A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation

Summary

Summary of "A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation"

Introduction

In the poignant episode, "A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation," The New Yorker Radio Hour delves into the life of Hashem Awarteni, a Palestinian college student from the West Bank, whose life was irrevocably changed by a violent incident in Burlington, Vermont. Hosted by Claire Malone and featuring insightful interviews, the episode intertwines personal narratives with the broader geopolitical tensions surrounding the potential annexation of the West Bank by Israel.

The Burlington Shooting: A Turning Point

The episode opens with the harrowing account of three Palestinian college students, including Hashem Awarteni, who were shot while walking down a street in Burlington, Vermont—an event initially perceived by many as a hate crime due to the victims' Palestinian heritage. Although the gunman, Jason Eaton, has not been charged with a hate-motivated crime, the incident left lasting scars. Hisham shares his desperate moment during the shooting:

“I didn’t know if I was going to survive, didn’t know if my friends were alive. I also think I was like, oh, this is how it ends.” (06:04)

Despite surviving the attack, Hisham became paralyzed, forever altering his trajectory and deepening his connection to his family and homeland.

Life After the Shooting: Rehabilitation and Resilience

Post-incident, Hisham spent two months in a physical rehab facility in Boston, grappling with his new reality of life in a wheelchair. Returning to Brown University, where he is a double major in math and archaeology, Hisham becomes an emblematic figure against anti-Palestinian violence. His involvement in activism, particularly advocating for Brown to divest from companies supporting the Israeli occupation, placed him in the national spotlight.

“Brown Corporation is a sham. No others like Hisham.” (08:31)

This newfound attention challenged Hisham's inherently private nature, compelling him to navigate his public persona amidst personal healing.

Return to Ramallah: Family Ties and the Looming Threat of Annexation

In December, amid escalating tensions, Hisham returned to Ramallah with his grandmother from Vermont. The journey was fraught with logistical challenges, especially given his physical condition:

“Getting to the West Bank is even harder in a wheelchair... three flights, multiple border crossings, and hours of waiting to go through Israeli immigration with no guarantee of being let in.” (13:52)

The primary concern for Hisham and his family is the imminent threat of Israel annexing the West Bank—a move that would have severe implications for Palestinians. Discussions with his family reveal a pervasive anxiety:

Hisham: “I feel like annexation is like it's getting worse, but it's not like something that's so jarring.” (15:23)

The normalization of annexation plans has left the family in a state of fearful acceptance, contemplating the future amidst uncertainty.

Political Climate: Annexation and Its Implications

The political landscape has grown increasingly tense, especially following Donald Trump's election in November, which intensified annexation efforts. A prominent Israeli lawmaker, Smotrich, signaled accelerated plans for annexing around 150 settlements in the West Bank, emboldened by the current administration's stance.

Hisham: “It's like, annexation is more pressing and, like, salient... I'm the frog in the boiling pot.” (22:55)

This aggressive political maneuvering has resulted in heightened violence and displacement within the West Bank, with over 40,000 Palestinians fleeing their homes since 1967.

Navigating Uncertainty: Practical Strategies and Hope

Despite the looming threats, Hisham adopts a pragmatic approach to his uncertain future. Balancing his academic pursuits with the possibility of sudden geopolitical shifts, he plans to remain adaptable:

Hisham: “If annexation happens, I can just like, take academic leave and then go back home real quick and then, like, somehow, like, figure my situation out.” (21:08)

Surrounded by friends from conflicted regions like Ukraine and Syria, Hisham finds solace in shared experiences of displacement and resilience. His focus remains on maintaining a semblance of normalcy through routine and education, even as he grapples with profound personal and political challenges.

Conclusion

"A West Bank Family on the Verge of Annexation" offers a deeply human perspective on the intersection of personal tragedy and broader geopolitical conflicts. Through Hisham Awarteni's story, the episode illuminates the enduring struggles of Palestinians facing potential annexation, while highlighting themes of resilience, identity, and the quest for normalcy amidst chaos. As Hisham continues his academic journey, his narrative serves as a powerful testament to the strength of family bonds and the enduring hope for peace.

Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Hisham Awarteni (06:04): “I didn’t know if I was going to survive, didn’t know if my friends were alive. I also think I was like, oh, this is how it ends.”

• Hisham Awarteni (08:31): “Brown Corporation is a sham. No others like Hisham.”

• Hisham Awarteni (15:23): “I feel like annexation is like it's getting worse, but it's not like something that's so jarring.”

• Hisham Awarteni (21:08): “If annexation happens, I can just like, take academic leave and then go back home real quick and then, like, somehow, like, figure my situation out.”

• Hisham Awarteni (22:55): “I'm the frog in the boiling pot.”

Attributions

• Hashem Awarteni: Palestinian college student from the West Bank, victim of the Burlington shooting, and activist at Brown University.

• Claire Malone: Host and reporter for The New Yorker Radio Hour.

• Suzanne Gabber: Freelance reporter interviewing Hashem Awarteni.

Final Thoughts

This episode masterfully weaves together personal tragedy with the complexities of international politics, offering listeners a nuanced understanding of the Palestinian experience in the face of potential annexation. Through detailed storytelling and heartfelt interviews, The New Yorker Radio Hour brings to light the human stories often overshadowed by geopolitical discourse.

Transcript

[Claire Malone]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

[Hisham Awarteni]

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[Claire Malone]

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[Hisham Awarteni]

Try [e-mail], progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Not available in all states or situations.

[Claire Malone]

Prices vary based on how you buy. Listener supported WNYC Studios this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Claire Malone. You might remember a story from a little more than a year ago when three college students were shot while walking down the street in Burlington, Vermont. Burlington is generally known as a safe, very liberal college town. The young men were Palestinians from the west bank attending schools in the Northeast. Two of them were wearing keffiyehs, the Palestinian headscarf. And so the shooting was assumed by many people to be a hate crime. Though the suspect hasn't been charged with that by prosecutors, the victims all survived. A reporter named Suzanne Gabber has been talking with one of them since shortly after the attack. His name is Hashem Alwarteni. Suzanne went to the west bank recently to visit the Awarteni family and talk about what's on everyone's minds there. The possibility that Israel will annex their home and the entire West Bank. Here's Suzanne Gabber. How often do you go back to the school since you graduated?

[Hisham Awarteni]

A few times. Like, every time I'm back, I come once.

[Claire Malone]

It seems like you're very close with the teachers.

[Hisham Awarteni]

Yeah, it's a small school.

[Claire Malone]

In January, I went to visit Hisham oh, Itani. He's a senior in college, and when he was home on break, he went to visit his high school.

[Hisham Awarteni]

Some of them have been teaching for, like, 20, 30 years. Some of them have taught my cousins who are now, like, married and have PhDs and getting divorced.

[Claire Malone]

Hisham's mother, Elizabeth, drove him. Wait, can you, like, wait until I park?

[Hisham Awarteni]

You don't open the door until the cars are parked.

[Claire Malone]

The school is Ramallah Friends School. It's at the top of a steep hill overlooking the city of Ramallah in the West Bank. It's a cluster of beautiful old stone buildings. Two of Hisham's best friends from school met him there. Kinan Abdel Hamid and Tahsin Ali Ahmed. And the three of them were almost giddy.

[Hisham Awarteni]

No, we're gonna go see the teacher.

[Claire Malone]

The boys go to college in the US and so people are excited to see them. Five different teachers are gathered around people fawning over Them and saying embarrassing things. We really missed you. You guys were the best class. No, really, you were older than your years. You understood things way above your age, that kind of thing. The head of the school walks up and she wants to greet them, too. And I was just on the phone with Se'ed. Oh, yeah, of course. So he says, hello. I want to say hello to Ishmael. Thank you. Holding court.

[Hisham Awarteni]

Yeah.

[Claire Malone]

And while we were there, one of the boys, Takhsin, got a job offer, but I can't really tell if it's serious or not.

[Hisham Awarteni]

I told him I was doing math. He's like, okay, by the time you graduate, I'll be retired and you'll come replace me.

[Claire Malone]

So do you want to do that?

[Hisham Awarteni]

That sounds fun. I don't know how well he gets paid, but. But it'd be nice to be here.

[Claire Malone]

And of course, they got to reminiscing about the times they got in trouble messing around in chem lab.

[Hisham Awarteni]

Oh, my God. We were doing an experiment, putting, like, water on the salt and, like, watching it sizzle. And I was like, hey, what would happen if I spit in this? The only time I ever got in trouble for something in school was I installed counter strike on the PCs here. It's not that hard to install. You type in, like, install counter strike 1.6. You used to hang out with the library, too, with the librarian.

[Claire Malone]

You hang out with the library?

[Hisham Awarteni]

Yeah, that's the guy. We talk politics here. You have to be political. Like, you see what's happening around, and then you're like, oh, why is this happening? And then you get into politics and.

[Claire Malone]

That for us, high school, it's everyone.

[Hisham Awarteni]

Yeah, that's what I think.

[Claire Malone]

Even from the grounds of the school, you can see directly across a valley to the Israeli settlement town of Sigot. But the west bank has changed since Hisham left for college. It's grown far more dangerous for Palestinians. And nostalgia is especially complicated, I guess.

[Hisham Awarteni]

Like, reconnecting with my childhood, like, seeing the things that are more familiar. It's like, wow, like, a lot has changed. I can't, like, drill at home. There are lots of things that are different in my life now permanently. But, you know, what's the use in, like, kicking yourself over things that have been lost?

[Claire Malone]

Hisham has lost a lot. Part of the reason the teachers were so emotional about greeting the three boys was. Was what happened while they were away at college a little over a year.

[Hisham Awarteni]

Ago tonight, police on the hunt for.

[Claire Malone]

The gunman who they say shot three Palestinian college students in Burlington Vermont. Hisham's grandmother lives in Burlington, so he, Tahseen and Kinan had all gone there from their respective colleges to spend Thanksgiving.

[Hisham Awarteni]

President Biden has been briefed on the suspected hate motivated shooting.

[Claire Malone]

The 20 year old students are all graduates of a West Kinan, Takhsin and Hisham were shot on the street. The man accused of the shooting is named Jason Eaton. He's awaiting trial. It seems he didn't speak to them or start a fight, just shot them as they walked by.

[Hisham Awarteni]

My main priority at that point was just to call 911. So I tried to like open my phone and then you know when there's like liquid on your phone it like messes up. So I got actually locked out of my phone because I couldn't put in the password right. But then I went to the emergency thing so I ended up calling 911. Didn't know if I was going to survive, didn't know if my friends were alive. I also think I was like, oh, this is how it ends. I mean I always like, you know, it was never outside of the realm of possibility for me for that to happen to me, but I always expected it to be like in the west bank and never in Burlington.

[Claire Malone]

The shooting in Vermont was big news. It was seven weeks after Hamas October 7th attack in Israel shook the world. Kinen and Takhsin made full physical recoveries. But Hisham, Hisham Oritani's mother tells WBZ in Boston her son is now paralyzed and may not be able to move.

[Hisham Awarteni]

His legs for the rest of his life after the shooting left him with.

[Claire Malone]

A bullet in his spine. Hey.

[Hisham Awarteni]

Hello.

[Claire Malone]

I was just checking in to see Hisham or Tenny, sixth floor. Suzanne. Hi. Yeah, nice to you. I first met Hisham in January of last year in a physical rehab facility in Boston. He spent two months there recovering from surgery and adjusting his body to using a wheelchair. His legs remain paralyzed. I spent the year getting to know him. Hisham is a shy academic kind of guy. He's double majoring at Brown University in math and archaeology.

[Hisham Awarteni]

I mean, I've always loved history and archaeology I feel like is not a more objective take on history, but it's just another way of looking at things. You know, in history you often get lost in the big picture of like, you know, King X declares war and whatever, like larger political systems. Whereas in archaeology it's just, it's more personal. It gives you a better idea of how people live their lives.

[Claire Malone]

When Hisham went back to Brown in a wheelchair, he got involved in the movement for Brown to divest from companies that students said facilitated the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. He became a symbol of anti Palestinian violence.

[Hisham Awarteni]

Brown Corporation is a scam. No others like Hisham.

[Claire Malone]

Brown Corporation is a sham. No others like Hisham for sham for soul. But the spotlight was hard on Hisham. It's something that came up a lot in our conversations. Is it weird that people are invested in you?

[Hisham Awarteni]

I mean, even beforehand, I was quite a private person, so, yeah.

[Claire Malone]

So what did this do to that? I guess. Do you feel like you can have any sort of privacy at this point?

[Hisham Awarteni]

I don't know. I mean, I hope that just in the future, not that people will forget, but that I'll be able to grow out of it and do things on my own and be known by those things. I'll try to keep low profile, but it's not that easy in a wheelchair.

[Claire Malone]

It's also not that easy when you're now, like, a national news story. I feel like even on Brown campus have become quite a point of topic.

[Hisham Awarteni]

Yeah, especially on the Brown campus.

[Claire Malone]

The divestment movement was a big part of his life. And if after all that work, the school didn't divest, it would be very infuriating.

[Hisham Awarteni]

It would mean, like, this institution that I'm part of is not only is it, like, implicit in, like, refusing to condemn what's happening to, like, Palestinian people, but it's also like saying it will never condemn. And it's like. It's basically just like throwing the whole nation under the bus.

[Claire Malone]

Eventually, in October of last year, the university board voted against divestment. It was pretty demoralizing for Hisham. He was done by that point. He was watching from afar as violence surged in the West Bank.

[Hisham Awarteni]

A terrifying wave of Israeli settler violence.

[Claire Malone]

Has engulfed the West Bank.

[Hisham Awarteni]

Israeli forces have killed at least 6.

[Claire Malone]

7 Palestinians during a military raid in the city of Jenin. At least nine Palestinians have also been injured, two of whom are in serious condition.

[Hisham Awarteni]

I don't know, like, I. I kind of wish I could be there, just like, you know, experience it with my family. Like, I don't. I don't want to feel like I'm abandoning my family. Maybe it's a bit of survival. Survivor's guilt.

[Claire Malone]

The survivor's guilt was eating at him. He was attending classes, going to physical therapy. But in every lecture, every new workout, the desire to return to the west bank and be with his family hung over him.

[Hisham Awarteni]

I felt like the time is ticking and that, like, there could be a possibility that, like, some form of annexation happens while I'm outside. And then because I'm outside, I, like, lose my legal status to live in Palestine.

[Claire Malone]

Since Donald Trump was elected in November, the possibility of annexation has felt even more imminent. A high profile Israeli lawmaker said yesterday Israel is a, quote, step away from annexing the occupied West Bank. Following Trump's election, Smotrich suggested planning for.

[Hisham Awarteni]

This is already in motion.

[Claire Malone]

He's ordered his officials to draw plans for Israel to annex some 150 settlements in the West Bank. Now Smotridge is a settler himself.

[Hisham Awarteni]

He's also a key minister in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling coalition.

[Claire Malone]

So when the fall semester ended in December, Hisham returned to Ramallah for the first time since the shooting. At that point, he told me he might not return to college. He was too worried about what might happen in the West Bank. Reporter Suzanne Gabber talking about Hashem Arwarteni. We'll continue in a moment. WNYC Studios is supported by Pulitzer on the Road, the official podcast of the Pulitzer Prizes, now back with its second season. Each spring, 23 prizes are awarded for distinguished journalism, books, drama and music. Pulitzer on the Road is bringing conversations with many of those prize winners to you. In each episode, guests reveal how much labor and risk, heart and imagination go into creating their work. You'll hear from novelist Jane Ann Phillips, film critic Justin Chang and columnist Vladimir Karamorza, and so much more. Season 2 of Pulitzer on the Road is out now. Listen to Pulitzer on the Road wherever you get your podcasts. WNYC Studios is supported by the United Nations Refugee Agency. Coffee or tea? What should I wear?

[Hisham Awarteni]

Can I sleep for five more minutes?

[Claire Malone]

These are questions refugees dream of asking again one day. Instead, many of them will ask, will the bombs find us here? Will we ever see home again? How do I help my child cope with the horrors they've witnessed? Unhcr, the UN Refugee agency, is there to answer these questions and more by rushing them. Food, shelter and protection.

[Hisham Awarteni]

You can help Donate to UNHCR today.

[Claire Malone]

Go to unrefugees.org donation to make your gift. The news about reading is not good. About 33% of fourth graders can read proficiently. But there's a school district in a poor Rust Belt city that's doing something different. We want to be the best. Sound it out.

[Hisham Awarteni]

My turn. This was an amazing school.

[Claire Malone]

For years, almost every third grader in this district has passed the state reading test. Find out how they're doing it on Sold a Story. New episodes available now in your podcast app. Getting to the west bank is even harder in a wheelchair. So his grandmother from Vermont went with him. It takes three flights, multiple border crossings, and hours of waiting to go through Israeli immigration with no guarantee of being let in.

[Hisham Awarteni]

And then I got home, and I, like, collapsed, literally. The second day is, like, probably 36.

[Claire Malone]

Hours just in bed, sleeping in the west bank, too. The shooting in Vermont had made big news. Hisham had a steady stream of visitors.

[Hisham Awarteni]

I'm not exaggerating. I think the past week, there have been guests over every single day, and I've had to greet them every single day. So I've had a whole week of not lounging in bed.

[Claire Malone]

By the time I made it to Ramallah, he'd been home for a few weeks. One night, I went over for dinner. Hisham's younger brother and sister were there, and I wanted to talk about what was on everybody's mind. The prospect of annexation. On the news in the US Annexation is a hypothetical, a major world event that might happen. But sitting in Ramallah, the Owartani family talked about annexation as a fact of life.

[Hisham Awarteni]

Yes.

[Claire Malone]

I mean, I think annexation is definitely happening.

[Hisham Awarteni]

Yeah. Like, annexation, I feel like, is like. Like it's getting worse, but it's not like, something that's, like, so jarring.

[Claire Malone]

That's like, what would be so jarring?

[Hisham Awarteni]

Killing everyone here.

[Claire Malone]

Like, I don't know, in case you didn't catch that, he's making a joke about the Israelis killing everyone in the West Bank. It was surprising to me to hear him talk like that. Somehow he seemed more carefree than when we talked about this before. And you'd think it would be scarier to contemplate from within the West Bank. When we were sitting in Providence, there was such a present fear of losing your connection to home and, like, the escalation of the war and what that would mean to your connection to home. And it feels almost like that's evaporated.

[Hisham Awarteni]

Well, no. Yeah, because I'm here. I mean, like, the connection is, like, not that home, per se, will cease to exist. I'll just lose the right to be here. I don't know.

[Claire Malone]

It's like.

[Hisham Awarteni]

It's. It's uncertainty. Would you say so?

[Claire Malone]

Yeah.

[Hisham Awarteni]

Yeah.

[Claire Malone]

I mean, we live with the knowledge that we could be killed at any moment. I also think that when you're in the US you have anxiety because you expect you can control more. Do you think so, Hisham? When you're here, you're like, yeah, whatever happens happens. When you're in the U.S. there's a greater anxiety because you feel like, you have to take action. I think what they're going to do, they're going to be, if they, if they were to annex, it would be a slow suffocation to encourage people to leave. And then potentially, yeah, I think that's what they would do.

[Hisham Awarteni]

Surely if they're encouraging people to leave, then they stop people from coming back at some point. But again, like, because Ramallah is such a bubble, like you're kind of like sheltered from everything because like life goes on pretty normally in Ramallah. Definitely. Like, like from last time, like people are more like depressed and like hopeless and whatever. But like in terms of like day to day livelihood, like you feel more unaffected.

[Claire Malone]

Hisham broached the idea of graduating school early. He didn't want to risk returning to the States for too long in case Israel made a sudden move that cut him off from his home in the West Bank. But his folks weren't buying it. He started talking about graduating early. I said, you have to get 2 degrees. I think he was going to sacrifice his math degree in order to get his archaeology degree. And I'm like, you have one class left in math. As long as he gets a degree.

[Hisham Awarteni]

That'S not my life to live.

[Claire Malone]

He gets those two degrees and he's out of there and he can do what he wants. That is a very mom answer. Yeah. They also didn't want him to stop physical therapy in the US that was a non negotiable.

[Hisham Awarteni]

I think actually like her bigger concern was I think she just wanted me to do physical therapy for as long as I could. It's not that like I didn't care about it, but it's like something that I felt like, how much is physical therapy going to help if, like, if I'm miserable?

[Claire Malone]

Hisham and I were talking in Ramallah just before President Trump's inauguration. The Owartanis could see what was coming.

[Hisham Awarteni]

I mean, I think it's like actual policy aside, the feeling that the Israeli government will get, they feel like they've been written more of a blank check than they're already being written because like, policy wise, if you look at like on the ground, like what will change, like in terms of material support. It's not like the previous administration was like putting like any like checks and like, I think Israel is just more emboldened with Trump in office.

[Claire Malone]

And since January, a series of Israeli attacks on the northern west bank has led to the largest displacement in the territory. Since 1967, around 40,000 Palestinians have fled their homes. The idea of a political Solution that would include a Palestinian state seems farther away than ever. But after the long discussions with his parents, Hisham went back to Brown for the spring semester. And once he recovered from the trip, he settled back into college life.

[Hisham Awarteni]

It's been good. I have my routine, and the routine is nice. It's like, okay, I think. I think I have things figured out and, like, you know, just go to class, go back to class.

[Claire Malone]

How is it seeing your cats?

[Hisham Awarteni]

It was really good. I was afraid that they would have forgotten me, but they didn't. And then, like, one of them was, like, actually even more affectionate because, like, I think she missed me. That's a hope.

[Claire Malone]

So sitting back in his dorm at school, it's been more than a year since Hisham and I first started talking. And when this semester started, I saw a lightness in him that felt new. Being home changed him in some ways. After a year of watching violence in the west bank on the news, seeing life go on, at least in what he calls the bubble of Ramallah, was comforting. And his friends are helping him put his situation in perspective. One of Hisham's suite mates at Brown is from Ukraine. Another is from Syria. They've all lived through horrific disruptions in their countries.

[Hisham Awarteni]

I don't know, maybe it's like, naive, but it's like just going back there and, like, seeing life there being lived as it is is something that's like mixed annexation and, like, expulsion. Like, more concrete idea. Like, if you're thinking about in the abstract, it's like you worry about it more versus, like, okay, like, it's gonna be like a big logistical issue. Like, I guess, like, what calmed me down is like, wow, like, whatever happens, it's gonna be really logistically complicated. And I feel like hopefully I'll be able to, like, to slip through the cracks. You know, if annexation happens, I can just like, take academic leave and then go, but hack home real quick and then, like, somehow, like, figure my situation out.

[Claire Malone]

So he's focusing on the practical.

[Hisham Awarteni]

I have a good idea. It's like, okay, like, I take these clothes. I have some medical supplies that I need to always take with me, books wise. Like, yeah, maybe I take like one or two books for the journey, but, like, I have so many books back home. It's kind of, like, superfluous. It's like bringing coal to Newcastle.

[Claire Malone]

Do your parents know that this is the plan if that were to happen?

[Hisham Awarteni]

I think I told them. I don't know how, if they thought I was joking or something.

[Claire Malone]

I keep returning to something Hisham told me early on about majoring in archaeology. He likes the field because it isn't about the big headlines of history, kings declaring war and so on. He likes the more intimate view of how people lived normal lives. Annexation of the west bank would have huge consequences, not just for Palestinians, but for the entire Middle East. But Hisham is also seeing it as a fight to keep living a normal life during one of the most unsettled and deadly historical moments in this long conflict.

[Hisham Awarteni]

I think for better or for worse, trying to think too much about things too far ahead, you know, like annexation, I feel like, is like something that now feels more pressing and, like, salient, but, like I'm not gonna think about, like, what's gonna happen, like, 20 years in the future, which I think, like, in a large part, like, what is the time frame that lots of these things are working on? Who knows? Like, I'm 21 years old. Like, like, you know, in the period of time that I've been live, it's been a slow push. It's like I'm the, the frog in the boiling pot.

[Claire Malone]

Hashem Awateni is a senior at Brown University. Suzanne Gabber is a freelance reporter. Some of her reporting about Hashem and the shooting in Vermont has appeared on WNYC's Notes from America. I'm Claire Malone. You can find my reporting and all my colleagues [e-mail] you can subscribe to the magazine there as well. David Remnick will be back next week. That's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thanks for joining us. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Jared Paul. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul and Ursula Sommer. With guidance from Emily Bottin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barge, Victor Guan and Alejandra Deckett. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund. Hey, podcast listeners. Hi, I'm Chris Marocco, food director of Bon Appetit and Epicurious and host of the Dinner SOS podcast. Every week on Dinner sos, my Test Kitchen colleagues and I help listeners figure out what they should be cooking right now. And this winter, we're helping you embrace all things cozy cooking, letting you join the Ba Bake Club and getting back to basics with simple strategies to level up your home cooking. So don't miss out. Listen to and follow Dinner SOS wherever you get your podcasts and if you have your own kitchen question, email us at dinnersos at bonapetit.

[Hisham Awarteni]

Com. Happy cooking.