Liberty and Leadership
TFAS has reached 53,000 students and professionals through their academic programs, fellowships and seminars. Representing more than 140 countries, TFAS alumni are courageous leaders throughout the world – forging careers in politics, government, public policy, business, philanthropy, law and the media. Join TFAS President, Roger Ream, as he reconnects with these outstanding alumni to share experiences, swap career stories, and find out what makes their leadership journey unique. The Liberty and Leadership podcast is produced at Podville Media in Washington, D.C. If you have a comment or question for the show, please drop us an email at podcast@TFAS.org.
Liberty and Leadership
Satire in the Age of Censorship: How Kyle Mann and the Babylon Bee Preserve Humor and Navigate Cancel Culture
Roger welcomes Kyle Mann, a comedian, writer, podcast host, and the editor-in-chief of the Babylon Bee.
They discuss the origin story of the Babylon Bee, the creative process behind crafting their daily satirical headlines, and their expansion into film and other media projects. Plus, how they navigate the landscape of censorship and fact-checking, and why humor is such a valuable outlet when it comes to commenting on the absurdities of modern culture and politics.
Kyle Mann writes and publishes articles on topics that include politics, current events, censorship and wokeness. In comedy, he has authored or co-authored numerous books including his latest title, “The Postmodern Pilgrim's Progress: An Allegorical Tale.” In addition to being an accomplished comedian and writer, Kyle is a sought-after public speaker, and he recently joined us at our annual TFAS conference in Naples, Florida.
The Liberty + Leadership Podcast is hosted by TFAS president Roger Ream and produced by Podville Media. If you have a comment or question for the show, please email us at podcast@TFAS.org. To support TFAS and its mission, please visit TFAS.org/support.
Welcome to the Liberty and 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 be joined by Kyle Mann, the editor-in-chief of the Babylon Bee. Kyle is a comedian, satirist, writer and podcast host who fearlessly blends humor into his hot takes. At the Babylon Bee, which is a satirical news site, he writes and publishes articles on topics that include politics, current events, censorship and wokeness in comedy and Wokeness in Comedy. Kyle has authored or co-authored numerous books, including his latest title, the Postmodern Pilgrim's Progress, an Allegorical Tale. In addition to being an accomplished comedian and writer, kyle is a sought-after public speaker and he recently joined us at our annual conference in Naples, florida. Kyle, welcome to the Liberty and Leadership podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1:For those who aren't as familiar with the Babylon Bee, could you first talk a little bit about the origin story of the enterprise?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the Babylon Bee was launched in March of 2016,. So right in the smack middle of the primaries that ended up being won by Trump and Hillary and it was a tumultuous time in politics, especially for conservatives and Christians who didn't know. You know what was going on, with Trump all of a sudden gaining all this ground in the primaries Christian webcomic for some years. And it gained ground. You know it was fairly popular in like the hardcore reformed Christian circles and you know he saw through the years Onion headlines and recognized the incisive power of satire to communicate a point. You know, so you can read these like short headlines that are 70 characters long or 80 characters long and sometimes they have more impact and can communicate a point so much more succinctly than you know really long blog pieces or debates or these longer forms which you know obviously are important.
Speaker 2:But humor has a very unique power to get to the point quickly and make it in a way that's whimsical and approachable and funny and witty and all these things. So he always kind of wanted something like that that was written from a more conservative or middle of the road perspective, because a lot of the comedy had gone you know more leftist, and so that idea bounced around in his head for years and finally, march 2016, he launched it and I jumped on board on day one as head writer and eventually took over as editor in chief and a part owner of the site. So it's been a real whirlwind and it's grown just kind of virally and organically through all these. You know, nine years of our existence now.
Speaker 1:I've heard you talk at our Naples conference a little bit about how you got connected, but what was your wife's reaction when you told her?
Speaker 2:Well, I had a full-time job in the construction sales industry. I had a nice salaried job where I was going in the office 12 hours a day or whatever and working with construction guys and trying to get construction projects through. And you know it was intensive. Anybody who's been in sales or the construction industry you know how intensive it can be. But personally, you know I always had comedy just as an outlet, as a lot of people do like, using your sense of humor in the middle of the trenches to kind of cope in some ways and get you through the day.
Speaker 2:And I think we had just bought our first house. I was in the heat of it with this intense sales job. I'd been there for 12 years and my wife we had just moved into our new house and I came home from work and I was all beat and I was like there's this new website called the Bambalong Bee and I wonder if I could do that for my career. And she's kind of like you know what, if you could do it like I support you, but I'm sure you know in her head she's doing the numbers like you write jokes on the internet, that's gonna make money, like that's actually gonna make money, are you sure?
Speaker 2:You know, I think it was about two years later because I was basically part time. You know, I was just writing for the site part time for a couple years or two years later we took the leap and went full time with it and took over and all that stuff. And you know, it was a real leap of faith from a financial perspective, like you're really rolling the dice, going from like a stable, salaried career with all the benefits to like I'm going off on my own and we're going to like jumpstart this business. But she's been great and supportive and it's paid off, you know. So obviously guys can't do that kind of thing without support from their family and from a great wife like mine.
Speaker 1:Let me go right into asking the question that I most want to ask, and that is how do you come up with such outstanding material every day, throughout the day? Or does it write itself, given the crazy times we live in?
Speaker 2:Yeah well, I mean, you'd think so, right, you'd think it would write itself. It's work. I'm sure it's work. It's work.
Speaker 2:And it's hard to the degree that trying to write something that's more absurd than real life is difficult. You know it's a blessing and a curse. You have a target, rich environment, for sure. You know there's always something to tell a joke about. But you're just like competing with the rapid pace at which our society gets more and more absurd each and every day. So jokes that we write last week come true this week, you know, and you're just barely staying ahead of reality. So we're awaiting the satire. Reality, singularity, where it all merges.
Speaker 2:It's an interesting creative process. I'm sure it's unique to the way that our headlines are formulated. It's almost equal parts, like a bolt of lightning from on high that gives you a funny idea. And honing the craft and learning what works and what doesn't, and collaborating with others.
Speaker 2:You know we have a great and very funny group of writers who love to bounce off each other. You know we'll do in-person meetings at our Southern California office where we joke around, and then we have a lot of writers that are scattered all over the country that are pitching headlines in our group chat so you just have a constant flood from that. Like, a lot of times someone will pitch a joke and it's like is there a nugget of something there that we can then, you know, craft and chisel down into like the core essence of the great joke, you know? So those are probably my favorite are the really collaborative jokes, where someone has a core idea and someone else comes along and punches it up. It's such a fun thing. I always try to remind myself if I'm ever stressed out or you know. I just try to remind myself how good I have at being able to do this kind of thing for a living.
Speaker 1:And you take submissions from the public. Sometimes, I think and you credit people and you show, occasionally at least, how you have edited the submissions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, on occasion we'll get somebody like completely random, you know, from the outside, that will submit a headline that might get published. But most commonly, if we're publishing something from the outside, we have paying subscribers who fund the site basically voluntarily, for, you know, five bucks a month, 10 bucks a month, whatever it is, and one of the benefits of that is that they get to pitch headlines to the writers, you know. So it's a little bit like pay us and you can do work for us, but at the same time it's fun for them. Like there's a whole community of these subscribers who just love all day long joking, or, you know, they've almost formed their own writer's room and so we'll publish those and we'll show how we take that joke. And you know, like if you're not a professional comedy writer, you might have strong core ideas but not really know how to like really get it down to that succinct headline style voice, and so our writers will then take it and massage it and mold it and get into something that's publishable.
Speaker 1:You mentioned a few minutes ago that it's a target rich environment. At the Fund for American Studies we do a lot of economic education, trying to teach high school and college students the economic way of thinking, and I was saying to someone yesterday that with the tariffs that have been imposed, it's a target rich environment for teaching economics, and they responded that well, that's what General Custer said when he looked out at Little Bighorn it's a target-rich environment right before he got massacred. And speaking of getting massacred, the Babylon Bee has been censored. It's been fact-checked. You've had to go through a lot over the years. Let's talk first about the censorship you faced. Could you speak to that and interactions that you had with Elon Musk?
Speaker 2:We have faced censorship challenges since the beginning. I mean, like, right away, you know, I mentioned that I had left my sales job in order to do the satire thing and right in the middle of that transition we got a message from Facebook saying that we are under threat of being deplatformed and demonetized due to sharing fake news on Facebook. And the specific post that offended was like CNN purchases industrial sized washing machine to spin the news. That was the joke. That went too far and so, like you can kind of see the absurdity there of you know not that there aren't concerns about people that can't distinguish satire from reality or like that. There are legitimately fake news sites out there trying to trick people or whatever. But we were getting lumped in with those kinds of fake news sites when it was very clearly humor and satire and we've had dozens and dozens of our jokes fact checked. So our first real run in was with the fact checkers and that kind of spiraled because the fact checkers work with the social media sites and that's all propped up by mainstream media and it's funded by the government sometimes you know, and so this and this all kind of came out years later that there was this big cabal of these people that were working together to silence free speech on the internet, and when we were one of the targets, the most famous example, as you alluded to, was X suspending us, locking us out of our account for a joke about Rachel Levine, and we decided not to back down and that we wouldn't self-censor.
Speaker 2:You know, we're going to go ahead and leave our post up and it's a joke and I don't think a society that silences people for I want to say opinions, but it's not even opinion like humor, it's humor, it's absolutely. It's like it's 100% humor and it was alluding to like biological reality, like biological truth and facts. You know was the point that the joke was making. It's not like we said some insane, crazy opinion which I still don't think should be censored. But you know it was like very clearly, you know where you're in a society where you can't abide humor anymore. That's a scary place to be when the government silencing the comedians, you know.
Speaker 2:So we decided not to back down and Elon Musk ended up contacting us, talking to us and then buying Twitter. When he went into Twitter headquarters that November, the first instructive he had was free the Babylon Bee, you know. So it's like wow. And you look at the 2024 election and it's like would Trump have won if Twitter wasn't a place for free speech? If the liberals had controlled every social media site? Maybe not, you know. So it's kind of humbling and honoring. You know, it's a little bit of an honor to maybe have played a little bit of part in them.
Speaker 1:I wondered if you've ever been fact-checked and found your humor to be judged as true. Sometimes, sometimes a few months later, it becomes true. Something you're joking about today turns out to be true tomorrow.
Speaker 2:There's definitely jokes that they fact check and they say, oh, false. And then I'm kind of thinking about, I'm like, well, it's kind of false. But you know we did one that was like Trump says I have done more for Christianity than Jesus, and you know they found it false. He never said that but then, like I don't know, a year later he kind of like got pretty close to saying that.
Speaker 1:And so.
Speaker 2:I always thought about contacting Snopes and asking him to go back and revise the rating.
Speaker 1:You mentioned the origins being Christian or faith-based and some of your humor is definitely in that territory. Have you ever been criticized by Christian groups for offending them or any of your humor offending them?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it comes in a few different stripes. Any criticism from Christian groups, like our core audience is still that Christian audience and that's where we started and we still publish, you know, church jokes and religious humor jokes every day because you know that's kind of our passion to some degree. We stumbled into the politics, we were more right in just the little niche jokes for the Christian audience at first. But the criticism from Christian groups comes from like one of three different places.
Speaker 2:You either have kind of the stereotype of the old church lady who's you know you can't laugh about these. Things like these aren't things to joke about and I always listen to the old church lady so maybe sometimes we do go too far. They're wiser than I am usually. And then the other it's people that have a very specific pet topic or pet issue in theology or, like you know, you make fun of their denomination. You make fun of the Baptists and they're a hardcore Baptist and they get offended, even though some of our writers are Baptists, hardcore Catholic. You make a Catholic joke, they get offended, they get offended. So it's like that's the other thing. And then and then you have the very early on the progressive movement within Christianity kind of realized oh, these guys aren't on our team, and so they very quickly turned on us.
Speaker 1:You have branched out into film and other projects now. I think your first film was January 6th, the most deadliest day. Could you talk a little bit about the branching out that you're doing?
Speaker 2:deadliest day. Could you talk a little bit about the branching out that you're doing? Yeah, that's you know, for a long time I mean ever since Adam and I launched the site in 2016, we've been having talks with studios and individuals and people in Hollywood who you know see the potential for Babylon B to do film and shows and stuff like that, and we've always held our cards very close to our chest and that we don't want to expand into that too quickly. We want to do the right thing and do the right project for us and do it well, and so finally, last year we did make our first movie January 6th the Most Deadliest Day and we made it ourselves with our own fantastic video production crew. We released it for subscribers on our platform, so it's people that support the Babylon Beat got to watch the movie for free and then eventually, I think, we put it up on Twitter, on X, and then we we also released the DVD for it. But it was a blast, Like we kind of adapted this format, influenced by mockumentaries and documentaries and then the Kunk on Earth series that's on Netflix, and like the concept of a satirical documentary was so perfect for us.
Speaker 2:You know, it's a fun format. You're communicating true information but you're coming at it from the other angle, from the satirical angle. So I play a journalist who's investigating and I'm talking to real experts who are going to say you know true things or say their opinion, but I'm asking them the stupidest questions you've ever heard in your life and they're playing along. Like you know. They're being very serious. So it's so much fun. It was a blast to make and it was a great stepping stone for us, you know. So we're working on now what maybe is our next documentary, as well as more shows and movies. And, like you know, I see a world where, five to 10 years from now, we're the like the old national lampoon of movies, where we're putting them out every year and you're always looking forward to the next Babylon Bee production. We would love for that to happen.
Speaker 1:A lot of your humor is retweeted, often by celebrities. Have you noticed any? Have any celebrities retweeted that have caught your attention?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have caught your attention. Yeah, you know we interact with people all the time that share our stuff and like, very, I think early on, we were seeing like one of the early big boosts in our reach was when, like Ben Shapiro started sharing our stuff on a daily basis and so that was like, oh okay, like that's when we really started picking up steam with the political crowd, you know, and then sometimes you make fun of a celebrity and then they'll share it. It's really funny when something like that happens and then, just in the political circles, it's pretty crazy to see the reach. Donald Trump just recently shared another Babylon Bee article. He shared one five or six years ago when he was in office. At the time, it wasn't clear if he knew it was satire, if he knew that it was fake. Do you remember what it was? I think it was during the election, right before the 2020 election, when everybody was banning that Hunter Biden laptop story. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And we had a joke because I think Twitter went down or something like Twitter servers went down for a day. We joked like Twitter shuts down servers to make sure no one shares the Hunter Biden laptop story or something like that, and then he shared it like crazy this is crazy, yeah, and he did one.
Speaker 1:It like crazy, this is crazy, you know. Yeah, and he did one recently as well.
Speaker 2:He shared the genius. Trump leaks war plans to the Atlantic, so no one will ever see them.
Speaker 1:That's a good one. I missed that one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so he shared that and we were so funny. It's just constant entertainment.
Speaker 1:You had a great one just a week and a half ago, I think it was, that a judge was ordering Trump to return the astronauts to the space station, which I thought you know was a great satire on what we're seeing in the courts these days. But are you able, just kind of off the top of your head, to share some of your favorite posts that you guys have done?
Speaker 2:You know, as a writer you're always excited about the next one, like you're always excited about the one you're working on next. Like you know, it's like kind of a what have you done for me lately? Thing. You know, like you write one, you get about something but doesn't know how to express it and then you kind of throw the hand grenade in the middle and then you're, you know, people start sharing it. It helps people feel less anxiety about the topic, have a little more hope for the future, laugh at things a little bit, take themselves a little bit less seriously. And then two like we're making a good point but people hadn't figured out how to like share that point or express that point themselves. It makes them feel like they're not alone. It gives them something to share and talk about on a discussion. Point One we repost every year. That always does well. On April Fool's Day, we always share. The CNN publishes a real news story for April Fool's Day and that always is classic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, a few years ago, I guess Jerry Seinfeld comes to mind saying he does not going to go perform on college campuses anymore because people can't take his humor. People get offended too easily and they get censored and I applaud you for what you're doing because I do think in some sense comedy's been under threat for offending and we had such a push for political correctness that it takes courage, I think, for people like the Babylon Bee and for other comedians to be willing to put themselves out there with humor, because you never know what will offend.
Speaker 2:No, you're absolutely right, and that's like you do end up in this place in society where you know, cancel culture was a big thing. I think it's going away a little bit. Political correctness was a big thing. I think it's going away a little bit. Political correctness was a big conversation for a long time. I think it's going away a little bit. But yeah, you had people like the comedians were the last ones, like they're the ones standing up and saying, hey, comedy is comedy, like it's good. It's good for the nation to be able to laugh and it's an important avenue for free speech. It's super important to protect comedy. So I'm glad that comedians on both sides of the aisle were able to kind of come together and push against that cancel culture stuff.
Speaker 1:I think we're at a moment where the established media is kind of rethinking their role. There have been a lot of changes. The White House has opened up the press corps. We had the same Naples conference you were at. Ari Fleischer was there who was President Bush's press secretary, and he said when he was in the White House in 2001, 2002, he had someone on his staff look at the voter registrations of the White House press corps and at the time it was 12 to 1 Democrat versus Republican. So he was encouraged with what Trump is doing to allow podcasters and other media, new media, into the press corps to ask questions. Has the Babylon Bee been invited in yet to cover the White House press briefing?
Speaker 2:You know we did apply. We applied for press credentials. I don't know what has come of it, but we did apply. Imagine like how much fun that would be to have like a satirical news site at the White House, why not? You know, that's fantastic.
Speaker 1:We really appreciate what you're doing, appreciate that you came to Naples. It was wonderful to have you there. You had our donors and alumni rolling in the aisles, I think with all the examples you shared, I know some who've told me they've subsequently subscribed to the Bee, who hadn't been subscribers before. And what do you see in the future? Beside your filmmaking, do you have other plans you can share with us today?
Speaker 2:You know it's always trying to find that next thing like that, next like what's coming up in the wave of the comedic space and trying to find gaps. You know it's like any business to Sundegger, where you're trying to find those market needs that nobody's addressing, and I think there's still so many of them in the creative space for freedom-minded people, libertarians, conservatives, christians. You know there's a lot of holes there that aren't being filled. So that's kind of what we're looking at. You know, when it comes to the shows, shows and films is like what would be the next logical step for us to expand there and then seeing, like where people are consuming comedy now and how that's changing.
Speaker 2:You know we put out a lot of comedy sketches on YouTube and they're fun and a lot of them have done really, really well. At the same time, you look at the landscape. It's like kids are watching seven second videos on TikTok. You know that's the attention span. You know you obviously want to push against that and you want to say like hey, let's get our youth consuming longer form content. At the same time, you have to go to those places and figure out like how is comedy changing? And I've been actually really impressed when you look at TikTok comedians, the art form of taking a joke and turning it into a five second video with no production cost is, I mean, it is an art form, you know like. It has its limitations and it's probably going to destroy the minds of all our youth, but from a creative perspective it's been really interesting to see that whole new form. You know so trying to figure that stuff out as us old guys try to figure out what a TikTok is.
Speaker 1:Kyle, thanks for being with us today on the Liberty and Leadership podcast. Thanks for all you're doing on behalf of free speech for preserving comedy in our culture. We love the Babylon Bee and thank you so much for your time today.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you guys, thank you guys for everything you do as well.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Liberty and Leadership Podcast. If you have a comment or question, please drop us an email at podcast at tfasorg, and be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app and leave a five-star review. Liberty and Leadership is produced at Podville Media. I'm your host, roger Ream, and until next time, show courage in things, large and small.
