Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 1/25/24: UAW Backs Biden 2024, Texas Dares Biden To Remove Border Wire, US Begs China To Help With Red Sea, Israel Plans Gaza Buffer Zone, Boeing Caught With More Part Failures, Dems Try To Ban Zyn Pouches, Jon Stewart Returns To Daily Show, And Case Closed On Covid Origins

Episode Date: January 25, 2024

Ryan and Saagar discuss the UAW backing Joe Biden 2024, Texas dares Biden admin to tear down razor wires, Biden begs China to help with Red Sea crisis, Egypt outraged as Israel plans Gaza buffer zone, Alaska Airlines CEO says many loose bolts on Boeing planes, Dems move to ban ZYN nicotine pouches, Jon Stewart returns to The Daily Show, And Emily Kopp joins to close the case on the origins of Covid.  To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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This is your girl T. Look. Lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. This is your girl T.S. Madison and I'm coming to you loud, loud and in color from the Outlaws podcast. Let me tell you something. I've got the voice. My podcast? The one they never saw coming. Each week, I sit down

with the culture creators and scroll stoppers. Tina knows. Lil Nas X. Will we ever see a dating show? My next ex. That's actually cute, though. And Chapel Rome. I was dropped in 2020, working the drive-thru,

and here we are now. It's a fake show you tell Beyonce. I'm going right on the phone and call her. Listen to Outlaws with T.S. Madison on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, honey. Hey, guys. Ready or Not 2024 is here and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. 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. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. Indeed we do. It's another bro show. There we go.

Sad circumstances because one of Crystal's kids is sick, but she will be back. She says that one of her kids is on the mend. Turned the corner, doing well. Is looking good. So don't worry about it, but we're to give her all the time that she needs. And we thank you all for some of the messages that you guys sent in. But before we get to that, man, setting up these stories is tough, especially on a day like today.

We have so many things to go over, Ryan and I. Number one, we're going to start with the 2024 race. We're going to go over, since things look like where they're trending for the general election, Biden and Trump, we've known that for a while. We're going to look at some of the things that are good for Biden, some of the things that are bad for Biden, same with Trump and vice versa. Also, some breaking news yesterday. The Texas governor appears to be kind of putting his middle finger in the face of President Biden and the Supreme Court after being ordered to take down some razor wire at the U.S. southern border. This is setting up a possible confrontation with the federal government. Lots of Republican governors backing up Governor Abbott. And this

certainly could be a major story on top of what's going on with the border crisis continuing. We're also, Ryan and I, going to break down some of what's happening with the Houthis and continuing war in the Middle East. Biden administration continues to say we're not at war in the Middle East. We just happened to bomb three countries in a single day. Boeing, you guys know I love airline stories and everything to do with that. Boeing, the manufacturing crisis and more is just getting way worse for them. Alaska Airlines CEO saying they found multiple doors with loose plugs. And we have confirmation now from the Seattle Times that it was, in fact, Boeing's fault for misinstalling that door.

We're also going to talk about Zin, nicotine, a subject near and dear to my own heart here, Ryan. And we're going to talk about Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader. He wants to ban Zin pouches and nicotine. Interesting. He came for Four Loko first, and now he's coming for this. And then Jon Stewart.

Jon Stewart is returning to The Daily Show. He'll be the executive producer there, and he'll be hosting the show on Monday, trying to rescue the corpse from what Trevor Noah has left behind. And then finally, Emily Cobb is gonna be joining us actually in the studio. She is a phenomenal reporter at the right,

was it Right to Know? U.S. Right to Know. U.S. Right to Know. I've used some of her work here in the past. It's about LabLeak. Why don't you tell us about it? Yeah, I think reasonable debate on this question around COVID origins is over as a result

of her latest reporting, which comes from a bunch of FOIA documents that she pulled up. Without teasing too much of it, it's shut. This is it. The case is closed. It's been closed for a while in my mind, but Emily is the one who gave us the evidence. So we're going to talk to her. And, you know, again, I want to give total accolades. She has been an absolute warrior on this subject now for a long time. But let's go ahead and begin with the

2024 race. Where do things stand? Exactly. I have been keeping my eye, Ryan, on the Biden HQ website and on their Twitter page in particular, because this has given us a real preview in how the Biden administration is going to be campaigning. And over and over again, we see a consistent theme, abortion, abortion, bro, bro, bro. That's all they want to talk about. And for good reason, it seems to be the best single electoral thing that they have for them. Here was President Biden just a few days ago

in one of a major campaign speech. Here's what he had to say. Listen to what he says. Trump says he's proud that he overturned Roe v. Wade. He said, and I quote, there has to be punishment for the women exercising their reproductive freedom. He describes the Dobbs decision as a miracle. But for American women, it's a nightmare. So let's be absolutely clear what Trump is bragging about. The reason there are 21 states where abortion bans are in effect, made with no

exception for rape or any other incest, is Donald Trump. There you go. So you can see a preview of where things are going. At the same time, President Biden got a pretty good lift yesterday. Ryan, he got the endorsement of the United Auto Workers. Sean Fain, who we've covered a lot here on the show from his time at the strike, he actually delivered that endorsement yesterday. Let's take a listen. Now, here's what Trump did to help the American auto worker in our 2023 historic standup strike now that he's running for president. He went to a non-union plant, invited by the boss, and trashed our union. That's right.

And here is what Joe Biden did during our stand-up strike. He heard the call and he stood up and he showed up. So that's a choice we face. It's not about who you like. It's not about your party. It's not this bullshit about age. It's not about anything but our best shot at taking back power for the working class. All right, Ryan, so abortion and unions.

Normally, I would say, yeah, that's pretty potent. At the same time, the bullshit about age, I'm not so sure that Mr. Fain should be. Let me ask you this. If you, would you want Joe Biden, UAW members, would you want him on the line next to you? Or would you want him well into his pension and to his retirement, which you fought very, very hard for in your more recent deal? UAWs are no different than the rest of Americans in the sense that they don't get a choice. This is it. You got Biden or Trump. And both of these rallies are actually useful windows into the other problem that Biden has because both of them were disrupted by protests over Gaza. That's a great point, over ceasefire.

My colleague Prem Tucker over at The Intercept has a good piece on how there was a lot of dissent within the UAW about the timing of this endorsement that they wanted, that the UAW has come out for a ceasefire. And there were people inside the UAW who were saying, get the UAW back to its 60s and 70s roots of being a kind of vehicle for social justice broadly. UAW sponsored the March on Washington, for instance. They're the ones that financed Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech. And that has been something that has been near and dear to their legacy for decades now. And there was a major disruption at the endorsement ceremony with UAW protest, UAW members protesting the president over Gaza. At his speech in Manassas where, you know, the centerpiece of it was abortion rights. Again, you had endless disruptions

from the audience protesting his support for, his unconditional support for Israel's war on Gaza. And so what it's showing is that he can't really go anywhere, you know, for the next year unless he can get to some type of resolution or they put in a different candidate who's not so closely associated with this. And what kills, like, so many progressives is that it's true. He was the first president to join a picket line. Sean Fain, there's a kind of that's my president vibe that he has. And maybe he will be your president one day down the line. He did join Fain on the picket line. They did win a historic contract. And it is true that abortion is on the ballot. All of these things are true,

but they're being stained by the blood of so many innocent Palestinians. I'm glad that you put it that way, because that's like the dichotomy of Biden. And also, even with the union front, wanted to make sure that we flag this. Fain actually, in his speech, even was like, look, some people are not going to vote for Biden. And many people even admitted, don't forget that some 40% of union households went for Trump in 2016. I don't know the exact numbers for 2020. I was struck by Sean O'Brien, who we've actually had here on the show. He's the president of the Teamsters Union. He was actually on Fox News yesterday and he said, listen, you know, we invited Trump. We want to come meet with him. And I think that demonstrates

where some of his base actually was. He said a little bit of this yesterday. Let's take a listen. So we met with Donald Trump two weeks ago and we are meeting with our general executive board and rank-and-file members at the Teamster headquarters on January 31st. We've extended the invitation to President Biden. We're talking to the White House now to try and schedule both on the same day. And we think it's important that we're meeting with all candidates. We have a very diverse membership, 1.3 million members. So we owe it to our members to do our due diligence and make the recommendation what's in the best interest of Teamster members nationwide.

There you go. So he's invited President Trump. I mean, he hasn't endorsed him per se or any of that. But, I mean, look, I always think these union guys have a much better pulse of politics because they've got real memberships that they've got to deal with. You know, they've got to get reelected. They've got to make sure that their constituents are satisfied. Look, most likely he's going to endorse with. You know, they got to get reelected. They got to make sure that their constituents are satisfied. Look, most likely he's going to endorse Biden. But the whole point is that even indoor, even inviting Trump there, I mean, in a certain way, Sean Fain has been a little bit more

partisan on that. But Fain, like I said, in the speech is still realistic that he's like, look, not everybody is going to support Biden. Right. Some people are going to support Trump. Right. And the way that it went down with Trump in the strike, with Trump going out and speaking to a non-union crowd, invited by literal management, didn't leave Fain a whole lot of choice. Although the UAW certainly didn't make it easy for Trump to come address. It wasn't as if Trump really had, he could have dropped in on a picket line. And that could have been interesting. But it wasn't like the UAW leadership was going to make it easy for Trump to show his support.

O'Brien is following in the footsteps of this, like, 100-year union legacy of pushing for support from both parties. Because whoever's in the White House, you know, working people are going to have interests that they're going to want to, you know, push any particular White House, whether it's Trump or somebody else. So by keeping those doors open, that could be useful to Teamsters members themselves. The best thing perhaps that we have about Biden is the NLRB. His appointments to the NLRB have been consistently maybe the most pro-worker in the agency's history. Whereas the Republicans on the NLRB continue to vote with bosses, with management, against workers. And so there is a push from people like Hawley and others in the Republican Party to create a kind of worker uniparty so that there is power when it comes to the FTC, the FCC, the NLRB, other agencies that you've got kind of Hawley populist right pro-worker Republicans who become commissioners on these boards.

And then you've got democratic pro-worker boards because for 40 years, the corporate bosses had the opposite. No matter who was in the White House, corporate America was able to pick who ran these administrative states. So there's a war over the administrative state and O'Brien kind of being friendly with Trump can help grease some of that. It's absolutely true. And that's the thing. I mean, Trump, you know, we shouldn't forget he played footsie rhetorically in the unions. In general, he basically just didn't pay attention to it while he was in the White House, but maybe he will this time. It's very possible you could actually this time around. Returning to abortion, one sign again that this is just going to be front and center for the Biden campaign. Let's go and put this one up there on the screen. Kate Cox,

who you will remember, we actually covered her here on the show, the Texas mother who experienced like that nightmare situation where, you know, because of the abortion law, was not able to get an abortion, even though, you know, she an abortion, even though her fetus was diagnosed with something that was like completely non-viable. It was terminal. It was terminal diagnosis. And they're like, no, we're not doing anything until it dies, which puts you at extreme risk

because you could die from an infection. Like you have to get that treated immediately if a fetus dies inside of you. And they're like, no, you just wait until then and you could get sepsis and die as a result. So she eventually had to leave the state. She left the state. She became kind of a national figure because of the story. I believe she was already a mother.

She wanted another baby. And so it's kind of a prototypical case for a lot of people in the pro-choice movement, kind of the effects of this. I know the pro-lifers were arguing and they were like, well, you know, not theoretically, technically, you know, the diagnosis doesn't necessarily mean what it means. I'm not going to sit here and litigate, you know, medical conditions of 21st week fetus. But I will say, you know, politically, I think we've seen enough data to know where this bears out. And I think it's probably a smart move on behalf of the Biden administration. She will be joining Jill Biden at the State of the Union. We will be doing live coverage here of the State of the Union. And, you know, the State of the Union right before the election is always a vehicle for the presidential campaign.

If we think back to Trump in the 2019 presidential State of the Union, it was the exact same thing. It was about the immigration. It was anti-impeachment. Some of that was going on. And a lot of it was about the economy, about low interest rates, et cetera. So these are always a good way to look at things. Now, in terms of the election, something we flagged yesterday that we want to make sure, again, everybody takes away, is that while Trump definitely won, and he won by double digits, there's some troubling data for him, even in the GOP polls. So let's put this up there.

Steve Kornacki flagged this. We have never seen a gap, he says, between the independent vote and the Republican vote in the New Hampshire GOP primary, like we saw in the New Hampshire primary of Tuesday. Trump won Republicans by 49 points, but Nikki Haley took independents by 22 points. That is a swing of 71. Their previous high on that was 40 points. So I just think we all need to pause and maybe just think a little bit about the fact that Nikki Haley was able to

dramatically win over these independent voters such that we could view her as a vehicle, as we saw here before, Ryan, how many clips did we play of Haley voters being like, I'm voting for Biden? So if that's a preview of things to come, well, you know, an independent voter or others who were so critical in the 2022 midterms, a lot of them swung Democrat. They don't even like the Democrats. They're not particularly pro Biden or any of that, but they genuinely are so repulsed both by stop the steal and by abortion that they're willing to come out and to vote. And there's something very interesting there where it's, look, I think if you just live your life in online circles, you know, it's hard to put your finger on that, but we always need to

remember, you know, even the people who watch the show, the vast majority of the people who watch the show, you're just not, you know, on average, you are not one of the deciding votes whenever it comes to the election. You probably know who you're voting for. Yeah, not even if you know who you're voting for. I'm talking about the median voter, median, is like 55 years old and doesn't have a college degree. Just think about that. I mean, it's crazy. There's so much older than the vast majority of people

who consume content online. And the fact is that young voters, yeah, I mean, they can affect things on the margins, but in general, like, you people don't vote. And when you don't vote, it's like, well, then your voice is not going to be heard and the election is going to be decided by people who are way older than you and consume

very different media than you. I think that's another critical point I want to put. If I were going to try to offer Trump some cope, you would say, all right, well, a lot of those Nikki Haley people were actual Democrats who became undeclared just so they could mess in the primary. But having covered so many elections, it is extremely rare that shenanigans like that move things beyond on the margins. And so anytime you try to explain things with shenanigans, you're probably going to outsmart yourself. And so you're probably seeing what you think you're seeing, which is that a lot of independents, and even if you take 10, 20% of those and move them aside because they were just a 19-year-, and even if you take 10, 20% of those and move them aside

because they were just a 19-year-old Democrat who voted in the primary, you're still talking a 50-point swing, which we've never seen before. Somebody who wins in a blowout fashion, double digits like that in New Hampshire, usually is going to be at least even or winning with independents, not getting crushed with independents. The final piece of data I want everybody to take away from this is that things are both looking good and bad for Biden. So this is why we're putting these two things together, put this up here. So, you know, just yesterday we saw a new poll, Susquehanna, decent poll out of the state of Pennsylvania, decent sample size and all of that. And what do they find? Biden, 46.8%. Trump,

39.3. Not sure at 7.6. And other at 5.6. So, you know, we've got some undecideds there. Enough, you know, if they all went Trump to put him over the edge. And he definitely did compete in the state pretty well in 2020 and obviously won the state back in 2016. And you should never count him out, especially, I think, in the industrial Midwest industrial Midwest in general, the KNS rule was to add five to a Trump number in any of these regions. But here's the thing. In 2022, the KNS rule was reversed. You actually should minus five for Republicans. So that's one of those where that's why it's not really a rule. It's more of a vibe. And for these, it it's just you should say, I don't know. I don't know. You could really read things two ways.

So I would look at this and be like, man, you know, Biden, I'm feeling pretty good. But then let's put the next one here up on the screen. How popular is Joe Biden? Well, he's got a 55.7% disapproval rating and a 38.8% approval rating. That's putting him in Jimmy Carter territory going into the general election. He's got a 17-point spread between disapprove and approve. He's been unpopular now for years, for the vast majority of his short presidency. He only was really popular for a year. And as you can see from that trend line,

things did not go well for him. October 2021 really is, I think, just such a turning point for the Biden presidency because it's the chaos of Afghanistan. And by the way, I supported Afghanistan. I actually supported withdrawal. But let's be real. Politically, it was a disaster. Let's all just be honest about that. Media bears responsibility, but Biden does too, you know, just for the total chaos.

But on top of that, that was, you know, that was in the midst of like vax craziness, COVID craziness, Delta variant, diapers. 9% inflation. 9% inflation. It's just never recovered from that. So I could look at this thing truly two ways. The 2022 data, I'd be like, okay, I would not feel great if I was Biden. I would feel okay. And then I could look at it the other way and any traditional metric with the economy where it is and everything else.

And I would say, man, Biden is you know, absolutely creamed in the election. So it's one of those where we're going to continue to try and present this case. I just encourage everyone, like, don't live in a bubble and try to look at contravening data and just mess with it in your head. Don't have to draw a conclusion of either or. Just anything can happen. That's my main takeaway. What's been so interesting to see is that consumer confidence and people's feelings about the economy have absolutely exploded in the last two months. Yes, that's right. The last three months in particular. You're seeing the biggest swings in an upward direction, perhaps, than you've seen since they started looking at the data. And so if that continues, that's extremely

helpful for Biden, because then you would have a year of people feeling good about the economy, which could be enough time for a lot of people to recover a lot of what they lost through inflation and the precarity of 2021. So yeah, this is a wide open race, even though both people ought to lose. Yeah, no, absolutely. I've said that. It's pathetic that either has a 50% chance. Yeah. And yet, that's the situation. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast,

Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try.

She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into,

call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero.

She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her. Until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right?

And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone,

breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me, and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is,

and they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like, he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like that's what's really important.

And that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy. Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Immigration, top issue in New Hampshire for Republican voters, top issue in Iowa. Huge.

If you're watching and consuming any conservative media, this is it, number one. And if you are looking watching and consuming any conservative media, this is it. Number one. And if you are looking at GOP voters and others, if you want to say like the main reason people are going to vote Trump, this is the issue. And now we are seeing a major standoff. You guys did a great job yesterday of covering the Supreme Court case. But there has been some major development now since, which is after the Supreme Court issued an order where they said that Texas officials cannot obstruct federal, what is it, federal border patrol agents from cutting the wire. They have now began actually putting even more razor wire at that border crossing, which has now become like a critical juncture.

Now, I was explaining this to you, Ryan. People are, you know, many people, including the Texas governor, are showing, you know, they're making this a big show. Many GOP governors joining them as well, being like, that's right. Like, he's defying the law technically. And I asked some of my Republican lawyer friends. I said, OK, what's going on here? So the technical explanation is this. The court order says, well, you can't obstruct the feds from cutting the wire.

But that doesn't mean you can't put up a ton more wire. So there's definitely a little bit of a loophole. It's certain, you know, almost certain the Biden administration, they either may challenge us in court, they could send the feds and the military, they could try and federalize the Texas National Guard, which is putting this up. There are all kinds of very interesting possibilities.

Jorge Ventura, he's a great reporter over at News Nation, actually did a segment showing how the Texas officials actually putting up even more razor wire after the decision yesterday. Let's take a listen to some of his report. Texas officials say they are going to hold the line and double down on their operations to side Shelby Park. Actually, right now we're witnessing Texas officials installing even more of that razor wire and anti-climbing fencing. Now, the reason why they're installing some of that razor wire and fencing on top of the shipping containers is we have witnessed several migrants going on top of the shipping containers and entering Shelby Park illegally that way. Texas

officials say they're going to continue to beef up security here. As of right now, federal agents are still not allowed in Shelby Park. We're going to take a look at the scene over here. We're actually witnessing right now migrants that have actually been blocked by that razor wire. They say they've been here for at least two days. Here we have three migrants from Venezuela who cannot enter Shelby Park illegally. So this is exactly what the state of Texas is trying to do. So that was an important view kind of into the whole standoff. I know you guys covered it a little bit yesterday, but I think the background on all of this is obviously we've had between six and eight million people cross the border

illegally since Biden took office. This has led to massive debates about catch and release, about the remain in Mexico policy, about our asylum laws. We could probably do an entire episode just on the background of this. But the main political issue is that the scenes of just like millions of people coming across. I think everyone can just agree like this is not an orderly process. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like and that's that's where I think the Biden administration suffers is that there have not been three years now in a policy that they have been able to find other than the original Trump policy, which was just straight up remain in Mexico, meaning you have to apply for asylum there. And then if you're adjudicated and approved, you can enter where if you were trying to and you're allowing people basically to enter the border and you're doing it, even crossing illegally, but then declaring asylum and then

trying to adjudicate that here, if you're not going to hold them in some sort of detention center, a catch and release is the inevitable outcome. And there's varying data. People like to put, liberals like to say that there's a 90% show up rate to the first court hearing. Conservatives are like, yeah, but what about the final court hearing whenever they lose their asylum claim? There's a lot of adjudication over asylum itself. But overall, Ryan, I think this is a sleeper potent issue. And I have not seen the mainstream media actually catch up to it yet. I saw coverage of the SCOTUS ruling, but this particular one with Governor Abbott basically saying, I'm going to defy this, I have not seen it yet. Before we get into Governor Abbott's statements, do you have anything you want to go into? Just that it's fascinating how,

like you said, little of an issue this is both among the mainstream media, but also among Democrats. Democratic voters are like, don't care. Right. It's very odd. Yeah. If they see some images at the border, they might say, oh, that doesn't look great. Right. Not very rational. But they're not going to expend any political capital on it. They're not going to criticize Biden. They're in such a difficult jam because their kind of ethics around immigration were forged in the Trump years. And they took, I think, some positions because they were anti-Trump

that they don't actually hold. They became far more kind of pro-immigrant and pro-immigration than a lot of their kind of actual instincts and base are. But they were driven by animus towards Trump. And so with Trump gone, now they're like, we actually are not that pro-immigrant. But now we're kind of stuck actually are not that pro-immigrant. Yeah. Well, not even- But now we're kind of stuck because we have signs in our yard. Exactly. And I think a lot of them are beholden to a lot of these immigration groups. I maintain the literal most genius move that these governors did was, all right, you guys are sanctuary cities, we're just going to ship them to you. You guys can deal with it. You have all these laws,

right to shelter, et cetera. And now all of a sudden you've got Long Island Republicans and others sounding like people down in Texas. They're like, this is crazy. They're taking our housing and you got people sleeping in Boston airport. And I mean, the clips on this stuff, I cannot emphasize this enough, go viral in the right on such a level that to a certain point, other than those who are dealing with this, like in Chicago, California and New York, they are living, people like Democrats, they are living, like Democrats and Republicans are living in a different reality. But this is one of those, I think, reality-forcing events, specifically because it might lead to confrontation between the state of Texas and

the federal government. So Texas Governor Abbott put out a statement yesterday. Let's put this up there on the screen. And can we bring our nice little highlight function there? And I'm going to read this. He says, President Biden has violated his oath to faithfully execute immigration laws enacted by Congress. Instead of prosecuting immigrants for the federal crime of illegal entry, President Biden has sent lawyers into federal courts to sue Texas for taking action to secure the border. President Biden has instructed his agencies to ignore federal statutes that mandate detention of illegal immigrants. The effect is to illegally allow their en masse parole into the United States. Let's go to the next one, please, because this is an important pullout. They say, for these reasons, I have already declared an invasion under Article 110, Clause 3 to invoke Texas's constitutional authority to defend and

protect itself. Now, as I said, all of this is being framed by the Texas governor and by DeSantis, you know, even Governor Youngkin backed him up. They're like, hey, he's standing up to President Biden. I want to be very clear. They're not in violation of the Supreme Court agreement, or the Supreme Court ruling. The loophole is, as long as you don't obstruct the feds from cutting the wire, you can still keep putting up wire. Now, will the feds take him to court and say, hey, you need to stop? I don't know. I mean, that seems politically pretty nuts on their part. But, you know, it's one of those where they're in a major standoff because border according and let me give the Biden case. The Biden case here is that the Border Patrol needs

secure access to all points along the border. That's their case. And the border constitution gives. Yeah. Yeah. The Constitution gives the federal government and the authority in order to take control and to have, you know, to have supreme governance over border policy, even if you should disagree with it. Texas is like, no, obviously this is our border, state border. In the Constitution, they have the ability to invoke that invasion clause, which is one that goes back a long time. You're speaking to a native Texan here. And, you know, we take it very seriously, the ability, you know, the whole, what was it, Jade Helm or whatever during Obama and all of that, invoking the Texas or, you know, bringing up the Texas National Guard to guard against Obama and the federal government. This is deep within our DNA. My only point just being that at that time, that was definitely political.

This time, I think this is, and I think political in the wrong way, maybe good for Texas at the time, but not nationally. This time, because it's a forcing function to get the media and others to grapple with it, I think they're in a tough spot because effectively what the Biden administration is saying is if they do challenge this, is they're like, no, we need more unfettered access for people to be able to cross the border. The Biden administration, they're not stupid. They know this is a huge problem for them. But the groups, obviously, these immigration groups and others are the ones who are like, no, you need to go through. I've seen people like Beto O'Rourke and other Texas Democrats saying, no, the federal government should go in there and cut the wire. I mean, you know, it's like it's one of those where I just think politically, given where national sentiment is on

this and immigration is the number one issue where Biden loses amongst the general public and amongst independents. He's in a tough spot with this case. And as long as Texas and all of them are, you know, whatever, in the spirit, violating the spirit, but not the letter of the law, I think they're coming out on top in this debate, Ryan. Yeah. There's no better kind of epitome of our failed immigration policy than if you had a bunch of Texas Rangers laying down razor wire, followed by a bunch of CBP guys cutting it right behind them. And then behind them is a bunch of Rangers laying more down. And you've got hundreds of guys just fighting over razor wire. And then you've got immigration crisis around the rest of the border.

Bunch of Haitians and Venezuelans and Somalis being like, hey, can I come in here? With a system last updated in the 1980s, and our immigration policy now is depending on who's in the White House, they just execute it like wildly differently and then fight about it in the courts until they're thrown out of office and somebody else comes in. It is really unfortunate, actually, because any serious effort to try and do anything about this has been killed basically left and right. And even the Biden administration, I mean, they just look ridiculous. They just look ridiculous. And John Kirby, we're going to put this, you know, we can play some of this when he's asked about the razor wire. These people are like twisting themselves into knots, literally, to try and to defend the policy of which currently stands and which, you know, they're trying to stand up to Texas, but then they're also not trying to endorse like completely open border. Let's take

a listen to what they said. Does razor wire work? Does razor wire work for what? Does it work for the border patrol to allow them to have the access they need to be able to better process people that are trying to get across the border? I don't think so. And that's why we asked for it to be removed. So, yeah, there you go. It's like work for what? But the problem is— When Trump was asked if the airstrikes are working. Exactly.

It's a problem that they have. Do the bombs blow up? Right. The problem that they have is that the Border Patrol Union is like, no, we need this. Like, we actually need people to cross in an orderly fashion at the legal entry points. That's kind of where the major standoff goes. The migrants would want that, too. Like, everybody— Well, I'm not so sure. I'm not so sure. That's why there's a bunch of guys waiting on the other side of that. But look, maybe, I think that the major point is,

this is part of what obscures it as well. This razor wire, this is a dent in the issue. All right. Like the major problem is, yeah, you can basically walk into this country and be like, I fear for my life. And you can get to stay here for like two or three years while your case is adjudicated, even though you're an economic migrant and you get a work permit from the federal government. Now, listen, I think that's crazy and I don't think that should be allowed. A lot of people though, they do think that. I'm pretty sure you don't get a work permit, which creates this underclass of, well, it's very hard to get the work. Yeah. So you can get the work permit. Some people don't get the work permit. This also comes to the whole question around E-Verify.

The Biden administration has been much more liberal in terms of and I mean, in terms of like, oh, like handing out. Well, they gave a bunch of Venezuelans work permits. But exactly. Not them. There's different legal hard to get minutia that goes into this as to whether you have a like a legitimate asylum claim. And I know that this is very, very difficult. And it can also be very emotional because it's like, well, well, what qualifies as asylum or not? You have a legitimate asylum claim. And I know that this is very, very difficult.

And it can also be very emotional because it's like, well, what qualifies as asylum or not? It's like if you literally are being gunned down by gangs in the street, does that qualify as asylum? Some people would say yes. I personally would say no because I would say it's like, listen, that's a domestic problem and that's your issue. If you want better government, you guys can deal with it in your house. Ryan, I'm sure you're about to throw in my face. You're like, well, it's your fault that those gangs exist in the first place. I'm like, well, you know, yeah, that's technically true. But at certain points, like I like that we can just have this. Yeah, I'm not. I don't even need to be here. I've done this so many times. It's like I've

been sitting here so many times. So, I mean, I guess what we can come to some sort of consensus, at least on this, is that the problem is that the incentive to fix it is also very low. And perfect example of this, let's put this up there on the screen, is that the problem is that the incentive to fix it is also very low. And perfect example of this, let's put this up there on the screen, is that Mitch McConnell just yesterday told a closed door meeting of Senate Republicans that the politics of the border, quote, has now flipped for Republicans, casting doubt on the ability for any sort of Ukraine border deal. He says the politics have changed. And because he says Trump, who he's referred to now as the nominee, wants to run his 2024 campaign centered on immigration. And the GOP leader says we don't want to do anything to undermine him, demonstrating –

And what he means by undermine because normal people might not understand that what they mean by undermine is implementing their preferred policy. Well, okay. Right? Yeah, so I'll give the defense. The defense is, is that any sort of bipartisan deal would undermine the total preferred policy of the Republicans and Trump. So why would we compromise now when Trump, the nominee, not only wants to run on the issue, but if he wins and he can implement his policy. Now I will give you the counter to that. And by the way, I do not support the bipartisan immigration deal. I am a pretty big border hawk, but I do live in the reality of the system. And I can tell you that when Trump had unified control of Congress and he was the president, he also was not able to get comprehensive border deal done.

Those are the facts. I just want to be very clear. The issue too is that unless you have a 60 vote majority or whatever in the Senate, you're going to have to go bipartisan there no matter what, especially because they're not going to kill the filibuster. You're going to do a bipartisan deal now or you're going to do it in the future. whenever I hear it from any party, it's like, you're not, you would rather this just be a giant mess than actually, than actually solve the problem. So if you want to solve the problem, what I would tell Republicans, Democrats are flat on their back right now. They're, they're ready to trade away the entire store, steal it from them. And then if you do take power in the future, be even more terrible. That's possible. I do think it's, I do think that That's the end of my Republican consulting. You're welcome. Yeah, thank you, Ryan. I do think that

one of the major problems for the Republicans in that right now was that a large portion, I would say half or so of the caucus, they didn't even want Ukraine aid anyways. So they're like, why would I compromise with you on the border? They're like, I'm not going to hold, you know, I don't care about Ukraine. I don't care about Ukraine aid. You're the one who cares about Ukraine. You're like, I'm sitting here and I'm just negotiating on the border. So I think that political calculus behind it was very stupid from the beginning. And also what everybody forgets is the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. Mike Johnson said, I don't care what you guys are doing. You either do H.R HR2, which is the House Republican bill, or nothing. That's the only thing I would agree to. Right, because Johnson's already going to have to shove, he's going to shove a spending bill down the right wing's throat in

the House. He's like, now you want me to do something else they don't like too? Like, get out of here. So it is that funny situation where the Senate likes to operate as if the House doesn't exist. Like that's kind of, it's almost in the constitution that the Senate will pretend the House doesn't exist. And then they will pass all these things and they'll find out the House is like, just not interested in playing along with them. My question for you is how do you think that Biden will handle this? Do you think he will escalate to the court or do you think, because right now the media is not paying attention and it's just a Republican story, this is not a bad thing for Biden. Emily made a really interesting point by elevating some reporting that it looks like Biden may have cut a deal with AMLO.

What Biden will try to do is reduce the number of images that we're seeing along the border that will damage him politically. One way you do that is you work with the Mexican government and say, what do you need? And there were a lot of reports that Trump did the same thing, that in election years, he talked to the Mexican government and either he wants a caravan or he doesn't want a caravan, you know, whatever he can do. The Mexicans do have a significant amount of power to, you know, block people down, you know, from using the train system, from down at the border, down with Guatemala, and otherwise to influence what we're seeing at the Mexico-U.S. border.

So I think Trump will do a lot of that because he's got – that he has leeway over. That's foreign policy. Pick up the phone, AMLO, look, buddy. Now, no, AMLO then has political decisions he has to make about whether or not he wants to do that or whether or not he wants to, how much he wants to anger Trump. Because you have this weird irony that Trump would actually be upset because he wants more chaos at the board. So he can complain about the chaos. It's all cynical, top to bottom, all the way down. Both parties. It's honestly very sad. It is actually a tragic situation.

Because, you know, we're talking about this in politics and all that. We're talking about millions of people. Peoples of people's lives. Peoples of people's lives, yeah. And a lot of them die, actually, on the journey. It's a very difficult journey. A lot of them, you know, children and others are exposed. It's one of the biggest things they're going to do in their entire life.

It's uprooting- It's bad. From the place that they were born and raised to somewhere that they don't know. Right. And there's a lot of uncertainty involved, which is why it's not really fair to anybody, both the people who live here and the people who are coming here. But anyway, the point is, is that it ain't getting resolved anytime soon. And this is definitely a major standoff. And I am very curious to see how the Biden administration handles if they're going to escalate it or if

they're just going to let it sit kind of where things are. The current stasis is not a terrible situation for Biden because, look, it's to his benefit that less people come in. The Texas governor, I mean, this guy, like he can write off this for the rest of his life, I'm telling you. You know, in terms of like, this has mobilized the right in a way that I haven't seen also in a long time.

You got Governor Youngkin, Abbott, Brian Kemp and all these people will be like, come on, Governor Abbott, all of this, Abbott's gonna be a star, you know, in the Republican Party writing off of something like this. He wants confrontation with the feds. I wonder if Biden will give it to him or not. I don't really think it's in his interest either. There is no major,

as you said, Democratic constituencies like, no, Joe, go stick it to Greg. Democrats don't want to think about it. They don't, exactly. They don't want to think about it. They just kind of want the whole thing to go away. So we'll see. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. We'll see. I've never found her, and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try.

She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades,

a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real?

Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95

has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me, and he's getting older now, too.

So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is, and they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's, like, really the GOAT. Like, he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me, just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like, that's what's really important and

that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better so the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that I'm really happy or my family in general let's talk about the music that moves us to hear this and more on how music and culture collide listen to we need to talk from the black effect podcast network on the iheart Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's move on to the Houthis. This is one where, Ryan, I'm really going to rely on you for this. I will just kick things off with a really funny clip from the Pentagon where Pentagon reporters, who are smart, they're like, hey, so are we at war in the Middle East? They keep asking them this needling question.

You guys bombed three countries yesterday. So what's going on? And the Pentagon just continued to be clowning itself and say, no, we're not at war in the Middle East, even though, yes, we did bomb three countries yesterday. Let's take a listen. Well, Carlo, we've been working for a very long time on regional security and stability, not only in the Middle East, but around the world. And so we'll continue to work very closely with allies and partners globally to address tensions in the Middle East.

Since Hamas's attack against Israel, of course, we've been very focused on deterrence and on preventing a wider regional conflict, and we'll stay focused on that. And what about his words, on the brink? Is the U.S. on the brink of war right now in the Middle East? MR. We are not at war in the Middle East. Clearly, there are significant tensions in the Middle East. And again, we're working closely with allies and partners to de-escalate and reduce those tensions where we can, recognizing the fact that, you know, others have a vote as well.

Okay. Got it. Very clear. We're going to keep de-escalating tensions with these bombs. It seems obvious to me he doesn't want to say we're at war because legally we're not at war. And legally, Congress is the one who is supposed to authorize war. The best one was on Tuesday. One of the many countries that we bombed was Somalia.

And AFRICOM put out a statement announcing the bombing and said, in an act of self-defense, U.S. forces bombed al-Shabaab militants. Like, self-defense? You flew halfway around the globe just to bomb people in Somalia, and you're going to pretend to tell us that this was about self-defense? Maybe you needed to do that. Maybe these were the worst people on the planet, and it's wonderful that your bombs blew them to smithereens, but let's not pretend that this had anything to do with self, imminent self-defense. And you had, you had Mike Lee, Todd Young, Chris Murphy, and Tim Kaine, who are, you know, these are some, you know, serious. Very across the. Yeah, across the board here. This is not, this is not Bernie teaming up here with anybody. Writing to the White House saying that you have the right to respond immediately in a self-defense capacity. Obviously, there's a ship somewhere, there's a boat coming at it or a missile coming at it.

You can take action against that threat. Nobody says you need to get a declaration of war to Congress before you can stop a speedboat with explosives attached to it. If you are in prolonged hostilities that you have entered yourself into, you need authority. Even Ben Cardin, who's as close to the White House, as hawkish as you can get, said that if they're going to continue this, they're going to need to get on sounder legal footing. So across the board, people are recognizing that this is not really sustainable. I love hearing from the Defense Department because the words that they use are just the opposite of what we understand them to mean. Well, they're all couched in legality. So

like you said, U.S. forces have the authorization to act in self-defense basically anywhere, and they can do anything that they want to. That's why they say it all the time. And they keep saying that we really don't want the war to spread. We want the hostilities to de-escalate. And their argument, to give them as much credit as possible, is that deterrence is the thing that is going to de-escalate. And the way that you get your deterrence is by dropping bombs everywhere, because then everybody's scared of you and they're going to retreat. Problem for them is that there's no evidence that Iran or its proxies are deterred by the fact that we have lots of bombs. To that, Ryan, there was an interesting thing I wanted to get your take on. Let's put this up there on the screen, where the U.S. is currently asking China to help

bail it out of the Red Sea attacks. It says the U.S. has asked China to urge Tehran to rein in the Houthi rebels. According to American officials, they have repeatedly raised the issue with top Chinese officials in the past three months. U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and others actually spoke directly to the head of the Chinese Communist Party's international department. So did the Secretary of State. And yet there has been zero Chinese pressure so far. What do you make of this? Is it an admission of diplomatic failure? Is it, I mean, I personally think it's just humiliating because you have your main geopolitical

rival and you're going to them and you're like, hey guys, this is bad for you too. And they're like, is it? They're like, because I'm raking in cash. I'm like, your carriers are the ones who are paying all these extra prices, euros. You guys are the ones paying for the inflation. They're like, we're sitting here pretty. We're actually doing fine. The fact that this idea ever got off the State Department whiteboard shows just how bankrupt and out of ideas they are. So we could count the layers of absurdity here. First of all, the Houthis have actually – the Houthis are warning ships before they fire on them, and the Houthis have told Russia and China that they're not going to attack Russian and Chinese ships as long as those ships are not going to Israeli ports. We don't talk about that here in the United States because we pretend that the Houthis are a kind of nihilistic bunch of pirates who are just doing these mean things to these ships for no reason. Russia and China are both aware of what the Houthis' regional interests are and what their global interests are and what their domestic

interests are, and it's not to attack Chinese and Russian ships. So why are the Chinese and Russians so concerned about? Now, a lot of Chinese goods operate on U.S.-linked ships. So that's where the U.S. thinks, okay, China's having a problem here because now shipping costs are going up. Do we have the, we can put the Suez Canal traffic. Guys, can you please put up the next element, please? That's the next element.

So you're seeing Suez Canal traffic just absolutely plummet. That's raising prices of shipping. The State Department thinks to itself, okay, well, now the Chinese are upset because they're spending a little bit more for shipping costs. That's absurd because China is sitting on mountains of our cash. For geopolitical advantage, they're constantly spending that money and they're okay to take a little tiny hit if it is causing us as much geopolitical damage as it is. So right off the bat, there's no reason to think that the Chinese are going to bail us out because we're getting hurt worse by it than they are. The maybe third or fourth layer of absurdity is that China, first of all,

Tehran does not run the Houthis. Tehran has influence over the Houthis. U.S. has influence over Israel. Israel operates with its own agency as well. But China does not run Tehran. They talk sometimes and they do business. They talk. They have influence. China's a big country that Tehran's going to listen to. Absolutely. China's on the phone. The Iranian guy. Yeah, he's going to pick it up. He's taking that call. He's leaving whatever meeting he's going to take that callouthi thing came out of a vacuum. A lot of it stems back to Israel. And this is where the interesting point about Israeli pressure domestically for a ceasefire may be increasing. Let's put this up there. We gave some of the preview of this the last time that we did a show together, Ryan, about these Israeli hostage families that crashed into this Knesset meeting. But this time, you know, it's really starting to

get attention internally. And they say here the Israeli hostage families, quote, have nothing to lose in this push for a new deal. And the new deal that the Israeli government, the war cabinet had approved, was a release of all hostages in exchange for a two-month ceasefire. Doesn't seem that it's being, you know, widely entertained, but clearly there's a lot of pressure because you have 132 hostages who remain in captivity. They say 28 of them are believed to have been dead, either of injuries of Hamas or claimed to have been killed by Israeli troops currently in the situation. But in general, it does seem that many of these families have, quote, now mounted large-scale demonstrations, met with officials, and are papering the entire country with posters,

including traveling abroad to try and drum up global awareness. What do you make of that pressure inside of Israel and what effect it might have here on the Houthi situation? I think politically speaking, oh, and one complication that also never gets mentioned in the press that we should let our viewers into is that Hamas does not actually have all of these hostages. Hamas has released a lot of the civilian ones. What's remaining are mostly, you know, IDF, reservists, etc. But a bunch of gangs and thugs and other groups went over the border on October 7th and have some. We don't know. Nobody knows how many, but it absolutely is some and a non-trivial number. And so it's not even clear that Hamas, and Hamas might be embarrassed in that sense because they're supposed to have total control.

So you mean like criminal gangs, Palestinian Islamic Jihad? They might not even know where they are. Hamas could reach a deal with Qatar, reaches a deal with Israel, and then Hamas might not be able to deliver on some of these. So some of that is embarrassing for them. But separately, from the Israeli government perspective,

I feel like politically have politically two options. They can reach a deal that releases the hostages or they can achieve their military objectives of annihilating Hamas, wiping out the Palestinians and kind of basically repopulating it with Israeli settlements, which you hear from so many of the far right members of the current Israeli government. They are clearly failing at that first one. Like Hamas is not eliminated. Their efforts to clear buffer zones the other day led to 21 Israeli casualties. And so I think from an Israeli public that is saying, okay, you're not accomplishing your primary objective. If you were, then maybe we could understand what you said in the beginning, that you were going to be ruthless with the hostages. But if you're not accomplishing your military objective, then just get the hostages back. Like you no longer have an excuse to refuse to negotiate over these hostages.

And so they came forward with this two month ceasefire offer where there'd be a pause, they release all the hostages, there'd be some release of Palestinian hostages, and then the hostilities would resume. And Hamas, and I think a lot of Palestinians are like, so in two months, are you going to let in enough humanitarian aid? Like if it's not an end to this crisis and then we've lost our bargaining chip and then you're just going to just continue carpet bombing the place. That's a good point.

That's actually a good segue to our next part here about the hostage, what is it, the demolishing buildings and the buffer zone. This is where those 24 soldiers were actually killed in one of these missions. Let's put this up there on the screen. This was part of the mission. It says Israel demolishing buildings to create a buffer zone within Gaza. It's unclear today what that buffer zone exactly is, how big it would be, and whether it would be sanctioned by the international community. So, Ryan, can you give us some of the details here and how this won't fly in the face and have problems with overall U.S. diplomacy?

So basically, the Iron Dome cannot protect Israeli kibbutzim that are right up against the Strip, for obvious reasons, if you're that close. And that's why so many, basically all residents, Israeli residents in that area have safe rooms so that these mortar shells are constantly coming from Gaza and landing near these kibbutzim. And so they would sleep in safe rooms. And they thought that that was kind of enough that they could kind of quote unquote manage the conflict in the long term. October 7th proved that not to be the case. And so currently you have a displacement crisis in Israel because you have tens of thousands of people

from the north that have left north of Israel that have left because of the fighting with Hezbollah. And you have tens of thousands, or maybe hundreds of thousands of people who have left the Negev Desert because of the hostilities in Gaza. And so they're living in hotels, they're living with relatives. There was already a housing crisis in Israel, which is related to why there are now 700,000 settlers in the West Bank, because it's cheap housing for the Israeli population, just like in the United States, the one way we buy off our population, cheap housing, go west, young man.

And so in order to relieve that, they're trying to get people to be able to move back to the kibbutzes in southern Israel. And what they're now saying is we need a buffer zone. So we're going to demolish all of these civilian and residential areas that are kind of within X distance. Yes. And this one was only 600 meters away from a kibbutz. But there's others that are further away.

So anything with a line of sight, they're going to knock down. International law is extremely clear. I was going to say, so how does this complicate U.S. diplomacy, international law, and all of that? Under international law, if you want a buffer zone, you have to use your own territory to do it. Like, you don't wanna live too close to us. It's like if San Diego wanted a buffer zone between it and Tijuana, they'd have to knock down San Diego.

You can't go into Tijuana and be like, this is too close. We're leveling this. And so separately, the United States, international law, whatever, that is what it is. The United States has said one of their lines, and I want to call it a red line because they've said there are no red lines, but one of the public things that they've insisted Israel not do is take land from Gaza to create buffer zones. They've said, do not do that. Israeli government continues to say, we are going to do that. So I have some update on that. John Kirby was actually asked about this by the Financial Times. He says, quote, we do not want to see the territory of Gaza reduced in any way. However,

the Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, struck a softer line on Tuesday saying that while the U.S. is clear about not encroaching on Gazan territory, there might be scope for, quote, transitional arrangements. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I think actually- The euphemism just dropped. Yeah, I love that. The major, you know, actual diplomatic crises that might come out of this may not involve America. It's actually probably Egypt. Let's put this up there on the screen. Egypt actually lashed out yesterday saying that extremist Israeli leaders are seizing Gazan Egyptian buffer zone territory because of Netanyahu's suggestion that Israel is going

to have to take control of the 100-yard buffer zone on the Gaza side of the Egypt and Gaza border. The Israelis are like, hey, this is the Philadelphia corridor. This is the above ground and through border. The Israelis are like, hey, this is the Philadelphia corridor. This is the above ground and through tunnels. This is where a lot of the supplies and the smuggling and the weapons and all that comes through. The head actually of the Egyptian State Information Service said on Monday, this is an attempt to create legitimacy of the Israeli government's real goal of occupying the border corridor in violation of the security agreements that have been signed between those two

neighbors. Well, remember that if we go back and we think about Oslo and we think about some of the other international agreements, all the way going back to 67 and Jordan and all the control of the border and all of that, Egyptian control of that border has always been very important. The Rafah crossing today remains the main thoroughfare of humanitarian aid and others. And especially if we consider in the future, in the future, the idea of people in Gaza crossing the Israeli border to go work in Israel probably seems like zero for me. What do you think? In the next five years? I don't think that's going to happen. And so if that's the case, it's very hard to see. Yeah, it's not going to happen. Right. So if we think about that,

then we're talking about really the only way in and out of the country. And they're like, no, we're going to take control of that. That really is going to rankle a lot of people inside of Egypt because this is now a problem of sovereignty on their part and of violation of an agreement that they have signed. And these people have fought two wars in the past. It's not a joke. Right. And the Egyptians and the Palestinians, the UN have all said, this humanitarian crisis where we're talking about 2 million people being in the grips of famine, on the brink of starvation, dying from disease, is caused by

the Israeli government restricting the amount of humanitarian aid that can get into the country. There is also a border in the north between Israel and Gaza that is just completely shut down. Israel has complete control over that. If they could load every truck and make sure that all that's in there is baby formula, diapers, and aspirin, and roll those trucks through there, there would be no question, because the Israelis are the ones loading the trucks, that there are going to be weapons or RPGs or new ammo for Hamas. The people in the north are perhaps suffering more than even the people down in the south because Israel is blocking getting humanitarian relief through their own border and is also bombing any convoy that goes from the south up to the north and refusing to deconflict.

And so you have a situation where people are just scrounging like absolute Hunger Games-style stuff in the north. And so Egypt is then like, and you think we're going to turn over the southern border to you as well, which is our border? Given what we have seen you do, like you have lost all moral legitimacy to maintain any immigration or border control on the Egyptian side.

And so, and also, Sisi and Bibi have not spoken since October 7th is what the reporting is. Wow, that's crazy. I did not know that. Yeah, they're at a nadir. Because the Egyptian and Israeli normalization was one of the great triumphs of Israeli foreign policy. All right, final thing, Ryan,

you have got a story for us involving playing cards. Why don't you tell us? So we have a picture of said plane cars you can put up there on the screen. These are reminiscent of, what were these, the same plane cars from the Iraq war, and now these are being sold. And you have the exclusive on the story, so go ahead and tell us about it. Yes. In fact, we do have an exclusive here. So a group of critics of Israel's war effort led by a man named Ashish Peshawar, who's a kind of UK kind of political consultant. You may have heard of him, kind of well-known in the UK, worked for Boris Johnson, Tony Blair, when Tony Blair was Mideast envoy. The rest of the folks involved in this are remaining anonymous, but they have created a deck of cards kind of modeled after the U.S.-created deck of war criminal cards during the Iraq War. Remember, they were going out and trying to find the six of spades or whatever. They're also working loosely with international human rights organizations and prosecutors around the world in at least these countries, Switzerland, Mexico, Bolivia, Ireland, Spain, Belgium, and Colombia. And in each of these

countries, they're working with either human rights organizations or prosecutors to try to file charges. If they can get an Irish judge to issue arrest warrants, anybody who comes into the EU at that point is going to struggle. So the cards are a propaganda device to keep it in the mind, keep it in people's minds. But here, I'll show you a couple of them here. So here we got the Six of Spades is Brett McGurk, who is kind of the mid-East envoy. U.S. mid-East envoy. The Ace of Diamonds Netanyahu. Netanyahu. Makes sense. Ace of Clubs Matt Miller.

Huh. Impressed. Impressed. State Department spokesperson. Matt Miller. So let's see if you can follow. Yeah. Do you have any money on you?

Yes. Here. All right. What do we need? Okay. Let's play for 20. What do you think? 20 bucks?

Jeez. Okay. All right. Here you go. You got to follow. Yeah. What do you think? 20 bucks? Jeez. Okay, here you go. You got to follow. Yeah. How about you follow? You want to follow Netanyahu?

Yes, I'll follow. I'll follow Netanyahu. Ace of diamonds. Ready? Here we go. Yes, all right. Right. Oh.

All right. It's yours. It's yours, Ryan. Take it. Keep it. You can keep Netanyahu. Okay, thank you. If you see him, report him to authorities. All right, we'll have a link down in the description for all of that. Ryan. Take it. Keep it. You can keep Netanyahu. If you see him, report him to authorities.

We'll have a link down in the description for all of that. It's at the warcriminals.com if people want to buy their own deck. That is a pretty prized 40% of profits are going to Gaza charities. The rest is being kept for taxes and also for possible defamation

judgments in the future. Which is always nice to set that aside if you've got a deck of war criminal cards. The rest is being kept for taxes and also for possible defamation judgments in the future. All right. Which is always nice to set that aside if you've got a deck of war criminal cards. Interesting stuff. We'll have a link down there in the description. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing.

No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking.

Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough. Someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her. Until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying.

This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. the talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious do they like rap along now? Yeah cause I bring him on tour with me

and he's getting older now too so his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is and they're starting to be like yo your dad's like really the GOAT like he's a legend so he gets it. What does it mean to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family?

It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy.

Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, let's move on to Boeing. There's some crazy stuff going on in the world of Boeing. The Alaska Airlines CEO, who originally it was their plane that was affected by those loose door plugs, has now come out and said to NBC News that actually they have found many other aircraft that have been affected by that issue. Here's what he had to say. We found, you know, some loose bolts on many of our MAX 9s.

Many? Yeah. So those are things that are going to be rectified through the inspection process. Flight 1282 was a new Boeing MAX 9. The door plug covers an unused emergency exit in planes with fewer seats. It makes you mad. It makes you mad that we're finding issues like that on brand new airplanes. Thankfully, no one was sitting next to the plug when it exploded. Looking at that video and those photos, did you think, my God, what if somebody were sitting there?

There were only seven open seats, and we had a guardian angel, honestly, on that airplane. And I just want to take a moment here to say how sorry I am for our guests on Flight 1282 for what they experienced. It was just a terrifying flight. It makes me angry, Tom. Boeing is better than this. And Flight 1282 should never have happened. Should never have happened. That's a pretty diplomatic way of saying, screw you, Boeing. And look, Boeing has had some real issues now in the last month. Let's put this

up there. In the last 20 days, Boeing 737 has a panel ripoff in midair. Cockpit windows cracked on January 13th. Boeing 737 stranded Anthony Blinken. Boeing 747 cargo plane burned up in the sky. January 20th, Boeing plane in Atlanta loses a wheel. And January 25th, Boeing has to pause all production, quote, for a quality focus day. And I would say that's pretty warranted because the news is now coming out from the Seattle Times, which has done phenomenal investigations into Boeing now for years and years. And they say that the door plug that blew off of the Alaska Airlines Max 9 jet this month was removed for repair and reinstalled by Boeing mechanics at its Renton assembly line, starting a person who was familiar with the matter.

Boeing is refusing to comment, saying that they cannot do so because of the NTSB investigation. But this shows that currently Boeing had the key role in installing and checking that part. Previously, Boeing was trying to put some of the blame or at least cast doubt that it may have been their fault. It could have been their supplier, Spirit Aerosystems. What people forget is that Spirit Aerosystems was actually spun off by Boeing back in 2005. It was part of their whole financial reorganization of the company. You could spin it off, but you could still buy from them. It's all just BS in terms of boosting their stock. Same thing in terms of the stock buybacks. But what's coming to light now is a genuine crisis,

I think, for this company. Because you have now three incidents from Alaska Airlines to the 737 Maxes that literally fell out of the sky and killed hundreds of people in the span of, what, five, six years? That's how you kill a 100-year-old company. Yeah. When people are dead, and as the CEO said, I mean, if somebody was sitting there, it's very possible they could have been sucked out of the sky. Especially, yeah. And actually, even if nobody was sitting there and that accident happened at higher altitude,

from what I had read from aviation experts, absolutely, it's on the table. There was an incident over a United flight many, many years ago. I think it was over the ocean. It was like somewhere to Honolulu. Same thing. It was like nine people got sucked out of the plane. They never even found their bodies. Imagine that.

That's a whole other story too. And they definitely would have been directly responsible for that if it's their fault here. Yeah, when as a flyer you start going from, oh, man, I hope I can get the emergency row so I can have extra leg room to like, hope I don't get the emergency row because I might get sucked out the door and into the sky. Then you know you have a problem. Pete Buttigieg is announcing, you know, the Lever News has been doing great work on Mr. Rhodes' news organization. Following some of that, Buttigieg announced a, quote, bigger picture exam of Boeing issues. Thank you. I don't know what little picture Buttigieg and his FAA were looking at when it came to Boeing because basically Boeing is it.

Like Boeing is the kind of U.S. airline manufacturing. We have a duopoly in airlines, right? We have Airbus and we have Boeing. And it's a tragedy. In Boeing's defense, it was an Airbus plane that stranded Justin Trudeau. You remember hilariously. But I bet that was shenanigans on the part of somebody. Here's the thing. Here's why it matters the most. Airbus is a European company. So that means that let's say push comes to shove and we got to look out for ourselves. We've only got Boeing. That's it. They cranked out 100,000 planes in World War II. Nowadays, we really trust US pilots on top of a

Boeing aircraft? I don't know. And they've got a century now of work that they have done to invest in this brand. It was one of the most important and iconic brands in the world, I would say. Think too of the 80s and the story, actually even before that, of the pride that the people in Seattle and in Washington had of working for before that, of the pride that the people in Seattle and in Washington had of working for this company, of knowing that millions of people set foot on their aircraft, that they had one of the best safety rates in the entire world. Then all throughout the 90s and the 2000s, they start spinning off companies, they start

reorganizing, they're moving their headquarters. It becomes basically a financial bank as opposed to an actual airline – sorry, an aircraft manufacturing company. And now you're really reaping the rewards of that. And the craziest part is we all thought it had stopped after those two planes fell. It was a wake-up call for them. It should have been the wake-up. I mean hundreds of people were dead. It's a problem with the culture.

It's directly your fault. Yes, and it's a culture. You saw it change, you know, coming out of the kind of New Deal era, you've got this like consensus between the state and these giant corporations that there's a welfare, general welfare kind of attitude around the business approach. In the 80s and 90s, it becomes just pure financialization. Like how do we extract as much capital out of this company and give it to investors? And so that's why you see them spending so much on stock buybacks and otherwise just hiring a bunch of people who are like McKinsey types to look at their system and figure out

ways that they can make it more profitable. The board, Boeing lobbied against a rule that would have required that most of their board know what they're talking about when it comes to flying an airplane. Because instead- What, you mean having Nikki Haley on your board is not actually a benefit to the company? It turns out that it is a benefit to the company in terms of profitability and making sure that you can keep the money flowing into the company and then back out to investors. But, yeah, it turns out Nikki Haley doesn't know a whole lot about actually flying or building an airplane. And they fought against a rule that would have required the board to know what they were doing. And this is why it's tragic is look at the Alaska Airlines guy.

You know, at a certain point, it's like, and by the way, Alaska Airlines, I love Alaska Airlines. It's a great, great airline if you ever get the chance to fly it. The thing is, is that they're pissed because they're like, who else are we supposed to buy airplanes from? We had a deal. We paid you billions of dollars for these aircraft. They can fly. Yeah, that's it. It was like, we're supposed to just work. And now, you know, like he said, his brand is tarnished. It's not just him. United also, they were a huge purchaser of 737 MAX 9s. Let's put this up there. The CEO of United and now Alaska Airlines are coming out,

and they are really pissed with Boeing and the manufacturer. I mean, what they're saying, and you have some of the quotes here, are just withering. They say, well, we're at least going to build a plan that doesn't have to have the MAX 10 in it. This is United Airlines. This is one of the largest airlines in the world. We will hope Boeing gets its certification at some point. We're just gonna build an alternative plan that doesn't have that. That's devastating.

And already Delta actually just bought a ton of Airbuses. I believe that they already had existing in their stock. But the same problem remains is that if you have US airlines not even buying from a US company that increases all the problems with globalization, with where it's assembled. I mean, I saw a meme posted online. It's like, guys, you know, Airbus is a company

where they barely work like 35 hours a week. And they get these euros who barely even go to work. And they shut down in August. Almost all of August, Airbus is down. Shut down, they barely go to work, and they build better planes than us. What the hell is going on? They're in the south of France, sipping like rosé. Exactly. They're going to Provence and hanging out in Burgundy and all this. And the joke's on us

because our guys at Boeing are getting paid like not that much money. They barely have- They even live in Provence. Functioning, they have non-functioning pensions and their CEOs and executives are flying around like gajillionaires. There's also been a really troubling report from View of the Wing. These are some airline-specific aviation news outlets, which have been fantastic. And this one just came out a couple of days ago. It says, Boeing whistleblower production line, quote, has an enormous volume of defects on the MAX 9 and were not installed. This came, one of their whistleblowers

says, I will save you waiting two years for NTSB to just come out and give it to you for free. The reason that door blew off is stated in black and white in its records. It is very stupid and it speaks volumes of the quality culture at certain portions of this business. Why did the left hand bolt fall out? Simple, as has been covered in numbers of articles, there are four bolts that prevent the mid-exit door plug from sliding up off the roof to stop fittings that take the actual pressurization loads in the aircraft. These four bolts were not installed when Boeing delivered the airplane. That's it. Our own records reflect this. How crazy is that? The four bolts that are supposed to be there to make sure that the door does not fall off in the middle of the sky did not work. It's just nuts. I mean, sorry, we're not installed

on the aircraft whenever it was delivered to Alaska, which explains why their CEO is so angry there in that interview. So, you know, just another example of the degradation of that company. Some of you talked, I did a monologue on about the financialization. It really is a tragedy and it gets to exactly what you said about the government and more. Okay, let's move on now to, like I said, the fun segments, the two fun ones that we had to get into the show. Senator Chuck Schumer, who has long been kind of a hall monitor whenever it comes to substances that people may be enjoying, say, you know, Four Loko, which was certainly quite a bit of fun. Who barely knew you, Four Loko. I barely certainly quite a bit of fun. We barely knew you, Four Loko.

I barely knew. It was actually banned my freshman year in college, which we will never forget, I can tell you, those of us who were in a fraternity at that time. Chuck Schumer now returning to now another fraternity, I guess, substance of choice, which is Zen, calling for a crackdown and a pouch full of problems. Here's what he had to say. Pouch packed with problems, High levels of nicotine. So today I'm delivering a warning to parents because these nicotine pouches seem to lock their sights on young kids, teenagers,

and even lower, and then use the social media to hook them. Uses the social media to hook them. I'm not so sure about that one. Zin, for those who don't know, is like the oral nicotine pouch. It was developed, you know, after many of the cancer problems came to light around chewing tobacco, smoking, et cetera. And there's actually been a real resurgence, I would say, in nicotine usage these days because they've been able to disaggregate it from, you know, tobacco and the carcinogens which are in that. It just led to a lot of really interesting discussions. If people are interested, Andrew H has led to a lot of really interesting discussions. If people are interested, Andrew Huberman did an entire episode on nicotine.

There's been a lot of discussion about the nootropic effects of nicotine. Again, if you are able to look at it in a synthetic form, which is actual quality control and all that stuff behind it, as opposed to inside of a cigarette, which is addicting you to smoking. I think there's a legitimate conversation, I think, to be had around all of that. But culturally, this one is very interesting because clearly they've touched a nerve. This very much gets to some of the Barstool conservative ideas and things that I've put out before here on the show.

For example, one congressman actually tweeting out, quote, Zinn, come and take it, in the same way that we have the don't tread on me flag and other things. What do you make of this, Ryan? Because what fascinates me is Chuck also wants to legalize pot. So how can you be for legal weed and want to crack down on Zin nicotine pouches, which already, I believe in the state of New York, you have to be 21 years old or older to buy. I know at the very least, wherever the places I buy from, you have to be 21 years old or older in order to be a consumer.

And these people are pretty religious about checking it. So, I mean, this idea that they're being targeted towards children and all that seems ridiculous to me. You could make that case for Chinese vapes, for whatever those are called, the health bars, stuff like that, yeah, maybe. But even then, I wouldn't necessarily say that you should ban it. Although it's probably way less healthy to vape than it is to use Zin, which is the most ironic part of all this. If Chuck does ever

succeed in legalizing weed, I'm sure on day two, he will be coming after weed companies for marketing to kids. So in that sense, it would be consistent. And I actually think that that's a good place for a society to end up. Interesting. That adults should have reasonable access to high quality and regulated products that aren't going to poison you. And that kids should not be marketed to and that developing brains should be protected from, Zin and whatever else. It's like, as your brain is developing, it's not good for you. Well, it's interesting to me. Even the weed kids. Listen, you are absolutely right about weed. Let's be very, very clear about that. But what's

fascinating to me, actually, is that this actually has caused a little bit of an organic pushback inside of Congress. So, for example, you had many Republican congressmen and senators go on the record. Senator Tommy Tuberville says, quote, it's going to make a lot of people mad. He wants to do that and then also cut out menthol cigarettes. We don't need to do that. The menthol one I have always found fascinating. And maybe you and I can talk about it. Because why would you target The menthol one, I have always found fascinating. And maybe you and I can talk

about it because why would you target specifically menthol cigarettes? Now, their justification, as I understand it, is that menthol cigarettes are predominantly smoked by people in the black community. And thus, you should ban menthol cigarettes basically for the own good of the people who smoke them. Now, that to me seems outrageous because it's like you're protecting white cigarettes, but you're not, you're gonna regulate black cigarettes? Like, first of all, that's insane. And it's not just black people smoke menthols. I think a lot of people smoke menthols,

even amongst the 20% of Americans today who do still smoke. But how can you move to ban one type of cigarette, which is preferred by some, and then leave others as completely legal. That makes absolutely zero sense to me. The only discrimination to me that is, that is, that you can countenance is around age. And so maybe you've got some like hall monitors who would say, well, the kids like menthols more. But you're right. It's racial.

No, but the public health justification I've seen explicitly says this is trying to protect black Americans. They're being honest about it, the people who want to ban the menthols. So I'm like, what? How can you? First of all, you're making a decision for somebody else. Are menthols more carcinogenic than regular? I don't know, actually. I honestly don't know. The most I've ever read into it really was the racial angle. But I mean, I would just say this with cigarettes, with nicotine, with any of these things. It's like people who drink alcohol. Nobody is drinking alcohol and be like, this is really good for me. You know what? I'm really improving my health right now. There was an

attempt of people to fool themselves for a while. For the red wine thing. Yeah, this is BS, okay? And nobody even believed that. Exactly. It was something that they could joke about while they were relaxing and have a good time. Everyone understands that's a trade-off. Same thing whenever it comes to cigarettes. I know a lot of people who smoke cigarettes. Nobody smokes because they're like, this is really good for me. They're like, I enjoy it. It's a trade-off. I know that it may kill me. Some people smoke because they think it helps them keep weight off. Okay. But once again, they're doing that. But they know it's hurting them. They know that they have, what is it, 2,600% or whatever increase, even nicotine,

full mea culpa. I use nicotine. I mostly chew nicotine gum. Not a lot, but I, and you know what? I know that it is, what is it? A vasoconstrictor. I know that it will have downstream health effects. I'm willing to make that trade-off because of the nootropic benefits. I think that it's a very, very powerful no-tropic. I think it's one where there's actually a lot of discussion that remains to be had where, as a society, the vast majority of Americans either used to smoke or lived in a smoking household, 40s and 60s and all that. You can think of the madmen and all that. And then, because of public health, we just all stopped using 18 for a while. I mean, listen, was it a net benefit or not? Like maybe. We definitely, you know, we live longer. But yeah,

what about our mental clarity? You ever see those guys in Apollo? What is everyone doing in Apollo 13? How do you think we got to the moon? Yeah. It's like, you think they figured out how to put a round filter into a square hole or whatever? You think they did that all by themselves? Okay. They need the cigarette. Now, look, I'm not promoting smoking and it definitely is very bad for you. Same in terms of nicotine. It is a highly, highly addictive substance of which I have seen people go way down the rabbit hole. Many of these frat kids are not using it for no tropic benefits. They're just buzzed out of their minds all the time. That said, you know, okay, you know, we live in a free country. Now, many people would say, Sagar, How is this so hypocritical whenever it comes to your stance on weed and people would say that but people misunderstand it

I am NOT for I do not believe in the criminalization of marijuana I do however, however think that there is a very unhealthy Trend amongst people who use marijuana who are like, yeah But this one kid with seizures took it and it cured them and it like, yeah, but this one kid with seizures took it and it cured them. And it's like, yeah, but you don't have epilepsy, dude. Like you don't have childhood epilepsy. Like you're just a stoner. Like you're just sitting on your ass doing nothing. And I think that there is not the same, and you correct me if I'm wrong, you seem more immersed in that world perhaps than I am. There is less of an acknowledgement for people who are

daily pot users in that doing that, they understand fully. They're like, there is less of an acknowledgement for people who are daily pot users in that doing that, they understand fully. They're like, this is bad. Like, this is not good for me. And we have seen an explosion of high THC products that are on the market, totally unregulated, most of it coming from China, some of it, you know, really, really unhealthy. And really, you know, this is the other part nobody wants to talk about. Same with alcohol. You know, as alcohol can be very conducive to horrible behavior like drunk driving and to spousal abuse and all these other things, ask any cop how many alcohol-related instances are in. Marijuana, you know, driving while impaired is not necessarily good. We don't have the same cultural stigma against it. And, you know, I recently tweeted out a chart, kind of wish we'd pulled it for this segment, which was about the drug-induced psychosis. Cannabis is actually the

number one substance that they have seen in which there is drug-induced psychosis, even more so than alcohol, cocaine, methamphetamine, and other. There's been long, you know, Tell Your Children, the book written by Alex Berenson, a link, and even Joe Rogan, a marijuana fiend, would acknowledge this, is that there is a link between very, very high THC, which is very much on the market right now, and people who are predisposed to schizophrenia having a full-blown psychotic break. And people who would advocate for pot need to understand that. Yes. Yeah. I think that's fair. And for a community and a society to get there, you've got to have it legal. You've got to have it regulated.

You have to have access to product that you can trust and can analyze and can understand. And I think that free people can work that out. But I think you're right that culturally people need to acknowledge the downsides as well. In a way that they don't quite with alcohol. And alcohol is worse. What do you mean by that? So like you said, everybody. Also, smoking is bad. In a way that they don't quite with alcohol. Well. And alcohol is worse. What do you mean by that? So, like you said, everybody that drinks knows it's bad. Yeah.

But also fun. Yeah. Or whatever. And for some people, it's not even fun anymore. They're just kind of can't quit. That's true. And there are a lot of people who have like full-blown alcoholism. Right.

Which we don't talk about enough in this country. Right. Yeah. But I think there's less willingness to recognize the downsides of weed compared to alcohol. I think one reason for that is that the downsides of alcohol are so much more obvious and clear and dramatic than the downsides of weed. That doesn't mean that there aren't downsides of marijuana and cannabis. So I think that is something they should possibly— I just wish I could hear that more from people who are obsessed with pot. Because, you know, all the data right now tells us that the increase, for example, in pot usage, everyone's like, see, there's a lot more pot.

A lot of it is daily smokers. Like, we have a whole new generation of high-potency THC. Exactly. Edibles. You got marijuana in drinks now. Lollipops. Like, all this. I can't even keep up with what the hell is going on here. Um, and within all of that, there is not, again, the same culture, at least from my,

you know, from my view of what I've been able to find. Same thing in terms of smoking. It's like, Hey, you know, inhaling smoke in your lungs is still bad for you. Like it doesn't just not, just cause it's not, um, cigarettes doesn't mean that it's like good whenever you're smoking marijuana constantly all the time. There are a lot of health effects. Again, I would recommend, Huberman did an entire podcast on marijuana, THC, and all of that. There's a lot of links. I'm going to check his nicotine one out too. You should. It's very interesting. And I want to be very clear here. It is a highly addictive substance for which some people who use it will find it incredibly difficult to quit. There's a lot of differences in between people's genetics and their tolerability.

Just as I'm a coffee fiend, I love caffeine. I always have, you know, I can drink five, six cups of coffee. I know people who have one and they can't even function. So, I mean, every person is different. And, you know, you should never, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Like whenever you're, you know,

riding high on nicotine, you're gonna be coming down, trust me. Like, you know, there's, there's going to be that. The question is, is like, is that useful to you? You know, are you making an informed choice? Like how does all that work? I think we should have the same culture around that with marijuana of which I do not currently see right now. Yeah. I just see it everywhere. Also the smell is terrible. Let's be honest. All right. You can't walk down a city street without smelling this shit. They call it skunk for a reason. Yeah.

I kind of like the smell, but- I wish Crystal was here. I wish she was here to talk about this. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder.

I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there.

Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions

that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people.

Everyone thought they knew her, until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying.

Listen to Deep Cover The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now?

Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me, and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is, and they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like, he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good.

Like that's what's really important. And that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy. Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Let's move on to the Jon Stewart block. The final, the fun segment here. I'm really curious to see what you think. Because you worked professionally in media whenever he was a really big deal. So the news is in. Let's put this up there. Daily Show, here it is, your moment of zen. Jon Stewart will be returning to The Daily Show, hosting it on Mondays, and will be the executive producer. This is after Trevor Noah has exited the show. This is after, let's be honest, since he left, it's just been a disaster. It hasn't even come close to the cultural touchstone that it was. Under Jon Stewart,

Trevor Noah never was able to capture any of the energy. I think it was because Stewart at his best, at his best, and this is where I'm really curious, was able to skewer CNN, MSNBC, and Fox. He was definitely a thorn in the side of Fox, and Roger Ailes and all of them hated him. But CNN and MSNBC hated him too, mainstream media, because he made fun of them ruthlessly. He's liberal, obviously. Crystal and I interviewed him. You can go watch that a couple of years ago if you want to. But in the Trump era, he never was able to recapture some of that. So when Crystal and I interviewed him, for example, he would criticize the liberal media, but in almost like a left perspective, he'd be like, well, but you guys are obsessed

with Trump too. And it's like, well, that's not really like what the criticism is, I guess, per se. So do you think he will be able to bring the same magic that he had from the 2010s to the current era? Especially because we have lived through his Apple show. And let's be honest, the Apple show was not as good as The Daily Show. It just wasn't. But even on his Apple show, he had moments where his interviewing technique, his style. Unparalleled, I agree. And he makes it look so easy to do, which is an extra humiliation for the media. Right. Because you see him do it, and the viewer's like, well, this is just a comedian using very basic common sense language to just eviscerate this Larry Summers or whoever it is. And you're like, well, I wish if it was that easy, he wouldn't be who he is.

One of the coolest things I ever did on a Valentine's Day, we went to in 2000, a taping of The Daily Show. Oh, interesting. Chris Rock was the guest. Wow. Wait, what year? In 2000? 2000. Holy crap. So pre-9-11. That daily show. Oh interesting. Chris Rock was the guest Wow. Wait, what year in 2000 2000? Holy yeah pre 9-11. That's wild. It was and I went to his rally when I was a freshman in college I remember that rally here to rally sanity. That was actually pretty fun. I enjoyed myself. Yeah. Yeah, but the guys It will be and he was like the conscience of the left in a way because he was against the Iraq war.

And like it was back then there was no social media to go to kind of connect with like-minded people. So all you had was the mainstream media gaslighting you by telling you that there's weapons of mass destruction and we have to go to war. And we have to cut Social Security and all of these other things. And the only kind of safe space, so to speak, was 11 o'clock, the Daily Show. You watched it. I would watch it online back in those old viewers pre-YouTube. Or was it 10 o'clock? I don't even remember. I never watched it live. I was living abroad. I was in high school at the time. You'd have to fire up a VPN and then try and go watch it on the Comedy Central website and filter through all the crap ads of whatever it looked like in 07.

But you're right. Because of opposition to the Iraq War and kind of that dissidence, him and Vice were really at the center. But there's a cautionary tale there. Look at Vice today. And then also with Stewart, like you said, some of his interviews that he did, like with the veteran secretary or with that woman at the defense department, I forget her name, the number two, Kathleen Hicks, I think, where he humiliated her on like, why can't you pass an audit? She was just so arrogant and annoying. He had a few, and I mean, he's done incredible work on 9-11 firefighters, first responders, on the burn pits.

He probably single-handedly is responsible for that. Let's put that aside, though. In terms of his monologues and commentary, it hasn't gone viral in the same way. So that's where I'm really curious to see. Yeah, because the problem that he's going to have is, okay, let's say he makes fun of Trump's—I mean, let's say he makes fun of Biden for being super old. Like, easy stuff. Right. And, you know, everybody laughed, but on so many Democrats, we're like, that's a but her

emails. They can't handle that. Yeah, exactly. You're so, that is so right. In the old days, he could make fun of Obama and there was not a predisposition of the liberal viewer to be like, that's racist. Right. You know, it was funny.

It was just funny. The liberals consider the stakes so much higher today than when Obama running against McCain or something. They see Trump as this kind of existential threat to everything that they hold dear. And therefore, any criticism, even valid, even criticism that they're like, yes, that's true. I agree with you.

But you should not say it right now because the threat outside the gate is so much greater. Where does that leave? And that's, I think, one reason he kind of left originally. He's like, where does that leave a comedian who wants to skewer all sides? Part of the reason I'm sad that he's coming back is that linear TV is just not the same. I mean, he left in 2015. It was already on its way out. And now, let's put this up there just to give people an example. Plus, can't resist dunking on CNN. CNN's ratings are now behind the History Channel and, quote,

an obscure Western network in primetime ratings. They are struggling to get even half a million people total, not in the key demo, to watch. That's insane. At certain points, that's like a third of what we do here on a daily basis. And that just demonstrates to you how much cultural cachet that they will have amongst the elites and all that, and how few people actually watch the network. It's all the right people. In their defense, people will watch their stuff when it goes viral. Yeah, exactly. You, no, you're exactly right. And that's not always often good for them. Not always good for them, exactly.

And the other thing is with Stewart is, you know, at the end of the day, how they make their money there over at Comedy Central is people watching live. Right. Yeah, if you want to play the YouTube game, which is kind of what he was doing a little bit previously, that's fine. But there's a lot less money in that. It's a very different, you know, environment and all of that. So I'm really curious to see what he does with this. The return of the Monday night will be interesting. But even more interesting is what talent is he going to tap?

Who is he going to have actually host? Or is he going to bring back a rotating cast of characters? And that's what he was really, really famous for doing. And he built such a talent pool. Basically every one of his correspondents became like a megastar. Yeah, John Oliver. I'm trying to think about some of the others. Samantha Bee.

Yeah, well, some cautionary tales there too. Isn't there, Ryan? Anyway, I wish him nothing but the best. I love Jon Stewart. He was a major inspiration to a lot of the work that Crystal and I even initially, I remember when we first started rising and started taking off, I was like, who are some people we can look and model ourselves afterwards? Stuart's name was at the top of the list. And by the way, I've been trying to get him back here for a long time. So John, if you're listening, you are welcome back here anytime

and we can talk. I'll ask you many of these questions to your face. But otherwise, we have a great guest standing by, Emily Kopp, to talk about that lab leak reporting. Let's get to it. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line,

I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister.

There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her, until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter going to be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is. And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me.

Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better so the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that i'm really happy or my family in general let's talk about the music that moves us to hear this and more on how music and culture collide listen to we need to to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Joining us now is Emily Kopp. She's a reporter at U.S. Right to Know. She's done some of the best work that there is on the lab leak hypothesis on that investigation. She's joining us now for our latest report. Thank you so much for joining us, Emily. Great to be here. Absolutely.

So we've covered your work here for a long time, and we have one of your latest that we can put up there on the screen. Let's see it. U.S. scientists propose to make viruses with unique features of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan. All right. So it's a headline of which is, you know, we got a little bit of some jargon in there. Unique features, SARS-CoV-2. I think that's COVID. Wuhan, I think I'm a little bit familiar. Some of our viewers probably know, but just break this down for the average person. They have a little bit of familiarity with COVID, with the lab leak and more. What did you find in this report? Sure. So it's a little bit of an understated headline, I'll give you that. But takeaway is origins of COVID solved, question mark. Basically, what we found is that some of the most unusual features

of the SARS-CoV-2 genome, the things that made SARS-CoV-2 SARS-CoV-2, the most pathogenic virus of the last 100 years were, I mean, they're very rare in nature, but they were central to the esoteric research interests of the top coronavirus virologists in the world, Ralph Baric, and the top coronavirus collectors in the world, Peter Daszak and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. We also found that while these scientists told the U.S. government that they were going to be doing this high-risk virology at UNC under relatively strict biosafety protocol, they were actually going to secretly be outsourcing much of this research to the Wuhan Institute of Virology under an inadequate biosafety level, essentially in order to save on

costs and to be able to do the work more quickly. So, you know, obviously that is very concerning. Yeah, yeah, I would say so. So let's talk about the that is very concerning. Yeah. Yeah. I would say so. So let's, let's talk about the, the Alex Washburn et al preprint that kind of led, that led to this reporting that you did. And so we can go back to Bob Gary too, who's a Tulane University virologist who people might recall was involved in this, that first kind of famous and now infamous conference call with Anthony Fauci, February 2nd or 4th or whatever, between the 1st and the 4th, where the virologists all at the beginning are leaning towards a lab leak. And by the end of it are pronouncing and organizing

public statements and articles saying that there couldn't have been a lab leak and everybody is crazy who thinks it is. So Bob Gehry at the time observed the makeup of COVID-19 and identified some unusual features of it, which takes us to the Washburn paper. So what did Bob Gehry find and how important was that to your reporting? Sure. So I'll start out with what is, I think, indisputable at this point from our reporting, and then I'll get into the more controversial stuff. So the stuff that's indisputable is that the scientists working with the Wuhan Institute of Virology were interested in making engineered viruses in the lab and testing whether they could infect human receptors. And their so-called gold standard would be to identify viruses that could cause disease. They were also knowledgeable about two things that could essentially supercharge a coronavirus into that gold standard of something that could cause disease in humanized mice. And those two features were a furin cleavage site at the S1, S2 junction of the spike protein and a receptor binding domain

that was very good at latching onto a receptor called ACE2. And when SARS-CoV-2 first came out, those virologists who initially said privately, oh, no, this looks engineered, and then came out with a paper that said, if you think that this is engineered, you're crazy. They were privately very concerned about these two features, the furin cleavage site at the S1S2 and the fact that it was sort of immediately very good at infecting human cells. And so the documents that we obtained show, they lay out their plan to create a model where they could create engineered viruses with these features that we later see in SARS-CoV-2, but that are exceedingly rare in nature. So that all is indisputable at this point, I think. There have been people, you know, people like Robert Gary who have really nitpicked and said, well, it's not a fear and cleavage site at the S1, S2. It's a fear and cleavage site at the S1 or S2. But, you know, the new documents we obtained make it very explicit that they were interested in precisely viruses like SARS-CoV-2.

The Alex Washburn paper that you mentioned around restriction sites, I think that's a little bit more controversial and requires a little bit more scientific inquiry. But what they found in 2022 is that a pattern of restriction sites, and restriction sites are essentially little bits of code that occur in the genome that can be used in the lab to engineer new viruses, but they also can occur naturally. But what they found, they did a statistics around how likely is it that we would see this precise pattern. And they found it to be very unlikely.

And so the new documents that we have, I mean, confirm their intention to create synthetic viruses with these restriction enzymes in six pieces, which is what the Washburn paper found. And they also include a budget line for one of these specific restriction enzymes. Right. Let's stop there and talk about that. So the paper says, okay, there's these six different, you know, whatever they are. And they basically predicted, okay, if you were going to do this, what you would need would be this one particular enzyme of thousands of enzymes commercially that

are available to do this research. And what you found is that they in fact did purchase that enzyme and did use this, which suggests that they're doing the exact thing that was predicted. So not only do you have a regression analysis that shows the chance of this being formed naturally as infinitesimally small, but then they add a prediction on top of it that you would need this particular enzyme. And the chance that they actually then purchase that, and it all being a coincidence takes it from infinitesimally small to me to impossible to be anything other than a smoking gun. So why is it

still considered somewhat controversial, even among some people who have recently been saying, yeah, I believe I lean toward a lab leak, but I want to see more scientific inquiry on this. Yeah, it's sort of hard for us lay people to evaluate because it does require knowledge of statistics and of bioengineering. So the number of people who can really evaluate these claims, I think, is pretty small. But some scientists who are a bit more skeptical, like Alina Chan, they basically point to other viruses in nature that are very similar to SARS-CoV-2 having similar restriction sites. Then you get kind of another layer of complexity, which is that there is a debate about how many

silent mutations you would see around these sites in nature versus in the lab. And so I think that's something that scientists need to duke out. I think another, I guess, just a cautionary word I've heard is that Ralph Baric, this coronavirologist who was working very closely with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, he was known for doing this sort of work without any of these sort of markings, without leaving the restriction sites in. He patented no-seum technology, no-seum being the name of an insect in North Carolina where he's based. So it's almost unusual to find a pattern like this if we expect it to be Barrick's idea that the Wuhan lab was working with. Yeah. I mean, what's really concerns me, Emily, is like, I've never believed obviously in natural origin, but let me ask you then,

this is Crystal often does this, how would you steel man, you know, your reporting? What, what natural origin hypothesis at this point even bears scrutiny for a seasoned healthcare reporter like yourself? What would the, you know, the critics critics say in response to this? I know. I feel the same way. That's why I'm asking you. Well, I think the possible coincidence of the pandemic first being detected at the wet market, I think that story still hasn't been told. How is it that that was the first place where we started detecting cases? I think the idea that early cases clustered around the wet market is based on a really bad analysis. I think the idea that a spillover occurred at that market is based on an analysis that was recently, recently suffered a major correction. Yes, exactly.

So it's hard. But I do, you know, I'll give it to my opponents, I guess, and say that I think it is hard to explain, just given the information that we have, the limited information, why it was the wet market that, you know, where we first.

But can't we just say, well, yeah, that's where the Chinese first reported the cases. I mean, they're the ones who are responsible for, you know, they, we, they control the information that we get. Not like, not vice versa. It's not necessarily organic. Yeah. Continuing to like occupy the mind space of the virologists who think they're a natural origin. I would say, um, some of the first people who detected the pandemic were doctors in Wuhan. Right. You know, I would also say I've done reporting showing that the doctors in Wuhan were censored very heavily and faced a lot of retaliation for early reporting. So whether that early reporting is actually reflective of the earliest cases, I'm not confident in that. Yeah, great point. So, I mean, given the documents you've obtained and the work that you've done, right now news outlets are busy submitting their different articles for Pulitzers.

You know, I think – I don't even know if U.S. Right to Know is eligible for a Pulitzer. I think you deserve one for the work that you've been doing on this. Thank you. But I'm curious what it's been like to see so little mainstream media follow up on this reporting because we're talking about a pandemic that killed at least 25 million people. Correct me if I'm wrong here. Upended our geopolitics, upended our politics, our economy, the number of people who are suffering from having lived through COVID, and on and on. It's just, the damage is incalculable. And the evidence points to a small group of people breaking rules

because, you know, the Obama administration had put in place restrictions around this type of research that they, you know, went around in order to do this. Small group of people, we're talking fewer than a dozen perhaps, doing something not on purpose, you know, but recklessly knowing that it was a possibility. Anthony Fauci in 2014 said that, you know, the potential risks outweigh the benefits of this type of research. I think that's absurd, given the costs that we've endured. So what's it been like from your perspective to see so little follow up at this point? The New York Times, if you only read the New York Times,

you believe that it's an open and shut case and it came out of that. Natural origin. It came out of that and you're racist. It was a bat and then it was a raccoon dog and now you're just not supposed to even know anymore. What's it been like to know the opposite and to watch this unfold? I mean, it's maddening.

It makes me feel like I'm losing it a little bit. But, I mean, I think some of the things that are at play are the same things that are making this show so popular. I think the mainstream media is becoming culturally irrelevant. And to me, I think my theory just kind of coming out of the health reporting space and knowing kind of the culture and some of the editors who are running the health and science desks at these major outlets. I think they're friends with Fauci, to be honest. I think it's just personal relationships.

And they really admire him. And I think they have a hard time grasping the idea that someone who had good intentions and who might not be a bad person might have made a catastrophic error in judgment. Yeah. I mean, to me, if you'll remember Donald McNeil, who worked for The Times, he got fired. It was a bunch of controversy. He came out later and he's like, look, I didn't believe it because I was friends with these guys. He literally said that.

And they lied to him. Yeah. We have the emails of them like directly lying to him. He came out and was like, I've known Anthony Fauci and Peter Daszak for 30 years. I believe them. And he's like, they misled me. And he's open about it. But he can only be open about it because he's no longer within the system. So I guess finally, you know, we can bring this,

you've effectively solved the case for us, but what else is there? Like you're obviously going to continue on the story. What other things are you going to potentially inquire in? Can our audience help you? What can people point you in the right direction? Well, your audience can definitely, you know definitely follow us. Obviously, I think we're punching above our weight, but we're not the New York Times. So that every little bit helps every follower, every subscriber to our newsletter. I think next steps, this latest document set, I think lays out how SARS-CoV-2 probably got its unique features, but we still don't have the starting genomic sequence.

And even the guys, you know, the virologists who very strongly favor a natural origin have said a smoking gun would be identifying that virus in that lab in 2019. Got it. So I think if we can confirm that they were doing this experimentation with urine cleavage sites, with receptor binding domains that bind strongly to ACE2, with something like SARS-CoV-2, that would be, I mean, game over.

Like truly game over, indisputably. Got it. I think also one thing the audience could not do is jump in and be like I always knew this from day one Such a useless. Yeah point to make stop it because even if we definitely did even if you It's dismissive of all of the great work that so many journalists have done to confirm your hunch All right your hunch. I'm sorry. Yeah, YouTube audience your hunch is not worth much. That's right. He's right He's right. And this is why we need you to do the work that you continue to do.

So people can follow you on Twitter. What's the most helpful way people can help you? I think subscribing to our newsletter, US Right to Know, is the most helpful. We'll have a link down in the description. Everybody go also support Emily's work. Follow her on Twitter, et cetera. And we will see you guys later. in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case.

If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You say you never give in to a meltdown and never fill your feed with kid photos. You say you'd never put a pacifier in your mouth to clean it and never let

them run wild through the grocery store. So when you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there, no, it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out. Never happens before you leave the car. Always stop, look,

lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. This is your girl T.S. Madison and I'm coming to you loud, loud and in color from the Outlaws Podcast. Let me tell you something. I've got the voice. My podcast, the one they never saw coming.

Each week, I sit down with the culture creators and scroll stoppers. Tina knows. Lil Nas X. Will we ever see a dating show? My next ex. That's actually cute, though. And Chaperone.

I was dropped in 2020, working the drive-thru, and here we are now. This is a fake show you tell Beyonce. I'm going right on the phone and call her. Listen to Outlaws with T.S. Madison on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, honey. This is an iHeart Podcast.