Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/22/24: Shock Poll Huge Gen Z Boomer Divide In US, Scarlett Johansson Slams Altman Over Stolen AI Voice, Julian Assange Wins Ability To Appeal Extradition

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

Ryan and Emily discuss polls show huge generational divide in the US, Scarlett Johansson slams Sam Altman for stolen AI voice use, and Julian Assange wins right to appeal extradition.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process.

Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to voiceover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Interesting divisions going on here in the United States. Tell us, this was one that you picked up on. Tell us what's going on here in the United States. Tell us, this was one that you picked up on. Tell us what's going on here. So Axios picked up on a polling analysis from a guy on Substack, which I thought was really interesting because the polls that he was collating basically were everywhere yesterday. It was like, it was almost like the Beltway didn't realize this was from Bruce Mellman on his Substack, brucemellman.subsect.com, then Axios picked up on it. It's almost like people here in the Beltway, Ryan, are out of touch. He had picked up on this NBC News poll, and then Axios ran this NBC News graph from a deck that Bruce Mellman reported on that's found Gen Z is less than half as likely as

the baby boomers to say patriotism, belief in God, and having children are, quote, very important to them. Now, I think where this is even more interesting is the massive decline. So it's not just half as likely, it's that you had baby boomers somewhere around 76% when it came to the questions of whether patriotism was, quote, very important, 76%. People between the ages of 18 and 26, 32%. So, yes, less than half is likely, but that's coming down from a very high level, 76%. Belief in God and religion, 65% to 26%. Huge difference there. Having children, quote, being very important, 52% to 23%. And another

really big one here, America being the best place to live, 66% for the baby boomers, 33% for Gen Z. That, again, was from an NBC News poll that was done by Public Opinion Strategies that Bruce Millman picked up on and then Axios reported on, and people were just sending like wildfire throughout like kind of DC media circles yesterday. I'm not surprised at all by these numbers. I don't know, Brian, are you surprised at all by these numbers? Did we cover this one? Didn't you flag this for us when it first came out? We've covered similar ones because it does repeatedly show up in polls. This is probably the starkest divide that I've seen generationally.

It's not surprising. But when you're asking sort of big questions, patriotism and America, the best place to live, like very broad themes, to see it show up, I think, I mean, obviously it's interesting, but it's not surprising at all. And this reminds me of what we've talked about on college campuses. And my perspective from the right on the campus protests

is washing a lot of this away as anti-Semitism, lumping it all together with bigotry. You know, when we had that great conversation with Safiya Salfi, one of the organizers at Columbia, it's so abundantly clear that this is not anti-Semitism from her and some of the other organizers. Not to say there isn't actual bigotry and anti-Semitism, we had conversations about that too, it was disgusting, but from many of these students, they have an entirely different worldview. They're approaching consensus.

I mean, this is a flip-flop. If baby boomers have a consensus on whether America is the best place to live or that patriotism is very important, which they do, basically, is they're at 76% on that. Gen Z not being at 76% on that. Gen Z not being at 76% on that is approaching a position of consensus on a worldview. So no kidding, you know, there was polling that found most of college students weren't protesting, they weren't in

the encampments, and that, you know, maybe the opinions of some of the hardcore protesters weren't representative of their peers broadly. That may be the case. But what we're seeing here is pretty clear as to why their other students weren't, you know, picking them up and throwing them out of their tents. And it's because there is this deep, widespread sentiment that America is not the best place to live, that patriotism is not very important. And there was a related, there was an interesting annual survey that comes out that says,

that asks people how democratic their country is. And then they'll say, these are the 10 countries where, you know, people feel like the most democratic. China was in the top ten, like Chinese people. Because when people think of democracy, they think of the ability, basically, of people. Or I would say the ability of the government to respond to the public's majoritarian wishes. What was fascinating is that in the top ten, there was no correlation between kind of the trappings of procedural democracy, like midterm elections, parliament, parliamentary elections, presidential elections, and whether or not somebody felt like they were in a democratic country like France was in the bottom top 10.

They have elections. The U.S. was not in the top 10 of feeling or people saying that they felt like they lived in a democratic country. So there were some that were, you know, procedurally democratic, but there were others that were not. But I don't think you can disconnect what those students are feeling from the cost of college, too. Like the whole glory of the U.S. for the post-World War II era has been our college system. Ticket to the middle class. Ticket to the middle class. All these old people tell you it's the best four years of their life. Find your purpose.

Fulfill your calling. They find themselves. Yep. Like they develop intellectually and spiritually, and then they're thrown into the mall of the economy. But at least they're moving upwards. Well, you're accruing terrifying debt with every year. Right. But now you are accruing all of this debt and you're worried that you're just downwardly mobile relative to previous generations. And so the

paradox of those numbers is that if you compare kind of the median net worth of an American 25 year old or 20 year old to basically anyone else in the world, the Americans are doing better. But they sense that they're losing ground constantly. The thing is they— So it doesn't help to be told, well, you're ahead now. Right. When you're like headed downhill. But that's what's so tough.

You are ahead compared to other places in the world. You are not ahead compared to what was happening and where you could have been in a prior generation. So you see your grandparents— You don't compare yourself to people around the world. You compare yourself to previous generations and people here. Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, I look at my grandparents, you know, military career, owned a home and had seven kids on one income in the Milwaukee area. Like that's incredible and totally unattainable for anybody now. So when they can't do, and union, like when you can't do that, you're looking at

66% of people in baby boomers saying America is the best place to live to 33% now. Patriotism is going to decline. And then you see the having children thing, which freaks a lot of people on the right out. Only 23% of Gen Z saying that's very important to them. Well, how are they supposed to have kids when their ticket to the middle class has left them thrown into the mall with, you know, the rungs having, the rungs up the ladder having been kicked out and broken? It's like, what did you think was going to happen? What did you think was going to happen? You look at decline and belief in God. I mean, there's just chaos. To your point, this Bruce Melman sub stack, stack, this one makes me the most sad in the Six Chart Sunday thing that Axios picked up on. He said, Americans under 30 rating their lives

came in 62nd among nations in the World Happiness Report. Americans 60 plus ranked 10th. So if you're over 60 in America, you're about 10th in the worldwide happiness ranking. If you're under 30, you're all the way down at 62. It's tragic. And you can understand why that shows up in the other numbers pretty easily when you see such a stark divide. I found the top 10 list here, or maybe not the whole top 10. Arno Bertram, the Twitter account, posted this. It's from the allianceofdemocracies.org. You can find their report. The countries whose citizens most perceive themselves as living in democracy are China, Switzerland, Singapore, Israel, Norway, Vietnam, that's the top list there, and the Republic of Congo. For those seven countries, more than 75% of people are on the 7 to 10 scale where they ask

the question, think about your country today. How democratic do you think it is? We're zero, not at all democratic, very democratic. China very democratic China is fascinating China and Switzerland next to each other It's a super interesting and then now here's the list of countries where less than half of the people say they live in democracy Japan Which has all the trappings of procedural democracy Pakistan, which also has the trappings They hold elections as we've covered here. People are correct there, not remotely democratic. France, Nigeria, Iran, Peru, which recently had its president impeached after the first indigenous president basically ever in Peru. White people quickly impeached him. Morocco, Turkey, Ukraine. They don't even have the procedural trappings of

democracy anymore. They'll get to that eventually, they say. Yeah, and so does Blinken. He's like, watch this drive, but let's actually watch this solo. Hungary, which has elections, but the elections are controlled by the right-wing government there. The media is completely controlled by the right-wing government there. There media is completely controlled by the right-wing government there. There was an effort to, like, contest the election. It didn't have a hope. Venezuela and Greece. So these are the least, the people who don't believe that they live in democracies anyway. 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. 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 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 Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaking of oligarchy, Ryan, we have the story from OpenAI to talk about and Scarlett Johansson. And you did promise a story about Scarlett

Johansson. So we'll put a pin in that. Let's just do it to keep people watching because it's a good story. But Scarlett Johansson is locked in a battle with Sam Altman and OpenAI, and actually I think locked in a noble battle with Sam Altman and OpenAI. Basically won, right? OpenAI. Legally, it looks like she's clearly has the law on her side,

which is interesting because there's going to be a lot of novel legal battles and decisions coming out of the AI space in the near term future. And Intercept is suing them. OpenAI? Oh, that's really interesting. For robbing content, basically, for the AI, with a few other small news organizations.

Sarah Silverman, I think, is doing something similar. Is she a good fan? Yeah, absolutely. Solidarity. So let's put this tear sheet from NPR up on the screen. Scarlett Johansson says she is, quote, shocked and angered over the new chat GPT voice, as she should be.

If you haven't heard the backstory here yet, it's absolutely insane. Like the level of brazenness comes from like only, it could only come from Silicon Valley tech bros. Just reading from the NPR piece here, lawyers for Scarlett Johansson are demanding that OpenAI disclose how it developed an AI personal assistant voice that the actress says sounds uncannily similar to her own. Johansson's legal team has sent OpenAI two letters asking the company to detail the process by which it

developed a voice the tech company dubbed Sky. Johansson's publicist told NPR in a revelation that has not been previously reported. After OpenAI held a live demonstration of the voice last week, many observers compared it to Johansson's voice in the 2013 Spike Jonze romantic sci-fi film Her, which, as you may remember, centers on a man who falls in love with the female voice of his computer operating system. And if we skip ahead in the elements here, I just want to go ahead and put this next, not the next one, but actually E3 up on the screen because it's relevant to what we just read from NPR. Sam Altman on May 13th had just cryptically tweeted, her, lowercase, her. And then the voice comes out,

it sounds just like Scarlett Johansson. Sounds just like her. In the Spike Jonze film, her. So to test this out for yourselves, we're gonna play a video that somebody else made comparing OpenAI to actually Scarlett Johansson. It's not from Scarlett Johansson. Reading a statement, right? Right, this isn't actually Scarlett Johansson. It's not from Scarlett Johansson. Reading the statement, right?

Right. This isn't from Scarlett Johansson, even though it's reading Scarlett Johansson's statement. She did not put this out. Her team did not put this out. Someone else made it, but it's a very instructive mashup. So take a listen here. Last September, I received an offer from Sam Altman, who wanted to hire me to voice the current ChatGPT 4.0 system.

He told me that he felt that by my voicing the system, I could bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives and help consumers to feel comfortable with the seismic shift concerning humans and AI. He said he felt that my voice would be comforting to people. After much consideration, and for personal reasons, I declined the offer. Nine months later, my friends, family, and the general public all noted how much the newest system named Sky sounded like me. When I heard the release demo, I was shocked, angered, and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice

that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference. Mr. Altman even insinuated that the similarity was intentional, tweeting a single word, her, a reference to the film in which I voiced a chat system, Samantha, who forms an intimate relationship with a human. Two days before the ChatGPT 4.0 demo was released, Mr. Altman contacted my agent asking me to reconsider. Before we could connect, the system was out there. Okay, so that was Scarlett Johansson. Not really. That was the AI voice of Scarlett Johansson reading Scarlett Johansson's statement. Ryan, what do you make of all this? Has anybody ever been more busted than Sam Altman? No. He busted himself. Just completely

busted. Yeah. He clearly. But did he want to be busted? Is he intentionally testing the limits of the law in this case? Because you mentioned Intercept. I think Sarah Silverman has a similar case to some of the media outlets that you guys have joined up with to challenge legally scraping all of your guys' work and doing machine learning based on it. The fact that he tweeted her after knowing for sure that Scarlett Johansson was going to publicly say, this is not consensual. I said no to this. You came out and used my voice. It seems to me like he's intentionally testing the limits and is doing a wink and a nod in a way that you used to see from Silicon Valley back when they felt like they were on a pirate ship in 2006. Yes, that is a very good analogy that this is the old move fast and break things, which is I think a Zuckerberg line, which meant don't worry about

the rules. Don't worry about the laws, we're just, just go, just plow ahead. And what's meta-concerning about this, no pun intended, is that, speaking of brazen, Altman is the guy who we're supposed to rely on as the ethical mind and the ethical soul behind AI. Like he's the one that's been promising us, trust me, I have the interests of humanity at stake here. I'm thinking about the future in ways that the grubby capitalists are not. Nevermind that he moved his thing from nonprofit to for-profit.

And the regulators who just don't understand this. Right, he's the one that we're going to just supposed to trust with this. And now, given a very basic test of ethics, he just wildly failed. Like this is a test that a third grader could pass. If you ask somebody's permission for something and they tell you no, are you supposed to do it? Yeah. A third grader would be like, no. Yeah.

Some third graders will just be like, no. Yeah. Some third graders will just plow ahead anyway. We don't want those third graders shaping the entire future of humanity. Do you currently have a third grader? No, second and fourth. It just sounded so visceral for you. So I'm leaving my kids out of this because they're in different grades. Yes. Yeah. They could run open AI. Absolutely would not run that. Not even in fourth grade? No. Okay. But the reason I think this resonates with so many people, A, is because it's so brazen,

but also because people can connect the dots and see how this will be used for them. They know that people, because people have been dealing, by the way, with like revenge porn on individual community levels, not just celebrities. The celebrity cases are the ones that get the most attention. But you can see where this is going really quickly because people see where some of this stuff has gone already very quickly. People are dealing with this stuff in high schools, how you can use AI right now to do horrible things that are not consensual, especially young girls. But you can see, you can connect the dots between what happened here to Scarlett Johansson.

It's just disgusting to treat this like, and I get this is not pornographic. It's not content that's humiliating or embarrassing in any way. It's just reading. It's a voice that's reading, but the possibilities with AR are absolutely endless. And the way that they can be used to target people that don't have the resources of a celebrity to release a lawyer practice statement to NPR and have a full media blitz defending yourself, that is not going to happen to the kids who deal with this in Fort Wayne, Indiana at their high school. And for Sam Altman to be so cavalier about it, it just speaks to something that is so rightfully out of fashion for the rest of the country now, which is this, although it's becoming defensible again with the sort of EAC accelerationism crowd that is reacting to some excessive, you know, zeal among people who just want to control everything. I understand that, but do you get why people maybe want to control everything? Because you're doing this.

Yeah. You're doing this. If a good thing that could come out of this, well, A, she should sue him. But B, there should be a ban on producing AI products that allow you to take somebody's voice and then recreate it. It's just...

Because like you said, you're going to have middle schoolers who will take voice memos from a friend, or who they thought was a friend, feed it into some program, and then make new voice memos and pass them around as if these are the real people. And Altman is showing here that AI absolutely cannot be trusted on this question. Yeah.

Yeah. And the legal point is really interesting. One of the things that's been circulating since this happened is going back to what happened with Bette Midler and Ford. Do you remember this? It was like the yuppie commercial campaign for Ford. Bette Midler said no to having her voice used. And then they hired a Bette Midler impersonator, and Bette Midler won that battle. So this is a legal framework that should give Scarlett Johansson actually a pretty good defense or a pretty good advantage in defending

her rights against what Sam Altman just did. Who knows if Sam Altman, with all of the resources of OpenAI, was even aware of that, if any of his legal team actually was aware of what happened with that case. My assumption is that they were, and that they're still, but maybe they weren't. And they're just, they don't care. They're testing the waters. They have all the money in the world to do it. And, you know, they're ready to go, have fun, move fast and break things and, you know, do no evil. But their definition of evil is probably different than a whole lot of other people's. Now, Ryan, the crowd is in suspense. My Scarlett Johansson story actually does kind of flow into the impersonation point also.

Yeah, it does. It does. So back in the Obama era, basically, the contest among media organizations was who could get the biggest celebrities. It was pretty gross. To come to the White House Correspondents Dinner. But fun for reporters. We were the Huffington Post. We were the cool kids in town. We were run by Arianna Huffington, who knew, from L.A., knew absolutely everybody in L.A.

So it was actually a contest of, like, who could compete for second place of getting the best celebrities. And it would usually be Bloomberg for just because they had this huge party at the French embassy. And so they would be able to get like the second best celebrities. We'd always get the top A-list ones. And so a couple of years, we had Scarlett Johansson at our table. I would not get invited to these French embassy parties. Even though I was at the Cool Kids outlet, I was still doing reporting that made the Cool Kids very uncomfortable. Obama just constantly was trashing us. He's like, why won't the Huffington Post? Just get in line. Didn't lock you up or surveil you. Well, not that we don't.

We don't know. So yeah, so Scarlett Johansson, of course, did get invited to the French Embassy party. So, she, I think it was her brother that she was with. And then a couple other Huffington Post reporters, my wife and I, like go with her in this limo to the French Embassy.

We're not invited. But she's like, look, I'm Scarlett Johansson. I can get you guys in. So, we get to the gate and she's like, these are my friends. And they're like, well, they're not on the list. They can't come in. And the look on her face, I've never seen anything like it. Like it was like the first time she'd been told no. Mm-hmm. I think she was a child actress, right? I don't remember. And so she's just, like, stunned. This is Ryan Graham.

More like, I'm Scarlett Johansson. You're telling me no? Yeah. You're a security guard here? And so she recovers, and she's like, who runs this? Yeah. Like, who's your manager? And you speak to the ambassador.

You speak to the ambassador. Bigger people come over. And it took a while. Yeah. Like it was not, they did not just roll over. But she fought for you. But she was not, it became a matter of principle. Yeah.

She was not fighting for my wife and I. She was fighting for the principle that if she says that these people are cool and her friends, that damn it, they're coming into this party. And so eventually they're like, okay, fine. Just how many of them? She's like, she counts. All right, fine. Come on, come on in. And the thing was surreal. It's like Henry Kissinger over here. It's like the absolute grossest place I've ever been. I think I stayed for about 15 minutes. Gotta get out of here. I was like, this is insane.

But then, so then later, and this is where the impersonation comes in. And I won't say who we did this to, but we did an April Fool's prank where we made a fake New York phone number and texted one of our reporters saying, great hanging out with you. It's Scarlett. I've got a cousin who wants an internship at the Huffington Post. And started a text conversation. You pulled an Altman. You fully pulled an Altman. We started a text conversation and had the person convinced. And he never told anybody that he was texting with Scarlett Johansson.

Eventually. Good for him. Well, eventually we called it off. We're like, this could end badly. Yes. Told him. So anyway, she should sue us too, but we didn't do it publicly. Same ultimate if you're watching. It takes a certain dose of wisdom to pull your chips and just go home, take the L. Exactly. But this is the kind of thing that people will do, these kinds of pranks. And they're not, this was funny because it was. I was going to say.

But it almost, you know, it could end badly. It could end very badly. But good for Scarlett Johansson fighting for the free press. That's right. To rub ebbles with Henry Kissinger. Let them come into the Henry Kissinger party. To toast champagne with Henry Kissinger and get, you know, more scoops about how great China is. I'm sure that's what he was dishing out at the time.

I wonder. I was like, oh, my God, that is. It's hard to say. It's hard to say. But all right. Well, that was a hell of a story. There you go. I don't know.

Story time with Brian. It was a story. Yeah, it was good. It was good. All right. Let's move on to the next block. We have a great interview. Super excited to have Gabriel Shipton, brother of Julian Assange, in the studio with us.

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 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 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. This week, Julian Assange notched a rare win in his legal battle against the United States with a high court in the UK ruling that he is able to appeal the US extradition and also dealing a blow to some of the US efforts

to make assurances about the conditions that he would be kept in if he were to be brought back to the United States. To talk more about this, we're joined by Julian Assange's brother, filmmaker Gabriel Shipton. Gabe, thanks so much for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. So tell us, so you were at the hearing on Monday. What were your expectations going into it? And what was the tone of it? How did you feel about the result? Well, for us, you know, as Julian's family, going into this hearing where they could have turned around and ordered his extradition, there were some people saying...

From there, basically. Yes, yeah, there were some people saying there were US Marshals in the court, even ready to pounce. So going in there, there's a lot of, it's very tense, very tense for us. And this decision obviously was a huge relief. You know, the Julian lifts the fight another day in this ongoing extradition proceeding.

The mood in the court, I think, was a bit different. The judges are sort of taking on the gravity of what this means, not just for Julian, but what it means for freedom of expression in the United Kingdom. And they spoke to that when they rejected this US assurance from the DOJ, from the State Department, that said that Julian could seek to rely on the First Amendment, but they wouldn't guarantee a First Amendment

that would apply to Julian. And so the UK courts actually rejected that assurance and said, you know, that's not good enough because what that would mean for citizens in the United Kingdom is that these secrecy laws, these espionage laws, could be used potentially to suppress the freedom of expression of people in the United Kingdom. So that's a huge rebuke to the DOJ, to the State Department. I think

quite embarrassing as well on the world stage, having a diplomatic note rejected in that fashion. They could seek, he could, say that again? He could seek to rely on a First Amendment defense. You can seek to rely on the First Amendment. Yeah You can seek to rely on the First Amendment. Yeah. But you can't have actual First Amendment protections. Yes. You can seek to, you can try. Yeah, yeah.

Well, you can give it a go. Well, anybody's allowed to try. Yeah, exactly. Well, and Gabe, I was going to say, if we keep pulling at that thread, from the position of the UK, there's a serious question about free expression in journalism. And I wanted to see if you could explain just a little bit more what Ryan was just saying. You can seek the protections of the First Amendment sort of hypothetically. But what does that, what are they talking about practically?

That would mean if you're in the UK reporting on things that the United States security apparatus is unhappy with, they can, you know, do what they will if they become unhappy with it. Is that kind of what's going on here? That's right. And if these judges had have accepted that assurance, that's exactly what it would mean for all journalists in the United Kingdom, that they wouldn't actually have free expression rights in their home country because the US could use, the US DOJ could use its espionage laws to reach into the United Kingdom and go after any journalists. And the judges actually acknowledged the gravity in court. They said, you know, this has massive meaning, not just for Julian, but for all the people in the United Kingdom. So I think it really frames now

the next appeal as a freedom of expression case, which hasn't been, which haven't been really been done in Julian's case for a long time. And I think that's going to have repercussions back here in Washington, because I don't think the DOJ ever really wanted to have a freedom of expression case going on. Yeah, I think that's a really important point. The DOJ wanted to prosecute one of the most important publishers and journalists of the last 15 years, but they somehow thought that they could do that without getting into a debate over freedom of expression and the free press, that they could just talk about hacking and cyber this and cyber terrorism. I think it's like Mitch McConnell and

Joe Biden have referred to him. But yeah, that was always ridiculous because that's not what it's about. And so, how has the public, and when I mean public, I mean public officials that you're meeting with on a regular basis, how has their reception of the case evolved over the last year or so? Well, there's a lot more room now to hear Julian's perspective on this case. You know, this perspective that we bring, that I bring as Julian's brother to Washington. And I think I've been here every month for the last three months for a week,

you know, working away in Congress. And the amount of attention that we get, the amount of meetings we get is just increasing exponentially. People very high up, you know, in the Congress who hold these high positions are willing to hear a different perspective now, which would never have been possible. And just last month you had President Biden, he was asked, is he considering the Australian request to drop the charges? And he said, yes, we're considering it.

And so even at the highest levels, you've got the Biden administration saying, we're considering dropping this, but the DOJ is pushing forward. So there's this sort of, you know, a little bit of a divide between the institutions here that I think shows some movement in the case. And we're here to make sure that Julian's perspective is carried through into the Congress.

Well, and on that point about Biden saying, yes, I'm making this consideration, I'm also curious, Gabe, about how geopolitical negotiations might be changing the way some people are thinking about this. Ally in Australia, obviously an ally as China hawks are increasingly concerned about Taiwan, increasingly concerned about that whole area of the world. Is there any sense that you get as you're talking to members that they see Julian as a chip kind of in the way that they're looking at negotiations with this hugely powerful ally that they're concerned or

that they want to be sort of a hedge in a potential conflict with China. Just trying to think of why over the course of the last year people might be more interested in having that conversation. Yes, certainly. And I think if you look back into the reporting that's going on around the alliance in Australia, Julian has always mentioned

whenever there's an alliance discussion and how that is a reflection of Australia's true position in the alliance that you know the human rights of Australians don't actually matter within this sort of alliance structure and carrying that through into the meetings on the Hill obviously members who are more concerned about foreign relations it really carries with them it does and we had a group of politicians here from Australia, bipartisan group last year, and they made an incredible impact

in terms of explaining to them, explaining to Congress people what's actually happening back in Australia and the sentiment among the Australian public, because 90% of the Australian public wants Julian brought back, and it's having a detrimental effect on the alliance because it's like one point of contention, really, in the alliance between the US and Australia. It's a really incredible statement

about how desperately the US wants Julian Assange behind bars here in the United States, that they are willing to upend their relationship with Australia when they keep claiming they're doing this pivot to Asia and the Pacific, and willing to upend their relationship with the UK. And double down on a Trump-era prosecution. And double down on a Trump-era prosecution. Do you have a sense, and you have the president himself saying, you know what, actually we're open to dropping this in our talks with Australia, which takes it out of the DOJ.

Like, that was an unusual thing for him to say, because typically a democratic president will say, ah, we don't get involved in Justice Department matters. Actually, that day I asked, you may have seen this, I asked the State Department, I was like, you always refer questions to the Department of Justice on Julian Assange. But today the president said he was talking to Australia about it. So you can't. So it's now diplomatic. It's now in your domain. And they did then, they finally commented on it and had a back and forth, claimed why it was a legit prosecution. Because it brings it out of that realm of, oh, this is just prosecutors kind of doing their work. But what is your sense of what is the impulse here? Like, why is it so fanatically necessary for them to pursue this in the face of all of

the kind of political obstacles and problems that it's causing for them around the world? Yeah, well, I think there is, you know, there is a division. And so you've seen Biden saying, making these comments, as well as all the press freedom organisations writing to the president, as well as the New York Times calling on the president to drop it. So I think there is a division between those who want to pursue this prosecution,

the sort of Mike Pompeos of the world, the sort of hubris from these sorts of characters within the intelligence community, and those people who see it as a sort of albatross, political albatross around their necks. So I think there is a division forming and I think the political costs now, we're reaching a point where the political cost of pursuing this actually outweighs the benefit of dropping it, particularly after this decision in the UK courts where the UK has actually said, you know, we're not going to accept your assurances, this is

going to affect the freedom of expression of all people in the UK. I think that is a really strong rebuke and that will feed into the cost of pursuing this and hopefully shift the balance so that the DOJ can now take another look at it and say, well, actually, you know, maybe it's not worth us pursuing this. It's incredibly embarrassing. It's affecting our relationships. Might be time to bring it to a close. The next step is that he will file an appeal. And then the question will be, does the Department of Justice respond to the appeal?

So they'll set an appeal date now. And that appeal will be based on these freedom of expression questions. So the appeal will be, I think it's going to move quite quickly. They've got four days to submit schedules and things like that and then the court will set an appeal date. So the lawyers, Julian's lawyers are expecting an appeal date even before the summer. So there could be another hearing before the summer break in August.

But then whether that result comes back before November, I'm not sure. And could that appeal result in his release? Potentially. If the appeal, if it goes Julian's way and may, you know, it would block the extradition. And then it would be up to the DOJ again to say, OK, we're going to take this to the Supreme Court of the UK. So that could be a perfect, neat end point for the DOJ just to say, oh, yeah, this has gone on too long.

This is too hard. Like, we lost. Let's move on. Yeah, and it's the UK's fault. We can blame the UK. We still pursued it as much as we could, but the UK courts blocked us. And you mentioned November. Do you feel like there's a race against the clock? Are you worried that Pompeo, the Pompeos of the world are coming back to power? It's hard to like imagine a worse situation than the current administration, which has been prosecuting him for all these years.

Yes, that's right. But maybe there is a worse situation. I don't know. Where do you come down on that? Well, so I think what's happened with, you know, the Australian advocacy, which has been very, very important in this case, and Biden saying, the president saying that he's considering dropping it, I think now is the time to really move and to end this right now. We don't know what's going to happen after November, what administration will be sworn in in January. So I think now is the time to really make the best move to end this based on the President's comments, the support from Australia and the UK court decision. They're like a dog with a bone. Last question, how is he doing mental health-wise?

I know it's just absolute torture to be in the conditions that he's in. How is he faring? Yeah, he's holding up. Obviously, it's a lot of relief now that he's got sort of a little bit of a glimmer of hope and a path to keep fighting because that's what it is. He's not been extradited. We can keep fighting.

We can keep mounting this political pressure. But, you know, he's hanging in there. His health is deteriorating. You know, I'll go and see him next week after I leave here. So, yeah, he's hanging in there. He was telling me the other day he's in prison with, there's an actual cannibal who's being put into the prison with him. So these are the sorts of people that he has to deal with

on a day-to-day basis, these extreme criminals, the most violent criminals, predatory criminals in the United Kingdom who he's sharing a jail with. Well, thanks, as always, for joining us, and good luck on Capitol Hill today. Thank you. Thanks for having me. 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

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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. All right, well, that does it today on this edition of CounterPoints. We will be back, of course, on Friday with a great debate on weed that Ryan set up. This is Ryan's pet issue. In fact, you can see his book.

There it is. This is Your Country on Drugs right behind us. That's a great book. Is that your best-selling book? Buy Them Both. We've Got People was my best-selling book. Okay, but that one, that's a good book. The problem with that one for sales is that it really appealed to 22-year-old men.

Not a lot of disposable income. Yeah, those men don't buy books. They buy weed. They will steal it from the library. Or if any of their friends do buy it, then they'll pass it. 30 people will read one copy, which is great. That's fine. Happy with that. But yes,

the publishing industry will tell you that like something like 90% of books are bought between, bought by women who are like 30 and up. And even if the books are read by men, it's the woman in their life that buys it for them and gives it to them. That's good. So if you ever are wondering like how do publishing houses make decisions, they make decisions thinking, you know, what will a 45-year-old woman want to read and buy? Makes sense. Actually buy.

They don't care if you read it. Well, I hope they buy a CounterPoints or a BreakingPoints premium subscription so they can get all of CounterPoints Friday early to their inbox. There you go. Because they want their husbands to watch this great weed debate that we have coming up. And actually, with the move of the Biden administration that we talked about last week, we're going to get into that. I think we'll actually start with it. But this is really important to a lot of families. There are

scientific questions that are increasingly very important to a lot of families. And I'm excited to sort of dive into the policy. It's not my area of expertise, but you know the people, you know the issue. So I'm really, really excited for this one. Yeah, we'll have John Lubecki, who you guys may remember, we've interviewed him before. He's a veteran who advocates for the use of kind of psychedelics and MDMA for post-traumatic stress disorder, he talks about his own experience overcoming PTSD, you know, through the use of MDMA therapy, MDMA-assisted therapy. And then we're going to have Kevin Sabat, who is basically the kind of leading antipod

voice in the country. I've known him since he was an official in the Obama administration. But he is basically the man when it comes to beating up on the pot crowd. Buddy of Sager's, I believe. Sager looks up to him when it comes to forming his own intellectual edifice around his anti-pot thinking. Yeah. Sager is popping his popcorn right now. He's ready to rumble. And we actually invited Sagar. He's too humble. I think he had

something else going on, but we do want him, maybe him and Lubecki, like at some point in the future, it would be fun to have Sagar as the kind of guest on one of these debates. Buy Sagar a bunch of caffeine, lock him in a room for an hour before the debate, and let him loose. Red Bulls on the...

Yeah. He's just so similar to his nemesis, Destiny. There you go. Just pounding the caffeine. All right, well, thanks everyone for tuning in. We will be back here on Friday.

Make sure to stay tuned for that, and then we'll be back here next Wednesday. All right, see you later. See you then. 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 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. voiceover. I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl

behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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, Apple Podcast,

or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.