Inspiring & Horrifying

Summary

Armstrong & Getty On Demand

Episode: "Inspiring & Horrifying"

Date: October 1, 2025
Host: Armstrong & Getty

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Episode Overview

This episode presents a blend of inspiring and disturbing stories, ranging from the psychological complexities behind the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with reference to a Bari Weiss interview, to personal anecdotes that spark debate and humor. The hosts reflect on human nature, indoctrination, media, and societal quirks—delivering thought-provoking commentary in their signature candid and irreverent style.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Bari Weiss Interview & Middle East Reflections

[02:51–11:13]

• Background: Armstrong introduces Bari Weiss’s recent interview with Leland Vittert, a journalist who recently disclosed his autism diagnosis; Armstrong finds this particularly inspiring due to personal connections with autism.

• Leland Vittert’s Story:

  • As a foreign correspondent, Vittert recounts the harrowing tale of Wafa, a Gazan woman severely burned as a child, treated for years by Israelis, who later attempted a suicide bombing targeting the hospital that saved her.
  • Quote (Vittert, relayed by Weiss):

    “I asked her, ‘What are you thinking watching this [video of her attempted bombing]?’... She goes, 'I'm thinking, I almost tasted paradise.' ... I said, 'Would you do it again?' 'Absolutely. In a minute. This is my calling in life.'” — [06:15]

  • Vittert’s expectation was a redemption story, but instead encountered unwavering ideological conviction.
  • The moral clarity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict became evident to him in this moment:

    “That’s when my mind was made up about sort of the moral clarity of the Israeli-Palestinian debate. Are the Israelis perfect? No. But that's what they're up against.”
    — [07:18]

• Hosts’ Analysis:

  • Armstrong & Getty underscore what Israel faces when “your enemy tries to kill the very people who saved her life and then says she would do it again.”
  • They draw parallels between Middle Eastern indoctrination and what they see in American educational culture. Armstrong explains:

    “Every evil regime in the history of the world has known this...they do it because it works. But people can’t accept that it’s happening in their own country, I guess.”
    — [08:12]

  • Getty broadens the point:

    “That’s what we’re all up against in terms of the whole radical Islam thing all around the world.”
    — [08:38]

  • Armstrong references psychological studies on “first thing bias”—how people cling to what they first learn, even after it’s proven false:

    “Even if the people who told you the first thing you heard come back and say...it’s not X, it’s Y...they’ll say, ‘Oh, it’s X. Definitely X.’”
    — [09:26]

2. The Free Press and Bari Weiss’s Impact

[10:20–11:13]

• Armstrong and Getty praise The Free Press, lauding Bari Weiss’s entrepreneurialism.
• Armstrong jokes about her declining CBS money to build the media future, “not going back to what was the big deal 50 years ago.”
• They mention Nellie Bowles, Weiss’s wife, as a “brilliant writer,” and riff humorously about lesbian couples and Doc Martens as a cultural staple:

  “Could Doc Martin stay in business if it weren’t for lesbians?” — Getty [11:20]
  “Doc Martin knows...punk rock loving neo-Nazi lesbian, because that is their bread and butter right there.” — Armstrong [12:00]

  • The segment is tongue-in-cheek, exemplifying their irreverent humor.

3. Social Etiquette Debates: Pizza at a Wedding

[15:39–17:21]

• Armstrong plays a viral clip about someone who ordered pizza at a wedding after eight hours without food, igniting a discussion on wedding etiquette.

  “12 to 8 with no food at a wedding is bullish.” — Armstrong [16:15] “I would have left. Yeah, I would have been out, I think.” — Getty [16:18]

  • Armstrong calls the bride's reaction excessive and sides with the hungry guests:

    “Feed your guests, dumb, dumb. What do you want them to starve, pass out, crack their heads?” [16:35]
    “That bride needs to shove it.” [17:07]

  • The conversation ends with a humorous note on pizza preferences:

    “Hey, I’m thinking of getting a pizza. I got a three-word answer for you. Sausage and onion.” — Armstrong [17:10]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Indoctrination:

  “Every evil regime in the history of the world has known this...they do it because it works.”
  — Armstrong [08:12]

• On Psychological Bias:

  “Even if...what we told you is wrong, it's not X, it's Y...you go back in a couple months and ask those people if it's X or Y, they'll say, 'Oh, it's X. Definitely X.'”
  — Armstrong [09:26]

• On Modern Media Choices:

  “It’s possible that she, being significantly younger than me, thinks, why would I go to CBS? I'm building what is the future of media. I'm not going back to what was the big deal 50 years ago.”
  — Getty [10:43]

• On Wedding Poor Planning:

  “Feed your guests, dumb, dumb. What do you want them to starve, pass out, crack their heads?”
  — Armstrong [16:35]

---

Timestamps for Important Segments

• Interview Overview: Leland Vittert on Autism & Middle East: [02:51–03:57]
• Wafa’s Story and Indoctrination: [03:57–08:38]
• Free Press Media Talk & Bari Weiss’s Career Choices: [10:20–11:13]
• Doc Martens, Pop Culture, and Humor: [11:20–12:23]
• Wedding Pizza Debate: [15:39–17:21]

---

Tone and Style

The episode retains Armstrong & Getty’s hallmark blend of sharp wit, candid cultural critique, and moments of poignant seriousness. The hosts navigate between deeply impactful stories about human nature and lighter, everyday debates with ease, maintaining a conversational and occasionally irreverent tone throughout.

---

Summary

"Inspiring & Horrifying" frames the paradoxes of humanity through stories of tragedy, resilience, conviction, and everyday absurdity. From the seemingly intractable ideological divides in the Middle East to the social minefields of American weddings, Armstrong & Getty provoke, entertain, and invite listeners to reflect on the complexity—and sometimes the humor—of what people believe and how they act.

Transcript

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[Cindy Crawford]

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[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

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[Bari Weiss]

When I told people I was making a podcast about Benghazi, nine times out of ten they called me a masochist.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

Rolled their eyes, or just asked why Benghazi? The truth became a web of lies.

[Bari Weiss]

From prologue projects and Pushkin Industries, this is Fiasco.

[Cindy Crawford]

Benghazi what difference at this point does it make?

[Bari Weiss]

Listen to Fiasco Benghazi on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

There's some inspiring here and a bunch of horrifying. It's one more thing Armstrong and Getty. One more inspiring and horrifying. The fabulous Barry Weiss of the Free Press didn't interview recently with Leland Vittert, who is a longtime Middle east correspondent for Fox News, and I believe he is with News Nation now. Is that right? He's recently come out publicly that he is on the autism spectrum or is autistic or has autism. Whatever you're supposed to say these days, I don't know. And and has described how he has dealt with it and gotten beyond it. Really interesting and inspiring stuff. I can't wait to read it as there is autism in my family more than a little. Really an amazing guy and really cool. But he was talking to Bari Weiss about the Middle east and Gaza and Israel, and here's a little snippet of her excellent conversation with him.

[Bari Weiss]

2012 I'm a foreign correspondent for Fox, and normally when you're based in Jerusalem, you're covering suicide bombings, you're covering protests in the west bank or riots in the west bank, on and on and on because of the Arab Spring. I really hadn't spent that much time in Israel, and the Palestinian Israeli conflict was not a thing those years. There'd been a couple Gaza skirmishes, but there was the Galad Shalit deal where there was an Israeli soldier who had been held hostage and traded from Gaza to Israel for a thousand Gazan prisoners, including Sinwar. Including Sinwar and including a woman named Wafa. And Wafa had been a woman in the West Bank, a woman in Gaza. She had pulled a pot of boiling water over herself when she was like five or six years old. The Israelis treat most of the people out of Gaza who have really horrific burns, catastrophic medical injuries. She goes back to Gaza after being treated for four or five years in Israel, but has a pass to get in and out of Israel, which very few people in Gaza did at the time. So she gets recruited to be a suicide bomber. Oh my God, this is in the second intifada, so mid 2000s. And there's the video of her coming to the checkpoint to get into Israel wearing her suicide vest. And she'd been given three target options by the Alaska Martyrs Brigade, a bus, a cafe, or the hospital that had treated her and saved her life. She chose the hospital that had treated her and saved her life. She gets to the checkpoint. They discover that she has a bomb, or they really think she does. She tries to detonate it. It doesn't go off. She gets thrown in jail again. The Israelis treat her. They help her with her burns. They educate her, they give her a college degree. And now in the galactic deal, she goes back to Gaza. So I go to Gaza to interview her, thinking, this is going to be a redemption story. It was before Christmas, right, that she's gonna say, perfect Christmas story. I am going to be the one to try and forge peace. And I believe in peace. And I've seen that the Israelis are not evil, that I don't want to kill them anymore. Fine. So I get into Gaza, and I bring with me an iPad that has the video of her trying to blow herself up. So we're sitting across from each other like this. She's wearing a hijab in a very junky Gazan apartment. It is an awful place in every sense of the word. And I show her the video, and I said, what are you thinking watching this? She goes, oh, oh, oh. Has all this reaction. And she goes, oh. She goes, I'm thinking, I almost tasted paradise. Oh, okay. Would you do it again? Absolutely. In a minute. This is my calling in life. I said, wait a second. These people treated you in all of your burns. They saved your life. You tried to blow them up. They still treated you. They educated you, and now you have a chance to at life back here in Gaza and you'd want to blow them up. And she goes, absolutely. They are the infidels. They are evil. They are the enemy. I can't remember what the exact translation was. And that's when my mind was made up about sort of the moral clarity of the Israeli Palestinian debate. Are the Israelis perfect?

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

No.

[Bari Weiss]

But that's what they're up against.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

And that is the key point that so many people ignore. That's what they're up against. And it's funny when people see deliberate attempts to indoctrinate the young. They have Americans, they have this inability to absorb it or accept it or believe it, because I think a lot of us have seen those TV the kids shows from, you know, that part of the world where they teach the little kids that the Jews drink the blood of babies and the rest of that.

[Getty]

Yeah, it's like they're Sesame Street.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

Right? And then when people like me are trying to lecture you that the government schools aren't accidentally indoctrinating your kids to hate America and Western civilization and not Know their own history. That, that's just these silly woke people who don't really know it. No, it's an absolutely deliberate attempt to capture the minds of young people. Every evil regime in the history of the world has known this. They've practiced it. I could bore you to death with examples of it. They do it because it works. But people can't accept that it's happening in their own country, I guess.

[Getty]

Yeah, that was quite a story. And you know, not just the Palestinian Israeli conflict. That's what we're all up against in terms of the whole radical Islam thing all around the world.

[Bari Weiss]

Yes.

[Getty]

The people that actually believe. No, no, no. I want the bomb to go off because then I'm in paradise immediately.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

Right. Well. And one of the most interesting things you've ever brought to the show was that psychological study where they pointed out that human beings cling to the first thing they learn about something.

[Getty]

Yeah, it's troubling. I feel like I'm up against that in my life sometimes myself. You will, you will stick with the first thing you heard, even when it's been proven that you were wrong about the first thing you heard. But the first thing.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

Even if the people who told you the first thing you heard come back and say, as they did in the study, hey, what we told you is wrong, it's not X, it's Y. Just we apologize. It's not X, it's Y. You go back in a couple of months and ask those people if it's X or Y, they'll say, oh, it's X. Definitely X. And so that's one of the insidious parts of indoctrinating a young girl like this or the American example I was giving. How much opportunity did she get to observe that the reality of the Israeli people is not X, it's Y. Indeed. But she was indoctrinated to believe it was the horrors of the evil Jew and they must be blotted out, blah, blah, blah. And she could not, with the most amazing, awe inspiring, kind, beautiful examples of the actual truth, she could not be budged from that, that premise. Human beings, man, who.

[Getty]

Wow, that was a. That was, that was a good one. That was interesting and troubling. So that's Barry Weiss's outfit that brought us that.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

The Free Press. Yeah.

[Getty]

So she, she made a decision or not to make. Take that 200 million dollar offer from CBS.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

I haven't heard.

[Getty]

I wish she would because it's quickly.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

Become a media empire. They have lots of super talented writers.

[Bari Weiss]

Yes.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

They put out more con. Pardon me.

[Getty]

It's possible that she, being significantly younger than me, thinks, why would I go to cbs? I'm building what is the future of media. I'm not going back to it. It was the big deal 50 years ago.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

Yeah, but they put out more good content that you could take in. Yeah, podcasts too, obviously. Yeah, it's amazing. She is a go getter. And her wife. That's right, Katie. Two women married.

[Bari Weiss]

Whoa.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

Go figure. Lesbians. Yes, that's what I've been told.

[Getty]

I was going to ask this question the other the air.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

But anyway, I was going to say Nellie Bowles. Her wife is brilliant writer. I love Nelly.

[Getty]

Where was I? I live in a college town. So I'm at the bagel shop coffee shop Sunday morning and I had this thought. Could Doc Martin stay in business if it weren't for lesbians? Is what I thought.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

Looking substantially lower profit.

[Getty]

I'm not sure they could. I'm not sure they could. Lot of attractive young lesbian couples all wearing Doc Martens.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

Big in the punk rock scene.

[Getty]

Yeah.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

Oh yeah, yeah. There's plenty of punk rock.

[Getty]

I have several pair.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

My neo Nazis. Are you a lesbian, Jack?

[Getty]

I wear them regularly but I think, I think what really keeps them going is the lesbian scene. She's a lesbian.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

I've got to believe that in this era of data collection, Doc Martin knows like the home address of every single punk rock loving neo Nazi lesbian because that is their bread and butter right there. Those girls are the next quarter profits right there.

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[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

Ugh. Come on.

[Cindy Crawford]

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[Homes.com Announcer]

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[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

2.

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[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

3.

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[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

Can I play a clip for you guys real quick? I just need your opinion on it. Sure.

[Getty]

Opinion.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

All right, here we go.

[Cindy Crawford]

Went to a friend's wedding but it was a really long day. The wedding took place at 12. When it got to 8pm with no food in sight, I was absol struggling. I was starting to get hangry. So me and my friend who I was with decided to order a pizza sneakily to the venue. When it arrived, I slipped outside to grab it and I shared it with a couple of other people at the table who were also starving. Word got round and now the bride is furious with me and said if I'd just been patient, food was arriving in the next 30 minutes. She told me that I embarrassed her, but some others told me it was tacky and disrespectful.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

12 to 8 with no food at a wedding is bullish.

[Getty]

I would have left. Yeah, I would have been out, I think. Unless it's like close friend. It would have to be.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

How were they doing that?

[Getty]

I'm sticking around. Well, I wonder. I wonder, like I don't know if you've ever been to a full on Catholic wedding where they do the full mass, but those don't last eight hours.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

Feed your guests. Dumb, dumb. What do you want them to starve? Pass out, crack their heads?

[Cindy Crawford]

Noon to 8?

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

That's a long wedding anyways.

[Getty]

Yeah, yeah.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

And then food's coming. Now I'm out.

[Getty]

I would leave before I would bring a pizza into the wedding venue.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

That is a bit of a she, but she did it. Well, the venue though, I mean, what if it's a hotel? They rented a ballroom, she went out to the lobby and you know what? That's commitment to her friend wanting to stick around for this hellaciously long wedding.

[Getty]

The bride's furious.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

Oh my. Yeah, well, that bride needs to shove it.

[Getty]

That was.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

I'm in that scenario, Katie. And you bring it up. Hey, I'm thinking of getting a pizza. I got a three word answer for you. Sausage and onion. And one word response.

[Lenovo Advertiser]

Done.

[Getty]

Thanks guys.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

You're a lot of help. Well, I guess that's it. Ugh.

[Cindy Crawford]

Come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.

[Lenovo Advertiser]

Still using yesterday's tech Upgrade to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Ultra Light, ultra powerful and built for serious productivity with Intel Core Ultra processors, blazing speed and AI powered performance. It keeps up with your business, not the other way around.

[Cindy Crawford]

Whoa, this thing moves.

[Lenovo Advertiser]

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[Bari Weiss]

When I told people I was making a podcast about Benghazi, nine times out of ten they called me a masochist.

[Armstrong and Getty (Armstrong)]

Rolled their eyes, or just asked why Benghazi? The truth became a web of lies.

[Bari Weiss]

From Prologue Projects and Pushkin Industries. This is Fiasco Benghazi.

[Cindy Crawford]

What difference at this point does it make?

[Bari Weiss]

Listen to Fiasco Benghazi on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Homes.com Announcer]

This is an iHeart podcast.