Ben Rhodes

Andrew is the only reason we sound coherent.

He has endured an infinite number of coughs, burps, cleared throats, garbled words, and then cut them so that you do not have to.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then he turns the show around fast and flawlessly every time.

So we just want to say a huge thank you to Andrew for everything he's done for us and for the show.

And hopefully I didn't stumble on this section for once so that he does not have to clean up his own.

Thank you.

Amen.

All right, we're going to take a quick break, but we've got some news for Friends of the Pod and anyone else who wants even more Pod Save America.

We just launched a new weekly newsletter, Pod Save America Open Tabs.

It's released every Thursday morning.

What it offers is a behind-the-scenes look at how we put together Pod Save America, what's coming in the next episode, and the stories rattling around in our brains.

before we get into the studio, including the ones that didn't make the cut.

Check out the first issue of Open Tabs at crooked.com slash substack.

Sign up for Friends of the Pod to get access to this newsletter at crooked.com slash friends.

If you're already a subscriber to our substack or our Discord, you'll start getting Open Tabs every week.

My guest today is Jason Rezaian.

He is currently the director of Press Freedom Initiatives at the Washington Post and the host of the podcast 544 Days, which documented his time being held hostage in Iranian prison and all the machinations that it took to get him released.

Jason, for those who don't know his story, we'll get into it in more detail in a second, but he was falsely accused of espionage in 2014 while serving as the Post's Tehran bureau chief.