I think anytime you need more leads, it's probably that you're having more class-based, bigger classes.

Exactly.

And so the studios with less than 10 or 10 to 25 are probably more of the performer.

So number of leads per month is the first metric to track.

I'm going to run through these quickly and then we're going to come back.

Okay, so...

The first KPI is number of leads per month.

So there

How is John Ratcliffe doing at CIA? Do you have any feel for that? Do they like him out there? Has he manipulated the responsibilities office to get into the election denial aisle? Uh, what do you think? Do you have an overall assessment or, of how he's doing?

I mean, we saw at the beginning, right, when there were reductions in force and the Doge people were going on.

We saw, you know, the, the elimination of the officers who were working on diversity, uh, issues at CIA, and that was widely seen as very unfair.

These were people who were, you know, experts at spying and, you know, tradecraft.

Uh, they were not diversity experts, but this had been a priority both at ODNI and CIA under the Biden administration.

And so very good officers got moved temporarily into these jobs.

And so there was a lot of, um, feeling of betrayal when those people were pushed out unfairly.

So do you get a sense that CIA level of, the CIA's level of help to the Ukrainians is as, as good as ever?

[laughs]

Right.

"No, w- we're different.

You know, we're a fusion Asian-Cuban-Latino restaurant.

We're not like a steakhouse." Do you serve food? Do your clients come here to eat? Do you have to hire from the same pool of people? You subject to the same laws, the same overtime laws.

It's, you know, so everyone thinks that they're special.

And, and I don't mean that they're not, but they're not distinct.

But it's, it's still showing up today in who you are and how you lead, uh, but in what ways? Like, what are you sort of carrying forward with, with the, the skills that you-

Is this a prelude to what we saw in Venezuela, where Nicolás Maduro was indicted by the US government and then was extracted by the US military? Is that what this is about?

It's very important to note that our reporting shows that President Trump wants the option.

He wants the option to do a military extraction to get Raúl Castro, to put pressure on the Cuban government.

You saw Todd Blanche raise that.

He talked about how would they get Castro, right? And he talked about it being a Pentagon issue.

That said, it's also important to note that there aren't a lot of special operations forces in the region.

There aren't special operations forces that we know of that have been training for this kind of operation.

So why would the administration take this on right now, given everything you're saying, given that the administration is already in the middle of a war in the Middle East, that people are already skeptical of what the administration is doing abroad? Why do this now?

Is this a prelude to what we saw in Venezuela, where Nicolás Maduro was indicted by the US government and then was extracted by the US military? Is that what this is about?

It's very important to note that our reporting shows that President Trump wants the option.

He wants the option to do a military extraction to get Raúl Castro, to put pressure on the Cuban government.

You saw Todd Blanche raise that.

He talked about how would they get Castro, right? And he talked about it being a Pentagon issue.

That said, it's also important to note that there aren't a lot of special operations forces in the region.

There aren't special operations forces that we know of that have been training for this kind of operation.

So why would the administration take this on right now, given everything you're saying, given that the administration is already in the middle of a war in the Middle East, that people are already skeptical of what the administration is doing abroad? Why do this now?

Anyway, we

decided to...

Well, my parents decided that we'd go to France.

This would have been about 1958 or 9, and we did a little tour of Brittany and Normandy.

But almost my favourite moment was we went from New Haven to Dieppe.

We drove down to New Haven, we drove to the docks, we drove on to the embarkation area... and we stopped the car, and then all of a sudden a crane arrived, and it descended on the car, and they put various bits of wood around it, and then it was just swung up into the air and then dropped into the hold of the boat.

It was extraordinary.

What's the significance of the setting and the uniform?

So Julian, take us through what you and your colleague are reporting.

Well, this is an intelligence report from last year, right, as the Trump administration was negotiating with Iran, preparing to strike Iran.

Um, and the intelligence report was collected actually by, uh, another, a partner nation.

We don't know yet what nation did it, but they handed it over to the NSA.

They, they shared the intelligence.

And these two people were talking about Jared Kushner.

Now, the original report redacted his name, or masked his name, as they, as the intelligence people say, but people who read it could kinda tell who it was about.

I mean, the, isn't there a process for legally, uh, what you're supposed to do with a whistleblower report?

As it

happened, he did die in the middle or at the start of a book, but his widow didn't get it finished.

I think she probably burnt it.

And I thought, well, yeah, that's one way of ending.

Or I could write a book, which was my last book, and not publish it, but have it in place so that when I write two or three more books and then I'm chopped off in chapter three of one, that doesn't matter because I've got my last book there in place.

And so I started writing it, and as I wrote it, I realized that maybe it would be correct to publish it now.

And I went through, you know, I've always had, as you do, books of ideas and thoughts and, well, this might turn into a novel or whatever.

If you don't have an interesting mind, the corollary of this is, don't become a novelist.

And then he realised he was seriously injured.

Can I read something? Yes, please.

Good.

I was looking for a cue, but I didn't get it.

You didn't deserve it.

I feel sure that you all want me to read from my book at this point.

And we are obviously going to talk about memory and its fallibility and its oddities.

Yeah.

... mentally?

No.

No, I mean, uh, quite a lot of people are interested in awful things that happen or unexpected things that happen.

Um, and I think it's a way of confirming that, um, you know, as the, uh, I think the Russians have it, um, life is not a short walk across an open field.

Um, there's always something waiting for you, um, coming out of the hedgerow at you.

Uh, so, um, I have a friend who's a consultant radiologist and who sends me clippings from the British Medical Journal.

Um, and, uh, as, as you say, she knows that my, my, my interest tends towards the ghoulish and the extreme.

Did you give yourself, like, a border? Like, if you reach that border, that you would try to end your life?

Is that fair?

Writing is difficult but I think using the word struggle makes it sound more heroic than it is.

It's extremely enjoyable as well as difficult and frustrating sometimes.

But then that's your job.

You've chosen it.

So just get on with it, is what I think.

It's true.

And you speak about how the writing itself is what helps keep you calm and sort of composed.

I should interrupt here and say, you got sick just as the COVID lockdown was starting.

Yes, that's correct.

This is the start of the ending.

"I live in the present, but my future is to exist only in the past.

The writer, quarantined in his own home, suddenly victim of blood cancer, while all around, a plague is spreading exponentially.

It sounds like a bad or at least derivative novel, and yet there are promising themes.

Thus, he is meticulous about self-isolation because he doesn't want to die of coronavirus.

Did you give yourself, like, a border? Like, if you reach that border, that you would try to end your life?

Julian, l- level set us on the reporting here, what the Ratcliffe report, that they're calling a note, alleges, and how that is contradicted or how that stands up against other probes into the same men and the same actions and the same chapters led by close Trump, I don't know if Durham's the Tr- the MAGA hero, ah, the Durham probe, and the Marco Rubio-led Senate Intelligence Committee probe.

I think it's really important to emphasize something you said at the top of the hour, which was, this note, this review by the CIA does not question the key judgments of the 2016 intelligence assessment that Vladimir Putin tried to interfere in the US election on behalf of Donald Trump and against Hillary Clinton.

And it looks at the tradecraft, how that was done, and there are complaints in it, there are complaints that the, the analysts looking back feel that the project was too rushed.

Um, but I think Director Brennan offered some important context there.

The president of the United States at the time, Barack Obama ordered it done before he left office, and so what is the CIA to do? Are they supposed to embark on a, a, a long-term, uh, investigation if the president wants it done in a matter of weeks? Uh, but the review, the note, takes issue with that timeline.

It also takes issue with the inclusion of the Steele dossier in that report.

Now, it was only included in the annex.

mentioned.So Julian, d- what do you understand to be under investigation? That discrepancy you just described to us...

But tell me about your perception of boutique with those kind of start out kind of brands that started defining the segment.

So if you ask a martial artist, they will say that they were the true originators with martial arts studios and judo and karate.

I don't know when the first karate studio was, but probably far earlier than the first Pilates studio.

We know Joseph Pilates and his disciples started opening Pilates studios in New York City, and forgive me, the yoga world would probably say that they were first.

And then martial arts, both of those being deeply intertwined into ancient cultures.

But the commercial fitness industry started approximately in 1950, as you know.

And so to say that the first boutique, the first modern, commercially successful boutique being Barry's started in 1999.

What do you see is going on there in your mind?

What are the facts, as we understand them today about the state of Iran's nuclear program?

I think you framed this at the top really well, right? Because for days we've been talking about the damage to these sites, right? How badly damaged is Fordow, Astafan, Natanz.But that's, as Courtney was saying, only half the program, uh, problem, right? There's the damage on the sites and then there's the damage to the nuclear program.

And then there's a third question about, like, even if the nuclear program itself is damaged, even if they can't make fuel in the future, how much of their stockpile is left over and could they use that to race to a bomb? Even if their p- overall program is damaged, is their ability to make a bomb only delayed by a few months? And so, we've kinda been debating the, the wrong thing.

You know, the, the, Jennifer Griffin's question, what happened to the stockpile, is the right question to be asking.

You know, where is it? Do we know? How much was destroyed? How much remains? Um, we don't know the answer to those questions.

There are European intelligence officials, there is the IAEA suggesting that a lot of the stockpile was saved by Iran.

We've known for a long time that was the Iranian plan.

Uh, Julian, let me, let me start back with you because we just learned from Lindsey, Senator Lindsey Graham this, this is his readout after the briefing, quote, "The program was obliterated in those three sites, but they still have, I don't know where the 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium exists, but it wasn't part of the target set." So, US Senator Lindsey Graham, as close of an ally as Donald Trump, um, has, is saying that the 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium wasn't targeted? This feels new.

Julian, take us through what you're reporting.

Well, you gave a pretty good summary here.

What we reported is, um, there was a White House request back in February for, uh, an e- look at the intelligence.

Joe Kent assigned the National Intelligence Council to make a, uh, to do a dive into the connections between the gang and the Maduro government.

Um, The New York Times reported, uh, later in March that that assessment did not find what the, what the Trump administration had asserted in its court filings.

There was no connection, the bulk of the intel agencies found, between the gang and the Maduro government.

There was a dissent by the FBI, but even that was not as clear, not as forceful as the administration is saying it is now.

(coughs)

Um, but it's a fake story anyway." What?

Yeah.

Like, I...

You know, he ended on a fake story, but it wasn't a fake story.

Look, look, we are...

This reporting was really solid.

Um, and you know, we knew that once this reporting was out there, that when Trump saw it, he would likely, uh...

Julian, what, (clears throat) what, what was the purpose of briefing Elon Musk on war plans, uh, for China?