Lemonade Stand - War AND Peace | Ep. 076 Lemonade Stand 🍋

Episode Date: August 19, 2026

On this week's show... DougDoug discovers mega-sanctions, Atrioc provides the NBA legal council, and Aiden preps for CS2. 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: 076 Recorded on: August 17th, 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 1:56 Unprecedented Economic Sanctions 17:16 Avoiding NBA Salary Caps 27:10 Shopify Ad 28:40 Gusto Ad 30:08 Sudan Crisis 41:36 Columbian Mercenaries Are Involved 49:48 Chinese Micro-dramas 1:05:10 Leesa Ad 1:06:34 Fora Ad 1:07:40 Trump, North Korea, and Aliances 1:15:59 Greenland and Dr. Phil 1:25:50 Russians and Ukraine 1:32:41 ASU's Content Creator Major 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

Get your tickets now for the dog stars. It's no surprise how fast civilization can disappear. Go! Out there, just kill or be killed. Jacob Allorty. There are people out there? They need our help. Josh Boland.

Shoot first and inquire afterwards. Margaret Quali. Okay, tough guy. And Guy Pearce. Arm up! The Dog Stars, directed by Ridley Scott. In theaters, August 28th. Get tickets now.

Hi, it's Kara Swisher. You know me as co-host of Pivot, but for August, I'm flying solo, and I've lined up some incredible guest host to join me. Mark Cuban, Chelsea Handler, Caitlin Collins, and a lot more you won't want to miss. Already out, my conversation with Hillary Clinton. Among many other things, we get into redistricting fights,

reshaping state politics, and what Trump's golden makeover of the presidency actually means. And it's not good. Trust me, you don't want to skip this one. Find pivot on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the limit. Adelaide stand today. We have been faced with a monumental challenge that hits all podcasts. We're talking about serious subjects. We had too much war in this episode. A lot of war. And we were

concerned for your mental health. We were concerned there'll be depression. And particularly Aden, who by the way, every day or two on Discord in our group has been like, I think I want to talk about Sudan finally this week. It's crazy over there. Yeah, I think maybe we do some Iran stuff to update. I think guys, I am going to cover Israel-Palestine updates today as well. Sudan, Gaza, sort of put all in... It's going to melt this poor Gen Z brain. It just kind of came together in the same week, okay? And upon realizing that we had all come with stories,

we came with a lot of stories focused around war and heavy topics. And while we also tended to round these things out with some lighter topics, we have decided to go segment by segment trading off so that there is a small bit of a Peace episode. So every time we have a hardcore, difficult war topic, we will bookend it with something a little lighthearted, a little silly. Like just an emotional whiplash that is going to leave you confused for a week or two.

Yeah, this is. You should end this episode feeling emotionally confused. Right, right. Like a breakup. Feel free to use the timestamps on this one. I would just. Yeah, if you used it right, you could have a really fun episode.

Yeah, yeah. Feel free to pick which one you want. The first story, the odd stories will be war. And the even stories will be fun non-war. And depending on which one you want, the comments are going to be very confusing. Really appreciate hearing some cool things going on in the world, guys. One episode.

Like on it. Oh, that fun fact about Chinese dramas on social media is, was really funny. Laughing emoji, crying emoji. So kick us off, Doug. We have a war. We'll start with a war, obviously. Obviously.

Let's get serious up the rip. Let's start with war. Yeah. All right. So the Iran war hasn't concluded yet. Wait, really? Yeah, which is crazy. Now, there's not some insane new update other than the daily, if you open up any news article and says Trump says the deal is going well. Trump says the deal is not.

That's not happening. But something that was slightly different this week that I thought was interesting. Per Bloomberg, Treasury Secretary Scott Besson said that the Trump administration is going to soon announce unprecedented economic measures against Iran. And you can actually see this quote here. Got it be. He says, watch this space for more announcements coming next week because we are going to apply measures

like have never been seen in the history of economic isolation on a country. It'll be part of a one-two punch. So I, as a plea, I sort of saw this and I wondered, haven't we been doing that? That's my first reaction is like, do you hold this stuff back in war

until you're, it's like a boss, I'm pretty sure we've been doing economic sanctions on Iran for a long time, actually. And so what I thought would be fun is I did some research on like, what is the history of economic sanctions on Iran? And I have decided to use my executive assistant to Claude to make this visual diagram, which is, of course, somewhat oversimplified. But I'm going to walk us through how exactly has the U.S.'s economic pressure on Iran changed over time?

And that will lead us into what is Scott Besson even talking about? what else could we possibly do? So let's start with pre-1979 before the Iran Revolution, oversimplifying everybody's cool. But after 1979, there's that hostage crisis. I believe there's that movie about it

made by Ben Stiller called Tropic Thunder. Yes. So, yep, correct. On the X axis, we're going to go through notable moments that change and on our Y axis, we are seeing these countries are either neutral with Iran.

They're a medium pressure that they're putting on a moron. Iran or really max pressure everything they can possibly do. Got it. Okay. So in 1979, quite a while ago now, what, 47 years, the U.S. kicks off pressure on Iran. We do, we seize assets. We do.

Yeah, I had told us taken over. I had told us taken over. U.S. is not upset. Most other people are like kind of chill. But move forward to 1995. This is when it becomes a little more modern. Bill Clinton is present and becomes very upset that Iran is funding, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad.

and they're suspecting a nuclear program. So 1930, 30 years ago, Bill Clinton is like, I think Iran's screwing up and we're going to ban stuff. Well, you nailed that Bill Clinton. Yeah, yeah. That's mostly what I spent my time from that. Yeah, no, I felt like I was in the 90s. He said, I did not have sexual relations with Iran.

So we're kind of, not economically. He said, economically, we're actually kind of on a break right now. Yeah. Okay. But Bill Clinton wants the rest of the world to get in and on it. it. So he starts ramping up max pressure in 1996 and we start the Iran-Libia Sanctions Act, which is trying to force the whole world to comply, like basically forcing punishments if other people aren't going along with what the U.S. is doing. So I'm looking at the Y-axis right now.

I'm seeing this column of medium pressure, max pressure. How are you, like when you built this out, what is contributing to medium versus max pressure? What's the actual difference? Medium is like, we are putting sanctions on you and we're hurting you Iran to make things a little bit harder for your government, your economy, your daily life. Max pressure is like we're trying to prevent anybody else on earth from even contributing anything to you. So this max pressure jump. When is this going to zoom out though and show the greatest sanctions of all time? Oh, Scott Besson's quote. What is that how is that going to fit? Well, what I think is so interesting. The main story here is there was an actual, a long period where we were all kind of

aligned. So in this period, these early decades, like it's just kind of the U.S. flying solo, the EU and UN and the rest of them, it specifically did not go along with what we were doing. And this goes up until the mid-2000s when we start to suspect that Iran has nuclear sites. So the U.S. keeps putting on pressure is getting more kind of aggressive about this, but the rest of the world doesn't really care yet. It's starting to get a little frayed. Then we hit 2006. And this is where the UN, and notably China and Russia, who I'm calling out separately here, also start to increase pressure. Once Iran really realistically is like, ah, you guys are developing nuclear weapons

and have been hiding it. That's when pressure really kicks off. Even from China and Russia at the time. Yes. So this is what led me to go down this whole path to begin with. Is were they aligned with us? And so for a while they were. China and Russia voted on the UN security protocols that basically said, all

of us are going to put pressure on Iran now. And then in fact, China and Russia kept putting on pressure, EU and other UN members start putting on even more. We go even farther above what is necessary beyond the U.S. exemptions and eventually in 2012 we cut Iran off of Swift the banking system right so you can see in 2012 really the takeaway for this is at 2012 everybody in the world basically was aligned against Iran including their

theoretical allies China and Russia because of that the Iranian currency collapses in 2013 inflation's rampant they elect a new president who comes to the bargaining table and this kicks off the famous Obama nuclear deal era. So all of the pressure starts to ramp down over the next couple years as negotiations happen. Okay. And then in 2015, we actually get the nuclear deal signed. So to summarize all this, there's this 30 year long period where the U.S. is going, well, hey, Iran. And we eventually got everybody else on board after the nuclear program. And the deal is signed and finally everybody is cool with Iran again. Is this symbolic of, so that deal comes together and there are no more sanctions on

Iran during that period or is just very limited compared to what it was before. Basically, everything pulls out. So if you've ever heard about the Iran nuclear deal that the core tenant was Iran agreed to stop a lot of their nuclear programs, sell off a lot of the enriched uranium they had, and they would allow inspectors to come and, I believe the word is invasively, invasively like look at everything they're doing and like deeply inspect it. So they agree to all this inspections. Okay. And in return, the sanctions are going to be lifted almost in its entirely. They get put back on Swift. So the global banking system, they can actually buy and sell from other countries again without all this hassle. Sanctions are lifted. Asterisk, obviously all of this is a little

oversimplified. There's still some sanctions there from the U.S. about terrorism and whatever else. But there's this, you know, the Obama nuclear era deal did get everybody back onto like neutrality with Iran. And for the next three years until 2018, Iran actually followed through with it. Like the agency that checks this stuff went and they went into Iran and they monitor all the nuclear things. They were following their end of the deal. And then we elected Donald Trump. And in

2018, Donald Trump, after this whole decades long history of making this happen through negotiation and no warfare, in 2018, Donald Trump says, fuck you, Iran. And we step back from the nuclear deal. The EU responds by saying, please God,

don't do this and is trying to salvage it. But the U.S. is putting so much pressure that they're trying to basically do what they did back in 1996 where they're saying, we're going to cut off anybody who tries to work with Iran and they pressure the EU successfully to kick Iran back off of Swift. So 2018, everything kind of just collapses and falls apart. The EU is trying to hold us together. Is there, that's what I was about to ask. Is there, surely there must have been, and I'm asking, I'm asking, Doug, I'm asking the audience, surely there must have been a justification for this

at the time. I vaguely remember him saying, oh, the Obama deal is awful. We're backing out of it. Right. I remember that. Yeah. That's well established. Nothing else. But I remember, like, did they do somethings particularly? Or was there, I guess we don't.

The deal was a bad deal. And here are the three arguments made why. One is that Iran is agreeing to, like, shut down its nuclear programs, less centrifuges, things like this. But only for 10 years. So there was like a time limit on how their restrictions lasted.

And so he's like, that's a terrible deal. And of course, this is like Trump and Republicans and shocker, Israel. And then it was like saying they're lying. They're still funding all this terrorism around the world. And this is like a shitty deal that we should not have agreed to. But I mean, that's why it was a big deal when Trump backed out of this thing that like the world had kind of put together. Yeah. And Iran was agreeing to at the time.

So EU is like, please, no, can we hold this together? China and Russia. this is what I thought was notable. This is the point at which they explicitly go from, we're kind of allied and going along with what you want, UN, to we are not going forward with this. We are supporting Iran through this. So China and Russia really at this point kind of break off and become allies.

And you can see the graph here. This goes forward for up until 2024, for like six years. US is full pressure on Iran. The EU's like trying to keep this deal together. Iran, because the deal was broken from the U.S. side, It's like, we're going to enriching uranium now. Like, if you guys aren't doing your end of the deal, we are going to enrich your radium. I will say, if you're Iran in this scenario, it does feel like a bit of a fuck it we ball.

Right? Yeah. Why would you not? Yeah. I think we're also doing a lot to ramp up tensions after this, right? Because we killed in Iranian general through this time period. Yeah, was that his first term? Yeah.

Was that his first term? Yeah. So, so it's, this was like the split. Trump caused this giant split. And then in 2025, after six years of like trying to hold this together, it really, truly collapses. At this point, uh, the EU actually fully steps. Well, first off, Israel bombs Iran.

This is last June. Yep. And then we join in and we bomb Iran. Midnight hammer. Yeah. In Operation Midnight Hammer. And then the EU at this point is like, the deal that we've had, the Iran deal that we signed under Obama is fully.

truly dead. Iran, you are genuinely trying to enrich uranium at this point. We are reinstating all of the sanctions. So that state that like six, seven year period where everybody, all that's back now. That all went back up last September, I want to say, when the nuclear deal

is fully off. And at the same time, China and Russia are going, you can't add the sanctions back on. You're the ones who broke it. And so they have explicitly been supporting Iran at this point. And so this is where we are now. We're in this world where the U.S. I mean, it's just interesting to look at the history.

The U.S. has been like full pressure this whole time and been dragging the EU up with us and for a period successfully got China, Russia with us, and now have not. The last, you know, seven years they've been like... What sucks about it is like the only way it's really effective is if you get China and Russia on board because that's where they sell all the oil to,

or that's like the part of the trade network. That's where most of the economy is. Yeah. So all of this leads to the question. If this is what the U.S. has been doing, For the past 47 years, what the hell does Scott Bessent mean when he says we're going to unleash economic pressure? We've been going almost max speed for 47 years. So what exactly does it look like?

Well, it looks like China ties, right? 90% of oil is being bought by China from Iran. And so there's been some minor sanctions on like minor Chinese refineries, which China partially just told them not to comply, by the way. But the next step, if you want to actually do economic isolation, is to sanction the major Chinese banks. And then, of course, that is like... Dude, we're like in Soft World War III. That's crazy.

Major... Major escalation. So here's where we're at. We've done everything we can up until this point. And when Scott Besson says, we're really going to do economic isolation, there is one thing left. And it's burn every single bridge with Chinese financial systems and therefore the country. Have you seen the China made an anti-foreign sanctions law, this new court that literally handles if you were a corporation in China and you don't deliver something, don't do something

on time because of the impacts of U.S. sanctions, they will hold you liable. So it's basically saying you have to choose and you will go to jail if you don't do what you said because of U.S. sanctions. Like if you follow the sanctions. So it's like forcing a split for a lot of companies. It's causing a lot of companies a huge amount of headaches right, basically right about now, where they're like hiring massive teams of lawyers to figure out how we can somehow straddle this line because they don't want to fall afoul of the U.S. sanctions and they don't want to fall.

But they're being forced. They never weren't forced before. Now they're forced to pick. You're like, you will be viable. So it's this really weird fucking thing. And of those two allies, Russia's already sanctioned to hell, right? Because of Ukraine. Yeah.

So it's like China's the one left. Like that's the opportunity, which is scary. It sucks because I think about this theme. that Atriac has presented across a lot of your content in the last two years, and it's this idea of as the US pushes towards this sense of isolationism, leaving all these allies behind, you're losing your ability to leverage change in the world.

And I'm not saying that the Western order is necessarily always advocated for good changes. But this example of, oh, look what happens when everybody works together, like everybody in the world, world at that time pushed for sanctions on this one country that they didn't want to develop nuclear weapons. And then they did, they came to the table and made a deal because of it. It's a bad deal I heard. And then you can see this instant diversion where by blowing it up, you lose the support of a bunch of the other parties. And this seemingly successful method

of leverage, we're getting further and further away from it by every decision we've made in like the last, I mean, the last year and a half. I mean, this is, this is a really interesting presentation, Doug, because I think this 2016 breaking of this deal really feels like the beginnings of what has become like this China, Russia, Iran, North Korea. Yeah. Separate web. You know, it's like, it's like this weird, we're having these soft proxy wars,

but it's all connected. It's like this was the breaking of that order. And they just said, fuck it. We're not going to stick to this. plan anymore. It's a total self-own. It's like you got the whole world to work together to put pressure on Iran and got them to wind down a nuclear program with no war. And you got them to elect a president who was like open to negotiations and it was like this proof of this all working. And then on the other side we come in, go max pressure, shut down all deals and then shocker, it ended up in war.

Not max pressure. Get ready for what's coming. Yeah, you're right. Sorry. This is one. We'll add one more Y axis here. Yeah for plus one. Max pressure plus one. You know who needs to be under the pinpoint of maximum pressure I would argue? Is that? Maybe Steve Bomber. Maybe. Adam Silver.

Okay. Right. Harding story. Okay. That was serious. Fun watchers skipped her right now. Welcome Fun watchers. You skipped it for a story. You skipped the year. You skipped the year. That last story was a good time. That was a good time.

It's weird. I've almost forgotten about all the consequences and details. I'm sure you guys, you guys probably know this story, but I'll give you a little tiny primer. You guys know the NBA has a salary cap so that one team with a billionaire owner can't buy all the players. That's the idea, right? That's a salary cap.

Some teams, you know what I found out during research of this? There's also a salary minimum because the fucking Detroit Pistons like just tried to not pay anybody for years. So there's a salary minimum. So anyway, there's a salary cap and teams can't pay over it. And that creates an incentive. If you were a rich enough owner like Microsoft, former co-founder Steve Balmer

who has $100 billion, you could spend a little bit extra and buy a bunch of players and win and be the owner that rules. You could be the Los Angeles Dodger. Yes. We actually have a cool example of what can happen. Yeah, it happens in European sports all the time too.

That means, yeah. So anyway, so Steve Balmer sets up the clippers in L.A. and wants to be the, he's got to compete with the Lakers, he wants to be the dominant team, he's building a new stadium. And he's like, all right, I've got an idea. Well, this is essentially the reading of it.

I can't afford to get my two-star players, Quai Leonard and Paul George, on the same team with the salary cap. And reporting comes out from a great podcaster, Pablo Otori, that says that he circumvented the salary cap by giving $50 million to a fake green bank called Aspiration that was going to hire Kawhi Leonard to do a sponsorship where he didn't have to do anything

and it only applied while he was on the clippers, which is a really weird thing for them to agree on. And that was the idea, okay? So this all happened. And the reporting came out, and the NBA goes, you know what? We are going to look into this.

This is a serious thing. He wins the Pulitzer Prize for this reporting. We're going to look into this. Really? Wow. Yeah. I mean, it's a really powerful, well done piece of reporting.

He interviewed whistleblowers and the companies, all of whom are like on camera with their voices guys saying, yeah, we were stricken in the salary cap. Like, nobody understood why we were paying Kauai this much money. Because again, you could look at aspiration

in this startup and who they were paying for public relations. They paid some celebrity, $7 million, $7 million, whatever. And then all this sort of, like it's $7 million, $7 million, and then $50 million for Kauai Leonard who did nothing.

It's very obviously, that's how I kept your convention. So anyway, the report comes out today from ESPN, who stands by the reporting. It's not 100% confirmed yet, but they've been challenged on it. They said we're standing by it. That the NBA is going to offer

in terms of punishment, absolutely nothing. that they don't think he's guilty at all. They've investigated for now 11 months. They found nothing. But what's interesting is just, I don't know, two weeks ago, Pablo Torre did a follow-up where he's kind of been waiting for this investigation, get closer, and then hit him with a second.

And the second bullet was that there's a jumbotron company called Dactronics that was also in close dealings with Steve Balmer of the Clippers. And they also did a $20 to $30 million sponsorship with the Quieto Leder where he had nothing to do. And it's like literally nothing. This story is so funny because if Kauai just got off his ass to do an Instagram post, there's like some plausible deniability. It's all you had to do if you made one Instagram post with a hashtag ass-smiling with a Jumbotron. It's like the lawyers have so much more gray area to defend you because you did do something. So when you say he literally did nothing.

He did. I'm saying nothing. Wow. And he made it part of his. deal. Like if you read the contract you did with with aspiration, it's like Kauai Leonard maintains his sponsorship as long as he never leaves the Clippers and his law and he has the right to refuse any sponsorship action. And he just didn't do it. It's so, because they take, it's like they looked at every plausible line of deniability they had for the future and just

said, nah, nah, let's not do that and just hope that nobody finds out. So listen, just to be super candid. If you watch his report. it is so obvious what happened here. There is no reasonable human explanation of any other, like the money is way greater than anything else. It's funneling directly to him. You know why they did it.

The steel man is that Kauai got paid, they circumvented the salary cap. That's what I feel like at this point. That's the steel man. And so it's kind of a huge joke for them to investigate and take it so seriously for 11 months. And they're going to come out and say,

yeah, there was nothing wrong. And it just seems like Steve Bomer, who is by far the wealthiest NBA owner and is extremely well liked by NBA management and other owners, generally because he's investing a lot of money in the league, he's building this stadium.

He didn't take taxpayer funds to build the stadium, which is something I guess you can give him credit for. No, but like to have no punishment at all. He didn't take taxpayer funds to embezzle money to Kaui Leonard. Yeah, that would have been crazy. It was an ethical billionaire.

Yeah, well, so they couldn't find any evidence. And it's just crazy to have somebody publishing this stuff wins the Pulitzer Prize and they say there's no evidence. What's interesting about this story is that Pablo Tori announced today that he's got possibly one other ace up his sleep. So it's going to be, I think he's timing it for when they do their official release. So they're going to do the official release.

There was nothing going on. It's just going to keep dropping some new. Another piece of evidence. How do you explain this? Yeah. So he's really done a master class. I mean, I think his saving of the Daktronics thing was extra cool because he had Mark Cuban come on a show

and basically defend Steve Balmer all the while knowing that he had this extra ammo in his back pocket. He didn't reveal it. That's the update. I don't know. I think what what is the counter? Like if Mark Cuban went on that show, what, what is the counter? Mark Cuban and Steve Balmer's counter is that how could I have known what they're, I just invested in this. I've invested 50 million dollars in aspiration. How is I to know that they're going to, they can do what they want with it. I don't control their sponsorships. The fact that they took that $50 million and gave it directly to Quay Leonard is not my business. Okay. So there's no question that the money went to him for doing nothing. It's just like it's whether or not the owner actually directed any of that. I guess

there's that's the denial, the plausible deniability is that someone else in the organization orchestrated the circuit. It's the circumvention of the salary cap no matter what. Well, no, no, someone else. Their defense is that they, these companies are just stupid and they just invest in money in Quay Leonard and he didn't do anything and they're just dumb and we don't know why they did it, even though we have great deals with them and they helps us out. Sponsors do famously give away tens of millions of dollars for zero deliverables. Famously. Dude, it's just the zero Deliverables is what makes it so open and shut. But yeah, that's their, that's their defense.

It's not that there, there's no salary caps or convention. These guys are just stupid. But, I mean, it really, you have to be a child to like to buy this argument because Dactronics was at the exact same time they do this, having very close deals with Steve Balmer to build the Jumotrons for his brand new stadium. And he gives them all this extra money and they give it to Quay Leonard. And it's like, and he doesn't do anything. And it's, okay, just come on.

I do have one last question about it. You know what the luxury tax is in the NBA. I don't know exactly how it is enforced or works, but the idea is you can go over the salary cap if you're willing to pay an extra fee on top of it. And it's like tiered out, I believe. So like if you're a certain amount past the threshold, you start paying this luxury tax,

you go even further beyond that. You pay more luxury tax. Steve Bomber's pretty rich. Why not just pay the fucking tax? Or is there a limit on how about you can do. Like this is the band they want everybody to be in. And there's a band above it. It's like the luxury tax where it's like, okay, you're a little rich.

You know, the son's owner famously went right into that. Yeah. Got a bunch extra. Then there's like the first apron. I don't know why they're called aprons, but that's where they start adding penalties more than just financial. Okay. And then they have the second apron was what he would have crossed to do this. And it's like they like take away certain first round picks.

There's like real penalties to your team because they knew that some owners are so rich, they wouldn't care and they would pay extra. So they started doing like competitive. competitive penalties at a certain level. So this is like an attempt to avoid the penalties of the aprons and like maintain, you know, it's less about, I think, purely money and more about. Because actually my, you know, based on the numbers being thrown around, the amount of money he spent above and beyond what he would have,

what he would have had to just give Kauai in a contract is massive. Like keeping all this going and like the extra money he had to pay them to do this salary type of intervention is like a lot. They were sending $2 million checks all the time to these. companies to keep them. So yeah, that's my understanding is that there's the competitive penalties of the luxury of the of the aprons is why he did it. But so the last thing I'll say on this, we'll move on. We got war to get to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that the incentives this now creates. And by the way, he's probably not the only owner to do this, but this seems to be the most egregious

and largest amounts. Yeah. And the incentives now create is like if he's getting no punishment at all, everybody's going to want to start doing sponsorship deals. You see NBA players all starting podcasts. Suddenly you can just sponsor their podcast. There's a lot of ways to get around this now. And if nobody's going to be looking, after 11 months, they couldn't find the one in plain sight.

They're not going to find the slightly more sneaky ones where they do one Instagram post, you know? It doesn't give you a lot of faith as to how they're investigating gambling within the league. Do you know what I mean? It's always so funny when they have like an ESPN first talk about the problems of gambling and there's the gambling sponsor right. The odds for the tonight's game are like, oops.

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That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com slash lemonade. One more time, gusto.com slash lemonade. You guys sold me. I'm going to try it. More for this show comes from Lisa. You guys know it feels great to sleep well. You need a good mattress to do that. Aidan, have you tried Lisa?

I've been sleeping on the Lisa mattress for two weeks now. Okay. And what review? Fantastic. Had an old mattress that I had for a long time. Very firm. Uh, bought it on Amazon for like $100. Just slept on it for honestly unhappily for years.

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lemonade. Anyway, war. What's happening with war? Okay. All right. War, war watchers skip ahead to write. Now you're getting into something that is real, real dark. Okay. I have been wanting to bring this up on the main show for

a while now because I did like some long interviews a while back about it. And I want, well, you might know the answer already. What is the largest displacement or humanitarian crisis in the world right now? Clippers fans after the... It's not the Clippers. I think Sweden is trying to keep out Americans. It's not sweet. We're concerned about that for other reasons. Well, it is the Sudan Civil War right now

that started in 2023. And I don't know, I want you guys to answer this genuinely. Can you guys think of what the most recently recognized country in the world is. Oh, that's a great question. You say recognized? Like officially recognized? In order to really become a country, you need basically all the other countries

to recognize your status as a country. So can you think of what the most recent one was? It was in 2011. 2000. I was thinking like 80s or 90s. Wow, 2011. No, I'm not going to know. Yeah, it has to be Africa.

right? It's South Sudan. Okay. South Sudan. And if you could take a guess as to what led to their becoming a South Sudan. I'm imagining that there was some sort of larger, probably the name was mega Sudan. Right. It was likely, that's a decent

guess. It does have Sudan in it. Yeah. There was a civil war that led up to that happening. Okay. So in the early 2000s, there's this guy in charge of Sudan named Omar al-Bashir. Okay. And Omar al-Bashir, to maintain his own personal security, has basically a variety of, like,

military forces, the largest of which is kind of the more formal Sudanese army called the SAF. And throughout his time in charge, there's this region in the west of the country called Darfur. And Darfur has a bunch of natural resources. in it, including a lot of the country's gold mines. And he, during that era, through one military group and the SAF, attacked a lot of that Western region for a bunch of different reasons.

But this region of the country has a kind of a long jaded history with the SAF forces in the country because of the damage they caused back then. And I assume brutal, like a brutal. Yeah, like crimes against humanity, like heavily scrutinized by the internet. international, you know, the international courts at the time, things like that. And maybe we could just assume all of these are going to be brutal from this point. And you tell if it's not, extremely brutal. If there's ever a non-brutal one, spot like that. Okay.

There's, I'm not going to say that. It's not going to come up. Okay. So what there is this, uh, giant conflict between a body in the south called the Sudan People's Liberation Movement or SPLM, SPLM. and al-Bashir's forces in the north. And this is the war that unfolds in the build-up to 2011. And the SPLM end up being able to gain enough control and win. There's a more complicated history behind it than that,

but they create what is now South Sudan. And what remains of that, when they decided on like the border between the two countries, there's a huge portion of the SPLM supporters or SPLM fighters that remain in the country of Sudan. And the thing about this is across those borders, there's huge pockets of oil. And so Al-Bashir, in the fallout of this war,

loses access to a lot of the country's oil reserves, which puts a lot of economic pressure on the rest of the country because they rely on that. And... Was it economically like a petro state at the time, like basically all the... Yeah, huge reliance. alliance on oil. And of the remaining areas that have oil, a lot of them are in this territory

that are still in areas where the SPLM North is what it's called still lives in the country. And even though the civil war that led up to the formation of South Sudan is over technically, there continues to be a war that rages on in the southern portion of Sudan, like through the 2010s. And the guy that I was interviewing, he is an American guy that has lived in the country for 20 years. And that is the region of the country that he lives in. And he was explaining from a southern, like, southern of modern Sudan perspective as somebody in this like SPLM North territory. This is, this is above South Sudan. This is the southern part of Sudan. Southern part of modern Sudan. So right above South Sudan. Yep, got it. The war continues.

And it's very violent there for a long time, even though that isn't labeled as an official civil war in Sudan's history, like by the broader public. And he was telling me these crazy stories of how the village he was in was like bombed. He lost his house at the time. His like wife escaped and like managed to like hide behind like rocks and like shrapnel like exploded off of them. And he remained in the country in the time because of like the humanitarian effort that he had been putting in. He still lives there now. But as we approach, like 2019, things start to change in the country. The rest of the country, which has been traditionally very divided, there's a lot of, like, internal racism within Sudan, especially between the Arab population

and the other, like, African ethnic groups. And as the country is, like, crumbling economically, Al Bashir, the guy still in charge of modern Sudan, starts to be put under like more pressure and scrutiny. And this actually unites a very traditionally divided country. Like Al Bashir and his supporters put a lot of effort into stoking these like racial flames in the country in order to divide people. And eventually people came together and is like this guy in charge of our country

is doing a terrible job where like economically disenfranchised, There's no opportunity. We're falling off since the end of this previous civil war. We're going to rally together and do a coup and get this guy out of power. And there's two major bodies that decide to do that at the time. There's the SAF, like his main portion of the military that was behind him before. And then there's this other military organization called the RSF that he also had formed previously. Because remember, his security strategy was,

I'll have all these different like paramilitary groups like act as my army as a whole because that way it's it's they're all like vying for my attention and therefore it's easier. There's no one that could cue me that I have a lot. Exactly. So these two big ones, the RSF and the SAF, push him out of power and like take over the country.

Is he flee or what is he? He fled because he's still alive. I believe. And the two of them, the two guys in charge. of these two factions. RSF, SAF, are now in control of the country. But the country, as you can probably guess, still isn't very stable in the wake of this. They're going through all these negotiations with like international powers in order to like establish the new order of the state

and bring stability to the country. But they can't agree on who's actually going to be in charge between the two of them. And the RSF, which is, has heavy influence in this Darfur resource region of the world. They have a lot of this animosity from the 2000s and the damage that the SAF did there at the time and they really don't like them. Right. So you have this civil war start to break out between the SAF, which is like basically Sudan's official, in quotes, army in the eastern part of the country at war with the western part of the country, which is what the RFS controls. There was animosity already. Then they united to get rid of Albaeshire and then the animosity returned, essentially.

Yeah. And this is all in Sudan, North Sudan. This is all in, yeah, Sudan, aka North Sudan. Okay.

And there's this third, there's this third faction that was like, they were, they were under fire through all of the 2010s, this SPLM group in the southern part of the country

that was like, trying to make it through, trying to like establish their own state, figure out what they are in the wake of like South Sudan breaking off from them and stuff like that.

And then the two bodies of military power that were like pummeling them for the 2010s are now at odds with each other. And their attention kind of shifts away from the southern portion of the country into this like West versus East battle. So weirdly enough, during this civil war, this southern portion of the country is like relatively quiet and chill. Like they're in a period of reprieve from all of the violence. Okay. And that continued to this day? Kind of, yeah. Oh.

Because these two sides are so distracted with the conflict between the two of them in the majority of the country that this faction of the SPLM North is actually pretty insulated. So this war, as it's, has resulted since 2023, there are 25 million people who are like under threat of famine. Keep in mind, this is a country of like 52, 55 million people. So like half of the country. like four million children are estimated to be starving, like throughout this. An estimated, and it's really hard to like count up the total death toll in the war because of like the way information travels and is distributed.

But like up to like 400,000 people have been killed in this war since 23. And one of the largest conflicts was a huge city in the Darfur region in the west is called El Fasher. and SAF had control over that city for the first years of this conflict. And what the RSF, which controls the bulk of that region, did, is they put a siege on that city. So they made a huge berm around the entire thing that you can see on like satellite. They like built it out over months.

A lot of giant berms in Africa that I've been learning about the past couple weeks. I had the exact thought. I was like, we've been weirdly touching on berms recently. And they enclosed the entire city. And what this did, and keep in mind, after they enclosed it, there were still like 270,000 people living in it. And the goal was to starve them out in order to take it. And this prevented any UN or aid groups to be able to get in during this time.

And the city is under siege from the end of 2024 until 2026 earlier this year. and nobody can get out during this time. And at the beginning of this, like the early reports of what's going on is like people inside the city are starving. There's like no food. There's limited water. People cannot like live life

because they're under this siege. And then eventually the RSF was able to take the city. And the terrible, awful, awful thing. It's hard to even like describe this on the show. As the city fell, the military groups like didn't allow anybody to leave and they killed over the course

of like the week that it took to to take the city they killed like 70,000 people out of the 270,000 people that were still living there they like there's insane reports of like gang rape and there also

aren't a lot of videos going around about the conflict because the limited access to like power and like cell service in this area. Is there a reason for that level of brutality to just kill one in four people, but one in five? I mean, I couldn't speak to the,

I'm sure it's, you know, deeply complex, but I think there's like a, there's a lot of history behind like the way people approach these things. I think there's also just tactics that are used in like war historically that are used to like, you know, put fear into people and to commit this like level of atrocity. I watched like a report.

It's really hard to watch, but it's like just people getting lined up on the side of the street and just going down the line, like shooting them. And it's, it is so truly harrowing to watch. And like, here's survivors accounts from what happened. It is honestly, even reading about other conflicts, like it's so unlike anything I've really ever like read or seen. and this happened like earlier in this year and the city fell and the RSF now controls it.

The, and I think there is some animosity that rolls over from the 2000s when a lot of these people who see the SAF as the enemies that committed atrocities to them during that time. That's part of the reason. But it feels like decades of eye for an eye atrocities and yeah brutality.

Okay, so I, this is a turn of something still part of this story, but maybe a little lighter, is, you know, which country, if you remember, did we talk about, recently had people in Ukraine for drone training? Columbia. Columbia. And what's crazy is there's a huge number of Colombians

involved in this conflict that have been like commissioned by the RSF. The natural question is, what are a bunch of Colombians doing in the middle of the Sudan Civil War? Yeah, why? So the other thing that comes into play here is there's a bunch of other powers in the world that want to fund and back these sides, right? On one hand, like Egypt is probably the biggest backer of the SAF. And they have a strategic interest in the country

because they're the country that borders it on the Red Sea. This is a giant trading route to the rest of the world. Stability and a relationship with Sudan is really important because of the Red Sea. And then on the other hand, the biggest supporter of the RSF has been the UAE, which they vehemently deny. But if you listen to the reports of these Colombians, and there's this crazy, crazy article that just came out on the FT about them interviewing a bunch of these Colombian agents, basically. And they're like, we've been trained by UAE soldiers and, like, paramilitary groups in other countries in Africa. a bunch of us have like visited the UAE and the UAE is supplying a bunch of money

and arms to the RSF side of the conflict. The side that committed that atrocity in Al Fasher. So you might wonder why. Yeah, I was my first question, why? What does the UAE get out of that? So do you know besides oil, what is one of the largest industries in the UAE? Do you happen to know?

Colombian tourism. Is it gold? Is it what? Gold. Gold. The UAE is a huge. huge point for the world's gold supply because they do a ton of like processing and sale of gold to like outside parties. China built a big gold transition bank there or a settlement bank.

Yeah and it's so control over the global supply chain of gold is really critical and there's a ton of gold in this region in Darfur and they have a vested interest in having control over that gold in that region or access to that gold in the. the future. So they've kind of picked a party to like win the war. Like RSF is more in control in this area and has more control over these mines. So we're going to support the side that we see is more likely to win. There's also smaller reasons why they might be supporting as well. I think like you know, the UAE arguably has an interest in the Red Sea as well. They have like interest in like knocking down like Islamist terror groups and this is a way like if they weaponize one side,

they can like potentially combat that. But the gold seems. to be the main thing. The main economic impetus, okay. And they also, throughout this whole time period, even though they're funding the RSF, they buy gold from the Sudanese government and the SAF all the time too. Like, all-

They mainly just want the gold. They mainly just want the gold at the end of it. But they're picking the horse that looks more likely to win the control over this territory of the gold. There's like a fantasy dragon in the Middle East who is doing whatever it can to extract gold from Sudan.

Yeah, and- It's just hoarding it regardless of the consequences. And the consequence of it are the most severe, right? It's like literally thousands of women and girls raped, literally tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people killed. And that isn't to say that UAE is the only player.

There's other countries with vested interests here, and it includes places like the United States, Russia, Turkey. But the UAE and Egypt are like the two big foreign powers at the table when it comes to this conflict. And it is... Do you know, I'm not going to know the answer, but my understanding from the United States

is that not that they would never get involved their metal, they do it. It's the classic, but they don't even have a side on this because there's no gain. But what is the US? Yeah, I don't have a great answer to that question, but as someone who reads and has seen a lot of the US's involvement in other places,

they seem weirdly checked out of this one. And it might just because of that. It's like you don't have a vested interest in either side. If anything, the US's biggest impact here is as we've chosen to pull out so many of things like US aid and like, and helping places like this in times of conflict, there's a lot of accusations directed towards the US of like, if you had stepped in or if you had provided the money, you would have helped with the fallout of these atrocities. You could have been able to

prevent it. That is more the rhetoric that I see around this. Right. I see. So as we've dismantled that international aid system, this is some of the consequences live in like places like this. I thought this and the Colombians are there because as the drug wars have like wound down a bit in Colombia there's a bunch of people in Colombia actually with like insane expertise

in like guerrilla warfare and either on the Colombian military side or on the drug cartel side that just have a lifetime of experience and are like really well-trained soldiers relative to like other mercenaries available for hire so they're just going where the work is And there was this crazy tech that they used to like monitor phones where you can like see the language of a phone that like connects to the tower or whatever.

So they can monitor like Spanish like it popping up in these regions of like conflict in Sudan or a bunch of phones with like Spanish default language. And they can like track around where people are going. I just. That's wild. The cascading like global connections. and consequences of this are so insane to me and the real human cost is absurd. That's the Sudan.

That's the Sudan. That ties to what we said last week because it's like these Colombian trained narcos are now going to Ukraine for training and then going around the world as part of like... Renaissance men, really. Yeah.

They're getting... They're getting the drone training from the UAE too. That's part of them have like drone expertise now. that is demanded in the Sudan war. It's, it's insane. This is a great piece. This is cool.

Wow. Yeah. Okay. Was there any like, what is the most recent update? It's the continued multi-year war. Is there, is there, look,

I wish you had context here. Aden has been talking about this for months and has been doing a lot of research on this for months, including talking, having these long conversations, but this guy has been working and living there for 20 years.

Is there any? I mean, maybe in the months that you've been looking into this. Yeah. Any positive developments? Anything that's moving towards it? Is it just like,

this is just awful and, and that's it? To be honest with you, not really. Oh. Like, I, I think there isn't,

I wanted there to be kind of like a light at the end of the tunnel here. It doesn't seem like it. I think the last big city, uh, in the Western region that hasn't fallen under RSF control yet is called L-O-Bed, L-O-Bed.

And, uh, people are fearful that basically, what happened to El Fasher is going to happen there next, and it's like the next city to fall before they have control over that entire portion of the country. Yeah, dude, I really, I wish, the only positive piece I really had in the whole thing

is that weirdly enough, in the wake of like civil war distracting the rest of the country, this southern faction, the SPLM North, actually has a weird bit of sanctity to it now because the rest of the country is fighting each other. and yeah, I strongly encourage people to like read more and look more into it. It's very complicated with like a huge amount of history to it. And I was thinking, you know, I'd love. Okay, how are you going to do this?

Good luck. Good luck. You have a scalpel. I want to see a surgeon level precision on how you do this transition. So when you look at tears right now. That is an extremely sad story. When you look at, dude, I was like actually almost crying. the office of this morning.

When you look at the countries involved and the proxy war within Sudan, there's a name you don't really see, interestingly enough, China. And then I looked into why. And it seems to be because the entire country has been distracted by micro dramas on their phones.

Yeah, I'll take that. Welcome back. If you're looking at only a happy segment. Hey, fun times. Boy, if you like happy ones, I would go back and watch that because that was like, You love, that was, hey, if you go back.

That was a, that was an easy list. It was a, it was a breeze. Hoof. I think, I think, you know, stay on this one for a bit and then maybe go back at the end of the episode. What I will say is if you're interested in watching both halves of this episode, don't do war, don't do every war in a row. Like, oh yeah, that would be, that'll be a tough one. Don't do, man. Okay, you know, okay.

All right. I'm also interested in this because I, I, Well, you tell me about it. I'll don't know what though. Okay. All right. You might not have known this because Quibi failed horribly in the United States, but microdramas on your phone are rip roaring through the world. Okay, it's a fun story. Pull this up, Perry. You got micro dramas. Now they appear. These are short one to three minute episode shows on your phone where you pay per episode. And while you might not have heard of this, because I hadn't until recently, these have been blowing up in China for like eight years now.

nine years now, and now are starting to spread to the rest of the world. They seem to be largely about vampires and rich people billionaire type things, including the double life of my billionaire husband. Watch out. I'm the boss lady. My firefighter ex-husband burns in regret or this exclusive, the discarded ace. Um, so, so my firefighter ex-husband burns in regret is awesome. That is fucking awesome. It sounds like the fake. true crime stories that I was reading a little while ago. Yeah. Similar audiences probably. Okay. So, so what the heck's going on here? All right. So they started in China. This was actually in the 2010s, but then it blew up during the pandemic where all these production companies were like,

people want to watch short vertical videos on their phone and we could turn a show into like a quick little bite. Funny because again, we tried this with Quibi in the U.S. and it failed horrifically. But this has been going extraordinarily well in China for a while. The past couple years, people started to bring it to the U.S. So you may or may not have heard of these. I hadn't, but here's some interesting things. First off, these are filmed insanely, insanely cheap. The entire series is estimated to be about $200,000, where for reference, most TV show episodes are millions of dollars, especially depending on the production. It's very focused on romance, rich people, a lot of vampires. It seems to be like Mr. B style all focused.

on getting you engaged where every episode is like a cliffhanger hook. Here's a quote from one of the Japanese production developers. He avoids mysteries and thrillers because they aren't great at hooking audiences instantly in favor of romance, which he saw is both an underserved market in the U.S. and a genre that could sell big emotions quickly. Another quote, the basis for a classic microdrama set piece, the cheap to shoot banquet humiliation in which a character is subjected to endless rounds of cruelty in a public place before getting the last laugh.

It's Star Man. It's Star Man. It's Mr. Beast. It's these, yeah, it's ridiculous. Wait, how long are each one of these episodes? One to three minutes. And so the business model's really weird because they give you like a couple episodes free

and then you pay per episode after that. And that's part of why they're like, how can we get this to work in the United States? It's hard to do so, right? Some of them, it changes, right? But they're these special apps. Like, I was trying to find it. So it's like, I think real app is the name, spelled R-E-E-L.

Think about what this meets. Katsenberg was on to something. Yes, he was on to the thing. He made the fatal mistake. Of hiring chance the rapper to be your flesh. Okay, that's immediately one. That's a big one. Ten minute episodes are too long.

Too long. Too long. He made a bet on everyone's attention span of being dog shit and he didn't know how dog shit would be coming. He was too old. He was too set in his ways to see he had to really. So I was at a party recently and I met some people who, you know, LA has been through a bit of a production drought.

All the screenwriters are like finding out of trouble right. Yeah. So this is, yeah, this is really true. No, no, no, you start with yours. Okay. So I was going to say, they said that all the actors they know are taking jobs with these because that's what's available right now. Like these are, these are where the money is.

A lot of money is flowing into these investment ideas and they're all getting jobs and they're like, they're really trying. They said if you can get cashed. is like the hot CEO type, you can get tons of work. Yeah. But if you get cast as like, I don't know, like the, the chud or whatever, you don't get that many, you don't get that many things. And so, yeah, I was hoping, maybe we bring them out for a few years.

They want to be interviewed. They mentioned. Oh, cool. But yeah. Is it, I blur this. No. Okay. So I'm going to play out.

I talked to another friend at a party this past weekend where they mentioned how one of their actor friends. this has been this like recent last two years like, oh, you can get these jobs with these little microproduction companies. Sometimes a little weird, you go in, you just like churned through episodes in a single day. This is like hyper, hyper efficient. Like no second takes. No second takes.

Just go, go, go. And it's like you don't need necessarily good acting or production. It's just like, so it's been kind of slop. And so a good friend of theirs has been doing this. And this has been where their work has been as an actor until recently because now you can do it with AI. And so Drama Box, one of the Chinese production studios doing this, has 6,000 of these shows in their catalog. 6,000 that are live action, and they already have 1,000 new AI shows.

That's crazy. With an estimate that 50% of their upcoming projects are AI generated. From that Bloomberg article, in April, the Singapore-based company, NetShort, had a hit with an AI-generated series called The Discarded Ace, whose protagonist looks like Jesse Eisenberg. Fake. This right here, you can pull it up. I don't know if we're allowed to show this. What are they going to do? Sue us. This is a fully AI generated show about a Jesse Eisenberg lookalike who goes on these like gambling journeys. It's all AI and this was one of their most popular shows. The ghost hand. No one's ever succeeded. To stack six dice into a single tower with every face the same number, how is that even possible? Though it's like blatantly ripping off of like now you see me, right? That. that movie, but it's all AI. Dude, I like, for audio listeners, it is not good. This is not.

He's very obviously AI. He's playing something that looks similar to Liars Dice. What? What the hell? So apparently, as these companies have already been optimizing for mega slop, this is the obvious next evolution. And now even this brief window of, like one to two years where American actors could get jobs on these shows are now getting turned

like sloppifying even harder. It's just a crazy story. And if you're like me, you probably have never even heard of it. This is a sad. It's not a sad, but this is making me sad like Sudan. People are watching this by the millions. Now, I'm not sad like Sudet. Okay. You know what I'm saying, but like this is a depressing angle. This is, this is like successful is what you're telling me. This was one of their hit shows. Yes. That makes me depressed also. Wait, how many, sorry, just help me, how many people are watching this? Are there any viewers, there's viewership? I know, according to the Bloomberg article, one in every 10 humans. No. Yes. No way. No, that just can't be fucking, well, if so many people are watching, think about how much China moves the needle on that. I know, it's so big in China. That's crazy. But you, you probably scroll past an episode on social media, perhaps while wondering who watches this stuff. The answer about one-tenth of all. people on earth.

So fucking crazy. There's also a variety article that goes into this called The Vertical Revolution, how microdramas became a multi-billion dollar global phenomenon. Can I ever tell you that this, I was on the New York subway one time when I was visiting, and I'm standing up, there's a guy sitting down next to me. He's got to be in his 50s.

And he's on his phone, and he's watching this like AI video about Obama. And I watched the entire thing over his shoulder. And then he, after he finishes the video, he leaves a comment that's like, ha ha, loved Obama in the second term. And then I had a thought.

I was like, this is the guy. Do you know what I mean? Like when you see the comments on these things on YouTube or Facebook and you're like, who is watching? Who is commenting? Surely they're all robots. It's him. It's him and he's a normal guy on the train in New York.

There's tens of them. One in every thing. There's literally one every 10. Yeah, it's I I this is gonna be like a brief little fart in the wind that we never hear about because I think it'll die because of this AI stuff. I don't know I feel like humanity is a brief little fart in the way it's like everything beautiful. What this is crazy? This is gonna be you guys Jeffrey Katsenberg had a vision for yet a vision grown AI shitty vertical video and now we're losing that job. Have you seen Darmann? Have you seen one of those videos? Yes, it's you seen it? It's like motivational. This is basically this. It's a very poorly acted slop.

But if you ever look on Facebook and look at the amount of views those get, it's like Mr. Beast level numbers. Like he gets 50, 60 million views on every one of those. And they're always like two minutes long, total slop. There's like the poor guy wins in the end or whatever. Yeah. I don't know. I want to take a shot.

You know what? I'll take this shot. I feel like I've consumed enough Chinese media. Okay. I fit maybe part of the reason that this flies is because Chinese TV is so dog shit dude. It's like I used to watch a bunch of Chinese TV while I was studying. I watched Chinese TV literally every day.

And it's bad. It's just bad. They make bad shows. And I've heard the TV industry there is like improving and getting better in the same way that like their film industry is getting a lot better in recent years. But I remember like to, dude, why are the TV? shows so, you gotta give me more. I watched one good TV show during that time. It was called

The Bad Kids and that was the only good Chinese TV show I watched. Was it about a billionaire or a vampire? No. No, that was it was about, it was about three like really, uh, like impoverished kids who like accidentally witness a murder. Uh, and then, and then like deal with the consequences of that guy seen that they saw the murder. And it's really good. Every other show, garbage. And I wonder if it's like a comparison there. Remember, this is an insane sentence. When we would all watch TV together in Chinese taxis, because they all have screens everywhere, they're all period, these like terrible empire period pieces. Because you all, yeah, exactly.

Because you can't make a TV show that is about modern politics that would criticize the government in any way. So to be safe, you make it about ancient governments. And it's just like rich people having these romance things or American billionaires. And it's like, anyway. Yeah, I did remember, I read something about this because a lot of these micro dramas, I assume the actors that I talked to said they're like, some of them are like basically soft corporal. Like they're just, they're like all romance. They're all about people being hot. They kind of make out instantly, whatever.

And it's tuning in now. And there was a crackdown in China recently because they're so popular. The audience for a lot of these is urban educated women who can't find a partner because that's a huge problem right now in China. And so they love these things about, oh, I secretly married a billionaire or whatever. Yeah. That's a, and there was a China attempt to crack down on these microdramas to help increase the birth rate because they thought it was making women too picky. They were looking for the CEO or whatever for the microdramas. Again, I don't know the, the, that, but I remember reading a piece on that.

That was pretty funny. Yeah, stop looking for a vampire. You can't find a vampire. People are big mad about data centers in the United States this summer, but don't sleep on how mad people are about flock. Flock cameras, if you haven't noticed them, don't worry, they've noticed you. You may have heard about them in your reels or on flock talk. I have never in my life been as pissed at the government as I am now that flock cameras exist. Americans are going to war against flock AI surveillance cameras and people are going around and literally sawing them down, absolutely destroying them.

An AI surveillance apparatus goes against the very essence of freedom and the core values of our country. It's not right. It's not conservative. And it sure as hell ain't American. Flock surveillance cameras have popped up all over the nation every state but Alaska. But this year, dozens of cities and counties across the country have cut ties with Flock. And on today, explain from Vox, we're going to tell you why. Megan Rapino here.

This week on Why Are You Like This? I got to sit down with legendary Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve in Chicago during All-Star weekend. We get into her personal style of activism. she supports her players as people and why she proudly considers herself a dyke. Then we learn if she's more of a mommy, daddy, or baby. Check out the latest episode

of Why Are You Like This, wherever you get your podcast and on YouTube. Why don't we, what if we scoot it on over from China? Okay. And we went to their neighbor. Okay. Korea. Korea. Oh, okay. And I want you to break down for me. And we're back to war. We're back to war. Hopefully,

a little less sad, but we'll see. There seems to be a a dynamic changing between North Korea and South Korea. Yeah, what I'll say is this one's probably less sad than that story. Okay, then the Chinese microchrom? Okay, this is good. So we're equal opportunity for sadness across war and peace. Yeah, yeah, there's a little update is obviously Donald Trump is a stalwart ally to all

of our longtime allies. We all know this. No sarcasm needed. But recently he did something that kind of confused me, which is that he posted a photo of him and Kim Jong-un and said, you know, we're good buddies. We're always, you know, we're friends. I don't remember the exact quote, but that's the theme of it. And then yesterday, he said, hey, we're going to be cutting back on our joint exercise.

These are done every year for 70 years, our joint military exercises with South Korea, which are starting today. They've already started. He said, we're going to be cutting them short because it sends the wrong message to our friends in North Korea about, you know, about how hostile we are. And then he says, not that it's related. This is in the same true social place. Not that it's related,

but it was a little strange that we needed help in Iran and South Korea didn't help us. Hmm, or whatever. So it's seemingly like in punishment for South Korea, one of the United States's closest and long-time allies, not jumping into the insane Iran war. He is like switching sides in this 17 years. They're not related for one.

He couldn't be more clear. He couldn't have been more clear. So I'm writing a tweet. You may as well get all your thoughts out. Just get all your thoughts on. Even if they're separate. Somebody paid $100,000 to get that five second to say it's already. So people is, this is Mason Richie, professional of international politics in a university

in Korea, said Trump's language that he's saying around this is like basically one-to-one parading Pyongyang's lines, North Korea. And it's causing a lot of chaos and tumult in South Korea. And I think his actions around this are sent, the analysis is what they're saying, is that it's been sending a real message of unreliability to basically all of America's partners in East Asia. Because at the exact same time as we,

not the exact same, but within a few months of this, we also pulled all of our fad anti-missile launchers that were in South Korea out because we needed them for the Middle East. And at the same time, this was within a past week, because we needed to replace, you know, you guys heard about what's happening with the USS Lincoln

where, It's been deployed for too long, so there's like moldy food and the people are getting really crazy. So they had to replace it. So they said that ship to dock and they pulled the last remaining aircraft carrier out of Asia, out of East Asia. So the entire pivot to Asia strategy has completely gone now. We've basically reduced our ability to project any power in Asia massively. And it's all gone to the Middle East. And so all of the allies that have like been relying on the U.S. security blanket and these like are now in a real like, what the fuck

moment. And South Korea is ground zero for that. Where they're, this has really caught them off guard. And so that's, that's, I mean, that's really update. It's like he is just, it just feels, you know, you read about a lot of things in history and they feel like they were products of larger forces. But when we read about, like, even what you did in your presentation on Iran, it feels like the whims of this one fucking guy are making so much change because I don't think he was pressured into this.

I don't think this is like something he had to do. I think he literally wants, I don't know, he's. He said he had great relationship with Kim Jong-un and that he gets along with him real well. Even that we have notably threatened them before. Like explicitly. You remember we used to tweet and he'd be like, in North Korea, hell and fires come in. But now they're good friends. I mean, you know.

Is there any? I read the steel man. I read the steel man. Yeah. So the steel man would be that, you know, he is trying to extend in all of branched North Korea as they become deeper entrenched with Russia and China, which they have been. I don't know if you guys know that famous picture of North Korea and South Korea where there's lights on one side and stark on the others. So if you look at that more recently, the lights of North Korea have started to get a little

brighter. They've actually been leveling up a little bit economically. And it's because of deep ties with Russia around their war effort. They've had soldiers out there come back with spending money from Russia. They started to military upgrade. And then China's been sending in tech. So they've been upgrading. And the idea is maybe Trump thinks through negotiation alone via tweet.

He hasn't met Kim Jong-un in this past year. Like he has in person, but not, not recently. He did it in his first term. Yeah, but not in the last, what, six years. Yeah, exactly. Not since his first term. Cool. But the idea is, I think they were both at an event together.

And to be fair. He hasn't gone to, yeah. I have friends where like it can be years. Yeah, he feels like it's a good yesterday. It feels like that's a bit of day. Like me and Kim Jong-un used to play Mario Kart online together. Yeah, exactly. And if you saw him now, we see it.

We'd click. You'd have instant rapport. And I think he feels that way for some reason and his decision. and is deciding this is the way. But to do this, again, I think to do this so publicly, to publicly announce after the drills have already started, that South Korea is getting cut off from them and that they don't pay their fair share,

which I looked into it, for these drills is not true. They actually, they do pay their fair share. And in fact, Pete Hegzeth, not but like four months ago, publicly praised them for being one of the few allies that does pay their fair share on these things. So, yeah. I could stack on to steal money if you want. Yeah.

Keep in mind. That's really kick South Korea while they're down. I've watched one video about this. Yes, okay. But North Korea recently made a change to their constitution. Okay. And why this is interesting is throughout the entire history of North Korea and South Korea, and the history of the Korean War,

is that the goal is reunification. The two countries will not be two countries, but all of Korea will be back together once one side has won. But this year, they made a change to their constitution, which they changed one of the lines about the status of like their state. And instead of saying like Korea, they identify North Korea as its own sovereign state,

implying that there has been some sort of internal motion towards we're no longer seeking to unify or like more South Korea back into our country. We're our own thing and we're moving on as such. So the steel. the steel man, I would say if, if, you know, Trump or whoever is advising in this regard is aware of this, maybe they see this as a time where the pressures of the Korean War are no longer the same as they once were. That's something I'm putting out. There's a South Korean source that did say that like, if Trump has the relationship with Kim Jong-un that he claims,

then theoretically this could lead to a normalization or some talks between North and South Korea. But, you know, most of the South Korean sources that I saw were very skeptical that there would be any sort of any real talks or any real progress. And additionally, we have to acknowledge the elephant in the room, which is that North Korea is strongly supporting Russia and Russia in the war of Ukraine, which we're on one side of, and Iran in the war with Iran. And those are closer alliances for them than whatever Trump is going to true social out. So I find it to be even from like, you know, even if you're like, hey, listen, I don't think we should do drills. in South Korea, because we shouldn't have any conflict at all. Just from a game theory on U.S. sticking to what it's said to do for its alliances

feels really backwards. It feels really ad hoc. You know, there's no... Well, you got to think about it. It's like, you make mistakes sometimes, and at least our alliances with everybody else have been so strongly. It's been so rock solid. That just South Korea is getting a little bit of it. Yeah, you're right.

That's the economic sanctions that Bessent is talking about with Iran. Like, if the whole world is destroyed, Iran will suffer. If we destroyed all supply chains everywhere, they're going to have a really fucking hard time in Iran. We start sleeping with their allies. Never let them see your next move. Speaking, okay. Speaking of boosting up, boosting our allies. Yeah, boost them.

Let's get on over to Greenland. Yeah, for the Nordic. Wait, wait, wait. Is this fun? Is this fun? It's a Nordic fun fact. I would argue this is a little fun and silly. albeit it does have some severe consequences.

There's my one question for you. Is this Nordic fun fact going to end up in Ukraine at all because it needs to stop doing that? Dude, I'm not kidding. No. I'm not kidding. There's no line. There's no way.

There's an easy line to Ukraine on this one. There's no way. Okay. All right. Okay. Nordic fun fact. This has to be fun. Because honestly, our last phone was a little too's dark for me.

Well, okay. What do you do? Who do you think of when I say Greenland in oil. Who comes to mine? Like an individual? Like an individual? Greenland oil? Any, any, I think of Trump.

That's because he wants, he wants Greenland's resources. The, the king of Denmark. You have Denmark. What about Dr. Phil? That was my next guess. Dr. Phil. So there is,

there is a company called the Greenland Energy Company. This is a fun one. This is a fun one. She better not take an unfun turn. Which has negotiated a six episode documentary with Dr. Phil that he's like producing to go over like the journey of discovering oil in Greenland. When did Dr. Phil get into this type of content? It twist.

All the episodes are one minute vertical. And there's soft corp ward. Dr. Phil is in a bikini. The article does not make it clear if Dr. Phil is like an owner or a stakeholder in this company direct. Hunter's and Dr. Phil. But Dr. Phil is a good friend of Donald Trump and a supporter of him. Okay.

And as these, you know, oil companies try to make a play on Greenland, especially in the wake of Trump's support for them doing so, a few things are happening. So I had a question for you guys. Yeah. There's just kind of a grander context

of things changing in the Arctic here. And I wanted to ask you guys, what are three main things? What are the three main things why the U.S. is interest in Greenland? I'll give you one. I know that because a lot of the Arctic ice is melting, there are new trade routes opening up.

Boom, that's one. Major cultural exporter. And I mean no disrespect at Greenland. I would not consider that one of my three. Wow. In the Nordic Fun Facts section, if we were going to five. Greenlanders rise up in the comments.

Half of the Nordic fun facts have been about Greenland. That's your export. Yeah. That's their biggest cultural export. It's the Nordic... It's the Nordic foot fact on lemonade stand. I also know that there's like new minerals appearing because of the declining ice.

Boom. Number two. I don't know number three. And number three, new military concerns. Because as that sea ice opens up, if you look at the, you know,

if you look at the globe from the top down, countries, you know, like Russia in the U.S. and Canada are all much, much closer together than people like really realize. But... She was ahead of the game on that. She saw Russia from her backyard.

and we didn't believe her. So we have this, like the U.S. has this rising. We've always had an interest in Greenland, but it has been rising and has come to this point because of a bunch of factors coming together and arguably because of how flippantly interested in things Trump is. So,

Greenland is in this interesting position where they have declined the rights of these oil companies, like this Texas one that I described, that Dr. Phil is shooting a documentary for it. from searching for oil. They're revoking, or rather extending the timeline that it will take for them to do the exploration of oil in the country. And...

Do they have a deal and it was... Yeah. Okay. So there was a license that was already acquired and a deal that was already made. But as these companies have come to Greenland and the preparation to search for that oil, there's been a lot of pushback from Greenlandic citizens,

especially because of all the public noise around the U.S. and Greenland. And so... It's so stupid, dude. If he had said nothing, almost any company would have been welcoming Greenland to set up and drill oil. But instead he made it into this military thing

and now everyone's... It's so stupid. It's like, it's really self-owning on every respect. So people are pushing back, naturally. And I think there's always a subset of people within Greenland that are concerned about like the encroachment upon their natural resources, I would say.

Yeah. But the tide has turned further because there's interest, you know, this is a multifaceted issue for people within Greenland because, you know, on one hand, there's people who like want independence from Denmark. They want independence over their own country, but they also want resources and opportunities in ways to like build the country up and have economic success and freedom.

But there's a diversity of opinion there, right? But there has been a huge pushback to this company and other efforts recently. So they delay this permit. And then Greenland is in kind of a precarious position right now. Because on one hand, think about what happens. if you deny the rights of permits you've already submitted, especially of U.S. companies that potentially had access to those things, then you potentially attract Trump's attention.

And then he reaggresses the issue because he's mad that U.S. companies are not getting access to what they were promised. It's not stretched in at all. He's got full attention to focus on this. But think about the opposite, opposite issue for Greenland is if any company, successfully finds oil in Greenland, which is, it's contentious

as to how likely that actually is. Imagine the case where it's confirmed a ton of oil is in Greenland. Well, the U.S. has been famously kind to countries that have an abundance of oil available. Right. So they're in this weird spot where

they don't want to like irk Trump in one way, but don't want to irk him in the other. They're so afraid to find oil and be like, it's not that much. It's like, we've got a little bit of oil, but it's not a crazy amount of oil. And then as you kind of get further and further along this timeline of more and more and more ice melting and more and more other countries getting interested in your place because of that, you feel pressured to make some sort of deal or some sort of concessions so you can make the best of a situation for your country before these other powers, you know, forcefully take their peace. Because while the U.S. is pressuring Greenland, there's also, you know, interest from China, interest from Russia in similar. similar things.

So that's basically it. This is just green. The reality of what types of decisions Greenland has to make right now in the wake of Trump provoking so much. You know what reminds me? Have you seen the story about what's going on in Albania with Ivanka Trump and Kushner? Yeah.

Where like, so they're trying to build this private island for billionaire basically. Okay. Yeah. And they got this land through a mob dealer. It's great. They spent a lot of money. and she did this very public interview

kind of bragging about it and it became this big story and now there's like a huge pushback in Albania of like don't sell our private nature preserve land to these billionaires. But what's funny is like why do the interview? It reminds like if you're trying to oil drill in Greenland why bring in Dr. Phil to do the documentary?

It's like not only are you doing this crazy thing you're bragging about it you're bragging about it in a very public, stupid like headline grabbing way. it just boggles the mind. It boggles the mind the Albanian thing but this reminds me of that

where... They're just trying to avoid the ire of Trump now or not even the eye or the eye like he's Sauron. They're trying to get him to not look in their direction. I mean this has already changed

so much in Denmark, right? It's like Denmark has moved a ton more troops there. They have more military exercises there. They change those conscription laws because of this.

And now, and then Greenland, like the people of Greenland and not necessarily Denmark. have to make all these decisions around how do we navigate? Yeah, it's, it is Sauron's eye. It's Sauron's eye like scanning,

looking for any excuse. The globe. The things to tweet about. It's so fucking crazy. Dude, it's only been like a year and a half. What hell has it been? It blows my mind, man. It is crazy. It's crazy.

You read about every single alliance that we've had for decades is like on shaky ground. Is there a, Do we got any good ones left? Have we not fucked up? I would have said South Korea. That's what they always said South Korea.

I guess Japan. Yeah, but that's, but we've antagonized them a whole bunch. I mean, he talks about Pearl Harbor every single time he meets Takiichi, but she's pretty pro-Trump. Japan's probably the closest ally,

but it's just crazy. I did quiz all my relatives this weekend because I went to, I went to Colonna and, uh, in British Columbia and I interviewed, like, just asked all of my relatives,

what they think of Carney, what they think of Trump. And it's, it's just an interesting time to, I assume positive for Carney. I assume it was all Trump right was all like pro pro pro pro pro mostly positive I think the worst opinion I had of Carney is like I don't he hasn't really proved himself yet like I don't like him and I didn't like him before and he has to do the stuff he's saying he's going to do but not also recognizing that not a lot of time is past yet and then

everybody else was like positively like positive to like very positive I would say but most of it had to do with like this guy super smart. Look at his resume. Seems like seems like he's handling Trump while type of thing. Don't like the US right now. Shocker, dude. That's crazy. What's what was it? That was a happy one? That was a happy one. That was a happy one. So let's go over. Well, I thought it was goofy. To Ukraine, Russia, back to war. Love that reprieve. That wasn't a reprieve at all. That wasn't about war. You said Dr. Phil like once at the beginning, but then it was about like a really depressing something.

Hold on. Hold on. I, my impetus for this was the New York Times article and they clickbaited Dr. Phil the same way. They really did. He's barely involved in the article. Yeah. He just,

okay, one of our happy episodes, Kaui Leonard, Chinese microdramas and Greenland all start fun. Yeah. It's like, Dr. Phil. But then it goes bad.

So we need like, if you want the ultra happy episode, you listen to the first half of every happy section. And then you skip ahead. You got like a 15 minute episode. And then you're like, cool, they caught Steve Balmer, micro dramas are fun, Dr. Phil. Hey, let's go for something cool and lighthearted,

Russia, Ukraine. I will say this is obviously not like cosmically lighthearted, but I do think this is a one that ends happier. Maybe, I don't know. Okay, let's explain it. Entitle on our sheet, it says Russian economist plus Ukraine. So it's like, how happy could it be? Okay.

So, I'll say, is there estimated to have 100, of thousands of people have died in the Russia-Ukraine war. So go ahead. This is not an update on the Russia-Ukraine war current battle lines or who's winning or how many people have died, which is all very sad. This is about a Russian economist named Andre Kleppach, okay? Probably saying it wrong. Who is, let me get his exact job. He's a, he's the deputy economy minister at a state company VEB.

He's very high up. He's a very respected economic analyst within Russia. And he publicly said earlier this year, not too long ago, that the Ukraine war is taking a irreversible toll on Russia. Things are much worse than is being said. He's being very frank, which is rare in Russian public circles, especially for someone so high up and so connected to the state. And he said, let me see, we are falling behind,

we are losing technological and economic competition with the world, not just China and the U.S., the world, but also in some respects, Ukraine. We are losing on all these fronts. He said, we will not win this. This is a competition of attrition. We are under the illusion that Ukraine will eventually just somehow collapse,

and it hasn't, and it won't, and our costs keep growing. So he was like, extreme, like this is like, again, in Russia, this is almost like a nuclear bomb level of frankness from somebody behind it. He said this. And I want to get one more thing he said.

It's already gone on for longer than the Second World War. there's no end in sight, strikes keep intensifying, our losses from the Ukrainian armed forces on our strikes on our ports, oil, gas, and chemical, which by the way is the recent development. We've kind of talked about this, where Ukraine has switched to this drone warfare and it's striking within Russia. It's hit oil ports. It's hit transport.

And recently, I don't know if we have NDI set up. If we do, I'd like to show this picture. This is the Amazon of Russia called Wildberries. This was set up by a 50-year-old, I think Russian lady, actually, who just started doing it. It got really big. This is the Amazon of Russia. there are warehouses, key massive warehouses all over Russia,

which deliver a lot of people's goods. They order from these things online and they get delivered. Recently, Ukraine did a coordinated strike and hit like eight out of 12 of these, like just destroyed them. And so people are really starting to feel the economic impacts

of the Russian-Ukraine war in a way they weren't feeling before. Like, it's all happening now. So he's mentioning all this and being just dead honest. And the call came, this is the report, the call came from on high to have this guy fired.

And so instead of like responding to anything that he said, he was just similarly dismissed from his job, kicked out, and they said his views do not represent that of B, B, B, or the state, and they're moving on. So it's not like it's the happiest story, but it is a sign, I guess, of what we've been reporting on previously, which is that Ukraine's strikes seem to be, at least to somebody high up in Russia, having a material impact,

and that the war is not going the way that Putin would like it to go, based on their analysis, which I get, that's, that's really all the updates. Like this guy, this guy had a very public statement, went out to the world, and now he's been fired for it. First off, yeah. Insane that this has gone on longer than World War II, which is like the great, horrific altering war of Russian history, right? I mean, obviously, World War I rough too, but, and then the second thing, do you know,

obviously Putin would not have been cool with this type of critique at any point in the war, But do you, with your reading, do you get the sense they're becoming more sensitive to it because it is now hitting so many people? It's interesting. Until this story, I would have said the opposite because the stories that are coming out of Russia are that they can't keep the criticism as buried anymore. It's like more and more people, even on state TV are being a little more open to the idea of like saying some negative things. Not like openly criticizing Putin, nobody's criticizing Putin, but like this war has been really painful or like saying things they wouldn't have said before. natural event that couldn't have probably prevented. We're just trying to get through it.

But so this, him being dismissed so quickly is like maybe a sign of like a return to trying to crack down on what has been a little more permissive on people criticizing the war. And I will say the last thing he said, because there's a pretty stark prediction by him in this speech, was that he says, I believe Russia won't collapse, but I'm almost certain, he said, we will have a social crisis. basically likening it to the Russian Revolution of 1917 or the collapse of the Soviet Union 91, which is like the cost of this war will be so severe

that when it's over, especially if Putin, you know, this war's over and he is out of power or dies. Let's say Putin can't hold everything together. What happens to Russia after that? It's like a bunch of fiefdoms in a declining economy. It feels like it'll rip apart this gigantic country.

That is like the thing that this economist is putting out. And it feels like it could balkanize as basically the idea. It's like this whole thing is held together by basically Moscow and like, there's only a few powerful economic cities. They hold this whole thing together. It's so big and so massive. And the costs are now really widespread.

So I just thought this is a fascinating look into what's going on from their POV, but it's no major update on Ukraine War, which is still as deadlocked as it seemed to be before. No, I mean, hearing that directly from a Russian, somebody within Russia being willing to say that and then take, take the risk that comes with it too. I guess he's lucky he hasn't fallen out a window, bro. You just got fired as far as we know.

Like, it was remarkably direct, which is crazy. Anyway, give me a lighthearted story to bounce out. Let's end on something real lighthearted. Okay. Your alma mater ASU is launching a content creator degree. This is a real-ass thing that is happening. There's various articles about including one by Forbes,

which you can pull up here. Perry. You know, it's interesting about this. I heard this, I believe, a week or two ago. Probably a lot of you have. Oh, ha ha. Your Arizona State University is now going to have content creator courses. But I did not realize until looking into it. This is a major. You can major in content creation now. I thought you were talking about they made some new classes. Right. It was like an elective or something like side things. I thought. Yeah, of course. Like, of course they're going to do that. You know, my college had things like this. But no, this is a full on media degree. Dude. I think. This is no disrespect. I love my alma

or ASU proud, but I can't imagine applying for a job at anywhere and you're like, yeah, I have a degree in influencing from Arizona State University. Ludwig weighed in on this, actually. I don't know if either of you caught that. He tweeted about it when they made the announcement or when it hit Twitter. And from his perspective, he was like, oh, this is probably going to be ASU's communications degree with a few classes swapped out for, that are more influencer focused or something like that. So I don't know if he looked into it because that is exactly what it is.

Here is the actual major on the ASU program. And what this is, it's under the Walter Cronkite Communications College. Anyway, they have a big media and communications college at this place. And this is part of that. And I couldn't figure out the exact number. But basically, if you look at the curriculum, which is here, most of these classes are actually what you would already expect as part of a communications or media degree. media and society developing media media writing information gathering principles of strategic communications so most of the things in this major aren't actually like here's how to make a youtube video it's

mostly communications and it's already within this thing so it's like right it's slightly clickbaity but there are some genuine ones including this class podcasting and audio storytelling which i looked at we podcasting and audio storytelling is some guest professors real class at as u starting this fall this is and this is the By the way, big college that's doing this. Technically another one added like a content creator degree. But ASU is a massive school and they're like doing this. Yeah, like 60,000 students. That's my biggest plus on ASU if I'm telling anyone about it.

It's like a lot of people are just there to party and there's 60,000 people and many of them are out of state and they pay your tuition. So the school is actually insanely well funded. They're building new cool things all the time. And if you are somebody who wants to do stuff, like if you're if you're in the journalism school and you want to like get the highest in cameras to go film a project, You can get almost anything. They have a lot of money. And so that's the cool part of ASU. Like we did our e-sports club and they funded trips to tournaments and jerseys.

Wow. And we just asked for it. Like they have money for everything. So it's kind of cool. Podcasting and audio storytelling, the real class of ASU, explores various types of journalistic audio storytelling for podcasts, including interviews, narrator reports, and non-narrated podcasts. Students deliver a podcast based on a unique value proposition that fulfills a specific need for

their audience. And I want to ask you as an ASU graduate, but do you think you would be more or less successful as if you had taken this in college? I think it would help with mic discipline. You're mic discipline. I think I could have used some pointers from a teacher on that.

It's actually they hire, what's his name? Not JJ Abrams. Who throws the chair in the movie? J.K. Simmons. They hired J.K. Simmons just stare at you. And you say, mic up. You, mic up. Was your mic down or was it dragging?

He slowly comes over it and you throws the show. You know what would be funny is to submit one of our podcasts to this class's final course and see what it gets graded by somebody who doesn't know. I would love that. That'd be good. And they just go, dog shit. Why should you whiplash between you? I tried to figure out who teaches this? Because in theory, you would want somebody teaching this who has done a podcast, right?

But as far as I can tell, they don't have the faculty for this yet. So I'm like really curious to see. and maybe we maybe the class just consists of every episode of our show in a row. If you take this class, if someone is listening right now, goes to ASU and takes this class,

I would love an opportunity to come and see it. I love that you're like getting one of our, one of our viewers to drop out of like chemical engineering to join this measure so we can get you. We're not asking for much. Just change the course of your life. Well, you don't even have to change the college first.

Transfer to ASU. Well, A lot of people are in school right now doing a CS degree that isn't going to pan out. All right, I'll have more questions on our bonus episode or our Patreon. I do want to ask you guys what you think about the viability of something like this. Like your genuine thoughts as professional content creators. And one of the most important lessons in this class is to paywall your most important opinion. So if you want to check us out over on the Patreon, one new hour of content every week.

We got, we have the tail end of this episode that we didn't do, which is how weed is more popular than alcohol now. Kushner is negotiating with Benjamin Netanyahu about the state of Gaza and falling U.S. crime. And you can go to Patreon.com slash lemonade stand. Do you want to watch the rest of that? We tried to have this be more upbeat. We tried. When we were talking about last week, we're like, that was a negative. It's the new, I don't know.

I don't know if it's possible to not be an Eeyore with what is happening. You know what I fucked is we did the good news episode. We did it. We did it. And you know what? You fucks didn't watch it. It was one of our worst performing episodes ever. And so that's why I'll put that out there.

So when the next good news episode goes up, because we'll try it again, I hope you guys click it. I just remember the good news episode being like this mostly bad. Yeah, it just ended up being bad news. It was just bad news. We tried. And then every episode was like, oh, that's so. It was crazy because I remember doing the climate. change segment in that episode. And the whole thing was like, well, it's not going to be,

it probably won't be as bad as people have been saying to this. And that was the good news. You smiled for five minutes straight. Anyway, guys, thank you for watching. That was an interesting whiplash. I hope you're all emotionally. I hope you're emotionally okay. Leave your current emotional state in the comments. Yeah, we'd love to hear that. And we'll see you next week. Thank you for watching. Bye, everybody.