8/14/26: Karoline Leavitt Quits After Decoy Plane Fiasco, Scott Jennings Meltdown, AI Math Breakthroughs, American Doctor Doc

23:05i don't give a f**k what black people care about oh black people care about this black people care about that like shut the f**k up that's not how politics works oh well hassan how dare you like it or not black people care about this issue it's like it's such a f**king stupid stance any other black folk want to engage in radical activist language in this f**king chat suck my f**k yes dude it's because i'm racist that's why it's because i'm racist dude go back to a better time when lynchings were happening. This is what I like as a black man. Are you always doing too much with black people? Leave them alone.

23:39I want to go back to lynching like I get it, but relax, man. Shut the f*** up, okay? You got me, okay? You got me because I'm a racist person. You just heard campaigns all the time for Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan. He campaigns for other Democrats around the country. Every black voter in this country needs to listen to this. And if you look at these Democratic primaries, black voters have been voting against the socialists, only to be overruled in many cases by young, privileged white commies. Might the black voters find a home in the Republican Party this fall? Well, if Democratic campaigns are adopting the Piker plan of returning our country to lynchings, that just might happen.

24:23Saagar Enjeti:OK, all right. Can I start? Because I have a lot of thoughts on this, please. i'm collecting myself as our resident wokester yes first of all what hassan was doing in those clips is technically anti-woke right it's dark woke it's him making fun of people who are being ridiculous and policing things that he said which is if you paid any attention to hassan piker and you cared about presenting an accurate depiction of who he actually is you would understand. Secondly, clipping people out of context is one of the most evil things that you can do on the Internet and also for your own cause, by the way.

25:07Like, if you really think that Hassan Piker is a racist, you should be able to find real clips of him actually being a racist instead of making fun of his opponents. And I really think some idiot at a Republican opposition research firm handed this to Scott Jennings on a silver platter. And because they haven't bothered to learn one or two things about what Hassan Piker actually does, they ran with it without checking it. And now Hassan Piker, as I'm sure you have this, Griffin, is in litigation for defamation because they were too stupid to actually do the legwork of figuring out what he really does on his show.

25:49I don't think they're too stupid. I think they don't give a it. They don't care. They don't care whether it's true or false. They have decided he's going to be a boogeyman. It doesn't matter whether there is a basis in reality or not. And so over tens of thousands of hours of content, they clip a few things that are completely misrepresent his views. You think Hassan Piker wants black people to be lynched? That is fucking insane. And that is a monstrous thing to say about someone, especially someone whose entire politics are deeply committed to equality and to human rights and to anti-racism. To do that is so sick.

26:35I am really glad that Hassan is going after him because this should not, this crosses a line beyond like good faith misinterpretation or, well, he did say that they deserve, no. This goes way beyond that and is thoroughly disgusting. I don't care whether you love or hate Hassan Piker, everyone the way you did, Emily, should call it out. And, you know, I don't think it's cute or funny. I think it's genuinely disgusting and monstrous and a fucking evil thing to do. It's evil. And the only thing I wanted to add to that is that I spend a lot of time with people on Oh, right. They genuinely don't understand Hassan Piker.

27:15And some of them it's because they don't bother to. And some of them is because they're stupid. And some of you're right, Crystal, they just literally don't care. But they're going to care when they get a defamation lawsuit. And I think it's great that he's going after it because he should. Yeah. Well, like Scarborough, when he did his whole like unhinged, spittle laden rant against Hassan, it's like, oh, I've never watched him. Then what are we doing here? And he also was lying and misrepresenting the comments that Hassan has made about October 7th in service of his, you know, unhinged meltdown tirade.

27:48They fundamentally don't understand streaming. They don't understand when people are on for eight hours a day. They're going back and forth, being sarcastic with the people that are throwing questions at them. Anyway, yeah, I just co-sign the point that it's evil.

28:00Saagar Enjeti:And Ryan, I've and to you, I would ask, you know, I've seen a lot of attacks on Hassan as he is connected to all these lefty progressive candidates. You know, clips like this are probably getting retweeted by like Neera Tanden and people like that. So is there some sort of crossover alliance happening between these Scott Jennings types and these more centrist establishment liberals? There's some for sure. Maybe like that Michael LaRosa guy and those and those sorts of folks are pushing it if they still count as like even Democrats at this point. The question for whether or not it rises to defamation will be whether or not really it's an assertion of fact or if it can count as this like over the top, like hyperbole.

28:52And if you're somebody who is always spouting over the top hyperbole, interestingly, you kind of get more protection from courts. Alex Jones used that defense. Right, because people are like, oh, he always says crazy stuff. Right, it did not work. Because he was making factual claims that were knowably false when it came to Sandy Hook. He, to me, Jennings is making a factual claim here. He does at the end. He makes a factual claim about lynchings. He's making a factual assertion that is factually untrue and it is demonstrably untrue. and Jennings either knows or with a tiny bit of diligence would have known that it was untrue, which makes it malicious, which is the standard for defamation.

29:38I hate defamation cases because people overuse them to restrict people's ability to have speech, debate, and argue. But there also needs to be some check on firmly lying about people in such a dangerous way if you don't like what he says, like criticize what he says, but don't fabricate things that he never said and then condemn him for that in a way that then gets circulated and is like genuinely dangerous and also just corrosive of like the idea of public debate. So yeah, I hope he does go forward with this and Jennings has to like think about and people in the future have to say, because we're in this space And Hassan has made this point that we have two standards for what's allowable in conversation.

30:33If you are supportive of Israel in general, you can say whatever you want about people who are critics of Israel. Doesn't have to be true. Can be completely blatantly false. And that is just the norm that is allowed within our current media structure. That's changing. And as it changes, like this could be one of the things that forces a change where people like Scott Jennings, who is literally working for a radio station, radio network, whose chief strategy officer, Brad Parscale, is a registered agent for the Israeli government. Like that's the program he was on is under the guidance of an Israeli agent.

31:17And if those folks have to check themselves a little bit and think, oh, wait, I actually have to pay attention to what I'm saying here. And it has to have some basis in fact or truth. Then I think that's a good thing. And we have to get to that place. This world where one side can just lie all the time and the other side says true things and gets raked over the coals for it is unsustainable. But I just want to say on that point, this is why Griffin's opening joke about woke Scott Jennings is a really good one, because Scott Jennings would have complained for years about people on college campuses, like professors on college campuses, people with some legitimate power, saying whatever the hell they want to say about accusing others of racism or whatever it is.

32:03And that's a really serious accusation. And then he's like flipping around and doing the exact same thing. And in a way that is so, so cynical. It's just like completely undermines any credibility that anyone ever wanted to have. If he wants to be a critic of the corporate media, this undermines your credibility. Say that no Americans trust media. This undermines your credibility. Like, how can you how can you say that again? And that's, again, why it's also important for people on the right to understand what Hassan Piker does, which is reject a lot of the woke pieties that were foisted by, in some cases, the Hillary Clintons of the world onto the left.

32:45And so if you want to make an argument against Hassan Piker, you sure as hell better understand what he's actually doing, which was rejecting, in many cases, political correctness from those very clips that he showed as some example of him calling for lynchings. Like, it is just based on a willful misunderstanding. In some cases, Kershlo, I think you're totally correct. It is cynical. They don't care. But again, a defamation lawsuit does make you, to Ryan's point, have to think about it and exert a modicum of care. Yeah. And I'll just say to the liberals who think this is great or they're going to quietly be happy about it because they want to make Hassan a boogeyman just as much as the right does, if not more, because it's more directly existential to them right now and their grip on the party.

33:28Like, if you think the right views you any differently, you are so delusional. They think you're all communist. They think you're all socialist. They think you're all, most importantly, obstacles to their own power. They will not hesitate to use these very same disgusting, shameful tactics against you. So get it together. Let's focus, people. Let's focus on what is, you know, more important here. And, you know, and again, this isn't even shouldn't be a left right thing because this could literally be done to absolutely everyone, which is why I've defended many people that I vociferously disagree with when they have been smeared or canceled and things have been done to them that I thought were, you know, unfair and unjust.

34:11Saagar Enjeti:Well, speaking of people who are focused, Jill Biden's ex-staffer, Michael LaRosa, former guest on this program, is continuing the tirade against AES and seems tangentially also related to Hassan. Let's take a listen to him on Fox News. I want the Democrats to win. I think they're going to win the Senate. I think they're going to win the House. I want Chuck Schumer and Brian Schatz to be the next majority leaders. I want to do it without. and the work can be done um but this isn't what i signed up for totem cough and ss and defending it and then defending hassan piker is just not the leader of my party and it's okay for democrats to say that my old boss chris matthews was on tv this morning saying democrats just need to do the hard part for politicians which is sometimes standing up to your friends wow okay i like how it says now solar eclipse in europe on the screen i'm quite an eclipse don't look don't look directly at La Rosa.

35:07Saagar Enjeti:You need some protective eyewear for that. So yeah, two things to flag here. He says the Totenkopf for AES. The Totenkopf tattoo is moving. It's shifting candidates. It's now apparently on Abdul. It's infectious, I guess. The sisterhood of the traveling Totenkopf. Yes. So that's very interesting. Watch out. And then also, you know, I think we have, we can't neglect to mention who La Rosa is currently working for, Ryan. Isn't he currently working as a consultant for a Trump-friendly gentleman? Yeah, Ballard. Right. Their clients include Saudi Arabia, Haftar, who is a warlord in Libya. They had TikTok, and La Rosa was actually on that account, but he got fired in April.

36:02He claims on Twitter that happens all the time. Contracts expire. Yes, they kept contracts with all their other lobbying firms. So I think the pieces are starting to come together a little bit. Like in April, he loses this$50 ,000 a month TikTok contract. He's been on an absolute rampage. You know, Ellison, now the owner of TikTok, I think he's trying to show his value to these Trump people that he works for. And so I think that has given him an extra level of motivation to just go out and go on these screeds. But it would be nice if news organizations would say we're now joined by a representative of a Libyan warlord and Saudi Arabia to tell us what he thinks about Hamas Piker.

36:50To opine on morality.

36:53Saagar Enjeti:But Crystal, Crystal, we have, you know, a math guy later, but I have a math question for you now. He says that he wants to take the Senate without AES. What's the math like on that? Very tough. Where we take the Senate, but we don't have Abdul in the Senate. Just as it is theoretically possible for a woman to be good at math, it is also theoretically possible for Democrats to win the Senate without Abdul winning Michigan. but highly unlikely. Yes. Highly unlikely. I love that people might just see this clip and not the callback reference from the earlier part of the episode. Oh, Scott Jennings is going to be posting this later today, Em.

37:30I posted, yeah. You're right. No, but that's exactly that's the equivalent. Ladies, listen up to what Crystal thinks of you. Yeah. Yes, but that's the equivalent. That's exactly the equivalent. Literally. Literally. The irony being that the chance of Griffin and I are the two worst at math on this call or it's pretty high. I promise you you're not. Crystal's probably very good at math. I am not. I mean, I'm serviceable. I'm not. I wouldn't say very good. I'm serviceable. I was competent.

37:54Saagar Enjeti:All right. Well, not me.

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38:49it is a movie has kind of changed anyway too right what do you think it is now it's images and words being spoken captured by some sort of uh technology danny mcbride he loves oh that's fantastic and you make it on you make your own that's great i call him tarot reed it's a good name they're all named after cast members of american pie yeah i call i don't I never looked up if she was in this, but I call him Leachy Sobieski. I don't think she was in American Pie, but I still like that. Haven't looked it up. Haven't looked it up. She was prominent around the same time. Then Mary Steenburgen. Why are you guys talking to me like, why are you talking so down to me that you think I don't understand your little play game?

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40:45Saagar Enjeti:On that note, sounds like we all need to hit the books. Let's get to our math professor, Daniel, here. I actually feel like you would be very good at math, Crystal. Daniel, what's going on? Hey, Daniel, how's it going? Hey, how's it going? Well, how about you guys? Good. Thank you for doing this. It's not my pleasure. So Daniel, this is Daniel Litt. You are a university professor at the University of Toronto. Welcome. You've been talking a lot about mathematics and artificial intelligence. Now, you know, when I do math, I put it in my phone calculator and I'm set. But where does AI play into this?

41:25Saagar Enjeti:That's kind of an artificial intelligence of sorts. And there's these long unsolved math problems that are now being solved by AI. So tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, so first of all, I want to say you made a great point. So in some sense, what we're seeing now, so AI being useful for open questions in mathematics is like a continuation of a long trend, right? So, you know, calculating machines, computers, even going back to Abakai, the world of Abakus, have like already for a very long time been important for mathematics. What we're seeing now is problems that previously required a human expert, maybe no human expert spent time on them.

42:06In some cases, human experts spent a lot of time on them being resolved more or less autonomously by machines, by artificial intelligence, and then a lot more being resolved by a combined effort, teamwork between human mathematicians and machines. And so I think, I mean, that's a really exciting time. Like, there's a lot of open questions, things that I've been wondering about for a long time that, you know, I expect will have some help resolving now. Griffin, can you put this open AI story from Quartz up on the screen about Astra specifically solving 10 different, I guess, conjectures? Forgive my total lack of math knowledge here, Tanya.

42:46That's why we've got you in. That were, you know, long unsolved by humans and AI got involved and now has, you know, has been able to solve some of these problems. First of all, just help put in context, like, what are these things? How long have they been out there? Which ones sort of impressed you the most? How should we think about this as an achievement? Yeah, so maybe let me give you some context. So there's like something like, I don't know, somewhere between maybe like 10 ,000 professional mathematicians in North America worldwide, more than that, obviously. There's probably like millions of open conjectures.

43:19There's a lot of open problems. Some of them are important. Some of them have had a lot of attention put forth trying to resolve them. Some of them not so much. Some of them almost nothing. So, OK, so these are, I would say, among the more important results proved by AI. They're still very kind of specialist questions in general. So like questions that most mathematicians have spent zero time thinking about, probably had never even heard of. Can I just pause you to specify on there? You said these are some of the most important conjectures solved by AI. How do they compare to some of the conjectures solved by humans?

43:52Like how would they rate if this was a human being that had accomplished this? That's great. So what's certainly true is that if a human being had accomplished, like had proven these results, they would have been rewarded for it. So like if a graduate student had done it, they would probably get an interview at a good university. If you compare them to like the best results produced by humans in a given year, they would, you know, probably rank pretty high up. But definitely they wouldn't be like better than the best results produced by a human in a given year. There are also all certain kinds of problems.

44:21So like the AI models are not autonomously doing all kinds of work that mathematicians do. I think that you should think of them by and large as being problems that can be attacked with existing techniques, maybe sometimes very cleverly put together. I'm not saying that that will continue to be the case, that we won't see more exciting new techniques developed by models. I think that will probably happen, but that's where things are now. So I moderated a panel at this interesting neurosymbolic AI conference last week where that was their big emphasis. Basically, they're saying that the LLMs are just, you know, they're doing their thing, but there's a real cap on what they're actually capable of.

45:07And if you're not combining their strategies with neurosymbolic AI, then you're never going to get to a place of actual reasoning. When it comes to approaching these math questions, how much is tool-based and how much of this neurosymbolic approach is essential for it? Or are we just straight up doing these with LLMs? Yeah, so that's a good question. And I think that there's a lot of disagreement on whether LLMs have an upper limit in their ability to be useful for math research. I'm skeptical that new techniques are needed to do high-quality work. Already, I think the same people claiming we need new architectures claimed that a few years ago, and then it seems not to be true in general.

45:53That said, yeah, so these models are definitely, in many cases, using tools like writing Python scripts and so on. If you want to call that neurosymbolic, you can. that said it's you know I think there's like been a lot of predictions about the limits of current architectures and I'm personally skeptical I think the models are going to continue to get a lot better and to be you know more and more useful for math research for example how do you end up like knowing it's true like how do you get the right answer nobody's solved it how do you know that is a really great question yeah so okay so one thing is like we're going need a lot more mathematicians right like right now these models that's actually very that's interesting so can you speak to that too that because because this is part of the claim from companies is that this ends up some some of these weird things will open up opportunities for humans in ways that we haven't yet anticipated is that kind of what you're saying yeah i think that's right yeah so so right now the models are producing like a huge amount of text uh most of that that's not like you know just a bunch of symbols that you can put into a computer and check like most with them are English language proofs.

46:55Okay, sometimes they can be checked automatically. So there's a technology called formalization, essentially a way of turning a mathematical proof into a computer program, and then the computer can check that. So for example, with these 10 new results from OpenAI, those were formalized in a language called Lean. And so they were checked rigorously by a computer before OpenAI put them out. In some areas of mathematics, that's now practical. In some areas, it's not. So, okay, so for example, Every day now I'm getting sent new claims like, oh, I proved such and such using an LLM. Is it right? The people producing this aren't able to check it.

47:28It's really hard. Yeah. So at least in the short term, just to check these things are correct. And they're often not. We need a lot more mathematicians. We need a lot of people working on this. In the long term, I think even if we get to a point where computers are really reliable, where the LLMs are able to check their own work very reliably or where we can formalize them in lean. What's the point of producing a bunch of math papers that no one's reading? I think in order to engage with it, in order to have it become part of our mathematical knowledge, we're going to need a lot more mathematicians just to read this work, let alone develop it further.

48:03So let me get your reaction to the substack that you undoubtedly saw called The Dark Knight of Mathematics. Kerwin Hampshire says, what are we really doing? I'm going insane. During the last week or so, LLMs have produced a number of counter examples to significant longstanding conjectures, talking about the news stories we're covering right now. I will not recount these happenings here. There are many places where you can find the details. Mathematicians, math enthusiasts, and curious lay people are responding to these developments in ways I believe obscure what is for me the true heart of the problem.

48:32I do not speak for everyone in the math community in my response, but I suspect I'm not alone. I am suffering a profound spiritual crisis due to these developments. I've been screaming internally for days. It feels as though I am living inside of a nightmare. And he basically talks about this existential dread that he has of now if computers can do this, all of the joy that I get from mathematics, which is exploring these unknown questions and being at the forefront of discovery and pushing human knowledge forward, I feel that is being taken away from me. And he says at one point, even if we ban the AI at this point because we're like, oh, well, we got to let humans do this stuff and sort of did like an affirmative action for humans over robots.

49:17He's like, it wouldn't be the same because I would know they could have done this and could have done it more easily than I ever could dream. So I wonder what you made of this piece and if you have also, you know, had this sort of existential dread about the robots pushing you out of the aspects of your profession that you enjoy the most. Yeah. So, OK. So first of all, I really empathize with what Kerwin wrote there. I think there's a lot of uncertainty in the profession right now. You know, anytime radical new technology develops, like certain skills that humans have become less important and others might become more important.

49:53And I think it's really totally reasonable to have anxiety about that. A lot of young people in the profession, graduate students, math undergrads, are really concerned. And I think justifiably, we don't know what the profession is going to look like in a few years. That said, why is the profession of mathematics valuable? Presumably, it's because we think mathematics is really important. We have all these burning questions that we want to know the answers to. My personal motivation for doing math is I have so many questions that no one knows the answer to, that I really want to understand. And a new tool that helps me do that, I think, is extremely valuable.

50:31right so like ultimately being worried being anxious about uncertainties and how the profession develops like totally reasonable totally understandable and I think that you know there are a lot of hard questions we're going to have to answer about like what the profession will look like in a few years as these tools become more capable that said like my personal view is that we're going to see an explosion of need for mathematicians, an explosion of need for like mathematical human capital, like as these questions start to be answered. Okay, one more comment is like, the models are starting to be able to do a lot of things.

51:09Definitely like the vast majority of mathematical tasks I do, the models like aren't helpful with yet. But let's suppose in the future they become able to do all those things. They're not going to be able to do everything. I think there's good theoretical reasons to believe that there's arbitrarily hard, interesting math questions. And so there's going to be a lot of open questions that we still don't know the answer to, that we still want to know the answer to. Maybe we'll have the feeling in a few years, or I don't know, 10 or 20 years down the line, the models are so good that if they're not able to answer this question, like, are we going to be able to make progress?

51:43Well, I don't know. What I like to say is that the job of a mathematician is being stuck and being confused and trying to understand these hard problems and I don't think that's going to go away. But if we need more mathematicians, yet at the same time, these robots are doing all our thinking for kids, is there concern about and is there anything being done about the fact that we're not developed, like there's a risk that we won't develop critical math thinking skills in the same way that we have in the past because people have the crutch of these LLMs. Yeah, that's a great point. And we definitely need to rethink a lot about how we do math education.

52:21And I want to point out, like, we've been talking about math at, like, the very tip of this pyramid, like research professors or something. Right. Like there's, you know, some several thousand of us. You can't produce that without a pipeline. We need to have, you know, if we want people to be understanding these answers to the questions that have been torturing us for years, like we need a pipeline of millions or, you know, everyone needs to be learning math. I think that, you know, there's an opportunity here as well as a danger like the, you know, a new tool gives you new ways to learn. I absolutely agree with you that there's like a danger of de-skilling.

52:57I don't think it's like insurmountable. You know, I've been thinking a lot about how to redesign my courses. I'm not involved in like K-12 education, but I'm sure that a lot of people are thinking seriously about how to how to adapt their teaching methods to the fact that like it's now possible to, you know, have a machine do your homework. Yeah, I hope that that's the case. What you do is so obviously theoretically complicated that I'm going to have a hard time understanding it. But could you give us an example maybe of something that the models are really breaking perhaps new ground on or are pushing further than we were prepared for this quickly?

53:36Sure. Yeah. Okay. So maybe let me say, so the sorts of things I think about are like about numbers and shapes mostly and the interactions between those two things. So like that's number theory and algebraic geometry, I guess, is the area I'm in. So most of the questions I think about the models have not been so useful at. What I would say, those places they're useful are, so first of all, things that you can really parallelize. So, for example, if you're looking for an example of something, you can try a million different things at the same time with the models. That's something where if you needed a human to do that, they'd have to try a million things sequentially, and that would take a long time.

54:13And there's also no guarantee of success, so that's very expensive. You spend a year of your time trying to find an example of something, you probably don't even make partial progress. Most people don't pursue projects like that. So that's some place where the models have been really helpful. The other place where the models have been really helpful are problems where it's easy to tell you're right. So in a lot of mathematics, you know, you write down a proof maybe. And that's actually something that's really hard to check. Like you need an expert to check it. It might take a long time. There might not be many people who can do that.

54:45Sometimes, though, like you want to make a construction. You might even be able to like write a Python program or something to check that construction is correct. So like even if the way you came up with it is like kind of hard to check, like the output is easy to check. And that's something where, again, the models have been very useful just, again, because like they can, you know, you write that Python program, say, and then they can just like plug in their outputs into the program and then tell you, oh, I found something that works. So that I would say those are the primary sorts of situations where they've been really useful.

55:13So you should think it's something like making constructions or doing things that it might have been very expensive for a human to try. It sounds like sort of when when a brute force approach would be useful, that that's where they excel. Is that fair? Yeah, that's definitely part of it. So definitely the models like have, you know, they don't get tired. They are able to go pretty far. That said, like, I don't want to try. I don't want to be downplaying their successes. I think some of what the models have done is like something that I would I consider really clever. Or, like, you know, if a graduate student had done it, I wouldn't say, like, oh, you did that by brute force.

55:50I would say, like, you had a pretty good idea. Gotcha. Well, and that relates to the last question I at least have for you, Dana, which is that there's this concept in debates over how transformational AI is going to be, where people who tend to downplay that level of transformation compare it to a, quote-unquote, stochastic parrot. They talk about, look, it's just, you know, taking in all of this language and then predicting the next word and that's all it is. And so there's this sort of upper limit of human intelligence is never going to be able to invent, discover, be creative in the way that human beings can.

56:23How do these results impact your view of that debate? That's a great question. I mean, I think that there's some truth to that. What we see is the models are doing math in a maybe slightly more recombinatory way than people do. That said, I want to stress the word slightly. I think a lot of what people do is take ideas they've seen and remix them in various ways. When we kind of go out of distribution, I think it's usually within a small distance of distribution. And the way human knowledge and human ideas grow is we slowly poke at the edges of what we know and expand that and expand that. I see no evidence that the models will be unable to do that.

57:02I expect them to be able to do all the sorts of reasoning that people do. Maybe that reasoning amounts to predicting the next token or, you know, some kind of stochastic parity. I think that's a lot of what we do, too. So, yeah, I am very skeptical that the models have those kinds of limits, even if, like, that's a correct mechanistic description of what they do. Yeah. Well, and perhaps that, to your point, sort of misunderstands the way humans do creativity and discovery, which is a lot of inspiration from other things in their lives and recombination and predicting the next word in terms of how, you know, even how we speak and how we formulate ideas and linguistic concepts.

57:41So do you guys have any other questions for Daniel?

57:44Saagar Enjeti:I just have one short question. So you're teaching students all the time. You're seeing students in the throes of this AI evolution. Are they getting stupider? Are they getting smarter? Are they getting lazier? What is your feeling? That's a good question. So I think for a self-motivated student, this is like the golden age. You can learn an unbelievable amount much more easily than you could have a year ago. I mean, this is already true. The internet was a huge boon to self-motivated students. There are some students who are not as motivated. And for them, you know, the fact that it's now cheap and easy to cheat on your homework really sabotages their learning.

58:22My view is that's like an institutional problem, like a big part of the point of K-12 education universities is to like provide a structure that motivates students to actually do the work and actually learn. The old structure where, you know, I don't know, I give you a take home exam and you get to think about it for a week, like probably doesn't work for most students anymore. That was my favorite way to learn. And I think it's a little sad we're losing something like that. But I think we'll find a new structure. Like, you know, anytime there's a new technology, old equilibriums or equilibria are not going to survive and we'll need to find a new one.

58:56But I think that ultimately, like, it's going to be great for people who want to learn. And I think that we're going to be able to help the people who are less self-motivated also learn, despite the fact that there's, you know, a ways out.

59:10Saagar Enjeti:All right. Well, people say that we never had any optimistic AI guests on. There's some optimism here for everybody. Daniel, we thank you so much. A University of Toronto professor will definitely continue to be in touch if there's any other big math problem solved. You want people to follow you on Twitter or you got anything you want to plug, Daniel? Yeah, sure. You can follow me at LitMath, L-I-T-T-M-A-T-H. And my website's DanielLit.com. Awesome. This was very insightful. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you. See you later, Daniel. See you later. All right. So good. Very cool. Very cool.

59:50Saagar Enjeti:Back to school. Back to school. It's August, September time. We have one update that Crystal wanted to cover about the Galapagos. Now, we did a story yesterday about some mysterious drones. And now the Washington Post revealed about an hour or two after our program came out that confirmed the long mystery attacks on three fishing boats near the Galapagos. They're part of a covert CIA program with a spy plane, with its ownership hidden behind an LLC oriented towards each boat before the strikes. Yes. So we had at DropSite, kudos to you guys, Ryan, had really been the ones pushing this story forward from the beginning.

1:00:33So I want to get your thoughts on this as well. But we had the reporter that you guys had do this incredible investigation, Camila Lourdes-Galarza on the show yesterday. And she had broken the story that the Ecuadorian prosecutor who was looking into these U.S.-linked boat strikes, including allegations of torture from the survivors who had been pulled from the wreckage and then held for days and tortured, allegedly, and then dropped in El Salvador. In any case, she had done that incredible reporting. And now you've got New York Times picked up the thread and they were able to track down some information about one of the planes that was involved.

1:01:11They traced it to this like UPS box in Richmond, I think, Virginia, somewhere, you know, somewhere in Northern Virginia or Richmond, Virginia, something like that. So it was looking like, oh, this may have been private U.S.-backed mercenaries. They reached out to Eric Prince for comment, whether these were former Blackwater types, which he is doing similar type things in the region. So still possible that there is an involvement there, though they deny it. Washington Post in this story seems to have cracked one aspect of it, which is that this looks to be a CIA operation. So slightly different in terms of the command structure versus the boat strikes that the military and Hegseth have been happy to brag about, post videos of, celebrate.

1:01:55Right. So that was one of the questions is, well, how come in this instance they wanted to deny what had happened in spite of a lot of evidence that you guys at DropSite were able to compile that this was U.S. backed, including the fact that the the guys that picked up the survivors and that were spotted on the scene had a spoken American accent in English and had American flag patches on their uniforms, even though they carried no military insignia. So, yeah, Ryan, what do you make of these developments? Because this is, I mean, just so people know, these were fishermen. I mean, it wouldn't be OK if they were running drugs.

1:02:31By the way, they deserve due process. These were fishermen cleared by the Ecuadorian government on commercial licensed fishing vessels. And they were injured, tortured and murdered. One of the boats is still missing. The prosecutor investigating it was murdered. This is a massive, insane scandal. This is a crime. There needs to be accountability. And so, you know, it's really important that these mainstream outlets, even though they, of course, give you guys no credit, are pushing the story forward in this way. Yeah. And we know for a fact from some of the journalists working on this that they've been thankful for our reporting and reading it quite closely and following it quite explicitly.

1:03:11I would encourage everybody to go listen to the interview you did with Camilla. It's very helpful. She lays it out, you know, quite well. She also found, you know, a U.S. Coast Guard vessel, like, in the area. Like, so, like, U.S. linked drones. Like, a lot of the pieces are there. This extra piece from The Washington Post that this is a CIA operation is fascinating. You would ask Camilla a really interesting question. Like, why are they so willing to brag about their crimes in some cases, whereas with this one, they've been much more reticent? And I think her answer, I think, was pretty, pretty, had a lot of explanatory power, basically, that the Ecuadorian, Ecuadorian Coast Guard had intercepted some of these fishing boats previously and had like within hours of this operation.

1:04:04And it had been like, oh, these guys have fishing licenses. These are commercial fishing boats. Like, this is not, this is not remotely a question. Like, this is, these guys are what they say they are. And they left them. and then they get attacked. And the gap between what they did and the legality of it is pretty wide in all of the boat strikes because it's illegal to just kill people out of the sky. But in this case, when their allies, their partners had already confirmed that these are commercial fishermen and then they come in and they torture them and we still don't know where eight of them are.

1:04:43you know maybe they're still in El Salvador in prison maybe they were killed probably killed because you know the some of the ones that Camila interviewed were survivors of a strike so like it but you know we don't we don't know and the you know families are holding out hope at this point you know one one thing that Trump has been so effective at doing is is kind of squashing scandals by just admitting everything it it really deflates the media's interest in an issue when he's like, yeah, we did that. And this is why we did it. Like they would have, the media would still be chasing the question of whether or not Trump like got the red card lifted.

1:05:21If Trump hadn't just come out the next day at a press conference and be like, yeah, I called FIFA. And I was like, this is a terrible call. And the press is like, oh. And so they haven't paid proper attention to this spree of extraditial murders of people out in the Caribbean and in the Pacific because Hegseth just releases the videos. This is a case where the press is finally interested because they're hiding it. And so there's, there are strings to pull on. There are witnesses to interview. There are videos to find. There's evidence to uncover. Yet still, interestingly, the Post and the Times are still flinching a little bit.

1:06:04Like they don't, they don't mention that the prosecutor tasked with looking into this was assassinated by men on a motorcycle. Like why, like, you know, that, that, that, that pulls it much tighter into this, into like death, you know, death squad allegiance. Especially using the same airport they were using to fight the Sandinistas. Right. And especially knowing that Naboa himself is, has all these taught Naboa, the president of Ecuador has all of these ties to drug trafficking. Like he is the scion of this banana export business. And these banana shipments that his company keeps sending around the world, they keep accidentally trafficking cocaine along with the bananas.

1:06:54Hate when that happens. It's crazy how that just keeps happening. It's incredible. So this is our ally who then appears to be out assassinating prosecutors who are looking into what's going on with this. So there are a lot of strings to pull on this, and I hope that the Times and Post keep looking at it. We certainly will. We're going to have more reporting on this in the next couple of days. It's completely insane. It does seem a lot like Middle East, Black Sight, war on terror tactics. It's insane. Over what? Like, cocaine's everywhere. Like, cocaine has not budged. Nope. Has not had a single solitary impact.

1:07:41And Camila also said, like, look, first of all, these were fishermen. So let's be clear about that. But also some of the, you know, low level drug runners that you're talking about, some of them are forced to do it at gunpoint. Others are forced to do it by economic desperation. and you're sentencing them from the air to death. Yeah, exactly. So, of course, it's not going to have an impact. And not that, you know, that would be justifiable even if it did. But this is an insane, monstrous policy. And for these individuals, very clear that they were completely innocent, just fishermen out doing their thing, trying to earn a living.

1:08:18One of the drone strikes happened. They were like on board preparing their lunch, preparing their ceviche for lunch. and then, I don't know, where they like waved at the drone like, oh, hey, you know, like that's weird. And then this, you know, and then they're attacked. So that's what we're talking about here. And with regard to the prosecutor, just so people know some of the details, that first of all, we know that she was under a lot of pressure, that she had been, they were trying to push her to not explore all avenues of this, to only look at this as a disappearance, not to look into the drones, not to look into the torture allegations.

1:08:52We know she was even being reassigned from this investigation. And then in terms of the actual details, somehow mysteriously, her police security detail, because she's not the only Ecuadorian prosecutor that has been murdered in recent years, her police detail just disappeared when this motorcycle pulled up and killed her and her sister, too, by the way. So you don't have you don't know definitively because she was investigating some other sensitive things. But it sure looks very, very suspicious, given that this is what she was working on. She was receiving pressure on it. And then this is the way that she is taken out.

1:09:32So, yeah, it has been noteworthy to me, too, Ryan, that the mainstream outlet is like that part of that doesn't get a mention at all. Completely like hands off of that. Don't touch it whatsoever. Don't seem to be delving into that aspect, at least not yet.

1:09:48Saagar Enjeti:Well, I am deploying drones to monitor LLC PO boxes in Virginia. So hopefully we'll get to the bottom of that, going to the source. But why don't we get to the documentary American Doctors right now? On Solita, we share the messy stories of traveling alone as a woman. Your Duolingo is not going to come back to you when a man is inside of you. Oh, no. I'm Julie Pinheiro 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.

1:10:35Not a lot of people smile around here. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. 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. 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. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook. Every episode we're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers.

1:11:14The show is famously super accessible so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on. We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller. The definition of what is a movie has kind of changed anyway too, right? What do you think it is now? It's images and words being spoken, captured by some sort of technology. Danny McBride. He loves mountains. Oh, that's fantastic. and you make it on, you make your own. That's great. I call him Taro Reed. That's a good name. They're all named after cast members of American Pie. Yeah. I call, I don't, I never looked up if she was in this, but I call him Leachie Sobieski.

1:11:52Yeah, I don't think she was in American Pie, but I still like that. Haven't looked it up. Haven't looked it up. She was prominent around the same time. Yeah. Then Mary Steenburgen. Why are you guys talking to me like, why are you talking so down to me that you think I don't understand your little play game. I just really am trying to set you up for success here. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nick Turturro. You probably know me from NYPD Blue, The Longest Yard, or Spike Lee's Black Klansman. But I'm also from Queens, which means I know pizza.

1:12:28And on my new podcast, Delivering Happiness with Nick Turturro, I deliver pizza from Prince Street Pizza to a new guest. Are you delivering pizza now? Then we sit down for a real conversation. I've shared a slice with everyone. From Seth Rollins. What are you doing with my belt? To Alex Rodriguez. Just to let you people know, we're talking to one of the goats here. To Bill Burr. I don't think I've ever met somebody so exactly out of their mind as I am. And now, we even have more great guests coming up, including the great John Turturro. It's called happiness. Delivering happiness. Mariano Rivera.

1:13:00Oh my God. And many, many more. Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Delivering Happiness with Nick DeTuro, and listen now. There's an extraordinary new film out that tracks the horrors and the heroics of doctors who went to Gaza, American doctors who went to Gaza. We've spoken to a number of them here on the show, and the film takes you into the day-to-day life and what they were facing as Israel committed genocide in the Gaza Strip. Joining us now to talk about that film is the film's director, Posi Tang, and also one of those, Drs. Thayer Ahmad. Welcome to both of you. Thank you for having us.

1:13:39Yeah, of course. So, Griffin, if you want to go ahead and play people the trailer here so they can get a sense of what this film is all about. I want to take you through what Gaza looks like when a hospital is totally overwhelmed. You're getting waves of patients. What do you prioritize? What do you have to treat them? Got no pain medicine to give the people whose legs have been blown off. Three surgeons are working on one little girl for, what, two and a half hours? And she's probably going to lose her right leg, left leg, and the left arm. If she's starting to wake up, let's get her warm. As a Jewish physician, I knew nothing about Gaza.

1:14:13Like most Americans, I thought everybody out here were nothing but terrorists, because that's what I was told. I'm not Israeli. I'm not Palestinian. I'm not Christian. I'm not Muslim. I'm not Jewish. I don't really have any connection to it. But as an American, I just don't want my government involved in crimes. I'm a Palestinian. I'm not a spokesperson. I'm a human being. I'm a U.S. doctor who wants to see babies like my babies not be killed anymore. What surprised me most was how the carnage was focused on journalists, health care workers, and children. Fist bump. Where was that? That bomb hit the building.

1:14:49There was a 15-year-old kid ready for discharge that was incinerated. And if I had gone down and been changing that kid's dressing, there would have been three bodies and I would have been one of them. When they hit a hospital, it's a deep tragedy that people will feel in the community for the foreseeable future. We're just asking that hospitals not be targeted. Why that conversation is derailed in the United States is beyond me. We do not have to accept that as Americans. The United States could stop sending jet fuel, bombs, all sorts of weapons. This is a political problem. We need a political solution.

1:15:20we're a good pair of blue talk intelligently and i talk emotionally it's on us to make sure that their stories are told i couldn't go to philosophy i got rejected and then i come back to the united states and get detained by the department of homeland security this is what my tax dollars did what your tax dollars did what my neighbor's tax dollars did they have the right to know the truth perot's the right one to listen to he is about fairness and he is about doing the right thing you know we're not dating right you don't have to talk me up this much

1:16:03extraordinary um po let me go ahead and start with you uh what made you want to tell this story in particular? You know, long before I became a documentary producer, I was a journalist and I worked for all the mainstream entities. I was a journalist for the New York Times. At my first job, I was a camera person for the Associated Press. I was a documentary commissioner for Al Jazeera English. I was studio executive for ABC News Studios Disney. And so, you know, a year into the genocide and seeing colleagues that I respected, Al Jazeera colleagues in Gaza being targeted and executed, it did something to me.

1:16:35And that's when I realized I didn't want to work anymore as a studio executive, and I wanted to do something, you know, to try and help do something. But what I didn't know until I found Dr. Theramud, Dr. Mark Pohlmutter, and Dr. Farrow Sidhwa. And, Doctor, tell us a little bit of your story. You're from born and raised in Chicago. Your parents moved from Palestine in the 80s. Tell us a little bit about your journey and then what made you want to decide to go to Gaza in particular. You know, I think a lot of who I am is similar to many of the stories of Palestinians in the diaspora. During the first intifada, my parents decided to come to the United States.

1:17:14And being born and raised in the United States gave us a different perspective, a sort of different idea of what it meant to be Palestinian, because we saw so much of the dehumanization that was taking place outside of Palestine, in the Western world, in the U.S. and in the U.K. And so for much of my life, it was always about try to keep your head down, try to be as successful and as professional as you can, and then try to use whatever skills you develop and bring it back to the homeland, bring it back to your people and be able to try to have some influence in that way. And so, you know, I think part of becoming a physician had a lot to do with my father when he was nine years old in Palestine, in Jerusalem, developing what we call rheumatic heart disease, which is a complication from like a strep throat infection.

1:17:59and him not having the access that he should have had, the right to health that we think every single person on the planet should be entitled to. And as a result of that, he had medical problems for his entire life and ultimately died in 2017. I think a lot of that, you know, growing up in that mindset, understanding that an occupation and apartheid prevented him from getting the medical care that he needed, really pushed me to become a doctor and try to serve my community. So hospitals obviously became a central propaganda battle. And we were hearing in the corporate press constantly about what was actually happening in hospitals.

1:18:40And both of you have unique insight, having seen in real life the reality of what was happening at the hospitals and then also looked at the media coverage, referring to the hospitals as basically de facto military bases and that there were tunnels under them in some cases. and there was an enormous amount of propaganda being spread about hospitals. And this is a question for both of you, and I don't know who wants to take it first, but just about the experience of seeing reports versus seeing the reality. Yeah, I mean, I think this is something that is not unique to after October 7th. If you really look back and see what's taking place in Palestine, hospitals, clinics, health care workers have constantly been targeted and attacked.

1:19:22And it's always some false premise. It's always about getting a target or some infrastructure that exists beneath this. As somebody that's been through all parts of Palestine since 2009, I can tell you from my own lived experience, eyewitness testimony, and those of all of my colleagues that have visited, we've not seen a single shred of evidence to suggest that these were anything more than health care facilities and that the doctors are anything more than outstanding health care providers and the nurses as well. And, you know, this is a trend that the Israeli military continues to deploy in the West Bank currently.

1:19:57I mean, just two weeks ago when I was in the West Bank, they raided a hospital in Nablus, trying to go after whoever they were trying to go after. And so for them, there is no red line when it comes to hospitals, clinics, shelters and schools. It's a consistent theme that you'll see. And to add to what Dr. Thayer is saying, it's not like this confusion just came about in the past two plus years since the beginning of the genocide. I mean, if you look at media as a whole in the decades past, and not just news media, but Hollywood, for example, you begin to see like all these narratives that have just been, you know, it's just a certain kind of narrative.

1:20:34And that's why fast forward to, you know, the beginning of the genocide, you're starting to see all this confusion. And so, you know, I was a journalist before I became a documentary producer, and I was also a studio executive. And one thing, you know, wearing my studio executive hat and thinking as I was thinking of what kind of film I should make for an American audience, it was not lost on me that medical dramas do very well. You know, every year you have two or three medical dramas. I'm a big fan. I'm a big consumer of it. You know, there's like the pit, there's ER back in the day, there's house MD, there's scrubs, there's Grey's Anatomy.

1:21:10So there was something about human mortality, doctors, hospitals that Americans like to watch. And so my thinking was, all right, maybe this is an opportunity here, knowing that, you know, we're going to make the pit. Difference is it's real and it's set in Gaza. And this is how we're going to bring Palestine back to the American psyche, because people should know what their taxpayers money is doing over there.

1:21:36Saagar Enjeti:Oh, you mentioned Hollywood and they did have a Hollywood specific question. Now, I'm happy to see that South by Southwest and Sundance, if I'm correct, have both picked up to play the film. but we've seen other films about Palestine like The Voice of Henry Job and other films like that struggle to find distribution from Hollywood. I believe The Voice of Henry Job now has a distributor but it's a small distributor. What have those things, what have you faced with trying to get this film out especially as we know that a lot of people in Hollywood big and small have been blacklisted in large parts of the community for even posting a single Instagram story.

1:22:14Saagar Enjeti:I'm Scream, and thinking about a lot of other allegations of blacklist within Hollywood. Susan Sarandon. Yeah. Susan Sarandon. You know, that's a really excellent question, Griffin. And, you know, I'll say at the start of the film when we were making it, first of all, we made it in one year. Most films take about five years to make. We made it in one year. And at the start of the film, you know, my thought was always like, all right, how is this going to get distributed? But also at the same time was like, you know what? We're just going to have to make it. But what I didn't realize a year into making the film, and now we've been on the road since we premiered at Sundance earlier this year, we've been on the road for seven, eight months now.

1:22:52I didn't realize that how fast society has shifted. And institutions and studios and newsrooms and all of that, they are only made out of people. And so when society shifts, they shift. Of course, it takes a lot longer for it to trickle up to executives, but it is happening. And in terms of distribution, I will say this, you know, for a film like ours, I knew as somebody with some experience, you know, in distribution as a former executive and a documentary commissioner, the path for us was never going to be traditional and straightforward. We would have to chart and carve our own way. And so very early on, I would say six, seven months into making the film, nobody wanted to back this film.

1:23:36All right. I had put in my own money. Nobody wanted to back this film. Granters were running away. Equity folks were running away. And it took some very brave and courageous individuals and entities. And one of those entities is Watermelon Pictures, co-founded by Hamza Ali and Badia Ali, two Palestinian-American brothers based in Chicago. And Hamza Ali, who is also an executive producer on the film, he saw the early stages of the film, the early scenes, and he said, we're going to back you. We're going to support you. Of course, at that time, Watermelon Pictures wasn't a distributor. They only came in as EP and in association with.

1:24:13And so, but fast forward six months after when the film was done. And first of all, we premiered at Sundance. Never in my life would I have thought that, wow, we were actually going to get this chance to be catapult, for the issue to be catapult in this way. But we did. And now Watermelon Pictures, you know, they weren't the only offer that we had. But for me as a director and as a producer, it was very important for our team to ride with those who was there with us when it was the hardest. And I'll say, you know, they may have started small, Watermelon Pictures. and now two years in. But I can see the vision behind it.

1:24:52And so together, we are going to ride this. And they're already expanding their portfolio of films. And so in the short time, I think they already have won an Oscar nomination. They have shortlisted films. And their films have gone beyond just Palestine. And so it is a great honor to ride with them and for them to back American Doctor. And we back them as well. So that is the path forward in terms of distribution. That's very helpful. Doctor, I wanted to connect something we saw recently with what you experienced on the ground in Gaza. Griffin, if you could pull up this. This is an Oracle executive who was proudly bragging about the quote unquote scary technology that they gave to the IDF to deploy in Gaza.

1:25:36Let's go ahead and take a listen to this. You hit our website in an Arab country and you saw your entire screen filled with an Israeli flag, which said not only we stand with Israel, we stand with our employees in Israel. We stand with the people of Israel. We stand with the military establishment of Israel. So there's a few things that we did that I really can't talk about, to be honest, because to advance the agenda for the Israeli military. But our teams did a lot. We have some really profoundly scary technology at Oracle, and we wanted to make sure that it was available for the effort. Let's just say that.

1:26:24OK, I was in the Kyria and I go in and I meet with everyone you'd imagine I meet with. And on my way out, I run into, I don't know, five of my team who are all in uniform working. And to be honest with you, it's like my proudest moment. Yeah. I mean, that's pretty disgusting. I mean, this is just sort of the rhetoric that exists anytime you're talking about Arab Muslims or Palestinians. this sort of, they're like these guinea pigs where you can test new technology. And something that we saw in Gaza that I think also contradicts what she says is you saw the Israeli military willfully sort of bomb civilian infrastructure and devastate the area indiscriminately.

1:27:09I mean, we see, if you look at satellite imagery and you compare the studies that have emerged, for example, out of North Gaza, the Israeli military was not sophisticated at all with their behavior and the way that they were bombing infrastructure and destroying the strawberry fields. And then on top of that, you would see really deliberate attacks against folks that the Israeli military was using their technology for, that if you actually went one layer behind that, if you just dug in a little deeper, you found that suddenly they were just targeting men between the ages of 15 and 60 and then somehow saying, hey, these are military targets.

1:27:42And they're just doing that based on some of the technology they were using. Oh, they're moving from this place to that place. Maybe there's a chance that this person could be affiliated with this group. Let's go ahead and kill them. That sort of extrajudicial assassinations were taking place all over the Gaza Strip. And I think finally, the one last thing I will say, given that we're approaching the one-year anniversary of the assassination of Enes al-Sharif and his colleagues, Mohamed Karik and the other journalists that were in the tent outside of Shifa Hospital. You know, Enes, really to me, is one of the most disgusting acts that the Israeli military has committed over the last two years.

1:28:14And it's because he repeatedly, if you just go to his Twitter feed or his X feed right now, repeatedly called on the world saying, I am being harassed by them. I am being threatened by the Israeli military. And this is where I am. And they knew exactly where he was. And they still decided to go ahead and assassinate him, almost as if saying, what are you going to do about it? What's the world going to do about it? And it's not only over there. This technology is also being used over here. And so it's really important to not, in the making of the film, I didn't want people to think that is happening in Palestine, in Gaza, in the West Bank.

1:28:49It's so far away. It's here and it has already affected Americans. So we should not only stand up to fight for the living over there because we are responsible for it, but we should fight for ourselves in the United States. I just wanted to put in a plug for Watermelon too. They also have a streaming service, Watermelon Plus, which I think it's like$9 a month. It's great. So you can check there. you know you can that's how you can get all like all of all of their bat catalog i was actually this is it's an interesting coincidence i know that those guys and about a maybe a year ago or so i was saying you know what i think the public would really appreciate is like a pit but in take in gaza but a drama i mean the i the fact that you were able to do a documentary is absolutely incredible um but i also think and i'm curious if you've gotten any interest from people saying we should do a fictionalized drama that is, you know, the way that the pit is set in Pittsburgh that runs, you know, that begins before the genocide.

1:29:53And then just follows the doctors, both Palestinian and American and West and others who come in and out. And just follows them for several years. Just a day in the light. Precisely the same, basically, as the documentary, but, you know, in a serialized form. have you gotten any interest in that? Is that, or is it, is we just not in a world where that's like remotely possible? Oh, I think it's very possible. And in fact, that's been floated to me before. But speaking to what you just said, Ryan, that's why the film is the way it is. Even though it is true, it is real, it's not fiction, but the way it's made, the cinema verite and aspect of it, it is like a drama.

1:30:39And because, you know, I think, I'm thinking of myself where having been a journalist and seen all of these, also having worked on so many sit-down interviews and films with archival footage, I just wanted our audiences to be in the world of the doctors. And so you just move with them as though you're just a fly on the wall. And I have learned so much as a filmmaker, you know, from Dr. Theramah, Dr. Feroz Sidwa, Dr. Mark Pohlmutter, very, very different doctors. And so I just wanted our audiences and Americans to be able to feel close to them. And because they were going into Gaza to bring that home and that to show that doctors there, healthcare workers there, they're no different from the doctors and healthcare workers here.

1:31:24Ther and I, we were just talking this morning, there's doctors banter. So it's basically, Ryan, I would say, not to be crass, but it's all the elements of a scripted entertainment film, but it's real.

1:31:37Saagar Enjeti:I was struck by a moment in the trailer where a bomb hits the hospital and one of the doctors says, that could have been me in one of the bodies there. Was there ever a moment where you felt like you might be killed? You know, I think when I was there at Nasser Hospital in early 2024, that was the first time the Israeli military surrounded that hospital. And I remember I was with a couple of my colleagues and we were watching the tanks from outside the window and they were shelling so ferociously that night. I mean, it was so violent. The hospital was shaking and the emergency department started to fill up with smoke.

1:32:12And you saw so many of the displaced people because that's where they go to the hospitals to shelter inside and around the hospitals. You started watching them in the middle of the night pick up their stuff and try to leave to go to safety. And I think it was that moment where I was like, OK, there is no there's a chance here that this could this hospital could go up in flames and all of us inside of it could be gone. I think one thing I will say is I think there's been and this is something that really bothers me coming back. There has not been an international health care worker that has been killed in the two and a half years.

1:32:45But there's been 1700 Palestinian health care workers that have been slaughtered by the Israeli military. And I think, again, it tells you that there was this intentional targeting of the Palestinian health care workforce. And it was, again, that sort of racism that exists that if I am an American doctor or British and I can come in, I'm sort of guaranteed this safety just looking at what's taking place. But if I happen to be Palestinian, there's a real chance that there's a nonzero chance that I may be killed by the Israeli military. And so, Doctor, were you detained by Homeland Security on the way back?

1:33:17Can you tell us about that and also just what it has been like, what it was like getting back? And, you know, after everything you saw and experienced and then to go back to, you know, a hospital and functioning environment where this is a side note to most people. Yeah. So actually, this is an interesting piece because it kind of compares the two different administrations, to be honest with you. is under the Biden administration, I had come back and I had stopped in Turkey and there was they had already put the quad S's on my boarding pass, which suggested that I would have to go through a secondary specialized screening process, whatever it stands for, just the classic racist Department of Homeland Security stuff.

1:33:55And I remember we had appealed this while I was in transit with an office of civil rights through the DHS saying this was a violation of my civil rights. I'm an American citizen. This is a secondary screening that's racist in nature. and we kind of had a back and forth at that time. The second time I had come back after being rejected, I didn't even make it inside of Gaza, I land in O 'Hare Airport and you get this X on the screen when they screen your face and you go to a room and you're being sort of interrogated by this officer. I just want to kind of give you a couple of things that I was asked just to show you how absurd some of these questions are.

1:34:27It was this gentleman is sitting there in Chicago asking me, did you treat any Hamas fighters? Did you give them any medicine? Did you interact with them? And, you know, I had to be very clear with him. I said, you know, the Israeli military doesn't believe in us being able to treat anybody that comes through hospital doors. You know, they don't believe in that sort of thing. And he's trying to almost entrap you because he goes, well, you know, I served as a medic in Iraq. It doesn't matter who came in. I'm going to, you know, I'll treat them. Right. You would do the same thing. I'm like, no, no, guy.

1:34:57Like, that's not, you know, that's not what happened here. That's not what we're going to. just so he could under, you know, knowing that he's just trying to get you to say something. And then it was a lot of questions about how much money I took, where I spent that money, who I donate to here in the United States. Like what are the nonprofits that I donate to, where I work, my boss's phone number, just all sorts of, all sorts of questions that make you feel like a criminal. You're like, Hey, you know, I just, I was trying to go in there and work as a doctor, you know, and that is just kind of that profiling that's at play here.

1:35:26And, you know, when that happened in the film, when, you know, I get rejected, I've been rejected five consecutive times from going into Gaza. I actually was trying to avoid Poe and wanted to kind of step away from the movie. I said, you know, what's the point? I can't even get into Gaza. Why would you even want to follow me? And she felt like it was an important part of like just the access issues that exist in terms of Palestine. It's one of the most difficult places to access, whether you're a humanitarian, journalist, you know, first response, whatever it is, it's incredibly hard to access there.

1:35:57And, you know, eventually she was able to kind of insist on moving forward. And I'm very appreciative of that because I think for our community, the Palestinian diaspora, I think it's so much of the pain that we're experiencing, that survivor's guilt of like, we're so far away, we're so privileged, we have all of these opportunities, and we're not able to do anything for our people. You know, and then I'll add to what Dr. Thayer is saying, you know, it was not lost on me, even in the early beginning and inception of the film, on who gets to say what, and who gets to do what, and whose word gets to go further, who gets to go into Gaza.

1:36:32You know, I'm a woman, I'm a person of color, I'm barely five feet, you know, so I understand that on a certain level. But I also know I will never understand to the extent of what Thayer and the Palestinian community are going through. And so it was sort of like, okay, we have these three doctors. Now they are able to reach out to different communities. They're able to say different things and they are very, very different. And what are the lessons that we can learn from them individually and also when they work together collectively? And that has always been the hope, you know, because I'll be honest with you all, a year into the genocide and I live in New York, I work, and as we all do, we work and we live in different communities with different people.

1:37:19And for me, I had lost the ability to speak my mind and to speak my mind and communicate effectively. And when I found Thayer, Mark, and Feroz, I felt, wow, if this can help me, maybe it can help Americans in how to deal with what is happening in Gaza.

1:37:38Saagar Enjeti:well uh doctor there uh director poe thank you so much for making this film we're grateful that you made it where can people watch this movie right now if they want to can they yet yes they can and you know when we first made the film little i did not think at all it would be possible for our film to get distributed but we had early access screenings on tuesday in new york and And tonight is going to be our opening theatrically at the Angelica. And then we go to LA, we go to San Francisco, we go to Chicago, we go to Ojai, we go to Santa Barbara, and we go to 77 theaters across U.S. and Canada.

1:38:17And that's because of Watermelon Pictures, which backed our film from the very beginning. And we couldn't be more excited to bring the message of the doctors and also their colleagues that they had to leave behind in Gaza to all of the United States.

1:38:31Saagar Enjeti:Well, we'll include a link in the description to all the cities that it will be playing in. I'll definitely be there for the L.A. screening. So I hope to see you guys in person. And thank you so much for joining us today. Have a great day. Thank you all. Thank you so much. Thank you. All righty. Let's end another great Friday episode with my favorite part of the show where you guys ask us anything. Let's start with a question about the Jon Stewart interview that occurred this week. That got everyone talking and was also the inciting incident for our new public Twitter account, at BreakingPointsX, where you can get clips from the show.

1:39:11Saagar Enjeti:This is from Raphael Dimion. Hello, crew. In the Stewart interview, mea culpa for voting for Trump was discussed. And often Trump's rise gets attributed to figures like Tucker, Rogan, etc. But that doesn't but doesn't that deny the left agency through things like Russiagate and the unwarranted mass illegal migration under Biden, which fueled Trump's populist energy and abetted his anti-establishment status? I mean, I don't know who you're talking to because, I mean, this is we I was a huge critic of Russiagate. So I don't know. I just always find this. Yes, it's important to look at the entire context.

1:39:47But to be like you people were too oppositional in your views. And so it's your fault that Trump actually came back. I don't know. I think first we need to deal with the people who actually enabled his return, ran cover for him, whitewashed him, or continue to support him, are directly in the administration, you know, that would be the place to start. But obviously I have my critique of the Democratic Party, which I talk about all the time, which is that I think that their status quo approach to politics has been insufficient to deal with fascism. So yes, on that front. But there's a, you know, the primary responsibility still needs to lie with the people who were actively involved in supporting this person.

1:40:30I would say if you compare the two midterm cycles, 2018 and this cycle, what you see is a movement in the Democratic Party to do something different than what I think in the kind of lesser than two evil voting structure that a lot of Americans, I mean, we have a record level of people identifying as independents now, according to Gallup. I mean, you just have more swing voters on the table. And so I think a lot of people for them, it comes down to who's the lesser of two evils. Like if you look at Sagar, for example, Sagar was never somebody who was like, Donald Trump is a genius. He is so handsome and brilliant and beautiful.

1:41:08It's always just like, well, I think Kamala Harris was out there saying Iran was the biggest threat and that sort of thing. So anyway, without getting too much into that, I think the movement is much smarter now on the left. It's not Trump-Russia like it was 2018. That was an election that was about Russia and health care. And like the Cheeto Jesus, Orange Man, like Rick Wilson, Cringe, MSNBC weirdness and health care. But now it's really not about Trump at all. And that, I think, has been much smarter on the left.

1:41:40Saagar Enjeti:All right. This next one comes from Alex Barbella. For Emily, can you talk about your thoughts on Tallarico's relationship with Christianity and how that might impact the election? And there's also been some polling showing him winning by a point or two. Yeah. We don't trust polls anymore. He's running a smart campaign. I still think it's a long shot. I'm not saying it's impossible. I think it's a long shot. But he's way up on the polls compared to where Beto was and Ted Cruz. If you're looking at the polling averages, Beto was actually never beating Cruz and the polling averages have Tallarico up.

1:42:17So, yeah, I mean, I could talk a lot about Tallarico's relationship with Christianity. I think it actually might be a problem for him with some Hispanic voters in like the Rio Grande Valley because it comes across as, well, honestly, to use a cheat phrase, woke, like for for a lack of a better word. And that's what turned a lot of those Hispanic men in the Rio Grande Valley away from the Democratic Party, even though they had previously been supporting them. So I don't know. At the same time, it's going to be we've seen really high Democratic base turnout in these primaries, which probably bodes well structurally for places like Texas, for Democrats in places like Texas in November.

1:43:00So I can also talk to you about Ken Paxson's relationship with Christianity, which is pretty bad, too. Well, I actually wanted to ask you about that because it's one thing Sagar and I were talking about a bit yesterday. You know, you've got Paxton who cheated on his wife. They got divorced on biblical grounds. And not only that, but his girlfriend, he got her a job with like a top donor. and, you know, there appear to have been a mingling of the professional and the personal there for all of those who want to be like, ah, that's his personal life. Who cares? He because there was a, you know, an intermingling of taxpayer dollars and political position, et cetera.

1:43:40That means that, yes, it does matter. He was impeached in the House by Republicans, was not convicted in the Senate, though there was that was in doubt for quite a while. And you've got the specter of, you know, the Republican Party. He's out there portraying himself, family man, family values, Christian, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm wondering how the contrast of that versus Tallarico is always very comfortable talking about his faith and really makes that a center of his politics, if that contrast does actually work out pretty well for Tallarico. Yeah, it might. I mean, I think it's a really interesting thing where you have a Biden style.

1:44:15Remember, Biden in 2020 was running on decency and civility and restoring norms, and then you had him up against the Republican candidate Trump, who was just openly like, screw it. Whatever. I'm going to call John McCain a whatever. Anyway, that was 2016. But the point remains. He's Donald Trump. And he was running against the left saying there the candidate on the left saying that I want to restore decency and civility and norms. And so I actually think it's kind of similar to that where you have the person on the top of the Democratic ticket making that argument. And the problem is Ken Paxton isn't Trump.

1:44:49Ken Paxton tries to pretend that he is like the decent Christian candidate. And Trump only ever gives lip service to that type of thing. So I think it's a very interesting dynamic.

1:44:58Saagar Enjeti:Very nice. And we'll end with this question from John Yoder. This is one's kind of for me. How does booking a guest work? Do they get paid? Do you have a green room? Do you have to provide basic amenities of food and drinks? Just some inside baseball curiosity? Well, you know, we do have we do have great coffee in the studio. We do not pay our guests, you know, paid in exposure, classic entertainment industry trope. But, you know, this question reminds me of one that we were all laughing about just earlier this week, because some guests do require a little bit more. We had Chris Matthews on the show about maybe like two or three years ago now, and they had a debate.

1:45:39Saagar Enjeti:And, you know, Chris is old school. I mean, he's from a very different time in news media. So he needed us to send him a car to pick him up from his home and bring him to the studio. And then he needed a car to go home. Now, as I sent him off in his car, about half an hour later, I get this message from Uber Black saying, hey, your car has been stopped for a really, really long time on the side of the road. Is everything OK? I call the Uber and the Uber is like, oh, he's making me do his errands. We're doing dry cleaning now. So everyone has different levels of amenities that they require based on.

1:46:19That's in his defense. That was standard behavior for cable news hosts, as Crystal, you probably know. Well, I mean, not this cable news host, but in general, yes. In general, yes. And certainly for a star like Chris Matthews. Exactly. Classic. Yeah, we will. Like if if if one of our guests asks for a car, we'll typically provide that there's no hair and makeup. Yeah, you're on your own. No green room either. Yeah. Yeah. That is actually a little bit awkward. Usually we like stick people kind of in like the kitchen until we're ready for them. So it's not, you know, it's we do our best to make our guests feel welcome and comfortable.

1:46:57But there are relatively limited amenities. Energy drinks, coffee, Diet Cokes, those are all available, certainly. The floor food pantry. If you want food and you just look down, if you're sitting at the desk, Brian and Crystal in particular have a food pantry on the ground. It's not in the shot. I'm hungry, okay? It's a long show. By the end, my stomach is growling. My brain is shutting down. I need some quick—we're both trail mix people, which I feel like fits politically with us, too. Yes, but you work out before the show, which means you're entitled to be hungry. Thank you, Emily. That's fair.

1:47:36You're allowed, I guess. I'll allow it. This is dark. All right.

1:47:43Saagar Enjeti:Well, I think all our brains are shutting down right now. Ryan will literally go to Costco and bring a big bag of Costco trail mix and then just put it on the ground. Yes, and I'm always very excited when there's a new addition. Yes. And on live stream nights, Ryan and Emily always bring a few beers into the studio as well. Ryan doesn't. I do. Oh, I guess. Sorry. Ryan freeloads. Ryan participates, though, yes. Emily supplies. So does Griffin. So does Griffin. It's a long night. So that's going to do it for us as our brains are shutting down after our two-hour shows Friday. Happy to be back on Fridays.

1:48:18Saagar Enjeti:And we'll cover anything that happens over the weekend. And if not, we'll see you all on Monday. Have a good weekend. Bye-bye. Hey, Portlandia fans. Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. The dream of the 90s is alive in podcast form. We're launching Podlandia, AO Rewatch, our brand new podcast where we revisit every episode of Portlandia together, breaking down sketches, going deep on our iconic characters, and pulling back the curtain on how it all got made. And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life. Guest stars, collaborators, and friends, including director Jonathan Kreisel, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more.

1:48:56Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song. Well, I thought you were all going to write a song. I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia, A-O-Rewatch on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. Your Duolingo is not going to come back to you when a man is inside of you. Oh, no. I'm Julie Pinheiro, 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.

1:49:36Listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. Every week, the news gets worse, the world gets crazier, and Yamanika is here to tell whoever's responsible you're the problem. Do you know I just found out who Sidney Sweeney was? If he got a bunch of women, then I should have a bunch of men. Do better or do less so I don't have to do so much. I'm Yamanika and I'm out. Listen to You're the Problem with Yamanika on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.

1:50:16Guaranteed human.