What happens to our nation’s discourse when every issue has only two possible positions? This week, Roger welcomes Kat Timpf, Novak ’12, to explore the complexities of division within American society. They discuss how embracing vulnerability can be a tool to diffuse that division and examine the dangers of binary thinking, touching on topics like religion, mental health and the size of government. Plus, discover how Kat’s journalism background led to her successful career as a television personality, writer and comedian.
Kat is a regular panelist on Fox News’ “Gutfeld!” and her national comedy live show has sold out theaters across the country. She’s a 2012 Robert Novak Journalism Fellow and her work has been widely published in major outlets. Kat is The New York Times bestselling author of “You Can’t Joke About That: Why Everything Is Funny, Nothing Is Sacred, and We’re All in This Together” and her new book, “I Used To Like You Until…(How Binary Thinking Divides Us)” has just been released and is available wherever fine books are sold.
Episode Transcript
The transcript below is lightly edited for clarity.
Roger Ream [00:00:02] Welcome to the Liberty + Leadership Podcast, a conversation with TFAS alumni, faculty, and friends who are making an impact today. I’m your host, Roger Ream. Today, I’m delighted to welcome Kat Timpf to the Liberty + Leadership Podcast. Kat is a television personality, writer and comedian. She’s a regular panelist on Fox News’s “Gutfeld!” and her national comedy live show has sold out theaters across the country. We are proud to also mentioned that Kat was a 2012 Robert Novak Journalism Fellow, and her work has been widely published in outlets including National Review, The Washington Times, Barstool Sports, Fox News, and more. Kat is the New York Times bestselling author of “You Can’t Take a Joke” and her fascinating new book, “I Used to Like You…(How Binary Thinking Divides Us)” has just been released. So, let me preface the conversation just by mentioning for the audience benefit, that there might be some mature themes used in this podcast, but you’ve covered a lot of ground in the book and your basic theme is it comes at a time when our society’s so divided and polarized you have experiences that you write about in there that are similar to some others have had, I think, probably not to the extent you have working at Fox News, but could you first talk about your motivation at writing the book?
Kat Timpf [00:01:34] Well, I was writing this book as I was on tour for the first book. I’m on tour again right now. I’m going literally all over the country. So, come check me out if you haven’t seen me, but, I did almost 40 cities last tour for the last book, and I went all over and I went to places that were very, very different. I went to Portland, Oregon, but I also went to Midland, Texas, just for example. Those are very different places. People who live there are very different, but what I kept finding was that as different as these people were, a lot of us, most of us, in fact, want the same things out of life and value a lot of the same things. What our differences are is how do we get there? I just, for example, being someone who is for small government, sometimes that gets spun as if there’s a problem, I don’t think that the government is the best at solving that good spun as not caring about the problem itself, which is a very different thing. I kind of already suspected this because I’m somebody who has a lot of different kinds of friends, I’m independent politically, as I’m sure as a Partizan alliance. I mean, I’m just for small government across the board, which places me at odds with people in both major parties, depending on the issue and depending on the day, really, but I have friends who are conservatives, but they hate Trump. I have friends who are super MAGA, love Trump. I have friends who are to the left of AOC. These are all very valuable relationships to me in some way. So, I have, I think, a unique perspective. So, this book is a guide really, for how to connect with someone who may have written you off, because now there’s this impulse to hear one thing about a person, whether it’s who they voted for or an association, like where they work and say: “Oh, that tells me everything you know about that person,” and it also is a guide for it or an explainer for why you should want to, because this division really hurts us in our relationships, but it’s very beneficial to politicians. So, it’s not just for the sake of our relationships, but also for our freedoms, it’s why we need to pay attention to something like this.
Roger Ream [00:03:46] So, you mentioned in the book, you know, the reaction if you’re at a party and strangers come up and they ask the question: “What do you do,” which is always the question you ask a stranger, I guess, and you talk about the fact that if you say Fox News, you get such a reaction that you instead would say something like: “I work in the porn industry.”
Kat Timpf [00:04:05] Yeah, I’ve said that before.
Roger Ream [00:04:07] Yeah, and you get a very different reaction, then their tolerance level is up high.
Kat Timpf [00:04:11] It’s way higher. Yes of course. I’ve done this at parties. You know, we’ve all been in that situation where you’re talking to someone at a party who you know you’ll literally never see again, but you’re stuck talking to them for a couple minutes anyways, and they always ask: “So what do you do?” I don’t want to change the whole vibe of the party and the whole vibe of my night by saying Fox News. So, I’ve said, I work in porn and they’re always like: “Oh, cool,” and then they move on to something else, or I’ve said: “No, thank you,” because, I mean, if I say Fox News and it’s like: “Oh, how could you?” And it’s like Fox News is a platform, it is not an idea in of itself, it’s a platform on which to share them, and I get attacked often just for working here from people who have never heard me open my mouth. They’ve never heard me say a single thing. It doesn’t matter to them, and that’s harmful.
Roger Ream [00:05:06] They might share the same views on a whole range of issues with you.
Kat Timpf [00:05:09] Absolutely, and in many cases, that is the case with people where you think you hear one thing. I mean, we’ve gotten so far beyond being able to think independently, where now it’s people often can’t perceive it, where let’s say you say something critical about Trump, then people will say: “Oh, well, you’re communist. You love Kamala, you love Biden?” And really, you might have had that very specific criticism of Trump, and it works in the reverse, too. Of course, if you criticize Kamala, they say: “Oh, well, you’re a super ultra MAGA,” and you might not even like Trump at all, or you might like some things about him, its issues are often complex and nuanced, but people always are. And we act differently in a lot of our approaches to one another. This isn’t just my opinion. There’s like studies in my book that back this up as well. There’s something called the perception gap that I write about where there are people in one party hugely overestimate the amount of people in the other party that have so-called extreme views. So, we’re writing each other off a lot of times for things that are even real.
Roger Ream [00:06:18] You refer to this, of course, as binary thinking, which is, everything’s black and white, it’s Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal. It seems to be particularly pervasive today, and you describe it as is the enemy of critical thinking, which is right on target, I think, it is. Have you found that through the experiences you’ve had, you find ways to overcome that, besides saying: “I’m in the porn industry,” I mean, can you find ways to engage people in a productive conversation who would normally just want to push you aside because of where you work?
Kat Timpf [00:06:52] Yes. I think that the main tool that I use is what I do throughout the book, even though it’s very scary to do, which is being vulnerable, which that’s the whole point of my book cover, where I’m naked and I’m covered in a bunch of hate mail letters. And the idea is vulnerability in the face of hatred. I share a lot of things in this book that I’ve never talked about before that struggles things I’ve been through, stuff that I know I’m going to get hate for, or people judge before, and I have gotten hate for some of the things that I’ve shared. But to me, it’s worth it. Because to me, I think vulnerabilities are going to be a huge way for us to get out of this mess, because being vulnerable makes it more likely that someone is going to have compassion for you. At the very least, see you as a human. If we want to start seeing each other as humans, we got to be willing to show that we are humans. I have done this in life, I mean, I try not to look at social media too much.
Roger Ream [00:07:49] You don’t read that hate mail; I hope.
Kat Timpf [00:07:51] Oh, I get a lot of it from both sides, quite frankly, but there’s been times that I get a hateful, something hateful and I will DM the person privately, and I’ll say: “That really hurt my feelings.” Nine times out of ten, truly, the other person is like: “OMG, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean.” Even though, like, the person told me to kill myself or something horrific, it’s like: “Well, what did you think?” You know, but they weren’t seeing me as a human being. So, I really do think it’s a difficult thing to do, and it’s also, I think, counterintuitive with social media where on Instagram people say the highlight reel of your life and so on and so forth. Look at this beautiful picture of, even could be as simple as me and my family on Easter and we’re all dressed up, but you ignore, like the meltdown the toddler had in the car, something like that. Everybody’s going through, whether it’s something smaller like that or something bigger. I write about mental health things that I’ve gone through. I read about an abusive relationship that I was, it was very seriously abusive relationship I was in. You never really know what somebody is going through, and often we give people no grace, no grace at all, and another theme on my book is mental health, because I think that we’ve never paid more lip service to mental health as an idea, but we’ve never given less grace to people going through mental health issues, once it starts to look a little ugly, which it almost always does.
Roger Ream [00:09:06] Yeah, I years ago I worked for Leonard Reid, who was the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, and he used to tell a story in every speech he gave about getting this hateful piece of mail in the letter from some union organizer, in longshoremen’s union. And he decided to respond to it, and he said as if God was responding to them to show kindness, to give him very thoughtful letter back, and over this correspondence with the guy, he turned the guy into this believer in free-enterprise and free-markets, who was out proselytizing to other people on the docks about freedom and free markets, and that’s because he treated the people with that kind of grace that you point out is often missing. I think it’s great advice you offer, particularly at this time. You did write that so many people notice just a single thing about a person and then assume that tells you everything about them, and that is so true and hard to overcome, that fact. But, if people watch you on Fox News, they seem to latch on to maybe one opinion or have they disagreed with even though you’re expressing other opinions all the time that they might agree with? I mean, you have your own positions, your own voice, you think critically about issues, and you express them as you say: “A small libertarian who fears tyranny by government.” Does that win you some support from a libertarian audience that might be out there?
Kat Timpf [00:10:36] Well, that’s obviously a small audience, but also, I’m a small libertarian. I’m not a member of the Libertarian Party. I’m a registered independent, but I don’t really have any allies, quite frankly, and it’d be a lot easier if I did. My book is selling well. I could sell a book, many more of a book, especially now during this time about digging in on one side or the other, about how the other side is so evil, so bad, and you’re the best because you’re not on that side, and I would sell a lot more books. I would sell out my shows faster. I mean, I do sell out shows, but not all of them and I probably sell all of them out. I’ve chosen not to do that because I’m going to be honest about what I really believe and what I really feel knowing sometimes it’s not going to be popular, because I really think we just have so much to lose. I know we have so much to lose, but it can be very difficult sometimes. It can be difficult sometimes, knowing that I’ve chosen less money for myself, because I will get criticized by the Fox audience for if I am ever critical of anything Trump said or done, which I have been times and will be again, I’m sure. But then it’s not like I win points with the other side either, because the fact that I work here, people hate me. Like I said earlier, who never even heard me open my mouth, they just see where I work. I’ve been called horrible names only because I work here, that I’m a horrible person. I’m, at my core, rotten, disgusting, nasty, horrible person because I work here. So, I have no allies, but I know that I’m sticking to my principles and my values, and that’s enough for me.
Roger Ream [00:12:25] Yeah, there’s that old story that Michael Jordan being asked to pressure to endorse a candidate in a North Carolina Senate race many years ago, and he refused to do it. And he said: “Republicans buy sneakers, too.”
Kat Timpf [00:12:38] Right. For me, it’s the opposite, because the business that I’m in, right? I mean, working at Fox, I know what the audience wants me to say. I know going into a segment what the people watching want me to say. Sometimes I agree with the audience and my opinion will reflect that, but sometimes I don’t.
Roger Ream [00:13:01] I went to a Bruce Springsteen concert on Friday night, and I was anticipating hearing politics from the stage, and there was none. It was great. I was glad not to have to deal with him talking about politics, and I thought to myself that audience was probably close to 50/50 divided between Trump and Harris. Nowadays, especially, when the Springsteen audience is in their 60s and 70s, and, given where I was. But I thought: “Well, he didn’t want to antagonize.” He probably would have got booed by half the audience if he started endorsing a candidate or talking politics in there. I think we’ve politicized too much in our society, and that’s a problem with the big government we have as well. You make an interesting point in there that if you say you’re against a particular government program, you already touched on it earlier, people will assume that means you don’t want to help the people that programs intended to help. And you and I know so often those programs are counterproductive. They subsidize the problem rather than solve it. How do we overcome that sense among people that if we’re against expanding a government program, it doesn’t mean we don’t want to help the people that program has been proposed to help?
Kat Timpf [00:14:13] My book is an excellent guide, I will say. I provide a lot of examples of that in my book, and its excellent guide for how to talk to people like that. In short, I would say focus. A reminder that the focus on the problem, that you agree on the problem. I think a great example would be education, right? Criticizing any education, whether it’s the Department of Education or criticizing any leaders in education, gets to be you don’t care about kids. You don’t want kids to learn things, which is, on its face, ridiculous, and that’s already a whole chapter book called “Think of the children and how the powerful among us will often use kids as pawns,” essentially, to get people to agree to bigger government. Honestly, if I could spend, we could spend our way out of this, then I would be wanting to give even more money. But just one small example of locally here in New York, it just came out that my taxes here are absurd. I mean, I’m working for free half the year. The amount that I have in taxes, and it just came out that these education bosses were taking money, that this was supposed to be used to take homeless kids to Disney and taking their own kids instead, and that’s just like one example of, I mean, so many examples where it’s just you say, where does this money go? I would have said that you have an issue with taxes doesn’t mean you don’t want to help people. It could just mean; I don’t really know that this money is going towards the people. Where does this go? I’ve seen so many places where it goes with things I don’t agree with, even. For some people where their money funds things that they are morally opposed to as well. So, I think that is a good reframe. I agree with you that I want kids to be educated. I just don’t think this is the best way, and that can be difficult, though, for people to give up. It can, because I also write about my book and research about how, moral outrage is more often rooted in self-interest than it is in altruism, which makes a lot of sense, right? The more guilt or powerlessness you feel over a problem, the more you are then motivated to direct that outrage at a third-party target, and then you do feel better when you do, but it’s easy, right? If the other side’s all bad, evil people, then you get to be good just by not being on that side.
Roger Ream [00:16:47] Yeah, there’s the adage, people have to think that you care before they care what you think. I think that’s how you address that issue, like you said: “I’m really concerned that our kids aren’t getting a good education. Therefore, I think we need to look at charter schools or school choice or alternatives to government schools.” So, you have a chapter in your book about religion and how religion impacted your relationship with your mother. I thought that was a very interesting chapter as well. I don’t want to dive too deeply on that, but I wonder if, the problem, that you discuss in there has more to do with organized religion as how we see it often practiced today versus the actual religious beliefs that we find in, at least, some of the main religions in our society that religion doesn’t have to be binary, I guess.
Kat Timpf [00:17:44] It is in a lot of cases, though, and I will say this, this is the stuff I get attacked over a lot. I get called names you would not believe, because I’m open about the fact that I’m not religious, but I would love to be. I know that I would be happier if I were. I can’t get there. I hope I someday can get there. I think that there’s a lot of great teachings in, for example, the Bible about loving your neighbor, and I have values, but I decide to be open, transparent and vulnerable about the fact that my lack of, and I’m not an atheist, I’m just totally a question mark, agnostic, I guess, is the word. But it is a struggle for me, and I’m open about it and I do get viciously attacked and I’m called evil and all these other things because I’m not, at this point in my life, religious. And there’s a lot of misunderstanding between people who are not religious and people who are, and there’s research about that in my book, where both atheists, of which I’m not one, but let’s just say atheists and Christians, is what the study was about. They believed that they were morally superior to the other group, and they had misconceptions about the other group. I’m lucky enough to not fall into that because I also, again, in making my point, I do get into some very, very deep, personal things about my relationship with my mom, who’s been dead for ten years, which wasn’t easy to do either. I have a lot of friends who are very devout Christians, and they’re not judgmental, and they’re not all these things that people can accuse Christians of being. So, for me, the answer has always been getting to know people and having a curiosity about people, rather than just being judgmental about people off the bat.
Roger Ream [00:19:28] Well, I recommend the chapter to people because you do address it in an open and thoughtful way, and as you say, in a way that I guess shows your vulnerability by talking about your relationship with your mother. So, that was excellent. I’m mindful of your time as well, but I did want to ask you a few more things. Last night, we’re taping this the morning after you had President Trump on Gutfeld. Can you tell me what that experience was like? I know you got in a question and comment or two. It was mostly Gutfeld interviewing the president and the president giving long answers to the questions, but it was interesting.
Kat Timpf [00:20:06] It was weird because, I mean, he’s surreal, is the word. I mean, he’s probably the most famous person in the entire world, and you see him on TV, I talk about him all the time, had written about him, and he’s just sitting right there. It was very strange, but it was just supposed to be like a fun show, and it was lighthearted. I did ask him about aliens, he gave me, like a non-answer, sadly, which I guess I expected, but he was nice. I mean, he’s funny. It was a cool experience.
Roger Ream [00:20:37] It was interesting, yeah.
Kat Timpf [00:20:37] It was a cool experience, for sure.
Roger Ream [00:20:39] In 2012, you received a Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship. I think that’s when I met you, because it was a year before we took over the program, but John Farley, who directed it, was including me in the retreats. I think you were at a retreat that year, your first year, and you had a project that related to the outsized influence California seems to have on the rest of the country. I’m just curious, was that program beneficial to you and in what way?
Kat Timpf [00:21:05] The program was hugely beneficial to me. It allowed me to; it kept me writing and working on things. When I was working jobs, I didn’t as much writing, but also financially, I don’t know that I would have survived without it. So, that’s about as much of a difference as it can make, right? I was finishing it up when I lived in New York, and I was telecommuting for the campus reform job, which didn’t pay a lot because it’s small job and it’s in Virginia, and it was my choice to telecommute from New York City, which is very expensive. And with the help of the fellowship, I was able to eat, like, pay my rent. I mean, I I’m very, very, very, very, I cannot say enough about how grateful I am for the opportunity, not just financially, but also to push me to write and have several bylines in these publications. I don’t know where I’d be without it, so I can’t say enough, about how grateful I am for it.
Roger Ream [00:22:08] Well, clearly, John Farley was good at identifying talent, and the judges who selected you. I wish John were still around so he could see the success that you’ve had in your career, and some of the other Novak Fellows. You were with campus, you mentioned. Did you go from there to National Review and write for them?
Kat Timpf [00:22:27] Yes.
Roger Ream [00:22:27] And then you started getting the opportunities at Fox News?
Kat Timpf [00:22:31] Yeah, I started getting opportunities at Fox, during my campus reform time. I made a video for campus reform that went viral on Fox. I’d already been on Fox Friends a few times before, but that was the time when I was on air talking about this video that Greg Gutfeld saw me for the first time, and he was like: “She looks kind of weird, we should have on red eye,” and then the rest is history.
Roger Ream [00:22:51] So, you’ve also been doing these comedy shows around the country? That I guess came out of your last book or did it predate your last book?
Kat Timpf [00:23:02] I’d been doing stand-up on and off for 14 years, but I’ve quit several times, and my last book tour was more of like, a one woman shows, and then my manager had me go out and start doing stand up again, and he kind of tricked me because he said: “Just try this. Do the show, get up here over the summer.” So, now my new show is more stand up. It’s very fun. It’s loosely based on the book, and there is an interview portion about the book. It’s not family friendly, but if you’re not easily offended and you don’t mind, like swearing. It’s a raunchy, I guess, I don’t know. Then you should come. It’s a fun show. Everybody has fun, everybody laughs, but it’s not for kids.
Roger Ream [00:23:49] Now, you’re expecting a child in a few months. Do you have any thoughts as to how that may change you?
Kat Timpf [00:23:56] It already has. I mean, it already has. I love this baby so much that I have not even met yet. It’s crazy. I was somebody who was scared to get married. I was scared to date a man, seriously, because I thought a serious relationship would be something that interfered with my career. What kind of happened was my career skyrocketed as soon as we started dating. I think it’s because I found this safe place of this home, in this family, that I felt freer than ever, and it was just so rewarding. So, I’m really looking forward to it. I can’t wait. I really can’t wait to meet the baby. I have no idea how it’s going to change me because I have no frame of reference for it.
Roger Ream [00:24:47] Well, one other question I was hoping to ask you was, whether you have thought about whether you know writing books will be something that you’ll continue to do, or do you enjoy the process?
Kat Timpf [00:25:01] Yes, yes, I will. This is not my last book. Writing is the thing I’m the best at. I love it. I am going to focus, after the baby release, I guess, the baby release, as I call it, when I give birth, I hear you got to hang out with them for a few months, and that’s an intensive job for a little bit. So, I’m going to be on maternity leave and focusing on adjusting to my new life as a mother, but far from my last book.
Roger Ream [00:25:30] Well, the last thing. Each summer we have we bring about 300 college undergraduates to Washington, D.C. for a summer of live, learn, and intern, as we call it. They get internships, they take courses through George Mason that we sponsor, and we try to recruit the best and brightest students we can find. So, they come from a lot of different perspectives. They aren’t all self-identified, some libertarians or conservatives. Some of these students don’t really know yet what they believe. They might label themselves one way, but if you talk to them on issues, they’re all over the place. So, what we really stress right out of the start of the program in June is the importance of civility, the importance of listening to others, and the things I say in orientation, we talk about, they’re right front and center in this book of yours. I just think it’s so necessary today. And then, in June, this summer, the morning after the Trump Biden debate, I said to the students: “Did you guys have knockdown, drag out arguments in the dorm after the debate about who won and what they talked about?” And they said: “No, we just wanted to listen to each other and hear what each of us thought about it.” I thought: “That’s exactly what we’re trying to accomplish here, is get people to listen.” I like to say: “God designed us with two years and one mouth and expects us to use them proportionally.” You learn from listening and reading, not from talking, but I just think it’d be excellent, we should give this book to our students. We should get you to come down and speak to our students in the summer, because the themes you write about in here are just so needed right now, especially with a young audience.
Kat Timpf [00:27:15] Thank you. That’d be great. I’m very passionate about this. Much hope for the future.
Roger Ream [00:27:20] I’m not asking you to accept the invitation to speak now, but I just hope that this book tour you’re on now, goes exceedingly well. I went to the local bookstore here in Washington, D.C., to buy a copy, and they didn’t have any. Barnes and Noble in Virginia did, but we need to get it in the bookstores, we need it in the people’s reading pile, so they they read the book and learn the lessons that you have to offer here.
Kat Timpf [00:27:45] Awesome. Thank you.
Roger Ream [00:27:46] So, thank you so much, Kat, for being with me on our Liberty and Leadership Podcast. Best of luck to you on the tour, as well as on the upcoming arrival of your son or daughter. Do you know?
Kat Timpf [00:27:57] I don’t know, the doctor knows, but I’m keeping it a surprise.
Roger Ream [00:27:59] Okay, that’s the way it is.
Kat Timpf [00:28:00] I think it’s a boy. My husband thinks it’s a girl.
Roger Ream [00:28:02] Well, we’ll be thinking very positive about it all. So, thanks so much for joining me.
Kat Timpf [00:28:06] Thank you.
Roger Ream [00:28:08] Thank you for listening to the Liberty + Leadership Podcast. If you have a comment or question, please drop us an email at podcast@TFAS.org and be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app and leave a five-star review. Liberty + Leadership is produced at Podville Media. I’m your host, Roger Ream, and until next time, show courage in things large and small.
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