Pod Save the World - Ukraine and the global food crisis with Samantha Power

Episode Date: June 1, 2022

Tommy and Ben cover the latest news from Ukraine, including the EU’s plan to ban most imports of Russian oil, reports that Iran has enough nuclear material to make a bomb, how other countries have prevented gun violence, a major election in Colombia, President Biden meets BTS, the Queen’s Jubilee controversy, and climate activists say let the Mona Lisa eat cake. Then Ben speaks with USAID Administrator Samantha Power about how the war in Ukraine is creating a global food shortage and what we can do to help. Crooked Coffee launches 6/21. Sign-up to be the first to sip: http://go.crooked.com/coffee-pstw For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to Pots Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben, how are the reply all is coming from the Nome Chomsky. Yeah, yeah. They kind of petered out faster than I thought it would. That's great news. In case you didn't listen to the outro last week. There were, what, 300 people on that two field by accident? I bet you updated your contacts list there. I mean, you know, you don't always get the steel email addresses for cabinet officials. Also, the Celtics from the end-day finals, no big deal. Congratulations. Thank you. That was a close call.

It was. Yeah. It was. The question now is. how many threes is Steph Curry going to rain down in my face? It's just hard to pick against the Warriors. They're just really good. I mean, and they've just been there, you know. Yeah. And if Clay Thompson, I mean, he's the wildcard to me. Like, if Clay is like the clay that is dropping like 25, 30 points, like, that's hard to beat.

You're done. But like if he's not, then you get shot. Steve Kerr, hell of a coach. Also experience. Good guy. Yeah. In addition to NBA takes, we can finally share that Crooked Coffee is launching on June 21st. This is the thing we've been awkwardly teasing for weeks. This coffee has been in the

works for a very long time. We're excited for you guys to try it. I drink it all the time. It is ethically sourced. It comes from recyclable packaging. We're donating a portion of the proceeds to register her, which helps make women's voices heard across the country through the power of their vote. If you want to check it out, go to crooked.com slash coffee. Anyway, we're going to cover a lot of news today. We get the latest from Ukraine, including the EU's announcement that the European Union will ban imports of Russian oil. Seems like a pretty big deal. Some bad news, Ben, about Iran's nuclear enrichment.

Who could have seen this coming? Gosh, I don't know. Not listeners to this podcast. Foreign gun laws, big election in Colombia. Biden and BTS and then the Queen's Jubilee is creating more controversy. And finally, the Mona Lisa back in the news, staying relevant. Yeah, that Mona Lisa smile. Someone tried to wipe it off her face.

And then, Ben, you talked to our old friend, Samantha Power. earlier today. What's Sam up to? Yeah, I mean, like, we've been focusing a lot on the global food crisis, but that's because, as Sam explains, people have to understand it's something that's happening right now, but it's something that's going to be unfolding for a long time. Yeah. Like, actually the worst outcomes are going to start to come online later this year. So we talked about what USAID is doing, what other countries can do, what listeners can do,

what other countries that have been fensiters in terms of, you know, what other countries that have been fensiters in terms of their pressure on Russia might do more. So we really went soup to nuts on the food crisis and nobody can break that down better than Sam. Yeah. Check it out. It does feel like a looming disaster that will have a near term really acute impact

of just starvation for a lot of people and then political instability and, you know, just God does what after that. So that's the other thing that I keep thinking about, which is that, you know, when you ask, well, where is this going to, you know, have the biggest impact? What you, we heard from Linda Thomas Greenfield,

you know, government people, but that, you know, we really want to show you what, what are we trying to do as a country about this? The countries you hear as being most vulnerable always include places like Egypt and Lebanon and the Horn of Africa. These are places that are already kind of ripe for political instability. And so I think something to watch just geopolitically late this year or next year is whether high food prices and food shortages and potential famine conditions and more extreme circumstances lead to serious political instability. Yeah, I mean, a lot of analysts, right, look at climate change, bad crops, food instability, and then the Arab Spring, kind of all

being a piece of one puzzle. Yeah. And this is a flavor of what's to come with climate change, too. I mean, like part of what Sam talked about is trying to update the entire kind of global food security ecosystem because it needs to happen anyway. And this is just putting a spotlight on it. Yeah. Well, all of this is because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or a lot of it, at least. in this acute. A lot of it, yeah. So let's start there because there's a couple of major updates. So first, on Monday, European Union leaders agreed to ban between two-thirds and 90% of Russian oil imports by the end of the year. The range and estimates there kind of depends on who you ask, but it's significant either way. The EU works by consensus and to overcome objections by noted

asshole Victor Orban and his government in Hungary, the leaders had to agree to a Hungarian carve-out where they all will agree to block Russian imports of oil by sea, but allow, imports of Russian oil delivered via pipeline. That's a little carve out there. But the EU also agreed in this meeting to provide Ukraine with nearly $10 billion in economic aid. They also announced additional sanctions, including on Russia's biggest bank, and then on three Russian state-owned broadcasters, which will now be prevented from distributing their content in the EU. So, Ben, I mean, obviously implementing this kind of pledge will take some work. But like getting that political agreement done. I mean, imagine three months ago that we just saw that happen. I mean, it's

pretty monumental. Yeah, I mean, it's huge in the impact that it could potentially have on Russian revenue and their capacity to sustain what they're doing inside of Ukraine. It's also just like a big potential shift in how Europe is oriented around energy because you look at countries like Germany that have largely looked to Russia for their energy needs. This feels like not just a temporary shift. It feels like a pretty structural shift away from Russian oil. Now, the hungry thing is worth pausing on for a second. It just shows you the danger of a Trojan horse like Victor Orban, who has been a Putin associate, a Putin friend who's like lubricated all manner of corruption through deals with Putin since he came back to power in 2010. And Putin gets two things into Victor

Urban. One, because the EU operates on consensus, it felt like Orban was the last holdout of like a total, you know, total ban on Russian oil by the end of the year. This carve out that they did feels like it's just for Hungary because there are other countries like Germany that have gotten Russian oil via pipeline who are saying we're not going to, we're not going to do it. Germany and Poland are going to cut off pipeline imports. So Germany and Poland are taking that extra step. So this is basically Orban, you know, carving himself out in continuing to provide revenue to Russia and continuing to be energy dependent on Russia. And it just shows you that, like, you know, letting, Fn-Nationalist of authoritarianism get a foothold inside of the democratic institutions that we have,

including the European Union in the West, like the vulnerability that creates. Like, Orban was out there, like, kind of bragging about it when all he's doing is highlighting that he's structured the entire Hungarian economy to be hugely dependent on Russia, which is by design, It's by design from Putin. He wants somebody inside of the European club to be at his beck and call. So it is a vulnerability. But still doesn't diminish what everybody else in Europe is doing. Yeah, for sure.

I mean, obviously, you know, natural gas would be the other huge shoe to drop and they have not cut off natural gas. They'll just take longer because it's harder to replace the delivery systems for natural gas. Right, right. The flip side of this, you know, good news is that Russia continues to make significant military progress in eastern Ukraine. So the Russian artillery has just been pounding Luhansk and Dhenetsk nonstop for literally weeks. Russian troops are advancing towards Siever Denevsk, which is the last contested city in Lujansk. There are more and more reports from the ground of just how brutal the fighting is and how outgunned the Ukrainian forces are.

The U.S. and others have tried to step in and help Ukraine level the playing field by sending more sophisticated weapons like the long-range howitzer system that we talked about a couple weeks ago. But there are limits and lines have been drawn. On Monday, President Biden seemed to rule out sending even more advanced weapon systems called the MLRS system over concerns that Ukraine forces could use it to fire into Russia itself further escalating the conflict. This system, the MLRS, can fire certain times of rockets as far as 185 miles in Russian officials. I think Medvedev actually was on the record saying that if these rockets hit Russian cities, we're going to retaliate against the places where the decisions to send them were made. He also said he would like nuke Scandinavia.

And so we didn't join NATO. And then they said it was no big deal. So anyway. I mean, look, that's a good point. And then, you know, along that line, Ben, like a couple data points I guess kind of for good news is the Russian ambassador to the U.K. said he does not believe that Russia would use a tactical nuclear weapon against Ukraine. Yeah. That guy doesn't seem to be in the chain of command.

I'll take it. I'll take it. Sure. Any reassurance we can get on the tactical nukes is good. Hey, point for the good guys on tactical nukes. And then, again, you know, like consider the source here. But Turkish president, Raya Bairdouin offered to host peace talks between the Russian. Russians and Ukrainians in the UN. No word if either side will agree or if they'll be successful,

but I don't know, pro diplomacy. Can I be pro diplomacy in this case? Yeah, yeah, this whole situation is, there's a lot about this complicated. So the first thing is, if you look at these reports of what's happening in Lahansk and Dignetsk, places where the Russians are making some territorial gains, they're making territorial gains by basically completely destroying the cities. And we've talked about this a little bit. 90% of houses. Yeah, like, There's nobody living there. They're basically claiming somewhat depopulated land. Or just killing old people who couldn't move.

Or just killing the people who couldn't leave. It's horrific. The thing to watch is do they just start to annex, kind of formally incorporate this ruined land, essentially, into the Russian Federation and try to create facts on the ground that way? And this question about whether the U.S. gives more advanced offensive weapon. to go take back territory has been like the looming question. I, you know, I have to, as someone who is wary of escalation, I still don't quite understand what's the line here. Is it like the range of the artillery, you know, because we are giving them weapons to kill

Russians. We're giving them weapons that like if you're at the border of Russia, you could fire the weapon across the river. Sure. Yeah. So it's just an odd. I'll be an understandable calculation. They don't want to escalate.

That said, if what you're really doing is arming the Ukrainians to get into a stalemate, you know, that actually, I think, raises the ante on needing to be more proactive diplomatically. We talked about this last week about the U.S. can't dictate terms, but the U.S. is kind of taking a position in terms of the kind of weapons we're providing about how much we want to support Ukraine's capacity to take back at least this land in eastern Ukraine, never mind Crimea, I think that's much harder. So this Erdogan thing, you know, in the context of an emerging stalemate, suggests a lot of diplomatic work that would have to be done.

But again, like diplomatic work that is going to have the glaring question of how can you ask the Ukrainians to accept losing more territory in this war and essentially de facto losing eastern Ukraine and Marilbel as a settlement. And again, I just think we might end up in a stalemate where there are ceasefires, but it's not really a peace agreement because Ukraine can agree to it. And then Russia is trying to like annex and repopulate this land with Russians. Another thing I'd look for is do they start to try to move in the same way that Stalin used to try to move people to other parts of the Soviet Union to repopulate them with Russians?

Do they start to do that in eastern Ukraine? And that would be a pretty, you know, that would be an escalation in terms of, you know, essentially trying to create facts on the ground. Yeah. And there's reports that they've moved people out of parts of eastern Ukraine into Russia, especially kids. I mean, it does feel like a race here between the pressure on Ukraine in their military and this military campaign in the east with the long-term pressure on Russia from international sanctions.

I mean, and the reason I'm a little bit nervous about that is because in May, inflation in the Eurozone hit its highest annual level since the creation of the currency in 1999, thanks to record increases in energy and food prices. They hit 8.1% in May up from 7.4%. In April, prices have been going out for 10 consecutive months. I mean, that is going to create at some point huge political pressure on all these European countries who so far have been pretty great in terms of crack a nut on Russia. We'll see what happens when there are popular uprisings potentially because of food and energy

prices. Yeah. I mean, I think it's absolutely true that Putin has, you know, failed catastrophically in his maximalist objectives as we talked about. But in this next phase of the war, I think what Putin's counting on is he like takes territory inch by inch, you know, puts himself in a stronger position in eastern and southern Ukraine in terms of controlling territory. And then bets that over the next six to nine months, inflationary pressure, food pressure, all these other kind of things he's weaponizing. start to create electoral difficulties in European countries, start to create, you know, problems in the global economy that try to force a choice between continuing to support Ukraine and trying to get beyond the war. I think the reality is like we're not going to be able to get

beyond the war. It's hard to see a place where sanctions are lifted on Russia in the next calendar year, you know. So I think it's it's, there's a reason. to dig in and say, no, like, we're not going to succumb to that kind of pressure, but it's just going to require a lot of workarounds to address things like the food crisis, to address things like the energy crisis. And also, you know, I think accelerating the negative consequences of the war to Putin, so like Finland and Sweden joining NATO, Ukraine joining European Union, which kind of solidifies not just their association with, you know, Europe, but also kind of their viability is a state that can be

reconstructed on the back end of this war. those things become more important too. Do you see that Russian opposition leader, Alexei, Navalny, announced he's been charged in a new criminal case and faces up to 15 more years in prison on top of his existing trumped-up bullshit sentence? Oh, and by the way, they tried to poison him like a year ago. Yeah. I mean, I think that the reality that, you know, Navalny seems to understand is that, you know,

as long as Putin is president, like, it's hard to see him out of prison, right? I mean, they're just piling on, you know, invented charge after invented charge. And now they've legislated new laws that they can say violent. Right. So like, you know, if you mention the war, you can be criticized the military. Well, you know, Navalny's done that, right? So really, he's a political prisoner so long as Putin is around. That's right.

That's all I got for Ukraine. But let's turn to Iran because there's been some bad news over the weekend. So first we learned that the IAEA believes that Iran, officially has enough highly enriched uranium to create a nuclear weapon. Since leaving the Iran nuclear deal back in 2018, Iran has steadily increased its nuclear enrichment activity, including near weapons-grade material. So great work, everyone who advocated that we pull out of the deal or tear it up. Also, Iran reportedly continues to stonewall the IA's request for information about its past nuclear weapons activities. I believe this is dating back to the early 2000s. In 2018, the Israeli

intelligence officials were able to get into Iran, steal a bunch of documents about past Iranian nuclear activities, and those records were turned over to the UN to examine efforts of this past deception. So all bad news, it does seem like the bottom line here, Ben, is that Iran is now sitting on nearly 100 pounds of enriched uranium that could be pretty quickly converted into weapons-grade fuel in just a matter of weeks. It doesn't mean they instantly have a nuke, but it means they're well, well, further along the nuclear cycle than they were before. They have the material for it. And how to unpack this, like, and it's worth doing because this podcast is a place that pushes back on the eternal gaslighting on Iran. I mean, the first thing is the critics who

supported pulling out of the deal in the first place in 2018, their biggest criticism of the nuclear deal was that some of the restrictions expired, right, in 10 years and 15 years. And Iran could get to the point where they have enough material for nuclear bomb after the restrictions expired. Well, congratulations, guys. You accelerated those timelines. by like a decade, right? Like this is insane. Like they, by tearing up the deal, they brought about the outcome that they were arguing about in like 2025 that could have been renegotiated at some point, at first point.

Second point is this Israeli allegation, which we've heard time and again keeps coming back to life about Iran not telling the truth about what they were doing 20 years ago. In like 2002, 3. Yeah, that's what this is about. It's not about them like cheating on the Iran deal. It's about them like not telling the truth. the bad things that happened in 2002. So it's not about the restrictions that we're put in place in the program. I feel like we knew most of this. We knew this and also like wouldn't you rather have

the restrictions on the nuclear program and then you could yell at them about like what they said about 2002? I mean, this is a, again, just as it's an insane argument to say, because we don't like that certain restrictions go away in a decade, we're going to make those restrictions go away right now. It's also insane to say because they lied about something happened in 2002, we don't want them to have any restrictions on their nuclear program today. That's why you put in place verification regimes. Yeah. And then the, the last thing is like this is the argument I would make about why the Biden team

should have been moving, they should have tried to move into the back in the Iran deal right away. When they came in office, they, like, I don't, I still don't understand the value of the terrorism designation on the IRGC, which they appear to have chosen, at least for the time being over the nuclear deal. I hope that there's an opening or hope that Iran, if. accept some formula without that because the reality is if you don't have an Iran nuclear deal, if you don't have some diplomatic agreement that limits this program, you're going to be living

in this kind of permanent state of potential crisis. And I just don't, I don't think that we want to be there, you know. Could you imagine if there was some, you know, Iranian effort to really break out quickly and fully get to 90% of rich uranium and get to a full nuclear weapon? And like, all of a sudden the White House and the U.S. government and the entire U.S. media was now debating not what to do in Ukraine, but whether to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. I mean, like, this is a very real scenario. We're doing another six months of news cycles about whether the Israeli government will bomb them first or whatever, like all the things we dealt with. I mean, these issues can become all-consuming much faster than you think. Yeah. And what about China? China, as if I'd say,

like to pivot, you know, to Asia. Or, frankly, oil prices, energy prices, like, they were worried about. Like, guess what would happen if there was a war with Iran? Yeah. Gas prices. $200 a barrel of oil. You're paying even more at the pump. I mean, nothing about this is what you want.

Like, I just think that the political difficulty of re-entering an agreement is much less than the difficulty of just living in this state of potential crisis at any given point, you know. Yes. So that is the looming nightmare abroad. The disaster that we're all living with at the moment, it's still guns. And it was hard for me to wake up this morning, Ben, and read that the Canadian government has already announced steps to further tighten their gun laws. So they started on Monday.

In response to shooting in America. Yeah. Which is- Yes. Trudeau's government already put forward a bill that would force owners of military-style assault weapons to turn their guns over to the government as part of a buyback program. They also said the Canadian government that they will ban the sale or importation of handguns, essentially capping the number of handguns, currently. currently in the country. And making this announcement has been noted, Trudeau said,

we need only look south of the border to know that if we do not take action firmly and rapidly, it gets worse and worse and more difficult to counter. So we are now a cautionary tale for everyone in Canada and everywhere else when it comes to guns. Canada is not the only country that has done something about guns in the wake of a mass shooting. UK banned semi-automatic weapons after a mass shooting in the 80s. Australia put in place a number of gun control measures after a mass shooting in 1996 and their gun-related homicide rates subsequently halved, as did the rate of firearm suicides. Very important point there. New Zealand banned military-style automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines less than a week after Christchurch, that horrific massacre from several years ago. And I think

they did a buyback program too. Yeah. And they just melted down a bunch of AR-15s. Yeah. Look, not every country has responded well to these incidents, but man, like it is- Well, America. Yeah, right, starting with us. It is just really, look, good for Justin Trudeau. I'm not trying to take anything away from him. It's just really hard to know that, you know, because he has a parliamentary system and the votes, they can do something to save lives. And in the U.S., Mitch McConnell is just going to block everything. Yeah, everything highlights the insanity of our gun policies. To be clear, like when there are mass shootings in other countries or when other countries observe mass shootings in America, guess what they don't do? They don't debate the number of doors at the place where the

shooting took place. Or arming teachers? They don't debate arming teachers. Or they don't, gaslight about mental health and all the bullshit pissing on your leg that you hear from Republican politicians who are trying to do nothing but get out of the news cycle that they're in. I think the other thing that will be on display to some of the Americas, Tommy, to just further take the world of piece of this is there are so many AR-15s in this country now and such wide availability of guns and high-capacity ammunition that it is a massive, massive security challenge in the entire hemisphere. So I used to hear a lot when I was in government from Latin American governments saying, hey, guess what guns the cartels in Mexico use?

Guess what guns find their way down to Central America where gangs are then using those guns in such indiscriminate violence that we have huge inflows of migrants from Central America. It's American guns. It doesn't, you know, all it takes is a supply chain where you come up to the United States and purchase all this stuff and ship it back down to. the cartels in Mexico or the gangs in Central America. So once again, the Republicans have weaponized, you know, MS-13 is present in the United States. Well, guess what MS-13 is in part doing in the United States? They're buying AR-15s because they're so readily available. So we are exporting.

We make no mistake. Not only we're endangering all Americans, we're endangering people in places like Canada, too, right, where these guns could cross the border. It's a real problem. So that is just, yeah. Depressing, right? These countries have to look at America as a national security. threat because of our gum laws.

Speaking of some of the Americas, there was a big election in Colombia. They voted on Sunday in the first round, what will be a two-round presidential election. So competing in the runoff on June 19th for the second round, will be Gustavo Petro, leftist candidate who got more than 40% of the vote in round one, and a right-wing populist named Rodolfo Hernandez, who got about 28% of the vote. I've heard him Hernandez compared to Donald Trump, basically. So the establishment candidates on both sides of the spectrum got locked out of the runoff. If Petro wins, he would be the first left-wing president in Columbia's modern history,

and it could really lead to a transformation of their economic policies. Specifically, he's vowed to expand social programs and refocus the economy away from oil, gas, and coal exploration, which will be hard. He's, I think, it's currently half of Columbia's exports, but, you know, it's a big pledge. Petro is a current senator. He's a former mayor. He's also been criticized for being part of a radical group, the M-19 guerrilla organization in his youth. This is third time running for president. fascinating result, huge election coming up then. Part of this interesting trend of not only left-wing candidates doing well in Latin America, but also candidates that are running as outsiders or against the establishment, seemingly

just doing better than everybody else. Yeah, I mean, we've talked about this leftward shift. It's getting worth revisiting, you know, and I'm going to leave one out, I'm sure, but Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, potentially Colombia now. You got Brazil looming on the horizon with Lula. like the entire hemisphere is moving in the populist left direction, right, which is interesting, which shows you the extreme frustration with inequality in these countries that have often had huge rates of inequality.

Again, my hobby horse, but shows the insanity of picking ideological fights and rooting your entire Latin American policy in Cuba when you're going to have some pushback to that from the key countries. But to focus on Colombia in particular, Colombia, this is a huge, huge change because it's not a country like Chile or Argentina where you've had inroads for the left in the past. This has been a country with like a polarized society where particularly the farther left used to be rooted in some of the guerrilla opposition to the government, right? The FARC most notably. And part of what happened is you know, you had a peace deal where the FARC stopped being a military operation.

and so it kind of defanged, I think, to some extent, at least, the way in which the left was associated with kind of armed, you know, rebellion against the government. Yeah, same with MIT, I think. But I would say that it also, the outgoing government, the Duque government, President Duke of Columbia, pushed all his chips into the Trump bet. Duque was literally campaigning for Trump in South Florida before the election. they did all of Trump's bidding on his Venezuela policy, and lo and behold, it didn't work out for the Colombian right, you know. So it's a warning sign of like signing on to the kind of the trumpist agenda, which, to be fair to the Colombians, like, you know, they're probably strong armed.

I do think the warning sign for Petro is, look, Colombia does have a pretty entrenched kind of business establishment. He's going to face a lot of challenges to implementing some of the promises he's made. I think it's a positive thing that there's like a populist direction meant to narrow inequality. But I think if you look at Chile already, some of the problems that Gabriel Borich has had in his early administration is how do you square the promises that you make versus the tough reality of what's doable? Totally. That's going to be challenged. But that said, his opponent, you know, reading up on that guy, like, the phrase that stands out is like, has expressed past admiration for Adolf Hitler. It's never something you want to see as a general matter.

Yeah. You know, real extremes here. Yeah. Yeah. Again, the runoffs on June 19th. We'll see what happens. But fingers crossed for Petro. You got Peru to your list of recent left for elections.

I mean, you know, also I was reading some coverage of the race that pointed out how in the past, or past times he's run, Petro has been attacked for his relationship with leaders in Cuba and Venezuela. Well, guess what? This time, not really an issue. Yeah, no, because like there's, you. You know, the people are fatigued. Again, it's not that everybody likes the Cuban's Venezuela. And people are fatigued with the U.S. kind of forcing this to be an issue in their domestic politics, forcing them to get involved in conflicts that seem, you know, on Cuba, not that relevant. And on Venezuela, you've had this influx of refugees into Colombia, too.

It'll be interesting, too, because Colombia receives a ton of security systems from the United States. Right. You know, it would be interesting to see if Petro, you know, maintains that relationship. I assume he will. I mean, you could see potentially big changes in terms of U.S. policy on drugs, cocoa eradication, ties with Maduro, just trade policy generally. I mean, there's potentially a radical break here. Yeah, potential, you know, there have been pushed from left from governments to legalize drugs. And, you know, there's a lot like a, there's a gulf that could, some of the Americas may end up really highlighting this widening gulf between the U.S. position on a bunch of issues and the most important governments.

the region. Okay, Bid, so we just talked about a bunch of very big, important global issues and events. Many of them land on Joe Biden's plate every single day. But I bet you money that if in a week we looked back and we're like, okay, what White House event from the past week got the most media coverage? It will likely be this next topic, which is BTS's visit to the White House on Tuesday. If you do not know what BTS is, welcome to reality.

Yeah. And the BTS Hive may come after you. They're going to, yeah, don't admit it. Keep it yourself. There is South Korean boy band, arguably the most popular group on the planet. So the White House said that President Biden and BTS discussed Asian inclusion, representation, and the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes. The meeting with President Biden was closed press, but he banned delivered statements at the White House press briefing and reportedly recorded some videos with the White House digital team. I was trying to think of an equivalent visit by a group.

a famous person with like as much global as big of a global footprint as BTS when we were at the White House and I couldn't think of one really no I mean we had you know pretty much all the major American artists but in terms of international like I mean first of all I don't know that anybody was as big as BTS you know and then kind of having them what's interesting to me about it is how much you know they they were focused as you said in part on like Asian American hate crime and issues of representation, it shows you how much, like, they transcend national boundaries. You know, like, there's an intersectionality between, like, what they're interested in and

issues that go well beyond South Korea, too. So seeing them, like, in this kind of global, because we had, like, people that we'd work with who were kind of international artists on particular issues, so Shakira, right, to tie it back to Columbia, right? Literally was just, had pulled up that event from 2010. So we did an event with Shakira and Columbia focused. in education, but that was like her being focused on an issue in her home country and using an Obama visit to spotlight that work. This speaks to kind of the global agenda that an artist like BTS can have something of huge interest to Americans and particularly Asian Americans, obviously is violence and prejudice and representation here. Interesting that they could become

the amplifiers of that as a kind of foreign-based act is, you know, it shows you how much culture as being, you know, well, it's a truism, but globalized, to the extent that, you know, BTS has this reach here, you know. Yeah. I mean, I think that BTS has sold out four consecutive nights at SoFi Stadium, which is where the NFL teams in the L.A. area play. Yeah. You know.

And like in a row, like coming up this year. Yeah. And so when we would do stuff with like, again, foreign pop artists, it was not like meant to reach the American audience. It was usually meant to reach the foreign audience. And it's interesting that BTS is. as much about reaching an American audience as anything else. You think Biden was like, would you mind just saying that like inflation is no big deal?

Well, also like. Could you guys just heat like inflation by the ring BTS? I also think it's kind of like, do you think Joe Biden has BTS on the iPod? An iPod. I just stayed at myself. But Obama used to buy this iPod list, right? That shows how old we are. But like what's on his playlist, you know, like I don't know.

I doubt it. We'll see. You know it was a big, a BTS stand is our next subject. So as part of our ongoing 24-7 coverage of Queen Elizabeth the 2nd's Platinum Jubilee, I wanted to get your take on the Stonehenge Gate Ghazi scandal that's emerged. So again, the Platinum Jubilee, it's a celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Queen's accession to the throne. Official events start on Thursday. Ben will be there for coverage in a top hat.

In the days leading up to it, the organizers created, like, I think I would describe it as an art installation, Ben. They projected eight portraits of the queen onto the stone faces from Stonehenge. The organizers called it a spellbinding homage. You'll be shocked to hear that Twitter was divided on the output, I guess. The Washington Post had a fun write-up of this. One person who liked what he or she saw called it Thronehenge. Others whined that it was distasteful or unhinged the reaction. So we're doing a lot of terrible puns here.

So archaeologists believe that Stonehenge was built over time between three, thousand in 1520 BC. They don't know what it's for or why it was built. Maybe it's a solar calendar. Maybe it was a place to throw parties. No one tell Boris Johnson that I don't give any ideas. The thing that seems dumb about this being labeled a controversy, Ben, is that these images are not the first that have been projected on Stonehenge. That's happened many times before, including 2020 with like random musicians. Your take? My take is like there's some, the deeper the Brits get into this Jubilee, like the weirder it gets to the rest of us.

Like, it's kind of like you have a friend who has a very strange eccentric interest. Okay. You know, and then, like, they just go down a rabbit hole. And at first you can kind of feel the vibe. Like, you know, like, I get it. It's kind of interesting what you're into. But, like, I feel like as this Jubilee goes on, like, there's going to be a whole set of cultural things happening in the UK that, like, make less and less sense to us.

Yeah. Right. I mean, granted, we do. did fight a war turned 50 years ago to get rid of this governing family. But like, I just, you know, I'm here for it. Like I think the queen lot to admire. But it is a little weird to be like projecting on the to Stonehenge. I'm fine with it.

It's their hench. It's their stone. It's, you know, whatever. She's the sovereign. But like, you know, where are we going to be by the end of this thing? It does seem to lead you to an easy, obvious joke that has been made now a trillion times on Twitter, which is. the marriage of two, you know,

ceremonial, mostly useless monuments to a bygone era. Yeah, well, also, like, look, I mean, there's a lineage that the rural family can claim it. It's not like they were around, like moving the rocks, you know? Probably not.

Like, anybody asked to? She's 96. I've been to Stonehenge, by the way. Is it cool? It's very cool, because it just doesn't make any sense how these people move these giant stones, like without, you know,

I don't know, the stuff we have. have to lift them. Yeah, right, but then you're like counterpoint, the pyramids. The pyramids, yeah, that's pretty impressive too. Um, speaking to your earlier point of, uh, this increasingly making no sense. There's a headline on the Washington posts adjacent to this one that says, Corgi's playing role in Queen Elizabeth the second's platinum Jubilee celebrations. So yeah. Yeah, yeah. We're going down a weird road. I mean, she does love her corgis and, you know, who, who can hold that against somebody? I mean, it's a, they're very funny. Yeah. So apparently it's been like the same

lineage of corgi. Like the one that her first corgi, actually I read that, I read the article, came on her honeymoon when they got married and then now they have a couple, like three corgis that are all descendants of maybe the original. Yeah. It'd be nice to have that setup. I get that. Just like a replenishing, like stock of dogs. And it's a window into some psychology in the sense that like, here's a woman who like nobody around her is like normal ever, like, because she's the queen, so they're, like, walking backwards away from her, and they're, like, bowing and they're nervous and all this. But dogs, like, don't really, like, know the difference between two people,

and, like, seems that it doesn't take an armchair psychologist to suggest that maybe she likes that, like, that's a normal, it's a more, she's a more normal interaction with corgis and with humans. Yeah, the corgi is like, hey, lady, you're picking on my shit. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's how it goes. Charles might have said that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why is this being projected on this time of that?

Also weird. Okay, one more last thing before we get to Ben's interview with Sam Power. On Sunday, a climate activist decided to vandalize the Mona Lisa by disguising himself as an elderly woman in a wheelchair so that he could get close to the painting. Then he threw cake on it and smeared it across the glass covering the painting, which I think raises the age-old question about activism of this sort. Idiot, effective, or who cares? I mean, this definitely feels like it was kind of in the idiot category. For a couple reasons. Like cake, like doesn't have a climate. You know what cake?

If you wanted to stage a climate demonstration at a very high-profile cultural site, there's got to be like something other than throwing cake on some thick glass to do that. I mean, if you read this sends like this. this person might have also just kind of wanted to get arrested or something. I don't know. It was very strange. It does raise the question, though. Like, again, I don't know how serious a climate activist this person was.

But, like, you know, we talked recently about the person who, like, self-immolated, burn themselves to death in front of the court. Right. Right. It does, I do just feel like bubbling up the absence of government action, you're going to start to see some more out there stuff happening. And I'm not endorsing it because I'm certainly not endorsing vandalizing. Mona Lisa or people doing what that man did in front of the Supreme Court.

But I do feel like there's going to be a frustration that starts to manifest itself increasingly in strange ways, you know? Yeah, I could argue both ways, right? I mean, we're talking about it. Yeah. So point in his favor, I guess. On the flip side, you know, this guy obviously knew he wouldn't damage the painting because it's surrounded with like bulletproof glass.

So in a sense, no harm, no foul. That said, are you convincing anybody you need to convince? I don't know. Probably, probably not. Defacing random things in the name of whatever issue you care about is a slippery slope. Yeah. Potentially. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I think that there's other ways to channel that frustration. Like, you know, the Fridays for the future, there are other kinds of strikes and nonviolent disobedience that can get lots of attention without, I don't know, getting cake on the... I mean, I'm just spitball in here, but I would rather personally, I'm not endorsing this in any way. way, but throw cake at Mitch McConnell before I would throw it at Mona Lisa, because she didn't do anything wrong. I mean, you know, she's just been sitting there with that ambiguous smile for a few hundred years. I do, it does reason. I've always been interested about like the Mona Lisa is like

qualitatively more famous at any other work of art. And don't get me wrong, it's nice work. It's fine. But like I don't quite get why it is that. Like I went to the Louvre, right? And the Louvre is full of amazing works of art. And then you go in this one room, there's like 100 people all holding up iPhones and this thing. Yeah, you'll treasure that photo forever. Well, yeah, like it's not like this great experience to look at a mass of people just trying to like take a picture of something that's behind all this thick glass.

And you can go in the other room and see like a priceless Monet or Van Gogh and be like, well, it looks just as good. Right, or like a tiny like dish or cup or saucer from even earlier periods of time. great dishes, attic vases, you know, like ancient Greek stuff. Go over the Muzé d'Orsay and go see all the Impressionists. Have you seen the documentary about the Salvador Mundi, which is supposedly another work by Leonardo da Vinci that was purchased by Mohammed bin Salman for like half a billion dollars?

Its authenticity is questioned. Some people think it was maybe touched up by him or maybe, maybe, um, um, by him. or maybe it was, you know, one of Da Vinci's assistants painted it, or maybe, you know, none of them did. Maybe it was a fake. Yeah, yeah. But either way, I think it was last scene on his boat. Yeah.

Which is where you keep priceless works of art. Yeah, you put on your yacht for your Coke parties and hangs with Jared. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But I do think the answer is basically scarcity because there's, like, very few of them in existence. Yeah. It's not kind of dark about that. Like, you know, art becoming, like,

I know that don't at me NFT people but like You get a board aid? I'm just saying like these used to be kind of public goods in a way you know. What's more public than a gif you can copy and paste? Yeah, yeah.

Or something you can like slap on a yacht in the Seychelles for your, you know, getaways. Yeah, for your probably your All-GARC buddy. Speaking of which Roman Abramovich officially sold the Chelsea soccer team. Yeah. To the owners of the Dodgers actually.

that's great uh i would say that the effort to kind of get um dictatorial oligarchic money out of the premier league is an entirely consistent so long as newcastle's owned by the saudi sovereign wealth fund but hey it's a step in the right yeah yeah oh you mentioned um nfts a minute ago did you see that seth green um apparently someone stole his his board ape nfti and now he can no longer make a tv show about it yeah yeah i mean that's a shame i wonder like Like, did that really happen, or is that just funnier than whatever show he could have made? It's a good out, because I don't know how good that show would have been, right? So, like, maybe he's got like, he's take the out.

It's the ultimate rugpole on making this land show. Oh, shit, I was going to make this show. Oh, man. Bummer. Well, anyway, that's it for the news portion. We're going to take a quick break. And we come back, you will hear Ben's conversation with the head of USAID, submit the power, our old friend.

They're going to talk about the war in Ukraine and the scarcity of food and how it's causing huge problems. all around the globe. So stick around for that. All right, well, I'm very pleased to be talking to the USAID administrator and best friend of the podcast, Samantha Power. Sam, really good to see you. Great to see you, Ben. So let's just start by setting a baseline here. We've been following the issues around food scarcity, particularly growing more cute after the war in Ukraine. How is this impacting your work? And how would you describe, you know, the difference between what is already a challenging issue in terms of food

scarcity and how it's gotten worse since the war began? Well, before Putin made the reckless and inhumane decision to invade Ukraine, we were already heading toward a colossal food crisis that was likely to outdo the food crisis of 2007, 2008 that we inherited back in the Obama administration. And now what you have is five million tons of wheat, corn, sunflower oil stuck in Ukraine because Putin won't allow those stockpiles out. You have Russia and Belarus, two of the largest fertilizer producers in the world, not getting their fertilizer onto the market. In Russia's case, he likes to blame the sanctions, but fertilizer is not sanctioned.

It's actually that he created an export ban. And that's Russia's the leading fertilizer producer for the world. So you've seen fertilizer prices go up two times before the war in Ukraine, and now they're up roughly four times from about a year ago. I mean, think of that. If you're a farmer, that means one quarter of the fertilizer that you were able to get a year ago, you can get in order to plant and harvest in the way that you had hoped. And so there is a world of pain out there, Ben.

And the statistic that I found the most chilling is one that the World Bank put out a week or so ago, which is that for every 1% increase in global food prices, 10 million people fall into extreme poverty. I mean, that is whoa. And so right now, that's looking like it could be as much as 40 million people driven into poverty by virtue of the increase in food prices. Again, brought about by COVID-in. climate and now the fact that so much food and fertilizer has been taken offline by this reckless war. Are there particular regions that might face a threat of famine or where the reliance on

wheat from Ukraine or fertilizer from Belarus and Russia is having a particularly acute impact in terms of putting people's lives in danger? Well, whenever food prices go up, you always look to the most vulnerable places first. And so just in terms of regional concentration, that takes you immediately to sub-Saharan Africa. And now, both in West and East Africa, you are seeing famine-like conditions looming. And again, the fertilizer piece means that it's staggered effects. And so now you see the inability to import, for example, Ukrainian wheat. And in Egypt, that's a lot of 85% of Egypt's wheat supplies.

It happens comes from Ukraine. 81% of Lebanon's. So those wheat imports are taken offline. The expensiveness of operations for a big humanitarian organization like World Food Program has increased dramatically. So they're now able to buy less humanitarian relief than they might have been with the same amount of money because their operating costs have gone way up. And that's true, of course, as fuel prices increase,

but then, you know, that applies as well to food and fertilizer prices. So, again, it's the imports of wheat are way down in Ukraine-weat-dependent venues. The ability to do stopgap humanitarian emergency assistance is there, aided fantastically by the bipartisan Ukraine supplemental, which not only provides resources to deal with the humanitarian emergency inside Ukraine and in the frontline states who are sheltering Ukrainian refugees, but also allows us to use some of those resources to deal with the fallout from the war in Ukraine in places like sub-Saharan Africa.

So we will have additional resources to buy humanitarian assistance in order to try to prevent the kinds of scenes. We know what it looks like. But the issue with fertilizer is that people aren't planting now or they're planting less now. And so you're looking three, five months and into 20223 in terms of when those effects will be felt. That's what I was going to ask.

So this is the kind of thing that might become like an acute crisis, not necessarily immediately, but when you look into the fall and next winter and into next year, this is just going to get worse and worse. Well, the way we're thinking about it is, right, we have this toolbox. So first, you've got to get the humanitarian emergency. assistance out the door, even if it is more expensive, we're going to have to pay those prices in order to get emergency food relief to vulnerable communities that might have needed it, that in fact many did need it, even before Putin decided to invade Ukraine.

Then you have the lesser self-sufficiency for particular countries by virtue of the fact that they were prepared to buy wheat. They were buying sunflower oil. They were buying fertilizer. but now there's either no supply or the supplies are just so expensive as to be out of reach. And you're already seeing as well the cascading social unrest by virtue of the spike in fuel, food, and fertilizer prices. So we'll look for humanitarian emergency assistance to try to stave off the worst effects in here and now. But it's the structural getting people to be able to plant now in order to,

to be able to provide as much as they might have a year ago or two years ago to their people. And that's where getting them to use fertilizer more efficiently, trying to incentivize increased fertilizer production. Even in places like the United States, Tom Vilsack has made $500 million available in grants for Americans to produce more fertilizer so we can bring that to the global market and offset the fact that Putin is holding his supplies back as he does. So, you know, we've been looking at this. We heard we had Wally on a few weeks ago who talked about nations not not hoarding their own supplies. You've talked about, obviously, the additional assistance the U.S. is provided. When you engage other governments, like what are the mix of, and you mentioned the World Bank, but how much of this is just the U.S. ramping up with partners' additional resources to get food to people faster? How much of this is like a whole? reporting issue and getting other countries to release their own stocks of food, how much of this

is kind of redesigning supply chains? Like, what are you doing in your engagements with foreign governments via the USCID toolkit to kind of multilateralize responses? Well, just to start on the trade restrictions, that is the worst thing that can happen in a moment like this, as Wally said on your show. And unfortunately, it's happening in a lot of places. So I think there are something like 23 export restrictions that have been put in place, and that limits everything from the amount of fertilizer on the open market to the amount of wheat. And for every export restriction, some price somewhere is getting affected. But it also means that individuals within the countries where those export bans are put in place

can't themselves profit from what they might have sold on the open market. Because often it's not really calibrated to domestic consumption. so it's not as if everything that isn't going on the open market is necessarily going to get sold domestically. So we're still doing the diplomacy to try to convince countries that have done that to dial those back, maybe now as they have thicker plans in place as to how they mitigate some of the risks or embed more resilience in their planning. Then there is the emergency response, the supplemental that Congress passed, provided $4.3 billion in additional humanitarian assistance support with bipartisan,

votes, and that's incredibly important. But it's a misleadingly large number when you marry it to the potentially 40 million new people on top of the 130 million people who were food, you know, in need of food assistance last year. Then you end up with really numbers that even that generosity from the American taxpayer won't suffice to meet. So we really need his new donors to get involved, to get the Gulf countries more exercise, for example, about some of this. They have stepped up their contributions in Yemen, which is useful given all of the food insecurity there. But again, when you're looking at so many parts of sub-Saharan Africa and even in our own hemisphere, countries like Guatemala, Dominican Republic, any place Haiti, of course, any place

where the agricultural sector provides significant income for significant chunks, the population, you're seeing acute vulnerability. And then in the policy space, and this is where USA is very active because we have a program called Feed the Future that came online, you know, more than a decade ago. That's a billion dollars a year of preexisting investments in research into drought resistance and drought resistant and heat resistant seeds into how you apply fertilizer in a more precise way. I know it sounds like, well, if that's obvious, wouldn't wouldn't farmers be doing it? Not necessarily.

Yeah. Not subsistence farmers necessarily, yeah. Exactly. And we have a program in Ethiopia, for example, Ben, that I've only learned about really in detail in recent weeks out of necessity, but whereby training Ethiopian farmers how to more precisely target their fertilizer, they've actually been able to reduce the amount of fertilizer that they've needed to use by 80 percent and increase their, uh, production by 200%. And that's the win-win of all win-wins, right? And at a moment like this,

if we could scale that kind of learning across Ethiopia, because it's not in every community, and every farming community in Ethiopia, but above all, to the other feed-the-future countries and to additional countries that we're now going to need to bring online, I will say that in terms of, again, applying this learning, this technical assistance, helping countries diversify where they're getting their imports from. You know, this is a crisis that presents an opportunity for more regional trade, for example, within Africa, because that should have happened before in certain regions, but just, again, habits were created and trade channels, you know, don't diverge easily from what they have been before, but you're now seeing out of

this crisis countries talking to each other and thinking about how they work together in a way that they haven't. And here again, the Congress stepped up and provided an additional $750 million roughly in food security programming of this nature in terms of getting in and working with countries to do the kind of structural work so that they are more resilient in this crisis, but also going forward. So, like, I want to ask one kind of more geopolitical question, which is that there's the war itself, and then there's just this issue of whether, anything can be done to get Russia to facilitate the outflow of wheat and other products. And it strikes me that some of the regions and countries you've named in Egypt,

you know, CC there has cultivated this relationship with Putin. Africa is a place where Russia's tried to kind of highlight some cracks in, you know, the opposition to the war. Is there any like political leverage or entry point, given that some of the affected countries and regions are places where, again, I've returned to CC, right? If he was supposed to have this relationship with Putin, couldn't he pick up the phone and say, let the wheat get out? I mean, is there any benefit in the fact that some of these are places that have been somewhat fenced-sitters on the war and might be mobilized to put a little

pressure on this issue? Well, I will say that the invasion of Ukraine by Putin was so egregious that it moved many countries, not all, but who have fenced sat in the past, into more proactive positions of condemnation. And actually, the Gulf countries and Middle Eastern countries are among those who shifted and actually declared themselves, said that actually gratuitously invading a neighbor and, you know, bombing the daylights out of civilians in a sustained way in order to take part of somebody else's country, that that's a bad thing. And so in a way that those much higher numbers at the UN, that greater summoning of diplomatic unity

that we were all heartened by, you know, what some African and Middle Eastern leaders say back is, well, now, you know, we're not as friendly as we were. You know, he's taken note of our vote. But you absolutely are right that the diplomatic pressure needs to come. from the places where the food insecurity is the worst, and particularly those that have those channels. I will say the U.N. Secretary General and his team are working around the clock to try to secure a, shall we call a diplomatic solution to let the grains and the cereals free from Ukraine. I mean, we're talking about not only the 22 million tons of grains and other exports that are currently in storage, but Ben, it gets worse, there's the 30 million tons that could be harvested and need to move into those storage silos and other facilities.

Then there's the question, if you haven't moved them, how do you incentivize farmers to plant in the coming season here? in just a matter of months if they aren't confident that they're going to be able to move their exports to the open market. And so that pressure has to come from all over. And there is just, again, it's a black sea blockade. You have, I think it's nearly 100 vessels, merchant vessels, that are ready to go. And, of course, the Ukrainians have been guarding their ports fearful of an amphibious landing and of an invasion since Odessa and other ports have been bombarded by Russia. But as soon as there is a signal from the Russian Federation that they are willing to allow

those ships to clear the Black Sea, the Ukrainians have made very clear that they will, you know, demine the harbors. And, of course, they have every interest in getting that food out into the open market. But one thing just to stress, Putin is trying to, and Putin's messaging has been all about how the global food crisis is the product of sanctions. Yeah. And so the other piece of this is we are spending a lot of time, you know, through diplomacy, but also through public messaging. And I think the press really has a critical role to play is there's an elision that occurs, you know, it says, well, wait, Russia has fertilizer and there are sanctions. and therefore it must be that fertilizer is four times as expensive as it was a year ago because of sanctions.

No, Putin put in place an export ban on fertilizer. Putin is, and his forces are blockading the Black Sea and not letting, you know, as many as 50 million tons of global food supplies out onto the open market. And in order for that diplomatic pressure that you rightly say is needed from other countries to really take hold, it's very important that people have a clear sense of who's at fault here. And because I imagine there's also exceptions to sanctions for certain things to get out into the market, right? Well, fertilizer was not sanctioned deliberately, you know, knowing how important it was. But again, knowing you can't rely on Putin, having a change of heart, you can't rely on, certainly there's no humanity there.

You can't rely on him succumbing to pressure from anybody since spite is an animating feature of his. you know, form of activity, you know, his being. So at the same time, we press to let the grains go free, you know, and save lives. It is also really incumbent on us to get those donors who have resources to be doing just what the United States just did, which is pulling together extremely substantial, extra budgetary support for the food crisis in Africa and beyond. And Ben, it's, it's interesting the flood of Ukrainians into Europe and all of the generosity that has been mobilized by Europe to welcome, you know, six and a half million Ukrainians

into Europe. Unfortunately, the assistance that has been used to care for many of those Ukrainians, unfortunately is coming out of development assistance and humanitarian assistance budgets. which wasn't necessarily the way it had to happen, but it is the way it has happened. So you're looking at much more expansive needs and shrinking pies, at least so far, for many of the traditional donors. One last question before I let you go, which is people listening to this in the United States and around the world may want to do something. Do you have any advice? What can people do or the places they can donate or volunteer? What can a citizen of this country or the world do to help address this?

Well, first, since we have sometimes paralyzed domestic political system, I know we don't do this often, but, you know, particularly, I don't know how many pod listeners are in red states or interact much with Republican members of the House or Senate. But I actually think, hey, an attaboy here, this was a really substantial piece of legislation that passed. I'm struggling when we're not talking about food, of course, to get funding for vaccinating the world through the Congress. That's not happening. There's a thousand things that we're not doing that I wish we were doing that I think are in our interests and in the interest of showing America's compassion and foresight for ourselves.

But on this, Republicans and Democrats came together. And it's not obvious that that would have happened. It's also not obvious that it will continue, given that there are many within the Republican party that are that are divided over this there's a much more lively debate than than one would expect again given the egregiousness of what of what Putin is doing and the and the colossal harms that are ensuing but that kind of engagement affirmative engagement we want our legislative body to be working just like this and we want to be showing american leadership in this way it gives us tremendous leverage as we go to other donors to try to get them to do more then just as was true

of course when we spoke ben about the ukraine crisis itself, there are a number of very substantial international organizations where one can reliably send resources. We will make sure you have on your website a list of those, but of course the UNICEFs, the World Food Programs, the Red Crosses, the Mercy Corps, the International Rescue committees. I mean, all of those organizations, and again, we'll put more on the list, are out there doing the critical work of feeding people in need. And no donation. is too small, given the gap likely to come between public financing and hunger that is going to be with us, not only this calendar year, but likely well into 2023.

And people can go to work at you, SEDD? Yes. Yes. Well, look, Sam, thanks for helping us unpack this, and we'll keep following it. And thank you for, you know, everybody who works at aid for all you're doing. Thank you, Ben. Thanks for lifting it up. Thanks again to Sam Power for joining the show.

Thank you to Seth Green for not securing those apes, not getting the two-factor. Yeah. Thank you to Mohammed bin Salman for buying a fake painting. Thank you to whoever had to clean up the cake at the Louvre there, you know? I wonder what, it looked like a vanilla. There was like, the funny thing about that too is there were all these cell phone videos. I was looking at them last night and like some of them were these kind of bro-y like, no way, man. Like some dude like holding up his iPhone.

Just pumped. Whoa. Yeah. Like look at that dude with the cake. I saw the some of the videos of it. Like the guy who did it, the French cops just kind of like let him address the media and like give speeches as he walked away. Apparently he threw rose petals at their feet. Yeah.

Man, in the U.S. You are going to get your ass handed to you if you do something like that. Yeah. Yeah. That's where our policing focuses. Yeah. Right. Just beating up the suspects.

Not on like, you know, keeping guns out of tools. No. No, we just do mostly ineffective, symbolic things. Yeah. Anyone else to think here? The Queen? Gorgies in general. Stonehenge, you know, groundskeepers.

They do a great job. Great, great display there as part of the Jubilee. I did see, like, a friend of the pod, Mike O'Neill, Irish sent me the Irish perspective on the Jubilee. Yes. You were on the text, right? So funny. I mean, I'm not going to read it like verbatim,

but it's basically like being Irish and watching this is like having a neighbor who's really into clowns. and they have clown paraphernalia, and it goes on and on about this obsession with clowns. And then the kicker is, except if you're Irish, your grandfather was killed by a clown, which I thought was... Spot on. It's usually the Irish can kind of really stick the land.

It's from the Irish Times. Yeah, props the Irish Times. Shout out Irish Times. Some of the best writing in the world is always in Irish. Always. All right, that's it for this week. Talk to guys next week. See you.

Ponset of the World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Mewis. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seguin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Saul Rubin for production support and to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montuth

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