Lemonade Stand - The World Cup of News | Ep. 070 Lemonade Stand 🍋

Episode Date: July 8, 2026

On this week's show... We launched a Patreon! - https://www.patreon.com/lemonadestand for bonus episodes, discord access, a book club, and many more ways to interact with the show! Episode: 070... Recorded on: July 7th, 2026 Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCurXaZAZPKtl8EgH1ymuZgg Follow us TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thelemonadecast Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thelemonadecast/ Twitter - https://x.com/LemonadeCast The C-suite Aiden - https://x.com/aidencalvin Atrioc - https://x.com/Atrioc DougDoug - https://x.com/DougDougFood Edited by Aedish - https://x.com/aedishedits Thumbnail by Cheyenne DeWolf - https://x.com/cheyedewolf Produced by Perry - https://x.com/perry_jh Segments 0:00 Intro 5:28 Leading France Under House Arrest 14:16 Morocco's Pressure on West Sahara 32:30 Norway's Involvement with Ukraine 41:18 Decentralizing Power from London 51:01 Belgium's Diamonds, Chocolate, and Beet 1:00:37 Spain's Amnesty 1:11:10 Argentina's Beef 1:16:31 Trump Makes Red Card Worse 1:20:35 Switzerland's Vote on Capping Their Population 1:26:05 World Cup Winner New takes on Business, Tech, and Politics. Squeezed fresh every Wednesday. #lemonadestand #dougdoug #atrioc #aiden Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the lemonade stand. We have the thin yellow line of podcasting that keeps all of us safe. Hard at work here. Wolfing down a gigantic sandwich as we start recording. This is... Thank you for your service. I feel like you're making fun of me. No, I'm not.
Starting point is 00:00:21 I think podcasters are the hardest workers in the world. I think your hat represents that. Also, for the record, it is July. It is 90 degrees. Safety first, though, Doug. You're right. You're right. It's hot out in the sun.
Starting point is 00:00:31 It is hot out there. I picked up another job. I've been busy. And I'm barely have time to eat. And you're making fucking fun of me right now. I shouldn't make fun of you. I do know that times are tough at mogul moves here and the yard collectively. So you needed a fourth job.
Starting point is 00:00:50 Yeah. Yeah. So I started doing a little construction like two days a week. Because you know my history in construction. I'm not to mention the thin yellow line. Yeah. This is this right here? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:01:03 That's the fucking edge between society falling apart. You got a thin of all right here. No, no, don't touch it. That's American grit right there. I know you can't handle seeing a true blue collar American sitting in front of you. I know, it does make me uncomfortable. Right? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:01:16 My hands are so soft. You never were going to get in you like. People like you're why we don't win the World Cup. Yeah. And it's exactly right. And so I wanted to ask you as a true blue collar worker. You've been watching the World Cup at all? Is that something you've been keeping your eye on?
Starting point is 00:01:27 I was not watching that gay European sport. Crazy. You've been absconding every weekend to fly two matches and watch them in person. You've been near every match. You are like those Republicans who are homophobic yet on crime. No. No, I went to Dallas. I flew to Dallas.
Starting point is 00:01:47 Yeah. And I went to hang out with my old boy Todd, who works on the ranch. I went to Filthy McNasties. Okay. I skipped the game. Because again, I hate that sport. Yeah. I hate that.
Starting point is 00:01:57 I just based on photos, you know, with your Swedish doctor friend and went to a World Cup game. It's hard to pin down the truth here, but I like where your heads out. However, this is a World Cup themed episode, so you're going to have to keep up a little bit. This is our bracket with the current World Cup. I know a lot of you have either been watching or paying attention
Starting point is 00:02:14 or at least know about it's going on in the ether. And we have realized a stunning truth. You can use the news from each country to predict the winner of the soccer matches. So far this has been true. So far this has been 100% accurate. Because Belgium, famously has a lot more news happening than America. Exactly. America had a news drought.
Starting point is 00:02:35 Just torched us. And then 4-1 does on that. And so we're going to keep this theme going. We've each brought pieces of news from all of the round of eight teams, one of which has not happened yet. That will happen live as we're recording. It is literally currently going on. So we are going to give news stories about the seven confirmed teams in the round of eight World Cup.
Starting point is 00:02:56 And then at the end of the episode, we'll tell you who. Who's going to win? Who's going to win? But also who just won. This is your live news for the World Cup tomorrow when you hear this. So we prepped, you're telling me. Yeah, we prepped.
Starting point is 00:03:10 We prepped stories for all these countries. Yeah. You were assigned some. I think I've misunderstood this. Because I got, I'll be honest, I got three news stories. But it's, it's Texas, Louisiana, and Florida. I got three big stories.
Starting point is 00:03:26 Just swap the name out. No one will know the difference. I'll just pretend. Just say it was Spain. I'll swap out the Morocco story with Louisiana and see if people think it's real. Maybe we'll notice. Wait, before we get into all our individual stories for a round of eight teams, I will make a prediction on who wins the final game based on this stat that I saw today.
Starting point is 00:03:43 Can you pull us up, Perry? Turns out the most predictive stat of World Cup success so far is which country has the highest youth male unemployment. So far it's been exactly 100% success rate, which implies that the game that's happening right now will be won by collaboration. Columbia, which has a 14.3% youth. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Yeah, Mexico is 5.4% youth unemployment? They're crushing. That is, that's, economy and not in soccer, apparently. Yeah, 5.4 to 17.84 is crazy. So far has been 100%
Starting point is 00:04:15 that's right. So you can tell that news, you know what I'm saying? It's all connected. News and soccer and 100%. So let's start with our first round of eight matchup. Who do we have? It's France versus Morocco. Who's got Morocco? Me. I've got France. All right. Kick it off with France. France, I would argue, is, and this is a bit of a hot take,
Starting point is 00:04:35 they might even win the World Cup. Yeah. And so I would imagine that the news that you're about to bring is extremely powerful. They must have some hot news, right? I mean, this is a tough battle for me, because on one hand, you have the French. You are just disgusted. Just, just, uh...
Starting point is 00:04:49 And snooty. And on the other side, you have Morocco. I don't know where that is. So it's right. And I'm so glad to have you're being on this. Pockets actually helps a lot to get an honest, god-wearing blue-collar American's opinion. So,
Starting point is 00:05:03 hold on, I want to just say, so people who watch the yard this week are going to get like an hour and a half of this character and then they're going to come here for another hour and a half of this character. I don't think it's a character. I think he's got, no, yeah,
Starting point is 00:05:16 I think it's a friend to you. Yeah. Go ahead with friends. What is happening in France, friends, friends, friends, friends. Are they even relevant in the world anymore? I don't know. It has some pretty big news. The question is for France, can a woman win the presidency of France while wearing an ankle bracelet monitor from the police?
Starting point is 00:05:42 Wow. Okay. Marine Le Pen. Oh, right, right, right. Marlene Le Pen. I swear you were pulling up the Italian minister. No, you got us making this up. No, Marine Le Pen is the head of the RN, which is kind of like the far rights, you know, you could say MAGA type, AFD type.
Starting point is 00:05:59 party in France. Every European, it's hot right now. Every European country has one. It's a party that really focuses on immigration and is right leaning back to traditional values type thing. She's the head of that party and they've been enjoying some electoral success recently. If you look at polling, which I have here, they, basically every opinion poll in France has them leading, which has a lot of people, I think, in France, understandably nervous. And she was not until today allowed to run. even though her party was leading, they had her young, like 29 or 30-year-old attache being the face of the party because she literally was banned from running because she lost an embezzlement case. The RN in France had parliamentary seats in the EU and you get money from the EU as a whole. All the EU's taxes go into a pool and they give you money to get like expert witnesses and, you know, things to have.
Starting point is 00:06:57 help do your job as a member of parliament. They were creating fake jobs and then billing the EU for that and then taking the money home. That was the, so they embezzled a few million from the EU, got caught doing it and she was banned from running for five years. Good people like us would never pretend to be doing jobs that we don't actually do. Of course not. That's a crime. But I have always said, the best leaders have done a little bit of crime. A little bit of You do say it a lie. It's weird how often you bring that up. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:07:29 And I guess as someone who's never faked a job, though, you think this is probably a line too far. I'm definitely too far. Anyway, so she was called on this and five-year ban. She could not run. And of course, that five-year ban covers 2027, which is the next big election in France. However, the appeal was this morning. And there was a big question mark. What will happen?
Starting point is 00:07:49 What are the possible outcomes of this big trial? Well, the news is in. she can run, but you have to wear an ankle tag. Does she have to wear one of those like old-timey jumpers too? Those like pinstripe prison outfits? The black and white. Yes. She has to carry a big sack that says EU money on it.
Starting point is 00:08:12 There's like a ball and a chain. She has to have a bowling ball on your leg. You can run. But it's going to be hard. But it's going to be difficult to sell it. But dude, imagine how fast you'll run once the weights are off. Oh yeah. This is training mode.
Starting point is 00:08:25 You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So she has the ankle tag. She's under house arrest. She could only leave the house for a certain number of hours per day and has to wear this angle tag. And that is with the environment
Starting point is 00:08:36 she has to make her campaign. Yeah, under house arrest and ankle monitor. So she's appealing again to try and get this. She's saying it's impossible for me to run under these conditions. So she is appealing. But realistically, after the first appeal,
Starting point is 00:08:50 this seems pretty set. So the question now becomes, will I run again? Will Maureen Le Pen run again? Is what she saying? Or will she pass it on to her second in command who has been doing pretty well in this interim period
Starting point is 00:09:02 where she thought she couldn't run? That's the big fucking question. That's the France news of the day. But seemingly, as of like an hour ago, she announced she is going to run. So I think that's the plan. It's going to be her with an ankle bracelet. How many hours a day does she get?
Starting point is 00:09:18 I don't know. It's not many. It's like a few, few, two or something. I am reading a book about constraints. Okay. And about how creating boundaries for yourself is actually, usually,
Starting point is 00:09:30 almost a critical element of being creatively successful the long term. Ed Katmel talked about this famously while creating Pixar in his book Creativity, Inc. And this just might be the thing that aligns and focuses Marine Le Pen.
Starting point is 00:09:43 Right. Do you think she'll be in the few hours a day? A politician usually has too much freedom, I would say. You're right. And she might make Toy Story 6 or something while she's... Right. I mean, on the job, we get, there's a lot of rules and regulations about how you might build a piece of infrastructure, for instance.
Starting point is 00:10:00 I can't wait for you to play this character in Morocco. And there's new ways to sort of weasel around the restrictions they give you all the time. And that's like, that's half the job, I'd say. And I do appreciate your insight on that because it comes from a place of honesty and of like experience. And, yeah, that's the story out of France. I mean, you know, we go deeper on like how the RN is kind of a spooky party, but they are crushing, unless something changes. I'll show you real quick. Last thing I'll say, this is the state of France.
Starting point is 00:10:32 These are the next two leading parties. The guy in the middle, Macron, is the current president of France. He can't actually run in 27. It'll be his Gabriel Talas next guy. But they're pretty far down there. It's basically the right, far right party, the centrist party, and the far left party under Belanchon, who's not. not really popular outside of his base. So yeah, that's where they're,
Starting point is 00:10:51 France has been a bit of gridlock. We'll see if this, uh, arrest changes things, but. And you might, you might remind me. Yeah. Because I, you might not expect this from the way I look.
Starting point is 00:11:01 I'm surprisingly tapped into French politics. No. But, Hey, let's look at the audience real quick. You're being a bigot right now. If you don't think this guy can know the ins and outs of French politics.
Starting point is 00:11:11 What, I can't, where this hadn't be interested in French politics? Work a blue collar job and no thing in too about what's going. Well, you think I'm watching it reading when I flip the all day. Sorry I cut you off.
Starting point is 00:11:23 What were you going to say? I was going to say, wasn't, she's been at the lead of the party for a long time and has already lost an election. Yep. But,
Starting point is 00:11:32 and that was four years ago now? Yeah, something like that. Yeah, what I'll say is the centrist party under Macron barely squeaked out last time.
Starting point is 00:11:44 Yeah. And then like it's happening all over the world, kind of in free fall. Everyone's going towards more of the extreme. And so this is her moment. It's like her family's party.
Starting point is 00:11:52 I mean, her dad ran it for, they go back a long, long time. There's many, many controversies I can go into. But now it's her turn in the sun. This is her moment, even with a damn ankle bracelet, she's going to try and take it.
Starting point is 00:12:02 And unless something changes within a year, it's looking, she's got a pretty commanding lead. So we'll see what else. She can survive in the Marines. She can survive an ankle bracelet. Yeah. In France, they knew you after your job,
Starting point is 00:12:13 that she was in the Marines. All right. Counter that. Okay, it's the World Cup. I want to head over to Morocco. And for starters, you're going to have to show me where it is. No, actually, unironically, can you pull up a map, Perry, and just have that in the background. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:12:27 I, look, I'm going to be honest, I was, I chose Morocco. And I was like, let me find some local news about Morocco. And I realized I don't know enough about Morocco to tell you what interesting thing happened this week and how it relates to the last year of Moroccan politics. Can I say something? Yeah. Oh, I'm going to say something. I'm going to say something seriously. Okay.
Starting point is 00:12:49 The true downfall of this episode and researching it during the World Cup is that every news story to do with these countries right now has to do with the World Cup. And I remember I was scrolling through articles about Spain, like from the past two months. I think on the FT, and I'm going through, it's World Cup headline after World Cup headline. It was New York Times. and I finally get to one where the headline starts off and it says like Spain's biggest strength
Starting point is 00:13:19 has become its biggest headache and I'm like oh wow what's interesting economic political story will this be Spain has too many good midfielders and I thought it finally finally found one and this was the trend
Starting point is 00:13:37 for all of these things all of the news about these places in English media right now is just what happened the World Cup this week. I was doing Belgium. I went to Belgian sources and translated them. All they can talk about in Belgium right now
Starting point is 00:13:48 is that they won against them. It's everyone's story on every piece of Belgian news and it's the last 50 story. It's really made the year over there. In Morocco, the one more modern one is that the guy who's now being tapped to probably become the next premiere of Morocco, the reason he's so popular is because he's led
Starting point is 00:14:06 the football team for 10 years and they're doing really well. So everybody's stoked about it. That's goaded. I didn't know that. So I guess that is one story. Okay. All right. Morocco.
Starting point is 00:14:17 I am going to talk about a horrific refugee crisis happening in Algeria. Fun stuff. Okay. So quick primer of 200 years of history or whatnot. So Morocco is top left of Africa, right? Right next to Spain. Now for, I don't know, thousands of years it's kind of different people have controlled it. There was a whole Moroccan empire.
Starting point is 00:14:36 I forget the exact name where they even controlled part of Spain. And at one point in their history, they were sort of. controlling or allied with the tribes in Western Sahara, which you can see is a country south of Morocco along the west side. You probably have not really heard of Western Sahara because it's mostly desert, not that much stuff goes on. But if you have heard of it, it's probably due to this conflict with Morocco, which is starting to kind of maybe move towards a resolution thanks to Donald Trump. Aiden, you're looking confused. My, my, maybe this is an insensitive question. Isn't the Western Sahara isn't even a country, right? Like it's a,
Starting point is 00:15:12 disputed territory that barely anybody lives in. Right. So Morocco, right, was taken over by France and Spain somewhat interestingly because they're playing in the World Cup. There's like legit grievance between Morocco and France. And then also Spain, who controlled the region from, I believe it was 1912 onwards. Spain's took control of Western Sahara when all the Europeans were like, let's take Africa like it's a pie.
Starting point is 00:15:41 So Spain took the slice of Western Sahara. Morocco was split by France and Spain a little bit later on. So in 1956, Morocco gets France and Spain to agree to give them independence back. So Morocco has been an independent kingdom since... Since 53. What? 53 you said? 1956.
Starting point is 00:15:58 56. Okay. Okay. Right after World War II. Right after World War II. Okay. So at this time, Western Sahara, the area below them is still controlled by Spain. And again, this is mostly desert with like a couple hundred thousand basic
Starting point is 00:16:11 indigenous tribes who wander the desert with a couple areas. But they realize that there is valuable phosphate. Turns out most of the phosphate, not most, but like a majority of the phosphate in the world comes from Morocco and Western Sahara, which is what we use for fertilizer. So the modern agricultural world largely depends on Morocco and Western Sahara getting a ton of phosphate out of the earth so that we can grow crops. On top of that, Western Sahara has some minerals. a lot of fishing stuff. You know, you could fish there and then sell it to Europe. Okay. In general, Western Sahara is this small area that was, you know, sort of maintained by Spain. And then finally, in 1975, Spain agrees to leave Western Sahara. There are three different parties who want
Starting point is 00:16:56 Western Sahara. 75. That's pretty recent. Yeah, 1975. Morocco wants Western Sahara. They have, again, some historical claim from like a thousand years ago. Maritania, which is the country to the south of them, which is a little bit smaller and less influential, but they also want Western Sahara and feel like they have claims, and even the people who live in Western Sahara want Western Sahara. These are the, I will probably say it wrong, but the Sahrahi people, Sarawi people. So the indigenous tribes in Western Sahara are like, can we have it? And Spain goes, yeah, probably maybe, ah, no. And last minute, they give it up and they say Morocco, you can have the top two thirds and Maratania can have the lower two thirds. So in 1975, Western Sahara is split.
Starting point is 00:17:37 Now, Morocco, as they sense that this is about to happen, is like, we need to get in there and make it feel like this is our territory. So they do something called the Green March, and they send 350,000 citizens and 20,000 troops pour into Western Sahara, which again, is mostly desert. Like, they have to invest a ton of infrastructure to support all these people, pour in there so they can say, this is our territory, we got it. Okay. Promptly, Western Sahara tribes form the technically two years before this, but they form the, let me get the exact, let me get the exact, name. Polisario Front, which is basically a resistance group. So the tribes people, the indigenous people, start fighting back against this. They successfully boot out Maritania, but Morocco just takes over that owner, that land. So the bottom third. So the bottom third. So to put this differently,
Starting point is 00:18:25 a W.W.E match starts between these three, the indigenous tribes, the underdogs, Maritania, and Morocco. Morocco's the big dog. Maritania gets kicked out by the underdogs, the indigenous people, but Morocco basically with. So to simplify this since the 1970s, Morocco has basically been the big dog, pushed in there with a ton of resources and troops, got into Western Sahara and said, we are going to claim ownership. They take the big areas that actually have population centers. They take all the areas that have the main sort of phosphate and mineral reserves and the coastline, right? And they push the Polisario over to the east. And then they build a gigantic wall called the berm.
Starting point is 00:19:04 And I didn't know about this. This is the second biggest wall in the world. It is made out of sand and natural resources. It is only smaller than the great wall of China. And at this point... There's a gigantic sand wall in the Sahara. Across the entire north of like... What does it look like?
Starting point is 00:19:22 We've got to take a photo of it. Yeah, yeah, it's wild. Vertically through Western Sahara, Morocco over like seven or eight years built a wall... Oh my God. From north to south. And yeah, you can pull up pictures. That's crazy. That way I can look at my know.
Starting point is 00:19:34 Game of Thrones ice wall. This is crazy. It's wild. And this is the... entire verticality of a giant country state, whatever it is, and this huge wall of sand has intermittent military posts. There are 130,000 troops from Morocco manning this wall at all times. This is a gigantic military operation on the eastern side, which is where they're basically, it's literally Game of Thrones. They're trying to keep the indigenous people out. This is like Trump was
Starting point is 00:19:59 in Mexico. Yes. They have nine million landmines. It's one of the most mined places on earth. So Morocco in the 70s. That's crazy. Once Western Sahara kind of goes up for grabs, they muscle their way in and they build a vertical wall cutting off all the most valuable resources and population centers and have pushed all the insurgents to the east with a gigantic wall blocking them off. That is the current state of Western Sahara. It's crazy that this just exists and I've never heard of it. I've never heard of the giant sand wall of the Sahara. That's crazy. Yeah. And I'm guessing the phosphate for the fertilizer is on marine.
Starting point is 00:20:37 Morocco side of the wall. Yes. In fact, they somewhat identified that the eastern third of West Sahara is not that valuable. And so the sad part about this, as cool and fun as this has been up till this point, the sad part is that the hundreds of thousands of indigenous people have nowhere to go because there's a wall now protecting them from the parts that, you know, have a lot of industry and ability to live. This is in the middle of a desert where not a lot of life can happen. So what has actually happened over the last 40 years is that hundreds of thousands of Sarawi people, and you can pull this up, Perry, I found a 13-year-old video of Windows movie maker, this like timeline. They moved to Algeria. It's basically right across the border. And there have been
Starting point is 00:21:23 hundreds of thousands of people living in refugee camps for 40 years. Again, their homeland is occupied by Morocco. And so these pictures are from, I think, 12 years ago. This is a YouTube video if you just search for Sawari refugees. And they're living in a camp in the middle of the desert that is supported by Algeria who kind of doesn't like Morocco. They just, they don't want Morocco to kind of win in this. And generally, the international community is historically not been stoked about this.
Starting point is 00:21:52 Morocco is sort of the aggressor and they have wanted the Sarai indigenous people to have the at least vote about what happens to their country. We're, by the way, we're, so we're looking at these pictures of the refugee camps. And I think the main difference I could describe for audio listeners compared to maybe like tent set up or something that seems a little more temporary when you see refugee camps and the modern era is these are like built out homes of like clay or rock like much more permanent looking communities. I'll be it the video was showing that they don't have access to running water. They don't have access to electricity. They're in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Like it's all, they only can live there because of aid, yeah.
Starting point is 00:22:37 That is wild. It gets up to 122 degrees Fahrenheit during the day. And then it gets to freezing at night because they're in the desert. Yeah. So this is, you know, if you're familiar with the map or you're able to look at a map of Morocco, Algeria is Morocco's neighbor. And Algeria is basically agreed to host and take care of these refugees with international aid.
Starting point is 00:22:57 But this has been going on for literal decades. And it is incredibly sad. The two pieces. of context I even had going into this are I have looked at the map, whether it be on a globe or Google Maps and seen that little section of Western Sahara and it's always been like,
Starting point is 00:23:14 it's marked kind of weird compared to like other countries around it. Yeah. And then have this vague idea of Morocco being like some territorial aggressor in history of this area. But I didn't realize this had such a modern reality. Yeah. So then we get to, to like, okay, what's been happening since?
Starting point is 00:23:36 So Morocco and the 70s got in there, built this wall. They are the de facto controllers of Western Sahara. However, the rest of the world has not recognized it. The UN does not recognize it. So it's a little like the China-Taiwan situation, where they're like, except Morocco actually is, you know, currently in control
Starting point is 00:23:54 of Western Sahara, but they're saying this is our historical ties, the rest of the world, you need to recognize that it is ours, and the rest of the world is kind of tiptoeing around it. You can see it on the map. And the problem is, you know, that Morocco has become increasingly powerful, both because of the phosphate and generally just geopolitically. You know, they have massive tourism. They're kind of the gateway to Europe. It's like for Europe having a Western aligned country that they can interact with and is right at the Strait of Gibraltar is very
Starting point is 00:24:21 important. Morocco has done very well and has been relatively much more stable. Like Algeria has had horrific wars at multiple points. Morocco has been the stability point. So for decades, the and the Sarawi and Algeria have all pushed and said, let us have a vote to decide if we want to be independent, if West Sahara should be its own country. And Morocco has said, absolutely not, we will not allow that to happen.
Starting point is 00:24:46 So that's been the battle going on. And recently, as in 2025, that has started to change. Actually, it's back back a little bit. One of Trump's last things before he left, December 2020. I forgot Trump was involved. You said Trump solved this war.
Starting point is 00:25:01 It's a 10th war he solved. Yes. So right before Trump, leaves office the first term, he posts and like I think was Twitter, posts and officially recognizes Morocco's claim over Western Sahara. And this is basically part of Morocco is down to ally with Israel as part of the Abraham Accords. But in return, Morocco wants to be recognized as the owner of Western Sahara, right? So this happened in 2020. If you remember the Abraham Accords and this was Jared Kushner doing trying to get the sort of Arab world to unite
Starting point is 00:25:32 and, you know, do agreements with Israel. Morocco did agree. It was a huge win for them. And that's what Morocco asked in return. And then in 2022, Spain also, and this is after decades of this situation being in a stalemate, right? Of hundreds of thousands of refugees just being in Algeria, everybody's just waiting.
Starting point is 00:25:50 Nothing's happening. In 2022, Spain endorsed Morocco's, basically, you know, autonomy. Morocco says, we want to own Western Sahara. They have said, oh, they can self-govern. They can have some autonomy, but we need to be the owners of it. And then in 2024, French President Macron changed his policy. He said to the Moroccan king that he does support their plan for Morocco owning Western Sahara and only some self-autonomy.
Starting point is 00:26:17 And then last year in October of 2025, the UN Security Council officially voted and pivoted. And they said they support Morocco's plan. And they said, this is recent. Yeah. genuine autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty is potentially, quote, the most feasible solution. And more and more countries have been falling into line. Kenya, Ghana. What is autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty mean?
Starting point is 00:26:39 So it would mean that Morocco controls the foreign affairs, the defense, the sort of high-level policy, but that the local places still get to govern themselves. It is basically Moroccan ownership. Yeah, because like resource extraction and all that would go to Morocco, right? It's Morocco. They would have taxes on it. They would have, they would get the phosphate. They would get the phosphate. I think it's all they want is the phosphate.
Starting point is 00:27:05 Yeah. It is great. I'm just conferring what you said, but 70% of the world's phosphate in Morocco right now. Yeah, it's crazy. And if you add in the Western Sahara parts, even more, that's crazy. I think the 70 concludes Western Sahara, because I think that's part of the thing. The reason this is so, I mean, Morocco, the reason these countries are all falling, probably, you know, who knows exactly why McCrone did this. But most likely, it's like, if you piss off McCrone in the same, or excuse me, Morocco, in the same, in the same,
Starting point is 00:27:27 in the same way that China has gotten a monopoly on rare earths. Like, you need phosphate. Like your access to phosphate. To like feed people, right? And this is like a, this would be a global crisis if it was cut off. It's, dude,
Starting point is 00:27:38 it's so wild that every country in Earth is finding the thing they can squeeze. Yeah. I mean, you know, and to Morocco's credit, like they, they identified to the strategy 50 years ago. They,
Starting point is 00:27:49 when, when the land grab happened in 1975, right? Like, they were ready. They sent hundreds of thousands of people in. They built a gigantic wall, which is insane. And they've been locked in and basically ready to hold the claim. So in February of this year, of this year now,
Starting point is 00:28:06 US decided to start leading the talks to resolve this. Trump wants that Nobel Peace Prize. They had direct talks between Morocco, Polisario, which are the indigenous resistance group, Algeria and Mauritania. The Morocco proposes this new, you know, 40-page document called the Madrid-2026 roadmap in May, Rubio, R. Rubio said this. He reiterated that the United States recognizes Moroccan sovereignty
Starting point is 00:28:33 over Western Sahara and supports Morocco's serious, credible, and realistic autonomy proposal as the only basis for a just and lasting solution to the dispute. And talked about the Abraham Accords again. But this is really snowballed recently. Yes. It's like the last couple years. It's like decades of no action. And then like the last two decades of this being a stalemate. And then this, I mean, you know, the last couple years, major countries have been turning. End of last year, UN flips, which is huge. And now this year, Trump and Rubio are directly involved trying to resolve this. And the current state right now, Morocco has this new proposal.
Starting point is 00:29:08 Everybody's talking. But ultimately, if this is really going to resolve, the Polisario, who are the insurgent group representing the indigenous tribes, needs to agree to it. They are still saying absolutely not we refuse to. And until they, I mean, until there's a. a resolution of some kind, you have hundreds of thousands of people still in a refugee camp for the rest of their life. It seems like there's progress on the, the UN recognition, everything, but nothing is actually changed. This is the boots on the ground reality for it seems
Starting point is 00:29:36 like decades, is that they have a wall. They're operating as if they own it. And now people are going, yeah, you own it. It's just, it's been a Taiwan situation where everybody tiptoes and doesn't commit. And now they're just basically all of the world powers are turning and going, Morocco, we support you. And so the ability for the Pulsaria to resist this is basically disintegrating. Right. That was her last hope, I guess. It was like getting... Right, because up until this point,
Starting point is 00:30:00 they've been able to paint themselves as the people who were being oppressed in this situation. And at this point, Morocco has kind of won the international battle, and now it's just a matter of like, how do they get the insurgents to sign something finally? You know what those... The UN resolution doesn't necessarily give them
Starting point is 00:30:17 what they want, though, right? If the UN, if the UN plan or the UN approval, the UN's proposal goes through. That's Morocco controlling this area. It's not even really a proposal. It's the UN just saying we, we sign off. We sign off conceptually with what Morocco wants, rather than what they had been doing for many years, which is saying, we think there should be an independence vote. Morocco's main goal is to stop there from ever being a vote about whether they should be
Starting point is 00:30:44 independent. And now they are successfully stopping that. So pretty lovable stuff. and we'll see if they win against France. The most shocking part of this is that all the betting markets have France winning, but this was a more interesting story.
Starting point is 00:30:57 And so our official prediction will be that Morocco win. Morocco with the upset of the tournament. Morocco with the upset of the tournament because they have a more interesting piece of news. I literally started reading about this and I was like, it'll be really cool to kind of learn something up Morocco.
Starting point is 00:31:09 Maybe I can kind of root for them a little bit more. And I was like, ooh, this actually not that likable of a story, Morocco. Yeah, not super endearing Moroccan story. But I would argue very interesting story. Very interesting, which is why Morocco is going to the round of four. We're caught at least. And Bampa is going to be quite upset.
Starting point is 00:31:30 Bobby might support independence in Western Sahara after this. Okay, it is kind of badass to have this grudge match. French came in and took over Morocco in like 1912. Isn't that sick to be like we're going to take? I guess it's, you know, it's kind of like if we were fighting England. There's been a ton of like colonial era matches in the World Cup that far, by the way. If you look at it. even Portugal, Spain is like in the 1400s, those two countries split the world in two and said,
Starting point is 00:31:55 we get one half, you get the other hat. That is what they literally did. That's less of a grudge match. I don't know. That's more they're fighting over toys. That's two spoiled kids. Like, that's not the same as a grudge match. There's a joke for a comedian I like, and he's talking about how, like, dumb U.S. sports
Starting point is 00:32:12 rivalries are. And he was like, your town from over there makes you mad or like, you've been rivals for decades. And he's like, you know, in soccer every year, Serbia plays Croatia. Yeah. Yeah, there's been some bloody wars that are solved in the pitch nowadays. Yeah. So you guys know that I got a fourth job. We did.
Starting point is 00:32:35 I've been doing construction. And I decided that's not enough. I'm a bit of an entrepreneur. I decided to make the thin yellow line hat. But I have, I'm not kidding. 2,000 of these hats in a warehouse that I decided to make and I need to sell them. Any ideas about how it can make a website to like sell those to people? You could go through an enormously complex set of doing all of this to yourself, but you could
Starting point is 00:33:02 also just go to Shopify. Use them to make an online platform. Makes it incredibly easy to sell whatever product for your business. Aidan, even though you made 2,000 of these things first, seemingly before having any demand. Any idea of what you're doing afterwards. and not really being a representative of the thin yellow line of construction.
Starting point is 00:33:19 But with Shopify, nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Doing construction for one. You also said that with an air of like my business isn't real. And I'm working super hard. And I've talked a lot about it. I've never seen you construct anything.
Starting point is 00:33:36 I use Shopify to sell Ludwig's inventory out of our old garage. And now it's my turn to sell this hat. I'm glad that Shopify is going to allow you to focus on your real passion, construction and you can start free at Shopify.com slash lemonade. That is Shopify.com slash lemonade. Support for this show comes from Anthropic. And Claude. Claude. The LLM of choice for the thinking man. That's the tagline I'm giving them. I want to give a real use case. I am part of a Pokemon Nuslock tournament hosted by Point Crow. And I don't know any of the Pokemon type matchups. So I asked my good friend and personal friend, Claude.
Starting point is 00:34:18 And executive assistant. And executive assistant to create this game. I literally did like a one sentence. I don't even know what my prompt was. It was Claude my good friend. Can you code up a game that test my knowledge? It created this typemaster, which pops in a thing.
Starting point is 00:34:33 And then I have to guess, I believe super effective against Rock is fighting. Yes, I'm right. Okay. And then it gives me a sound effective. I'm right. And I just keeps testing it and it tells you why you're wrong. And I've been drilling this a little.
Starting point is 00:34:45 a few minutes at a time, and it's been actually helping me learn the game. And it's like a really great UI and just pop us all together. That was pretty cool. Do you ever have that feeling where you really want to make fun of Brandon? But he's shown you something cool. So you can't. Be like this nerd. This is kind of, this is kind of awesome. Yeah, this is sick, bro. Well, if you, you can use cloud like me where I send about 50 messages a day checking my Swedish grammar. Yeah. And I've actually been grinding out my reading and writing with Claude and assisting like messaging friends and things like that. And it's been super helpful.
Starting point is 00:35:25 So for problems where we're solving, get started with Claude today at Claude. A.a.a.com slash lemonade. That's Claude.a. slash lemonade and check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all the features mentioned in today's episode, clod.a.i slash lemonade. Uh, well, let's stay on the top of the bracket and let's do Norway versus England.
Starting point is 00:35:44 Okay. Oh, well, well, well. It's been a Nordic fun fact of the week snuck its way off. Take that hat off. Because no blue collar American. Your hands are softening in real time. Oh, the microphone hurts. Well, uh, I, well, as I described earlier, I thought it was somewhat challenging to find a piece of news about Nora. right now that isn't Holland dominates the competition record goal setting A lot of Holland stuff so many articles
Starting point is 00:36:23 so many articles we even had it as a segment last week it's like Norway does Norway fans do the row on an escalator Which is cool news by the way It's cool news I'll give it to you It's cool When they want to look cool I wonder if Sweden was pissed
Starting point is 00:36:37 But I did have Two recent stories out of Norway from the past day about their perspective or involvement on the war with Ukraine. So a bit of a shorter thing. The Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, visited a bunch of the Nordic countries and Norway was one of his last,
Starting point is 00:37:01 I think Norway was his last stop. And after meeting with the Norwegian prime minister, he made a public statement about China's obligation to be the channel for diplomacy in the Ukraine-Russian war, basically asking for China. The Norwegian guys said this. Yes.
Starting point is 00:37:20 China is the one, like, big ally and power that has the means to convince Russia to, like, make big concessions and wind this thing down and publicly called upon China to be the channel by which those negotiations are done. And I admit, like, when reading through this article, I felt a little, it did feel a little, little like or else type language where how much meaning does this statement really have other
Starting point is 00:37:49 than like public words of support. What sort of means does like Norway have to pressure the conflict in any significant way? But within a 24 hour period, I read a different article about how Norway is committing over 300 million dollars to Ukrainian air defenses right now. And the reason why that's really important is we've talked a ton about the Ukraine-Russian War and in like the last couple weeks and how there's like all these changing developments there. But one of the last things that Russia has at the moment to really pressure Ukraine is they can fly ballistic missiles
Starting point is 00:38:26 into Kiev. Yeah, they have been. And it's one of the only things they can still do effectively because Ukraine does not have adequate air defenses because these systems are so like complex and expensive and they don't have access to them. So Norway is directly funding air defense systems with this money. They're making that commitment publicly now.
Starting point is 00:38:51 And it's one of the last like holes in the Ukrainian defense that is mounting a lot of pressure on Russia at the moment to finally make concessions in this war. Do you know what that looks like? I can't imagine you go to Walmart and pick up an air missile defense system for $10 million. What's the last time you've been to Walmart? Unlike. If you're honest, Doug, you yellow line bogged me. It's in the back, dude. It's new rifles.
Starting point is 00:39:21 You can tell he's getting out of touch. That's why you got to be booed. You can get air defense. You can get it at. They're like, well, you know about the gun show loophole, right? Yeah. Using the gun show loophole to get a $300 million air defenses. Is that how we get around not declaring war on Russia?
Starting point is 00:39:39 We host gun shows in Ukraine. Yeah. We host... We're not helping them out. We're not offering wares up. We're showing off our cool stuff. Wait, pull this article out because it tracks with what you're saying. I read this yesterday.
Starting point is 00:39:49 It was Zelensky's basically going on a tour of Europe and America saying the battle in the sky will decide the outcome of the war and is asking for air defense missiles. And that totally attracts with what you're saying. He's saying the same thing. It's very, very important, the aerial battle. Yeah. And I would just assume that's like a decade to build up. That seems so hard to build in short term while your country is being attacked.
Starting point is 00:40:11 But I don't know if that was discussed at all. Nobody said war is easy, Doug. Nobody said war is easy. I don't know what the turnaround time on building out adequate air defense systems in Ukraine is. But I do know that other examples of attacks on Kiv, like drone attacks from Russia, are way more limited right now. So there's this one, and I forget his name right now. There's this one like younger journalist who's been living in Kiev for a while. and he talked about how over the course of the war,
Starting point is 00:40:44 at night you can often hear the sounds of a ton of different drones flying through the sky all the time. And recently, it's been much more quiet because the cell towers in Belarus that are required to fly the drones that deep into Ukrainian territory are no longer operated.
Starting point is 00:41:04 Because of Zelensky's threats he made towards Belarus, he's like, see us attacking Moscow, we could do the same to you if you do not comply and reduce your support for Russia,
Starting point is 00:41:21 either through these cell towers, through intelligence, threatening Belarus to no longer support Russia in this war. And because of that, the ways that Moscow can get to attack the capital tower so limited. I think it's good to walk through it.
Starting point is 00:41:36 I mean, because, yeah, Lucaschenko running Belarus has been super, super helpful to Putin so far in this war. And the recent Ukrainian success, he's been scared. He's been like, he like switches. He's like, you know what? I think Ukraine has a right to itself. And then like you said, Zelenskyy threatened him. He's like, all right, well, if you believe that,
Starting point is 00:41:57 then turn up your fucking cell towers. Yeah. Or we're going to do it for you. So Belarus's cell towers are the ones powering Russian attacks. Yeah, because it's the northern border of Ukraine. So they were going through there and using their... Oh, wow. Yeah, and apparently the boots on the ground reality, at least in the Capitol,
Starting point is 00:42:14 is that because these cell towers are no longer providing that service to Russia, there's limited ability to fly Russian drones that deep in Ukrainian territory now. That makes sense. Crazy. That's awesome. And so all they have is the ballistic missiles, hence the need, the greater need for the air defense systems.
Starting point is 00:42:31 Yeah, direct quote from the article, there remains only one unknown, Zalinski said. Unfortunately, it's the anti-ballistic defense. That is the major weakness for Ukraine this equation. Basically, it's like we've got everything else handled. If we can just figure this out, we can win this war.
Starting point is 00:42:45 That's his optimistic take. Not with this photo. Really doesn't know the optimism. But yeah. Yeah. And that's how my Nordic fun fact of the week morphed into a little more Ukraine-Russia news. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:42:57 I was going to say, this is not about Norway. Quite a bit. I was reading this other article. It was like something that the Nordics. It was something that the OECD had published and the article, it's like why Norway's economic stagnation is like something to look out for or something to that avail. And the article starts off by saying like Norway is an
Starting point is 00:43:21 incredibly well off country with low income inequality, high incomes, but it could be bad in the future. No, it's ridiculous. And not to say that something like can't get worse in Norway, but it was funny is like as I'm looking for news, this like critical article of what's going wrong in Norway economically right now is like, all right, things are pretty good.
Starting point is 00:43:44 To be honest. Yeah, comparatively, it's like they're just doing so much better, even if there's some... Yeah, they got Holland. Yeah. They have Holland. They have Holland.
Starting point is 00:43:53 And I'm wondering what they even have to fear against England. If they can power Ukrainian air defenses, surely they can stop the cup from coming home. Right. So looking at England,
Starting point is 00:44:05 news recently here. What I found, Harry Kane's a little baby bitch. They're moving on. Norway wins. All right. All right. That was easy. That one was easy. The UK has never had it rougher. Do they don't even get a segment on our podcast. Okay. Dude, trying to find something about England specifically. Not only is it all about the World Cup, even more so it's about the UK and not about England. And so the best I got, which actually I do think is pretty interesting. Is there's a guy who's set to replace Kirstarmer named? Well,
Starting point is 00:44:40 uh, Nigel Farage is going to win, but it's the other guy. It's B. Andy Burnham. Andy Burnham. Andy Burnham. Nigel Farage also seems like he's going through a silly little, uh, drama right now.
Starting point is 00:44:51 Nigel Farage is like the RN. He's the fucking. He's a goofball. Yeah, he's crazy. Uh, okay, correct me,
Starting point is 00:44:56 correct me if I get my UK politics wrong because I don't understand the UK that much. So the king personally elects the leader. The king does everything. He, He builds the tanks. Yeah, yeah. He builds the boats.
Starting point is 00:45:08 And thank God we freed ourselves from him. Yeah. It's $2.50. King George the 48th is still in power, the long lineage, and he runs shit. He taxes your damn tea. That's the first thing. They don't talk about that anymore, by the way. They don't talk about it, but he still does it.
Starting point is 00:45:26 No, he doesn't. Labor Party. What is in control with Kirstarmer, Kirstarmer just stepped down. So they need to elect a new PM. And currently the main guy is Andy Burnham. And what I thought was interesting about this is he, so he was like the mayor of Manchester, which is the city in northeast England. And actually, we pull up a map again.
Starting point is 00:45:45 If you want to pull up a map of England. Now, as a hot-blooded, God-fearing, freedom drinking, beer-loving American, I don't give a shit about England. I don't know where the countries are. I don't know where the cities are. Manchester apparently is in the north of England. It's in the north. Holland. They call Andy Burnham, the king in the north.
Starting point is 00:46:04 They do call him that because they loved how he did as the mayor of Manchester, which is, you know, one of the other big cities in England. And so his whole thing, which I thought was interesting because it relates to just straight up England is the push to decentralized power out of London and spread it to the other cities. That is like really what he's pushing on. And this has been something he's actually been pushing on for a while. So in 2017, there was a study by IPPR North showing that over like a seven year period, even though there was. a 2014 initiative to be like, we're going to invest more in the north of England. Actually, the government expenditures in England, uh, in North England with those smaller cities fell by 6.3 billion pounds, while the south of England, which includes London, actually had an increase.
Starting point is 00:46:50 So Burnham at that time, this is 2018 said, almost five years after the government promised us a northern powerhouse, we learned the public spending in the north has fallen while rising in the south. This has got to stop and it's time that the north came to the front of the queue for public investment. And I didn't know this. Apparently, uh, apparently the UK is one of the most centralized governments in the G7 or I should, let me rephrase that, is the most centralized. 96% of taxes, or sorry, 94% of taxes are raised nationally rather than locally and 80% of all money spent by the central government, rather than local governments. So it's an extremely centralized government, even though their central government is kind of dysfunctional, it doesn't get
Starting point is 00:47:32 anything done. And so what I thought was interesting about this Burnham guy, he is most likely going to be the next prime minister of Britain. Wait, can you help me out a sec? He's going to be the prime minister of Britain for the remainder of what would have been Starmor's term until the election happens. I don't know when the election, it's years. Starrmer's stepping down very early. They can go for, I think it's like three to five years. It's a long time. Okay. So he's still going to run the country for a while. Yeah. So this is him talking about this centralization. We are one of the most over centralized countries in the world. And worse, that over centralized heart of the country is not pulling in the same way, but in different directions.
Starting point is 00:48:18 That's really the core of it. So he talks as somebody who was a MP for, I don't know, like 16 years or something. And then this mayor, he's making a big push to say, look, our country has become entirely centralized, all the power, all the spending in London. And it's dysfunctional. and my explicit goal is to radically push power out of London and back to the other parts to local governments around England. I did not realize how centralized the English government is, and it's pretty cool for him to push for this.
Starting point is 00:48:46 He's more like, not like hardcore socialist, but more in that vein of like more government spending and local support. But this is interesting. He's pushing for the rest of England to actually have success. I think if you've, if you spend time like talking to friends that live in different parts of the UK,
Starting point is 00:49:03 it's pretty crazy the way they see their futures. Like most people around my age from there, it's you're faced with this weird decision of if I really want to progress in my education or career, I pretty much have to move to London, but then I have to figure out how to afford to live there. Yeah. And I'm kind of gambling on the idea
Starting point is 00:49:29 that my education or career, development in that place will be good enough that I'll be able to afford it. I'll create a better life for myself versus the economic stagnation of these smaller cities around the country, especially in the north. Yeah. Yeah, there's graphs all over the place basically showing that like the GDP and spending and everything is just going down and basically everywhere else except London where it's going up. So, oh, and actually a cool thing. One of the one of the explicit things he is proposing, if it becomes prime minister, which currently there's not even another candidate to become prime minister. So probably he will be.
Starting point is 00:50:04 Is he's going to have a second office in Manchester. So he's literally going to have the prime minister have a second office in one of the northern cities, which may just be symbolic, but that's a, that's a key thing, right? He seems super tied to me. I mean, given his background as mayor of the area, he seems like he's actually going to follow through and try to move things there. But it remains to be seen. Like a lot of this stuff comes from network effects, right? Like London is successful because it's successful in it. Yeah. It's like, can you really do. Maybe you can. We'll see. But as a guy who in politics
Starting point is 00:50:35 gets hyped up by the most recent thing he's heard, he's got some great stuff. I love this guy. He's, he seems great. Yeah, I think my fear is kind of that entrenchment you're bringing up where you hear a lot of the financial success in Britain that does exist has to do with
Starting point is 00:50:51 like the financial services sector in London and what it specifically offers either because the city of London exists within London, which is it's like own financially carved out city in a bunch of different ways. The attraction of London
Starting point is 00:51:09 to like global elites and investors. How much of this industry that you have diverted so many of your countries like resources and planning into over time for various reasons can really be distributed to the rest of the country. I'm not saying that this won't be successful. I'm not saying that the UK can't dig itself out of a whole.
Starting point is 00:51:31 it's, that's kind of the thing I think about is like the country has consolidated so heavily around the economic success of this one sector servicing a type of client and so many things are built around that in London what is breaking a piece of that really look like and giving it to the rest of the country.
Starting point is 00:51:52 Let's bring back Grimsby. Who's Grimsby? It's over there on the east. I've never heard of this before in my life. Brimsby. Right there, zoom in. Zoom in Perry. Zoom in on Grimsby.
Starting point is 00:52:01 Oh, more to the east. I don't know about Grimsby, but this does bring up a point. There, Grimsby. Which is that? Zoom in. Some of the reactions are seen. All right, that's the heart and soul of England. The UK is like, okay, he's going to take some stuff out of London and make it better in the north.
Starting point is 00:52:18 Where people in the southwest are saying, well, fuck me then. Because they're already stagnating so hard and there's no real, they're not even getting mentioned. Counterpoint, fuck those guys. That's what my chats are. We need the north? If I'm in Wales, east. What do you say, fuck me for? I heard, yeah, I have a younger more Gen Z.
Starting point is 00:52:38 Chad, but they were just like, yeah, well, those guys are all fucking chabs and stupid. They're forgotten about. But I guess there doesn't seem to be a lot of like, hey, let's fix the problems outside of the northern. It's trickle down Grimsbonomics. If you just make Grimsby, if you make Grimsby, it will follow up. It will follow from Grimsby. And that's why I think, to be honest, England doesn't have any
Starting point is 00:53:01 so cool news going on right now. My backup story for England was that pontins, it's very well established. You talk about Pontins all the time. They're closing them. It's urgent. What's your Pontins?
Starting point is 00:53:13 It's a nearly defunct amusement park, one of the worst meat parks in the world. I want you to imagine Chuckie cheese, but it's British and it's an overnight camp. And that's kind of what Pontians is.
Starting point is 00:53:25 You're getting stabbed. And you said that's in England? Nine times out of ten, you're getting stabbed at Pontens. Norway moves on. As the impartial party atrial. You have to vote. Who wins between Norway and England?
Starting point is 00:53:37 I'll give it to England. I'll give it to England. I'll give it to England. I'll give it to England only because the Norway one is mostly a Ukraine story. If you can't work a meeting. Yeah, that's a, it's just. Norway just said something. We looked at a map of Ukraine and Belarus in five minutes.
Starting point is 00:53:53 Norwegians, I'm begging you for, just sound off in the comments with a non-world cup related story in your country and from the past month. It's gonna roll some more, dude. They're just gonna see the rowing. It can't be the rowing. Okay. Well, why don't we mosey on down?
Starting point is 00:54:09 Okay. To Belgium versus Spain. Okay, all right, all right. Now, if you put a gun to my head and ask me to tell you anything about Belgium. I think you could tell me these three things. Belgium. What is it known for outside of Belgium?
Starting point is 00:54:23 It's known for having Brussels, which is often considered one of the least fun tourist destinations in Europe. True. Also, the capital of the East. you consider all the EU organization meets there but that's boring what is Belgium known for if you are a put on your hat if you're a blue collar American are you are you saying waffles actually damn it that's probably the first thing that's the only thing no there's two other
Starting point is 00:54:48 things there's diamonds okay belgian capital of diamonds and chocolate okay diamonds and chocolate diamonds and chocolate. So these are two of Belgium's biggest exports by far. And this is what they've sort of built some of their... Belgium has an economy, which is they have almost no natural resources. They just buy and they manufacture and they upgrade and they make something else and they sell it.
Starting point is 00:55:12 They're one of the world's best at that. And they've become a prosperous nation on that. And their exports are diamonds and chocolate. And there's actually been two big stories in these areas. So I wanted to bring up bowl. I'm doing a double whammy. In diamonds, there's a single source. square mile in the city of Antwerp that is known as the Diamond District. And every single
Starting point is 00:55:31 diamond company and Diamond family worldwide has an extremely expensive bit of real estate there. And they have, on the surface looks fine. All those streets have, um, ballards that can come out to block exits. And it goes deep underground. It's actually one of the most secure areas in the world. They have some of the most advanced vaults in the world because the amount of diamonds in this one square mile are, are insane. And there has been a famous heist. You think me and my boys? Couldn't crack that safe? I don't think so. You get out of your Colt 45.
Starting point is 00:56:01 You get out your Cole 45. You bring a brew and you bring an American comments. And I bring four American friends. Yeah, you could do it. They won't catch you on any of the cameras. So the diamond industry has been going through some tough times recently because, number one, younger people aren't getting married as much. So they literally invented a thing called a divorce ring to try and sell more to boomers who are getting divorced.
Starting point is 00:56:22 That's a lot. Real quick. Yeah. Do you give the divorce ring to your? partner when you get divorced or do you buy it for yourself? Oh, quiet for yourself. This isn't working out anymore.
Starting point is 00:56:34 It's been at saying you on one knee. We had a good run. You, me 40 years from now, I'm next to my girlfriend. I think this is over. It's the nicest divorce ring you've ever seen. No, legitimately they're doing that because people aren't getting married as much. Oh, but don't tell me the divorce ring business is suffering from fake diamonds. The fake diamonds or the other part of it. The rise of fake or I mean fake is probably
Starting point is 00:57:01 the right just lab produced diamonds are undercutting this deck you know centuries long business that has been based here. And so the second thing that's been squeezing them that's more immediate is the tariffs. A large part of the diamond exports go to America billions of dollars. And they are getting hit with the new Trump tariffs and it's drastically cutting into their margins and the ability of them to be a major diamond exporter. And so, enter this ring. This is a really gorgeous ring where dozens of diamonds spell out the letter T
Starting point is 00:57:36 next to the stars and stripes 1776, 2026. The numbers 45 and 47 in Superman logos. A diamond winged eagle carries a ruby shield catching an olive branch of emeralds below a radiant 250 atop the phrase 250 years USA etched in 18-carat gold. This is a very, very expensive ring. I wonder who it went to. Could you guess if I gave you 15 guesses?
Starting point is 00:58:03 15? Yeah, just on the top of your head, who do you think this ring went to if tariffs are your problem? It better not have gone to Hillary Clinton. It was presented to Donald J. Trump, who promptly removed the U.S. tariffs on diamond imports. Shoot. So now, at least.
Starting point is 00:58:27 least in this short term, Antwerp's diamond industry has a bit of relief. These diamond companies needed relief. So very similar to how the U.S. presented some information to FIFA to get a red card removed Belgium, his following suit on the diamond industry. You think we gave him the ring? Yeah, maybe. Maybe he passed the ring along.
Starting point is 00:58:49 It was a circle. Yeah, it's just a favor. I think it's passed from one corrupt organization. And then I want to say something about the chocolate industry because Belgian chocolates, everyone knows that. They've been the world leader in chocolates for a very long time. They have the highest chocolate content in their chocolate,
Starting point is 00:59:04 cocoa content in their chocolates. Can I guess the thing that is disrupting this business? Yeah, sure. Mr. Beast. Oh, you think it's feastables. Right. Was it right? I couldn't do a Belgian accident,
Starting point is 00:59:16 but I wanted them raging about Mr. Beas. It was not Mr. Beast. In fact, Mr. Beast is also being disrupted by the same thing, which is that climate, all of the world's cocoa, much like all the, all our phosphates here, or sorry, yeah, all our phosphates here. Yeah, that was roughly correct. Right. All of our world's cocoa is grown here. And, uh, that is Cape Verde. I just learned about that.
Starting point is 00:59:38 Yeah. And Ghana. Those two countries, uh, that's not true. Sorry. Never mind. Never mind. Is it? Yeah. It is. Right. No. No, it's not Cape Verde. Oh. Oh, yeah. It's not Cape Verde. Right. Every cause. Wait. So, so all of this cocoa in Africa. Yeah. is being sent to Belgium. That's right. To be turned into chocolate. Not all. It goes to,
Starting point is 01:00:00 some of it to Hershey and Mr. Beast. Right. But yeah, all of the cocoa comes from here and it goes to the world's chocolate companies and they make the delicious candy bars you enjoy. However, a little thing called climate change,
Starting point is 01:00:11 fake and gay, as you always tell me. They're making it up. Well, whether to make it up or not, these two countries are really in on the act because rising heat waves and floods have devastated the cocoa crop
Starting point is 01:00:24 consistently. Last year, it was horrendous, and the price of chocolate got so high that many companies like Hershey started removing the name chocolate bar from their bars because they didn't meet the minimum required amount of cocoa to be a chocolate bar. This really fucked with Belgium because they're known for having the highest cocoa content. So what's happening now is there was a brief relief. Prices went back down. Everyone celebrated.
Starting point is 01:00:48 Chocolate was making a comeback. But then they started rising again because, again, the problems there have not gone away. And so now the largest chocolate company in Belgium has realized that they have two options. One is raise prices, which they tried, but then their sales went way down and they realized, okay, that's not going to work. The second option is to start making fake chocolate. So recent announcement is that Belgium's largest company, Barry Calabaut, is like putting
Starting point is 01:01:15 all of their money and R&D and effort into creating a new type of synthetic chocolate that doesn't require cocoa. That is the big update out of Belgium. They're betting on cocoa-free chocolate. They can replace it with phosphate. Go phosphate chocolate. Rare earth minerals and phosphate. That we can find easier supply chain. What's the most abundant stuff on the planet?
Starting point is 01:01:36 Let's put all that in there. And finally, I guess the third of they all say is that they have a third export, which is beer, and they're just also struggling with that because Gen Z is not drinking. So like these three- She's ruining everything, dude. I know. So these three big exports of Belgium are all coming under fire. What do you have to save yourself?
Starting point is 01:01:52 And, uh, we did our job. We drank. One of us two got married. We got married. We drinks occasionally on rare occasions. And I, uh, I mean, I feel like this is a chocolate. Yeah, no, we're failing to. Kind of a made up issue, do you think?
Starting point is 01:02:06 Because the heat wave that we're experiencing is probably just going to peter off. We'll go back to normal. Oh, yeah. Dude, actually, the fourth thing out of Belgium is that they're getting melted by his heat wave. It's destroying. That's every piece of news that isn't World Cup. It's like, we're melting, but we're crushing it soccer. Short Aden knows a guy.
Starting point is 01:02:23 I messaged to, because I heard about how bad these French heat waves have been. Yeah. And I checked in with like my two friends that live in Paris and they're sending me what they're doing during the heat wave to like they keep like wet t-shirts and like put them in the fridge and then take them out and wear them. It's like 35 degrees Celsius indoors, which I think is like high, it's like high 90s. Oh, fuck. And that was sorry, sorry. That's at night. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:02:53 That's at night when they're trying to sleep. That's not during the day. You can't sleep at night. But the main thing they were complaining about was they, they just have no reprieve. Like they, you can't go anywhere to find. There's no way to see anywhere.
Starting point is 01:03:05 Solace away from it because so few places have air conditioning. And there's this huge spike in drownings in the country. Like over a thousand drowning deaths because all of these people seeking out, like going swimming at the same time. Don't add that to my story because that's too sad. Anyway, That's France. No, that's France.
Starting point is 01:03:22 That's France. Don't worry. Don't let it stay in Belgium's reputation. They're probably trowing in Belgium too. Which is loaded with AC as far as I understand. They're not. Don't look that up. This episode is brought to you by Accenture.
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Starting point is 01:04:31 A round of Jameson ginger and lime arrives at the table Smooth enough for kickoff Smooth enough for extra time New friends pulling up a stool Debates about whether that was a handball Cheers rising like a roar around the room Because match days are about the shared moments
Starting point is 01:04:47 Added Jameson to your match. day lineup. Jameson, it's what you bring. Please enjoy our products responsibly. Okay, so that's Belgium. Okay. Surely the heat isn't bad in Spain. Who is they are playing? It's actually been a frigid. 55 degrees Fahrenheit. Uh, no, I actually, I found this interesting story about Spain after I read that in lovely article about Spain's midfield. Because I got sucked in by the headline. Got to know what's going on in the midfield. And they have just passed like a resolution regarding immigration amnesty at a time when Europe is really cracking down on immigration and scrutinizing the way that people can even freely move within the EU. And Spain stands as one of the major countries within Europe that is taking a very different approach to tackling immigration.
Starting point is 01:05:42 And while we have this very specific image of European immigration over the past 10 years of people coming from like Northern Africa on both. over the Mediterranean Sea. Spain, the majority of their immigration and the majority of their like, quote unquote, illegal immigration is people coming from Latin America on short-term visas that they're able to get and then just coming to the country and not leave it, which is a huge portion of their population now.
Starting point is 01:06:10 A crazy stat, in less than 25 years, the country has gone from one in 20 immigrants to one in five people in the country are foreign-born. Oh, 20 years did? In less than 25 years. And most of these people that are coming are from South America. I think it's like 25% of... Like Brazil?
Starting point is 01:06:32 Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, were like the three biggest. And then Morocco is in the top end as well. Shout to Morocco. Hey! That's an easy trip. And... But for the rest of it, it's Latin American countries.
Starting point is 01:06:46 And the reason that that is the case is because because because of the shared, like, language and cultural origin and things like that, you have access to this two-year citizenship, citizenship track if you were from one of these places. So if you want to move somewhere else because of like instability in your own country, right? Particularly, like Venezuelans are a good example
Starting point is 01:07:07 where there's been a huge amount of people who have fled Venezuela over the past 10 years for a bunch of reasons we've talked about on the show. And Spain is one of the idealistic destinations, because you can apply for this type of residency. You could, you have the shared language. You don't have to learn something new. And if you wind up with EU citizenship one day,
Starting point is 01:07:29 then you can move and work freely in the rest of the European Union. And that has contributed to this huge amount of immigration. And instead of taking a more aggressive approach to shutting down immigration cutting into the country, the current party in charge is opting to, take this massive group of people who has overstayed their visas, and as long as they have no history of criminal activity within Spain, they're going to give them like permanent residency
Starting point is 01:08:00 status or amnesty. And they put out this application for all of these people. And not only do they benefit from the residency itself, but they're able to enroll in like Spanish social programs and access to things within the Spanish system that they didn't have access to before. So what I was interesting is they actually do have a history of doing this already. Like they at certain points in history, I think the last time, I'm probably getting this wrong, I think the last time was in like 2006. Uh, but they'll pass a resolution like this and then have these applications go out and then give a bunch of people residency all at once. Uh, however, this time is like four times as many people as any previous time they've done this before. Yeah. And they even, when they had made, when they did the vote to
Starting point is 01:08:48 put out this application or to pass this resolution, they expected like 500,000 applicants, I think. And this time they have 1.2 million applicants. What's the population of Spain? It's like, what, 60 million I want to say? 50 million. That's a lot. It's a lot of people. So it's, and this isn't like a policy that's like free from divisiveness within Spain. It pulled at like 38% support, 34% against and then the remaining like agnostic to it. But this general story, I was talking to a friend like a couple weeks ago, and I just didn't realize what a huge portion of the workforce and population within Spain now is from Latin American countries.
Starting point is 01:09:33 Like I wasn't really aware of that. And I realized like the Spanish speaking world just by filtering of news media and by it existing primarily in another language. Like this is, you know, this is a native. like native Spanish speakers are greater than English speakers. And this is just like a, you know,
Starting point is 01:09:55 a space of news that I am like so blind to because of that and the scale at which this immigration is happening. And Spain is still pretty pro-immigration because they feel like they need it to like economically fuel their country. Spain has been like particularly stagnant for a long time, high youth unemployment,
Starting point is 01:10:16 and they still, a huge portion of the Spanish government and Spanish people see this immigrant population as a vehicle to like growing, economically growing out of their current situation. Not everybody agrees on that, but that is the reason to like favor this sort of policy versus the more aggressive approach that a lot of other European countries are taken. If they're already there undocumented, so my wife's parents were given am, no defense of Ronald Reagan here, but in the 80s, Ronald Reagan did amnesty. A huge amount of amnesty for people who had done the same thing but in America,
Starting point is 01:10:50 lower you from Mexico. And her parents got some of the Reagan amnesty. And what it does is it allows you to go from being this undocumented, hard to build a real life off the grid system to being able to be a taxpaying productive. So you're part of the economy. You can do normal social programs. You can, everything's just above board. And it allows you to be more productive and part of the society that you're part of.
Starting point is 01:11:15 So I would think like the argument about immigration is one thing, but if there's already all these people in your country, allowing them to fill out of publication, become part of the society and do everything above board, I think it's just better. I think I think amnesty is underrated as a, as a method of getting everybody rolling in the same direction. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:11:35 I don't know all of the pros and cons like well enough, but I think this is the general approach that I, wanted to see within the U.S. So it's interesting to see a country approaching it this way with such a large group of people. I do think there was a stipulation about how long they've lived in the country. Like you need to meet a minimum threshold
Starting point is 01:11:58 of how long you've been there as well as the not being a criminal. But yeah, that was my big Spanish news story. I wonder. They're moving to do that. You know, and we are probably not qualified to say. So maybe if there's someone who's Spanish in the community,
Starting point is 01:12:15 but whether the, you know, culture and vibes around immigration change substantially when the immigrants speak your language, right? Because that is such a, yeah, it's such an obvious othering of a person and it feels like they're not going to integrate into society easily because it is really fucking hard to learn a language. And that's what so much of culture is about, right? And I just, like, I'm trying to imagine a world where what if everybody in South America or, or, you know, Mexico or ever, the majority of the immigrant population to America, if they spoke English, if that was everybody's shared language, would that change at all, the American perception of immigration, you know? I don't know. I imagine there is a huge difference in opinion
Starting point is 01:12:59 within Spain for that reason. Yeah. Like you have, intuitively, that feels like it would make a massive. I mean, yeah, you know, not to say that Spain would be, is like racism free or something. But I think the idea that like, oh, the majority. of these immigrants are just someone I can immediately communicate with. I'm sure that gets rid of a lot of... To be an employer and be like, I can instantly communicate with this person about whatever is needed. But in Spain, don't they say Espania? And then in Mexico, they say Espania.
Starting point is 01:13:25 Yeah, and that's probably a deal breaker. That's probably a deal breaker. You got to imagine that TH sound is like completely... In my understanding, you cannot understand Spanish without Vosotros. Exactly. Vosotros is such a big... It's a critical... I think, or if you live in like any Latin American country, like your experience or anecdotes
Starting point is 01:13:41 about like friends or relatives moving to Spain and like why they did it. Would love to hear that. The little correction I want to put on this, the last time they did this was in 2005 and they had about half as many people get amnesty through that program. So it was about 600,000 in 2005
Starting point is 01:13:55 and now in 26 it's going to be about 1.3 million provided everybody gets, clears the application process. So, uh, all right. Doug, who's winning? Damn. I think, I think we got to go,
Starting point is 01:14:11 Spain. I think we gotta go Spain. Belgium, you know, it's funny that they're strong. I just don't feel like there's enormous consequence to diamond prices going up. It just doesn't feel like that's an industry that I care about it all in any way, shape, or form. I do feel... Well, let me
Starting point is 01:14:27 rephrase that. So hold on. I literally, you know, starting to think about this. And ideally, I would like to buy a lab grown diamond because I want to suppress the wages of the children in the Congo mining diamonds. Right. Right. You're trying to ticket to them.
Starting point is 01:14:41 No, that's sick. Me, me, the evil man that I am, no longer buying raw natural diamonds because I want to pay the kids in the Congo less. That's what I was saying. When you were talking about the diamond thing,
Starting point is 01:14:54 I was like, oh, no, you're gonna have to pay the kids. You're gonna give them minimum wage. I mean, just seeing like Belgium... Flip, I think, Spain. Yeah, I'm on Spain.
Starting point is 01:15:04 Belgium was, you know, has this relationship, like this cocoa supply relationship with African countries. I'm always a little wary of that. Both industries are so unlike. You ever digging the like the history of like the Belgium rubber trade in Africa. It's one of the most horrifying.
Starting point is 01:15:26 Friendship and camaraderie and everyone worked together and the profits were shared equally. If you want to have a terrible day, go read about that. It is actually insane. Okay. But that means we're getting to the final match. Drum roll or do we already know? Oh yeah. Who's the winner?
Starting point is 01:15:41 The winner of the final match. It's Argentina going up against. Switzerland versus Colombia. It's USA. Trump called FIFA and got us in. USA wins. Belgium removed. Spain removed.
Starting point is 01:15:53 Argentina removed. The USA wins FIFA. Oh my God. Is it Switzerland? It's Switzerland. Switzerland wins. Wow. So Argentina versus Switzerland.
Starting point is 01:16:04 Holy 30. Holy moly. Okay. Who's got a story about little Argentina. I can give you one on Argentina, but we're going to have to scramble live to get something for Switzerland. Yeah, yeah. We'll figure it out. Okay. It's, yeah, the Swiss chocolate or something. So for Argentina, there's been a bit of a story. What is Brandon Malay Shill viewing have to say about Argentina? Not going to be so much about Malay. I think that's a bigger topic that we could take a long time on.
Starting point is 01:16:31 What I want to bring up, the story out of Argentina is that there is beef about beef. Uh, the truth is that America, and Argentina are two of the largest beef exporters in the world. And the beef industry of each one, especially America, is feeling a little bit threatened by the other. And this World Cup has actually been a kickoff point because the Argentinian team and fans, there's a huge steak culture,
Starting point is 01:16:57 grilling and steak culture in Argentina, and they've been going around grilling and using Argentine steaks. And there's a lot of debate or competition over who has the better beef. And there's an economic angle to this, because beef prices in America have been rising, which directly impacts the popularity of any politician who wants to win, okay, because people love their beef here in America too.
Starting point is 01:17:21 And so earlier this year, Donald J. Trump insured in for the American consumer. And the way he did this, you know, expecting a midterms problem if beef is too high, the way he did this was by drastically expanding the ability of Argentina to export to the U.S. So the opened the flood, And so now Argentinian beef is flooding into America,
Starting point is 01:17:43 which is good for Argentinian beef exports. They're making a lot of money. But American beef ranchers are very upset by this, this new competitor that's kind of undercutting them and flowing in. And so the supermarket aisle is being filled with battles over beef, over Argentinian versus American beef. They're running ad campaigns in America about how Argentinian beef isn't as good or what isn't marbled as well.
Starting point is 01:18:05 Of course. To try and... But the flip side of this is I found Argentinian news. This is translated. So on the other side of it is that this is so good for exporters in Argentina, but it's making the price of beef locally way more expensive because all the beef is being exported to America, which can pay higher prices.
Starting point is 01:18:25 And so Argentinian locals are having now the problem that the United States is having before where they can't afford their stake culture. It's becoming way more expensive. So ironically, it's really hurting, even though it's making more money of Argentina, it's really hurting Malay, because the money's only going to the beef exporters and not the regular people who can't afford the beef. So it's this weird web
Starting point is 01:18:45 where everyone's trying to bail each other out politically and also send money to beef producers. And it's going round and around. And eventually to solve this problem, Ardina might have to import American beef, which is getting cheaper. So we'll just put beef in a circle. No, they make it cheaper for Brazil to send beef.
Starting point is 01:19:03 Yeah, it might be Brazilian beef. If we keep kicking the ball, if you will, to the next country, and we just do that forever. And then somebody's left holding something at the end. Yeah. Some, by the very end, like, Senegal can't afford beef. But everybody else is raised in the same.
Starting point is 01:19:18 Who's the most vegetarian country? India. India. So we'll just get to India eventually. No. India is not selling beef. This whole plan. That's right.
Starting point is 01:19:29 His whole plan does not have. Shit, we had. We had it. India, you ruined it. India, you screwed the whole plan. I'm going to let you think about that one leg. All right. We'll focus.
Starting point is 01:19:38 Is there any definitive answer from your research about whose beef is better? Whose beef is better? No, I saw arguments for both. Yeah, I couldn't tell you. They both say, be honest, there was a quote in one of the articles, and it was like some actual person that eats, and he was like, no, I have a hard fucking time finding that guy? Guys, we got a guy who eats this week. This guy.
Starting point is 01:20:05 Argentinian fan Gonzalo Herrera Browsed packaged meat at a Walmart in Arlington, Texas He shrugged at the Whose Beef is Better Debate. Honestly, I don't see a massive difference As he packed four T-Bone steaks and stuff. I'm not sure there's a massive difference. They both have a vested interest in saying it's better, but it's a price thing really for most people.
Starting point is 01:20:25 They want to have beef at an affordable price. And there's a beef battle. Hold on. It says down there, quote, there's a big difference. Texans use a lot of pepper. They use butter. They use a little barbecue sauce.
Starting point is 01:20:34 Argentina's like to bring all the, flavor out of the steak by only using salt. As you can tell from that quote, that's about what you put on the steak. It's nothing to do with the beef itself. You can do that with either. You can only salt Argentinian bee. You really, you actually ruin Japanese steak if you put salt on it. That's true.
Starting point is 01:20:51 I've heard that. So anyway, that's the Argentinian story. There's a beef battle. Well. What's going on to Switzerland that you just figured out? I just figured out. Yeah. I did have to do this on the spot.
Starting point is 01:21:02 So forgive me. Okay. This is because, because it could have been. in Colombia. Could have been. And I, okay, so I decided to do a follow-up. Oh, this could have been Egypt, by the way,
Starting point is 01:21:13 based on how that game went. Holy, we were literally in the Discord like, it's Egypt. Yeah, we, I was like, Atregg, you're going to figure out something for Egypt today. And then we watched Argentina score three goals in under 10 minutes. And I can't even complain about FIFA's potential corruption because, by God, did they unblock that red card for the good old U.S. That, look, quick aside,
Starting point is 01:21:37 fucked us so hard. Because for people who do not know in the previous match before the one we lost, our star player got a red card, an American patriot who loves his country. He loves his country. And God bless birthright citizen. Yes.
Starting point is 01:21:51 Okay? He lived here. He grew up here for two months. You wanted the white card and a blue card to go with it. Let me tell you. Giving a red card, which meant he was banned from the next match, which is an unappealable thing. And it, to be, you know, it didn't seem, like the red card was deserved, but the referee even
Starting point is 01:22:07 looked at review footage and all that. And so we lost our best starter versus Belgium. And in my opinion, it was like, this is the best outcome because we have an excuse if we lose. It's like playing a low tier in melee. It's like you're options to like. If you lose, we were probably going to lose to Belgium anyway. They're a good European team relatively.
Starting point is 01:22:23 And instead, Trump literally says that he called the FIFA guy and asked for a reversal. And they just undid the thing and allowed our startup play. So now we go in as the benefits of blatant open corruption and lose.
Starting point is 01:22:39 And lose. We can't win. First time in my life where I read the article and I was like maybe Trump's base mode. But he couldn't just even like if he'd have done it
Starting point is 01:22:48 and just shut the fuck up about it and there to be one thing. But to go out there and brag that you call the FIFA guy is so crazy. That's why it's beast mode. You just say you made the call. Literally he probably didn't.
Starting point is 01:23:03 Like, we called, right? Do you think? I don't think. What I'm saying is that if Trump said... notoriously corrupt, they gave him a peace prize. He wants it. This is a rare overtime.
Starting point is 01:23:12 And I also would say that if Trump says I did a thing that now puts it at a 50-50 tops, that he did the thing. The likelihood is higher before he said he did it. Think about the state of American soccer. And think about the World Cup being hosted here. It's the 250th birthday. Like in the one in a million miracle
Starting point is 01:23:31 that we won this tournament because he made that call, he gets to brag about it for probably the next year and a half of his life. Oh. I heard Howard Lutnik was involved. Listen, I think there was some pressure applied.
Starting point is 01:23:45 It's a weird situation. And I agree with you. It's fucked. They could have just lost. And then we had the red card out. And it would have been awesome. It would have been like all fucking rules. Stupid rules.
Starting point is 01:23:55 Soccer's dumb. We got an unfair red card. It would have been great. We would love to complain about that forever. And we're just embarrassed. They just spit in our butt. Bro. I got to tell you,
Starting point is 01:24:04 I literally researched for the Belgium story. I'm not kidding. That's all they can talk about. Dude, they love it. They're all doing the Trump dance. They have a 30th of our people. If you're a listener from Belgium, stop listening right now.
Starting point is 01:24:17 I don't want you to listen to the show anymore. I don't want you. Go find a different fucking show. I was reading about like the Belgium prison system. And it was completely unrighted in the article. It was like a prison warden being interviewed. He's like, I have some more pep in my step today because that's... Oh my God.
Starting point is 01:24:35 All right. Let's fucking see them face off against the Eagles. All right. Get on the pitch against the Eagles. You have to play real football. Okay? The Belgium National Men's team versus 11 Eagles.
Starting point is 01:24:48 But like name any sport and we send our best 11 against Belgium. It can't be soccer. Can't be fun. Anything else. Anything with feet. Be fucking curling.
Starting point is 01:24:58 All right. It's fine. LeBron will be you. LeBron. Anyway, what's happening in Switzerland? The center of the world. Okay.
Starting point is 01:25:05 This story is pretty short. I wanted to do a follow-up on the 10 million population cap that I brought on the show a while ago, because they ended up putting it to a vote and seeing how it play out. And at the time, it was expected that this would not pass because there just wasn't that much support for it, and it seemed like kind of a longer shot play
Starting point is 01:25:27 by one of the further right parties within Switzerland. And that's pretty much how it played out. I think the way the votes fell was like 55, no, 45, yes. So maybe closer than initially expected. But I wanted to like follow. You don't mean out of the answer to this. How do they propose actually capping it?
Starting point is 01:25:50 The, are they gonna shoot somebody if you have a baby over a certain population? Is that? No, no, no. It's just you take a little bit off of each person. Everybody loses a pink. Everybody loses a chunk.
Starting point is 01:26:02 As long as it averages two of the, total mass of 10 million people. And that way, if you're a good person, you could offer a leg. Right. So that other people can. Right. And more babies can be born. I did look at this.
Starting point is 01:26:14 It wasn't that specific. Okay. The plan was the population would have to be capped at 10 million until 2050. And then I think at 9.5 million, they would start putting in provisions about how people could move into the country from the rest of the European Union. It's more like a border thing. Yeah. And because, so the big criticism that I saw to this outside of the, you know, for a group of people, you know, there's always the more like moral argument of, you know, we should be taking in immigrants and giving people, uh, granting people asylum, like being supportive, uh, being further integrated in the European Union. Uh, but for other arguments people had, they were like, all of the success.
Starting point is 01:27:02 Switzerland has had in the past like a couple hundred years has to do with our willingness to be open to other European countries to a degree economically, even if we've maintained this like new status of neutrality for a long time. And the business that we do, especially at this time in the world where like relationships with the U.S. are a little more stressed, relationships with China might be a little more stress. So much of our trade is done with the European Union. and by breaking some of the stipulations that we have with the European Union, and keep in mind, Switzerland is already a country that isn't actually a part of the EU. They have, like, very negotiated relationships with the rest of the European Union
Starting point is 01:27:49 that kind of allow them to, like, circumvent EU regulations in a way that other member states don't have to deal with. And so they already have... They already have, like, an advantageous relationship with the European Union. European Union. And now people's criticism of this law is like if you get rid of this freedom of freedom of movement that we have with the EU, you're starting to break down the current agreements that we have with the EU that our trade and economic success like relies on, either on the business owner end where you want to be able to have like a flow of immigrants to have as like affordable labor at your companies. Right. But even at like the lower end where
Starting point is 01:28:32 the market of your, like the reason my job exists is it, like we're able to sell products to the rest of the Europe. This has been greatly criticized as basically like Swiss Brexit if this goes through because if we get rid of the stipulations around movement with you, then it gets rid of the rest. And that puts us in a really bad spot. And the-swex it. Swecks it. And the reason that the right is pushing for this, which is a pressure on like social programs or a Swiss way of life, like these things don't, even if they like do or do not have a truth to them, they don't nearly outweigh the fact that a huge poor reason for our country's
Starting point is 01:29:12 economic success and place of importance has to do with our deep trade ties to Europe. And we cannot lose that at like any cost. So it didn't pass. And that was the expectation going into this. But I think this was my excuse to kind of, okay, now that this vote is over with, you know, Give an update. What was the reason? The last criticism I saw from people who are worried about now that this vote has been brought into the public conversation. So prominently, people are worried that this type of discussion is like, and capping the
Starting point is 01:29:45 population is being normalized in political discussion at all. And the risk that it poses to this like vote being brought up again and again in the future. Or outside of Switzerland? In Switzerland. Okay. Because I'm saying they're not, this is not setting the tone for. right wing movements. No, no.
Starting point is 01:30:02 No, solely just, just within Switzerland. That was the criticism that I had read. But yeah, that's the follow up on Switzerland. Beef. Who's taking it? That's clear beef. The story from Switzerland is that they didn't do it. If only they'd done it, then they would win.
Starting point is 01:30:18 Argentina did. Argentina did a thing. Argentina moved on. Also, based on how the reps are going, I'm sure they're going to win no matter what the news is. Have you got, I mean. Yeah, actually, you know what? after today's game,
Starting point is 01:30:31 Argy, let's, why don't we take a stab at who wins the whole thing? Okay, so the next matcher would be Morocco, Spain,
Starting point is 01:30:37 right, which is also a hilarious historical matchup. Oh my God. That is a, that is a generation's long war. It's just their literal two colonizers
Starting point is 01:30:47 that they get to face off if Morocco beats France, which will not happen. Morocco's like, let me beat my colonizers and let me do a little of it of my own. Yeah, but like Morocco and the moors colonized.
Starting point is 01:30:59 Like, they both, fought each other and calling each other for like generation. Yeah, yeah. No, the history is, in the, you know, in the most recent chapter of the way. No, I'm sure. I'm sure it's been one-sided the entire time. I just think it goes back.
Starting point is 01:31:11 That's like a crazy match. It's all in the field, you know? Okay, so based off news, do we think Morocco or spade moves to the final? What was that? That was the sandwall and. It's sandwall and immigration allowing it this time successfully. Let's give it to amnesty. I give to amnesty.
Starting point is 01:31:28 I give to amnesty. As much as we love a good. Wait, are you guys crazy? The sandwall was like a revelation. It's more interesting, honestly. It's like something. You pulled up a picture in real life out of, out of like,
Starting point is 01:31:38 Dune. Yeah, it is, it is wild. If it's based on interest, then I guess we have to get the other. It's based, yeah,
Starting point is 01:31:42 we didn't clarify. You haven't clarified. What is, it's not, it's not nicest of the news. I switch my answer. I think Morocco wins. Well,
Starting point is 01:31:50 Morocco sandwall is going to crush everything. Okay. Morocco moves to the finals versus Norway or Argentina. And then on, or England or Argentina. And so, So we have the story about beef or we have Pontons closing. We should chew in it.
Starting point is 01:32:07 But what was the England story again? I think we go beef sandwall. It's the final matchup. Beef sandwall. And ladies and gentlemen, we are giving the official prediction right here that Aden between Morocco and Argentina. You got to give it to the sandwall.
Starting point is 01:32:23 You got to get to the sandwall. It's just insane. You got to give a sandwall. It is insane. Morocco, your World Cup champion, in 2026. Who would have guessed at the start of this? What's crazy? We're going to start the final match and the Moroccans will build a sandwall in front of their goal. It'll be like tough from the avatar, dude.
Starting point is 01:32:43 And then the Moroccans will give their sandwall technology to Ukraine and they won't need missile defense. You only need sandwalls. If the sandwall is very high, you don't need air defense. You heard it here first folks. That was our lemonade stand World Cup of News. Let us know what your predictions are on what you thought of this episode. That was really fun. And if you want more, we're going to have more stories that we didn't get to get to on the Patreon, including from teams that did not make it this far. I got to get back to work. Bye, guys. Have a good week. Bye.

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