Thank you to everyone who joined us live. We appreciate you. For those who missed it, it is a heavy episode done in the only way Lauren Lehman Carter and I know how to do it: by confronting it head-on and mostly unfiltered.

Content warning: this episode is about sexual assault. Please proceed with care and caution.

We are moms, we are survivors, and we see that WHAT WE ARE DOING AS A SOCIETY IS NOT WORKING.

So this episode is about working through what real solutions look like when men aren't afraid of consequences, when solutions are products like nail polish that tests a drink to see if it contains GHB, when the President got elected (two times!!) even after saying he could grab women by the pussy, and the Vice President follows Andrew Tate on X. It should not be on women to make this world safer, and we certainly shouldn’t be expected to do it with a smile, and yet here we are.

Why are we talking about this now?

A civil lawsuit filed this month alleges a 20-year-old Cornell student was drugged and gang raped at the Chi Phi house in October 2024. This morning, Tompkins County DA Matthew Van Houten announced he’s reopening the case, but only after weeks of calls and emails to his office.

He also acknowledged that neither his office nor police ever interviewed the men.

This is how little regard our institutions have for women’s safety.

Doe’s attorney says two of the seven were expelled and the rest got suspensions, workshops or written assignments. Cornell disputes that, saying no one was offered an essay as a sole consequence.

They should have all been expelled. Period. An Ivy-League education is a privilege and a pipeline to leadership positions that affect millions of lives. It should not be granted to those who violated someone’s safety or who willfully ignored it.

We didn’t want to talk about anything else this week, so we didn’t.

We are grateful to all of you who join us, whether it’s every week or whenever you have time. We hope you are as angry as we are, and that together we'll direct our rage toward making our world safer.

Watch the full episode, and if you need a place to pivot to after you’ve processed your rage, here are some links:

* A Call to Men — acalltomen.org. Free Live Respect curriculum for middle and high school boys.

* End Rape on Campus — endrapeoncampus.org

* RAINN hotline — 800-656-4673, free and confidential, 24/7

We’ll see you next week.

Maya & Lauren