Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/6/23: Cardi B Loves FDR, Teenagers Scammed By Sexting, Diploma Divide, Aaron Rodgers "Mr. Pfizer" Joke, Saudi Water Deal Cancelled, Menendez Wife Car Killing, Health Issues With Big Corp Food Preservation

Episode Date: October 6, 2023

This week we discuss Cardi B declaring her love for FDR on the 'Hot Ones' podcast, thousands of teenage boys being preyed upon by "sexting scams", the Diploma Divide, Aaron Rodgers makes a joke about Travis Kelce calling him "Mr. Pfizer", the Arizona Governor cancelling the Saudi Water deal in their state, Senator Menendez Wife's history of killing a man while driving, and James Li looks at the health issues with "Food Preservation" at big corporations.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. So the one and only Cardi B made an appearance on a big YouTube channel podcast, Hot Ones, where they like eat hot wings and talk about whatever they talk about and had some very surprising comments on a favorite historical figure, FDR.

Take a listen. What stays in my mind for a long time is that I went to FDR's house. If anybody loves me, know me, I love FDR. You love FDR? Yes, and I love Eleanor Roosevelt. And you know how he got us through the Great Depression. Real war. With a war. Only president, the guy elected four times. While he's in a wheelchair. As I grew up reading a lot about Eleanor Roosevelt, she had a very sad life. And, like, when I went to her house, well, she had a different house from her husband because, you know, FDR mama, she was always around.

And she didn't really like that. Eleanor wanted her space. Just like me, I want my own space all the time. I saw the room where Churchill and FDR was talking about the nuke. That is crazy to me. Like, I'm really here. Like like i don't know why i'm obsessed with war art of war i could hear it with the aliens yes yes it's in you i'm obsessed with world war ii like i love world war i like you know i like reading about that but world war ii like

i'm obsessed with just learning everything about it so for me to be in the same room that Churchill and FDR was discussing, the nuke is like, it was just such a moment for me. So I already love Cardi B. Remember she endorsed? Cardi B's anti-tax. Don't forget about that. She endorsed Bernie.

Yes, but she was also bitching about income tax. I remember. That is true. There were all these fringe Republicans at the time. We're like, Cardi B is right. Keep your money, Cardi. I was like, stop it. I excised that from my mouth.

I'm just going to pretend that didn't happen because I love Cardi B. I'm actually, I like her music. I'm just like a fan of her in general. Sagar, as a history buff, what did you make of these comments? Well, I hate to break everybody's bubble, but that's basically regurgitating the Hyde Park tour word for word. And that's fine. It sounds like she was very struck. But she was into it.

The question that she was asked wasn't even about FDR. It was like her getting a cheese sandwich with Dave Letterman or whatever. And she was like, oh, that wasn't the thing. This was the thing. This was the thing. For those who are wondering, she's talking about the Manhattan Project and the development of the nuclear weapon. Eleanor Roosevelt, it's true. Sarah Roosevelt, who is FDR's mother, is like the quintessential helicopter mother.

Yes. Because what happened is that FDR's father was much, much older than Sarah Roosevelt. I think he married her when she was like 20 or something. He was like 50, so it was like a pretty significant difference. The issue was that she got pregnant, she had Franklin, and then the father got sick. And so because she was so young and they were alone, they were on this vast estate by themselves,

they kind of made it a game about hiding how their father was sick. And the two of them, they were more like siblings than like daughter, sorry, like mother-son relationship, which is a problem because Franklin marries Eleanor Roosevelt even though at the protest of his mother's, his mother doesn't like her from the get go. She thought she was ugly and they were, you know, fifth cousins or whatever. And there was like a rivalry there for his attention and

control over his life. And Eleanor never, she never felt like she was viewed as adequate by his mom. And he treated her very badly. It was always tense and uncomfortable, et cetera. It's an interesting history. Eleanor was very devoted to him for a while, but then she found out that he was cheating on her, and then obviously they didn't agree on divorce, and they kind of went their separate ways by the time they had adult children.

By the time they were in the White House, they had mostly reconciled, actually. Yeah, and she was quite extraordinary in her own right and very outspoken in the day. Actually, she was kind of more of an isolationist. There was some tension between them in terms of his desire to enter World War II. So she had her own views and her own political context and her own political life. So I can see why Cardi B, as a very strong independent woman, sees her as an inspiration

because I think she is an inspiration. She was an inspiration to a lot of women, a lot of Americans. She was an OG independent woman, actually. She was very politically active. She had her own column. She had her own columns that she used to write in. She actually the most influence, probably the most influential first lady of her time because she was massively influential in the New Deal and in getting a—blanket on the name.

I think it's Frances Perkins, who was the first female labor secretary. That's right. Getting her appointed. And the two of them teamed up to do a lot of work on the National Youth Administration. They made it a big project of theirs during the New Deal to save a lot of youth who were suffering under the Great Depression. So, yeah, she was interesting. And FDR really relied on her to be kind of his eyes and ears and go places he couldn't go, like go into factories and see the working conditions and report back to him. And,

you know, she maintained a lot of contacts in like, you know, the anti-war movements and civil rights movements. And so she was more connected, had more of her finger on the pulse of the grassroots and the overall population. So then, yeah, she ends up being influential in terms of the crafting of the New Deal, et cetera. And then not only the UN, she did a lot of stuff. Anyway, you can go on forever. Yeah. So anyway. There's a good series. I'm blanking on it. I think it's called The Roosevelt's. I think it's from, it's either Ken Burns. It's from PBS. It's like 10 episodes. Watch it. It's TR all the way to the end. It's a phenomenal series. It's like 10 episodes. Watch it. It's TR all the way to the end. It's a phenomenal series.

It's like 10 hours or so. But I love to see, it's cool to see, you know, a cultural icon like Cardi B obviously defying a lot of expectations for what she would want to talk about in this interview. And she's like, you know,

no, I don't want to tell you about Dave Letterman's cheese sandwich. I want to tell you about this historical thing that's really captured me. Cardi B, come on the show. Let's talk about it. Oh my God, I would love that. We can talk about taxes too. Sure.

Washington Post had a report on a really troubling epidemic that is really hurting young teenage boys. Put this up on the screen from the Washington Post. The headline here is, I don't know what to do. Thousands of teen boys are being extorted, in sexting, scams, an unprecedented number of cases, leaving families devastated. Some of the numbers here, just to give you the backstory and the idea, the way that this usually works, and I'll tell you, this is something that I'm aware of happening in my little small town

with one of the friends of my teenage daughter, is they'll start chatting with some girl, you know, cute girl online. And she starts asking, sending pictures, asking you to send pictures. Next thing you know, they send something explicit. And then she, which turns out not to be who she's representing herself as, blackmails and says, basically, I'll release these photos if you don't pay me X amount of

dollars. And, you know, if you're this kid, this teen boy, they don't want their parents to know they were sending nudes online. So they're embarrassed to go to their parents and they don't want to get in trouble and they don't know what to do. And so it's a horrific, you know, they end up in a horrific situation. The numbers here, they talked to this group that serves as a clearinghouse for records of abuse, received more than 10,000 tips of financial sextortion of minors, primarily boys, in 2022 from the public, as well as from electronic service providers like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. By the end of July 2023, they'd already received more than 12,500 reports routed to law enforcement with more continuing

deport. And now it is possible they say that some of these reports are duplicates, but you can see the way that the numbers are skyrocketing. And the fallout from this is horrific. You've had at least a dozen boys who died by suicide last year after being blackmailed in this fashion. So it's just another way that, I mean, there's just so many horrific things happening to kids that we would never have contemplated when we were young. Yeah, that's what really creeped me out. That's one of the reasons I thought we would, because you had told me that, you know,

you had, that this kind of thing had happened to somebody that you know. And I didn't realize it was so widespread, but it actually makes sense. Because, you know, parents, unfortunately, it doesn't seem, they're just handing their kids their phone and they're not having any conversations about this. And these kids don't have enough life experience to be like, yeah, some random hot girl just messaged me online. They're like, wow, this is awesome.

Like, hey, guys, it's probably not real. Ninety nine point nine percent of the time, it's just not going to be real. Comes with some life experience. And that's the other thing is not only they don't want to get in trouble, they're embarrassed. Yeah, of course. It's humiliating. Yeah, it's incredibly embarrassing. And you're like, I got fooled by this person

to send these photos. I thought she really liked me. You know, I thought this was like a whole thing. And now, you know, I'm being blackmailed. And sometimes what they'll do too is they'll ask for like a relatively small amount of money to start with. And it's like, all right, fine.

I'll send you the 20 bucks. Right. Just to, like, have this go away and not have to deal with it. And then they just keep upping the ante and upping the ante. And they're like, oh, go get your parents' credit card or something like that. That's awful. Or send me crypto. Probably a bad half of these guys aren't even in America.

Because they're technically dabbling in child porn, too, which is, like, a whole other thing. That's absolutely correct. It's really creepy. I just think that, you know, I honestly, schools need to take charge in this. They need to start doing sessions on this when kids are like 11, 12 years old. I don't know what age kids, what age do kids get phones now? Like 10? Around there, usually around middle school.

Okay. So yeah, 10, 11, 12, somewhere in there. You've got to start, it's like, you know, sex ed, health ed, whatever. You know, you've got to start having like some sort of conversation about online and phone behavior if this is gonna be happening because otherwise, you're just setting yourself up, like you said, for a nightmare.

And the really scary part and what we wanted to highlight is that there are multiple suicides now directly linked to this. I mean, who knows how many. And we've also had so many high profile incidents. Again, adults, we know the whole like Manny Teo story and the catfish movie, all of those.

I remember them, you know, very well. But a lot of these kids, they don't know, we know the whole Manny Teo story and the Catfish movie, all of those. I remember them very well. But a lot of these kids, they don't know. And they don't have as much experience. They're developing. And so it's just they're being thrust into the wild on Instagram and on their phones. Unfortunately, it appears with very little supervision or at least talking to from their parents. So we've got to set new norms around technology and all this stuff, which you or I who may have grown up with this tech,

you know, it seems very intuitive to us, but we got to think about a developing brain that's just immediately interacting with this tech. Yeah, no, that's right. And listen, I mean, sometimes the parents do talk to the kids about it. Right, and they still do. Kids are stupid.

You don't listen, you know? I mean, because sometimes you learn things the hard way. If there's anyone out there listening who's been in this situation, like I know it's embarrassing. I know you don't want to get in trouble, whatever. Your parents are human beings too. They've made mistakes as well. Like get a grownup involved and do not send the money because it will not end. It's not going to solve the problem. Go to your parent, go to your whatever, uncle, like somebody you can trust. Contact law enforcement. Because like you said,

I mean, there's not only the blackmail, but also you're talking about child pornography. I mean, there are serious penalties for this. And there should be. Yeah. It's a good thing. You can actually get them in trouble. Yeah. I hope law enforcement is like up to date on these types of crimes.

Because I know in the past there's been, it's been difficult to get police to take these sorts of things seriously. Like this is a real crime because it was just so like such a new landscape and something they didn't know how to navigate either. So. Makes sense. Anyway. Stay vigilant. A very good friend of mine, Jason Willick, he now works over at the Washington Post. He's a columnist, wrote a column which intrigued both of us. Let's go ahead and put it up there on the screen. Really highlights something we've been talking a lot about here on the show, quote, how the diploma divide came to dominate American politics. And he highlights specifically

a University of Pennsylvania political scientist who has a count of the recent political shift, the greatest shift really, in all of our lifetimes. The diploma divide, college-educated voters dramatically going towards the Democratic Party, working-class voters, with some exceptions, dramatically going to the Republican Party, especially when we're talking about whites. He says that within this, that, quote, whites with college degrees and not only white working class have driven the polarization process predominantly, quote, from at least the early 1980s to mid-2000s,

there was essentially no difference in average attitudes on economic policy between college and non-college educated voters. Beginning in 2004, however, college educated white voters have moved steadily left on economic issues relative to the working class, so much so that the education gap on economics is half as large in magnitude as the party gap was in the 1980s. But even more interesting, Crystal, and this is what really got us in this, is that it used to be that college-educated voters predominantly were the real culture war voters.

Those are the people most motivated by cultural concerns. But with the stripping away, really, of economics and reality that things probably aren't going to change, increasingly now, the divide is around culture. And that's part of why our politics are exactly the way they are today. And economics, in some cases, flows downstream from those two. It also just makes sense for anybody who's come up in the college-educated system. In the last decade, culture is all basically the obsession of not only the elite but the professors in terms of what's dominating campus life and what's there. Whereas, let's say in the 1960s, here are very different conversations

that were happening. Maybe the 60s is a good example. I was going to say, it was pretty politicized then too. Yeah, but it was different. It was about Vietnam and even the culture, quote unquote, there, it was about civil rights. I mean, I just don't think it's even fundamentally the same as opposed to like what we're facing right now. So yeah, so it's fascinating to me. It makes a lot of sense that it would be college educated voters who tend to be more economically secure themselves who then would prioritize cultural issues, right? It's like I've got mine. I'm good.

I don't really care about unions anymore or minimum wage. I'm way above that. I don't want to be glib or like, you know, but just in terms of people looking out for their interests. So now I have the bandwidth to care about these other social cultural issues. So that's what the model used to be, which is kind of what people still may intuitively think is going on. What we've seen shift is now basically everybody is a culture war voter. And I mean, I'm a little bit skeptical of this, but I think part of why it makes some sense is because in that earlier period, in the 1980s, certainly in the 1970s, you had more of an active conversation about what the model of the economy was going to be.

Yes, you're right. Once you get past Bill Clinton adopting a market radicalism very similar to Ronald Reagan, well, both of the parties agree on some of the major contours of the economic landscape. And so they seek to differentiate themselves by culture. By the way, culture is also a lot easier to deliver on and very comfortable for donors. Cultural issues don't threaten the donor class really whatsoever. So it's much more convenient for parties to focus on those as being like the litmus test and the core of their identity As we've had this big partisan sorting It then makes sense that you know

if you're on the Democratic side and this is like the set of issues both culturally and Economically that you just start adopting those no matter where you are in the economic spectrum if you're on the conservative side like these are the People who are signaling they're on your team culturally and so you take put more credence in the economic spectrum. If you're on the conservative side, like these are the people who are signaling they're on your team culturally. And so you take, put more credence in the economic philosophy that they are preaching as well. One thing that I would note though, is in spite of that, and in spite of, you know, them arguing that like, um, working class conservative voters have tended to adopt more conservative ideology. We do see that there are a lot of economic issues where there's a huge commonality across the American people that's not reflected by elites really in either party. I mean, you have this huge

support for unions right now, huge support for labor right now, huge support for upping the minimum wage right now, huge support for making healthcare better, health care, negotiating Medicare drug prices, lowering prescription drug prices. Like, I don't want people to get the impression that there is no commonality in terms of an economic vision across the two parties, because I do still think that there's a big split just by the numbers between what elites in the parties want and what the overall base of the party would like to see in reality. You're right. I mean, look, there's two ways to look at it. We're more divided than ever, true. We are also more united than ever, also true. Two of those things can be true at the same time.

It just depends on which conversation you wanna have. You wanna talk about guns? Okay, we're more divided than ever. You wanna talk about, you know, on some issues, we're more divided than ever. But even within cultures, like, what if we're talking about gay marriage? Well, actually, we're more united than ever. The vast majority of people in the country

support gay marriage. So it all depends on the conversation that you want to have. You can have a productive one or you can have a non-productive one. And I think we know which one most of the elites prefer. But unfortunately, as I've said, I don't like this trend. Before your college degree is still the single best indicator we have in this country of how you voted. I would really love to get away from that. I don't like that it is that way. I think there's a lot of social ills that come as a result of that, that also whitewashes most conversations that I think people could be having around real issues. But also, as you're highlighting, that doesn't mean that those can't happen because people still vastly agree on all that, whether you went to college or not, you know, in terms of wages or the way healthcare, whatever.

And perhaps more than ever post pandemic. Yeah. I mean, I do think that there was a real shift in the pandemic that we've seen play out in terms of, you know, people's attitude towards the economy and attitude towards the boss class and workers and what workers deserve, et cetera. So, yeah, I mean, it's complex. It's very complex. I guess the last thing I'll say is given that for quite a while you haven't really had either party delivering on the economic pieces of their promises, it makes sense that people would be like, all right, well then culture, like they can signal to me culturally and like be on my team. And I guess that's the best that I can hope for.

Like that makes sense. And it's going to take a shift in our political outcomes in order to, you know, to change people, convince people that no, I should, like I actually should care about these economic pieces because I have a reasonable hope that they may actually come to fruition. Yeah, I think that's true. Well, erstwhile Jets quarterback, or I should say recovering Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers may be physically injured, but he seems mentally pretty sharp during his weekly appearance

on the Great Pack McAfee show on ESPN. Aaron Rodgers called Travis Kelsey, quote, Mr. Fizer. Take a watch. Didn't have a crazy game. And, you know, Mr. Fizer, we kind of shut him down a little bit. He didn't have, you know, his like crazy impact game. Obviously, he had, you know, some yards and stuff. But I felt like for the most part, you know, we played really tough on defense

for the last three quarters. All right, Ryan. So Jets lose to the Chiefs. Rogers calls Travis Kelsey on ESPN, which cannot have been happy with that. Mr. Pfizer, because Travis Kelsey, I think, has done ads. He's actually partnered with Pfizer. This is actually from Fox News. Quote, Kelsey recently partnered with the pharmaceutical giant to promote its COVID-19 and flu vaccines in commercials. Rodgers had a conversation with Travis Kelsey after the game. He said he's going to leave it private, but he said, quote, I've known Travis Kelsey for a long time and we had a great chat. Got to have a quick chat with Mahomes about how every time we're supposed to play each other, it doesn't happen. A.J.

Hawk was his former player, his former teammate, A.J. Hawk, when they were at the Great Green Bay Packers, was on air as well. And both of, as people just saw, McAfee and A.J. Hawk's reactions were pretty priceless. Mr. Pfizer, you know, Aaron Rodgers' appearances on Rogan's show and McAfee's show basically come out as a vaccine skeptic. He's kind of railed against woke culture. What did you make of this clip, Brian? Just clout chasing Travis now that Travis is like the second most famous person in the world, right? I mean, that's what this is at this point.

You think he wants Taylor Swift? I mean, I think he wants some of the attention probably. It's funny how the NFL thought it was a big deal and then Travis Kelsey started dating Taylor Swift and they realized what an actual big deal looks like because Travis Kelsey you know may be the best tight end in like football history and uh but to the Swifties like who is this who's this nobody taking taking our Taylor there was an amazing post from somebody at a Chiefs tailgate who was wearing a Travis Kelsey jersey. It was like a girl and it was spelled Kelsey, like the name, the girl's name, Kelsey. The jersey was on the back because clearly they've never heard of Travis Kelsey. Don't know much about the guy, but they love him.

The only thing I really have to add to this conversation is that if people haven't seen it, they should Google his younger brother, Jason Kelsey's foot, his Superbowl speech that he gave in Philadelphia in 2018. That's right. Jason Kelsey, by the way, possibly the greatest center in football history. Did you watch the HBO documentary? No. You'd really like it. There's a lot of good Philly stuff too. I forget that you're an Eagles fan. So you must really like Jason Kelsey. Oh, yeah. And it's an incredible speech. You would, like, just go Google Jason Kelsey, like, speech.

And, like, that'll send you. If it sends you down a Jason Kelsey or a Kelsey Brothers rabbit hole, it'll be time better spent than some of the other Aaron Rodgers rabbit holes that you could probably end up going down. So Aaron Rodgers is a really interesting figure because when he was Brett Favre's backup and Favre was clearly on the way out and actually ended up in a really similar situation to Aaron Rodgers towards the end of his career with the Packers, Rodgers is somebody who has always taken himself so seriously. He was famously kind of jilted in the draft, wanted to play for the Niners and didn't get drafted in that spot ended up falling in the draft becomes this wonderful fantastic quarterback but he always has taken himself so seriously except for maybe like the smoke and Jay memes you remember that with Jay Cutler back in the day those were pretty good and was

really sort of well-liked and then towards the end of his career with the Packers starts getting what I think a lot of fans see as an attitude. And that is working at the same time as he starts also railing against woke culture, not taking himself that seriously, going on McAfee's show and going on Rogan and all this other stuff. And it is just fascinating to me how he's kind of, we've talked about this, the hippie to QAnon pipeline. And I'm not saying that Aaron Rodgers is QAnon, and I'm not saying, we've talked about this, the hippie to QAnon pipeline. And I'm not saying that Aaron

Rogers is QAnon. And I'm not saying, there's nothing about that. But there is the like the crunchy type of people, surfer type of guy who's now like actually aligning with the right. And then you have some of these more soccer moms who are aligning more with the surfer type hippies on this question of like Medical freedom and vaccines and listen people have very legitimate questions. That's not but we're not weighing in on vaccines here It's just an interesting Confluence and yes, I think people that self identify as free thinkers And I think it's important to understand that phrasing and that framing, used to position themselves on the left. And today, people who self-identify as free

thinkers position themselves or find themselves positioned on the right. Now, I also think that people who self-identify as free thinkers often are a little bit obnoxious and not as free thinking as they think they are. People overrate their own intellectual agency and ought to have some more humility about how free thinking they actually are. Because if you call yourself a free thinker, but then you agree with a particular person on everything, you should ask yourself freely, how freely did you arrive at that conclusion? Right, right. So, yes, the hippie to QAnon pipeline is a real thing.

Like, we've seen it move, but I don't think it's as simple as people want to make it out to be. And I would encourage people to think more freely about that. Yeah, and I don't think it has, it's like, it's not specific to vaccines. And the hippie to QAnon pipeline isn't specific to Aaron Rodgers, obviously. But what we're talking about basically is the kind of Venn diagram between like conservative soccer moms and hippies where there's this middle ground now where you have, you know, maybe like people like Aaron Rodgers coming down on the same side on on particular questions like woke culture and vaccines. And that's where like RFK Jr. launching what appears to be a third-party bid on Monday. I bet Aaron Rodgers supports

RFK Jr. Oh, no question. This is a real... There's a real constituency for this, and that doesn't mean everyone's going to do it responsibly, but I do think there are some responsible conversations that can be had because when you, again, relegate

people to the fringes of society who are otherwise intelligent, normal people, you allow bad ideas to kind of metastasize in the shadows instead of just like, ESPN should be happy. Seriously, because you should be able to have these questions in broad daylight, which is how we used to do, so that people can then smack it down. Jenny McCarthy starts saying weird stuff on The View. Great. Like, the American public and everyone else will weigh in and be like, yeah, no, this isn't right. And before people think I'm being too critical of self-identified freethinkers, self-identified people who quote unquote follow the science are also obnoxious and are also very rarely following the science.

So I just want to be equal opportunity here. Yeah, that's fair. Criticizing the self-identified free thinkers from a hardcore fish fan is a real bold move. Right. And everyone at the fish show thinks they're like, you know, breaking from the monoculture and they all look the same. So let's just be humble about it. That's all I'm saying. There you go.

All right. Well, we'll see you guys later. So for some time we've been tracking what is a completely insane situation that's been unfolding in Arizona. The backstory here is that companies owned by Saudi Arabia effectively have been putting in place alfalfa farms in the desert in Arizona, soaking up massive amounts of water, using it to feed then this alfalfa to cows in Saudi Arabia. Now in the country of Saudi Arabia itself, you are not allowed to grow water-rich, water-requiring, whatever the word is, crops like alfalfa. So they exploited some local water usage laws in Arizona to be able to grow these crops, use them to feed the cows in Saudi Arabia. And this, of course, comes at a time when Arizona is facing massive drought, huge heat waves, all of these issues that have created a lot of water usage challenges for Phoenix and for rural users alike.

So put this up on the screen. We actually have some good news. The governor there, Katie Hobbs, shuts down corrupt deal with Saudi Arabia for Arizona water. Huge win for water rights for Americans in the drought plagued Southwest. So the backstory here is that not only did the company exploit these longstanding water usage laws, where basically once they got these leases, they could pump as much water as they wanted out of the groundwater supply with zero accountability, without even having to track how much water they're even using. So they exploited those laws, and they made sure that they kept this deal in place by

effectively buying off the legislators in what for a long time was a Republican-dominated state. They had lobbied the legislature and the previous governor. They hired key people with high-level connections. One of their top lobbyists had actually served as finance chair for the Arizona Republican Party. They put a former Republican member of Congress on their payroll too. And because for so long it was a Republican-dominated state, paying off these key Republican figures worked. Now, because there's been a lot of press scrutiny and because the situation has become so dire, you've really had a shift. And Katie Hobbs has come in and said she was going to look at it.

She put in place a plan. And now she's not canceling all of their leases, but she's canceling some of their leases in the hardest hit, most drought stricken parts of the state. And Sagar, yeah, I did a monologue on this a while ago. Yeah, it was a good one. And part of what you find out too, is this already having a huge impact. Some of the workers who tend the alfalfa fields, they don't even have like drinking water and wells that they can themselves use because the sources have been so depleted. They have to like cart buckets of water for their own personal use. So this has already had a huge effect. And you're talking about parts of Arizona that are, you know, have a lot of high level poverty. They don't have a lot of a lot of local wealth. And so they'd also do things like, oh,

they'd buy some little nice thing for the football team or whatever to try to buy off the locals on the cheap. So it's good to see that there's actually progress in the right direction on this. Yeah, we should cancel all their leases, not just some of them. Absolutely. Especially because already we have issues with private, especially in the West, water use and land use up there. It's wild because it varies state by state. There's that whole project by the Sam Walton family in order to try and privatize water all across Montana.

That's a whole other story. But at least those people are our citizens. We could deal with that here with our laws. This is just straight up exploiting the ability to bribe their way into the U.S. So they don't want to waste their money. So they'll go ahead and waste ours in a very similar climate, I would add, in order to feed their cows and their populations. Like, OK, well, you can buy it just like any other person.

But instead, what they do is they buy up their access to the towns, the farms and their populations. Like, okay, well, you can buy it just like any other person. But instead what they do is they buy up their access to the towns, the farms and all that. So it's very basic little things. I am happy. I've been seeing a lot of democratic energy around this in recent times. Katie Hobbs just canceled this. I gotta give the man credit.

Fetterman gave a very eloquent, a good speech in Congress about Chinese farmland buying in the state of Pennsylvania, specifically like critical farmland, which was previously owned by American citizens. It's a very similar thing. It's a huge problem actually across the country. A big problem in Iowa too. It's a big problem in Iowa that relates very much to seeds and a lot of industrial espionage, stuff like that, because they're a net importer of a lot of their food, unlike us. So anyway, it connects to a lot of their food, unlike us. So anyway, it connects to a lot of bigger stuff. And I'm happy to see it. And it just should be a

message like, no, you can't just buy your way in here when you're in government. And just to give you a sense, for a long time, we had no idea how much water they were using. And then the first step forward was like, all right, we're going to force you to track it. And they found out they were using in a single year the amount of water that would supply a city of 50,000 people. This one farm just to feed cows in Saudi Arabia, alfalfa, wild situation. So it's good to see that there's been I really think a lot of the public scrutiny and public outrage, which was bipartisan, forced this governor to make some changes that are in a positive direction. Apparently, they have leases in California as well. So this isn't the only problem, but good to see progress in this direction. Looking at you, Gavin Newsom. Some very

interesting details coming out about Bob Menendez's wife, who's been directly implicated in that alleged bribery scheme, getting her hands on a nice brand new Mercedes and allegedly texting the guy who allegedly bought it for her. You know, it's not about all that alleged because there's like, thank you for this beautiful new Mercedes GLC car. Sounds nice. Well, it turns out one of the reasons that she needed a new car.

Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Apparently, while she was Menendez's girlfriend, she hit and killed a man while driving on Bogota's main street in 2018. Apparently, this happened in Bogota, New Jersey. I didn't know there was such a thing as Bogota, New Jersey, but there it is. And it's only a month after the crash, according to that indictment bought by the US attorney, that she was texting with this Egyptian businessman about the lack of a car who he then provided her with a 2019 Mercedes-Benz C300 convertible, a very nice car of which she then purchased, of which she then

thanked him for it. Now, the details of the crash, it was ruled that she didn't do anything wrong. Here's what they said. They responded to a call of pedestrian hit by a car at 7.35 p.m. The crash occurred on Main Street after a man was fatally injured in front of his home. The police department ruled that she was not at fault with the crash. Mr. Koop was jaywalking. He did not crash the street at an intersection or in a marked crosswalk. So this isn't like a tawdry report here about how she was allegedly at fault and there was a cover-up or anything like that. It's that the reason she needed a new car, was because she was involved in this crash and it seemed that she

seemed very comfortable after losing her car in this crash to then be going to this gentleman allegedly again for the lawyers to be asking for a new car but there are some eyebrow raising details about the circumstances here. She was not taken in for questioning at the time of this fatal accident where a pedestrian ends up being tragically killed. She was not tested for drugs or alcohol. Ask yourself, if you were in this situation, do you think they would bring you in? Do you think they would do a field sobriety test at least? If you or I hit somebody and fatally killed them,

no matter what the details are, of course our asses are getting pulled into you. 100%. At night too, just so we're all known. You think we're not getting in immediately to blow through whatever? 100%, 100%. And apparently some retired nearby police officer

ends up on the scene because he says, oh, his wife is a friend of Nadine's. The family very much thinks that there was some sort of special deal cover up, et cetera. They do not feel that justice was done here. And so anyway, there are I think the fact that she there was no field sobriety test done She wasn't taken in for questioning any of that, I think is very eyebrow raising and does suggest some special treatment that ordinary citizens would not likely receive. And there was no, there were no news reports of this at the time. Well, that's the crazy. This is the first time that we're learning about it because it was sort of like alluded to in this indictment and a bunch of local journalists and

national press were like, wait, what? Let's look into the details of it. And like I said, there are some very eyebrow-raising details contained here. Because she was only his girlfriend at the time, I guess not his wife. And it was only afterwards that it would have, yeah, I guess at the time that would have happened. Yeah, I don't know. The details on it. I mean, the police had said that he was jaywalking, you know, not in a crosswalk. I'm not saying the man deserved to die. Of course not. It's a tragic situation. So what I had read the details, but the blood alcohol thing is very, very suspicious.

The fact they're not bringing it. And then, of course, anytime some like retired person is showing up, quote, as a friend. I mean, once again, anybody here has ever been involved in an offender, but it's a terrible experience. You know, everyone's stressed and people are mad at each other. It's like, it must be nice to have somebody be able to show up who's connected on your behalf. So who knows? Actually, that's true. Really, who knows whether she didn't receive a lot of special treatment because she was the girlfriend of a sitting U.S. senator and then literally getting stuff on his behalf, allegedly, as laid out in the indictment.

Just gross. Gross that they, there's a totally different standard for these people whenever they do anything. Absolutely. Yeah. It said she initially agreed to let officers search her phone. Then she took it back shortly thereafter. She was allowed to get personal effects out of the vehicle. This retired cop shows up to help shepherd her through the whole process. Anyway. Yeah, that's starting to piss me off. All right. We'll see you guys later. The avocado you're looking at is about 30 days old, yet it still looks about as ripe as the day it was picked.

The source of the magic? It has been treated with a new tasteless edible coating called Appeal, an invisible shield promising to double the lifespan of your fruits but is there a catch appeal sciences you may remember them it take left behind plant materials like leaves or peels and blends they bake them into a kind of shield that you spray on fruits and vegetables it keeps them from going bad. Founded in 2012, Appeal is a family of plant-derived coating that is applied to keep produce fresher for longer. The company's Food Gone Good mission aims to tackle global hunger

and help mitigate climate change by saving water, increasing the shelf life of produce, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In the past few years, the company's valuation has skyrocketed and produce coated with appeal can now be found in grocery stores nationwide as well as internationally. Monks figured out in the Middle Ages that you could put beeswax on an apple and it would last a little bit longer. But if you go into a store today and you get an organic apple, it's still got beeswax. And so appeal comes in and says, you know what, let's use food to solve this problem in a way that dramatically reduces waste. Using food to reduce food waste sounds like quite

the scientific innovation, but some in the healthy eating community are beginning to ask questions and voice concerns that I think warrant our collective attention. Did you ever think that your produce would have an ingredient list? Kristen Dornick is a cookbook author and founder of Kristen's kitchen, a food blog that promotes eating real food. I recently spoke with her to better understand the controversy surrounding appeals new innovative coding. So appeal is a plant based coding, and it's used on produce to keep it fresher for longer. But there's

a lot of there's a lot of questions about what it's made of. Based on the company's website, a peel is made of mono and diglycerides, which they say are naturally occurring in all fruits and vegetables, and that this ingredient has a long history of safe consumption and has been verified by regulatory authorities around the world. But once you dig a little deeper, I found the answer to be a bit more opaque and a bit more complicated. First off, mono and diglycerides, sometimes referred to as monoacloglycerides, are plant-based in the sense that it is extracted from grapeseed through heavy industrial processing at high temperatures, somewhat analogous to the process to extrude seed oils commonly found in ultra-processed foods, which serve as emulsifiers or preservatives

to enhance texture, stability, and shelf life of food products. Such substances are considered by the FDA to be generally recognized as safe, or GRAS. What most people don't know maybe is that GRAS-certified ingredients means that the companies themselves are self-certifying the safety of the substances

through their own hired experts and their own trials and submitting a GRAS notification to the FDA, and 99% of the substances through their own hired experts and their own trials and submitting a GRAS notification to the FDA and 99% of the time the company's claims are not independently verified by the FDA. It's what's known as a loophole. And if we look closely at Appeal's GRAS notice submission to the FDA, the industrial process they use to extract monoacryloglycerides from grapeseed

leaves residue of processing aid residuals such as ethyl acetate and heptane, along with heavy metals like palladium, arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury. A recent European Food Safety Authority review of monoacryloglycerides E471 concluded that while there is no reason for a safety concern, they also warn that the potential exposure to toxic elements resulting from the consumption of E471 could be substantial and the need to lower the current maximum limits for arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury. It does sound like a lot of scary chemicals that we

probably don't want in our food, no? This is something that is eventually going to be put on all produce. You're not just getting exposed to a little bit here and there. You're getting exposed to a lot. You know, it's on organic produce too. In a now-deleted Instagram post, Appeal co-founder Jenny Du defended her company's use of chemicals. Everything around us is chemicals. You and I are all made of chemicals. In fact, even more amazingly, we are all made of star stuff. Cool. The star stuff that she's referring to, once again, based on her own company's registration with the EPA, is classified as a pesticide. That's right. OrganiPeel, which is a peel's organic formulation that the company uses to coat organic produce,

comes with a massive warning label and considered to be a hazard to humans and domestic animals. On top of that, the EPA registration raises even more questions about the ingredient list, as it lists the active ingredient as citric acid at 0.66% and other ingredients at 99.34%. But putting aside ingredients and chemicals for a second, are there other health implications if all of our produce is coated with a peel. How do you know when that apple was picked? Was it picked three days ago or was it picked 30 days ago? You can't tell because the outside it looks, it still looks pretty good because of that coating. Because a peel's barrier coating halts the visual decay of fruits and vegetables, the next question consumers have been asking is, does it lock in the nutrients too? It has been well documented that most produce loses 30% of nutrients three days after harvest. In fact, University of

California studies show that vegetables can lose 15 to 55% of vitamin C, for instance, within a week. Now, I know we just covered a whole lot of claims about appeal from chemicals to nutrients, which beyond mainstream fact checkers like those from the Associated Press reiterating that the FDA considers appeals coding to be safe for human consumption and correcting a post that erroneously confused appeals coding with a cleaning solution with the same name, appeal themselves have not really publicly addressed much in terms of these claims and concerns until now. I had the opportunity to sit down with Appeal's co-founder Jenny Du and the company's VP of marketing Lauren Sweeney to try to get to the bottom of some of these concerns we've just covered. The mystery ingredients of Appeal's organic formulation, the 99.34% other, they say is just purified mono and diglycerides,

which is the same ingredient in their non-organic formulation, along with food-grade sodium bicarbonate. In regards to the publicly available Grah submission and other patent submissions that we've referenced in this piece, the company states that they, quote, do not represent our current manufacturing processes, neither heptane nor ethyl acetate are used in our manufacturing process, and heavy metals are also not intentionally added to the product. In a follow-up email, Ms. Sweeney reiterated that, quote, with almost a century of safe use as a food additive, rigorous purity and safety standards, and low levels of

exposure or consumption, it is very unlikely that there would be any long-term health hazard related to the consumption of our product on produce. They also revealed that in order to comply with the new EU standards reflective of the notes in the EFSA study that we referenced earlier, the company has quote, already conducted testing on finished formulations that show we are already conforming to those forthcoming revised specifications. Ms. Du and Ms. Sweeney also shared that in addition to protecting produce against visual decay, Apeel also locks in nutrients better than produce without their coating. When comparing, for example, Appeal's protected blueberries with

unprotected blueberries, all of which were harvested at the same time and from the same lot, Appeal protected blueberries maintain higher vitamin C levels and over a longer period of time. And there you have it. I obviously can't tell you who to believe, but I do want to say that I'm very grateful that Appeal's senior leadership has made the decision to actively participate in this discourse, and I hope they continue to do so going forward. Now, moving away from the science for a second, let's talk money, because I don't think we can ignore Appeal's appeal. I think Appeal's got a bright future. No wonder they were able to raise $250 million last month at a billion plus valuation. That's right. Appeal has attracted a bright future. No wonder they were able to raise $250 million last month at a billion plus valuation.

That's right. Appeal has attracted a number of high-profile investors, including celebrities Katy Perry and Oprah Winfrey. Other investors listed on the company's website include the who's who of venture capital, as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, latter of which has been on a spending tear, tens of billions of dollars over the past decade in what some would describe as a coordinated plan to consolidate control over the world's food supply. Now, how does Appeal fit into this equation or does it fit at all? Just something to think about. Appeal has also been recognized as a World Economic Forum technology pioneer and is a part of the World Economic Forum global innovators Community. The company's CEO and co-founder, James Rogers, is also a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. Conspiratorial insinuations aside, it is at the very least, I think, concerning the direction of where our food

system is going, which is, I think, in a direction that seemingly favors a shift from localized community-level farming to top-down, globalized industrial farming, where the food supply necessarily becomes more centrally controlled and further removed from the communities that consume it. This is just my personal opinion, but without an active mission to empower local farmers and dismantle a food system that has been financialized to the degree that we as consumers have no idea or almost no idea where our food is coming from or what's in it, it would be difficult to see how appeal in its current incarnation would be able to do much more than co-opt what I think

are legitimate concerns like climate change and food insecurity as a means to make its investors a little bit richer. But alas, regardless of where your personal thoughts lie, whether you think a product like Appeal is a positive game changer, a part of a noble effort to end global hunger or battle climate change, or if it encapsulates everything that's gone wrong with our food system in the last half century, I hope this segment brings about more discussion and more discourse in the importance of food and the need to advocate for a food system that is truly designed for the people. That's it for me this week. Please comment below, share your thoughts about appeal

and about our food system. If you found this segment to be helpful, you can support my work by going over and subscribing to my YouTube channel, 5149 with James Lee. The link will be in the description below. Your support would mean a lot to me. Of course, keep on tuning into Breaking Points. And thank you so much for your time today. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success.

You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. So don't wait. Head to give it to his irresponsible son. But I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind Boy Sober, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, Boy Sober is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now.

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