Israel Pays Influencers $7,000 Per Post in Desperate Propaganda Push: With Journalist Nick Cleveland-Stout; How to "Drink Your Way Sober" With Author Katie Herzog
Quincy Institute researcher Nick Cleveland-Stout exposes Israel's influencer program which is paying $7,000 per post in a desperate attempt to sway public opinion about Israel. Plus: journalist and author Katie Herzog discusses her book "Drink Your Way Sober" and her own journey recovering from alcoholism. --------------- Watch full episodes on Rumble, streamed LIVE 7pm ET. Become part of our Locals community Follow System Update: Twitter Instagram TikTok Facebook
Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight, multiple documents have surfaced revealing an extensive plan by the Israeli government to covertly flood American political influencers with large amounts of cash in order to produce pro-Israel propaganda for an American audience.
The independent journalist Nick Cleveland Stout of the Quincy Institute has broken significant parts of the story for the site Responsible Statecraft.
And he'll be here with us tonight to talk about his reporting and what these rev revelations mean.
And then after that, the journalist and podcast host Katie Herzog has a very candid new book that details her two decades struggle with alcoholism.
And the book, which is designed to share her experiences, but also what she discovered is effective treatment for her, particularly focuses on a controversial and little known approach for treatment that worked for her and has been working for many others, despite being in many ways directly contrary to the consensus view for how addiction and alcoholism have to be treated, namely by insisting on abstinence.
Katie has always been, for me at least, one of the most interesting people in all of media, and this book is certainly no exception.
It's an extension of what I think is her very independent and interesting thinking.
I'm thrilled to have her tonight to talk about her new book, and I think you'll really enjoy the discussion about it.
Before we get to all that, a couple quick program notes.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update starting right now.
One of the most significant changes in public opinion has taken place over the last two years since the October 7th attack, as huge numbers of Americans for the first time have a negative view, not just of Israel, but of the US relationship toward Israel as well.
The changes are really quite stark, especially for a country that for decades has maintained a bipartisan stranglehold on a pro-Israel agenda.
And obviously, we've reported on those polls and the same polls that you're that you we've shown you and that we're seeing over here are being seen not only in Israel, but by Israel's most devout loyalist here in the United States.
And there's a lot of panic taking place, a lot of very extreme measures that are being adopted in the name of stemming the tide and then reversing it, including what I consider to be by far the most significant media story, which is the purchase of multiple media outlets, CBS News, Paramount, possibly CNN, and now uh TikTok by the uh multi-billion Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, who is the largest single donor, private donor to the IDF.
His son is now buying uh CBS and Paramount, installing Barry Weiss, the hardened uh devout Israel loyalist at the top of CBS News.
It is an attempt to essentially capture huge parts of the American media in order to stem the tide of public opinion turning against Israel.
And a major part of that is flooding American digital influencers and new media influencers with huge amounts of money in order to produce pro-Israel propaganda for an American audience.
Nick Cleveland Stout is a research fellow in the democratizing foreign policy program at the Quincy Institute.
He's also uh done a lot of research on US Brazil relations as a 2023 Fulbright scholar.
And he has really done some excellent reporting, several major scoops on what Israel is doing in flooding American digital media and new media with all kinds of covert cash in order to essentially launch a pro-Israel influence campaign inside the United States without any real constraints of law or transparency.
Nick, so great to see you.
First of all, congratulations on these stories.
I think they're incredibly important.
Really good scoops.
And I'm thrilled to have you on the show to talk about them.
And I want to begin because you have like, I would say, three different stories that you kind of yourself unleashed on the American public.
One that involves this program to pay influencers covertly by the Israeli government.
And you describe it as being $7,000 per post.
Another regarding FARA documents that were in fact formed by this kind of sketchy group that's targeting Christian influencers who are who will produce pro-Israel content.
And then a third involving Trump's former campaign manager who's also involved in various programs along these lines.
So just let's take this one by one and tell us what it is that you're reporting has uncovered.
Definitely, yeah.
So the first thanks so much for inviting me on the show, by the way.
Um great to be here with you.
And the first uh story, or the the one that you started with is that Israel is paying influencers um 7,000 uh dollar dollars per post um on social media platforms.
And um I found this just on the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
There's this firm um which registered very recently in the last few months called Bridges Partners, which really is kind of a ghost.
Like there's no information online about this this firm, no LinkedIn page, no website.
Um, you know, I've tried to reach out to the few people that we know are connected with it.
Um but what was detailed in that um filing with the Department of Justice was that they are overseeing this cohort of influencers that are being paid by Israel.
And it's running, it's we're in the middle of the program right now, actually, and it's gonna be running through uh November, at which point, you know, it could be renewed.
Uh, we don't know.
But um I think what's important for people to know about this is that we don't actually know as of right now who the influencers are.
But essentially what we do know is that this is a $900,000 contract.
There's between 14 and 18 influencers that are part of this program.
Um, and I think this is the first indication.
I mean, we know that that Israel has flown out influencers, they've met with them in the past, but I think this is the first real like smoking gun that they are actually not only doing that, but paying influencers directly to post on behalf of Israel.
Um, and again, they're not identifying themselves in and when they're posting on social media, they're also not identifying that those posts are distributed on behalf of a foreign government, in this case, Israel.
And I think part of the reason why that there's that $7,000 per post figure, why it's so astronomical, is one, there's a premium for foreign governments.
Um we see that there's a distinction between uh firms that that file under Farah versus the lobby disclosure act.
Usually clients have to pay more if they're a foreign government.
Um, but two is that Israel is a very controversial, controversial country right now in a lot of ways.
You know, the UN just decided, just um came down with this decision that it is carrying that it's carrying out a genocide.
Um so there's an extra premium uh that comes with that.
And so that's the that's the first story.
The um the second uh is that Israel paid another firm uh to basically, and this is Trump's former campaign manager, Brad Parscale, um, who was actually the Trump official in 2016 that hired Cambridge Analytica, which um, if people remember that kind of scandal-ridden firm that was uh tasked with carrying out this like targeting campaign.
Um Brad Parscale, what he's doing is he is he was hired on a six million dollar contract, so much larger actually than the influencer um cohort contract, um, in part to create websites and digital content that is then used to train ChatGPT.
Um, because people are increasingly using Chat GPT like a search engine like Google, um, and the idea being that they can help frame Israel wants to try and frame um responses to questions.
Um, you know, when people ask, for instance, is Israel committing a genocide?
Is Israel committing war crimes?
Tell me about the history of US uh or the US Israel relationship or Israel Palestine, then if Israel can try and manipulate that um in its favor, then it'll give more favorable answers to people that are using Chat GPT in that way.
And I think a through line between a lot of these stories is that they're very much geared towards targeting Gen Z. They're very much geared towards targeting young people.
And in fact, in some of these contracts, it'll look it'll explicitly say that.
It'll say we want to try and sway the opinion of Gen Z in social media platforms on Chat GPT, um, because they've broken so sharply in their support for Israel.
Um and then the last one you mentioned was um just uh a tweet that I had about another firm that that just registered uh under Farah, um, I believe just a couple of days ago, that is carrying out um Christian pro that is carrying out outreach um in the Western United States, specifically in California, um, with Christian organizations, and they're mostly in Southern California.
Um and that one's a bit that one's quite a bit smaller, it's like 300,000.
But all of this goes to show that Israel is very concerned about the the swaths of the population in the US that are breaking um or that are questioning the historical ironclad support for Israel, and goes to show the lengths that they're going to try and reconcile with that.
Instead of actually changing their actions.
Yeah, you know what's so amazing, Nick, is so much of this is taking place right out in the open, and yet a lot of it is uh material that isn't being reported, things that need to be found through a lot of journalistic digging, like you just demonstrated.
But oftentimes there are things that the Israelis say right out in the open, or their proxies in the United States say right out in the open.
Um just to give a couple of examples, right before the United States Congress voted to ban TikTok or force its sale, uh something that the Democrats got on board with that Joe Biden got on board with after October 7th, uh, the uh chairman of the ADL, Jonathan Greenblatt, went on MSNBC and said, look, there's too much anti-Israel criticism being allowed on TikTok, it has to be shut.
And then weeks later, they they obeyed that order, the Congress didn't and voted to ban it.
Then Jonathan Reblat, after Donald Trump won, it was clear that there was have to be a forced sale of TikTok, went to speak to his supervisors in in Tel Aviv and gathered them all there and said, look, the most important war that we have right now is not against Hezbollah or against Hamas.
The most important war is making sure that we conquer TikTok, that we control TikTok.
And now here we are just uh a few months later, and the largest single donor to the IDF, Larry Ellison, the multi-billion air fanatical supporter of Israel, is now in control of TikTok.
Well, he is he and his son by CBS and and uh Paramount as well.
And I want to show you some comments that Prime Minister Netanyahu himself made while meeting with American influencers, because I think what's so important here is this is not Netanyahu talking about the importance of disseminating messaging inside Israel.
This is a foreign influence campaign where they're specifically targeting American influencers and American audiences.
So let's just show these comments right out of Netanyahu's own mouth.
Uh we just gotta I just need a second before uh we have this, but I I think it's very important.
Um I'm just gonna stall a little bit, pretend that I'm saying things that are important.
Um the base of our support in the United States, that is being challenged systematically.
A lot of this is done with money.
Money of NGOs, that money of governments, bastard.
Okay.
We have to fight back.
How do we fight back?
Our influencers.
I think you should also talk to them if you have a chance.
To that community, they're very important.
And secondly, we're gonna have to uh use the tools of battle.
You know, the the weapons change over time.
You can't fight today with uh swords, that doesn't work very well, okay?
And you can't find with the fight with cavalry, that doesn't work very well.
And you have these new things, you know, like drones, things like that.
I won't get into that.
But we have to fight with the weapons that uh apply to the battlefield within which we're engaged.
And the most important ones are the social media.
And the most important purchase that is going on right now is class or tick tock.
number one.
Number one.
And I hope it goes through because it's uh it can be consequential.
And the other one, what's the other one?
So, I mean, there Netanyahu is not just talking about the importance of using social media weapons inside the United States, but he's talking about using what he regards as weapons of war essentially against the American public.
What do you make of Netanyahu's view and how it's reflected in these programs you uncovered?
Yeah, I mean, first of all, maybe not the brightest um group when he asked the most important purchase happening right now.
They said followers.
I'm not sure what they were doing.
I know I have my hand up in the air saying pick me, it's TikTok.
I mean, it's yeah, it's sort of obvious.
Yeah, I think we know.
Um, but I don't think either of us are getting invited that in that room.
Um yeah, I mean, it it really is revealing.
Um that, you know, in the last month, there have been six firms that have registered under Farah, under our the Premier Foreign Lobbying Transparency Law, um, for Israel.
And that's more, like, that's very abnormal.
Um that's more than than the amount of firms that registered for Israel in the last two years.
And so it's clear, and also this week, um Israel increased its Hasborough public diplomacy budget um by 40 million dollars.
And so it's clear that this is something that they are investing in, that they are trying to, that they see it as a threat that only 9% of adult Americans between the age of 18 and 34 um approve of Israel's military action in Gaza.
They see that as a threat.
Not only are these people, and it's not just young people, but it is in particular young people, um, because not only can these people hold elected leaders in the US to account, you know, try and get their officials to support the block, the bombs act, for instance, but they're also future leaders, and and he it's clear that uh Israel and and Benjamin Yanyahu sees this as a threat to continued US support for Israel, um, because the Israel needs the US's support um to carry out this genocide in Gaza.
And so it is uh indicative to me that um it almost comes across as desperate in a way.
Because when you look at like what these firms are doing, I'm actually not convinced that they're even gonna be all that effective.
I mean, one of the firms, like the the Clock Tower X, which is the firm that um was founded by Brad Pascal, Pascal, the former campaign manager, his goal per month is 50 million uh impressions across social media platforms, which might sound like a lot, but like I'm sure that, for instance, Glenn, you get more than that on just Twitter alone.
Um, so it's like, you know, it it's almost like they're throwing money at the wall trying to um change this.
I mean, impressions are kind of the easiest metric for social media, and it's not really an indication that you're gonna be um all that effective in trying to uh uh change the conversation.
I think people have their antennas up too when they see a sort of like astroturfed top-down campaign like this.
Yeah, well, I think your reporting and discussions about it are important precisely to alert people that they are being propagandized by a foreign power.
Um, and I think you're absolutely right.
When the Israelis are throwing millions of dollars around, there are a lot of people who are smelling that money and you know, coming in with PowerPoint presentations, you know, talking the buzz of social media influencing to people who probably don't understand it very well, and and a lot of it is just profit-driven, but clearly a lot of it is propagandistic.
And I there was a you had a uh really interesting anecdote about an influencer who went there and kind of came back with his mind completely changed.
And this has been something I've been trying to get people to understand for a long time.
Um Israel will pay almost anybody with influence to go and visit Israel.
We see all the time members of our Congress going over there instead of going to their home district, they make their pilgrimage to Israel, they spend their their uh summer recess there at traditional time when they used to go and have town halls with their their uh constituents, now they go to Israel.
And Israel has very specific programs for almost every kind of person.
So if you're like a progressive and you go over there, you're gonna get a progressive tour if you're a corporatist and you're interested in like startups in Silicon Valley, they have a special one for you.
If you're black, if you're gay, if you're a feminist, all different ones for you.
Um and you know what a lot of people wonder why people like Richie Torres, who represents you know the single poorest district in the United States, spends so much of his time, you know, spouting Zionist talking points.
He made those trips to Israel, and they show him, you know, gay bars in Tel Aviv, and then films about what Hamas does to gay people.
There's all kinds of these conversions that happen as a result of these trips that are very scientifically geared towards specific demographics.
What's the kind of uh reporting you've been able to do about how some of these influencers are basically brainwashed in like a very short period of time and then come back almost like with a completely different understanding of Israel?
Yeah, so um the uh yeah, there was a um an article uh detailing some of the the influencers that win on a trip in August.
And um a lot of them uh it's interesting, I mean, a lot of it is very coordinated.
I I mean I noticed, for instance, um, I mean, one of the consistent talking points that comes out of these trips is the that there's not a uh a famine happening in Gaza.
Um that it's just a complete um, which is just a complete denial of reality, right?
We've seen this time and time again.
There's all kinds of independent corporation of this.
Um I saw one instance for of like one of these influencers uh saying with a picture of food saying, Oh, look at there's there's food in Gaza, this is all a lie.
And then another one of the influencers on the same trip, quote-tweeted it, saying something very similar that it's fake news.
Um, and so they're clearly given um they're they're they're told a lot of uh of lies because a lot of what Israel is saying is dealing with a completely different set of facts than um what the rest of the world is seeing with our own two eyes.
And so that you know, they do a lot of, they meet with a lot of top officials, they meet with um a lot of um IDF soldiers, they meet with with um people who have uh who have fought in in previous wars.
They um they, in this case, in this most recent one, they even met with Benjamin Yatanyahu himself.
Um, in past trips, they've met with uh Mike Huckabee, who Trump once uh mistakenly called um the governor of Israel, um, and is is clearly um very, very close with uh top Israeli officials.
Um, you know, they they are very much exposed to one side.
And um a side that, you know, it's not just trying to express uh the positive, the friendly nature of the US Israel Israel relationship.
It's it's um much more sinister than that, because this is a country again that is carrying out a genocide.
It's not um, it's it's not just like, hey, look how great the the food in Tel Aviv is.
Um it goes far beyond that.
And the anecdote that you mentioned, there was this this guy who went in this August trip, and he was quoted in this article saying that, you know, he was a little bit skeptical of the the US-Israel relationship beforehand.
Um, but uh but after the trip, he is fine with the US sending as many weapons as we do to Israel.
Would you guys consider anything less than a championship to be a failure from this year?
I wouldn't say anything is a failure, especially because we all grow every day.
Obviously, the goal is a championship.
That's there's no doubt in that, and that's the goal.
We want to win a championship.
I'm Christina Williams, host of the podcast.
In case you missed it with Christina Williams, the WNBA playoffs are here, and I've got the inside scoop on everything from key matchups and standout players to the behind the scenes moments you won't find anywhere else.
It's really, really hard to be the champions, but we have to remember how it feels and embrace the new challenge that we have.
For all the biggest stories in women's basketball plus exclusive interviews with the game's brightest stars.
So to be here, I think it's one that we definitely don't take for granted.
But we also know, you know, that's just one stop along the way, and we're hoping to, you know, make it run.
So listen to In Case You Missed It with Christina Williams in iHeart Woman's Sports Production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
Would you guys consider anything less than a championship to be a failure from this year?
I wouldn't say anything is a failure, especially because we all grow every day.
Obviously, the goal is a championship.
That's there's no doubt in that, and that's the goal.
We want to win a championship.
I'm Christina Williams, host of the podcast.
In case you missed it with Christina Williams.
The WNBA playoffs are here, and I've got the inside scoop on everything from key matchups and standout players to the behind the scenes moments you won't find anywhere else.
It's really, really hard to be the champions, but we have to remember how it feels and embrace the new challenge that we have.
For all the biggest stories in women's basketball plus exclusive interviews with the game's brightest stars.
So to be here, I think it's one that we definitely don't take for granted.
But we also know, you know, that's just one stop along the way, and we're hoping to, you know, make it run.
So listen to In Case You Missed It with Christina Williams, an iHeart Woman Sports Production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
Yeah, imagine just changing your mind when you know that you're on a state-sponsored propaganda tour, but it's also kind of a testament to the efficacy of the propaganda itself.
One of the things you mentioned is this kind of attempt to cast uh the propaganda in terms of Gen Z jargon, Gen Z energy and the like.
We saw this, you know, over the last four years when the CIA would, you know, proudly tout its non-binary, neuro-divergent, you know, racially diverse operatives in the field.
We have the FBI doing that constantly with a lot of, you know, days to celebrate its female agents or whatever, you know, completely kind of covering up the reality of these institutions with this sort of very superficial appeal to progressive ideas.
And one of the people I believe you're mentioning who's become an influencer that has gotten a lot of attention solely by virtue of the pro-Israel content he's been doing.
Um and we don't know if he is on this list of of paid influencers.
I believe he has denied that that he is.
So I'm I'm showing it to you not for that reason, but just to give it to give you a sense of what they're trying to accomplish.
Um he's an American, uh black American, I think of Haitian descent, and he had makes a lot of videos with um a woman who's Jewish, I believe she's Israeli, who uses the name Emily Saves America.
And I just want to show you one of the videos that they produce that I guess they and whoever they're working with assumed would be an effective pro-Israel messaging campaign, while I kind of as a Jew think it would do exactly the opposite.
But let's just take a look at the kind of way they're trying to use this Gen Z uh appeal for a very sinister agenda.
Okay, let's take a look.
I can hear the sound.
Let's try that again.
Imagine supporting people who start wars just to lose the wars so they can cry about it and then try it all again.
You must be anti-Semites are literally obsessed with Jews.
Now walk with me.
While you must see anti-Semites are stacking eviction notices, Jews are out here stacking up businesses.
Jews control all the industries.
Maybe if you spent more time taking notes from successful people, you wouldn't have to spend your nights and weekends spreading hate from your anonymous account with an anime profile picture.
Do you work as hard as Jews?
Do you network like Jews?
No, because you're too busy cheering on a group of musty terrorists who smell like dirty earring backs.
And if we're gonna keep it real, you're really mad because your income is giving side hustle.
Period.
How are you gonna hate from outside Shabbat?
You can't even get in.
No, the thing that's kind of amazing to me about that, Nick, is that it's almost like material lifted right out of Mind Kampf.
You know, it's essentially saying Jews control industry, Jews roll uh r uh uh own all your real estate, Jews are, you know, piling up huge amounts of money in banks, but it's not really ostensibly deployed for anti-Semitic ends.
I guess it's a way of saying the reason you're resentful towards Jews is not because the Jewish state is committing a genocide in Gaza, but because you're jealous of all the money and power that Jews have amassed.
But you see the kind of Gen Z vibe.
The, you know, you have this black gay influencer who's using, you know, kind of a very familiar uh identity politics sort of uh posture in order to second the people into this into this message.
I don't know, this seems very ineffective to me, very cringe to me.
I mean, have has the material that you've seen, the uh content that you've seen, any better than this?
Yeah, I mean, I think that um I think that that influencer even deleted his his um that video because of the responses that people were giving to it.
Um yeah, I don't I think um it's I think what I'm most curious about is um getting to the bottom of who these influencers that are being paid by Israel are um because we need because otherwise it's like we don't we just don't know.
You know, there are a lot of people that are posting that are very pro-Israel that are saying these things um that are making, as you said, offensive content like that, um and also denying a lot of the facts on the ground, making all kinds of claims about um the Gazi Humanitarian Foundation that aren't true.
Uh and we just don't know which influencers are being paid by Israel and which ones aren't.
Um that's something that we need to be able to discern.
Because it is true that there are a lot of people out there that are that have these views that are very pro-Israel for ideas and completely independent of um these paychecks.
But then there are also these these cohorts that are being paid by Israel.
And I think I'm very curious, like this firm registered under Farah, but are there any other firms out there that are being paid by Israel that that aren't registering?
I mean, how many how deep does this go?
Yeah, I mean, I think the reason why polling data has collapsed for Israel is not hard to understand.
It's because everybody has watched over two years while the Israeli military has blown up children and starved an entire population and blockaded it and prevented food and medicine from entering.
Just last night, we had a uh a doctor from New Jersey, an ER doctor who spent two weeks in Gaza who just came back and described the malnourishment, the starvation, the horrors that that he saw.
And so, you know, I think it's gonna take a lot more than sort of playful Gen Z TikTok videos to undo this.
All right, the last question I want to ask you.
Um people like Marjorie Taylor Green in response to your reporting seem seem outraged, specifically on the ground that all of this can remain so clandestine.
The idea that there are presumably American citizens producing content for an American audience who are covertly being paid by a foreign government as part of a foreign influence campaign.
And even if that itself is legal, taking payments from a foreign government, disclosure and transparency seem like they they they are are vital in order to know exactly who it is being paid by a foreign government.
And that's not just true for Israel, it would be true of Russia we're paying, or China or Iran or Peru or Indonesia or whomever.
Um, what is the the law?
What are the the legal constraints that govern whether people taking these kinds of payments have to disclose that they're doing so?
Yeah, so um Marjorie Taylor Greene is completely right about that.
Um and that's an aspect that I didn't even really get to in my article.
I have a actually a separate piece coming out about this tomorrow that includes um those comments from Marjorie Taylor Green.
And um, and she's completely right.
I I spoke with several experts on on the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and they all told me that the influencers themselves need to register under Farad.
They need to register as foreign agents.
They need to identify who they are.
Um, and they also need to mark the posts that they have, whether it's in their their profile or whether that's in the content itself as being distributed on behalf of Israel.
This is a huge transparency problem.
I mean, we have uh Marjorie Taylor Green pointed this out in a separate tweet, and I think when she spoke, um she spoke with with Matt Gates um on One American News, she pointed out that we have this oftentimes for corporate branding.
Like when you're scrolling Instagram, TikTok, X, I'm not on TikTok as much, but when you're scrolling through, you see these posts that say they're you know, they're for a specific brand, that there's that there it's a sponsorship.
And if people and if people aren't doing that with um Farah, if they're not marking it as distributed by Israel, then that's leaving a lot of people in the dark about the sources of you know who is funding um these posts.
And there's actually even a statement on the FARA website that they're supposed to be uh releasing alongside this content.
It's called a conspicuous statement.
And it's and it's a standard and it's completely standardized.
Like if you look at um Rod Lagoyevich, for instance, he's the former governor of Illinois.
He uh is currently a foreign agent of Republica Srpska, which is a political entity in Bosnia.
And whenever he posts on Twitter, um, and it's and it's because of that uh affiliation, he always says, he always includes that conspicuous statement that says, you know, he might have a Twitter thread, and at the end of it say, by the way, I'm a registered foreign agent for Republica Srpska.
Um, and the influencers that are posting need to do that just that.
I mean, we saw last year um the FBI taking very seriously a um case in which uh there were two RT employees that were uh secretly paying um several uh influencers, Benny Johnson, um Dave Ruben, I can't remember all the names, but like Timpold Timpool, or yeah, Tim Pulp.
That's right.
And nothing ever really came of that, but um the indictment came through, and and um, and you know, if the FBI is gonna make a huge deal about about that, I think that there's a real double standard here that we haven't really seen other than Marjorie Tiller Green, many uh if any elected officials talk about this.
I mean, this um I mean it's good that the firm registered under Farah, but what about the influencers themselves?
That's like really running a foul of the law, the letter of the law.
Yeah, and to be clear, just uh in in terms of those influencers' name, Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin, Tim Pool.
There's no accusations they did anything wrong because that the origin of that money was mass.
They didn't seem very interested in the origin, but I don't think they knew that they were being paid by Russian sources that the indictment is against the company.
But in this case, the influencers obviously know they're being paid by the Israeli government and yet are in influence are aren't disclosing it.
Think uh, like a lot of people, you're probably surprised to hear how often these days you're saying Marjorie Taylor Green is totally right.
But on issues like this, there's no doubt that she's become not just one of the most courageous people, but also really quite sober as an uninformed thinker on it.
And uh, you know, on an issue like this where you often don't have a lot of allies, people are afraid to speak up.
It's always great to have anybody, and that's one of the reasons I'm I'm really grateful for the reporting that you're doing.
I'm glad you're continuing to look into this.
We'll definitely continue to have you on as you find more and and publish more, and we really appreciate your time tonight.
Thanks so much, Glenn.
Have a good day.
Have a good day.
Would you guys consider anything less than a championship to be a failure from this year?
I wouldn't say anything is a failure, especially because we all grow every day.
Obviously, the goal is a championship.
That's there's no doubt in that, and that's the goal.
We want to win a championship.
I'm Christina Williams, host of the podcast.
In case you missed it with Christina Williams, the WNBA playoffs are here, and I've got the inside scoop on everything from key matchups and standout players to the behind the scenes moments you won't find anywhere else.
It's really, really hard to be the champions, but we have to remember how it feels and embrace the new challenge that we have.
For all the biggest stories in women's basketball plus exclusive interviews with the game's brightest stars.
So to be here, I think it's one that we definitely don't take for granted.
But we also know, you know, that's just one stop along the way, and we're hoping to, you know, make a run.
So listen to In Case You Missed It with Christina Williams in iHeart Woman Sports Production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
Would you guys consider anything less than a championship to be a failure from this year?
I wouldn't say anything is a failure, especially because we all grow every day.
Obviously, the goal is a championship.
That's there's no doubt in that, and that's the goal.
We want to win a chairmanship.
I'm Christina Williams, host of the podcast.
In case you missed it with Christina Williams, the WNBA playoffs are here, and I've got the inside scoop on everything from key matchups and standout players to the behind the scenes moments you won't find anywhere else.
It's really, really hard to be the champions, but we have to remember how it feels and embrace the new challenge that we have.
For all the biggest stories in women's basketball plus exclusive interviews with the game's brightest stars.
So to be here, I think it's one that we definitely don't take for granted.
But we also know, you know, that's just one stop along the way, and we're hoping to, you know, make a run.
So listen to In Case You Missed It with Christina Williams and iHeartWoman Sports Production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
All right, so let me ask you something.
And I mean, really, let me ask you this.
I want you to pay attention.
Let me ask you.
I have a question.
I don't often have questions, but I do hear.
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Take back your time with uh online with comet all right Katie Herzog has long been one of my favorite people in media she is all sorts of things she's a highly accomplished independent journalist.
She's also the uh co-host of the very successful block and reported podcast she formerly wrote for Seattle's The Stranger.
She is as well a lesbian alcoholic or at least one who has reformed and she is now the author of a great new book an important new book I'm super interested to talk to her about I read the book over the last week it's really interesting about her life but also about methods that are increasingly successful to treat alcoholism.
The title of it is drink your way sober the science based method to break free from alcohol Katie it is always great to see you.
I hope I included all of your credentials um and congratulations on the new book.
Thank you Glenn Shonatova.
Thank you.
Really appreciate that.
All right.
You know, this, I have known you for a good while.
You know, we've known each other kind of through journalism, through media, and then also some personal.
And I was surprised when I learned that you were writing a book about your struggle with alcoholism.
That was something I wasn't aware that was in your life.
And can you just talk a little bit about your personal story and what led you to write this book?
because one of the things I think a lot of people are surprised about is like I said, you are a successful journalist, you've accomplished a lot in in your work and yet you were struggling with alcoholism throughout a lot of that time but I think people find those things incompatible.
So so what was it that led you to write the book?
I don't think that many people would find journalism and alcoholism incompatible but yes this was a part of my life that I kept completely hidden from everybody friends family including my wife but I struggled with drinking I struggled with drinking from a really a young age I started drinking when I was in middle school.
So I was 12, 13 years old.
You know, I grew up in the 90s.
This is like 20, 25 when young people are apparently.
It just it was sort of I had kind of an immediate an immediate love affair with alcohol.
It really I think it's not the taste so much, but the effect.
And so I drank, you know, I drank a lot in high school, drank more in college.
And by the time I was out of college, I was just kind of a full-blown barfly.
And and that continued to be my life for.
almost days and my drinking you know at first it was social I was very extroverted when I much wilder that I am sober.
And gradually over time, it became less social and more secretive.
And during COVID, that's when I sort of hit I wouldn't say that I hit rock bottom.
I had many rock bottoms.
But during COVID, it just got to the point where it was like kind of taking over my life.
I felt unhealthy, depressed.
I was getting puffy.
I guess everybody got COVID.
So could have chalked that up to the sourdough.
Yeah, and I decided to do something about it.
I had tried over the years different avenues sort of more traditional avenues like AA I did therapy did outpatient groups but none of that worked for me and and then I found something that was I knew but sort of a novel treatment.
And that's what the book is about and worship yeah so I definitely want to delve into the substance of the treatment and and what it entails and and why you found it effective and some of the questions around it as well.
Before I do, I just want to ask uh, you know, you're a journalist who, like I think all good journalists, it, you know, is sort of a controversial figure.
You've written about and reported on controversial issues uh you have as a result, people who dislike you, people who want to discredit you, people who regard you as their enemy.
I know it's shocking given how wonderful and and and uh universally beloved you you might think you are, but in fact, there are people out there lurking who who just like you.
And I'm wondering whether you had hesitation about becoming so public, so vulnerable about a very not just intimate party of your life, but but something that could easily be weaponized against you and the journalism that you've done as a result of being so candid about it.
You know, I hadn't thought about that till until you mention it, maybe I should have, you know, I had a lot of hesitation about writing this book because I like a lot of the stories in the book are frankly kind of embarrassing, although not the most embarrassing.
Um, but drinking stories tend to be, you know, it turns out that my desire for self-preservation is weaker than my desire to tell as good a story as possible.
Um, but I was still hesitant to write the book because it puts me in a vulnerable position, not just among my peers, but really among the people that I I lie to for years.
And so it wasn't just a sort of a coming out as an alcoholic or or recovered alcoholic to the world.
Like that's not that big a deal.
I honestly have that much of a shit about what people on Twitter, people Twitter, Twitter's fine with me now.
It's blue sky, probably where there would be an issue.
But I don't really give a shit about what those people think.
Of course, I care about what my family thinks and what my friends think and what my wife thinks.
And that was harder.
Um, luckily, I have I'm surrounded by good people who understood me and and you know, I'm still married, even though you know my wife found out that I was secretly drinking during COVID, she didn't leave me.
Um, so that's one good thing I did was surround myself by the right people.
But I I was definitely this took a lot of thinking.
And I I got sober years before I wrote the book.
And when I finally started talking about it, I wasn't talking about it under my own name.
So I went on a friend, my friend Andy Mill's podcast, and I talked about this experience, but I didn't, I didn't use my name.
And the reason for that was because, you know, if you Google me now, I have really great Google results, and I didn't want, I didn't want that to change.
I didn't want the trans to be overtaken by the alcoholism uh in my Google results.
But eventually I got to the point where it was like I felt like I was gatekeeping a protocol, a treatment that can save lives.
And I was just unwilling to talk about it publicly.
And I and I I started to feel sort of ashamed about that.
Like I wasn't willing to be brave and talk about this part of my life.
And by doing it, I could just, I felt like I could help.
You know, it's interesting.
Uh when you look at the range of addictions, and you can just throw alcohol, of course, as an addiction when you're talking about addiction broadly.
I mean, talk about illegal narcotics like carolin or cocaine or crack or whatever.
Um, and then, but you know, there's behavioral addictions as well, like sex addiction and gambling addictions, all these kind of addictions.
In a lot of ways, alcoholism is typically regarded by people as perhaps the most benign.
That's the reason why it's legalized and not just legalized, but glorified.
You know, you still, you know, you can watch uh TV shows from 40 years ago and you would have people just going on the set like smoking on talk shows.
Um, and now that's unthinkable, but drinking is something that people still do very much out in the open.
Um, there's almost no social stigma to it at all in the way that say, like if you just went somewhere in public and started snorting lines of cocaine, um, obviously you would be immediately thrown out and and and and scorned and castigated in all sorts of ways.
But on the other hand, though it's considered more benign, in a lot of ways, it's kind of what makes the addiction more insidious, right?
That like not only is it everywhere.
You walk into a supermarket or a group, you like you can't avoid it.
You see it on television, you see it in films, it's available on every corner.
How did you kind of navigate that that weird juxtaposition between on the one hand society always telling you, like, yeah, it's okay, you can drink in front of somebody in a way that you couldn't use narcotics.
Um, but on the other hand, it kind of makes it more difficult to to avoid and shield yourself from.
So the protocol that I did, it's called the Sinclair method.
And the amazing thing about that, I no longer have the desire.
So I have alcohol doesn't affect me at all.
Like I can go to bars.
I can be around people who are drinking.
I can walk through the ABC store or whatever they call it wherever you are.
I can be around alcohol.
It's just not a big deal because I have desire to drink alcohol.
And that's what's so different.
And I think what's so revolutionary about the treatment that I did is that it doesn't, it's not a band-aid.
It extinguishes the actual desire itself.
And some people would say, well, it's not a spiritual fix.
It's a, it's a, it's a medical fix.
Like there's some hole inside of it like that needs to get filled, which sounds more important.
I mean it too.
But that just wasn't my experience.
So yeah, that's not it.
That's not an issue for me at all.
Alcohol, it's at this point in my life, it's as though I never started drinking in the first place.
I have no more desire to drink than I do to go out and you know, shoot fentanyl.
Well, look, let's talk about the the treatment, which seems to me based on having read your book.
I wasn't super familiar with this before, but I haven't heard of it in in various you know sectors, but I never really focused on it before until your book.
I mean, basically, as I understand it, it's like a medicinal solution.
It basically alters your body's biology or chemistry so that the pleasure that you previously received from consuming alcohol, you're basically physiologically impeded or blocked from receiving so that you continue to drink alcohol as much as you want.
You just don't get the same effect and the same pleasure.
Is that a fair summary of of what this treatment is?
That's basically it.
So the drug itself is called naltrexone.
There are other drugs that are used, but it's an opioid blocker.
So in Europe, uh, one called nalfamine is more common.
But naltrexone, so this is a cheap generic drug that was developed in the 1960s.
It's been FDA approved to treat alcoholism for over 30 years, but it is for some reason not well known among the general public.
And so the it's prescribed in various different ways.
The way that I took it is called the Sinclair method, and it's this really targeted protocol.
So you take the drug, you wait at least an hour, so it's metabolized in your system, and then you continue to drink as normal.
And as you mentioned, you don't get the effects, like the positive effects from alcohol.
And not everybody reacts the same to alcohol.
But when I drink, I get a euphoric high.
I get this endorph, this endorphin dump in my brain, and then indirectly a bunch of dopamine floods my brain.
It's really in energetic.
It's not a set, it's for me, it's not it's not sedating.
It's not something that I would do to like chill out.
It's something that I would do to sort of get up.
And naltrexone targets that.
So it basically blocks your brain from releasing a bunch of endorphins when you drink.
And when you do that, it's just not very much fun.
So you can continue to drink if you want to.
And some people use this uh to just drink moderately.
So, you know, they want to drink one glass of wine and not the whole bottle.
They'll take naltrexone first and then drink moderately.
I wanted total sobriety.
I wanted absolute freedom from alcohol.
And so I did this over the course of seven months, and then I took a month off of drinking.
Like, I'm just gonna try this, see how it goes, not drink for a month, and then I just never started drinking again.
So I no longer take the drug.
But some people do this for the rest of their lives.
They just the protocol is really simple.
You take the pill, you wait an hour, then you drink.
Um, but it's really important to stick with it.
If you stop taking the pill, it won't be effective.
So, and I I don't want to say their exact analogs uh medically because I don't know enough to say they're equivalent, but they seem similar to me to other kinds of treatments, treatment for people who get addicted to various opioids, whether it be um, you know, but fentanyl or oxychotin or whatever, there's there's uh medicinal remedies that prevent the effects and the pleasure of the drug from being received in the brain.
Maybe even Ozempic, I've heard people on Ozempic talk about how they just don't quite have the same sensation from eating.
Um, they don't get any desire to eat junk food, that that chemical reaction that causes endorphin release and like getting Doritos or whatever, just doesn't happen.
So you can still eat them, you just won't feel the same.
And I guess my big reservation with this, and and maybe this requires a little bit of introspection on your part, maybe not, is that the consensus, I suppose you could say, in the world of addiction treatment, is that there are reasons why the addiction, The addictive behavior happens in the first place.
Like as you referenced earlier, there's some spiritual malady, there's something lacking in the person in terms of their psyche, they're not getting uh connection, they're not finding purpose.
And so they use the whatever the substance is, the drug or the alcohol as kind of a numbing method or as a way of creating the illusion of things that they crave but can't get on their own.
And we've always had this kind of concept in addictive world of addiction of dry drunk, meaning people who are drunks, they stop drinking alcohol, but they really haven't addressed the underlying cause that led them to drink alcohol in the first place, and that might manifest negatively in other respects.
I I get your your view that, well, look, that hasn't happened for me, but but is there, was there for you any kind of underlying spiritual cause for the alcoholism in the first place?
And and and it does this have the potential, if there is that, to address it.
Yeah, I think the consensus is wrong on that.
So a lot of people do have that spiritual whole.
They they're drinking for a reason.
That just wasn't my experience.
And this experience is not universal.
So I started drinking, as I mentioned, at a very young age.
I have a genetic predisposition to alcoholism, and I drank a lot.
So those are three risk factors for developing alcohol use disorder.
There are other risk factors like trauma, other mental health issues.
I don't have that.
Um, but I have these three risk factors, and I just drank a lot.
And my fundamental problem wasn't anxiety or depression or trauma or an unfulfilled desires.
My my central problem was that I drank so much that I drank myself into alcoholism.
And I think it's a little bit of a permanent pernicious myth that we all have some spiritual hole inside of us that needs to be filled.
And the only way to do that is through this deep introspective work.
And the reason I think it's permission permissive, uh, excuse me, the reason I think this is pernicious is because that in itself keeps people from trying to get sober in the first place, right?
As I I think also the myth that the only way out of alcoholism is complete abstinence.
And so a lot of people, if people have that need, there are I like AA 12-step programs, I think fulfill that really well.
I absolutely don't knock those programs, but I just don't think that we all have that experience.
Some of us just did too many drugs and we just drank too much.
I will say though, that the two methods are not incompatible, right?
So if you do have some spiritual need or uh emotional issues, or you need to make amends to your family because of what you did when you were drinking, it's a lot easier to address those drugs when you don't have the the monkey of addiction on your back.
When you're when your drinking is in control, you can address those things a lot easier.
And so I think it's totally possible to do something like the Sinclair method or take naltrexone and get sort of the physical addiction out of the way and then address all of the spiritual stuff.
I just, for me, you know, I quit drinking three years ago, and I don't, I feel like I feel good, I feel healthy, you know, my work is more fulfilling, my life is more fulfilling, and I don't, I'm not tempted to go out and you know, fill that or with other destructive habits because I don't think I ever had the, I never had that need in the first place.
Yeah, no, it's just like a very very aspiritual person, so that might be part of it.
And I don't believe in the soul, so there's definitely not a hole in it.
Right, right, right.
I mean, you know, I guess the idea of of these like meeting type uh approaches is really just the idea of like establishing community based, nothing more on the idea that human beings are social and political animals and connection always is healthy.
But one of the things I was a little bit uh confounded by with your book, and I mean I mean not genuinely, I don't mean that argumentatively, that I'm interested in hearing your view on it, is that uh, you know, I've heard for a long time that look, if there was a medication that would solve addiction, that would solve alcoholism, these other forms of addictive behavior, believe me, the pharmaceutical companies would be out there pounding the pavement, like screaming at you, no, you don't need to go through years of therapy.
You don't need to go to AA meetings every day.
We have this pill for you.
You just take this pill and you know, presto, you're no longer gonna want alcohol, you're no longer gonna need it.
Same with drugs.
Um, and in general, health insurance companies as well love medicinal treatments over, say, therapeutic ones because it's way less expensive, it's it's much faster and quicker.
Why is this medicinal treatment so kind of obscure?
Like, why is it that even people who have reported on addiction like myself, why have we not really heard much about it given the obvious financial incentives of these industries of these companies that run our health insurance industry.
Yeah.
So Naltrexone has was the patent on Naltrexone ran uh ran out expired in the 90s.
So there really isn't financial incentive to Marg because whoever markets it could just be undercut by the drug manufacturer down the street.
Now Naltrex actually developed to treat opioid addiction, not alcohol addiction.
And I talked to a drug rep, it was uh developed by this small pharmaceutical company called Indo Laboratories in the early 60s.
They were later acquired by DuPont.
And I talked to a drug rep who at the time was working for DuPont, and they thought the execs at that company this was going to be the solution for heroin addiction, opioid addiction, uh morphine addiction, things like that.
But at the time, so they would go shop this around to doctors, and doctors just were not interested because uh methadone had come on the market.
Methadone had was at the time the sort of gold standard, and they had just sort of cornered the market on that.
Um and then so the the resistance drug historically has not come from big pharma, it's come from rhythms, the rehab industrial complex, which are almost entirely not all of them, and this is changing, but they are based on 12-step principles and literature.
And so this drug is, especially the way that I took it, which is continuing to drink anathema to 12-step to 12-step programming.
And again, I don't have any problem with AA, it just didn't work for me.
And so that's where the tension has been.
And there's also, you know, in the US, we have this puritanical history.
I think people have this assumption that addiction, because addiction causes so much harm to society and to families and to the butt it's a public health nightmare that getting clean clean and sober should be a little bit painful, right?
People who lose 100 pounds the old-fashioned way and then find out that there's no Zimpic, right?
There's a little bit of, I think, bitterness that's possibly an easy way out.
And a lot of people who work in recovery got sober the old fashioned way.
They did it the way, and there's nothing wrong with that by any means.
It just doesn't work for anybody.
And so I think the more solutions, the better, because there's never going to be one way out of this for the for the entire population.
So a couple last questions.
Um, it is interesting, people are really dug in, like in terms of their consensus on how addiction should be treated.
Sometimes there are financial motives, but other times they're just it has kind of a religious fervor to it because in a lot of ways, people do use recovery when it works as their their religion.
And so they safeguard it very, very uh zealously.
And I remember when my friend Johan Hari wrote a book, uh, maybe it was like eight, 10 years ago now, it was called Chasing the Scream.
And it was designed to basically say that the common understanding of addiction, which is that we take these substances, you know, heroin or crack or whatever, and we get hooked on them chemically, like our brains just get hooked, and we cannot get off of them.
That that model is wrong for many people, if not most people, and he was arguing this kind of spiritual model instead, where he said the opposite of sobriety is uh the opposite of addiction is not sporety, it's connection, that that modern society deprives connection, and as a result, that's what leads so many people to drugs and alcohol.
And there's stats showing that addiction is on the rise as society becomes more isolating.
Um, and it causes like intense fervor and backlash against him.
I remember he was attacked by so many different sectors in the most vicious ways.
Have you started to experience that?
Do you expect to get some of that?
Because I'm sh I know for certain that the idea that, oh, if you're an addict, you can keep drinking or taking drugs, or that it's just the popping of a pill is really offensive to a lot of people, including people who do this work professionally.
So what do you what is your expectation in terms of the reaction uh of the book?
I haven't really seen much of that yet.
I do like if I write about this or I talk about it on a podcast, it definitely comes up in the comments.
There's always people who come from 12 steps who say that I'm gonna, that this is dangerous and I'm gonna get people killed.
And look, Johan and I are on the sides of this, but I had him, I he did a blurb for me.
It's on the cover of the book.
And the reason that I wanted it on the cover is I wanted people to see that there are, even though Johan, you know, he he thinks there's a lot more, he's basically a, let's say, uh a naturist when it comes to this or a nurturist when it comes to this, and I'm a naturist when it comes to this.
Although both of us concede that there, you know, there's a lot of people in the world.
We all have differences.
But I wanted people to see that these things that it's not incompatible to believe kind of all of these things, right?
There can be an environmentalist, environmental uh influence on addiction.
There can also be a biological one.
Um, I I anticipate that that I will be attacked for some people and by some people, and in some ways that would be good for me because controversy sells.
So I'll try and some of that up for you.
Yeah.
Thank you, Glenn.
But the book is not anti-AA.
I haven't frustration is that I've read a couple of the reviews, um, like just the the reader reviews on Amazon and places like that, who accuse me of bashing AA.
The book does not bash AA.
I was very careful about that.
I had an AA sensitivity reader, um, Sarah Huppala, who got sober through through AA.
I really, I think the program, that program is amazing.
And the fact that it's free and it's been around for almost a hundred years.
It's a testament to that thing is it just doesn't work for everybody.
And it just didn't work for me.
Yeah, I think that's the strength of your book is that you're not claiming to have discovered like the all-purpose cure, the universal solution to addiction for everybody.
It's just a very kind of personal story about why certain things work for you and and why certain things didn't that should kind of ward off um a lot of anger and attacks.
But again, I know not to, you know, it's like everything people hold strong opinions in.
And when anything disturbs or opposes it, they get uh very angry and you add to that the financial incentive and and just sort of the religious fervor on this issue.
Um I'd be shocked if if if you didn't get lots of attack.
Good good news though, is that you're certainly well accustomed to those um having done uh the work that you've done.
Um well, Katie, congratulations on the book.
Uh I know writing a book is a very difficult process.
It's not always fun.
Um, but this should be the fun part.
When you finally get your book out of the world, people are reading it and talking about it.
Uh, we'll put the link to the book.
I encourage everybody who has ever had addiction in their life, or somebody who has has addiction in their lives as well, uh, to read it because it's it's just another path, another alternative, another way of thinking about it.
