Pod Insights The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway Raging Moderates: Trump Spirals as Iran Blockade Triggers Recession Fears (ft. Sen. Chris Murphy) About this episode Big news! We’ve just been nominated for a Webby Award for Best News & Politics Podcast! Now it’s time to bring it home — and we need your help.
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Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov break down the escalating crisis following the Trump administration’s Iran blockade—and what it could mean for the global economy. As tensions intensify in the Strait of Hormuz and negotiations stall between the U. S. and Iran, markets are flashing warning signs that a broader economic shock may already be unfolding.
Senator Chris Murphy joins the show to discuss the legality of the administration’s actions, Congress’s inability to assert War Powers authority, and whether the U. S. is being pushed toward a wider conflict without meaningful checks and balances. The conversation also explores growing international backlash, shifting alliances in Europe and the Middle East, and the potential fallout for global trade and energy markets.
With the IMF warning of slowing global growth, rising inflation, and increased recession risk, the panel examines whether Trump’s Iran strategy could trigger a broader economic downturn—and what, if anything, can be done to stop it.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:52 Scott Galloway? Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Galloway.
1:55 Jessica Tarlov? And I'm Jessica Tarlov.
1:56 Scott Galloway? Today, we're joined by Senator Chris Murphy from the great state of Connecticut. By the way, you kind of absolutely destroyed my March Madness bracket. But anyways, Senator, thank you so much for making the time to join us today.
2:08 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's great to be with you guys. Yeah, we're psyched to be back in a world where it's not just the women's team. That is awesome, but the men's team as well.
2:16 Scott Galloway? Oh, that's right.
2:16 Jessica Tarlov? If you aren't already, please make sure to subscribe to our YouTube page to stay in the loop on all of the political news.
2:22 Scott Galloway? All right, let's get into it. Senator, with the war in Iran, you've been outspoken about US involvement, calling it illegal and warning it could cost trillions of dollars. It appears the situation is escalating on multiple fronts. The US military has begun enforcing a blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz, though its scope remains unclear, with reports that some ships are still getting through, raising questions about how effective or enforceable the strategy really is. At the same time, negotiations have restarted. Iran is reportedly offering to suspend Iranian enrichment for five years while the US is pushing for a 20-year halt, and President Trump is demanding guarantees Iran will never develop nuclear weapons. And the International Monetary Fund is now warning that the conflict could slow global
3:05 Scott Galloway? growth, drive up inflation, and even tip the world toward recession as volatility in the oil market ripples through the economy. So, given all of this, where do you think we stand right now? And what is your recommendation on a go-forward strategy?
3:18 Speaker 04 I think our instinct is often to apply previous lenses to sort of modern, very unique problems. And so, you know, we look at what the president is doing in Iran, and we look at these negotiations, and we try to apply a conventional rationale. I just don't think that works. I think that we underestimate the degree to which this is just...
3:47 Speaker 04 Basic incompetence, that we have people who literally have no idea what they are doing, who are applying no lessons from the past, who are drawing on no one who has any experience in doing diplomacy in and around the Middle East. And what you are getting is, you know, just gross incompetence. The latest is this plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by closing the Strait of Hormuz. The idea that Trump has is that because Iran right now is letting at the very least its ships through, if we stop Iranian ships
4:27 Speaker 04 from getting through, then Iran will magically open the strait to everyone. I think it fundamentally misunderstands the way that Iran thinks about this war. They believe they are winning the war. The regime does not feel any threat internally, and thus they think they can just wait us out, that the pain on the US economy will break Trump's will before the pain on the Iranian economy breaks their will. Same thing with negotiations. You know, we're trying to find a logical thread of these negotiations. I don't think there's any logical thread. I think this is J.D. Vance, who's never negotiated an international deal in his life, a real estate developer, who has no experience in negotiations and
5:10 Speaker 04 a bunch of hangers-on to the president. J.D. Vance was in Islamabad for 24 hours and left. That's not how negotiations work. You have to sit down and negotiate for weeks, especially with a complicated adversary like the Iranians. And the fact that we only are willing to give it 24 hours of negotiation tells you just how nonsensical all of this is. So I think this war is going to drag on for a really long time unless Trump just decides to end it unilaterally, which I still think is the best of a bunch of bad options moving forward. I don't see a big diplomatic settlement. I don't see Iran reopening the strait, absent
5:50 Speaker 04 Trump ending the war. But his pride and his hubris and his ego is probably, for the foreseeable future, going to stop him from ending it unilaterally.
5:59 Scott Galloway? What do you think we should do? Or what if the White House called you today and said, what outline a strategy, given? Where we are right now at this moment, what would your strategy be for handling the situation right now?
6:11 Speaker 04 Unilaterally end the war.
6:13 Scott Galloway? Just withdraw?
6:14 Speaker 04 Yeah, withdraw, withdraw.
6:16 Scott Galloway? Concede, concede, control the Strait of Hormuz to Iran?
6:19 Speaker 04 So you are, there's no military means for us to take Iran's control of the Strait away, so let's just start there. The fastest way to get into a conversation with Iran about how to reopen the Strait is to permanently end the war or the threat of military action. Trump believes that his threat to restart bombing or this current plan to sort of layer on an American blockade to the Iranian blockade will change Iranian behavior. Again, in the Middle East, there is not a lot of evidence to suggest that escalatory behavior ultimately achieves US war aims.
7:02 Speaker 04 I would advise him to stop the war, and I think that is the fastest way ultimately to get Iran to reopen the Strait.
7:12 Scott Galloway? If they take control of the Strait of Hormuz, and JP Morgan estimates they're getting an additional $90 billion potentially in revenue by charging a tax on any ship to come through, and they basically have what I would argue is more powerful and enriched uranium through control, and we acknowledge and concede control, what incentive do they have to ever give it back and not concede control of it?
7:35 Speaker 04 Yeah, I mean, that's, that's the disaster that Trump has wrought here. I mean, let's just go through his war aims. He said he wants to destroy their missile program. There's no evidence we've come anywhere close to that. Destroy their drone program. There's no evidence we will ever, ever be able to destroy their drone program. He wants to get rid of their nuclear weapons ambitions. They retain all of that enriched capacity, and you can't really destroy knowledge. And now you've made them a true global player by giving them control of the Strait of Hormuz. Again, the alternative is to just continue bombing Iran and hope that eventually...
8:15 Speaker 04 The destruction that we wrought, the number of civilians that we kill, will cause the Iranians to reopen the strait. I don't think that that's a likely path forward. And so let's end the conflict and then with our regional allies, be in a conversation with Iran about reopening. It may be that Iran is going to toll that strait for the short and medium term. I just don't know right now that there's any way around it. So do you want that to be the reality in addition to spending $200 billion of taxpayer money on a war that likely won't end up with the strait being opened?
8:56 Speaker 04 That sounds like a pretty horrific exercise in fiscal malpractice.
9:01 Jessica Tarlov? What do you think Russia and China are telling Iran right now? Because we know what our allies, you know, our NATO allies, and also what our Gulf allies are saying about it. But Russia and China have been, you know, close allies, obviously, of Iran and beneficiaries of this conflict themselves. You know, Putin suffered a big defeat in Hungary with the election a couple of days ago. But, you know, he got some sanctions relief, which I'm hoping that Secretary Besen is going to hold to this and put those sanctions back on. But this two-week period has felt like a gift to the Iranians that they can essentially rearm and, you know, conference up with China and Russia for the plan going forward.
9:42 Jessica Tarlov? So what's your feeling about what Russia and China want Iran to do?
9:47 Speaker 04 I think this conflict accrues to the benefit of both Russia and China. For Russia, these high oil prices and the easing of sanctions on Russia, it just fills the Russian treasury. For China, I think there's, you know, a longer-term play here. For China, you know, they don't really mind that that strait stays closed as long as Chinese ships and Chinese energy move through the strait. And so there's a pretty simple deal for the Chinese and the Iranians to do moving forward, which is that Iran will let Chinese ships. And energy bound for China move through the straight.
10:29 Speaker 04 And then China will help Iran rebuild its missile program and its drone program, and probably broader destroyed infrastructure when the United States stops bombing. That is just a reality that I think is very sort of hard to confront right now. And it just, for me, makes me pine for the days in which the United States, China, and Russia were aligned on Iran policy. I know, like, right now, that's hard to imagine. But that's what existed when we signed the JCPOA. That's the Iran nuclear deal. That was an agreement not between the United States and Iran.
11:10 Speaker 04 That was a deal between the United States, Europe, Russia, China, and Iran. We had the ability to basically build on the JCPOA with the United States, China, and Russia on the same side to confront Iran's other malevolent activity. We gave that up, and now we are in a world where, you know, we ultimately may have to accept that there's a more deeply integrated access, especially between Iran and China, but also between Iran and Russia.
11:41 Jessica Tarlov? Yeah, I'm glad that you brought up the JCPOA because I've been thinking a lot about the sunset clauses, which if we had stayed in it versus Trump taking us out in 2018, we would be coming up, you know, near the end of the deal. And there was this opportunity to hopefully renegotiate. And I'm curious as to what our diplomatic team, besides Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, looks like if we do manage to get Iran back to the table, even in the next year or two before President Trump is out of office. And hopefully, we have a Democratic president coming in.
12:17 Speaker 04 I mean, listen, I don't know what they're looking for, but when they describe the deal they want, it sounds a lot like the JCPOA. I mean, one of the things they talk about is a firm commitment from the Iranians not to develop a nuclear weapon. Well, that's exactly what the JCPOA said Iran in that agreement promised. To never develop a nuclear weapon and gave the Americans and the Europeans the ability to do in-depth inspections every single day on Iranian territory to make sure that they were only pursuing a civilian nuclear weapons program. So if at the end of this, you know, we just get a slightly different version of Obama's
12:54 Speaker 04 nuclear deal, that would be A, ironic, and B, it would be a ridiculous outcome with a dozen or more Americans having been killed and billions of dollars of American taxpayer money wasted just to come out with basically the same agreement that we had before Trump became president.
13:15 Jessica Tarlov? It took 18 months to negotiate the JCPOA and we're talking about, you know, this idea that deals can be done with these people who are quite emboldened at this moment in like, you know, you have 10 to 14 days to sort this out, so.
13:29 Speaker 04 And again, I just, I just like want to underscore that these guys have no idea what they're doing. I mean, this is, this is buffoonery. Vance flying over there for 24 hours, right? When John Kerry negotiated that deal and the Secretary of Energy, you know, they, they would sit at these negotiating tables for weeks at a time. And so there's no incentive for the Iranians to really negotiate when they get to see JD Vance for 24 hours and then he leaves. So they're not setting up any construct in which there's likely to be a meaningful negotiation and the Iranians know that.
14:10 Scott Galloway? The term I think the best describes it from my vantage point is operational excellence, but strategic incompetence. Do you think that if the president and his cabinet or some members of his cabinet member had consulted Congress, had tried to enlist the help of some Gulf and European allies and said, this is a unique moment in time to further neuter their ability to support proxies which have been wreaking terror across the region, to take out additional missile launch capability, to potentially tip over what appears to be a wobbling regime?
14:49 Scott Galloway? Do you think, one, would you have been more supportive and clear objectives that said, we're in, we're out, this is a military operation, not a war? Would you personally have been potentially supportive? And do you think that this might have had a greater likelihood of success and that we wouldn't be in, quote, quote, this, you know, this feels like the definition of a quagmire? And I would argue that what has happened here, there is some justification for a military operation, but not getting any support from Congress or our allies basically doomed this from the get-go. Would you personally have been more likely to be supportive of some sort of military action had he enlisted or at least consulted Congress and enlisted some allies?
15:29 Speaker 04 No, because I don't see an objective, at least amongst those that have been articulated by the president, that has a military answer. So you cannot bomb out of existence knowledge. So yes, you can set back their nuclear program, likely only for a handful of months, but not much longer than that. What we're learning is there is no way to eliminate their missile and drone program through airstrikes alone. Hegseth goes on TV and he lies. He says, well, we destroyed their missile program, 90% of it is gone. That's just not true. It is likely that we've gotten far less than, than half. And we knew from the beginning that a major military operation was going to cause them to close the strait.
16:13 Speaker 04 And that is the primary reason why both Democratic and Republican presidents prior to Donald Trump had not undertaken a military action of this size. We knew that it would draw them closer to China, ending up in China benefiting. And regime change is, is not something you can achieve without a ground invasion, as we have now seen definitively. The Ayatollah was a bad guy, but he was a doddering old man. It is now possible that we have put in charge of that nation much more competent, much more provocative leadership. So, no, I don't think that for me, there was any argument that they could make that
16:56 Speaker 04 a military campaign was going to end up achieving any of our goals. Yeah, I want their missile program gone. I want their drone program gone. I want Iran to be a democracy, but I don't see any of those being achieved by a short-term targeted military intervention.
17:14 Scott Galloway? And you don't, you don't worry that if we exit now, we, one, leave our allies sort of naked and afraid. We broke it, they have to fix it. And two, that we suffer from sort of a glass jaw syndrome where despite 1.4 trillion dollars of your proposed military budget, we become the ultimate paper tiger that a decent amount of pain, or some would argue relative to other conflicts, not that much pain, and we cut and run. You're, you're not, I mean, I think that your arguments are really, I don't know, have a ton of veracity, compelling, hard to argue with around the incompetence that's gotten us here and now. But if we were to exit, who takes us seriously when we show up with any
17:55 Scott Galloway? sort of military campaign and doesn't believe that just inflict a little bit of pain and they'll run?
18:01 Speaker 04 But who takes us seriously when we respond to a catastrophic mistake with another catastrophic mistake? I, I mean, you know, this is, this is like trotting out a little league team, you know, in a, in a, in a major sporting event and hoping that if you just keep playing, they'll win. I mean, these guys are embarrassing the United States. This latest move of, of, of closing the strait ourself in order to respond to Iran closing the strait, that makes us look like a laughing stock. This is just going to get worse and worse because these people do not know what they're doing. And listen, that argument has been made before, right? I, I heard our leaders make that argument to Congress on
18:44 Speaker 04 Afghanistan over and over and over again. Give us more time, give us more troops. That is literally the reason why we stayed in Vietnam for as long as we did, because if we can just escalate a little bit more, if we can escalate in a slightly different way, ultimately the enemy will come to the table. So I just see this quagmire getting worse and worse. I don't, I don't disagree with you that this is going to make us look weak, but for us to just continue to perform ineptly, for us to just invent new, bold, strategic mistakes on a weekly basis, that makes us look even weaker.
19:20 Scott Galloway? And what do we say to our allies there? We've inflamed Iran, we've put them in harm's way, and
19:27 Jessica Tarlov? And you have to pay more as a result of it because they're all getting their energy through the street.
19:33 Speaker 04 Right, but our but our allies there, maybe with the exception of Saudi Arabia, begged us not to do this. And Saudi Arabia, right now, is telling us to, at the very least, end this nonsensical plan to blockade the Strait of Hormuz because what they worry about is that that will end up with Iran and the Houthis activating to close or harass traffic inside the Red Sea. The Saudis see our continued escalation as bad for the region. So I don't know that our allies there are doing much else than hoping Trump ends this as quickly as possible so that they can try to put the pieces back together.
20:18 Speaker 04 It may be that it's going to end up being a sort of broader Sunni Shia dialogue in the region that might get the street reopened. It's not likely going to be Steve Witkoff that delivers this delivers this deal. And again, this is also a function of our broader alliance structure being shattered. The success of the JCPOA, of real diplomacy with Iran, was built on the United States and Europe working together. The fact that we can't do any of this with Europe, it greatly deleverages our ability to end this this this conflict in a meaningful way because Europe is, you know, basically running their own play in the region right now.
21:00 Jessica Tarlov? Okay, let's take a quick break. Stay with us.
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24:42 Jessica Tarlov? Welcome back. I just want to touch on a key element in this war that hasn't been mentioned yet, and that's the role of Israel in this. So with the Italian Prime Minister's announcement, we're up to 26 of 27 EU member states that now support at least partially suspending their trade agreement with Israel. We have Bibi Netanyahu giving press conferences where he says, "JD Vance checked in with me right after the negotiations. I talk to them every day," and really inextricably linking Israel and the US in this fight, which I think makes sense since it was a joint venture there. How are you seeing Israel's role in this?
25:20 Jessica Tarlov? And what do you think that we should be doing about a very clear fissure in American attitudes towards Israel on both the right and the left?
25:33 Speaker 04 I worry about the lack of coordination in US and Israeli operations in Iran. I do not actually think we share a goal set. It's been very confusing to me as to whether regime change is an American goal. Sometimes the administration says it is, sometimes they don't. That is clearly a goal of Israel. They have been targeting political leadership inside Iran in a way the United States has not. I don't think the United States wants Iran to be a failed state in the long run. I do think that Israel wants Iran to be a failed state in the long run. So there are divergent goals between the United States and Israel.
26:17 Speaker 04 What is more concerning to me right now is the potential for a massive new conflict between Israel and Lebanon. Obviously, you've seen this bombardment of Beirut and other cities inside Lebanon. We might be days away from a new massive Israeli ground operation in Lebanon. Lebanon is a very flawed country, but a multi-ethnic, multicultural democracy that was frankly, for the first time in a long time, on its way towards a better day because they had a functional government. And so the idea that we would end up after the conflict with Iran with another long-term
26:58 Speaker 04 conflict between the United States and Lebanon, where tens of thousands of Lebanese will be killed, millions will be displaced, just a disaster for the region. My sense is that the Trump administration has been trying to hold Netanyahu back, but they never seem interested in doing that for more than a handful of days. You know, right now, that's, I think, what we should be worrying most about is another massive US-Lebanese war that might end up with the eradication of democracy in Lebanon.
27:30 Jessica Tarlov? Do you think that the pursuit of destroying Hezbollah, which is what Israel's goal is in Lebanon, they don't want to destroy the Lebanese government, and they are killing a lot of civilians in the meantime, which is completely unacceptable. But the target is a known terror group, right? So is that something that you think is not worth? The effort or that Israel should be hanging back from that in general?
27:56 Speaker 04 Well, there was a path, a very viable, a difficult path, but a viable path to get the current Lebanese government into the business of directly confronting Hezbollah. Hezbollah obviously was weak and there were discussions underway to finally turn the Lebanese Armed Forces, the LAF, against Hezbollah, especially in the South, where Hezbollah poses the most direct threat to Israel. There was going to have to be a pretty major investment in the LAF from the US and from the Europeans. But we finally had a halfway competent government in Lebanon and instead of spending one day
28:38 Speaker 04 trying to pursue a route in which the Lebanese themselves would eradicate Hezbollah's threat to Israel. Instead, we decided to essentially greenlit a new Israeli military operation that has shown in the past no meaningful ability to eradicate Hezbollah's military capacities in the, in the long run.
29:01 Jessica Tarlov? So you think there was a diplomatic solution, both in Iran and for Lebanon, working with the current Lebanese government?
29:07 Speaker 04 Well, I mean, it wasn't a pure diplomatic solution because it was going to involve the Lebanese Armed Forces in some kind of conflict with Hezbollah.
29:14 Jessica Tarlov? And no Israeli forces, though.
29:15 Speaker 04 And, but no Israeli forces. And, and that, that would have been a very difficult proposition, but in the long run, the only way to eradicate Hezbollah's influence inside Lebanon, and remember, it's not, this is not just a sort of fringe military operation. Hezbollah in Lebanon is integrated into the government. But the Lebanese people were ready to support a strategy that would reduce Hezbollah's political and military influence in the country. We were poised to implement a strategy of that sort. But the Trump administration, you know, again, had no interest in the hard work of doing that. And instead, just...
29:56 Speaker 04 Told the Israelis to do a military operation that again has no evidence, there's no evidence in the past that those kind of incursions into Lebanon, of which Israel has conducted many, have a long-term impact on Hezbollah's power.
30:11 Scott Galloway? Appreciate how generous to be with your time, Senator. The race to replace Governor Newsom recently Congressman Eric Swalwell suspended his campaign, resigning from Congress following sexual assault allegations. And we've seen multiple cases like this across Congress, including the resignation of Tony Gonzalez. And supposedly a lot of this, these were quote unquote, "open secrets." Do you see this as a cultural problem in Congress? And if so, what can be done about it?
30:38 Speaker 04 Yeah, I mean, obviously, this is a systemic problem. And we've seen, you know, multiple instances in the House of Representatives. I mean, I think you have to have a much more vigorous oversight and ethics capacity in the House of Representatives. That seems to be a process that has ultimately broken down. And you have to have real protection for victims to make sure that they come forward as early as possible. And clearly, there's not a belief right now that victims are going to be protected if they, if they step forward. And that's something that I think both the legal system and the internal ethics system can work to address.
31:20 Scott Galloway? I want you to imagine that you decide to jump into a crowded field for the Democratic nomination for president. What would be the one or two policies that would be the touchstones of a candidate Murphy's campaign that would be, that would be different from a crowded field?
31:35 Speaker 04 Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll-
31:37 Scott Galloway? I knew you were gonna do that, Senator.
31:39 Speaker 04 I will tell you, my belief, and I think this squares with how you think of the world, is that Trump is not the cause of our American spiritual crisis. He is a symptom of it. What is plaguing America today is a lack of meaning and purpose and connectivity in people's lives. And we need to have an agenda that I think would be surprisingly bipartisan and in some ways apolitical. To give people greater access to meaning, purpose, identity and connection in their lives. Those are agendas about rebuilding healthy, unique, small cities and small towns. That's an agenda about controlling the poisonous technology that robs you of real connection.
32:23 Speaker 04 That's about industrial policy so that there's real dignity in work, a common good capitalism, where you can make a profit in this country, but not at the expense of healthy workers. I just think that we spend all this time in this country fighting over important issues like abortion and immigration and climate and guns, right? Things that I deeply care about. And it masks this underlying realignment in this country that is happening around a different kind of less exploitative capitalism and investments in local communities, a regulation of technologies, a belief that institutions from unions to churches need to be healthy again. I think that there's a real ability to scramble
33:08 Speaker 04 the traditional existing fault lines in American politics if you, you know, run a national campaign based around meaning, connection, friendship, companionship, leisure time. I think that'd be a fascinating campaign for somebody to run.
33:24 Jessica Tarlov? For somebody to run.
33:25 Scott Galloway? There you go. Common good capitalism. That sounds like a pretty good.
33:28 Jessica Tarlov? I hadn't heard that one before.
33:29 Scott Galloway? It sounds like a pretty good bumper sticker. Christopher Scott.
33:33 Jessica Tarlov? You know how I like a bumper sticker.
33:34 Scott Galloway? Christopher Scott Murphy is an American lawyer, author and politician, serving since 2013 as the junior United States Senator from Connecticut. Senator Murphy is a member of the Democratic Party. He served from 2007 to 2013 in the United States House of Representatives, representing Connecticut's 5th Congressional District. He joins us from our nation's great capital. Senator, we always very much enjoy your level-headedness, pragmatic, yet compelling narrative. Very much appreciate your service.
34:03 Jessica Tarlov? And you didn't back down to
34:04 Scott Galloway? There you go. Up front there. That's not fair.
34:07 Jessica Tarlov? 80 times.
34:08 Scott Galloway? Yeah.
34:08 Jessica Tarlov? Are you sure? Are you sure?
34:09 Speaker 04 Are you sure? Are you sure?
34:11 Scott Galloway? He's face down, much scarier people today.
34:13 Speaker 04 I know. You know, I listen, I mean, restraint is a policy.
34:17 Scott Galloway? Oh, yeah.
34:17 Speaker 04 And you can't be ashamed of that.
34:19 Jessica Tarlov? Before we go, a reminder that not only is Raging Moderates five days a week, we're also available on Substack. I've been getting to know Substack better and I guess people were right. It's like a very cool place to hang out. Um, subscribers get ad free episodes, live streams and a place to connect with us. Like I said, I'm hanging there. That's ragingmoderates.prophgmedia.com. Um, and we also have a new newsletter. The second one came out this week. We're calling it the Monday Rage. You will get access to that if you are part of our Substack community. And also we've been nominated for that Webby Award that we have been talking about. Best News in Politics Podcast. The voting closes on Thursday. The link is in the bio, comments. It's all over the place. I know it's a little wonky, but please follow through. Um, we really appreciate it. And that's all for this episode.
35:04 Jessica Tarlov? Thanks so much for joining us today.
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