Hey, so we have some exciting news. The Ambys are basically the Oscars of audio. They're

given out by the podcast Academy. They pick nominees and there's a whole ceremony, which just

happened right after the blizzards here in New York at the end of February. And one of our

stories won the Ambie for Best Reporting. This is the two-part series that our executive producer

Robin Simeon reported last January about the

American journalist Jeremy LaFredo, who was arrested in Israel while reporting there in 2024.

He was the first American journalist to be arrested by Israel, and that was initially what we

were interested in about this story, but honestly, it went a place we did not expect.

Robin and our producer, Zach St. Louis, who produced the story and editor Joel Lovell really followed just the facts as we found them to paint a picture of a much more complicated and honestly challenging situation to confront than I certainly expected when we started that story.

I'm really proud of it. It took a lot of work. Even in recent weeks, I've heard people talk about how these stories really stuck with them.

So we figured we'd play them again. We're going to run the two now award-winning episodes back-to-back this week and next.

Today we have part one of that story. Again, we first aired it in

January of last year. Here is Robin. Hi, I'm Robin Simeon, the executive producer of Question

Everything. And usually I'm behind the scenes on these episodes, but today, Brian and I have switched

hats.

I put down my editing notebook and dusted off my recording gear so that I can tell you this story that came to me from a very close friend.

Just tell me your name.

My name is Rob Does.

What do my kids call you?

Uncle Rob.

No.

Oh, evil gay Uncle Rob? Yes.

...