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- [00:04]
A
You are listening to an art media podcast. The mood music of the last 10 years has sounded very much like the mood music of the 1930s in which dictators aggress at will and democracies are timid and inward looking. We may very well recall Trump's moves, which are now being cast as hyper aggressive and sort of in line with the new era of great power competition, competition and winner take all geopolitics and say that these were essential, necessary and ultimately peace producing signals to foreign dictatorships that the United States meant business, that we were not a power to be trifled with, that we were capable of executing complex military operations with an astounding degree of success, as we just were with Maduro, as we were in Operation Midnight Hammer, that they should think twice before they next try to invade one of their neighbors. And I'm keeping my fingers crossed that that's the version of reality we're looking at in which we are averting great power wars rather than hurdling towards them. But we are definitely in an era that is more fraught, more dangerous than we were certainly when I was coming out of college and the only question was who was gonna sign the next free trade deal with the. Foreign.
- [01:39]
B
It's 11:30am on Wednesday, January 7th in New York City. It is 6:30pm on Wednesday, January the 7th in Israel where Israelis are winding down their day. On Tuesday, tens of thousands of ultra orthodox Israelis gathered in Israel for an unruly and at times even violent protests against the issue of military conscription for the Haredim, the ultra orthodox Israeli Jews. During the protests, a 14 year old haredi boy was tragically killed when a bus driver accelerated into a crowd that was blocking a street. There is a preliminary investigation underway to understand what actually happened. In other news, following the US Capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, President Trump and other American leaders have made strong threats against the Islamic regime of Iran, which the US Hit forcefully back in June of last year. The regime now faces its 10th day of nationwide protests and some analysts are wondering whether the U.S. could play a role in Iran as it relates to these protesters at some point. Meanwhile, officials from Israel and Syria are engaging in talks facilitated by the United States that began in Paris on Monday. On Tuesday, the two countries announced plans to create a so called joint fusion mechanism that will facilitate the de escalation, diplomacy and commercial opportunities between Israel and Syria. This comes amid reports, including reporting from ARC Media contributor Amit Segal, that America has proposed the construction of a sprawling joint economic zone along the current demilitarized strip between Syria and Israel, which would include energy projects, pharmaceutical plants and, wait for it, a ski resort. Also, in a coordinated effort by Israel, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Red Cross are set to resume the search for the final fallen hostage, Ron Gvili, in the Zaytun area in Gaza. Now on to today's episode. Few people expected to begin to 2026 by seeing images of Nicolas Maduro in a prison in New York City. In the days since the capture of Maduro, it has been argued that the Trump administration's operation in Venezuela is another signal that the global system we've known for the better part of a century has been changed dramatically. From the ongoing Russia, Ukraine war to the recent shakeup in the Middle east, in which Israel battled seven different fronts and re established itself as one of, if not the most important geopolitical power in the Middle east to a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, geopolitical dynamics are shifting rapidly. But to what end are we actually witnessing the emergence of a new world order as opposed to some kind of temporary crackup? Are we seeing the beginning of something that is new and semi permanent to the extent that anything in global affairs is permanent? Joining us to discuss this is Call ME Back veteran Brett Stevens. Brett is a columnist for the New York Times. He is the inaugural editor in chief of the Superior Journal, which he continues to run. I'm a big fan of the Superior Journal. I highly recommend our listeners to subscribe. We'll link to it in the show notes. Brett previously worked as a foreign affairs columnist for the Wall Street Journal, where he won a Pulitzer prize. And from 2002 through 2004, he served as editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post, where he was based in Israel. And he's also the author of a excellent book about the global affairs crackup even before the crackup was in full swing that we will also link to in our show notes. Brett, thanks for being here.
- [05:31]
A
It's good to see you, Dan.
- [05:32]
B
All right, Brett, let's get into this. Before we talk about any kind of new world order, let's spend a minute on what we may look back on as the old order. How would you define that system and the powers and the institutions that maintained it?
- [05:47]
A
Well, you have to be selective in what version of that order you have in mind. I mean, people are about this idea that the capture of Nicolas Maduro is unprecedented 19th century. But I remember as a I guess I was a junior or senior in high school when George H.W. bush, who was seen as a defender of the old order, actually conducted a Very similar kind of operation against the dictatorship of Manuel NORIEGA. The cocaine. 1989, 1989, 1990, I think right over the New Year's go back to 1965. Around then, Lyndon Johnson also sent 22,000 troops into the Dominican Republic to prevent what he feared was going to be a communist takeover of the doctor. So this has happened in the past. But let me put it this way, Dan. Under, say, Barack Obama, the United States conducted foreign policy in a Victorian frock coat, under a whole set of prim niceties and deference to ideas about the way in which international order should work, especially ways that were bound by law. Not in all cases, but in many cases. I think what you're seeing with Donald Trump is American foreign policy conducted not in a frock coat, but in Speedos. The clothes are off. You are seeing essentially the near nakedness of the factor of power in international relations. And I don't think that's an entirely bad thing for the following reason, which is that the ambient temperature of global affairs, if I can extend this metaphor a little bit, is a lot hotter. So wearing a frock coat now makes a lot less sense when our adversaries showing their willingness to use raw power to achieve their ends, and the United States in some ways, is responding in kind. I've seen a lot of talk in the last few days suggesting that what Trump did in Venezuela will encourage China and Russia to behave similarly. I think that's absurd. We were talking about Chinese takeover of Taiwan for a long time before this happened. And of course, Russia's invasion of Ukraine is Now in its fourth or maybe 12th year, depending on how you're counting. But the point is, what I think Trump has actually done is signal to those countries, those major adversaries, that the United States is prepared to play by much tougher rules. And I think, if anything, it's gonna serve more as a deterren then as an encouragement to their behavior.
- [08:27]
B
Well, let me just play devil's advocate there on that particular point. I generally agree with you. The counter, though, would be that the US Action in the Western Hemisphere has legitimized what in the case of Russia, Russia had already been doing in Ukraine, and it has legitimized what the Chinese government may do going forward in Taiwan. In other words, it's sent a message that the moves by Russia, or what could be the moves by China, are legitimate and there's actually precedent for it. And there's precedent for it created by no less than the leader of the free world, the United States.
- [09:03]
A
Well, I think that there is a case to be made that what Trump has done has provided a fig leaf or an alibi for future Chinese action. But again, that would be simply for propagandistic reasons. I think people need to think a little more carefully about what it is that we just did in Venezuela. Maduro was under US Indictment, not just by the Trump administration, but by the Biden administration. In fact, the Biden administration, I think, raised the reward for Maduro's capture and arrest from 15 to 25 million dollars. So there was a legal process here. Secondly, unlike what, say, Russia tried to do in Ukraine, which was depose a democratically elected government, getting rid of Maduro was about getting rid of not only a dictator, but a dictator who had stolen an election in 2024 in broad daylight. The legitimately elected leader of Venezuela is a man named Edmundo Gonzalez, who's living in exile, I believe, in Spain. So there's a world of difference between acting to remove a dictatorship and acting to impose a dictatorship. Now, very importantly, and this is the significant caveat, a lot depends on how the Trump administration moves forward here. If the Trump administration Simply replaces Maduro 1.0 with Maduro 2.0, which is to say the follow on of this current regime, then in that case, the argument that I've just made looks a lot weaker. But I suspect that's not what the Trump administration is doing. The Trump administration is trying to create a pathway to getting the Chavista regime out in a way that doesn't lead to mayhem when the next government is duly elected. That's my suspicion and my hope. But of course I could be wrong.
- [11:01]
B
Okay, so assuming we are going through some kind of reordering, and maybe I guess where the debate lies then between your analysis or your time horizon and others, is when that reordering began, you're basically saying it didn't take the US Operation in Venezuela to catalyze the reordering. The reordering was already happening. February of 2022, Russia goes into Ukraine. That was a part of the reordering. That said, can you just provide for us a map of the reordering? Who are the big players? Who matters in this kind of great power conflict, 3.0 or 4.0, however we want to describe it.
- [11:37]
A
Look, there's a term of art used by political scientists which describes certain kinds of countries as revisionist regimes. They want to revise the world order they were handed when they first came to power. And we live in a world of revisionist regimes. Russia is trying to revise the post Cold War order by its effort to seize Ukraine. China would very much like to do the same, not just in Taiwan, but along numerous borders, potentially even their border with India. With America's Post World War II role in the Pacific, until last June, Iran was very much trying to revise the order in the Middle east by creating essentially a new Persian empire. Thank God the Israeli government and the Trump administration set that project back, maybe irrevocably. And now there's a question as to whether the United States isn't entering the same game of trying to revise the world order, not simply better police the previous ones. You know, this incessant talk that you heard from most recently from Stephen Miller about taking over Greenland is of a piece of that. I really hope that's not what the United States is after. There's a lot to be said for using American power to prevent the further collapse of what used to be, call it the liberal international order. There's much less to be said for the United States entering this new game and essentially trying to carve out its own new sphere or its advantages through the raw exercise of American power. So I think that's the real question that we're now facing, Dan, which is that to the extent that we want to maintain what used to be called the so called liberal international order by putting authoritarian adversaries on the back foot, I applaud it. If this is really about essentially entering into the same competition along roughly the same terms as those powers, which is kind of an Athenian version of the famous, you know, the strong do as they will and the weak do what they must, then we really are in a scary world.
- [13:44]
B
So Brett, in your description of where the chips may be falling, where does Europe fit into all of this?
- [13:50]
A
Europe is a severe case of a continent or a political entity that not only put on a frock coat, a corset and maybe a virginity guard in the process of existing in a world that was supposed to have no real power dynamics, only win win solutions, sustainable development and all the other cliches by which the Europeans cond foreign policy. I remember 20 odd years ago, Robert Kagan, I think, was the guy who talked about America as Mars and Europe as Venus. The Europeans took it to such an extent that they became what amounts to a garden without walls. That's a term that Fouad Ajami used many years ago to describe Lebanon in the 1960s, which is to say a wonderful place that was there to be plundered. And that's in a sense exactly what happened to Europe, particularly in the last 15 years, through a comb factors. Mass unchecked migration would be, I think, one of them, the fact that Russia felt free to aggress not only overtly in places like Ukraine, but covertly in Germany, Britain elsewhere. And now the Europeans are having to wake up to the reality that they have enfeebled themselves almost to the point of self erasure. The words of the national Security Strategy that the Trump administration produced about a month ago were very harsh, I think too harsh, but they were not altogether inaccurate. You know, Europe's share of GDP, I think it was about 25% in 1990, at the end of the Cold War.
- [15:26]
B
Of global GDP.
- [15:27]
A
Of global GDP, I think it's down below 15% and falling. Europe cannot expect to spend another century as the benefiting ward of benign foreign powers. You're now finally starting to see European rearmament. It's still not taking place at a speed, speed and scale which needs to happen. I don't think Europeans understand how badly they are being out competed in global marketplaces. And I don't think they really are thinking through the real threats they face to their civilizational project unless they reclaim an idea of what Europe is supposed to be, which is a Christian civilization leavened and improved by the spirit of the Enlightenment.
- [16:13]
B
And do you paint a broad stroke across Europe on that? Do you see any green shoots?
- [16:18]
A
Sure. I mean, characteristically, I think Poland is an example of a country that has a much better grip on reality. Maybe because it's a more religious country and maybe because it has more proximity to Russia, at least in its exclave in Kaliningrad, sits literally on its very border, but essentially that Polish spirit, and maybe Finland is another good example of this. It's interesting how proximity to Russia increases one's awareness of brute reality in a way that's both frightening but also quite healthy. Those are the countries that are going to have to become models for the rest of Europe. I wrote a column about this recently, Dan, taking note of the appallingly small fractions of European publics who would be willing to fight for their country under any circumstances. And when you see data like that, you begin to understand why Putin, despite all of his weaknesses, thinks that Europe is there for the taking and that there will be a follow on to the Ukrainian invasion that will provide further riches and spoils for him in possibly NATO member states.
- [17:24]
B
Yeah, it is interesting. Chancellor Mears, the leader of Germany, has recently said that his goal by 2030 is to make the German military the most powerful most important military in all of Europe. There's only one problem. When there's surveys conducted in Europe of the number of young Germans that would be willing to serve in the German military and fight for their countries, the numbers are appallingly minuscule. It's all nice in a sense to have these grand visions which we have not heard out of Europe, but the populations are not on board.
- [17:53]
A
One point I think that is worth adding here is that Europe's broad attitudes towards Israel are the inverse of what they need to be. And I don't just mean in terms of their historical feelings about the Jewish people. I mean it in terms of looking at Israel as a small but mighty democracy that takes care of business. Because now in some ways what's happening to Europe is that they are beginning to exist in Israel's world with powerful foes without and also potential problems within. There were stories recently in the Wall Street Journal about how Europeans, some of the countries that are currently boycotting Israel, are showing up at Tel Aviv arms fairs to see what the Israelis are doing. They're taking tours with the IDF to figure out, you know, how the IDF is able to conduct the operations with the success that it has. I mean, it's a despicable hypocrisy. But that spirit is the spirit that needs to be broadly admired in the European public because that's what they're going to need, I don't know, in 10, 20 years, if they're going to survive as a civilization, they're going to need that Israeli spirit that says we are not simply going to become a washed out civilization of the past. We are going to fight and we're going to live.
- [19:10]
B
Right. So you mentioned Israel in this new world order, if we want to call it that, or lack of a world order. Where does the Middle east fit in?
- [19:19]
A
The idea that you can sort of draw a big black line around the Middle east and say this place no longer counts is just foolishness. The Middle east is still the world's swing supplier of cheap oil. You can lift a barrel in Saudi Arabia much more cheaply than you can in Texas. And so it's going to be a vital energy supplier. It is still a major exporter of fanaticism, terror, and the destabilizing effects of both. And it's an exporter of people through a mass migration. And so whether American and European policymakers like it or not, but the Middle east is going to matter immensely to the future of global order. I know there's this idea in the Trump administration which is that our enemy is China. We have to muster and marshal all of our resources to counter the Chinese threat, but the world doesn't really give us that option. Now, the way I'm thinking of the Middle east is that the real battle within the Middle east is the battle not between Israelis and Arabs or Israelis, Jews and Muslims. It's a battle between the moderates and the modernizers and the totalitarians and the fanatics. And the moderates and the modernizers are in Tel Aviv. They're also in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. They're in Oman to a large and growing extent. They seem to be in Jeddah and Riyadh, in Rabat, in Morocco and elsewhere. But there's also still an antediluvian axis that is led by Tehran. If that could change, it would be a colossal shift. With the important exception. By the way, the country that now worries me most in the Middle east as the next bad actor is Turkey.
- [21:05]
B
I actually want to stay on Iran and Turkey. First on Turkey. If you had to summarize what you think Erdogan's ambitions are to the extent that you can discern them, how would you describe them?
- [21:17]
A
Islamicized neo Ottomanism rolls right off the tongue. Knowing who listens to this podcast, I have no doubt that it was readily understood by your audience. Yeah, this is a kind of a neo Ottoman ambition that Erdogan has cultivated for a long time, but it has Islamist characteristics. So it's not just the sultanate, it's the caliphate. And that really should worry us a great deal. About 10 years ago, towards the end of his life, I had the honor of interviewing the historian Bernard Lewis from the stage of the 92nd street wine. He made a prediction at the time. He said, In 10 years, Iran and Turkey will switch places. He believed that the forces leading to the overthrow of the Islamic regime were essentially inexorable. And I think he was almost certainly right. But he also saw that the forces leading to the re Islamization of Turkish life were also inexorable. And those are two countries he knew very well. So don't be surprised if that prediction bears out. Which is one reason, by the way, that I understand Netanyahu's shudder at Mar? A Lago the other week when President Trump, by his side, put in a good word for Erdogan. Because Erdogan. Erdogan is and for a long time has been, in my view, the most dangerous man in the Middle East.
- [22:32]
B
You, Brett, have written extensively over the years and done a lot of actually original reporting in your Columns on uprisings in Iran going back to 2009, the, quote, unquote, green revolution following the reelection of Ahmadinejad as president, obviously, what is called the Woman Life and freedom protests in 2022, which you wrote a lot about, and really try to understand if it had real oxygen and altitude, and both of those, for different reasons, sputtered out. What is your view of what's happening in Iran right now? And do you worry that it, too, could sputter out?
- [23:11]
A
All the attention is on Venezuela, but the important story, the truly important story in the world is in Iran right now. I have a sense that this is going to grow. I don't think people appreciate the extent to which an inflationary economy creates revolutionary conditions, because people feel that with every single day, they are losing, not gaining. I think you saw the news that the Iranian regime's effort to quell dissent was to give Iranians, what was it, $7 a month of a stipend. I think even in Iran, that doesn't go very far. And the Iranian regime has no good options right now. So I think the protests are going to grow in intensity. There is a kind of a butterfly flapping its wings quality to many of these protests. For instance, the Women Life and Freedom protest began with what really, in Iran is a kind of an everyday event of the brutalization of a young woman who wasn't wearing her hijab in the proper manner, which somehow sparked an outrage that just spread like a match lighting a prairie fire. So it's not clear whether there will be an event like this in the coming days that simply Galvans galvanizes the protest to new heights. I just can't predict that. But I think they're going to intensify, and the government seems paralyzed. I think the big question, Dan, is whether this fire catches within the government itself and causes divisions. Khamenei is old and sick. The regime is very weak. It's been humiliated. The economy is in a dreadful state. But what will essentially end up being the differentiator between a successful protest and an unsuccessful one is whether regime elements, especially in the army, come over to the side of the protesters. Otherwise, what you're going to see is an intensification of a crackdown and the irgc, the Revolutionary Guards Corps, essentially assuming control. And I think that's a scary scenario that we should be mindful about to.
- [25:13]
B
The extent there's any rules in all of this. There was a sense that there were rules in the old system, what we would call in the decades immediately following the Second World war, although one could argue that there weren't really rules. People, I think, romanticize the rules that were in place before. But let's just for the sake of this conversation, say there was a sense of a system. What are the rules now? Are there any rules?
- [25:35]
A
I don't think there are rules, but the truth is there never really were rules. There was etiquette that was sometimes observed, but often observed only in the breach. And that is a fundamental truth about international relations in general. There was a massive effort after the Second World War. You can even, even go further and look back to the Geneva Conventions at the turn of the 20th century, or when there was quasi rules that were often but not invariably observed. And that's just the nature of international life, which liberals and progressives have been desperate to paper over for a very long time now. I actually think there's something to be said for etiquette. A lot to be said for etiquette, at least when most players in the international system are willing to observe etiquette. Where it tends to break down is when you have major players in the international system who are simply flouting the rules and others who are observing them to their increased disadvantage. And I think that's kind of what you were seeing in the last few years. Russia massively flouted the rules, and at the same time, the United States was trying to fight according to the old rules, and that turned out to be really inadequate. So how do we create a system that takes cognizance of a new reality in which our chief adversaries really are not observing any rules at all and doesn't essentially cede the field to them because we are so intent on preserving the appearance of the existence of those rules. That's actually a difficult question to answer.
- [27:16]
B
You are a regular criticism of President Trump and have been for a number of years. If you were to explain to other critics of President Trump what they don't understand about world affairs these days and America's role in it, that you actually think, despite your criticisms, President Trump actually does understand, how would you explain that to your fellow critics of President Trump?
- [27:45]
A
I've been thinking about this a lot. I was a charter member of the Never Trump group kind of coming out of 2015, 2016. And I think it deserved my clarity as a columnist to the extent that hatred of Trump became reflexive and doubting his motives became reflexive to the point that it ran the risk of blinding me now and again to things he did which were right and important. And I have strived, including in his first term, but especially now, to give him credit where it's due, moving the embassy to Jerusalem, getting out of the nuclear arms deal with Iran, killing Soleimani, and most importantly, the Operation Midnight Hammer are things that ought to be applauded.
- [28:30]
B
And the Abraham Accords, and of course.
- [28:32]
A
The Abraham Accords, I mean, the list is not insignificant by any stretch. And deposing Nicolas Maduro, Trump understands power. He understands hard power. And he understands not only the uses of hard power, but the perception of power. You know, one of the issues with Maduro is that Maduro kept going up on stage and dancing jigsaw, basically flouting repeated requests by the Trump administration to leave office. That could not continue indefinitely. And by the way, it would have damaged American power and the perception of our power. Trump gets this. What I think Trump doesn't understand is that what political scientist Joseph Nye called soft power, which is not the power to coerce, that's hard power, but the power to attract that soft power, is also power that he needs. And even as he is often making adept use of hard power, I just saw within the last hour that American troops have boarded that oil tanker under now a Russian flag trying to flee sanctions. I think he also has to attend to the soft power question of it. And this is going to matter, by the way, in Venezuela. If all we do in Venezuela is put in our sort of proxy thugs into government, the rump Maduro regime, seize their oil and not move towards a legitimate election, we will have probably done more damage than anything else. That's a real problem. We have to be able to match hard and soft power in equal measure so that we aren't turning off the allies and friends we need when we need them, because we will one day need them.
- [30:07]
B
But one thing I've been struck by with President Trump is there's this sense that he in foreign affairs, he kind of creates his own momentum. Yeah, that was certainly the case with the ending the Israel Hamas war in October, where once he unleashed incredible pressure on Hamas. And then also he put pressure on key players like Turkey and Qatar and others to deliver Hamas to a deal. But also Hamas said yes, but to the president's proposal that all the hostages come out at once. And once Hamas said yes, but many of us, me included, focused on the but, okay, wait a minute, what's Hamas gonna do? This isn't a done deal. And Trump seemed to say he just focused on the yes, cuz he figured once he had gotten the Y word yes, he could then create a momentum that was unstoppable. I've seen this pattern in other aspects of what he does, too. I don't know if it's just like sort of an idiosyncratic thing or there's actually a strategy here, but it just does strike me that this is where many people who've been steeped in decades of foreign policy and diplomatic negotiations discuss tend to focus on every word and every comma and every semicolon. But because he has some distance from those details, it's actually an advantage.
- [31:19]
A
Trump is an instinctual person, and instinct matters not just in terms of human relations, it matters in terms of geopolitics. And he has been able to use a kind of a sense of instinct, a sense of seizing moments, as you said, creating his own momentum, momentum that most of his predecessors simply didn't have. I think it's one of the reasons is that Trump is not a lawyer, and so he isn't trained to think in terms of legal fine print. He's able to think in terms of the feeling in the room. But Trump also has something else, which is that he has a nose for following the winner. Notice that Operation Midnight Hammer only happened once. 11 days of substantial softening by Israel guaranteed that he was going to get a win. By the way, it's something that foreign leaders ought to consider, which is that when they create winning circumstances, they might find the president is on their side. I would urge that on the Venezuelan opposition right now, you know, if you want Trump on your side, go prove that you're the winning team, and maybe his policy will change significantly.
- [32:27]
B
Brett, Just to wrap things up, folks listening to this conversation may think, and it's out there in the water, this idea that we're entering, entering a new phase of a great power conflict where Russia, China, the US Is in the process of carving out their own geographical sphere of influence, squeezing out the competition. And to your point, if that is true, this has been going on for actually some time. If one accepts that framework, do you worry that we are headed for some kind of great power war?
- [33:01]
A
I've been worrying about this for a long time because there are, at least until recently, the mood music of the last 10 years has sounded very much like the mood music of the 1930s, in which dictators aggress at will and democracies are timid and inward looking. We may very well recall Trump's moves, which are now being cast as hyper aggressive and sort of in line with the new era of great power competition and winner take all. Geopolitics and say that these were essential, necessary and ultimately peace producing signals to foreign dictatorships that the United States meant business, that we were not a power to be trifled with, that we were capable of executing complex military operations with an astounding degree of success, as we just were with Maduro, as we were in Operation Midnight Hammer, that they should think twice before they next try to invade one of their neighbors. And I'm keeping my fingers crossed that that's the version of reality we're looking at in which we are averting great power wars rather than hurdling towards them. But we are definitely in an era that is more fraught, more dangerous than we were, certainly when I was coming out of college and the only question was who was going to sign the next free trade deal with the United States.
- [34:27]
B
All right, Brett, we will leave it there. Thank you for this as always. I'm sure as the world gets more complicated, shall we say, rather than less complicated, we will be checking in with you. So look forward to continuing the conversation.
- [34:38]
A
Great seeing you, Dan.
- [34:49]
B
That's our show for today. If you value the Call Me Back podcast and you want to support our mission, please subscribe to our weekly members only show, Inside Call Me Back. Inside Call Me Back is where nadavayalamit. Segal and I respond to challenging questions from listeners and have the conversations that typically occur after the cameras stop rolling. To subscribe, please follow the link in the show notes or you can go to our ark media.org that's ark media.org call me back is produced and edited by Lon Benatar. Ark Media's executive producer is Adam James Levin Aretti. Our production manager is Brittany Cohn. Sound and video editing by Liquid Audio. Our associate producer is Maya Rockoff. Community management by Gabe Silverstein. Our music was composed by Yuval Semmo. Until next time, I'm your host. Host Dan Senor.