Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Okay. All right. All right.
Chapter 2: What is the significance of Venezuela in current geopolitics?
You hit it. Hit it. Shut up, Aiden. Support for this show comes from Rocket Money.
You know what? I was using Rocket Money last week and I found a whole bunch of subscriptions that I am paying for that I had forgotten about. Not only were there like five that I was... There were some new ones I wasn't even aware of. It turns out I've been funding the production software for this show on my credit card and I didn't realize that.
So now Aiden is finally going to get a company credit card so that I'm not paying for this. I literally did not realize this was going on until Rocket Money showed me my subscriptions.
Classic Aiden.
Classic Aiden. I liked things better before Rocket Money when Doug paid for everything and I didn't have to.
Literally. Try Rocket Money for free at rocketmoney.com slash lemonade. Figure out all the subscriptions. Save some money. It's great.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world flock to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show. And they spend a week trying to sell each other on the weirdest gadgets you've ever seen in your entire life. This week on The Verge Cast, we're talking all about everything happening at CES.
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Chapter 3: How are oil companies reacting to the situation in Venezuela?
From the TVs, to the AI gadgets, to the humanoid robots that everybody is hoping might someday do your laundry and wash your dishes. All that and much more on The Verge Cast, wherever you get podcasts.
We've got a theory. Every world leader is actually a psycho who's playing a big game of Risk. Psycho Risk.
Psycho Risk has started.
It's the game of Psycho Risk. Last year was just a little slow. So like this year, 2026, let's all start a new game on this board. starting with Trump and his favorite territory, Venezuela, apparently.
Lemonade stands gold for 2026. Capture all the world leaders, kidnap them, and then put them in a room with this game, and then we'll turn everything around.
And then we get all the cards, and we can get a unit bonus.
Why doesn't the world solve things with a champion? You elect a champion, like the movie Troy.
Whatever happened to champions? I do think that would solve a lot of things.
Everybody just had one champion. There's more serious things to talk about, but France quietly moved the G summit date to not conflict with the UFC event happening at the White House. Unironically, they're like, fuck, we got to move this. Like UFC events in the White House are taking precedent over major world events. So in theory, every country sends a champion.
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Chapter 4: What role does Trump play in the geopolitical landscape?
Wait, Russia's on top. The hierarchy of the world is like Russia, but actually like Dagestan.
Wait, is Russia on top of USA?
I know Iceland comes out because they have the huge guy, right?
Chapter 5: How is the U.S. military strategy evolving regarding Iran?
Yeah. From Game of Thrones.
Iceland is punching way above its weight. And then Brazil's in there. This would be a sick shuffling of the world order.
It's a way different world. It would be a shuffling.
Chapter 6: What historical context is relevant to the U.S. involvement in Iran?
I don't know how good it would be.
Yeah, sick in the more literal sense, by the way. It would be sick. Kind of psycho.
But yeah, I mean, I do think, okay, we're going to talk about the geopolitics stuff, I think, first, because it's kind of the big issue. But you're talking about this UFC thing. Just as you guys fully understand, this is probably one of the most insane two-week periods. Of the year. Of... Very good. You don't need it, bro. That I feel like we've been through it a long time. Like...
last January was insane, but it was mostly the LA fires. And I don't remember like this many things every single day being a major, major event, especially worldwide. So we're talking about that, but there's like, there's a lot of domestic stuff we can discuss. And there's the UFC event. We're gonna spend 40 minutes on talking about who's going to win. Yeah.
Chapter 7: How does military spending impact U.S. foreign policy?
And Jerome Powell versus Trump at the white house. Dude, honestly, that was the best champion. They put the card up.
It was on X. Jerome Powell height, how is it? I think Jerome Powell's fiercer, but he doesn't have the weight. The benefit to Jerome Powell, he's a lot younger than Trump. He's only 72.
He's a sore fox, man.
He'll get them with his speed. All right, let's follow up with Venezuela. I have a theory. It's been one week. And I don't think anybody else has said it. Correct me if I'm wrong, because you're covering it more. I think this is actually about oil. And so here's a couple of dozen articles that reinforce that idea, okay?
So this is a particular angle at the Venezuela thing I wanted to look into that I think is interesting. Obviously, huge development right now. According to the Venezuelan government, as of the past few days, they're in control. There's no external party that is in control of Venezuela. At the same time, Trump and the United States military... This is the right-hand woman of Maduro.
Right.
The vice president who replaced... Everything is the same except that she came in as vice president. And now she is in control. She is in control.
Same party's in control.
But in quote, we are here governing alongside the people and no one else. There is no external agent governing Venezuela. That is from the now president Rodriguez of Venezuela. At the same time, Trump and our military is stating... we are going to control all exports out of the country.
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Chapter 8: What are the implications of Jerome Powell's leadership for the economy?
Yeah. Yeah. They chased it around. It was like looping and looping for days.
And then it changed its flag to be like, no, we're Russian now. That's cool. And turns out that doesn't help. Actually, we don't like that.
Yeah, they were Venezuelan flagged, and they changed to Russia halfway through the voyage to be like, you're not going to get us now.
Just cycling flags on the back to see what gets them to stop. Apparently, they painted the side of the tanker as Russian.
That's from the movie Lord of War. They do that in a movie where they change the flags mid- Yeah.
So the justification for this is the U.S. is saying Venezuela is sanctioned. You can't come in if you are Russia or China or Iran or whatever. You cannot come in and transport oil. So the big player here, the big key chip that is being played is the oil side. So what has actually happened with oil? It's pretty obvious oil is a big part of it.
So on Friday, Trump had a meeting with 20 oil executives at the White House this past Friday. And the whole thing was he's going to try to convince them to invest in Venezuela. And it pretty much went exactly the way you would think with Trump, where he makes a lot of promises that are vague. Everybody in the meeting makes a lot of promises that are vague.
He comes out of the meeting and says, everybody's down. We've got this locked in and nothing has actually happened or there's no clarity after this.
The best part of that meeting was when Rubio hands him a little note. Did you see that? No. Rubio hands him a little note that says like, go back to Chevron and like ask this thing. And then Trump looked, it's supposed to be a secret. He looks at it and reads it out loud.
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