Chapter 1: What is the 'Lemon of Optimism' about?
Fellows, I got good news. There was so much bad news this week that unironically, sincerely, I've crossed a tipping point and I'm kind of depressed about the state of the world, which means I am giving up my role as the optimist of the show. Here's the limit of optimism. I'm passing it to you, Aiden. Awesome. This works well because I read no news this week.
Hey, some of your perspective is looking good. Just checked out. I have, you know, you guys can be Banjo. Yeah. I'll be Kazooie.
Chapter 2: What letter did Trump send to Norway?
You're Kazooie. You're in the backpack. Except I can't fly. Yeah. You have no skill. And I've got a heartwarming anecdote to bring to the show. I went to a Clippers game last week and there was three groups of high school students sitting in the two rows in front of us and the row behind us. And they were all sports betting on their phones their entire game. Optimism.
And that's why this episode is sponsored by DraftKings. Optimism. Yeah, I'm joking. I'm joking. So I thought that was pretty great. It's like getting out there, hanging out with your friends, losing money you don't have, getting addicted to predatory apps. I thought that was nice. He's not doing a good job with the optimism. I thought that was nice. He thought that was nice.
It brought people together. This is how the lemon of optimism works, right? You know, they were in person hanging out. They weren't like... In sports gambling brought them together. Brings people together. So it does have benefits. It does have benefits. This third space for Gen Z is DraftKings. We don't need physical third spaces because they can just gamble on the app. Yeah.
If you're in a discord server with your boys gambling, it's as good as the real thing. So big updates today. We got the Clippers game. Anything else happen? So far in January, there hasn't been that much outside of the two basketball games you just mentioned. Oh, it was my birthday. We're going to talk about that for 45 minutes. 45 minutes on that. Jake Drizzle's birthday.
And then I guess very slightly, if we can squeeze it in, because that's a lot of big stuff, we might squeeze in the fact that the president is trying to possibly declare war on Greenland and begin an unwinding of the transatlantic order. Hey, war for Greenland.
What?
Language matters, okay? It's for the future of Greenland, yeah. And there's so many angles we can take this from, but I think it'd be fun to talk about the wildest, most cartoonish one. Let me pull up this letter. Actually, a lot of these are wild and cartoonish. Yeah, I guess they're all pretty wild and cartoonish. But this one for me, you know, it's hard to be surprised lately.
by something that happens in the world or something that Trump does. And I thought when I saw this that it was fake. I legitimately saw it and I saw someone made this up and it's like, come on guys, there's enough real things to criticize. Can we not make up a fake letter? And then it was verified. So this is a real letter from Donald Trump to the leader of Norway.
Again, reminder that the Nobel Peace Prize is not fake. figured out in Norway and he's attacking Greenland, which is owned by Denmark. So, okay. Uh, all right. Considering your country decided not to give me the Nobel peace prize for having stopped eight wars. Plus I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of peace.
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Chapter 3: How is Greenland related to US foreign policy?
It's all looking good. We were walking here and Aiden was doing a funny Swedish voice making fun of his visa team because they will not... You were like... Because they're just really slow in the response, and I was like, hello, I am Astrid. I just got off my 45-day vacation. I haven't been able to look at your application.
But he's trying to get out. I get it.
I get it. I'm just getting a little antsy. Because considering you decided not to give me the visa... I no longer feel obligated to be purely peace. You know what? Fuck those vacation laws if I can't have them. All right, one more Nobel thing. We should talk about Greenland. Greenland is like the kickoff here because it's major. We've talked about it last week, but so much has happened since.
This is so... I don't know. There's big implications. This is, to me, the wildest that it's gotten. This is the culmination. I think it is one of the... Yeah, I think it is probably at least... For me, it's the dumbest thing. The dumbest, the single dumbest, like I don't see the upside. But just as a note, because we're on the Nobel subject real quick.
In the past week, since our last episode, Donald Trump did receive the Nobel Prize as a gift from Maria Machado. Congratulations. Congratulations. So I have a quick question. Is that how it works? So that was a question that had not been answered until this. Look how happy he is, though. Wow. Look how he's, I've never seen Trump cheese like that. He is happy. She showed up.
A little context here is that she and her party, I guess, won the election in Venezuela, rightfully. Maduro ignored it, retained power. Trump swooped in, kidnapped Maduro, took him back out. And there was sort of this expectation that perhaps she would be the person that he would try to give power to with this newfound control. He did not.
He said she had no respect in Venezuela and the powers transferred to Maduro's VP, Del Cid Rodriguez. And the same party is still in control of Venezuela. Her, there was a leak from the Washington Post that said some part of that may have had to do, and again, this is speculation, may have had to do with the fact that Trump was miffed that she got the Nobel Prize and he didn't.
Sounds crazy, but you read the letter, like the Greenland thing, it's like, it doesn't sound that crazy anymore. So I think in response to that leak, Maria Machado went to the White House on a diplomatic mission and presented it as a gift, hoping that perhaps he would then favor her in the election that she won and have some power in her own country. It is fucking insane.
I don't know how you're going to... Yeah. So, lemon of optimism. Okay. I'm going to tell you guys about a dream that I had as a young man.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of tariffs on Denmark and allies?
That's big. My grandfather makes that. My grandfather makes that. Apparently $4 billion seed market. Deep kind of a beast trade. Canada gives them seed oils and they get cool EVs. Yeah, that's tight. No, no, no, no. It gets better. Canada is now expecting. So China's going to drop these discrimination tariffs on lobsters. Big for Nova Scotia. Big win for Nova Scotia.
Apparently lobsters are so big in the Canadian economy that he chose that specific... Hold on. Lobsters and crabs. And can you guess the third one? These are three things that are listed as important exports that China is going to take in more of. I mean, I think... It's the big three. The big three. Surely it's timber or oil. It's the big three. Lobsters, crabs... That's right, and peas.
And peas? Peas, lobster crabs and peas. So big, big day for the pea farmers. Wow, that's crazy, peas. Wait, can I say something? So Carney, I've been listening to him talk about this a lot. I've been listening to all his speeches over at Davos and about this. He started in French? And I do think that Carney is the smartest Western leader right now. I think he's by far the smartest.
Much like all of his countrymen. No, that's not true. The most intelligent, average highest intelligence across the spectrum. I think he truly understands. The best flag. I think, in fact, most Canadians are dumb as hell. And they got very lucky with him. I think he actually gets it in a way that other leaders are only going to take a while to catch up on.
And one thing that he is like screaming, basically, in the nicest way he can, is that he sees the G7, which is the big Western economies, their debt-fueled bubbly speculative economies that have had, they've had for a while that have kind of run the world are coming to an end. He basically says that like this, the era of printing currency, G7 dominance is coming to an end. It's just happening.
And I am adapting to a new world where we need to use the resource, the hard resources we have, not the financial ones. So they, Canada is very wealthy in resources. They have a lot of, they have peas, they have lobster and they have oil and they have, Timber. And they are going to export these things while they have value in order to improve the tech of the country.
He's figuring out that the old ways of just printing money to keep a real estate-based economy, it's not going to work. It's coming to an end. It's going to pop. It's in trouble. And he is basically saying that we are going to use our resources at the values they are to get... And the smart thing he's doing, by the way, with the EVs, he's doing what China did when they were starting to get rich.
is if Chinese EV companies want to sell in China, right now they can just ship them for the first 40K cars, but then they have to come in and make a joint deal A joint, I forget the word. A tandem bicycle. A joint venture. So a Chinese company like NIO or like BYD has to set up a joint company in Canada with a Canadian company that has 51%. And then they have to teach them how to build the EVs.
And like, that's what China did to start moving up the ladder. And Carney's forcing them to do it here. It's like, it's trickling back down. out of China to Canada. I mean, it's a smart play. He's a smart, he's thinking forward and everyone else is driving headfirst to the cliff. And I don't know if you want to talk about bonds because it really ties into this.
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Chapter 5: What is the concept of the Board of Peace and its implications?
That's the premise. So there's been some updates. That is the Board of Peace for Gaza. But Trump is actually instituting a broader coalition called the Board of Peace broadly. The Board of Peace for Gaza is inside of it. Kind of like the UN.
The way it'll work is if you join, you join for three years, and then you're part of this coalition of country leaders that decide what kind of things are going to happen around the world. It sounds suspiciously like the UN, which Donald Trump does not really like. He announced Bloomberg...
found basically the prompt or the premise of it that's being pitched to countries, which is that you can join for three years, or if you pay a billion dollars, you're a permanent member. A little exclusive club. Cool. And even the board of peace got paid a win, bro. Dude, you know what this reminds me of? It's like selling Overwatch League slots for $20 million.
Chapter 6: How does Trump plan to maintain control through the Board of Peace?
It's like, just come and join. It's just like microtransactions are getting into everything, you know?
Even...
Come join my new league. You have to pay for different flags. I don't like the old one. This is going to be a great new league. It's going to last forever. So that's silly, right? It's like, ah, Billion Dollar Club, right? And that's probably the headline you've heard. But looking a little more into the actual draft that's been pitched to countries, how does this Board of Peace function?
Well, Trump is the chairman of the board. Decisions by these countries around the world on geopolitical issues, such as the rebuilding of Gaza, obviously majority vote, but every single vote is subject to the chairman's approval, Donald Trump. Trump will have the power to remove a member that can only be vetoed by two-thirds majority of the member states.
Chapter 7: What are the reactions to Trump's Board of Peace invitations?
So he personally, as the chairman, can kick people out and also decide who gets invited. Just to be clear, even if I paid the billion,
it's not clear as you can imagine, this is a Trumpism type thing where it's like an unclear document, but these are the, this is what it's stated so far is that, um, so meetings, they're going to happen when the chairman decides, uh, the agenda is approved by the chairman. So we're not going to talk about stuff unless the chairman wants to talk about this stuff.
We're not going to meet unless the chairman wants to meet. And here's the piece that really made me go, Holy fucking shit. The chairman who basically controls this new UN board is the only one who gets to decide who the next chairman is. And so this, I realized, is the play by Trump to stay in power after he's kicked out of office, right?
And again, it gets back to that feeling of like, ah, at least this will correct in three years. But...
Chapter 8: How do tariffs factor into Trump's international strategies?
He, if this works, and he can get country leaders all together, after he's president, will be chairman of the board of this institution that has all of these different countries deciding world affairs with permanent control over everything, including who's next. And of course, you can imagine he's put in Jared Kushner and various other people in leadership roles. Oh, the GOAT team?
Jared always funds away. The All-Star Squad? Jared always funds away. Man. He's going to run Paramount Pictures. He's a busy guy, Jared. And some crypto thing, and then... Yeah, my understanding, Board of Peace, you pay Trump a billion dollars to get on board. You don't get any input in the decisions. You do, it's just he can veto it. He can veto it. Trump has solo veto power over everything.
He's chairman of the board for life, not just the life of the presidency. Yeah. So even if you were... It's him establishing his own global thing that is separate from the U.S. government forever. And he has sole control over all the money in the Board of Peets.
Yeah, when you donate a billion dollars, it's going to go, in quotes, mostly to the... Sorry, the money raised will be used directly to accomplish the Board of Peets mandate to rebuild Gaza. There's a quote. Just to put this all back in a loop here. The big... Impetus for this, we have to take Greenland and break all our alliances thing was Greenland.
You can't protect it from our enemies, Russia and China. Right. And the first person I think he invited to the board of peace was is Vladimir Putin. There are some funny people invited to the Board of Peace. You got the European countries, the ones who, just to be clear, just were threatened with tariffs to take Greenland, inviting them to the Board of Peace.
You got Israel, who's the first one who came, Benjamin Netanyahu came out and said, the details haven't been coordinated with us. and is like apparently very upset because Qatar and Turkey are invited as well and is like this is supposed to be about like us running Gaza and instead he's making this board around the world.
Macron from France promptly declined, so credit to him, came out and was like we're absolutely not fucking being a part of this. Trump responds with, well no one wants him cause he's gonna be out of office very soon. I'll put a 200% tariffs on his wines and champagnes and he'll join.
fucking baffling and then others imply like carney said he's interested in principle but then behind the scenes they're like we will not pay a dime for this which is no one's gonna pay a billion dollars to join your board we got argentina's malay we got belarus's autocratic leader lukashenko so that's cool russia was invited lukashenko is invited yep to the board of peace dude if the board of peace is like lukashenko trump and he's so funny
That'd be... Hold on. Hold on. Stay with me. Stay with me. That's a little beast. If it's just the three of them. That's super funny. We've talked about the big two, right? Which is Belarus and Russia. Who's the big three that you really want on the board of peace? China. China's invited. They said they might be interested. Okay. Oh, and he wants this done by Thursday.
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