Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/9/24: Jeremy Scahill On Fall Of Assad In Syria, CEO Killer Backpack Found With Monopoly Money, Bill Burr Goes Off On CEO, Bird Flu Scare

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss Jeremy Scahill on the fall of Assad, CEO killer backpack found with Monopoly money, Bill Burr goes off on United CEO, bird flu milk scare.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator,

and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now.

Let me hear it. Listen to voiceover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A lot of times, big economic forces show up in our lives in small ways. Four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. Small but important ways. From tech billionaires to the bond market to, yeah, banana pudding. If it's happening in business, our new podcast is on it. I'm Max Chastain.

And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at BreakingPoints.com. Good morning, everybody.

Happy Monday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots of gigantic news unfolding. Bashar al-Assad's government in Syria has collapsed. He has fled the country to Moscow. Jeremy Scahill is going to join us to try to figure out what the hell is going on and what might come next as best as anyone can

possibly figure. Also, the manhunt for that killer of the health care CEO continues. Some interesting evidence has been located and also the cultural reaction continues as well. And our own Ken Klippenstein got leaked. The CEO of that company is like the larger health care group. His response, which is interesting as well. The FDA has announced a new sweeping testing regime of the nation's dairy supply amid fears of a new pandemic sparked by bird flu, which has been ravaging dairy cow herds across the western part of the country. So something definitely to keep an eye on there. Trump gave a wide-ranging interview to Kristen Welker over at NBC News. We'll bring you some of the highlights of that and a little bit of reaction. I'm taking a look at all of the billionaires in Trump's

administration and what they might want. And we also had an update last evening. A civil lawsuit has been filed against Jay-Z accusing him of raping a 13-year-old girl. He, of course, denies the charges, but we will tell you what we know about that as well. Yeah. There's a lot going on there. Yeah, this is linked to the Diddy allegations. So we actually had heard some of this from this, you know, at the time girl, now woman, but Jay-Z hadn't been named. So now the new addition is that he has been named as part of this.

He's been named. He's fighting back hard. We'll get to drama involving the new addition is that he has been named as part of this. He's been named. He's fighting back hard. We'll get to drama involving the lawyers, et cetera. We'll get to all of that. But thank you to all of our premium subscribers. We love you. We appreciate you. Thank you very much.

We really, you know, just been, we've been thinking just about how to build the show for the future and more. And we're just so thankful to have all of you. And also just to see the overwhelming number of people who came in after the election. It's great to have you. As you said, we took a look at our Spotify wrapped numbers and there's always some great surprises. The Vouch Dave Smith debate is our number one shared episode of the year, which is amazing. Also is a counterpoints debate, literally. So that was thanks to our premium subscribers to be able to expand content. There's a lot of interesting stuff in those in terms of the amount of growth that we've received over after the election. You would assume that our election coverage would be the most downloaded,

but it was actually our post-election coverage, which is the most downloaded. Oh, really? Oh, I didn't see that. Yes. November 20th, 2024, is the largest day in the history of breaking points, like by a mile, which is amazing. Nothing in particular even happened that day. Something history of breaking points. Like by a mile, which is amazing. But I don't know. Nothing in particular even like happened that day. Something went viral. So we can see that, you know, in terms of numbers. But yes, thank you to, seriously, tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people who joined the podcast just this last year.

So thanks very much. And if you can't become a premium subscriber, no worries. You can still help us out by liking the video on YouTube, sharing it, or if you're in the episode and you just literally just text it to somebody and share it with them, it really does help us out here. That conversation Emily and Ryan did with the Seeking Arrangements, Sugar Baby, that got a lot of shares too, actually. That got a lot of interest, a lot of discussion around that one. Some people were not happy, but some people liked it. Yeah, I liked it. I thought it was a great conversation. I thought it was very interesting, personally, to hear.

So in any case, you guys make that expansion of the show possible. We're actually having a big meeting today with our producers to think about next year and what we can do to continue to build. So thank you guys all so much for your support. All right, Sagar, what is going on in Syria? Oh my God, what is not going on in Syria? We're going to start off with some video, so let's go ahead and play some of this for the audience. I'm going to talk over it while it is. Just stunning scenes with the fall of Damascus to these quote unquote rebels. We'll tell you about those rebels in a little bit, but you can

literally see, you know, scenes reminiscent of the fall of Baghdad, the destruction of Assad, statues, both Bashar al-Assad and his own father who ruled the country for some 50-odd years. The most shocking scenes really are some of these that have been coming out of the secret and historic prison that was in Damascus that housed a lot of these political prisoners, you know, small children, lots of women, men who have been locked in these cells for, what, some odd years

now. I saw some reports that some of them literally didn't even know what a smartphone was, Crystal. That's how long they've been locked up. Yeah, if you think it's been, the Civil War's been going on since 2012, maybe even with the brutal regime, you know, a lot of these people have been housed in there for a long time. Some eyes also opened for

Austin Tice, the American citizen. The U.S. government does believe he is alive, and he was being held by the Assad regime. So we're hoping that he's returned sometime soon. This is apparently is a bunch of rebels trying to figure out how to operate a helicopter. But here we have al-Jalani, the leader of HDS, the new presumptive leader, I guess, of Damascus, not of Syria, giving a speech, talking about, quote, there's no house in Syria the war is not knocked down on. Praise be to God, today you are recovering, God willing. Thank God. Mr. Jolani is literally a wanted terrorist, you know, by the United States government. And that, with, at one point, we're offering a $10 million reward for his capture. His own history is a little bit shocking. And really, you know,

from step by step is just failure of US policy after failure of a policy. This is a man who is radicalized by the second Intifada, becomes a committed jihadist, goes to fight in Iraq. He is held in the infamous kind of basically jihadi university prison by United States forces in 2003 and 2004. He's released. He joins Zarqawi's al-Qaeda in Iraq. There's eventually some drama, and he splits off and goes to Syria. And he's been one of the most committed leaders of the al-Qaeda offshoot in Syria. Now, you know, the defenders, quote, unquote, will say, oh, well, he's distanced

himself from Al-Qaeda. He's actually purged some of the elements of that. We'll see. It really does remain. But I mean, the truth is, if you look at this man's history, he has been a committed jihadist who's been fighting either U.S. forces, the West, or frankly, even some of the religious minorities inside of Syria now for over a decade. So yes, this is the final conclusion, or frankly, even some of the religious minorities inside of Syria now for over a decade. So yes, this is the final conclusion, it seems, of the Syrian civil war, some 14 years, brutal civil war, hundreds of thousands are dead, but there is no indication that this is it, right? I mean, there are still so many different religious minorities in Syria. You have the Kurdish faction, the SDF, you have 10% of the country, which is Christian. You have the Druze population as well. Damascus itself, where, look, you could

say a lot of things about Assad, but it actually was genuinely kind of diverse, quote unquote. A lot of those people did support the Assad regime. Nobody knows now, you know, what's going to happen. It's some indications in Aleppo that they haven't cracked down on religious minorities yet. You know, We don't know. But there's going to be no cheering today on this show because they're... And I am a little heartened by this. At the very least, there is a heavy amount of realism I have seen, at least in some analysis, even at the mainstream level, Crystal, where people are like, did we... Is this a good thing? Did we win? Is this a celebration of U.S. policy? And don't, you know, don't brainwash yourself.

Yes, this war, a lot of it was fought by Syrians. A lot of it was fought by foreigners. A lot of it was funded by foreign dollars, including our foreign dollars. And President Biden's statement, which we'll get to in a little bit, is a full-on celebration. But I am at least heartened by, you know, the incoming vice president-elect and a few others being like, are we sure that this is a good thing? You know, this may actually end up being like the fall of Gaddafi and unleashing hell for this country for another 14 years. So I don't know how you could live through Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and just feel like, yay, this is going to go great. Or, you. Exactly. Living through all of the Arab spring. And so I

think anyone who was sentient, who, you know, observed those, you know, moments of optimism turn into horror. I don't think anyone could watch that and just feel really super confident, especially given what we know about this faction, rebel faction that, you know, is an offshoot of Al Qaeda. And yeah, he's saying the right things about, you know, commitment to religious and ethnic diversity within Syria, but this is a committed jihadist, a committed Islamist, so we shall see. Not to mention, you already see, and we'll get into this with Jeremy as well, you already see Israel making moves to annex territory and take advantage of the situation. Obviously, there's going to be a vacuum. Obviously, this is going to be a very weak government. This really came out of nowhere. I mean, I don't think

this was really on anyone's radar until these rebels were able to so quickly take over Aleppo, the Syrian forces scattered. There was a realization, the, you know, foreign governments, whether it was Iran or Russia, that had been backing the Assad regime were no longer there to keep them in place. And very, very, very quickly things collapsed. And like that, you have a fantastic observer of this entire region and has a good bird's eye view of how all of these pieces fit together. So let's get to that. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being

thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia

that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal.

It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room.

You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to Voice Over on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself.

And I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Joining us now is Jeremy Scahill, the co-founder of Dropside News and a great journalist. Good to see you, sir. Thank you. Thanks for having me back. Yeah, absolutely. So, Jeremy, we want to get your reaction to some of these rapid developments in Syria, but also in respect to what's happening with Israel and its current expansion of territory. First, let's get your reaction to this soundbite put out by Bibi Netanyahu. In reaction. Let's take a listen. This is a historic day for the Middle East. The collapse of the Assad regime, the tyranny in Damascus offers great opportunity, but also is fraught with significant dangers. This collapse is a direct result of our forceful action against Hezbollah and Iran,

Assad's main supporters. It set off a chain reaction of all those who want to free themselves from this tyranny and its suppression. But it also means we have to take action against possible threats. One of them is the collapse of the separation of forces agreement from 1974 between Israel and Syria. This agreement held for 50 years. Last night it collapsed. The Syrian army abandoned its positions. We gave the Israeli army the order to take over these positions to ensure that no hostile force embeds itself right next to the border of Israel. This is a temporary defensive position until a suitable arrangement is found. Equally we send a hand of peace to all those beyond our border in Syria, to the Jews, to the Kurds, to the Christians, and to the Muslims who want to live in peace with Israel. We're going to follow events

very carefully. If we can establish neighborly relations and a peaceful relations with the new forces emerging in Syria, that's our desire. But if we do not, we'll do whatever it takes to defend the state of Israel and the border of Israel. Jeremy, your reaction to that? Let's remember that not long before October 7th, Netanyahu gave a speech at the United Nations in which he brandished a map of the Middle East that showed a total erasure of Palestine in any form whatsoever and portrayed it as a greater Israel that was going to be the conduit that would connect the south and north of the world in the eastern hemisphere with sort of a great new Silk Road that would be heralded in by Israel.

And Netanyahu has made very clear that he supports a dramatic expansion of the state of Israel. And Netanyahu has made very clear that he supports a dramatic expansion of the state of Israel. And so, you know, while he may be exaggerating Israel's role or the role that it played in the events in Syria, certainly Israel's actions in the Middle East did play a role. And Netanyahu now is trying to seize the moment to literally invade kilometers into Syria. Israel does not have a track record of seizing territory and then saying, oh, well, actually, we were just doing this for our security. We're going to back out of it. I mean, look no further than the non-ceasefire that the Biden administration brokered in

Lebanon, where Israel has repeatedly been violating it, still has its forces occupying. But there certainly is a discussion to be had about how the impact in Gaza and Lebanon and the broader war that Netanyahu is waging in the Middle East impacted events on the ground in Syria. But this is a multidimensional conflict in Syria with a lot of foreign actors involved with it, as you alluded to earlier. So I think that on the one hand, we can examine Israel's role. On the other hand, we have to talk about the United States, Turkey, Gulf countries, Russia, Hezbollah, Iran, and then the Syrian forces themselves on the ground. Let's talk a little bit more about that. Eric, if you could put A4

up on the screen, this tear sheet from the Wall Street Journal that lays out some of those dynamics that you're discussing. The headline here is Assad's downfall marks a new realignment in the Middle East. You had Turkey backing the rebels. You had Russia previously backing Assad. Assad has now fled reportedly to Moscow. You know, questions about what various countries and factions in the region stand to benefit from these developments. I mean, what is your reaction overall to what has been a stunning chain of events and, you know, total collapse of government in just a few days? I think that there's several ways that we have to look at this, and we shouldn't strip Syrians themselves of their agency in this

or their moment to sort of express relief at someone that many Syrians viewed as a butcher, a war criminal, their torturer, their main violator of human rights. You know, Crystal, I was in Iraq when Saddam Hussein emptied the Abu Ghraib prison shortly before the United States invaded Iraq. And there were people coming out of that Abu Ghraib prison shortly before the United States invaded Iraq. And there were people coming out of that Abu Ghraib prison who had been there for decades. And we saw some of the facilities that were used to torture people in Saddam's prison. And as I've seen some of the footage coming out of prisoners being released from Assad's prisons in Syria, it brought back memories for me of that. And I think, you know, if you're talking about people that are political prisoners that have spent decades in a dungeon and have been tortured under heinous

circumstances, everyone should be glad to see prisoners being liberated. So on the one hand, I fully understand why many Syrians are celebrating this day. On the other hand, the forces that are now taking control, HTS and others, have a track record of their own brutality, of their own killing of ethnic and religious minorities, of running their own torture prison operations. And the United States for many years has had its hand in the dirty war in Syria. I mean, at one point, the United States was spending a billion dollars in CIA operations alone training so-called rebel forces. You have many nations that have had a role to play in this really dirty situation. And then on the Russia and Iran side, you know, while Bashar Assad was

a member of the so-called axis of resistance, the nation states and non-state actors that had a common pledge to confront Israel in the region. Largely what Assad's support for that Axis consisted of was allowing passage through Syria of weapons, logistics, personnel going into Lebanon and to resupply Hezbollah and others. But there's also a whole other part of this story, which is that at times both Israel and the United States worked with Bashar al-Assad. One story that I know you guys are familiar with was that in 2002, a Canadian Syrian named Mahar Arar was kidnapped at JFK Airport by the CIA, and he was sent to Syria, where he was tortured in those very prisons that we're seeing footage of by the Assad regime's forces. Assad was on

the verge of making some sort of a deal prior to the 2011 protests breaking out. And we haven't seen Syria launching air attacks at Israel over the past year. You know, Hezbollah was doing that. Iran was doing that. Even the Houthis of Yemen were doing that. But Assad has sort of played all sides of the fence. Damascus, Netanyahu was starting to directly threaten Assad and say that if he didn't stop efforts to resupply Hezbollah during this so-called ceasefire, that he would directly pay a price for it. Israel has been bombing the past couple of days targets around Syria. They claim that they're trying to degrade chemical weapons, air defense systems.

But Israel is certainly exploiting this opportunity to try to go in and preemptively strike all around Syria. No one should pretend that this is about self-defense. No one should pretend that this is about humanitarian motives. Netanyahu and the Israeli state have a very extreme agenda to seize Arab land. And I think that's a large part of what we're seeing right now. Yeah. And Jeremy, we also have President Biden openly celebrating this. We have A3, please. Let's play that and we'll get his reaction. What happened in the Middle East? After 13 years of civil war in Syria, more than half a century of brutal authoritarian rule by Bashir Assad and his father before him, rebel forces have forced Assad to resign his office and flee the country.

We're not sure where he is, but there's word that he's in Moscow. At long last, the Assad regime has fallen. So you can see that he's at long last, it's fallen. He's celebrated it, saying the United States will continue to participate. I mean, this is not a good look if we are literally talking about an al-Qaeda takeover of the country. So in context of the Netanyahu statement and how here the United States president, what is the policy here that will shape what comes after now that Assad is out? Well, you can go back and find video of Joe Biden when he was vice president, really directly stating what many people are talking about right now, which is that you have Abu Mohammed al-Jalani remains a wanted terrorist in the language of the United States with a $10 million bounty on his head.

Secretary of State Blinken has not, to my knowledge, removed HTS from the list of foreign designated terrorist organizations. Jake Sullivan, the current national security advisor, we know from WikiLeaks cables, actually at one point acknowledged that al-Qaeda was on the same side as the United States in Syria. All of this is very relevant, and no one should be derided for raising what are factual, factual rendering of events and the history leading up to this. What we're going to see now is a an aggressive rebranding effort. This has been going on for a couple of years with HTS and Jelani. But I think you're going to see an intensification of this.

Britain already is debating whether or not to remove them from their terror designation. The United Nations also has designated HTS as a terror organization. So, you know, on the one hand, the United States is opportunistic. It's looking to try to ensure that it has its own resources protected. The United States is tremendously happy that Russia has had to withdraw from its naval and air base in Syria. The United States, since going back to the 1950s, wanted to prevent Russia from having any kind of a foothold in the Middle East. So, you know, while I think that we should focus on Syrians and their views of this. The geopolitical realities of this go back many decades. It's Cold War politics. It's the U.S. wanting Russia out of it. It's the move toward

trying to do regime change in Iran. I think the Iranians are looking at this and saying we should accelerate our attempt to get a nuclear weapon because they're watching the dominoes fall in the Middle East right now. And you have a kind of a perfect storm that has been created by the Biden administration's policy, where now Donald Trump takes power. He's sending a total lunatic, Mike Huckabee, as the ambassador to Israel. You could have an attempt to actually destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque. You could have an attempt to do actual overt regime change in Iran. And Syria falling, I think, has caused great nervousness in other Arab capitals

where despotic regimes are fearful that this will be contagious. Talk a little bit more about the incoming Trump administration. What can we glean from his last time in office vis-a-vis his approach to the Middle East generally, but specifically towards Syria? Well, you know, I mean, Trump put out a statement the other day that was a kind of, Savi, his approach to the Middle East generally, but specifically towards Syria? Well, you know, I mean, Trump put out a statement the other day that was a kind of, you know, it was a mess. It had something for everyone to read into it. And, you know, Trump is kind of a master at leaving the door open to interpretation. When it comes to Israel, he has openly pledged that he's going to give Netanyahu carte blanche. If you look on paper, it would seem that

very ominous days are ahead for the region. But also when Trump was in power the first time, some of the bluster and rhetoric that he unloaded on the campaign trail, when he then became the commander in chief, there were moments when he was a president that embraced notions of restraint. We know that there were big battles between some of Trump's people and Trump himself and some of the neocons like John Bolton. And then at the end of the day, I think ego plays a role in this. Does Donald Trump want to have, when he enters office, fires raging across the Middle East? Iran certainly put out indicators that they wanted to negotiate with Trump. It does seem like there may be some deal between Hamas and Israel that probably wouldn't have happened if Biden had another year in office and it wasn't Trump.

So, you know, while I'm while I'm inclined to say that I think, you know, Trump is an ultra militaristic guy in some ways, he does have instincts that veer off the path of American empire. And I think that if there's going to be any chance of, uh, of the fires getting put out, it would be because of the quirky, strange nature of Donald Trump's approach to foreign policy. Yeah. I think that's really well said, Jeremy. Uh, you know, as we continue to watch all this, we're going to be relying heavily on

drop sites. So thank you so much for joining us, man. We appreciate you. Thank you, guys. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld

of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator,

and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other.

It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to Voice Over on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who did make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first Black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor,

going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So meanwhile, the manhunt continues for the killer of that CEO of UnitedHealthcare. Harry Enten over at CNN broke down some of the reasons why he has apparently been so difficult to find. Let's take a listen.

The number one thing that should stand out about Central Park is it's just freaking huge. I mean, that's the number one thing that should stand out. It makes up 6% of Manhattan. There are eight lakes and ponds, so you could potentially drop that backpack anywhere. There are 700 or more garbage cans as of 2021. Again, a lot of places that you might have to search in Central Park if you're trying to find somebody or find a backpack. But more than that, it's really easy to blend in in Central Park and escape there without people noticing. Why is that? Because get this, there are about 50 exits and entrances from Central Park. And more than that, there are

about 40,000 winter weekday visitors. So you can get out of the park really easily and you can really blend into the park really easily and you can really blend into the park quite easily, Erica. Harry, police say the suspect also may have gotten out of the city by using the George Washington bus terminal. Yeah. So I have been to that bus terminal. It's actually fairly close to where I grew up. And what you should know about it, it's really busy on your average weekday. There are about 900 plus buses that come in and out of the terminal daily. There are about 10, buses that come in and out of the terminal daily. There are about 10,000 plus passengers

who come either in or out of the terminal daily. And more than that, there are a ton of potential destinations from the George Washington bus terminal. Look at this map right here. You can go all the way up. Look at this, go all the way up to Boston. You can go all the way down to Philadelphia

or you can go all the way to Western New York. So what we know basically at this point is that we've all, you know, seen the footage, the security footage of the actual killing. And he hops on a bike, goes into Central Park, emerges somewhere upper west side, hops in a cab. We actually have an image of him in the cab that just came out, which by the way, a bunch of these pictures that they're saying are, you know, person of interest, basically alleging as a suspect. They really do look like different people, but it's hard to tell because a lot of them are masked. You can see him here. So the quality of the camera is not very high. Yeah, with his mask. So this is the latest photo that has emerged. So anyway, gets in this cab, goes to the George Washington Bridge

bus terminal. I mean, I haven't been to that particular bus terminal, but I've been to plenty of, I've been to the main New York City bus terminal. And the number of buses coming in and out of these things, the number of people, I mean, it's just, you know, it's constant. So he goes in, he doesn't come out. So the presumption is, of course,

that he took a bus somewhere to make his getaway. And they've only just recently found, he apparently ditched his backpack in Central Park near the merry-go-round. This is an image of that backpack. And based on what we know, it was apparently stuffed with his jacket and Monopoly money. So it seems like he fully intended. I mean, this guy is the Joker. It's about sending a message. This is the Joker. He intended them to find this backpack. And yet, this guy is the Joker. It's about sending a message. This is the Joker. He intended them to find this backpack. And yet, by the way, still took the cops three days to find it in Central Park, knowing that it was likely somewhere in there.

So, I mean, that's effectively where we are right now. Eric Adams, mayor of New York City, is claiming that they have a name. We could put this up on the screen. This was at some holiday party, I believe. He made these comments. He says the net is tightening on the CEO's suspected killer. He says they have a name,

but we don't want to release that now. If we do, we're basically giving a tip to the person we're seeking. We don't want to give him an upper hand at all. Let him continue to believe he can hide behind the mask. We revealed his face. We're going to reveal who he is, and we're going to bring him to justice.

Personally, I don't really believe him. I don't know. Maybe there's a strategic reason not to reveal the name, or maybe you don't want to get in legal trouble by implicating someone who you're not 100% sure that it is. But if you're out there saying we know your name, then now the guy knows that you know his name. But I don't know. I'm a little skeptical. It seems like the more time goes on, like the trail has, as best as the public knows, effectively gone cold. And it is kind of wild given this was, you know, early morning hours, but there were plenty of people out in New York City. It was in the most densely packed

tourist area of New York City. Number of surveillance cameras all around are crazy. They even have drone surveillance now in New York City. And this guy was just able to effectively vanish without a trace and was able to be in the city for some 10 days, but very careful about keeping his face hidden and keeping away from cameras, et cetera. So based on what the public knows, seems like very, very little that they're going on. New York City has 25,000 cameras at traffic intersections alone and that drone surveillance initiative, which began over Central Park.

And $1 billion a year spent on a lot of this. I mean, look, this is a good view, by the way, into how much all of us are surveilled all the time. That's true. And the justification for it is that, oh, it's so easy to stop terrorists and it's easy to catch killers. Well, it's been more than 72 hours. This man has been on the run.

I mean, presumably, even with the feds involved and all that, we still don't have him being apprehended. His name has not been released or even leaked. That is one reason why I'm really skeptical. The NYPD is massive. And, you know, it leaks like a sieve. And I've covered these terrorism cases and others for a long time. When they have a name, Tom Winters at

NBC or whatever, he'll have it in like two seconds. Yeah. So even if they don't want to officially put it out. Yeah. Even when they don't want to put it out, it ends up leaking. This happens every time. And there's also no indication that they've alerted. Like, if you had a name, wouldn't you alert all the authorities at airports and at the border, et cetera,

so that if that person shows up with their passport, you know what to do? But there's no indication that I know that. Yeah, I mean, that actually raises even crazier questions like, was he able to get out of the country? You know, was he able to leave the United States? I think it's very possible. I mean, you could take a bus pretty easy

to upstate New York. Canada's not that far away. So there's a lot of indications. And then from there, you know, who knows? You can get on a plane to anywhere. You can go to Switzerland, Peru, Bolivia. Could be hanging out with Assad in Moscow right now. Yeah, Moscow.

I think that's where I would head. I would head to Moscow. But yeah, I mean, when you read all of this, it is both terrifying in terms of how much we are surveilled. And then it also opens the door of like, well, what's the point of all this surveillance? I mean, look, maybe it's me. I think it's creepy that when you're in a cab, you're on camera, you know? I mean, I get it, you know, crime and people getting robbed and all of that, but it's weird. It's like every time you get into an Uber, it's like, you don't even think about it. And you're just, your face is being broadcast. Who knows what this person is going to do to it. You're in a hostel, somebody's videoing there, you're on the street,

you can track your location everywhere. This is an interesting, I saw a funny analysis. It just goes to show you that we're lucky that we live in a country where it's mostly like low IQ people who commit crime. Because it turns out like if you want to get away with it, I mean to a certain extent you kind of can. I personally thought, I said there's no way this guy's not in cuffs. Just because I had maybe too much faith in the surveillance data. I'm like, yo, in this country, you know, he had that one photo with his face down. That allegedly is him.

Yeah, allegedly. Whatever. I think it's him. You do? Yeah. I mean, you know, why else would you release it? I don't know. It looks so different.

He looks so different in the different photos that they've released. That's what I mean. Look, maybe he's wearing different. He was there for 10 days wearing different outfits. I don't know. The point is, is like, I thought, you know, who, who, if you've flown recently, actually in some airports, you don't even have a choice. They just, you know, they take a photo of your face and it's facial recognition. You don't even give them your

ID anymore. You just stand in front of the camera and it's like, boom. Uh, I've boarded flights, particularly international flights, uh, in the last couple of years, you don't have a boarding pass. You literally just go and they hit your face with facial recognition and they're like, oh, Sagar and Jetty, you know, 26E or something like that. So in my head, I'm like, okay, well, you just take that and you do facial recognition. You hit it across all of the different driver's license photos just in the United States or criminal database, whatever. And I thought you'd be apprehended the name. You know, I thought it'd be out there within 24 hours, but I mean guess maybe uh you know either they do have that they're not telling us

or you know even that photo is not enough um it you would assume too that you would leave fingerprints somewhere uh in a hostel or wherever you are for 10 days on a backpack dna etc but i guess all of that will take some time i I mean, I still remain like pretty, I still remain like pretty skeptical that you're genuinely going to walk free like a member of the Weather Underground or something. I don't know. And not get apprehended for 30 years.

I mean, remember, they did get caught. You know, at the end of the day, all of them did get caught. It took a while, but I guess it could happen. You know, it could happen. The other thing is that, you know, police really rely to a significant extent on public cooperation. Yeah.

And, you know, there has been some. But, like, the hostel that he stayed at that, you know, provided security camera footage and, like, whatever, a lot of people are pissed off at them. That's ridiculous. I mean, what are they going to do? You're going to get a subpoena. But I'm just saying, and there's all these communities on TikTok that are organized around helping to sleuth out different crimes and looking and trying to find the clues and whatever. And they're like, no, we're not helping with this one. So I'm sure that tip hotline they put out has been flooded with all kinds of nonsense. And if it's credible nonsense,

you still got to track it down. You still got to chase it. And so that also makes it more difficult is to sort even if they got a legitimate tip that actually could help them. If it's also being flooded with, you know, a lot of people who are not interested in helping or interested in thwarting,

that can also make it much, much more difficult. Camp Sheen, one of America's-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits

as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover?

I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. Voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other.

It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room.

You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day.

It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and I Heart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. At the same time, obviously, the cultural reaction has really continued. It has been pretty astonishing how widespread the reaction to this killing was.

Bill Burr, comedian Bill Burr, had his own commentary describing the CEO as effectively a gangster. Let's take a listen to some of his take. Oh, what's going on in New York? We were just talking about it. That CEO got fucking whacked. Oh, my God, dude. You know, it's funny. I was sitting there reading an article guy like, oh, my God, he's such a great guy. You know, you know, wife and kids. He's such a great guy. And then you find out he and the other guys he's working for are getting sued for one hundred twenty one million dollars for dumping a stock and not letting the other people know it's like there's your motive nancy pelosi just made nine million bucks on some shit they're gangsters dude fucking gangsters and then one of them gets whacked or something like oh good he was such a good guy it's a dirty game paul

healthcare healthcare dirty game it is a dirty game, Paul. Healthcare. Healthcare. Dirty game. It is a dirty game. Very true. This was interesting, too. So there's been a corporate reaction also. A bunch of healthcare companies and other Fortune 500 companies have been taking down their executive bio pages out of fear that their executives could be targeted. There's been a major upsurge in interest in executive protection. I'm sure that business is thriving today. And this was interesting. So in the wake of the killing of the CEO, people started sharing around the fact that Anthem Healthcare was planning this change. We could put this up on the screen, this tear sheet.

They've been planning this change where they're going to put a time limit on anesthesia. And for most patients, if the anesthesiologist went over the time limit, if your surgery, so you're knocked down, you have nothing to do with it. If your surgery goes over how long they think it should take, then they were going to mass deny those claims. So in the wake of this killing and more attention on the depravity of the United States health care system. This decision was something that people really picked up on. And Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield said, OK, never mind.

We are not going to do this anymore. This plan was supposed to go into effect in several states. It wasn't a nationwide change. It was just in a number of states. And they've said, oh, well, there was disinformation spread about what we were planning. So because of this disinformation, we're going to back off of this particular change. But listen, this is what health insurers do. The more care they deny, the more money they make. So they seek all kinds of ways to limit what they're going to, you know, what claims they're going to accept, what they're going to pay out, because the more that they do that, the more that their profit

margin increases. That's just the fundamental dynamic. I'm not going to pay out because the more that they do that, the more that their profit margin increases. That's just the fundamental dynamic. I'm not going to white knight for the healthcare company, but I also want people to understand that this is part of why the American healthcare system is so crappy is because there is actually decent evidence of anesthesiologists being, it's a very high paid field. I'll put it that way. Yeah. Their ability to control that and then also what the government then reimburses them for as well as the insurance companies.

It helps, right? It turns out that most anesthesiologists are making like $300,000 a year. So the justification from the – and I'm sure I'm going to get a ton of hate from the anesthesiologists. Sorry, folks. But the truth is, is that you guys are wildly overpaid, not just anesthesiologists, all doctors. It's basically a cartel. And so the American Medical Association has actively lobbied, you know, to restrict the number of doctors there to artificially push up the price that works in conjunction with our insane, you know, Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Anthem, and all these other reimbursement. So you basically have a ton of people. This is like a mob

war between two cartels when, as you said, the patient is what is supposed to matter. The guy under the knife or the woman who is literally asleep should not be subject to, is this doctor possibly keeping me under long enough just so he can make more money? Or is, you know, is it up to the insurance company? It should literally just be about all of the health. So again, I am not white knighting for the insurance company.

That was the justification, though, that they had seen that this was a systematic problem costing them money. But the whole insanity of it is that the same procedure in so many other different countries, there is no profit consideration in the entire operation. You just do whatever you have to do. That is the core of the problem. And the issue, of course, with the approach they were taking is that it ends up being the patient, once again, who gets screwed. Yeah. You know, and who gets their claim denied and is now stuck. While they were under the night, I had no say over any of this.

This is all happening while they're literally knocked out. And now you're stuck with a multi-thousand dollar bill because your claim has been denied because the surgery took longer than they expected. But you are 100% correct that the profit motive for all of these actors, whether it's the hospitals or the health insurers or the pharmaceutical companies or any of these different sort of mafia-like cartels within our healthcare system, that really is the root of the problem. I might do a monologue on the New York Times had a good piece about these methadone clinics. And I mean, it's the same thing. It's another part of our healthcare system. And the same profit motives are applied there where, you know, they're supposed to be giving counseling. They're by and large, not. They're falsifying records. They're giving methadone to people who should not be eligible to get methadone, who may have a meth addiction or a non-opioid addiction.

But, you know, this is really meant for people who are suffering with opioid addiction. But it's just like a microcosm of the way that these disgusting profit motives should not be at the core of our health care. And it leads to patients getting gouged and people getting sick and us having a disastrous life expectancy. I mean, this really is kind of the root of the problem. So in any case, the thing that was significant here with this particular decision was just how quickly they backed off of it, given the climate, given the scrutiny right now of the health insurance industry and how overwhelming the reaction was to the killing of the CEO. Meanwhile, so United Health Group, Brian Thompson, who is the CEO who was murdered, he was in charge of the insurance portion. There's a broader United Health Group whose CEO

put out a series of videos for their internal, you could imagine if you're an employee of this health insurance company, like what the hell is going on right now? So anyway, Ken Klippenstein was leaked this video of the United CEO's reaction and his presentation to internally to employees, where he's specifically here giving them some advice about how to handle media inquiries. And the TLDR is he's like, just avoid the media altogether. Let's take a listen to how that went. I'd like to give you a little bit of advice around the media. You've seen a lot of media interest in this situation with a huge amount of misinformation and, frankly, offensive communication. My strong advice and request to everybody is just don't engage with the media.

If you're approached, I would recommend not responding. And if necessary, simply refer them to our own media organisation. There's no value in engaging with the media. as you've seen people are writing things we simply don't recognize are aggressive inappropriate and disrespectful we've created a management structure to navigate through the period that we're in and that will focus on making sure that we continue to communicate within the organization, just like I am now. So, you know, don't talk to the media, don't communicate with them, etc. Ken has gotten some leaks from employees at United Healthcare

about how they're processing all of this as well, and obviously was leaked this particular communication. But, you know, it must be pretty shocking, Sagar, if you are, especially an executive, at one of these companies, to really sit with this reaction. Like, it must be a really quite a shocking thing to behold. So, maybe, but also remember what his wife said. He's like, well, there were some threats

over denied coverage. I mean, you and I don't see this, but, you know, imagine being on their side. You probably get heartfelt emails and threats and stuff all the time. I mean, I know peripheral people in the healthcare industry, nurses, doctors, et cetera, they rant about the insurance companies nonstop, right? But then imagine me, and they kick up their complaints to their hospital administrators, who I'm assuming, if they're not, you know, in collaboration, which they sometimes are, kicking some of that up to the insurance companies.

I mean, if anything, again, like I just explained with the doctors, this thing is so screwed up that it's so multifaceted. It's the insurance companies. It's the PBMs. It's the drug companies. It's the doctors. It's the insurance companies. It's the PBMs. It's the drug companies. It's the doctors. It's the hospitals. And, you know, everyone wants to believe their sweet old doctor is in their camp. And they probably are.

But remember, they work for somebody too. You know, a lot of these hospital companies, we covered a lot of this. Remember during COVID, a lot of them were going bankrupt? Well, guess what happened? They all got rolled up into private equity. And now all those people work for a single conglomerate. Apparently, Stoller's been tracking a bunch of the anesthesiologists, go back to that, have been part of these private equity roll-ups as well, which means, you know, and those are, you know, this is permanent capital has huge interest in just gouging,

get everything they possibly can out of these financial arrangements. And, you know, it shouldn't be a financial arrangement. Like other people in different countries where they have single payer health care, I'm not saying it's perfect. I know there are things they complain about and wish were different as well. But they look at our system and they're like, this is absolutely insane. Like if you're sick, you just go to the doctor and you get the care that you need. And so, yeah, when you put a profit motive at the center of this, it becomes grotesque. And what you get out of it is profit for a lot of, like, effectively leeches and people, patients who suffer. The same recorded message from that United CEO. His name is Andrew Witte. He also spoke to, you know,

he was trying to pump up the reputation of UnitedHealthcare, which we had showed you before. Of all the health insurers, they actually have the highest claims denial rate. They're being sued for using this algorithm, which according to the lawsuit has a 90% error rate. So again, they're innovating in ways to use technology to also deny claims that patients need to be filled so that they can get the care that they need. So in any case, here is the CEO trying to pump up their reputation and talk about what a great actor they are in the space. Let's take a listen to that. I'm sure everybody has been disturbed by the amount of negative and in many cases vitriolic media and commentary that has been produced over the last few days, particularly in the social media environment.

And I want to reassure you of a few things. Firstly, we are going to continue to make sure that we put patients, consumers and members first, as we always have done. The mission of this company is truly to make sure that we help the system improve by helping the experience for individuals get better and better. There was nobody who did more to try and advance that mission than Brian Thompson. And there are very few people in the history of the U.S. healthcare industry who had a bigger positive effect on American healthcare than Brian. And we are going to make sure that we not only acknowledge and honor that legacy of Brian, but we'll continue it. Our role is a critical role, and we make sure that care is safe, appropriate,

and is delivered when people need it. And we guard against the pressures that exist for unsafe care or for unnecessary care to be delivered in a way which makes the whole system too complex and ultimately unsustainable. So kind of an interesting way of phrasing things there. He says we guard against unnecessary care. And listen to your point, Sagar. I'm sure there are instances where, you know, doctors are incentivized to send you for a bunch of tests that you don't necessarily need or even a procedure that you don't. Oh, well, you can ask Senator Rick Scott about that one.

But, you know, that's their sort of industry cope is that they are these guardians against you getting, quote unquote, unnecessary care. But what he doesn't say is also swept up in this very generous mission is also a lot of actually necessary care that is also denied as much as they possibly can in order to boost their own profit margins. Well, care denial, and then also artificial price increase. Insulin is the best example.

We talk about it here, about what the exact same dose. But insulin is the easiest one to understand because a ton of people need it. And the price here is insane compared to the rest of the world, but it's the same for everything. Dialysis, congestive heart failure, something like 40% of the entire federal budget is like, not federal budget, Medicare spending, I think is literally just dialysis and congestive heart failure, which are obesity. Shocking, right? And it's like, oh, well, it's interesting how there are certain things where obesity prints hundreds of billions of dollars a year for a lot of these places.

And it's like, oh, it's very convenient to keep the price up on dialysis and on a few of these other drugs just to make sure that you're printing. It's just sick. Well, there's no incentive for people to be well. Yeah, exactly. Because healthy people are not particularly profitable, you know, if they don't have to seek care in these repeated treatments that they can price gouge you on. The other thing that somebody made this point online, which I thought was an interesting one.

They were like, you know, there's a reason why these healthcare CEOs are not household names, why they kind of try to keep a low profile, unlike a lot of other sort of famous celebrity CEOs, including like the heads of Wall Street banks, the Jamie Diamonds of the world, et cetera, et cetera. And it speaks to what you were saying, Sagar, that on some level, they do know that they are hated. They do know the villainous place that they occupy making millions of dollars a year, profiting off of people's like illness, pain, bankruptcy, and death. So maybe you're right. Maybe those executives aren't totally shocked that this would be the mass public reaction. I mean, I have to say even I was surprised at like how widespread the reaction was and how significant it was. And, you know, I knew the amount of pain in the health insurance system and the healthcare system in

general, but this outpouring was quite something to see. But, you know, maybe on some level they did understand what they are. Yeah, I think there is. I mean, look, you know, with this guy, too, it's clear, like, he is the Joker. I think he, at a certain point, you know, he's, what, he's scrawling things on bullets. Bullets. Monopoly money. Like, he knew.

I mean, maybe he was personally affected. He could also literally just be some mercenary believer. Again, I'm not justifying any of this stuff. But, like, it's clear that there was something happening within all of this. And if he does get caught, you know, his trial, I think I said it before, like, that is going to be the media event of the century in terms of, you know, his own defense and what that would look like. Like, you could see that becoming, like, an absolutely cultural sensation trial. Oh, my God. It would be insane.

It will be insane if they catch him. Completely. And you only need one juror to be like, I'm not predicting to have a hunger. I saw Ryan say that. He's like, if I were him, I would just turn myself in. Just, like, put myself on trial by jury. I mean, I don't know. At the same time, like, you even see people who are like parents of, you know,

parents of like rape victims will still get convicted whenever they act. I mean, jury instructions are very narrow. It's like, did you commit the crime or not? It's not really up to like whether it was justified. Well, I mean, jury nullification is a thing. So, I mean, you ultimately have the power in your hands to be like,

nope, I'm not going along with this. But if, I do think Ryan's point, if's point, if he's truly, which he seems, like committed to the cause, that would be the next way of pushing the narrative forward. Especially if he isn't just like, you know, a vigilante out to avenge others, but has his own personal story of pain, suffering, you know, debt, bankruptcy, whatever it is, then, yeah, you're right. It would be something. It would be crazy. It would be something. Let's get to milk.

Yes, indeed. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right.

It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian,

creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother

to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to Voice Over on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it.

I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant,

and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So there is a bird flu situation unfolding amidst our nation's dairy cow herds and a new development that is quite significant. So this story is important for a number of reasons. We can put this up on the screen, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture just ordered testing across the nation's milk supply. Effectively, what has happened here and part of why this is so important is we've known for a while now that bird flu had jumped to these dairy cow herds, started apparently in Texas. There was a push

among a lot of experts at that point to quarantine and make sure these cows were not being shipped across state lines. But the USDA and especially the current head of the USDA under Biden, Vilsack, he's very close, used to be a lobbyist for the dairy industry. So there was a priority put on continuing dairy industry profits at the time. And also there were a lot of fears of talking about a new pandemic, which is a real present risk with the possibility of this bird flu mutating enough so that it can in fact humans and travel through human to human contact. So nobody wanted to talk about another pandemic. Nobody wanted to disrupt the dairy industry profits.

So they delayed and they delayed and they delayed. Now there is a massive spread of this flu, especially throughout the West Coast. So let me just read you a little bit about this. So they say this flu virus has been raising alarms since it was detected in a Texas cow back in March. Since then, the virus has spread to over 710 dairy herds that we know of across 15 states. California has the highest number of infections. You also have a number of people, 58, who have been infected with bird flu. Now, the overwhelming majority of those, it's because they've come in

direct contact with these animals or with the milk. The new federal order is going to allow regulators to test the bulk milk pools before they're pasteurized so they can get a better sense of which herds are infected and move to quarantine and try to get this thing under control. The program's launching first in California, Colorado, Michigan, Mississippi, Oregon, and Pennsylvania. Those are the states that have apparently been most impacted. They say the risks are not entirely clear, but scientists do say it's possible consuming infected milk could lead to an infection. But pasteurized milk remains safe to drink. That's with regards to raw milk.

There was a raw milk batch that tested positive for bird flu, which was recalled. And the bird flu virus stays in much larger and more significant quantities in the raw milk. There are no known cases that have been transmitted that way, but they're concerned that it could be possible. So that was the reason for issuing that mass recall. We could put this next piece up on the screen. This is about the risk of a potential pandemic. This is Zeynep Tufekci writing in the New York Times before this order was issued, which she has said has come basically a year or too late.

They should have been doing this a lot earlier. It would be a lot easier, a lot less onerous to stop the spread at this point among our nation's dairy cows. In any case, she says that this avian flu, having mutated its way across species, is already raging out of control. It's infected roughly a third of the dairy herds in California alone. Farmworkers have so far avoided tragedy as the virus has not yet acquired the genetic tools to spread among humans. But seasonal flu will vastly increase the chances of that outcome as the colder weather

drives us all indoors to our poorly ventilated houses and workplaces will be undertaking an extraordinarily gamble that the nation is in no way prepared for. Some of the things that have been very concerning is there's an infected child in California who is not known to have come into contact with any sick animals at all. So there is a possibility that the virus is already spreading from human to human since this child was not in contact with any sick animal. And then the last piece here, Sagar, and I'll get your reaction, is we can put this up on the screen. So this is the raw milk brand that was recalled because bird flu was found in it. He might be picked for an FDA role. They've asked him to apply as a,

quote, raw milk advisor. He says that this recall is political know, I'm convinced that the risks here of bird flu spreading significantly and mutating into a form where it could be passed and transmitted human to human is a significant enough risk that, you know, taking these precautions, honestly, they should have been taken quite a while before so that they could have, you know, avoided this dangerous moment that we're in now. Yeah, I mean, so based upon my reading and my general perusal, there's a lot of skepticism, I would say, within the raw milk community and in terms of the like anti-Covidians who are very skeptical of this. They think that it's like planned or whatever. I don't know enough,

to be honest. And like, this is part of the issue with the fallout from COVID is like, anytime somebody's warning me about a pandemic, I'm like, well, we'll see. Let's see how it works out first. And, you know, especially like, okay, so it's no human-to-human transmission, right, so far. What is it? It's like four dairy cows, 10 from poultry. No, no, no, no, no.

There's like 710 herds. A third of the herds in California have been infected. Oh, I apologize. This is old. This is from August 9th. I thought it was from December 9th, which is the day that we're talking about. That's right, 726 herds in California have been infected. Oh, I apologize. This is old. This is from August 9th. I thought it was from December 9th, which is the day that we're talking about. That's right, 726 herds. Here it is, 720 herds, 15 different states. No one has yet been known to become ill

from drinking raw milk. The virus has now been detected in these herds. Yeah. But now, in terms of the quote-unquote jump, the human-to-human transmission, the possible case is here with the child. That's correct. That's right. Yeah, And so the worry is, you know, there's no proof or evidence that that child, it was a human-to-human transmission, but the child was not known to have come in contact with a sick animal. So that's where the concern raises. And there was also a pig that was infected, apparently, because pigs are similar to humans. It's like less of a jump, et cetera. So I think the real story here is actually the opposite. They should have taken a lot more precautions more quickly just in terms of

doing the testing that they're doing now. You know, there was a decision that was made a while back. These cows are shipped across state lines all the time to, you know, be milked or be bred or whatever, or be slaughtered. And there was a decision that was made quite a while ago after they knew that there was, you know, this was spreading, this bird flu was spreading in dairy cows, which again, it's a bird flu. So already it's made the leap into infecting cows and spreading wildly among cows.

There was a decision that was made to say, oh, you can still ship these cows across state lines. And that is what fueled this broader spread. And of course, the more spread you have, the more potential combinations. So because the USDA was too tied and too close to the dairy industry, they didn't take some of the things that could have just like nipped this in the bud early on. So in any case, it's something to watch. I agree with your general point that, like, God forbid, we have another actual pandemic because people are not going to believe anything because of the,

like, past, you know, mistakes that were made and also the way it just became this, you know, it became this mass cultural divide. So, right now, they're just basically hoping that the genetic recombination doesn't happen that allows it to significantly spread amongst humans. And it doesn't appear that that's happened yet, although the sick child is a reason for concern. But yeah, we are in no way prepared to deal with another pandemic, either from a cultural or from a medical perspective. Oh, absolutely not. Zero. There's zero trial. I mean, even like my default position is like, yeah, maybe, you know, we'll see. I mean, that's the thing. I hate to say it, but based upon COVID and all this other things, I want people to think out there, what's a mental exercise? How many people, how many people would have to be proven sick for you to put on a mask again? For me,

the number's high, very high. For me to be flying 16 hours on a plane with a mask again and getting tut-tutted or whatever, walking around outside. Like, we'll have to see. You know, the mask, whatever. I don't really. It's not about masks. It's about being told what to do. The part that would.

And about changing your life. The part that I would be very, very, very. I think I would just resist is the shutting down of the schools. Oh, shutting down schools. That was, to me, you know, obviously in retrospect, that was the wrong call. Right. And was, you know, really damaging to kids in terms of their learning outcomes. And especially with COVID, which we knew pretty quickly was not really infecting kids or it was infecting kids, but it wasn't making them, you know, sick to the point of death in almost all cases.

So, you know, obviously contours of a different disease, you have to evaluate what that looks like. But that's the one where I would be very, very reluctant. Fun fact, my SAT was actually canceled. I remember I was panicked because of H1N1. So is this different? This is H5N1? Yeah. H1N1 was also bird flu, if I recall.

Or no, that was swine flu. That's what it was, swine flu. Oh. I mean, this was like 2000 or whatever. Obama era. That was, yeah. Yeah, H5N1 avian flu. Okay.

So, yeah. I think H5N1 has hit Asia before. I'm not sure we've ever had a full-blown bird flu outbreak here. I think it's correct that this is the first time that we've seen it spread to cows. Is one of the things that I read. So, in any case, I just wanted to highlight it as something that is out there that is a question mark for the future and could not have really any impact on all of our lives and could have a dramatic impact on all of our lives. Well, let's hope, because then also think about all of the chaos, you know, first six

months of an administration. I mean, that's what the conspiracy theorists say. They're like, oh, pandemic, just right on time to destroy Trump's presidency. Well, this has been, but this has been spreading for a while. I'm not saying I agree with that. But like even if it's not a plandemic or whatever, like it still could be like a political catastrophe. Oh, absolutely. In terms of what and how people would – again, like my default on this is like prove it. You know, you need to prove that it's going to be beyond a shadow of a doubt. If you want me to change my life like 5% because as we learned last time, it's like, well, you start to give up a lot based upon a lot of shoddy information and those things start to get, it takes years to get pulled back and there's no recriminations and now Fauci may get a pardon or whatever. I'm like, look, hold on a second here,

like, you know, prove it. I don't necessarily disagree with what you said about Vilsack and the agricultural people too. I was going to say, I think the real conspiracy, that's the real conspiracy is the open one of like, we'd rather just keep the profits flowing and ignore this and do what the dairy producers want than to nip it in the bud. And if it does develop into something that can spread human to human and becomes a significant impact, even if it's relatively mild and it just means more people getting sick, when you have vulnerable people, you know, some percentage of them will become sick enough to have their health right. In fact, there's already a Canadian who is, you know, really quite ill in serious critical condition from this. So in any case, even if it's just at that level, the decisions to point back to will be the ones made under the Biden administration to just kind of like let her rip rather than nipping it in the bud early on before there was any real risk.

So to me, that's the out in the open conspiracy is around the profit, big ag and the profit margins and incentives there. Sure, definitely. Remember, you have something in common with the raw milk people. They hate big ag just as much as everybody else. Yeah, absolutely. They blame them for keeping them down for a long time. Let me just state my position.

I think milk in general is disgusting. I don't drink milk. I think milk is, like, I think it's gross. I think it tastes gross. I think thinking about where it comes from is gross. Like, I'm just not a milk person in general. So then the idea of we're going to make it even more, like, close to just, like, coming out of the cow's udder. No, but that's more, that's how you should drink it.

So, see, I would flip it around on you. I don't want any of it. I think it's gross to go to the grocery store and look at the additives for all this, like DHA, omega-3, blah, blah, blah, all this other stuff in milk. I'm like, is it milk? Like, what is that?

Like, how does that even get to where we are now? I mean, look, I get it. It's hypocritical. I'm sure I eat a lot of other things with a lot of different additives, but like milk in particular. Whereas if it comes straight out of a cow, I'd be way more likely to drink it. I've had it straight from the goat.

See, that's such a fallacy to think that just because it's like, quote, more natural, that it's better for you. I think so. If people aren't drinking raw milk, I think it's a reasonable risk to take. It's probably less risky than eating like raw oysters and stuff. If I had to guess, it's probably less risky than that. And to your point, there's no proof that even drinking H5N1 infected raw milk You're going to get sick.

gives you, yeah, will get you sick. Now, it's a risk. They're worried that it could. But there is no proof that it does at this point. There are no documented cases of that. So to your point,

but yeah, I am just not really a milk person. Let me put in a word for goat milk. I actually think goat milk is good. I've had some raw goat milk and I've like strayed out of the goat. It was good, man. I love dairy products. But the actual like just milk of any time?

I've had milk straight from the cow. I mean, it was not bad. You know, it's interesting too because it doesn't come out cold, which is a crazy thing to say. But most people are like, you know, used to drink cold milk, like, from a fridge. Right, it's, like, warm. But when you drink milk from an animal, it's warm.

Yeah. Actually. Anyway, I like goat milk. I like goat cheese. I actually prefer more, like, goat-based products than I do cow milk. But that's a whole other story. The other thing, the other, this is just random, but the other common American food product I find revolting is ketchup. Ketchup?

I hate ketchup. My kids ruin ketchup for me. I don't like ketchup. The amount that they wanted to eat when they were little and like dip their apples in it and stuff is like, oh, oh, I can't. I recommend leaving the United States and then trying ketchup. Because what you understand is that our ketchup is basically sugar water, like sugar and tomato. Where when you eat ketchup like in India or any of these other places.

I've had that Indian ketchup. It's good, it's spicy, and it has no sugar, which it turns out, it's like everything in our country has sugar, but that's a whole other story. In fact, though, people in Asia, though, they go to McDonald's or other places just to be able to eat Heinz sugary ketchup. American ketchup.

Because they think it tastes way better. I'm like, you have no idea. See, when I was in India, it was before I developed my ketchup revolution. And I definitely wanted the Heinz ketchup, not the Indian ketchup. Yeah, well, I mean, that's the point. It's your palate. It's what I'm accustomed to. Yeah, it's our hyper palate, you know, hyper palatable sugar and all this other crap. So anyway, live more like a, live more like an Asian and you'll be better off.

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