Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 6/20/24: Nvidea Surge Exposes DotCom Bubble, Putin North Korea Screw You To Biden, Zyn Online Sales Shutdown

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss Nvidea surge exposes possible dotcom bust, Putin North Korea screw you to Biden, Zyn online sales shutdown.    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is

still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. High Key. Looking for your next obsession? Listen to High

Key, a new weekly podcast hosted by Ben O'Keefe, Ryan Mitchell, and Evie Audley. We got a lot of things to get into. We're going to gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about. I am high key going to lose my mind over all things Cowboy Carter. I know. Girl, the way she about to yank my bank account. Correct. And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter.

Oh, I know. Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Stay informed, empowered, and ahead of the curve with the BIN News This Hour podcast. Updated hourly to bring you the latest stories shaping the Black community. From breaking headlines to cultural milestones, the Black Information Network delivers the facts, the voices, and the perspectives that matter 24-7. Because our stories deserve to be heard. Listen to the BIN News This Hour podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, ready or not, 2024 is here.

And we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. There's been a lot of concern in the markets right now around NVIDIA after this major event happened. Let's put this up there on the screen from the Wall Street Journal. It recently ascended to become the world's most valuable company, going over Microsoft in terms of its market capitalization, reminding a lot of people of what happened not that long ago during the dot-com bust. As they reference, Cisco Systems in March of 2000 was the last time a major big

provider of computing infrastructure surpassed Microsoft, and in retrospect, actually was a major indicator of some of the falling values to come. Now, I want to say, to be fair, the CEO of Cisco at that time, while he said that there are some parallels, said, quote, that the dynamics of AI are different than the previous ones, such as internet and cloud computing. And he has said that he himself is majorly invested in AI and in cybersecurity. So he doesn't think it's necessarily a one-to-one situation. But part of the reason why it's kind of scary is that the exponential jumps in NVIDIA are powering huge portions of everybody's retirement that they may not even really be aware of. And it's not just them. It's that the market forces that are driving NVIDIA above Microsoft are the

same ones that are powering, let's say, Google or Meta or any of these other technology companies who are betting the farm on AI. They're investing massive hundreds of billions of dollars into this. And so if there's any crack in the system, it's not just going to come from NVIDIA. It's going to shave huge amounts of value off all of these technology companies. And when you add those up, I mean, seven out of the $8 trillion companies in the world are US-based technology companies. The only other one is Saudi Aramco. So that means that if you saw any drop in NVIDIA, it's not just that NVIDIA is so dramatically represented in the S&P 500. So let's say you're a normal investor, your VOO

is like a meme online, which is like the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF. You're like, I have broad exposure. It's like, well, you know, actually today you don't. Not nearly as much as you think. Let's put this up there on the screen just to give people an example. I mean, you can see there clearly how far NVIDIA is powering the S&P 500 above where things are. And so where we say like, oh, the S&P 500 is up, what, 25% or whatever over the last year or so. Well, when we look at it, though, a huge portion of that is driven by those exponential Nvidia gains. So it's not just that a

single stock is so behind the rally in so many public markets. It's that if there were to ever be a crack in NVIDIA, it would mean that there is a crack in the whole technology ecosystem, which is almost like a quarter of U.S. GDP at this point. And any significant plunge, we're talking about capital problems, liquidity problems, people's retirements get wiped out. I mean, it's a disaster, as we all found out in 2008. So this is something that a lot of people that I know that are skeptical are starting to get worried about what happens here should anything happen with this single company. Yeah, and it seems to me like the question isn't whether AI will ultimately be a transformative technology and whether these chips are going to continue to be central to a lot of new tech development. But, I mean, that's the thing like with the dot com bubble. It's not that the Internet wasn't transformational. It's that you had a lot of,

you know, dumb company ideas, a lot of froth in the early days and a lot of money just being thrown at absolutely anything, whether it had a real market, whether it had a real path to, you know, earning revenue and becoming profitable or real path to, you know, earning revenue and becoming profitable or not. And, you know, I mean, you see this with a lot of new industries when they're first developing. Some things will succeed and many other things will not make it and crash, even though they were in the right place sort of at the right time. There were a lot of early personal computing brands that are no longer around, even as the PC obviously became really transformational technology. So, you know, what do I know? I'm a lay person. I'm just looking

at this from the outside. But having lived through the, you know, 2000 and that crash, it does seem like it could rhyme, like we could be seeing a very similar dynamic where there's so much hype around AI, there's so much money being thrown at it. There's so much projection of what it will mean in the future that obviously NVIDIA's price right now doesn't reflect where they are right now today. It's all based on people's projections of what it could be in the future. So if anything rocks know, if it doesn't come to fruition to be as transformational or if a lot of these companies, startup companies and other larger players that are incorporating this and betting on this for their future success, if it doesn't work out

in the first iteration, there could be massive exposure here. So I definitely think it's an important thing to keep an eye on. I'm worried about it. I mean, for example, you know, the quarterly revenue of Apple, which is, I think, the second most valuable company is like $90 billion. It's like NVIDIA is doing like $26 billion. Well, okay. So, but again, market people, I get it. It's about future value, not current value. But we're talking about Apple, a global brand with its own, you know, proven infrastructure, has a lot more resilience. This is not the similar situation. I mean, I was looking at some of the worries about NVIDIA. The very first thing that the new TSMC CEO, the person who actually makes all the chips

in Taiwan, he's like, yeah, I think Jensen and I are going to need to talk about prices for his chips. Well, this single company is making all the chips. You basically have the world's most valuable company. You're their sole supplier. What do you think you're going to do? It doesn't take an economics genius to figure it out. At the same time, I mean, we are a single one. Imagine this. China doesn't even invade Taiwan. They do what North Korea does, and they just launch a missile over Taiwan that crashes over. You are going to see half the S&P 500 go to zero. I mean, the existential systemic risk that you see there is outrageous. I mean, and the back of the US economy is built on this. So we are really subject to a massive shock. And geopolitics, what, you think Ukraine was important? Yeah, I get it. It spiked the price of gas and screwed up some wheat markets.

That is nothing compared to the risk that is sitting on the Taiwan Island. And when we consider the geopolitical risk, but really a lot of the exposure that people sitting on the Taiwan Island. And when we consider the geopolitical risk, but really a lot of the exposure that people have here, people are very worried about froth. They're worried about mispriced. And it's like you just said, no one is saying this company is not extraordinarily valuable and it is not a trendsetter, but it is also one where it could be just overpriced from where it was, just like amazon.com was in the middle of the dot-com bubble. And ask any of your parents who lived through the dot-com crash. It took a while for people to come out of that. There were a lot of lessons learned. We're already

seeing like some signs of a lot of these AI startups just going bust. There's going to be a lot of pets.com. Yeah. And we're already watching it. There was this famous Marquise Brownlee like helped kill this company. It was called called humane ai it was like a pin that you wear that you try and speak to and it was a terrible idea honestly but i mean they raised like a quarter billion dollars he actually uses it doesn't end up doing well at all now i think they're you know fire sale or whatever on the company there's a lot of these wearable ai texts just from an observational i know a lot of these people who work in tech, two years ago, they were all web three, you know, crypto guys. Now they're AI guys. They're like using AI to power X, Y, and Z. And the other funny thing is

you watch how ChatGPT, for example, in its translation, whenever it rolled out real-time translation, that wiped out like seven different companies who had raised hundreds of millions of dollars being like, we're going to use AI to real-time translate. And ChatGPT is like, yeah, but we could just do that ourselves. We're doing that now. Yeah, exactly. And we're watching two here, like Microsoft, a huge portion of their rally is through their enterprise collaboration with OpenAI, with ChatGPT.

So you can just see how like there's a lot of, like there's only a couple dominoes need to fall here. And a lot of stuff is going to get wiped off. Now, Microsoft is not going to go bankrupt. I'm not saying that. But you know, you shaved what 10% or whatever off the value. That's a $2 trillion company. Yeah. Well, I mean, you've got definitely the pets.com phenomenon. We already see that. I mean, the numbers in that first article we put up, they say that been satiable flow of money into AI has raised eyebrows among investors. Uncertain the boom can continue without pause. Some $50 billion has been invested in NVIDIA's chip since the boom began, according to a Sequoia Capital estimate in March. But generative AI startups have only brought in $3 billion in sales. So 50 billion invested, but only 3 billion in sales returned. No one should

have any confidence also that the VCs that are primarily responsible for distributing a lot of this money have any more sophisticated understanding of what's going to work than basically like you or I do. We've seen the way that they have been fleeced. If you come in with the right pitch and the right set of investors and the right pitch and the right set of investors and the right board and people who seem like they're prestigious and know what they're doing, they can easily be fleeced on this stuff too. So that's no check against this sort of froth. And then the other thing I would say is like, even the established players, it's not like some of the products they've put out have really gone over that well. What is it? The Google AI-generated results have been dramatically wrong and embarrassing.

What was the image thing that we covered? They're like, show me a Nazi soldier. It's a black guy. What? They went too far in the direction of being woke, and they just made it wrong. Just totally historically inaccurate in their attempt not to have white people on the screen at any particular time. So it's not like even the established players have really lived up to the hype at this point. So a lot of question marks there.

Yeah, I'm very worried because it, you know, even a 25% drop, 10% drop, which is you should always, if you're buying and playing around in single stocks, you need to be prepared for that. And if that happens, huge portion of the S&P 500 goes down. Now we're asking all of these questions. I mean, if you go back and you study the dot-com era, it took, I think, like seven years, really, to yield some of the investment results that eventually went down into the fact that dot-com enabled people to lay broadband and fiber optics, some of that stuff, and eventually yielded results in 2008 and forward. But I mean, it took a long time for some of that stuff to materialize. And I always think about the 65-year-old of today, because it's easy to think

about, you know, oh, well, in the long run, everything will be okay. But if you have to wait seven years and you're 65, that's a long time for you to wait for your retirement savings to come back. At the same time, we do have a counter indicator that NVIDIA is not going anywhere and it's doing just fine. Let's put this up there on the screen. Nancy Pelosi, presumably her husband, maybe her, has now made over $5 million off of some NVIDIA options, up 230% in 210 days. Still not sold her call options. She has made over 20 times her salary portfolio at an all time high of 100%, according to our friend, unusual whales. So when she actually sells,

then perhaps we may be in a problem. But here's the other problem. You won't find out in terms of reporting until like 30 days or whatever after we sell. So we don't have a real time indicator of whether she's getting out or not. But I don't know. She could be selling today. We don't know. Exactly. Me personally, I'm just saying I'm worried about it

because of, first of all, a lot of friends who work in technology. But second, and really the most importantly, is just anybody out there who's got retirement savings and more, you have a lot more exposure to this stuff than you may even realize. And something could just happen and boom,

you know, we're in a totally different economy. Yeah. And that has ripple effects for everyone, whether you're in the stock market or not. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission.

This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st

and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders.

I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try.

She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila. And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast,

brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. With guests like Corinne Steffens. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men. And then me too happened.

And then everybody else wanted to get pissed off because the white said it was okay. Problem. My oldest daughter, her first day in ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was doing. She was like, oh dad, all they was doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of high school.

And Slumflower. What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like I feel the moisture between my legs when a man sends me money like i feel the moisture between my legs when a man sends me money i'm like oh my god it's go time you actually sent it listen to the good mom's bad choices podcast every wednesday on the black effect podcast network the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you go to find your podcast i think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop it It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices,

and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me, and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is. And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just

being able to make people feel good. Like that's what's really important. And that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better so the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that i'm really happy or my family in general let's talk about the music that moves us to hear this and more on how music and culture collide listen to we need to talk from the black effect podcast network on the iheart radio Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is your girl T.S. Madison, and I'm coming to you loud, live, and in color from the Outlaws podcast. Let me tell you something. I broke the internet with a 22-inch weave.

22 inches. My superpower? I've got the voice. My kryptonite? It don't exist. Get a job. My podcast? The one they never saw coming.

Each week, I sit down with the culture creators and scroll stoppers. Tina knows. Lil Nas X. Will we ever see a dating show for the love of Lil Nas X? This is gonna show all my exes. X marks the spot. No, here it is. My next ex.

That's actually cute, though. Laverne Cox. I have a core group of girlfriends that, like, they taught me how to love. My next ex. That's actually cute, though. Laverne Cox. I have a core group of girlfriends that, like, they taught me how to love. And Chapel Rome. I was dropped in 2020, working the drive-thru, and here we are now. We turn side-eye into sermons, pain into punchline, and grief, we turn those into galaxies. Listen, make sure you tell Beyonce, I'm going right on the phone right now and call her. Listen to Outlaws with T.S. Madison on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, honey.

All right, let's go to Russia and North Korea. This is something, again, been tracking very closely and one in which the level of lying from the mainstream media is just out-chocking to us. You know, really? Let's put this up there on the screen. So President Putin recently visited North Korea. It was only the second visit of his entire presidency. And in this visit, he's, you know, heralded as a god. They roll out all the singing children for him and the stadiums and all of the old school propaganda that we know and love. But perhaps most importantly was this, is that Russia and North Korea have now signed a partnership deal that will be the strongest since the Cold War. The details of the deal are not 100% clear,

but they, quote, pledge mutual aid if either country faces aggression. And most importantly, it locks down a huge supply of ammunition from North Korea. North Korea has one of the largest stockpiles of the Soviet-style ammunition and production facilities of any country in the world. North Korea now is supplying a lot of these weapons and has a huge stockpile, not just of Soviet-style weapons, chemical weapons, all kinds of really nasty stuff, the most basics of artillery and others, to Russia for the Russian war machine in Ukraine. The important thing behind this is that you would presume that this was inevitable. It was not inevitable. It is directly a product of Joe Biden abandoning the Trump policy of engagement with Pyongyang. Donald Trump shocked

the world. And I'll never forget it. It's still one of the best things he ever did. When he just went to Singapore and sat across from Kim, shook his hand. You know what happened? We stopped seeing missile tests. We stopped seeing a lot of the aggression. Now, at first, people were very skeptical, the South Koreans and others, but the tensions were actually beginning to come down. Biden comes back into office, immediately reverts back to the Obama policy of non-engagement, where we tell the North Koreans, nothing, we will not give you anything as long as you have nuclear weapons. Now, do you know anybody on earth, a hermit kingdom dictator with nukes who's just going to give them up, why would you? And apparently from the people I've spoken to who sat across from the North Koreans,

what do they always talk about? Gaddafi. They're like, listen, Gaddafi gave up his stuff. You guys invaded Iraq. And then, you know, he was sodomized on live television after you guys bombed his country and you took him out. If you think that we're going to take your word for it, we do not believe you. These nukes are the only things that keep us in power. So we are basically locked in an existential battle with the North Koreans where they want to survive. That's all they want. They want the corrupt Kim regime to survive. We, for some stupid reason, just cling to this denuclearization policy. And in exchange, they say, fine, you know, we need money. So what are we going to do? We're going to the Russians. The Russians are going to pay us. And so now we

have this terrible new like actual alliance, which let's say you care about Ukraine. Then the policy of isolation towards North Korea has been a disaster. You know, same with respect to China. The Chinese apparently are, they're not like selling the Russians weapons directly, but they're facilitating the transactions. Obviously, the Kim regime is a client state of the Chinese, and they're actively encouraging this. And now what happens? The European Union and the United States is trying to slap China with sanctions over our policy vis-a-vis Ukraine. It's like the whole world is all revolving around Ukraine if it's the most important thing, but it's evolving a new axis against us, which make fun of North Korea all you want. Ask the people in Seoul who actually have to grapple

with the threat. It's terrifying. They will openly say, they're like, look, the North Koreans can destroy our most valuable city in 45 minutes. They could shell us. They've got the world's most powerful chemical weapons. They have all these stockpiles of ammunition. They're one of the world's largest standing armies. You can laugh at them all you want, but don't underestimate both their military capability in Korea, but they can launch a missile and wipe Los Angeles off the map if they want to. So this is something that we had directly facilitated, both in our policy on Ukraine and in our policy on North Korea. And it's a very good example of what you talked about, Crystal, the Biden brain of reversion back to the 1990s where we think that we have chips, which are long gone off of the table.

That's exactly right, where he still thinks he's living in a world where we are the sole superpower. We can do whatever the hell we want and no one can do a goddamn thing about it. And because of that, I mean, the direct thing that Putin points to in going forward with this pact, and there had already been a lot of cooperation, weapon sales, et cetera, between North Korea and Russia in the context of the Ukrainian war. The specific thing he pointed to was the fact that we said, hey, Ukraine, go ahead and use our weapons to hit targets within Russia. So that very immediate discreet decision. But above and beyond that, I mean, think of, too, how we threw everything in our sanctions playbook against Russia. And that's the other thing that Russia and North Korea talked about here is part of the cooperation is an attempt to undercut and further short circuit our sanctions regime.

I mean, Russia has already demonstrated that those sanctions, we just don't have the bite. We just don't have the power and the might to extract that economic cost and wage that economic war that we once did as well. So, you know, we have, we're already coming into a world of multipolarity by our actions in Ukraine. I think also with regard to Israel and the way, you know, most of the world has been oppositional to that. Even going back to our actions with regard to the Iraq war, we have helped to accelerate a shift away from us. We have helped to consolidate a block that is directly opposed and adversarial to us. And none of this was necessary. It didn't

have to happen and was not inevitable that we end up in this direction. This is all directly because of decisions that were made in this administration and others besides, by the way, you know, going back a lot of years and the way that we've acted with complete arrogance and disregard for any other actors and any other perspectives. And in this very warlike manner as well around the world. Yeah, absolutely. Let's put the next part up because this is a perfect example. Putin, not that long ago, was a direct participant in U.S. efforts to, quote-unquote, denuclearize, or at least halt nuclear weapons production in North Korea.

And, to be clear, also in Iran, which is currently seeing signs of nuclear enrichment. Guess what Putin is now doing? Putin says, I don't care about literally any of that. In fact, I'll probably help you if you want to. As you see in front of you, Putin once tried to curb North Korea's nuclear program. That is now over with the signing of this mutual assistance pact. He's similarly helping Iranians build production facilities of their drones on Russian soil, which are then being used inside of Ukraine. It's a great deal for Iran. They get money. They get to see how their weapons perform

against sophisticated Western technology. Win-win. Same here for the North Koreans. They're like, it's just a battleground, testing ground for them. They're like, sure, take as much ammunition as you want. They've got literal slave labor that can crank it out. All of this could have been prevented, but we are just slowly pushing these countries together and we are underestimating the sheer power that they now represent. We are not living in 1991 anymore, where we can just do whatever we want with relatively no consequences. These are powerful nations. And, you know, watching this happen should be humbling in Ukraine. But instead, things are actually flipping the opposite. Every single day, things actually get worse in terms of

dragging us more and more into this war. For example, let's put this up there. What do we see from CNN? The US and the UK and NATO allies are actively debating terms for Ukraine ahead of the summit. US wants to communicate to say that Ukraine has a bridge to NATO membership. The UK and others want to say that Ukraine's path is irreversible. So the divide today is the language over Ukraine eventually getting into NATO. Not anybody saying, yeah, maybe you're never going to get into NATO, literally ever. Yeah, sure, maybe we'll help you out if we want to, if you actually conduct yourself in a good manner. But this is the contours of the debate. And then just this morning,

I wake up to this insane news that the US is currently halting all open orders of Patriot air defense systems and interceptors for all allies deliveries to countries that are actually important to us until, quote, Ukraine has enough to defend itself from Russia's air attacks, which basically means the entire U.S. industrial, like military complex, is working on behalf of freaking Ukraine right now, abandoning Taiwan or any of these other countries genuinely important to the U.S. economy. This is like we are just watching, like the whole U.S. policy is revolving here around Ukraine for no discernible reason, Crystal. And watching it happen is

honestly terrifying, especially in the North Korean context. I mean, if they develop, what, 20, 50-some nuclear weapons, that's going to put them on the par with some of the other great nuclear powers like Pakistan and India. And they're directly an ally with China and with Russia, with Iran, presumably, when just five, 10 years ago, we easily had them on our side under the Trump administration. And it was thrown away for no reason. I mean, we've created over the course of a number of years, a landscape in which the incentives for smaller countries are all in the direction of obtaining nuclear weapons. Because, I mean, Ukraine probably wishes they still held on to their nuclear weapons as well.

That is the direction that the motivation is all in, and Libya being the primary example of why that is ultimately the case. But, I mean, with regards to Ukraine, again, the original policy, which there was a big difference between how Barack Obama viewed how a relationship with Ukraine would be. He was actually much more sort of dovish, unwilling to do some of the things that Trump did in terms of weapon shipments and training for Ukraine. But Biden is locked into this ossifiedtext to, you know, re-up the Cold War and use them as our, the Ukrainians as our plaything and engage in this proxy war under the arrogant assumption that we could actually foment some sort of regime change in Russia, that we could topple that regime and make it more compliant so that they just did, you know, whatever we wanted them to do whenever we wanted them to do it. Now that the foolishness of that has been ultimately revealed, there is no other plan. There is no other plan. The plan is just to muddle through,

hope to get through election day, sacrifice a lot more Ukrainians and worsen their position vis-a-vis any potential future settlement. And it's just foolishness after foolishness with no willingness to, you know, change course, no willingness to readjust because Biden rightly perceives that to do so at this point, after you've said, you know, we're not going to give up, allow them to give up an inch of territory would be to admit defeat. And it would be a political problem, especially the way that the media covers these things. Yeah, absolutely. So they're just, you know,

that's how you get locked into these forever wars, that and all the money that there is to be made off of warlike behavior. Yeah, it's not, it's very terrifying. All of this is just slow moving. And it's like, these things just happen and we move past. Oh, Biden gives permission to Ukraine to hit Russian territory.

They're like, but don't hit Moscow, okay? Just not Moscow, but everywhere else is fine. And now we're halting all production, just making sure that it's going to Ukraine. And now, oh, we're actually stealing $50 billion from Russian assets and breaking the integrity of the global financial system just to give money to bankrupt Ukraine, to protect democracy in a country which literally just canceled elections. How does that work exactly? What? Sorry. Oh, also this, we have to protect human rights of Ukrainian civilians. Let's forget about Israel and Gaza. Don't worry about that. Obviously, people in the rest of the world, in the global South, Asia or whatever,

they're like, what are you people doing? You people are idiots. We don't believe a word that you say. And then what was that, China? You want to give me some money? Okay, sure. Let me, let me, I'll take the meeting. At least I'll take the meeting. That is basically the road to where we are right now. And look, you know, maybe it'll happen tomorrow. It could be happening in a decade, but at the very least we are setting things up in a way which is not good for us. Not good. I think there's no doubt about that. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated.

I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder.

I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila. And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here.

If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. With guests like Corinne Steffens. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men. And then me too happened. And then everybody else wanted to get pissed off because the white said it was okay. Problem. My oldest daughter, her first day in ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was doing. She was like, oh dad,

all they was doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of high school. And slumflower. What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like, I feel the moisture between my legs when a man sends me money. I'm like, oh my god, it's go time. You actually sent it?

Listen to the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and

We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me, and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is, and they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like, he's getting older now, too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is.

And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's really the GOAT. He's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. That's what's really important and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the the better so the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that i'm really happy or my family in general let's talk about the music that moves us to hear this and more on how music and culture

collide listen to we need to talk from the black effect podcast network on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast this is your girl girl T.S. Madison, and I'm coming to you loud, live, and in color from the Outlaws podcast. Let me tell you something. I broke the internet with a 22-inch weave. 22 inches. My superpower? I've got the voice.

My kryptonite? It don't exist. Get a job. My podcast? The one they never saw coming. Each week, I sit down with the culture creators and scroll stoppers. Tina knows. Lil Nas X.

Will we ever see a dating show for the love of Lil Nas X? Let's do a show with all my exes. X marks the spot. No, here it is. My next ex. That's actually cute, though. Laverne Cox. I have a core group of girlfriends that, like, they taught me how to love.

And Chapel Rome. I was dropped in 2020 working the drive-thru, and here we are now. We turn side-eye into sermons, pain into punchline, and grief, we turn those into galaxies. Listen, make sure you tell Beyonce, I'm going right on the phone right now, and call her. Listen to Outlaws with T.S. Madison on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, what are you looking at? Well, if you have a bro of some kind in your life, you may have already heard the devastating news that I'm going to share with you.

On June 17th, 2024, the tobacco giant Philip Morris International announced they were pausing all sales of Zin nicotine pouches online after being served a subpoena from the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia. The latest move is a result of outrageous government overreach targeted at the smokeless nicotine industry and fits with a nationwide witch hunt against a drug that stands to benefit society as we become more permissive to the worst

substances and crimes around us. The subpoena by the Office of the Attorney General stems from a 2021 law passed by the local jurisdiction titled, quote, the Flavored Tobacco Product Prohibition Amendment Act of 2021. It's designed to keep tobacco out of the hands of minors under the age of 16. Now the law fits with the overall federal government witch hunt against flavored vapes that's been spurred by the FDA. That is a law we now know to be totally ineffective and in fact counterproductive, resulting in many under 20 year old nicotine users switching to straight up combustible cigarettes and also resulting in no change whatsoever to existing nicotine habits.

So we have a law that was born of a completely false moral panic. It's counterproductive, and it applies only to a single city. And if it was just that, I guess I could live with it. But because of the total insanity of the way that smokeless nicotine is regulated in the United States,

this means Washington, D.C., one of the most poorly run regulated in the United States, this means Washington, D.C., one of the most poorly run cities in the country, can now shut down all online Zin sales for the United States based upon a subpoena, a subpoena of suspicion that proves nothing, that some flavored nicotine product may have been improperly sold in the district and not even a vape. The reason is that Philip Morris is terrified of having the same thing happen to Zinn that happened to Juul. They would rather nerf sales for the entire product online and show regulators that they will have to be in 100% compliance rather than risk some ban

that's down the line. Again, it's not even fair because the last company that preemptively did this was Juul, which was still punished by the FDA under totally false pretenses, only to have to reverse themselves years later, as I recently covered. Furthermore, this Attorney General's office, which is behind this, is at best incompetent and at worst a straight-up crime enabler himself. Under his leadership, Washington, D.C. has defied all expectations of other major metropolitan areas and actually had a higher murder rate in 2023 than the year before, beating out, somehow beating similar cities that are all across the East Coast. Even worse, having a bad murder rate, this Attorney General himself and his predecessor

have contributed to a major scourge which is very unique to the district. As even here, liberals in the Washington Post are now acknowledging a massive spike in violent crime perpetrated on children is being enabled by the Attorney General's decision to dismiss violent and gun-related charges against juveniles. As usual with these pro-crime policies, it's in the language of leniency and race, and as always in reality, it means an epidemic of actual violent juveniles against fellow children has now erupted so badly that city elders are begging the city to actually do something about it. This is directly attributable to this AG, whose office has

dismissed more than a third of juvenile cases, many of whom are involved in carjacking. Who wants to guess what people arrested for carjacking do after charges are dropped against them? You would guess right. It means carjacking is now, in D.C., one of the highest rates in the entire United States. Much of it perpetrated by the very people this guy is working to actively release. Now, not only that, Washington, D.C. is now chock full of marijuana shops, including one less than a block from the very studio I am recording this right now. There has been an explosion of pot shops across the city. There has been zero pressure from the attorney general or the city on allegedly attempting to keep this out of the hands of kids or similar fines that they're leveling at the tobacco industry. So as usual, we have an insane double standard here. What weed smokers complained about in the 2000 about how cigarettes got a pass but they were somehow persecuted, that's gone.

Everything is flipped. People have somehow decided marijuana, itself a dubiously useful drug that has exploded teen psychosis and itself pollutes the literal air around us, is now more permissible than flavored nicotine pouches, which don't even have cancer-causing tobacco in them. It has no link to adverse health effects and is one of the most powerful nootropics known to man. Somebody make it make sense. You can't. In the meantime, this is a national trend. You had Senator Chuck Schumer, a man who wants to legalize weed nationwide, calls in a, quote, pouch packed with problems,

who is now pushing the FDA and FTC to crack down on them. The so-called war on drugs is coming to a close. It is instead now a war on nicotine. You get to choose what society that you want to live in. Is it one where people use tobacco-free nicotine pouches or one where people get shot left and right and the air reeks of weed? I think I know which one I choose. So, Crystal, I'm sure you've got a good one. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated.

I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband.

The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else,

but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council.

High key. Looking for your next obsession? Listen to High Key, a new weekly podcast hosted by Ben O'Keefe, Ryan Mitchell, and Evie Oddly. We got a lot of things to get into. We're going to gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about. I am high key going to lose my mind over all things Cowboy Carter. I know. Girl, the way she about to yank my bank account.

Correct. And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter. Oh, I know. Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Stay informed, empowered, and ahead of the curve with the BIN News This Hour podcast. Update it hourly to bring you the latest stories

shaping the Black community. From breaking headlines to cultural milestones, This is an iHeart Podcast.