Pod Save the World - Tucker’s all Orban has left

Episode Date: August 11, 2021

Tommy and Ben talk about the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, Mike Pompeo and the missing whisky, Sudan and Ethiopia, big climate change news, the US military’s new covid vaccine rule, China’s Olympic lies, and some dystopian space idiocy.Then, Ben interviews Hungarian journalist Szabolcs Panyi about Viktor Orban’s star turn with American right wing media and the Chinese Communist Party, and Orban’s standing at home heading into next year’s elections.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 Pots Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, we are swapping geographic locations. This is a bi-coastal show. You're not back in New York. I'm back in L.A. Can you feel the Cuomo era unraveling under your feet? Yeah, all around me here. It's actually like all anybody's been talking about here for the last couple of days. So pretty big. I mean, he's like dominated New York political landscape for a decade. So it's hard to overstate what a big deal it is for him to be. tend to be out, but I don't think anybody's surprised. I mean, I've known people who worked for him. I mean, none of the authoritarian behaviors were surprising. I think the depravity and the report, you know, exceeded, I think even some of his critics' view. And my parents who liked his performance in COVID, even they were very much ready for this step as well. So we'll see. Yeah. Good riddins governor. didn't really enjoy you while you were here, but love to watch you go. I don't know if that's the saying, but see you. Well, yeah, and what's interesting is he, again, he dominated New York state politics so much that, like, it's wide open. Like, there's no obvious, you know, successor in the next

election. So it'd be interesting to see. Yeah, that will be a big election. Speaking of big elections coming up this year, if you listeners want to get involved today and help out with future elections, help out grassroots organizers across the country, go to Vote Save America, dot com slash no off years all one word and if you live in california please fill out your recall ballot i did it today vote no on the recall leave the rest blank even if you don't like avenue some your choices are basically hammer like some crazy anti-vaxer right-wing radio hosts so don't mess around this one but vote save america dot com slash no off years will it'll get you to tons of volunteer opportunities uh there's no such thing as an off year anymore all these elections are important whether they're state

local, federal, all of them. So get involved. On the show today, we got a lot of good stuff. We're going to cover some, you know, all the news out of Afghanistan is bad, so we're going to talk through all of it. We'll talk about Mike Pompeo and the missing whiskey, Sudan and Ethiopia, some big climate change news. Ben, I loved your interview last week, by the way, with the climate activist. She was very inspiring. COVID update. The Olympics are over, which is sad. We got some final updates. And then some space-based idiocy that I wanted to flag for you guys. And then, Ben, you are doing our interview today, talking about some authoritarian, maybe Tucker Carlson. Is that what I'm hearing?

Yeah, well, I'm going to be talking to Sabolk-Spawne, who's a journalist, who's been right in the middle of a couple of stories we've been covering. One is, you know, he was all over the authoritarian bromance, fascist romance between Tucker Carlson and his new best friend, Victor Orban. He's also been all over the story of Victor Orban opening the door to the, you know, Chinese Communist Party to build a massive university in Hungary. I don't know if you saw Tommy that in the official transcript that was released by Orban of his interview with Tucker, they censored out Tucker's criticism of China, which goes to show, you know, who Tucker's wrapping his arms

around there. But also, Zabolch was spied on by the NSO outfit story we covered a few weeks ago. He was one of the two Hungarian journalists who was surveilled there. So lots to talk about there. Well, we're going to count those intercepted comms towards our download numbers for the episode, because I'm sure they'll be listening in before it goes live. So let's start in Afghanistan because we talked about it last week, the things have actually gotten considerably worse since that time. Over the last few days, seven provincial capital cities have been overrun by the Taliban. That includes cities and provinces in northern Afghanistan that have historically been anti-Taliban and where local warlords in militia groups manage to hold territory, even when the Taliban

controlled Kabul back in the late 90s. The Afghan special forces are fighting heroically. They're doing all the heavy lifting, but they are reportedly exhausted and in some cases literally out of food. The regular army units are often retreating or disbanding or otherwise just not really fighting. The fighting is moving further and further into urban areas. Civilian casualties are increasing. The Taliban is also conducting a series of assassination campaigns against government officials and activists and civil society, including an attack on the acting defense ministers, home in a heavily fortified neighborhood of Kabul that killed eight people, not the defense minister, luckily. The U.S. is still conducting airstrikes on Taliban targets, but those flights are now

based outside of the country because the U.S. handed over Bagrammeir base to the Afghans, and I suspect that, you know, the airstrikes generally are less useful if we're talking about, you know, urban combat because you can't just, you know, bomb urban targets. So, you know, Ben, these stories are just devastating, you know, people who worked with the U.S. and the NATO are getting killed. innocent civilians are getting killed, thousands of Afghans are getting displaced or forced to live under Taliban control. Last week we talked about some criticism of Biden for withdrawing too quickly and not doing enough first to get military interpreters and others who worked with the U.S. out of the country. I think that's a separate issue. It's a valid one. But what we're seeing today is a different

story, I think. I mean, these Taliban military advances suggest that there's a far bigger problem that, you know, the U.S. has been in Afghanistan for 20 years. We spent trillion dollars. More than 2,700 U.S. service members have been killed. Over 100,000 Afghans have been killed. But here's my question for you. I mean, you see these results what's happening with the Taliban are taking over these capitals. Doesn't this tell us that, like, this core mission of training and equipping the Afghan military has just fundamentally failed? Yeah, I think it does. I mean, that, you know, really, I was thinking about what angle we could discuss here, Tommy, because, as you said, the news is the news, and it's pretty clear that the Taliban is just steadily advancing, even in places

like, you know, the city of Kunduz, like not exactly their strongholds. And to me, you know, people can make it an indictment of Biden's decision to leave, and we can talk about that, and we have talked about that, and the speed with which you left. But as you just alluded to, It's kind of a dime in diamond of the entire theory of the case of this war effort, not the destruction of al-Qaeda. I mean, that was a targeted mission where you go in and you try to take out certain terrorist safe havens. Obviously, that bled into Pakistan. But the model of training and financing this kind of massive Afghan security force as the entity

that you could hand this over to, I think that needs to come under a lot of scrutiny, because I think to a large extent, if you look at who's actually doing the bulk of the front line fighting, it's these special forces, as you say. And there was this kind of almost the size was the goal of the Afghan National Security Forces. Right. And in order for them to sustain just their basic operations and their logistics, they were hugely dependent not just on the U.S. military, but also on private security contractors who were performing some of the basic functions for them. And now that those private security contractors are also leaving, it's hard for the Afghan national security forces to function. And so the idea of training kind of this massive military that you finance that has, as Biden himself said in a recent press conference, you know, has more numbers, more hardware than the Taliban, but they're not like a cohesive, tight fighting force. You know, clearly that didn't work in Iraq, as we saw when Mosul was overrun by ISIS.

and it hasn't worked here either. And so, yeah, I think there's, you know, there's going to be a lot of efforts put into looking back. But I think one of the basic points here is that our capacity to shape events in these distant countries, that we don't understand that well, that, you know, the U.S. public doesn't have an appetite for staying for several decades, that we sometimes think, oh, we can construct a, military, and if it's this size, it can get this amount of work done. You know, this is a lesson in the limits of what the U.S. can accomplish through military intervention itself. And because even again, like, even if we kept that small force there, the Taliban was still advancing. They just weren't

advancing at the speed. So it's not like everything was going well. And then Biden pulled out and the bottom fell out. It's like, no, everything was already deteriorating. And then that deterioration accelerated with this pullout. And again, I think that that that should teach us that, you know, the, the model where we think we can engineer events in other countries through military action, you know, hasn't borne out in either Iraq or Afghanistan and something we should take a lot of stock of 20 years after 9-11. Yeah, or build a military in the same sort of image as our own. I mean, here's a question that I bet the Biden folks are debating right now, which is you're seeing these district capitals topple and topple quickly. There's real concern.

now about, you know, whether Kabul will be next or, you know, or how quickly Kabul will fall. I believe that right now there are 4,000 people working at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, including 1,400 diplomats. There are 650 U.S. troops on the ground still defending the embassy, I believe. That embassy compound is a fortress. But, I mean, at one point, do you think the U.S. government will start thinking about whether it's safe to have a diplomatic presence in Afghanistan? Because, I mean, like, it would work.

Look, if I were serving there right now, I would be pretty worried. Yeah, I think at a certain point, they're clearly just going to make a decision. You know, what I think they hoped for in a best case scenario is that with the U.S. withdrawal, I think it was inevitable that Taliban was going to make some advances. But I think what they hoped for is that the Afghan government and security forces could hold some territory and that some kind of stalemate would emerge that could then kind of be channeled into a diplomatic negotiation. And in the current trajectory of events, it's hard to see what the Afghan government can hold at all. Maybe like an island of Kabul.

But I think what they'll have to decide is in addition to kind of continued airstrikes, are we prepared to deploy more military force to just keep Kabul from falling so that at least there's some outposts of a different political force and military force in Afghanistan? and they can allow you to have some protracted effort to get in negotiations. You know, right now it feels like with the current momentum, you know, it's very unlikely that they can hold out in Kabul in some other cities. But, you know, that's going to bring some tough decisions in the White House as to whether you deploy some, at least, you know, more robust air power on a more sustained basis to create some, hopefully some kind of perimeter around Kabul.

Yeah. And, you know, the statements have the White House, it sounds like there's no way there's sending troops back in. Just before, you know, we started recording Zalmeh Khalil Azad, the U.S. official leading the peace negotiations with the Taliban, put out a statement where he warned the Taliban that a government that takes power by force won't be recognized internationally. I mean, maybe he's working with like the best diplomatic stick he has available to him. But I just can't imagine the Taliban giving a shit about that. No, and look, the Taliban wasn't recognized internationally by many countries back when it ruled Afghanistan. before 9-11, and that they didn't seem to give a shit about that. And we've even seen, you know,

in recent weeks, you know, a Taliban delegation received in China, you know, so there are countries that are going to deal with them as, as a, if not a governing, recognized government of Afghanistan, at least as like an authority inside of Afghanistan. I do think to come back to this point that we've hit a few times, but it can't be stressed enough. Like, it's this question of, who to try to evacuate, I think should not be restricted just to kind of military interpreters or just to people who work with U.S. media organizations, as has been discussed. But there are a lot of people that were USAID contractors or a lot of organizations that got grants from USAID to set up, you know, women's rights organizations, human rights organizations. I really do think that if, look,

if the Biden team has decided and it's a decision that, you know, you and I have expressed some understanding of, that there's just diminishing returns for having a U.S. military presence at some point we're going to have to leave. It's been 20 years. I do think that there's a higher threshold of responsibility to get as many people out who work with us as possible. And again, not just people who are like employed by the military, but people who are like started organizations that receive funding from the United States because we encourage them to stand up for women's rights or girls' education or human rights. Because, you know, when you think of the most horrific scenarios, it's the kind of mass retribution taken out on those people, many of whom are based in

Kabul. And frankly, if you are headed to a scenario where what, you know, you're kind of hoping for, and hope is not the best word for such a grim scenario, but is that the Taliban, you know, kind of, once again, discredits itself by the way it rules and invites great. or opposition to it over time, you need those people to stay alive. And those people who represent Afghan civil society in an alternative future so that if things change in however many years, you have people that can go back and help put the pieces back together. So there's moral reasons and there are also practical reasons why you would want to save as many people as possible who've kind of participated in this project of trying to have an Afghanistan that represents

the rights of all its people and not just the Taliban's agenda. Yeah. Okay, that was a very grim topic. Let's talk about something very stupid, which is Mike Pompeo. So failed former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo is in the news because of a missing bottle of whiskey. Ben, I don't know if you saw this. In 2019, the government of Japan gave Pompeo a bottle of whiskey worth $5,800. I can't imagine paying that much for whiskey. But the gift itself isn't that weird. Foreign government's often given the president or give senior members of the president's staff, these. lavish gifts that basically immediately get recorded, taken away by the State Department, and then the recipient can either turn it over to the National Archives forever or buy it back with their own personal cash. But this special bottle of booze went missing. And Mike Pompeo was asked about this by Fox News last week in a moment of accidental journalism by the Fox News team.

And he kind of stuttered and stammered and said it never got to him, but if it had been Diet Coke, he would have drank it. It was kind of the joke he attempted. Yeah. What's your take, Ben? Where is the bottle? Do you believe, Mike, that he didn't just slug this thing down on the plane ride home? So, I mean, first of all, like, just so people understand how this works.

Like, I never got a time we were in our first trip to Saudi Arabia in 2009. And I arrive at my, like, little guest house that I was staying at, you know, each of the staff was assigned to one. And there was a suitcase full of, like, jewels. Like, it was literally a suitcase that I opened and it had, like, it had like, you know, like a necklace and a watch. or I don't know what was in it. And I thought that they were like trying to bribe me because I was working on like the Cairo speech. Yeah.

All you guys were like, what the fuck? So I was like, oh my God. Did I just get this? But then Favro was staying in the same compound as me. He got the exact same gift. And then turned out everybody got a suitcase full of jewels. And that's when the State Department explained us, oh, no, don't worry about it. We just take it.

You know, we'll let you know if you want to buy this. And I think it was valued at like tens of thousands of dollars or something. Nobody ever does that, right? I like that they gave you the chance to stash it in your bag. before telling you that they knew that the jewels were in there. Yeah, well, but like, and this happened, you know, again and again, Obama, like, the gifts, these gifts are given protocol office to protocol office. So what's very weird about this, right, is that, like, normally there wouldn't even be a

question, like the bottle of whiskey would go to, like, the State Department of protocol people would just take it back and put it in whatever warehouse they put it in, or I think maybe they sell some of this stuff for charity or something. So it's kind of odd and peculiar that of all the gifts that Mike Pompeo received. and look, like he gets them in every country you go to, you get some dumb gift. The multi-thousand-dollar bottle of whiskey is what goes missing. Knowing Pompeo, he's probably not the kind of guy that, like, had a good time with this whiskey. He probably re-gifted it to like some Coke Brothers type donor, you know?

Maybe it was served Tommy at the Madison dinners, you know? Yeah, I thought about that. I bet he got drunk and yelled at his staff, which is kind of like what he does. I love this guy, like throwing the State Department. under the bus because he kind of made another sneering thing about how like, you know, if anybody fucked this up, it was the State Department, like, what a great boss Mike Pompeo is. You know, like, how'd you like to work for that guy? And he's throwing you under the bus for every single thing that happens, including the fact that he lost

several thousand dollar bottle of whiskey. Yeah, you drank it. You slubby. You drank it or you re-gifted it, man. Come on. Yeah, you're the worst. Okay, some news out of Sudan. So our friend USAID administrator Samantha Power took a visit to Sudan.

She went to Khartoum. She gave a major speech. She announced some additional humanitarian assistance, and she also visited a refugee camp that hosts Ethiopians who have been driven out of Ethiopia because of the civil war there, the conflict in Tigray. Then, some interesting news on top of that, then Sudan's transitional government voted unanimously to join the international criminal court or ICC. I'm sure this was a pretty remarkable trip for Samantha, who is, you know, one of the world's experts on the genocide that happened in Darfur visited there. under very different circumstances a long time ago, then what do you think it would mean if Sudan joined the ICC and people like former Sudanese president Omar Abashir were handed over for prosecution? Like, what are the stakes there? I mean, it'd just be like a tremendous sign that international justice can work. Like one of the reasons, this is momentous for two reasons. One is on the international justice front. Bashir was kind of the poster boy of impunity for years

because he'd been indicted by the ICC, and he kind of flaunted it and was like, screw you. And he kind of pressured other countries, particularly in Africa, to say, don't cooperate with the ICC, continue to deal with me. And his ability to get away with that kind of undercut the credibility of the court. I think if he is prosecuted, what that demonstrates is at some point, justice is coming for you. You know, that like you may evade this for five years, 10 years, 15 years, but whether you're, you're, you're, Burmese junta or whether you're someone like Bashir, whoever you are, like once you get tarred with that indictment, like, just because you can evade it for a period of time doesn't mean the justice in coming. And that's a very powerful message. I think it's also a reminder that like pretty extraordinary political events have happened in Sudan, you know, that you had this kind of mass mobilization for democracy that successfully did oust Bashir and did lead to a transitional government. Look, there's huge challenges there. There's still a pretty entrenched military. There's like some autocratic neighbors, particularly our friends in the Gulf, who like to pour money in there

and don't want to see a full democracy. But, you know, things continue to progress somewhat in Sudan. It's a sign that, that, you know, when people stand up and demand change, like, they can, they can see tangible results, you know. It's also a sign, though, that that very fragile transition, one of the things that's putting it at risk is this conflict, you know, next door in Ethiopia and Aritrea that risks kind of spreading and pulling in neighbors. And so it's yet another reason why people should be concerned about the direction of events in Tigray. Yeah. And just before we started recording, I saw that the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, has called on civilians to join the army in the fight against the northern rebels in Tigray.

you know, the rebels up in the north had staged this major offensive, had taken back a lot of the territory that they lost. But, you know, calling on civilians to join the fighting seems like a very bad sign that this war is going to escalate and not end anytime soon. So it's something we should keep watching. It's a reminder that these situations that are already tragic can get worse. I mean, because the situation when everybody's turned into a combatant,

including civilians, is a recipe for just a lot of suffering and instability. And so the imperative of trying to get this, into some peace process and some kind of ceasefire negotiation, you know, that continues to be acute. And this is something that the Biden administration and a lot of other governments, and hopefully governments in Africa step up, because if you look at organizations like the African Union,

which is based in Ethiopia, if you look at all these neighbors, like Kenya, like important countries, they're going to suffer if this conflict continues to go off the rails. And so a lot of countries have a lot of interest at stake in preventing further deterioration here. And never mind the human beings caught in the middle of this. Speaking of a lot of countries having a stake in preventing for the deterioration,

let's talk about climate change because the intergovernmental panel on climate change where IPCC released a massive new climate report that was based on an analysis of more than 14,000 different studies. And it paints a very bleak picture. So here's some key takeaways. One, you know, the report is just unequivocal about the fact that humans are warming the planet by burning fossil fuels and that the impact is being felt literally everywhere. The CO2 we've released already has basically locked in more warming and extreme weather for the next

30 years. The rate of change in areas like sea level rise is happening more quickly than before. So things are accelerating. If the world does nothing, the temperature could rise from 3 to 6 degrees Celsius, which would be catastrophic. But if we are aggressive and there is a global effort to cut emissions, that could limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. So there's some hope here.

You know, just a personal aside, then I also hope that, like, industry is figuring out some way to pull carbon out of the atmosphere to help with this effort. But, you know, government to act first. So, you know, this study is especially valuable because it draws this link between extreme weather events and climate change. And that is important because a lot of people don't do that. They don't think climate change will impact them personally. But I think here's the big question. The next UN climate change conference is coming up in November. Do you think this report will do enough to get the world to come together and to act?

like enacted the scale that's necessary because, you know, we've seen that not necessarily happen in some of the recent summits. I mean, I had a lot of thoughts and feelings in reading the summaries of this report. The first is I don't think you can emphasize enough how selfish, reckless, short-sighted, and really cruel, the climate denialism in governments like our own has been. over the years. I mean, like, what is it going to look like to future generations that, like, Donald Trump stood up and, like, pulled out of the Paris Agreement and said he cared about Pittsburgh and not Paris, and that our politics, I mean, to do a little media criticism here,

covers that, you know, as if it's like, oh, that's a valid political argument, you know, like, this evidence has been clear for decades. And we've literally had people obstructing climate action, not just refusing to join it. But, like, even the infrastructure bill that passed a day. They had to pass a bill that could get bipartisan support that basically stripped out most of the important climate provisions because, God forbid, any even moderate Republican would have to vote for that. That is going to look insane. I mean, it's almost hard to get your mind around the negligence. I think the second point then that leads to is that, like, you know, for people like us who talk about foreign policy and international

relations, you read a report like that and you realize, like, at some point, we're going to wake up completely to this. And this is going to be like the only thing that people do. You know, like the issue that governments work on together, the issue that the U.S. government has to be structured to deal with is going to be climate change for a period of decades. And you would hope that the combination of extreme weather events that we've already had and the reports that have come out like this will make that moment now. Because what needs to happen at Glasgow is there needs to be a kind of transformation of the ambition that governments have in terms of the targets they're setting, in terms of the actions that they're taking, so that they can literally

transform the entire global economy into something that can leave the earth habitable, you know. And that's going to take governments, you know, spending money and having much stricter regulations. That's going to require people who invest money to only invest in clean energy. That's going to require all of us making different choices about the types of places that we live and the types of energy that we use. It's a whole of society effort that needs to start, like yesterday. Glasgow will be an opportunity, but I'm not that optimistic that we can get there. I think it does point to how important it is for this second infrastructure bill,

the reconciliation bill, to go through so that the U.S. has some momentum when we go there, and we can say, hey, we just spend X amount of money transforming our energy grid so that we can meet, you know, the goal of being carbon neutral by 2050. But we'll see. We'll see if we can get it done in that timeline. You're also seeing some like sort of near term political fallout, right? I mean, there are these major fires in Greece. And, you know, some people are blaming immigrants.

Others are blaming Turkey. Some are blaming corporate interests. So like the spillover effect into politics, especially like right wing politics, will be devastating. I'm going to road test a slightly lighter message. that people can use for their Republican friends. So, according to some reports I read Ben, bad weather is forecasted to reduce France's wine production by 30% this year.

Bad weather in Italy is going to reduce their output by 10%. Wine makers in California are struggling to grow grapes in these heat waves. So here's a message for your drunk Fox News watching relatives. Deal with climate change, or you cannot slug Chardonnay and yell at me about Obama's birth certificate this Thanksgiving. Do you think that will work? I mean, I hope so, except like I was thinking about this too, Tommy, is like, it's so clear what's happening. It's so clear that we're suffering extreme weather events because of this.

But if people won't even get vaccinated, you know, like to protect themselves, why would they support national policies to do? I mean, but again, we can do this. You know, I mean, we like it's a problem with the solution in terms of policies that can be pursued. Yeah, maybe, I mean, maybe that message can work. I mean, I also think, like, again, we have to remember that, like, it's going to require countries to say things like, okay, we're not going to trade with Brazil if they keep burning down the Amazon. Like, it's going to take that kind of collective effort of, like, you know, voting off the island,

the people that they refuse to deal with this. Unfortunately, the United States has often been the country that refuses to deal with whenever we've had a Republican president. But, yeah, maybe the Chardonnay can be a wake-up call. I don't know. You know, I'm trying something here. Burning to death, though, in the lips, though. That's what we're dealing with.

You mentioned COVID. So some good news there. The Pentagon announced that members of the U.S. military will be required to get a COVID-19 vaccine starting in mid-September. That timeline gives the FDA the chance to complete its inexplicably long process and give final approval to the Pfizer vaccine. So the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, frame the issue as impacting military readiness, saying, quote, to defend this nation, we need a healthy and ready force. Seems obvious. President Biden backs his plan. So the Pentagon says that more than one million troops are fully vaccinated. another 237,000 more have had one shot. The Navy is doing the best in terms of the service branches. They have the highest percentage of active and reserve sailors vaccinated with 74%. Having gotten one shot, the Army is bringing up the rear with closer to 50% vaccinated. Service members are already required to get lots of other vaccines. The exact list depends on your location. So this seems like a good step and a piece of the puzzle that will get us closer to having the federal workforce and country vaccinated.

But like, here's my question for you, Ben. Do you think DOD will actually punish the few holdouts who refuse to take it? And do you worry at all that those people become like right-wing celebrities once it happens? I mean, you can guarantee that there'll be some like, you know, Marjorie Taylor Green press conferences with some, you know, soldier who refuses to take a vaccine. Yeah, they'll be doing CrossFit and like not getting jab. Yeah, I think that this is great leadership by DOD. I mean, as the most respected institution in the country, like for them to take this step with so many people in that institution, you know, that's what they should do. They should be like at the forefront of modeling the kind of behavior that we should see in other institutions, right? So and like Lloyd Austin has been, look, you know, there's things we've criticized about some foreign and defense policies. On these matters of kind of personnel, he deserves a lot of credit. Like, they've taken steps to, you know, they've taken sexual

assault cases out of the chain of command to ensure better justice for victims and survivors. A huge step that was long overdue. You know, they, they restored the rights of transgender people to serve in the military. You know, now they're taking this step on vaccines. Like, you know, you're definitely seeing a lot of integrity and a lot of leadership from DOD on how it's and approaching its own behavior as an institution and what that's modeling for the rest of society. So, like, definitely a typical cap there, but you're definitely going to have some dead-enders, you know, making common calls with Matt Gates and Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Green. Oh, man.

I can already feel the press conferences. Some dumber COVID news along those same lines as the Marjora Taylor of the Green. So some anti-vaccine activists in the UK tried to storm the offices of the BBC because they were mad. Oh, I love this. I love this. The BBC was encouraging people to get the coronavirus vaccine. But unfortunately, they stormed the wrong address. They entered a building or tried to enter a building that now houses, apartments, restaurants, and studios that make daytime talk shows.

So great work there. Well, the best is that they had the whole premise of them storming the BBC was that they'd done the research about the fucking vaccine. And then they hadn't even done enough research to know that the BBC wasn't in the BBC. this building and hadn't been there for years? I mean, like, just maybe you're not doing the right research, guys. Like, maybe, maybe your sources on 5G or microchips in the vaccine are the same sources that led you to think that the BBC's in a building hasn't been in a few years, you know? Yeah, maybe not so much louder with Crowder. The Washington Post had a good write-up of the whole incident, Ben, and it noted in this story, I had missed this. Two men at an anti-COVID lockdown protest

in Sydney, Australia last month, were arrested and charged because they punched a police horse. So great stuff happening at these anti-vax protests all around. I mean, come on. Can we just lay off the horses at least? I mean, it's bad enough that you guys got to put us all at risk. They don't want to be there? You know, like, yeah, they don't want to be there. I mean, give me a break. You know, that actually, oddly, is a good transition to our Olympic section.

Because the Olympics are over. They were fun while they lasted. The Paralympics are. starting so we can also get our fix of great competition. There was also a horse punching incident, I believe, in one of the events that I don't understand that involves like seven different things, including horses jumping over shit. But the thing I wanted to flag for you, Ben, is apparently Chinese state media are trying to claim that China actually beat the U.S. when it comes to the total winning metal count by claiming that medals won by Taiwan and Hong Kong belong to China. Your response.

Okay, come on, guys. I mean, well, first of all, they were doing end zone dances, like, halfway through the competition about their lead in the gold medal count. And I'm sorry you guys just couldn't get it done. I mean, I'm sorry that, like, we eclipsed you in the final days because our extraordinary U.S. women won another gold medal in basketball, stood at our men, of course. You know, we racked up the medals and track like we always do. Like, just deal with it, right? And now you're going to tell me that you're going to count, like, Taiwanese medals. people that want nothing to do with you because they're so appalled by what you've done in Hong Kong.

Like, give me a fucking break. And, you know, putting aside the, you know, jingoistic Olympics tree leading here, we're, we're entering into, like, what's going to be a pretty intense year of debate about the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2020. That's looming out there because, like, you can bet there's going to be growing calls to boycott that or to at least downscale participation in some fashion. But for the time being, like we won, just deal with it. Like scoreboard is what it is, you know. Yeah. A weird aside here. I don't know if you saw the women's diving competition. The Chinese women are incredible. There's some of like some of the highest scores ever in the history of diving. But I just,

I found it really odd that like these are 13 year old kids getting pushed. literally off a high dive and forced to train for an Olympics. Something about it just seemed off to have a kid that young being forced to train like that. Yeah, I mean, look, the... That's not a China thing. Respect for the... Well, here's the thing. Like, I have a lot of respect for Chinese athletes.

Like, there's some extraordinary Chinese athletes. I love watching them. I like watching the athletes from all the countries. I like that we win the medal count. But, like, I'm happy when other countries win medals. there is something like I don't I'll put it this way like if we had not won the metal count I wouldn't really have given that much of a shit you know what I mean like like I would you know same like it shouldn't matter that much you know what I mean and you get the sense you used to get

the sense in the Soviet Union days that there was this kind of maniacal focus on pushing these athletes and often that led to doping right and like like it's supposed to be fun you know it's all these weird sports. And when you look at the American athletes, it's these people that you know they've been doing diving or they've been doing gymnastics or they've been doing water polo since they were like little kids, you know, and they just happened to be good at it when they were five. And then they went into some programs and they're just really good. But I don't get the sense that like the U.S. Olympic Committee is, you know, like sitting there trying to program athletes from some young age so they can map out what the medal count's going to be for eight,

12 years from now. If we are doing that, we shouldn't be. I mean, it's supposed to be fun. And yes, while there's a professionalization of some of these sports, like, most of this is pretty amateur. Speaking of which, you mentioned equestrian, like, do you feel old realizing that, like, Bruce Springsteen's daughter won like an Olympic medal in equestrian? Like, I had no idea that Bruce had a daughter who was like an Olympic athlete, you know? I mean, good for the boss. I do think the equestrian stuff. Look, it's kind of cool, I guess.

I don't know. It just sort of seems like kids who can afford the best horse are going to win, no? Well, you know, Springsteen sold some albums and, you know, I'm sure she had a good horse, right? I mean, yeah. Like, we went through this with Mitt Romney. I feel like Bloomberg's daughter was a really good. Bloomberg's daughter. Romney had that dressage horse Rafalka, which was very helpful to us in the 2012 election.

Yeah. But yeah, like, let's just keep the Olympics fun if we can. I'm looking forward to Paris. That'll be a cool venue. We look next to Summer Olympics. We got Paris and L.A. I mean, that's pretty awesome. And you don't have to worry that much about politics.

Except unless the Chinese are like boycotting the L.A. Olympics in 2028, but we'll see. Yeah, we'll see. Okay, my final story I wanted to fly for you, Ben, is so stupid that I kind of wonder whether it's fake. So Business Insider reported that a Canadian. startup is working with SpaceX, Elon Musk's company, to build a satellite with a pixelated display screen that can display advertising. Logos are whatever you want on it, I guess. And then they're going to launch it into orbit. So we'll have space ads. So from there, a selfie stick will display and live stream whatever is on this screen to YouTube and Twitch. This monument to,

I guess, capitalism and human stupidity is supposed to pollute our skies sometime in 2022. people will be able to buy ads with various cryptocurrencies because of course... Oh, that's perfect. Yes. Yeah. So here's my question. What idiotic nonsense do you think gets displayed first? Is it going to be like a doge coin meme, some sort of genitalia?

Like, how dumb can we get this thing? Well, I think it'll be like the, you know, crypto-utopian late-stage capitalist kind of messaging, right? I mean, like, honestly, if you tried to write a dystopian book, you know, you know, about capitalism going to space like 50 years ago and came up with a premise that in the 2020 space would become a place where billionaires have dick measuring contests about how high up they can go in rockets that they paid for personally. And then, you know, crypto guys were broadcasting ads that aliens like what is the impression that we're giving these alien civilizations who are studying us, you know? Can you imagine what they're thinking? They're looking at us from like

a couple of galaxies over. There's some really smart beings who've been studying us like, you know, like mice, you know, in a laboratory. And what they see is climate change happening. So they see these people burning this beautiful planet that they have while billionaires are flying up into space and then figuring out ways to sell advertising there, you know, like rather than dealing with a climate crisis. Like, can we just get the priorities in the right order? Can that be compatible with capitalism, please? Because if it's not, we are going to burn ourselves to death here. Building satellites with selfish things.

I mean, what's your money on for the first debt? I'm assuming, you know, some sort of penis drawing would be my money. But you mentioned like techno-utopian. So Jack Dorsey tweeted yesterday. Yeah, yeah. I actually wrote this down. Bitcoin will unite a deeply divided country and eventually world. That was the end of his tweet.

And it just made be so unbelievably mad because I think I just finished an ugly truth, which is the new New York Times reporter book about Facebook. And it details all the ways that the like Silicon Valley, naive, techno, utopianism led to bad decisions and real world harm, like doing nothing about hate speech in the U.S., sperm, anti-vaccine, disinfo, et cetera. And like I actually like Jack Dorsey, I think he's smart. I think he seems like a good person. But these same guys now want us to trust them when it comes to creating like digital currency or artificial intelligence or whatever the next thing is. And so, like, I don't think they realize how pissed off people are at that, how little they deserve our trust. And, like, I'm just,

I'm done with taking his gospel, this, like, cultish belief that whatever some tech CEO says is accurate, especially when they have, like, a clear financial interest in us believing their bullshit, whether it's space or Bitcoin. I know a bunch of Bitcoin bros are going to yell at us because they always do on Twitter, but, like, give me a break. Yeah, I mean, I, Like the cautionary note, I'd say, like, to this crypto utopianism is the same one you did, which is techno-utopianism has not worked out well. And there might be some good things about crypto in the same way that there's some good things about social media. But, you know, when you allow yourself to be convinced that you have the answer to all the world's problems, whether you're in politics or you're an entrepreneur, it tends to lead to some pretty. difficult places. And look, the reality of this, too, is, like, I've been going a little bit

deeper in this recently. You know, there's some interesting things about crypto, right? But the totalitarian governments like China are not just going to sit there in a lot. So the argument is this could be a way that, you know, dissidents in China can have a different currency. Already you've seen the Chinese say, we're not going to deal with Bitcoin. We're going to start our own minds. We're going to set up our own crypto. Because of course, that's what they're going to do. That's what any totalitarian government's going to do. And then, of course, what the U.S. governments can do and say, we're going to have to regulate this because we don't know what people are laundering through this, who's washing dirty money through this. Nevermind, it's not

taxed. And so it starts to migrate to the kind of offshore haven-type places. And yeah, like, I think that the point for the crypto people, before they yell at us, like, make your case. Like, there's some good arguments about, you know, the potential for crypto. But, Like, this has not been thought through in a way that deals with the reality of the world as it is. You know, and yeah, I saw that tweet and I saw you kind of take that on. Because, yeah, Jack Dorsey is usually a slightly more thoughtful guy than some of these other tech guys. But there's just this tendency to kind of hype whatever the next idea is without leveling with the downside risks. And there's always a downside risk.

And here the downside risks are clear. Like this can be manipulated by criminals that can be used to launder money. Like, just you have to deal with that. Right. Make your case. But like there's no circumstance in which it's going to unite a deeply divided country. It's Bitcoin, man. It's just, it's just, I mean, it's going to unite.

Just shut up. It's going to unite, like, crypto investors, you know, like. Yes. But then it's not even to unite them, by the way. It's going to unite Jack Dorsey in his summer house that he'll purchase when Bitcoin goes up. Because you're going to have these guys who are, you know, running up the price and then crashing it so they can make money. money. Like, I don't know, I don't feel like that's uniting. Just rain it in. Just chill with the hyperbole.

That's all we're saying. It's another venue for capitalism. That's what it is. I mean, you know. Yeah, yeah. Just tone it down. Okay, we are going to take a quick break. We come back. We will hear Ben's interview about Hungary and Victor Orban and Tucker Carlson and the awful uniting of these right-wing schmucks globally. So stick around for that. Okay. I'm very glad to be joined by Zaboch Spani, who is an Budapest-based investigative journalist with direct 36. You should definitely check out his work there. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. So, you know, you and I spoke for my book, which this podcast audience has heard plenty about, about Victor Orban and some of the, you know, connections between

Orban and other authoritarian movements in Russia, in China, in the U.S. And unfortunately, there's been a lot of more evidence for that thesis in recent weeks, some of which involves you personally. So I want to work through each of those. We'll start with the thing that's been in the news here, which is Tucker Carlson, who's emerged as kind of the most prominent right-wing commentator in America, making this kind of week-long pilgrimage to Budapest. What was the reaction to Tucker Carlson's visit in Budapest? How did someone like you and people there take this interest from Tucker Carlson and Victor Orban. Yeah, I mean, Tucker Carson is absolutely unknown to the Hungarian audience, obviously.

So his visit was not about Hungary or the Hungarian people. It was about a US audience or an international audience. It was a PR stunt. It was pretty obvious. I mean, you can compare his visit to, I don't know, J-Lo performing at the birthday party of Turkmenistan's dictator or Kanye, or Kanye West singing at the wedding party of the Kazakh president's grandson and stuff like that. So meaning that this is a vanity project for Viktor Orban to try to bring to Hungary these so-called

Western intellectuals, right-wing thinkers as they label them, because frankly the Orbán government is increasingly alienated with Trump gone, with Benjamin Netanyahu, with Bolsonaro in Brazil, struggling with all these ideological allies seem to be, their fortune seem to be fading. So it's pretty important for Orban

to still show that there's international support behind him, that this populist right-wing wave that has been riding is still existing. You know, Steve Bannon famously labeled Orban as Trump before Trump. Now it seems that now that Trump is gone and all these other people are on the verge of losing power,

suddenly the whole world is just shrinking for Orbán. So bringing in Carson is just a show force, I believe. You know, you and I have talked about, right, his effort to kind of beat the vanguard, the forefront of this kind of right-wing nationalist and authoritarian movement, particularly in the West, you know, what he calls illiberal democracy.

And so clearly you can see why having Tucker Carlson there advances, you know, that sense of who he is. And as you say, might try to suggest to the Hungarian people that there's still momentum for it, even after, you know, the U.S. election went the way it did. But, you know, Orban's up for reelection next year. Do you think this help, does this help him with Hungarian voters to be seen as this kind of global figure of the far right? Or is it just something that appeals to his vanity? I think it's, I mean, Carson and bringing him, him to Hungary, it appeals to Republicans in the U.S. It's not about the domestic audience. It's not about winning votes in Hungary. It's about trying to dismantle this bipartisanship in the U.S.,

which is really a risk to Orban, meaning China. So the whole China policy that's been pursued both by the Trump administration and by the Biden administration is a real risk to Victor Orban, who's been establishing Hungary as this bridgehead of Chinese influence in the region. And his main foreign policy goal in the U.S. is to try to dismantle bipartisan efforts critical of the Hungarian government. And the only way to do that is to win over some Republicans, mostly on the fringes of the Republican Party, like Dana-Rora Bacher or Paul Gosar from Arizona. these are some figures that the Hungarian government has been trying to court in the recent years. So it's about mitigating the risks of what consequences it may bring to Victor Oban's government

if he pursues this pro-Chinese, pro-Russian trajectory that he's been on. You mentioned China, you know, it was interesting to notice that in the official transcript of the interview released, with Victor Orban by the Prime Minister Orban's office. They censored out some of Tucker Carlson's criticism of the Chinese Communist Party and a question to Victor Orban. You know, when you and I spoke from my book, you talked to me about some investigative work you'd done and just kind of your understanding of how Orban had invited China in terms of being part of the Belt Road initiative so that they could get kind of a maid in the EU stamp on things, including Huawei, the Chinese tech giant. You've also subsequently done some great reporting on this university

that Orban has invited the Chinese to set up in Budapest. Notably, he kicked out the George Soros-funded university and has invited in this Chinese Communist Party funded university. Can you just explain to our listeners who probably aren't familiar with this, the nature of Orban's relationship with the Chinese Communist Party, in particular this university that he has plans for? Sure. I mean, you know, Hungary has become the most vocally pro-Chinese country in the European Union. Hungary is not the most important trade partner of China in the EU, of course, but Hungary, the Hungarian government has been basically vetoing any kind of EU statement that Brussels tried to put out criticizing human rights abuses,

like the Uyghur genocide or cracking down on Hong Kong. It was always Viktor Orbán's government who tried to basically kill these initiatives. Hungary is where Huawei has its largest manufacturing base outside of China. They are manufacturing 5G technology here, which they are then exporting to, I don't know, 50 countries or so. Two out of three Hungarian mobile carriers have been contracting Chinese vendors to roll out the 5G networks in the country. And what you just mentioned is that there's a Chinese university based in Shanghai called Fudan University, which will establish its first overseas campus in Europe in Hungary, paid by the Hungarian taxpayers. and it's widely seen as a political or even more an intelligence influence operation of China,

which is seen as a real threat to the whole NATO alliance. So given all this, Viktor Orban really needs to basically whitewash his image and use people like Tucker Carson, not to talk about his pro-Chinese and pro-Russian policies, but about migration, families supporting white Christian people instead of of helping poor Muslim people who are fleeing persecution civil wars so this is this is just a distraction and and also it's as again as I said it's it's to win over Republicans in Washington DC not to join certain efforts that would be detrimental to the urban government So the other thing that's been in the news recently that you were part of was this kind of global effort that came to light in some investigative journalism about NSO, the private Israeli-based surveillance outfit that was essentially surveilling a mix of journalists, activists, basically opponents to a variety of autocrats and oligarchs around the world.

your name came up in this, right? How did you become aware that you might have been surveilled and targeted by this kind of global apparatus of NSO? And what do you make of that? Yeah, well, I had a very strange dual role in this project called a Pegasus project. I was both investigating how Pegasus, this military-grade spiverer, was abused in Hungary against targets. and I was also a target of this tool. So we were working together with Zedewtze Tzu, and the Guardian, the Washington Post,

on trying to uncover mass abuses of this surveillance technology. And it turned out that I was also surveilled with Pegasus for a seven months period back in 2019 when I was mostly investigating certain Russian influence operations in Hungary which were not countered by the Hungarian authorities. And it really seemed to me that those who surveilled me, we cannot directly say that it was the Hungarian government, but circumstantial evidence only point to them.

Basically, there's no one else who would have been interested in what I was doing and what other journalists were doing. So it seems that the Hungarian government was mostly interested in my US sources and what I was writing about, for example, a Russian international bank that was relocating its headquarters to Budapest, and this bank was seen as a front for Russian intelligence, and there was a lot of criticism coming from the U.S. Embassy, for example. So basically what we found is that there were at least four or five Hungarian journalists who were spied on with Pegasus. We also had two very influential media company owners who were owning media outlets,

critical of the urban government and some opposition politicians also showed up on this list. And I have to stress that Hungary seems to be the only EU member state that uses Pegasus in a way that's not legitimate. So this tool was invented to counter terrorism and to go after drug dealers. But Hungary seems to be the only EU country where it was used against political targets. other countries involved in such illegitimate surveillance were like Mexico or Saudi Arabia or Togo or Rwanda. So it's really shocking to see Hungary on that list. And has there been any reaction?

I mean, basically, it seems like this came out, the Pegasus Project is extraordinary reporting, kind of paints a picture of this kind of private outfit being utilized by a range of authoritarian governments or actors, a lot of nexus to Gulf monarchies or Russia or perhaps a Hungarian government, as you say. But what's been the response? Have you felt like, yeah, this is just one more drop in the ocean of what we understand to be this kind of global drift towards authoritarianism? Or do you feel like there's any pushback on groups like NSO?

Well, I mean, domestically, it's a scandal, of course. The Hungarian government is not even denying that they procured peccasus and that they used it against journalists like myself. What they claim is that they only conduct legal and legitimate surveillance against targets, meaning that there was a reason for surveilling me. And in pro-government media, they tried to smear me as a U.S. agent, as an agent of the CIA or something like that. What we expect is that this will be a topic during our election campaign, which is just heating up. We are having elections next April. But I don't really see how there could be any legal challenge, how, for example, I can seek legal remedies for the surveillance that was put on me.

But I really, I'm really hopeful that this new push, for the global regulation of such spivers like Pegasus would come to something, because that's the only way to put an end to these things. The other thing is that it's really obvious that Pegasus was basically a gift by the Netanyahu government to certain allies. In the Gulf countries and also in Hungary, we see basically that Netanyahu, Néynau's visit to Hungary back in 2017 and then a high-ranking urban officials visit to Israel

coincides with the targetings of Pegasus. And we also see this happening in India. So now that Netanyahu is gone, now that we have a new government in Israel, which is set to conduct some internal investigation, maybe something will come out of that. At least I hope that Hungary and other governments who clearly abused this technology will be cut off from using Pegasus. Yeah, I was struck, you know, when I went to Budapest and met you and some of the other people I met with there had been spied on by Black Cube and another Israeli-based private

intelligence outfit. There seems this kind of reoccurrence of kind of Israeli-based private. private intelligence, whether it's NSO or Black Cube. In the case of Black Cube, this was around another election campaign where they were trying to target civil society. How do you explain, I mean, you know, you and I talked about this for the book, but for listeners, what this relationship was between Orban and Netanyahu that might have led to this kind of repeated use of of Israeli-based spies or surveillance outfits? Well, there was very obvious. quid pro quo here, Victor Orban had a tarnished reputation because of anti-Semitic comments coming from

his party. So Benjamin Netanyahu helped him with that, having the Israel Prime Minister as your Paul, as your friend, defending you in public against such accusations, that's something. And then, of course, Hungary not only blocks and vetoes EU statements that are critical of China or Russia, but also critical statements of Israel. So Hungary became the most vocal pro-Israeli government inside the EU. And now after the Pegasus Project investigation, we also see that somehow this spire was also part of the deal, which was given by Israel to Hungary.

And also this whole interconnected relationship between Hungary, the Trump White House and Netanyahu, is also something that's that's that that that that's really really interesting because what we see is that basically netanyahu helped Orban to open doors in the White House arrange a visit to to Trump. So now that that both of both of his allies are gone, you know, all what's left for Orban is Tucker Carson. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, seriously. Well, I think, you know, merits further. investigation, those links, because, you know, their efforts to smear Fiona Hill, a Trump administration official, for instance, by a Victor Orban, you know, lobbyist, Connie Mack,

but that's another story. I did want to ask you before we wrap up here, you know, just you're obviously doing such great work in some of your colleagues, but how would you describe what the state of Hungarian media is today? Like how much independent media there is versus pro-Fides, you know, Orban's party media. You know, how should we think about that? Well, majority of Hungarian media is directly controlled by the government. They are not directly owned by the government, but by some very shady conglomerates, which are seemingly non-profit, but the board of advisors and the board of directors are all

Orban loyalists. This means every local newspaper, most of the radios and TVs, but we still do have some free investigative and other news media on the internet. And as I said, during the Pegasus project, we identified that very crucial media company owners have been spied on by the urban government and one of them, Zoltan Varga, who owns a current the largest Hungarian independent news site has been telling about blackmail and pressure throughout the years coming from the urban government. They try to pressure him to sell his media portfolio to people close to the prime minister. So what we expect now that the election campaign is nearing is that such pressure on other media company owners will just be bigger. And we also see very specific smear campaigns directed at journalists individually, like myself and others.

We're going to be smeared as agents of George Soros, as agents of the CIA, you name it. And this is because we're going to have the first competitive elections since I believe 2006, probably. Now the Hungarian opposition has united. They're going to put out a joint party list and one candidate for prime minister who would be seen as the main rival of Viktor Orbán. So the only way for the Orbán government to try to win this election is basically to try to suppress the remainder of the free media so that there would be no air time and no space given to any other voice but the governments. Well, look, we'd love to come back to you later in the election campaign as that's heating up to get your sense of that. But thanks so much for joining. You guys are crowdfunded,

right, in part, at Direct 36. Yes, Direct 36. It's a small nonprofit. My bosses used to be the editor-in-chief and a senior investigative reporter of Hungary's largest news site, which is now now a propaganda tool of the government. They were fired and they left their job to establish the small nonprofit court Direct 36. So basically, we are crowdfunded through small donations. Well, you know, can people support it? Or is it just from within Hungary? No, no, no.

Of course. We publish everything in English as well. So I've read your work in English, but I encourage listeners both to read Direct 36. because as you can see Sabolks' reporting is not just about hungry, it's about the nexus of all these different forces. And if people can support you guys, they should because it's important to make sure that we're backing up

independent journalism everywhere. But thanks so much for joining us and we'll look forward to being back in touch. Thanks for being interested. Thanks again to Jaubolks, Pani, for joining the show. Thanks again to whoever purchases the first space ad, if it can be something, less offensive than our guesses. I guess that would be good. Ben, thanks to your Mets. I'm sorry about

the Philly series. Oh, man. Yeah, this has been an epic Mets collapse, man. And I was all excited to come to New York or the Mets in first place. Like, they've fallen from first place to third place in like a week. They can't score more than like two runs in a game. Players are dropping like flies. This is not good. It's just not like good right now. It's looking like the Mets, you know. I was going to go to a game, yeah, but now I'm not so sure. We'll see. It's also going to get, it's getting really hot here. It's making me realize.

When I was there, it was like 70 degrees. It was perfect. I couldn't believe it. Yeah, it was good when I got here. It's, you know, it's going to be cracking the 90s the next few days. We'll see. I'll try to get to a game for sure. I love going to the Mets games.

Well, I know the Delta stuff sucks and it's scary and everyone should be careful, but it was good to see New York back. It seemed like people were out. City was alive. All the reports of its premature demise were nonsense, as we knew at the time. So shout at New York. And it felt like it felt like it's back, but also like people are, you know, everybody's outside, everybody's eating outside. Like it feels a little bit more like pre-vaccine days, you know, in terms of the care of people are taking.

And that's a good thing. That's a good thing. Yeah, it's a good thing. All right. Well, that's it for today. And we'll talk to you guys next week. See it. Potsave the World is a crooked media production.

The executive producer is Michael Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadway. Kyle Seiglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Yale-Fried, and Phoebe Bradford, who film and share our episodes as videos each week.