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

30:14They are still saying, absolutely not, we refuse to. And until there's a resolution of some kind, you have hundreds of thousands of people still in a refugee camp for the rest of their life. It seems like there's progress on the UN recognition and everything, but nothing has actually changed. This is the boots on the ground reality for it seems like decades, is that they have a wall, they're operating as if they own it, and now people are going, yeah, you own it. It's been a Taiwan situation where everybody tiptoes and doesn't commit, And now they're just basically all of the world powers are turning and going, Morocco, we support you.

30:48And so the ability for the police area to resist this is basically disintegrating. Right. That was their last hope, I guess. Right. Because up until this point, they've been able to paint themselves as the people who were being oppressed in this situation. And at this point, Morocco has kind of won the international battle. And now it's just a matter of like, how do they get the insurgents to sign something finally? the the un resolution doesn't necessarily give them what they want though right if the un if the un plan or the un approval the un's proposal goes through that's morocco controlling this area it's not even really a proposal it's the un just saying we we sign we support we sign off conceptually with what morocco wants rather than what they had been doing for many years which is saying we think there should be an independence vote morocco's main goal is to stop there from ever being a vote about whether they should be independent there and now they are successfully stopping that so pretty lovable stuff and we'll see if they win against the most shocking part of this is that all the betting markets have france winning but this was a more interesting story and so our official prediction will be that morocco win morocco with the upset of the tournament morocco with the upset of the tournament because they have a more interesting piece of news but i like literally started reading about this and i was like it'll be really cool to kind of learn setting up morocco maybe i can kind of root for him a little bit more and i was like is this actually not that likable of a story morocco yeah not super endearing yeah but i i would argue very interesting story very very interesting which is why morocco is going to the round of four we're confident upset yeah and bapé is going to be quite upset and i'll be my support independence in western sahara after this okay it is kind of badass to have this grudge match.

32:32French came in and took over Morocco in like 1912. Isn't that sick to be like, we're going to take, I guess it's, you know, it's kind of like if we were fighting a ton of like colonial era matches in the World Cup thus far, by the way, if you look at it, even Portugal, Spain is like in the 1400s. Those two countries split the world in two and said, we get one half. You get the other half. That is what they literally did. That's less of a grudge match. I don't know. That's more they're fighting over toys. Like that's two spoiled kids. Like that's not the same It was a grudge match. There's a joke for a comedian I like, and he's talking about how dumb US sports rivalries are, and he was like, your town from over there makes you mad, or you've been rivals for decades, and he's like, you know in soccer, every year Serbia plays Croatia?

33:19Yeah.

33:23Yeah, there's been some bloody wars that are solved on the pitch nowadays. Yeah. So you guys know that I got a fourth job. We did. I've been doing construction. And I decided that's not enough. I'm a bit of an entrepreneur. I decided to make the thin yellow line hat. But I have, I'm not kidding, 2 ,000 of these hats in a warehouse that I decided to make and I need to sell them. Any ideas about how I can make a website to sell those to people? You could go through an enormously complex set of doing all of this yourself, but you could also just go to Shopify. Use them to make an online platform.

34:01makes it incredibly easy to sell whatever product for your business, Aiden, even though you made 2 ,000 of these things first, seemingly before having any idea of what you're doing afterwards. And not really being a representative of the thin yellow line of construction. But with Shopify, nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Doing construction, for one. You also said that with an air of like, my business isn't real. And I'm working super hard. And I've... You talk a lot about it. I've never seen you construct anything. I use Shopify to sell Ludwig's inventory out of our old garage, and now it's my turn to sell this hat.

34:37I'm glad that Shopify is going to allow you to focus on your real passion, which is construction, and you can start free at shopify.com slash lemonade. That is shopify.com slash lemonade. Support for this show comes from Anthropic. And Claude. Claude. The LLM of choice for the thinking man. That's the tagline I'm giving them. I want to give a real use case. I am part of a Pokemon Nuzlocke tournament hosted by Point Crow, and I don't know any of the Pokemon-type matchups. So I asked my good friend and personal friend, Claude. And executive assistant. And executive assistant, Claude, to create this game.

35:17I literally did like a one sentence. I don't even know what my prompt was. It was, Claude, my good friend, can you code up a game that tests my knowledge of Pokemon-type matchups? it created this type master which pops in a thing and then i have to guess i believe super effective against rock is fighting yes i'm right okay and then it gives me a sound effect if i'm right and i just keeps testing it and tells you why you're wrong and i've been drilling this a little bit a few minutes at a time and it's been actually helping me learn the game and it's like a really great ui it just popped us all together i thought it was pretty cool do you ever have that feeling where you really want to make fun of brandon but he's shown you something cool so you can't be like this nerd.

35:59This is kind of this is kind of awesome. Yeah, this is sick, bro. Well, if you you can use Claude like me where I send about 50 messages a day checking my Swedish grammar. Yeah. And I've actually been grinding out my reading and writing with Claude and assisting like messaging friends and things like that. And it's been super helpful. So for problem source solving get started with Claude today at Claude.ai slash lemonade. That's claude.ai slash lemonade and check out Claude Pro which includes access to all the features mentioned in today's episode. Claude.ai slash lemonade. Well, let's stay on the top of the bracket and let's do Norway versus England.

36:41Okay. Oh, well, well, well, it's been a Nordic fun fact of the week. Snuck its way off into this episode. Take that hat off because no blue collar American Your hands are softening in real time.

36:57Oh, the microphone hurts.

37:03Well, I, well, as I described earlier, I thought it was somewhat challenging to find a piece of news about Norway right now that isn't Holland dominates the competition. Record goal setting. A lot of Holland stuff. So many articles. So many articles. We even had it as a segment last week. It was like Norway fans do the row on an escalator. Which is cool news, by the way. Which is cool. It's cool news. I'll give it to you. It's cool. When they want to look cool, I wonder if Sweden was pissed. But I did have two recent stories out of Norway from the past day about their perspective or involvement on the war with Ukraine.

37:46So a bit of a shorter thing. the Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi visited a bunch of the Nordic countries and Norway was one of his last I think Norway was his last stop and after meeting with the Norwegian prime minister he made a public statement about China's obligation to be the channel for diplomacy in the Ukraine Russian war basically asking for China it's like Norwegian guys at this yes like China is the one like big ally and power that has the means to convince Russia to like make big concessions and wind this thing down and publicly called upon China to be the channel by which that those negotiations are done.

38:32And I admit like when reading through this article, I felt a little it did feel a little like or else type language. rich where how much meaning does this statement really have other than like public words of support what sort of means does like Norway have to pressure the conflict in any significant way but within a 24-hour period I read a different article about how Norway is committing over 300 million dollars to Ukrainian air defenses right now and the reason why that's really important is we've talked a ton about the Ukraine-Russian war in like the last couple weeks and how there's like all these changing developments there.

39:12But one of the last things that Russia has at the moment to really pressure Ukraine is they can, uh, uh, fly ballistic missiles into Kiev. Yeah. they have been, and it's one of the only things they can still do effectively because Ukraine does not have adequate air defenses because these systems are so like complex and expensive and they don't have access to them. Uh, So Norway is directly funding air defense systems with this money. They're making that commitment publicly now. And it's one of the last like holes in the Ukrainian defense that is mounting a lot of pressure on Russia at the moment to finally make concessions in this war.

40:00Do you know what that looks like? I can't imagine you go to Walmart and pick up an air missile defense system for$10 million. When's the last time you've been to Walmart? Unlike You yellow line It's in the back dude It's near the rifles You can tell he's getting out of touch You can get air defense You can get it And they're like Well you know about the gun show loophole right Using the gun show loophole To get a 300 million Dollar air defense system Is that how we get around not declaring war on Russia We host gun shows in Ukraine We host gun shows We're not helping him. We're not helping him.

40:40We're just offering wares up. We're showing off our cool stuff. Wait, pull this article up because it tracks what you're saying. I read this yesterday. It was Zelensky's basically going on a tour of Europe and America saying the battle in the sky will decide the outcome of the war and is asking for air defense missiles. And that totally tracks what you're saying. He's saying the same thing. It's very, very important. The aerial battle. Yeah. And I would just assume that's like a decade to build up. That seems so hard to build in short term while your country is being attacked. but I don't know if that was discussed at all.

41:09Nobody said war is easy, Doug. Nobody said war is easy. I don't know what the turnaround time on building out adequate air defense systems in Ukraine is, but I do know that other examples of attacks on Kyiv, like drone attacks from Russia are way more limited right now. So there's this one, and I forget his name right now. There's this one like younger journalist who's been living in Kyiv for a while and he talked about how over the course of the war at night you can often hear the sounds of a ton of different drones flying through the sky all the time. And recently it's been much more quiet because the cell towers in Belarus that are required to fly the drones that deep into Ukrainian territory are no longer operating.

42:00operating because of Zelensky's threats he made towards Belarus. He's like, see us attacking Moscow. You know, we could do the same to you. If you do not comply and reduce this, reduce your support for Russia, either through these cell towers, through intelligence, threatening Belarus to no longer support Russia in this war. And because of that, the ways that Moscow can get to attack the capital power is so limited. I think it's good to walk through it. I mean, because, yeah, Lukashenko running Belarus has been super, super helpful to Putin so far in this war. And the recent Ukrainian success, he's been scared.

42:44He's been like, he like switched it. He's like, you know what? I think Ukraine has a right to itself. And then like you said, Zelensky like threatened him. He's like, all right, well, if you believe that, then turn off your fucking cell towers. Yeah. Or we're going to I'm doing it for you. So Belarus's cell towers are the ones powering Russian attacks. Yeah, because it's the northern border of Ukraine. So they were going through there and using their... Oh, wow. Yeah, and apparently the boots on the ground reality, at least in the capital, is that because these cell towers are no longer providing that service to Russia, there's limited ability to fly Russian drones that deep in Ukrainian territory.

43:20Yeah, that makes sense. Crazy, that's awesome. And so all they have is the ballistic missiles, hence the need, the greater need for the air defense systems. Yeah, direct quote from the article. There remains only one unknown, Zalinski said. Unfortunately, it's the anti-ballistic defense. That is the major weakness for Ukraine in this equation. That's basically saying we've got everything else handled. If we can just figure this out, we can win this war. That's his optimistic take. Not with this photo, really doesn't have optimism. Yeah. Yeah, and that's how my Nordic fun fact of the week morphed into a little more Ukraine-Russia news.

43:52Yeah, I was kidding. I was going to say, this is not about Norway. Quite a bit. I was reading this other article. I love learning about the Nordics. It was something the OECD had published. And the article, it's like, why Norway's economic stagnation is like something to look out for or something to that avail. And the article starts off by saying like, Norway is an incredibly well-off country with low income, inequality, high incomes. but it could be bad in the future no it's ridiculous and and i not to say that something like can't get worse in norway uh but it was funny is like as i'm looking for news this like critical article of what's going wrong in norway economically right now is like all right things are pretty good to be honest yeah comparatively it's like they're just doing so much better even if there's some yeah they got holland yeah they have holland and i'm wondering what they even have to fear against England.

44:54If they can power Ukrainian air defenses, surely they can stop the cup from coming home. Right. So looking at English news recently, what I found, Harry Kane's a little baby bitch. They're moving on. Norway wins. All right. All right. That was easy. That one was easy. The UK has never had it rougher, dude. They don't even get a segment on our podcast. Okay. Dude, trying to find something about England specifically, not only is it all about the World Cup, even more so it's about the UK and not about England. And so the best I got, which actually I do think is pretty interesting, is there's a guy who's set to replace Keir Starmer named...

45:35Well, Nigel Farage is going to win, but it's the other guy. It's B. The party guy. Andy Burnham. Andy Burnham. Nigel Farage also seems like he's gone through a silly little drama right now. Nigel Farage is like the RN. He's the fucking... He's a goofball. Yeah, he's crazy. Okay, correct me if I get my UK politics wrong, because I don't understand the UK that much. So the king personally elects the leader. The king does everything. He builds the tanks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He builds the boats. And thank God we freed ourselves from him. Yeah. Happy 250. King George the 48th is still in power, the long lineage, and he runs shit.

46:14He taxes your damn tea. That's the first thing. Yeah. That's his step one. They don't talk about that anymore, by the way. They don't talk about it, but he still does it. No, he doesn't. Labor Party is in control with Keir Starmer. Keir Starmer just stepped down, so they need to elect a new PM, and currently the main guy is Andy Burnham. And what I thought was interesting about this is he, so he was like the mayor of Manchester, which is the city in northeast England. And actually, we can pull up a map again if you want to pull up a map of England. Now, as a hot-blooded, God-fearing, freedom-drinking, beer-loving American, I don't give a shit about England.

46:48I don't know where the countries are. I don't know where the cities are. Manchester apparently is in the north of London. It's in the north. Yeah. Holland. They call him Burnham the king in the north. They do call him that because they loved how he did as the mayor of Manchester, which is, you know, one of the other big cities in England. And so his whole thing, which I thought was interesting because it relates to just straight up England, is the push to decentralize power out of London and spread it to the other cities. That is like really what he's pushing on. And this has been something he's actually been pushing on for a while.

47:22So in 2017, there was a study by IPPR North showing that over like a seven year period, even though there was a 2014 initiative to be like, we're going to invest more in the north of England. Actually, the government expenditures in England, in North England with those smaller cities fell by 6.3 billion pounds, while the south of England, which includes London, actually had an increase. So Burnham at that time, this is 2018, said almost five years after the government promised us a northern powerhouse, we learned the public spending in the north has fallen while rising in the south. This has got to stop.

47:58And it's time that the north came to the front of the queue for public investment. And I didn't know this. Apparently, apparently the UK is one of the most centralized governments in the G7 or I should let me rephrase that is the most centralized. 96 % of taxes or sorry, 94 % of taxes are raised nationally rather than locally and 80 % of all money spent by the central government rather than local governments. So it's an extremely centralized government even though their central government is kind of dysfunctional. It doesn't get anything done and so what I thought was interesting about this Burnham guy he is most likely going to be the next prime minister of Britain.

48:35Wait, can you help me out a sec? He's going to be the prime minister of Britain for the remainder of what would have been Starmer's term until the election happens. I don't know when the election happens. It's years. Starmer's stepping down very early. They can go for, I think it's like three to five years. It's a long time. So he's still going to run the country for a while. Yeah. So this is him talking about this centralization. We are one of the most over-centralized countries in the world. and worse that over centralized heart of the country is not pulling in the same way but in different directions that's really the core of it so he talks as somebody who was a mp for i don't know like 16 years or something and then this mayor he's making a big push to say look our country has become entirely centralized all the power all the spending in london and it's dysfunctional and my explicit goal is to radically push power out of london and back to the other parts to local governments around england i did not realize how centralized the english government is and it's i think pretty cool for him to push for this he's a more like so not like hardcore socialist but more in that vein of like more government spending and local support um but this is interesting he's pushing for the rest of england to actually have success i think if you've if you spend time like talking to friends that live in different parts of the uk it's pretty crazy the way they see their futures.

50:03Like most people, most people around my age from there, it's you're faced with this weird decision of if I really want to progress in my education or career, I pretty much have to move to London, but then I have to figure out how to afford to live there. And I'm kind of gambling on the idea that my education or career development in that place will be good enough that I'll be able to afford it. I'll create a better life for myself versus the economic stagnation of these smaller cities around the country, especially in the North. Yeah. Yeah. There's graphs all over the place basically showing that like the GDP and spending and everything is just going down and basically everywhere else except London where it's going up.

50:50So, and actually a cool thing. One of the, one of the explicit things he is proposing, if it becomes prime minister, which currently there's not even another candidate to become prime minister. so probably he will be, is he's going to have a second office in Manchester. So he's literally going to have the prime minister have a second office in one of the northern cities, which may just be symbolic, but that's a key thing, right? He seems super tied to me. I mean, given his background as mayor of the area, he seems like he's actually going to follow through and try to move things there. But it remains to be seen.

51:20Like a lot of this stuff comes from network effects, right? Like London is successful because it's successful in it. Yeah. It's like, can you really do that? Maybe you can. We'll see. But as a guy who in politics gets hyped up by the most recent thing he's heard, he's got some great stuff. I love this guy. He seems great. Yeah. I think my fear is kind of that entrenchment you're bringing up where you hear a lot of the financial success in Britain that does exist has to do with like the financial services sector in London and what it specifically offers either because the city of London exists within London, which is its like own financially carved out city in a bunch of different ways.

52:01The attraction of London to like global elites and investors, how much of this industry that you have diverted so many of your country's like resources and planning into over time for various reasons can really be distributed to the rest of the country. I'm not saying that this won't be successful. I'm not saying that the UK can't dig itself out of a hole. It's that's kind of the thing I think about is like the country has consolidated so heavily around the economic success of this one sector servicing a type of client. And so many things are built around that in London. What is breaking a piece of that really look like, like giving it to the rest of the country?

52:48Let's bring back Grimsby. Who's Grimsby? It's over there on the East. I've never heard of this before in my life. Grimsby. Right there. Zoom in. Zoom in, Perry. Zoom in on Grimsby. Oh, more to the east. I don't know about Grimsby, but this does bring up a point. There. Grimsby. Your mouth is over it. Zoom in. Some of the reactions I've seen. Grimsby. Alright, that's the heart and soul of England. The UK is like, okay, he's going to take some stuff out of London and make it better in the north. But people in the southwest are saying, well, fuck me then. Because they're already stagnating so hard and there's no real, they're not even getting mentioned.

53:22Counterpoint? Fuck those guys. that's what my chat me in the north if I'm in Wales east what did he say fuck me for I heard yeah I have a younger more Gen Z chat but they were just like yeah well those guys are all fucking chavs and stupid they're forgotten about but I guess there doesn't seem to be a lot of like hey let's fix the problems outside of it's trickle down Grimms benomics if you just make Grimms if you make Grimms It will follow from Grimsby and that's why I think, to be honest, England doesn't have any cool news going on right now. My backup story for England was that Pontins, it's very well established.

54:04You talk about Pontins all the time. They're closing them. It's urgent. It's a nearly defunct amusement park, one of the worst amusement parks in the world. I want you to imagine Chuck E. Cheese but it's British and it's an overnight camp and that's kind of what Pontins you're getting stabbed and you said that's an nine times out of ten you're getting stabbed at ponton Norway moves on as the impartial party who wins between Norway and England I'll give it to England I'll give it to England I'll give it to England only because the Norway one is mostly a Ukraine story if you can't look at me Norway just said something we looked at a map of Ukraine and Belarus for five minutes Norwegians, I'm begging you for, just sound off in the comments with a non-World Cup related story in your country and from the past month, please.

54:57They're just going to row some more, dude. And it can't be the rowing. Okay, well, why don't we mosey on down to Belgium versus Spain? Okay, all right, all right. Now, if you put a gun to my head and ask me to tell you anything about Belgium. I think you could tell me these three things. Belgium, what is it known for outside of Belgium? It's known for having Brussels, which is often considered one of the least fun tourist destinations in Europe. True. Also the capital of the EU considered, all the EU organization meets there. But that's boring. What is Belgium known for if you are a, put on your hat, if you're a blue collar American?

55:37Are you saying waffles? Actually, damn it. That's probably the first thing. That's the only thing. No, there's two other things. There's diamonds. Okay. Belgian capital of diamonds and chocolate. Okay. Diamonds and chocolate. So these are two of Belgium's biggest exports by far. And this is what they've sort of built some of their Belgium has an economy, which is they have almost no natural resources. They just buy and they manufacture and they upgrade and they make something else and they sell it. They're one of the world's best at that. And they've become a prosperous nation on that. And their exports are diamonds and chocolate.

56:15and there's actually been two beast big stories in these areas so i wanted to bring up bull i'm doing a double whammy in diamonds there's a single square mile in the city of antwerp that is known as the diamond district and every single diamond company and diamond family worldwide has an extremely expensive bit of real estate there and they have on the surface looks fine all those streets have um bollards that can come out to block exits and it goes deep underground it's actually one of the most secure areas in the world they have some of the most advanced vaults in the world because the amount of diamonds in this one square mile are insane.

56:49And there has been a famous heist. You think me and my boys couldn't crack that safe? I don't think so. You get out your Colt 45. You get out your Colt 45, you bring a brew, and you bring an American conference. And I bring four American friends. Yeah, you could do it. They won't catch you on any of the cameras. So, the diamond industry has been going through some tough times recently because, number one, younger people aren't getting married as much. So they literally invented a thing called a divorce ring to try and sell more to boomers who are getting divorced. Real quick, do you give the divorce ring to your partner when you get divorced or do you buy it for yourself?

57:25Buy it for yourself. This isn't working out anymore. You get on one knee. We had a good run. You, me, 40 years from now, I'm next to my girlfriend. I think this is over. Can you just crack the box? This is the nicest divorce ring. you've ever seen. No, legitimately they're doing that because people aren't getting married as much. Oh, but don't tell me the divorce ring business is suffering from fake diamonds. The fake diamonds are the other part of it. Shit. The rise of fake, or I mean, fake is probably the wrong, just lab produced diamonds are undercutting this deck, you know, centuries long business that has been based here.

58:04And so the second thing that's been squeezing them, that's more immediate is the tariffs. A large part of the diamond exports go to America, billions of dollars. and they are getting hit with the new Trump tariffs and it's drastically cutting into their margins and the ability of them to be a major diamond exporter. And so enter this ring. This is a really gorgeous ring where dozens of diamonds spell out the letter T next to the stars and stripes 1776, 2026. The numbers 45 and 47 in Superman logos. A diamond winged eagle carries a ruby shield catching an olive branch of emeralds below a radiant 250 atop the phrase 250 years USA etched in 18 karat gold.

58:51This is a very, very expensive ring. I wonder who it went to. Could you guess if I gave you 15 guesses? Fifteen? Yeah. Off the top of your head, who do you think this ring went to if tariffs are your problem? It better not have gone to Hillary Clinton. Thank you. It was presented to Donald J. Trump who promptly removed the US tariffs on diamond imports. so now at least in the short term antwerp's diamond industry has a bit of relief these diamond companies needed relief so um very similar to how the u.s presented some information to fifa to get a red card removed belch of his following suit on the diamond industry think we gave him the ring uh yeah maybe maybe he passed the ring along it was a circle yeah it's just a favor i think it's pass from one corrupt organization.

59:50And then I want to say something about the chocolate industry because Belgian chocolates, everyone knows that. They've been the world leader in chocolates for a very long time. They have the highest chocolate content in their chocolate, cocoa content in their chocolates. Can I guess the thing that is disrupting this business? Yeah, sure. Mr. Beast. Mr. Oh, you think it's Feastables. Right. Was that right? I couldn't do a Belgian accent, but I wanted them raging about Mr. Beast. It was not Mr. Beast. In fact, Mr. Beast is also being disrupted by the same thing. which is that climate, all of the world's cocoa, much like all of our phosphates here, or sorry, all our phosphates here.

1:00:26Yeah, that was roughly correct. That was roughly right. All of our world's cocoa is grown here. Oh, that is Cape Verde. I just learned about that. Yeah, and Ghana. Those two countries. That's not true. Sorry? Never mind, never mind. Isn't it? Yeah, it is, right? No, it's not Cape Verde. Oh, yeah. It's not Cape Verde. I recosed, yeah, yeah. wait so all of this cocoa in Africa is being sent to Belgium to be turned into chocolate it goes to some of it to Hershey and Mr. Beast but yeah all of the cocoa comes from here and it goes to the world's chocolate companies and they make the delicious candy bars you enjoy however a little thing called climate change fake and gay as you always tell me they're making it up well whether to make it up or not these two countries are really in on the act because rising heat waves and floods have devastated the cocoa crop consistently.

1:01:21Last year, it was horrendous and the price of chocolate got so high that many companies like Hershey started removing the name chocolate bar from their bars because they didn't meet the minimum required amount of cocoa to be a chocolate bar. This really fucked with Belgium because they're known for having the highest cocoa content. So what's happening now is there was a brief relief. Prices went back down. Everyone celebrated. chocolate was making a comeback, but then they started rising again because again, the problems there have not gone away. And so now the largest chocolate company in Belgium has realized that they have two options.

1:01:55One is raise prices, which they tried, but then their sales went way down and they realized, okay, that's not going to work. The second option is to start making fake chocolate. So recent announcement is that Belgium's largest company, Barry Calibout is like putting all of their money in R &D and effort into creating a new type of synthetic chocolate that doesn't require cocoa. That is the big update out of Belgium. They're betting on cocoa-free chocolate. They could replace it with phosphate. Go phosphate chocolate. Rare earth minerals and phosphate. And then we can find an easier supply chain.

1:02:30What's the most abundant stuff on the planet? Let's put all that in there. And finally, I guess the third thing I'll say is that they have a third export, which is beer. And they're just also struggling with that because Gen Z is not drinking. so like these three he's ruining everything i know so these three big exports of belgium are all coming under fire save yourself aiden and uh we did our job we drank one of ours two got married got married and we drinks occasionally on rare occasions i mean i feel like this is a chocolate that didn't yeah no we're failing to kind of a made-up issue don't you think because the heat wave that we're experiencing is probably just gonna peter off we'll go back to normal actually the fourth thing out of belgium is that they're getting melted by this heat wave it's destroying that's every piece of news that isn't world cup it's like we're melting but we're crushing it soccer that's short a nose a guy yeah i messaged to because i heard about how bad these french heat waves have been yeah and i checked in with like my two friends that live in paris and they're sending me what they're doing during the heat wave to like they keep like wet t-shirts and like put them in the fridge and then take them out and wear them.

1:03:39It's like 35 degrees Celsius indoors, which I think is like high, it's like high 90s. Oh, fuck. And sorry, sorry, that's at night. Yeah. That's at night when they're trying to sleep. That's not during the day. You can't sleep at night, dude. But the main thing they were complaining about was they just have no reprieve. Like they, you can't go anywhere to find solace away from it because so few places have air conditioning. And there's this huge spike in drownings in the country, like over a thousand drowning deaths because all of these people seeking out, like going swimming at the same time. Don't add that to my story because that's too sad.

1:04:17Anyway, that's France. No, that's France. That's France. Don't worry. Don't let it stain Belgium's reputation. Which is loaded with AC as far as I understand. Don't look that up. Okay. So that's Belgium. Surely the heat isn't bad in Spain. Who are they playing? It's actually been a frigid. 55 degrees Fahrenheit. No, I actually, I found this interesting story about Spain after I read that lovely article about Spain's midfield. Because I got sucked in by the headline. Gotta know what's going on with the midfield. And they have just passed like a resolution regarding immigration amnesty at a time when Europe is really cracking down on immigration and scrutinizing the way that people can even freely move within the EU.

1:05:07And Spain stands as one of the major countries within Europe that is taking a very different approach to tackling immigration. And while we have this very specific image of European immigration over the past 10 years of people coming from like Northern Africa on boats over the Mediterranean Sea, Spain, the majority of their immigration and the majority of their like quote unquote illegal immigration is people coming from Latin America on short-term visas that they're able to get and then just coming to the country and not leaving, which is a huge portion of their population now. A crazy stat, in less than 25 years, the country has gone from one in 20 immigrants to one in five people in the country are foreign-born.

1:05:50Oh, 20 years? In less than 25 years. And most of these people that are coming are from South America. I think it's like 25 % of - Like Brazil or what was it? Colombia, Venezuela, Peru were like the three biggest. And then Morocco is in the top end as well. Shout out to Morocco. Hey! That's an easy trip. But for the rest of it, it's Latin American countries. And the reason that that is the case is because of the shared language and cultural origin and things like that, You have access to this two year citizenship, citizenship track if you are from one of these places. So if you want to move somewhere else because of like instability in your own country, right?

1:06:36Particularly like Venezuelans are a good example where there's been a huge amount of people who have fled Venezuela over the past 10 years for a bunch of reasons we've talked about on the show. And Spain is one of the idealistic destinations because you can get your, you could apply for this type of residency. You could, you have the shared language. You don't have to learn something new. Language is huge. And if you wind up with EU citizenship one day, then you can move and work freely in the rest of the European Union. And that has contributed to this huge amount of immigration. And instead of taking a more aggressive approach to shutting down immigration, cutting into the country, the current party in charge is opting to take this massive group of people who has overstayed their visas And as long as they have no history of criminal activity within Spain, they're going to give them like permanent residency status or amnesty.

1:07:34And they put out this application for all of these people. And not only do they benefit from the residency itself, but they're able to enroll in like Spanish social programs and access to things within the Spanish system that they didn't have access to before. So what I thought was interesting is they actually do have a history of doing this already. Like they, at certain points in history, I think the last time, I'm probably getting this wrong. I think the last time was in like 2006. But they'll pass a resolution like this and then have these applications go out and then give a bunch of people residency all at once.

1:08:07However, this time is like four times as many people as any previous time they've done this before. And they even, when they had made, when they did the vote to put out this application or to pass this resolution, they expected like 500 ,000 applicants, I think. And this time they have 1.2 million applicants. What's the population of Spain? It's like, what, 60 million, I want to say? 50 million. That's a lot. That's a lot of people. And this isn't like a policy that's like free from divisiveness within Spain. It pulled at like 38 % support, 34 % against, and then the remaining like agnostic to it.

1:08:49but this general story, I was talking to a friend like a couple weeks ago and I just didn't realize what a huge portion of the workforce and population within Spain now is from Latin American countries. Like I wasn't really aware of that. And I realized like the Spanish speaking world just by filtering of news media and by it existing primarily in another language. Like this is, you know, this is a native, like native Spanish speakers are greater than English speakers. And this is just like a, you know, a space of news that I am like so blind to because of that and the scale at which this immigration is happening.

1:09:33And Spain is still pretty pro-immigration because they feel like they need it to like economically fuel their country. Right. Spain has been like particularly stagnant for a long time, high youth unemployment. And they still a huge portion of the Spanish government and Spanish people see this immigrant population as a vehicle to like growing, economically growing out of their current situation. Not everybody agrees on that, but that is the reason to like favor this sort of policy versus the more aggressive approach that a lot of other European countries are taking. But they're already there undocumented.

1:10:10So my wife's parents were given amnesty. No defense of Ronald Reagan here, but in the 80s, Ronald Reagan did amnesty. Yeah. A huge amount of amnesty for people who had done the same thing, but in America, or just Mexico. And her parents got some of the Reagan amnesty. And what it does is it allows you to go from being this undocumented, hard to build a real life off the grid system to being able to be a taxpaying, productive. You're part of the economy. You can do normal social programs. You can, everything's just above board. And it allows you to be more productive and part of the society that you're part of.

1:10:46So I would think like the argument about immigration is one thing, but if there's already all these people in your country, allowing them to fill out publication, become part of the society and do everything above board, I think it's just better. I think amnesty is underrated as a method of getting everybody rolling in the same direction. yeah back to Norway I don't I don't know all of the you know pros and cons like well enough but I I think this is the general approach that I wanted to see within the U.S. so it's interesting to see a country approaching it this way with such a like large group of people uh I do think there was a stipulation about how long they've lived in the country like you need to meet a minimum threshold of how long you've been there as well as the the not being a criminal uh but yeah, that's, that was my, my big Spanish news story.

1:11:38I wonder they're moving to do that. I, you know, and we are probably not qualified to say, so maybe if there's someone who's Spanish in the community, but it, whether the, you know, culture and vibes around immigration change substantially when the immigrants speak your language, right? Cause that is such a, it's such an obvious othering of a person and it feels like they're not going to integrate into society easily because it is really fucking hard to learn a language. And that's what so much of culture is about. Right. And I just, I like, I'm trying to imagine a world where what if everybody in South America or, or, you know, Mexico or wherever the majority of the immigrant population to America, if they spoke English, if that was everybody's shared language, would that change at all the American perception of immigration?

1:12:25You know, I don't, I don't know. Um, I imagine there is a huge difference in opinion within Spain for that reason. Yeah. Like you intuitively, that feels like it would make a massive. I mean, yeah, not to say that Spain would be, is like racism free or something, but I think the idea that like, Oh, the majority of these immigrants are just someone I can immediately communicate with. I'm sure that gets rid of a lot of, to be an employer and be like, this is a, I can instantly communicate with this person about whatever is needed. Like in Spain, don't they say España? And then in Mexico, they say España.

1:12:56Yeah. And that's probably a deal breaker. That's probably a deal, right? You got to imagine that TH sound is like completely. In my understanding, you cannot understand Spanish without vosotros. Exactly. Vosotros is such a big. It's a critical. Or if you live in any Latin American country, your experience or anecdotes about friends or relatives moving to Spain and why they did it, would love to hear that. Yeah, I'd love to hear that. The little correction I want to put on this, the last time they did this was in 2005, and they had about half as many people get amnesty through that program. So it was about 600 ,000 in 2005.

1:13:26and now in 2026, it's going to be about 1.3 million, provided everybody clears the application process. So, all right. Doug, who's winning? Damn. I think we got to go Spain. I think we got to go Spain. Belgium, you know, it's funny that they're strong. I just don't feel like there's enormous consequence to diamond prices going up. It just doesn't feel like that's an industry that I care about at all. in any way, shape or form. I do. Well, let me rephrase that. So hold on. I literally, you know, starting to think about this. And ideally, I would like to buy a lab grown diamond because I want to suppress the wages of the children in the Congo mining diamonds.

1:14:10Right. Right. You're trying to stick it to them. No, that's me. Me, the evil man that I am no longer buying raw natural diamonds because I want to pay the kids in the Congo less. That's what I was saying. When you were talking about the diamond thing, I was like, oh, No, you're going to have to pay the kids. You're going to give them minimum wage. Speaking of it, I mean, just seeing like Belgium. Flip, I think Spain. Yeah, I'm about Spain. Belgium has this relationship, like this cocoa supply relationship with African countries. Yeah. I'm always a little wary of that. Yeah, both industries are so unlikely.

1:14:47You ever dig into the history of the Belgium rubber trade in Africa? it's one of the most horrifying friendship and camaraderie and everyone worked together and the profits were shared equally if you want to have a terrible day go read about that it is it is actually it's insane okay but that means we're getting to the final match drum roll or did we already know oh yeah who's the winner the winner of the final match it's Argentina going up against Switzerland oh my god it's USA Trump called FIFA and got us in USA wins Belgium removed spain removed argentina the usa wins fifa oh my god it's switzerland switzerland wins wow so argentina versus 43 zero zero holy moly okay okay who's got a story about little argentina i can give you one on argentina but we're gonna have to scramble live to get something for switzerland yeah yeah we'll figure it out okay it's yeah the swiss chocolate so for argentina there's been a bit of a story what is Brandon Malay shill viewing have to say about Argentina not going to be so much about Malay I think that's a bigger topic that we could take a long time on what I want to bring up the story out of Argentina is that there is beef about beef the truth is that America and Argentina are two of the largest beef exporters in the world and the beef industry of each one, especially America, is feeling a little bit threatened by the other.

1:16:21And this World Cup has actually been a kickoff point because the Argentinian team and fans, there's a huge steak culture, grilling and steak culture in Argentina. And they've been going around grilling and using Argentinian steaks. And there's a lot of debate or competition over who has the better beef. And there's an economic angle to this because beef prices in America have been rising, which directly impacts the popularity of any politician who wants to win. Okay. Because people love their beef here in America too. And so earlier this year, Donald J. Trump, uh, insured affordable beef for the American consumer.

1:16:59And the way he did this, you know, expecting a midterms problem of beef is too high. The way he did this was by drastically expanding the ability of Argentina to export to the U S. So, uh, the open, the floodgates. And so now Argentinian beef is flooding into America, which is good for Argentinian beef exports. They're making a lot of money. But American beef ranchers are very upset by this, this new competitor that's kind of undercutting them and flowing in. And so the supermarket aisle is being filled with battles over beef, over Argentinian versus American beef. They're running ad campaigns in America about how Argentinian beef isn't as good or what isn't marbled as well.

1:17:36Of course. But the flip side of this is I found Argentinian news. This is translated. So on the other side of it is that this is so good for exporters in Argentina, but it's making the price of beef locally way more expensive because all the beef is being exported to America, which can pay higher prices. And so Argentinian locals are having now the problem that the United States is having before where they can't afford their steak culture. It's becoming way more expensive. so ironically it's really hurting even though it's making more money for argentina it's really hurting malay because the money's only going to the beef exporters and not the regular people who can't afford the beef so it's this weird web where everyone's trying to bail each other out politically and also send money to beef producers and it's going round and around and like eventually to solve this problem argentina might have to like import american beef which is getting cheaper so we'll just put beef in a circle no they make it cheaper for Brazil to send beef it might be Brazilian beef if we keep kicking the ball if you will to the next country and we just do that forever and then somebody's left holding something at the end by the very end like Senegal can't afford beef Senegal has no beef but everybody else is in shame who's the most vegetarian country?

1:18:51India so we'll just get to India eventually no India is not selling beef This whole plan Does not have India selling beef India you ruined it India you screwed the whole plan I'm gonna let you think about that one later Is there any definitive answer From your research about Whose beef is better Whose beef is better? I saw arguments for both Yeah I couldn't tell you They both say There was a quote in one of the articles And it was like some actual person that eats and he was like they have a hard fucking time finding that guy guys we got a guy who eats this week this guy Argentinian fan Gonzalo Herrera browsed packaged meat at a Walmart in Arlington Texas he shrugged at the whose beef is better debate honestly I don't see a massive difference as he packed four T-bone steaks I'm not sure there's a massive difference they both have a vested interest in saying it's better but that's it's a price thing really for most people.

1:19:56They want to have beef at an affordable price and there's a beef battle. Hold on. It says down there, quote, there's a big difference. Texans use a lot of pepper. They use butter. They use a little barbecue sauce. Argentinas like to bring all the flavor out of the steak by only using salt. As you can tell from that quote, that's about what you put on the steak and it's nothing to do with the beef itself. You can do that with either. You can only salt Argentinian beef. You actually ruin Japanese steak if you put salt on it. That's true. I've heard that. That's the Argentinian story. There's a beef battle.

1:20:27well what's going on in Switzerland that you just figured out that I just figured out yeah I did have to do this on the spot so forgive me okay this is because because it could have been Colombia could have been and yeah I okay so I decided to do a follow up bro this could have been Egypt by the way based on how that game went holy we were literally in the discord like it's Egypt yeah we I was like you're gonna figure out something for Egypt today and then we watched Argentina score three goals in under 10 minutes. And I can't even complain about FIFA's potential corruption because by God, did they unblock that red card for the good old USM.

1:21:06That, look, quick aside, fucked us so hard. Yeah. Because for people who do not know, in the previous match before the one we lost, our star player got a red card, an American patriot who loves his country. He loves his country and God bless birthright citizenship. Yes. okay he lived here he grew up here for two months and he wanted the white card and the blue card to go with it let me tell you red card which meant he was banned from the next match which is an unappealable thing and it to be you know it didn't seem like the red card was deserved but the referee even looked at review footage and all that and so we lost our best starter versus belgium and in my opinion it was like this is the best outcome because we have an excuse if we lose it's like playing a low tier in melee it's like it's options lagged.

1:21:48It's like, dude, that's so bad. We were probably going to lose to Belgium. Anyway, they're a good European team relatively. And, and, and instead Trump literally says that he called the FIFA guy and asked for a reversal and they just undid the thing and allowed our start of life. So now we go in as the benefits of blatant open corruption and lose and lose. We can't win. First time in my life where I read the article and I was like, maybe Trump's base mode. but he couldn't just even like if he'd have done it and just shut the fuck up about it to be one thing but to go out there and brag that you called the FIFA guy to be fair that's crazy that's why it's beast mode you just say you made the call literally he probably didn't like if we called right do you think I don't think he what I'm saying is that if Trump said notoriously corrupt they gave him a peace prize yeah he wants it this is a rare overture and I I also would say that if Trump says, I did a thing that now puts it at a 50, 50 tops that he did the thing.

1:22:50I agree with you. The likelihood is higher before he said he did it. Think about the state of American soccer and think about the world cup being hosted here. It's the 250th birthday. Like in the, in the one in a million miracle that we won this tournament because he made that call. He gets to brag about it for the, probably the next year and a half of his life. Oh, I mean, I heard Howard Lutnick was involved. Listen, I think there was some pressure applied. It's a weird situation, and I agree with you. It's fucked. They could have just lost, and then we had the red card out, and it would have been awesome.

1:23:23It would have been like all fucking rules. Stupid rules. Soccer's dumb. We got an unfair red card. It would have been great. We would have loved to complain about that forever. Instead, they'd just spit in our butt. Bro, I got to tell you, I literally researched for the Belgium story. I'm not kidding. That's all they can talk about, dude. They love it. They're all doing the Trump dance. they have a 30th of our people but you're a listener from Belgium stop listening right now I don't want you to listen to the show anymore I don't want you to go find a different fucking show I was reading about like the Belgium prison system and it was completely unrelated in the article it was like a prison warden being interviewed he's like I have some more pep in my step today because that oh my god alright let's fucking see them face off against the eagles alright get on the pitch against the Eagles.

1:24:11You have to play real football. Okay? The Belgium national men's team versus 11 Eagles.

1:24:20But we're playing, like, name any sport, and we send our best 11 against Belgium. It can't be soccer. It can't be anything else. Any sport. Be fucking curling, alright? It's fine. LeBron will be you. Anyway, what's happening in Switzerland? Sorry, yeah. It's the center of the world. Okay, this story's pretty short. I wanted to do a follow-up on the 10 million population cap that I brought on the show a while ago because they ended up putting it to a vote and seeing how it play out. And at the time it was expected that this would not pass because there just wasn't that much support for it. And it seemed like kind of a longer shot play by one of the further right parties within Switzerland.

1:25:00And that's pretty much how it played out. I think the way the votes fell was like 55 no, 45 yes. So maybe closer than initially expected. But I wanted to follow... Can I ask, you don't mean I know the answer to this. How do they propose actually capping it? Are they going to shoot somebody if you have a baby over a certain population? It's just you take a little bit off of each person. Everybody loses a pink. Everybody loses a chunk. as long as it averages to the total mass of 10 million people and that way if you're if you're a good person you could offer a leg right you could offer more and more babies be born i did look at this it wasn't that specific okay uh the the plan was the population would have to be capped at 10 million until 2050 and then i think at 9.5 million they would start putting in provisions about how people could move into the country from the rest of the European Union.

1:26:02I see it's more like a border thing. Yeah, and because, so the big criticism that I saw to this outside of the, you know, for a group of people, you know, there's always the more like moral argument of, you know, we should be taking in immigrants and giving people, granting people asylum, like being supportive, being further integrated in the European Union. But for other arguments people had, they were like, all of the success Switzerland has had in the past couple hundred years has to do with our willingness to be open to other European countries to a degree economically, even if we've maintained this status of neutrality for a long time.

1:26:50And the business that we do, especially at this time in the world where like relationships with the US are a little more stressed, relationships with China might be a little more stressed. So much of our trade is done with the European Union. And by breaking some of the stipulations that we have with the European Union, and keep in mind, Switzerland is already a country that isn't actually a part of the EU. They have like very negotiated relationships with the rest of the European Union that kind of allow them to like circumvent EU regulations in a way that other member states don't have to deal with.

1:27:29And so they already have - VIP access to the club. They already have like an advantageous relationship with the European Union. And now people's criticism of this law is like, if you get rid of this freedom of movement that we have with the EU, you're starting to break down the current agreements that we have with the EU, that our trade and economic success like relies on either on the business owner end where you want to be able to have like a flow of immigrants to have as like affordable labor at your companies right but even at like the lower end where the market of your uh like the reason my job exists is it like we're able to sell products to the rest of the europe this has been greatly criticized is basically like Swiss Brexit if this goes through.

1:28:17Because if we get rid of the stipulations around movement with you, then it gets rid of the rest. And that puts us in a really bad spot. Swecks it. Swecks it. And the reason that the right is pushing for this, which is a pressure on like social programs or a Swiss way of life, like these things don't, even if they like do or do not have a truth to them, they don't nearly outweigh the fact that a huge reason for our country's economic success and place of importance has to do with our deep trade ties to Europe. And we cannot lose that at like any cost. So it didn't pass. And that was the expectation going into this.

1:28:56But I think this was my excuse to kind of, okay, now that this vote is over with, you know. Yeah, give an update. What was the reason? The last criticism I saw from like people who are worried about now that this vote has been like brought into the public conversation so prominently people are worried that this type of discussion is like, and capping the population is being normalized in political discussion at all. Uh, and the risk that it poses to this, like vote being brought up again and again in the future outside of Switzerland, in Switzerland, because I'm saying they're not, this is not setting the tone for right wing movements.

1:29:32No, no, no, no, no, solely just, just within Switzerland. That was the criticism that, that I had read, but yeah, that's the followup on Switzerland. beef? Who's taking it? That's clear beef. The story from Switzerland is that they didn't do it. If only they'd done it, then they would win. Argentina did a thing. Argentina did a thing. Argentina moves on. Also, based on how the refs are going, I'm sure they're going to win no matter what the news is. Have you got, I mean... Actually, you know what? After today's game, why don't we take a stab at who wins the whole thing? Okay, so the next match would be Morocco-Spain, right?

1:30:09Which is also a hilarious historical matchup. Oh my God. That is a, that's a generations long war. It's just their literal two colonizers that they get to face off if Morocco beats France, which will not happen. Morocco's like, let me beat my colonizers and let me do a little of it of my own. Yeah, but like Morocco, I mean, the Moors colonized, like they both fought each other and called each other for like generations. Yeah, yeah. No, the history goes, in the most recent chapter of the war. No, I'm sure it's been one-sided the entire time. I just think it goes back. That's like a crazy match.

1:30:44It's all in the field, you know? Okay, so based off news, do we think Morocco or Spain moves to the final? What was that? That was the sand wall and... It's sand wall and immigration allowing it this time successfully. Let's give it to amnesty. I give it to amnesty. I give it to amnesty. As much as we love it. Wait, are you guys crazy? The sand wall was like a revelation. It's more interesting, honestly. It's like something... You pulled up a picture in real life out of like Dune. Yeah, it is. It is wild. If it's based on interest, then I guess we have to get to Morocco. Yeah, we didn't clarify.

1:31:15We haven't clarified. What is... It's not nicest of the news. I switched my answer. I think Morocco wins. Well, Morocco sand wall is going to crush everything. Okay. Morocco moves to the finals versus Norway or Argentina. And then our England or Argentina. So we have the story about beef or we have pontins closing. We should be two in there. But what was the England story again? I think we go beef sand wall as the final matchup. Beef sand wall. And ladies and gentlemen, we are giving the official prediction right here that Aiden between Morocco and Argentina. You got to give it to the sand wall.

1:31:55You got to give it to the sand wall. Congratulations. Morocco, your world cup champion, 2026. Who would have guessed at the start of this? What's crazy. We're going to start the final match and the Moroccans will build a sand wall in front of their goal. It'll be like tough from. And then the Moroccans will give their sand wall technology to Ukraine and they won't need. You only need sand walls. If the sand wall is very high, you don't need air. You heard it here first, folks. That was our lemonade stand world cup of news. Let us know what your predictions are and what you thought of this episode.

1:32:31That was really fun. And if you want more, we have more stories that we didn't get to get to on the Patreon, including from teams that did not make it this far. I got to get back to work. Bye, guys. Have a good week. Bye. In the U.S., there's a break in every 26 seconds. But when intruders step near, SimpliSafe home security steps up. Stop. This is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way. Using AI alerts, U.S.-based live agents help deter break-ins. SimpliSafe, no long-term contracts. Save 50 % on your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com slash Spotify or with promo code Spotify.

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