Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 6/29/24: Dave Smith VS Vaush: Did NATO Expansion Push Ukraine Invasion?

Episode Date: June 29, 2024

Libertarian comedian Dave Smith and politics streamer Vaush join Counterpoints Fridays for a debate on the Ukraine war. To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.com/  Dave Smith: https://x.com/ComicDaveSmith Vaush: https://www.youtube.com/@Vaush  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Michael Kassin, founder and CEO of 3C Ventures, and your guide on good company. The podcast where I sit down with the boldest innovators, shaping what's next. In this episode, I'm joined by Anjali Sood, CEO of Tubi. We dive into the competitive world of streaming. What others dismiss as niche, we embrace as core. There are so many stories out there,

and if you can find a way to curate and help the right person discover the right content, the term that we always hear from our audience is that they feel seen. Listen to Good Company on the iHe the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Yeah, we're moms. But not your mommy. Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe.

Listen to the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday. On the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcast. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their

community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad.

That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. 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 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. Ukraine is losing this war. They're not going to drive Russia out of Crimea. They're not going to drive Russia out of many of the territories that they've taken right now. We should be working toward a deal, a peaceful solution, which has been on the table several times throughout this war. And it's been the West who has been trying to squash it. Ukraine hasn't been losing. Both countries have been stalling. I don't want this conflict to end in a way that's going to guarantee the conflict reemerges in two years. If the line just freezes where it is right now, are we not guaranteeing another conflict in a few years? The United States of America holds all of the chips. We could offer Vladimir Putin something that would probably get him to

do whatever we wanted him to do. And you know what that is, the ultimate crowning jewel for him. How about we leave NATO? All right, welcome to CounterPoint. Today, we're going to be talking about the Ukraine-Russia war. Emily, who are we going to have? Yeah, well, we have two great guests joining us. We're joined by YouTuber, live streamer Vash, and we are joined by comedian, podcast host Dave Smith. Vash, Dave, welcome. Thanks for joining us. My pleasure. Thanks for having us. Well, Ukraine is a timely subject to debate right now. Obviously, we're two plus years into the war, but there have been recent escalations. And that makes it important,

I think, to sort of go through some of those recent developments. For example, the U.S. recently greenlit, as many people know, strikes with U.S. weapons inside of Russia. There was the strike that Russia is blaming the U.S. for in Crimea just over the last couple of days. So I think probably a good way to begin is to give you both kind of an opening statement here. And I'll start with you, Vash. Should the U.S. continue funding this war? And then we'll go to Dave on the same question. But go ahead first, Vash. Yeah. I mean, I don't like the idea on a systemic level of rewarding Russia for invading a neighbor. I just think, generally speaking, that's bad for global relations, very destabilizing.

I think it's important that we support any system that prevents that from happening. And not exactly a novel position. With regards to the recent development and strikes inside Russian territory, I actually think that this is, in the long run, going to be a good move for peace, just because the previous U.S US doctrine, which seemed to be provide just enough weapons to stall the war, but not like decisively concluded. I think that was actually like the worst possible decision. You know, if Russia did sort of like early conquest, or if Ukraine decisively held its territory, those both end the war relatively quickly,

but just interminably stalling it right at the river, you know, I don't think that would have been good in the long run. Hopefully, these increased attacks inside Russian territory, mostly, of course, the refineries that they're using to sort of gin up their war economy, hopefully that serves as an effective long-term deterrent. I don't want this conflict to continue. I don't want civilians to die. Yeah, I mean, obviously, we'll have to see how things play out. Dave, go ahead. Well, of course, we should stop funding this. We never should have been funding this war to begin with. I think that in the original Cold War, which I still regard as one of the worst US policies in

modern American history that did so much to ruin our country, and not to mention things like the Vietnam War and the millions of people who died in it. But at least in the original Cold War, I think there was always a healthy respect for the risks involved, and that all of us, all sane people should recognize that the greatest priority in human history is that the United States of America and Russia do not go to war. And this was something that people in the old Cold War were very respectful of and aware of. The difference in this new Cold War environment

is that no one in the upper echelons of power in America seems to have any respect for this threat. And any respect for, you know, you could think to yourself, well, maybe this will work out in a positive way that the U.S. is greenlighting attacks inside of Russia, or perhaps it could be an absolute disaster. And we're playing with, when I say we're playing with fire, it's an understatement where we're flirting with potentially the most disastrous thing that could happen to the human species. If America is to have any role in this conflict, it should be working toward a peaceful negotiation.

And in fact, the American role and the Western role has been to kill peaceful negotiations from the beginning of this war and to prolong the fighting. I think that, as John Mearsheimer said back in 2014, the West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path has turned out to be the most accurate prediction on this entire conflict. And essentially, I think since the fall of the Soviet Union, American foreign policy, and just keep in mind, American foreign policy in the Clinton administration and in the W. Bush administration and Obama's administration, these are W. Bush administration, in Obama's administration. These are the same people who are in charge of the Middle East. And in fact, the neoconservatives

were very focused on NATO expansion back in the 90s. You can go read the Project for a New American Century documents. And the same people who totally blundered foreign policy in the Middle East have totally blundered foreign policy in Europe, provoking Vladimir Putin and the Russians at every turn, leading to this awful place that we're in. That is certainly, if you care about the Ukrainians at all, has been more of a disaster for the Ukrainian people than anyone else. And Dave, Vosch made a point that I think you hear a lot from defenders of the U.S. support for the Ukrainian war, and that is you can't allow other countries, you know, you can't reward other countries for invading other countries. You just can't do that. We can't have that. What's the response to that? We can't have that argument.

Well, I mean, first, I would just point out how absurd it is that after the last 20 years of terror wars, somehow the United States of America still gets to put itself in the position of global peacemaker, as if our major concern is that bigger nations can bully smaller nations. I mean, over the last 20 years, there's been no greater purveyor of violence than the United States of America, who has imposed its will on tiny helpless nations across the world. As far as that, yeah, it's not good that Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. And yes, certainly that's something we don't want to see. My argument would be that America and the West more broadly had many opportunities, many off-ramps to put this fire out or at least calm it down, and at every single turn poured more gasoline on this fire. That ultimately resulted

in the invasion in 2022. Yeah, so, Vosch, how can the U.S. say with a straight face that it's not okay for other countries to invade smaller countries? Well, I think it's kind of a cowardly non-argument because I'm not arguing in favor of the moral superiority of the United States. That'd be a ridiculous position for me to take. It's not football. We're not taking sides like, you know, waving banners.

There are two levels to this when it comes to agency. We're concerned about the broader socioeconomic and geopolitical context that led to where we are now. And that goes back to the Cold War and even earlier. If we listen to Putin's justifications for the invasion, it goes back to the borders of the Russian empire. And then there's the immediate decision making. We mustn't remove agency from the equation. Russia invaded, by Putin's own words, in a sort of territorial land grab. The idea that it was entirely because of a response

to Western aggression or NATO posturing is ridiculous and ahistorical. But that doesn't mean the West isn't responsible for helping to create the situation we're in now. We have to balance these two justifications. Our arrogance after the end of the Cold War, the fact that rather than reaching out to Russia as a potential future ally, we ostracized with the know, with the shock therapy, the sort of economic devastation of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet states. These contributed to an environment in which future conflict was inevitable. It was reprehensible on the part of the Western governments to participate in this. Look today at the divide between former West and Eastern Germany. I mean, the reason that East Germany is voting so heavily for the AFD is in large part because they see it as a rejection of the doctrine of the West that left them behind after reunification.

These should all be taken into account. And we must acknowledge that Putin is a fascist who did a territorial land grab. Those two facts don't contradict each other. They work together to create a complete narrative. With regards to the invasion now, I agree we have to take the threat from Russia seriously. And by that, I mean, we don't want this to scale out infinitely. We don't want this to turn into a global war. That's something we have to take seriously. At the same time, we have to acknowledge Russia does too. And their constant threats of nuclear war, the fact that they started this invasion, the fact that they have been posturing and acting aggressive towards

Finland, towards the Baltic states, been posturing and acting aggressive towards Finland, towards the Baltic states, even ramping up aggression towards the rest of Western Europe, we must consider again their agency. Now, I think that in the long run, there is a very deleterious consequence to creating an incentive structure where Putin gets to boost his national rep, his prestige with a successful land grab in Ukraine. I think it would have been disastrous if he could have just marched west and taken the territory because it would have reaffirmed and rewarded all the worst possible behaviors from him. That doesn't mean I think that we should sort of do a victory lap around Russia.

Cold War II, let's win, let's trounce them in Ukraine. I do think that we're in a tough situation because we can't just like magically make Russia, I guess, a democracy or a country less incentivized to invade its neighbors or reclaim historical territory. It's a difficult question, which is why I don't like simple answers. So Dave, actually, here's an interesting point that Vaus just raised about the beginning of the war.

And if we may all agree, correct me if I'm wrong, that we all think it would have been bad if Putin had indeed marched into Kiev and took all of Ukraine, et cetera. But that leads us to the question, Dave, of how much U.S. involvement, if any, was just if we agreed that it was good for the U.S. to perhaps prevent the Russian capture of Kiev, et cetera, at what point did it become too much? At what point is the support no longer just or moral? How do you respond to that, Dave? I think that the point that it, I mean, you could start at a lot of different points. I think the first round of NATO expansion was unjust and was unnecessarily provocative of the Russians. Let me just, I'm not exactly sure what Vash is referring to as like a cowardly non-argument.

I simply was directly responding to Ryan's point. If you have a serial killer who's killed far more people than another serial killer, and they claim that they're trying to stop a serial killer because they're so against killing, it's reasonable to point out that no, this is in fact not what's motivating US foreign policy, that no, the butcherers of Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria and Somalia and Libya and Yemen are not actually motivated by some sense of we can't let big guys pick on little guys. Let's have an honest conversation about what's really motivating this policy. And it has been since the collapse of the Soviet Union

to increase the power of the American empire. And Russia has always been seen as a force that's outside of the American empire. That's what's been motivating American foreign policy. This is what we're living through here is largely the neoconservative doctrine. It was the worst thing that ever happened in the history of our country is that after we became probably the first ever true global superpower, about 10 years later, the neoconservatives got

control of our foreign policy. And this was their plan from the very beginning. So no, I don't think America should have been involved in Ukraine at all. And I certainly don't think that anything we've done has done anything except make this situation much worse and much, much more dangerous. Because now you are experiencing a proxy war with the two biggest nuclear superpowers. I don't think saying any of that is reducing things down to simplistic worldview. And of course, you kind of snuck a straw man in there. I wouldn't say that this conflict is entirely because of NATO expansion. But to pretend like that's not a major driving factor in this conflict is to not be dealing with reality. And this has been admitted by all of the top people on both sides. This was why so many people within the national security apparatus in the 90s opposed the first

round of NATO expansion explicitly, because this will provoke a reaction from the Russians. Through the years, the Russians have been crystal clear that Ukraine was their red line. Thanks to the greatest journalist of the 21st century, the hero Julian Assange, who is thankfully now a free man, we know that the current head of the CIA, Burns, told Condoleezza Rice this explicitly, that this was a red line and not a red line in the way that America makes up red lines. Like Obama will say,

if Assad uses a certain type of weapon on his people, that's a red line for us. It's all just ridiculous. This is a red line in a true sense, in the sense that Jack Kennedy said putting nuclear missiles in Cuba is a red line for us. We will blow up the world if you try to do that. Vladimir Putin, and as Burns pointed out, not just Vladimir Putin, the entire Russian establishment has been unanimous on this, that they will not tolerate Ukrainian entry to NATO. And look, it's not justified or reasonable for Vladimir Putin to have launched this war. But on the scale of geopolitical demands, the demand that Ukraine

cannot be a part of the American Empire's military alliance. It was a fairly reasonable one. And we could have avoided this whole war by just committing to that. I have a quick follow up on that, Dave. So all things, you know, we're dealing in the reality that we did push for the NATO expansion in 2014 and all of that considered. Is your position that there should have been like basically zero aid, military, whatever else, government aid to Ukraine after the invasion a couple of years back, like basically just none? Absolutely, if there was any role for the Americans to play,

it would have been trying to negotiate an end to the war. Unfortunately, if you're putting me in the hypothetical of like, you can't change anything before this, but you're already here. We had probably blown all of that goodwill and there were better parties who would have been more suited for that. You know, for example, going back to even the Bucharest summit in 2008 into the beginning of the Maidan revolution, Germany was much more hesitant to get involved hesitant to go down this path. There were other European countries who were kind of like, hey, let's not provoke the Russians. It's part of the reason why Ukraine didn't get a full map invitation in 2008 is the objection of the Germans. So probably someone else would have been better at it. Yes, essentially what I'm saying is that the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, the most war-hungry country in the world, the United States of America, shouldn't have been the ones at the table at all.

And there might have been some goodwill from other parties who had more of an interest to avoid this catastrophe. If I may, there are elements of this that I guess don't make sense to me. First of all, the claim that America's decision making is based on it trying to expand its own geopolitical power rather than any altruistic interest, that's true, but that's also the case for all countries. That's basic IR theory. So the idea of like, well, this neocon theory of America expanding its interest,

that's just nation states. Russia's doing that right now. India's doing that. China's doing that. Everyone's doing that. We're better at it because we're a superpower, of course. But that's like a fundamental rule of national exchange. I don't think that it's really a moral question. It's a matter of material conditions. In a basic Marxist sense, who's motivated by what and where they are. In the modern world, the imperial sphere

of influence extends to the entire planet. American jets can reach any part of the world in 24 hours. Everyone's can, if they have jets. There's no, we get the nation next to us, which makes me think the idea that Ukraine is more innately in the Russian sphere of influence is, I think it's a little bit old hat. At the end of the day, the people in Ukraine were interested in closer relations with the EU. And that is ultimately what triggered everything from Euromaidan, Yanukovych fleeing the annexation of Crimea, the invasion of the Donbass following the invasion of Ukraine broadly. This is, again, a complicated situation. I don't mean to detract from the influence that Western

arrogance had. I would never, never try to do that but i do think that like your roadmap for how things should have progressed from an american perspective following the 2022 invasion is misguided because i don't think the world would be any farther from annihilation if russia had simply marched westward taking give and we had a bunch of ginned up russian soldiers right up against the border of poland you know, having just successfully annexed former Soviet slash Russian imperial territory. You can imagine the propaganda coming out of the Kremlin about how they're reuniting their people. They're sort of like expanding the Russian interest in like a Duginist ethnic sense, you know, reclaiming the empire. I think that like the

incentive structure behind that would be really bad. that you're basically getting you're like you're throwing chum into the water for sharks you know putin is expansionist he's been sort of like preempting this for a long time with georgia you know his behavior with the the chechens i don't think that that would bring us any closer to peace now is the current path we're on right now the best possible road obviously not nothing we ever do is the best possible road. Obviously, nothing we ever do is the best possible road, but I think it's closer to threading that line than just letting them march westward with them. What I'm interested in, I guess, is practical solutions now, outside of just letting Ukraine get annexed, which I really don't think would have been good for world peace in the long run, even if it would have quickly ended the conflict. How do we incentivize

Ukraine and Russia to come to the table and bring an end to this war? Can Ukraine regain its lost territory? I think morally it should be able to, because I don't like nations being rewarded for annexing adjacent territory. But logistically, can they? Would it be possible to end things where they are now? Would Russia keep Crimea and that just be seen as a kind of like dull historical injustice to fade away over time. And a hundred years from now, people would be like, did you know Crimea used to be Ukraine? I don't know.

I just, there's so much dogmatism. And whenever you bring up like modern solutions, people go back to, I don't know, the end of the Cold War. I know, I mean, I understand NATO is not exactly a global force for good, but what can we do now? I mean, I so rarely hear answers exactly a global force for good, but what can we do now?

I mean, I so rarely hear answers that are contextualized in the current moment. 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. 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 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.

I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month, and we need to talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes.

Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is and they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me.

Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like, that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy. Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to

We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is your girl T.S. Madison, and I'm coming to you loud live and in color from the Outlaws Podcast. Let me tell you something. I broke the internet

with a 22-inch weave. 22 inches. My superpower? I've got the voice. My kryptonite? It don't exist. Get a job. My podcast?

The one they never saw coming. Each week, I sit down with the culture creators and scroll stoppers. Tina knows. Lil Nas X. Will we ever see a dating show. Tina knows. Lil Nas X. Will we ever see a dating show for the love of Lil Nas X? This is gonna show all my exes. X marks the spot.

No, here it is. My next ex. That's actually cute, though. Laverne Cox. I have a core group of girlfriends that, like, they taught me how to love. And Chapel Rome. I was dropped in 2020, working the drive-thru, and here we are now.

We turned side-eye into sermons, pain into punchline, and grief, we turn those into galaxies. Listen, make sure you tell Beyonce, I'm going right on the phone right now, and call her. Listen to Outlaws with T.S. Madison on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, honey. This five months, we are not just celebrating. We're fighting back. I'm George M. Johnson, and my book, All Boys Aren't Blue, was just named the most banned book in America.

If the culture wars have taught me anything, it's that pride is protest. And on my podcast, Fighting Words, we talk to people who use their voices to resist, disrupt, and make our community stronger. This year, we are showing up and showing out. You need people being like, no, you're not going to tell us what to do. This regime is coming down on us.

And I don't want to just survive. I want to thrive. You'll hear from trailblazers like Bob the Drag Queen. To freedom! Angelica Ross. We ready to fight? I'm ready to fight. And Gabrielle Yoon. Hi, George.

And storytellers with wisdom to spare. Listen on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I want to answer your question at the end there, but just like a few things I want to point out. Number one, I think this is almost like bigger than just any political debate. There's kind of it's a broader theme in life in general. I think anybody who's married, who's on the show or listening to the show knows this is true in personal relationships. There's a tendency to if you're in an argument with your wife or your husband or something like that, to focus on what they did and what they did that's bothering you. But a much more healthy posture, if you're in a successful

relationship, is that you also add in like, okay, well, what am I doing? How am I participating in this? What have I done that's kind of led to this situation? Generally speaking, I think that if you look at the corporate media, you're going to hear all of this talk about what putin's done um and i don't i think a lot of times in these debates people can kind of claim to be like well i'm adding i have a more nuanced position i'm not simplifying things i think the point of saying that like well all governments are expansionist by nature so there's no difference between the neoconservatives and, say, other groups of people. I don't know. I'm not saying they're the same, but like a logical analogy, it's like, oh, well, all governments kill people. So like what Adolf Hitler is doing is just kind of the same as other governments. It's not exactly true. It's kind of different in scale and in kind. To sit here and

say, and look, if we have time, we could go through the history of Chechnya and Georgia and all this stuff. But to zoom out a little bit, during the Cold War, we drew the line at the Elbe River, halfway through Germany. On one side was the Soviet Union, on the other side was NATO. And we're now talking about Ukraine. And you could sit here with a straight face and say, Putin is expansionist. Okay. I mean, if that's how you want to look at it, it's like, let's just look at the actual reality of what's happening here. It's not that Putin has been this expansionist force. Putin has been almost at every turn reacting to the expansion of the American empire.

You've got to give him agency, man. And Ukraine, that's not, listen, that's just not true. It's not denying someone agency to say that they're responding to something. That doesn't make any sense at all. Everyone's responding to everything. That's all life. Sure.

No one just acts without, you didn't fall out of a coconut tree. That's just a cop-out. That doesn't mean anything. You're the one providing the cop-out. You're saying that it's not possible for Putin to have a distinctly expansionist element to his rule because everyone's just responding to it. So do you believe Putin has a distinctly expansionist element to his rule? Okay, no, that's not a binary.

One is it's not possible for this to be. Wait, do you think he does or doesn't? Hold on. Instead of just interrupting me, let me make the point. You just laid out a binary between is it possible he has expansionist intentions and does he have expansionist intentions? That's not a binary. There are some expansionist desires that he has. educate yourself on this topic. It was our CIA director who said in the Nyet Means Nyet memo leaked by Julian Assange that verbatim, this was a choice that Vladimir Putin did not want to have to make. This was a choice that Russia did not want to get involved in this war. And yet he made the choice. He made the choice to invade, to bring troops down to the Ukrainian

border, to commit to multiple years of, like, come on, you know. This is, again, this is the thing. I ask you for, like, what can we do now? And immediately it's back to the Iron Curtain. Well, hold on, hold on. I know. Vash, Vash, Vash. Hold on.

Here's what happened. I'm sorry, dude. I just want to know in the modern context. I get it. Actually, what happened was you made a long statement and ended with that question. And I said, let me answer that question. But first, let me deal with what you said at the beginning of your statement. And then you started interrupting me. So no, it's not that I'm not willing to answer that question. It's that I

had to point out, I think, a lot of the errors that you're making. Now, if you want just to say, what could we do right now? Well, look, we're going to have to be realists about this situation and admit that Ukraine is losing this war and that they're not going to drive Russia out of Crimea. That's a joke. They're not going to drive Russia out of many of the territories that they've taken right now. We should be working toward a deal, a peaceful solution, which has been on the table several times throughout this war. And it's been the West who has been trying to squash it. Well, that's not true at all, though. You've seen, I assume you've read the deals that Putin has put through. Zelensky hasn't been particularly amenable to them himself. The narrative that the West is squashing the peace deals, which is blown up largely because

of what, that one Boris Johnson visit early on in the conflict? Don't get me wrong, okay? The West has its own interests. There are plenty of Western leaders who would like to see the Russian armories depleted. But that doesn't mean that Ukraine would have been jumping in the bit for any of the deals Putin's been offering since the war began. And Ukraine hasn't been losing. Both countries have been stalling. This has been like a slog, and it has been since the first, or after the first three months of the war. I don't like the narrative that Ukraine's losing because the fact that they exist at all at this point, considering the Russian armaments aligned against them,

is pretty impressive. I mean, they're pulling guys off the streets to fight. Oh, yeah, but like, and Russia has their penal colony forces with the Wagner group pulling from their multiple rounds of really unpopular conscriptions, waves of immigration out of Russia. No, no, no, of course not. I'm not arguing that like it's a matter of our investment or whether or not it's moral.

You know, war makes unfortunately unethical decision making of every side, including the good ones. The allies did plenty of bad stuff during World War II. I'm only saying that it's been a slog for both sides. I don't want to see this out in like, I don't want this conflict to end in a way that's going to guarantee the conflict reemerges in two years. If you end up just setting the border right where the fighting lines are right now, we're going to be exactly where we were back in 2014. We're going to have a combination of like paid separatists and Russian soldiers like moving around in the Donbass.

There's going to be constant exchanges of fire across the border. This needs a real international solution. I don't know whether that means a proper DMZ. I don't know whether that means genuine reconciliation. Ideally, for me, it would be some kind of Hail Mary, where Ukraine gets its borders back, and there's a massive coming together between Russia and the West, and we reopen trade and negotiations,

but that's a little bit of a pipe dream. We do agree that at least, let's agree on this. If the line just freezes where it is right now, are we not guaranteeing another conflict in a few years? I don't know that that's possible to say, to be honest. People would be pretty mad if people would be firing across the border. It's not guaranteeing it. I don't know. I don't think you do either. Especially at the front are not positively disposed to each other. I feel like we need to give them something solid, a solid piece.

Not just like, oh, we've decided now the slog has gone on for too long. They'd be throwing rocks at each other across the border, you know? You could get a five-mile-wide DMZ, and they'd still be, like, sending drones over with bricks to drop at each other's heads. Maybe. This is all... It'd be rough. With the case of, in general, with all of the war hawks,

everybody who's supported every single war over the last 20 years, it always kind of relies on this unfalsifiable counterfactual, like, oh, if we didn't do this, then Vladimir Putin would be invading Poland right now. Or if the lines were drawn where they are, they'd be throwing rocks at each other or something. It's very hard to say. I think the one thing that, like, I think it's, again, just to rely on a counterfactual if that's what we're doing. I think the truth is that there were a lot of much better options. There were off ramps all throughout the path to get here.

And the truth is that if you want to go back to 2014, the West should not have gotten involved the way that it did. That it was such a provocation to back the overthrow of a democratically elected government. If, I mean, all you have to do is think to yourself and just be honest here. We're in the past again. Well, hold on, let me just finish my point. If Russia or China had backed the overthrow of the government in Mexico or Canada because they opted to sign a trade deal with us rather than the one that they wanted them to sign, what do you think DC would do? And we all know the answer to that.

They'd overthrow that government in a second. And we have a Monroe Doctrine for a reason. And you can say that it's like some relic of the past that faraway superpowers ought not intervene in the region of other large nations. But we certainly wouldn't feel that way. We wouldn't think it was a relic of the past. If anybody tried to come over here and set up a military alliance with Mexico or with Canada, tell me how much D.C. would go, oh, yes, the Monroe Doctrine is just a relic of the past.

Do you think the Bay of Pigs invasion was justified? No. Because the Soviets invested economically and militarily into a country that is just off our coast during a time of heightened international conflict. They knew that it would antagonize us. We already had strained relationship with Castro, even though we didn't initially, of course,

because we recognized that he was a much better leader for the Cuban people than the man he replaced. Do you not think the Soviets antagonized us in a way much comparable to what we have done with NATO and Ukraine? Yes, they did. Oh, they did. Okay. So do you think then following the Bay of Pigs... Well, this isn't a gotcha. This is a gotcha. I think it's an interesting question because I do think the Soviets were a little bit wacky with how they handled cuba but i feel like in retrospect we don't talk about the bay of pigs invasion as an inevitable consequence of expansionist soviet investment in light like in spite of our national interest i think we think about it as like

kennedy's mistake you know right okay but see a lot of the reason why we think of it as kennedy's mistake is the logistics of it by the way if you really want to get into it, it wasn't Kennedy's mistake as much as it was the CIA's. It was a race fault of the previous administration, yeah. But regardless of any of that, see, what you asked me is if I thought the Bay of Pigs was justified. And I would also say that, no, I don't think Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine was justified. Do I think that the Soviets and the Cubans were taking a provocative stance against the United States of America? Of course. Did those provocations lead to the Bay of Pigs? I think that's undeniable. And the truth is that Vladimir Putin's got a much stronger case about the provocations of

the United States of America because it's not just one little island or one economic deal. It's been a steady push eastward since the late 90s. Now that we are where we are. Oh, no, go right ahead. Before we go too far, I just want to stand up for the dignity of the Cuban revolution for just a moment. Please. At least it's surprising development. I mean, it was not a Soviet project. This was an organic Cuban project against the corrupt elites in Cuba. Fidel Castro, in the beginning, thought he could maintain some decent relations with the United States. That's right.

It was Che Guevara who witnessed in 1954. He was in Guatemala when the U.S. overthrew Arbenz. And he was the one always saying to Fidel Castro, you're not going to be able to work with the Yankees. It's not possible. Castro wanted to. He was like, look, no, these guys are corrupt. I'm George Washington here. It was only when it became impossible for the Cubans to work, for the Cuban revolutionaries to work with the U.S., that they went in the Soviet direction. And in fact, Ryan... It doesn't make it just, but go ahead, David. Well, correct me if I'm wrong. I wish they'd been our allies.

Correct me if I'm wrong about this, but I also believe that Castro had been rejecting communism up to the point that the U.S. started putting embargoes on him before he then said, oh yeah, I'm a communist. And so you could certainly argue that we drove him into the hands of the Soviets. Right, and I think it plays further into the broader dynamic where basically everybody acts as a reaction to previous acts. Very rarely does something, you know, sort of come up whole cloth.

You almost always, even for the United States, I mean, with all of our power, we are still responding to, you know, the actions and decision making of agents that are of themselves responding to others. In the world today, where we are now, because there are a million places that I could have turned the clocks back and changed history and brought us to a different point. For me personally, the big line wasn't with NATO. It was with economic investment in Russia and the shock therapy. I think that was the real line where we lost the post-Cold War world, where we arrogantly decided that having won over the Soviets,

we would do a victory lap by annihilating their economies, arrogantly pillaging them and leaving them to the oligarchs who had worked with us in a business relations sense. If there was anything I could go back and change, it would be that.

I'm not really particularly fussed about NATO in particular. Military alliances are always going to carry with them, let's say, problematic elements. NATO is just the Western military alliance. Everything that insinuates and carries. If we got along with Russia properly, maybe all of this could have been avoided. I mean, hell, it could have extended far enough east. We could be on better relations with China. We wouldn't have people like Trump trying to constantly push for a second Cold War with like the tariff. And well, Biden did that too recently

with the electric vehicle. So I guess everybody wants a Cold War with China. Things could have been better. That really started with Obama. Yeah, no, it's, we all, because we need a foreign threat. We need a foreign threat. Exactly.

Russia wasn't doing it for us. And they're certainly not going to be doing it now. Partly because- So let me just say, because I think there's something almost being lost here where, look, technically speaking, you are right that everybody is reacting and you are right that every nation is, you know, like I'm a radical libertarian. I think basically essentially all governments are criminal organizations. So you don't have to like convince me on that. The thing here that separates things is that after 1991, America became the

first global superpower. The level of power, it's funny, I have to explain this to a leftist, but the level of power that America had was totally asymmetrical to anything else. I'm just hearing this for the first time. And so, yes, it is true that there are all of these different nations that are reacting to different things. However, if you actually look at the role that the United States of America played and then think about it from, say, the Russian perspective, that this is not something that you and you may say from your perspective that, you know, the NATO military alliance isn't your biggest concern. Okay, but it is the Russians. And you have to see from their perspective that they would see this as a threat that they cannot live with. And the fact is that the idea of Ukrainian entry into NATO was something that was floated out for years.

And not just in 2008 at the Bucharest Summit, where they announced that Ukraine and Georgia would be joining NATO, but for years after that. And then more and more involvement, especially after the coup in 2014, joint military exercises with NATO and the Ukrainian military, which is part of the reason why Vladimir Putin did not have such a quick, decisive victory right away, as he probably would have before that time period. But that from the Russian perspective, you have the global empire, the most war-hungry country in the world, very clearly committed to encirclement.

Obviously, this is going to be a recipe for disaster. And yet Ukraine's desire to be protected by NATO has been validated by Russia's expansionism. Well, okay, can I just a couple of quick questions? Go ahead. I just want to finish that point, if I may. Again, you say Russia's greatest fear is NATO. Ukraine's greatest fear was Russia.

Who ended up being more justified in their fear? NATO hasn't invaded Russia. Russia did invade Ukraine. There's no getting away from it. At the end of the day, this powder keg was ignited by Russia. And here we are now today with the gunpowder having already left ablaze. Where do we move forward? Because I keep asking, I feel like we're always, it's always like, I said before we started the show, you may recall, whenever I debate Israel, you say, it's wrong to genocide these 30,000 such and such Palestinians.

And then the people you argue with, the Zionists, they'll go, oh, but what about Camp David? What about the Accords? They draw back into history because they want to avoid the question today. They want to avoid and turn their eyes away from it. But I'm certainly not avoiding that question. And as I just said a couple minutes ago, it was wrong for Vladimir Putin to invade. But what do we do now? Right, right.

I also answered that. But look, this idea that, first of all, the concern from Vladimir Putin was never, and not even Vladimir Putin, the Russians in general, the concern was never as simple

as is NATO going to invade us? The concern was moving military hardware closer and closer to Russia's borders. Okay, so the concern is more akin to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Not that we were ever worried Cuba was going to invade us, but moving military hardware that close to our borders was a legitimate concern, and one that Jack Kennedy said he would blow up the world over. Most Americans, however they feel about the Bay of Pigs, look at that as fairly justified, that that was a threat we couldn't live with a knife to our neck. Now, to your point that Ukraine's biggest fear was Russia and that they just wanted to join NATO because they had this fear of Russia,

that's not exactly true. Like, if you know the history of this situation, it was in 2000, oh man, I think it's 2008, so it might have been 2006. But there was the State Department admitted that one of the big problems they had is that Ukrainian entry into NATO was just not popular in Ukraine. They estimated that it was about 30%. And so they embarked on a campaign. They literally said, we need the NED and we need the USAID to intervene more to get this support up for NATO membership amongst the Ukrainians. It's not, look, Yanukovych was elected in 2010, and these elections were verified by the EU,

because we're all, you know, neoconservatives are such believers in democracy, but only in the places where we feel like we need to import democracy to. Not necessarily in Ukraine. The legitimacy of those results. Well, okay, but I'm saying it's not as simple as saying that overwhelmingly the Ukrainian people just wanted to join NATO. And D.C. was just, you know, respecting the wishes of the Ukrainian people. That's not what's happening. I'm never saying that the West is acting out of altruism. I would never be that silly. No, but I'm saying that your point that Ukraine just

wanted to join NATO because they feared Russia. I didn't say just wanted, but let's turn the clock forward, right? The Russian economy was stalling. The EU's economy was booming. The Ukrainian people were more interested in economic ties with the EU than they were with Russia. Yanukovych against the will of the people. And yes, he was democratically elected. Democratically elected leaders can do unpopular things. That's life. He then turned towards Russia and said, because Yanukovych was, and we don't have to get into it, let's say, compromised by Russian interest, the people revolted. America supported the Euromaidan revolt because we were interested, of course, in Ukraine having closer ties to us.

But nonetheless, and you can take a look at polling from the time, the Ukrainian disgust with Yanukovych's decision was authentic and widely reflected. Yanukovych fled, of course, fearing for his life and well-being. They took his little wealthy boy palace. And then after that, of course, you have the annexation of Crimea and the separatist movement in the Donbass, which was, of course, heavily supported by Russia. And then, of course, after that, they want to join NATO because they realize that the moment they do anything that Russia doesn't like, Russia is just going to turn the military on them. You have to keep moving the clock forward. Camp Shane, one of America's longest runningrunning 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. 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.

If you have a case you'd like me to look into, with 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.

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

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

Like, that's what's really important, and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us to hear this and more on how music and culture collide. Listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is your girl T.S. Madison, and I'm coming to you loud, live, and in color from the Outlaws podcast. Let me tell you something. I broke the internet with a 22-inch weave. My superpower? I've got the voice. My kryptonite? It don. Get a job. My podcast, the one they never saw coming. Each week, I sit down

with the culture creators and scroll stoppers. Tina knows. Lil Nas X. Will we ever see a dating show for the love of Lil Nas X? Let's do a show with all my exes. X marks the spot. No, here it is. My next ex. That's actually cute though. Laverne Cox.

I have a core group of girlfriends that, like, they taught me how to love. And Chapel Rome. I was dropped in 2020 working the drive-thru, and here we are now. We turn side-eye into sermons, pain into punchline, and grief, we turn those into galaxies. Listen, make sure you tell Beyonce, I'm going right on the phone right now and call her. Listen to Outlaws with T.S. Madison on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, honey. 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. Let me just interject there and ask. So we're $175 billion into this as the United States. The Ukrainian death toll is at least 31,000 people. It's probably much, much higher than that. Both sides minimum around 100,000, but again, probably according to a lot of analysts, much, much higher than that. So to what extent can the United States, this is like higher than the NASA budget last year, the amount of foreign aid we're sending to Ukraine. Is that just the United States spending that much U.S. taxpayer money to protect every inch of the Donbass with no plan, as of right now, ostensibly no serious plan as to what a peace process would look like going forward. Is that a just outcome for the American taxpayer? Oh, look, every dollar we

give to Ukraine, we don't give to Israel. Okay. So it's like, it's like convincing your friend. That's the best argument I've heard. Yeah. Right. It's like convincing your friend to spend money on cigarettes, not fentanyl. But I, I agree that Washington should have a more decisive plan. The lack of a plan, which is a common pattern, by the way, with both the United States and also Netanyahu, so not a fan of that tendency on all sides, is problematic to me. Like I said now, if we just froze the war where it is, because of course, Putin's peace deals are basically just like forfeit the territory you've lost up until this point. They're not like real conciliatory deals, right? Which, of course, Putin wants to keep the territory that he's gained.

I think that if we just took that, if we pressured Ukraine into taking that, a war would break out again within a year, two years, maybe. Because you would have like the military buildup on either side of the DMZ would be like the greatest. Vosh, you started the conversation talking about not wanting this to be a stalemate that goes on forever. So last year, we had this much vaunted counteroffensive. At the time, there were tens of thousands of younger Ukrainian troops who were alive and were well-trained. They were well-equipped. They launched this massive, much anticipated counter offensive.

It was a complete disaster, led to an enormous loss of life and a loss of equipment. And so to your question of what do we do next, like why is it the case that a new counteroffensive with older, less well-trained Ukrainian troops and less well-equipped troops would be able to succeed against a more fortified Russian military while the previous one failed. In other words, like what is this Hail Mary that you're talking about that could change the calculation on the ground to such an extent that it's worth it to continue throwing Ukrainian men and women into the maw of this war? Well, I don't like the term throwing only because like they are, of course, you know, engaged in it right they're not

just being no they're being grabbed in many cases and literally thrown 45 year old men well literally throw yes yes um ukrainian morale or at least interest in continuing the war is still high but that sort of nitpick aside i would only say i look the hail mary is something that i hope for it's not something that i think is guaranteed with With the introduction of ATAKOMs and other relatively long-ranged munitions, we have the ability to sort of provide Ukraine the option to strike at depots, refineries, and facilities that are closer to the sort of back lines of the conflict.

And that has had a massive effect in the past four or five months since that was introduced. I don't know whether that's going to be a game changer in the war in the long run. I hope that it is, because ultimately, I do think that a conciliatory position from Russia would be a better way of ending this conflict than one in which things just freeze as they are now. The DMZ buildup along the line that people settled on right now would be catastrophic, and I think it would just guarantee further war my hope and this is

I know perhaps a little naive of me but I still have a little bit in me that hopes for this my hope is that eventually following the um expansion of Ukraine's ability to strike at further back targets this becomes increasingly economically untenable for Russia there's pressure from both sides hey this has gone on long enough we literally can't keep this going anymore we're both on fumes and like two exhausted boxers on the 14th round they both collapse into each other's arms and um you know they they they uh they they have a christmas day in world war one you know there's a there's a moment where for for a second things get rough enough long enough that they collapse and they just can't do it anymore and maybe the world like breathes a sigh of peace as they finally do settle on whatever line they're at at that point.

I think it's quite a dangerous game to play, man. I mean, I know it was all dangerous, right? Well, sure. But I'm just saying, you know, it was the neocons hope that if you overthrew Saddam Hussein, democracy would sweep the region. And, you know, that would have been nice, I guess. But, you know, the hope that, oh, if they strike inside of Russia, that will make Russia realize that, you know, this war just has cost us a little bit too much and we sure should knock off

this war business. That's quite a quite a risky game to play. There's a couple of things that I want to. Well, let me let me just respond to a couple of things you said there, because things that I think are pretty interesting. So, number one, just a couple of points of correction. I mean, I know I said it was a good point in jest, but no, it's not true that, you know, every dollar that goes to Ukraine is a dollar that doesn't go to Israel. I mean, as you know, we print money out of thin air

and the U.S. government is quite fine to spend well beyond its means. So, no, they can deficit finance through fiat currency both of these wars at the same time. Now, what that's going to do to our dollar... We're mostly just giving Ukraine equipment too, not just money. Sure, sure.

Yeah, no, mostly we're just bribing the military industrial complex and sending old weapons over there. However, you know, there is, as you brought up the talk of agency before, it is true that individuals have agency. It's also true that there's such a thing as moral hazard. So if I were to just say, I'll start giving, hey, Ryan, I'm gonna start giving you a million dollars a month. And then you quit your job and you sit at home. And I go, look, he doesn't wanna work. He doesn't wanna work, he wants to stay home.

He doesn't wanna do it. It's like, well, yeah, okay, there is some truth to that. But might that have, you know, the Ukrainians just wanna fight. Okay, but might that have something to do with the blank check that they've received from the world? So the whole point here, right, is that, and this is true with Israel and with Ukraine. What happens is that when the biggest bully in the history of the world,

the US empire, says, we got your back, people get a lot braver than they otherwise would. If Israel didn't have unconditional support from the United States of America, they'd be forced to make a deal with some of their neighbors. And same with Ukraine. You say like, oh, if the war ended, Ukraine would just be ready to fight Russia again in a few years without our backing, without us arming them, without all of Europe behind them. No, they wouldn't because they know it's a fight they couldn't possibly win. Dave, what's a riskier game to play? I mean, I think I know what your answer would be to this, but what's a riskier game to play? Is it allowing Putin to expand unchecked, just to go back to the argument that Vash made earlier, or is it escalating the

war? It seems as though there are risks in both scenarios, and why is one riskier than the other at this point? Well, look, I mean, okay, So the biggest risk that, again, as I mentioned at the beginning, we should all be concerned about is the potential of nuclear war. And what's prevented the nuclear war in the past has been private negotiations, handshake agreements, and mutually assured destruction. The fact that, you know, nobody really wants to get into a nuclear exchange because we all lose. The only time, especially now because the current administration isn't doing handshake deals or even having conversations behind the scenes with the Russians, the only thing that could lead to a nuclear exchange. So in other words, the worst case scenario is that Vladimir Putin actually thinks he's going to die. He thinks he's going to end up

like Muammar Gaddafi. And that's the scenario where you might end up launching nukes because, you know, screw it, bring everybody down with you. In terms of the risk of Russian expansion, I do think that Vash made a somewhat fair point where, look, between the mix of, this is my point, not yours, but resulting in yours, between the mix of, this is my point, not yours, but resulting in yours, between the mix of NATO joint military exercises with the Ukrainian government, the massive amounts of foreign aid, the weapons shipments that Ukraine has got, going back to before the invasion of 2022, but certainly since 2022, it has made Ukraine a tougher adversary than they otherwise would have been. Vladimir Putin famously said back in 2008,

when he was warning Burns, who was the ambassador to Russia at the time, that I could be in Kiev in two weeks. Well, I don't think that's true anymore. I think it's a tougher battle for him than that. But then also, you think because he ends up getting the eastern part of Ukraine, that what, he's moving on Poland after that? I just think there's absolutely no reason to think that that's the situation. I don't think, the bottom line is that- Although he's right next to Poland, it seems like given the history of NATO and everything else, that's pretty dangerous too.

Well, I don't know. I mean, the whole argument that all of the people who wanted to bring Ukraine into NATO made was that, well, he won't attack them if they're a NATO country. Now he's going to go after Poland. I just don't see it as being very likely. I don't think the guy's on a suicide mission. I think as Burns told Condoleezza Rice that it was never a suicide mission. It was a choice they didn't want to have to make. That's what our intelligence was saying at the time. And so, no, I don't think that there is to pretend. Look, I think American expansionism has been more of a threat to the American republic than anything else. The idea that Putin is somehow some type of existential threat to America, I think is aside from the nuclear

question, just not true. I think that there has been an effort for many years now by the entire political class and the entire corporate media to demonize Vladimir Putin in oftentimes the most cartoonish, ridiculous ways. He stole the election in 2016. He's got bounties on US soldiers' heads in Afghanistan. Now, from our perspective here, right, people like in, say, this alternative media space like Breaking Points is in, we all kind of laugh and mock this stuff. Like, oh, it's so ridiculous. Look at how the CIA is lying to everybody and they actually fell for it. And look how it's been exposed. Putin's perspective, all of the most powerful people in the most war-hungry, powerful country in the world have essentially been saying over and over again that he declared war on us.

I mean, you guys, you tell me, because I know you guys have covered this stuff a lot. How many people in the corporate media and in the intelligence apparatus said that the fake overthrowing of the elections in 2016 was worse than Pearl Harbor. They were saying out loud for years that he's declared war on us. Now, if you're Vladimir Putin, you can't just laugh at that. You have to take that seriously. It was William Perry, Bill Clinton's defense secretary, who said that Vladimir Putin believes that the US policy is to overthrow Vladimir Putin. I don't know for sure whether he's right about that or wrong. It wouldn't surprise me if he was right.

That does sound a lot like my government. But that's the perspective that he's got to come to this from. And I think all it takes is, as I believe it was John Mearsheimer who coined the term, strategic empathy. And that's all you kind of need in this scenario. It's not empathy for its own sake, it's strategic empathy. The same thing that you need to understand the Palestinians, the same thing you need to understand Al-Qaeda, is that these, I'm not saying they're good groups, some of them are, you know, some of the Palestinians are good people, but some of them

are terrorist organizations. Al- Qaeda is a terrorist organization. Vladimir Putin is a despot. But they also can have legitimate grievances. And we ought to, if we want to ignore those, then okay, but we ignore those at our own peril. I just want to say, if I may, like, respectfully, again, no talking about the present or what to do now. And this is my frustration. I promise I'll be very, very quick on this. But the other point that I just did want to make to you as you bring that up again, it's actually not the case that when I have all of these Israel Palestine debates that I want to talk about what's going on right now, and they want to talk about

all of the history that led to this point, it's actually quite the opposite. Sagar made this point when he moderated a debate recently for me on breaking points when he was recapping it the next day. The truth is that all of the pro-Israel supporters want to just talk about October 7th to today. And everybody who's critical of Israel actually wants to go back through the history and talk about all of it.

Because yeah, it's important to understand the history to understand what position we're in now. 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. 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 new case, bringing the skills I've

learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. 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. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was

my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, cause i bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too so his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is and they're starting to be like yo your dad's like really the goat like he's a legend so he gets it what does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family it means a lot to me just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better so the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that i'm

really happy or my family in general let's talk about the music that moves us to hear this and more on how music and culture collide listen to we need to talk from the black effect podcast network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is your girl T.S. Madison, and I'm coming to you loud, live, and in color from the Outlaws

Podcast. Let me tell you something. I broke the internet with a 22-inch weave. My superpower? I've got the voice. My kryptonite? It don't exist. Get a job.

My podcast? The one they never saw coming. Each week, I sit down with the culture creators and scroll stoppers. Tina knows. Lil Nas X. Will we ever see a dating show for the love of Lil Nas X? Let's do a show with all my exes. X marks the spot.

No, here it is. My next ex. That's actually cute, though. Laverne Cox. I have a core group of girlfriends that, like, they taught me how to love. And Chapel Rome. I was dropped in 2020, working the drive-thru, and here we are now. We turn side-eye into sermons, pain into punchline, and grief, we turn those into galaxies.

Listen, make sure you tell Beyonce, I'm going right on the phone right now and call her. Listen to Outlaws with T.S. Madison on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, honey. 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. Let me bring you up to this week, since you want to talk about today.

So this is from earlier this week from Zelensky's top advisor. You probably saw this quote. He's got a couple others out there publicly. He's saying this in English, so we don't even have to hit the translate button. Nice of him. Very nice of him. After the attack on the beach in Crimea, he said, quote, There are not and cannot be any beaches, tourist zones, those are his quotes, and other fictitious signs of, peaceful life in Crimea. Crimea is definitely a foreign territory occupied by Russia where there are hostilities and a full-scale war. The very war that Russia unleashed for genocidal and invasive purposes only. Crimea is also a large military camp and warehouse with

hundreds of direct military targets which the Russians are cynically trying to hide and cover up with their own civilians, which in turn are considered to be civilian occupiers. So he said this after Ukraine killed civilians on the beach. So are we the baddies here? I mean, it's almost a perfect mirror of rhetoric employed in the Hamas versus Israel conflict, actually, where, you know, when Hamas killed civilians on October 7th, the argument was that the civilians were settlers who were occupying stolen land, and therefore you can't, like, reasonably argue they're civilians. And then on the other hand, of course, you have, like, Israelis who say that, like, Hamas uses the Palestinian people as human shields. In the West Bank, you have the argument,

like, it's remarkable, actually, how many parallels there are and how these are employed. Are we the baddies? Yes, we're all the baddies. Nation states the baddies. That sounds reductive, but that is just the way the game is played. You will never find a nation engaged in war. There are ways to play the game without explicitly justifying the slaughter of civilians on a beach. But in practice, if you go back to basically any military conflict where existential threat was on the line, which it certainly is for Ukraine or is in the Israel-Hamas conflict, you will see that this rhetoric and these standards are employed.

This is not me arguing that it's justified. It's morally abhorrent because war demands abhorrence of the people who participate in it. You're not going to find any large-scale conflict where stuff like this doesn't happen, which is why, to me, the interesting question is... It's not even a large-scale conflict in Crimea. What part of the broader Ukraine? Why is the American public supposed to care all of a sudden that Russia controls Crimea?

Like four years ago, you would have been laughed at if you suggested that Ukraine ought to go to war to kick Russia out of Ukraine. Well, that's a separate question. The first one about ago, you would have been laughed at if you suggested that Ukraine ought to go to war to kick Russia out of Ukraine. Well, that's a separate question. The first one about the abhorrence of this rhetoric, which by the way, I agree with. I just want to be clear that this is a consequence of these heightened tensions, which is why I'm interested in what can be done to bring an end to this war, a permanent end, not some middling ceasefire that gets broken almost immediately. In terms of whether or not America should care, I don't know. The average American couldn't find Kabul on a map. The average American doesn't care about anything outside of their own tax breaks.

My interest in what the average American cares about is nil. The average American doesn't care about the homeless. Why should I care about what they care about? What I care about is what's good. Sometimes they do. I don't know. The average American with the state of our education, I care about what's good. Nuclear war is bad, by the way. That's where I land in that particular moral equivalence. I think that if we settle

with an unjust, tense, quiet, with the Russia-Ukraine conflict, we guarantee future conflict. If you look back at the history of expansionist empires, if you take a look at what Russia is doing now and compare it to the rhetoric employed by other nations that have annexed adjacent territory, you will find they tend not to quit while they're ahead. There's a pattern of overextension.

Let me ask you, so on this piece, you hoped that if there's enough fighting that eventually these two fighters will become exhausted and and kind of peace will break out. But you've also said that if we get a peace deal, then war will eventually break out. So why would the peace from exhaustion not just lead to your your fear that two years later war would break out again? Because it sounds like war is the only logical endpoint of your position here, either position. I think it needs to be a peace deal that the Russian and Ukrainian people are happy with. Right now, we haven't even gotten close to finding that point, which means the only real end to the conflict would be the complete annexation of Ukraine and the annihilation of all the militias and insurgency groups within it,

which would be very difficult considering the fact that Russia has logistical breakdowns 50 miles out of their border, or Ukraine retaking all of its territory, which is at the moment basically unthinkable. It doesn't seem like there's any end to the conflict right now outside of something that could be imposed by a kind of international move to sort of like solidify the line where it is now.

And I do think that would just lead to more peace in the future. That's my question. And I don't come to this with a solution, by the way. If I had a solution or if anyone did, I think you'd be hearing them preaching it a lot more often. I don't like the idea of treating this like team sports or like, you know, well, in actuality, like we could have prevented this

if we went back 20, 30, 40 years. I know there's a lot of other cool stuff we could have done. We could have invested in like Apple early too, you know? Well, let's say the US tripled the NASA budget and sent it all to Ukraine. Do you think that would be too much US support? I mean, if we over-support Ukraine, if we commit to it so hard that Ukraine starts pushing back further, my concern would be that the brass in Ukraine would get arrogant and start pushing into Russia. I don't think that's especially likely. Certainly, Ukraine doesn't have the same sort of legacy and cultural pretext of expansionist sentiment the way that Putin does. But it's possible.

I also disagree, by the way, with the strike they did on some of those early warning systems. You showed an article with that headline a little bit ago. I think that's dangerous territory. I don't think that Ukraine has been particularly irresponsible in this conflict as military conflicts go. And that's a pretty low bar. I do think that there's a risk. The more we gin them up, the more gung-ho they get. And I think that risk increases the longer this goes on, too.

So, again, we either let Ukraine get washed entirely. I don't even know if Russia could do that at this point, even if we divested from Ukraine. We sort of pressure Ukraine to accept the Russian peace deal as it is now, or we overinvest to the point where they can reclaim their borders, which given enough time and enough money, we unleash Area 51 on the Russians. Sure, maybe Ukraine could do it. Of these three options, which is the most likely to bring about the fewest deaths, the lowest likelihood of long-term nuclear conflict? In my opinion, the path will get clearer the more time goes on because we will increasingly test the willingness of the Russian people to support this ongoing engagement. That sounds horrible. I think this is a horrible situation. That's not me blaming anyone involved, the Pentagon,

the Kremlin, whatever else. It's a horrible humanitarian nightmare, but it's also a pretty difficult one to manage. You know, you look back at history and there are empires that were clashing with each other for centuries over and over again, borders barely changing with each successive war. I don't want that to happen here,

not just because we've got nuclear powers involved, but because like it is a collective drain on the spiritual financial and military collective of humanity i just don't want to come at it from a dogmatic position because i don't want to blind myself to avenues of peace that might um might be unintuitive and we're running up against our time limit here uh but but dave any any kind of final thoughts you'd want to have on how this ought to end? From your perspective to Vosch's question, what do we do now? Sure. Okay, well, first of all, I would just say that I don't think Ukraine has been very responsible throughout this whole thing.

And certainly when their missiles hit Poland and Zelensky immediately called for preemptive attacks on Russia by the West, either lying through his teeth and claiming it was Russia who attacked Poland or being so clueless that he hadn't even done any investigation to figure out whether it was them or not. Either way, it seems pretty irresponsible to me. But look, without even going back into ancient history, just going back to very recent history, it was Jens Stoltenberg. I apologize to the Norwegians. I know I'm butchering that.

That was offensive. He gave the whole game away last year. But he admitted that Vladimir Putin actually sent them a draft treaty and said, if you just promise to not bring Ukraine into NATO, I won't invade. And he brags that they said, no, we won't sign that. Ha ha, you didn't want NATO expansion.

And look at you now, you're getting more NATO expansion. It's like, yeah, and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians dead. Like, could we at least all agree that we should have just signed that treaty? Why is it a vital strategic interest to the United States of America that we have a war guarantee with Ukraine? How many people in America, it's like George Kennan said back in the first round of NATO expansion, we have neither the political will nor the resources to actually defend these countries? How many people in America actually would be willing to sacrifice themselves or their children to make sure that the Donbass region is ruled by Kiev? Would you guys be willing to sacrifice your kids for that? This is ridiculous.

Anyone here? The average American wouldn't sacrifice their lives to protect East Germany or Poland either. Do you think the average American would fight for Warsaw? This sounds convincing, but it's empty rhetoric. Likewise, you're still not talking about what you want. No, no, explain to me what you want today to minimize. Because I keep talking about today, and then you keep talking

about NATO, NATO, NATO. We know. I addressed and acknowledged and agreed with the Western Americans that led to us. Vash, you're interrupting me and then claiming I'm not addressing something. So first I was just saying, could we at least all agree that a couple years ago we should have just signed that deal and committed to not bringing Ukraine into NATO and avoided this war? Couldn't Russia have just invaded anyway? Huh?

Couldn't Russia have just invaded anyway? Sure. I guess in the worst case scenario, it would be as bad as... I think maybe. That's not... You're laughing, but there's no point to that. Yes, in the worst case scenario, we could have still ended... Let's talk about what we can do now. Let me just make my point. Okay, Fash, let me just make my point.

Instead of this constant interrupting. Listen, yes, in the worst case scenario, I suppose it could have gone as bad as it did in this scenario, but obviously the overwhelming odds are that it wouldn't have come to this. Now, in terms of your point of saying, well, the average American isn't willing to go die for Germany or Poland. Okay, but so why are we adding more of these countries, especially when our own intelligence community is telling us that the risk of adding this other nation that Americans care about even less, the risk of it could result in this war, very explicitly, blatantly saying that. Now, look, again, I do think I actually answered this question pretty clearly pretty early on in this. But right now, what we should do, being educated by what's happened in the very recent

past, is to go, hey, America is going to announce that we will pull all of our support for Ukraine in this war under the condition that Vladimir Putin accepts some type of peace proposal. That's going to look like not quite as good as Ukraine would have gotten if they had taken the deal that Boris Johnson broke up. But it's going to look like Vladimir Putin obviously keeping Crimea, obviously keeping some of the territories that he already has control of. And in exchange for him ending the war, we promise that Ukraine will not be admitted into NATO. I believe that deal is still possible. Let me just add one final point to this, and then you can respond however you want. Understand something here. The United States of America

holds all of the chips. We could offer Vladimir Putin something that would probably get him to do whatever we wanted him to do. And you know what that is, the ultimate crowning jewel for him. How about we leave NATO? If you end this war right now, America will withdraw from NATO.

Why not? This is like silly internet rhetoric that we can laugh at at any political conference. We're going to from NATO. Why not? This is like silly internet rhetoric that we can laugh at at any political conference. We're going to leave NATO. This is like for Twitter likes. What if we left the key military alliance on the planet to incentivize

a despot on the other side of the world to not invade the country they unjustly invaded. It's such nonsense. No, no, no. It's good for Twitter likes. It's great for the ultra libertarians who are all keenly interested in Yanukovych's electoral legitimacy. It's not reality.

You suggested that we offer to pull support from Ukraine in exchange for a peace deal. Okay, fine. So let's finally talk about that then. What happens then if that divestment occurs? Naturally, there's a DMZ. Of course, there would be, right? And then you have a buildup of the remaining Ukrainian troops and Russia's troops on both sides. Don't you think it's likely that given a peace deal that takes place under those circumstances,

eventually the conflict would spark again? And this time, what are we going to do? Provide aid to Ukraine again when Russia is at base again? But is the alternate just rolling conflict, like the ongoing slog for another couple of years? I mean, go ahead. We need to find the path through that allows the peace deal to take place in a way that doesn't guarantee an immediate future conflict. If we pursue an unjust peace that is immediately broken, it will have been for nothing and we'll be in a worse position than we were before because nobody's going to want to stop the second version of the conflict five days after it starts. We need to be careful with this.

So first of all, let me just say that- So Dave, respond and then Vash will close with a response from you. Okay. So I think that Vash's response of like, oh, this is just what internet libertarians care about or something like that. I just think there was a lot of words without you actually saying anything there. NATO was created after World War II because we had the Soviet Union controlling half of Europe and Western Europe had been destroyed. It was in utter ruins. And so we felt like we had to subsidize the defense of Western Europe

to make sure that this very clearly expansionist power, the Soviet Union, didn't expand into Western Europe. At this point today, Western Europe is rich and we are $34 trillion in debt. It makes absolutely no sense. And by the way, the Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore. There is no reason for NATO to exist. There's no reason for the US to be a part of it. The former president of the United States of America and the current front runner to be president of the United States of America again has made this point many, many times. This is not just something for

internet libertarians to be interested in. This is something that should be a serious conversation amongst the American people. And by the way, during the fall, when the Soviet Union collapsed, there were many of the wisest graybears in the American security establishment who felt the same way, who felt that, okay, the mission of NATO is over. Anyway, to your next point, again, this is just an empty argument. You could say this about any peace deal. Well, what if war breaks out again? Well, okay, but if your worst case scenario is war breaks out, your solution is to continue supporting the war? We want to continue the war because we're afraid of war? Listen, if we actually, as I just mentioned, which is a serious proposal, we have the ultimate chip here. We have the chip that could allow Vladimir Putin to claim,

hey, I won, which is what you want in these situations. You want to let everyone save face. You want to allow the Ukrainians to say, hey, we fought and we kept this part of our territory. You want to allow the Russians to say, hey, we were pushed into this, but we were victorious. You want to let everybody save face and come up with some type of deal. And yes, Vaush, you can make the point that it's never 1 million percent guaranteed that it'll hold and another war won't break out. But it's a hell of a lot more likely than continuing the war. So the point is you want to come up with a deal that's realistic, that could maybe hold. And I do think that America has all the leverage in the world to make that happen and if i may uh i'll i'll just say that like no the idea

of holding out for a good piece one that actually incentivizes both parties to hand like keep their hands off rather than just the first piece that comes up that is a good instinct um the idea that there is no difference between uh a peace deal that immediately breaks down and a war that continues until a good peace is found, there is a massive difference between these. Look at the multiple attempts at securing peace between the Ukrainians and the Russians over the 2014 invasion of the Donbass, right? Terms are set, conditions are then not met by either side,

and then nothing changes, cementing a course of action that continued down eight years until the proper invasion by Russia began. You need to find a good peace. I don't know where that path lies, which means that I don't have the convenient, simple answer of saying, what if we just divested, left NATO, and hope that Putin never invaded the remains of Ukraine again. I think that's a very easy thing to say. I think that it's good for ginning up populist fervor. I think it sounds compelling. I think it would do nothing.

I think it's a virtue signal. After all, America is in NATO as a formality. Many nations that are in NATO don't even meet the required 2.5% GDP military expenditure that they need to be there. NATO is just a cementing of existing alliances. Do you think we still wouldn't go to war with the interests of, say, Britain or Germany or France? Of course we would, because we're still allies. NATO is just the framework built around it. The real, true underlying force, which is shared geopolitical interest, persists nonetheless.

What would keep Putin from invading again? In my mind, it would be promises from the West, but not promises of divestment. We shouldn't just leave Ukraine weak and open to being invaded again, because again, if they just break the peace and conquer the rest of Ukraine after giving it a year or two to rearm on the Russian front, what do we get then? Well, obviously, the Ukrainian people are conquered, and they are subject to a great many, you know, violences and humiliations. But in addition to that, of course, we continue to sort of throw fuel into the fire of an expansionist empire.

Putin's intentions on this are not subtle. He was invoking the borders of the Russian Empire when he began the invasion of Ukraine. I do not think there's any reason to believe that he would be like sated after he made his way all the way over to Poland. What I want is real reconciliation, not just between Ukraine and Russia, but the West and Russia. Russia has been, let's be real here, a nuclear missile-ridden backwater since the end of the Soviet Union. Prostitution skyrocketed. Child sex trafficking skyrocketed after the end of the Soviet Union. Their economy in shambles.

Oligarchs effectively rule the country. There are many, many Russians who don't even have indoor plumbing. I think that a promise of shared investment, the thing we never did after the end of the Cold War, and not just business investment, not just Coca-Cola opening up a factory. I mean, you don't want the American taxpayers spending money on Ukrainian weapons? Okay, I got a better idea for you. Three times as much money on Russian economic reinvestment. Give it to them to work with. Build real economic bonds. One of the reasons Taiwan hasn't been invaded yet

is because China and America are so integrated economically. We don't have that with Russia. That's one of the reasons they're able to persist in spite of all the sanctions on them, because they rely on a pretty primitive oil, coal, natural gas kind of extraction economy. I think that if we take Russia seriously as a foreign power and as a people, we invest in them and we care about them. In the long run, we could secure a better peace that both sides feel better about, and we could build a world where there is no longer any incentive for the West or for Russia to get angry at each other. And we could build a world where there is no longer any incentive

for the West or for Russia to get angry at each other. And that's my hope. Naive it may be. There you go. And probably cheaper if we just reached a peace deal and lifted the sanctions

and then kept dollar hegemony. There's an idea. But anyway. Well, this is a good place to leave it. And this has been super, super interesting. Thank you guys both for being game to talk some of this out. We really appreciate it.

Vaush and Dave Smith, thanks so much for joining us on CounterPoints. Have a good week, guys. Thank you, Dave. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Vaush. 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 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Michael Kassin, founder and CEO of 3C Ventures and your guide on good company, the podcast where I sit down with the boldest innovators shaping what's next. In this episode, I'm joined by Anjali Sood, CEO of Tubi. We dive into the competitive world of streaming. What others dismiss as niche, we embrace as core. There are so many stories out there. And if you

can find a way to curate and help the right person discover the right content, the term that we always hear from our audience is that they feel seen. Listen to Good Company on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila. And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday.

Yeah, we're moms. But not your mommy. Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. Listen to the Good Moms, Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you go to find your podcast. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. High key. Looking for your next obsession? Listen to High Key, a new weekly podcast hosted by Ben O'Keefe, Ryan Mitchell, and Evie Audley.

We got a lot of things to get into. We're going to gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about. I am high key going to lose my mind over all things Cowboy Carter. I know.

Girl, the way she about to yank my bank account. Correct. And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter. Oh, I know. Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is an iHeart Podcast.