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PODCAST

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein

For years, Matt’s been unpacking the events, people, and culture wars shaping the world around us. On A Bit Fruity, we take deeper dives into those issues — joined by celebrities, experts, and journalists who help us laugh and learn along the way. Follow Matt: https://www.instagram.com/mattxiv Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MattBernstein1

society & culture news commentary

All Episodes

62:17

The Liberal Wine Moms are Radicalizing (with Jennifer...

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein ·

2025/10/31

Jennifer Welch, a 51-year-old Texan turned Oklahoman, is radicalizing America one wine mom at a time. The southern podcaster (who might finally be our “Joe Rogan of the Left”) has become an unlikely, fierce critic of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the corrupt Democratic establishment, and unregulated capitalism, which she says “brought us Trump” (I agree). This week, Jennifer and I cross a generational divide to discuss Israel’s erosion of the Democratic Party, Ezra Klein’s

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105:04

What Is the Point Of Bill Maher?

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein ·

2025/10/17

Bill Maher is, allegedly, the last sane voice on the left. But he doesn’t believe in the rights of transgender people, or of Palestinians. He thinks college campuses are hotbeds of liberal indoctrinarian that have gotten “out of control.” Come to think of it, he hasn’t really advocated for any left-wing position in recent memory. An advocate for breaking out of echo chambers, Bill speaks almost exclusively to right-wing activists, and never to the minorities he bashes. He claims to know what

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100:19

The Unraveling of Debra Messing and “Liberal Zionism”

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein ·

2025/10/03

For the last two decades, Debra Messing — the star of early 2000’s hit Will & Grace — has been something of a liberal Hollywood icon, courting an adoring gay audience and getting into public feuds with Donald Trump. More recently, she’s become the face of Liberal Zionism, an ideology which believes in human rights in the US while supporting Israel’s flagrant violation of them in Gaza. Sound confusing? The contradictions inherent to Liberal Zionism are too big for anyone to hold onto — even, it turns

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74:48

Charlie Kirk’s Legacy Deserves No Revisions

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein ·

2025/09/19

The day after Charlie Kirk was murdered, Ezra Klein published an essay in the New York Times: “Charlie Kirk Practiced Politics The Right Way.” Klein’s piece was one of countless teary-eyed eulogies from across the spectrum of political media, and this first draft of Charlie Kirk’s legacy is now being used by the U.S. government to crack down on free speech in unprecedented ways. But let’s be clear: the way Charlie Kirk died does not change the way he lived. He did not “practice politics the right

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103:53

Dr. Phil: From Nice Guy to Nazi (with Aubrey Gordon)

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein ·

2025/09/05

Dr. Phil has a new hobby: ICE raids. The daytime television fixture bewildered fans when he began touring with the Trump campaign last year, ending his decades-long streak as a seemingly apolitical celebrity. Like so many 2000s stars, Dr. Phil has found a career revival in right-wing media, advocating for everything from deportations to zionism. But what could explain such a radical shift from the man who spent decades trying to bring families together? In this episode, the inimitable Aubrey Gordon

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70:50

Sydney Sweeney and the Outrage Machine

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein ·

2025/08/23

Sydney Sweeney is Hollywood’s most-discussed starlet, often for confusing reasons. Her existence as a visible woman with a human body made her the target of widespread male adoration, ridicule, and political projection. How she navigates being the new Miss American Dream is yielding increasingly bizarre results — what’s the deal with her eugenics, I mean genetics? And the bathwater? In this much-requested episode, Taylor, Kat and I examine the 27-year-old’s relationship to wokeness (just kill me

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56:02

The Trans Teen Imprisoned for Refusing to Join the IDF

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein ·

2025/08/06

Yona Roseman is 19. In two weeks, the Israeli government is imprisoning her for refusing to join Israel's military, for which service is required by all Israeli Jewish teenagers. Because she is transgender, Yona anticipates she’ll be kept in solitary confinement for 22 hours per day. She’s been brutalized by cops who hurl slurs at her despite Israel’s alleged status as a safe haven for LGBTQ people. Ahead of her imprisonment, Yona joins us to talk about the reality of Israel’s treatment of queer

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92:06

Jojo Siwa: The Internet’s Court Jester

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein ·

2025/07/25

Jojo Siwa has been a lot of things: an eleven-year-old abused on television for public entertainment, a tween merchandising mogul with a billion dollar brand, Nickelodeon’s first out gay child star, and most recently, a dollar store trad wife. Behind the facade of endlessly shapeshifting court jester, though, Jojo Siwa is a 22-year-old human who has not known life without cameras and a momager since she was nine. Today, Kat Tenbarge and I do some good ole (queer) child star anthropology — and make

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121:11

The New York Times Thinks Gays Have Gone Too Far...

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein ·

2025/07/12

On the twilight of Pride Month, the New York Times published (and sent out a push notification for) a guest essay titled “How the Gay Rights Movement Radicalized and Lost Its Way” by a gay journalist named Andrew Sullivan. If you thought I could resist this A Bit Fruity bait, you’d be wrong.Today, Chase Strangio — who recently made history as the first trans lawyer to argue in front of the Supreme Court in US v. Skrmetti — helps us parse out some genuinely difficult questions. What is the right

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74:24

Why Is Everyone Going Back Into the Closet?

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein ·

2025/06/27

From granola fascism to the manosphere, much gets said of the various right-wing pipelines people have gone down in the years since lockdown. One such pipeline remains more mysterious. When you think of conversion therapy, do you imagine a doctor administering shocks to a gay man strapped to a chair? A queer child sent to conversion camp against their will? What if a queer adult goes to ex-gay camp of their own volition? What if someone's conversion therapy is simply a playlist of ex-gay testimonial

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71:18

Never Apologize to Fascists (with Contrapoints)

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein ·

2025/06/13

Last week, world-class athlete Simone Biles stood up to failed-athlete-turned-crybully Riley Gaines when Riley antagonized a transgender child to her 1.5 million Twitter followers. A harassment campaign, which has become a standard (and winning!) online strategy for online right, ensued against Simone. The comments flooded in, eviscerating the gymnast (and her sponsors) — “So you want my daughter to compete against boys?” “How many medals would YOU have if you competed against MEN?” And perhaps most

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80:07

The Antisemitism Panic (with Matt Lieb)

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein ·

2025/05/30

“From the river to the sea” is antisemitic. “Free Palestine” is antisemitic. Children’s YouTuber Ms. Rachel raising money for child amputees is antisemitic. ICE is kidnapping college students for antisemitism. Trump is dismantling higher education because of antisemitism. As a Jew, I’m… confused. And uncomfortable. Today, we examine the validity of The Antisemitism Panic, the dark underbelly of it, and the people pulling the strings to make it happen. Hint: they aren’t Jewish.Listen to bonus

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47:36

A Morning With Vivian Wilson, Elon’s Estranged Daughter

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein ·

2025/05/16

In today’s special episode, we’re taking a break from political and cultural analysis to chat with someone who’s been at the center of today’s culture wars but rarely in her own voice: Vivian Jenna Wilson, Elon Musk’s 21-year-old estranged trans daughter. She tells us about her decision to take back her voice after years of being spoken for by an unsupportive father, dealing with lunatics online, and putting Jordan Peterson in his place.Listen to bonus episodes on Patreon! Thanks to today’s

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87:03

The Breeders Who Want You to Have More Kids Right Now

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein ·

2025/05/03

Last week, the New York Times reported: “White House Assesses Ways to Persuade Women to Have More Children”. But who exactly is behind this push, and why, and what does it have to do with Elon Musk’s breeding compulsion? The answer is that “pronatalism”, a far-right movement that looks and smells a lot like a eugenics cult (despite what its leaders say), has entered the White House. Today, Emma Vigeland of The Majority Report and Moira Donegan of In Bed With the Right help explain how a particularly

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76:54

“Alpha Males” Are Making Men Lonelier (with Ryan...

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein ·

2025/04/18

When fitness influencer Ashton Hall’s absurd morning routine went viral a few weeks ago, I was… moved. The hours-long skincare, gym, and journaling ritual felt like an American Psycho-inspired metrosexual fever dream — one peppered with shocking misogyny and profound loneliness. Hall’s viral moment felt like a tipping in point in “alpha male” influencer culture, or the content ecosystem of men teaching boys what it means to be men. The further down the rabbit hole I went, the weirder it got — and

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85:33

Maia Poet: The Final Boss of Detrans Grifters (with...

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein ·

2025/04/04

What does “gender ideology” have in common with ISIS? Well, they are both… things, arguably. As more people become aware of opportunities to commodify their trauma into anti-trans right-wing media bait, the race for those opportunities is getting more competitive, and the results are… fascinating. Today, veteran trans YouTuber Kat Blaque and I interrogate the right’s shiniest new detransitioner, Maia Poet — an ex-trans October 7th survivor, kind of. In doing so, we take a closer look at what

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82:30

Gwen Stefani: From Feminist to Fascist

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein ·

2025/03/21

When Gwen Stefani made a tacit endorsement of Tucker Carlson earlier this month, I felt like somebody had knocked the wind out of me. Had the iconic 90’s ain’t-no-hollaback girl made a not-so-sweet escape to the dark side? Dizzy and disturbed, I set out to journey Gwen’s path from early aughts punk rock princess to… spokeswoman for a conservative billionaire’s anti-abortion prayer app. I learned a lot about how she’s changed — and perhaps more importantly, how she hasn’t.COME SEE A BIT FRUITY LIVE

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77:50

The Complex Tragedy of Grimes

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein ·

2025/03/07

To the mainstream news, she’s the mother of three of Elon Musk’s children. To a certain type of extremely online Tumblr user in the year 2012, she once approximated God. Today, we take a challenging look at the strange tapestry of Grimes’s life and unearth stories about the Internet era that shaped millennials, pipelines to right-wing radicalization, and domestic abuse as a public spectacle.COME SEE A BIT FRUITY LIVE! Tickets are on sale here. :-) Listen to bonus episodes on Patreon! Thanks to

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75:15

The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein ·

2025/02/21

Elon Musk just (allegedly) had his thirteenth child with a fourth woman — a 26-year-old “conservative” influencer named Ashley St. Clair. In a past version of the “traditional family values” party, this might’ve been a career-ending event. Today, it hardly generates coverage. In this episode, Moira Donegan and Adrian Daub (of In Bed With The Right) help me make sense of the right’s impossibly contradictory code of sexuality: is MAGA the movement of the hot, virile new youth, or is it the movement

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63:36

How Conservatism Infiltrated Pop Culture

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein ·

2025/02/07

Quiet luxury. Clean girl. Old money. Trad living. Kylie Jenner’s pivot from Black culture vulture to glass skin pilates princess. College youth dressed like polyester Shein replicas of Reagan-era prepsters. Something’s happened, and I’m uncomfortable.Listen to bonus episodes on Patreon! Work smarter, not harder, with Factor meals ready in two minutes at https://www.factormeals.com/fruity50off. Start managing your money better and cancel unwanted expenses at

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