Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/14/24: Ukraine Admits War Is Unwinnable, Report Exposes Israel Torture Camps, Lindsey Graham calls for nuking Gaza, And Meet The Hawks Behind Biden's Israel Policy

Episode Date: May 14, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss a Ukraine General admitting the war is unwinnable, CNN report exposes horrifying Israeli torture camps, Lindsey Graham calls for nuking Gaza, and meet the hawks behind Biden's Israel policy.    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. are more than welcome to listen in. I knew nothing about brunch. What? She was a terrible girlfriend, but she put me on to brunch. To hear this and more, open your free iHeart app, search Good Moms, Bad Choices, and listen now. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into

the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. Like, that's what's really important and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio

app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1.

Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated 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. Let's move on to Ukraine. This was also a very important story. This is one which we've been tabling for a little while. There have been no immediate developments. The biggest news that really came out from just two days ago, let's put this up there on the screen, is you can view it in two ways. President Putin of Russia has replaced Sergei Shogun, who was the longtime defense minister, one of his closest allies in the Russian government in a major security shakeup.

Allegedly, Crystal, he had been, he's been nominated and given a promotion, but I guess they call this like promotion, a promotional firing in the best way possible. But what's fascinating is that he did not put a military man to replace him. He actually put a former deputy prime minister, quote, who specializes in economics to replace Shogun. Now, the reason why that's so important is that this shows basically that the Russian economy post-sanctions, the way they've been able to survive, is to fully ramp up their entire military industrial complex. It's the way that they've been able to pump so much money into their economy. They become one of the major employers. Obviously, they've drafted and or recruited hundreds and hundreds of thousands

of Russian citizens into the military. They've got artillery production, which is coming up. So economic management and a fusion of the war industrial complex tells us actually that Russia is in a more robust and actually self-sufficient place than it was prior to the war. Sergei's firing really comes on the heels of, obviously, his failed invasion of Ukraine and some of his embarrassing— it just revealed the oligarchic corruption that was inherent to the system. Hiring somebody like this, especially on the heels of the many Russian victories recently that have been happening, it tells us where things are going in that they're coming at this from a total position of strength. Their economy is doing better than the Eurozone, according to the IMF, you know, the International Monetary Fund.

You've got Putin, basically more popular than ever, more of a stronger hold on power. The oligarchs themselves all have not deserted him despite all of these sanctions. And now you're putting somebody, frankly, even more competent who's in charge, which if you think Russia's an adversary, it's not necessarily something that you want. So by all means, their military is much more powerful. Their new leaders are much more efficient. And they're showing us that their war footing is actually on more of a basis today than it was before. And that any attempt to degrade their capacity

has not happened despite the $200 billion or whatever that we've spent so far. Yeah, so reportedly there's a few things going on here. To start with, Shoigu is the guy who thought that they would just roll into Kyiv and knock off the Zelensky government and it'd be over like this and no problem, and obviously that didn't work out.

And you'll remember the early phases of this war went very badly for Russia. I mean, it was really a truly a catastrophic, disastrous showing from the Russian military. There's also all these, I'm sure, justified allegations of corruption in the sense that he's a corrupt dude who's feeding off the teat of the state. So there's that. And then I think the bigger picture here is that they describe this economist, I'm going to go with Belusov as his name. They say he's a fan of military Keynesianism. He believes in the supremacy of the government in the economy, government first, then business. And so it's an acknowledgement too of the contours

of where this war is at this point, that basically, like, you know, you're in this somewhat of a stalemate where Russia is starting to gain the upper hand. And one of the key questions here is, you know, how can your economy perform? How can you spin up as much defense production as possible. And as Sagar's about to talk about, there are a lot of signs that, you know, the Ukrainians, not only because there's been a lull in their support from the U.S., that lull has now been filled. Don't worry, guys, all the stuff is coming to you. But because they have so little of their own defense production capabilities, that, you know, over the long run, if Russia is focused on being able to spin up their own production and using that to bolster their economy and also keep people happy in terms of wages and jobs, etc.,

they're going to be in a much better position. No, and they are in a better position. So let's go to the next part. We've just got sign after sign after sign. There's just catastrophic news at every turn for the Ukrainians. Here we have major offensive in the Kharkiv regions. Quote, according to their own commander, the Russians simply walked in. This is the commander of the Ukrainian special reconnaissance unit who fought in the Kharkiv offensive. And yet, what is he talking about here?

He says, quote, now his men are facing the prospects of doing the exact same, walking in all over again, because Russian forces have made small but significant gains right along the border of the Kharkiv region. Their advances, quote, are only a few miles deep, but have swallowed up nearly 100 kilometers already of Russian territory. And that in the more heavily defended east of Ukraine, it has taken Russia months to achieve the same. So they're trying to consolidate as many of their gains as possible before major aid begins to flow from the West. But even if the aid does begin to flow, you're going to see that the Russians have really mastered of attritional warfare on the ground.

They know what they're doing now at this point. Let's put this up there. For example, Russia's bombardment of Ukraine is more lethal than ever. And what you see is that the Russians have now had two years to test NATO missile defense systems and ones that the Ukrainians have and have developed custom strike packages that are maximized penetration and so that they can hit all of the targets that they want. They say in the past six months, Ukraine has intercepted only 46% of Russian missiles compared with 73% in the preceding six months before. The interception rate has fallen to 30% now, and the interception rate for these long-range Iranian drones has fell 1% to 82% in the past six months.

So drones, you know, remain relatively easier for them to shoot down. They seem to have mastered that. But missiles, which are, you know, frankly, something that Russians, any highly advanced nation state, would be able to develop, has largely been able to use and employ them. And it's something that the Ukrainians themselves have been one of the biggest strategic problems for them that is happening on the ground. I would also show you this, a very recent interview with the Ukrainian, a top Ukrainian general, General Spitsky. This is from The Economist. I'll read you directly what he has to say.

He does not see a way for Ukraine to win the war on the battlefield alone, even if it were able to push Russian forces back to its borders. Quote, an increasingly distant prospect. It wouldn't end the war. Such wars can only end with treaties, he says. Right now, both sides are jockeying for the most favorable position ahead of potential talks. But according to him, meaningful negotiations can begin only in the second half of 2025 at the earliest. He says by then, Russia will be facing serious headwinds

because their military production has expanded, but it will reach a plateau by early 2026 due to shortages in materiel and engineers. Frankly, this is all cope and it's BS. Their artillery production, all of their military production has no signs that it's going to plateau anytime soon. If anything, they're making exponential gains year over year. And Crystal, if they're going to admit that even if they were to achieve their so-called military objective and push the Russians all the way back to their borders, that they still wouldn't win the war, then what are we doing here? Why are we spending

all of this money? Except increasing the risk of nuclear war and or a serious problem in Eastern Europe, which is the last thing that we all need right now. I mean, I can tell you what we're doing. It's just pushing the problem off to after the election and pushing it, kicking the can down the road because there's no real possibility of ending the war at this point. There's, you know, effort to secure some sort of negotiation. As we've discussed before, any time that American presidents actually, you know, draw down troops, withdraw from an area, they take hell from the news media. I mean, you could imagine if there was some actual concrete deal and Ukraine had to give up the Donbass or Crimea or whatever officially, Biden would be killed. I mean,

not literally, guys, but in the press, it would be wall-to-wall negative coverage, just like we saw with Afghanistan. So it's just like, we'll keep funding it. We'll just try to preserve the status quo, kick the can down the road. At the cost of, you know, courting disaster and at the cost of decimation of generations of Ukrainian men and, you know, future possible instability for years and years to come. So that's the phase we're in at this point. And no one even denies that.

I mean, there's not even a plan. You don't even hear this. It's not even talked about in the media anymore. We're entering that phase as well. You see, you know, obviously we've pulled some Wall Street Journal reports and whatever, but when's the last time you heard them talking about this on cable news is very much slid from the front page. It's just this sort of perpetual ongoing conflict that they're working hard to push to the back of Americans' memories and, you know, attention span and hope that

something undefined potentially one day changes. Absolutely. And last but not least, just to highlight why this remains dangerous, let's put this up there. We still see a lot of actions from Putin and from Russia, which we don't want in a stable world. Putin orders tactical nuclear weapon drills, quote, to deter the West, which was only a week or so ago. He said on Monday that it would practice their deployment of tactical nuclear weapons after what Moscow said were threats from France, Britain, and the United States. This is because the insanity of all of this is that as the Ukrainians do worse and worse on the battlefield, and as the West realizes that

aid alone will never be able to prop them up, we have two choices. We can force them to cut a deal and we can just wash our hands of an irrelevant conflict. Or what the British and the French want to do is, hey, maybe we send some troops there on the ground, special forces and others. Immediately, the Russians were like, yeah, if you do that, we will kill them. We will strike and kill soldiers

who are deployed onto Ukraine. And now what? You know, we're in Article 5 territory. We're in a whole other disaster. And that's why the tactical nuclear weapon drills are not all that far away. I mean, we talk about this too with Israel and Iran. Just because it didn't go hot that one time,

it's just all about tension and tension and tension. When you read history, it's very rare that a single event just happens in a vacuum. It's easily predictable if you go back and you look at all the signs, some of which can take years, I mean, you know, 10, 15 years of tension and buildup and all that before something eventually explodes. So recency bias is far too high.

This is still a very, very dangerous conflict that's happening. Yeah, that's absolutely the case. 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. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company

dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th.

Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there.

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

that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's turn to the latest out of Israel. CNN actually spoke to an Israeli whistleblower about the extensive program of torture of Palestinian detainees. This was quite a report, especially coming from CNN. Let's take a listen to a little bit of what they found. Away from the military facility near the beaches of Tel Aviv, one young

Israeli army reservist agreed to speak about scores of detainees at Sedi Taman. He says are kept in cages or pens, constantly shackled and blindfolded, many for weeks on end. We've hidden his identity and voice to shield him from prosecution. We were told they are not allowed to move and must sit upright. They're not allowed to talk or peek under their blindfolds. And what happened if they did do that? What kind of punishments would we be to that?

We were allowed to pick out problematic people and punish them, having them stand with their hands above their heads for an unlimited time. If they didn't keep their hands up, we could zip-tie them to the fence." The Israeli military says detainees are handcuffed based on their risk level and health status. But the account tallies with photographic evidence obtained by CNN of Palestinian detainees inside Sedi Temen. And with hand and wrist injuries shown to CNN by dozens of Palestinians released back into Gaza. I was zip-tied and blindfolded, says this former detainee,

and tortured in a way I never imagined. One source telling us the restraints were so tight they had to amputate a man's hand. And this is not an isolated report. We had heard previous reporting from doctors that it was relatively routine that people, because of the way that they were handcuffed, would have to have limbs or hands amputated. You know, the Israelis obviously claim like these people are all under suspicion of terrorism,

but we know the way that they have interpreted any quote-unquote military-age male as a potential Hamas terrorist. We've even also talked about how they were planning on setting up checkpoints around Rafah to not allow any military-age male, regardless of whether they had even a purported tie to Hamas or other terrorist groups to leave that area. And so this is absolutely horrifying. We remember Abu Ghraib. We remember the massive international backlash over that, the scandal of it, the way that the media was covered. Kudos to this whistleblower who's incredibly courageous to come forward to CNN. And thank you to CNN for doing this report. But it's very limited what you hear ultimately about the treatment of these Palestinian detainees. And we even, Sagar, recently had a report of a prominent doctor in Gaza who died from torture

in one of these facilities. So it's an outrageous and unacceptable situation. There's just all, these things are just like on the news every day. And I guess, you know, look, again, as somebody who's not like the lefty Keffiyeh wear and all that, all I ever ask for is honesty and for people to just be real about what's happening. And these are all selectively ignored. I mean, the next part, Crystal, which we're about to get to, the, you know, videos of these Israelis rampantly destroying aid inside or inside of Israel, headed into the Gaza Strip with the police just sitting there and standing by. I'm like, how in, you know, how in the world does this get not one ounce of media coverage here? And then also for all, okay, because I do the show with you and others,

I see so many people who are leftists, very sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. And every time they're always asked, they're like, hey, do you condemn Hama? And they're like, yeah. And it's like, well, how many people who are out there on social media and who are basically working as a fifth column in our country, why are they not asked, do you condemn this violence and rapid looting of all of this aid? It's the most basic and simple one, and that's why it's ignored completely. Where's Dana Bash's segment about this? Such a great point when you have the number of statements and the actions coming from the Israeli government. It's insane, and we're going to get to Lindsey Graham in a minute calling to nuke Gaza. Do you condemn that? We're very concerned about what a 19-year-old might

have chanted on a college campus. But what about when Lindsey Graham goes on network news and says, hey, maybe we should nuke Gaza? Let's go ahead and put up on the screen what Sagar was referring to. Now, this has been going on for months. But these are right-wing psychos in Israel who are blocking and destroying aid. These are new images. The Gaza Strip is in, obviously, dire humanitarian crisis. You can see here the amount of aid that was destined, supposed to go into the Gaza Strip that was completely destroyed here. Here are the trucks. Now, this is entirely, and this shows you how this is an Israeli government policy. These are all the trucks that are lined up at the Egypt border. And by the way, Egypt has also said since the Israelis seized the Rafah crossing in violation of their treaty agreement,

that they are not going to cooperate at the Rafah border. So that has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis. But it's easy to, obviously, these psychos are responsible for their own contribution to genocide. But it's also very clear that this is the Israeli government policy. Number one, because they're allowed to block the state and no one ever intervenes, no one arrests them, etc. The Washington Post reported on how the police and no one ever intervenes, no one arrests them, etc. The Washington Post reported on how the police and the Israeli military were there and they were hanging out together and sharing food and whatever and telling them you're good to go.

Meanwhile, protests against the Bibi government, much more aggressive response there. So we know that from, we know this is tacitly, if not actively supported by the Israeli government. And we also know the official policy, which from the beginning was announced, we're going to have a complete siege. They then opened up the tiniest trickle, but you have extraordinarily dire circumstances, which are being exacerbated by the day because you now have a complete cutoff effectively of aid, especially into the southern Gaza Strip. Northern Gaza Strip is already under famine conditions. And just to emphasize what a dire circumstance this is at this point, Ryan Grimm, our own Ryan Grimm, doing some fantastic reporting about, put this up on the

screen, American doctors, about 20 of whom are trapped in a hospital in Gaza, in the southern Gaza Strip, and they are facing death by dehydration as the entire population clings to life. So let me read you a little bit of this report. This is from Ryan Grimm and Hind Koudari, who is there in Gaza. She's a Palestinian journalist. Upward of 20 American doctors are trapped in Gaza as a result of Israel's post-invasion closure of the Rafah border crossing into Egypt. Israel has blocked fuel, food, and water from entering Rafah for over a week, leading to severe dehydration among the general population, as well as among the doctors on mission. Relatives of the doctors were told by the State Department rescue efforts were underway, including through coordination with the UN and the IDF. Yet on Monday, the Israeli military

fired on a UN vehicle that was traveling to that hospital in Khan Yunus near Rafah, killing a UN employee and injuring another. So just to underscore what's being said there, you've got 20 American doctors suffering from severe dehydration who are trapped at this hospital in Khan Yunis. The UN is supposed to be helping them in coordination with the State Department. They send a rescue mission vehicle and the Israelis, it appears, we know that a UN vehicle was targeted and a UN aid worker killed by the Israelis. It appears that was the vehicle that was headed to rescue these American doctors. Now, keep in mind, you can only imagine if these are the conditions that American doctors in Gaza

are suffering through. Imagine what ordinary Palestinians are suffering through, living in a tent for months on end, having no resources available to them whatsoever. It really underscores for you how dire the circumstances are for absolutely everyone involved. Ask the spokesperson there about this report and about what the State Department was going to do about these Americans who are trapped in the Gaza Strip. And, you know, with their lives on the line, let's take a listen to what they had to say. Citizens, doctors who are at the European Hospital in Kanunis facing dehydration, at least one of them is on an IV drip now. Our understanding is that relatives have been in touch with the State Department, U.S. administration. Is there anything you can say about efforts to get them out? And was the UN vehicle that was on the way to the European hospital part of those efforts? So let me start with the second part. I'm not sure of the operational and logistical specifics of what was involved in those specific efforts or not. But I can say is that we're aware of these

reports of U.S. citizens, doctors and medical professionals currently unable to leave Gaza. As I said before, we don't control this border crossing. And this is an incredibly complex situation that has very serious implications for the safety and security of U.S. citizens. But we're continuing to work around the clock with the government of Israel, with the government of Egypt, to work on this issue, not just to address the very serious humanitarian assistance concerns that I just talked about, but as you so pointed out. And I've and Matt have addressed before, RAFA is a conduit for the safe departure of foreign nationals, which is why we continue to want to see it get opened as swiftly as possible. And what does it say about conditions more generally in Rafen and in

Kanunis if American doctors who only arrived there recently are already suffering from dehydration and malnutrition? So look, we have not been unambiguous about the humanitarian situation in Gaza. It is a crisis. So if you ever were under the illusion that if you were traveling abroad and you got into some sort of trouble, your government would move heaven and earth in order to rescue you, you should disabuse yourself of that notion right now

because it depends very much on the politics of taking such an action. And so here you see this very bland, nonplussed language from the State Department. And by the way, Sager, Ryan posted an update that one of the doctors that is trapped there by Israel's siege is Adam Hamaway, an Army veteran who famously saved the life of Senator Tammy Duckworth after her helicopter crash in Iraq. So these are American doctors, one of whom, you know whom I think you can very much say is an American hero. And this is the sort of nonplussed reaction you get from the State Department. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, yeah, like you said, I mean, there used to be a time the whole the sun

never sets on an American citizen whenever they're traveling abroad. I'll admit, I used to think that too whenever I would travel. I'll be fine. And some of the sketchier places, not so sure about that one, especially now. Kudos to Ryan for doing the report on that. You also found this. I actually did some reading on this. It's very interesting. Let's put this, please, up on the screen. This is from Haaretz, and it's an analysis.

It says, why Israel's generals are now openly briefing against Netanyahu. They say Israel's military commanders should have confronted Netanyahu about the lack of strategy for the day after Hamas before entering Gaza in October. Now they may be right to blame him for squandering their tactical gains, but they should also shoulder some of the blame. And what's happening, Crystal, is that there is a glowing acknowledgement from the military establishment, both in Israel and actually here in the US, that the day after plan and the inability to even think about that before tactically going in was a total disaster. One of the reasons that I

know that the elite opinion is turning is, it's kind of hard to explain, but back in the mid-2000s, there was a big counterinsurgency revolution in the military about strategy in Iraq. It was led by David Petraeus famously and a bunch of other guys like John Nagel and a few other scholars who kind of took over U.S. military strategy in Iraq. And it worked for a period of time until there's debates around it. But it did certainly work, at least in what they were trying to do in a very narrow scope from 2007 to 2010. Well, these people whose fundamental insight is that you have to separate terrorist population from the civilian population, and at times even expend, at that time, U.S. lives to protect the civilian population to create a more stable environment and place, was the insight that should have been brought

by the Israelis into what was going on in Gaza. Well, Crystal, now they are all being quoted in the Washington Post being like, yeah, it was a mistake. They clearly haven't been making any of that effort. If you were going to do this from the beginning, of course, this is all very couched. But if you know enough to read between the lines, you can see that both in Israel and here, we are beginning to set the stage for the blaming of what will eventually follow. We're now in the Iraq 05 years where it's like, oh, things are starting to actually get bad. Turns out the mission wasn't accomplished. A little bit of an insurgency popping off in Gaza City in Khan Yunis.

Oh, we've got this little Rafah thing dangling. As soon as all of that is resolved and we get to see the real, not destruction, but the full probably either resuscitation or whatever the hell insurgency comes next inside of Gaza, we will be having this debate. So, you know, you can mark your calendar. It'll be a year from now, maybe six months from now. But the ground is being set by people in the know. And they're like, we got to throw these people under the bus. Yeah. Yeah. And obviously all of these people we're talking about here with the IDF, Top Brass, Bibi Netanyahu, the entire war cabinet, these people are all extremely pro-war. They have zero qualms about the incredible level of devastation and civilian massacres that have occurred, you know, ever since the first bombs were dropped post-October 7th in the Gaza Strip. And so the significance of this, though, is that you can see these divides starting to emerge. These generals in a coordinated fashion to brief to the media against Bibi Netanyahu,

that is a very stark domestic political situation that is worth taking note of. Now, in terms of like, their hands certainly aren't clean here in terms of a quote unquote day after plan either, because they're the ones who came up with the plan of we're not going to do targeted strikes. We're going to do this overall mass campaign of annihilation, even knowing that there was no quote unquote day after plan. Like they knew that from the beginning, they were expressing concern about it from the beginning. And yet they still push this plan, which was ultimately adopted of the total and complete annihilation. So you can't really say, oh, they, you know, it all Bibi's fault, et cetera, et cetera. No, everyone was in this together.

Everyone signed off on this plan, knowing that Bibi didn't want to actually say what his plans were for the Gaza Strip because he wanted to keep his hold on power. He didn't want to alienate either the extreme right-wing terrorist psychos that are in his government coalition or the, quote, unquote, moderates that are in his coalition, none of whom are actually moderate. And so he wanted to keep it vague. And at this point, I mean, they're really scrambling. The latest thing, you sent this, I think this morning, they're like trying to talk the Palestinian Authority into taking control of the Rafah crossing, but they don't want them to say it's the Palestinian Authority. They want them to do it like in disguise, which of course the PA is like, no, why would we do that? And Bibi had previously said he didn't want to work with them at all. So

it's a complete, obviously it's a cluster from a military perspective. They're having to go back into Gaza City, having to go back into Jabali, a refugee camp, because of course, because of course, because the idea they were ever going to completely decimate Hamas is preposterous. And now you have top administration officials. We play for you, Tony Blinken, but Jake Sullivan and let's see, there was another one who said the same thing in the past couple of days. Like, no, you're not going to defeat Hamas. So what are we doing here? We're just destroying civilian life in the Gaza Strip, which has been really quite apparent from the very beginning. So absolutely, you know,

extraordinary divisions that are starting to emerge, blame game starting to emerge, all amidst the backdrop of continuing deterioration and dire humanitarian circumstances as Israel has begun that invasion into Rafah. That's right.

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 re-examining 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. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution.

But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad.

It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast

Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case.

They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try.

She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never got any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, guys, I wanted to share with you a little

atrocity denial, fake news being perpetrated from Joe Scarborough over at MSNBC, among others, but he was one of the most high-profile spreaders of this completely false nonsense. Let's put this up on the screen. So he claims here, UN halves estimates of women and children killed in Gaza. Apparently, the Hamas figures repeatedly cited are false. Now, if you were anywhere online yesterday in proximity of an Israel, no matter what type of person, you very likely heard a similar claim made. Let me show you what this was based on. Let's put this up on the screen. So the UN changed the way that they were reporting fatalities. You can see here on May 6th, they have the overall number of Palestinians killed, 34,735. You can see on the

right, two days later on May 8th, very similar number. It goes up a little bit, 34,844 Palestinians killed. So total numbers, 34,000 and climbing. However, when you look below, in the May 6th one, they say more than 9,500 women and more than 14,500 children. In the May 8th one, they say these are the individuals who are identified, 4,959 women versus 7,797 children. So identified. So the difference here is, whereas previously there were assumptions made about how many were women, how many were children based on the overall numbers and some identifying information. The Ministry of Health in Gaza has since said that some roughly 10,000 of the individuals don't have complete identification information. So they're changing the way that they're reporting on these fatalities.

The number of fatalities did not go down. In fact, it went up. In fact, if you look at the bottom, you can see that in addition to these 34,000, you also have more than 10,000 who are reported missing or under the rubble, which means they are also likely dead. But this was used to claim that the UN has now decided the Hamas numbers were wrong and have the number of women and children killed not true at all. In fact, UN spokesperson yesterday in response to Joe Scarborough and many others spreading this fake news, decided to clarify just exactly what was going on here. Let's take a listen to that. Thanks, Farhan. There's some reporting that's come out that says, quote, the UN has halved the number of casualties. Halved, yes. It's a hard word to say. You know what I'm talking

about, though, right? Yes, I do know. Cut in half. Cut in half. Thank you. The casualties from Gaza, is that true? It's not quite the case, no. What I can tell you is this. The overall number of fatalities that's been tallied by the Ministry of Health in Gaza, which is our counterpart on dealing with the death tolls, that number remains unchanged, and it's at more than 35,000 people since October 7th. What's changed is the Ministry of Health in Gaza has updated the breakdown of fatalities for whom full details have been documented. So what they recently published was that they gave figures for 24,686 out of 34,622 overall fatalities recorded in Gaza.

And those 24,686 people are the ones for whom full details have been documented. In other words, people who have been fully identified. Out of those, then out of that smaller number, that subset of identified bodies, you have 7,797 children, 4,959 women, 1,924 elderly, and 10,006 men. And the Ministry of Health says that the documentation process of fully identifying details of the casualties is ongoing. Meanwhile, as you can see if you do the math, that there's about another 10,000 plus bodies who still have to be fully identified. And so then the details of those, which of those are children, which of those are women, that will be re-established once the full identification process is complete. We, our teams in Gaza, are unable to independently

verify these figures given the situation on the ground and the continuing combat and the sheer number of fatalities. And so we cite the Ministry of Health as the source for our figures. And do you have any reason to believe that the Ministry of Health numbers are incorrect based on the years that the UN has worked with the Ministry of Health of Gaza? Unfortunately, we have the sad experience of coordinating with the Ministry of Health on casualty figures every few years for large mass casualty incidents in Gaza. And in past times, their figures have proven to be generally accurate. So important there at the end, too, because this is used a lot of like,

oh, well, you're just going to trust Hamas. And he says, well, listen, first of all, we can't in this war zone with Israel, by the way, providing limited access, we can't independently verify. And second of all, based on historical record, actually the Ministry of Health has been quite accurate. And in fact, this change in the identification of the data is really an indication that they're being quite careful and trying to be very meticulous in the way that they record and identify, Palestinians who have been killed. So, um, you know, the thing that's so gross, Sagar, is first of all, everybody was telling Joe Scar, like, this is just wrong. This is not true. And the tweet is still up. There's no community note on it. You know, the UN comes out and says, no, no, that's a lie. That's not what happened. It's not true.

And yet you just know that this talking point is going to be used, even though it's thoroughly debunked. It's everywhere. It's going to be used over and over again, the same way that they're still, Mike Johnson's still out there talking about people, plural, getting stabbed in the eye with a Palestinian flag, even though that never happened. The way that you still have people who are out there talking about babies being baked in ovens, even though that never happened, and babies beheaded, even though that never happened. It gets debunked, but it doesn't matter because it still persists. The claims still persist, and it still gets weaponized

to dismiss, to dehumanize, to undercut the severity of what has been done in the Gaza Strip. And it's just such a gross episode and so characteristic of the dishonesty that has been endemic to, you know, the way that this conflict has been. I'll just put it this way. I don't trust you. I don't trust Hamas. I don't trust Israel. I don't need to trust any of those people because I got two pairs of eyes. So whenever I watch the battle of Mosul, we saw ISIS being like, they're killing civilians. They're massacring civilians. Independent sources, ISIS's own videos and the Iraqi videos all show the same thing. What? Iraqi security forces engaging with ISIS, ISIS uses them as human shields. And in the many cases, they went to extraordinary lengths, coalition forces, to separate the civilian population.

Okay, that's all it took. It's like the numbers that eventually came out just validated what we saw at the time. What do we see right now? Well, you got videos coming about bombing a refugee camp. You got the IDF coming out and saying, well, we're trying to hit one person as we killed 150. You got rubble that's collapsing all over the places. You got, and this is actually, again, all I need is you go into Gaza and to communists into Gaza city. We're like, we're going to destroy all the terrorists. And then you leave. And then there are a bunch of terrorists that are still

left there and including rocket attacks and insurgent attacks. And the idea of death toll, people haven't taken notice, is starting to take up there, even with these limited operations in Rafah, which tells us what? That you've got a maximum amount of defense and that all of your strategy and all that hasn't been working. And so whatever the death toll is, whatever it is, it's not about the number. It's about the proportion. And it's about what lengths that you have gone to. We're going to talk with Arjun about this Lindsey Graham quote about why we should nuke Gaza. And there's a lot of talk always about Dresden and all those other things. And even today, they're very controversial about why they are. But what everybody forgets

is that the extraordinary lengths that we're gone to, both for Japan and for Germany to avoid ever having to make that catastrophic choice about trying everybody's best from the highest echelons of the U.S. military to including strategic bombing and trying to knock out different, you know, areas and places, minimize civilian casualties. And only when the Nazis and the Japanese empire basically made it a choice of complete unconditional surrender and actually ramping up their defense, making surrender and victory as difficult as possible, did they resort to the mass civilian casualty strategies of Dresden, of Hiroshima, and of the firebombing campaign onto Tokyo. And those were pure competitive enemies. Israel basically just came out the gate without ever trying any of those steps. And what I would say is that because of the power imbalance of that enemy, they did not try and even do what the U.S. did in fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan,

which it's not even about morals. It's strategically and militarily backfired and is not working. You can see it right now. It's very clear. Yeah. I mean, it's just disgraceful. And yeah, to your point also, I mean, there's a reason why after World War II, the world community came together and said, we got to have some rules to protect civilians because this is, you know, what we just saw unfold is outrageous. It's unacceptable. And that's what we're seeing right now. It's clearly outrageous. It's clearly unacceptable. And so if you're seeing those things on their face, it's very difficult to defend. It's very difficult to deny the obvious horrors that are being done in our name with our dollars.

And so that's why they pick up these lies and they run with them because the truth doesn't work for them anymore. Nothing even approximating the truth works for them anymore. So I hope, but I don't really have any expectations of this. I hope this is a mark of shame against Joe Scarborough and other people who shamelessly spread this lie forever. This is a very prominent, we played Fareed Zakaria earlier, one of Biden's favorite anchors. This is Biden's other favorite anchor who is spreading this abject lie that you have thousands of people telling him this is a lie, this is not true. The UN itself comes out and says, this is a lie, this is not true. And you know, Sagar, the reality is, given the level of devastation, given what we've seen, given the humanitarian

situation, given the lack of sanitation, the starvation, the dehydration, American doctors who are on the brink of death right now because they don't have clean water to drink, given what we know about that, I don't think that there's any way that these numbers even accurately reflect the full death toll caused by this war. Because how could they? How could they possibly know all of the individuals who have perished as a result of direct Israeli strikes and of the Israeli siege policy. And we may never know. It may take years for us to have a more complete toll. But to try to lie and pretend like, oh, actually, you know, these have been halved based on the changing in the reporting of some data is so, it's just so disgusting.

It's just so utterly repulsive. All right. Well, we've got a good guest standing by, Arjun Singh of the Lever Time podcast. We're going to discuss further. Let's get to it. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results.

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She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So our partners at Lever News have re-upped, new and improved their podcast, which is called Lever Time.

We're really excited to be joined this morning by that podcast producer, Arjun Singh, who is the Lever's senior podcast producer and has a fantastic new episode that I really recommend you guys check out, going inside the Biden administration's internal discussions and policy vis-a-vis Israel. Arjun, welcome. Great to have you. Good to see you, man. Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. So before I get into this podcast, I just want to sing your praises. You know, I've told this to David. I've been talking to Sagar. You're doing such an excellent job in terms of the quality of these podcasts. I've enjoyed all of them. I'm a big fan. So let's go ahead. Why don't you break down for us this particular episode and some of the things you learned about who's most influential behind the scenes in terms of Israel's, quote unquote, bear hug of Netanyahu.

Yeah, absolutely. So in this episode, we began by looking a little bit at why Israel means so much to the United States and in particular to President Biden, who has long considered himself one of Israel's strongest allies in the U.S. government. Inside of the White House during what's happening right now, though, I spoke with Akbar Shahid Ahmed, the Huffington Post diplomacy reporter, and he illuminated me to the fact that there are really three people inside of this administration who have consolidated power and taken control of Israel policy, and that is Secretary of State Tony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

But most importantly, is someone who many people have never heard of. He's a gentleman named Brett McGurk. He's an advisor to President Biden. He's been a staffer for his entire career. He has gone between the Bush administration, the Obama administration, the Trump administration,

now to Biden. And he is the one who has really pushed Biden to take up things that people who have observed Biden were surprised at, such as a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia, which would involve a mutual defense pact, including sharing civilian nuclear technology. Brett McGurk's career, though, really started during the Iraq war when he was tasked with more or less the Bush administration's goal of rebuilding Iraq. And I would say that was really not a successful, beneficial or humane policy. Yet he has continued through government as a staffer.

And being a staffer, he rarely gives interviews. He fits kind of behind the scenes. And I think that is something that has alarmed State Department officials. People inside of the diplomatic community say that they've been felt locked out. And Akbar told me a lot of that has to do with Brett McGurk, who really seems to have an idea of ego and kind of his own desires that he's pushed Biden on these issues. Yeah, I know Brett McGurk. Actually, I don't know him personally. I've covered him for many years. Like you said, for Iraq, Syria, he was at the heart of that, famously resigned from the Trump administration, but has come back. He's kind of the preeminent, he's almost like a World War II-esque type figure, like the bipartisan

foreign policy connoisseur. But you're very correct to point that out. So one of the things that we wanted to get your reaction to was not only the kind of evolution of the pro-Israel policy inside of the Biden administration, but also of broader Washington, where there does seem to be a complete cosign, really, of Israeli military strategy, perhaps best exemplified by Senator Lindsey Graham. You can see both the emotion and the support here he has. And clearly, obviously, there's at least a taste of this inside the Biden administration as well. In a recent interview, he suggested that there should be nukes employed against Gaza by the Israelis. Let's take a listen to what he said.

Can I say this? Why is it okay for America to drop two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end their existential threat war? Why was it okay for us to do that? I thought it was okay. To Israel, do whatever you have to do to survive as a Jewish state. Senator, again, military officials say the technology has changed. But let me ask you about how all of this could impact. Yeah, these military officials that you're talking about are full of crap. So, what'd you make of that?

The shuffling of the papers emphasizes that point. But I mean that, I think, as you said, Sagar, that underscores how emotional this issue is. And also that someone like Lindsey Graham feels completely comfortable to say that as a sitting senator. I mean, that's a pretty ridiculous comparison. On the one hand, World War II was a completely different issue than Israel and Gaza. The machinations that had to go into World War II were largely surrounding, will one of the worst wars in human history continue?

And I'm not justifying what they did in World War II, but to use that as an example to justify a completely one-sided war. I mean, Israel is clearly on the dominant side of this war. Over 35,000 Palestinian civilians have died. The numbers are nowhere near in comparison, even taking into what happened on October 7th. So I think for Lindsey Graham to say that we should just go in and drop a nuclear bomb, it shows how comfortable the bipartisan consensus is that you can make such an extreme statement. If Lindsey Graham had said we should drop a nuclear bomb in Iraq or Afghanistan, I do wonder, would that have gotten the same level of acceptance? I mean, that clip that you just showed, I didn't

see that registered in New York Times, Washington Post. If Lindsey Graham had said, hey, we should just go and drop a giant nuke on North Korea, I imagine that's something that you would see the mainstream media absolutely jumping on top of. But it does seem like that kind of a comment is, hey, par for the course in Washington, even if it sounds absurd. I mean, he's not even the first member of Congress to suggest such a thing. Like, that's what's so crazy. We're a member of an official in Israel. They've also, some of them have suggested nuking Gaza, and it just sort of goes by as a blip. Meanwhile, I saw pictures this morning of college student protesters who were being charged with felonies under some, like, 1950s-era rule against masking that was put in place to combat the KKK.

They're being charged with felonies for protesting and, you know, rally chants that people don't like. And you've got a sitting senator who has actual power suggesting you nuke the Gaza Strip. And it's barely a blip. You barely hear about it. Yes. Someone who's considered a statesman by people within his own party. Great point. That's such a great point. You know, I wanted to ask you about another development in terms of the Biden administration and their policy, which is while you have, and Biden has always operated this way where he has a very small group of advisors and they're basically the only ones that count. And any newcomers, anyone from the outside is very difficult to break through. I mean, he's been in Washington for what, freaking 50 years

and very locked into his ways, not to mention it seems like he personally has a deep ideological commitment to the Israeli cause grounded on a visit he had with Golda Meir in the 70s or whatever. But it's not uniform across the Biden administration. There are some individuals who, especially in positions in the State Department, who really do dissent from this direction. And that's been manifested in a number of ways. You've had some of these anonymous letters of Biden staffers or Kamala Harris staffers who will say, we're very upset about this, but very anonymous. You've had a few different resignations. And this is the latest one, which I think is quite

extraordinary and quite powerful. We can put this up on the screen, the letter that was written. This was from, sorry, just pause this for a second. This is from U.S. Army Major Harrison Mann. And part of what he said is that he felt so alone going about business, his business. He was disturbed by the footage from Gaza, but he talks about how he had all of this sort of rationalizations of, well, if it wasn't me, someone else would be doing this job. And my work here doesn't really matter that much anyway. But he says, I now realize the obvious. If I was afraid to voice my concerns, you were too. I've always known what kind of people you are, and I should have had more faith in this team.

So I am deliberately not sending this to the entire agency. I'm writing to people I know who might value hearing the reasons I chose to walk away. He also talks about how, as someone who is Jewish and was raised Jewish, how this moral imperative of never again and the inadequacy of just following orders was really impressed upon him from a young age. And so because of those moral conscious reasons, he resigned from the Biden administration. You know, do you have a sense? First of all, just react to this letter and this resignation. And do you have a sense of how widespread this dissent from the Biden administration top line policy is among sort

of rank and file individuals such as this. Yeah, I think what's really remarkable about this letter and even thinking about Aaron Bushnell, who did the self-immolation in front of the Israeli embassy, these are not people who come from the traditional anti-war constituencies. These are not activists. These are people who signed up for the U.S. military, many of them in the wake of what we've seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, you know, they had convictions that they believed in what the military was doing. They believed in the United States government. And it says something to me that what they saw in Gaza, what they saw is a lack of ability to dissent, which inside of government, usually you have traditional dissent channels. They didn't feel that they were able to properly dissent to the point that they went back on what

they believed in and they decided to resign. And Aaron's case, you know, very sadly, he committed a self-immolation. And I've heard that from State Department officials, too. I spoke with one State Department official in January. He had worked on Iraq policy. He had worked on Ukraine policy. This is not someone who had an issue necessarily with the fact that the United States arms different nations. He said that in arms transfers, you start with the goal of how do you not do harm, but how do you do harm reduction?

He didn't necessarily debate the idea that you would be sending weapons. But what he saw happening with Israel was this rapid acceleration of getting weapons over there, the complete squashing of dissent. And he told me that he felt the debate was stifled and that similarly to Mann, he was not able to adequately speak out against these things. And these are the people who are going public. But when I spoke with that official in January, he said there were many, many more people who privately said, I completely agree with you. And when I spoke with Akbar, he said something similar to me. And so I do think that there is a very widespread problem within the State Department, especially for people who feel that in areas they've traditionally been able to provide dissent. In this policy, there are communications and there are directives coming down from the top. The State Department officials said it was coming from White House and top level State Department, Blinken, Sullivan, McGurk. And they were not able to push back on this.

They weren't even able to debate the righteousness of this policy, much less the speed of which things were happening. So I do think that what we're seeing is very remarkable within the United States government. For government officials, it takes a lot to resign, particularly in the case of the person we saw a couple weeks ago, 18 years at the State Department. Josh Paul, more than a decade at the State Department. These people built entire careers and they left. And that is just absolutely astounding to me in the way this administration is carrying this out. Arjun, what's your sense of whether there is a realization that the quote unquote bear hug strategy has utterly and completely

failed? And what's your sense of whether there is an actual policy shift going on right now with the Biden administration versus a rhetorical one? And of course, I'm referring to the fact that he said, listen, if they do a, quote unquote, major invasion of RAFA, we're gonna cut off some weapons shipments, but they've so far deemed what is the invasion that has already happened and RAFA doesn't cross that red line for whatever reason. So it really does leave it open to interpretation whether this is an actual shift or whether it's an attempt to sort of pacify a left and young cohort in the party that is outraged over the atrocities that they see being committed. Yeah, I think in terms of this being a successful policy, it's not been a successful policy. And it

is something that for Biden has politically failed for him. He has given a lot of his administration's reelection chances to, as you said, bear hugging Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu is quickly becoming isolated on the world stage. Akbar told me foreign allies are consistently saying to Tony Blinken, the Secretary of State, why are you doing this? Why are you allowing this to continue? You have control over the situation. And there was a moment that I saw where India's foreign minister actually said during a speech that he felt that the Palestinians had been denied sovereignty for a homeland. And India under Modi had been and has been one of the strongest allies of Netanyahu.

Modi and Netanyahu are very close with each other. And that's, again, another remarkable statement to show that even a very strong ally who believes in this idea of what Israel is trying to do, create this religious dominant state, they feel the need to have to speak out and tell their allies in their region that, look, we don't agree necessarily with all of these full objectives. As far as is this something that is really a change, I'm skeptical of that, to be honest, Crystal. This is a pause on a certain package of bombs. It feels a little bit mealy-aly mouth. And I haven't seen Biden give a really forceful statement. He's given very taciturn comments saying, I told them that if they went into Rafale, we would not provide these weapons. We've told them, we've told them,

there's leaks to Peter Baker at the New York Times that he had a tough conversation with Netanyahu. He privately told him, I'm considering changing my mind. That is not a strong change of heart to me. I think a real change of heart would be a reconsideration of the historic policy of arming Israel and also a reconsideration of whether the United States should be supporting Israel in no matter what kind of policy. That I have not seen a change of heart. And Josh Paul, who was one of the first people to resign from the State Department, he said something similar. He said it was a good sign, but it doesn't portend a long-term shift.

Yeah, I think that's all very well said. Arjun, great to talk to you. Congrats again. Guys, I can't recommend Lever Time enough. It really is an excellent product. You'll learn a lot from it. And you guys have tackled a lot of really important and interesting topics, including airlines, which Lever News had a big hand in forcing some changes through, including the oil price fixing, which we covered here as well with Matt Stoller. So definitely check out the podcast, guys. And great to meet you, Arjun.

Good to see you, man. Great to meet you guys. Thank you. Yeah, it's our pleasure. All right. Thank you so much for watching. CounterPoint is a great show for everybody tomorrow. And we will see you all later. You experienced dad guilt?

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in i'm nyla simone breaking down lyrics amplifying voices and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, you get your podcasts. and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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