Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 2/23/24: Ukraine War 2 Year Anniversary, Inside Scientology With Former Member, Gateway To Statesmanship Book

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

Saagar speaks with Tim Mak about the 2 year anniversary of the Ukraine war, James Li talks to a former Scientologist about the cult and how it operates today, and Saagar speaks with John Burtka about his new book Gateway To Statesmanship. 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/ Gateway to Statesmanship Book: https://www.amazon.com/Gateway-Statesmanship-Selections-Xenophon-Churchill/dp/1684515432 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. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? and subscribe today. his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up, they could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Over the years of making my true crime podcast

Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder 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. 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. Joining us now is Tim Mack, live from Kyiv.

He's the founder of The Counteroffensive, which is a news organization specifically dedicated and focusing for what's going on inside of Ukraine. It's good to see you, Tim. Great to see you. Absolutely. So, Tim, you're joining us for the two-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine of the Russian invasion. You've done some fantastic work at The Counter the two-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine of the Russian invasion. You've done some fantastic work at the counteroffensive.

There's a link down in the description. We encourage everybody to go and to support it. Just to tell us a little bit about the actual operations that were happening. To mark this occasion, you actually wrote a very interesting story about one of the most important battles that's actually happened so far in the war. And why don't you just tell us a little bit about it? Yeah, so the battle is a battle called the Battle of Antonov Airfield. And what happened there was in the first 72 hours of the full-scale invasion, Russia's most elite airborne units landed at this airfield, trying to secure it so that large cargo planes come in with armored vehicles and thousands of other Russian soldiers and surround and destroy and occupy Kyiv. And so

our story that's out on counteroffensive.news is all about eyewitness accounts from that battle and how close they came to losing it, that is the Ukrainians, as well as how close Kiev came to falling. I mean, had that battle not turned out the way it did, Zelensky might have been killed, as was a Russian primary objective in those early hours and days. And Kiev might have fallen as well. Now, it really was won just by a little bit of a thread. I mean, Ukrainian artillery, only four

pieces were available that day. They managed to fire on the airfields and prevent Russian forces from landing there and pushed Russian forces back. So Tim, one of the things that you've been focusing on from drawing from the battle then is then the next two years or so of the war. Why was that battle so foundational to kind of like the lore of the Ukrainian military, its ability to push back those Russian forces? And how does it square with some of the things that you are seeing on the ground today? Well, it set the stage and the conditions for the whole war after that, that Russia was not able to establish that quick lightning strike, 72-hour

occupation of Kiev. And they were ultimately driven out of the Kiev region and later out of the Kharkiv region in the east. So the battle lines that we see drawn now are very much the results of this first 72 hours in around the Kiev area that prevented Russian troops from flying into the capital and made the work of the Russian military much, much harder to the extent that years later they're still trying to work back west. I mean, had that battle not turned out in the way it did, we might be talking about a situation where Zelensky was ultimately killed. We might be talking about the war taking place in western Ukraine right now instead of eastern Ukraine. I mean, it set the stage for so much more to come.

And it was just one of those battles built out of epic desperation. There's a story in this report that we did about members, soldiers that were supporting Ukraine running out of ammunition and while making an ammo run, essentially hitting Russian soldiers with their car that they saw walking along the side of the road. That was how desperate it got, is that they would use any means they could whatsoever to fight back.

Tim, how do we relate this battle to some of the major discussions happening here in Washington right now around aid to Ukraine? I'm curious as somebody who's actually there, what you can tell us about some of the morale stories that have come forward, recruitment, debates inside the Ukrainian government about mobilization, the new commander. How does that fit with what we're seeing right now? Yeah, I mean, I have to say the morale in Kyiv and other parts in the country are really quite low. You know, from the American perspective, America has enjoyed a lot of support from Ukrainians and a lot of thankfulness from Ukrainians over the last two

years. But I think at this point, there is a concern in Kyiv that the tide of war might be turning against them. And this is one of those moments where a major American strategic victory might turn into a major American strategic defeat, simply because it feels, from the perspective of a lot of Ukrainians, that the United States hasn't kind of kept up their end of the deal and supported them when they need them the most. Ukrainians do believe that if they're properly supplied in the long run that they can hold their territory and push back against the Russians. I think the Battle of Antonov Airfield shows what can happen when even

not so well equipped Ukrainians are pushing back against people trying to take their territory and hurt their families. So Ukrainians very much still believe that if they're properly equipped and aided by their allies, they can push back and win this war. I mean, victory is a kind of ambiguous idea, but there's a lot of confidence that if they get the support that they need and they've been asking for from the West, they can certainly succeed. That's the risk. That's the moment we have here as we enter the third year of the full-scale invasion, is Ukrainians looking at the West who had promised them support until the very end, not holding up their end of the deal. Interesting. Yeah,

it's interesting you mentioned their whole their territory and victory. Just from your conversation with people in Ukraine, what does victory look like? You ask 100 people, you get 100 different answers. I think to some, it can mean the continuance of democracy and the ability for free people to choose who their political leaders are in Ukraine. For others, it could be a territorial issue, the reestablishment of Ukrainian holdings of territories based on a certain date. One senior Ukrainian official made a really interesting comment saying that he will know when victory has come when they're able to go to the airport in Kiev and fly to the Hague, where they will be able to see Putin and other top Russian officials get tried for war crimes.

And so two elements of that is the resumption of commercial airline services and accountability for crimes committed against Ukraine. So there are so many elements here, right? It can be territory, it can be economic, it can be legal. So you ask a lot of people, you get a lot of different answers. But I think that if you're looking holistically, all of those in some way will be part of what your average Ukrainian will believe victory includes. Well, I appreciate your perspective. It's rare to

actually get somebody who's on the ground there. I encourage everybody to go and read Tim, The Counteroffensive. There's a link down in the description. We encourage everyone to go subscribe. Appreciate you joining us, sir. Thank you. 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 Boy Sober on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily it's your not the father week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. Now I find out he's trying to give it to his irresponsible son instead,

but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. So what are they going to do to get those millions back? That's so unfair. Well, the author writes that her husband found out the truth from a DNA test they were gifted two years ago. Scandalous. But the kids kept their mom's secret two years ago. Scandalous.

But the kids kept their mom's secret that whole time. Oh my God. And the real kicker, the author wants to reveal this terrible secret, even if that means destroying her husband's family in the process. So do they get the millions of dollars back, or does she keep the family's terrible secret? Well, to hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Breaking Points Beyond the Headlines.

My name is James Lee. Over the years, you might have heard a little or a lot about the Church of Scientology. Its high-profile association with Hollywood A-listers like Tom Cruise and John Travolta have long lent the institution a veneer of glamour and legitimacy. However, the recent sexual assault conviction against Danny Masterson, an active member of the church, and a lawsuit filed by former member Leah Romini against the church have revealed cracks in their carefully curated image. Today we dive into this mysterious and controversial organization. 75 million years ago, the galaxy was ruled by a tyrant named

Zeno. One day, Zeno rounded up various wrongdoers and imprisoned them in volcanoes on Earth, which was then called Tigiak. This is the world according to church founder L. Ron Hubbard. Hydrogen bombs were dropped on them. Then their spirits, called thetans, were trapped in humans. And that is the cause of all our sufferings. Only through

Scientology can our Thetans be clear. Wow. I think we're going to need some expert help to unpack all of that. So joining us today on Breaking Points is a former Scientologist and host of Growing Up in Scientology on YouTube, Aaron Smith Levin. Welcome. Thanks for having me. Okay, so I just played for the audience a little clip of L. Ron Hubbard. He's talking about Xenu spirits and exercising thetans. Can you break down for us, in as simple a term as possible, what is the core teachings and practices of Scientology? I'll do my best. The core teachings and practices of Scientology? I'll do my best. The core teachings and practices do actually change

as someone goes up the levels in Scientology. There's levels that are non-confidential and at the higher end, there's levels that are confidential. So the thing about Xenu and the body thetans, most Scientologists don't actually know about that, believe it or not. So the most fair and charitable description that I can give you for what Scientologists believe, all Scientologists believe, even at the lowest level,

is they believe that everyone here on earth is an immortal spiritual being. Their word for that is Phaeton. People say it sounds like Satan with a lisp, but it's just Phaeton. Scientologists don't believe in a heaven or a hell. They just believe that Phaetons just continue to exist forever, that this body is just sort of a temporary vessel. When your body dies, you just pick up another body and live lifetime after lifetime after lifetime. Now, there's another aspect to this, which is that they believe Earth is actually a prison planet and that the Phaetons who are sort of sentenced to live lifetime after lifetime here on Earth are here because they've kind of been banished here as a punishment, that this is quite literally a prison.

And that normally a Thetan in native state that wasn't in this prison planet would have full and total recall of all their previous lives because, you know, a thing just exists forever. And, and that the reason we only remember one lifetime at a time is that every time we die, we as Thetans are sort of pre-programmed as, as a part of our prison sentence to report into these, these stations called the between lives implantplant Stations that wipe our memories

from lifetime to lifetime, and that we're programmed to then shoot back down to earth and pick up a new body and just live a new lifetime with complete amnesia of not only our previous lives, but our native God-like spiritual potential. Well, does that do a little bit of a service for now? It sounds a lot like a blend between science fiction and religion, a little bit of that coming together. That's right. Now you might go, okay, with that fundamental belief system,

what is Scientology actually doing with that belief system? Well, Scientology has a one-on-one form of counseling therapy. They call it auditing. And Scientologists believe that with enough auditing, you can regain enough of your spiritual awareness and powers to skip, to bypass these between lives implant stations and to regain your ability to have a total recall of your previous lives. And that the goal of Scientology is to get enough people into Scientology. And that one Scientologist succeeding getting enough, at least half of the population of earth up through these levels and unplugging them

from the matrix, basically, that we will, instead of reincarnating to earth, we'll reincarnate to the next planet and get the cycle started on the next planet. They call it target two. Now, what's crazy is that like 90% of Scientologists in the world don't know anything about the Xenu story. They've never heard the word body fade tin. They don't know anything about that part of it. They only know about your own reactive mind and trying to get rid of your own reactive mind. So I don't know that that's the that's the three minute elevator pitch for Scientology. I know this this can also be a long answer, too. But can you give the viewers a little bit of the skinny on your journey in and out of Scientology when you joined, when it is and why that you've

left and a little bit about the in between and also the post Scientology experience? Sure. So I was four years old when my mom got involved in Scientology. She was introduced by a friend of hers, which is how most people get into Scientology. Some friend introduces them. So I was four. Some of my earliest memories in life is just being in the Scientology organization in downtown Philadelphia with, you know, a whole bunch of other Scientology kids in the nursery there. I lived a relatively, my mom joined staff. So instead of being what a scientist, what Scientology would call a public Scientologist, that's someone who, who pays to do Scientology courses or who pays to receive Scientology auditing, which by the way, auditing costs

between 200 to $500 per hour. It's, it's not, it's not cheap. So she joined staff. That means you work for Scientology. It's like your day job. And the Scientology courses and auditing that you get, you don't have to pay for them. So that's why a lot of people joined staff. So as a kid, I lived a relatively normal life until about 12 years old. I went to public school and everything like that. When I was 12, my mom took me and my brother, my stepbrother, my stepsister, two of her friends' kids, pulled us all out of school. And we all started working full-time for Scientology in Philadelphia. And then we moved down to Clearwater, Florida to do Scientology training down there. So from the age of 12 to 26, I worked full time for Scientology.

I did not go to high school. I did not finish middle school. I did not have a diploma or an equivalency degree or anything like that. I ended up joining what Scientology calls the C organization. That's like their most dedicated core of staff members. If you're in the C org, it's not just your day job. It's your entire existence. It's 24-7, 365. It's your entire existence. It's three, 24, seven, three 65.

It's all you do. Uh, you don't own property. You don't, you know, you don't own a home. You know, you can only have a relationship with other Sea Org members. You cannot have children in the Sea Org such, such as their dedication to the cause. Um, so, uh, after a certain amount of years, uh, I met my wife and got married in the Sea organization. After a certain number of years, we were just a little fed up with kind of how unfulfilling

and abusive the experience of working in the Sea Org was. So we got pregnant knowing well that we would have to leave the Sea Organization. So we left the Sea Org because we were having a baby, but we were still public Scientologists for a while. That started to change in 2009 when the Tampa Bay Times, back then it was the St. Pete Times, published a series of interviews with very high ranking former Sea Org executives, people who had been famous personalities in Scientology. These people had not only left the Sea Organization, but had left Scientology altogether

and were speaking out for the first time. So these former executives who were starting to speak out were telling the most horrific stories of abuse, of imprisonment, of quite literal torture, not quite Guantanamo level, but close. And for me, that was like the first major crack in the dam of going, uh-oh, a lot of things I have believed were true. My entire life are clearly not true. I don't know exactly where everything stands, but something's not right for about the next three or four years. I was on a pretty gradual path of discovery of what exactly, uh, the lies were. And, um, and it quickly became clear to me that it was pretty much all lies and um part of the the tail end of that path for me had to do with i mentioned earlier that

there's non-confidential levels and there's confidential levels well there's levels even above the confidential levels they're so secret secret. They're so confidential. They've never been released yet. They're still in the vault. It's like the magic, right? And it's sort of the carrot that gets dangled in front of the faces of Scientologists is, guys, we need to work a little bit harder. We need to donate a little bit more money. Because L. Ron Hubbard said, these unreleased levels can't be released until Scientology

reaches certain expansion benchmarks. So we just need to try a little bit harder. Well, once I found out from people who I knew would actually know that there ain't no such thing as these upper confidential levels, L. Ron Hubbard did not leave behind anything. They looked everywhere. They looked through all of his papers and his files and his records and his cabinets and there ain't nothing i was like someone should have told me that 25 years ago i'm ready to get on with my life before i do want to get into the the controversy a little bit that you're alluding to this control type of thing but i did want to ask you what do things

people just in the real world what do we get wrong about Scientology? Because I'm certain there has to be some positive aspects to Scientology or else no one would join. Let me answer two different ways. I think one thing that people would get wrong about Scientology is just not truly understanding that most Scientologists have never heard that most Scientologists do not know anything about the Zenu story or the body of Satan story. Scientologists know everything that I explained early on about the Between Lives Implant Stations and the prison planets and the Galactic Federation and all sorts of stuff. They've just never heard the Xenu story. So if you've seen South Park, you know more about Scientology than most Scientologists do.

And to answer the question the other way, at the lowest introductory levels, Scientology is actually very practical, sort of helpful in like a self-helpy, personal coach, guru, motivation, Tony Robbins-ish, Grant Cardone, who just happens to be a Scientologist. Um, you know, uh, we, we can, you can, you can fix all your problems. Just hustle a little harder, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Um, people, people who ended up joining Scientology, they don't think they're joining a cult. And at the very lowest levels, Scientology doesn't feel like a cult. It feels self-empowering. Uh, It's giving you a positive message. You can overcome any obstacle.

You can solve any problem. You are all powerful natively. All you need is the right tools. And for $9.99, we can give you those tools. But honestly, I wonder, I mean, the question was, what do most people get wrong about Scientology? I wonder how many people actually understand that. What on the flip side of that, what is so there's all these good things about Scientology. It's practical. It gives you these kind of self-help tools.

What's the worst part? Why do people like why you said you were driven to leave because of certain things that you saw? Is it the is it the secrecy? Is it the control they exert over people's lives seemingly? Is it the leadership? Is it David Miscavige, corruption? What's your opinion on where does Scientology go wrong? In my personal opinion, the easiest answer to the question is where it just overtly goes out of its way to destroy families, the family unit. Because Scientology has this belief, like we're all just basically 60 some trillion year old beings. They have this belief, like if you have a child, that's not really your child. It's just your body gave birth to that body. But you're a thetan and that body is animated by a thetan and thetans don't give birth to thetans. Thetans are just all natively godlike entities. So this belief completely

minimizes the value of familial relationships. And Scientology will demand that people sever all ties with anyone in their life who is negative about Scientology. And it doesn't matter if that's your mom, dad, you know, spouse, brother, sister, son, or daughter. To me, that is where Scientology gets really, really bad. Now there's financial aspects as well. So because Scientology holds that, you know, this entire existence is really just the matrix anyway. And, you know, higher education is pointless. Retirement accounts are pointless. Savings accounts are pointless. The only thing that could possibly have any value in this lifetime is helping Scientology expand and get more people into Scientology and up Scientology's bridge to

total freedom. Those, that whole construct leads to just financial decimation of Scientology's bridge to total freedom. That whole construct leads to just financial decimation of Scientologists. Now, when I mentioned before that the experience working in the sea just got to the point where it was not fulfilling and it was abusive, L. Ron Hubbard created this management system where he says there is no natural, explainable reason why stats would ever go down. In order for stats to go down, somebody has to actively be forcing them down and sabotaging the organization to make them go down. Well, unfortunately for Scientology staff members, Scientology is shrinking, not growing. So there's this constant witch hunt happening internally in the organization to find out who is it that's sabotaging the organization. Now, the problem is you can never point the finger

up. You can only ever point the finger down. So it's the lower level staff members that are constantly just being harassed and interrogated and punished for the fact that more new people aren't coming into Scientology. When the reality is the people at the lower levels of the organization have absolutely no control over the reason why Scientology is shrinking. They have absolutely no control over it. And so the experience of working for Scientology, everyone is just always pointing fingers at each other and witch hunts all the time. And it's just exhausting. Yeah. I want to pivot to talking a little bit about the work that I think this ties in, the work that you do today. So you live stream almost every day. I think every day or almost every day you have conversations with other people about Scientology.

So I'm wondering, what is your goal? Is it to get people out of Scientology? Is it bringing attention? Is it pressuring the government or the IRS to remove its tax exempt status? What's your motivation? It's definitely all of those things. Sometimes on my channel, I will say fundamentally, I'm simply motivated by pure revenge. And if I can do as much good in the process, but success is the best revenge. And so I define success as making sure that former Scientologists who have their own stories that highlight how abusive and destructive Scientology's policies and practices are, that all of those voices can get as big of no budget, whereas Scientology spends hundreds of millions of dollars on the most expensive professional AV operation possible. And yet the voices of former Scientologists who are telling the actual truth about Scientology are being heard louder with no budget than everything Scientology can muster. You mentioned earlier that Scientology is on the decline.

So what I'm wondering is, what do you think is the outlook for Scientology over the next few years to a decade? Is this something that we need to actively pay attention to, or is it going to die out on its own, just let things play out? Where do you see things going? Yeah, interestingly enough, a little bit of the both of what you just said there. It is dying out on its own. I do think it still deserves to have attention paid to it, and it deserves to have the speed of its demise accelerated.

I certainly enjoy contributing to the acceleration of that demise. Now, practically speaking, I don't think Scientology ever ceases to exist unless you succeed in getting its tax exemption taken away. It already has its tax exemption taken away once before. The IRS determined that L. Ron Hubbard was personally enriching himself from Scientology, and it stripped Scientology of its tax exemption. In 1993, it won that tax exemption back after a years-long process of harassing thousands of IRS agents personally. Scientology is probably the only organization in history that succeeded in bringing the IRS to its knees. It is my hope that sort of what we're doing here with SPTV

and a whole bunch of other activists who are doing similar things, who've never had anything to do with Scientology, that we will eventually succeed in getting enough grassroots support for revoking Scientology's tax-exempt status, that members of Congress will take it up as a popular cause, and that eventually, I hope within the next 10 years, we will succeed in getting Scientology's tax-exempt status revoked. Even if Scientology keeps its tax-exempt status, its membership will continue to decline. But the problem with having this tax exemption is because it has a special type of religious tax exemption

that protects it in the courts. Like if you sue Scientology and you try to get the judge to look at a particular policy letter in Scientology, the judge will go, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's religious scripture. I'm not even allowed to pass, to give an opinion on whether that's abusive or not. And also because they're tax exempt, their operating expenses are as close to zero as you can get. They do not pay property tax and they do not have a payroll. All of their staff members are considered volunteers. They don't have to pay any of them. And even the ones they do have

make like 50 bucks a week or less. So Scientology probably makes more interest on its cash reserves than it costs to keep all the organizations in the world open. Electric and water is the only expenses Scientology has. So they will continue to exist as an entity as long as they have tax exemption. And that's why I think getting that tax exemption revoked is a worthy cause, even if their membership will continue to dwindle on its own. There's less than 30,000 members in the entire world. I mean, it's probably closer to 20,000 at this point. All right. I think we have, there's actually probably a lot more than we have time for today. So Aaron, I want to give you an opportunity to tell people where they can find you, find more of what you do, what you're talking about, whether it's on YouTube or other platforms.

Growing up in Scientology on YouTube is where I focus all of my efforts. I've got socials and stuff, but growing up in Scientology on YouTube is my central thing. Everyone can just find me there. All right. Awesome. We'll link down below and everybody go follow Aaron. Really appreciate your time today. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. If you'd like to learn more about the growing grassroots protest movement against Scientology, I recently joined some of the protesters on Hollywood Boulevard to do some on-the-ground and behind-the-scenes reporting. The video is live over on my YouTube channel, 5149 with James Lee. Hit on over, check that out. Give me a follow. The link will be in the description below. As always, thank you so much for watching Breaking Points, and I appreciate your time today. 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 VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily it's your not the Father Week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, My father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. Now I find out he's trying to give it to his irresponsible son instead, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up.

So what are they going to do to get those millions back? That's so unfair. Well, the author writes that her husband found out the truth from a DNA test they were gifted two years ago. Scandalous. But the kids kept their mom's secret that whole time. Oh my God. And the real kicker, the author wants to reveal this terrible secret, even if that means destroying her husband's family in the process. So do they get the millions of dollars back or does she keep the family's terrible secret? Well, to hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Joining me as my good friend is Johnny Burka. He's the president and CEO of ISI, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, but for our purposes, he's the author of a brand new book that we have here in front of us, Gateway to Statesmanship. It's the selections from Xenophon to Churchill. It's been edited with an intro by you, Johnny. So it's great to see you, my friend. Thank you for joining me.

Thanks for having me, Sagar. All right. So why did you decide to assemble this book? What is the purpose behind a book about statesmen? As if there hasn't been a million already. Why? It's pretty simple, but you say there's been a million, but in America, we have this genre of self-help books for entrepreneurs. There's a million of them, Peter Thiel's Zero to One, Jim Collins' Good to Great, but nothing really comparable exists for statesmen. We have a lot of books about historic statesmen, but this book is really a collection of practical self-help leadership advice that was presented to political leaders going all the way back to antiquity in East and West, really connecting the world of theory to the world of action so that

they can better govern their country. So who are some of the people that are included in here? You have Xenophon to Churchill. So there's a lot of people in between that. So give us a taste of some of the people we're pulling from. Absolutely. So in the ancient world, I have Han Fei, who's an ancient Chinese legalist. In India, I have Catilia, who wrote a book, The Arthashastra, which I've included selections from. And then in the Middle Ages, I have Gopitis' letters to Justinian the Great. I have some Thomas Aquinas in there. And of course, as we get to the Renaissance, we have Machiavelli, Thomas More, and Erasmus. And then I brought the tradition up to date and included some Churchill and De Gaulle and Theodore Roosevelt. I'm a big De Gaulle fan.

It may be controversial, but I think he was a very, very interesting leader. So if we're going to look through the book and we're going to consider this, were great statesmen made by the moment? Did they rely on a lot of previous, Churchill, for example, is very well read. He probably could be, quote, by many accounts, I could quote Roman poetry off the top of his head. I don't think de Gaulle was as educated as him per se. Roosevelt, certainly, you know, he was of a patrician class, but he was more of an instinctual type of leader. So what is it? Do you have to read self-help advice? Like, do you need a book like this?

Do some do, some don't? And why do we not seem to have statesmen, as many statesmen today as we did back in the past? Yeah, so really a great statesman arises when two things intersect. Virtue on one hand, that's, you know, the moral, the intellectual qualities. But on the other hand, fortune has to align with their particular moment. If George Washington was born 10 years earlier or 10 years later, we might not know his name. America might not exist as it does today. But take someone like Charles de Gaulle, who you mentioned that you're a fan of. So de Gaulle actually wrote this book called The Edge of the Sword, and I've included the selection in there. And he wrote this book

when he was in his early 30s. He hadn't accomplished anything in life. He sat during World War I as a prisoner of war and mostly drank coffee, smoked cigarettes, and wrote old books. And so he sat down and he actually articulated the qualities that he wanted to see in an ideal political leader. And he had this profound sense

that he would one day lead and rule France. And then the political moment aligned. And he, of course, led the resistance to the Nazi invasion, founded the Fifth French Republic, and served as president for 10 years. So there's a delicate interplay between harnessing fortune for your political rise. Why do you think we don't have that many good statesmen? You had an interesting question, I remember, on Twitter. You're like, who is the last living statesman? And I said, I can't come up with a single answer. I think Kissinger was the last great one that we had. You can hate him, you can love him, but he had a coherent ideology. He was very well rooted. He had accomplished a lot in his life,

again, whether it was good and or bad. Everybody else just seemed to kind of be bumbling along. I mean, even some of the bigger mistakes that have been made, Iraq and all, that was not part of a grand ideological project, at least per se in a Kissingerian sense. So what is it, why is in the last 30 years we have no great statesmen? Sure. I think there's really two reasons. One, at the beginning of the progressive era, this is going back a hundred years ago, there was a shift away from statesmanship, classically understood, to management, expertise, bureaucracy. So the art of the statesman has been lost. And then secondly, I think it really comes to our educational system. If you go back to the education of Cyrus, describing Xenophon's education,

he was raised in almost a Spartan culture. I'm not saying we should bring back that level of rigor, but basically they taught him the principle of restraint, self-control, mastery of self from a very young age. And that played a big role in his shaping his leadership abilities. Today, we really don't read any old books, any classic books. We don't teach students to think or to write the way that we do. And I think we saw this recently with the controversy at Harvard and so many other elite universities. Oh, that's a good point. That's a good point.

So you write, leadership requires painting a beautiful portrait of the world that you'd like to inhabit and installing confidence that you are the best person to make it a reality in an age where truth and goodness have lost their potency, beauty, and wiser minds have noted could save the world. So how do you bring that back in an era where, look, institutional education is not coming back in any sense? Is it just to read books like this at scale? How do you recreate it? Yeah, well, I think that quote on beauty is really important. It's something that gets lost. I think a lot of conservatives in particular tend to over-intellectualize politics. They think if

you get the ideas right, if you get the policies right, then you'll be a great leader, right? And that's not really how it works. Great leaders throughout history have been builders of beautiful things. I go back to Justinian the Great. He built the Hagia Sophia. Yes, that's right. This is a structure that is around 1500 years later. And he coupled that beauty because he knew he knew that most people, they're not persuaded by logic. They want that big, compelling story. That's why a Lincoln or an FDR were such successful presidents, even a Reagan. And so I think it comes back to that storytelling and to painting that beautiful vision that can really capture the imagination of the next generation. All right.

Well, it's a treat to actually have something like this on. So it's Gateway to Statesmanship, selections from Xena Fonda Churchill. We'll have a link down in the description. Everybody going by it. It's good to see you, my friend. Thanks again. Thanks for watching. DNA test proves he is not the father.

Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily, it's your not the father week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app,

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