The Killing of the Gaza Chef

**Tim Howard** (0:26)
Hello, hello.

**PJ Vogt** (0:27)
Hello.

**Tim Howard** (0:27)
Good to see you. Good to see you.
How's it going over there in New York?

**PJ Vogt** (0:31)
It's going well. It's like the part of summer where you remember that you forgot to go outside all summer. And the two things I need to do before summer is over is go to the beach and eat some fresh tomatoes. And I did both this week.

**Tim Howard** (0:48)
That's awesome. That's nice.

**PJ Vogt** (0:54)
This is my dear old colleague, Tim Howard, a person who does not need to be reminded about the importance of a good summer vacation. It's practically his religion. A sometime activist for the national four-day work week and a full-time radio genius. I worked with Tim for many years at a previous show called Reply All. He was the show's editor.
Tim was the person who gave Reply All its signature weirdness, who built stories that ran on an engine of absurdity and adventure. When I think about episodes I loved from that old show, like Boy in Photo or Long Distance, I see Tim's bong-hit sense of adventure plastered all over them.
But we were talking this week because over the summer, I'd been listening to a new series that he'd edited which had captivated my attention. It was for the big German newspaper where Tim works now, Die Zeit. The series was an investigation into a mysterious death in Gaza.
So I wanted to talk to you about your series. I guess the first thing is just like, give me the origin story of this series existing.

**Tim Howard** (1:52)
Yeah, totally. So it's reported by a really excellent reporter named Yaseen Musharabash, who I met like a week before I started at Die Zeit. A friend of mine who also works here invited me to lunch with two of his colleagues, Britta and Yaseen. And Britta tells me about a podcast that she's working on. And I was like, that kind of reminds me a little bit of John Le Carre, great spy novelist. And Yaseen was like, well, you know, I knew John Le Carre. I was like, what? And he was like, not only did I know John Le Carre, I worked with John Le Carre.
And I'm like, where did I land?
What is going on here?

**PJ Vogt** (2:35)
In what capacity?

**Tim Howard** (2:36)
Well, Yaseen has been reporting on the Middle East for like 25 years. And he is an expert on a lot of things Middle East, and he's also an expert on Islamist terrorism. And at one point, John Le Carre reached out to him, and was like, I'm looking for somebody who can help me with the novels I'm working on. Basically, I need somebody who is an expert on Islamist terrorism in Europe. And so Yaseen starts like working with him.
And I guess they had a pretty good and active working relationship to the extent that when John Le Carre died, Yaseen even spoke at his funeral.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:16)
Wow. Yeah.

**Tim Howard** (3:17)
And then like a minute later, Yaseen was like, yeah, and I think you're going to be editing my podcast. I was like, oh, okay, cool. It's great.
And he told me about this story that he had already started reporting.

**PJ Vogt** (3:31)
This is the wonderful mind of Tim Howard, where every question provokes a story, which usually reminds him of another even better story. It's a place that I very much enjoy hanging out.
Anyway, Tim told me how Yaseen had found himself curious about this one particular story, the one that had launched this investigation. That investigation would take them to some surprising places, some of them very dark.

**Tim Howard** (3:52)
Starting in early 2024, Yaseen and other colleagues at the site had been hearing these rumors of horrific malnutrition in Gaza and of children dying of malnutrition because not enough food was getting in. But it was also a really difficult thing to report because journalists not allowed to go to Gaza. So they start calling around looking for people that they can talk to just to like report out this story about malnutrition. And the by far best source who Yassin meets in the process is this guy, Mahmud Almadhoun, who is the head of a soup kitchen in the north of Gaza in a place called Beit Lahia.
So he reaches out and Mahmud is totally willing to talk to him. And Yassin was also really just surprised that Mahmud spoke really openly about everything that was happening in a way that is not what he was used to have happening with other people there, with doctors, with nurses, with ordinary people living in Gaza.