Latest / Pod Save the World / Russian Plague and Putin's Prisons

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Russian Plague and Putin's Prisons · Pod Save the World

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• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: I'm Ben Rhodes.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: And I take back everything bad I said about Drake
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: May and the Patriots. And I also take back everything
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: good I said about the Red Sox because that was
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: a very quick series. We're out.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, fortune's going to flip there.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the Yankees are cruising. It feels like.
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: Well, now they've run into the Tampa Bay buzzsaw.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: They're down 2-0.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Weird. Yeah.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: I'll take it. Someone has to beat the Yankees.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: That's all I care about. Yeah, that's all we're asking for. Also,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: I guess we live in one of the two cities
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: that Trump wants Iran to target with some sort of attack.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: We'll play that clip for you guys later, but that
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: was fun to wake up to. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: Curious to have the president of your country desire your
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: nuclear annihilation.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: I assumed it was nukes too.
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  Speaker 2: It's kind of a new thing.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: You didn't specify, but I assumed it was.
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure how else Iran is going to destroy
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: Los Angeles and San Diego.
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  Speaker 1: Right. We take a lot of conventional weapons. Anyway, that's
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: our president. Big fans here.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Big fans.
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  Speaker 1: Today, we're going to talk about some very important recent elections.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Speaking of terrible presidents, we're going to talk about what
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: happened in Brazil last and the right-wing surge across South America,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: what it means for us here, what it means for
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: the Brazilian people. Nothing good. No. Doesn't mean anything good.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: We're going to talk about political turmoil in Spain, a
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: major protest movement in France, which also is coinciding with
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: the budget crisis. We'll talk about separatists in Quebec, a
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: crazy story about espionage in Germany.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: That we woke up to this morning. Very severe German
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: man is seemingly in a lot of trouble.
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: We're going to dig into what we know about reports
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: of a plague outbreak in Russia. That's a fun one.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: Never a good thing.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: What we know, what we don't know, what to worry about,
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: what's just hype and fear-mongering, we think. Finally, we're going
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: to talk about the latest from Iran and a strange
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: story about Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to the U.S.
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  Speaker 1: and potentially his health. Ben, then you did our interview today.
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  Speaker 1: What did you talk about?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I talked to Evan Gershkowitz, who people may remember
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: was a Wall Street Journal reporter, still is, but was
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  Speaker 3: detained by the Russians in prison for a year and
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  Speaker 3: a half. Also was part of a spy swap negotiated
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: under the biden administration he's got a new book out
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  Speaker 3: uh this cursed beautiful land which is really terrific um
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: we talk about you know his book obviously how he
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: got picked up in kind of the sting operation you
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  Speaker 3: know whether the russians were just trying to grab him
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: as a pawn or whether they actually thought he was
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  Speaker 3: conducting espionage what life is like in a russian prison
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  Speaker 3: what he learned about russians and that's not fun no
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  Speaker 3: not great um what uh what the attitudes are he
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: could kind of get about the war in prison.
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  Speaker 2: So it's great.
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  Speaker 3: We cover an extreme experience that hopefully none of us
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  Speaker 3: will have.
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  Speaker 1: To go through. Yeah, God help us all. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: so my understanding is it's about his time in prison
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: and his experience, but also about like other people he
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: feels like have been imprisoned by the Russian state, right,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: in various different ways.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, he kind of covers his own imprisonment like a journalist,
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: which is interesting. Like how does the FSB operate? How
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: does the judicial system operate? What are the experiences of
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: these other prisoners he meets? Some of whom are like
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: in for politics. You know, they spray painted something against
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: the war. Some of them are just common criminals. So
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: you get this kind of tableau of who is in
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: Russian prisons and.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: What is that like?
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: It's really interesting. Well, check that out. Subscribe for that
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: interview and also buy his book. The dude did some
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: really hard time and the least we can do is
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: purchase his book.
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  Speaker 3: And it's a great, you know, sometimes you read these
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: memoirs and they're kind of like, oh, you know, we just,
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: here's the record of what happened.
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  Speaker 2: And this is like, A literary memoir. It's really well done.
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  Speaker 1: Cool. All right. Let's start in Brazil, Ben, because they
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: held some elections over the weekend and the results are
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  Speaker 1: not good at all. The headlines are all about the
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: presidential election, and so we'll start there. That pitted the
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  Speaker 1: leftist 80-year-old incumbent Lula da Silva against the right-wing 45-year-old
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  Speaker 1: Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of the disgraced former president
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  Speaker 1: Jair Bolsonaro. Flavio got about 47%, which is a little
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  Speaker 1: more than anticipated in opinion polls. Lula got about 45%.
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  Speaker 1: We're going to play some clips and then we'll explain
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  Speaker 1: the results. Here's Trump and Rubio commenting on the election.
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  Speaker 1: A little clip from one of Flavio's events to give
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  Speaker 1: you a sense of what it was like on the ground.
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  Speaker 5: Well, it's a big victory. Close, but very, very big victory. Amazing.
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  Speaker 4: Excellent.
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  Speaker 5: We're going to a second round.
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  Speaker 1: I think everybody expected that it would. So we'll see
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  Speaker 1: how that plays out. I want you to know Anisha
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: tried to cut like a better clip from Trump. That
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  Speaker 1: incisive commentary was the best he had.
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  Speaker 3: Well, it's like he's describing the results from like a
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  Speaker 3: house race.
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  Speaker 2: Wow.
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  Speaker 3: I will say the Brazilian far right still manages to
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  Speaker 3: look like a better time than anybody.
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  Speaker 1: Else's far right.
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  Speaker 5: It looks fun.
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  Speaker 1: They're rocking out there. So the way this works is
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  Speaker 1: because neither candidate got 50% of the vote, they go
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  Speaker 1: to a runoff on October 25th. But Flavio is widely
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  Speaker 1: expected to win the runoff because there were other right-wing
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  Speaker 1: candidates in the first round. They got about 5% of
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  Speaker 1: the vote. Those votes are likely to go to him.
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  Speaker 1: Lula's best hope is that enough of the 33 million
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  Speaker 1: or so Brazilians who did not vote decide to re-engage
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  Speaker 1: and show up in the second round or that one
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  Speaker 1: of the many rumored scandals about Flavio kind of explodes
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  Speaker 1: into the press. There's already lots of reporting about his corruption,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: but there's other things rumored to be out there that
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  Speaker 1: are a little more– Titillating, I'll put it that way.
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  Speaker 1: So the key issues in the campaign were the economy,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: like anger at the status quo, crime and corruption. But
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  Speaker 1: the presidential results do not capture how bad the totality
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  Speaker 1: of the results were. In the Senate, the Bolsonaristas, the
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  Speaker 1: Bolsonaro's party and its allies, got nearly 47% of the seats.
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  Speaker 1: Then the traditional conservatives got around 18% of the seats,
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  Speaker 1: while the centrists in the left got 70% each. In
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  Speaker 1: the Chamber of Deputies, which is like our House of Representatives,
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  Speaker 1: Bolsonaro's allies got 34%. Traditional conservatives got 25%. The centrists
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  Speaker 1: got 17%, and the left got 23%. So what that
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  Speaker 1: means is that Flavio, if he's elected president, will start
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: with like 60% of the vote on most issues, and
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  Speaker 1: he can get up to two-thirds majority in other places.
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  Speaker 1: And that's what you need to do stuff like impeach officials,
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  Speaker 1: like a Supreme Court judge who just prosecuted your dad
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: and threw him in prison, for example, like Justice Alexander
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  Speaker 1: de Moraes. So The right wing candidates also won, like
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  Speaker 1: most of the governor's races. So it's a terrible night
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  Speaker 1: for Brazil, terrible night for democracy. If Flavio wins, we
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  Speaker 1: should expect more alignment with Trump generally, more draconian law
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  Speaker 1: and order policies like we saw in El Salvador with
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  Speaker 1: mega prisons and, you know, people arrested without the trial.
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  Speaker 1: And then potentially most catastrophic is what Flavio Bolsonaro could
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  Speaker 1: do to the Amazon and the impact on climate change.
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  Speaker 1: I think with him as president and with a right-wing parliament, um,
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  Speaker 1: there's going to be no check on permitting for oil
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  Speaker 1: and gas or minerals or whatever other like logging industries. Um,
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  Speaker 1: and some experts already think the Amazon is at a
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  Speaker 1: tipping point where it could turn into a dry Savannah,
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  Speaker 1: which would be bad.
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  Speaker 2: That'd be bad.
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  Speaker 1: So Ben, with that really, um, uh, depressing setup thoughts
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  Speaker 1: on the results so far.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not great.
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  Speaker 3: And, um, it's very steep mountain to climb for Lula
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  Speaker 3: to even have a chance here in the runoff. Um,
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  Speaker 3: for the reasons you said, like most of the smaller
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: parties were right wing to begin with. There is something eerie,
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: like everything is apples to oranges, but still like it
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  Speaker 3: does feel a bit like Brazil's just like living our
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: lives two years behind us. Because like 2016, Trump's elected. 2018, Bolsonaro,
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: this kind of Trump-like figure is elected on very similar message. 2020,
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  Speaker 3: the older well-known commodity, Joe Biden's elected. 2022, Lula comes
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: back and he's elected. Um, and then we have 2024
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  Speaker 3: election and now there's an 80 year old incumbent running
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  Speaker 3: for reelection in Brazil. Um, who's seen as like representing
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  Speaker 3: things people are pissed off about a shitty economy, high
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: cost of living.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of common threads.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: And we had January 6th and they had their own version.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: They had their own version of that.
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  Speaker 3: So like we are in a strange like relationship with Bizarro.
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: Because look, part of, I love Lula.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: I think he's done extraordinary things in his life.
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  Speaker 3: Um, He's also 80 years old and definitely is representative
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: of some version of the status quo that people don't like,
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: whether they don't like just the state of the economy
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: in Brazil, whether they associate Lula with some corruption scandal
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: or another, or whether they just think this guy's 80
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: and things aren't great and let's try something different. I mean,
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: there's any number of factors. And also, there's an innate
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: conservatism to part of Brazil. There's a growing evangelical population.
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: There's some things that are happening in that society that
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: are moving it to the right as well. But I
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: think we have to reckon with the fact that this
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: same disease of kind of right-wing nationalist politics has infected
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: all parts of the world.
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  Speaker 2: We're not the only ones going through it.
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  Speaker 3: A lot of America is going through it in a
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  Speaker 3: big wave right now. You had a bunch of left
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: governments that were in charge People don't like incumbents. And
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: now we've just seen a huge wave of right-wing governments.
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: Some of that, again, is anti-incumbency. But some of that
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: is like these concerns about crime in Latin America are
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: kind of akin to the concerns that we had about
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: immigration here in this country, a sense of disorder, a
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: sense that the institutions don't work anymore.
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  Speaker 2: They're not responsive.
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  Speaker 3: Maybe this strong man will at least punish some people
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  Speaker 3: I don't like and bring some law and order.
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  Speaker 2: Flavio is a little less.
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: like, MAGA-pilled than some of the rest of the Bolsonaro family.
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: By the way, we should note, Tommy, like, so many
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: Bolsonaros got elected, I can't even keep track of it.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: And I don't know.
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: We all celebrated Brazil for prosecuting Bolsonaro and for doing what,
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: you know, Merrick Garland couldn't do. I still think that
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: was the right thing because that guy deserves to be
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: where he is.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: But it didn't stop a lot of Bolsonaros.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: It didn't solve all the problems. Yeah, just to give
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: you the full count, Ben. So Jair Bolsonaro's wife, Michelle,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: and his son, Carlos, both won Senate seats. And then
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Jair's brother, And his other son won seats in the
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Chamber of Deputies. So it is a Bolsonaro family affair.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: The Don Roe doctrine is well alive and kicking in
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: Latin America. I mean, what does that mean for Trump?
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: I mean, what's strange about it is it means this
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: kind of neo, not even really neo, this imperial view
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: of Latin America will somehow be validated by an increasing
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: number of far-right leaders down there.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: You've got Mille in Argentina.
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: You know, you've got potentially Bolsonaro back in Brazil. You've
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: got Bukele in El Salvador. You know, keep on going
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: to Colombia now.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Venezuela.
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: The Latin American left is going to have to regroup.
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: And it's going to need a different kind of message.
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: And it's going to need a message that, as in
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: this country, cannot just be about like protecting social progress,
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: protecting social safety net.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: Like how bad the far right is.
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: Like they're clearly going to need, as Democrats in this
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: country need, like an alternative vision to reach people where
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: they are.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and like obviously Brazil is like the 10th biggest
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: economy in the world by some measures. It's the biggest
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: kind of, it's the political heavyweight in South America. But
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: to your point, I think in December of 2023, you
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: had like three right-wing governments, seven left-wing, two kind of other.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Flavio will make it eight right-wing governments, three left, one other.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: So it's quite bad. Thanks, by the way, shout out
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: to Nick Zimmerman, who's at the Wilson Center and used
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: to work with us in the Obama administration for talking
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: to me. through a lot of it this morning. I mean,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: I think to your point about Lula, I think he
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: is a lion of Brazilian politics. He's an icon. He's
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: a legend. The Brazilian left needs a total reboot. You
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: know what I mean?
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: And it has for a while.
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: It's been too dependent on Lula for a long time.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: It's been decades of Lula or Bolsonaro, you know, back
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: and forth and back and forth.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: Dilma Rousseff, who was Lula's chief of staff.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: Right, his chief of staff. And I think he seemed
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: out of touch. He seemed like he can't shake these
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: corruption allegations no matter what happens. I think there was
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: some concern, Ben, understandably, around the Brazilian insurrection about whether
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Brazil would return to a military dictatorship. But if you
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: look at the political kind of status quo now for Flavio,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: if he wins, it's like, why bother? He's got the
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: presidency of the parliament. He can reshape the Supreme Court. Like,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: it's kind of got a bird in hand. I think
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: there's also been kind of chatter online about, was this U.S. interference?
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Did the U.S., the CIA do something? It's like, I
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: don't know that they needed to because Trump slapped you know,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: the biggest tariffs on anyone in the world besides the
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: Chinese on Brazil for absolutely no reason, despite, I think,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: us having a trade surplus with the Brazilians. So the
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: coordination has been happening in plain sight.
• 13:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: And look, some of the tech people like Elon Musk
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: have backed Bolsonaro. But clearly, you know, as in this
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: country in 2024, like clearly the election is telling us
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: something about people's openness to this kind of politics. They
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: know who the Bolsonaros are. Just like, We lived through
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: one term of Trump and then we elected him again.
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: They know what that's like. I think the two other
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: things that highlight are like, so what's in it for Trump?
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: What does he really want down there beyond someone who
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: welcomes his weird Venezuela colony?
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: I honestly think it's just going to be corruption. Cash.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: And minerals.
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of critical minerals and a lot of
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: these things that Trump and his associates are constantly circling.
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: Like I just kind of look for business deals between
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: the Bolsonaros and the Trumps. Like it's not something that's
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: going to like benefit Americans if we're aligned with like
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: the potential far right leader of Brazil. I do think
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: that as much as we might say, well, this is
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: a cycle of politics and, you know, we're just going
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: to weather this. Your point about the Amazon is probably
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: the most important, which is like this could be an
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: irreversible verdict for the Amazon. Like if these guys continue
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: to open things up to permitting, logging, you know, this
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: could have a devastating impact on the rest of the world.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: And so that's something that I think, you know, the
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: last time around when Bolsonaro was president, like the Europeans
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: were like considering different kinds of sanctions just to protect
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: the Amazon. I don't think that's in the cards, but
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: that's something that we should pay careful attention to.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: And then the last thing that's.
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: Kind of crazy to think about, Tommy, is that, you know,
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: we could do everything right in this country and win
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: the midterms and elect a Democrat and that Democrat may
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: be dealing with like a completely far right alliance in
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: Latin America. And in Europe, they could be dealing with
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: like a French far right government. So it just reminds
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: you that this is not all about Trump, what's happening
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: in global politics. Like Trump, you know, that's just one
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: piece of a much bigger puzzle of the far right
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: having a lot of resilience.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, there's like, 90% chance that Don Jr.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: starts like a drone company based in the Amazon that
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: also does like logging or something with someone named Flavio.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Speaking of Europe, let's turn to Europe. So there's political
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: turmoil and protests that we want to talk about. Let's
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: start in Spain. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced a
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: snap election on November 29th. The decision was driven by
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: anger about the cost of housing. So there was this
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: crazy story, this 87-year-old disabled woman named Mari Carmen She
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: was forcibly removed from her apartment in Madrid. She had
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: lived there for 71 years. But then in 2018, a
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: developer bought the building. They jacked up her rent. They
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: made her some completely ridiculous and unaffordable offer for her
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: to buy the place. She couldn't do it because she's
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: a pensioner. Then they forcibly evicted her, which led to
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: this dramatic scene with protesters and cops and people getting
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: tear gassed. And it was just like a huge thing.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: And so Sanchez's party has tried to pass legislation to
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: address the problem. It failed last week, so we called
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: the snap election today. to try to use anger around
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: the issue to get the legislative majority. Victory in that
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: race is far from guaranteed. Spanish voters are upset about immigration.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: Back in July, we talked about the situation in Ceuta.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: Tens of thousands of migrants passed into this city of Ceuta. Basically,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: all of them were expelled soon after. The city is
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: in Northern Africa, not continental Europe, but those scenes kind
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: of exacerbated tensions around immigration in Spain. Sanchez is also
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: dealing with corruption allegations that have not been made about
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: him personally, but it's touched on a former top official
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: in his party, the former prime minister, his wife, his brother.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: So it's all around. And then in France, students are
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: now protesting in more than 40 cities. Those protests started
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: late last month near Paris over lack of school funding.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: This is a clip from TikTok of a French student
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: named RX explaining why students have been hit in the streets.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: Let's watch.
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: The learning conditions right now in France are... getting worse
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: day by day. We're 35 in most classes. We lack
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: teachers enough for people to fail their exams. My school
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: has water dripping on the power outlets. The walls are
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: so damaged, cannot be heating up during the winter. Basically,
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: the French students are right now protesting against a government
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: that doesn't give a single fuck about them. The media
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: are calling us lazy. They're saying we're protesting because we
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: don't want good class. Well, what we're asking for is
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: actual good education and for us to not fail all
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: classes because of the way the government works. The problem
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: is that we're working that much without any teacher to
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: actually teach us anything. And the fact that our environment
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: where we're learning in is actually dangerous.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: So these protests started with just kids like that, and
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: then they've grown to include labor unions, activists, teachers, many more.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: I think the Interior Ministry estimated that on Tuesday, the
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: day we're recording this, there were like 256,000 people on
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: the streets. Some of the protests got violent. 24 schools
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: were burned or damaged. 6,000 arrests. A 15-year-old kid got
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: his hand blown off when he picked up some sort
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: of police grenade and it exploded. And Ben, this is
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: happening in the midst of this bruising budget fight. France's
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: debt is now at 3.5 trillion euros, which is 120%
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: of GDP. It's well above the eurozone average. Interest rates
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: have spiked. The current government proposed this package of tax increases.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: And spending cuts, including changes to pensions and civil service salaries,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: that will be very, very unpopular, which could lead to
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: more protests, the government getting toppled. So like the Macron
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: government is squeezed between a pissed off French public and
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: then bond markets that are worried about France's debt. And
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: this is all happening in the midst of an economic slowdown,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: higher borrowing costs. And, you know, there's a presidential election
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: next year, which is likely to see the far left
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: against the French far right. So pretty scary stuff, man.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, it feels like there is a non-zero risk
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: that the Spanish election leads to the Vox far right
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: party gaining a lot of ground. And then in France,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: as we've talked about many times, like 2027, we could
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: see Marine Le Pen as president of France, which is
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: not fun. Yeah.
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: The Spanish thing, I just, I love Pedro Sanchez. He's
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: been the vanguard of progressive politics globally. Some of this
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: is he's just been in power for 10 years, you know.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: And so, I mean, even like you mentioned the corruption scandal,
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: like when your party's been in power for 10 years,
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: like somebody did something stupid, probably, you know.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: Hopefully he can weather it, but it's going to be
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: a tough one.
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: I think that to offer a theory of everything that
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: addresses the French piece too. America is symbiotic with these
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: other places. Like to take what I said about Brazil
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: and turn it inside out. yes, what's happening to us
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: is happening in the world, but also what happens in
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: America matters to the rest of the world. And one
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: of the things that is not coming from America yet,
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: and it could, is some kind of model for progressive politics.
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: Like the example I'd give is like Obama, after he
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: was elected, you know, you had some kind of copycat.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: In a good way, like Renzi in Italy and Trudeau.
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: In Canada, like people taking the kind of Obama model
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: of a campaign and having it work in their countries.
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: Then Trump comes along and you know, Bolsonaro is impossible
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: without Trump. It's like, oh, I'll do that act. You know,
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: I'll use social media and I'll bludgeon my opponents. And
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: I think part of what you're seeing on the kind of,
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: you know, and I should say Biden comes along and
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: then you get Lula, who's kind of like, and you
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: get Keir Starmer, like this kind of cautious.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: Brand of more returning to something.
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: I think that there's, if you look at where the
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: energy is going in the right, it is able to
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: flow to these personalities, right? It's able to flow to
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: the Bolsonaro family in Brazil. It's able to flow to
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: Marine Le Pen in France. And then you look at
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: this left-wing energy, like among these students, and there's just
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: doesn't seem like there's anywhere for.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: That to go.
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: There's not like a French political party or politician that
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: is kind of capturing the sense that, hey, wait a second,
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: the basic bargain of society is breaking down. Because, you know,
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: if you look at what the French students are going through, yeah,
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: like their shit keeps getting cut. Sounds like here, like schools,
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: we can never find the money for that. oh, what is,
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: and we should take this seriously, what does Macron spend
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: a lot of time talking about?
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: Like Ukraine. Right, foreign policy. And defense spending and foreign policy,
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: and he's constantly flying off.
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: If I was a French student, I'd be like, you know,
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: and this is not to say that the Ukrainians don't
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: merit our support, but I'd be like, what the fuck, man?
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: Like I, you know, can't even heat the school in
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: the winter. There are no teachers. Like you're making cuts
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: to my education. There needs to be like a political
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: argument on the left globally about taking that seriously again,
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: not just about like defending against the far right or
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: defending against the Russians, but fixing the fucking schools, you know,
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: which Macron has never seemed to care about. You know,
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: like he cares about macroeconomics. He cares about geopolitics. Like
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: he's calibrating some centrist position. There's just this kind of
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: giant vacuum that, and hopefully the Democrats can begin to
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: offer some blueprints for how other people can fill it.
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: Because if not, The far right will capture all the
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: populist energy and the left will just kind of be
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: unmoored and angry.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: And weirdly, in France, you have a situation where Marine
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Le Pen is seemingly more responsible than Jean-Luc Mélenchon from
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: the far left. She's proposing 140 million euros in budget
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: cuts over five years, national debt limit at 60% of GDP.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: But also she's saying, well, we're going to lower the
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: retirement age for some and cut the VAT tax on
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: energy and food essentials. So she's talking out of both
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: sides of her mouth. But Melenchon is like, we could
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: take the French bonds and throw them into the fire.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: So it's like the bond markets are spiraling, right? The
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: spread between the yield on the French and German debt
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: is getting higher and higher. It's close to like financial
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: crisis levels. And then, you know, people are talking about
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: like an ECB bailout. It's like, it just feels like
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: a very. dangerous setup in an election that is going
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: to yield some sort of extremist outcome in some way
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: or the other.
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: And it feels like a recipe for the far right,
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: because it's like the fiscal situation is unsustainable. There's societal divisions.
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: The one thing I would say, Tommy, just to take
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: a passing shot at our far right, is I see
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: all these people from Trump on down, like Trump himself,
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: like posting that what's happening in France is a sign
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: of like the radical Islamic takeover of France.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: So stupid.
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: If you didn't have YouTube, like the French kid we
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: saw is not like trying to impose Sharia law.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: He just wants his school to be funded.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's, yeah, I hate when the Trump people try
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: to like give themselves credit for some movement or like
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: blame everything. It's like, just shut the fuck up. One
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: other weird thing we want to talk about in terms
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: of kind of political ruptures, Ben, is there was the
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: Canadian province of Quebec, held an election earlier, I think
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: last week, earlier this week, where the separatist Quebecois party
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: for the first time in 12 years won. They got
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: 59 of 127 seats. It's not a majority, but it's
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: a big victory. And they promised to wait until Trump
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: leaves office to call for a referendum on independence. But
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: in the past, like the kind of independence referendum question,
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: I think was much less of a focus in the election.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: And then this round, There was an overt promise to
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: hold a referendum on independence for Quebec. It's not popular.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: Like there have been there have been past. I think
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: it's like 30 percent of the population supports it. And
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: they only have a minority in the legislature. They need
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: to get other parties on board to actually get a vote.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: But it's just another example of where the like center
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: right coalition that won the last two elections got literally
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: wiped out. and decimated. And you're seeing these more sort
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: of extreme parties get support.
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: And it's a vulnerability for Canada.
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: I mean, we talked about how in these trade negotiations, like,
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: you know, Carney's stood up for French language and Netflix.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: Algorithms and things like that. But this is why, right?
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: And at the same time, if you're Trump, this is
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: not helpful for Canadian unity because you're just like, what
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: can I do to create more fissures between Quebec and
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: the rest of Canada? Like, If they were smart about it,
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: maybe not Trump, but maybe somebody over there is smart
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: about it. They will just do whatever they can to
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: poke the bear of like Quebec separatist intentions.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: Like they've been doing in Alberta, which has basically a
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: referendum on whether to hold a referendum on October 19th.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: That's another one we're watching. Pod Save the World is
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• 29:47
  Speaker 1: The weird story out of Germany that I mentioned. So
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: this morning we woke up to reports that someone named
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: August Hanning, who is the former head of the BND,
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: BND is Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, He was arrested Tuesday for, quote,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: treasonous espionage and attempting to pass along state secrets to
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: foreign governments. So the BND collects foreign intelligence like the
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: CIA from human sources, but also they run Germany's signals
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: intelligence like the NSA. So they have a lot of authorities.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: They don't have all the covert action shit that our
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: guys do, but, you know, a lot of authorities. So
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Hanning led the BND from 1998 to 2005. He also
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: served as the top civil servant in Germany's interior ministry
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: from 2005 to 2009. German law enforcement also arrested his
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: former chief of staff, who I guess was in government
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: and was basically paid to give Hanning documents since 2010.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: This has been going on for an awfully long time.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: They estimate that 2,000 documents were taken in total. Hanning
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: reportedly provided information to at least two separate foreign intelligence services.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: The Financial Times said Russia was not currently part of
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: the investigation. The word currently is doing a lot of
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: work there, though. Apparently, some of the documents... were found
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: in Hanning's office in 2025 in a search that was
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: part of a different investigation, but that led to his arrest.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: The previous search was about an attempt by a German
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: steakhouse heiress to kidnap her children from their dad when
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: they were living in Denmark at the time. Crazy story.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: Bunch of dudes ambushed the dad, beat him up, threw
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: the 13- and 10-year-old kids into a car, took them
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: back to Germany, and then ultimately it got unraveled. Anyway... Like,
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: we don't know who Hanning was selling secrets to. I
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: think there's been speculation that it was Israel. He has
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: a relationship with the Israelis. But this is a disaster
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: for the German government and for any other intel services
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: that have like a liaison partnership with them.
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: We'd shine a lot of light on the story if
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: we knew who it was. I saw speculation from Israel.
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: I saw speculation from Azerbaijan.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: Interesting.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: Which is also close to Israel.
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: And, you know, so look, bottom line is it's never
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: good if the chief of a major Western intelligence service
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: is literally excelling secrets to foreign governments.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: Like that, that's not good. And it.
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: Does suggest, you know, like a degree of kind of
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: corruption inside of, like when you see something like this,
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: you wonder, is there more to this? Are there other
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: people doing this? Is this something that has become kind
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: of wink, wink? something that happens we don't know also
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: what is your counter intel if this is happening for
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: well that's what i mean it's like how does someone
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: not see this if like this stuff is just walking
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: out the door and the u.s shares intelligence with them
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: i mean this is like a john le carre novel
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: of like moles and uh and actually like it'd be
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: interesting if because if it's not russia it could be
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: some back door by the way to russia it could
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: be to russia via some other intelligence service but let's
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: say it is israel or azerbaijan like what are we
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: doing here like like major world power like you putting
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: yourself up for sale to some smaller country because you
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: just need the money that bad. I mean, it doesn't
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: feel that ideological to me. You know, it feels like
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: it's for money. And it does kind of play into
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: the feeling that there's something vaguely corrupt about all of
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: this infrastructure that's been built up over so long.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: And I think Friedrich Merz is trying to get the
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: BND more authorities to do like offensive cyber operations, more
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: in line with the US kind of version. I bet
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: this kind of pumps the brakes on that a bit.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: And then in 2023, there was another top BND official
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: who was arrested for selling secrets to the Russians as
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: the war in Ukraine is ongoing.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: There's something rotten in the house over there. Now, like,
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: you know, they're not the first and won't be the last.
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: We've had our own share of, like, moles, but this
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: guy was at the top of the thing.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you know, the BND is, you know, not
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: the most celebrated history. I do believe it was set
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: up by an ex-Nazi. Yeah, yeah, it was.
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: With U.S.
• 33:36
  Speaker 5: Support.
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: We gave him a pass to be on the team.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, good shit, everybody. All right, Ben. Because all of
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: the existential dread about artificial intelligence wasn't keeping you up
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: at night enough, let's talk about reports of pneumonic plague
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: in Russia. I'm sure most listeners have seen this by now.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: It's like articles or social media posts about potential pneumonic
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: plague outbreaks in Russia, potential cover-up. Trying to figure out
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: what to make of them. Here's what we think we know.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: A 28-year-old female lab worker at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: of Siberia in the Far East, she died last week.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: The institute was created in 1930s as an anti-plague research
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: facility and later expanded to researching other diseases like cholera, anthrax,
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: et cetera. The inpatient facility where this worker was treated
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: is under quarantine and 200 people who came in contact
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: with her are under medical observation. The Russian government, of course,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: is denying it all. They said, quote, no microorganisms linked
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: to her professional activity were identified in the patient samples and, quote,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: no health changes related to infectious pathology were had been
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: identified among her contacts. There's a lot of reasons not
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: to believe that official story. First, just Putin's government lies
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: about everything. There's also the history of the Soviets lying
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: about health disasters, Chernobyl. There was an anthrax leak. There
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: was a smallpox outbreak. It's a long list. Second, the
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: local government officials keep saying the opposite of what Peskov
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: is saying in Moscow. The Irkutsk regional governor said he
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: had a meeting with Russia's top official in charge of
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: disease control about some sort of dangerous infectant in a
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: resident and that the person's contacts were put under quarantine.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: There was a local mayor who said that a hospital
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: was closed for quarantine. The governor of a neighboring region
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: put out a statement referring to a, quote, woman who
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: died of plague in the Irkutsk region. So a lot
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: of those statements get amended or taken down, but, you know, notable.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: Ren TV, a Russian media network, reported that the lab
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: worker had researched plague a local news outlet has reported
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: on the closures of this clinic and the hospital and
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: that the young lab assistant broke a test file and
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: then died, right? So there's a lot of smoke here.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Trump and Rubio, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, were asked
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: about these reports. Here's what they had to say.
• 35:46
  Speaker 5: We're looking at it very strongly. We just heard about it.
• 35:49
  Speaker 5: And pneumonia, you know, years ago, you could treat pneumonia easier.
• 35:53
  Speaker 5: The microbes and the germs have gotten stronger disproportionately, but
• 35:57
  Speaker 5: we'll help them.
• 35:58
  Speaker 6: We know what we know, obviously, about whatever the Russians
• 36:01
  Speaker 6: have provided us. There's very limited travel between the U.S.
• 36:04
  Speaker 6: and Russia, obviously. But like anything else, something like that
• 36:07
  Speaker 6: gets out, it could quickly spread. So we're watching and
• 36:09
  Speaker 6: monitoring it closely. I don't think it's cause for alarm,
• 36:12
  Speaker 6: but it is cause for focus.
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: And a cause to just keep an eye on it.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: And we're doing that.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: Cause for focus. OK, so interesting, Ben, that the crew
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: that was once very hot and bothered, a potential lab
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: leak from China is a little less hyperbolic about this one.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: But what do you make of what you've read? And
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: kind of the reaction from the Trump administration so far.
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: We talk a lot about things that are, you know,
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: concerning on this show, like plague is not something that
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: I thought I was going to worry about.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: But here we are.
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: I mean, because what I take from it, look, first
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: of all, you don't trust anything that the Russian authorities say.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: And that's always worrisome. You know, like.
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: In any kind of, as we learned in COVID, Like
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: transparency is your only friend when you're dealing with these
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: types of things. And if you have these discrepancies between
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: local authorities and the Kremlin, like it just makes you
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: wonder like what on earth you can trust.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: And that's concerning. Also, it makes you wonder.
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: What kind of biological weapons programs and research Russia continues
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: to do. Because it's kind of not the most normal
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: thing in the world for people to go to work
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: and study plague. You tend to be studying plague if
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: you're like, you know, I don't know, developing plague as
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: some kind of crazy biological weapons hedge. So the need
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: to kind of revitalize the anti-biological weapons because AI is
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: part of that too, right? We don't want the AI
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: to be developing biological pathogens to make it easier for
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: bad actors to develop biological weapons.
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: So that's a piece of this too.
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: And again, I think this is just highlighting once again,
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: that when you have a breakdown in any kind of
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: geopolitical trust or cooperation, or organizations like the World Health
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: Organization are discredited. You just kind of feel like stuff
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: like this happens and you just hope it doesn't get
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: worse because you don't feel like the people in charge,
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, the World Health Organization, the
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: Russian authorities, whoever it is, are all going to like
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: share information and figure out a way to make sure
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: that this thing is like kept in a box. Like
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: it feels like we're just, you know, not like everybody else.
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: I'm you know, contagious plague. Thankfully, it doesn't seem to
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: be as contagious as airborne flus and COVID viruses are.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: But, you know, that's, you know, cold comfort here.
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: So, and Rubio and Trump, like, they just, it is, like,
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: just so notable the extent to which they just don't
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: want to call out Russian behavior.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: About anything ever. Trump's a goddamn idiot. He's like, we're
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: monitoring it strongly. Why can't you.
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: Just say, like, yeah, like, if this had happened Honestly,
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: this had happened in a Western European country.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: It was in Germany.
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: He would be slamming Mertz and, you know, boosting the
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: AFD or something.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: Yes, exactly.
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: So like I scrolled past this like you did. And
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: I'm like, God damn it. You know, do I have
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: to worry about this? Is this clickbait? Like, what is it?
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: So I reached out to an expert named Haley Ann
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: Severance for like a gut check. She's currently the deputy
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: vice president for the Nuclear Threat Initiatives Global Biological Policy
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: and Programs Team. Previously worked at the Pentagon doing a
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: bunch of counter WMD and biological weapons stuff. So scary shit,
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: long titles.
• 39:28
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: Some reasons not to worry, right? And then I'll tell
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: you some things to worry about or what experts are
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: worried about.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: I'm ready for this.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: So not to worry. If it's standard pneumonic plague, we
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: have antibiotics to treat it. And you can cure it
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: pretty easily. We got to catch it in like 24 hours,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: I know. Russia actually has a vaccine. We didn't develop
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: the vaccine because I think that we didn't think it
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: worked very well. But there's lots of public health tools
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: to deal with something like this. It's not like a
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: novel virus. Transmitting plague requires a prolonged face-to-face contact for
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: it to spread. It's not like measles or COVID that
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: was kind of like airborne and fast. Also, this is morbid,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: but the mortality rate is really high. And it happens
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: pretty quickly after symptoms start. So there's not like a
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: long incubation period where you're traveling around giving it a
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: bunch of people. To spread the thing, like, you're just
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: fucked if you get it, basically. So that's part of
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: the good news. That's the good news section, unfortunately. Here's
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: the bad news section, things experts are watching and kind
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: of thinking about. An outbreak like this in Russia raises
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: more questions because, as you said, they had and have
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: a biological weapons program. If this was in whatever, name
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: a country that doesn't have one, you'd be like, oh,
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: someone ate a marmot or something.
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: Some natural transition. In Russia, it's reasonable to ask, Did
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: this come from a biological weapons program research facility? And
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: if yes, was the bacteria enhanced or altered in any way?
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: We have no evidence that it was, but that's the
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: kind of thing you'd be very worried about. The facility
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: where this incident occurred has been linked to Russia's broader
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: biological weapons program in the past. It's probably defensive research.
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: You make the new pathogen over here, and then at
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: this place, you research ways to defend against it. But
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: none of that is good. And then, as you said,
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: there's just like the general lack of transparency for the
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: Russian government. Like if Peskov, the spokesman, says the sky
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: is blue, the sky is red that day. And then also,
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: it's not great that we don't trust our own government.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: We don't trust the Trump administration. And then, as you mentioned,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: like they've been pulling out of these international organizations like
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: the WHO and like, you know, organizations that deal with
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: global biological threats and weakening them or at least flirting
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: with pulling out of them. So- I don't know, man. Like,
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: I think we're probably going to be okay here, but like,
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: who knows?
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it just speaks to the need that it is,
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: there's something not sustainable about a global political system where
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: you can't trust anybody about something as basic as like plague.
• 42:05
  Speaker 5: You know?
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: And like, you don't trust your own authorities, you don't
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: trust their authorities, nobody trusts the WHO anymore. Like, we
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: are going to, at a certain point, have to put
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: aside all of our neuroses and kind of rebuild these
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: systems so that they can work again. Because otherwise, every
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: time these things pop up, like, yeah, you're just sitting
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: there and like you're sorting information on the internet and
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: you're like parsing Dmitry Peskov's statements. I mean, like this
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: is why we built an international system so that there
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: would be like trusted sources of information when things like
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: this happen. And I think part of what is so
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: disorientating about the last few years is to suddenly realize
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: we don't live in that kind of system anymore.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And just like, it would be great if we
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: just had trusted experts telling us, not Bobby Kennedy Jr.
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: Like I was going to say, I was just about
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: to say like, Like our trusted experts at HHS, like
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: Bobby Kennedy.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: What happens if, like, we have some leak and Bobby
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: Kennedy's the voice of that?
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's like, you know, Kid Rock's gym benching.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: Shirtless in jeans. Like, you know, he's scalping a bear
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: or something.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he probably killed the marmot and ate it and
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: got the goddamn plague in the first place. Speaking of
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: places you could get the plague, Ben, Crooked Con is
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: happening in Washington, D.C. from November 5th to 7th. I'm kidding.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: No one's going to get any diseases. You're just going
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: to get some hopium. We are very excited. that we're
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: recording a live episode of Pod Save the World on Saturday,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: November 7th at CrookedCon. Come see me and Ben. We're
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: going to have a great time. We're going to talk
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: about oversight and corruption and what we want Democrats to
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: do when we get power, knock on wood, hopefully. So
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: get your tickets to CrookedCon. Get them now. Come see
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: us there. Go to crookedcon.com to check out the lineup
• 43:47
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  Speaker 1: at checkout. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you've
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  Speaker 1: a lot going on. There's terrible political news. There's all
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  Speaker 1: payment options. That's BetterHelp.com slash Crooked World. All right, a
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: couple of round updates. So listeners probably remember the story
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: from last month where a bunch of dudes were arrested
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: near an airbase in the U.K., that the US uses
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: to fly B-1 bomber missions, including missions that hit targets
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: in Iran. Over the weekend, the US just immediately, just
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: like very quickly and suddenly, pulled all of its B-1
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: bombers from this base. The New York Times reported that
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: the planes were moved so suddenly that some, quote, left
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: while aerial refueling aircraft were still being scrambled to support
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: their flights back to the United States. So it sounds
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: like it was a pretty sudden decision. The Wall Street
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: Journal reported that The decision was made over fears of
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: a possible drone attack on the base ordered by the IRGC,
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: which would target the aircraft and the pilots and obviously
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: attempt to kill them. Again, here's what our president had
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: to say about this decision to make you guys feel good.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: Let's watch.
• 47:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think we can say that. I mean, they
• 47:32
  Speaker 5: didn't fly out by accident. Yeah, no, but there were
• 47:36
  Speaker 5: some threats. And rather than tempting the enemy, we'll capture
• 47:41
  Speaker 5: the enemy and beat the enemy. But why should we
• 47:43
  Speaker 5: leave them there? So we moved them around a little bit,
• 47:45
  Speaker 5: not very far.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: Feel better?
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess. Can I just say on the politics
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: of it, like, this is an incident where if the U.S.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: suddenly moved all its P-1 bombers... out of a base
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: when like a Democrat was president, like the right wing
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: media would be like, it's weakness. You know what I mean?
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: I mean, remember that Chinese balloon flew over like during
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: Biden's administration.
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: It was like a two week standoff.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: Like people lost their fucking mind for a week. It
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: is kind of nice that he'd be like, yeah, we
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: moved on an abundance of caution, whatever. However, lest you
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: think that the B-1 bombers moving from this airbase back
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: to the U.S. means the war is winding down. Last week,
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: the journal reported that 10,000 more U.S. service members are
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: going to the Middle East and a third aircraft carrier
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: strike group Maybe that means they will rotate one of
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: the aircraft carriers that is already there home. Probably they will.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: But I think we should take very seriously these reports
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: that Trump is planning to ramp the war back up
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: after the midterms. Speaking of that war, in Yemen, the
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: Yemeni government announced a military operation to recapture areas taken
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: by the Houthi rebels. That's going to be done in
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: concert with the Saudis. But also, according to The New
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: York Times, about 200 U.S. military and intelligence analysts are
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: embedded with the Saudis working with them. So we are
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: very much a part of this mission, too. But finally, Ben,
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: Trump seems to have settled on a closing argument about
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: the war just in time for the midterms. This is
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: from a campaign rally on Monday night.
• 49:02
  Speaker 5: It's a small price to pay for keeping the world safe,
• 49:06
  Speaker 5: keeping our country safe.
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: They can take out a city.
• 49:09
  Speaker 5: Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out
• 49:12
  Speaker 5: San Diego. This is a very small price to pay,
• 49:18
  Speaker 5: and it's going to be over very soon. This is
• 49:20
  Speaker 5: almost over with.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: So was that a threat? A recommendation? It landed like
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: a laugh line in the room.
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: It almost feels like his heart's not fully in the bit, though.
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: Because he keeps trying to find some formulation. that can, like,
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: land with the audience at these rallies. Like, every week
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: there's some new, different way to either declare the war
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: over or, like, threaten to annihilate Iran.
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: And, like, he's just kind of not landing the applause lines,
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: you know?
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: The war is so unpopular that his new tack is, well,
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: maybe we could kill a bunch of liberals. We support
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: it now. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's cool. That's right.
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: He's just groping around for something that can, like, fire
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: up a crowd.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: It's like that's what his, all he's thinking about is, like,
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: He's like road testing material, like a standup comic who's
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: like trying out different things in clubs. When in fact,
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: like he, what he actually has to do is solve
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: like the fucking war that he started, which he can't
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: solve because he doesn't have answers.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: Also, I know we're a bunch of libs here in LA,
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: but San Diego is like a big military town.
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, but I mean, that's like, like they no
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: longer cheer for the annihilation of Iran because they've heard
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: him say it so many times. So now he's threatening
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: to kill us, you know, because maybe they'll cheer for that.
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: You know, like it just shows you how he's just
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: like unmoored, like he has no place to land on
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: Iran anymore, you know.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So it's so unpopular.
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: It's so unpopular that like it might be more popular
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: for him to argue for the annihilation of Southern California
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: than for like maintaining his war in Iran.
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: That's depressing. Anything about these other stories, the Air Force Base,
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: the carrier movements, the youthies jump out at you?
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: I want to say something about the bombers because I
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: think I have a theory about what's happening here, as
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: strange as it seems, right? So, and we talked about
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: this in other contexts, but I'm going to do the
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: callback to the second Obama administration. There was like this
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: plot that was uncovered about like an IRGC operative who
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: was going to come to the United States and assassinate
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: the Saudi ambassador at Cafe Milano.
• 51:32
  Speaker 5: Oh, yeah.
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: Remember this?
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: And Preet Bharat announced this case. Look, I'm not here to,
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: I wasn't down in the weeds of this thing. I
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: remember feeling like at the time, there was probably some
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: like distant Iranian aspiration to do something like this. But
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: I had a hard time believing that they were actually
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: going to like like in a movie, like shoot up
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: Cafe Milano to get the Saudi ambassador. I think part
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: of what happens to the Trump people that's interesting is
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: they get these whiffs of Iranian intelligence and they like
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: just take them as something that's happening, right? So you
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: remember the reason that Trump was like rushed out of
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: Air Force One and like a food cart was because
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: there was some intel reportedly passed by the Israelis that
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: that they were going to like shoot down Air Force
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: One with like an RPG or something.
• 52:22
  Speaker 5: Right, right.
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: Out of Turkey.
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: It just feels like, because what did we see?
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: We saw them detain those guys who were casing the
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: air base and then release them as if, well, those
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: guys clearly probably weren't hardened Iranian terrorists, so they wouldn't
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: have released them.
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: It feels like they have like some whiff of.
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: Intelligence that like Iranians have discussed, you know, drone attacks
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: on bases, including this UK one. And they're like just
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: freaking out and that, The point is it doesn't like
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: suggest that you have a lot of confidence in what
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: you're doing.
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: You know, like we're not confident we can defend B-1
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: bombers in an airbase.
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: So that's the weird thing. Are there no– I mean,
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: I guess it's a base in the U.K., so you
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: would think it's relatively safe, but there's no air defenses
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: on the base to speak of. I mean, like maybe
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: what they were worried about is some sort of IRGC
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: operative in the U.K., that like launches a quad copter
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: drone that hits the planes. Like, I don't know, but
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: you can't put a bunch of cops around the base. Yeah.
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: I mean, cause it just feels like the Iranians could
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: almost like do psyops with us and like talk to
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: each other in open lines, but all the.
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: Things they want to do.
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: And then suddenly we're moving military equipment around and Trump's
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: in a food cart.
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: You know, like it, it does just feel like he's, he's,
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: these people are in his head.
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: Like, like the, like we've been rattled by, by the Iranians,
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: you know? Um, Because, like, it's not a small thing
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: to be, like, yank B-1 bombers from the U.K. Like,
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: it suggests, like, an empire that doesn't feel safe anywhere.
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That Iranian assassination plot, that was 2011. The target
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: was Adel Al-Jubeir at Cafe Milano. Was that 2011?
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember I was there for this.
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: Because I remember it was, like, the IRGC reached out
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: to some naturalized U.S. citizen. He was, like, a used
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: car salesman, literally, from Texas.
• 54:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: Who then tried to hire someone he thought was in
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: the Zetas cartel, but that guy was a DEA informant.
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: So the whole thing just unraveled.
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: Again, it felt like, you know, some guy had a,
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: you know, no bad idea in a brainstorm.
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: You know, like, let's take out Aldo Aldrobert at the
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: Cafe Milano. But like, I just think sometimes we overreact
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: to bits of intelligence, you know, and that's kind of
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: what it feels like this is all about.
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was quite rushed. They certainly freaked the fuck out.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: Final story we wanted to flag for Ben's interview. So
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: listeners probably know that Chinese President Xi Jinping was just
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: in D.C. for a state visit. They accomplished nothing. The
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal, though, had a report over the weekend
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: about some unusual requests that Xi made while he was
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: here and what it might say about his health, what
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: the bunch of requests and sort of the observations of
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: him might say. So first of all, they reported, the
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: journal reported that quote, a private room in the West
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: Wing for Xi Jinping and his wife was required to
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: take breaks between events. No one else was allowed to
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: join or go in the room. Not even Xi's chief
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: of staff. They called it the hold room, which is
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: just like hard to think of any other time that's
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: happened or why you wouldn't let your own staff in
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: the room. Also, Xi just had like very limited schedule.
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: So there were no activities the night he arrived. And
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: then on the last day he was there, He was
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: supposed to go to the, he went to the National
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: Archives with Trump, but spent only 10 minutes inside, which
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: was way less than the Trump team had planned. One
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: of the days he was in DC, there was a
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: five hour gap in the summit agenda. I think it
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: was like Trump meeting with Xi. There was no working lunch.
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: He just like peaced out for five hours and then
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: came back for the state visit, which is just weird.
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: But like when you're on the ground for 48 hours,
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: you flew 14 hours to be there. Like usually you
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: make the most of it. And then there was this
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: incident at a summit of the BRICS, countries earlier last month,
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: earlier in September, where she skipped the dinner that was
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: attended by Putin and others because he was feeling sick.
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: So Ben, this could be nothing. There have been health
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: rumors about she and other leaders before, but if he's
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: really sick and he dies, it's like a huge succession
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: question that will have global ramifications. And also I think
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: like my big takeaway was surprise. Well, maybe not surprise. Um,
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: Probably a bad idea for all the Trump people to
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: leak this. Yeah.
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: So that was mine.
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: Wildly sensitive.
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: Because look, on she's health, we don't know. There's a
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: bunch of smoke. Like he travels far less than he did.
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: He's out of sight a bit more. He's getting older.
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: He's gripping his wife's hand really strong, going up the stairs.
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: He's also just getting older.
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: But like there's enough to suggest maybe there's something happening there.
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: And to your point, it's just a reminder that he
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: is so wildly consolidated power. Like he's turned that system
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: from like a party system into like a one man,
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: one rule system that, yeah, like there it's worth thinking
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: about the fact that there could be like a real
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: power struggle if he just drops dead.
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: You know, it's just one more very, very blood there.
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: However, to me, the headline was, wow, crazy thing to leak.
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: You know, the Chinese are going.
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: To be fucking apoplectic that the Trump people are leaking out.
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: stories that had to come from them it's like the
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: chinese delegation was leaking this right now that she needed
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: rest that it was peculiar and and also like talk
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: about whiplash because if you're xi shenping you come over
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: here donald trump is just kissing your ass like he's
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: meeting you at the airport in your bags he's just
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: carrying your bags he's talking about how handsome you are
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: all this stuff like uh you know the the white
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: house chief of staff you dan scavino is like tweeting
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: out like, weird AI videos of, like, a wild party
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: at the state dinner.
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: Remember that?
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: And then other White House staffers are leaking that you're, like,
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: an old man who had dressed, you know? Like, what
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: is your guy's fucking approach to this country?
• 57:56
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: You know, because, like, you can't do a charm offensive
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: and embrace a guy.
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: And then leak that he's, like, you know.
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: An old weak man. An old weak man.
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: Like, that's... Like, it just.
• 58:07
  Speaker 3: It shows you how undisciplined this whole thing is because...
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: this is going to really piss off the Chinese. I mean,
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: that's the only practical result of this.
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: Remember that there was like 2022, the party Congress, when
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: Xi's sitting next to Hu Jintao, previous leader, and all
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, he just gets frog-marched out of the room.
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: They fucking dragged the guy out, and I don't think.
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: And then they like erased him from history.
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: Not sure we've seen Hu Jintao since, you know? That
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: was one of the strangest things that's happened in the
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: last decade.
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: Really weird.
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: It's an underrated thing.
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: When you like basically frog-marched the former president, chair of
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: the party and president of the country out, you know?
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: And then I think all of his, like, all of
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: his faction within the party was just purged.
• 58:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just, it's like, it's a parable about
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: what could happen to Xi if he's perceived as weak
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: or if he gets sick or incapacitated in some way.
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just, there's a lot going on.
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: Well, remember, he.
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: Also replaced the chief of the military not too long ago.
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's clearly machinations happening in that Chinese system.
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: And one of the things that maybe is like potentially
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: hopeful too We have to... remind ourselves as much as
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: we've been talking about like the shitty leadership in the world,
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: like Putin's fucking old, like Trump is fucking old.
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: Xi Jinping's old. Erdogan's old.
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: Like at a certain point, just by mother nature, like
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: there's going to be a lot of turnover here in
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: the world.
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: And like that can go for better or worse.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: Hope springs eternal. Okay. We're going to take a quick break,
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: but we come back. You're going to hear Ben's interview
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: with Evan Gershkovich about what it was like being in
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: a Russian prison for way too long and about life
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: in Russia under Putin. So stick around for that. This
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website
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  Speaker 3: All right, I'm very pleased to be joined today by
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: Evan Gershkowitz. He is the author of the really extraordinary
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: and beautiful new book, This Cursed Beautiful Land. He is
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. He was, of course,
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: detained in Russia for a year and a half and
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: released as part of a swap that makes up for
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: a good chunk of his memoir.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: Uh, Evan, thanks so much for joining us.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: Thanks for having me, Ben.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 3: So, you know, I've had a chance to chat about
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: this book before. I just want to reiterate for our audience. Uh,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: this is not just, you know, you, you check the
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: box and wrote the memoir. Uh, this is like deeply
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: insightful into Russia, deeply reflective personally. It's, it's got literary flourish.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: It'll take you inside of a Russian prison. So I
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: really urge everybody to pick up this book. Um, But
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: I want to begin where you start in the prologue,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: which is kind of the anatomy of a sting. You
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: travel on a reporting trip thinking you're meeting with the
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: source to get information about Russia's military complex, and you
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: quickly find yourselves in the middle of a sting operation.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: He's trying to give you documents that essentially play to
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: a narrative that you're a spy. I want you to
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: just take people into, in that experience when you realized
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: you were being set up, And then share a little
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: bit about how you spent a lot of time in
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: the book unpacking how what to you is traditional reporting,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: whether it was clearly just a setup or whether some
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: people might have actually believed that you were engaged in espionage.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 7: Yeah, so when I moved to Russia in late 2017,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 7: an American foreign correspondent or a foreign correspondent at all
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 7: hadn't been arrested for espionage charges since the late Soviet period,
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 7: since the late 80s. And so when we got there,
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 7: When I got there, the Russian press was feeling some pressure,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 7: but the foreign press was allowed to report on whatever
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 7: it wanted, and we were treated as kind of quasi-diplomats.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 7: The worst, you know, that would happen, and it happened
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 7: to one person before the full-scale invasion in 2022, was
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 7: getting kicked out. And when the, you know, the reason
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 7: really is just that the Kremlin wanted to control the
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 7: information environment, censor it for a domestic audience, but for
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 7: a global audience, you know, it didn't really.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: matter what the global audience knew.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 7: And it gave the Kremlin cover, you know, it's a
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 7: regular functioning country, a regular economy, if the New York Times,
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 7: the BBC, the economists and so forth are reporting on it.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 7: When the war, full-scale war starts, obviously the ground had shifted,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 7: but we were trying to read the signals the same
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 7: way we had always done. of whether the rules applied
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 7: to us. So Russia passed these draconian censorship laws, which
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 7: criminalized calling the war a war. They were calling the
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 7: war a special military operation. And you could land in
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 7: prison for up to 10 years. The Russian press at
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 7: this point completely flees the country. I was reporting in
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 7: London at that point when the war started, just happenstance
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 7: happened to be there, decided I'll wait to come back.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 7: Over the months, some Russian journalists are targeted in absentia.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 7: And we took that as a signal of the Russian
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 7: state saying, do not come back. Uh, and the foreign
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 7: press left loans. My bureau chief had stayed, uh, you know,
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 7: other journalists had stayed. I came back, the Washington post
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 7: came back to New York times, the financial times, the
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 7: guardian and so forth. We start reporting more and more
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 7: sensitive stories, so to speak, because, you know, it's a
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 7: war and it's the most, that's, that is the topic.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 7: It is basically all there is to report on really, uh,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 7: not really sort of, you know, a museum opening in Moscow,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 7: but the war effort, um, I reported a story on
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 7: how Putin was getting information from the front and making.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: Decisions about the war.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 7: Went to Pskov, which hosts the 76th Division of the
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 7: Russian Airborne Forces, which had occupied Bucha in Ukraine and
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 7: committed a series of war crimes. So I was doing
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 7: stories that, you know, we would consider probably, you know,
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 7: either brave or reckless given the sensitivity, but not something
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 7: that we would consider to be espionage.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: At the end of 2022, Putin.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 7: Addressed the FSB, which used to be the KGB, Russia's
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 7: domestic intelligence agency, and told them that they needed to
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 7: catch a spy.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: Three months later, I'm arrested. I was working on a
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: whole bunch of.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 7: Stories at that point, but the story I'm arrested while
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 7: doing is about, as you said, basically Russia was switching to.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: A complete war footing.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 7: The war wasn't going as well as it wanted to,
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 7: and Ukraine was telegraphing a large counteroffensive for the summer
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 7: of 23rd. It was saying it was going to drive
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 7: to the south, split Russian lines between Crimea and the east,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 7: and that way be able to get back to the
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 7: negotiating table. The Biden administration and European countries were backing
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 7: that as a tactic, but nobody was really reporting on
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 7: or discussing the fact that Russia was saying, well, we're
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 7: going to defend the land that we've occupied. They were
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 7: building four defensive lines. They were switching their economy to
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 7: military footing. And My colleague and I at the journal
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 7: were planning on doing a story about this.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: And so we're doing this story. We're connecting with different sources.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 7: And he has a source who is a union boss
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 7: in the Urals for various factories and said that, you know,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 7: he'd be able to help. You know, with this story,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 7: he had helped my colleague before and actually journals from
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 7: NPR and other places.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: And he said he could meet in person.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 7: And so that's where the sting really begins is that
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 7: I'm the one who's learned to go to this meeting.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: At that meeting, we talk about basically.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 7: How we wanted to get a view into how Russia's
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 7: main tank factory was basically increasing its output. And so
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 7: really what we were trying to do was get a
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 7: sense of how much they were prepping. So one of
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 7: the sources I was talking to was a lawmaker in
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 7: the region who was talking about how students were being
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 7: sent right from universities into all the factories. They were
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 7: working three shifts around the clock. You know, it wasn't
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 7: just this guy. But this guy at this meeting suggested
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 7: that one of the things that would be interesting to
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 7: me would be the total capacity output of the factory
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 7: would be interesting to us.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: And I say, yeah, yeah, yeah. Turns out that is.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 7: What Russia considers classified information because we don't have a
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 7: sense of what a tank factory could produce. And I,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 7: by saying, yeah, that does sound interesting, have agreed to
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 7: receive it. Second meeting, There's the actual sting. When we meet,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 7: he brings papers that he's drawn official tables of production
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 7: figures onto, hands them to me. And that's when masked
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 7: men storm in and arrest me. Lo and behold, from
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 7: the FSB, the service that is responsible for espionage cases,
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 7: they march in, tell me I'm under arrest. And as
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 7: I'm being, as they're approaching to drag me on the ground,
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 7: I noticed that the source is stepping away into the crowd.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 7: When I'm brought to the station, I'm simply handed my
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 7: espionage charges. I'm not interrogated. I'm not tortured. And so
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 7: at that moment, I realized, oh, this was a setup.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 7: This was a sting. And I assume for a specific
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 7: reason to, as the Russians call it, to stock up their,
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 7: what they say, their exchange fund. The Russians use journalists
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 7: as cover for their intelligence operatives still. We banned that
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 7: practice back in 1977, codified it as policy in 1997,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 7: but they still do. And I think, you know, Where
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 7: I basically landed on is, you know, they're ordered to
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 7: catch a spy.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: They're trying to find more Americans to swap.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 7: It turns out when I get out, I find that
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 7: they were running a second sting operation at the same time,
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 7: which had to do with the story I was doing
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 7: about Wagner, the paramilitary group at the time. So I
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 7: think they were looking for different ways to set me
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 7: up at that point.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I mean, clearly they wanted you for a swap.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 3: They may have also not liked what you were doing
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 3: and how you were doing it. You're a Russian speaker,
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 3: parents born in the Soviet Union. Maybe that raises other suspicions.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: You go to prison and you're in this world where
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 3: you're kind of reporting. It's interesting. You get access that
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: no reporter usually gets. to FSB officers, to other prisoners,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 3: to prison guards. The war is kind of a constant
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 3: background noise, right? It's on the state media that is
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 3: on television in your cell. Some of the convicts are
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 3: debating whether to take the offer to go to the front.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 3: so that they can break their sentence, knowing that they
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: might just be put in the meat grinder. Obviously, people
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: are not being totally candid with you because they think
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: the authorities might be listening in prison. But what did
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 3: you surmise about Russian attitudes about the war and about
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 3: what Putin has done, where he's taken Russia, based on
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: your conversations with everybody ranging from you know, FSB officials
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: to common criminals to people who are in prison for
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 3: their views on the war?
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, on the first part about the reporting exercise,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 7: just for, you know, listeners who might have not gotten
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 7: to the book yet or read anything about the book,
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 7: I basically, I had wanted to do a book already because,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 7: you know, I was one of the last foreign reporters
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 7: on the ground, rush of news gathering from, you know,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 7: reports to news analysis to blog posts. it's hard to
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 7: capture how much Russia is really drastically going off a
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 7: cliff in this sort of autocratic descent, return to its
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 7: kind of, you know, the normal way its government had
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 7: gone about doing things after kind of like the blip
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 7: of the 90s, so to speak. And I was thinking
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 7: of characters for a book to memorialize this period, follow
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 7: their lives, how their lives had changed. And then I
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 7: get arrested. Some of those characters have ended up in
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 7: this book. But when I get arrested and realize that's
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 7: for a swap, you know, I'm treated better than some
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 7: other people there. You know, the warden checks in on
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 7: me before the U.S. ambassador comes to visit on state television.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 7: I hear news programs talking about how they had to
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 7: replenish their exchange fund. You know, it all becomes clear
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 7: that I'm not really being treated as a spy.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: That's not what they're concerned about.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 7: They just needed an asset, a bargaining chip. And so
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 7: a coping mechanism that I had was essentially, well, this
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 7: place is interesting. There's nothing much I can do about this.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 7: Swap deals take a while. Brittany Griners, who some people
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 7: might remember, the WNBA player, her swap took 10 months.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 7: But most take more than a year and a half.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 7: Some take two years, some take up to five. And
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 7: so I thought, well, I'm going to be here for
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 7: a bit. And a coping mechanism was reporting on the place.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 7: Reporters don't really get to waltz into the FSB offices
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 7: every day. Or like you said, Ben, meet regular, this
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 7: many regular Russian players criminals or soldiers who had fought
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 7: in Ukraine and so forth. I mean, the state of
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 7: affairs when I got to Russia in 2017 was already
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 7: then this notion of kind of apathy. I think Russians
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 7: take umbrage with that word because apathy sort of.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: Makes it seem as if they've checked out on their
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: own volition.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 7: And some would argue that they've checked out because Putin's
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 7: government made clear that they should check out politically. And
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 7: it's always felt like you know, there's maybe a third
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 7: of society is really tapped into what's going on and
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 7: two thirds are not.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: And when it came to the war, especially, you know.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 7: When criticizing the war is criminalized, you can land in
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 7: prison for 10 years for criticizing the war. And I
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 7: met a teenager in prison who had spray painted four
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 7: anti-war words on a government building in protest and ended
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 7: up with a double digit sentence for defacing a government
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 7: building and committing a terrorist act and so on. that
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 7: tells you the real fear that exists in Russia to
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 7: really speak out. And so when a pollster calls you
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 7: and asks what you think of the war, you know,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 7: you might not, you might reserve your better judgment. And
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 7: I think both from, you know, there's interesting kinds of
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 7: pollsters working in Russia. Keith Gessner, the New Yorker, wrote
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 7: about these different kinds of pollsters that spread it up,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 7: trying to really do this more creatively through focus groups,
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 7: asking questions, kind of tangential questions. To me, it seems
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 7: like there's something like 15% of people who are really, really,
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 7: really pro-war 15% of people who are really, really, really
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 7: anti-war and something like two thirds that are a silent
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 7: majority that we can't really tell. Maybe they like Putin,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 7: but they don't like the war. Maybe they are for
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 7: the war, but they actually don't like Putin. They just,
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 7: you know, or maybe they don't want to think about
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 7: it at all. Or maybe they think the war is
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 7: totally bad, but they won't speak out about it. Um,
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 7: and that was the kinds of people I met in
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 7: prison too, including prison guards, uh, uh, I got in
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 7: a conversation with the prison guard and, you know, I
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 7: asked him what he thought about the war and he,
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 7: he kind of, you know, gave me a little smile and,
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 7: and a nod. And I said, I understand, you know,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 7: because he has to wear an audio, an audio recorder
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 7: and a video recorder whenever he's moving a prisoner around.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 7: And he had that on me and he, he can't
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 7: speak out loud. I, with another prison guard, once we
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 7: were having a cigarette and there was a third prison,
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 7: a second prison guard. And we started talking about Putin
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 7: with the first and the second one just turned on
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 7: his heels and walked off as far as he could, uh,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 7: because he didn't want to be anywhere near this, uh,
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 7: no matter what we were saying. Uh, so I, I,
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 7: I think it's, it's, it's a black box. That's really
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 7: hard to get a true view into. Um, but I
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 7: think that silent majority is really key in terms of
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 7: understanding what might happen after Putin.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: Eventually, uh, it doesn't necessarily have to remain this way.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, in going beyond even the war and Putin, um,
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 3: you know, you're in good company, um, Solzhenitsyn was in
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: prison in Russia. Dostoevsky was in prison in Russia. And
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 3: you also clearly had some affection. You create a composite
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 3: of your cellmates at the prison you're at outside of Moscow.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 3: But clearly you had some affection for this person or
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 3: these people that you were forced into such intimate quarters
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 3: with in a cell. My question for you is, as
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 3: someone who has a Russian background, speaks fluent Russian, is
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 3: fascinated by this country, What did you learn about Russians
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 3: from being imprisoned with them? Is there something you learned
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 3: on the inside that you could not have learned, you know,
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 3: in Moscow or even traveling on reporting trips?
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 7: You know, I, yeah, I have this dual, kind of
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 7: dual identity since when I was a kid. I grew
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 7: up in a Russian-speaking home with a Russian name at home, Vanya,
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 7: which is Ivan. Evan is the American name. We step out,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 7: you know, at home it's Russian food, Soviet cartoons. You
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 7: step out into the world and there it's American pop
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 7: culture and an American name.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: English.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 7: And in prison, it kind of felt like it was
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 7: my Russian side in prison, right?
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: I think it was also another coping mechanism.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: You kind of became your Russian side. You became Vanya.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 7: I became Vanya completely, basically. Evan was left somewhere out there.
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 7: I'm watching the news, reading the news about him. And
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 7: a journalist is usually the one observing the news, isn't
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 7: the main character in a story, the subject of the story.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 7: And suddenly, my position in life has flipped upside down.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 7: And I think I kind of was, you know, in
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 7: the cell, we speak Russian. I'm referred to by my
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 7: Russian name. The U.S. ambassador came once a month and
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 7: I spoke one hour of English. And actually over the months,
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 7: I started, you know, in the 11th month, the 12th month,
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 7: I started being, it was hard to recall certain English words,
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 7: you know, which is a total tangent on how insane language,
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 7: you know, emigres Russian or Chinese or Mexican will forget
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 7: some language, you know, some words over the years. My
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 7: parents don't remember all Russian words. That's a kind of,
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 7: you know, a total fascinating thing about the plasticity of language.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 7: But so I become my Russian self. And I, you know,
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 7: one thing that I really felt was this kind of,
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 7: you know, there's this sort of majestic terror of an
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 7: autocratic regime.
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: It's immovable. There's nothing you can really, you know, I
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: couldn't do anything about my situation. I'm there.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 7: I can't change anything. Obviously, my case is fabricated, but 99.7%
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 7: of Russian people.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: End in a conviction.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 7: So you're sort of being passed along down the conveyor
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 7: belt of this rubber stamping court. And you have to,
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 7: how you kind of handle it is with dark humor.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 7: And my cellmates handled it with that way. It's kind
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 7: of resignation and dark joke. And that's depressing, obviously. But
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 7: I think it's a kind of way to deal with this. And,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 7: you know, I think one thing about Russians is that,
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 7: you know, their history is much more tragic, but they're
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 7: a bit more They're a bit more grounded and able
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 7: to sort of swim with these various currents that go
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 7: around them. And there's something that I could really relate
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 7: to about that. And they try to keep living in
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 7: a way. But, you know, also interesting, you know, my cellmate,
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 7: I thought sometimes it can be really, you know, some
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 7: of these decisions can be really conscious. So my cellmate,
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 7: one of my cellmates was, had tried basically normal office work,
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 7: was not making much money. wasn't able to move up
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 7: in the career. There's not, you know, the job market
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 7: isn't that great. After Crimea, the economy is sort of
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 7: grinding to a slow stagnation with all the sanctions that
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 7: have been imposed on it. And he's like, well, you know,
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 7: Putin and his regime are up to corruption and crime.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: Why can't the rest of us?
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 7: And so he made a conscious decision to become a
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 7: professional criminal because, you know, sort of if the big
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 7: man is doing it, Why do I need to follow
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 7: the rules? And, you know, I think, I mean, I
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 7: hate these direct comparisons, but we're watching our administration in
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 7: the US, the norms that are being violated on what,
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 7: you know, what kind of money you're allowed to be
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 7: making while you're in office and foreign deals and so
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 7: on and so forth. And we kind of become inoculate
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 7: to that. And you can, I think, you know, more
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 7: and more people find it kind of comfortable. You know, there's...
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 7: if the norms shift, so be it. So I found
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 7: that really interesting too. I think like, you know, our
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 7: norms are malleable and I think Russians have, you know,
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 7: they've had this tragic, difficult history and they kind of
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 7: find ways to exist in it.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 3: It's interesting because you sometimes become more Russian and, I'm
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 3: sure that allows you to see the experience of Russians
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 3: through different eyes. And then part of what you're seeing
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 3: is people who are both coping and in some cases
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 3: adapting to the kind of enterprise that they're living under.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 3: There's one other thing I want to ask you that
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 3: I actually meant to ask you the other day and
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 3: I didn't get to it, which is you kind of
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 3: allude to this at the end. So you go through
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 3: this extreme experience, you weather it, but it's not obviously
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 3: with that difficulty anymore. Then you're released in this dramatic swap.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 3: But part of what you're realizing is, you know, one,
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 3: you're leaving behind Russia. You don't know if and when
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 3: you'll be able to set foot on this, you know, cursed,
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 3: beautiful land again. Two, obviously, you've been to this extreme
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 3: circumstance of reporting in dangerous places and getting apprehended. Do
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 3: you think about, as you've kind of processed reentry, what
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 3: and how you're going to find that kind of, I
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 3: don't mean to be pejorative about it, but that thrill
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 3: that you probably got in reporting in a dangerous place
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 3: and taking risks, right?
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: Because you clearly.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 3: Like the, you know, every foreign correspondent I know likes
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 3: to kind of be on that line that you're on,
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 3: you know, like I'm taking some risks, but it's worth it.
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 3: Prison itself was an extreme experience. Now you're back, I imagine,
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 3: and kind of on the one hand, loving the mundane
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 3: nature of day-to-day life. But do you think to yourself, like,
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 3: where am I going to find that next act that
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 3: is both thrilling and rewarding for me after what I've
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 3: been through?
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great question.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 7: I mean, there's really, I guess, two questions there and
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 7: two points to make. The first one about Russia is
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 7: just that, you know, I am Russian American. I.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 7: Uh, moved there with no illusions about the Russian state
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 7: at that point. It occupied Crimea, Eastern Ukraine, murdered people
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 7: like Boris Nemtsov in the street on a Polakovsky journalist. Uh, the,
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 7: when I was arrested, it was shock, not surprised, shocked
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 7: that they would cross this red line, not surprised in
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 7: terms of the.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: Logic of the regime.
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 7: And I, you know, I feel like somewhat part of
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 7: the people, right. I'm not a citizen of Russia. I
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 7: I met some of the best friends I've ever had
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 7: in my life there. My girlfriend there, I became an
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 7: adult there. And so I think a country is much
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 7: more complex, uh, and greater than just simply the, uh, the, what,
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 7: what it, it's government might be up to at any
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 7: given moment. Um, and so, yeah, you know, I don't
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 7: think there's this change suddenly of, Oh, I never want
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 7: to go back to Russia again. I can't go back
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 7: while he's alive, but you know, we'll see what happens
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 7: one day. And it's a, history's long, and maybe there
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 7: will be a moment where there's a free Russian, like
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 7: the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny was, you know, dreaming of,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 7: and a lot of other Russians and his supporters, the
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 7: tens of thousands of people who support him and the
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 7: thousands who came out to his funeral in Russia, even amid,
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 7: you know, the draconian.
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: Measures that are going on there.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 7: The other side in terms of, yeah, this sort of
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 7: foreign correspondent nature, I think, you know, foreign correspondents aren't
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 7: the only ones that feel this way. I mean, I
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 7: think you and your job probably felt this way leaving
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 7: government too, after, you know, traveling the world, being at
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 7: the heart of things, making these decisions, and suddenly we
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 7: become what reporters, podcasters, columnists.
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 3: That's probably the reason I asked the question.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 5: Exactly.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: And I think, I think it's this kind of comedown.
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 7: I think what it is, is I think addiction in
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 7: a way comes from the repetition. You are used to
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 7: that kick. So People were asking me when I got out,
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 7: what were you craving?
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: What did you want to eat?
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 7: And I'd lost my cravings because I, you know, I
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 7: wasn't thinking about sushi because I couldn't order it off
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 7: Uber Eats every two weeks. And so the craving isn't
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 7: being satisfied. Yeah, you learn to look forward to other things.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 7: So I was looking forward to when my lawyer would
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 7: visit each week to when I would go on my
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 7: walk each day. to when my friends would send in fresh,
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 7: you know, fruits and vegetables. And, you know, I actually
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 7: made guacamole in prison because they sent in fresh avocados
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 7: and red onions and whatnot. And I was able to,
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 7: that was like, that guacamole was the best thing I'd
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 7: eaten in forever. And so I wasn't, like the cravings
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 7: go away. And I think it's the same thing with
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 7: this kind of.
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: Work.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 7: At the beginning, I was thinking about it a lot
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 7: and I was exploring that in the book of sort
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 7: of this, wow, Hooten and, you know, the FSB stole
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 7: this from me. They stole this, But where I've come
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 7: to is like, I'm a journalist again. I've got back
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 7: to reporting at the Journal. And some of the stories
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 7: we were working on and that I was helping do
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 7: over the summer were fascinating in their own right without
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 7: having to go to the front lines. We did a
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 7: story on how actually the Biden administration was deciding whether
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 7: to give the UAE chips for its AI program, which
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 7: was a big debate given the UAE does work with
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 7: China and Russia. And should we cede this technology that
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 7: we have to them? ended up being a CIA operation
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 7: to make this decision. It was a fascinating story. Then
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 7: we did a story on how the Trumps were building
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 7: a new tower in Tbilisi with the help of a
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 7: sanctioned oligarch, U.S.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: Sanctioned oligarch.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 7: Anyway, I think finding other things that give you some
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 7: sort of, maybe not thrill, but make life interesting.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: Curiosity.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 3: Curiosity is like a virtue that can fill a lot
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 3: of space. Well, look, Evan, it's been great talking to
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 3: you again. Everybody should read, I mean, your glimpses of
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 3: prison life that you just mentioned are fascinating in their
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 3: own right. It's also like a detective story. It's a
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 3: prison story. It's a story about what's happened to Russia.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 3: So thank you so much for writing it. And thank
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 3: you for spending some time with us today.
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: Thanks again, Ben. It was two great conversations. Proud to
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: have a second one.
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: I really enjoyed it.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Evan for joining the show. And thanks to
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: you all for listening. And we will talk to you soon.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: Pod Save the World is a Crooked Media production. Our
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: show is produced by Alona Minkowski, Michael Goldsmith, and Anisha Banerjee.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Kenny Moffitt,
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: David Tolles, and Ryan Young. Our staff is proudly unionized
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: with the Writers Guild of America East.