By the time the Tumblr comes along, one of the key innovations it has is a tagging system

where you can find people who tag themselves by certain kinds of terms or ideas all across

the world and certainly across the United States.

And that allows a kind of experimentation, a proliferation of different identity categories

that would just have been too marginal and too rare before

to actually command sort of enough members to be a real group.

Welcome to the unspeakable podcast.

I'm your host, Megan Daum. Or Megan Daum. It's up to you.

I'm still thinking about it. If you are someone who follows the current battles over free speech

and shifting definitions of liberalism, you are probably familiar with my guest.

Yasha Monk is a political scientist, an author, a podcast host, naturally, and the founder of

Persuasion, a digital magazine and community devoted to providing discussion forums about society,

politics, and culture. He is the author of several books, including a brand new book, The Identity

Trap, a story of ideas and power in our time. That book

offers a comprehensive overview of the modern identity movement and its relationship to ideas about

social justice. And it traces that movement's origins back to a number of thinkers, including

Michelle Foucault and leads us right up to the emergence of Tumblr.

In this conversation, we talk about all of that, as well as Yash's work with persuasion,

his relationship to America, he was born and raised in Germany, and his experience as a professor

he teaches at Johns Hopkins University. If you are a paying subscriber to the substack for this podcast, you can hear Yasha

stay overtime and talk about his feelings about aging.

He's 41, spoiler, our mutual feelings about the changing media landscape, and a lot more.

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