Russian Plague and Putin's Prisons

Tommy Vietor (0:00)

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Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vietor.

Ben Rhodes (1:15)

I'm Ben Rhodes.

Tommy Vietor (1:16)

Then I take back everything that I said about Drake May and the Patriots, and I also take back everything good I said about the Red Sox because that was a very quick series.

Ben Rhodes (1:24)

We're out.

Evan Gershkovich (1:24)

Yeah.

Ben Rhodes (1:24)

Fortune is going to flip there. Yeah.

Tommy Vietor (1:26)

The Yankees are cruising.

Evan Gershkovich (1:27)

Feels like...

Ben Rhodes (1:28)

Well, now they run into the Tampa Bay buzzsaw. They're down 2-0.

Tommy Vietor (1:32)

Weird.

Evan Gershkovich (1:33)

I'll take it.

Ben Rhodes (1:34)

Someone has to beat the Yankees.

Evan Gershkovich (1:35)

Yeah.

Tommy Vietor (1:36)

That's all we're asking for.

Also, I guess we live in one of the two cities that Trump wants Iran to target with some sort of attack. We'll play that clip for you guys later, but that was fun to wake up to.

Ben Rhodes (1:47)

Yeah. Curious to have the president of your country desire your nuclear annihilation.

Evan Gershkovich (1:52)

I assumed it was nukes too. We have a new thing.

Tommy Vietor (1:54)

He didn't specify, but I assumed it was.

Ben Rhodes (1:56)

I'm not sure how else Iran is going to destroy Los Angeles and San Diego.

Evan Gershkovich (2:00)

Right.

Tommy Vietor (2:00)

We take a lot of conventional weapons. Anyway, that's our president.

Big fans here.

Ben Rhodes (2:05)

Yeah. Yeah. Big fans.

Tommy Vietor (2:07)

Today, we're going to talk about some very important recent elections. Speaking of terrible presidents, we're going to talk about what happened in Brazil and the right-wing surge across South America, what it means for us here, what it means for the Brazilian people. Nothing good. No. Doesn't mean anything good.

We're going to talk about political turmoil in Spain, a major protest movement in France, which also is coinciding with the budget crisis. We'll talk about separatists in Quebec, a crazy story about espionage in Germany that we will come to this morning. Very severe German man is seemingly in a lot of trouble.

Ben Rhodes (2:37)

Yes.

Tommy Vietor (2:38)

We're going to dig into what we know about reports of a plague outbreak in Russia.

That's a fun one. Never a good thing. What we know, what we don't know, what to worry about, what's just hype and fear-mongering, we think. Finally, we're going to talk about the latest from Iran and the strange story about Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to the US and potentially his health. Ben, then you did our interview today. What were you talking about?

Ben Rhodes (2:59)

Yeah, I talked to Evan Gershkovich, who people may remember was a Wall Street Journal reporter, still is, but was detained by the Russians in prison for a year and a half. Also was part of a spy swap negotiated under the Biden administration. He's got a new book out, This Cursed Beautiful Land, which is really terrific.

We'd talk about his book, obviously how he got picked up in the Sting operation, whether the Russians were just trying to grab him as a pawn, or whether they actually thought he was conducting espionage. What life is like in a Russian prison? What he learned about Russians in Russian prison?

Evan Gershkovich (3:33)

Guess it's not fun.

Ben Rhodes (3:34)

No, not great.

What the attitudes are he could get about the war in prison. So it's great. We cover an extreme experience that hopefully none of us will have to go through.

Evan Gershkovich (3:48)