Pod Save the World - Tucker Carlson makes a fascist friend

Episode Date: August 4, 2021

Tommy and Ben discuss the latest news from Afghanistan, Tucker Carlson’s adventures with fascists in Hungary, the state of US-Iran relations, the shortcomings of the global coronavirus vaccination campaign, updates from Myanmar, the defection of a Belarusian sprinter at the Tokyo Olympics and more. Then Ben talks to German climate activist Luisa Neubauer about how Germany's summer of intense weather has impacted the politics of climate action there.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 Pot Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben, I'm kind of in your hometown. Brooklyn, not Manhattan, but it is very nice to see this city very alive again. I miss this place. It's been a long, I think Hannah and I went here February before COVID. That was my last visit. Yeah. Well, the family story for me starts in Brooklyn, actually. So the normal Jewish emigre, you start in like flat bush and you make your way to the lower your side and then go uptown. So you're near the origin point of the Rhodes-Janever family. Okay, nice. That is great. Well, we got a lot of good news, a lot of good, interesting stories for everybody today.

We're going to start with some grim updates from Afghanistan, and we'll talk about Tucker Carlson's global embrace of fascism, some news out of Iran, an update on the effort to vaccinate low and middle-income countries around the world, how Trump fans are actually somehow. helping spread ISIS propaganda, and then we will do all things Olympics. And then, Ben, you got our interview this week. What are folks going to hear? You're going to hear from the young woman who started and really led the Fridays for the Future movement in Germany, Louisa Newbauer. You know, she started the climate strikes along with Greta Thurnberg, who's obviously got a lot of attention.

And we want to talk to Louisa about the floods in Germany, which she herself has gone out to witness. what that's doing to German politics, including their upcoming election, and what's next for this global climate movement that young people like Louisa are leading. So pretty on point, pretty excited for today's interview. Excellent. Two quick plug before we get to the news. If you want a smart, accessible, funny show about public health, subscribe to America Dissected with Dr. Abdul-El-Said. And if you need some more sports in your life, because our Olympic updates just aren't enough for you, I guess. Don't miss Take Line with Jason Kempstione and René

Montgomery. They'll do a lot of Olympic news this week, talk about Simone Biles. And then their guest is my buddy, wannabe soccer hooligan, Roger Bennett, from the Men and Blazers podcast. So listen to that. Roger's great. Subscribe to both America Dissected and Take Line wherever you get your podcast. So, Ben, let's start in Afghanistan because things are looking pretty grim. There's two related issues. The first is the Taliban just keep picking up territory and they're close to taking some pretty large cities, including Lashkarga, the capital of Helmand province. Afghan special forces, they're sort of elite commandos, have had some limited success fighting them back, but they're getting exhausted and the larger regular army and police units have just

been totally ineffective. You know, I suspect there are some parts of Afghanistan that the Biden administration thought might end up under Taliban control after the U.S. withdraws, and that might include big chunks of Helmand province. But the speed with which all this is happening, I think is pretty unnerving, which brings us to the second issue, which is that there are tens of thousands of Afghans who are. who've worked with U.S. military as translators and have applied for something called a special immigrant visa. That visa allows them to move to the United States. The Biden team is reportedly

considering expanding that visa to include Afghans who helps with civilian infrastructure projects or who worked for U.S. news outlets, which is a very good idea. They should do that. But the problem is that that special immigrant visa process is slow and bureaucratic in normal times. And right now there's just a huge influx of applicants who are understandably very worried about what the security situation is going to look like when all U.S. troops are gone by the end of August. Since this program was created, about 6,000 of these visas get processed a year. The administration has processed 3,000 in 2021. The White House says, I think, nearly 7,000 Afghans and their immediate families will be flown to the U.S. or another country to wait there while their visas are being processed.

But that still leaves tens of thousands of Afghans stuck in Afghanistan waiting for a visa after the U.S. is left, which is very scary for them. The New Yorker wrote in a piece this week, in Kabul, Biden's withdrawal increasingly appears as poorly planned, rushed and chaotic. Ben, you know, I think you and I both have said many times that we believe it's long past time to end the war in Afghanistan. But what do you make of, you know, the really unnerving reports about this backlog and that broader critique from the New Yorker that like the U.S. just wasn't prepared to get out on this timeframe? Well, I think on the question of the time frame, you know, I think what people are going to be looking at is, you know, the deadline was set. They decided to go past the precise deadline that Trump had negotiated. So they built in some extra time. But then they set this deadline of the 20th anniversary of 9-11, which makes sense in the U.S. context. But in the Afghan context, you know, I I think there will be questions as to whether, you know, a few more months might have allowed for

a more orderly processing, at least of this question. I think you, I mean, to be fair to the Biden people, you were always going to have a decline in the security situation when the U.S. left. We've talked about this. At some point, we were going to leave unless we were going to stay kind of indefinitely. And it was going to be challenging security environment. I think there's this bigger question of whether there could have been a more orderly processing of the risks facing, particularly those Afghans who worked with us or were kind of stood

up for our values, and I'll get to that in a second. Because also, clearly in the withdrawal itself, the overriding priority was the safety of American troops, which led for it to actually be faster than people thought. I mean, we kind of all woke up to the news that Bagram had been vacated. And so, look, I do think that, you know, what we've seen, and it's kind of what we've seen throughout the war, that the safety of our troops understandably kind of comes. to the forefront, but that that speed that equaled safety for our troops endangered more Afghans. And that's a difficult proposition to wrestle with. I think what that does do is raise the bar on getting these Afghans out. I think the administration has dealt with a couple of hurdles.

One is just you have to change the process by which you're literally processing tens of thousands of Afghans. The special immigrant visa process and the cumbersome vetting and, you know, getting the right interviews and that kind of thing, clearly is not going to be fast enough. And so you just got to get these people out, as we've talked about, get them into third countries where you can process them because they're under threat. I think the administration was also thinking, well, we don't want to signal that everybody should leave because that might kind of feed a sense of inevitability of a Taliban kind of takeover.

But at the end of the day, when you're talking about literally the safety and livelihood of any Afghan who's worked with us, I think you just have to make allowances that if people want to leave, they should be able to leave. I also, to further complicate this, Tommy, you have the Afghans who worked directly with us as like translators. You have the categories you mentioned, like the Afghans who worked with us as civilians or worked with U.S. news organizations. But then you have the Afghan civil society, people who started human rights organizations, people who started women's rights organizations, those people, perhaps even more than some of the people who worked with us, could be in the crosshairs of the Taliban. And so, frankly, I think we need

be taking the broadest possible definition of who is at risk and who worked with us to include those people who kind of started organizations in line with our values. And look, this is both about what we owe those people. And it's also about like we should be looking at, you know, the benefits of immigrant populations and refugee populations of the United States, you know, to combine like a seemingly disconnected story, the Olympics. When I watched Sunni Lee win the all-around gold medal, you know, she comes from the Hmong community. And the Hmong community was on the side of the United States kind of recruited en masse by the CIA to help us in northern Laos during the Vietnam War. And we actually did not get all of the Hmong out of Vietnam at the end of the war.

We got a lot of South Vietnamese out. And the Hmong had to kind of find their way across the Mekong River and into Thailand, and it wasn't until the 80s that many of them got resettled in the United States. But look where we are now. We've got thriving Hmong communities and places like Minnesota. We have an Olympic champion. I'm not trying to trivialize this. What I'm saying is that like, you know, part of America's complicated foreign policy legacy is when things go bad, we are a safe haven for people. And those people not only get a second chance in the United States, they end up enriching the United States in unpredictable ways. Yeah.

I also just think like this is like death by bureaucracy. And, you know, this is reportedly a 14-step process with applications, paperwork, interviews, takes an average of two years. I think part of this is a bit of like the residual post-9-11 hysteria where people are so scared that one of these individuals could have ties to terrorism or do something bad once they got to the U.S. that they let the vetting be so onerous that people will literally die waiting. And I think that's just like inexcusable. and we have to, I don't know, come together in some sort of bipartisan way to speed this process up,

like stop worrying about the political risk and just get these people to fuck out of there because it's just inexcusable. It really is. Yeah. When you look at the risk calculus, right, I mean, the risk of one person getting through, you know, obviously you can have vetting and all the rest of it, but look at the risks in American society from the people who live here, you know. Like there's plenty of terrorist threats that exceed those of Afghan interpreters, right, that we choose to live with on a daily basis as Americans. I think, you're right, I think we can't be kind of imprisoned by our own fears here, given the danger that these people are in. Yeah, it wasn't much of Afghan interpreters who stormed

the Capitol, it was a different people, I believe. Speaking of which, Ben, the world's worst fascist Hinge date is happening as we speak in Hungary this week. So, bow-tied white nationalist, Tucker Carlson is speaking at a far-right conference in Budapest on Saturday, presumably because they paid him a ton of money. And he is also hanging out with and interviewing Hungarian president Victor Orban. The conference Tucker is speaking at is funded by an organization called Ben, I'll probably butcher this name, Matthias Kovinas Collegium, which is a very MCC. It sounds like Opus Day or some sort of weird Latin name.

The MCC was recently granted more than $1.7 billion with a B dollars in government money from Orban. that's about 1% of Hungary's GDP with the goal of creating an academy of sorts to train the next generation of baby right-wing fascists. Ben, you've written extensively about this in your book. Can you give listeners a quick reminder of who Victor Orban is and what you make of this unholy alliance with Tucker Carlson and Budapest? Yeah, and again, if you were interested in this story, please pick up after the fall because this was kind of the jumping off point for me to write this book.

I mean, Victor Orban, as we talked about, has been at the vanguard. of this kind of white Christian ethno-nationalist trend that we've seen particularly gain momentum since the financial crisis. But I think what people also have to understand is Victor Orban has been symbiotic with elements of the American right wing. His political consultants, as he was running to be prime minister in 2010, were American-Republican political operatives. The playbook that he is pursued in Hungary in redistricting parliamentary seats to entrench his party in power, in packing the courts with right-wing judges, and changing voting laws to make it easier for his supporters to vote, particularly ethnic Hungarians who are outside of Hungary, but are part

of his ethno-nationalist view of what constitutes a Hungarian. His playbook of having a right-wing media machinery that is constantly flooding people with scary stories about crimes committed by immigrants or the danger of invading Muslim hordes, the wall he built or fence, whatever we want to call it, he built to keep migrants out. All these things should be sounding familiar to people. And look, Steve Bannon has passed through there. He's astro-turfed a kind of white nationalist civil society that's kind of an incubator for not just a Hungarian far-right, but for far-right movements across the West. This is a really odious, autocratic, ethno-nationalist, fascistic character. And the idea that the most prominent American conservative commentator is just going over there,

being welcomed with open arms and embracing Victor Orban and calling his followers' attention to, like, basically, a blood and soil nationalist, ethno-national state should be much more fucking concerned. And anchoring his show there for the week. He's anchoring his show in Budapest. I can't even think. It'd be like a, like, a left-wing podcast going down to Caracas, you know, and hanging out with Maduro and then anchoring like a podcast from fucking Caracas for a week. This is insane. And like people, this isn't normal. This isn't like, this isn't an, like, you know, this drives me crazy, Tommy when people

are like, and I'm not just saying this because they go on MSNBC, but like, well, the left has MSNBC and the right has, well, fucking MSNBC isn't broadcasting from Caracas? You know, like, this is extremism. And like Tucker Carlson is a truly dangerous character. And the thing about Victor Orban that I really wanted to focus on, the book is the reason he matters is because he says the quiet part out loud. You know, he gave a speech in 2014 saying that the future should not be democratic. It should belong to illiberal democracies, which is essentially single party rules. You know, this is a guy who's made no bones

about looking to Putin, looking to China. He's invited in the Belt Road Initiative into Europe. He's kicked out a George George George Ford's funded university and replaced it with a Chinese-funded university. Like, this is a full embrace of autocracy. Never mind, by the way, Tucker Carlson, this is the incoherence of the American right, can rail about the Wuhan virus in China one day and then go and embrace a guy who's inviting China into the West and building Chinese funded universities because they care more about autocracy than they care about certainly democratic values. So this is a big story in my mind. It is a big story. He's got a little fetish for fascism, so we'll keep an eye on Tucker and see how it goes. I'm sure he won't apologize in any way,

shape, shape, or form. All the usual suspects will defend him because nothing seems to matter. anymore. But it's a big deal. It's a big deal. And it's gross. And he's getting paid a ton of money, I am sure. And it's terrible. So, Ben, let's turn to Iran. These things are also looking not great when it comes to efforts to return to or renegotiate the Iran nuclear deal. So we talked about this a lot on the show. You know, Iran recently elected a president, this hardline cleric named Ibrahim Reisi. I say elected in air quotes because there were dozens of more moderate candidates who were barred from running. I don't think anyone thought that Raezi's election was a good sign for the trajectory.

of the relationship. But, you know, there was a belief that the Iranian regime would allow the nuclear talks with the West to be completed before he was inaugurated, maybe just like give him a clean slate. But something seems to have changed. Reisie takes office on Thursday. The talks have been stalled for some time now. And the Iranians have increased their nuclear enrichment activities, so that's not good. On top of that news on Sunday, the U.S., the U.S., the U.S., the U.K., and Israel accused Iran of carrying out some sort of drone attack on an Israeli-owned oil tanker off the coast of Oman that killed two people. So again, like this feels like a very familiar update. Israel and Iran are, you know, engaged in this constant low-grade war where they're just, you know,

chipping away at each other. And the U.S. and Iran can't seem to come to an agreement on how to sequence getting back into the JCPOA or Iran nuclear deal and we're really quite literally running at a time. So a few weeks ago, people seemed hopeful that this would get done. Now maybe not so much. What's your take back? I mean, those might be unknowable, but like, do you think this is brinksmanship? that we often see at the end of a negotiation or a sign of something bigger, some bigger problem. It feels like a sign of a bigger problem. I mean, there was kind of a flurry of activity after that election when Biden was going to Europe. Europeans obviously very eager to get back into the JCPOA and just didn't happen. I mean, look, I think, you know, there was always a risk the longer

these negotiations drifted in terms of time, the more external events could interfere. Obviously, the running election could interfere. Where does that leave us now? Like, Nobody wants to be back on this ramp of escalation where the Iranians are approaching the capability to have enough material for nuclear weapon. And there's this kind of tit for tat escalation. And yet it seems hard to find the formula to get back into the JCPUA. I hope that's not because the U.S. is kind of insisting on the maintenance of a lot of these Trump sanctions that were put in place after the U.S. withdrew from the JCPA when you withdraw from a deal. I think it's an understandable idea that the starting point for the negotiation to return to that deal is where the deal was when he pulled out. That said, I think what I hope could happen and what may happen is the negotiation of some interim agreement, right?

Like there was last time before the JCPOA, there was an interim agreement that froze the Iranian nuclear program, didn't roll it back. There was a modest amount of sanctions relief. So at least we're not on that path of escalation. And so what I hope can happen in the coming weeks is a negotiation of something that at least kind of stops the clock on the advancement of the Iranian program by some more time for diplomacy. And then you're at least averting this kind of decision point between Iran approaching that nuclear capability or the U.S. taking some kind of military action, which would upend everything else Joe Biden's trying to do. I mean, you know, trying to revitalize democracy. He's trying to deal with climate change.

she's trying to deal with China, all these things, Russia. We don't need to spend another two or three years in like a psychodrama of Iran negotiation. So I hope that they can at least try to put a lid on this problem and create some space for diplomacy. Yeah, it ain't going to get any easier. So turning to COVID here, Ben. So I'm in New York right now. DeBlasio just put in place a plan for a vaccine mandate that will require you to show proof of vaccination before you get into various places, bars, restaurants, et cetera.

I think it seems like maybe the first thing de Blasio has done that people are happy about in several years. So congrats to him for finally figuring it out. But the global vaccination effort is not going as well, especially the effort to get vaccine doses to low and middle-income countries through a program called COVAX. So this seems like another example of bureaucracy, slowing things down and literally killing people. According to a long piece on the state of COVAX in the New York Times, the program was supposed we've delivered 640 million doses by now, but it is only delivered 163 million, so well short.

They're hoping to get to 1.7 billion doses delivered by December. I believe the U.S. alone has contributed 110 million doses total. So there have been a bunch of problems of the program. It starts with just the enormous challenge of creating this whole entity, funding it, getting doses, building it in the middle of a pandemic, especially when you have nations fighting for vaccine doses for their own populations, securing doses got even harder when a major manufacturer in India called the serum Institute was no longer able to export COVID vaccines because the Indian government halted those exports when their outbreak got worse.

But the bigger problem than just supplying doses is countries are also struggling to get the shots into people's arms once they receive the doses. According to the times, it took Chad, the country of Chad, not a dude named Chad, five weeks to distribute 6,000 of the 100,000 doses that Kovacs delivered in June. And then Benin, only 267 shots were being given each day a pace so slow that 110,000 of the program's AstraZeneca doses expired. So that's obviously a terrible outcome. Countries need freezers for doses like Pfizer that require ultra-cold storage. They need fuel to get vaccine doses outside of big cities.

So long story short, I mean, this pandemic is far from over. everyone is now anxious all over again about the Delta variant. And I think we probably don't have to explain to anyone why it's not enough to just vaccinate yourself. We need the whole world vaccinated to stop the spread of this disease and the mutations that are making it deadlier. But man, it was really rough in frustrating to read about all these predictable problems with coax.

And I'm not entirely sure how to fix it when you sort of have a leaderless organization like that. Yeah. And, you know, you have, this is where like, you know, nationalism is. is not your friend of massive multilateral efforts to vaccinate people. I mean, I think the bottom line is that like the announcement at the G7 that we talked about and welcomed of a half a billion doses being made available by richer countries has to be seen as just the very first step of a multifaceted, sustained effort over the next couple of years to do whatever you can to get doses out there to kind of address some

these intellectual property issues around whether or not doses can be manufactured and in other places like the Southern Africa. But also like figuring out ways to surge healthcare infrastructure and invest in healthcare workers in different places. I mean, the Chad issue highlights the fact that there's a huge gap, but at the same time, a relatively small investment of resources should be able to close some of that gap to get some health.

I mean, in Ebola, we dealt with this. The Ebola outbreak was in West Africa in Liberia. Syria, Leone, countries without significant healthcare infrastructure. And we searched now, obviously, healthcare workers are in demand in other countries, but there are ways that you can invest in that, there are ways that you can have smaller teams go out, they're training people to do things like give shots. And look, this is an investment in our own safety, as we've seen with the Delta variant.

I mean, the more this passes around the world, not only is that a danger in terms of the human beings at risk in these developing countries, but it's a danger of the emergence of new variants. So we're talking about a drop in the bucket of what the U.S. defense budget is or what our outlays were in Iraq and Afghanistan for something that is endangering American lives as well as lives around the world. I think there's going to have to be a sustained effort through organizations like the G7, through the U.N. and through the World Health Organization to be building out both doses but also some of the infrastructure necessary to deliver them in these countries. And on the back end of that, we'll get something out of it. We will have improved the public health infrastructure. We will have improved pandemic preparedness, which is going to be a constant issue.

So it's not just a one-off investment. I think the more you're doing to raise the floor of country's capacity to deliver things like vaccines, the more you're securing global health going forward. Yeah. And then it's also, you read these stories about these countries that desperately want doses and are struggling to get them to people. And then you read about, you know, sort of anti-vaccine politicians in the U.S. Or in France, hundreds of thousands of people are out on the streets protesting new laws mandating

the people show proof of vaccination or negative COVID test before going to a bar. And you just think, like, my God, it's so frustrating to read about people who are like literally in these life and death situations where they desperately need this miracle vaccination. And then you have people on the streets in Paris or whatever complaining. Far left and far right, by the way, complaining when they have, you know, abundant access to all kinds of vaccines and just won't take them. Can you imagine what it must be like to be like, you know, sitting in Nairobi or Jakarta and you're desperate to get this vaccine to have some degree of normalcy?

And you turn on the news and you see people who are so privileged in places like the United States or France that they can indulge whacked out conspiracy theories about microchips or 5G as like an excuse to mass mobilize against a vaccine? something is just broken in rich societies that like billions of people would trade places with anybody who can walk up to get a shot. I mean, when I went to the mass vaccine site where I got my vaccine, Tommy, they were telling me that there were people who were like flown from Europe who obviously had means, a lot of means to do that.

Yep. And there were people in Bakersfield where I drove who didn't get vaccinated. Like most of the traffic was from L.A. like this is insane. People can like literally drive down the street and get a shot and would rather spend that mental energy like on Facebook. And it does make me just think like what is what is the rest of the world think of this? Like how would I feel if I was sitting in like Chad and seeing a bunch of privileged people like being enraged that they have to get the vaccine that I'm desperate to get? Yeah. So the global inequity is glaring. Speaking of a place that Facebook has really damaged, let's talk about Myanmar. So six months ago, the Myanmar's military launched a coup. They ousted Aung San Suu Kyi, who is the democratically elected leader in her government. Since then, the military has brutally cracked down on peaceful protesters.

They've even used the coronavirus as a weapon. According to the L.A. times, the junta has ordered oxygen manufacturers to not sell to the public amid a huge shortage of oxygen. They've also ignored calls to blunt the spread of the disease in prison. And those prisons are full of political detainees, so they probably just want them to get sick. The military has also cracked down on community volunteer medical groups formed by anti-QU health care workers. So you've also seen stories about soldiers posing as coronavirus patients to draw out medical volunteers and, I guess, target them. This is all despite the fact that less than 3% of the country is vaccinated, the country is facing a new wave of infections. And to make matters worse, this week, the military sought to consolidate.

control by extending the country's state of emergency for two years and announcing that elections will not be held until 2023. Until then, the general in charge whose name, I forgot to write down, is going to be the de facto prime minister. Menong, right. I don't know. Yeah. So, like, I'm curious what you think. I don't have a lot of hope that these elections will happen in 2020 or ever. But are you hearing anything from, you know, your contacts and friends in Myanmar? And does it, I mean, are we basically back to the status quo that existed before the West had this opening with Myanmar back in what, 2012?

I mean, yes and no. I mean, yes in the sense that you hear nothing but bad news in terms of the sadism and nihilism of this military government, the lengths that they're going to to try to quash this opposition movement. The reality, though, is there is an opposition. There's kind of a government in exile, though some of them are actually still in the country in hiding. And the difference is, and this is, the difference is, and this is, the, the recommendation I would offer, like the military government, you know, that preceded 2011 and that opening, you know, was really entrenched. And, you know, they were, the rest of the world dealt with them as the government of Myanmar. You know, they were, they attended multilateral

meetings and a lot of people didn't like them, but it was what it was. I think the imperative here is to not normalize this. Like these, nobody should be dealing with this guy. I mean, they should not be, you know, ASEAN, the principal form for Southeast Asian countries. It should not be welcome as like equal partners in any multilateral form. Like the diplomacy of the United States should be focused, number one, on, and obviously we're not going to be able to affect like, you know, autocratic regimes like China, but maximize the degree to which people are just not dealing with these brutal sadists in the Burmese military. And at the same time, we should be engaging the opposition. We should be meeting with them. We should be figuring out, are there ways that we can provide assistance to them, humanitarian assistance and some of these, obviously with like refugee populations, but along the border areas that are not necessarily in the control of the government. We just should not be accepting that it's business as usual that really the most odious regime in the world right now, you know, it's in the running, I guess, with North Korea.

and a couple others, should not be normalized. So that to me is the task, and it's hard because, you know, your attention drifts to other things. But the people of Myanmar do not want this government. It's not like they have a bunch of support and it's contested. Super unpopular, right? Yeah, it's not even like, you know, in some places, you know, Egypt, which I've been very critical of, there were a bunch of people that supported the military takeover of that government. This is not the case at all in Myanmar.

And so we should, we should not be in any way acceding to it. Yeah, yeah, that's good advice. Hopefully the Biden administration folks are listening to that and thinking of ways to pressure these military leaders personally go after their money, not let them, you know, go shop in Paris and don't let their kids travel bans, like don't let their kids and wives, you know, travel to Paris and go shopping or go to universities. Like everybody who's associated with this should just be cut off. Yeah, yeah.

Ben, here's a headline for you. This is from Politico. Jihadist flood pro-Trump social network with propaganda. So this is about a new social media network that I guess I'm not on yet. Maybe I'll get there. It's called Gitter. I'm not sure if that's related to the getter done guy, that comedian, Larry the Cable guy or something. I don't know.

So it's a pro-Trump social media site. It was started by a bunch of Trump lackey like Jason Miller and Tim Murta, those hacks who would do comms for him. It was designed to be a place for absolute free speech. And now predictably the site is flooded with ISIS propaganda. including graphic videos of beheadings, content promoting violence against the West. And according to Politico, even memes of a militant executing Trump in an orange jumpsuit, similar to those used in Guantanamo Bay.

An expert told Politico, on Facebook, there was one of these accounts that I follow that is known to be Islamic State, which said, quote, oh, Trump announced his new platform. Inshallah, all the Mujahideen will exploit that platform. The next day, there are at least 15 accounts on Getter that were Islamic State. So great job, guys. Great job Jason Miller. I hope all the right-wing fascists, the oathkeepers, the dudes who storm the Capitol, the best of luck with our new ISIS buddies. Maybe you should meet up together in Budapest next year. Have a little hang out. What do you think? Good job by you. I mean, look, this puts the lie to their free speech thing, which is that like I remember, again, this is why like regulation of social media is such an imperative. In the Obama years, ISIS was making a lot of use of social media platforms like YouTube, like Twitter, like Facebook. And we sat the tech companies down and were like, you guys have to deal with this.

And in a kind of cooperative effort with the government where we were helping the spotlighting accounts, etc., they take all that down. Nobody was crying free speech back then, even though that potentially involved some Americans, right, who were ISIS sympathizers. you know, if there's dangerous disinformation online that can lead to violence, they can lead to terrorist attacks like a mob of armed people storming the Capitol. Like, it's a public safety imperative to regulate those platforms. Like, and so to me, they're by trying to make their point about free speech, they're actually making their point about regulation. They're highlighting the fact that there is speech that is so dangerous and such a hazard of public safety that, it does require like intervention. And and and and and and so you know, good job by you, Jason

Miller, like proving the point that you're you're kind of, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, platforms like Facebook into being the most efficient means of disseminating your disinformation is, is, is dangerous and needs to be dealt with and requires a policy response. A couple more quick Olympic stories because we are, Olympic fans. I've been in New York for the last few days. Hannah and I've been watching the Olympics way too late.

Cheering for Sunni Lee, Jade Carrie, all the gymnasts who are kicking ass. One sort of world of story that caught our eye here, Ben. So there's a sprinter from Belarus just received a humanitarian visa from Poland because she feared for her safety after team officials tried to basically kidnap her, force her on a plane back to Belarus from Tokyo

because this woman, Christina Semenoska, had criticized her coaches for trying to make her compete in a race she hadn't even trained for. And I guess that created a huge backlash back in Belarus's state-run media. And then her coaches tried to take her to the airport, force her on a flight. And luckily she resisted and asked the police for help. So, you know, again, for listeners who remember Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, he's often called Europe's last dictator. He's only in charge because he's repeatedly rigged or stolen elections.

and his government is so sensitive to criticism that they had a fighter jet recently forced a passenger plane traveling from Greece to Lithuania down and made it landed Belarus so they could arrest a journalist who was on board. There's also reports today that the leader of an exile group, a Belarusian exile group operating out of Ukraine was found hanged to death in a park in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital. So I assume that was a murder. So again, this is a very scary group of people who don't allow dissent. And this dramatic defection sort of brought back Cold War era Olympic memories. One ESPN article I saw said that has been used, 117 athletes defected at the Munich Olympics in 1972. I had no idea it was that many. That is wild. Yeah. I had the first, that was my first reaction, too, like how reminiscent this was of the Cold War when you had these kinds of defections.

You ever see the movie Moscow on the Hudson with Robin Williams, by the way? No. Check it out. It's like a classic. 80s movie. He's a Russian circus musician, and he defects in New York. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. But to me, like, raises a couple points. One is that these institutions like the IOC, I mean, I saw some of the, you know, some of the commentary was, I think she initially appealed to the IOC. They're so corrupted by, you know, the Russian Olympic Committee, the Rock and all this stuff. But ultimately, like, athletes need to be safe when they go to, they go to competitions like this. And there needs to be more of an effort put into making sure that they're not kind of

under the strict control of their autocratic minders throughout. And they have freedom of choice about what they're doing and even whether if it's not safe for them to go home. And then I think separately, this highlights the extent to which is like Belarus has just become just this kind of like global police state. You know, I mean, this is like, you know, they're forcing, trying to force athletes on the planes, they're grounding planes that aren't even flying to Belarus to arrest people. Like, this is like, this is like the ugliest manifestation of Putinism kind of infecting global spaces like outside of the borders of Russia and Belarus, because none of this

would be happening without Putin's support. And, you know, it does, I think, call upon. us to protect, you know, the safety of air travel, the safety of airlines. Like, this autocracy is now moving outward, you know, and even though it's targeting Belarusians in this case or in the case of the flight that was grounded, like it's doing so in venues where people are supposed to be free, air travel, the Olympics. And so I think, and the Biden team has spoken about this, it does require a kind of concerted multilateral effort to push back on autocracy infecting those kinds of spaces. I also saw Lukashenko recently make a comment about, well, of course,

I'd invite Russian troops in. So the space I'd be watching, too, is like whether Putin just kind of tries to swallow up Belarus in its moment of desperation. The reason he may not want to is because the people Belarus are clearly so over this kind of autocratic corruption that they're facing. So, you know, the Belarusian opposition has done a great job of keeping international tension on it, like the opposition leader recently met with President Biden. I think that's good. We should be dealing with the opposition as the only legitimate political actor in the country. Yep. Yep. Speaking of the IOC being completely corrupted, the 2022 games are in China. Yeah. And because it's never too early to start planning a headband, the former Trump,

Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, says that the International Olympic Committee or IOC should not allow China to have the 2022 winter games. He wants to, you know, smartly, actually, I think he wants to change the venue so we don't have to cancel and punish the athletes. The question, why you ask, is it because of China's genocide against the Uighurs, the hacking and IP theft, the suppression of democracy in Hong Kong? No, it's because of what he calls China's refusal to come clean about the origins of the coronavirus. So this was an op-ed. Ratcliffe wrote in Fox News.com, I believe, he wrote, quote, I had access to all the U.S. government's most sensitive intelligence related to the pandemic.

My informed opinion is the lab leak theory isn't just a possibility. At the very least, it's more like a probability, if not very close to a certainty. So I suspect we're going to hear more and more calls to move the games out of China or potentially even boycott them. I think those arguments all have merit. They're worth considering. What's frustrating about this is Ratcliffe literally had the power to declassify and release whatever intelligence he wanted about the lab leak theory. and he didn't do it. And now he's telling us to trust him

based on a New York Times op-ed. He was also the guy, I believe, who was trying to say that the Chinese interfered in the election in 2020, just as much as the Russians were. So he's not someone who's particularly trustworthy or well thought of. So I don't know.

It's like good idea, wrong reasons. I'm not, I don't know. I'm not sure what to make of this. Look, let's put the lob leak over here for one second. This guy is an asshole who has no credibility and nobody should listen to a word he says. I mean, and this is the problem with the Trump people, right? Like, let's say that the lab leak theory is true.

They've done more themselves to discredit that theory than to advance it because nobody believes a word they say because when this guy was DNI, they were downplaying denying Russian interference in the election. They were purging officials who told the truth from the office of the director of national intelligence. They were inviting in complete lunatic fringe conspiracy theorists, and then this guy wants to walk out of government, this guy who, by the way, is just

some blowhard freedom caucus loser, right, who gets picked just because he's sycophantic to Trump, why would anybody trust this guy just because the letters DNI were once next to his name? You know, I mean, like, this guy has no credibility. Now, there's a separate question, right, about both the origins of COVID, and I'd like to be informed by that by people who have credibility. Like, people, you know. And the House, one of the House committees today released. a report, I believe, that said they think that the origins of coronavirus actually date back

much earlier than originally thought, like maybe back to August. Again, I would love to just someone help me. Please prove it. I just want to know. I'd love to know the answer. Either these people are just like pissing on our legs because they have like a political interest in pointing the finger of China, or they're the most incompetent assholes in the world who were running the U.S. intelligence community this whole time and just didn't bother to tell us, Like the evidence that they, that he claims he saw? Like, I mean, come on, man. I think the question of the Olympics is a separate question that deserves to be debated and raised. And you're right. I think it has more to do with the fact that the Chinese Communist Party is carrying out a genocide, you know, than even the origins of COVID. Yeah. I do think we should have a serious conversation about whether there could be a pressure campaign around the 2022 games to force them to stop the treatment of the Uyghurs. a whole bunch of other issues. I don't know that John Ratcliffe's the guy to lead that charge.

Yeah. The guy worked for the president who told Xi Jinping it was a great idea to put a bunch of Uighurs in concentration camps. Yeah, that was very bad. Okay. So last Olympic story, this is much happier. So two Olympic high jumpers decided to share the gold medal after they both cleared jumps of 2.37 meters and they didn't feel like going to a jump off. By the way, I don't know if you watch the high jump or the long jump. there was a crazy long jump contest that went super deep. These guys were jumping like 27 feet in horizontally and then 2.37 meters in the air. It's like it's wild. But there was an athlete from Qatar, an athlete from Italy.

There were super close friends. They both had just come back from injuries. They had the chance of basically going to a jump off to see who could get the next best height or just like splitting the metal. And in the last moment, you might have seen the video of this. They just agreed to share the medal. and then this Italian dude, Gianmarco Tambari, lost his mind. He's like writhing around on the track, holding up his old cast from when he heard himself four years ago, generally being hilarious.

It was a great story. Can I just say like how much I love the moment. People should watch the video if you haven't. You may cry if you watch it. But I love that that guy was like so demonstrably Italian. You know what I mean? It's like everything you love about Italians. He's waving his arms.

He's jumping into the arms of the Qatari guy. He's riding around the ground. And I love them. And meanwhile, the guy from Qatar, like super reserved, you know, like stoic, you know. Yeah, yeah. But like, it was such a great contrast of people that clearly come from different cultures, right? There's not a lot of, like, it's not the same degree of emoting from the guy from Qatar. But they clearly had such esteem for each other and such respect for their sport and the sacrifices they'd each made.

It was like, it was what you love about the Olympics, which is like, it's fun to compete against one another and want to like dunk on other countries, but it's also fun to see other countries succeed and where the athletes succeeded. Like it was in miniature kind of what what you won from the Olympics. Yeah, it was great. It was one of the better things I've seen. Highly, highly recommend checking it out. Last thing today, Ben.

So today is a sad day for us here, Pot Save the World. Our brilliant, intrepid producer Jordan Waller is leaving us to go up to grad school. Jordan started a billion years ago at cricket as an intern. We hired her back because we were incapable of really getting by without her. She worked on POTSafe America before we stole her for POTS of the World full time. She has helped us cover issues that we otherwise would have totally missed. She is found and booked incredible activists and journalists as guests that just like would never have been on our radar screen. And if you think Ben and I are bad at pronouncing names now,

Get ready. Buckle up, get ready for how we sound. It is going to be ugly. So, you know, here's where we'd start rolling. You're replaceable by Beyonce if we didn't, you know, if we weren't worried about getting DMCA'd in the episode just like kicked out the internet.

But Jordan, we love you. We'll miss you. There's still time to change your mind. Have you tried the hard sell talking Jordan out of going to school? I mean, I haven't in part because I'm so excited to see what Jordan's going to do with the rest of her life, apart from keeping us honest on translations, which is not, you know, which is going to be a huge gap.

But I think the point I'd make, Tommy, is it like, it's like a privilege to be able to, like, you know, have a podcast where you and I get to talk about these things that we're really interested in. But, you know, it's a challenge to kind of get up every week and to be on point and to cover new issues and to find the right guest. And to me, like Jordan is both like world though number one. like she understood the ethos of this blend of activism and trying to inform people better than I did. I mean, she's done more to shape like the direction of where the show is going because because she sees that intersection of wanting to understand something happening in the world, but also wanting to kind of feel connected to people who are fighting for the right things.

And I have to say, like, to not be too small-y about it, but like if people like Jordan Waller are running things in the world, like we'd be fine. So what I'm getting is I'm just trying to live up to Jordan's aspirations for this show, for the world, for global activism, because it's truly inspiring. It keeps me motivated each week. And even when she's gone, it's going to keep me motivated that there are people like Jordan out there because that's what this is all about. Yeah, she'll be in the back of our heads. Because you know what happens? The older you get, like, literally, I can sense this what I like wake up and I read the paper in the morning. Things you're familiar with that you have, like, it's like pleasing to read those things.

New things feel harder and more difficult and more challenging. So you obviously default to the stuff you know. Like we come back to Iran or something. And like she's constantly pushing us to think outside of the stuff we know best, the things we worked on in the past, a whole new set of activists, younger, cooler people, if we're being honest. Yeah. And so that is great.

We love her. She's probably fucking furious. She's furious right now. She's very angry right now. But she's also the one who's like, if we said something a little wrong, we should, like, oh, maybe we should go back and retract that. Jordan's probably kept us out of trouble. Yo, oh, everyone, both of us all have like a Joe Biden moment every once in a while where you

got to trim something. Yeah, something doesn't really work anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway. Jordan, we love you. We'll miss you.

I'm proud of you. I think we'll hang out again soon, though. I hope we'll hang out. I, you know, I don't know. Like, I don't know if we're cool enough to hang out, Jordan. Yeah, I don't know. We're old, like middle-aged guys. All right.

When we come back, we'll have Ben's interview. So stick around for that. And I don't know. That's it. I'm very glad to be joined by Louisa Newbauer, who's a German environmental activist and one of the main organizers of the German Fridays for the Future School Strike for Climate Action. Louisa, thanks so much for joining us. Hi.

Thanks for having me. So I want to start with the devastating floods that we've seen in Germany this summer. and I understand that you went out there to see these floods, perhaps to help with the relief efforts a bit. What did you see? What did the aftermath of the floods look like and how are recovery efforts going? Well, it's been an incredibly odd situation. We are assumed to be one of those places on Earth where you kind of save from the climate crisis. And that's a very privileged and, of course,

paradox perspective, but that's how the climate crisis has been handled. And so we're facing a future for the past two and a half years, we've been going out on the streets and saying, hey, the climate crisis is here. It's happening around the world. It's happening at the most effective places the most. Yet it's also happening here. And still, you know, being one of those people who've been saying this every single day, it's been shocking. It's been unbelievable that the devastation, I couldn't have imagined that. And it's, um, You know, people talk a lot about this kind of German welfare and how people worked hard for decades to kind of build their homes and buy their cars. And within just hours, everything what they've kind of tried to achieve, everything they've worked for in the past was just kind of, you know, flooding, running down the streets.

And that is infrastructure that has lasted, you know, for decades that has, you know, experienced wars. in the past. And yeah, then we just saw it all collapsing in the midst of the climate crisis. That's been, yeah, that's been a very odd and shocking and sad experience, I guess. Well, you know, one of the things I've noticed here in the United States is that we have extreme weather events a lot, you know, floods, fires. And sometimes people don't immediately connect them to climate change, although that's beginning to change.

Did you get a sense in Germany that people immediately were drawing a connection between the climate crisis and the floods? Yeah, that's been an interesting spin there because, you know, this devastation just happened in one particular area in the country, in the beginning at least. So in most other places, for quite some days, people didn't really recognize how heavy that damage really was. So it was kind of from the distance was kind of easy to say, oh, you know, that's a climate crisis. Ah, it's happening. And because, you know, immediately after those floods hit those regions, people started talking about the climate crisis and how it's, you know, unraveling in Germany. And it was just, you know, it wasn't until a few days later, as people came up and say, oh, no,

you shouldn't talk about the climate here because, you know, you need to make sure that people understand it's all about them and it's all about the floods. But then it was already too late in a sense because the discourse had already started and there wasn't a single point in those floods where people kind of deny this being connected to the climate crisis and it was always been considered as a consequence of the escalating climate crisis. And so yes, as you're saying, we are seeing people, especially in those regions, kind of really standing up and saying, hey, this is a climate crisis happening here and now,

and we are obviously not protected. So I do think it has changed the perspective on our vulnerability. I'm not sure to pronounce the word. Vulnerability, yeah. That's a word. Yeah. It's, you know, yes, people, like the government kind of, it kind of acted like we were immune to the climate crisis.

and everything you would do to protect us from us would just be, you know, this kind of nice charity action, but not really necessary. And suddenly, you know, it turns out we are being hurt and we are being hit and we are not at all protected or immune. And what do you think of the government's response to date? I mean, obviously, you know, you've pushed for more climate action. And there's also the question just preparing for the effects of climate change. So in addition to taking steps to deal with the climate crisis,

you know, part of what this seemed to reveal is that all societies need to be taking greater steps to protect people from the way in which the weather is going to change. How do you look at the current German government's response? Oh, well, that's an interesting question. I mean, I think one thing that really struck out is that there wasn't a alarm system. in place. And that is, you know, we're speaking of an area in Germany, which is known to be a high risk area because the soil is really dense. So when rain hits, it kind of, you know, doesn't sink in. It just kind of floods down the hills. So people knew and scientists knew

and governments even knew, local governments knew that this is a high risk area. Yet there was no, you know, no adequate system to protect into war. want people. So what does it mean? It kind of, you know, it really, it really highlights how little even our government believe in the in the realness of the climate crisis. You know, you know that these reports around and they say technically, you know, there's a high risk area, but deep down, you're kind of like, you know, you're not really believing it. So I would, I would think that, you know, the devastation happening is also a consequence of this. kind of deep down denial of climate crisis happening in this country, you know, not on paper,

not in speeches, but in action. And so when politicians travel to the region and they would, you know, stand in all these flooded streets and in the, well, streets that used to be streets, it was an odd situation for them because they knew they very much messed up and they are responsible of, you know, not having warned people, not having installed their systems, while at the same time wanting to prove that they did nothing wrong. And that's obviously an impossible task. So we saw a lot of what I would kind of, you know, describe as political theater. So people changing their minds all the time, saying, oh, that's bad.

We need to do something about the climate crisis. And then your next day coming up and saying, no, it's, you know, just one, one event. You can't just change politics because of one event. And it was, yeah. eventually, I guess it kind of highlighted how little government, I would say, you know, in the larger sense and politics is prepared to face those catastrophes. And it turned out that our government wasn't really capable of reacting adequately, of proving that they're, you know, that they feel what people are going through and that they're able

to draw the necessary consequences. And so people are, yeah, they're angry. And especially those hit in the regions, they are not understanding what's going on. And many of them seem to feel let down. What do you think? I mean, obviously there's an election coming up in Germany. You know, climate has been one of many issues in that election. It's, you know, the first election that's going to produce a chancellor rather than Angela Merkel

in a long time. You've had greens on the rise in German politics. What do you think the impact of any of the flood is going to be on the election and how is climate factoring into the politics leading into the election? Yeah, that's a good aspect. I mean, many people are asking me, like, whether that's a climate election. And I would, I would on that say that indeed, every election happening, everywhere, really is a climate election, just because any kind of consequence from those election very much shapes

our chances to do anything about the climate crisis. And we are one of the richest countries on Earth. We are one of the heavy emitters. We are one of the most responsible places. So this is not a feel-good election. This is not just about, you know, who is representing us in other countries, but this is really about what does one

what such privileged plays does about its role in the climate crisis. And then there's a second dimension to this. This is this whole election campaign, this process running up to the elections right now. It is effectively about climate. It's the most controversial issue. It's the one that's being most talked about. It's the one that brings the most headlines. It's really the number one issue that people care about, that voters care about.

people are really looking at it. And then, of course, we're seeing how political parties are trying to kind of find a balance between pleasing voters. You know, for instance, by kind of not saying how heavily people have, governments have messed up in the past, but at the same time producing answers that are, you know, real and, living up to the challenge. And that's a complicated issue. So we are, yeah, it's a very, very odd experience. And this catastrophe happening right now and the floods is really, you know,

highlighting how little this country even is prepared for this crisis and how vulnerable we are, we effectively are. And I mean, for people outside Germany, I mean, it's probably most people don't know about this, but it's a very interesting political landscape here just because we, We have so many parties who have very good chances of, you know, being part of the future government. So we're speaking of five different parties and one that's, you know, the far right that people don't consider to be, you know, governing. But of those five democratic parties, all of them are considered to be at least, you know, likely to get into the next government. And that's a big deal. It means we have to kind of, you know, expect everything and anything.

and this, yeah, it puts a lot of dynamic into this election campaign, I guess. What would you like to see the German government's policy beyond climate? I mean, obviously there's the question of what Germany itself does, and then there's the question of like Germany's leadership in the European Union, which obviously is going to be very important to global action. But what do you want to see and how far apart are the political parties from the kinds of actions you'd like to see? maybe just to the latter one first in the past year every single major party has kind of committed to

fight for 1.5 you know fight 1.5 politics and that's that's big and you know I try to be humble here but I think Pfizer future has done a job there at least so that's one thing we can at least look at yeah and just so people know that's you guys have advocated 1.5 degrees Celsius warming as the goal not two degrees. Yes. And we have made this kind of, we said this global campaign called Fight for 1.5. And it's really, it's really, you know, led to all of those parties claiming, yes, yes, of course, we want to work for that.

Yet as soon as we get kind of beyond that headlines, we see that on paper, no political manifesto of none of those parties is, like, is in fact. you know, working or allowing us to stick to 1.5 degrees politics. So that's already a bit of a misfit there.

You know, we're seeing that all of them say they want to fight for 1.5 and at the same time not providing the plans we would need. So that, of course, already sheds a light on what we are facing

the next legislation, you know, a lot of work coming up, I guess. And then what of course we would need is our government not just to provide a plan for, you know, our national emission budget about how we stick to planetary within, you know, German territory, but to also kind of take a lead in European politics or at least inspire European politics in a way that we would need it to.

And that's an, and there actually the Biden administration, I guess, has helped a bit to kind of, you know, there is a lot to criticize there yet I think what the Biden administration is shown is what it looks like when you take a lead in climate. And so everyone is now turning at the German government and saying, hey, so we have quite a strong government, or we had quite a strong government. For 16 years, we had Chancellor Merkel. Where was the point that she would kind of, you know, rise up and say, look, hello, this is a challenge and we are willing to tackle it.

And, you know, if you want to stop me, go ahead. but you won't let me get me down on this. And this has never happened before. Rather the opposite in European politics. The German government was often one of those governments who secretly blocked environmental legislation and environmental policy when it, you know, came down to concrete measures in order to protect a car industry

or coal industry or so on. So I guess there is this internal role and this external role that we are really looking at, that we are really needing to see, you know, changes and that we, or many of us at least here, are doubting that parties yet have a plan for. But that's something we're working on. And just talking about Fridays for the future, you know, you guys have obviously had a huge impact in German politics and European politics to reach the United States. We see also, of course, now, you know, to deal with climate change, one of the biggest

challenges and the world is going to be in Brazil and protecting the Amazon. They have an election upcoming. You guys have been pretty amazing at a remarkable young age and galvanizing kind of global mobilization. What are you guys doing to kind of make sure that the kind of effective pressure you're bringing to bear in places like Germany, that that kind of pressure and that kind of mobilization is taking place in other countries? Well, luckily enough, we are a global movement. there's also Pfizer future. In Brazil, there's a rise of future. And, you know, many places around the world, even in China, there's activism happening.

In places like India, we are like, you know, regularly surprised by the power of those movements rising on the streets. And I remember that day that, you know, I got a text message of someone saying, hey, did you know that there were 30,000 schoolchildren in Ethiopia striking for the climate right now. And, you know, we didn't even know that they were preparing those strikes. that's happening. So, you know, our pressure is happening around the world as we know that we the only chance we have in this crisis is if people everywhere really act up. And then, of course, what we try to do also is to kind of, you know, to put pressure on transboundary issues. So for instance,

there is this agreement, the trade agreement between the EU and Southern American countries. happening right now. So that's called the Mercosur agreement. And we know that this agreement, for instance, in the worst case, would trigger much more of, you know, rainforest burning and land use changes. So what we're trying to do here is we're talking to European leaders saying you need to get out of this agreement in solidarity with our Brazilian and Southern American activists who know that this trade agreement will work against, you know, by diversions.

and climate protection right there in the Americas. So that has to do with kind of, you know, working with and using foreign power dynamics, making sure that we increase pressure from the outside and the inside as we see that this regularly helps a lot. And sometimes, I mean, eventually, you know, It seems to me that sometimes it's just, it's surprisingly banal, but it makes such a difference if people feel like they're under an international spotlight. If people know that they're being seen, if people, you know, and governments know that they're being watched with whatever they do,

not just from the activists they're speaking to all the time or they're hearing from all the time, but from places around the world and media around the world. So what would you, I mean, you know, we've got a decently sized audience here, including a lot of Americans. I mean, what should people do, you know, who are watching this, who obviously would like to see greater action on the climate crisis, but they don't quite know how to participate, they don't quite know how to get involved? Like, what would you tell people to do who care about this? Oh, I'm organized. I mean, get together. I think, you know, eventually, eventually, eventually, eventually.

Eventually, we know that those changes necessary are possible as soon as we, you know, start taking ourselves seriously in this. Nothing is for granted. Nothing is just going to happen except maybe more, you know, climate crisis. Any positive changes we need to see in the world and we want to see in the world, you know, start with people getting together around this, start with people understanding that they I wanted in this. And, you know, there's a tendency to consider other countries to be at the forefront.

So I guess many people from, you know, international spaces think that Germany does a very good job in, you know, protecting the climate and inventing new technologies and in doing all those things you're supposed to do. And I'm so sorry to tell everyone, but this is not true. We are not sticking to what we promised. In fact, we're kind of betraying, betraying the international community here because we're going out advocating to be this climate champion and at the same time making sure that our coal really destroys our climate performance everywhere.

And so, you know, what we're seeing is that there is no, that there's no point on relying on others to figure this out. We all need to act up in the places where we are, knowing that, you know, we're everywhere and the environmental community, the climate movement is growing and in places around the world, and every kind of corner people are getting organized. And eventually this all can work out when we get more and more and more

and we understand that we are needed wherever we are. And, you know, this is basically, you know, this is allowing others to get going wherever they are. Well, look, it's been great talking to you. That's a very motivating way to conclude. I mean, I think you guys have given a lot of people a sense of at least agency, right, of the capacity to do something about this. So hopefully that pressure continues to build, and hopefully that contributes to a better German policy in the near term too. So thanks so much,

Louisa, for everything you're doing. Of course. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks again to Louisa Newbauer for joining the show. Thanks to the people at Studio G here in Brooklyn. Thanks to Jordan for getting me into this awesome studio. Thanks to, I don't know. Ben, your backdrop, like, it looks great. Look, I love being in studio with you, but your videos much more compelling in your home studio. I'm not going to lie to you. Well, I mean, I actually did an event recently, a book event.

Remember Karen DeYoung? I love Karen. Great reporter. She's got a great kind of... She would kick my ass up and down every week. Yeah, she's seen it all. and she's got a great kind of sardonic sense of humor sometimes. So I get on this book event with her and she's like, you know, I've watched one or two

your events and you're always sitting in the same place and you're usually wearing the same shirt. And I felt like I was just, she just pierced my soul because like I like I, I, people, anybody who's watched me do things has seen the same effing backdrop. You know, if the book event I throw on the same white shirt. So as usual, Karen D. Young saw right through me. But, you know, take the background out for a spin a few more times. That's how she rolls. Well, it looks good.

I'm going to run a LaGuardia, so I will talk to you guys soon. Thank you, Jordan. Potsave 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 Segglin 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. Thank you.