War AND Peace | Ep. 076 Lemonade Stand 🍋

24:32Atrioc:Okay. So there's no question that the money went to him for doing nothing. It's just like, it's whether or not the owner actually directed any of that.

24:39Aiden:I guess there's, that's the deny, the plausible deniability is that someone else in the organization orchestrated the circ, it's the circumvention of the salary cap, no matter what. Well, no, no, no. Someone else. Their defense is that they, these companies are just stupid and they just invested money in Kawhi 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.

25:07But yeah, that's their, that's their defense. It's not that there, there's no salary caps or convention. These guys are just stupid, but I mean, it really, you have to be a child to like buy this argument because Daktronics, was at the exact same time they do this, having very close deals with Steve Ballmer to build the Jumbotrons for his brand new stadium. And he gives them all this extra money and they give it to Kawhi Leonard. And it's like, and he doesn't do anything. And it's okay, just come on.

25:31Aiden:I do have one last question about it. You know what the luxury tax is in the NBA. I don't know exactly how it is enforced or works, but the idea is you can go over the salary cap if you're willing to pay an extra fee on top of it. And it's like tiered out, I believe. So like if you're a certain amount past the threshold, you start paying this luxury tax. You go even further beyond that. You pay more luxury tax. Steve Ballmer's pretty rich. Why not just pay the fucking tax? Or is there a limit on how you can do it? Yeah, it's like, this is the band they want everybody to be in. And there's a band above it.

26:05It's like the luxury tax where it's like, okay, you're a little rich. You know, the son's owner famously went right into that, bought 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.

26:18Aiden: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 started 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, it's less about, I think purely money and more about, because actually my you know based on the numbers being thrown around the amount of money he spent above and beyond what we would what he would have had to just give kawaii in a contract is massive like keeping all this going and like the extra money he had to pay them to do this salary type of provision is like a lot they were sending two million dollar 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 um 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 incentives this now creates and by the way he's probably not the only owner to do this but this seems to be the most egregious and largest amounts yeah and the incentives now create is like if he's getting no punishment at all everybody's gonna 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 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.

27:47Aiden:It doesn't give you a lot of faith as to how they're investigating gambling within the league. Do you know what I mean? It's always so funny when they have an ESPN first talk about the problems of gambling and there's the gambling sponsor right on the ground. The odds for tonight's game are like... Oops. Look who it is. support for the show comes from Shopify this week. Isn't that, isn't that fine and dandy? You flirty little minx. Well, the thing about Shopify is if you're running a business, you can sell pretty much anything on there. I actually just recently, I bought a ring, not an engagement ring, but from a, she's watching with, not an engagement ring.

28:35Aiden:I love you from a Shopify based store. They run it through there. I access like all the tracking information I need. Eat checkout was super easy. And if you need to sell anything you are making like engagement rings, and I won't be buying for my girlfriend, you can sell it on Shopify. The moment your first customer is ready to pay.

28:58Atrioc:Shopify checkout helps them finish their purchase. And when they come back for a second ring that isn't for the girl, it's just, he just has a lot of rings.

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29:37Atrioc:Support for this show comes from Gusto. You know what is the worst part about running a company in my literal direct experience? Paying my employees. Yeah, and that's why lemonade send... I like when they do the work, but I don't like when I have to pay them. Well, I should be clear. Conceptually, I actually do like it. Oh. It's just the actual logistics of paying employees is kind of a nightmare. And I believe Aiden has also done this. I have been using Gusto as a small business owner for payroll and paying contractors for years and years,

30:03Aiden:and it is great. I'm going off script, Gusto, because I'm just going to tell you the truth. I, prior to the sponsorship, I've actually used this at every stage of my career post-college. I used it as an employee when I first got hired at a job. I used it at every job after, and then I've used it as an employer across multiple companies, including this one, and it actually works great. It just gets rid of all of the BS annoying stuff, the paperwork that you have to deal with, like different states uh when you hire and bring employees on uh the way you like automate pay all of like the uh tax documents you need for the year super easily available end of year sending documents to employees super easy this is a company i i clamored uh for the opportunity to sponsor our show when it came up gusto i'm going back on script you can try gusto today

30:54Atrioc:at gusto.com slash lemonade and get three months free when you run your first payroll that's three months of free payroll at gusto.com slash lemonade one more time gusto.com slash lemonade i'll say you guys sold me i'm gonna try it more for this show comes from lisa you guys know it feels great to sleep well you need a good mattress to do that aiden have you tried lisa i've been sleeping on

31:15Aiden:the lisa mattress for two weeks now okay and what review fantastic had an old mattress that i had for a long time. Very firm. Bought it on Amazon for like$100. Just slept on it for, honestly, unhappily for years. Why have you been living the melee life well past when you have a job? I don't know. But I really like the lease mattress I got. Well, they have a lineup of beautifully crafted mattresses tailored to how you sleep. Each mattress is designed specifically with your sleep positions in mind and preferences. I also got cats a couple weeks ago and they've been sleeping on the mattress with me.

31:49Aiden:I cannot guarantee that part. They are. they don't include the cats. They don't include the cats or the fact that they will want to sleep on the mattress with you, but the mattress is very data that we have. The data does say that it's comfortable enough for cats and comfortable enough for aid in the podcaster. You could go to Lisa.com for 25 % off select mattresses. Plus get an extra$50 off with the promo code lemonade exclusive for our listeners. That's L E E S a.com promo code lemonade for 25 % off select mattresses. plus an extra$50 off. And when you use our code, you're supporting our show.

32:27Lisa.com promo code lemonade. Anyway, war. What's happening with war? Okay. All right.

32:34Atrioc:War watchers, skip ahead to right. Now you're getting into something that is real, real dark.

32:42Aiden: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 uh i want well you might know the answer already what is the largest displacement or humanitarian crisis in the world right now uh clippers fans after the it's not the clippers

33:02Atrioc:i think sweden is trying to keep out americans it's not sweet that's we're concerned about that

33:08Aiden: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.

33:28Atrioc:You said recognized? Yeah.

33:30Aiden:Like officially recognized. In order to really become a country, 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. Wow, I was thinking like 80s or 90s. Wow, 2011. No, I'm not going to know.

33:49Atrioc:Yeah, it has to be Africa, right?

33:51Aiden:It's South Sudan. Okay. South Sudan. And if you could take a guess as to what led to their becoming a South Sudan.

34:00Atrioc:I'm imagining that there was some sort of larger, probably the name was Mega Sudan. Right.

34:06Aiden:It was likely. That's a decent guess. It does have Sudan in it. Yeah. There was a civil war that led up to that happening. Okay. So in the early 2000s, there's this guy in charge of Sudan named Omar al-Bashir. Okay. And Omar al-Bashir, to maintain his own personal security, has basically a variety of like military forces, the largest of which is kind of the more formal Sudanese army called the SAF. And throughout his time in charge, there's this region in the west of the country called Darfur. And Darfur has a bunch of natural resources in it, including a lot of the country's gold mines. And he, during that era, through one military group and the SAF, attacked a lot of that Western region for a bunch of different reasons.

35:04Aiden:But this region of the country has kind of a long jaded history with the SAF forces in the country because of the damage they caused back then. And I assume brutal, like a brutal yeah like like crimes against humanity like heavily scrutinized by the international you know the international courts at the time things like that and maybe we could

35:23Atrioc:just assume all of these are gonna be brutal from this point and you tell us if it's not extremely brutal there's ever a non-brutal one spotlight that okay there's to be honest with you

35:34Aiden: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 and Al-Bashir's forces in the North. And this is the war that unfolds in the buildup to 2011. And the SPLM end up being able to gain enough control and win, there's a more complicated history behind it than that, but they create what is now South Sudan. And what remains of that when they decided on like the border between the two countries, there's a huge portion of the SPLM supporters or SPLM fighters that remain in the country of Sudan.

36:22Aiden:And the thing about this is across those borders, there's huge pockets of oil. And so al-Bashir in the fallout of this war loses access to a lot of the country's oil reserves, which puts a lot of economic pressure on the rest of the country because they rely on that. and was it economically like a petro state at the time like basically all the yeah huge reliance 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 used to be a war that rages on in the Southern portion of Sudan, like through the 2010s.

37:10Aiden:And the guy that I was interviewing, he is an American guy that has lived in the country for 20 years. And that is the region of the country that he lives in. And he was explaining from a Southern, like Southern of modern Sudan perspective, uh, as somebody in this like SPLM North territory. This is, this is above South Sudan. This is the Southern part of Sudan. Southern part of modern Sudan. So right above South Sudan. 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.

37:54Aiden:He lost his house at the time. His like wife escaped and like managed to like hide behind like rocks and like shrapnel, like exploded off of them. And he remained in the country in the time because of like the humanitarian effort that he had been putting in. He still lives there now. But as we approach like 2019, things start to change in the country. The rest of the country, which has been traditionally very divided, there's a lot of like internal racism within Sudan, especially between the Arab population and the other like African ethnic groups. And as the country is like crumbling economically, Al-Bashir, the guy still in charge of modern Sudan, starts to be put under like more pressure and scrutiny.

38:44Aiden:And this actually unites a very traditionally divided country Like Al-Bashir and his supporters put a lot of effort into stoking these like racial flames in the country in order to divide people. And eventually people came together and is like this guy in charge of our country is doing a terrible job. We're like economically disenfranchised. There's no opportunity. We're falling off since the end of this previous civil war. We're going to rally together and, 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.

39:25Aiden:And then there's this other military organization called the RSF that he also had formed previously. Because remember, his security strategy was, I'll have all these different like paramilitary groups, like act as my army as a whole, because that way it's, it's, they're all like vying for my attention. And therefore it's easier. There's no one that could cue me. Exactly. So these two big ones, the RSF and the SAF, push him out of power and like take over the country. Does he flee or what does he? He fled because he's still alive, I believe. And the two of them, the two guys in charge of these two factions, RSF, SAF, are now in control of the country.

40:09Aiden:But the country, as you can probably guess, still isn't very stable in the wake of this. They're going through all these negotiations with like international powers in order to like establish the new order of the state and bring stability to the country. But they can't agree on who's actually going to be in charge between the two of them. And the RSF, which has heavy influence in this Darfur resource region of the world, they have a lot of this animosity from the 2000s and the damage that the SAF did there at the time. And they really don't like them, right? So you have this civil war start to break out between the SAF, which is like basically Sudan's official in quotes army in the Eastern part of the country at war with the Western part of the country, which is what the RSF controls.

40:59There was animosity already. Then they united to get rid of Al-Bashir and then the animosity returned essentially.

41:04Atrioc:And this is all in Sudan, North Sudan.

41:07Aiden:This is all in Sudan, AKA North Sudan. Okay. And there's this third, there's this third faction that was like, they were under fire through all of the 2010s, this SPLM group in the Southern part of the country that was like trying to make it through, trying to like establish their own state, figure out what they are in the wake of like South Sudan breaking off from them and stuff like that. And then the two bodies of military power that were like pummeling them for the 2010s are now at odds with each other. And their attention kind of shifts away from the Southern portion of the country into this like West versus East battle.

41:49Aiden: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.

42:01Atrioc:Okay. And that continued to this day?

42:04Aiden:Kind of, yeah. Oh. Because these two sides are so distracted with the conflict between the two of them in the majority of the country that this faction of the SPLM North is actually pretty insulated. So this war, as it has resulted since 2023, there are 25 million people who are like under threat of famine. Keep in mind, this is a country of like 52, 55 million people. So like half of the country, like 4 million children are estimated to be starving. like throughout this, an estimated, and it's really hard to like count up the total death toll in the war because of like the way information travels and is distributed.

42:47Aiden:But like up to like 400 ,000 people have been killed in this war since 2023. And one of the largest conflicts was a huge city in the Darfur region in the West is called El Fasher. And SAF had control over that city for the first years of this conflict. And what the RSF, which controls the bulk of that region, did is they put a siege on that city. So they made a huge berm around the entire thing that you can see on satellite. They built it out over months.

43:26Atrioc:A lot of giant berms in Africa

43:28Aiden:that I've been learning about the past couple of weeks.

43:29Atrioc:That we did not know about. I had the exact thought.

43:31Aiden:I was like, we've been weirdly touching on berms recently. and they enclosed the entire city. And what this did, and keep in mind, after they enclosed it, there were still like 270 ,000 people living in it. And the goal was to starve them out in order to take it. And this prevented any UN or aid groups to be able to get in during this time. And the city is under siege from the end of 2024 until 2026, earlier this year. And nobody can get out during this time. And at the beginning of this, like the early reports of what's going on is like people inside the city are starving. There's like no food.

44:10Aiden: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, it's hard to even like describe this on the show. Um, as the city fell, the military groups like didn't allow anybody to leave and they killed over the course of like the week that it took to to take the city they killed like 70 000 people out of the 270 000 people that were still living there um they like there's in insane reports of like gang rape and uh there also aren't a lot of videos going around a route about the conflict because the limited access to like power and like cell service in this area is there a reason for that level of brutality to just

45:05Atrioc:kill one in four people but one in five i mean i couldn't speak to the i'm sure history of anything

45:14Aiden: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 uh 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 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.

45:56Aiden:And this happened like earlier in this year and the city fell and the RSF now controls it. 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. And it feels like decades of eye for an eye, atrocities and yeah, brutality. Okay, so this is a turn of something, still part of this story, but maybe a little lighter is, which country, if you remember, did we talk about recently had people in Ukraine for drone training? Colombia. Colombia. 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.

46:48Aiden:The natural question is, what are a bunch of Colombians doing in the middle of the Sudan civil war? Yeah, why? So the other thing that comes into play here is there's a bunch of other powers in the world that want to fund and back these sides, right? On one hand, like Egypt is probably the biggest backer of the SAF, and they have a strategic interest in the country because they're the country that borders it on the Red Sea. This is a giant trading route to the rest of the world. Stability and a relationship with Sudan is really important because of the Red Sea. And then on the other hand, the biggest supporter of the RSF has been the UAE, which they vehemently deny.

47:29Aiden:But if you listen to the reports of these Colombians and there's this crazy, crazy article that just came out on the FT about them interviewing a bunch of these Colombian agents, basically. and they're like, we've been trained by UAE soldiers and like paramilitary groups in other countries in Africa. A bunch of us have like visited the UAE and the UAE is supplying a bunch of money and arms to the RSF side of the conflict, the side that committed that atrocity in Al Fasher. So you might wonder why. Yeah, that was my first question, why? What does the UAE get out of that? So do you know, besides oil, what is one of the largest industries in the UAE?

48:13Aiden:Do you happen to know? Columbian tourism. Is it 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 and sale of gold to like outside parties. China built a big gold transition bank there or a settlement bank. Yeah, and it's so control over the global supply chain of gold is really critical. and there's a ton of gold in this region in Darfur. And they have a vested interest in having control over that gold in that region or access to that gold in the 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.

48:58Aiden:So we're gonna support the side that we see is more likely to win. There's also smaller reasons why they might be supporting as well. I think like, you know, the UAE arguably has an interest in the Red Sea as well. They have like interest in like knocking down like Islamist terror groups. And this is a way, like if they weaponize one side, they can like potentially combat that. But the gold seems to be the main thing. The main economic impetus, okay. And they also, throughout this whole time period, even though they're funding the RSF, they buy gold from the Sudanese government and the SAF all the time too.

49:31Aiden: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.

49:40Atrioc:There's like a fantasy dragon in the Middle East who is doing whatever it can to extract gold from Sudan. Yeah. And he's just hoarding it regardless of the consequences.

49:49Aiden: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 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 - Do you know, this is interesting, you might not know the answer, but my understanding from the United States is that not that they would never get involved in their metal, they do, it's the classic, but that they don't even have a side on this because there's no gain.

50:27But what is the US -

50:28Aiden:Yeah, I don't have a great answer to that question, but as someone who, you know, reads and has seen a lot of the U S's involvement in other places, they seem weirdly checked out of this one. And it might just because of that, it's like, you don't have a vested interest in either side. If anything, the U S's biggest impact here is as we've chosen to pull out so many of things like USAID and like, uh, and, uh, 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.

51:05Aiden: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 for hire.

51:45Aiden: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 it popping up in these regions of like conflict in sudan or a bunch of phones with like spanish default language and they can like track around where people are going 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 because it's like these colombian trained narcos are now going to ukraine for training and then going around the world as part of like renaissance men really 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.

52:51Aiden:It's, it's insane. This is a great piece. This is cool. Uh, wow. Yeah. Okay. Was there any like, um, what is the most recent update? It was just, it's the continued. Is there,

53:04Atrioc: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

53:23Aiden:and that's it to be honest with you not really like i i i think there isn't i wanted there to be kind of like a light at the end of the tunnel here it doesn't seem like it i think the last big city uh in the western region that hasn't fallen under rsf control yet is called l uh obede l obede and uh people are fearful that basically what happened to al 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 uh yeah dude i 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.

54:15Aiden: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 how, okay, how are you going to do this? Good luck. Good luck. You have a scalpel. I want to see a surgeon level precision on how you do this transition. So when you look at tears right now, that is an extremely sad story. 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.

54:55Aiden: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 segment. If you like happy ones, I would go back and watch that. because that was like, 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 episode. What I will say is

55:28Atrioc: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. I'm also interested in this because i well you tell me about i'll don't know 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 story pull this up perry you got micro dramas now they appear these are short one to three minute episode shows on your phone where you pay per episode and while you might not have heard of this because i hadn't until recently these have been blowing up in china for like eight years now nine years now and now are starting to spread to the rest of the world they seem to be largely about vampires and rich people billionaire type things including the double life of my billionaire husband watch out i'm the boss lady my firefighter ex-husband burns in regret or this exclusive the discarded ace um so so my firefighter ex-husband burns in regret is awesome that is fucking awesome it sounds like the fake true crime stories that i was reading a little while ago yeah um similar audiences probably okay so so what the heck's going on here all right so this started in china this was uh actually in the 2010s but then it blew up during the pandemic where all these production companies were like people want to watch short vertical videos on their phone and we could turn a show into like a quick little bite funny because again we tried this with quibi in the u.s and it failed horrifically but this has been going extraordinarily well in China for a while.

57:11Atrioc: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$200 ,000, where for reference, most TV show episodes are millions of dollars, especially depending on the production. It's very focused on romance, rich people a lot of vampires uh it seems to be like mr b style all focused on getting you engaged where every episode is like a cliffhanger hook here's a here's a quote from one of the uh jap excuse me chinese production developers um 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 u.s and a genre that could sell big emotions quickly another quote the basis for a classic microdrama set piece the cheap to shoot banquet humiliation in which a character is subjected to endless rounds of cruelty in a public place before getting the last laugh um it's star man it's star man literally 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 is really weird because they 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 it's hard to do so right um some of them it changes right but 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 on to

58:52Aiden:something yes he was once again he made the he made the fatal mistake of hiring chance the rapper to be your 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's been through a bit of a production drought. All the screenwriters are like finding out how to trip over. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so this is... Yeah, let me try.

59:25No, no, no. You start with yours. Okay. So I was going to say, they said that all the actors they know are taking jobs with these because that's what's available right now. These are where the money is. A lot of money is flowing into these investment ideas and they're all getting jobs and they're like they're really trying they said if you can get cast as like the hot ceo type you can get tons of work yeah but if you get cast as like i don't know like the the the chud or whatever you don't get that many you don't get that many things and so that yeah i was hoping i'll be we'll bring them out for future episode they want to be interviewed they mentioned because it was like cool but yeah so is it i blur

1:00:01Atrioc:this no okay no so i'm gonna play 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 yeah just go go go and it's like you don't need necessarily good acting or production it's just like so it's been kind of it's been kind of slop and so a good friend of theirs has been doing this and this has been where their work has been as an actor until recently because now you can do it with ai and so drama box one of the chinese production studios doing this has 6 000 of these shows in their catalog 6 000 that are live action and they already have 1 000 new ai shows that's crazy with an estimate that 50 percent of their upcoming projects are ai generated from that bloomberg article in april the singapore-based company net short had a hit with an ai generated series called the discarded ace whose protagonist looks like jesse isenberg fake this right here you can pull it up i don't know if we're allowed to show this what they're what are they gonna do sue us this is a fully ai generated show about a jesse isenberg look-alike who goes on these like gambling journeys it's all ai and this was one of their most popular shows from the ghost hand no one's ever succeeded to

1:01:28Aiden:stack six dice into a single tower with every face the same number how is that even possible

1:01:35Atrioc:though it's like blatantly ripping off of like now you see me right that 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

1:01:51Aiden:similar to Liar's Dice.

1:02:00What the hell?

1:02:02Atrioc: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 a sad, does not have 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, this is a depressing angle. This is, this is like successful is what you're telling me.

1:02:38This was one of their hit shows. Yes. That makes me depressed. Also.

1:02:41Aiden:Wait, how many, sorry. Just help me. How many people are watching this? Are there any viewers? There's viewership. I know.

1:02:48Atrioc:According to the Bloomberg article, one in every 10 humans. No. Yes.

1:02:54Aiden:no way no that just can't be fucking well if so many people are watching think about how much china moves the needle on that i know it's so big in china that's crazy but you uh you probably

1:03:05Atrioc: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 Take it on in America.

1:03:21Aiden:Did 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 fifties 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, after he finishes the video, he leaves a comment. That's like, ha ha 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 who is watching yeah who is commenting yeah surely they're all rub it's him it's him and he's a normal guy on the train in new york there's tens

1:04:06Atrioc:of them it's one in everything there's literally one every 10 uh yeah it's i i this is going to 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 i feel like humanity is a brief little fart to win it's like everything beautiful what this is crazy this is gonna be you guys have seen jeffrey katzenberg had a vision for human 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 basically this It's a very poorly acted slop.

1:04:45If you ever look on Facebook and look at the amount of views those get, it's like Mr. Beast level numbers. He gets 50, 60 million views on every one of those. And they're always like two minutes long, total slop. There's like the poor guy wins in the end or whatever. Yeah.

1:05:03Aiden:I don't know. I want to take a shot. You know what? I'll take this shot. I feel like I've consumed enough Chinese media. Okay. Uh, I, I fit maybe part of the reason that this flies is because Chinese TV is so dog shit. It's like, I used to watch a bunch of Chinese TV while I was studying. I watched Chinese TV literally every day and it's bad. It's, it's, it's just bad. They, they make bad shows. It's one of the, and I've heard the TV industry there is like improving and getting better in the same way that like their film industry is getting a lot better in recent years. but I remember like, dude, why are the TV shows so, you gotta give me more.

1:05:41Aiden:I watched one good TV show during that time and it was called The Bad Kids. And that was the only good Chinese TV show I watched.

1:05:47Atrioc:Was it about a billionaire or a vampire? No, no, that was, it was about,

1:05:50Aiden:it was about three like really like impoverished kids who like accidentally witness a murder and then like deal with the consequences of that guy seeing that they saw the murder. And it's really good.

1:06:04Atrioc: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 they're all yeah exactly because you can't make a tv show that is about modern politics that would criticize the government in any way so to be safe you make it about ancient governments and it's just like rich people having these romance things or american billionaires and it's like 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 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 now 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 that's a and there was a china attempt to crack down on these microdramas to help increase the birth rate because they thought it was making women too picky they were looking for the ceo or whatever for the microdramas uh again i don't know the the that but i remember reading a piece on that that was pretty funny yeah stop looking for a vampire.

1:07:29Settle for a human.

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1:09:34Aiden:Why don't we, what if we scooted on over from China? Okay And we went to their neighbor Okay Korea Korea, oh okay And I want you to break down for me And we're back to war We're back to war 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 microtransmit? Than the Chinese microtransmit. Okay, this is good.

1:10:01Atrioc:So we're equal opportunity for sadness across war and peace today. Okay, good, good, good, good. Here's a little update. Obviously, Donald Trump is a stalwart ally to all of our longtime allies. We all know this. No sarcasm needed. But recently, he did something that kind of confused me, which is that he posted a photo of him and Kim Jong-un and said, it. You know, we're good buddies. We're always, you know, we're friends. I don't remember the exact quote, but that's the theme of it. And then yesterday he said, Hey, we're going to be cutting back on our joint exercise. These are done every year for 70 years, our joint military exercises with South Korea, which are starting today.

1:10:37They've already started. He said, we're going to be cutting them short because, um, it sends the wrong message to our friends in North Korea about, you know, about how hostile we are. And then he says, not that it's related. This is 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. So it's seemingly like in punishment for South Korea, one of the United States is closest and longtime allies, not jumping into the insane Iran war, he is like switching sides in this. Oh,

1:11:15Aiden:they're not related for a while. He said he could have been more clear. So if you're writing a tweet, you may get all your thoughts. Get all your thoughts on it. Even if they're separate. Somebody paid a hundred thousand dollars to get that five second.

1:11:32So people is 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, North Korea. And it's causing a lot of chaos and tumult in South Korea. And I think his actions around this are, the analysis is what they're saying, is that it's been sending a real message of unreliability to basically all of America's partners in East Asia. Because at the exact same time as we, not the exact same, but within a few months of this, we also pulled all of our FAD anti-missile launchers that were in South Korea out because we needed them for the Middle East.

1:12:10And at the same time, this is within a past week, because we needed to replace, you know, you guys heard about what's happening with the USS Lincoln, where it's been deployed for too long. So there's like moldy food and the people are getting really crazy. So they had to replace it. So they sent that ship to a 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 in the Middle East. And so all of the allies that have like been relying on the US security blanket and these like are now in a real like what the fuck moment.

1:12:48South Korea is ground zero for that where this has really caught them off guard. And so that's, I mean, that's literally 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 he says he said he had great relationship with Kim Jong-un and that he gets along with him real well.

1:13:23Aiden:Even that we have notably threatened them before. Like explicitly. Remember he used to tweet and he'd be like, in North Korea, hell and fire is coming. Yeah, but now they're good friends. I mean, you know, I read the Steel Man. Yeah. So the Steel Man would be that, you know, he is trying to extend an olive branch to 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.

1:13:56They'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. He has in person, but not recently. He did it in his first term. but not in the last what six years okay not since his first term cool but the idea is i think they were both at an event together and to be fair i hasn't gone to yeah i have friends where like

1:14:32Atrioc:it can be years yeah it feels like it's been yesterday it feels like that's a minute day

1:14:36Aiden:like me and kim jong-un used to play mario kart online together exactly and if you saw him now we'd click you'd have instant rapport and i think 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 Hegseth, 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.

1:15:11Aiden:So, yeah. I could stack onto this deal. Stack onto this. Yeah. Keep in mind. That's really kick South Korea while they're down. I've watched one video about this. Yes. Okay. But North Korea recently made a change to their constitution. Okay. And why this is interesting is throughout the entire history of North Korea and South Korea and the history of the Korean war is that the goal is reunification. The two countries will not be two countries, but all of Korea will be back together once one side has won. But this year they made a change to their constitution, which they changed one of the lines about the status of like their state.

1:15:51Aiden: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 steel man, I would say if, if, you know, Trump or whoever is advising in this regard is aware of this, maybe they see this as a time where the pressures of the Korean war are no longer the same as they once were. Uh, that's something I'm putting out. There was 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.

1:16:41But, you know, most of the South Korean sources that I saw were very skeptical that there would be any sort of any real talks or any real progress. And additionally, we have to acknowledge the elephant in the room, which is that North Korea is strongly supporting Russia and Russia in the war of Ukraine, which we're on one side of, and Iran in the war with Iran. And those are closer alliances for them than whatever trump is going to truth social out so i i find it to be even from like you know even if you're like hey listen i don't think we should do drills in south korea because we shouldn't have any conflict at all just from a game theory on u.s sticking to what it's said to do for its alliances feels really backwards it feels really um ad hoc you know there's no

1:17:23Aiden:uh well you gotta think about it it's like you make mistakes sometimes and at least our alliances with everybody else have been so rock solid that just South Korea is getting a little bit.

1:17:32Atrioc:Maybe 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 destroy all supply chains everywhere, they're going to have a really fucking hard time in Iran. We start sleeping with their allies. Never let them see your next move. Speaking of

1:17:55Aiden:boosting our allies, Yeah, boost them. Let's get on over to Greenland. Greenland. Oh, for the Nordic fun fact.

1:18:02Atrioc:Wait, wait, wait. Is this fun? Is this fun? It's the Nordic fun fact.

1:18:05Aiden:I would argue this is a little fun and silly, albeit it does have some severe consequences. Here's my one question for you. Is this Nordic fun fact going to end up in Ukraine at all? Because it needs to stop doing that. Dude, I'm not kidding. No. I'm not kidding. There's a line. There's no way. There's an easy line to Ukraine on this one. No way. Okay. All right. Okay. Nordic fun fact. This has to be fun. Because 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? Like an individual?

1:18:44Greenland oil? I think of Trump. That's because he wants Greenland's resources.

1:18:52Atrioc:The king of Denmark. You have Denmark. What about Dr. Phil?

1:18:57Aiden:that was my next guess dr phil so there is there is a company called the greenland energy company

1:19:07Atrioc:this is a fun one this is a fun one this is better not take an unfun turn which has negotiated

1:19:13Aiden:a six episode documentary with dr phil that he's like producing to go over like the the journey of discovering oil in Greenland. When did Dr. Phil get into this type of content?

1:19:27Atrioc:At Twist, all the episodes are one minute vertical. And they're soft core porn. Dr. Phil is in a bikini.

1:19:34Aiden:The article does not make it clear if Dr. Phil is like an owner or a stakeholder in this company directly. One little hunters and Dr. Phil. But Dr. Phil is a good friend of Donald Trump and a supporter of him. Okay. And as these, you know, oil companies try to make a play on Greenland, especially in the wake of Trump's support for them doing so, a few things are happening. So I had a question for you guys. There's 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 US is interested in Greenland?

1:20:13Aiden: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 to nordic fun fact section if we were going to rise up in the comments i don't know the nordic fun facts have been about greenland that's your export yeah that's their

1:20:37Atrioc:biggest cultural export it's the nordic fun fact on lemonade stand i also know that there's like new minerals appearing because of the declining ice boom number two i don't know number three and

1:20:47Aiden:number three new military concerns because as that sea ice opens up if you look at the you know if you look at the globe from the top down uh countries you know like russia and the u.s and canada are all much much closer together than people like really realize uh but her parents 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, like the US 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.

1:21:24Aiden:So - 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 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 US and Greenland.

1:22:07And so it's so stupid, dude. If he had said nothing, almost any company would have been welcomed 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.

1:22:23Aiden:And there may, I think there's always a subset of people within Greenland that are concerned about like the encroachment upon their natural resources. I would say, but the tide has turned further because there's interest. You know, this is a multifaceted issue for people within Greenland because you know, on one hand, there's people who like want independence from Denmark. They want independence over their own country, but they also want resources and opportunities 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.

1:22:55Aiden: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 US 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 US companies are not getting access to what they were promised. It's a good thing he's not stretched thin at all. He's got full attention to focus on this. But think about the opposite. The opposite issue for Greenland is if any company successfully finds oil in Greenland, which is it's contentious as to how likely that actually is.

1:23:42Aiden:Imagine the case where it's confirmed a ton of oil is in Greenland. Well, the U.S. has been famously kind to countries that have an abundance of oil available. Right. So they're in this like weird spot where they don't want to like irk Trump in one way, but don't want to irk him in the other. Oil and be like, it's not that much. It's like a little bit of oil, but it's not a crazy amount of oil. And then as you kind of get further and further along this timeline of more and more, 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.

1:24:19Aiden:So you can make the best of a situation for your country before these other powers, you know, forcefully take their piece. Because while the U.S. is pressuring Greenland, there's also interest from China, interest from Russia in similar things. So that's basically it. This is just the reality of what types of decisions Greenland has to make right now in the wake of Trump provoking so much. You know what it reminds me of? Have you seen the story about what's going on in Albania with Ivanka Trump and Kushner? Yeah. where like so they're they're trying to build this private island for billionaire basically 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 private nature preserve land to these billionaires but what's funny is like why do the interview like if you're if you're trying to oil drill in Greenland, why bring in Dr.

1:25:23Phil to do the documentary? It's like, not only are you doing this crazy thing, you're bragging about it. You're bragging about it in a very public, stupid, like headline grabbing way. It just boggles the mind. It boggles the mind. The Albania thing. But this reminds me of that where.

1:25:40Atrioc:They're just trying to avoid the ire of Trump now, or not even the ire, the eye, like he saw Ron. They're trying to get him to like, not look in their direction. I mean,

1:25:48Aiden:this has already changed so much in Denmark, right? Is like Denmark has moved a ton more troops there. They have more military exercises there. They changed 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 and a half. What the hell has it been? It blows my mind, man. It is crazy. It's crazy.

1:26:26You read about every single alliance that we've had for decades is like on shaky ground.

1:26:31Atrioc:Do we got any good ones left? Have we not fucked up? I would have said South Korea. I would have said South Korea. I guess Japan. Yeah, but we've antagonized them a whole bunch. I mean, he talks about Pearl Harbor every single time he meets Takeichi, but she's pretty pro-Trump. Japan's probably the closest ally, but it's just crazy.

1:26:48Aiden:I did quiz all my relatives this weekend because I went to Kelowna in British Columbia and I interviewed, just asked all of my relatives what they think of Carney and what they think of Trump. And it's just an interesting time to ask them about this. In Canada? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:27:04Atrioc:I assume positive for Carney. I assume it was all Trump, right? It was all pro, pro, pro, pro Trump.

1:27:08Aiden:Yeah, mostly positive. I think the worst opinion I had of Carney is he hasn't really proved himself yet. I don't like him and I didn't like him before and he has to do the stuff he's saying he's going to do. But 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. But most of it had to do with like this guy, super smart. Look at his resume. Seems like he's handling Trump well type of thing. Don't like the US right now. Tell you that much. Shocker, dude. That's crazy. That was a happy one? That was a happy one?

1:27:49So let's go over.

1:27:50Atrioc:Well, I thought it was goofy. To Ukraine, Russia, back to war. Loved that reprieve. That wasn't a reprieve at all! That wasn't about war.

1:28:00Aiden:You said Dr. Phil once at the beginning, but then it was about a really depressing... Hold on, hold on. My impetus for this was the New York Times article, and they clickbaited Dr. Phil the same way. They really did. He's barely involved in the article.

1:28:13Atrioc:yeah you just okay when i'm realizing each one of our happy episodes kawaii leonard chinese microdramas and greenland all start fun yeah it's like they're not that 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 bomber microdramas are fun dr phil hey let's go for something cool and lighthearted okay you know I will say this is obviously not like cosmically lighthearted, but I do think this is a one that ends happier. Maybe. I don't know. Let me explain it.

1:28:51Aiden:In title on our sheet, it says Russian economist plus Ukraine. So it's like, how happy could it be? Okay.

1:28:57Atrioc:So I'll say 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, which is all very sad. This is about a Russian economist named Andrei Klepach, okay, probably saying it wrong, who is, let me get his exact job. He's the deputy economy minister at a state company VEB. He's very high up. He's a very respected economic analyst within Russia. and he publicly said earlier this year, not too long ago, that the Ukraine war is taking a irreversible toll on Russia.

1:29:45Things are much worse than is being said. He's being very frank, which is rare in Russian public circles, especially for someone so high up and so connected to the state. And he said, let me see, we are falling behind. We are losing technological and economic competition with the world, not just China and the US, the world, but also in some respects, Ukraine. We are losing on all these fronts. He said, we will not win this. This is a competition of attrition. We are under the illusion that Ukraine will eventually just somehow collapse. And it won't. It hasn't. And it won't. And our costs keep growing.

1:30:17So he was like, this is like, again, in Russia, this is almost like a nuclear bomb level of frankness from somebody behind it. He said this. And I want to get one more thing he said. It's already gone on for longer than the Second World War. There's no end in sight. Strikes keep intensifying. are losses from the Ukrainian armed forces on our strikes on our ports, oil, gas, and chemical, which by the way is the recent development. We've kind of talked about this where Ukraine has switched to this drone warfare and it's striking within Russia. It's hit oil ports. It's hit transport. And recently, I don't know if we have NDI set up.

1:30:46If not, if we do, I'd like to show this picture. This is the Amazon of Russia called Wildberries. This was set up by a 50-year-old, I think Russian lady actually, who just started doing it. It got really big. This is the Amazon of Russia. There are warehouses. key massive warehouses all over russia which deliver a lot of people's goods they order from these things online and they get delivered recently ukraine did a coordinated strike and hit like eight out of 12 of these like just destroyed them and so people are really starting to feel the economic impacts of the russian ukraine war in a way they weren't feeling before like it's all happening now so he's mentioning all this and being just dead honest and the call came this is report.

1:31:28The call came from on high to have this guy fired. And so instead of like responding to anything that he said, he was just summarily dismissed from his job, kicked out. And now they're, and they said his views do not represent that of B.E.B. or the state. And they're moving on. So it's not like it's the happiest story, but it is a sign, I guess, of what we've been reporting on previously, which is that Ukraine 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 get that's that's really all the updates like this guy this guy had a very public statement went out to the world and now he's been fired

1:32:08Atrioc:for it first off yeah insane that this has gone on longer than world war ii 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's criticizing putin but like this war has been really painful or like saying things they wouldn't have said before.

1:32:56Atrioc:It's kind of a natural event that couldn't have prevented. Yeah, it couldn't have prevented. Probably from my government, yeah. We're just trying to get through it. But so this, him being dismissed so quickly is like maybe a sign of like a return to trying to crack down on what has been a little more permissive on people criticizing the war. And I will say the last thing he said, because there's a pretty stark prediction by him in this speech, was that he says, I believe Russia won't collapse, but I'm almost certain, he said, we will have a social crisis. basically likening it to the Russian Revolution of 1917 or the collapse of the Soviet Union in 91, which is like the cost of this war will be so severe that when it's over, there's going to, especially if Putin, you know, this war's over and he is out of power or dies.

1:33:38Let's say Putin can't hold everything together. What happens to Russia after that? It's like a bunch of fiefdoms in a declining economy. It feels like it'll rip apart this gigantic country. That is like the thing that this economist is putting out. And it feels like it could balkanize, is basically the idea. Like this whole thing is held together by basically Moscow and like, 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 as deadlocked as it seemed to be.

1:34:15Aiden: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 was remarkably direct, which is crazy. Anyway, give me a lighthearted story to bounce out.

1:34:36Atrioc:Let's end on something real lighthearted. Okay. Your alma mater ASU is launching a content creator degree. This is a real ass thing that is happening. There's various articles about it, including one by Forbes. Wish you could 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 either i thought you were talking about they made some new classes right it was like an elective or something like side thing which was 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.

1:35:21I 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.

1:35:30Aiden:Ludwig weighed in on this, actually. I don't know if either of you caught that. He tweeted about it when they made the announcement or when it hit Twitter. And from his perspective, he was like, oh, this is probably going to be ASU's communications degree with a few classes swapped out for that are more influencer focused or something like that.

1:35:51Atrioc:So I don't know if he looked into it because that is exactly what it is. Here is the actual major on the ASU program. And what this is, it's under the Walter Cronkite Communications College. Anyway, they have a big 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 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.

1:36:42Atrioc:Podcasting and audio storytelling is a guest professor 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 like a content creator degree, but ASU is a massive school and they're like doing this.

1:36:57Aiden:Yeah, like 60 60 ,000 students. That's my biggest plus on ASU if I'm telling anyone about it. It's like a lot of people are just there to party and there's 60 ,000 people and many of them are out of state and they pay tuition. So the school is actually insanely well-funded. They're building new cool things all the time. And if you are somebody who wants to do stuff, like if you're, if you're in the journalism school and you want to like get the highest in cameras to go film a project, you can, you can get almost anything that they have a lot of money. And so that's the cool part of ASU. Like we did our e-sports club and they funded trips to tournaments and jerseys and wow.

1:37:28And we just asked for it. Like they have, they have money for everything. So it's, it's kind of cool.

1:37:31Atrioc:Podcasting and audio storytelling, the real class of ASU explores various types of journalistic audio storytelling for podcasts, including interviews, narrator reports, and non-narrated podcasts. Students deliver a podcast based on a unique value proposition that fulfills a specific need for their audience. And I want to ask you, as an ASU graduate, do you think you would be more or less successful as if you had taken this in college? I think it would help with mic discipline. You're mic discipline. I think I could have used some pointers from a teacher on that. It's actually, they hire, what's his name?

1:38:00Atrioc:Not J.J. Abrams. Who throws the chair in the movie? J.J. and J.K. Simmons. jk simmons just stare at you and you say mic up you mic up was your mic down or was it dragging he slowly comes over it and you 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 did you whiplash between the question i tried to I try to figure out who teaches this because in theory you would want somebody teaching this who has done a podcast, right? But as far as I can tell, they don't have the faculty for this yet.

1:38:42Atrioc: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.

1:38:49Aiden:If you take this class, if someone is listening right now, goes to ASU and takes this class, I would love an opportunity to 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 we 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.

1:39:13Atrioc:Well,

1:39:13Aiden:a lot of, a lot of people are in school right now doing a CS degree that isn't going to pan out.

1:39:21All right.

1:39:22Atrioc:I 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. 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,

1:39:39Aiden:one new hour of content every week. We got, we have the tail end of this episode that we didn't do, which is how weed is more popular than alcohol now. Kushner is negotiating with Benjamin Netanyahu about the state of Gaza and falling US crime. And you can go to patreon.com slash lemonade stand.

1:39:58Atrioc:Do you want to watch the rest of that? We tried to have this be more upbeat. We tried. When we were talking about last week, we were like, that was a negative. It's the news. I don't know. I don't know if it's possible to not be in Eeyore with what is happening. You know what's fucked?

1:40:13Aiden:We did the good news episode. We did it. We did it. And you know what? You fucks didn't watch it. It was one of our worst performing episodes ever. And so that's why I'll put that out there. So when the next good news episode goes up, We'll try it again. I hope you guys click it. I just remember the good news episode being like this. Mostly bad. Yeah, it just ended up being bad news. It was just bad news. We tried. And then every episode was like, oh, that sucks. It was crazy because I remember doing the climate change segment in that episode. And the whole thing was like, well, it's not going to be.

1:40:45Aiden:It probably won't be as bad as people have been saying it is. And that was the good news. You smiled for five minutes straight. Anyway, guys, thank you for watching. That was an interesting whiplash. I hope you're all emotionally. I hope you're emotionally okay. Leave your current emotional state in the comments. Yeah, we'd love to hear that. And we'll see you next week. Thank you for watching. Bye, everybody.