More than a third of the country’s population requires urgent food assistance. Malnourished mothers and children bear the brunt

Over the next 20 years the United States will see a massive transfer of wealth as boomers leave trillions of dollars to their children as they pass away. A contingent of those children are asking, “What if we got that money, now?” Millennials and Gen Z want to be able to take advantage of the money they stand to inherit before their parents pass away. While a majority of parents actually do help their kids, many with the means are surprisingly reluctant. 

Bill Perkins argues that these parents should let it all go. Perkins is an entrepreneur and the author of the book Die with Zero. He argues that the money would be better spent while your children are young adults rather than in their 60s when they may already be set up financially. Perkins joined Today, Explained co-host Noel King to explain the philosophy behind his book and why the best time to give is now. 

Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

What you’re essentially saying is before you pass on from this earth and leave your kids a big inheritance, maybe instead give that inheritance away sooner.

If you’re going to leave money to your kids, you should be thinking about what’s the right amount. That’s probably the first thing that people think about. But one of the things that people don’t think about is when is the right time? And I argue ferociously that it is not when you die. It is actually well before you die. So that gift makes the maximum impact on their lives.

So you would be agreeing with the millennials who are feeling some kind of way about their parents sitting on the inheritance for now and waiting until they pass on. You think that the youths have a point?

Oh yeah. I’m their best friend. I am definitely their best friend. When you leave an inheritance to someone, you’re trying to have maximum impact on their lives so that they may be able to enjoy it. And that time is not at 86 or 60. The time that they can convert that capital into meaningful experiences at the greatest rate without that much decay is between 28 and 33. 

Why is that? What’s happening between 28 and 33?

The sharpest and the biggest calculator you will ever be is at 28. And you reach physical maturity at 33 and then it plateaus and declines. And so what that means is that your mental acuity is declining and your physical abilities are declining at various rates, which means that your ability to convert that money into experiences that you enjoy or can do decline as you age. Most of your life is still ahead of you. At 60, most of your life is behind you.

Are you literally advocating “die with nothing”? Or are you saying, “Hey boomer, maybe have a responsible cushion and give your kids the rest.” What are the mechanics of this?

I am arguing to get as close to zero as possible. Knowing that there are uncertainties in life, that’s going to be probably an impossible goal — especially the biggest uncertainty, when you’re going to die. The uncertainty around what things will you be doing later in life besides hanging out and maintaining yourself. But this is an iterative formula, and if you are not on autopilot and you deeply think about it, you can be more efficient with the allocation of your resources and how you split those things up.

There’s a mathematical reality to some of this. If you’re a boomer and you’re sitting on money, you invest it. Having that money compound over 15 or 20 years, you could be giving your kid, when they are 60 or 65, just an enormous sum of money versus a much smaller sum based on how investment works when they are 33. What do you think about the argument that it’s better math to wait?

I would say that they’re not truly understanding the purpose of the money. Would you give your kid who’s 30 a rattle or a binky? So the understanding of the purpose of the money is for them to have a fulfilling life, not to have a bunch of zeros. And so what matters is how do they convert those zeros into a fulfilling life? And so because you decay — that’s the unfortunate part of having a human body — and then you eventually die, the ability of you to convert that money into the adventurous life or fulfillment that you choose declines with age. And you could just have a thought experiment. How much would you pay of your net worth to be 30 again? 

Jesus. One hundred percent, and I’m not 65.

Exactly. And so you can easily see that I’m not going to make enough capital to make up for the difference in age, right? Because that money helps make the life.

We know that this is a very hard conversation to have. It’s hard for parents to talk about not being here. It’s hard for kids to approach this without seeming greedy. How do you suggest families broach this conversation?

The one thing I don’t tell people is whether you should be leaving an inheritance or not. That’s up to you. There are some people who are just like, “All my money is for me. The kids, I gave them an education or gave them whatever they need, a shot in life, and they have to go make their own way.” That’s one. But those who intend to leave a gift, once they’ve thought deeply about it, I think they will come to the logical conclusion that it’s not a bequest. It’s an inheritance and that there’s a better time. And so in my mind, it’s a gift of love. It’s a gift of opportunity. It’s like, “Here you go. I’ve been fortunate in my life to be able to pass on the gift of choice. And here’s this capital and here’s some wisdom that comes with that.” But again, that’s me, not you.

The International Criminal Court is in the trenches right now.

Last week, its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, was voted out of his position. In a first-of-its-kind vote, 82 member states decided that he engaged in misconduct and a serious breach of duty. The vote comes after he was accused of sexual misconduct by a female colleague at the ICC, which Khan has denied.

It’s a mess, and it’s hitting the ICC at an inopportune time. On top of this internal turmoil, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently launched an all-out attack on the court.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier this month, Rubio wrote that the Trump administration’s goal is to “dismantle the ICC—brick by brick, if necessary,” citing the possibility that the court could “target” American citizens, such as Border Patrol agents or US soldiers.

The US is not a member of the ICC, and has a history of wariness about the organization.

Beth Van Schaack previously served as the US ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice, a role that led her to work directly with the International Criminal Court. She spoke with Today, Explained co-host Noel King about the decades-long tumultuous relationship between the US and the ICC. And they discuss whether, if the ICC is now weaker than ever, the Trump administration can actually break it for good.

Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

If the International Criminal Court is charged with dealing with people who have allegedly done very bad things and then trying them, why is the United States not a member?

The United States signed the treaty in the waning days of the Clinton administration, but never submitted it for ratification to the Senate. And one of the concerns is that the final treaty allows for jurisdiction over individuals who may commit crimes on the territory of state parties. And the United States has always been concerned about that principle because we have troop commitments.

Supporters of the court have always said the United States and its personnel are vulnerable regardless of whether you join. If US personnel are committing crimes on the territory of state parties, which we saw in Afghanistan, the response is to do those cases domestically and there’ll be no occasion for the International Criminal Court to consider those matters.

There’ve been peaks and valleys in the relationship between the ICC and the United States. So we’re in a frankly pretty deep valley right now with this new campaign that Secretary Rubio announced.

But back in the Bush administration, there was also very acute concern and it stemmed from this Afghanistan investigation. The Bush administration and Congress both put in place measures that they thought would be protective of US servicemembers. So that was one valley.

Now what’s interesting is in the second term of the Bush administration, many of these measures were dismantled because the Bush administration realized that the court was doing important work in some areas where it also cared about justice — in particular, Darfur.

Then, the Obama administration announced a reset in its relationship with the court, and that’s where I entered the picture. The Obama administration directed various executive agencies to look for ways to support the court where the work that it was doing was consistent with US policy.

Then, we had the first Trump administration, which reversed course almost immediately and eventually imposed sanctions on senior figures, including the prosecutor herself and one of her key aides.

Then, we get to the Biden-Harris administration. They pulled down those sanctions and again launched a reset of the relationship. At that point, there were a number of situations where the court was working, including following the brutal war of aggression by Russia against Ukraine.

Here we saw a remarkable rise of bipartisan support for the work of the court. You had senior Republican figures in Congress supporting the court. The late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) led a resolution that was supporting justice in Ukraine. Secretary Rubio, then Sen. Rubio, joined that resolution. There was new legislation passed that made it easier for the United States to support the work of the court.

Of course, with the second Trump administration, we have reversed course again, and in particular with Rubio’s announcement.

Well, let’s talk about the reversal. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is at one point on board with the ICC, and then recently he vows to dismantle it. What happened here?

It’s not clear what the precipitating event is, to be honest. There is no existential threat at present. Obviously, there’s always the concern that this is some kind of a distraction because matters are not going well in Iran and with respect to the economy — that this is something to pull eyeballs away from those matters onto something that he can look tough in. Is this just kind of red meat for anti-multilateralism or is there something that is not made public that is happening?

Is there anything actually that Marco Rubio or anyone else in the United States at the highest level could do to the International Criminal Court to put an end to it?

The International Criminal Court is part of a larger system of the rules-based order that we’ve been trying to build since World War II. Almost all of our friends and allies are members of this court and they care deeply about its success. They are committed to seeing a system of international criminal justice. So, no is the answer. The United States alone cannot dismantle this court.

Now, it can injure the court and it has already done so. There are already eight ICC judges, including judges who hail from some of our closest allies — France, for example — who have been subjected to brutal sanctions. They can’t use credit cards that pass through New York. They can’t make reservations online because of financial sanctions. They can’t travel to the United States because of travel bans, et cetera. The chief prosecutor and two of his two deputies have been sanctioned. Non-governmental organizations that are involved in human rights in Palestine have been sanctioned and a UN figure has been sanctioned. Those measures are already in place.

What his most recent campaign seems to announce is some diplomatic move to try and convince states to leave the court or to cease their cooperation with the court. And we have seen in recent days a couple of states announcing that they were withdrawing. These are mostly states within Africa, but also Venezuela, subject to investigation by the prosecutor’s office. The United States can certainly injure the court, but there’s no way that we could dismantle the court.

Most Americans don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the International Criminal Court, but they may know it because lately, it has gotten a lot of attention that the court has issued an arrest warrant for [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has said he would like to see Netanyahu arrested if he comes to New York.

Mamdani has said he does not have that power. He cannot order the NYPD to do it, but he would like for it to happen. What are the chances that Benjamin Netanyahu comes to the United States and is arrested?

Pretty close to zero, if not actually zero. This is a matter of federal law and international law. And the Headquarters Agreement between the United States and the United Nations, which placed the headquarters of the UN in New York, basically gives certain privileges and immunities to individuals who are coming to New York to attend official functions.

New Yorkers are a feisty bunch. So when word is out that Benjamin Netanyahu is in New York, can you imagine the protests that would happen? Can you imagine the embarrassment that he might experience when he’s supposed to be giving his remarks at the General Assembly High-level Week where all the heads of states convene to deal with transnational issues and his motorcade is ensnarled in protests protected by the First Amendment, calling for his arrest for various international crimes? If I were his lawyer, I would say, “There’s no chance you’re going to get arrested.” But honestly, it could be a miserable visit, given all of the strong support for accountability in this matter in the United States.

This is a lot of drama for a body that for a long time seems to have avoided a ton of very public drama. So who gets hurt in all of this? Is it the court? Is it the US and its reputation? Where do you think this leads?

Unfortunately, I think everyone comes out not looking great here. The court needs to put in place measures to be able to receive those complaints by witnesses, whistleblowers, victims themselves, process them quickly, but also fairly to all parties involved. The United States looks terrible as well, launching a campaign like this against an international organization whose mandate it is to deliver justice for the worst crimes known to humankind.

The internet may no longer be solely the domain of humans. Last week, OpenAI disclosed an “unprecedented cyberincident”: An experimental AI agent successfully hacked its way into the open internet.

Specifically, the agent was assigned a task; in order to complete it, the agent broke out of an isolated research environment and hacked into a third-party platform called Hugging Face. It’s a move that many experts deemed inevitable, given the speed and scale of advances in AI technology — and it raises serious questions about AI safety.

But for Konstantinos Komaitis, a senior fellow with the Democracy and Tech Initiative at the Atlantic Council, it wasn’t the unexpected behavior of the AI that was significant. It was what that behavior could mean for the internet’s fundamental, decentralized infrastructure and whether it would spur calls to build new barriers against autonomous AI agents. 

Komaitis argues that such barriers are not the solution, however. He spoke with Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram about why an open internet is actually key to combating AI cybersecurity threats.

Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

So most people see that this happens and they think, “Oh no, AI went rogue. How long before it kills me?” You see that this happens and you start thinking about infrastructure. Tell us more about why you were thinking about infrastructure in light of this AI agent breaking containment.

The internet was never designed with full security in mind, right? 

When you’re creating a decentralized system, you cannot possibly foresee every security or vulnerability that might come up. But because you have a system that is based on building blocks, you have the extraordinary capability of actually addressing security issues as they come up through those building blocks without breaking the whole system down. 

And of course, the other thing that this does is that it pushes you towards collaboration, because when you have so many building blocks, you cannot possibly possess all the knowledge for each building block. So you’re bringing literally everyone to try to address these problems. 

Take the internet, for instance: We have spent decades addressing those vulnerabilities and developing mechanisms to authenticate users and devices, encrypt communications, mitigate distributed attacks, coordinate incident response, and of course share threat intelligence. 

Now, what is new with agentic AI is not that simply the malware is better or the phishing attacks are more sophisticated. It’s the emergence of systems that can actually discover vulnerabilities across thousands of systems. They can reason about alternative paths to an objective. They can adapt when they’re blocked. They can chain together legitimate internet services in unexpected ways. Then they do that while they’re operating continuously at machine speed. And this is really at a scale that the internet is not ready to necessarily cope with. 

Effectively, the internet’s openness becomes both a strength and a vulnerability. So the internet was optimized for interoperability, and AI now is optimized for exploiting that interoperability.

And what scares you the most about that? What do you think is most vulnerable to threats?

The fact that we do not have the appropriate mechanisms and institutions to be able to deal with that. I come from the internet world. I’ve spent 20 years of my career defending the open internet and discussing it in international fora. And one of the things that a lot of people underestimate about the internet is how valuable trust is as a property within the system. 

We are talking about networks that exchange data literally based on trust. So what really concerns me right now is that in many ways, we are asking 21st-century AI systems to operate on 20th-century assumptions about trust. And unless we figure that out and we realize it, we will continue having these problems. And of course, the knee-jerk reactions that are coming with this, which are, “Let’s fragment the internet, let’s restrict it, let’s restrict access, let’s take control over it.” That is never the solution.

What do you see as the solution?

Effectively, we need to build institutions that are trusted and are able to cope with those incidents as they happen. Because right now you have OpenAI and you have Hugging Face telling everyone, “Don’t worry, we’ve got this.” And we don’t know; they might have this. But at the same time, I cannot help but wonder. And many, many other people have wondered whether, actually, this is very good PR for these companies and especially for OpenAI.

OpenAI just went to the world saying, “We have developed one of the most powerful LLMs, and we realized that it behaved the way it behaved, but don’t worry, we are going to fix this.” And in this current climate and in this current timing, I am not sure that this is enough. You need institutions that are much more transparent, much more accountable, and much more collaborative across the board.

You want institutions to step up and essentially serve as a watchdog. Help us understand which institutions, because in the United States, famously, our government has done very little to regulate tech.

First of all, we need to stop thinking of institutions as necessarily government-affiliated, right? Or that they are the outcomes of government initiatives. There can be in collaboration with governments, but one of the things that the internet has taught us is that institutions that are built through a bottom-up coordinated process have the tendency of actually being more agile and able to deliver some of those things that we’re talking about. 

So take, for instance, again, open standards. The internet’s open standards are not created by any agency, government or private. It’s created by institutions where engineers from all across the board and all over the world gather together and create those standards.

That’s reminding me of the original design of OpenAI to be this not-for-profit company that had everyone’s best intentions in mind, that could do something idealistic and moral and ethical because all of the profit-minded companies weren’t going to. And now look at OpenAI. Their not-for-profit arm is an afterthought, and they’re chasing profits. 

Do you think it’s practical to leave this to institutions? Because what we’ve seen so far is that institutions bend toward capitalism.

It really depends on how you build the institution, right? It really depends on what sort of guardrails and checks and balances you have around it. In order to build an institution, you need to really know what you want to achieve. You need to have a north star. 

One of the reasons the internet worked was because everybody disagreed, but they agreed on the common shared goal, which was to connect people across the world. For AI, we still do not have that northern star. And once we get it, that’s when you start the building of those institutions in order to facilitate this and bring everyone together.

For me, it is very important for everyone to understand that keeping an open internet is really more important than ever, especially as AI agents become increasingly capable. Because it is tempting to think that the answer to new AI risk is literally ‘build more barriers.’ But the internet’s greatest strength has always been its openness. So the challenge today is not that the internet is too open; it’s that its trust architecture was designed for a world in which humans or software directly controlled by humans were the primary actors. 

Now, it’s being challenged by this agentic AI that introduces a new type of participant — systems that can reason and plan and act with limited human oversight. So we need to evolve our understanding of trust and what it means online. And that will require a lot of work because, as you know very well, Sean, it’s very difficult to build trust, but you can break it within seconds.

Last week, the Trump administration announced a landmark civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia. The deal would allow the kingdom to develop nuclear power using American technology and could eventually pave the way for uranium enrichment on Saudi soil. But the agreement must first undergo congressional review — and survive President Donald Trump’s social media feed.

When the Trump administration announced its agreement, it made no mention of the possibility of normalizing diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. But that omission and the possibility that Saudi Arabia could eventually enrich uranium alarmed Israelis — and Trump quickly threw in both conditions in a Truth Social post.

The chaos around the agreement comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heads to Washington, DC, this week to meet with Trump. The Saudi deal — as well as growing friction over differences on the goals and trajectory of the renewed US war with Iran and frustration in Washington over Israeli military operations in southern Lebanon — will undoubtedly be topics.

Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswame spoke with Michael Koplow, chief policy officer at the Israel Policy Forum, about the relationship between the two countries and its leaders ahead of Netanyahu’s visit. 

Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

What are we expecting from the meeting between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump?

I suspect this will be among the most tense meetings that they have had because there are a number of issues on the table where President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu are on different pages. The issue that they used to be on the same page about was Iran, and I don’t think that is the case anymore. 

As we’ve seen the Iran war unfold, the Israeli view is still the view that they had at the outset of the war, which is that this is necessary to deal with Iran’s nuclear program, with its ballistic missiles, with its proxies. And ultimately what the Israelis wanted to see, and what they still want to see, is a different regime in Iran. President Trump may still share those goals, but it’s pretty clear that, as the war has not gone the way he anticipated, he’s looking for an exit strategy and his main focus is the Strait of Hormuz, which is not something that the Israelis care about at all. 

I think at this point, when Prime Minister Netanyahu arrives at the White House, he’s probably going to try to convince the president that the original goal should be on the table, that the US and Israel should keep going, and President Trump seems to have a different view of things.

And now we have this new deal with Saudi Arabia. Was Israel taken by surprise by the deal? 

It absolutely took Israel by surprise. When the deal was announced on Wednesday, it was a deal to provide Saudi Arabia with nuclear power and nuclear infrastructure. There was no mention of Israel. There was no mention of normalization. There was no mention of anything outside of the bounds of a nuclear agreement. 

President Trump on Thursday put out his Truth Social where he said that the deal is absolutely contingent on Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords. And what’s curious about that is that when the deal was announced, there was no mention of it, and the deal was actually signed. So either the president is intending to change the terms of the deal after it’s been signed, or he’s willing to back out of it if this new condition is not met. 

Or, and I suspect that this is the actual answer, he will secure some sort of commitment from the Saudis to examine joining the Abraham Accords at some point down the road when Israel has met a number of conditions and there’s been progress toward a Palestinian state. And if that is how it unfolds, it will leave the Israelis behind. And I think this comes as a pretty big shock to [Israel] given that President Trump’s previous policy was that a deal between the US and Saudi Arabia would involve normalization.

Was Netanyahu himself surprised by this deal? 

I think he must have been surprised by this deal. It is true that Trump and Netanyahu have seemed to have had a very cushy relationship, not only during this term, but during President Trump’s first term as well. But it’s not a relationship of equals.

We’ve seen President Trump — particularly over the past few months, I think in response to criticism here in the United States over the role that Israel and the role that the prime minister may have had in convincing President Trump to go to war — repeatedly talk about the fact that he is in charge, that Prime Minister Netanyahu is going to do what he says, that he is the decider and Prime Minister Netanyahu is not. 

I do think they have a good relationship, but President Trump, at least publicly, seems to be signaling that he is in charge and he wants everybody to know that. I think that Prime Minister Netanyahu undoubtedly is feeling some stress in this relationship. And when he shows up here tomorrow, he’s going to do whatever he can to try and repair any rifts that there are.

Israel wanted this war, but hates this deal that the president may very likely complete with Saudi Arabia. Did they miscalculate somewhere in here? 

I think the Israelis have miscalculated in a number of ways. And the biggest is that consistently since 2017 or 2018, you hear Israeli officials, political officials, security officials, even ordinary Israelis, talk routinely about President Trump being the best friend that Israel has ever had and exhibiting a faith in President Trump that he will never do anything that will hang Israel out to dry. 

And a lot of what they’ve done has proceeded on that assumption. And even though everybody is aware of President Trump’s transactional nature, even though everybody is aware that he is relatively volatile, that he slips on policy issues all the time, the Israelis had this faith that they would always be an exception to that rule. And I think what we’re seeing is that they’re not necessarily an exception to that rule. 

And it’s important to stress that when it comes to this Saudi nuclear deal, the problem for the Israelis is not just that it was signed without any hint of normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia being part of the deal itself. It may open the door for countries that have signed more restrictive agreements in the region, like the UAE, to do the same. And ultimately, all of this is a bet that the trajectory of Saudi Arabia is going to continue, that it’s going to continue modernizing, continue becoming more moderate and pragmatic, and continue improving relations with Israel. 

If that’s not the case, once you’ve handed the Saudis a nuclear program, that’s irreversible. People shouldn’t forget that Iran’s nuclear program started off as a civilian nuclear program that the United States provided for it under the days of the Shah. So for Israelis, the normalization part of this is absolutely worrisome, but the deal itself is problematic too. And I think that’s where the Israelis are feeling panicked.

Last week, House Democrats voted on an amendment that would have cut $3.3 billion in annual US military aid to Israel from a State Department funding bill. The amendment was brought to the floor by Rep. Thomas Massie, an outgoing Republican from Kentucky. It failed 314-104, but 103 Democrats — nearly half of the House Democratic caucus — supported it, signaling a significant shift in the party’s longstanding support for aid to Israel.

In 2024, a similar vote came up in the House to cut military aid to Israel. Then, just 37 House Democrats voted for the measure. Now, two years later, 103 House Democrats voted to cut funding. That shift in support was accelerated after the October 7 Hamas attacks and Israel’s subsequent military campaign in Gaza, which has killed large numbers of Palestinian civilians. The debate is also playing out in Democratic primaries across the country. In New York and Colorado, Democratic socialist candidates who have sharply criticized Israel and opposed continued US military aid recently won House primaries.

Historically, Jewish Americans have overwhelmingly identified with and voted for the Democratic Party, while Democratic lawmakers have generally supported Israel and US military assistance to the country. In 2016, the Obama administration signed a 10-year memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Israel, committing the US to seek $38 billion in military assistance for fiscal years 2019 through 2028. Congress must vote to approve this funding, so the shift in Democratic support of Israel could have real consequences.

There is still a very strong support for Israel among many House Democrats, but the shifting views are notable. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries opposed the Massie amendment, arguing that it was overly broad and could jeopardize humanitarian assistance. But in a letter addressed to his House colleagues he also called for a “major reset” in US policy toward what he described as Israel’s “far-right Netanyahu government.”

Today, Explained host Sean Rameswaram spoke with Democratic Rep. Brad Schneider, who represents Illinois’s 10th Congressional District, and remains a strong supporter of Israel.

Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify. 

Can you walk us through last week’s vote? You voted against the measure to cut aid to Israel, and a lot of your colleagues obviously did not. How did that play out for you?

Growing up in the ’60s, ’70s, and for the last 65 years, I fundamentally believe that the US-Israel relationship is important. I also believe that the aspiration for peace in the Middle East, not just between Israelis and Palestinians, but broadly throughout the region, is something that is in the United States’s interest and the interest of the people in the region. So this is not a new issue to me, and it’s something I thought long and hard about. 

Tom Massie doesn’t believe any of that. His intentions with this amendment were anything but pure. It was hastily crafted and poorly written. And one of the biggest issues with it is not only does it [not] address this 10-year memorandum of understanding, something negotiated by President Obama eight years ago, but there are also two years left on the MOU. 

It was a messaging bill and nothing more, and it was a negative message. I voted no because I think if we’re going to move toward peace, we need to do so in a constructive way. A lot of my colleagues were saying we need to send a message to the Netanyahu government.

“I have to hold onto that optimism for the prospects of peace because the alternative is too dark.”

I’ve been extremely critical of this government, their failure to address the settler violence in the West Bank, the failure to plan for a day-after in Gaza following what was a horrific war. If we’re going to move towards peace, if we’re going to find a path where Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side and the region can have the peace they deserve. Because we’re not just talking about Israelis and Palestinians; there’s progress being made between Lebanon and Israel in giving Lebanon, the people of Lebanon, the liberty and freedom they all deserve. 

Can I ask you if you still take money from AIPAC? And if so, how much?

I appreciate the support I get from people who care about the issues that I advocate for. So people who are pro-Israel, pro-US-Israel relationship are likely to support me because I’m pro-US-Israel, pro-US-Israel relationship. I’m also pro-addressing gun safety and reducing gun violence in this country. So I get the support of those groups. The support I get doesn’t determine my positions. I think my positions determine who supports me. 

Has your position on Israel shifted at all since October 7th, or at any point in your political career? And if so, can you tell us how?

So my position hasn’t changed because I’ve always been committed to promoting peace between Israelis and Palestinians and finding a path where both can live together, which I believe ultimately is two states: a Jewish democratic state of Israel, and a Palestinian state living side by side. My frustration with the current Israeli government has grown and continues to grow. Every conversation I have with them, whether it’s the US ambassador to Israel, whom I’ve had the privilege of working with many times, or my meetings with Prime Minister Netanyahu. I’ve had an engagement with the prime minister going back now for almost 30 years. But in the last several years, every single conversation I have with them talks about the need to address settler violence, the need to get humanitarian aid.

One of the things that I am proud of and will say loudly and proudly is that immediately after October 7th, as the war began, my team and I worked hard to push for humanitarian aid into Gaza to do everything we could to make sure that the civilians who were always caught in the middle of any war wouldn’t suffer more than they did. And the suffering was horrific. And I did challenge Israel when they made what I’ll call ill-conceived, ill-advised, in some cases illegal decisions to deprive humanitarian relief from entering Gaza. We pushed hard, and we worked with the Egyptians to get the Rafah crossing open. We pushed the Israelis to open the Karam Shalom crossing. And to not just get aid to those crossings, but get aid into and across the territories within Gaza.

Why are you so optimistic about the situation? 

I am always going to be optimistic. I have to hold onto that optimism for the prospects of peace because the alternative is too dark. And let’s separate the issue for folks living in the region and the folks living here. And for the Israelis and Palestinians, these are two peoples who are totally traumatized — traumatized not just over the last couple of years, but for decades. So I recognize the trauma that Israelis have and are experiencing, and I recognize the trauma that the Palestinians have and are experiencing. And that’s part of what I feel is my obligation: to hold onto that optimism and speak to a better future and work to try to find ways to bring the parties on both sides of the issue together to make the hard choices and take the risk to get to a path to peace.

So the reason I’m holding onto optimism — and it’s not 24/7; I have my moments when I am down and where I feel like the hill we’re climbing is just too steep — is you take a deep breath and you dig deep, and you say, I can’t give up on hoping and working towards peace because otherwise peace is never going to happen. And I want to find people who are like-minded.

And that is not just on the Israeli side of the equation. We have to find people on the Palestinian side, and for those on the Palestinian side, we have to find Israelis. And I meet, and I spend time with them on a regular basis. They come to my office. When I’m in the region, I talk to them. We have to strengthen and empower those voices who believe that peace will only come when the Israelis see the Palestinians as a people worthy of engagement and a shared future, and the Palestinians see the Israeli as a people worthy of engagement and a shared future, and recognize that until they get there, there’s no future for either side. We’ve got to have a path where both are pointing in the same direction.

Fermented food is the hottest new trend in the halls of the White House. Members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet are reportedly walking about with jars of sauerkraut in the hopes that it will give them glowing skin and tiny waists. 

Wall Street Journal’s Liz Essley Whyte told Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram that “Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and Vice President JD Vance are all on this eat-a-lot-of-steak-and-sauerkraut diet.”

So, should we all be eating jars of sauerkraut? Or are ferments just the new Florsheims?

Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

Is there a name for this diet?

Kennedy calls it the carnivore diet. I think people mean different things when they say that, but for him, it includes a lot of yogurt, a lot of kimchi or sauerkraut, a lot of steak, a lot of eggs. Kennedy now travels with sauerkraut. His wife has said that he has asked her to carry it in her purse for him, and she has said, “I actually cannot,” which is an amazing phrase. It seems they all think their skin is glowing, and people online have commented that JD Vance is looking good.

Are we sure it’s not Wegovy?

We don’t have any public knowledge of that, but we do know that he is eating eggs, sauerkraut, pickles, blackberries, and raspberries for lunch pretty often — and beef and lamb with sauerkraut for dinner. Then, when he’s on Air Force Two, he snacks on beef jerky and maybe eats a hamburger with cheese, no bun, and a side of fermented vegetables.

Now that you’re mentioning the full spectrum of JD Vance’s diet, it’s kind of reminding me of their new food pyramid. Is this part of that?

Earlier this year, Kennedy and the other health officials like to say they flipped the food pyramid. They recommended a lot more fruits and vegetables, red meat — which was controversial — and whole grains, and whole milk, that kind of thing. They also, and for the first time in the nation’s dietary guidelines, recommended fermented foods, which was something that was actually agreed upon by a lot of people, and they thought that was a good part of this, even if they had qualms about the red meat recommendations, because those can introduce more cardiac risk and risk of bad cholesterol.

How widespread is this in the White House? Does it go up all the way to the top, to the president?

Given what we have seen of his recent public dieting, I don’t think so. At the Knicks game, he was eating pizza and french fries, and, you know, he still has his Diet Coke button on his desk where he just pushes it and a Diet Coke comes. Kennedy said, once said on a podcast about him, “I don’t know how he’s alive.” 

Does the science back this up, or is this some kind of quackery that ferments can make your skin healthier and help you lose weight?

I don’t think there are a lot of good studies that show exactly that sauerkraut can help you lose weight, but there have been a number of studies that have shown health benefits. Researchers have generally agreed that sauerkraut and other fermented foods can help with digestion and inflammation. There was a 2025 study from UC Davis that suggested fermented cabbage could protect your gut and protect against illness. Basically, they found that the intestinal cells do better with sauerkraut. They help maintain the integrity of those intestinal cells. And, in general, that has a lot of other good health effects. Mainstream scientists, dieticians, are pro-fermented veggies. This is not something that is hotly debated.

Most people in the scientific community are realizing there’s a lot of good fresh science out there about how important your gut really is in your overall health. The part of the diet that is a little more controversial is the focus on red meat. Obviously, that comes with some cardiac risk and some cholesterol risk. That is why when the new dietary guidelines came out and recommended more of that for Americans, that part, in particular, made some dietitians a little upset.

Do you think fermented foods could help people with this parasite that gives you explosive diarrhea?

I personally have not seen any studies on whether fermented foods help with explosive diarrhea, but let me know if you find one.