War AND Peace | Ep. 076 Lemonade Stand 🍋

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And we were concerned for your mental health. We were concerned there would be depression. And particularly Aiden, 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. You're speaking 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 reprieve. This will be a war and 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 has been confused for a week or two. Yeah, this is. You should end this episode feeling emotionally confused. Right. Like a breakup. Like a be up front. 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. 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. Fun episode. Oh, that fun fact about Chinese dramas on social media. It was really fun. Laughing emoji. Crying emoji. So kick us off, Doug. We have a war. We'll start with the war, obviously. Obviously. Let's get serious on 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. You surely. 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. You can pull this up, Perry. 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 politician, plebe, 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 fight. 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 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 seize assets, we do trade and barcode. Yeah, I had told us to take it over. I had told us to take it 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 president and becomes very upset that Iran is funding Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and they're suspecting a nuclear program. So 30 years ago, Bill Clinton is like, I think Iran's screwing up and we're going to ban stuff. Wow, you nailed that, Bill Clinton. Yeah, yeah. That's mostly what I spent my time prepping for. 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 on it. So he starts ramping up max pressure in 1996. And we start the Iran-Libya 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. So when is this going to zoom out, though, and show the greatest sanctions of all time? Oh, Scott Besson's quote. How is that going to fit? Well, what I think is so. It's 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 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. Starting to get a little frayed. Then we hit 2007. And this is where the U.N., 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 U.N. security protocols that basically said all of us are going to put. we're going to put the pressure on Iran now. And then, in fact, China and Russia kept putting on pressure. EU and other U.N. 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, when 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 of years as negotiations happen. 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, "But I hate 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 it's 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 tenet 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 their, everything they're doing and, like, deeply inspect it. So they agree to all these inspections. 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 US 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 it together. That's what I was about to ask. Is there, surely there must've been, and I'm asking, I'm asking Doug, I'm asking the audience. Surely. Surely there must've 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. But no. That's well established. Nothing else. But I remember like, did they do some things particularly or was there a, 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 was 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, 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 is like trying to keep this deal together. Iran, because the deal was broken from the US side. It's like, we're going to enrich in uranium now. Like if you guys aren't doing your end of the deal, we are going to enrich uranium. - 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. 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 or second? - Yeah. - Was that his first term? - It was his first term. - Okay. - So 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, 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 and 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 US, I mean, it's just interesting to look at the history. The US 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. - 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 the most of the economy is. - Yeah. So all of this leads to the question, if this is what the US has been doing for the past 47 years, what the hell does Scott Besant 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, major escalation. So here's where we're at. We've done everything we can up until this point. And when Scott Besant 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 that 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 US 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 US sanctions. Like if you follow the sanctions. - It's like forcing a split for a lot of companies, causing a lot of companies a huge amount of headaches, basically right about now, where they're like hiring massive teams of lawyers to figure out how we can somehow straddle this line 'cause they don't want to fall afoul of the US 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 liable. So it's this really weird fucking thing. - And dude, of those two allies, Russia's already sanctioned to hell, right? Because of Ukraine. So it's like China's the one left. Like that's the opportunity, which is scary. - It sucks. 'Cause I think about this theme that Atrioc 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. Like, 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 at that time, pushed for sanctions on this one country that they didn't want to develop nuclear weapons. And then 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. I mean, the last year and a half. - I mean, this is a really interesting presentation, Doug, 'cause I think this 2016 breaking of this deal really feels like the beginnings of what has become like this China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, separate web. You know, it's like this weird, we're having these soft proxy wars, but they're all connected. It's like, this was the breaking of that order. And they just said, fuck it. We're not gonna stick to this. We're not gonna stick to this plan anymore. - It's a total self-own, you know? 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. - Well, not max pressure. Get ready for what's coming. - Yeah, you're right, sorry. This is the, 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? - Who's that? - Maybe Steve Ballmer. Maybe Adam Silver. - Okay. - One light-hearted story. - Okay, so that was serious. - Fun watchers, skip to right now. Welcome fun watchers. - Fun watchers are the fun ones. - You skipped the first story, you're here. - Okay, you skipped here. - And you knew it was gonna be tough. - That last story was a good time, right? - That was a good time. - All right, keep it. - 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? They have 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 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 Ballmer, 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 Dodgers. - Yes. - We actually have a cool example of what can happen. - Yeah, that happens in European sports all the time too. Yeah, so anyway. So Steve Ballmer sets up the Clippers in LA 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, Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, on the same team with a salary cap. And reporting comes out from a great podcaster, Pablo Torre, 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. OK, 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, this is a really it's a really powerful, well-done piece of reporting. He interviewed whistleblowers in the companies, all of whom are like on camera with their voices. Guys say, yeah, we were circumventing the salary cap. Like nobody understood why we were paying Kawhi this much money. Because, again, you could look at Aspiration, this startup and who they were paying for public relations. They paid some celebrities seven million, whatever. And then all the sort of like it's seven million, seven million, seven million and then 50 million for Kawhi Leonard, who did nothing. It's very obviously a salary capture convention. So anyway, the report comes out today from ESPN, who stands by the reporting. It's not 100 percent confirmed yet, but they've been challenged on it. They said we stand 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 Daktronics that was also in close dealings with Steve Ballmer of the Clippers. And they also did a 20 to 30 million dollar sponsorship with Kawhi Leonard where he had nothing to do. And it's like literally nothing. This story is so funny because if Kawhi just got off his ass to do an Instagram post, there's like so much plausible deniability. All you had to do, if you made one Instagram post with a hashtag. Just him 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. No, he did. I'm saying nothing. Wow. And he made it part of his deal. Like if you read the contract he did with Aspiration, it's like Kawhi Leonard maintains a sponsorship as long as he never leaves the Clippers. And he has the right to refuse any sponsorship action. And he just didn't do it. 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 reporting, 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. It's that Kawhi got paid. They circumvented the salary gap. 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 Ballmer, 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. But like to have no punishment at all. He didn't take taxpayer funds to embezzle money to Kawhi Leonard. That would have been crazy. He's an ethical billionaire. Yeah, he's an ethical. Well, so they couldn't find any evidence. And it's just crazy to have somebody publishing this stuff who wins the Pulitzer Prize and they say there's no evidence. What's interesting about this story is that Pablo Torre 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 be officially. There was nothing going on and then they're going to drop in some new another piece. 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 his show and basically defend Steve Ballmer 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 is the counter? Like if Mark Cuban went on that show, what is the counter to Mark Cuban and Steve Ballmer's counter? Is that? Yeah. How could I have known what I just invested in this? I've invested $50 million 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 quiet 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. Right. I guess there's that's the deny. The plausible deniability is that someone else in the organization orchestrated the circuit. It's the circumvention of the salary cap, no matter what. No, no, no one else. Their defense is that they these companies are just stupid and they just invest in money and quiet 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. It's just the zero deliverables is what makes it so open and shut. But yeah, that's 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 that. Electronics was at the exact same time. They do this having very close deals with Steve Ballmer to build the Jumbo Tron for his brand new stadium and he gives them all this extra money and they give it to quiet Leonard and it's like and he doesn't do anything and it's okay. Just come on. I do have one last question. Sure. You know what the luxury taxes 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 teared 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 Ballmer is pretty rich. Why not just pay the tax or is there a limit on? Yeah, it's 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 that the son's owner famously went right into that. Yeah, 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, which is 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 start doing like 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. The money he spent above and beyond what he would have had to just give Kawhi 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 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 of the aprons. That is why he did it. But so the last thing I'll say on this, we'll move on because we got war to get to. Yeah. Is that the incentive? 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. Like you see NBA players all starting podcasts. Suddenly you can just sponsor their podcast or like 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 of 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. When it's time to scale your business, it's time for Shopify. Get everything you need to grow the way you want. Like all the way. Stack more sales with the best converting checkout on the planet. Track your cha-chings from every channel right in one spot and turn real-time reporting into big-time opportunities. Switch to Shopify. Choice Hotels gets you more of what you value. Comfort Inn. It's calling your name. Save on the stay. Oh, and free. Waffles are yours to claim. Book direct at choicehotels.com. For month trial at shopify.com slash special offer. Anyway, war. What's happening with war? Okay. All right. War. War watchers skip ahead to right 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. out uh clippers fans after the south i think uh sweden is trying to keep out americans it's not sweet that's 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're saying recognized yeah like officially recognized like how like in order to really become a country you need all you need basically all the other countries to recognize your status as a country yeah so can you think of what the most recent one was it was in 2011 2011 i was thinking like 80s or 90s wow 2011 no i'm not gonna know yeah i just it have to be africa right yeah 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 and i'll in the early 2000s yeah there's this guy in charge of dan named uh omar al-bashir okay and omar al-bashir uh 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 uh 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 they're called the gold mines and they're called the gold mines and he uh during that era through one military group and the saf uh 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 i assume brutal like a brutal yeah like like crimes against humanity like heavily scrutinized by the international you know the international courts at the time and the national courts at the time things like that and maybe we could just assume all of these are gonna be brutal from this point and you tell us if it's not extremely brutal if there's ever a non-brutal one spotlight that okay there's to be honest with you i'm not gonna say that it's not gonna come up okay uh 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 uh al-bashir's forces in the south and 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 uh 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 uh between the two countries there's a huge portion of the splm supporters or splm fighters that remain in the country and they're not going to be able to win because they're not going to be able to win the country of sudan and the thing about this is across those borders there's huge pockets of oil and so uh 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 economically like a petro state at the time like basically all the yeah huge reliance on oil and uh of the remaining uh 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 uh 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 first and foremost that he lives in the southern part of the country and he lives in the from a southern like southern of modern sudan perspective uh as somebody in this like splm north territory this is this is above south sudan this is the southern part of sudan okay southern part of modern sudan so right above south sudan yep got it uh 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 uh 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 uh there's a lot of uh like internal racism within sudan especially between the arab population and the other like african ethnic groups and in uh as the country is like crumbling economically al-bashir the guy still in charge of modern sudan uh starts to be put under like more pressure and scrutiny and this actually unites a very traditionally uh 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 it's like this guy in charge of our country is doing a terrible job we're like economically disenfranchised there's no opportunity we're falling off um since the end of this previous civil war we're gonna rally together and uh you know 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 one that could kill 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 he flee or what is he what he fled because he's he's still alive um i i believe uh 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 uh but they can't agree on who's actually going to be in charge between the two of them and the rsf which is uh 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 army right in the eastern part of the country at war with the western part of the country which is what the rsf controls animosity already then they united to get rid of al-bashir and then the animosity returned essentially okay yeah and this is all in sudan north sudan this is all in yeah what is sudan aka north sudan okay uh and there there's this third there's this third faction that was like they were they were under fire through all of the 2010s they were under fire this splm group in the southern part of the country that was like uh 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 uh but that continued to this day kind of yeah oh because these two sides are so distracted with the 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 uh as it's that has resulted since 2012 23 there are 25 million people who are like under threat of famine uh famine keep in mind this is a country of like 52 55 million people so like half of the country uh 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 uh war because of like the way information travels and is distributed but like uh up to like 400 000 people have died in this war and it's really hard to like count up the number of people who have been killed in uh this war since 2023 and uh 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 satellite. They built it out over months. A lot of giant berms in Africa that I've been learning about the past couple of weeks. That we did not know about. 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 2020. So the city is under siege from the end of 2024 until 2020. 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 is under siege, 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 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 it's like, you know, it's 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 history of anything. I'm sure it's 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 hear 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. Yeah. Atrocities and yeah, brutality. Okay. So I, this is a turn of, 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. Yeah. 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, 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 roof 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, 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, arms to the RSF side of the conflict, the side that committed that atrocity in Al Fasher. So you might wonder why. Yeah. It was my first question. Why? What does the UAE get out of that? So expensive, you know, besides oil, what is one of the largest industries in the UAE? You do happen to know. I want to be in tourism. Gold. Is it what gold gold? The UAE is a huge point for the world's gold supply because they do a ton of like processing, uh, and sale of gold to like outside, trying to build 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 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 a like interest in like a 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, main economic impetus. Okay. And they also throughout this whole time period, even though they're funding the RSF, they, they buy gold from the Sudanese government and the SAF all the time too. Like 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 consequences of it are the most severe, right? It's like literally thousands of women and girls raped, literally tens of thousands, hundreds, hundreds of thousands of people killed. And that isn't to say the 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, you know, you might not know the answer, but my understanding from the United States is that not that they would never get involved their metal. They do it all. It's the classic, but they don't even have a side on this because there's no gain. But what is the U S. Yeah. I don't, I don't have the, a great answer to that question, but as someone who, you know, reads and has seen a lot of the U S is 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 U S is biggest impact here is as we've chosen to pull out so many of things like USAID and like and helping places like this in times of conflict, there's a lot of, uh, accusations directed towards the U S 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. Um, so, uh, as we've dismantled that international aid system, this is some of the consequences live in like places like this. Uh, I, I thought this, and the Colombians are there because as the drug wars have like wound down a bit in Columbia, there's a bunch of people in Columbia actually with like insane expertise in like guerrilla warfare and either on the Columbia 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 to for hire. So they're just going where the work is. And there was this crazy tech that they use 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 span, like 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. Uh, I, 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. Uh, that's, that's the Sudan. That's the Sudan. That ties into what we said last week. Cause 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? They're getting, they're getting the, the, the drone training, uh, from the UAE too. That's part of them. Some 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. Uh, wow. Yeah, okay. Was there any like, what is the most recent update? Is there, look, I wish you had context here. Aiden 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 with this guy who's been working and living there for 20 years. Is there any, I mean, maybe in the months that you've been looking into this, any positive developments, anything that's moving towards it? Just like, this is just awful and that's it. To be honest with you, not really. Like, 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 in the Western region that hasn't fallen under RSF control yet is called El Obeid, El Obeid. And 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. - I'm on the verge of tears right now. That is an extremely sad story. - When you look at, dude, I was like, actually almost crying in the office 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 the happy segments. - Hey, fun times. - Boy, if you like happy ones, I would go back and watch that. 'Cause that was, that was like. - If you love, that was, hey. - You skipped ahead, but that one was a, that was an easy listen. It was a, it was a breeze. - I think, I think, you know, stay on this one for a bit and then maybe go back at the end of the day. - Into 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 would be a tough one. - Don't do, man. Okay, you know. - Okay, all right. - What's. - I'm also interested in this because I, well, you tell me about it. I'll jump in with it. - Okay, all right. You might not have known this because Quibi failed horribly in the United States, but micro dramas on your phone are rip roaring through the world, okay? It's a fun thing. 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, 'cause 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. - Sheesh. - 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 what the heck's going on here? All right, so this 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 wanna watch short vertical videos on their phone and we could turn a show into like a quick little bite. Funny, 'cause again, we tried this with Quibi in the US and it failed horrifically, but this has been going extraordinarily well in China for a while. In the past couple years, people started to bring it to the US. 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 $250,000. Where for reference, most TV show episodes are millions of dollars, especially depending on the production. It's very focused on romance, rich people, lot of vampires. It seems to be like Mr. Beast style, all focused on getting you engaged where every episode is like a cliffhanger hook. Here's a quote from one of the Jap, excuse me, Chinese production developers. He avoids mysteries and thrillers because they aren't great at hooking audiences instantly in favor of romance, which he saw as both an underserved market in the US and a genre that could sell big emotions quickly. Another quote, the basis for a classic micro drama 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 Starman. - It's Starman, 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 means. Katzenberg was onto something. - Yes, he was onto something. - He was onto something. He made the fatal mistake. - Of hiring Chance the Rapper to be your flesh. - Okay, that's admittedly one. That's a big one. 10 minute episodes are too long. - Too long. - Too long. - He made a bet on everyone's attention span being dog shit and he didn't know how dog shit would become. He was too old. He was too set in his ways to see you 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. This is, yeah, this is really interesting. No, no, no, you start with yours, okay. - So I was gonna 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 where the money is. A lot of money's flowing into these investment ideas and they're all getting jobs from. And they're like, they're really trying. They said, if you can get cast as like the hot CEO type, you can get tons of work. But if you get cast as like, I don't know, like the chud or whatever, you don't get that many things. And so, yeah, I was hoping. Maybe we bring them up for a future episode. They want to be interviewed. They mentioned, 'cause it was like a cool, but yeah, so. - Is it, I blur this. - No. - Okay, so I'm gonna be glad. 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 micro production companies. Sometimes, little weird, you go in, you just like churn through episodes in a single day. This is like hyper, hyper efficient. - Like no second takes. - No second takes. - Yeah, just go, go, go. You don't need necessarily good acting or production. - No, it's like slop, dude. - 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 DramaBox, 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. - The Discarded Ace was fake? - This, right here, you can pull it up. I don't know if we're allowed to show this. What are they gonna do, sue us? - What are they gonna do, sue us? - This is a fully AI-generated show about a Jesse Eisenberg lookalike who goes on these gambling journeys. It's all AI, and this was one of their most popular shows. - It's one of their most popular shows. - From 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? - Yeah, but like-- - That movie. But it's all AI. - Dude, I like-- - For audio listeners, it is not good. This is not-- - He's playing something that looks similar to Liar's Dice. - What? - What? - What? - What? - What? - He stacked all the dice under the code! - 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, slopifying even harder. It's just a crazy story. And if you're like me, you probably have never even heard-- - This is sad! It's not sad, but this is making me sad like Sudan! People are watching this by the millions! No, I'm not sad like Sudan, okay? You know what I'm saying? But like-- - No, it's sad! - This is a depressing angle! 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 viewership? There's viewership stats? - 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 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 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 uh there's also a variety article that goes into this called the vertical revolution how micro dramas became a multi-billion dollar and it's taking on america 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'm i watched the entire thing over his shoulder and then he he'd leave after he finishes the video he leaves a comment that's like haha loved obama in the second term and then i i had a thought i was like this is the guy do you do you know what i mean like like when you see the comments on these things on youtube or facebook and you're like oh my god i'm like oh my god who is watching yeah who is commenting surely they're all rob it's him it's him and he's a normal guy on the train in new york there's tens of them it's one in everything there's literally one every 10 uh 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 wind that we're all going to it's like everything beautiful what this is crazy this is gonna be uh you guys jeffrey katzenberg had a vision for he had a vision grown ai shitty vertical video and now we're losing that job have you seen darman have you ever seen one of those videos yes it's have you seen it it's like motivation this is basically this right it's like it's a very poorly acted slap but you if you ever look on facebook and look at the amount of views those get it it's like mr beast level number like he gets 50 60 million views on every one of those and they're always like two minutes long total slop there's a the the the poor guy wins in the end or whatever the yeah yeah i don't know i want to take a shot i will you know what i'll take this shot i feel like i've i've consumed enough chinese media okay uh i 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 yeah and it's bad it's it's it's just bad they use they're they make bad shows it's one of the and and i've heard the tv industry there is like improving and getting better in the same way that like their film industry has been getting a lot better in recent years but i remember like 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 seeing that they saw the murder and it's really good every other show garbage and i wonder if it's like a comparison thing i mean 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 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 the anyway yeah i did remember i read something about this because a lot of these micro dramas i assume the the actors that i talked to said they're like some of them are like basically soft core porn like they're just yeah they're like all romance they're all about people being hot they kind of they make out instantly whatever and it's tuning in though and uh there was a crackdown in china recently because they're so popular the audience for a lot of these is um 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 that's the answer that's a and there was a china attempt to crack down on these micro dramas to help increase the birth rate because they thought it was making women too picky they were looking for the ceo or whatever the micro dramas uh again i don't know the the that but i remember reading a that that was pretty funny yeah stop looking for a vampire so you can't find a vampire when it's 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of the fastest growing companies use vanta at vanta.com why don't we what if we scooted on over from china okay and we went to their neighbor okay korea korea and i want you to break down for me and we're back to war we're back to we're back to war hopefully a little less sad but we'll see there seems to be 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 than the chinese Chinese micro this is good so we're equal opportunity for sadness yeah across war and peace yeah okay good uh here's a little update is obviously uh donald trump is a stalwart ally to all of our longtime allies we all know this no 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 gonna be cutting back on our joint exercises they're 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 gonna be cutting them short because um it sends the wrong message to our friends in korea about you know about how hostile we are and then he says not that it's related this is the same true social place okay not that it's related but it was a little strange that we needed help in iran and south korea didn't help us or whatever that's so it's seemingly like in punishment for south korea one of the united states' closest and longtime allies not jumping into the insane iran war he is like switching sides in this oh oh they're not related for a while he said he couldn't have been more clear so if you're writing a tweet you may as well get all your thoughts just get all your thoughts even if they're separate um somebody paid a hundred thousand dollars to get that five seconds um so people is uh this is mason ritchie 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 parroting pyongyang's lines uh north korea and it's causing a lot of chaos and tumult in south korea and i think his actions around this are sending the 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 exactly 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 is within the 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 sent that 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 is ground zero for that where they're this has really caught them off guard um and so that's that's i mean that's the update is 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 uh he says he said he had a great relationship with kim jong-un and that he gets along with him real well even we have notably threatened them before like like like explicitly you remember we used to tweet and he'd be like in north korea hell and yeah it's coming but now they're good friends i mean i you know 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 branch 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 it's dark on the others. So if you look at that more recently, the lights in 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've started to military upgrade and then China's been sitting 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 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 at B2G7. And to be fair, I have- He hasn't gone to, yeah. I have friends where like it can be years and it feels like it's been yesterday. It feels like it hasn't been a day. Like me and Kim Jong-un used to play Mario Kart online together. Yeah, exactly. And if you saw him now, we'd see him, we'd click. You'd have instant rapport. And I think he feels that way. He feels that way for some reason 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 and steal. Stack on to this. Yeah. Keep in mind. Let'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 morph South Korea back into our country. We're our own thing and we're moving on as such. So, the Steelmen, I would say if 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. 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 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 gonna 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 'cause we shouldn't have any conflict at all." Just from a game theory on US 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 gotta think about it. It's like, you make mistakes sometimes and at least our alliances with everybody else have been so strong. - They've been so rock solid that just South Korea is getting a little bit of, yeah, you're right. - To me, that's the economic sanctions that Besant is talking about with Iran. Like, if the whole world is destroyed, Iran will suffer. - That's what he meant. If we destroyed all of it. - If we destroyed all supply chains everywhere, they're gonna have a really fucking hard time in Iran. - We start sleeping with their allies. - Never let 'em see your next move. - Speaking of boosting our allies. - Yeah, boost 'em. - Let's get on over to Greenland. - Yeah, for the Nordic fun fact. - Wait, wait, wait, is this fun? - It's the Nordic fun fact. I would argue this is a little fun and silly, albeit it does have some severe consequences. - Okay. - I have 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 a 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. 'Cause honestly, our last phone was a little too dark for me. - Well, okay. What do you do? Who do you think of when I say Greenland in oil? Who comes to mind? - Like an individual. - Yeah. Greenland oil? - Any guy that comes to mind. - I think of Trump. That's because he wants Greenland's resources. - The King of Denmark. What about Dr. Phil? - That was my next guess. Dr. Phil. - So there is a company called the Greenland Energy Company. - This is a fun one. - This is a good one. - This is a fun one, okay. - This is better not take an unfun turn, which is negotiated. - Yeah. - A six-episode documentary with Dr. Phil that he's producing to go over the journey of discovering oil in Greenland. - When did Dr. Phil get into this type of content? - At Twist, all the episodes are one-minute vertical. - And they're soft-corp worn. Dr. Phil is in a bikini. - The article does not make it clear if Dr. Phil is an owner or a stakeholder in this company directly. - Oil hunters and Dr. Phil. - But Dr. Phil! - And in fact, he 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 interested in Greenland? Do you-- - 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 to Greenland. I would not consider that one of my three. - Wow. - If we were going-- - In the Nordic fun fact section. - If we were going to find-- - Greenlanders, rise up in the comments, let them know. - Half of the Nordic fun facts have been about Greenland. That's your export. - Yeah, that's their biggest cultural export is the Nordic fun fact. - It's the Nordic fun fact on Lemonade Stand. - I also know that there's like, two 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 globe from the top down, countries like Russia and the U.S. and Canada are all much, much closer together than people really realize. - Sarah Palin realized it early. She was ahead of the game on that. She saw Russia from her backyard and we didn't believe her. - So we have this, 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. - He's a jazz man. - 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, from searching for oil. They're revoking, or rather, they're extending the timeline that it will take for them to do the exploration of oil in the country. And-- - Did 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 in 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've been welcome in 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 there may, I think there's always a subset of people within Greenland that are concerned about the encroachment upon their natural resources, I would say. 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 want independence from Denmark. They want independence over their own country, but they also want resources and opportunities and ways to like build the country up and have economic success and freedom. So 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 re-aggresses the issue because he's mad that U.S. companies are not getting access to what they were promised. - It's a good thing he's not stretched thin at all. I think he's got full attention to focus on this. - Doesn't seem to stop him anymore. - But think about the opposite issue for Greenland is if any company successfully finds oil in Greenland, which 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 uh so they're in this like weird spot where they don't want to like irk trump in one way but don't want 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 not a crazy amount of oil and then as you kind of get further and further along this timeline of more and more 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 uh similar things so that that's basically it this is just green the reality of what types of decisions greenland has to make in the wake of trump provoking so much you know it reminds me have you seen the story about what's going on in albania with uh ivanka trump and kushner yeah where like so they're they're trying to build this private island for billionaire basically okay okay yeah okay and they got this land through a mob dealer it's great they spent a lot of money and uh they she did this very public interview kind of bragging about it and it became this big story and now there's like this huge pushback in albania of like don't sell our people don't sell our people don't sell our people don't sell our private nature preserve land to these billionaires but what's funny is like why do the interview remind like if you're 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 that 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 of trump now or not even the eye or the eye like he's sauron they're trying to get him to like not look in their direction i mean this has already changed so much in denmark right is like denmark has moved a ton uh 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 things to tweet about it's so fucking crazy dude it's only been like a year what the hell has it been it blows my mind man yeah it's crazy it's crazy you read about every single alliance that we've had for decades is like on shaky ground is there do we got any good ones left have we not i would have said south korea that's the thing i would have said south korea i guess japan yeah i guess japan but we've we've antagonized them a whole bunch oh look i mean he talks about pearl harbor every single time he meets takahichi 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 i just asked all of my relatives what they think of carney and what they think of trump and it's it's just an interesting time to like ask them in canada you know yeah yeah i assume positive i said it was all trump right it was all like 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 gonna do but not also recognizing that not a lot of time has passed yet and then everybody else was like positively like positive to like very positive i would say interesting but most of it had to do with like this guy super smart look at his resume seems yeah like it seems like he's handling trump well type of thing don't like the u.s right now value that much shocker dude uh that's crazy what's that was that wasn't a that was a happy one that was a happy that was a happy one let's go over i thought it was goofy to ukraine russia back to war loved that reprieve that wasn't reprieve at all that wasn't about war you said dr phil like was at the beginning but then it was about like a really depressing hold on hold on i i did my impetus for this was the new york times article and they click baited dr phil the same way they really did he's barely involved in the article yeah he just okay what i'm realizing each one of our happy episodes kawaii leonard chinese micro dramas 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 and then you're like cool they caught steve balmer micro dramas are fun dr phil hey let's go over something cool in my heart okay you know what i will say this is obviously not like cosmically light-hearted but i do think this is a one that ends happier maybe i don't know okay let me explain it in title 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 hundreds of thousands of people have died in the russia ukraine war so this is not an update on the russia ukraine war current battle lines or who's winning or how many people have died in 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 klepach okay probably saying it wrong who uh is let me get his exact job he's a he's a he's the uh deputy economy minister at a state company veb he's very high up he's a very respected economic analyst within uh russia and he publicly said earlier this year not too long ago the ukraine war is taking a uh 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 it's okay to the state and he said uh is let me see we are falling behind we are losing technological and economic competition with the world not just china in the u.s the world but also in some respects ukraine we are losing on all these fronts he said we will not 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 won't 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 he said this and um 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 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 not if we do i'd like to show this picture this is the amazon of russia called wild berries 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 uh 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 8 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 now they're and they said his views do not represent that of beb or the state and they're moving on so it's not like it's a the happiest story but it is a sign i guess of what we've been reporting on previously which is that ukraine 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 um uh based on their analysis which i guess 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 yeah which is like truly the great horrific altering war of russian history right i mean obviously world war one rough too but um and then the the second thing do you know it 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 nobody criticizing putin but like this war has been really painful or like saying things it's kind of a natural event that yeah i couldn't have probably prevented government we're just trying to get through it but so this him being uh dismissed so quickly is like maybe a sign of like a return to trying to crack down on 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 a prediction by him in this speech was that um 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 there's gonna especially if putin you know this war is over and he is out of power or dies let's say putin can't hold everything together what happens russia after that it's like a bunch of fiefdoms in a declining economy it feels like it's uh it'll rip apart this gigantic country that that is like the the thing that this economist is putting out and it feels like it could balkanize is basically the idea is like this whole thing is held together by basically moscow and like cp 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 was a fascinating look into what's going on from their pov but it's no major update on ukraine war which is still um as deadlocked 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 he just got fired as far as we know like it it was remarkably direct um which is crazy anyway give me a light-hearted story to bounce let's end on something real light-hearted okay your alma mater asu oh yeah is launching a content creator degree this is a real ass thing that is happening there's uh various articles about including one by forbes uh which you can pull up here perry you know what's interesting about this um 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 what i did not realize until looking into it this is a major you can major in content i didn't know that i thought you were talking about they made some new classes that right it was like an elective or something like side thing that's what i thought like 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 mater 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 wade in on this actually i don't know if either of you what did he say 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 uh communications college anyway they have a big like 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 going to be 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 just 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 podcasting and audio storytelling is a guest professors real class at asu starting this fall this is and this is the first by the way big college that's doing this technically another one added uh like a content creator degree but asu is a massive school and they're like doing this yeah like 60 60 000 students that's right that's my biggest uh 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 each 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 be a part of this program you're going to be a part of this program if you're in the journalism school and you want to like get the highest in cameras to go film a project you can you can get almost anything they have a lot of money and so that's the cool part of asu like we did our esports club and they funded trips to tournaments and jerseys and wow and we just asked for it like they have they have money for everything so it's it's kind of cool podcasting and audio storytelling the real class at 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 do you think you would be more or less successful as if you had taken this in college i think it would help with mike discipline i think i could have used some pointers from a teacher on that it's actually they they hire what's his name j not jj abrams who's the who throws the the chair in the movie jj and jk simmons jk say hi jk simmons just stare at you and you say mic up you mic up was your mic down or were you dragging he slowly comes up over it and you uh 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'd you whiplash between the question i tried to i tried to figure out who teaches this because in theory you would want somebody teaching this who has done a podcast yeah 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 uh 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 not to teach but to just come and see it one of our viewers to drop out of like chemical engineering to join this major so they can get you we're not asking for much just change the course of your life and well you don't even have to change the college first transfer to asu asu well a lot of a lot of people are in school right now doing a cs degree that isn't gonna pan out all right i'll have more questions on our bonus episode on 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 um and one of the most important lessons in this class is to paywall your most important opinions 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 uh 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 you want to watch the rest of that thank you guys we tried to have this be more upbeat we tried all right when we were talking about last week are we just yours that was a negative it's the new i i don't know i don't know if it's possible to not be in eeyore with what is happening i don't know what is it we did the good news episode we did it we did it and you know what you fucks didn't watch it you it was one of our worst performing episodes ever and so and 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 is like genuine good news it was crazy because i remember doing the climate change segment and i was like oh my god i'm gonna do the climate change segment in that episode and the whole thing was like well it's not gonna be it probably won't be as bad as people have been saying it is and that was the good news smiled for five minutes straight anyway guys thank you for watching that was an interesting uh whiplash i hope you're all emotionally emotionally okay okay leave your current emotional state in the comments yeah we'd love to hear that and uh we'll see you next week thank you for watching bye everybody i wrote a little song to remind you choice hotels get you more of the experiences you value the cambria hotels got it all a rooftop ball have a ball bring a date your squad or even your mom book direct at choicehotels.com you know that friend you only call when you need something home serves here for you got a burst pipe hvac outage or electrical issue home serve has your back for regular use where basic homeowners insurance typically won't help with a protection plan from home serve in place before disaster strikes just call us we'll send a qualified contractor and we'll see you next week bye help you avoid unexpected expenses maybe we're the last ones you want to call but we're happy to hear from you go to homeserve.com audio for 50 less your first year savings compared to renewal price point in florida think glp ones are too expensive on row 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