Pod Save the World - Private mercenaries and naked sunbathers

Episode Date: June 30, 2021

Tommy and Ben discuss updates on the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the discovery of hundreds of bodies at former residential schools for Indigenous children in Canada, Saudi mercenaries getting trained in the US, Russian war crimes in the Central African Republic, the ongoing civil war in Ethiopia, Hungary’s latest attack on LGBTQ rights, Boris Johnson’s big boat boondoggle, a helicopter rescue of naked sunbathers in Australia and more. Then former US ambassador to the UK and Sweden joins Tommy to tell some of his best stories from his time abroad and talk about his approach to leadership.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsavetheworld. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, welcome back to the West Coast Heat Dome. I'm not sure we're technically under it. It was 98 in New York when I left. So you had your own heat. This feels a little bit better than that. But yeah, it's kind of hot.

Yeah, I don't know about you, but, you know, reports of like 117 degrees in Seattle or Portland or Canada. Like, that gets me to like the existential dread feeling sometimes. Yeah, we're going to have to bring some more climate content out of this podcast. Yeah, we're going to get some more climate content. Yeah, I'm going to move from authoritarianism to climate change, Tommy. I love that. One cheerful subject to the next. Yeah, I do.

Well, we'll spare everyone on the show the infrastructure conversation that we've been having on Pots in America. Today we got a lot of good stuff, though. We're going to talk about news out of Afghanistan, the treatment of indigenous kids in Canada, news about Jamal Khashoggi's murder, the international fight for LGBT rights, some Russian mercenaries in Africa, apparently, talk about the Civil War in Ethiopia, and then President Biden's decision to again launch air strikes in the Iraq, Syria, area,

and some COVID news. And then we have some quicker headlines out of Japan, North Korea, in outer space, because it's time to talk about UFOs. I've never been more excited to broochist up with you. And then finally, a little sports minute, and I was hoping we could vote on the dumbest story of the week. I'm eager to hear your thoughts on these two options.

We're basically a weather report away from being the local news here, Ben. Although I talked about the weather to start. So maybe we are the local news. We got it. We got it. Good for us. Then stick around for my interview with former U.S. ambassador to the UK and to Sweden, Matthew Barsen.

He's been a friend of ours for a decade plus. He's going to talk about what a day in the life is like when you're an ambassador. He'll tell stories about the queen. He'll tell stories about how he got in trouble for telling stories about the queen. Ben, I relayed to him your story about the queen. and you will really want to hear that reaction. And we'll talk about why Matthew is waging a war against bureaucracy in his new book, The Power of Giving Away Power.

So definitely stick around for that conversation. It's very rare that you meet somebody. And over the course of the decade, like your first impression that they're just one of the nicest people you've ever met remains the case like 15 years later. But that's what it's like with Matthew is just like the best guy. Great dude. And yeah, I mean, I remember I saw him. when he was over in London on official trips. And then I also went over there

and had like one of the best dinners of my life with him and his wife, ending it off with like his Woodford Reserve, which is excellent. But the thing he did over there, there was so interesting, he had a real cultural focus at the ambassador's residence. So he'd have these concerts.

I think he had like the national play over there and like a bunch of bands like that. It was pretty cool. Like it was not your stodgy, you know, Trumpy. successor that he had. Woody Johnson, the crappy owner of the Jets. Yeah, no, it wasn't some stuffy old, like, you know, hedge fund person or whatever that job often is. It was like the most fun person who was actually famously really good at the job. Matthew did an amazing job. People loved him over there.

So it's worth listening to. And speaking of worth listening to, if you have not checked it out already, check out, listen to you, subscribe to our new podcast, Edith. It is a scripted comedy starring Rosamine Pike. It explores the untold, truished story of America's secret first female president, Edith Wilson, First Lady to Woodrow Wilson. It's hilarious. Two episodes are out. New episodes come out every Thursday. Travis Helwig, who many of you know and love, is one of the co-creators. So check it out on Spotify, Apple Pods, wherever you get your podcast, because you will enjoy it. It's fun. It's just fun. All right, Ben. So we talked about this last week. But last Friday, the president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, met with President Biden at the

White House. He was joined by Abdullah Abdullah, who's the guy leading the effort to broker a peace deal with the Taliban. So a few updates that came out of that meeting or around the meeting because they were reported in the press. First, Biden said the U.S. will provide Afghanistan with $266 million in humanitarian aid, $3.3 billion in security aid, and then send three million doses of the Johnson and Johnson coronavirus vaccine to Afghanistan. So that's a good thing. Second, the Wall Street Journal reported that there's a new U.S. intelligence community the assessment that found that the government of Afghanistan could collapse in as little as six months after the U.S. pulls out of the country.

So that's revised way down from the previous assessment that was like two years was sort of the floor. Third, we talked last week about concerns that Afghan citizens who had worked with the U.S. over the years were being targeted for assassination by the Taliban and that the process of vetting them and getting that relocated was going really slowly. Good news there is there's some reports of the Biden team is working on a plan that would locate those individuals in their families first, so like maybe take them into a place like Guam so that they are safe during that vetting process. So then, you know, good news there and that last

point, but obviously not great news on this intelligence assessment. What did you make of Biden's meeting with Ghani and that intel report? You know, I think, you know, Biden's doing what we can do, right, which is a signal that we have a long-term commitment, not just, you know, short-term tranches of assistance, but there's going to be a sustained effort to support the remaining Afghan security forces in the fight, the long-term sustainability of the Afghan security forces, but also this humanitarian piece. You know, and obviously I was very pleased to see the news of, you know, the Biden team signaling that they may take in tens of thousands of Afghans who've worked with us. I think that's essential. And I think, look, if the, if you need a temporary

place like Guam to process people and, you know, to get them visas, better to do that there than to be trying to do it in a really chaotic security environment like in Afghanistan. As long as I think, you know, hopefully they get here and don't get stuck in Guam. Nothing wrong with Guam. But I don't think that's a long-term solution. Not the goal. Yeah. Not the goal. But then I guess the new thing I'd say, I was struck by, you know, these comments you saw coming out of the meeting from Ghani about this is 1861, as if kind of it's like the beginning of a civil war, not the end of a civil war. And even the only kind of plan that there appears to be on the Afghan government side

is to kind of try to unite these different warlords and factions who have been at odds with each other to some extent, but may form a united front against the Taliban. And again, I think what's so while that is inevitable, and I think that that may be the only way to try to hold some territory against what has been a really aggressive Taliban offensive. It's amazing how much that returns you to kind of the pre-9-11 status quo, where you had a bunch of warlords in the north who kind of fought the Taliban in the south. And so it is pretty remarkable that, you know, 20 years of war kind of is returning Afghanistan to some extent to that state, obviously without the al-Qaeda safe of him, right?

So the principal reason we went into Afghanistan has been addressed. But I think it speaks to, it should inject everybody with the dose of humility. I don't think that's a failure of our troops. I think it's a sign of the limits of what a foreign military presence can do in a place like Afghanistan. So I hope people don't lose sight of the challenges there after the last U.S. troops exit. I hope we sustain our commitment. I hope that we get as many Afghans out as we can and, you know, hope for the best,

but it looks like it's going to be an incredibly difficult circumstance. Because, you know, that intel assessment, look, there's always kind of the worst-case doom and gloom assessment. I think what's clear in the news reporting is the Taliban offensive into these northern cities that have not necessarily been their strongholds, you know, is a pretty clear tell that the Taliban's intention here is to try to take over the country. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Well, I imagine we'll come back to this like almost every week because the deadline for getting U.S. troops out is in September. So stay tuned for more on this. The second story here, I just want to warn everybody in advance. This is a very tough story to hear her to talk about. So the context is for decades, indigenous children in Canada were taken from their families and forced to live in these church-run boarding houses where they were often abused and they were basically forcibly stripped of their language and their culture. Like they literally, weren't allowed to speak their own languages.

There was a 2015 report by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada that estimated that about 150,000 indigenous kids passed through these schools between 1883 and 1996 when they were finally closed. And that 6,000 kids died. That was the old estimate. I still can't believe these schools are open until 1996. This year, this summer, really, the bodies of nearly 1,000 people have been found on the grounds of two of these schools.

there were many, many more. It's not yet clear how many of the bodies were indigenous students or how they died, but it's pretty well documented that these kids were not treated well. Obviously, disease was rampant in some of these periods, but there was also a lot of physical sexual abuse happening. The discovery has led to calls for Prime Minister Trudeau, Justin Trudeau of Canada, to allocate more funding for these kinds of searches and to do more generally to help Canada's 1.7 million indigenous citizens who are still living with just horrible trauma from these schools. in many cases, intergenerational trauma. The discoveries have also led to calls for the Vatican to apologize for the role that the Catholic Church played here because 70% of these schools were operated by the Catholic Church. Episcopal denominations at Canada have apologized previously.

And in the U.S., Deb Howland, the Interior Secretary, who's the first Native American cabinet secretary in U.S. history, announced that the U.S. is going to search similar facilities here in the U.S. And so, you know, we just wanted to raise awareness about this. It's a truly horrible story that I think people are are rightly describing as a cultural genocide. And it's something that happened right here in North America. And, you know, I'm glad to see Canada trying to get to the bottom of it. I do think that's into the kind of progress that we should probably be taking right now, too. Yeah. I mean, a few things jumped out to me, Tommy. I mean, one of the things was that there have been oral traditions or kind of, you know, storytelling through generations about the mass. killings of children that were kind of ignored or dismissed or not taken seriously enough, that that was just a stunning detail to me, that this has lived within these communities, and it's only now that they're getting to it, although obviously better late than never.

I do think, you know, it made me ashamed at the extent to which I didn't know about this, you know, Canada here in North America, and obviously it does suggest, as you say, that there's plenty of history that we don't know about what happened in the United States with indigenous communities. But I think that also globally, you know, you've seen in recent years, you know, movements to have more of a reckoning in places like Australia and New Zealand, I just think globally when you see something this shocking and jarring, yes, you want apologies. Yes, you want redress. Yes, you want resources from the Canadian government. Again, that apology from the Vatican. But I think everybody needs to take a harder look at their own history. Anybody that has

a circumstance where you have indigenous people who were mistreated, who were displaced, who were the subject of genocide, ethnic cleansing. So I think that anything constructive can come globally from this. It's any country that has history like this needs to shine a brighter light on it and do what is necessary to try to address the past. because, you know, these are, this is part of who we are. This is part of what made our country, made Canada, made many other countries. And it continues to be a situation where there are communities that deserve better. Yeah.

I mean, look, if conservatives in this country can't stomach the teaching of critical race theory or slavery, wait till they see the curriculum about the treatment of Native peoples and, you know, the literal genocide or disease and other means that happened around the founding of the country, I mean, by the way, you know, I agree with you completely, Ben, that, like, education is really the first step here. If folks want to listen to a podcast that gets some of these issues, this land, our series, talks about the treatment of Native Americans in the U.S., including treaty rights. And then the second season is coming out later this summer, and it's going to talk about some of these specific issues that we're touching on right now. So important stuff and stories that really need to be told. And I was just saying, because, like, again, like, listen to the voices of the Native peoples.

You know, like, too often it's like, because that's what speaks to the world tradition, like, you know, oftentimes this is treated as something that is discussed without them driving the conversation. This, you know, this land is a good example of storytelling that listens to the voices of native people. Yeah, exactly. It's, you know, basically the entire production was native people from the host to the, you know, people editing to ever, because we felt that was really important. The next issue is equally dark, Ben. So we're in talk about Saudi Arabia and Jamal Khashoggi. So the background for listeners was in 2018, Saudi operatives murdered a journalist named Jamal Khashoggi in a Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

The assassination was ordered up by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman or MBS for short. Last week, the New York Times reported that four of the Saudis who participated in Keshoggi's murder had received paramilitary training in the United States. This was, I think, a year before the murder. The training was provided by a company called the Tier 1 group. what a weird Orwellian, I don't know, name. They say that the goal of the training was to help the Saudi Royal Guard defend Saudi leaders.

It was supposed to be defensive in nature. But it's clear that the guys who are supposed to be like MBS's elite guards, right? They became his private assassination force. So this training was first approved by the Obama administration in 2014. It was continued by Trump. And so while Trump's relationship with the Saudis and with MBS in particular is gross and problematic because he literally tried to cover up Khashoggi's murder for MBS, the issue is more about, I think, the U.S.-S.-Saudi relationship than anyone president.

So, Ben, this report also made me think of the incident in 2019 when a member of the Saudi Air Force was in Florida getting training, and then he went on a shooting rampage. It was an al-Qaeda-linked attack in the U.S. in Florida. So, look, I realize that, like, the U.S. and the Saudis, we've allied in a lot of areas from fighting al-Qaeda or AQAP to, like, managing Iran's nuclear ambitions or support for terrorism. But I guess my question for you is like, at what point do you think the U.S. government needs to start asking whether this training could potentially do more harm than good? I mean, if we're like training individuals who are murdering journalists who live in the U.S., that seems like a real problem.

Yeah. I mean, look, I think it's long past time for the kind of full reconsideration of this relationship with Saudi Arabia. Whatever we're getting out of it, it is corrupting us to be a party. to this kind of stuff. And it is not, I think, in the long run, advancing U.S. interest to have this kind of regime engage in this kind of activity with the support of the United States because the rest of the world sees us. And we talk a lot in the show about democracy and authoritarianism.

What leg do we have to stand on in all of those conversations around the world if we are supporting and training people for an autocrat like Maham bin Salma? So I think this stuff needs to end full stop. I mean, it's not like it's time to just. And look, people can at me about the Obama administration. I was not a fan of the, let's be clear of the Saudi government in those years. And I think that the Saudi government would back me up on that. But the reality here is that oftentimes we hear about like needing to recalibrate things and tweak things.

Like, no, sometimes you just shouldn't be doing things. And we'll get ahead. You know, I think when we get to the Russian mercenary story, There's this kind of interesting spectrum between things that the U.S. government does, right, like the pilots. And then things that are kind of privatized. And that kind of runs the spectrum all the way to kind of the stuff that like Eric Prince and his outfit does, often in concert with like the Saudis and the Emirates and places like Yemen, where you literally have mercenaries who not only fight in wars like places like Yemen,

but I've gone kind of down rabbit holes on this stuff. You know, they'll be hired to be like the protective guard for the Saudi royal family in some fashion. But they do more than just, you know, run motorcades and be bodyguards. They do all kinds of stuff. They do private intelligence. They do clearly shadier work. And I think this is an area that deserves a lot more scrutiny from policymakers, from the press. I think we only have seen the tip of the iceberg of this kind of underworld of the kind of privatized.

espionage, mercenary, security, that if you have a lot of money like the Saudis do, you know, you can take a lot of advantage of. So there's a U.S. government issue here, and then there's a broader issue that it has to be addressed. So let's talk about this Russian element because I agree it's, it's escalating it and it's gross. So according to a UN Security Council report, Russia sent mercenary forces to the Central African Republic in an effort to help the government there win back a bunch of towns that were basically were valuable diamond mines were existed. So these Russian mercenaries, according to this report, engaged in excessive force, indiscriminate killings, looting, even killed worshippers at a mosque. And so basically, like, it's exactly what you talked about,

Ben, the continuum. Like the UN had okayed a military training mission for the Central African Army, but the UN ultimately found that there were as many as 2100 Russian mercenary fighters there in the country engaging in combat. And the Times got an early look at this report. And in their story on its fighting, they noted that these Russian mercenaries like keep popping up in places like Libya, Mozambique, South Sudan, Chad. Many of them are employed by a Russian, yeah, Syria. Many of them are employed by a Russian oligarch who is close to Putin through a company called the Wagner Group. So like, I guess my question to you then is like, I agree that we need more security on this stuff. What do you think that the U.S. or the international community can do to kind of curtail this activity?

So first of all, I think the U.S. needs to set a better example because we've been setting, the wrong example on this across the board. Oh, you think Blackwater was good? Well, exactly. So basically, part of what's happened here, right, is after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, you had this explosion of private military contractors. And that was Blackwater. That was the infamous group that was engaged in some atrocities in Iraq under the leadership of Eric Prince, who has since kind of repurposed, rebranded, renamed Blackwater multiple times. But there is still a massive footprint of private military contractors, again, that the U.S. government contracts with in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Not everybody who works for those firms is like a bad guy, right? Like a lot of them are former

military guys who just, they need a job and they're driving motorcades or they're running logistics. So I'm not paying everywhere the broad brush. But part of what's happened over time is, look, the U.S. intelligence community subcontracts some stuff out. I mean, I felt like even when I was in government, I didn't have my mind fully wrapped around. the extent of national security functions that were privatized. And when you get into places like Libya and Yemen that are just tough places where we don't have a lot of troops on the ground, you have, I think, way too much activity, way too much money flowing to these kinds of contractors with way too little oversight.

And so I'm just talking about America here. We need to set a better example in terms of what is the transparency? around this? What is the oversight of this? How much stuff should we really be outsourcing to contractors like this? Because the first thing we need to do is just set a better example. It's like everything else. I think secondly, if you want to go down a rabbit hole world, it's like Google the Wagner group, and trust me, you can spend a lot of time reading about this. Because like a lot of things, what the Russians did is they just created an even worse version of the Frankenstein that we did. I mean, the Wagner group has been deep in places like Syria.

and Libya with no regard to humanitarian consequences. And again, now that spills into Africa, where you have these competitions over natural resources in countries without much governance, right? And so that's right for, you know, a couple thousand mercenaries to go in and wreak havoc. You know, and frankly, you know, South Africans, you know, infamously did this a lot in the past,

white South Africans, the old regime and the legacy of that regime. So this is an area that, like, again, it's like the dark underbelly of what's happening out there in the world. If people want to read a book about how this intersects with kind of authoritarianism, they should check out a book called Kleptopia by Tom Burgess, which will blow your mind. Because, again, like, there's such an interconnection between this stuff. And then, again, the private intelligence firms, groups like Black Cube that respond on me, you know, that I write about my book if you want to check that out. But, like, this is a, I don't know if you've done much, like, I know you kind of read about this Tommy. Like, it's amazing to me how little we understand about this kind of privatized security world out

there. Yeah. And like Eric Prince was, you know, like, Blackwater during the Bush administration disgraced itself, right? There are these horrible atrocities that happened. Innocence civilians were killed. It seemed like an entity that would kind of maybe hopefully fade away. Like, look, naively. Like, if we lived in a just world, it would have gone away.

It would have been shut down. But instead, under the Trump administration, Eric Prince, like, had an open door with Steve Bannon. He was in the Oval Office. They were pitching the National Security Council on privatizing the war in Afghanistan. And, like, I just can't think of a worse idea than removing congressional oversight from a war effort to make, putting a for-profit element into a war effort. I mean, like, look, talk about pouring gas on a fire. I mean, it's just a catastrophically bad idea that I think had quite an audience in the Trump, years. Yeah. And again, if you look at the Russian piece of this, like they have a good special

forces capability. So it doesn't take much in terms of money or even personnel. Because a lot of these groups like the Wagner group are pretty loosely tied to Russian security interests. They're run by oligarchs, right? I mean, that one guy. There's this kind of neo-colonial competition for resources in Africa now between Russia and China and to some extent the U.S. where a lot of the front lines are these places, again, not well governed, where these kind of mercenary forces can make a big difference and they can hook up with the wrong warlord and terrible things can happen to innocent people who are caught up in that.

And then again, I think people need to graph the extent to which it's fighting wars, it's securing resources, it's being private security detail, but it's also running disinformation campaigns, you know, getting dirt on people, blackmailing people. Like, this is a huge netherworld. world, you know. And so I think the Biden team, to end where you started, Tommy, is like, it's worth looking in under the hood at what was going on with Eric Prince and some of these other guys in the Trump years. Because I can imagine that some of the contracts that were dished out from

DOD or the intelligence community when they had all these goons in there, these MAGA guys, I assume some of those contracts went to people like Prince. I'd kind of like to know what they are and what those guys are doing. Yeah, I agree with that. Let's talk about one other, unfortunately, ongoing civil war in Africa. So for the past eight months, there's been this civil war in Ethiopia. It has killed thousands. It's pushed hundreds of thousands of people to the brink of famine and displaced more than two million Ethiopian. So this started when the Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiyahe-A allied with the country's former enemy Eritrea to attack the northern Tigray region of Ethiopia, which also happens to be the home to Prime Minister Abbe's former rivals. That's the short description.

So Prime Minister Abbey said that his attack on Tigray was a response to attacks by rebel fighters on his troops. But I mean, I think, you know, we should probably see through that explanation. Since then, there have been many credible reports of war crimes. And for a while, it seemed like these Ethiopian and Eritrean forces were firmly in control of the region. But this week, there was a big development in reports that the Tigray defense forces have launched a major counter-attain. and according to the BBC, have taken back the regional capital of Tigray. So there is still an urgent need for humanitarian relief. Tragically last week, Doctors Without Borders announced that two of its aid workers have been brutally murdered in Tegrae.

It's not clear to me, Ben, whether this kind of trading of territory will just prolong the fighting or whether this could possibly create maybe some sort of humanitarian zone in Tegrae where people are safe and where the international community can deliver some supplies. The UN has accused air-trained troops of blocking aid shipments and using star. as a weapon of war, so it's a real risk. I think we should note also that we're waiting on the results of a recent election in Ethiopia, but don't have that yet. So, Ben, I was reading this profile of Abi, the prime minister. Yeah. I did not realize that he was an evangelical Christian who believes in the prosperity gospel. Those are the folks who think that God rewards you with money

and material things, right, like the preachers with private jets, which, surprise, surprise, has endeared him to the Republican Party. And that last month, Senator James Inhoff of Oklahoma flew to Ethiopia to show his support for Abi despite U.S. sanctions in like concern about war crimes. I'm just like, how is that possible? How can you do that? Not the first time, by the way, that you've had some kind of nutty right-wing Republican members of Congress embracing very questionable evangelical or Pentecostal Christian African leaders overlooking their human rights records.

Look, I think on the Tigray situation, party one is just dealing with this humanitarian crisis and all these people at risk of famine. And so anything that can get better access to those people, and I know the cement, the powers prioritized as the USAID, that has to happen. And that may be possible with these forces taking back parts of Tigray because obviously they have an interest in bringing in more resources, whereas the Eritians have been credibly, I think, accused of using starvation potential as a weapon of war. And then, yeah, I think it does suggest that a military solution for Ethiopia is unlikely in the sense that part of the reason why they're taking this land back is that the people don't want the Ethiopian forces there because they treat them like shit and commit human rights abuses. And so inevitably, as in any circumstance, like an occupying force is going to run into trouble. And the forces in Tigray, these are people that, you know, we're deep in the Ethiopian. army. These are well-organized fighters. So I think it does suggest that this is going to either be

a situation where you have a brokered ceasefire piece, some kind of de-escalation, or it's just going to be a kind of grinding civil war. I hope that that's the lesson that the Ethiopian government is taking from this, and therefore that they take the path of some kind of negotiation, de-escalation, something that just allows for humanitarian relief to get in and doesn't perpetuate a conflict that needlessly takes more lives. Yeah, and it sounds like Biden has tapped Senator Chris Coons, like a close friend of his, to sort of push that message with the Ethiopian government, so hopefully they'll listen. And a guy named Jeff Feldman, who's been an envoy who we worked with. We know. We know well. And he was at the UN through the Trump year. So he got a nice

he got out in the right place. But that's good because Jeff's the kind of guy who knows both the UN system and the Biden players really well. So he's a good person to do it. Switching gears here, Ben, so it's Pride Month, and there have been a lot of amazing celebrations happening around the world and here at Crooked Media about pride and LGBT rights, but it's also, I think, important to remember that millions, if not billions, of LGBT people around the world have to live under bigoted laws and governments. So according to Human Rights Watch, there's nearly 70 countries that have national laws that criminalize same-sex relations with consenting adults. That seems crazy in 2021, but that's the reality. One recent example of a battle. One recent example of a battle

law comes out of Hungary, one of your infamous least favorite places, which is a lot that was least favorite leaders. Yeah, least favorite leaders. There we go. So this law was like spun as an effort to protect kids from pedophiles, right? A lot of these laws take that kind of attack. But it, you know, could easily be abused and used to stigmatized and harass LGBT people. Thousands of people have protested the measure in Hungary. And then when Germany played Hungary in a soccer match last week, the mayor of Munich asked for permission to light up the stadium with the colors from the LGBT flag, the rainbow flag. The idiots at UEFA, this international body governing European soccer, said no, but a lot of fans took matters into their own hands and they wore rainbow gear

at the game. And then they lit up the stadium with the rainbow colors anyway after the match was over. So that's how they got around it. So my conclusion here is good for Germany. Get your shit together, UEFA. And once again, Victor Orban, you are the worst person. in the world potentially. And we... Yeah, he's, you know, he's making a run at it. I mean, the reality here in this, I talk a good amount in my book about is that, you know, Orban has been copying the Putin playbook for over a decade here.

And Putin, you know, was at the vanguard of a bunch of these types of laws in Russia that basically criminalized the LGBT community in Russia under the guise of protecting children. And it was the same kind of gross justifications, same kind of stigmatization. And it was all meant to kind of gin up this us versus them politics, you know, us, the real Russians or the traditional Russians or the traditional Christian Russians. The same thing Orban is doing in Hungary. And it's fucking bullshit. And it's, you know, and with Orban, it's just the latest target. You know, it was immigrants.

It was Muslims, you know, refugees, George Soros. He went after the Roma people. like, you know, now we're going after LGBT people, because this guy has no agenda to run on, and he's corrupt and everybody knows it. And so he's constantly trying to find some divisive culture war issue to grab onto. It sounds kind of familiar, right? It does. I think the one thing I'd throw into the mixer, Tommy, is that the EU needs to get its act together on this more in the sense that they're giving billions of dollars to Hungary and these EU funds that Orban has been siphoning off the top to finance his cronies who then finances politics. The EU has basically been subsidizing Viktor Orban's corruption.

They've recently given themselves more powers to punish and sanction EU leaders who act in undemocratic ways. Clearly, this is that. And so you've seen some really good statements out of European leaders. You even saw the Dutch prime minister raising the prospect of like, hey, we shouldn't even have somebody in the EU if they're going to pass laws like that. And I think, you know, listen to the voices of Hungarian opposition on this. They want the EU to play tougher with Orban, not necessarily kick them out of the EU. but start with those funds and say, if you're going to pass laws that are in that contradiction to the kind of liberal values of the EU, you're not going to get a dollar from us,

period, full stop. Yeah, no, I think that's really good advice and something we should be probably talking about even more. So we will keep an eye on this one. Let's turn to the Biden administration, Ben, because on Monday, the Biden team, the Biden administration conducted airstrikes on Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria. And the White House said that they did this because, these Iranian-backed militias were launching drones against U.S. forces in Iraq and targeting our forces.

So Biden cited as his legal authority, Article 2 of the Constitution and the right to defend U.S. forces in the region. That was the legal case. That didn't sit well with a lot of Democrats. The House of Representatives recently started the process of repealing the 2002 authorization for the use of military force, which is long overdue. This is just the broader context here. And then people like Senator Chris Murphy, they're talking about the need to rein in the White House's authority when it comes to these Article 2 airstrikes that we're talking about right now that are ostensibly for force protection because Murphy's point, which I think is a very good one, is that if you are constantly taking strikes in self-defense, like lobbying back and forth with these militias, pretty soon you're in a low-grade war.

Yeah. In a low-grade war in any scenario needs to be authorized by Congress. So, Ben, you know, in the past, there have been some members of Congress who have consistently try to reassert Congress's role, like Tim Kane comes to mind. There are many more who think it's bad politics. They don't want to deal with it. They don't like the political risk. We saw that during the Syria redline situation. Do you get the sense that like the political winds are shifting here and there's a chance that Congress might really try to roll back the executive's authority? I mean, I think it'd be really hard to accomplish and practice, but I think it's worth the effort.

because, yeah, I mean, like, at what point, you know, are you at war with Iran through these proxies, right, in a kind of low-grade war? We said in the Trump years that we were. I mean, like, that was our assessment on this podcast, right? It's essentially you had such tit for Tad, and you had the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, and you had this constant kind of brink of escalation with the Iranians. And it was a kind of low-grade war. It wasn't like a conventional war. I don't want to overstated. But the reality is, like, that needs to be discussed and debated. If there's going to be a repetitive multi-year set of air strikes against Iranian targets, like the American people, are they aware of that? And to me, this gets to the question of ending forever wars, right? Because

it's, you know, it's one thing to take trips out of Afghanistan. It's actually a much more complicated thing to kind of deep dismantle and disentangle the legal authorities and the infrastructure of the Forever War in so many countries. And we need to be asking ourselves across the board, like under what legal authority are we conducting military operations? How much of this stuff do we really need to still be doing? What infrastructure and resources is supporting it? Like, we need that kind of bigger discussion, you know, if we're truly going to take on the target of ending the Forever Wars, it's not just about taking troops out of Afghanistan. It's about looking at this whole enterprise. Yeah, look, and good for Senator Murphy for raising this. And I do think that just

having this conversation every time there's a strike will probably, I don't know, make people think twice about leaning on article to you or declining to brief Congress or, you know, relying on past habits in these cases. And I do think a bit of it is that. It's like when there's no friction, when you take an airstrike in a sovereign country, of course you're going to do it again if it feels easy. Yeah, and look, I get like your force protection concerns, you see some intelligence, you want to take action to protect our people. Here's a problem with that over time.

Like, first of all, you know, the amount of military resources and even strikes that we're engaged in for the purpose of protecting our people leads to a growing military footprint itself. Yeah. And then that growing military footprint is increasing conflict with groups like these Iranian-backed proxies. And one of those incidents can spiral where they escalate in response and then we escalate.

And then suddenly, like, you're in a war that wasn't like the original intended war. I mean, we're on the third or fourth rationale for having troops in military action in Iraq, you know, weapons of mass destruction. It was democracy. It was, you know, countering al-Qaeda. Then it was countering ISIS. Now it's countering Iranian proxies. Like at a certain point, like, you know, we're so far away.

from the reason we went there in the first place that we have to ask these questions. Yeah, and killing Kazam Soleimani, the Iranian general was supposed to solve a lot of these problems, and what a shock. It didn't. It was supposed to restore deterrence, right? Yeah, yeah, restore returns. I want to do a quick coronavirus update before we get to some quicker headlines. So there's a lot of discussion lately about the delta variant of the COVID-19 virus. It's much more transmissible strain, and it's become the dominant strain in a lot of countries that can lead to more severe symptoms. The good news for everyone in America is that the vaccines are still very effective. but obviously there are concerns about a lot of people who live in countries where the vaccine is not

widely available or available at all, and that some of those countries might have like India-like level outbreaks. You're starting to hear a lot about this sort of scenario in places in Africa, which so far has done pretty well against COVID. But in Kenya, South Africa, Uganda and Namibia, there's concerns about like third waves that are worse than the first or the second. only 1% of the continent of Africa is fully vaccinated. So that is terrible. I know the Delta variant is on a lot of people's minds. Again, you probably shouldn't worry if you're listening to this show.

But I do think, you know, stories like this, variants like the Delta variant should make us want to double down on our efforts to help the world get access to vaccines because COVID is still very much a threat. It's a threat to, you know, mutate again, develop new variants. I saw something about the COVID-plus variant, right? So, like, we've got to get this thing under control. I'm glad the Biden team is on it. I hope they'll keep going, though. Yeah, I need the same, like, kind of rigor that we use to protect ourselves to deal with

both humanitarian and public health crisis around the world because, you know, the longer this is able to transmit, you know, the more we're going to have these kinds of scares over and over and over again, better to just get on top of this. And they've got to really keep kind of the floodgates open with the vaccines here. Yeah, agreed. Okay, a couple quicker things. So, one, Japan. is considering shifting to a four-day work week. The idea is to help employees who want to go back

to school, raise a family, just hang out. So the population of Japan is aging. The birth rate is falling. That's a major concern for the future of the country. It's also seen as a step that would help the economy because people will spend more money when they're not working. To me, that was a little bit counterintuitive, but I love it. It's interesting. Japan traditionally has had a pretty intense work culture where you're expected to be there a lot. So it may surprise people, right, that they're following the lead of Spain, which launch. to a three-year voluntary 32-hour work-week experiment. So, Ben, I'm just raising this because I love this idea, and I want to know who we have to call at the Biden White House to, like, get them to

push with this. Let's do this. Look, I think this is another one of those categories of issues where the nature of work is changing everywhere. The nature of family is changing, right, as we really work for gender equality. And therefore, we need to learn from different places about what they're doing to manage that. You know, and so, like, if Japan is taking something like this on, like we should take a hard look at that and see if it works there and what might we want to take away from that. So I think we're going to see a lot more countries, you know,

everything from obviously, you know, family lead policies to work weak policies to universal basic income type approaches. We have to make sure that we're watching what public policies are working, what's not working in other places. Yeah. like we have just a cultural problem around this like if you're a billionaire and I read about how you're still a workaholic and you do 80 hour weeks you're just an idiot you should just chill the fuck out like what what do you need to buy that you can't buy already well and like you know life

should be about something more than work I mean Americans tend to forget that and Japanese like we're much more in that category of people just work work work but I mean yeah you know I think there's a bit of a crisis of meaning in people's lives so maybe with that extra day a week you know you can do some you know do some thinking I'm for it I'm four more thinking. Some self-care. So, yeah, self-care. Second story, speaking of self-care,

North Koreans are reportedly heartbroken over Kim Jong-un's weight loss. This is pretty recent. So CNN had a good piece on this. And they made the point in this segment that it's very rare and surprising for the North Korean state-run news channels to talk about Kim's health in any way. But apparently, I guess just like his weight loss was so evident that they felt they need to talk about it for the domestic audience because these changes were visible, we don't know why Kim lost weight. I'm sure the intelligence community is like desperately

trying to figure it out. But I don't know. I just thought it was interesting. And it could be a sign of a health problem. It could be sign that he's downloaded Noom and is sort of getting on a diet. I don't know, but notable. I was going to say, like, I'm not like thinking that he's at the top of list for guys who's like doing the South Beach diet or something. No, he's ripping sigs and drink French wine. Yeah, nor do I think he's hitting like the spinning class that hard, you know. So like you have to think, given the personality type in question here, the excesses that, you know, he has been more than rumored to be known to go to, that something is probably a foot. So it does bear watching.

Bear is watching. Maybe he's a CrossFit guy. We'll find out. Maybe. Then I wanted to do a little UFO. So, Ben, last week, the National Intelligence Director released a report on UFOs. It was requested by the Senate Intelligence Committee last year. So we only got to see an unclassified version, but here's some takeaways.

ways. One, they think that these objects that we keep seeing in like footage from F-18s or whatever are physical objects. Two, there's some things they could be like clutter, some sort of atmospheric phenomena like ice crystals, some sort of foreign government objects being used to spy on us or like maybe even a more secret US government thing. They don't know. The report looked at 140 incidents where UFOs were observed. And some of them, these objects that they saw did extraordinary, unexplainable things, like move super fast without an engine or like not move in the winds at a high atmosphere. A lot of the sightings were around U.S. military installations. And, you know, this report notes that like the Russians and the Chinese are constantly trying to spy on that kind

of, you know, stuff. So some of these sightings could be like a balloon or a device associated with spying activity, right? Like a submarine releases a balloon to capture something. I don't know. The shit works. But the Washington Examiner had an interesting write-up. which is not something I've ever said before. I've never heard that phrase that before. Well, I'm an examiner. Usually like a free newspaper given outside the subway in D.C. But, you know, so basically they noted, one, the CIA wasn't part of this report.

Interesting. Two, there was no mention of nuclear technology in the report. And then three, there was no mention of sort of like some sort of acoustic sonars and things that, you know, you think might have been used here. So more questions and answers. Fascinating to see the U.S. intelligence community release a release, a report that says, yeah, we see this stuff and we don't know what the hell it is. Ben, my question for you, what would you give to get your hands on the classified version of this report? Oh, yeah. I mean,

and look, you've seen some of these videos, right, Tommy? I mean, like, have you ever seen a fucking balloon doing any of those things? I mean, come on. No, no, I have not. And look, the idea that Russia or China have, like, these things moving at like the speed of sound up and down and sideways with no engines. Like, I mean, if they do, like, you, you know, would think that they'd be doing other stuff with them, just kind of like messing around with some of our pilots. So that kind of rule that out. That leaves like the aliens, which I think we presume this probably is, right? I don't know if they're too far here.

But like the throwaway of like, maybe there's some other U.S. government program we don't know about. I was like, what? Like what? I was there for eight years. I definitely wasn't read into the like crazy UFO like things that like, like, go in circles around our own planes? Like, what is going on here? Like, I hope this is not just a report that gets issued and, like, we all just forget about

this. Like, it'd be nice to know what these objects are that are, like, flying around, you know, in crazy ways in the atmosphere. I think there's a task force that's now basically tasked with constantly following this and probably updating the Intel committee. But, man, wild stuff. All right, I conclude with a couple lighter things. So first, it's a quick sports minute.

First Sports Minute Update is just a word of advice. Do not bring your big, dumb cardboard sign to the Tour de France like one fan did on Saturday. Because she caused a massive crash. If you haven't seen it, all-time sports blooper. Nobody was hurt bad, right? Nobody was hurt. That that I saw, but it was like just like endless rows of Tour de France bikers like stacked up. And then the woman just disappeared.

They can't find her. They can't find her. So they're like some, and you just had like a big poorly done banner. Like it wasn't like, I don't think it was. Yeah, it was like ill intent here. It wasn't even like a political protest or something. But yeah, like check it out and don't do that if you're going to go watch the tour. Yeah, don't do that.

Second, we here at POTS of the World are pumped about the Olympics. And we're going to start highlighting some of the athletes on the show. So stay tuned for that. Kind of ran out of time this week. And then finally, if you aren't watching the Euro 2020 soccer games, you have some time left. The games this week have been incredible. France versus Switzerland was just an unbelievable, exciting game that when it's overtime. Germany versus England today had some great action at the end, some really great goals, and then it gave you a chance to fire off all your well-worn World War I and World War II jokes. So we're there for that too. So, Ben, my question for you, rank them for me in terms of your interest and odds of watching. Tour de France, Euro 2020, Summer Olympics.

So first of all, like my, you know, sports punditry, you know, I think the last time we talked about this, I talked about how great the Dutch were playing, and then they just got tossed in the round of 16. So I'm going to like not offer like any predictions about the... Cold takes exposed here. Yeah, but I'm a summer Olympics. Like I like all those sports. The tour is like an underrated thing to watch if you're an American. Like if you check it out, it's crazy what these guys can do and like seeing them winding through

these ridiculous geography in France, mountains, and it's very cool. But then the Euro I'm definitely watching already. And then the Summer Olympics, though, I just, to me, like, I don't know, as a kid, I still remember, like, some of my earliest sports memories were, like, that 84 Olympics, you know. You know, I just caught the bug. So I can't wait to dig into this. And, yeah, like, in the pod, we'll try to bring you, there's always some crazy set of stories from around the world from these athletes.

that like really like I'm I'm here for the Schmalti Olympics coverage on TV where you get like the nine minute like mini documentary of someone's life so that then when they like get the silver medal in the swimming race like I'm literally in tears like watching this so like we'll try to tease some that up here no Bob Costa or anything but I like we'll do our best yeah no Bob Costa's pink eye but it is a human interest story just bonanza it's a free for all and I love it okay two dumb stories to end the show. And then, Ben, I would like you to rank for the listeners which one you think is the dumbest. The first involves a very dumb leader named Boris Johnson, the prime minister of England. He wants the UK to spend $280 million on a new national flagship vessel, a boat for the UK to serve as some sort of floating brand ambassador. Sounds like an expensive monument to stupidity to me for a country. Brexit's going great. Yeah, right. Like, oh yeah, Brexit, COVID. Yeah, let's build a fucking boat. I guess he has a history of doing this stuff,

like wanting to build bridges over the Thames or like one to Northern Ireland. I don't know. Stuff nobody wants. So that's his big construction thing. Second story. A pair of nude sunbaters in Australia had to be rescued after they apparently ran into the bushes

and got lost after being scared by a deer. This was on a remote beach south of Sydney, Australia. After the rescue that you were found, they were fined for violating COVID protocols. I, like, have you seen a deer before? They're not that scary. I don't get what happened here. As the new South Wales State Police Commissioner said,

it's difficult to legislate against idiots. Ben, rank a boat or sunbaters. So I just want to say, I have questions here. Tell me. First of all, I didn't even know about this boat. Like, who's going to use this boat? Like, to what end? Queen, maybe?

You know, yeah, is this the time that the rural family really wants to be seen as spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on a boat? No. I mean, there wasn't a big boat right now, right? Yeah, they had one until like the late 90s. They got rid of it. No, I remember, yeah, like it was like a big. Britannia or whatever. Yeah, the Britannian.

I met like Prince Charles going on that thing after the Hong Kong handover. But anyway, then to be that scared of a deer? Like, what was the deer coming after here? Like, are there Australian dears that I don't know? out, you know, like they have some of those giant animals that, you know. Tasmanian devil deers? Exactly. It's like this.

Kangaroo deer? Do something else? And then I saw these people were helicoptered where they were like heloed out of there. And it's like I'm just trying to imagine like, you know, heloes are pretty tight quarters. Like when those guys are all done to the helicopter? Like anyway, so I'm going to rank. I actually think that the dumber thing is building a multi hundred million dollar boat because you want to show that like global Britain is back after Brexit. As much as the deer thing is kind of intriguing to me, it sounds just like a

mortifying sunbathing exercise. So look, I agree with that. Spending $280 million on anything is incredibly dumb. What I'm struggling with, though, is this is just really fucking up my impression of Australians, which more recently, you know, you see that dude who was like boxing a kangaroo and punched it in the face to free his dog. Like, you know, I think of like them, Crocodile Dundee. You know, that country is full of stuff that can kill you. Spiders, jellyfish, great white sharks, snakes. Like, even the kangaroos, they've giant claws. They can just, like, gut you.

Yeah, not as friendly as you think. What kind of, what, like, what are we not understanding about this story? What kind of deer was this? And, you know, why rescue these people? I mean, like, you would think they should leave them in the bush? Well, that's the point, right? I thought the Australians were these kind of, what were they being rescued from the deer? You know, like, I mean, like, like, like, they can't fight their way out.

They can't walk through the bush. I mean, like, we hear about how tough Australians are. And I think they are. I've met a lot of Australians. They're quite tough. You know, like, I don't know what this is. How far into the bush did you run? How did you call for the, do they have a phone?

Like, did you have a, you know, those straps you people used to use for their cell phones in like the late 2000s? Like, where was the phone? Look, all I'd say is, too, is like, I, you know, I would be much more afraid and maybe I'm revealing my own, like, bug. And to be clear, I don't need some baby. But if I was naked, I would be more. I would be more afraid of like the kind of bugs and shit that would crawl on you in the like whatever jungle.

Oh my God. Yeah. Then some deer on the fucking beach. No way. Like there's a lot of questions here that need to be answered. Yeah. Give me stand. As I would say, hopefully people are on top of this.

There's oversight. There's some public attention. There's some press attention on this. Yeah. We're going to have to report back to the listeners. Okay. Well, I guess, you know, that was a great section. I like that a lot.

When we come back, stick around for this, please. you will hear my interview with Matthew Barson, the former U.S. ambassador to Sweden in the UK. You'll hear tons and tons of fun stories about what it's like to be an ambassador, beating the queen, all kinds of great stuff. So stick around for that. I am thrilled to welcome to the show, the former U.S. ambassador to both Sweden and the United Kingdom and the author of The Fantastic New Book, The Power of Giving Away Power, which I'm holding up for some reason, even though it's an audio format. My friend Matthew Barnes and Matthew, it's so great to see you. Tommy, thank you for having me.

So what's funny about this is that folks who regularly listen to this show have probably heard your name a lot of times. Because whenever Ben and I talk about how there's career foreign service officers and there's others who come from outside the Foreign Service and how they can be great, you are quite literally the gold standard. We talk about you, Mike McFall, Dan Shapiro. And so I was just hoping we could start there with some of your ambassadorial experience because I just think it's so great to demystify. like, what do these guys do? What are these men and women abroad do? Well, first of all, thank you for the compliment to you and Ben and putting me in the company of those guys. I'll take it. I don't know that I deserve it, but I will take it. I mean, listen, McFal might know Russian, but I think you could argue that your embassy was a better

hang than Esposso House or whatever. So you've served in these two different posts, Ambassador to Sweden, Ambassador to the UK. You wrote in the book that your mantra, your watchwords were listen and whiskey. How did that guide your approach? How did that make you a good ambassador? Well, the listen part comes from just a super simple bit of advice. I went into the West Wing right before I went to Sweden. I got to sit down with newly elected President Obama.

I was kind of nervous. Obviously, I knew him from the campaign, but he was president now. And all you guys were there. And I'll never forget it because it's like, I loved you guys and you were like my young campaign friends, but you were all wearing ties and you were kind of like pulled together and kind of quiet, you know? And I've seen you in Iowa or wherever. And it was just mayhem in a fun way.

Everyone was super quiet. Anyway, I get in there and I've seen it like a zillion times on the TV show, the West Wing, and it looks just the same. And I sit down and I'd flown up from Kentucky where I'm talking to you now, which is home. And anyway, we do the chit-chat thing. And then I basically just said, hey, Mr. President, what advice would you have for a first time ambassador? And he said, well, Matthew, listen. And I had my little moleskin, trendy notebook out.

And I was like ready to write down all his pearls of wisdom. And that's all he said. So it took me a second. It was like this awkward pause. And I was like, oh, right, the advice is listen, not listen to all my great advice. So I tried to do that. And then the whiskey piece is my late father-in-law, who's this wonderful man, Owsley Brown, and he ran a whiskey company, worked there his whole life. And he described to me,

he's like, hey, three things to make whiskey, step one, fermentation, right? And what it's called is beer, but not the kind you can drink. Step two, distillation. We know what that is, right? And he said, and then the trick question was like, well, what is step three? Right. And I fell for it. And I was like, aging. You know, he's like, not quite. It's called maturation. It's not just time. It's time in the barrel going in and out, hot, cold, and it's that final stage that turns what looks like vodka at the end of stage two into delicious looking whiskey with color character and complexity. So I thought, okay, heading into diplomacy, how do you turn, with no disrespect to Mike and our vodka drinking friends, you can make vodka in an afternoon, right? Whiskey takes time and it takes time of like good news, bad news, agreement, disagreement. Don't be freaked out about disagreement.

It helps make whiskey. That was sort of the theory anyway. I love that. And also, you know, that sort of, you know, closing loops is sort of a theme in the book, right? Like you talk about how jokes are not a joke unless someone laughs. You need that feedback loop. I want to get into that more because there's a really interesting sort of philosophy for how to do the job of ambassador and a philosophy for how to sort of be a good manager, frankly, in anything. But could you give us just a sense of like, what is the day?

in the life of an ambassador like, or maybe like a representative sampling of things you did in a week in London? Sure, let's take a day. I think a day is pretty good. Because I remember I had no idea what the job was. I was 30, I don't know, what, 35 or something, maybe, 36. I don't know, now I'm 50, so it feels like I was super young,

even though you guys were properly young. There's a wonderful guy, Republican friend of mine, worked for Colin Powell named Walter Kahnsteiner. And in the weird days of like Washington after a new administration gets in, everyone's just sort of, it's not us at our best, right? Everyone's kind of scrambling to like figure out what they're going to do and like, it's weird. So the only person I could get, it's gross. I mean, it's just gross. And I was part of the grossness. I mean, let's be clear. Everybody was. Yeah. But this new friend of mine, Walter took me under his wing and he just sort have told me what the job was about. It was unbelievably helpful. And I'm forever indebted to him.

And he sort of described it. So then I get there and I actually do the job. And one of the wonderful traditions at the State Department, not limited to the State Department, but I'd never seen it in my dot-commy world before was they'd print your Microsoft Outlook schedule on like a little index, like three-by-five index cards. And everyone had them, you know, in their jackets or whatever. And so I would be given one every morning. I was like, oh, how nice. And then I had them color-coded. So this is the long-winded answer to your question.

And I remember the coat. It was like it was blue for kind of classic diplomacy, like go talk to the people at the foreign office about, you know, something you and Ben were working on, you know. Green was trade diplomacy. So like, you know, help sell airplanes or whatever to the British market. And yellow was dealing with media, which was sort of a not very funny joke about yellow journalism, but I had to pick a color. And then gray was sort of internal meetings. And then purple was cultural other. And I think if you look at any typical day would be sort of rainbow of those colors.

I guess gray isn't the color, but you know, that idea. And over the course of a week, and I would always sort of, look, you know, if it was like way too much gray, something's wrong. But I think that that's sort of, that's kind of a day in the life. So it's kind of like keeping that balance of official, fun, media, like that's an interesting way to do it. I read that you once ordered up a briefing on the rules of cricket and that you also used to post videos of yourself just butchering the names of villages in Welsh. Is that, is that true? Well, I did because evidently Wales has the longest word or the longest place name in the history of the world. I don't know who keeps track of

these things. And it's like a tiny little town. And on the train station, it's like, I don't know, like a football field long, one name. And so I learned it in Welsh, which is like a not, not an original thing to do, but I did it. And it was, yeah, I mean, I'm not going to do it here for you right now, although I try to bait you. I could. I don't think the world does are dying to hear Welsh. Maybe they are. They probably are, to be honest. Do you understand cricket now? Did the briefing help? Yeah, well, we played cricket. We hosted in our backyard a cricket match between British broadcasters and American broadcasters. Oh, nice. Which doesn't sound like a fair fight, except almost everyone who works for like ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN are British. So we had, it was just

Brits against Brits with different brands. But it was really fun. That is really fun. And it's also just like, that's a smart idea. Bringing a bunch of journalists to, you know, the ambassador's residence, to get to know each other, to hang out informally to, like, build relationships. Like, that's being an ambassador. That's also being a smart press person. I think, like, these old anecdotes are so instructive. One thing that will, I think, probably shock no one, right, is that there's, there's a little bit of pomp in circumstance, especially in the UK. And there's great, great scene in the book when you and Brooke had to present your credentials to Her Majesty of the Queen. And you described this really, I think, surprisingly poignant interaction, which later got you

in a little bit of trouble. Can you tell that story? Oh, right. Well, so it turns out you are never supposed to reveal. This just came up, I think, during President Biden's trip to the G7 and the bilateral they did a couple weeks ago. But anyway, it's a huge no-no to ever reveal a private conversation with Her Majesty to the public. Well, I did. I'm going to do it again because double jeopardy. Like, whatever. I already did it. But the annoying part is, so I did end up saying this story. I'll tell you in a second. Out loud, it showed up in the paper. So I had to apologize and they were incredibly gracious and it happens all the time, evidently. But I have since been misquoted. No one particularly cares about the comment I made

except that it has been in every single article about the royal wedding and about Harry and Megan ever since. Huh. So here's what I am misquoted as having revealed, and then I'll tell you the real story, and they couldn't be more different. The quote said, well, Ambassador Barsen reveals that the queen

told him that she outlaws selfies for the royal family. Like, okay, not at, she may or may not have, but that's not what she told me. So we're sitting there. Yeah. So we, speaking of pompant circumstances,

we get picked up at the American Embassy in a horse-drawn carriage. My lovely wife Brooke looks beautiful. I look awkward. I mean, I'm wearing like a morning suit and a top hat. And I challenge any man to put on a top hat and not feel like a total clown. Oh, yeah, monopoly would be preferable. I mean, it's like bad Abe Lincoln.

It seems way too tall. Anyway, the good, so then you get driven into Buckingham Palace on a horse-tron carriage with all those tourists, right? So like thousands of tourists are always there. And then they see a cart, and this might be like their lucky day. But then they see who it is and they have no idea. And they're like, are they royal? And then you'd be like, I don't think so. And they're just like talking about you and snapping pictures, whatever, hoping that you're someone other than me.

Anyway, you get there. And the best news is you get to take off your top hat. So that is just for the horse ride. Good, good. Then you go up, blah, blah, blah. You have your audience, which is what they call it, with her majesty. And it's all going, love, she's so good at this. She's done this a million times.

and welcoming each new ambassador from all around the world. And she has been briefed about my background, so she knew I did dot-commy stuff back in the 90s. So she's asking about the internet. And so I, in some way of answering the question, I said, well, what do you think about all those tourists? I just got to see what you do all the time, just coming through these throngs of tourists

and having them all take your picture. What's that like for you? And she said, well, she said, you know, they always have taken pictures, but in the old days, and then she, it was tough on this bad radio, right? But she holds up, you know, the old kind of cameras, like 35 millimeter camera. She's like, they used to hold them up, click, and then she puts it down. Right.

And then I was like, okay. And then she said, but now, and she takes her hand with a white glove, and she puts it up in front of her face and holds it there while she's talking to Brooke and me. And she goes, and now they put up these phones, and they put them up, and they never take them down and I miss seeing their eyes. And I thought that was so sweet. Here's the Queen of England and you think it's this one-way thing, right? Like the tourist just snaps it and she is snapped. But yeah to the point you made about a joke, it's like it's a mutuality. Like it's a two-way street. And I thought that that was such a poignant moment of sort of a lament for these times we're in

where we're totally connectable but feeling really disconnected. So anyway, I said that out loud and I shouldn't have it and end up in the paper. So that is the opposite of not letting you take selfies. It's like, I miss the connection with people I've never met and we'll never meet. And that's beautiful. I do too. And it's actually, and it's the opposite of what you'd expect. You would think that no one would be more insulated from the isolating effects of technology than the queen of England, but it's still affecting her too. I think that should probably tell us all something. Totally. Oh, I love that story. So I have to flag for you that this is now the second first-hand We've gotten on the show.

I don't know. Has Ben Rhodes ever told you his? No. I'll give you the quick and dirty. Great. Obama trip, 2014. Last stop is Normandy. As you know, sometimes you go out the night before the last night, right?

Because that's what we do. So I think there was over a late night of merrymaking, drinking, whatever. So they get there to this D-Day anniversary event. You know, Ben's a little hungover. He's just trying to hang back. Pete Sousa runs in, grabs him. He's apparently Obama was talking to Putin about Ukraine as all that. that stuff heated up. So Ben sprints into this leader's only area where he's probably not

supposed to be, listen to this discussion, the discussion end. And Ben's like, who man, like I'm sweating. I got to go to the bathroom, like get my shit together, like wipe off the sweat because he's hung over. So he gets there, finds a bathroom door, tries to open it, such rattling it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. They stands there impatiently, who walks out, the queen of England. That is the best. Oh, my gosh. He said, He said she opened the door. We have a winner.

We have a winner. Adjusted her handbag and he said she looked at him like he was the biggest fucking loser in the block. And then walked away. Or tied for it. Yeah. That's fantastic. So you did a hell of a lot better job in your diplomacy with the queen than Ben Rhodes did. So, you know, that's nice.

Well, a low bar to chin. But, you know. You also talk in the book about how the British press was sometimes, was like giddy to report on this faux pa right and like generally write about the demise of the special relationship and that was my experience too from the location of the churchill bust in the west wing to like i read an article where you know they quoted a bunch of of british chefs giving you shit for saying that you were sick of eating lamb and potatoes it's this like bizarre mix of maybe trouble making or insecurity did did you ever develop a theory of the case for why that happens you know it's funny the the

Well, I think there's kind of a basic misunderstanding, which is that this is on the more serious thing, not the stupid lamb and potatoes thing. Which, by the way, I probably deserved weirdly. I mean, granted, it didn't have to have like 10 articles about it. But I sort of glibly was like, oh, I'm so sick of lamb and potato. And it's like, it's kind of stupid to offend, like, the national dish of a country. It just, like, food diplomacy, it's like hating cheese steaks and filly or something. It's like, or lobster roll. What would it be for us?

We're both-mashells. Or John Kerry putting tomato on a cheese steak in Philly, which actually happened in the 2000. I couldn't possibly comment. I couldn't possibly comment. But anyway, what it would be for us as Massachusetts guys? You could say lobster roll. Yeah. Fried clams.

I don't know, something. It's just not a great idea. And so I probably deserve that. But on the more serious ones, like six days after getting to London, you and Bennett, you were, you guys are debating about use of force. asking Congress for the Syrian Civil War. Cameron calls back Parliament early, right, to have the same debate there. And he loses the vote. And the front page of the Sun, which is the top circulation paper or was then, maybe still is,

says death notice, special relationship, 67 years old, blah, blah. And I think the misunderstanding is that the special relationship is based on agreement. And that's where I think the whole whiskey thing comes in, right? It's like agreement and disagreement. And so a special relationship, which I actually used all the time, even though everyone warned me that it's a cliche. And it is a cliche, and it's a worthwhile one if you kind of unpack it. It's like that the mistake we make is we think we do things together,

whether it's in places like Syria or on climate or coming up COVID, global vaccination. It's like, we don't do things because we're good friends. We are good friends because we've done hard things together. Yeah. Right. I mean, and there's mutually reinforcing, like you said, but it's not, the friendship evolves out of hard work.

And that's what excites me about the hard work ahead of our two countries right now, because I think it can be sort of strengthened by that work. Yeah, I mean, it didn't start great when we got off. No, you said, there we go. That's so good. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we had to celebrate July 4th every year there. And it's a lovely tradition all around the world that embassies do that and kind of awkward. Slightly awkward. Where we are. Again, the book is the power of giving away power. And there's sort of a philosophy that's embedded throughout it that I want to ask you about, but also just like amazing stories about your time in the UK. And also in Sweden. And I think one of the things that made you special and it literally like was it kept showing up in papers was that, you know, you did.

did have this sort of rainbow daily schedule where you had the official duties, but you really prioritized spending time with real people, especially students. And you're right about how you ended up holding 200 listening sessions with, I guess, high school juniors. Is that what it was? I mean, they call them six-form colleges, so they're kind of, we don't really have the equivalent here. But I would say high school seniors is probably the closest week ago age-wise. And like, it's very funny you talk about in the book, how you did like four of them. And your staff is like, are we good? Are we done now? And you like, no, no, no. Let me show you what good looks like. But the thing that was really cool is like you asked them to name a thing that

frustrates them. You name a thing that inspires them about America. And the things that frustrated these kids were guns, racism, and police brutality. I think those are the rankings. And obviously, like, those are not new challenges. In some cases, these are foundational problems for this country, right? But it was interesting to me to read about how these kids in the UK, these like seniors in high school, were ahead of the curve when it came to the national conversation in the U.S. because this is what, 2013 to 2017. Yeah. And so it's after Ferguson.

It's after Newtown. But it's before Parkland. It's before George Floyd. And I just wondered what you made of that, like the sort of prescience from these kids. Well, just like you said, I mean, it was, and it was sort of a tip I got from inspired by my wife, Brooke, who you know and who is a art therapist by training. So I was kind of like, I know these kids didn't want a freaking lecture from the American ambassador, right?

But the reason we did it, which was Pew had come out with this big study, the wonderful study right as I arrived, 40 countries, sort of what we would call Western Europe in the old days and Japan, Australia, New Zealand, all these countries. Every single country, except for the UK, young people had a far favorable, more favorable opinion of America than their parents and grandparents. So I was like, well, there's an opportunity. Let's go sort of engage with young people, which is what old people call people younger than them. And so we do it. And so we didn't want to do a lecture. So we do this old thing where they get an index card. And I started, you know, a lot of people wrote words, but I started and say,

please draw me a picture of something that frustrates you or confuses you about America. So after we started doing this, it was always guns number one, racism, police brutality. And then we would also say, you know, flip over the card and write something that inspires you about America. And there wasn't like a glaring one like guns. I mean, I have 20,000 index cards. So I had 200 schools, 100 kids at a time. So 20,000 index cards upstairs in my attic. 10,000 of those index cards have a sketch of a handgun.

Wow. Right. And so, whoa, okay. And so I had to get better talking about guns. And I had to, which I wasn't really prepared to do. And so one big aha was not only were these kids wide awake and paying attention to what's going on in America. As I told my colleagues, and I remember telling Secretary Kerry and President Obama when he visited

like our domestic policy is foreign policy. I understand the distinction. And in your and Ben's old world, it's in mind as an ambassador. It's like, look, we could talk about policy, Israel, Palestine. We could talk about surveillance and drones. And those things came up, right? Just not nearly at the level that these, what we would call domestic issues. That's such a good lesson. It's really an important lesson because you're right. I mean, there are these sort of artificial buckets of like the NSC does this, the domestic. folks do that and it's completely intertwined. I actually think Biden is, I think, really trying hard to make exactly the case that you kind of outlined. Yeah, it seems that way.

So, Matthew, one of the things it's so interesting to me about the book is that you're making this broader sort of philosophical case for giving away power, for encouraging collaboration, for like pushing for flat organizational structures. And you're doing so after spending several years in one of the most hierarchical siloed, jargon-filled places on the planet, the State Department. Are these lessons learned from that experience, the subtle trolling of the State Department?

Like, what got you here? What made you want to write this? No, God, you're right. Well, Tommy, you know it, and Ben knows it so well. I have such deep love and hope for the State Department. So in the book, I contrast, For a while in my head, it was called the Pyramid versus the Constellation. I think for a bunch of good reasons we didn't call it that.

But it is these two symbols that are on the back of a U.S. dollar bill. There are two sides of our national logo. Pyramid representing consolidated power. It's the world of top down, but it's actually the world of bottom up also, same shape, different direction. The world, the pyramid, consolidated power, lording it over others, according it to yourself, whatever. And then this alternate view of looking at ourselves and people around us, which I call

the constellation, which is right above the eagle's head. We can get into that later. But I really started writing it because I just watched State Department's a pyramid. I saw this when I was a dot-com person. We had a magical constellation that we sort of calcified into a pyramid. I saw it on political campaigns, the magic constellation it was Obama. and then how it ran into Washington and what started to change. And what 2012 was like, very different campaign than 2008.

So just alive to how, at big scales, but also just like in any meeting you're in, how energy can be kindled or it can be smothered whenever people are gathered. And like science tells us that there's the conservation of energy. Remember, we learned that in high school, I think. Maybe so, but not in the realm of human affairs. because it is killed and it's created wherever people are gathered. And I started to be really allergic to and hypersensitive really to just the devastating energy killing of the pyramid. Everywhere I looked and saw a lot of it in diplomacy, the State Department at its best.

And that's why I include that great Colin Powell story, I think, which I got third hand. But the idea, basically without retelling it, is this idea. of like, hey, in this town of Washington, like, what do you have that's special, right? What do you have that no one else has? And he's like, what does the Navy have and his Foreign Service officers get the answer wrong? This is when he's Secretary of State brand new. They say ships. He's like, Coast Guard has ships.

A lot of people have ships. We have aircraft carriers. He's like, oh. So what does the State Department have that no one else has? And they get the answer wrong. And they say the Harry S. Truman building. He's like, everyone's got a building. We have 240-something forward operating bases for diplomatic engagement and walking these halls.

of Maine State, you would never know it. And that to me is the opportunity of the State Department to realize that it has these amazing women and men spread out in interesting places, engaging, and not think that you look at that building, it's like the top floor, it is a, it should be shaped as a pyramid, wood paneled seventh floor where everything's fancy

and the whole rest of it looks like a public mental health word. Yeah, it's not the nicest building. Right, just like super wide hallways for kind of know. weird, just our sad kind of place sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. But you're right, though, because it's funny to me because I think the media, government officials, others, like, we talk about prioritized sort of like lionize intelligence.

But, you know, there is open source intelligence that's getting gathered in every single embassy through conversations with people. And when you look at like a lot of the big intelligence failures of the last few years, like, yes, there's nuclear programs that went missed or, you know, But then there's also like the Arab Spring where not enough people were paying attention to how street vendors in Tunisia felt about the world and how that might might play out and lead to a government being toppled. So it's like the work you're talking about, the people you're talking about are really the key

to fixing that problem. That's right. And I think if you have, I mean, the, if you take that pyramid mindset, you just, you are factoring out uncertainty. That's why you do it. And you trade off, you just factor out so many people in trying to get predictability, which most of the time you can't get anyway. Right.

Right. And if you think about just to get sort of American here about it, and obviously we have fallen so tragically short of this from the very beginning of our country and every decade since. But this idea, I think, of, you know, so from many one, I pluribus, Una, is our motto. It is the thing written on the dollar bill or on our national logo right underneath the constellation. We're supposed to think of ourselves as from many stars one constellation, not from many bricks one pyramid. Although that would be a way of, and in that world, in the pyramid world, you either fit in or your left app. Right. That's just the way it works.

And in the constellation world, you can stand out, be a star on your own, and fit into something bigger than yourself. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what I, that's the idea we're supposed to have in our minds. I think that's right. The other thing that you really lay bare for state is just the jargon is horrible. I just want to read a little passage from page 148 here. This is from a briefing slide, a PowerPoint that I think was from your charm school. From your charm school. It was your two-week briefing about how to be an ambassador basically. How would you describe charm school? Yeah, I mean, not living up to the name. And it should. Like I thought it was going to be, someone joked. It's like, oh, how to hold your, you know, teacup for the queen or something. It's none of that. It's just welcome to the bureaucracy and where

you fit. At its worst, I mean, I'm being slightly unfair, but only slightly. Only slightly. So this is from a slide. All of you are in EUR. So if you have issues, you can ask your P-DAS to consult with M about budgets. But make sure to go through I-X-slash-I-O. They are the gatekeepers, unless, of course, R has extra money. It goes on. I mean, the jargon in government is so pain. I mean, I guess here's my question for you. Do you think there's a cost to sort of like talking like that? Like, do we end up dehumanizing these discussions? I do.

I do. I mean, I think, look, some of it isn't it like we all do it, right? And some of it is okay just to save time, right? But then I think it crosses this line where it ends up being like bricks in a wall to keep other people out and to feel special and to just be part of the crowd. I mean, look at, I mean, just not our world or yours, but like financial, the whole world of Wall Street. I mean, this stuff is basically at some level pretty simple, like a lemonade stand, but the amount of jargon to make everyone else feel stupid and not welcome is horrible. Yes. And preventing people from even wanting to go

into that whole profession. So we do it too. And it's why I think, and we get into it in the book with this woman, Mary Parker Follett, we probably don't have time to talk about. But, like, we can start to change whatever organization we're in, beginning tomorrow at the next Monday morning meeting. Yeah. Like, just really, because not using that kind of jargon, going in with different expectations, and basically trying to make something together and stop trying to win meetings, stop trying to just acquiesce and let someone else win.

a meeting. Stop even trying to compromise, which sounds crazy, but like really make a determination, make a whiteboard drawing, make something together. And if you do that, I think the lingo and the jargon will start to fall away because you'll see it, it's like scaffolding. It's not actually, it might be useful for a little bit, but it should fall away. I agree. I mean, look, part of the conception of this show was one of my favorite things to do with the White House was some reporter would need to learn about Syria. So I'd find some really smart person at the NSC who could talk about Syria. I'd connect them on background and I'd mute the phone and listen, right?

And it was just sort of like my window into like gaining all this knowledge through osmosis. And, you know, but the jargon can be so intimidating. It can make you feel like these conversations aren't for you that you're not welcome in them to begin with. And so I think like we try to imagine our listeners as being like a college sophomore, take an international relationship. So like spell out the word. You know what I mean? Skip the acronym. No, and you know who's great about this is President Biden?

I just, when you were saying, when he was vice president, we came back for St. Patrick's Day. And there's a tradition that the folks from Northern Ireland or the two different parties in Northern Ireland would come jointly and meet with him. And he obviously knows the issues so well. And so we were having some meeting, I think right before that, it wasn't the official ones with the heads of that. But, and someone said, and it wasn't me mercifully, but I mean, easily could have been, right? Someone said Brexit. And this is probably 2014 or something. So it wasn't really common knowledge.

It obviously hadn't happened yet. But he knew what it was, but he's like, cut it out. This was just America. I mean, it was just our team. He's like, stop that. Right? And that is like jargon. I mean, I've said the thing a thousand times.

Me too. It's like a little inward, you know. And you could just say when the UK decides or doesn't to leave the European Union. Like, yeah, it takes a little longer. But, and so he's very, I think, sensitive. And he's sensitive to that. And I'm sure from his youth of feeling excluded, and it makes you really aware. I think it's one of his many traits.

There was actually an article recently about writing for him where his staff talked about how you basically get in trouble if there's a single acronym in his speeches because of the reasons you just talked about. I also have this like really strong memory of one of the first trips Obama did. We went out to Camp Lejeune, which was a military base in North Carolina. and he was announcing something about Iraq or Afghanistan. It's escaping me at the moment. And so after it was over, the Pentagon spokesman at the time kind of pulled me aside. We went and grabbed box lunches and we sat down.

I ended up eating lunch with Bob Gates, Secretary of Events. And he asked me like, how's the job going? What do you know so far? And I was like just brain fart, couldn't think of a single thing to say. And I just said, a lot of acronyms, sir. And he laughed and the other guy slats. He's like, yeah. He's like, you know what?

I don't know what the hell most of them mean either, but I got the balls to ask in the meetings. I was like, oh, that's great, you know? That's a great story. Yeah, if Gates has the tenacity to say, pause, what does I-XIO mean? You know, like speak English to the broader meeting. I still have no idea. By the way, I still have no idea what IXIO means. Well, you're going to have to buy the book.

That's the only one. Yeah, you can buy it to decode that. You have to buy the book because Matthew does translate it for you later. I was thinking about sort of getting more earthy, like the opposite of jargon. And I didn't put this in the book, but we're both Red Sox fans, which I think every world, though, knows. It's hard not to know with you guys, which is just beautiful. Keep telling it. So there's a bathroom somewhere on I-95 between Boston and New York, where someone wrote, very wisely, Yankees suck.

Right? And then someone came around and wrote Red Sox suck. And it goes on and it takes up like almost two feet of wall space next to the mirror. Right? Just right. Everyone's scrolling out, right? Then this guy comes along. I don't know who he is. He has a green Sharpie. And he circles the whole sort of rant. And he writes, and we all love baseball. Now, this is what I think those of us who care a lot about diplomacy like you and Bendu and I do. do and other listeners here do. I think that when I heard, you know, it's like, oh, like, that's like we all love baseball, right? I have not been back to the bathroom, but trust me, I think there's lots of commentary on where Mr. Green Sharpie can put that path. Do you know what I mean? Yes. Because there's a way of talking about that that belies the fact, it denies the legitimate tribal animosity between Red Sox and Yankees, which kind of makes it look like Mr. Green Sharpie doesn't even love or understand baseball himself if he were to write that. Yeah.

So when I think about diplomacy, not only international stuff, but domestic diplomacy, we don't use that term, but that's what I want to get involved with. Yeah, politics, right? Why I wrote this book. Yeah, yeah. But not sort of win-lose, like, not just electoral fighting, which is important, but like the kind of stuff that you and Ben and others did so well, you know, actually working to together, right, to deal with COVID vaccination relief.

That's not a fight to be won. It's a problem to be worked through. And, but anyway, so I thought about that bathroom wall. And I was like, okay, so what I think we should write as someone who's trying to be constructive and trying to get people to engage and not just be in fight it out mode or sit out mode is you would write, do you think the American League should eliminate the designated hitter, question mark? And I just would wonder what, like, that is a legitimate conversation that Red Sox and Yankees fans.

And what would happen is, I mean, we can get out of the men's room now and think more broadly, that if you can get people engaged discussing and debating games of the rules of the game they love, that's how we can start to heal our democracy, I think. Yeah. And we have, you know, I don't know. What do you think of that? Look, I think you're right. I mean, I think in essence a bit of what you're, what you could be literally talking about if we just translated this conversation is sort of reforms to the political process, like getting money out of politics, like reducing the influence of lobbyists, right?

Like, I think that those are issues that poll at like 100%. And the challenges are special interests that help out either side and try to prevent us or making any progress on them. it's incredibly frustrating. Yeah. I'm with you there. One other question I wanted to ask you before we wrap. You have this other sort of very fun kind of counterintuitive take in the book where there's this famous, famous, famous Teddy Roosevelt speech about the man in the arena that you had

to memorize and you had recited various important events. And then you reveal that you kind of hate it. Can you tell us why? Yeah. So it's the one that starts, it's not the critic who counts. It's the man who's at the arena whose face is marred with dust and sweat and blood, blah, blah, blah, okay. And as you said, my uncle made me memorize it when I was 11, and I'm glad I did.

And he made me recited at my wedding. And like, every time we're gathered. And I just do it because he was an awesome uncle to me, is an awesome uncle to me. Now, I'm about to say this at the risk of losing a bunch of world dos here. I have to acknowledge that it is, like President Obama read it at McCain's funeral and one of the most beautiful eulogies and one of the rare bipartisan moments of the last decade.

Brunei Brown, whose work I adore, it inspired the title of every book she's written. LeBron James has in the arena etched into his basketball shoes. I mean, so these are some amazing people who love the phrase. And I get it, right? And I think it is not helpful for where we are now because it's fundamentally a gladiatorial framing.

It is go into the arena and fight it out, win or lose, sort of like win or die trying. And so you're either going into the arena sort of by yourself fighting it out, dust, sweat, blood, or, you know, or maybe it starts with, it's not the critic who counts. Or just be a bystander and sit on the sidelines. So your choices are fight it out or sit it out. Right? And that's it. And pick one. And given those two, I see why everyone's like, fine, I'll go into the arena.

Right. But I think what we're willfully ignoring is a third option of, and it's not as clear cut as fight it out, sit it out, but it is play it through, work it through. I mean, how do we build arenas together? I mean, we got to make big things together. And there's a time for fighting, of course. Everyone on this, listening to this podcast knows that. But if you ask 10 people, and I did this, I mentioned this in the book. And everyone should try this.

It's kind of a fun little parlor game. You ask 10 people, what's the opposite of winning? And then they all say, there's just a warm up. They all say losing. And you're like, yeah, I agree. What's the opposite of winning and losing? And 9 out of 10 of us say, I don't know, not playing, sitting it out. 9 out of 10.

1 out of 10 says playing, being, learning, loving, laughing, all the things we actually value in life. Right? our relationship you can't win you relate you can't win relationships you can't win your career you can't win parenting and you can't win a marriage you could lose one but you can't win one right and yet nine out of ten of us think if we're not winning and losing we are doing nothing yeah and the happy bit and the encouraging part i think is that once the nine out of ten of us hear that other person who says playing or being or all those other things you're like oh yeah yeah right there is more to it than that so that's my beef with teddy roosevelt um there's a time for

fighting it out. And in our democracy, the critic ought to count. And I know they're annoying. But we have to factor in critics in everything we do. That's why we're a democracy. So, of course, the critic counts. Yeah. Yeah, no, it is definitely like a very self-aggrandizing way to frame one's own work and dismiss all the work and input from others. Like, to your point, you don't win COVID. We either work together and fucking prevent deaths or we don't. Yeah. It's not like, I hate the winning, losing framework. I picked up Politico this morning and had a list of winners and losers on the bipartisan infrastructure bill. I'm like, God, for God's sake, guys. That's it. It's roads and bridges. Exactly. So it permeates everything. And it's not just sort of out there in the state department.

It's so tempting to point fingers, right? It's like in there. And I think what that, with that sort of nine out of ten of us saying, sitting it out when we're asked that question, that that pyramid perspective lives in here in each of us. And realizing that and then putting it away, it then leaves you open to looking at the world a different and I think better way in terms of the constellation. I totally agree. Well, I loved reading the book, The Power of Giving Away Power. I love the philosophy, the mindset. And also, I think people who read it will just really like the stories about working on the Obama campaign in 2008, maybe less so in 2012 because I think you enjoyed it a little less.

But I also love, like, you know, hearing about you driving around and like a RV in Sweden flipping pancakes for people as part of the diplomatic effort. So it's just, I think it was a really fun way to like learn about the details of what made you uniquely good at these jobs. And I think how we all could approach our jobs in a little more collegial way. So great to have you on the show. I really appreciate it. Tommy, huge thanks for having me on. I love what you guys do. Thanks, man.

Cheers. Thank you, going to Matthew Barsen, for doing the show. Thank you to the sunbathers everywhere, giving us great content, I guess. Anyone else we need to thank? New sunbathing world though content, you know. I mean, it's just the bad concepts. Like, there's some things that you don't want to burn and are pretty pale. Yeah, I mean, I don't, like, I don't get, I've never quite gotten that.

You know, some things you just want covered, you know. Yep. Yep, especially in the forest. Anyway, to talk to you guys next week. Happy July 4th. See it. Pod Save the World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.

Our producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seiglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Yale Freed, and Phoebe Bradford who film and share our episodes as videos each week.