Full Episode -The Blue Wave Is Building… But How Big Will It Be? + 25 Years After 9/11: How The Attack Reshaped America

0:00This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. 30 years ago, an island off Manhattan almost brought down New York City. Who will you trust? Your friends and neighbors? Who will you trust the people five miles overseas? This is a story about neighbors turning on each other. And what happens when a forgotten place decides it's had enough. But we're not stopping, are we? Listen to revisionist history, the Staten Island problem on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode of the Chuck Toddcast is brought to you by chapter. Now almost everything you hear about Medicare is somebody quietly trying to steer you somewhere. And you're skeptical of that. And as you should be, I get it. I mean, there's a federal lawsuit going on right now over exactly this. Companies that branded themselves as unbiased while allegedly pointing people toward whatever would pay them the most as some sort of broker.

1:01So if your default is to distrust everyone in this space, honestly, I get it. I'm a bit distrustful these days myself. That's the whole reason I want to tell you about chapter. They're independent Medicare advisors whose entire model is that their advisors are not paid to push anyone plant. They're just trying to help. Yes, there's compensation that goes with it, but it's across the board is what they're trying to do. At the end of the day, they're advocating for you. They're not the insurance companies themselves. They're an actual person who actually goes through your doctors, your prescriptions, your needs, and then compares them to every single plan available to find the best one that will work for you and hopefully send it to you a couple dollars too. And here's the part that sets chapter apart. They don't disappear once you've been enrolled. They will keep advocating for you. They're kind of like almost like a concierge service. You're just there. I need to help. You're like customer service, you know, the plan, you know, help me navigate this again. So you ever get hit with a wrongful medical bill?

2:02They'll help you fight it. They want to stay an advocate for you even after you've done this. So look, I get it. I think there's all sorts of space. You see a lot of people are throwing themselves in this healthcare space. When I like about these chapter folks, I've spent time with them. This is a very transparent organization. It is Medicare and all of its affiliated stuff can be very confusing. The whole point of this is to make this easier and less confusing. Okay. So look, take the skepticism you already have in all of this. Point it at your own plan for 20 minutes. It's free. There's no pressure and then call chapter today at 9807343985. Hello there and welcome to the Thursday edition of the Chuck Todd Cast. The first September edition, we are coming to you by the time you're listening to this. We'll be somewhere either right at 60 days until the midterms or 59, depending if you delay the day.

3:08And I got a packed episode for you. We're going to hit a lot of big themes, including some new midterm analysis. And a couple of deep dyes that I've gone into that I think help gave me a clearer picture of the battle for the Senate in particular. I want to share with that. We had another primary night on Tuesday. Got a few takeaways from that, but we also have more specific data on, on overall turnout during the primaries. It's incredibly important to leave to read. I've been sharing that with you as well. We've got a crisis of five alarm fire at the Pentagon. I want to get into that. And we've got a broken house. And I'll explain that my interview for this episode Brian Nappenberger. He is the writer and director of a new documentary that's on Netflix right now. It just hit as we published as we published this episode. It is the 20.

4:08It is essentially the documentary that every Netflix subscriber is going to have an opportunity to watch on the 25th anniversary of 9-11. And this is sort of generation 9-11. It's called Turning Point Generation 9-11. And what Nappenberger did with this doc was try to try to both capture the feelings of the moment, which is I would argue nearly impossible. I've certainly got a lot of, a lot of my own feelings that I didn't feel were captured there, but I didn't expect it to be. But what was more important is sort of how 9-11 impacted a generation of young Americans who were maybe five or six when, when it hit and are now more than coming of age. And those were the conversations that certainly hit pretty hard there. So it's definitely we have a very robust conversation about 9-11 and it's legacy and where it stands and it's just, you know, for those of us that were went through it, those of us, you know, that day is still.

5:09I was at the Watergate, publishing a hotline that day. I'll never forget a staffer named Court Ruddy who was, you know, as soon as we heard the Pentagon was hit. He just looked around the corner and was trying to, because you could see we were right on the Potomac, you could see the Potomac from our offices. And he was looking to see if he could see the smoke from the Pentagon. And we didn't know what else to do, but we kept publishing. And that's what we did, because I, you know, it was easy. It was like we had to keep ourselves busy. I made sure we, you know, everybody called their parents, called their loved ones, let them know everything was okay. But my offices were right across street from the Saudi Embassy. So to say that everybody was a little bit nervous as an understatement. I spent my evening driving as many people home as I could, because I didn't want anybody on the metro. I'm taking a subway, taking public transportation. Because I, you know, we were all, that's what people forget about that day as we were convinced this was only the beginning. And perhaps it's still the most remarkable aspect of all that is that that was not it ended up being the beginning middle and end.

6:12And yet we have scar tissue from wars that still feel like they haven't ended on that. I'll have a new top five list, hot off the presses on where things stand in the Senate. As I said, I have a pretty clear picture now. And then of course, week one, the, the, the track, the University of Miami's campaign to prove to the world, they are the best team in college football, the best program in college football, that we are building something that is sustainable and bigger and better than those two overrated conferences. Called the big 10 in the SEC. So I'll give you a little bit of my exclusive Miami preview. Who else is going to give you Chuck Todd's preview of the University of Miami football season? And then I have a couple words about the angels and Steve Balmer and co-I Leonard in the Clippers. But look, I know why you tune in. Let's start with the midterms. Because I think we now have what may be the most important political tea leaf we've gotten all year.

7:13Bottom line is this a democratic wave is building what we don't know is how big it's going to be. And that's why I'm using the word building. I'm not telling you there's going to be a democratic wave or a tsunami in November. We're still two months away. There's still things that can happen. Campaigns matter, debates matter, candidates matter, those things matter. But if you're looking for actual evidence that a wave is forming. You know, we just don't know this is this is going to be a hurricane. But is it a category one or a category five? The best piece of evidence we have right now is overall primary turnout. And it's not simply the comparison of and this is the total number basically the Democrats won the midterm primaries. Hard stop. What do I mean by that? More Democrats showed up to vote in democratic primaries than Republicans showed up to vote in Republican primaries. It is about the most important stat you can have in your pocket to try to project what's going to have in November.

8:13And it's not just what happened this cycle. It's how it compares to 2022, 2018 and 2014. So stick with me here. John Cuvillion, Republican data analytics guy and sort of one of the best modelers out there in the Republican side of the aisle. He's a frequent contributor to our election night live streams that I do with DDHQ and Chris Liza. He was on again on Tuesday night. But he's a must follow on on X if you're a political junkie. He is you know, yes, he works on one side of the aisle. His X feed is not just part is isn't about just promoting stuff. He's just the data guy and you learn so much of it. Well, he's been tracking this very closely. The partisan primary turnout across the country state by stating updated his numbers through the Massachusetts primary from Tuesday night and democratic turnout overall is running about according to John about 35% higher than it was for Democrats in 2022. As for Republican turnout, it's down about 4% from 2022.

9:14Overall, primary turnout is up 14% but all of that rise and turnout is due to Democrats showing up in the primaries. That alone should get your attention. But then you compare it with 2018, right? Remember 2022 was the red Mirage, right? The web wave that didn't form, but it was still a Republican leaning year and primary turnout told us it was going to be a Republican leaning year. But let's compare it to 2018. 2018 was a pretty decent democratic wave. I say decent. It got 40 seats for for Democrats, but they did lose two Senate seats. And Democratic primary turnout this year is running 25% higher than it ran in 2018. And Republican turnout this year is also above 2018 for what it's worth 14%. So we have greater engagement overall in both parties for this midterm then before, but it is supercharged on the Democratic side. And overall turnout is 20% higher compared from 2026 through to 2018. But here's one more number I'm going to come back to of the people voting in one of the two major party primary so far this year.

10:23Democrats are accounting for about 56% of all voters, right? In 2022, they were 40% of all voters in the blue wave 2018 election. Democrats were 54%. And then if you go back to 2014, Republicans were 55%. So you see, right, it is a foreshadowing mechanism. What whichever primary party is more enthusiastic in during the primary season is usually the party that comes out ahead in November. What we don't know is how much do they come out ahead, right? But that pattern you go back to 2014 Republicans won the primary turnout game. They picked up seats. It was a it was a base. It was a reddish wave. 2018, the Democrats won the primary turnout game. They gain seats 2022 Republicans won the turnout. They won the turnout. They narrowly were able to get control of the house. So it's that trend line that should really get your attention.

11:23Now look, somebody may clip this and say Chuck Todd's already declared blue wave is here. Look, there are plenty of ways that this could both be correct and still be a tropical storm rather than a category three. Every three hurricane, right? And I think that's a fair thing. It is a tea leaf. That's what it is. But it is better than any poll that's out there. Because this is measuring actual people who showed up to the polls. And if you show up in a primary, you're definitely showing up in a general. Right. And that's why this matter. So it's already Democrats are ahead of the Republicans when it comes to general election turnout. Look, I'm a huge believer in looking for election indicators that don't ask voters what they're going to do. But instead, just to you get to observe what they actually did, right? That's special elections. That's fundraising. That's voter registration. And that's turned out because it's the behavior that matters.

12:27People will tell a pollster anything, but voting is voting. And so when you compare 2026 to 2022 and then 2018 and 2014. I just think it absolutely crystallizes that, oh, a wave is blue wave is building. What we don't know is how big this sucker is going to get. But look, the ingredients for one are clearly there, right? Republicans have to worry about the next two months. And it's, you know, they're going to be playing a lot of defense. And I'm going to get more to that in a minute. Now let's talk about Massachusetts voted this week. Next week, we've got New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Delaware. And then mercifully, we're basically done with primary season. What did we quickly learn in Massachusetts? We just say, look, the old guards in trouble, but they hung on, you know, Massachusetts in some ways is a, it's, it almost behaves. It's politics behaves kind of machine-ish like. And it's still kind of an old guy, you know, it's been chipped away at. And the, and the, I think the Massachusetts Democratic Party is in the middle of a, of being remade.

13:32But it's not completely there yet, right? That's why Richie Neal survived. That's why Stephen Lynch survived. Ed Markey is sort of, you know, he's really good at sort of moving where things are. But Seth Moulton, I think Markey could have lost another type of candidate, another type of campaign. Seth Moulton just didn't run that campaign. And he was the wrong candidate. Look, there are two significant things to watch. And next week's primaries, New Hampshire and Delaware, we got the center, Senate primaries, both on the Democratic side, Republican side. This is the C. Jeanne Shaheen is vacating. Chris Papis, the likely Democratic nominee is suddenly looking over his left shoulder. There is a progressive challenger that has gotten a little bit of traction and at least one poll we've seen. But I always want to be careful. University of New Hampshire polling has been a mess. They've been a mess all over. And so I don't, I would be, let's not overrate it completely. You also have two senators running against each other, two former senators, Johnson, and in Scott Brown.

14:33By the way, this is like the 18th time, I think Republicans have had multiple former US senators running in primaries in New Hampshire. Bob Smith and Johnson, you know, I think ran once again. I think Bob Smith and Scott Brown ran against each other once or whatever. But Sunoon is likely to come out on top. The Sunoon who name is still gold in that state, particularly in a Republican primary. And we'll see. I think Johnson, who in any other camp year would be a formidable general election opponent, it's an uphill battle in this environment. Because of the national of the national wins. But I do want to do a little bit of a dive here in the Senate and give you a little taste of what I wrote about this week, both for my column that appears both in news fear and in substack. I spent a lot of time essentially trying to look at some different ways that the battle for the Senate could get impacted. And I'll be honest, I have one idea of where I think the Senate's going and then I did this deep dive and on gubernatorial races and their impact on Senate races over the last 20 years over the 21st century.

15:41And I ended up coming to a different conclusion about which seats I think are more likely to flip and which ones aren't. So I want to make an argument that's going to sound that it's incorrect at first. But I believe this control of the United States Senate may ultimately be decided not by any Senate races, but by three governors races, Michigan, Texas, and Iowa. So stick with me here. Because what I went and did is did a bunch of sort of data analysis on this. And by the time I finished, I changed my mind about which state I think might be the Democrats last legitimate path to a Senate majority. If the wheels fall off in Michigan. Well, let me establish the map here for Democrats have any conversation about Senate control. They have to, you know, they already have to have a really good night on the East Coast, right? So the for the purposes of this exercise, I'm going to assume that they're going to find a way to win under this environment North Carolina main Ohio and Alaska.

16:41I don't want folks to sit here and assume I've already predicted this, but I'm going to, I'm going to, because those for our heck of a lot easier for Democrats to win in this environment. Then the next couple of Senate seats that they would need if for some reason they didn't get one of those four. So, and I know particularly Ohio and Alaska main, we're not going to say they're gimme's I think North Carolina. That definitely feels like that's that's going to flip to the Democrats. I'm pretty bullish about Democrats in Ohio because I think the anti tech atmosphere that's there. I think Vivek Ramaswami being a so closely associated with tech, let alone Elon Musk, let alone Donald Trump. I think that's a negative three for I think he's I think he is going to be a huge drag on the ticket, not a not a small drag on the ticket. And I think that's going to be that I think it's I can't believe I'm saying this. I think there's going to be a Democratic sweep. You know, Ohio, because of this unusual combination of just anger at tech and literally Ramaswami being the exact wrong avatar Republicans could have at this moment.

17:47Right. Here's a somebody who is just embedded in the tech community. And I, you know, I don't know how he punches his way out of this, but we'll see. Look, you know, we're not even talking about Senate control if they can't flip those four. So we're going to start there. And if they flip that flip all four of those, then of my three states, Michigan, Texas and Iowa, then Michigan is sort of the first big challenge, right? As Michigan is now the firewall for the Democrats. They flipped those four North Carolina Ohio, Maine and Alaska. And they hold Michigan. Texas and Iowa, no matter they've got their Senate control, but if they lose Michigan, then they have to find another Republican seat. And it is that next category of of targets that Democrats have in the Republican Senate, Texas, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska. That's just another level of difficulty. A lot of those states, you can see a path, the 47% for Democrats. It gets really hard to go find those last three points in those states. A lot harder to find them there.

18:52Then in say Alaska, where Mary Patelo in the first round of voting already got to 49 or a place like Maine that has elected plenty of Democrats, the state Kamala Harris carried or a place like Ohio or shared brown has recently won or a place like North Carolina or a Rorquiper is one plenty. But Michigan becomes a firewall situation, which means Democrats would have to win it. They lose Michigan. They'd have to win a Senate seat in a state they haven't even carried for president since Barack Obama or one. That they haven't carried for president since Jimmy Carter. Okay, that's the map they're staring at here. But before I get to those three states, there's one of the Senate race that I don't think Republican leaders expected to be spending September thinking about in that South Carolina. Darling Graham survived a Republican runoff against Ralph Norman, lastly barely right 5248. And remember what it took for Republicans to drag her across the finish line. Donald Trump had a personally intervene. He went to South Carolina. I think I had to spend heavily president, put his political capital behind Graham in a way that he hadn't done for anybody else on the ballot this year. And she survived.

19:59So you would think, all right, South Carolina, Republican state. All's good, right? Nope. Because Ralph Norman who lost that runoff is still pretty bitter. He got up and said we thought hard the voters are spoken and now let's go beat the Democrats. Nope, that isn't what he did. Ralph Norman hasn't done that yet. He was asked this week what he would tell South Carolina voters who haven't made up their mind in November. And you know what his answer was? This is what he told the Greenville news vote for Ralph Norman. Now technically Norman is not announcing some organized writing candidacy. There are South Carolina election law issues actually involved here. They have sore loser laws. But politically that's almost besides the point, right? The Republican nominee just 15248 and the guy who got 48% is not telling his voters to quote come home to the Republican. He's telling them that vote for him basically sit the race out right in somebody else. Don't vote for either Graham or any Andrews, the Democratic nominee.

20:59And then Norman continues to criticize Trump's intervention in the primary called it shocking. Look, we all get why Norman intervene. Why Norman's upset because if Trump doesn't intervene, Norman is the Republican nominee. But Ralph Norman had to know that at some point Donald Trump was going to exact revenge on him because Ralph Norman endorsed Nikki Haley in the presidential race in 2024, not Donald Trump. That said, Norman claims he's still really supportive of Trump. But he's still upset because I just don't understand why the president decided to get involved and I'm like, you really don't know how personal he takes everything. There's both a personal in the positive with the grams and a personal in the negative with you, Mr. Norman, who chose to support opponent. Now good on you for doing it. Right. You you you didn't back down you weren't afraid, but we know how Donald Trump operates. But if you've got him going out there and you're the Democrats, do you decide to try to take advantage of this? Do you you start to maybe run some some ads and in the most conservative parts of the state, you know, sort of amplifying Ralph Norman's comments, questioning why, you know, because there's already a bunch of conservatives in South Carolina who were never big Lindsey Graham fans.

22:19Any Andrews isn't going to be able to convince those folks to vote for any Andrews, but she might be able to convince those folks not to vote in the center. And Ralph Norman basically just offered up a like it's almost like a book blurb, right? He gave you the blurb to use and paid advertising to give Republican voters the permission slip to not vote for darling Graham. So pretty potentially powerful thing to use there. Now, so we'll see it, but I have a feeling. I think look, look, Lindsey Graham has a, you know, he didn't clear he hasn't cleared 55% I think he cleared 55% and two of his last three elections. So and darling Graham's not Lindsey Graham. I'm not saying, but it's certainly another place where I think Republicans are going to have to spend a little bit of more money and a little bit more time. I don't know if the Democrats have access money. I don't know if they would bother to spend it in South Carolina rather than in say Mississippi or rather than say Kansas, but boy Ralph Norman is just handed them an engraved invitation to start playing around here.

23:34Because if you just get 10% of the Norman vote to vote for a third party candidate or write in Norman's name or skip the Senate race. That's a much, but that's a much more realistic path for any interest to it. Hey, this episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to you by ethos. Look, let me tell you about life insurance. As you know, ethos is is an incredible portal for helping you find the right life insurance policy. I'm a huge believer in life insurance. I wouldn't have gotten to college in Washington, DC without life insurance. My father had a policy buried somewhere that we discovered and it wasn't a lot of money, but it was important. Bucket of money at a time that my mother newly widowed single mom may on 16. It was in of enormous, enormous help at that time. And this is why I believe in life insurance. You don't know what could happen to you in any given day. This is literally an insurance policy for that.

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25:45I'm Eli Rallo and every week we're connecting the dots between books. The internet and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up the story. I'm obsessed. From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments. Nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters and that is the Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives smart pop culture conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much. You're in the right place. Listen to pro society on the I heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. What up y'all this your main man Memphis bleak right here hosted our rock solid podcast and each week we bring in your exclusive looks inside music. Everything happening inside the culture. Some of the best conversations with the biggest names in the game. You had a little bit more pressure to be good. They didn't care if you was a girl like you wasn't getting a point.

26:47Look if you not trash you better be not just going to be great. Or rock solid we talking the rap legends hit making producers rising stars from the golden era to the future this hip hop game. When we keep it 100% unfiltered and keeping nothing but rock solid. The thing about Jay my opinion is he's been so great at being seen but mysterious. She's not saying he don't got to come talk about nothing you figure it out so it's always a mystique and mysteriousness behind them but they like you don't see him. Listen to rock solid on black effect podcast network our heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you string podcast. Welcome to decoding women's health. I'm dr. Elizabeth Pointer chair of women's health and gynecology at the Adriah Health Institute in New York City. On this show I'll be talking to top researchers and top clinicians asking them your burning questions and bringing that information about women's health and midlife directly to you.

27:52100% of women go through menopause it can be such a struggle for our quality of life but even if it's natural why should we suffer through it. The types of symptoms that people talk about is forgetting everything I never used to forget things. They're concerned that one they have dementia and the other one is do I have ADHD. There is unprecedented promise with regard to cannabis and cannabinoids to sleep better to have us pain to have better mood and also to have better day to day life. Listen to decoding women's health with dr. Elizabeth Pointer on the iHeart Radio app Apple podcasts are wherever you're listening now. Dear honeys this is goodbye. In February of 2024 celebrated illustrator and children's book author Patre Mathers and her husband Michael nailed letters to dozens of friends and family members to let them know that they had died by suicide. By the time you get the shalliter both Petra and I will be dead next stop Wonderland.

28:52Patre and Michael were by all accounts healthy happy and in love. Why did they do it and what did it do to the people they left behind. I would have given a million reasons to not leave this world had I known. I keep coming back to a truly hope that Patre was a thousand percent on board with the plan. Do you think of him as having killed her? Yes I do. I hold Michael responsible for my mother's death. I'm Leon Nevock. And I'm Alice Gregory together we set out to interview everyone who got one of Patre and Michael's letters as one married couple trying to understand another listen to death of an artist on the iHeart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Now it brings me back to the three governors races though I wanted to give you that a little update that I just norm and did this on Monday. It's just astonishing. This is a Greenville news which is the paper of record for the part of the state that has been the most skeptical of the grams both Lindsey and Arlene.

29:59So we'll see it's a very Republican part of the state. Any Andrews is not going to do well there. But again it's about splitting voters off. But I want to bring up the governor's races here a little bit because there's also another reminder here you know Washington consistently consistently gets one thing wrong when it comes to the midterms. At least the Washington ecosystem and I say this as somebody who has spent my entire career inside the ecosystem we obsess over Senate races we obsess over the control of house races who's up who's down which seats are going to flip. And in a lot of these states that's not necessarily what voters are talking about right usually if a race has a high profile Senate race and a governor's race nobody even if the Senate races super high profile most of the time. Voters are more concerned and interested in the governor's race especially when it's an open seat. The governor's races in general usually are what I say they make the weather in the state right and part of that is mechanics right the gubernatorial campaign first of the governor's race is usually at the top of the ticket in these midterm years in in most of these ballots.

31:11And the gubernatorial nominee is usually the running the statewide political operation right there usually either in charge of the state party appointed the party chair sort of get control of it it is you know in many ways they're sort of the the lynch pen of the entire turnout operation and field program and things like that. And it's also a reminder that voters treat governor's races where they care about the two candidates. Senate races are usually treated as Jersey you know am I am I am I voting for the red jersey of the blue jersey it's usually less about the person there's exceptions I think Texas and Michigan are exceptions in this case. But governor's races are much more personal so what but what matters here and states where there's both the governor's race in a center race right where the governor's race is you know can impact turnout but more importantly sort of you know can especially in places where you know the gubernatorial nominee is going to outrun the Senate nominee.

32:13How you know how much padding do they need how much can they drag them over the finish line so here's here's a few facts that we already know going it can Paxton is going to run behind Greg Abbott in Texas I do allow say it is probably going to run behind Jocelyn Benson in Michigan and Josh Turek is going to run behind Rob Sand in Iowa. So the question then is what kind of number does Abbott need for Paxton to survive what kind of number does Benson need for Abdul Al-Sahead to survive and what kind of number does Rob Sand need to suddenly get Turek from the dreaded 47% zone over you know over over into the 48 49 or 50 territory that might just be enough to pull it off right. So that's what I wanted to figure out so in order I want to give you a little taste of the research I did so I kind of went backwards I pulled every midterm Senate race going back to 2002.

33:19Where there was also a governor's race on the ballot that I narrowed it down to the genuinely competitive Senate races and I ended up with 46 races total going back to 2002 of competitive Senate races that were running simultaneously with governor's races in that state. And I know 46 is not will approve statistically etc but there were some interesting patterns here right the first one is a pattern that tells you a lot about how our politics have changed over 25 years when you go back to 2002 in 2006 roughly half the states that were holding competitive Senate races and governor's races they actually split between the two parties meaning. There were 22 states in 0 to that had both the governor's race and a Senate race and literally an 11 of them I think it was 11 of them where they split right a Democrat one one the state wide while the Republican won the other. Frankly it was something that used to happen all the time and 0 to 0 6 saw a flurry of them but since 2010 basically since the Obama era the start of the Obama era.

34:28Only about 25% of these midterm races in 2010 2014 2018 in 2022 only about one in four of the states that held both a governor's race and a Senate race did we see a split decision. Ticket splitting hasn't disappeared it's just become less common right we know that the polarization of America has really sort of bounded people to almost voting straight. I think 75% of partisans now vote straight ticket all the time right we can't come up with that figure exactly yet but I think there's I think after this election will be able to have a little bit more way of doing that so that's why I think what the that's why I think these governors races could end up becoming in some ways incredibly impactful on whether they are strong enough campaigns to essentially improve the weather for their ticket. It makes in the Senate race so the other part that I wanted to look at is this how much can the Senate candidate underperform a governor before the party coalition breaks and that Senate candidate loses.

35:41And so I went back to I used three I had a three recent candidates to try to help me figure out what is the penalty for various sins that voters may have for a candidate. Right Mandela Barnes Wisconsin 2022 right Tony Evers gets 51 just over 51% of the vote Barnes got just over 49% of the vote. Which means if there was a two point penalty for being seen as sort of ideologically you know too far out of the mainstream that's what Ron Johnson rain against him and all this stuff. Evers you know there was a two point penalty right there's some small slice of Evers voters decided to cross over and vote for Johnson or they skip the Senate race. And it was obviously Evers you know was it strong enough you know had he gotten 53% of the vote Mandela Barnes probably comes across a finish line. So I looked at that and thought ideological penalty to voters is approximately two points. Jay Jones in Virginia in 2025. Do you remember Jay Jones the scandal you have those text messages where he fantasized about his political opponents getting killed by gunfire.

36:49It was terrible. A lot of people denounced it. Well, there was a voter penalty voters didn't like it right Abigail Spamberger got nearly 58% of the vote statewide Jones got 53% of the vote. So Jones got hit with about a four and a half point penalty, but he won. Okay, so this was scandal play guy. There's a four and a half point penalty from the top of the ticket to him. Now let's go to her. So Walker Georgia 2022 Brian camp gets 53% of the vote. Walker gets about 48.5% of the vote. So call it a five point penalty and her. So Walker right it wasn't one scandal. It was a lot of scandals right it was like it was like a lot of little things. It's a if you notice there right four and a half for Jones five points. So scandal right that was about a five point penalty in Virginia and it was a five point penalty in in Georgia. But in this case Walker lost why well Jones Jones didn't survive because voters forgave him. They did they penalized him and it was the same size penalty that Walker got.

37:57But Jones survived because Spamberger gave him an enormous cushion. Walker takes the same hit and kept wins fairly comfortably for a swing state. But he didn't have enough room to you know he didn't win by enough to drag a flawed candidate like her. So Walker over the finish line. So keep that keep those two numbers in mind right four to five point penalty there both in Virginia and Georgia 2022 2025. That takes me to Texas right that's of the my three examples here. He's the scandal play candidate. So what's the Abbott number got to be to save taxed it. So Paxton takes it is penalized by voters like Jones and Walker. By about four to five points. He's going to need Greg Abbott to win by a big number. Now look at Abbott's last three elections. 2014 he got 59% of the vote 2018 he got 56% of the vote and in 2022 he got just under 55% of the vote.

38:59So if you're Paxton you look at the electoral history of Greg Abbott and you say hmm all right good news is he he's he's hit the cushion. If I'm going to get the five point penalty. All right, you know he's hit it before so that it's possible. But there's something else those Abbott numbers show you Abbott's never Abbott has his trajectories going in one direction down not up right. So is Abbott going to get another 55% or is Abbott going to get 54 53 52. Look three months ago I might have told you that Abbott was that that possibility of Abbott getting a 54 55 was realistic. He had a ton of money. He still has an enormous amount of money. Gina, you know, so is a very good candidate been underfunded. Arguably from the I could argue she's from the wrong part of the state. If she wants to win statewide Austin right the most liberal enclave. But I'd say I'm much less certain now she's been running a terrific race.

39:59Abbott has been running scared. Um, you know, you don't flip on data centers because your polling are doing your polling is so good, right. And obviously now we know Senate Republicans aren't entirely comfortable with the situation. You've heard, I mean, John Thunes posture toward Paxton is telling you something, right. Republican leaders don't need to don't need to believe Texas has suddenly become a blue state. They simply understand the math problem they have. They realize that four to five point candidate penalty when your governor is probably sitting at 54% on these best day these days. Maybe it's survivable. Maybe it isn't. But what happens if the governor gets 52% you got a huge problem. And guess what? I think Abbott's more likely to get 52% not 54% it is this analysis and this deep dive into here. That is suddenly making me a lot more bullish on Tolerico. I mean, I've been watching all these Texas polls. Tolerico's numbers rarely moves. It sits at 47, you know, and a lot of these polls. It's the Paxton number that fluctuates a lot.

41:00But ultimately, you know, I'm going to stick with with what has been a tried and true way to look at this when you look at these past results, you look at sort of trend lines. You know, it's still Abbott's race to lose. I'm not predicting that Abbott's going to lose here, but this is going to be a much closer race. He is running scared. He's got to use all his money for himself. He can't be bailing out the entire Republican ticket. And again, there's a trend line happening here. Right. Abbott's numbers have gone down, even though the fluctuation of right. He did worse in 22 than he did in 2018. The Democrats had a better year in Texas in 2018 than they did in 2022, but Abbott keeps sliding ever so slightly. One more wrinkle here in Texas, the libertarian line. Go back to there's one other candidate. I looked at very closely to try to understand how much voter penalty there is for a scandal playing candidate. Do you remember Todd Aiken, it's a Senate candidate, Missouri 2012. He's the guy that claimed there was not all rape was the same legitimate rape. Go Google it.

42:03The Republican party walked away from totally abandoned it. Mitt Romney was the, this was a presidential year. Mitt Romney walked away. So the entire party had to walk away. Aiken collapsed. But not every Republican voter in Missouri who abandoned Aiken went to Claremont, a bunch of them parked with the libertarian candidate. The libertarian party line got a bigger number in 2012 and Missouri than they'd gotten a long cut. And it's an important thing to think about here because it Texas Republican who cannot bring themselves to vote for Ken Paxton doesn't necessarily have to become a James Taloriko voter. There is another place to go. Texas libertarians normally get something like one to 3% in the center races. What if it's five? What if it's six? Shoot what if it's just four? They're not democratic votes. Those are votes Paxton doesn't have. So there you go. So use this Abbott scale 54 or 55 maybe Paxton can survive. Do we see any evidence that Abbott's going to get 54 or 55 this time or is all those evidence pointing to Abbott somewhere between losing reelectionarily or winning by less than five points with something like 52% of the vote.

43:18I have a very hard time seeing how Paxton survives. Under those circumstances. At 53% I have a feeling we could be in recount territory. Now let's go to Michigan. It's a slightly different problem. Right. I do all say he's not a pack. He doesn't have a Paxton problem or an aching problem. His potential penalties ideological similar. That's why I looked at the Mandela Barnes race here. And that's why I think that's the better comparison. Barnes ran about two points behind Evers. So we're going to call L. Syed's potential penalty two points. Maybe it's three. So if Jocelyn Benson gets 54% then I think L. Syed is probably okay. If Benson gets 52% we are in total coin flip territory now. Aren't we? Right. And that's why I think Michigan is now basically the firewall and somebody think it could decide the Senate if you don't believe in Texas. But I think I've just made the case that Texas is much more Texas looks more like Ohio to me now than I ever thought it did.

44:20And that's on me. This is why sometimes you got to go back and do your homework. Right. I did my homework. I got a difference. I got a different attitude about Texas and I'll get to Iowa here in a minute. I got a different attitude about Iowa. So Democrats don't merely need Jocelyn Benson to win. They need to hurt to create enough room underneath her for L. Syed. By the way, I just want to do a quick aside. I think this single best campaign of the cycle is being run by Jocelyn Benson. And she's not going to get the credit for it. And she hasn't won yet. And she, you know, stranger things have happened. So I don't want to, you know, I don't want to presume anything. But boy, when she got in first she was, you know, she looked like it was going to be a crowded primary. She cleared the primary field. Then Mike dug in the popular mayor of Detroit chooses not to primary, but starts running as a third party candidate. And she's like Jesus, right. Then all of a sudden you're like, could he get traction? Look, I was a, I was a huge, I was definitely dug and curious because I'm obviously very down on the duopoly these days as many of you know.

45:25But you know, she put her nose to grindstone and you know, just never gave dug in an inch. Now, whether that was poor, you know, dug and didn't know how to run a statewide campaign and just was running a metro Detroit race, whatever. Benson, you know, she's been everywhere. And she's also not somebody who's feeling as if she's got to win the attention economy either. You know, it's interesting. A lot of people look at Gretchen, went or Joss on Benson wins this race. And is the next governor of Michigan, people need to spend a little more time getting to know her. She, her origin stories, fascinating. You know, look, we're probably going to hit her. She spent a little bit of time working at the Southern Poverty Law Center and obviously the Trump administration is trying to make that. I think what they've done to them feels a little bit suspicious to I think that's a, there's a lot of merciness there. But I think, I think I think Benson is is, when you see that it's, you know, sometimes campaigns don't get credit because there's not enough drama.

46:30You know, she somehow has dealt with all these hurdles and there's been very little drama. And she can end up being the candidate that saves the wins the Senate and saves out of do else. I have. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I choose option B. I'm Julie Pinierro and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, you smiled at us. Not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies your soul about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind or wake up to a new version of yourself.

47:35So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your four-year page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Pro's Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm gonna have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. So like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters and that is a Trojan horse, whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.

48:40Listen to Pro's Society on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. Dear Hunnies, this is goodbye. In February of 2024, celebrated illustrator and children's book author, Patre Mathers, and her husband Michael, mailed letters to dozens of friends and family members to let them know that they had died by suicide. By the time you get the shalliter book, Petra and I will be dead. Next stop, Wonderland. Patre and Michael were by all accounts healthy, happy, and in love. Why did they do it? And what did it do to the people they left behind? I would have given a million reasons to not leave this world had I known. I keep coming back to a truly hope that Patre was a thousand percent on board with the plan. Do you think of him as having killed her? Yes, I do. I hold Michael responsible for my mother's death. I'm Leon Nefak. And I'm Alice Gregory. Together we set out to interview everyone who got one of Patre and Michael's letters.

49:44As one married couple, trying to understand another. Listen to death of an artist on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Jay Valentine. I've spent my career on the executive side of this industry, multi-platin of songs, building artists and building business. And alongside my brother, Tank, the superstar R&B singer, songwriter, and producer, we've created something special, the R&B Money Podcast. This is not just a podcast. It's a safe space where artists, executives, and fans of R&B music come to reminisce. Pull back the curtain and tell the stories that shaped this culture, the real history behind the hits. That was hood famous. Yeah. And then real love came out and it blew up. We lived in a project. Yeah, and they were seeing all the success. They hear the music and we had nothing. We're covering the entire spectrum from Smokey Robinson, Alicia Keys, B2K, Mary J. Blige, Legends, Current Stars, and everyone who's contributed to the sound of R&B. You come out the gate with a hit. And then not Michael Jackson out of number one.

50:44Come on, man. I was like, hold on. I'm not gonna M.J. out of the number one spot. If you're a super dedicated R&B fan who wants the real discovery, the real stories, this is your podcast. This is the R&B Money Podcast. Listen to R&B Money from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Now let me move to Iowa. I was where you could say my theory kind of fell apart and I'll explain. But it made the exercise useful because it really helped me understand Texas better. Look, I started out thinking Rob Sand might be a tow rope, if you will, for Josh Turck. Right? Sand wins the governor's race and pulls Turk across with him. Except Iowa has its own interesting history of producing enormous differences between candidates of the same party without splitting the ticket. Right? In 2010 Chuck Grassley ran about 11 points ahead of Terry Brandstead's winning campaign for governor.

51:45In 2014 Brandstead runs seven points ahead of Joni Ernst, but they both win, right? Two Republicans. The gap can go in either direction. I mean, part of that is a Grassley phenomenon there, right? But the party result seems to hold. In fact, Iowa hasn't split a governor in a Senate race since 1998. It was Phil Sack and Grassley. So, you know, I think there is something here, but I don't know what the actual number is. I do think the sand number, look, I think sand's going to win the governor's race. The question is, you know, what's the realistic ceiling he could hit? Is it 53? Is it 55? Is it 57? Okay. Those are serious questions. I do think he's sort of a thermometer here. And Turk, right? Turk doesn't have any, you know, I'll get to this a minute. So if sand wins the governor's race with 51 or 52, it just means sand running a great campaign. And it tells me Iowa has not moved back towards the center enough from its shift to the right in the Trump era.

52:48And it's probably 51 or 52 won't be enough for Turk to win. But if sand's getting 55%, then maybe something is happening here. Now, here's something to think about. No Democrat is one in Iowa governor's race with 55% since Harold Hughes in 1966. Put that in your trivia column, right? So if sand is sitting there in election, I'd have 55. That's not simply a candidate having a good night. That is that he might be changing the weather. And even with that, I don't know if it's enough to get Turk over 50, right? Now, there is a libertarian candidate on the line in Iowa. Maybe, you know, he could pull off something akin to what John Tester has done, right? Two of his three races in Montana. He got, he won with less than 50% of the vote because enough Republicans parked in the libertarian category. But I looked at libertarian performance in Iowa. Historically, Iowa libertarians have maybe gotten 1%. Montana libertarians consistently get over 2%.

53:49So there's not a big habit of Republicans splitting off the vote libertarian the way there is a little bit of it in Montana. So it brings me back to where I started. You know, when I began this exercise, I assumed Iowa was probably the Democrats fifth seat, right? If they need to, right now they need to flip four and hold everything. But if they lose Michigan, they need to find a fifth. And I, you know, part of that is my own habit, my own personal bias. I've spent a lot of time in Iowa. I grew up with Iowa as a swing state, right? Iowa has been a be all end all for politics. And I just assumed, oh, Iowa is finally course correcting. It's going to be back to its normal sort of Midwestern swingy self. You know, I really did. I thought if boy, if Michigan, you know, if I do all side comes up short, then the emergency pickup, it's surely Iowa is going to be more plausible than Texas. Except looking at this, I'm not sure that's true. I think Texas has something Iowa does.

54:49It has at one, a potentially significant candidate penalty that you can identify. It has a Republican governor who remains strong, but who is vulnerable for the first time in any time. He's running for a fourth term on president. And there is a third party line where there are where unhappy Republicans can park without having to vote Democratic. But it sort of lowers the winning number for the Democrats. So these are the three numbers. I'm going to put on my election. I cheat sheet, right? Benson 54. If she's there, I'll do all. I had has the cushion he needs. Abbott 53 above it. Paxton has a chance below it. It's over. Paxton loses. And then sand is 55. Not because sand getting 55 automatically, Alex Turg, but it does tell me something is shifted to probably means if sand's at 55, they've picked up three house seats. And then we'll see. Look, Ashley Henson is a really good candidate for the Republicans. She's from actually a Democratic part of the state.

55:49So, you know, I think it's going to be awfully tough for Turg to overcome. Henson unless sand really changes the weather. The Republican candidate for governor is very weak. The guy is he's going to be painted as a carpet bagger from Kansas. And there's just way too much, you know, the fact that he currently flies back and forth from Kansas, it feels like he's a he sand is has the resources to be able to paint him as a part time Iowa resident. I once care about that. Be an I one's more important than being a part of just trust me and I once know this. So, like I said, I started this exercise. I think that I was probably the Democrats third path to the Senate majority. I finished it wondering whether Texas actually might be just part of the same group before that we've been talking about before. And, you know, wasn't we're expected to be all right. Let me move on here. I want to spend a little bit of time on something that I genuinely cannot understand why Washington isn't treating as a five alarm fire.

56:53We are at war. Our military is stretched. Senior commanders are warning that the strain from the Iran war is degrading our ability to respond to threats in other parts of the world. And simultaneously, we have a secretary of defense conducting an extraordinary purge in the middle of a war of the senior leadership of the United States military. And nowhere is the damage more obvious right now than in the United States Army. Frankly, I'm starting to wonder whether the Army is, you know, his anger at the Army is personal for Hague Seth. Remember, Hague Seth was in the Army National Guard. He was an infantry officer. He served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He eventually made major. And he has spoken and written for years about his own anger at what he believes the military became. Right. He clearly blames whatever promotion he didn't get or whatever in the Army on somebody else and he really seems to be taking it out on that single branch. He titled his book, The War on Warriors. So this was not somebody who believed in the military when he went in, which makes him. I do not understand how Hague Seth got this far, but I have a theory.

57:55I'll tell you in a little bit. Look, but Hague Seth has talked about an army that he believes became too politically correct, too bureaucratic, too obsessed with diversity and not obsessed enough with fighting. Okay. Clearly it's personal for him, right. He didn't get, he didn't get some promotion he wished he got, but that's beside the point. Now, there's a legitimate argument to have about whether the Pentagon has become too bureaucratic. That's a fair argument. And there's a legitimate argument about whether there are too many generals. All right. And there's a legitimate argument about whether the military was preparing for the wars it wanted to fight rather than the wars it actually has to fight. But that's not what Hague Seth has been focused on. Look what he's actually done. He fired General Randy George, the chief of staff of the Army. No public explanation. He forced out General Chris Donahue, nicknamed Captain America, commander of the US Army in Europe and Africa, no meaningful public explanation. General David Haudney, who was overseeing the Army's transformation effort, gone. Other senior officers associated with George and Donahue have all had their promotions blocked.

58:58Seven more officers selected for the two-star rank were just targeting. And now Dan Driscoll, the Secretary of the Army, has resigned after repeatedly warning the White House about what Hague Seth was doing. This isn't about reform folks. This is an intentional gutting of the United States Army by the Secretary of Defense. And here's what makes it almost incomprehensible. These are some of the people who were trying to change the Army. In exactly the ways everybody agrees it needed to change. It needed to get smarter use of drones, artificial intelligence, counter-dram warfare, learning from what happened in Ukraine, learning from Iran, figuring out how a relatively inexpensive technology can destroy enormously expensive American weapons systems. Randy George and Dan Driscoll were actually trying to accelerate the transformation. Chris Donahue's command was applying lessons learned from Ukraine.

59:59And now we're learning that the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Europe, a unit that had been experimenting with drone warfare and developing some of the very capabilities to do this better ourselves is being told to go back toward a more traditional airborne infantry role. Now there are members of Congress from both parties asking what the hell are you doing? And they should, but I don't think they've done it loud enough personally. Because this is no longer theoretical folks. Iran has been firing drones and missiles at American forces. Russia has transformed warfare with drones in Ukraine. China is watching every lesson being learned in both places. If there's one institution on Earth that should be racing toward understanding this technology, it's the United States Army. And somehow this lug nut, Hegseth is just firing some of the people who were leading this transformation in the middle of a war. That's the part that gets me. We're doing this during a war.

1:01:01A war turns out we were not prepared for. We don't have the munitions for. There was no planning for. The Army is being asked to defend American bases from Iranian missiles. We're drawing down our munitions. We're extending deployments. Thank goodness the guys on the USS Lincoln. They get 24 hours in Bangkok. Good luck with that gentleman. We're borrowing assets from Europe and Asia. And the Army itself doesn't even have a Senate confirmed chief. And it just lost its secretary. It doesn't have a confirmed commander for Army forces in Europe. Where we know Putin is thinking about testing the resolve of NATO. The senior leadership of the Army has been hollowed out intentionally by Hegseth. And the guy presiding over this seems increasingly interested in turning the Pentagon into some sort of personal reality show about himself. And look, you know, I struggle sort of being, you know, a name caller.

1:02:05I don't like, you know, that that's supposedly what gets you to, you know, I'm not trying to, you know, go viral or whatever. But at some point, this image making for Hegseth becomes relevant to the management question. Right. He's more concerned about influencers and about what the press could say. You know, he's got his wife out there planning a campaign for president. He's campaigning in Iowa. You know, and he gets away with this because Trump is, you know, I keep, I've asked folks who are also bewildered, but have some access to this White House. And they, and they said that, you know, I can't believe him. You won't believe what I'm up. You actually will believe what I'm about to repeat. Apparently they just say he's, that Trump's obsessed with Hegseth look and his looks that he's, I guess got a crush on him. Right. You know, I, it's sort of the same way he gets a, you know, because these people have the look. And he's just been obsessed with Hegseth and Hegseth was on TV at Fox. And whatever it is, he just, he's like, he's like mesmerized by Hegseth square jaw or whatever.

1:03:12And I guess Hegseth has taken advantage of it and he knows it. I mean, you know, dangerous goes no Biden holdover. Okay, dangerous goes into the oval to basically say this guy's a moron. And he's gutting the United States Army. And it's like, oh, but he's so dreamy. I mean, I don't get it. And I can't believe that's the explanation I got. And yet I can't, right? It's Trump. I can't. So, look, I just, this whole thing. We're removing generals with decades of combat and command experience. We're blocking the promotion of officers selected through the Army's professional process. We're dismantling parts of the leadership team trying to actually figure out drone warfare that clearly have us on our back feed. And we've apparently got time to bring in social media influencers into the Pentagon because Mr. Self-esteem, Hegseth problem. I mean, look, the guy clearly clearly has poser complex, right?

1:04:13His whole workouts that he's got a show mean, I mean, anybody that's obsessed himself with looks and all this. I think they tell you about who they are. What are we doing here? This is not a freaking table TV show. This is not boot camp cosplay. I can't even do a proper pull up, by the way. And heading up the Pentagon shouldn't be a branding exercise. See, United States military. It's a last institution, Americans trust. And this guy is blowing it up. The Iran War is entering its seventh month. The Navy is warning about its ability to sustain the current pace. Commanders responsible for Europe, the Pacific, Latin America, have formally objected to continuing some of the force commitments. They're being ordered to make to the Middle East. Assets that we may need to deter China are being moved. China's happy about that. Assets we need in Europe are being moved. Putin is happy about that. Important munitions are being depleted. And we're doing something else that deserves a hell of a lot more scrutiny.

1:05:15The United States has spent the last year blowing up suspected drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific. Hundreds of people have been reportedly killed. The administration claims they're narco terrorists. Okay, we'll show us. Who are these people? What's the evidence? What was on the boats? What intelligence established that these people were members of organizations against which the United States can lawfully use military force? Why are we killing them instead of doing what the United States had traditionally done with suspected drug smugglers? In basically, boarding the vessel, seizing the drugs, arresting the suspects, and getting the higher ups. Pentagon inspector general is now examining the targeting process, so we'll get a report in the next two years. Obviously, there is no way any of this is constitutional. Congress did not authorize war against every suspected narcotics trafficker traveling by boat in the Caribbean.

1:06:20And yet we've normalized the US military blowing up boats and killing people on board based largely on assurances from the same Pentagon leadership that refuses to show the public the evidence. What are we doing? So let's put all this together because these stories aren't separate. We have a war of the run, the depletion of our military capacity, the boat strikes, the army purges, block promotions, this leadership vacuum, dismantling of modernization efforts, obsession with ideological conformity. And they all lead to an enormous question. Who inside the Pentagon is willing to tell Pete Higgseth he's wrong and even a more important question, what happens to them when they do? It's what Bill McRaven warned about months ago. Former head of special forces. The guy that commanded, you know, basically was in charge of seal team six that got been long senior military officers have to be able to walk into the secretary defenses office and say no, not no, I won't follow your order.

1:07:24That's not how civilian control works, but they have to be able to say no sir, I don't recommend this. This deployment creates too much risk. We don't have enough interceptors or the Navy can't sustain this tempo moving that carrier will create a vulnerability in the Pacific firing that officer damages the morale of that. Institution stopping program X makes us less prepared for the next war. And then you let this civilian leadership decide that's the system, but it only works if the people giving the advice believe that telling the truth won't destroy their careers. And right now, I don't know how any senior officer at the Pentagon could look at what's happening and not wonder about that. More than 80 generals and admirals have been fired or blocked from promotion. Randy George, Kristina Hugh, CQ Brown, Lisa Franchetti, Jim Slyf, David Haudenay, JP McKee, Joe burger, Jamie Sands, many more, but I'm naming them for a reason and I'm going to get to that. Some of these people spent three or four decades preparing for precisely the moment we're in now.

1:08:27Many of them have left quietly and I understand why fact, I respect it. The American military has always had this culture. You don't whine about civilian leadership. You don't go on television and settle scores. You don't make yourself the story. You don't politicize the uniform. When the president relieves you, you salute and you leave. I understand it, but I'm speaking to those officers right now, just as a citizen. I don't think the country needs you again and I'm asking you to become political. I'm not asking you to endorse Democrats or any opponents to crazy. I'm not asking you to attack Donald Trump and not even asking you to attack Pete Higgs. You need to be witnesses. Tell us what's happening. General George, tell us what happened. General Donnie Hugh, get in front of Congress and tell us what happened. Admiral Fran Chetty, General Brown, General Haudenine, General Sly, all of you owe the American people an explanation to what the hell is happening in the Pentagon.

1:09:32Guess what? If we're all wrong about what's happening inside the Pentagon, then testify to that and tell us where wrong. If Higgs sets reforms are making the military stronger than please explain to us how they are. If these officers were removed for legitimate performance reasons that simply haven't been made public, tell us that. But if you believe the United States military has been weakened. If you believe experienced officers are being removed because of ideology and personal grievance. If you believe people are becoming afraid to give candid military advice, if you believe the army's ability to fight a war is now damaged while we're fighting the one we're in. If you have an obligation to warn the country, the president's not listening. He's apparently, you know, can't stop staring at Higgs. I get it. It's asking a lot. Nobody wants to become a public figure if they don't want to be one. I get it.

1:10:32Some of you spent your entire adult lives believing the most patriotic thing you can do is to keep your mouth shut after leaving command. 95% of the time that is the correct. That's correct. These are not normal circumstances, generals. You don't have to come on my podcast and tell me what happens though you're more than welcome open invitation to any of you. Go anywhere. Go before Congress. Go to a newspaper. Go to Fox. Go to CBS. Go to CNN. Write an op-ed. Tell us what happened. Congress is clearly not doing enough. Maybe they'll do a little bit more. The Pentagon is refusing to explain itself. The American public has no way to see inside this institution, but you do. You were there. And this is what frightens me. We already know this is bad. If we see what we know what we we already know certain things. The aren't the vacuum leadership vacuum at the army is staring us in the face. We've seen the firings we know about the black promotions. We know about all these readiness warnings.

1:11:37The strain from Iran is real. We know about the munitions problems. God knows them what we don't know. So to the people who do know the country needs you. You served America for 30 years, 40 years. America served you well too. You've got a nice retirement. You've had a nice time in and you know the military does a good job of taking care of families. We need you to serve one more time. This is one more tour of duty you've got. Tell us what's happening inside the Piedex at Pentagon. Because right now, silence is not protecting the institution. I'm afraid silence may be helping destroy it. You must speak up. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I choose option B.

1:12:44I'm Julie Pinero and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, you smile good. That's not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're bookshelf and you're for you page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Pro's Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives and anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse.

1:13:49I'm Eli Rallo and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. So like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters and that is a Trojan horse, whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro's Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. Dear Hunnies, this is goodbye. In February of 2024, celebrated illustrator and children's book author, Patre Mathers and her husband Michael, nailed letters to dozens of friends and family members to let them know that they had died by suicide. By the time you get the Schleiter book, Petra and I will be dead.

1:14:49Next stop, Wonderland. Patre and Michael were by all accounts healthy, happy and in love. Why did they do it? And what did it do to the people they left behind? I would have given a million reasons to not leave this world had I known. I keep coming back to a truly hope that Patre was a thousand percent on board with the plan. Do you think of him as having killed her? Yes, I do. I hold my corner responsible for my mother's death. I'm Leon Nefak. And I'm Alice Gregory. Together we set out to interview everyone who got one of Patre and Michael's letters. As one married couple, trying to understand another. Listen to death of an artist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Jay Valentine. I've spent my career on the executive side of this industry, multi-platinum songs, building artists and building business. And alongside my brother, Tank, the superstar R&B singer, songwriter and producer, we've created something special, the R&B Money Podcast.

1:15:52This is not just a podcast. It's a safe space where artists, executives and fans of R&B music come to reminisce. Pull back the curtain and tell the stories that shaped this culture, the real history behind the hits. That was hood famous. And then real love came out and it blew up. We lived in a project. And they never seen all the success. They hear them music. And we had nothing. We're covering the entire spectrum from Smokey Robinson, Alicia Keys, B2K, Mary J. Blige, Legends, Current Stars and everyone who's contributed to the sound of R&B. You come out the gate with a hit. And then not Michael Jackson out of number one. Come on man. I was like, hold on. I'm not gonna MJ out of the number one spot. If you're a super dedicated R&B fan who wants the real discovery, the real stories, this is your podcast. This is the R&B Money Podcast. Listen to R&B Money from the Black Effect podcast network on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

1:16:53All right. I'm gonna end today with what I increasingly believe. Believe is the central institutional problem in American democracy. I'm gonna give you one of one of my one of our subscribers called a Todd Talk. So I'm gonna give you a little bit of a Todd talk. Because it's crystal clear to me now what the most damage part of our democracy is. It's not the presidency, the Senate, the Supreme Court. It is the House of Representatives. The House is the cancer in our political system. And I use that word intentionally because the damage isn't confined to the House anymore. It's spreading. But the, you know, the cancer was first, you know, showed itself in the House. The presidency is sick in part because the House doesn't function properly. The Senate is sick in part because the House doesn't function. In fact, trust me, when we said, when you're worried that the Senate's becoming like the House, that's not a compliment. The judiciary's become too powerful and too political in part because the House doesn't function.

1:17:56Our political parties are sick in part because the House doesn't function. And our presidential elections have become these quad-generial, existential crises in part because the institution that was designed to process the country's political disagreements has stopped doing its job. It turns out the House is the single most important organ of the body politic. Think about the constitutional design. This was the House was supposed to be where the country's political energy went. The good and the bad. The anger, the movements, the regional differences, ideological differences, the crazy stuff, all of it. You elect representatives closest to the people, you send them to Washington, they fight about it, they negotiate. They build coalitions, they compromise, and eventually hopefully they'll turn some of those disagreements into laws. But it's a pressure release fund. And what happens when the pressure release valve stops working, the pressure doesn't disappear, just goes somewhere else. Went to the presidency, went to the Senate, right, with presidents, they'd start governing through executive action.

1:19:00Then the next president comes in and reverses those executive actions of the last president. So policy itself is unstable thanks to the House being dysfunctional. Then the pressure goes to the courts. Congress doesn't settle abortion or immigration or trade or war powers or anything. Pick an issue. So eventually judges are being asked to settle questions that the elected branches should have settled. Now control of the courts is becoming enormously important, but it shouldn't be if the House were doing its job. Senate confirmations become existential because the House can't do its job. So it makes Senate control more existential than it should be. And because so much power is migrated to the presidency, control of the presidency is existential. Every four years we win or democracy dies. We win or America dies, right? We win or everything you care about disappears. And then we wonder why the country is so polarized. The House was supposed to be the organ that absorbed the conflict.

1:20:00Instead, exporting political conflict to every other institution in the country. And that's what a cancer does. It spreads. And this week, Jared Golden and Marie Glucent Camp Perez gave us almost a perfect x-ray of the disease in the House. Here's what happened. Jared Golden, Democrat from Maine's second congressional district, the more rural district in Maine. It's one of the most important industries in his district that it made overall is lobster fishing. This isn't some interest to a group that gave him a campaign check. This is actual communities, families, generational businesses. And Golden has been working for years on the fight over federal regulations designed to protect the endangered North Atlantic right-wale. And there is a legitimate environmental argument here. There are legitimate concerns about the survival of these whales. And there are legitimate concerns about the survival of Maine's lobster fishing communities. And that's what legislating is supposed to be about, right? Trying to deal with the competing interests, trade-offs, etc.

1:21:01Figuring out, how do you do the most good while doing the least harm? Golden believes the regulations as currently envisioned could devastate the industry and the communities he represents. And so he was doing an interview after this whole kerfuffle was taking place. And he explained to the journalist Natalie Furtig, what the stakes were. And listen to the language he used. He said, look, I literally had fishermen telling me that they were contemplating suicide. And then he described what losing the lobster industry would mean. He said the town is decimated, no property tax base, schools closed, everybody moves away, it's just devastating. And he compared it to losing a mill. And he talked about what happens next. The working waterfront disappears, outside investors come in, property gets bought up, a fishing town becomes a vacation town. And the people whose families have lived there for generations can't afford to live there anymore. So that's what Jared Golden said he was representing. It's not a national democratic constituency and it's maybe not what the D-Triple C worries about.

1:22:04And certainly they don't have a caucus in Washington, those towns, people. So Golden made them a promise and wrote a bill. And what it would do is extend the existing pause on new regulations and give researchers more time to figure out whether there's a technological solution that both protects the whales without destroying the fishing lobster fishing industry in May. Look, you can agree with this bill. You can disagree with this bill. That's not what the point of this exercise. I'll give you a little bit of backstory there. My point is that Jared Golden is a representative from the state of Maine. He happens to be a Democrat. But he's ultimately, he's one of the two members of Congress from the state of Maine. He decided this was important enough to the people he represents that he was going to fight for it. And he promised it. So Tuesday night, his legislation is sitting in a package of bills that needs what's called a rule before the House can debate it. This is one of those procedural votes that normal people have absolutely no reason to understand. And frankly, that's part of the problem. Republicans currently control the House. Normally Republicans provide the votes for these rules.

1:23:10Democrats vote no, everybody knows their role. Right. Except Republicans have been having a lot of defecions on their rules committee. Chip Roy is no fan of leadership. Right. So suddenly the rule to get Jared Golden's bill on the floor was in trouble. This rule goes down. Jared Golden's lobster bill never gets a vote. So golden being one of the Democrats on the rules committee has a choice. He can vote the way Democratic leadership wants them to vote and kill the Republican rule. Handing Mike Johnson as speaker and embarrassing defeating might have to send Congress home and they don't vote on anything. Right. And it would allow Democrats to avoid an uncomfortable vote that Republicans had included in the package of bills condemning socialism. But in order to do that, he would have to kill his own legislation in the process. Or he can vote for the rule. Give the legislation he wrote for the people he represents a chance to pass. So golden voted for the rule and Marie Glucin Camp Perez voted with them. They have a they work with each other there. They're kind of ideological soulmates, you know, sort of the true blue dogs that, you know, have sort of been abandoned by the rest of the Democratic Party and the rule passed.

1:24:22And then golden's lobster bill passed the house. Now listen to golden explain what the alternative would have required him to do. Here's what he said to Natalie for it. In an era of ever-hytening partisanship and disillusionment, I think people would be shocked if I introduced a bill to help my core constituency and then voted against a rule that would have advanced that bill. He's right. Right by the logic of Washington, he's made this promise that he's going to do this bill. And then he would have to go back and explain well, I couldn't do it because I had a vote against a rule that would have brought the bill to the floor because my leadership wants to embarrass the speaker of the house and doesn't want to vote on a bill condemning socialism. It's crazy, right? This is why they hate Congress. This is why we all hate him. And golden described the explanation Washington apparently expects him to give his constituencies. Constituents. Well, I wanted to help you, but party leadership wouldn't let me vote for the rule. He goes, that just doesn't fly in real life. Of course it doesn't. Try explaining it to the lobsterman.

1:25:29Sorry, I wrote a bill to protect your livelihood. I fought for it. I had a chance to get it on the house floor, but my political party wanted to embarrass the other political party. So I voted to prevent my own bill from getting a vote. Don't worry though. I maintain good standing with the House Democratic caucus. It's insane. And the idea that there are a whole bunch of Democrats wanting to punish golden and Marie Glycec Perez for doing this is just as insane. Why did you get into politics to help people or to punish another political party? As golden put it, let me quote golden. I know who I work for. I work for the people that I represent, whether they voted for me or not. That should be the most boring sentence a member of Congress could possibly utter. And yet, right. Apparently it's brave these days. It sounds revolutionary doesn't. Golden said something else that I think is worth listening to. He said, we believe in localism and being rooted in the place that you live in and represent. We're Democrats, but we have a strong loyalty to the people we represent.

1:26:41That's what golden thought being a Democrat. A strong loyalty to the people you represent. Imagine that. And golden's larger diagnosis of his own party is pretty brutal. He says some Democrats need to quote, adjust our thinking about certain things and certain trade offs instead of asking voters to change their thinking. And when asked about the people attacking him for doing this procedural vote, golden said, I think those people are living in a bubble of partisanship and are totally detached from reality on the street and it's nuts. I mean, it's right. What happened next doesn't exactly disprove his point. Democratic leadership accused golden and MGP Maria Glycec Perez, you know, MGP, none of us want to write it out so hard of a significant breach of trust and promised a serious response. Are you telling me they broke trust by representing voters first over and above partisanship? That's a breach of trust. If that's what the leadership thinks is a breach of trust, get the hell out of politics.

1:27:44That House Democrats are discussing changing their caucus rules to define what it means to be a member in good standing. So maybe good standing means you can't vote with Republicans on procedural motions. Maybe D triple C dues become part of it. Okay, think about what we're talking about. The House Democratic caucus may respond to two members who decided to put constituents ahead of their party on a procedural vote by writing new rules designed to make it harder for members to put their constituencies ahead of party. What the fuck are we doing here? And then Democrats wonder why they have a problem with working class voters. And you wonder why the Democratic brand is in the gutter and the only reason why this isn't a blue tsunami is because the Democratic brand is in the gutter. The Republicans are already not representing normal everyday people. Good job, Democrats. Everybody in Washington says Democrats need more Jared Goldens and Marie Glycec and Camp Perez. When we're all voters, when working class voters compete in Trump districts. Stop talking like everybody who lives in Brooklyn and Bethesda. Great. Well, here they are.

1:28:49And they did just that Golden represents a district Trump carried. Losing camp Perez represents a district Trump carry. They built their identities around convincing voters that they're going to represent the district before they represent a party. And then when they actually behave the way they promise, their party considers punishing them. Folks, that's the disease. And again, before Republicans enjoy my tirade too much spare me your party's been doing the same version of this ship for years. Ask Republicans who crossed Donald Trump. Ask the Republicans who voted for impeachment. Ask Republicans who tried to negotiate bipartisan immigration legislation. Ask the members who decided they're constitutional responsibility mattered more than whatever party wanted that afternoon. So this is not a democratic disease. This is a partisanship disease that is concentrated in the House of Representatives first and foremost. And there's some convenient historical amnesia here too. We're being told Democrats simply don't help Republicans pass rules. Please they have.

1:29:52When Nancy Pelosi was minority leader, there were occasions when dozens of Democrats voted for Republican rules she opposed. 2006 and again later that year 2015 when Barack Obama was working with Paul Ryan on trade Democrats help Republicans adopt a rule despite Pelosi's opposition. Democratic party seem to survive didn't it? Congress survived because that's what legislatures occasionally do. They legislate. I say occasionally right. But here's why I think this week's episode matters beyond Jared Golden. There's a very real possibility Democrats are going to control the House next year. And if the turnout numbers I talked about earlier really are signaling the beginnings of a huge wave. Perhaps a pretty good possibility. But everybody celebrating a potential Democratic House ought to think about what happens the morning after the election. Because Democrats aren't going to inherit a functioning house. They're going to inherit the cancer. And they're probably not going to have some gigantic majority where leadership can lose 20 votes and shrug. They're going to have factions. Right. They're going to have members from deep blue urban districts. They're going to have members from districts Trump carry members elected because they promised to fight Trump every waking minute and members elected because they convinced cultural conservatives and working class voters that they're not like the national party.

1:31:05And they're all going to be in the same caucus. What happens when five of them say no. What happens when progressive won't support something unless leadership moves left. What happens when blue dogs won't support something because leadership move left. What happens when swing district Democrats are told to take a vote that could end their careers because the caucus needs unanimity. Sorry, right. We've watched we've watched years of watching Republicans do this. Five members here seven there. Faction holds the speaker hostage, procedural votes become loyalty tests. Eventually business doesn't happen. So perhaps next year we'll spend our time saying why can't Democrats govern and two years later, why can't Republicans govern? Because changing the party controlling a broken institution does not fix the institution. The institution is broken. It's sick. And here's where I think we need to go deeper. Why has the house become this? Well, you know part of my answer the house is too damn small. The districts are too damn big. The two parties aren't enough to represent a country this complicated. All of that. I'm not going to go through all of my diet tribe on this. You've heard me time and again in my other Todd talks right about the size of the house about the the two party system is a mess.

1:32:15But it's just, you know, we've the whole thing is broken and it is forced this partisan polarization. And if we increase the size of this, what we need is a really foul again. Jared Golden and Alexander or Casio Cortez have to function as members of the same political team. Marie, Glucin Camp Perez and some of the most progressive members from the safest urban districts are going to have to function on the same team next cycle. Look, we're probably going to have the same problem. And we've seen it because they're not parties, right. We know we need to do this. So it was unbelievable that everything comes down to play. So it's a really good thing to have a party first. And leadership so dominates how the house runs that I don't know why we bother with 435 members, just to let that came Jeffries and Mike Johnson give them each a weighted vote based on how many seats their party one.

1:33:15We're getting dangerously close to that anyway because if a procedural vote becomes on whose team you were on. And then the time has become leverage all this stuff. This is sick. This is terrible. Right. If your job is not to work for your constituents, but your job is to protect the majority, defeat the other team. Don't get the other side of when. Don't give them a vote. Don't let them embarrass us. That's how you end up in this completely upside down situation where Jared Golden successfully passes legislation for the people who elected him that he promised he would do and his party considers punishing him for the vote that allowed him to pass it. It's not a weird congressional side show that's a pathology. So if the house is a cancer, what's the treatment? Well, as you know, make it bigger, make district smaller, make politics local again. And maybe we need to talk about this whole political party. It's just a mess. This is why you need a third or fourth entity inside that is able to allow the Jared Goldens of the world, the Don Bacon's of the world.

1:34:22The Jared Moscow, it's is of the world, the Marie, Glucentan Perez, people that have promised to sort of represent all the people in their districts, not just one faction of one political party. And we don't have the ability. The house was supposed to be this go read Madison, go read Federalist 10. Oh, Jared Golden has the most important part of this right. He says, I know who I work for. I work for the people that I represent, whether they voted for or not. The house doesn't work that way anymore. He he doesn't want to work for our key Jeffries, but apparently Jeffries thinks golden works for him. Marie, Glucentan Perez doesn't want to work for the D triple C, but apparently they think she should work with them. Republicans don't work with Mike Johnson, and they don't work for Donald Trump, but apparently Donald Trump and Johnson think they do. I tell you, thank you, Jared Goldens. You gave a great x-ray of the disease. The house is a mess. It doesn't work. It is the single. It is the cancer we have to cure before we can reform anything else.

1:35:33That's what's so frustrating about this. And it's sort of this moment with golden crystallized it. And I know you know what, in the sexiest reform. But if we don't get the house right, we're not going to get anything else. Everything, nothing else gets fixed until we fix the disease that is impacting the house of representatives. Todd talk over. All right, let's take a break. Let's get to my conversation about a real uplifting topic, the 25th anniversary of that online. The 25th anniversary of that online.

1:36:33I'm not a kiddie for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people, and they were like, you smiled at us. Not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're bookshelf and you're for you page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Pro's Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island do you think? I'm Elie Rallo and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.

1:37:34I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. So like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters and that is the Trojan horse, whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro's Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. Dear Hunnies, this is goodbye. In February of 2024, celebrated illustrator and children's book author, Patreon Authors, and her husband Michael, nailed letters to dozens of friends and family members. To let them know that they had died by suicide. By the time you get the shalliter both Petra and I will be dead. Next stop, Wonderland. Patreon and Michael were by all accounts healthy, happy, and in love. Why did they do it? And what did it do to the people they left behind?

1:38:36I would have given a million reasons to not leave this world had I known. I keep coming back to a truly hope that Patreon was a thousand percent on board with the plan. Do you think of him as having killed her? Yes, I do. I hold Michael responsible for my mother's death. I'm Leon Nefak. And I'm Alice Gregory. Together we set out to interview everyone who got one of Patreon Michael's letters, as one married couple trying to understand another. Listen to Death of an Artist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is J. Valentine. I've spent my career on the executive side of this industry, multi-platinum songs, building artists and building business. And alongside my brother Tank, the superstar R&B singer, songwriter, and producer, we've created something special, the R&B Money Podcast. This is not just a podcast. It's a safe space where artists, executives, and fans of R&B music come to reminisce. Pull back the curtain and tell the stories that shaped this culture, the real history behind the hits.

1:39:39That was hood famous. And then real love came out and it blew up. We lived in a project. They had never seen any of this success. They hear the music and we had nothing. We're covering the entire spectrum from Smokey Robinson, Alicia Keys, B2K, Mary J. Blige, Legends Current Stars, and everyone who's contributed to the sound of R&B. You come out the gate with a hit. And then not Michael Jackson out of number one. I'm like, hold on. I'm not going to M.J. out of the number one spot. If you're a super dedicated R&B fan who wants the real discovery, the real stories, this is your podcast. This is the R&B Money Podcast. Listen to R&B Money from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Well, we are, we have embarked. This is going to be or is the 25th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. And you know, 25 years is an interesting period because that's basically, you know, it's an entire generation.

1:40:47And you know, I've, you've heard me talk about this before, which is, you know, when is the perfect period to feel like you can get both an honest assessment of an historical event, and at the same time, you know, still have firsthand accounts, and at the same time be far enough away where people feel like they can say things that they couldn't say in the moment. And so we're at one of those periods with 9-11, and it's in that vein that my next guest is here. It's Brian Nappenberger. He is the executive producer and director of a of a 9-11 documentary that is landing on Netflix in the month of September, turning point generation 9-11. This is part of the turning point franchise of historical events there. And Brian joins me now. So Brian, I, I believe there's something somewhere in that 20 to 30 year range is when I feel like living sources finally tell the truth.

1:41:49And you can, you're far enough away where you don't have to worry about personal personal feelings sometimes as much. And look, before we get into the specifics of this documentary, you do a lot of history. What's your sense? What's your experience when you're trying to recreate a moment or trying to understand what was happening in and around life during when one of these turning point events happen? What's your sense of when you feel like you're getting close to the truth? It's interesting. I thought a lot. That's a great question. I thought a lot about it when we were creating this, creating this film. When we first released, you mentioned the first series. So the turning point 9-11 on the war on terror was on the 20th year anniversary of 9-11. And you know, a lot of people watched it on Netflix. And there was a lot of chatter online. You know, I was kind of looking at how people were talking about it and thinking about the film. And one of the things that really struck me that I think goes to your source, speaks to your question is, is how many people didn't know what 9-11 was?

1:42:55Really didn't know either they hadn't been born yet or they were just too young to remember the events of that day. So you know, here we are. You know, they may have learned about it in school, but pretty minimally probably. And so for me, that was just really eye-opening. 9-11, like so many people changed my life. I mean, I can't imagine, you know, I changed the course of, she taught us all the world. You know, and she's my career. And my wife and I moved in with each other that day, that night and I really, wow, I mean, we had just started dating. And she had a little dog lived on Capitol Hill and I lived in the suburbs of Arlington, suburbs of DC in Arlington. And we, you know, we, we were, we worked at the Watergate together. And so, you know, I always had visions of my staff looking at the, looking like craning their neck to see if they could see the smoke from the Pentagon. And I remember I'm like, you're, you're not staying near the Capitol. That's insanity. Yeah. And our mom was a little bit conservative and not, you know, probably would not have, would have frowned upon it except for the circumstances that we were in.

1:44:01Yeah. We never left. And we get married a year later. I mean, but I was 28, 29 when this happened. So yeah, I think you and I are about the same age. It's like, it was a life changer, particularly if you lived in New York or DC. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, exactly. And I'm not, you know, it's not that you and I are old by any distraction. But, but you know, we're just not young. That's how I was. We're just not young. I'm just not going anymore. Right. There you go. But, you know, on the first anniversary of 9-11, I was, I was actually in condos making one of my first films that it was picked up by PBS Frontline. And it was so profound and, and for me, and, you know, here we are 25 years later. And we're about to reach the point in the next couple of years where nearly half of all Americans were either born after 9-11, we're too young to remember the events of that day. So, you know, when we're making this, I'm really thinking about how, how, with this event is moving from a lived memory to history.

1:45:10And so this, this, this film is really about the experience of that, of that younger generation. I don't assume people that know what 9-11 meant or what I felt like to go through it. I wanted to bring them into that dead. I understand. Not, you know, not just the terror and the uncertainty, but what happens next? Because some of the decisions we made after 9-11 in those uncertain days and weeks that followed really define our current modern world more than the event itself. Before I get into the film, I'm just curious, because I know I suddenly was curious after I was watching your film is, did you find any scholarship in 1966 about how we marked the 25th anniversary of Pearl Harbor? And did you look back at 1988 and how we marked the 25th anniversary of Kennedy being shot? I'm trying to, look, I was 16 and 88. So I, I remember all the specials, because man, I was an obsessive conspiracy theorist back then.

1:46:13I've read all, right, with Kennedy. So I have some memory of 88, but that is what stride. I was just curious, did you go back to see how other sort of scarring events like that that was sort of captured the imagination of the country and how it was handled 25 years ago? I did a little bit and I, like you, I remember, I remember that, because I was in high school. But, you know, one thing I did clock for sure is to do the math back 25 years from my own birth, and that would have been herosional. So 25 years before I was born was herosional. So that really puts an in perspective. So this, this event that was so transformative to us that in which we will remember, it's the day you've moved in with your wife. It was, I spent every minute of that day watching television as my view of the world, shift it, I could feel it. Politics was different. My, the way I saw our country was different.

1:47:14And, and that is so such an indelible moment for us, but, but you can't, you can't be upset with people who do who just worn around and don't see that one. I felt out, I felt on an application to join the Navy reserves. Never heard back from the Navy, by the way, on that. But I remember in that aftermath that first week, it was sort of like, especially here in DC, you just, you know, you just, it was inevitable. More was going to happen. So then you started to think, okay, what, what am I going to do? You know, both, both in, I need to contribute. And at the same time, how am I going to escape when the next terrorist attack comes and how am I going to live my life? And, and there's a thing, a lot of people were thinking this way back then. And I think the most, the biggest, you want to talk about the biggest prediction did not come true. It was that, right? This idea that we were going to become Tel Aviv. I mean, I think that was the, that is what I thought, you know, we lost our terrorist virginity, right? Our terrorism virginity and what the, what life has been like for the average person in Tel Aviv for, for our, for the last 40 years, I thought was going to be life in Washington in New York. And I guess, thankfully, it's not been that way.

1:48:25Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And that's part of what I was hoping to capture in this film, just that, that fear, the fear of that day, but just also that uncertainty in the days and the weeks and the months that followed, you know, all of those events were done in a few hours in the morning. And we didn't know what was coming next. We didn't know if there were more coming that, that next day, in the next week, in the next months, we, we were so sort of traumatized by this that we just didn't know what was coming next. And in hindsight, nothing came next really. There was the underwear, bomber, the shoe bomber, both absurdly, sort of absurd, a town. Yeah, kind of like bad copycats, right? Yeah, yeah. But, but since then, there's been virtually, personally, nothing, certainly not connected to how kind of so let's talk about the concept generation 911. Was the goal trot, who's your audience?

1:49:28My audience is well, everybody I think sure will get something out of this, but I really do want to focus on people that weren't around that day, who are too young to remember those events, who, who may know a little bit about it, but may, may not quite understand how much, how different it is, you know, our country is, I mean, America, after 911 is just a different country than the America that came before it. And, you know, and I would, I would love to not to go through, not just what it felt like that day for people, not to, to communicate the fear and the uncertainty that came after. And not to excuse the decisions that came later, I'm pretty critical of a lot of work. No, you had this, you know, I'm glad you kept it in, you clipped a news clip, but I think it was with blitzer saying, you know, 63% of Americans are willing to give up some of that. Americans are willing to give up some freedom in exchange for, you know, for security.

1:50:29Right. And, you know, that, you know, you wouldn't see that, I don't know if the number would be that high today, and that, that, of course, you know, you know, with security that, you know, comes that comfort perhaps, but I thought that was important to include, like, you, you have to, you could sit here and say, I can't believe you guys went to war in Afghanistan in Iraq. And, you know, it just makes no sense. Yeah, it's, it absolutely makes little sense now. But in the moment, we never experienced anything like this. This wasn't a nation state that came after us. And then we, it, and more importantly, as much as, we also just didn't believe a stateless actor could do this without the help of the state. And we were just our folks. And I understand that instinct that we weren't going to believe they didn't have help. But so we were, you know, and it was going to take years to convince us that that wasn't the case, right? So I think it's, and I probably to this day, I mean, I think you did your best to convey that it's still very hard to convey the, the fear we were all living in particularly.

1:51:41And again, this was a big divide. And I know this was harder to capture. And I think 90 minutes. Well, you need, I was talking about this with my producer. To really do 9-11, you might need to do the OJ Simpson made in America, five, 15 hour exposé because, because one of the things that I think we've never fully appreciated is how the rest of America, well, certainly touched by this, not like DC and New York. And yet we drove so much of the feelings about it to the point of you weren't allowed to comment if you hadn't experienced it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it is, it drove us to make decisions. I mean, back to who this is for. I do think it would be not, I love the next generation to kind of understand. But the people that are, you know, sort of will begin to start to take the reins of power and start to make some of these decisions and start to define who we are as a country. I mean, not to fall into the same fear and suspicion that lead us leading us down a pretty dark path as well.

1:52:48And we gave up personal liberties as a country and it was just into these endless shifting kind of forever wars. And, you know, a lot of that fear and suspicion was directed at, you know, Muslim communities. Yeah. And we built this enormous security and enforcement infrastructure in response mass, and dragging that suspicionless surveillance expanded dramatically. A lot of the conversation about whether that was, you know, whether that flew in the face of the Fourth Amendment and whether we were willing to do that or not. But that whole kind of infrastructure that we built, it didn't disappear when that immediate threat receded. It remained and it found new targets. And when you look at this, you know, but people don't, I think when you talk to the people nowadays, they don't realize like, you know, you and I lived in a world where there wasn't a department of homeland security, where there wasn't ice, you know, this, you know, 9-11 created that and created the departments that would eventually become ice.

1:53:53We very much live in a world now that was created out of the decisions after 9-11 and those decisions were largely based on fear and suspicion. I mean, you know, one of the things I think it's one of the worst decisions government made was the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. And I understand how it happened. And there had been certainly there was a plan on the shelf. There were to be people talking about, should we have should should should really treasury and commerce, you know, back then treasury and commerce for some reason housed a few of these kind of semi security agencies and we find, you know, maybe there ought to be another cabinet agency. So there was, you know, like anything, there was a play, I always tell people, you want to put a plan on the shelf because you never know when a crisis emerges, people are desperate for a plan and them one, you know, sometimes and Joe Lieberman handed them one, right? This was sort of him and a few others were, were sort of into this, but, you know, you can go back in history and any decision government makes quickly is usually a bad decision.

1:55:01Yeah, it's hard to find one that when you when you made it quickly that it that it that it goes well. Yeah, in the initial series, we talked about that vote for the AUMF, right? The authorization to use military force, which was really made in the few in the days, maybe it was in a week of 9, 11. There was this kind of bill that, that, you know, basically said that the president had the ability to go after terrorist groups, very open and in a way, terrorist groups all over the world. Country list, right? It was country list. Yeah. Yeah. And that passed unanimously, except for one person, Barbara Lee, she's the only one who said, look, I've said, is everybody had to flee the capital. I was scared for my life. He thinks she had an assistant or somebody, a staffer that was killed. And, but she said, look, we can't, we can't let fear and the this fear just overtake us and make these decisions that we may regret later, even in this moment where everybody is on board with some kind of vengeance, some kind of military action.

1:56:07We need to keep our heads about us. It's striking that there was one vote that said no to the AUMF and yet that is the, that is the, that is the effort that has continued really to this day, including going after groups that were never even around on 9, 11. If your bookshelf and your for you page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Pro's Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives and anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed, so obsessed. From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.

1:57:08So like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters and that is the Trojan horse, whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro's Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait 4 hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I choose option B. I'm Julie Pinierro and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I try to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, you smiled at us, not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it.

1:58:13It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Dear Hunnies, this is goodbye. On February of 2024, celebrated illustrator and children's book author, Patre Matheres and her husband Michael, nailed letters to dozens of friends and family members to let them know that they had died by suicide. By the time you get the shalliter both Petra and I will be dead. Next stop, Wonderland. Patre and Michael were by all accounts healthy, happy, and in love. Why did they do it? And what did it do to the people they left behind? I would have given a million reasons to not leave this world had I known. I keep coming back to a truly hope that Patre was a thousand percent on board with the plan.

1:59:15Do you think of him as having killed her? Yes, I do. I hold Michael responsible for my mother's death. I'm Leon Nevok. And I'm Alice Gregory. Together we set out to interview everyone who got one of Patre and Michael's letters as one married couple trying to understand another. Listen to death of an artist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Jay Valentine. I've spent my career on the executive side of this industry, multi-platinum songs, building artists and building business. And alongside my brother Tank, the superstar R&B singer, songwriter and producer, we've created something special, the R&B Money Podcast. This is not just a podcast. It's a safe space where artists, executives, and fans of R&B music come to reminisce. Pull back the curtain and tell the stories that shaped this culture, the real history behind the hits. That was hood famous. And then real love came out and it blew up. We lived in a project. And they never seen any of it. All the success. They hear them music and we had nothing. We're covering the entire spectrum from Smokey Robinson, Alicia Keys, B2K, Mary J. Blige, Legends, Current Stars and everyone who's contributed to the sound of R&B.

2:00:25You come out the gate with a hit. And then not Michael Jackson out of number one. Come on man. I was like, hold on. I'm not gonna mj out of the number one spot. If you're a super dedicated R&B fan who wants the real discovery, the real stories, this is your podcast. This is the R&B Money Podcast. Listen to R&B money from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. On the other thing, it's hard to, I mean, you know, we were shaming people for not wearing flag pens. Yeah. Culture, which was still more mono culture than it is today. We hadn't, this is pre-iPhone, which means pre-you know, 2.0 fragmentation, right? Basically pre-social media. Yes, there was internet. Yes, there was blogs. Yes, there was certainly conspiracy. There was plenty of places for conspiracy theory to foment. Don't get me wrong. But it really was more, you know, on the outskirts,

2:01:27only even the stream edges of the internet. And it was, you know, but the mainstream conversation was, you're either pro-America or you're with the terrorists. Yeah, people forget that stuff. I was trying to get a little more of that in there too, the freedom fries. Or, you know, you can't call them French fries because the French had a house somewhere. That was not good with us. Yeah. But, you know, that was a weird moment. And it did seize the culture in a positive way. It was a moment of unity too. People really kept an amazing thing. I mean, it's one of the most watched events in all of world history until that point. It was, you know, people, you know, this first, you know, there's this feeling that we've experienced something together, something, you know, dramatic, but that we would respond to it together, right? We all kind of felt like we were there for each other. People kind of forget that. That was true in America. It was true worldwide. Look, I mean, this is going to sound a little, little snarky, but, you know, people love New York City. And that was remarkable.

2:02:33New York City was a city knew that you loved if you were there, but you hated if you weren't, right? Yeah. Kind of mindset a little bit, right? There was always, you know, and, you know, the, the, the coming together, rallying around New York City, which is again, you're not going to find that every day in some of the reddest parts of America. But in that moment, right? Everybody was, I mean, to this day, we treat firefighters better. As a collective, if you will, right? We local communities vote to give them raises and all this stuff. Those first responders in particular, we didn't, we never treated those folks as anything other than bureaucrats before 9-11. And our firefighters that are, you know, we now know we treat that we treat it all differently because we realize, you know, they don't know what moment they're putting their life on the line. They just, they signed up to do this. And they just, they just jumped in. And so, you know, you're right. And it's like we shouldn't just focus on the negative. It had this, you know, we, we brought pride into being a firefighter.

2:03:42And I think to this day, you have people wanting to be a firefighter, a little bit goes back to 9-11. I think that's totally true. And it really gets you. You know, you're going to footage. You know, of this day. This was a little trickery to watch this. I'll be honest, Brian. I, it is a little, I wonder how, you know, I don't know how much 9-11, I struggle sometimes doing 9-11 retrospectives. You know, you feel like, well, I went through it. So I know I had to cover it. I had to do all I live it. I, I, I, but I'm glad I saw this because it's it. I realize, boy, we have a lot more work to do. Yeah, yeah, that unity is right. And it gets you that, you know, the, you know, the bloodlines, the way that people kind of came to New York City, the, that sort of collective coming together. That's, that's an important part of the story. I'm pretty critical probably of the, in this and other stuff I've done of the war, of the wars and the decisions that were made in the way it changed our government, the way we started changing what it kind of meant to be an American.

2:04:53That sort of thing and some of that, the, and the divisiveness that came later, there was a real moment of unity worldwide. You know, you hear here, there's been such a discussion of, you know, Trump talking about NATO. Why should we put the build for NATO if they know what I'm doing there, fair and shared and all this stuff. But the only time, you know, this kind of key article 5, you know, it was ever triggered with NATO. Ever in all of history in the history of NATO was in defense of the United States after 9,000, that's it. The world came together and said, we're going to, we're going to help you. We're going to protect you. We're going to be, that was the show of unity that we've never, there's never seen any at any other point in history. You know, it's interesting. I'm sure, you know, there's a lot of complicated feelings for a lot of people when it comes to the bush, bushes and the chanings in 9,000. And there's a lot of people who have rethought their belief what they think of these two people and these families after the Trump era, right, which is like made people.

2:05:56And but you know, I don't think people fully appreciate how, you know, we were in hindsight, we were lucky to have an empathetic president at that moment. Whatever one thinks of the decisions bush makes down the line on the war, that's one thing. And we're going to have a lot of policy disagreements there. But go into a mosque very quickly after 9,11. To say the things that he said after 9,11, the rhetoric that was was used and was denounced if somebody else chose to do something different. I mean, we had some responsible leaders rhetorically in this country at a time when can you imagine today's leadership with a similar situation. Yeah, I don't, you know, with the infusion of Christian nationalism and our Pentagon with the way Islamophobia is sort of woven through so much of of MAGA.

2:06:56You know, I mean, I think, you know, at the time it was just he was behaving as we would assume any president would behave now you look back and realize, hey, not every president might have behaved the way Bush be it. You made an effort. That's true for sure to say that Muslims are not terrorists to reach out to the Muslim community. One of the things trump did, I think, is he found that there was still political power somehow. And it was up to to exploit. Yeah. And firing people up and then in regenerating some regenerating some of that fear and suspicion and using it for his own political purposes. I mean, there's, you know, this speeches that are equally upsetting when you go back to 2016, 17, where he's saying, I think there should be more surveillance of certain mosques and really calling for what? You know, this, no Muslim, Muslim ban, stop until we understand what's happening. Think about that. That's 15 years after 9, 11 and no terrorist attacks happened in that 15 years at all.

2:08:00So why are we banning Muslims until we understand what, and what's the problem is there isn't a problem. This is the, this is the legacy of 9, 11, that is a scourge, which is Islamophobia. Obviously, the seeds that were already there a little bit, frankly, how Hollywood portrayed every Muslim, right? You know, back in the 90s and the early ops was a certain way. You and I in the 80s grew up with hijackers always happened to be from the Middle East, right? Yeah. Or comedies, I guess. Or Russian comedists. But remember the terrorists, the hijackings of the 80s that were, that were the sort of the, that was always one of the, you know, one of the attempts to try to garner attention for various issues in the Middle East. And, boy, I can't tell, is it better or worse?

2:09:03On one hand, there are more Muslims in American political life today than there were 25 years ago. And I frankly think a lot of Muslim Americans decided, hey, you know, we need to get more involved in American politics and more involved in the American fabric. So we are not like seen as outcasts and isolated and all this stuff. And so on one hand, there's been a tremendous amount of progress. And yet it feels like Islamophobia only gets worse. Yeah, you feel like, yeah, I feel like pre-Trump, there was, there was a significant, you know, the country had sort of made some real progress to some degree. I think he discovered there was this, this, this hatred there, I guess. Oh, or, like we just said, it's like we Jews have discovered with anti-Semitism. And one of it ever goes away, it just goes dormit for a little while. Yeah. The, the weird way in which it's kind of shown up to is, you know, what we did.

2:10:03The, you know, we've talked to a lot of kids who were, who's lost parents on 9-11. And one of them was this woman, Laura Homer. She was, her father was the pilot on flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania. And she had, you know, she really rocked me with one of those guys. Yeah, but go ahead, I don't want to give it away. No, it's just really powerful. And one of the things, first of all, it's just her story was powerful. Well, one of the things that really struck me was, you know, that she was trolled online. That she had, that she was, you know, while she was, you did these comments, these direct messages that were sort of, you know, how you describe it. I guess mocking her or trolling her. And it really made it clear to me that, that a lot of a kind of younger generation is getting what they know about 9-11 from social media. And, you know, social media explosion social media happens right after 9-11. I mean, we're talking about, I think Facebook is around 2004, maybe Twitter's, maybe read something like 2005, Twitter's around 2006.

2:11:07So suddenly, this is the wave of social media that kind of rushes into our system, just as we're still kind of trying to figure out the trauma of this event. And that goes in this very bizarre dark way, you know, this very dark movement that people call the truth, truth or movement. I think it's pretty clear that that's a sort of past that you can kind of trace and you can kind of follow Alex Jones really starts to become famous in that truth or movement. But this, you know, this conspiracy is this swirl around it that 9-11 is an inside job. I mean, that anticipates this dark, that anticipates Trump and some of the, some of the divisiveness online that we started to see, this started to get sharper and sharper. And it really gets into stark relief when you're hearing that from somebody who lost their father on 9-11, you know, what does that person think of the truth or movement or this divisiveness?

2:12:09And they just sort of put in context that how far then where that movement has gone and where it's taken us. So, you know, I think about sort of the broader strokes of now looking back 25 years. Our post 9-11 response, or was it a total failure in hindsight? You know, and if it's not, what parts of it weren't a failure? It's a good question. And we, and we struggle with that and we try to figure that out in the film. Like so many people, I was in favor of initial military actions. So many people felt they had to tell somebody accountable damn it. We got to do it. I'm going to punch a wall through dry, I'm about to put you a fist through drywall. It feels really good proud of myself. And then I'm going to go to Home Depot and go figure out how to patch that. That's the way we go. And you know, we drove the Taliban out pretty quickly. And we drove almost completely out of Afghanistan and Al Qaeda as well.

2:13:14All that leadership fled into the Belucistan and into Pakistan. And they were gone. And as I mentioned, my, what one of my first films I ever made was I was in Kondahar on the one year anniversary. And at that point, this was optimistic. I mean, I, and there's no other way for me to describe it. This was a positive, interesting. They did want to say you point this out. We were, we were treated as liberators and, and you know, there is a, you want to talk about a what if what if we never go to Iraq and Afghanistaners are our soul focus. I don't think Afghanistan ends the way it ends. I agree. I'd, I'd, I'd be gay. Yeah, we took, we took our eye off the ball. No question and created this war of choice in Iraq. So yeah, it's, it's a really stark for me, you know, to sort of be there and experience this kind of optimism that there's this new chapter. And then to talk to these Marines that, you know, nobody thought when I was there for sure that 20 years after 9, 11, we would actually be engaging Marines sending Marines in

2:14:23to assist the Taliban in the takeover of, of, of Kabul. I mean, in nothing quite says it like that. We are, they, we're sending our troops in to assist with this. And so what was this whole effort of failure? It kind of, kind of seems like it at this point. All that money that we put in to those. What's the way? Like what is better today than it was on September 12th, 2001. For security, for national security. Yeah, or, yeah, let's go. What is better today? You know, we probably smartened up about communications between intelligence agencies. You know, we probably did. You know, there was a real lack of communication. It wasn't even the lack of communication. It was a territorialism between FBI and the CIA. And we were naïve in that regard. I think, I think we've, we've smartened up about that.

2:15:24That's probably true. We've, I think some of the, even though they're kind of annoying, but some of the stuff at airports is, is probably smart. But the ways in which we have gone overboard and the ways in which politicians have exploited that fear has really led us into a country that has changed us. And I don't think it's for the better. You know, I think when you look at ice, the violence on the streets today that's perpetuated by ice, I think that's a reverberation of my love. There's no question about it. That is a result of the choices that we made. The kind of our immigration debate has been separable from all of this. You know, and I think we rushed into a new technological world that expanded surveillance and security. It's surveillance of American citizens in a way that is that was dangerous and could continue to be dangerous. And more importantly, flies in the face of basic kind of for amendment protections.

2:16:30I mean, you know, there's a reason why founders said you can't be searched without a warrant. That's a reason for that. So this idea that we'd have this mass suspicionless dragnets surveillance of Americans without who aren't suspected of a crime is it just goes and flies in the face of something that's pretty important. And valuable and special about this country. How do you answer the question of why did he attack us? Why did he attack us? He, you know, that's a good question. He has been lot and I'm sorry, but I'm going to get a few more of been lot, but I want to start with that. Do you think that's a question we've sufficiently answered for this generation that maybe was alive, but didn't wasn't aware? Yeah, he is, I mean, his officially, of course, he are the way he talks about. It's interesting. After he died there, you know, after some of them, Rodney was killed in Pakistan, really close to this military base in Pakistan, they found six thousand documents of his.

2:17:37And so they're trying to piece together some of this and I think we've learned a little bit more about him from that. You know, what do we know about him really? Actually, he did a surprising number of television interviews in the 90s for somebody who was wanted back then. Talk to CNN and talk to him. Yeah, and other kid of privilege who becomes a political extremist. Yes. Yeah. Interesting pattern. But anyway, come. You talked about the military, American military next to Holy Sites and Saddi Rabia. He talked about just I think I think it's you know, a lot has been made. I think of and it's true that that we, you know, we backed some some dictators and people that were oppressive and they was convenient for us. And so I think I think he, a lot of his point was around that. And so that is that is the, that's the complicated story to tell like it.

2:18:37Yeah, because look, we had a Cold War mindset, right? Real Palatee where we were our values, we looked the other way. Yeah. If you were on, if you were on team capitalism, we looked the other way. As long as you weren't going to be on team communism. And it was like you were forgiven of anything else, no matter how you treated your people, whatever it was. And we were, you know, we embrace transactional politics. Basically we bought, we bought allies with necessary. And when you're dealing in a binary world, which is the world that the Cold War was, I can explain it. But there were always going to be consequences. And, and the, and this is among the consequences. Look, we have an entire multiple generations of Latin America. I grew up in Miami. So I live with this multiple generations of Latin Americans who don't trust the Americans, which is why I like, I can't believe we're taking the oil of the Venezuelans.

2:19:38It's like, do you have to learn nothing from history? This is only going to end badly. I just don't know how it's bad, how badly. And here we go again. But that's the, that's a tough thing to, we won the Cold War because of these decisions. But it did lead. It did, you know, there are unintended consequences. And it's possible the rise of Ben Laden was one of them. Yeah. And no question about it. To add a little irony to it. You know, a sum of Ben Laden was one of our solutions that one three two winning the Cold War. And so we were with the Taliban before we were against them, which we're back with them, remember? Yeah, exactly. But it's an interesting question. I take it that's those are the, those are the reasons for that. And I think I think we learn a lot about that. Another question, a very, a variant of that that I kind of think about is what, what do you, what do you want to do after 9-11? And I, and you know, there's, you know, I think that they were, they seemed, you know, as far as I know, the next video interview of his is something like 2004 or something.

2:20:48He comes, he comes forward. That's the first time that's the next time we actually see him on camera. And, you know, they were, they, they were a small group on 9-11. They weren't, they weren't a large group. And they, and he was focused mostly on killing more Americans, which led to the, which were more, he was more focused on tactics than he was. Yeah, something larger, right? Yes. But I think he came to understand that, that the real damage was, was the divisiveness that it caused within us. And I think it was the, the way that it triggered us, you know, going to war all over the world and on this incredible sort of, you know, this is the way that it triggered us. You know, this enormous amount of money that it took us to go to war. And the way that that would deteriorate our society. I think he came to see that later that that was actually the, the success, the divisiveness, the what we would do to ourselves in divisiveness and what, and they had the kind of attrition, the, the, the cost that it would take for it to be engaged in all these wars for so many years.

2:21:58On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I choose option B. I'm Julie Pinierro and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, you smiled at us, not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita. On the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

2:22:58If you're a bookshelf and you're for you page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Pro's Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives and anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters and that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro's Society on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages.

2:23:58I'm Britt Coleman and I'm Trevor Sikama. If you ever watched a game and wondered what really made the difference beyond the final score, that's exactly why we created NFL Pro. Pro's growth got a man wide open. Come down, stay locked! Every week we use exclusive next-gen stats insights and NFL content to break down the biggest stories, matchups and moments from around the league. We go beyond the box score to uncover the numbers, the tendencies and details that help explain what actually happened on the field. Fires it out and deflect the barkly to Pete's one man, spins past another, leaps over a furlough. And don't worry, this isn't just a show for stats experts. We use advanced analytics to help tell the story behind the game, turning the numbers into insights that every fan can understand and enjoy. So whether you're a casual fan learning more about football or a hardcore fan who can't get enough analysis, our goal is to help you see the game in a whole new way.

2:24:58If you've ever wanted to know why a playwork, how a matchup was won, or what most fans missed on Sunday, NFL Pro delivers insights you simply can't get anywhere else. Listen to NFL Pro on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. That call was really pivotal for me. Hey, it's Emily Tish Sussman, and this season on She Pivots, the podcast where women share bold career moves and personal turning points that changed everything. I sit down with culture shifting women who share their pivots, like Para Olympian Alley Truett. I was like, I'm a month out from a shark attack. There's no way in 11 months I'm making the very analytics. Advocate Elizabeth Smart. I still feel that drive that I can still make a difference, so I'm gonna keep going. Celebrity chef Carla Hall was that scary to walk away from such a stable career after just two years? No, I was more afraid of being unhappy than I was broke and in a dead and job that I didn't enjoy. And feminist legend, Gloria Steinem.

2:25:59All of us were trying to express women's real lives. We need a meeting place of our own, and if I can contribute to that, I'd like to maintain that and leave this house for that purpose. Listen to She Pivots on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. The operation itself, in hindsight, it really was Ragtag, wasn't it? Yeah, more lucky. Yeah, there was a lot more luck involved. I think that's true. I mean, you know, when you look at 9-11, Al Qaeda, the group Al Qaeda, I think we're talking about a few hundred people, maximum. That's it. And so, you know, they're and I mean, in the world. And so we're talking about this very small group of people that were able to exploit this kind of vulnerability in our system and our openness of our country. And it doesn't just get to why the Bush administration for so long just refused to believe they did this on their own.

2:27:04Right. Yeah, I think it does. I think it does. But really, it's pretty striking that there's so few few members of Al Qaeda. And of course, there is no Al Qaeda in Iraq at all before we go to war in Iraq. That's it. And so there's this whole deep application process where we kick people out of it. And then we put people in prisons. There's this kind of fomenting of extremism. They suddenly create this. They create a QI Al Qaeda in Iraq. They just worn out of after this as a reaction to our going to war in Iraq. A QI becomes the Islamic State of Iraq. And the gross has broader territorial ambitions moves into Syria as the S and says and suddenly we have the ISIS, which is the biggest terrorist organization probably in the history of the world. And it's just a huge international well funded because they're stealing art and oil reserves.

2:28:09So it's it's this phenomenal kind of domino effect that that increases as our military engagement increases. So in now, 2051 at the 50th, you think will be more comfortable describing the basically that I have this theory that essentially about 25 years from now, we're going to put all the Middle Eastern wars into one bucket and just say basically the West got the post 911 reaction wrong. And it's screwed up and it cost America it's standing in the world. And it really set back in the United States. As far as their global legitimacy, it's set them back a generation, if not two. It feels like that's frankly the general direction we're headed by 2051 without some sort of course, correction.

2:29:09Yeah, well, when I do that series, you have me on your show, by the way, at that point, and we'll both be what it be like, you know, that I mean that's what I'm curious about is what will all this look like when the only people making these will be people that really didn't experience it. So it's just going to be seen as outcome focused, right? And boy, like to me, the Iran war and the Iraq war will probably get conflated the farther away we get. And every time we have done these war of choices, they don't work out, Vietnam or Iraq, and you know, it'll start being done that way because, you know, it's interesting about the first nine months of Afghanistan that you that your documentary capture so well is that wasn't a choice. We felt like well, that's where we had to go. We had to go find them. Yeah, and you know, we we went into Iraq the first time because we were kicking about of Kuwait, we weren't really going into Iraq, we were kicking them, you know, we were, we were justified. It's a reminder, justify when you when you when you when you truly are justified, you usually make good decisions when you're trying to be preemptive, that's usually when you make bad decisions.

2:30:17Yeah, no question. You know, I, you mentioned Vietnam because we're at the we were at the 50 year anniversary of the fall of Saigon last year. And we did a little we did a piece on that. And you know, another another person that we interviewed here is on the win, whose father was in Vietnam and fled Vietnam in 1975 with the fall with that fall. So, and when you look at those images of South Vietnamese who'd worked with the Americans desperately trying to escape as a gone fell, running toward planes, trying to board helicopters. I mean, these are some of the most famous images and all of a little dream. And what do we do? We recreate it in 2021. Compare them with those images in the final days and Kabul airport, the echoes are just impossible to ignore. You get another sense of this with the advocate Marines because, you know, you're talking to people who are who are, you know, we have put the responsibility on to help end this war, right, to take these final steps to get everybody out.

2:31:25And yeah, they have they weren't so more born yet. Some of them, you know, were three or four years old way to young to remember the events of 9 11 and they're fighting and working with. And that odds with the cases occasionally Taliban soldiers who this same right young to young to remember the events. They this is a new generation finishing off this war that started right after in the days after 9 11. And so in 50 years, where will we be at the 50 years interesting, but think about it, right, you know, 50 years after the fall of Saigon, we're comfortable saying we lost the Vietnam war. Yeah, we were not comfortable saying that at the 25 year anniversary. We were still there were too many Vietnam vets in our politics too many Vietnam vets, you know, in leadership positions, who I think were never going to accept the premise that, yeah, that they were involved in an a failure, right. Yeah, I wasn't that that's a really good point. I wonder about the because you talk to some of these Marines that were there at Abigate and I think I get a sense of that they're they're conflicted right.

2:32:34I mean, they really wanted to serve. I mean, I have so much respect for them, first of all, but you know, they they wanted to to help they want they thought they were doing something, you know, important. They, you know, one of them got involved not because of al-Qaeda 9 11 necessarily, but because of ISIS, some of the things that he saw online with ISIS. And so he was motivated to go kind of solve that. And I mean, I really kind of respect the instinct in general, but what are we, you know, but when you, but when you talk to them now, you wonder if they have, you know, they're questioning some of not just why they were there, but what about Iraq, what happened. I sense a real kind of deep thinking about about what this was all about in them. And by the way, that gives me some hope. I mean, I think, you know, as we talk to young people, you so often when people get older, not that you and I are old, but it once you get older, so many people say, you know, people don't get it nowadays.

2:33:38Sometimes they ask the simpler question. Yeah, but like ducking too often. Yeah, but I, I feel like they, that a lot of people do get it and do understand it and do our starting to ask you a question that you don't have the answer for because neither do I, but you know, I've been thinking a lot about the fact that we're at the 25th anniversary of 9 11. And every year we've passed a defense budget that pretty much gave the Pentagon whatever they asked for. And it hasn't mattered. Democratic Congress from public in Congress. Sometimes it's always waving the bloody shirt, right? Don't forget 9 11, right? A little bit of that, right? And like, and yet we're running out of munitions. We can barely fight a war against Iran. And then also be prepared for a second, you know, the United States, above America, right? Is suddenly being being humbled by Iran. And what is, what have we done with 25 years of military of Pentagon budgets?

2:34:41How is it that 25 years of some of the most sophisticated war planning, supposedly that had been done has left us in a position like this? I mean, it's, it's a question. I try to say I'm asking you a question you can't answer, but it's a, I kind of think that this is a time to lift up and ask ourselves where the 25th anniversary of 9 11 were still mired in the Middle East. And we seem less prepared for another 9 11, then we were on 9 11. Yeah, I agree with you. It is, it's, and I think that, you know, just to sort of take that back to the AUMF to some degree. I mean, you know, this was a huge, this idea that the authorization to use military force. This is a, this is a shift in how it's supposed to work in the United States, right? The Constitution is pretty clear. Congress has a power to declare more. Right. I keep wondering if the members of Congress do any of them read the Constitution before they come to the office.

2:35:41I don't know. I mean, I kind of think that they have to read the, they won't, I understand that most people don't read the owner's manuals to things, but I think my members of Congress ought to. Yeah, if they did, it's unambiguous. There was a real reason why, you know, after the American Revolution, and they made these, these founders made it clear. You know, we don't want a king deciding that we're just going to go to war. We were this, this, you know, the war, the ability to go to war is in the hands of Congress. Also, the ability to fund the wars in the hands of Congress has a huge amount of power here, but post 9 11. And I think you can also probably argue cold war stuff here too. I mean, but in the modern era, especially post 9 11, Congress has has relinquished that, that like been a blank check both in, in money to the Pentagon and empowered to the presidency on this. Yeah. And yeah, are we better off for it? Definitely not. I think you see this in, in the tax on Venezuelan boats, you know, off the international waters, you see this in the Iran war.

2:36:51That was interesting. You included that. Why did you include it? Just this, just emphasizing this, this shift of power to the executive that we don't, that we don't question. And, you know, you clearly see that Iran in Iran, Trump doesn't feel like he even needs to explain why we're going. It's deteriorating so far. It's not just that there seems to be no congressional oversight of any kind or any, you know, congressional, you know, no discussion with Congress, but, but, no, no discussion with the American people, nothing. It just, they're just doing it. And so that, that's, we've slipped pretty far since 9 11 and certainly since the beginning of this country, the, how many of this country, that basic idea that people themselves have to have some say, where they go to war with. All right. Well, let's land this plane, the series turning point. What's, what are some, you hinted to me that this is kind of a season two. So what's a few other projects coming?

2:37:54Well, I don't know. This, this is kind of the, the end of this one, I think, unless we can't, we return to it later. But, yeah, we're continuing to be just really fascinated with how things are shifting right now technologically, you know, what technology is doing to us. Taylor shared in one of his shows, I think it's a little lioness had a line that I thought was terrific about Ukraine. He said, it's as if war war one and Star Wars merged that that's the Ukraine war, right, because we're having this, you know, we're radically changing warfare, right. Yeah. In real time watching this, it is, it feels like we're only a few years from some drone swarm showing up on the coasts of one of our major cities. And we're going to be like, what the hell is that, right. Like it's, it feels inevitable. Yeah, it is, it is the superpower mindset going to get punctured even more so in the next 10 years.

2:39:00Oh, I think it absolutely well. I mean, in all those sorts of ways, right. Technology is shifting, changing what it means to be vulnerable. I you can't help, but if you're thinking about 9, 11 and the decisions that we made after my love, you can't help, but kind of fast forward. What would they do now? They would use airplanes. They'd use some drone swarm or something, right. Like I don't know if they'd even bother with commercial aircraft. Totally. I mean, we're getting where the world is weird. The world is getting, we're getting strange with things like AI and other, other sorts of things. It's just a different battlefield. And yet some of these, you know, what is also the war Ukraine is refighting the boundaries of, you know, World War II in some ways, right. This is boot and reclaiming what he thinks is initial, you know, back to that kind of Soviet era, right. This is where there are these, these undercurrents. These historical undercurrents are meeting this bizarre, you know, futuristic moment with AI and with all sorts of new tools. And, you know, it's going to create all sorts of challenges. It's going to create all sorts of new vulnerabilities for terrorists. And I just hope that like, guess part of this effort really is, you know, what can we remind ourselves of this trauma that we went through these days in which we were just seized with this fear.

2:40:19And this suspicion and, and in the decisions that we made after that were driven and then a lot of ways by that fear and suspicion that led to these kind of adverse outcomes so many years, decades later, can, can this next generation. Not fall into that same fear and suspicion that let us such down such a dark place in the first place. Can we use our tools as media and as. This is the most important thing you're doing. Right. This is the most important thing you're doing because I, you know, I weirdly do believe that, you know, look, we've got a bunch of scar tissue from this 25 years 9, 11 going forward. And yes, we pretty much, you know, we rehab the wrong part of our knee and we, we've got everything we've gotten wrong. But, but my God, when it hit when something similar happens again, I'd like to think now we have, hey, here's one way not to handle it.

2:41:19Yeah. Yeah. In fairness to us, we hadn't experienced an attack on our homeland like that. That's true. You never experienced and frankly, no offense to Pearl Harbor. But that was not on that was like on an island. Literally. Yeah. That was different. It was the closest thing we had experienced as a country. But we still had to tell every the president had to tell everybody this happened. Yeah. Back then, right. Like this was, you know, we had none of us had ever, you know, Oklahoma people in Oklahoma city had experienced something like this, but nothing like this. Right. So that's the hope is that what you're doing constantly reminding people, frankly, what we got wrong. Yeah. How much of this we got wrong. How really bad it looks now 25 years later, I hope provides at least a blueprint of what not to do. Right. There's no, yeah. I'm not saying it means we'll do it. We'll do it right the next time. But hopefully we make different mistakes.

2:42:20Yeah. I agree. I mean, look, this was this was brand new. This this this shot us in all sorts of ways. It reoriented everybody's just changed everybody's vision of who we are as a country in our place in the world and what was possible in this country. We didn't think we were vulnerable to this and we are. And it was brand new, but there will be as you mentioned with technology and all the kind of stuff that's coming and the shifting ground beneath us, we would and all that there's going to be new brand brand new things to you and you wonder, you know, what is that percentage of us that's able to to sort of step back and say, can we call more emotions and make smart decisions on 911. It was one person in the entire Congress, Barbara Lee. Next time. Yeah. So numbers up a little bit, you know, so how do you balance? Let me get you out of here in this. How do you balance trying to step back and look at things from 60,000 feet with our nonstop amount of information getting shoved at you all the time.

2:43:23Yeah. I think it's I think there's real benefit. And I think also I think there's hunger for that with with people. I think, you know, we are we are we're we've been hit with a tsunami. The tsunami of information and a social media environment that we just still don't understand and we still don't know what's happening. Oh, I was still trying to say we're social media has been a great experiment on the human brain and it's been a failure. Yeah, but we just we stuck with it. Yeah. And that's just a failure. We don't you know, we haven't even begun to solve it yet. And we're getting hit with this other thing. AI now, which is further shifting our perception of what is real and what isn't so. I actually think there's a real hunger for basic longer form. Explanation deeper dive, which things are sources are clear and. And the perspective is clear that the process is more transparent.

2:44:23I think there's a kind of hunger for that. Well, Brian, it is. I don't I don't know how numb you become when you when you work on something like this. At what point did you compartmentalize it where you stop reacting emotionally? You can you can't look at 9 11 not be. And not be still affected by you. You just can't it doesn't I mean the more you look at it the more it's still there. And those days after I still there and then some of the anger and stuff that have you know some of the decisions later. All that is still there, but I do I will say that. You know talking to young people again, I don't I'm not pessimistic about it. I am definitely not one of those people who says how young people today don't get it. I don't know. I don't feel I think they're asking a better question. Exactly. Exactly. Which is hopeful. So you dig into this this dark day and this dark and these dark. This decades of engagement and all these wars and all all the pain that's caused and what it's caused this but.

2:45:28But I think I mean. I I emerge somewhat hopeful from all this that you know the right questions are being asked and that there's a there's an instinct and a willingness to. To think about it. This debut on 9-11 itself or the Monday before the second so it's. This is. Yeah. You can have this week. All right. Yeah. Brian, this was great. Appreciate the time. Congratulations. Great to have you. If your bookshelf and your four you page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is pros society. The weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives and anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet and the conversations everyone can't stop having.

2:46:29I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed with the latest pop culture moments. If you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters and that is a trojan horse, whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to pros society on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. On the new podcast solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I choose option B. I'm Julie Beniero and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility.

2:47:31Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, you smiled at us, not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to solita. On the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Dear Hunnies, this is goodbye. In February of 2024, celebrated illustrator and children's book author, Patre Mathers and her husband Michael, nailed letters to dozens of friends and family members to let them know that they had died by suicide. By the time you get the solita, both Petra and I will be dead. Next stop, Wonderland. Patre and Michael were by all accounts healthy, happy and in love. Why did they do it? And what did it do to the people they left behind?

2:48:32I would have given a million reasons to not leave this world had I known. I keep coming back to a truly hope that Patre was a thousand percent on board with the plan. Do you think of him as having killed her? Yes, I do. I hold Michael responsible for my mother's death. I'm Leon Nayfak. And I'm Alice Gregory. Together we set out to interview everyone who got one of Patre and Michael's letters. As one married couple, trying to understand another. Listen to death of an artist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Britt Coleman and I'm Trevor Sikimah. If you ever watched a game and wondered what really made the difference beyond the final score, that's exactly why we created NFL Pro. It got a man wide open. Touchdown! Stay locked! Every week we use exclusive next-gen stats insights and NFL content to break down the biggest stories, matchups and moments from around the league. We go beyond the box score to uncover the numbers, the tendencies and details that help explain

2:49:36what actually happened on the field. Fires it out but flat to bark leave to Pete's one man, spins past another, leaps over a bird. And don't worry, this isn't just a show for stats experts. We use advanced analytics to help tell the story behind the game, turning the numbers into insights that every fan can understand and enjoy. So whether you're a casual fan learning more about football or a hardcore fan who can't get enough analysis, our goal is to help you see the game in a whole new way. If you've ever wanted to know why a playwork, how a matchup was won, or what most fans missed on Sunday, NFL Pro delivers insights you simply can't get anywhere else. Listen to NFL Pro on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. The top cast, just top fight, top fight, top cast, top fight. All right, as I promised all that energy I put into researching the midterms for the entire 21st century and the impact of Governor's races,

2:50:43means I have updated my top five list and I will tell you this, I've got five slots, I've got six races, and there is no number seven, meaning I think there is a now a huge gap between the six races that made my top five list because I have one tie. And then the next level of race so number one North Carolina, it is still there Roy Cooper is got the luxury of being able to start running attack ads that really are about an oculating his weaknesses as I saw in the college football games that we saw in week zero, the North Carolina North Carolina state games both featured quite a bit of anti Michael Wattley, TV ads and there's an enormous financial gap and given how much resources Republicans now need potentially for Texas, but also with an opportunity in Michigan Ohio still win a bowl. I think Mr. Wattley's in deep deep trouble and so North Carolina is still number one with the bullet number two on my list now is Alaska.

2:51:49I'm sorry the first round on Alaska her getting up to 49 and Sullivan the incumbent not able to crack 45 let alone 43. I don't see it I mean you know she is in you know when you start to compare Alaska to Maine to Ohio to Michigan to Texas and suddenly you're like wait a minute Alaska's now the second most likely flip and I think it is. When you look at things Alaska and Mary Patel in the number two slot number three for me believe it or not I'm going to say Texas I think the can I think when I when you sort of put numbers to all this and you see the scandal penalty that does exist with whether it's Todd Aiken whether it's her walker whether it's J Jones you know it is a minimum of four points and it is and it could be as high as eight or nine Missouri got as high as eight. On the sort of on sort of underperforming the top of the ticket.

2:52:52Tossed the fact that John Thune is basically said we don't want Paxton in our caucus if somebody else wants them Donald Trump can go spend the money to do it. I think you throw all those factors in I think I'm suddenly I'm suddenly a talent Rico truth or and I was I was I was a skeptic I made it clear I was a skeptic but you start looking at these numbers you start looking at the Abbott situation I think that Texas is not going to be a good deal. Revis is amed is my friend Quinn McCord who does a lot of this analysis he was he was my Senate editor back at the hotline in 2006 I think if I'm not mistaken for a left for NBC, and he kind of compared Texas to Virginia 2006 in 2006 the idea of Democrats flipping Virginia seemed like a long shot well they could get close I don't know you know Virginia hasn't done that you know it's kind of a public and lean state yet. state. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And now what does Virginia look like 20 years later, right? It's it's it's light blue. It's not even purple anymore. Let alone red or light red.

2:53:56It may be what I'm thinking on Texas now. Number four, my list Ohio. Look, I think it's going to be a coin flip race. I really do believe that Rama Swami is now a huge problem for the Republican party in Ohio. And it's, you know, what I thought was a problem before his sort of he's kind of polarizing and the doge thing didn't go well, connection to Elon Musk. But I think that him being such a cheerleader for the tech industry and and the anger that voters have right now at data centers, tech industry in general, he can't run I don't think there's I don't think he can run away from it. I think it's impossible to run away from. He's trying to, which actually I think could make things worse. I think this is going to screw up the entire Republican ticket. I think Rama Swami could be could could end up being a gigantic anvil, you know, that just sort of drags down everybody. And it's simply because he's just an avatar for the tech industry. And you know, it's inevitable to

2:54:57me that it's almost a it's a fairly when you see this environment and this sort of rage and tech in general, data center specifically. I think it's a I think this you're not going to contain this to the governor's race. I think this whole thing's you know, so I'm I am I think that is the you know, sort of like shared brownies one one more little extra bit of help there. And I think oddly enough, the Rama Swami problem for Republicans in general is going to be that. And then at five, I have a tie for Maine and Michigan. One other thing I left out of my Michigan analysis and the opening that I'll say for here. So if Benson gets 54%, it's the best, you know, that was Gretchen Whitmer's two victories. The first time she ran she got 53. The second time she got 54. And she only got that 54 against the Republican that the party kind of abandoned in the state. Point is, that there's a pretty hard ceiling for statewide Democrats. It's in that 54 55 range. So,

2:55:58you know, I made it clear Benson needs 54 to probably drag up to a L. S. I.N. For sure, when you get to 52 or 53, which is probably the most likely range she ends up in, it really does put it a coin flip. And I'm putting Maine there. I'm more bullish on for Democrats on Maine, but I respect the fact that boy Collins always overperforms the polling and all of that. But I tell you, her conversation with my pal, Jay, Mark, this week, the fact that she went down, you know, going after Troy Jackson for having kids with his second cousin just felt like a little beneath Susan Collins. And I say this because it tells me it's sort of like a talent, a poker game. She's kind of showing you she's out of juice here. She doesn't have a affirmative case for reelection. All she can do is try to disqualify Troy Jackson. That's a tough place for a 30-year incumbent being. So, I'm certainly think it's uphill for her. But I'm going to put it at 5,

2:57:01because we do know she overperforms. There certainly was enough problems earlier in the summer. But I put Maine and Michigan tied for the fifth slot. And I put it there. And then I think there's a huge jump. I actually think I would actually put an empty slot. And then you get to New Hampshire, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, South Carolina, Mississippi. All of these will be places. The winter doesn't break 55. The question is whether any of them slip into, slip into accidental pickup territory. Most of those are Democratic seats. New Hampshire is a Republican seat. We'll learn a lot more about New Hampshire next week. And with that, with my top five list for the week. Let's do some questions. The podcast top five list is brought to you by Fandall baseball fans. Do you think you know who's hitting a home or today? Well, Fandall is giving you a free chance to call your shot with what they call daily dingers. Joining the action is easy. Just make your free pick on who's hitting a home run in their game. And if you're right, you'll get a profit boost to use on your next bet for a chance

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2:59:08visit gambling helpline ma.org. You can call 803275050 in Massachusetts. You can call 1 8 7 7 8 hope and why or you can simply text hope and why New York in order to get some help with any gambling concerns. Finally, you can also call 1 8 7 7 7 7 7 0 7 8 6 7 if you're in Louisiana. Let's do some questions. Kelly X Aubrey Texas. Yes. Remember the five timer club Texas 26 congressional district. Here's the question. Pulley showing the statewide races virtually tied. Do you think some version of the Bradley effect could be in play Republicans telling posters they'll support the GOP because they don't want to be seen as backing Democrats but ultimately voting differently or staying home. Thanks for your insightful analysis and fins up. We'll see nine win season of 2020. Wow. You are smoking the hope you're on the Miami dolphins. I do think they're going to be weirdly like the triple option

3:00:09NFL team like like a pain in the ass to play because Malik Willis and H.A.N. are just going to run all over teams. But I don't know if they have a defense to prevent other teams from scoring. That's an interesting thought. I thought you were going to actually go the other way are are some Republican saying they're not going to vote for Paxton but quietly will and they're kind of embarrassed right like that to that is to me more the Brad would where I was thinking of the Bradley effect. But all I will say is Kelly. Can I point you back to my top five list and back to the intro of this episode. I am I'm pretty bullish on Tala Rico now. I think Paxton is especially now that the NRSC the center Republicans don't want to help. I think they've decided I think there's enough anger there. I think they don't want to help them. They know that Paxton himself is sort of a cancer on politics in general. He's you know he's not just unqualified to be a senator. He's unqualified to be an elected official. Arguably he's done enough he deserves some

3:01:09sort of legal scrutiny whether it's whether it's criminal or not is up to somebody else. But I know where he doesn't belong in a position of trust from the public. I mean he really and he seems to also just be lazy. You know he's not trying very hard. He doesn't he really just seems to sort of think that he's got away with it like this for so long. He just assumes it's going to happen and and that's usually you know so anyway I when you first did Brad effect I thought you know because that would be what I'd worry about that people are saying they're going to vote for Tala Rico but they don't want to tell their friends that yeah they cared about the Jersey color enough that they even voted for that crook impact. That would be I'd be more concerned about that. All right Heather from Georgia's Fit District here at long time Lister and I love hearing you with more freedom on this platform. Thank you for saying that. I would tell you that I used I used a softer words but I would argue I was saying the same thing but I'd take your point. Given the recent Postal Service whistleblower news shouldn't Congress be doing more to protect the

3:02:10mail-in ballot process especially since there's no clear evidence the mail voting inherently benefits one party or the other by being too optimistic and expecting bipartisan pushback against executive actions I could undermine the process. Thanks for being a voice of reason in this polarized world. Heather well you probably have sadly are too optimistic on that it Congress should be doing this. You know and there are livestream on Tuesday night Nathaniel Raikich he runs an organization called vote beat that and I would encourage you to take a look at it. This is all they focus on which is the administration side of elections and you know you're asking a question the Mrs. Todd keeps asking me and keeps trying to find more answers herself which is how concerned should we be about this and I put that question to Nathaniel and he's like look the concern is real it's not clear it helps or hurts one part of the other in fact evidence suggests that if all of these rules were implemented it probably hurts Republicans more than it hurts Democrats and he explained you for instance you know if you're if you have to like suddenly drive 50 miles to drop off a ballot

3:03:16you know well who's more likely to be 50 miles from a ballot drop location a rural voter not an urban voter well that's somebody that leans red not somebody leans blue generally in the way we're we're sort of segregated I do think the courts are going to let this get implemented this cycle and we're going to see this litigated I think you know throughout 27 and then we'll see what happens but that's where I think you're right Congress needs to get more involved here and who knows maybe this attempt to sort of hijack the postal service which is really what Trump's trying to do I mean it really is supposed to sort of not be hijackable like this this is where I think if there's a I do think Congress after this election we'll have a little more cuts to question things on this and maybe they'll have partisan motivation to this but I imagine there's a possibility I mean if I represent a rural district in Utah or Oregon two states that are all male voting or Arizona I don't want these hurdles I want to make it easier for my constituents to

3:04:17vote so the opera I know there's bipartisan pain from these decisions at Trump's making so in theory there should be bipartisan support to to sort of some oversight over it but I'm I'm a big skeptical all right last question before I get to my college you know I know this is really why you're with me it's for the big college football previews that I do every week starting with week one Steve Frank a fellow two two first name Steve Frank he calls himself a fellow two first name and he's from California is 47th yes nothing like having two first names right people love to talk about it I you could argue that I have two last names too I have met people with the last name of Charles anyway if I really want five-time or status he goes I guess I need to stop asking questions only in my head and actually write in he goes I love the idea of a podcast series on political reforms and recently heard a proposal to add 12 at large senators I've heard this proposal you've made me a strong proponent of expanding the house but what do you think of the idea of reforming the Senate take care so here's the thing I go back to the point I made earlier on the

3:05:23podcast which is we got to fix the house first and then let's see how the other institutions naturally respond after the house is functional again right after the house expands and all this stuff um I do think if you're going to create at large senators and I've heard this idea that maybe you would do it um maybe you would do it by you know the 10 largest states you know maybe they get you get some extra senators but you need constitutional amendments for that expanding the house you don't so that would be my um uh my pushback I just think that if you have a more functioning house you'll have a Senate that behaves better I think our 100 senators look it was never meant to be a small D democratic institution and so at the end of the day I think you make these reforms based on founders intent founders intended for the house to be the more democratic institution well let's make it a more democratic institution and then figure out what we need to do after that with the Senate um I wouldn't simultaneously do all of this at once right I think the house you do on

3:06:28its own because it does fix the electoral college and it does sort of fix a few things all at once if you do that expansion correctly I think it just triggers a better functioning Senate if you have a house that's functioning that way so um that's my only thing with adding the at large senators um I don't know it you're again constitutional amendment and I don't know I don't know how you I don't know if it would pass because you're asking 38 state you need 38 state legislatures to approve it and if you're adding 12-hour senators it's really only going to benefit maybe 10 states um what's in it for the other 28 states so I just think you might have a math problem adding that constitutional amendment um of it all right I am going to uh now rant rave for 10 minutes about sports because this is why you some of you what you want to do is first my hurricanes they play Friday night um at Stanford

3:07:30uh if I didn't know it was our first game of the season I'd be petrified as hell about this game Friday night road game uh across the country all the makings of a problem except it's our first game of the season so the schedule makers at the ACC did them did Miami a huge favor by making this the first game right they could they could leave earlier they had time to acclimate they've been you know all they've been doing you know they had the fall practices so uh there's no excuse and in fact Miami now is at advantage because Stanford played a game last week and week zero against a wide look pretty confident um so but uh look I have pretty high expectations for this team and I think we we have a the healthiest quarterback situation we've had in three years and that includes cam ward right I mean cam ward was a bit unknown um Carson Beck clearly was hurt until the playoff um uh he he certainly did a good job playing trying to build his strength back and you can

3:08:32tell he became the quarterback everybody thought he could be starting in the playoff just and I think we're seeing already and uh he's gonna be the starter in Arizona before the end of the season I think that's for sure uh but you know Miami got better everywhere the only question marks about Miami are the is the youth of their offensive line and the youth of their defensive line uh particularly on the adds on defense um but you know on paper they're loaded on paper I think they're the best team in the country I think this you know I know I know there's a lot of skeptics about Miami still a lot of my favorite gambling podcasters have uh assume Mario Christobal's gonna blow a game that he shouldn't blow because he's you know every season he seems to lose a game he shouldn't whether he was at Oregon where's Miami etc there's just such competency in this coaching staff and I think that credit is not given enough to coach Christobal for frankly he's evolved as a coach he's matured as a coach he gets this team as tougher it's more prepared the outside noises

3:09:33isn't there um and look I think Malachi Tony is the cheat code of college football um and if uh if you're looking to make a long shot Heisman bet go grab Malachi Tony now because I think by week five or six it won't be as easy as easy to get um Miami's got a couple of tough games this year big one is November 7th at Notre Dame um it is I am stunned at the benefit of the doubt Notre Dame is getting in comparison to the lack of benefit of the doubt that Miami is getting Notre Dame arguably lost a more important player than Miami did uh in Jeremiah Love and uh what's the prince I think is his name I got to get to know him because I may need a draft him at my fantasy and of L leagues and sees the starting running back for the defending Super Bowl champion Seattle price excuse me prices his name Seattle Seahawks um so you know look I I want both I want Miami to beat Notre Dame and I

3:10:33want both Miami Notre Dame in the playoffs and I hope they get to meet again in the playoffs uh on this front but I am uh I'm really bullish and maybe I'm making a mistake but my expectations are through the roof but I I have a lot of look we bring it back both our coordinators I think Corey have a Heather men and defense and and Shannon Dawson they you know that guy is a quarterback whisperer he knows that a design uh an offense around the strength of a quarterback and he's done it different ways for different you know we've got Mark Fletcher might be the the toughest running back in the country and not be the fastest running back but he sure might be the toughest so I'm I am full of optimism and I think it's warranted you know look Miami is seen as sort of one of the realistic teams that has the shot at winning the whole thing um but the ACC appears to be weak um this year and so they can't make many they can't drop two games um you know if you're looking for a game that Miami two games worry me the most on our schedule

3:11:34one is November 14th it's the week after Notre Dame it's a home game but it's we played Duke I think Duke's gonna be pissed that we took their lunch money uh their quarterback they're starting you know and it's a former University of Miami coach Mani Diaz Mani's a friend I love Mani love coach Christopher ball it's going to be a little bit of they there's a little bit of rivalry there Mani cares about this game a lot that game just that game I especially if Miami comes off from beating Notre Dame at Notre Dame the entire college football world will say Miami's the best team in the country and then they go I can see them you know Duke doing trick play after trick play and somehow um we lose a stupid game like that so that game scares me um and then Clemson we play at Clemson and and Davos Swini's gonna be in desperation mode right and whenever you're playing a team that's desperate and you know you know maybe I'm a little worried about our North Carolina game now hit Bella check it's finally figured out how to coach college football defense um I have one other hot take about college football lane kiffin there's a new vanity fair piece not good Nick Saban saying saying that you had to keep him away from the college girls

3:12:41I have to tell you lane kiffin is now the bat it's one thing to be the bad boy like Mike Leach was the bad boy of college football but yeah a bad boy you kind of love like a rogue like Mike Leach was the rogue we all loved I love Mike Leach we all you know he was just sort of he was he was countercultural he was all the bait you know he was you know kind of you know there was something weird about him sometimes you may think he was kind of an a-hole but but he was he was sort of a rogue kind of a lovable rogue lane kiffin's not lovable and now you know between this fight over bringing in NFL players would literally the rest of the college football world including the normally acquiescing SEC is like no we got to draw a line somewhere um then you throw this peanut there I have to say here's a hot take lane kiffin doesn't finish the season as the head of ball coach of ls u realistically do I think I is it likely to happen no is it is it impossible

3:13:45no this is not going well so far um and here's what'll happen look if he wins no ls u will accept anything but if he loses to Ole Miss be suddenly five and two four and three and then more stories come out and more crap comes out kiffin kiffin I think is the most hated man in college football right now and I don't think it's a good thing to be the most hated man in college football um let me leave you with this if the angels are worth four billion dollars then please learn her family put the team back for sale let's get if the nationals are going to be where if if anaheim's team is worth four billion Washington's team is worth at least four billion you apparently didn't like the two billion valuation a couple years ago great it's now doubled please sell the team before you trade these young good done players and the fact that there is a value that you can get four billion great sell the team please let's go if you I don't

3:14:52want to watch an off season where we suddenly trade see get trade more of our good all stars in order for potential we may never see all right with that enjoy your weekend enjoy week one of college football hopefully i'll be in a good mood based on how my Amy does on friday and i'll see you my day morning our hometown is not a test tube 90 miles northeast of Nashville a battle for the future of America plays out in one small town developers with right wing ties have purchased hundreds of acres of land we need cities on a shining hill this is our town a podcast about what happens when a small town becomes the site of a social experiment and fights back i guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now did you listen to our town on the i heart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts hey it's Alec Baldwin this season on my podcast here's the thing i talked to

3:15:56actor Stephen Root i'm a people watcher you see that guy going down the drain though yeah i can use that and open igloo co-founder alya mohammad i love staying on top of what is going on in our city what is on renter's minds and taking all of that knowledge to build a platform that hopefully is going to make new york city better in the long run listen to here's the thing on the i heart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts hi i'm michael and perioli i want to tell you about my new podcast underground zero we're looking at the opportunity of a lifetime for us and the other families it's about the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks what's in the tunnels go boss of a engage it'll be worth half a billion starring steve surepa ray of roots oh and me michael and perioli how far you prepared to go depends how far you are listen to underground zero on the i heart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts welcome aboard season six of the girl friends

3:16:57flight or fight which takes place 30,000 feet in the sky a beautiful woman smiles and hands you a scotch but you have no idea just how messed up her job actually is it was the most sexist job i think you can have until one day a group of stewardesses spark a revolution that reshapes america listen to the girl friends flight or fight on the i heart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts this is an i heart podcast guaranteed human