conversation with Emily Jisinski.
1:25.8	Enjoy.
1:32.2	Emily Jusinski, welcome to the unspeakable.
1:39.0	Thank you for having me. It's an honor. You are a journalist and the host of undercurrents, which is a podcast YouTube program produced by Unheard, which is, I think, a favorite magazine media platform
1:47.6	of a lot of listeners of this podcast, certainly mine. You're also the host, the co-host with
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -20 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Meghan Daum, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Meghan Daum and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.