The Opinions - Why Starvation in Gaza Has Reached a Tipping Point

Episode Date: August 2, 2025

And what it could mean for the future of the conflict in the Middle East.As Gazans starve, some of Israel’s supporters and global allies, including President Trump, are beginning to change their views on the humanitarian crisis in the region. Michelle Cottle, a national politics writer for Times Opinion, joins the columnists Lydia Polgreen and David French to discuss this shift and Israel’s fundamental mistake. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. I'm Michelle Cottle, and I write about national politics for New York Times opinion. And today I am joined by my fabulous colleagues, David French, and Lydia Polgreen. Guys, welcome. Hi, Michelle. Thanks for having us. Hi, Michelle. So nice to be here with you. Lydia.

Reunited. Reunited. I won't sing. I won't do that to people. So we're recording this on Thursday, and we're talking Gaza, where things have reached a new level of horror. Recently, a UN-affiliated group stated that the worst case for a famine scenario has been reached there. So this seems to have caused a tipping point, both globally and here in the U.S., and now politicians who had been mostly quiet when it came to criticizing Israel are starting to speak out. On Monday, Maga Stronghold Representative Marjorie Taylor Green, ramping up her criticism,

becoming the first congressional Republican to call Israel's actions in Gaza, a quote, genocide. We can save a lot of people. I mean, some of those kids are, that's real starvation stuff. I see it. And you can't fake that. U.S. taxpayers have spent many, many billions of dollars in support of the racist, extremist Netanyahu government.

Enough is enough. So let's just dive right in. Lydia, kick us off. You've been reporting on this issue for years, and in particular, since October of 2023. Seems like there has been a sea change now and the number of people calling what is going on, genocide and denouncing it.

What do you think shifted and why now? Yeah, you know, obviously in the immediate aftermath of the horrific attacks by Hamas on Israel, everyone expected a response and a strong response, and that is indeed what we got. But I think that there were many people, myself included, who were listening closely to the kind of rhetoric that was coming out of elements of the Israeli government and worried that this was going to, you know, quite quickly tip into war crimes and possibly genocide. And we've reached a point now with the freezing of aid to Gaza, where we're seeing what is just a kind of undeniable level of

human suffering involving hunger. And, you know, hunger, I think, is particularly resonant because it's such a universal human experience, right? And historically, as I've covered, you know, famine and hunger across the world, it does have this ability to activate a response in people. You know, it's interesting because hunger is very intimately linked with the birth of the idea of, in the coining of the word genocide. Raphael Lemkin, the man who invented the term in the Holocaust, really, really, identified hunger and starvation as a critical weapon in this type of war. And I think people know it when they see it, when you see these pictures of emaciated children, you know, women who are unable to nurse their newborns. It just reaches a level of horror, I think, that becomes hard

for really anyone to, including President Donald Trump, to countenance. And so I think that's a big part of why we're seeing this shift. There are a lot of longer term issues that are at play here, but I really think that the emotional resonance of that is a big part of it. Yeah, and I'm seeing a shift even amongst people who've long supported Israel in this war like me. And why would you see that now? I think one of the reasons why you would see it is it's beginning to dawn on people. It's a very different scenario than October 8th, 9th, 10th. It's a very different scenario than even the months immediately following.

Because what happened in the months immediately following, if you were supporting Israel, you were sort of presuming three things were going to occur. Number one, there was going to be a very strong Israeli response, just as there would be from any country attacked the way Israel was on October 7th. Number two, you knew immediately it was going to be very, very tragic, bloody, messy, horrible. Because Hamas had wormed its way into the Gaza infrastructure to such an extent that taking on Hamas was going to mean something like what happened when we took ISIS out of Mexico. Mosul, for example, or out of Raqa in Syria. This was going to be brutal, brutal urban combat. And the third thing that a lot of supporters of Israel knew is that immediately big parts of the international community were going to turn on Israel. And that happened as well. Even in the first

few days after the attack, you began to see harsh criticisms of Israel based on its early response. But so that number three thing did something that immediate harsh criticism is. of Israel really began to almost inoculate friends of Israel against criticisms of Israel. Because what you saw was, wait a minute, right after civilians have been massacred in their homes, you're already after us for a military response that is exactly the one your own nation would do. And what that did is it hardened people against critique. And now, why would they start to soften now? There's been fighting for a long time. Hamas has been utterly decimated as a fighting force. Hamas is not what it was before. Now, it's not completely dismantled. It's not

completely gone. And so I think there's a very logical question that people ask, which is, wait a minute, after Hamas has been utterly decimated, it has a fraction of its fighting power, it has a fraction of the ability to govern and control Gazans. Why are we having possible famine conditions now? Why now? Isn't this when Hamas is on its back? Isn't this when Hamas is the weakest it's been in decades? Why now? And I think that that is what has penetrated through, and now the consequences of that Israeli approach are fully coming home to roost now. And unfortunately, it does not appear that the Israeli government is reacting with alacrity to the crisis that it absolutely contributed to causing. Now, we have to talk about Hamas here. Hamas not laying down its harms,

Hamas not surrendering the hostages, is a grave. grave issue, and that needs to be discussed more. However, Hamas's failures to comply with the law of war, Hamas's failures to release hostages do not relieve Israel of its own obligations. So taking a piece of what you're talking about and what Lydia is talking about, it does seem like we've reached a point where nobody in good conscience or who's being honest about this can look at the situation and think this is a situation that's a regular war, so to speak where you have hostility on both sides once you reach the famine point. I mean, whatever Hamas is still doing, there's something about starving a people to death that feels

different in kind than just bombing, which everybody assumes is a part of war and, you know, no matter how horrific it is. So it does seem like nearly two years down the road, we've come to this. And I do think it's just got a lot of people thinking about, well, what is the endgame on some level. Well, I think that's a great point, Michelle, because, you know, there's also been some really excellent reporting on this. There was a fantastic New York Times Magazine piece earlier in July that really laid out in kind of forensic detail. You know, Benjamin Netanyahu decided to essentially prolong the war in order to hold his coalition together. And, you know, there's also been other reporting that has discounted the idea and sort of shown that there's really no concrete

evidence that there's been widespread aid diversion by Hamas. Now, aid diversion happens in every conflict situation. David knows this. I know this, having reported, you know, and been on the ground in these places. But there have been these kind of fig leaf explanations. And I think that really tough-minded fair reporting, I think, has really raised questions about those justifications, and rightly so. So now Europe is upping the pressure, as David has pointed out. Britain has said they will recognize Palestine as a state if Israel doesn't end the humanitarian crisis. France has said they will recognize statehood in September period. So given the escalation of international pressure, what about Prime Minister Netanyahu and his coalition? What impact is this having?

It's very uncertain because you have to look at this also in a larger context because in a larger context, Israel is riding very high right now. October 7th was arguably even worse than the surprise before the Yom Kippur War because so many Israeli civilians were killed. So from that low ab, when arguably the worst day in the IDF's military history, as far as allowing harm to Israeli citizens, the Israeli military has recovered and has won on every front in a way that I think very few people expected. And I think that that has created a sense of impunity in some ways, that Israel has pressed forward, shed off a lot of restraints that people in the international community wanted to put upon it, and won a series of very decisive and very important military victories.

And that has led, I think, Israel to this position where it might be feeling a lot stronger and a lot less dependent on foreign approval and authority than it has in generations. But that is extraordinarily short-sighted thinking, just extraordinarily short-sighted. And I think what you see is the European powers using whatever levers they have. And we saw Canada come into this as well recently. So the European powers are using what leverage they have, which is not a lot, to be honest, to try to ease this crisis. And so on one sense, you would say, well, is Europe rewarding Hamas by sort of saying, hey, you get recognition? even when Hamas is not dismantled.

And I think I see that argument. However, however, I keep circling back to the point that I made before. Hamas is decimated. It's not destroyed. It's utterly decimated. And I know why this all occurred because of the initial Israeli approach that it stuck to, which is they did not want to occupy parts of Gaza and take responsibility for the safety and the security and the sustenance of its citizens that we didn't.

did that in Iraq. In the surge, we took responsibility for the safety, security, and sustenance of the people in my area of operations. And that way, we were able to secure it and hold it against al-Qaeda when al-Qaeda tried to come back. They didn't do that. They played sort of this game of whack-a-mole with a giant mallet where they're just pounding every place where they saw terrorists and then did not move in to the decimated and destroyed areas and provide safety and security and make sure that Hamas didn't come back. And so you just have this endless round of whackamol. What it is doing is it is annihilating Gaza and it's creating exactly the conditions that you have now. Well, and I think it's also in thinking about the European response and frankly,

the American, you know, shifting, somewhat shifting Trump administration position on all of this, it's helpful to look at the broader regional context because David is absolutely right that is has had this string of quite spectacular victories. You know, they've knocked out the leadership of Hezbollah in Lebanon. You know, the spectacular strike on the leadership in Iran, obviously not including the Supreme Leader, but other major figures there, the things that they're doing in Syria, for example, you know, that threatened to be incredibly destabilizing. I think that when European leaders, and frankly, when the Trump administration looks at this broader picture, and looks at the way that Israel is seeking to, you know, essentially export its mow-the-lawn strategy from Gaza, which is essentially to kind of, you know, do these occasional decapitations and keep the situation under control beyond its own borders and acting almost like a kind of, you know, emerging imperial hegemon in the region, that starts to conflict with other core interests of these countries, right?

you know, the Syrian Civil War was a powder keg, tremendous suffering for Syrians, but it completely reordered the politics of Europe, right? The last thing Europe wants is a destabilized Syria that's going to send huge numbers of Syrians, you know, that they're desperately trying to get back into Syria, back towards Europe or even to Turkey, you know. And so I think that there are a variety of complex interests, even beyond the humanitarian horror, that are creating a significant amount of daylight between Israel. And I think you're starting to see countries like Germany, for example, which, you know, literally claims as its reason, you know, it's Stott's reason. It's reason of state is the protection of the state of Israel and the Jewish people for very understandable reasons, given the history.

I think there's been a real sense of discomfort and having to reassess, like, what are actually our interests as Germany in this region of the world? and what should our commitment to this particular government and its prosecution of this particular war be? So where do either of you think this is going and how it's going to end? I know that's a really open-ended evil question for something this big and complicated. But, I mean, for instance, a senior Hamas official has told news outlets

that the group would hold out for a deal that ends the war with a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Can Israel fight Hamas indefinitely in this way? It cannot fight Hamas indefinitely with this degree of intensity. But what you're hearing about Hamas saying, they want a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, that's a big part of the problem. What nation, what nation after what Hamas did,

would not create buffer zones, would not expand its ability to interdict if Hamas stays in power, okay? If Hamas is still a governing, authority. This is the consequence of the fundamental mistake Israel made with its approach, which was it did not want to occupy Gaza, but it wanted to defeat Hamas. Pick one. Pick one. Okay? And so that's the problem. They set a goal that was not attainable with the tactics that they chose. Now, I'm not saying that if Israel had chosen the path, the more conventional path,

in response to an armed attack like that, which is an occupation, a temporary governance, and a handing over to civilian authorities following the cessation of hostilities and their storing of peace, that would have been extremely difficult. It would not have been neat and easy and clean.

It would have been infinitely better than this. Yeah. And yes, the international community would have been yelling at Israel over an occupation. There's no question about that. And here's my concern. Has the ship sailed on? that? Is this something now where when I talk about it, it's just like a bunch of academics

and a panel discussion, right? And are we now at a point where Israel just has to say, okay, we're going to negotiate a hostage release, we're going to negotiate a ceasefire, and then have what kind of influence on the ground in Gaza, allow aid in, but what happens next? it feels a lot more like ceasefire, although incredibly valuable, is a prelude to almost like a Mad Max type situation as people sort out Gaza, who's going to run Gaza? And one other thing, there's been a lot of defense of Israel on the grounds that like when America has fought, particularly in World War II, we were very violent. No doubt. No question. But I will tell you this. When we attained control of an area, we took care of the people in it. And what happened is that

people then in Europe voted with their feet. They could have gone over to the Soviet side or they could have gone to the American British side. And by the millions, they moved to the American British side. Why? Because we took care of people as best we could. And that is not just humane. It's not just legal, it's smart to do that. It helps you over the long term to do that. And it's just so sad, tragic, and infuriating to see the total disregard of these lessons from history. Lydia, do you have any sense of what could happen, what should happen that would make this a better outcome? The great difficulty in seeing a positive future comes from the cynical and tragic choices that were made in the past, you know, and that, and that I think is, it definitely

aligns with a lot of what David just said. But, you know, I will say that, you know, the fact that Hamas is, it was in power in Gaza and was able to sustain itself for so long in Gaza was the result of a deliberate strategy by Benjamin Nattanyahu to so division between the Palestinian Authority, which he wanted to be weak, and allowing Qatar to funnel billions of dollars to the, horrific Hermas administration in Gaza, right? So there's just, there's so much history here and there's so many terrible and cynical decisions that have been made that make it very hard to sort of like clear away the cobwebs and see a future. And I think Israel is riding high in one sense, having had all of these military successes beyond the kind of envelope of its own

territory and the occupied territories. But I think it's also sure. showing tremendous strain. You know, one story that I've been tracking for some time is just the extraordinary amount of mental health strain on IDF soldiers. We're seeing a spike in suicides. You know, I would not be surprised if, you know, just as during the Vietnam War in the United States, we're going to just see more and more young people in Israel saying, look, I don't want to be a part of this. there was an American former Green Beret who was hired as a contractor to work for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation doing whatever this supposed aid distribution was. And he's come back and just given, you know, absolutely chilling accounts. And I think that takes a toll.

And so I do think that there's just a deep, deep rot that Israel is going to need to contend with, both in its policy postures, but also, just in its populace and its own psyche. Well, let's dig in on a bit on President Trump in this situation. So he has said that he wants to make sure that humanitarian aid is reaching Gaza, which this is breaking from Netanyahu's claim that there is no starvation. That's not, you know, however incredible that seems. But I want to hear from both of you on how you think Trump's shift, potentially changes the entire equation, at least in terms of America's relationship with Israel

and the support. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the, one of the striking things about Donald Trump, because he's such a, you know, kind of brutish and crude person who seems to enjoy cruelty, I think one of the repeatedly surprising things about him is that he's really, he really does have this, it's almost an ick response to seeing suffering children. But I don't know that, that actually has like real longevity in terms of policy, right? And I think it's quite possible that we could see a quasi, you know, return to just enough aid to, you know, certainly not stem off a wave of death because I think we're a little bit too far gone for that. But I think we could sort of turn the page enough to satisfy that impulse of Trump's to be able to just kind of say,

okay, this is fine. But, you know, Trump has said so many different things about, you know, what the state looks like here from his perspective. We all remember the crazy AI video of, you know, the Gaza Riviera. He wants America to take it over. There are going to be, you know, bearded belly dancers and, you know, glitzy resorts and a gold statue of Donald Trump. You know, I think my big fear is that, you know, that the Trump administration will essentially enable an ethnic cleansing of the area. I have complicated feelings about that because I think that if there are people who are in Gaza, who want to leave Gaza in order to be safe. Who am I to say they shouldn't go?

I mean, obviously, you know, people have a right to live. At the same time, you know, this is one of the most explosive questions of modern times. You know, what happens to the Palestinian people who are currently experiencing incredible violence, not just in Gaza, but also in the West Bank. there is just an incredibly complex set of questions that need to be answered here. And so do I have a lot of faith in, you know, Donald Trump and his administration can somehow finally magically find a way to solve this problem that has bedeviled American presidents for generations? Absolutely not. You know, I think right now Trump is riding high a little bit because of the Iran strikes.

And he's also very much riding high with a specific part of his base. And that would be sort of the evangelical conservative base very, very, very much. very, very happy with the way he is backed Israel. But at the same time, there are other parts of MAGA. The right is beginning to split on Israel. It used to be quite united on Israel. But now you have, you know, outright anti-Semites like Tucker Carlson, like Akandis Owens and others who have millions, the audience, sadly, millions and millions strong. And they are relentlessly attacking Israel, just relentlessly attacking Israel. So one of the things that could end up out of this conflict for Israel is it could end up with a big military victory, but an American public,

both on the right and the left, that is substantially less likely to support Israel in the future. And my question would be, what did they then gain? What did they gain by continuing and pressing and pressing and pressing if it's fracturing relationships that Netanyahu may not need? Who knows how much longer he's going to be leading the Israeli government? But Israel will need. I have been completely fascinated by the growing objections from certain parts of MAGA, like, say, Representative Marjorie Taylor Green, who has come out and called the situation genocide. And they are, they are pressuring for Congress and the administration to do something about this crisis. Do you, what do you think?

But I'm not necessarily surprised that Jewish space lasers is due. I mean, like that's, she's. I know, but she had been pretty supportive of Israel ahead of time. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think even, you know, quite significant also, though, is you're seeing the Joe Rogans, the Theo Vons, right? know, people in this kind of podcast universe. And I think they represent not necessarily the MAGA base. They speak to the MAGA base, but I don't think either of them represent like a kind of core MAGA, right?

But they definitely represent the kind of soft fringe that drifted towards Donald Trump in the 2024 election, right? And there are a number of forces that are pulling that fringe away from Trump. you know, maybe they go to the Democrats, maybe they become just disengaged. But I do think that the relationship with Israel and Gaza, you know, just kind of feels wrong to that group of people. And, you know, and I think that there is this, you know, I'm always suspicious of the idea of common sense, but there is this version, I mean, common and common to whom. There is this version of just, you know, kind of an ordinary person looking at this situation, just being like, what the hell? You know, how can we be part of this?

Well, one of the things that I do think has come out of Trump taking the new stand he has is it gives permission for Republicans in Congress who are just, you know, they're Trump's ride or die group to also come out and be a little bit more critical. And I just, I don't know where that will go. I mean, none of us know where that will go in terms of like, does any action get taken? But I do think that if the leader has opened up a little bit of wiggle room there, he's giving. and his followers permission. Yeah, and if you give, if you give, like, any kind of credence to the notion that there is an actual idea behind Trump's America for foreign policy, right, then you could argue that we're moving in a direction of having more transactional relationships and fewer

relationships that are based on these kind of, like, ironclad, you know, we're always with you, no matter what. You know, we've seen that play out in Ukraine. We've seen, you know, we're seeing that play out with NATO and other allies. And it's been interesting to see how that attitude towards foreign policy actually plays out both on the left and the right, right? I think that there was a tremendous amount of praise, for example, for Trump's decision to recognize Al-Sherah, the new president of Syria, and drop the sanctions there, you know, and talk about, you know, not giving lectures about human rights to countries and things like that. I think that's something that was welcome, not just on the right, but also on the left. And

trying to sort of pull America out of these entanglements, I think, is something that has broad support in various political pockets. That speaks to like David's short-sightedness point about what Israel's done, because in recent years, there has been a split in the Democratic base, and I think that has gotten very dramatic in recent months with what's going on over there. This has long-term implications for what Israel can expect from America. And, and, in terms of the United States, and terms of support. This is not just like domestic political machinations that we're talking about. This has major global repercussions. And do you think this is a permanent issue in the Democratic Party or at least semi-permanent, Lydia? I think this is an absolutely, I mean, I don't like

the word permanent because nothing is permanent. No, I know. I think this is a huge realignment within the Democratic Party. I mean, it's notable to me that, you know, Bernie Sanders has put up these these resolutions repeatedly in the Senate to try and block the sale of certain kinds of weapons to, or, you know, to Israel. And, you know, you've just steadily seen ticking up the number of Democratic senators that have voted in favor. And, you know, the most recent vote was a high water mark of 27 senators. And, you know, it included people like Gene Shaheen, who's the, you know, hardly a, you know, hard left figure who is the, you know, the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Amy Klobuchar, Tammy Baldwin. I mean, these are, these are normal,

you know, sort of centrist Democrats. They're not, you know, they're not, you know, wild and willy leftists. You know, the most recent Gallup poll, I think, you know, the support for Israeli military action among Democrats was at 8 percent. So I think there's a, there's a feeling that like this is the direction that it's going. And of course, you know, we just had this, this historic Democratic primary here in New York City where I think there was an assumption that, you know, that the stances that Zeran Mamdani took on Israel were going to be essentially disqualifying. And the latest analysis of the vote, it seems that it was actually the opposite that, you know, that him taking a principled stand on this issue that I think, you know, particularly for voters under the age of 45,

was actually really crucial in sort of pushing him to victory. So I think there's going to be a lot of revisiting of this question, you know, around the 2024 election and other and ancient history and what's going to happen in the past. But I think in the future, I think there's just a fundamental break. Yeah, I've just noticed among the generational split in the party on the question of Israel with younger voters being much more outspoken in their criticism. And for a party that's struggling, having lost ground with the young voters, I'll be interested to kind of see where this goes. You know, and this is more consequential than I think Republicans realize, I think Republicans have drunk their own Kool-Aid for a long time on this idea that the Democrats are the anti-Israel party. This has been a talking point. You know, when I decided way back in 2016, I'm definitely not supporting Trump.

The argument was, you know, say what you want to say about Trump, but you're abandoning. Israel if you're not supporting Trump. And my argument was that was always extraordinarily exaggerated because when the chips were down, Democratic administrations came through for Israel in big ways. So one of the largest arms deals that Israel has ever had with the United States was with the Obama administration. When Israel was attacked by missiles from Iran earlier in the Biden administration, Biden put American planes in the air to defend Israel. This is a very, very, very big deal that the U.S. under a Democratic administration gave Israel huge arms deal.

It's a very big deal that a Democratic administration protected Israel physically with American pilots. And so the question that I have, will that happen in the future? And there's another thing that's happening here that let's put this in an even bigger context. We're getting to a point where negative polarization in the U.S. is beginning to, leak into our foreign affairs in some pretty substantial ways. And so you could end up a situation where Israel is the Republicans ally and Ukraine is the Democrats ally. And so depending on who wins the election, that orientes who our allies are and are not. And it's just a terrible formula, not just for us, it's a terrible formula for Israel going forward. Okay. So obviously we've just

skimmed the very surface of all this, and there's a lot going on that people could dig into. Is there anything either of you want to recommend that people read or watch or listen to to get a good sense of the situation? I have a couple of recommendations. Our mutual friend, Michelle, Isaac Chotner, did a rather extraordinary interview, as he often does, with Amit Segal, who's quite a right-wing journalist in Israel and in classic Isaac Schottner style. I think he brings out something really interesting that helps us understand the sort of right Israeli's perspective in this interview. That's on the New Yorker website. Anybody can read it.

And the other thing that I've read recently that I think that's quite a long read, but I think very much worth looking at, is an essay by the writer Adam Schatz. the London Review of Books called The World Since October 7th. And what Adam does in that piece is really kind of zoom out and take in the totality of everything that has happened, both since October 7th, but, you know, with the context of history and looking forward to the future. And I think it's just a kind of magisterial and quite deeply felt piece that people will benefit from reading. Okay, David, what you got? Hit me. Well, Lydia got one of mine, which is the Isaac Chautner interview, Which, by the way, I love the way Lydia, you said, you know, that way that he interviews, because I have often thought, if I get a call or a text or something that says,

Don't do it. Isaac Chotner wants to interview you. I've known Isaac since he was baby. He's now officially scary. Having been once interviewed by Isaac Chotner, I can tell you he's a sweetie pie. As long as you're not a total liar. I mean, that's right, right. You know.

You know. Yeah. No, exactly. Obviously answer Isaac's calls. Yes. Of course, of course. Sorry, David. Anyway, I definitely recommend because you can see the cognitive dissonance.

You can see it so hard for him to rationalize or justify what's happening right now, even this person. The other thing that I would say is one of the things that we have a problem with is just we have an enormous amount of just background ignorance in American society about a lot of the things that are so important. And so I'm going to recommend a book. and it's not about Gaza and Israel, it's about the U.S. and ISIS and Mosul. And it's written by our former magazine colleague, James Verini, and it's called They Will Have to Die Now. And it is the story of the Battle of Mosul. And the reason why I recommend it is two reasons. One, it demonstrates to you the extraordinary difficulty that a military force faces when they fight a terrorist force that's embedded.

it in a city. But it also shows that, yeah, in fact, in fact, there are better ways to do this. Now, I'm not going to say we're perfect in this in any way, shape, or form. It is, let's emphasize, it's horrible. But, but you never had to get where we are today. Okay, well, there you go. I now have my excellent beat treats for the week. Thank you both. So uplifting. It's going to be, it's going to be a dozy. With that, let's just land this plane. Guys, thank you so much for coming in and explaining all of this. Well, thanks for a great conversation, Michelle. Yes, thanks, Michelle. Thanks, Lydia. If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Opinions is produced by Derek Arthur, Bashaka Darba, Christina Samuoski, and Jillian Weinberger.

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