Podcasts about Chinese

From the BBC World Service: Have you ever wondered where your festive Christmas lights, ornaments, and toys all come from? Well, there's a good chance they originate in the Chinese city of Yiwu. It's home to a major the world's largest wholesale market and produces more than half of the world's Christmas decor. This Christmas morning, we'll take a trip to the city and hear how it's being affected by the latest U.S. tariffs

Merry Christmas from China Compass! After a few minutes to talk about The Millionaire Missionary's Last Christmas, my wife and youngest daughter join me to (mostly) talk about Christmas overseas, but also hit the following topics (and more)... Eating Chinese fish (or not) Internet Cafes on Christmas Eve Chinese Christian Christmas Talent Show Christmases long ago, including our first in China I'm your China travel guide, Missionary Ben. Follow me on Twitter/X (@chinaadventures) where I present a new Chinese city or county to pray for every day. Also, I’m now set up on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/c/chinacompass), which not only allows for donations, but also lets me sort podcast episodes into various collections, making it easier to find all the episodes on a certain topic or region, like Tibet, North Korea, or Hong Kong. Send any questions or comments to chinacompass@privacyport.com. Everything else can be easily found at PrayGiveGo.us! Now Available on Amazon (+ free PDF): The Millionaire Missionary (BordenofYale.com) The Millionaire Missionary's Last Christmas The Millionaire Missionary, William Borden, of all people(!) could have stayed home an extra week to be with his family (his mother!) for Christmas. But he boarded his ship in New York on December 17th, determined to land in Egypt by New Year’s Day to begin his life overseas. https://chinacall.substack.com/p/a-mothers-final-farewell-part-i https://chinacall.substack.com/p/mothers-final-farewell-part-ii Kevin Belmonte’s biography of William Borden, Beacon-Light, which mostly borrows from early Borden biographies by close friends, as well as Mary Taylor’s Borden of Yale (the unabridged version of The Millionaire Missionary), provides a few more details from the trip (pgs 227-230). Christmas for Missionaries https://mailchi.mp/radiusinternational/was-the-great-commission-only-for-the-original-apostles-9217919?e=baba53761c As an adult, I’ve spent far more Christmases overseas than at home. Looking back, there is some sadness in what I missed, especially with loved ones who have since passed away. But there are no true regrets. And there are many happy memories, especially when God provided for loved ones to visit us and spend Christmas (or Thanksgiving) with us on the mission field! Thank you for listening! Subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! Don’t forget to follow me on X (@chinaadventures) or email chinacompass@privacyport.com with any questions or comments. Also, I've finally set up Patreon, but my favorite thing isn't the (potential) support. There’s also a Paypal link at PrayforChina.us if you’d like to give to our China ministry. Last but not least, for (almost) everything else we’re doing visit PrayGiveGo.us. Luke 10, vs 2: the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few, therefore ask the Lord for more. Talk again soon!

It's Christmas, Thursday, December 25th, A.D. 2025. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes written by Jonathan Clark and heard on 140 radio stations and at www.TheWorldview.com.  Filling in for Adam McManus I'm Ean Leppin (contact@eanvoiceit.com) Millions of Christians Persecuted at Christmas Time Millions of Christians around the world must celebrate the birth of Christ in secret or face persecution this year. For example, China bans children from Christmas church celebrations. In Iran, Muslim converts to Christianity who attend unregistered house churches face arrest at this time of year. Christmas worship and displays are banned in North Korea. And Somalia completely bans Christmas observances. International Christian Concern noted, “For those of us blessed with the freedom to celebrate Christmas publicly, let us also remember and lift up our brothers and sisters in Christ who cling to him, regardless of the cost.” 1 Corinthians 12:26-27 says, “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” U.S. to Support Faith-Based Health Care Providers in Nigeria The United States agreed to support faith-based health care providers in Nigeria on Saturday. The U.S. committed over two billion dollars to the five-year bilateral health agreement. Two hundred million dollars of the funding will go to 900 Christian health care facilities. Christian clinics represent about 10% of providers in Nigeria, but they serve nearly a third of the country.  Nigeria is one of the most dangerous places in the world for Christians with tens of thousands of believers being killed there in the last decade.  LA Governor to Lead Envoy to Greenland President Donald Trump named Louisiana Republican Governor Jeff Landry as the United States Special Envoy to Greenland on Sunday.  The president expressed interest in buying the territory from Denmark during his first term. Listen to his recent comments. TRUMP: “We need Greenland for national security. And if you take a look at Greenland, you look up and down the coast, you have Russian and Chinese ships all over the place. We need it for national security. We have to have it. And he wanted to lead the charge, so we're making him [inaudible] a special envoy to Greenland. Greenland's a big deal.” The leaders of Greenland and Denmark continue to reject efforts to make the territory part of the U.S. Rand Paul Releases Report on Government Waste Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky released his annual “Festivus Report” on government waste. The report shows $1.6 trillion in waste up from one trillion dollars last year. Dr. Paul identified most of the waste with the $1.2 trillion spent on interest payments for the U.S. debt.  Highlights from the remaining $400 billion in waste included funneling money to social media influencers, drug experiments, and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Abortion Mills Decline for 4th Year in a Row Operation Rescue reports the number of abortion mills declined for the fourth year in a row. There were 657 abortion mills in operation this year, down from 718 in 2021. Meanwhile, the number pro-life pregnancy centers is growing. Heartbeat International is the largest network of pregnancy help organizations. The network reached 4,000 locations globally last month. Gallup Releases New Survey on How Americans Celebrate Christmas Gallup released a new survey on how Americans celebrate Christmas. Most U.S. adults still celebrate the day, but fewer do so religiously. The majority of people who celebrate Christmas participate in activities like exchanging gifts, gathering with family and friends, and decorating their homes. However, only half of Americans display religious decorations or attend religious services for Christmas. That's down from two thirds of the population in 2010. Anniversary of Baptism of 1000s of Brits And finally, today is the anniversary of when thousands of people in Britain received baptism. Augustine of Canterbury was a Christian monk who arrived in Britain in the year 597 A.D. He is known as the “Apostle to the English.” Augustine preached to the local ruler, King Æthelberht who led the Kingdom of Kent. The king converted to Christianity from Anglo-Saxon paganism. He allowed Augustine and his missionaries to evangelize the people.  On Christmas Day in 597, Augustine reportedly baptized thousands of people who turned from paganism to Christ. John 3:16-17 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”  Close And that's The Worldview on this Christmas, Thursday, December 25th, in the year of our Lord 2025. Follow us on X or subscribe for free by Spotify, Amazon Music, or by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com.  Plus, you can get the Generations app through Google Play or The App Store. Filling in for Adam McManus I'm Ean Leppin (contact@eanvoiceit.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ.

SHOW 12-23-25 THE SHOW BEGINS WITH DOUBTS F THE EU... 1831 BRUSSELS EU STRUGGLES WITH RUSSIAN ASSETS AND AID Colleague Judy Dempsey. Judy Dempsey discusses the EU's difficulty in utilizing frozen Russian assets and the "defeat" for Chancellor Merz regarding the funding mechanism for Ukraine. NUMBER 1 THE RISE OF THE AFD IN GERMANY Colleague Judy Dempsey. Judy Dempsey continues, focusing on the rise of the AfD party in Germany and its connections to elements of the US Republican party. NUMBER 2 STALEMATES IN GAZA AND LEBANON Colleague Jonathan Schanzer. Jonathan Schanzer discusses the stalemate regarding the last hostage in Gaza, the fragmented control of the territory, and threats in Lebanon and Syria. NUMBER 3 EU REGULATION VS. US GROWTH Colleague Michael Toth. Michael Toth critiques the European Union's "regulatory imperialism" and contrasts it with the economic growth of the US. NUMBER 4 STATE DEPARTMENT RECALLS AND STRATEGY Colleague Mary Kissel. Mary Kissel discusses the recall of career ambassadors by the Trump administration and challenges in Panama and Greenland. NUMBER 5 AUSTRALIA'S DEFENSE AND CHINA Colleague Grant Newsham. Grant Newsham warns about Australia's lack of defense capabilities and the erosion of its influence in the Pacific islands due to Chinese political warfare. NUMBER 6 THE BORING BENEFITS OF AI Colleague Kevin Frazier. Kevin Frazier advocates for the "boring use cases" of AI, such as in healthcare and traffic management, to save costs and improve efficiency. NUMBER 7 REGULATING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Colleague Kevin Frazier. Kevin Frazier continues, warning against a "waterfall of regulation" by states and advocating for "regulatory sandboxes" to allow experimentation. NUMBER 8 US EXPANSIONISM AND DIPLOMATIC RIFTS Colleague Gregory Copley. Gregory Copley analyzes US foreign policy moves regarding Greenland, Panama, and Venezuela, describing them as a return to "might is right" expansionism. NUMBER 9 THE MONROE DOCTRINE AND NAVAL POWER Colleague Gregory Copley. Gregory Copley continues, debating whether the US is a naval or continental power in the context of enforcing the Monroe Doctrine and discussing a proposal for new battleships. NUMBER 10 THE DECLINE OF LITERACY AND CONTEXT Colleague Gregory Copley. Gregory Copley continues, discussing the decline of literacy and context since the mid-20th century, comparing modern society to the Eloi and Morlocks of H.G. Wells. NUMBER 11 KING CHARLES III AND UK POLITICAL TURMOIL Colleague Gregory Copley. Gregory Copley continues, analyzing the challenges King Charles III faces under the Keir Starmer government, which Copley compares to the era of Oliver Cromwell. NUMBER 12 THE LEGEND OF THE HESSIANS Colleague Professor Richard Bell. Professor Richard Bell discusses the American fear of Hessian soldiers and Washington's strategic victory at Trenton. NUMBER 13 FRANCE'S GLOBAL STRATEGY IN THE REVOLUTION Colleague Professor Richard Bell. Professor Richard Bell continues, highlighting the role of Foreign Minister Vergennes and how French involvement expanded the war globally. NUMBER 14 BENEDICT ARNOLD AND PEGGY SHIPPEN Colleague Professor Richard Bell. Professor Richard Bell continues, discussing Peggy Shippen's influence on Benedict Arnold's defection and their subsequent life in London. NUMBER 15 THE ACCIDENTAL COLONIZATION OF AUSTRALIA Colleague Professor Richard Bell. Professor Richard Bell concludes, recounting the story of convict William Murray and the accidental selection of Australia as a penal colony following the loss of the American colonies. NUMBER 16

AUSTRALIA'S DEFENSE AND CHINA Colleague Grant Newsham. Grant Newsham warns about Australia's lack of defense capabilities and the erosion of its influence in the Pacific islands due to Chinese political warfare. NUMBER 6 1894 PERTH

Within the last three months, we already discussed: a Chinese woman, from Wuhan of all places, who was smuggling in roundworms through the mail—while studying at a lab in Michigan; a couple, boyfriend and girlfriend (both Chinese nationals, also working at that Michigan lab) who were smuggling in a dangerous fungus—a type of deadly fungus that can target crops; and now, the FBI just arrested another Chinese national—this one studying for his doctorate at Indiana University—and he was allegedly smuggling plasmid DNA derived from E. coli bacteria from China hidden inside women's underwear. Let's go through the details of this new case together.

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From the BBC World Service: Plans to mass-produce and sell self-driving vehicles in China have been delayed after news spread of a crash involving one earlier this year. Chinese regulators gave narrow approval to just two out of nine companies to operate autonomous taxis on highways. We learn more. Then, we hear why 2025 was a mixed picture for commodities. And later, Martha Stewart joins her friend Snoop Dogg as she invests in the U.K. soccer team, Swansea.

Christmas in Room Number Four: https://chinacall.substack.com/p/christmas-in-room-number-four-the Just as we did on Thanksgiving a few weeks ago, today I want to read a special story from Richard Wurmband’s book In God's Underground (https://richardwurmbrandfoundation.com/pdfs/IGU-english.pdf). Welcome to China Compass on the Fight Laugh Feast Network (and the Christian Podcast Community)! I'm your China travel guide, Missionary Ben. Follow me on Twitter/X (@chinaadventures) where I present a new Chinese city or county to pray for every single day. Please send any questions or comments to a new, secure email: chinacompass@privacyport.com. Everything else can be found at PrayGiveGo.us! One last thing: I’m now set up on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/c/chinacompass), which now only allows for donations, but also lets me sort podcast episodes into various collections, making it easier to go back and find all the episodes on a certain topic or region, like Tibet, North Korea, or Hong Kong. Now Available: The Millionaire Missionary (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G94FKJJW/) For those who aren’t familiar with Richard Wurmband, here's a brief intro: Lutheran minister in Romania. 14 years in prison, including 3 in solitary confinement. After “escaping” abroad, published ”Tortured for Christ" in the 60s and testified to Congress. Founded Voice of the Martyrs with his son, but Michael Wurmbrand doesn’t trust VOM today. Michael Wurmbrand’s VOM letter: https://www.billionbibles.com/michael-wurmbrand-vom.html Free books (PDF) by Richard Wurmbrand: https://richardwurmbrandfoundation.com/ Follow China Compass Thank you for listening! Subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! Follow me on X (@chinaadventures) or email chinacompass@privacyport.com with any questions or comments. There’s also a Paypal link at PrayforChina.us if you’d like to support our China ministry. For everything else, visit PrayGiveGo.us. Hebrews 13:3: Remember those who are in prison, “as bound with them”! Feliz Navidad

From the BBC World Service: Plans to mass-produce and sell self-driving vehicles in China have been delayed after news spread of a crash involving one earlier this year. Chinese regulators gave narrow approval to just two out of nine companies to operate autonomous taxis on highways. We learn more. Then, we hear why 2025 was a mixed picture for commodities. And later, Martha Stewart joins her friend Snoop Dogg as she invests in the U.K. soccer team, Swansea.

Dr. Li-Meng Yan w/ The Voice of Dr. Yan – Hidden messages and small courtesies show how the Chinese Communist Party builds networks inside American life. The newly exposed exchanges between a local operative and Chinese officials read like a manual for a soft takeover. They show coaching of elected officials, orchestration of public greetings, arrangement of special treatment at...

We're in Santa's grotto – sort of - a Chinese city that some call the Christmas capital of the world. With 75,000 traders, across 50,000 stores, Yiwu offers the world's largest wholesale market across a labyrinth of arcades. But at a time of growing trade tensions with the US, who's actually buying the tinsel this year? If you'd like to send us an email, our address is businessdaily@bbc.co.ukPresenter: Ed Butler Producer: David Cann Additional production: Victoriya Holland(Picture: Crowds of people walking through Yiwu wholesale market. Credit: BBC/Wang Xiqing)

You asked and we answered. 2025 has been a wild ride.This podcast has never been about telling you what to think. It's about reminding you that you can think.This episode weaves together voices from across the year — conversations about men in women's sports, politics, health, nervous system regulation, money, wealth, propaganda, healing the body, the mind, and the soul.On the surface, these topics might seem unrelated.They're not.They're all asking the same question: Who are we when we stop repeating what we've been told to believe?Today we are going to here 10-15 minute clips from the most popular episodes of 2025. Our guests in order will be:1. Ep 203: Jennifer Sey – Jennifer Sey, a former National Champion for USA Gymnastics. Jennifer is the founder of XX XY athletics who's motto is: "Free to speak. Free to move." Her story is so compelling, her drive is inspiring and her dedication to protect young girls in sport is commendable. 2. Ep 205: Sarah Swain – Sarah is a business mentor, entrepreneur, podcast host of “The Sarah Swain Show”, speaker, writer and honestly a refreshingly authentic voice in the Freedom community.3. EP 210: Sean Dillion - Sean Dillon, the owner and founder of PEMFit, PEMF expert and educator. Sean empowers people from around the world with education and treatment protocols that heal the body with natural frequency.4. EP 213: Laura Foster - Dr. Laura Foster is a life and mindset mentor, yogi, breathwork facilitator, tonal chiropractor, retreat host and founder of Soul Inspired Gurl.5. EP 221: Shaun Parke – A business mentor, a leadership coach, Senior Marketing Director with WFG, the Founder of Evolution Financial and my financial advisor.6. EP 226: Dr. Kevin Preston – A traditional Chinese medicine doctor, retreat host and the founder of The New Human events.Want to hear more? Subscribe to the show and get first dibs on all future episodes. Or go back and find the guest and episode number above to hear the full episode.As always, I encourage you to join the conversation. Say the thing. Let us know how you feel. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it, leave a review or subscribe or rate the podcast. Every little bit helps!

【聊了什么】 一座占地仅三分之一街区的小花园，为何能让纽约的政客们冲突、登上纽约时报、还惊动马丁·斯科塞斯和罗伯特·德尼罗等名流亲自站台？ 2025年11月，刚刚当选纽约市长的马姆达尼还没上任，即将离任的Eric Adams就抢先签署行政令，将伊丽莎白街花园永久划为公园用地——这被外界解读为一枚"政治毒丸"。这座花园的命运，折射出纽约乃至美国城市治理中的一个核心的矛盾：我们到底应该建更多房子，还是保护现有社区？谁有权决定一个街区的未来？ 本期节目，我们邀请到纽约城市规划师罗雨翔老师，从一座社区花园的十年争议出发，聊聊纽约政治中那些看不见的博弈。罗雨翔此前也做过两期纽约相关的节目《纽约的房价到底为什么这么高》和《纽约地铁为什么这么破》，两期播客都发布在我们的友台《选修课》上，也欢迎大家前去收听，并关注这档播客。如果你对这期节目内容感兴趣，欢迎购买罗雨翔的新书《创造大都会——纽约空间与制度观察》，国内各大平台均有销售，海外用户请使用此链接购买。 【支持我们】 如果喜欢这期节目并希望支持我们将节目继续做下去： 也欢迎加入我们的会员计划： https://theamericanroulette.com/paid-membership/ 会员可以收到每周2-5封newsletter，可以加入会员社群，参加会员活动，并享受更多福利。 合作投稿邮箱：american.roulette.pod@gmail.com 【时间轴】 03:45 马姆达尼当选与Eric Adams的"政治毒丸" 05:40 伊丽莎白街花园的前世今生 09:40 社区的阶层分化：SOHO富人区vs唐人街低收入社区 12:57 花园之争背后的市议会选战 16:01 公园异化法：为什么正式公园用地几乎无法改变 21:17 Adams给马姆达尼的台阶？ 23:41 社区规划与NIMBY现象 30:24 政府的复杂角色：豪华公寓与保障房的平衡术 35:04 Eric Adams的另一面：区划法改革与垃圾革命 42:31 纽约的小政府传统 51:14 Robert Moses vs Jane Jacobs 54:25 为Robert Moses翻案？丰裕议程与当代回响 【我们是谁】 美轮美换是一档深入探讨当今美国政治的中文播客。 我们的主播和嘉宾： 小华：媒体人 罗雨翔：美国注册城市规划师，哈佛大学与伦敦政治经济学院建筑与经济双硕士。现居纽约，参与以及主持北美20余地区的地产开发、区域经济政策与公共领域投资项目。 【 What We Talked About】 How can a tiny garden—barely a third of a city block—spark political battles in New York, make headlines in the New York Times, and rally celebrities like Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro to its defense? In November 2025, just days after Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral race but before he could take office, outgoing Mayor Eric Adams signed an executive order permanently designating Elizabeth Street Garden as parkland—a move widely seen as a "political poison pill." The fate of this garden reflects a core tension in urban governance, not just in New York but across America: Should we build more housing, or protect existing communities? And who gets to decide the future of a neighborhood? In this episode, we're joined by Yuxiang Luo, an urban planner based in New York, to explore ten years of controversy surrounding a single community garden—and the invisible power struggles that shape New York City politics. Yuxiang has previously appeared on two episodes about New York: "Why Is Housing in New York So Expensive?" and "Why Is the New York Subway So Run-Down?", both available on our sister podcast Mo Electives (选修课). We encourage you to check them out and follow that show. If you're interested in this episode's topics, consider picking up Yuxiang's new book, Creating the Metropolis: Observations on Space and Institutions in New York, available on major platforms in China. Overseas readers can purchase it here. 【Support Us】 If you like our show and want to support us, please consider the following: Join our membership program: https://theamericanroulette.com/paid-membership/ Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/americanroulette Business Inquiries and fan mail: american.roulette.pod@gmail.com 【Timeline】 03:45 Mamdani's Election and Eric Adams' "Political Poison Pill" 05:40 The History of Elizabeth Street Garden 09:40 Class Divide: Wealthy SoHo vs. Low-Income Chinatown 12:57 The City Council Race Behind the Garden Battle 16:01 Parkland Alienation Law: Why Official Parkland Is Nearly Untouchable 21:17 An Off-Ramp for Mamdani? 23:41 Community Planning and NIMBYism 30:24 The Government's Balancing Act: Luxury Condos vs. Affordable Housing 35:04 The Other Side of Eric Adams: Zoning Reform and the Trash Revolution 42:31 New York's Small-Government Tradition 51:14 Robert Moses vs. Jane Jacobs 54:25 Rehabilitating Robert Moses? The Abundance Agenda and Its Echoes Today 【Who We Are】 The American Roulette is a podcast dedicated to helping the Chinese-speaking community understand fast-changing U.S. politics. Our Hosts and Guests: 小华 (Xiao Hua): Journalist, political observer Luo Yuxiang: U.S. Registered Urban Planner, holding dual master's degrees in Architecture and Economics from Harvard University and the London School of Economics. Currently residing in New York, he has participated in and led over 20 real estate development, regional economic policy, and public domain investment projects across North America.

Christmas in Room Number Four: https://chinacall.substack.com/p/christmas-in-room-number-four-the Just as we did on Thanksgiving a few weeks ago, today I want to read a special story from Richard Wurmband’s book In God's Underground (https://richardwurmbrandfoundation.com/pdfs/IGU-english.pdf). Welcome to China Compass on the Fight Laugh Feast Network (and the Christian Podcast Community)! I'm your China travel guide, Missionary Ben. Follow me on Twitter/X (@chinaadventures) where I present a new Chinese city or county to pray for every single day. Please send any questions or comments to a new, secure email: chinacompass@privacyport.com. Everything else can be found at PrayGiveGo.us! One last thing: I’m now set up on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/c/chinacompass), which now only allows for donations, but also lets me sort podcast episodes into various collections, making it easier to go back and find all the episodes on a certain topic or region, like Tibet, North Korea, or Hong Kong. Now Available: The Millionaire Missionary (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G94FKJJW/) For those who aren’t familiar with Richard Wurmband, here's a brief intro: Lutheran minister in Romania. 14 years in prison, including 3 in solitary confinement. After “escaping” abroad, published ”Tortured for Christ" in the 60s and testified to Congress. Founded Voice of the Martyrs with his son, but Michael Wurmbrand doesn’t trust VOM today. Michael Wurmbrand’s VOM letter: https://www.billionbibles.com/michael-wurmbrand-vom.html Free books (PDF) by Richard Wurmbrand: https://richardwurmbrandfoundation.com/ Follow China Compass Thank you for listening! Subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! Follow me on X (@chinaadventures) or email chinacompass@privacyport.com with any questions or comments. There’s also a Paypal link at PrayforChina.us if you’d like to support our China ministry. For everything else, visit PrayGiveGo.us. Hebrews 13:3: Remember those who are in prison, “as bound with them”! Feliz Navidad

China has voiced strong opposition to a U.S. plan to impose tariffs on the Chinese semiconductor industry starting in 2027, warning that the move would disrupt global supply chains and hurt all sides.

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Soybeans led a holiday rally on Chinese buying, short covering, and Argentina dryness. Corn closed above 450, wheat recovered, cattle mixed, hogs pressured.

Op 26 december 1991 schreef de toenmalige correspondent van de New York Times in Moskou, Serge Schmemann, een aangrijpend stuk over het einde van de Sovjetunie. Hij koos de vorm van een necrologie. Wat een vondst. ‘De Sovjet-staat’, zo luidde de eerste zin, ‘gedurende zijn korte maar tumultueuze geschiedenis gekenmerkt door grote verworvenheden en vreselijk lijden, is vandaag, na een lang en pijnlijk verval, gestorven. Hij was 74 jaar oud.’ Hopelijk is het allemaal minder dramatisch, maar in een groot deel van Europa heerst een vergelijkbaar sentiment over onze tijd: het einde van de schijnbaar in gietijzer gegoten alliantie met de Verenigde Staten. Al het gepraat over de dreiging van oorlog op het Europese continent, het aanleggen van noodpakketten, bezorgde ministers van Defensie en het groeiende besef dat de grote, strategische paraplu waaronder we sinds de Eerste Wereldoorlog konden schuilen wordt opgeklapt, markeert het afscheid van een tijdperk. Hoewel gemijmer zinloos is, moeten we ons wel afvragen of Amerika beseft wat het verliest, niet alleen historisch en cultureel, maar puur strategisch. Het land wilde niet meedoen aan de Eerste Wereldoorlog tot 1917, toen Duitse onderzeeërs het passagiersschip Lusitania tot zinken brachten. De Amerikanen dachten dat de Britten garant stonden voor de verdediging van de Atlantische Oceaan, maar toen de Lusitania zonk beseften ze dat de oorlog in Europa tot aan hun oostkust kon komen. In de Tweede Wereldoorlog deed zich iets vergelijkbaars voor. Onder druk van de isolationistische en pro-Duitse ‘America First’ beweging eind jaren ’30, kreeg president Roosevelt het Congres niet mee om te luisteren naar de smeekbedes van Winston Churchill om Groot-Brittannië te steunen. Tot 7 december 1941, toen Japan met de aanval op Pearl Harbor de VS de oorlog in sleurde. Ook de Pacific bood, net als de Atlantische Oceaan, geen garantie voor veiligheid. In de fragiele situatie in Oekraïne en de waarschuwingen over gevaar voor de rest van Europa zou Donald Trump de historische parallel moeten zien. Als Europa valt, is er alleen nog een oceaan, en die doorkruist Rusland permanent. De explosieve ontwikkeling van de Chinese krijgsmacht, met vliegdekschepen, jachtvliegtuigen en onderzeeërs, bedreigt de Amerikaanse westkust. Dat houden zelfs nieuwe Amerikaanse schepen van de Trump-klasse niet tegen. De uitdaging voor diplomaten zit ‘m niet in het bedelen of Trump alsjeblieft met ons mee blijft doen, en de beschermende paraplu niet helemaal opklapt, maar in het laten zien dat Europa – hoezeer Trump ook op ons neerkijkt – onmisbaar is voor de Amerikaanse veiligheid. De lessen van twee wereldoorlogen zijn overtuigend: Amerika heeft een primair belang: niet ons, of Oekraïne, maar zichzelf.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on the teaser! We begin in a chaotic pre-Christmas Eve update filled with last-minute shopping woes, mediocre Chinese food reviews, and reflections on recent controversial episodes. Dave teases the full Patreon show featuring the return of the legendary Downtown Ray Brown (Stephen Ray Brown) and a reluctant appearance by Dave's dad, Alan Manheim. The trio discusses everything from name pronunciations and stage names to the Nick Reiner aftermath, Hamilton Morris drama, and Ray's Bushwick Book Club adventures.The episode wraps with holiday cheer: Dave and Ray perform classic Christmas carols like "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" and "Silver Bells," plusRay does GSB!Dave reminds listeners about the weekly Dopey recovery Zoom, monthly Patreon Zoom, free Dopey Nation meetings, and encourages joining Patreon for bonus content, including upcoming Christmas songs.ALL THAT AND MORE ON A BRAND NEW TEASER OF THAT GOOD OLD DOPEY SHOW!Length: ~24 minutes Vibe: Holiday chaos, recovery talk, family banter, live music, and Dopey charm.  This episode perfectly blends Dopey's signature mix of dumb shit, deep recovery insight, family dynamics, and unexpected musical moments – a great holiday treat for Patreon supporters! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

PREVIEW STATE DEPARTMENT CHALLENGES WITH PANAMA AND CCP INTERFERENCE Colleague Mary Kissel. Mary Kissel evaluates the State Department under Secretary Rubio, noting fewer negative leaks but significant challenges regarding Panama. She details how the CCP disrupts agreements by constantly renegotiating, suggesting that high-level US intervention is now required to counter Chinese influence and finalize deals in the region. 1910 CANAL ZONE

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For years, gold was the asset nobody wanted to talk about. It sat there quietly while stocks and real estate continued to rip. Gold was for pessimists. For doomsayers and perma-bears.And then suddenly… gold didn't just wake up. It launched. As of mid-December 2025, spot gold is trading around $4,300–$4,400 an ounce, depending on the market, marking a gain of roughly 60% over the past year and pushing decisively into record territory. The obvious question is: why now? The short answer is that gold isn't reacting to one thing. It's responding to a stacking of pressures that have been quietly building for years and are now impossible to ignore.Start with central banks. For the better part of the last decade, central banks were net sellers or indifferent holders of gold. That changed dramatically after 2022. According to the World Gold Council, central banks have been buying gold at more than double the pace of the pre-COVID years, and 2025 continues that trend, with hundreds of tonnes added to reserves year-to-date. These aren't hedge funds chasing momentum. These are monetary authorities making deliberate, strategic decisions about what they trust to hold value. Why would central banks suddenly want more gold? Because geopolitics has re-entered the chat. We now live in a world where reserves can be frozen, payment systems can be weaponized, and “risk-free” assets depend heavily on political alignment. The World Bank has been explicit that rising geopolitical tensions and global uncertainty are key drivers of gold's surge this year. When trust in the global order erodes, gold benefits. At the same time, the U.S. dollar devaluation thesis is no longer fringe thinking. It is reality.Gold is priced in dollars, and when real yields fall and the dollar weakens, gold historically performs well. That dynamic is playing out again. Reuters has repeatedly pointed to a softer dollar and declining Treasury yields as near-term tailwinds for gold's rally . Bank of America's research echoes this relationship, emphasizing gold's inverse correlation to the dollar and the growing desire among nations to diversify away from dollar-centric reserves . In other words, gold isn't just going up because people are scared. It's going up because confidence in fiat discipline is eroding, slowly but persistently. So…Is gold still a buy or did we miss it? The truth is, both answers can be correct. Yes, gold is expensive relative to where it was a year ago. You don't go up 60% without pulling future returns forward. But what makes this cycle different is that many of the buyers driving demand are price-insensitive. Central banks don't care if gold is up 20% or down 10% in a quarter. They care about long-term reserve integrity. That's why major institutions aren't dismissing the move as a blow-off. Goldman Sachs has cited sustained central-bank demand and the potential for further ETF inflows as supportive of higher prices. J.P. Morgan continues to frame gold as a beneficiary of geopolitical instability and monetary uncertainty, and Bank of America is projecting prices as high as $5,000 an ounce into 2026. Of course, nothing goes up in a straight line. A shift toward tighter monetary policy or a sudden easing of global tensions could cool enthusiasm. Understand though, that gold's breakout isn't just about gold. There is a larger message that should be taken away from all of this. Hard money has come back into favor. Gold is the original hard asset. It's scarce, politically neutral, and has thousands of years of monetary credibility. But it's also heavy, difficult to move, and awkward in a digital world. Bitcoin exists on the same philosophical axis. Both gold and Bitcoin are reactions to the same problem: expanding debt, monetary dilution, and declining confidence in centralized control. Gold is the conservative expression of that view. Bitcoin is the aggressive one. Today, Bitcoin trades around $86,000, still volatile, still controversial, still misunderstood. But if gold's surge is signaling a regime shift toward hard assets, then Bitcoin may simply be earlier in that adoption curve. In other words, gold may be leading the parade. And if history is any guide, when institutions start moving into the oldest form of sound money, they eventually begin exploring the newest. That's the signal worth paying attention to. So this week, I interview Dana Samuelson, an old friend of the show and an expert in everything gold and hard money. Transcript Disclaimer: This transcript was generated by AI and may not be 100% accurate. If you notice any errors or corrections, please email us at phil@wealthformula.com.  Gold isn’t reacting to one thing, it’s actually responding to a stacking, uh, pressures, uh, that have been quietly building for years and, and really right now are impossible to ignore. Welcome, everybody. This is Buck Joffrey with the Wealth Formula Podcast coming to you. From Montecito, California and today. Uh, before we begin, just a quick reminder. Uh, there is a, uh, website associated with this podcast called wealth formula.com. And, uh, that’s where you go to get deeply more deeply integrated into this community, including our accredited investor club, AKA investor club for you to join. And, uh, once you get onboarded, all you do is you, you have an opportunity to see private deal flow, uh, that, uh, is not available to the general public. If you are an accredited investor, meaning that you have, uh, make $200,000 per year or $300,000 per year, uh, for the last two years with the reasonable expectation of continuing to do so, or you have a million dollars outside of your personal residence, a net worth, then you are an accredited investor and. All you need to do is sign up and join the club. Just go to wealth formula.com and sign up and get onboarded. Now, let’s talk a little bit about something that has been extraordinary this year. It’s gold. You know, for years, gold was the asset that nobody wanted to talk about. I mean, it sat there quietly. Well, stocks and real estate continue to rip. Um. Gold really is really, you know, was for the pessimists. For the doomsayers and the perma bears. I mean, I, I gotta tell you, I kind of am was one of those people, right? And then suddenly gold didn’t just wake up. It, it totally launched, exploded in his mid-December 2025. Spot Gold is trading around, I know, 4300, 4400 an ounce, depending on the market, gaining roughly 60% over the past year. Pushing decisively into record territory. Now the obvious question is why now? Well, the short answer is that gold isn’t reacting to one thing. It’s actually responding to a stacking, uh, pressures, uh, that have been quietly building for years and, and really right now are impossible to ignore. And this is an interesting shift because. The thing is that in the old days, and I’m even talking about 15, 20 years ago, uh, you would look at gold as something that didn’t really go up when the stock market was doing well, right? It was kind of a reaction. It was a fear-based thing. It still is sort of a fear-based thing, but now it’s not just fear of, you know, whether the stock market’s gonna crash. It’s fear of geopolitical concerns. That’s where the central banks come in, right? So for the better part of the last decade, central banks were net sellers. Or really indifferent of holders of, of gold, and that changed dramatically after 2022. So according to World Gold Council, central banks have been buying gold at more than double the pace of the pre COVID years. And 2025 continued that trend with hundreds of tons, uh, added to reserves year to date Now. These are central banks. They’re not hedge funds chasing momentum, right? They’re monetary authorities and they’re making deliberate strategic decisions about what they trust to hold value. And why would central banks suddenly want more gold? Well, because again, geopolitics has reentered that chat. We live in a world now where reserves can be frozen, right? Payment systems can be weaponized. Risk-free assets depend heavily on political alignment. Now of course, I’m talking about the United States when I’m mentioning all those things, right? Uh, how we can kind of just freeze assets of Russia and that kind of thing. I’m not, uh, pro-Russia, I’m just pointing out the fact that. Countries don’t like it when you freeze their assets. Right? The World Bank, uh, has been explicit that rising geopolitical tensions and global uncertainty are the key drivers of gold surges this year. And when trust in the global Ory roads, of course that is now when gold benefits and at the same time, the US dollar devaluation thesis is no longer just kind of fringe thinking. It’s reality. No one, no one even bothers to pretend that that’s not happening. So gold is, uh, of course, priced in dollars and when real yields fall, uh, and the dollar weakens gold historically performs well so that that dynamic is playing out again as well. In fact, Reuters has repeatedly pointed to a softer dollar and declining treasury yields as near term tailwinds for Gold’s Rally Bank of America. Uh, their research shows, uh, this relationship emphasizing gold’s inverse correlation to the dollar and the growing desire among nations to diversify away from the dollar centric reserves. In other words, gold isn’t just going up because people are scared. It’s going up because confidence in the fiat discipline is eroding altogether slowly. Persistently. So the question is, is gold still a buyer? Did we miss it? I mean, I just mentioned that it just went up by like 60%, right? So that’s a tricky question. It really is. I could certainly see some volatility there. But here’s the thing. I mentioned that central banks were big buyer, right? Central banks don’t care if gold is up 20% or down 10% in a quarter. They care about long-term reserve integrity. So they’re a price insensitive buyer. Um, and that’s why major, major institutions aren’t dismissing the move, as you know, just a big blow off. Uh, Goldman Sachs cited sustain central bank demand, and the potential for further ETF inflows is supportive of higher prices. Banks, uh, like JP Morgan and um, and, and Bank of America. I mean, they’re continuously talking about how gold is a beneficiary of this geopolitical instability. Bank of America is projecting prices high as $5,000 a ounce in 2026. So that’s still a big move, right? Of course, nothing goes up in a straight line. So shift toward tighter monetary policy or sudden easing of global tensions. Well, I, I could, they could cool enthusiasm, right? The less fear in the world. Well, that isn’t. That’s not good for gold. I understand though that gold’s breakout isn’t just about gold. There’s a larger message that should be taken away from all of this, and that is that hard money, real assets have come back into favoring, and gold is the original hard asset. It’s scarce, it’s politically neutral, tens of thousands of years of monetary credibility, but it’s also heavy, difficult to move and awkward in a digital world. Now, of course you know where I’m going with that. I don’t wanna make every gold conversation conversation about Bitcoin, but just as a reminder, Bitcoin exists on that same philosophical access, right? Both gold and Bitcoin are reactions to the same problem. Expanding debt, monetary dilution, declining confidence and centralized control. Gold is the conservative, you know, version of that, the expression of that Bitcoin is the crazy youngster, the aggressive one. They’re, they’re following the same rails. And today Bitcoin trades around $86,000. It’s still volatile, still controversial, still misunderstood, and really, listen, the market cap is 2 trillion bucks. Um, you know, no asset that has ever reached $2 trillion. Market cap has ever gotten to zero. But on the other hand, there’s it, it’s pretty small, and you could still move those markets really quickly, and that’s why you’ve got volatility. But if gold surge is signaling a, a, a shift towards hard assets, it’s really hard to not see that. Uh, Bitcoin may simply be, uh, you know, early in that adoption curve. In other words, gold may be leading the parade. And if history is any guide, uh, when institutions start moving into that, you know, oldest form of sound money, they eventually begin exploring the newest. And that’s, that’s a signal. Worth paying attention to. Anyway, this week what we’re gonna really focus on though is gold and hard money. We’ll talk a little bit about Bitcoin as well. My guest is Dana Samuelson, who is. An old friend of the show, and we will have that conversation right after these messages. Wealth Formula banking is an ingenious concept powered by whole life insurance, but instead of acting just as a safety net, the strategy supercharges your investments. First, you create a personal financial reservoir that grows at a compounding interest rate much higher than any bank savings account. As your money accumulates, you borrow from your own. Bank to invest in other cash flowing investments. Here’s the key. Even though you’ve borrowed money at a simple interest rate, your insurance company keeps paying. You compound interest on that money even though you’ve borrowed it at result, you make money in two places at the same time. That’s why your investments get supercharged. This isn’t a new technique, it’s a refined strategy used by some of the wealthiest families in history, and it uses century old rock solid insurance companies as its back. Turbo charge your investments. Visit wealth formula banking.com. Again, that’s wealth formula banking.com. Welcome back to the show everyone. Today my guest on Wealth Formula podcast ad Samuelson. He is been on the show before. He’s friend of the show. He is a professional. How do we see this numismatist since, uh, 1980. Working with some of the most influential, precious metals trading companies in the country. Before founding his own American Gold Exchange Incorporated in 1998. Uh, for nearly a decade, he was a personal protege of James U. Blanchard ii, one of the true giants of the industry, and the individual most responsible for re legalizing the private ownership of gold in the us. American Gold Exchange Inc. Is a national mail order, precious metals and rare coin dealership that makes competitive buy and sell markets in mainstream, modern, gold, silver, platinum, palladium, bullion coins and bars and classic pre 1933 US Gold and silver coins and World War ii European Gold coins. I don’t know if I left anything out, but welcome Dana. How are you doing? I’m doing great, buck. Thanks for having me back. I really appreciate it. Well, it was funny, we had a little conversation, uh, just before we started and I said, well, gosh, you know, uh, we’ve had you on the show before, maybe once, maybe twice. And, you know, and, and you, um, I think Apley described the gold market as watching paint dry. And I, I think that’s, I think that’s pretty adequate. Um, I mean, for, I mean, the last decade or so before this all happened. So, so let’s start talking about it. So, gold gold’s moved into price territory that, you know, very few people would’ve predicted even a couple years ago. So what, from your perspective, having lived lived through multiple gold cycles, what feels fundamentally different about this move? Uh, this market is a globally driven market and it’s focused on physical. There’s been a move into gold this year, and silver now platinum two. To a degree palladium, uh, in a physical level that we haven’t seen since the late seventies when we had the last really, you know, red hot market driven by fears over debt inflation. Geopolitics. Uh, you’ve got the bricks, nations that are trying to divorce themselves of the dollar, but they really can’t do it easily because there’s not a good viable alternative except for gold. And that’s been one of the leading drivers of this gold price surge that has really, you know, almost doubled in price since, uh, two years ago. A lot of it is, you know, underpinned by Central Bank Gold buying, you know, between 1950 and 2010, after the dollar became the world’s reserve currency backed by gold. And even after we un pegged the dollar to gold in the 1970s, 1971, central bankers had had gold on their, physically in their vaults from pre-World War ii when gold was money, uh, they shed that. From the 1950 all the way to 2010, they became net buyers after the great financial crisis due to the global debt explosion and primarily quantitative easing printing money outta thin air. But they were buy, they were modest buyers, you know, 500 tons a year until Russia invaded the Ukraine in 2022. And we sanctioned Russia and weaponized the dollar. The last four years, they bought, you know, almost a thousand tons of gold year or double. That really became material last year in price as the cumulative effects of their continually buying about a fifth of what the mines make every year started to really impact supplies and price movement. And now we’ve got President Trump this year, you know, throwing a monkey wrench into the World Trade order with his tariffs. And I think that that’s created a lot of uncertainty, some fear. And of course the debt just continues to go higher and higher. And now interest payments on our debt are over a trillion dollars for the first time ever. So debt servicing is starting to become problematic. The cumulative effects of all this have caused the, the people around the world, including central governments to buy gold at record rates. Um, but it’s not the phenomenon that’s happening in the United States. ’cause we don’t have a gold culture in our country, like almost every other country does. It’s interesting. Um, so what, you know, you’ve been talking about really is central banks around the world have it really been accumulating gold at levels we haven’t really seen in modern times. Right. And, and, uh, why do you think the US Central Bank. It doesn’t do the same because is it an admission of the debasement of the dollar? Because really the gold, gold is the anti dollar. I’ve always viewed it as the anti dollar maybe. Maybe that’s not the, you know, you may not agree with that a hundred percent, but I’ve always viewed it that way, and so why wouldn’t the US hedge and accumulate more? Well, we’re the world’s reserve currency. That Right. That’s, that’s created a paper culture in our, in our world. It’s now three generations old, right? Since 1945, when the dollar became the world’s reserve currency and we, the world went to a paper money standard instead of a gold money standard, which was the world’s standard from ancient times all the way till the 1930s. You know, the, our monetary system when the country was founded in 1793 was based on gold and silver coins. A copper penny was the size of a half dollar because that’s what one penny’s worth of copper was worth in 1793. Right. Um, you know, after World War ii, we had a couple things that the rest of the world didn’t have. We had a manufacturing, uh, industries that were, uh, unaffected by the, physically by the war. And we had, you know, the ability for markets to work properly, which should allow the dollar to become the world’s reserve currency. Backed by, you know, 8,200 some odd tons of gold, the biggest pile of gold that any country had. Actually, at that time it was more like 20,000 tons of gold. Uh, but by the time we got to the seventies and we un pegged from gold, we were down to about 8,000 tons. That’s still more than anybody else is supposed to have. I do think China could have more gold than that. Now they’re just not telling us they do. You know, officially they’ve got about 2,400 tons of gold, uh, and the second and third are, you know, 3000 tons of gold. So we, we still have a lot of gold. And there’s talk about auditing Fort Knox and monetizing it, but it only gets us about a trillion dollars. It’s not enough to really, you affect the 38 trillion, maybe pay the debt off for a year, or, you know, for six months. Six months, yeah. Something like that. Our, our debt is starting to matter too. You know, it’s doubled twice in the last 20 years. It gonna double again in the next 10 to 70 trillion, 78 trillion. People hear about the, the whole, uh, the bricks phenomena, right? And part of, part of what you were just discussing in the, uh, accumulation of gold. Explain that, explain what’s going on over there for people who aren’t paying attention, and you know how that is, how that is playing into all of this. Well, when we sanctioned Russia after they invaded the Ukraine. And seized their assets and threw them off of the Swift International Bank Transfer Payment System. We forced countries that were concerned that if they ran politically afoul of us, we could do the same to them. They forced them into thinking, oh, how do we get some independence from that vulnerability? Potential vulnerability? It’s not easy to replace the dollar. What they’ve, what they’ve been doing is replacing the Swift Bank transfer payment system with a payment transfer system of their own right so they can move money amongst themselves outside of the SWIFT system, number one. And since there isn’t a good viable alternative to the dollar, really the only other asset that makes sense is gold. Gold is a neutral asset. It’s not like you need it for oil or grain or steel. Nobody really needs gold, right? But it’s universally trusted. It’s immediately liquid, and it’s got a couple other things going for it that are unique. Number one, it has no counterparty risk. It’s one of the only assets. It isn’t simultaneously someone else’s liability. And number two, uh, gold in a vault can’t be seized or sanctioned. Right, so they’ve been going to gold, like they’ve been going to gold for, for centuries. It’s just, it hasn’t been that way since after World War ii. It’s a, it’s kinda like a back to the past kind of a situation. It’s sort of back to the future. It’s back to the past. That’s the allure for gold and the reason why they’re accumulating. In fact, they just launched their own currency unit called the unit. 40% backed by gold. The bricks nations have now it’s in its infancy and it’ll take a while for it to really, you know, work. But they’ve been building the components and the infrastructure to get to this point, creating the transfer of payment systems and all the components to go along with that so that they could announce something that they could use as a, as a settlement vehicle for trade, which is really what this is all about. And they’re backing at 40% by gold. Which is material and it’ll become bigger as time passes. Let’s, let’s try talk a little bit about that price movement. Huge. Um, is 60% in the last couple years, is that about right? This year alone, gold’s up 67% on a 12 month rolling basis, 67%. I mean, those are like bitcoin num, you know, type movements in the past. Right. They’re kind of crazy. So a lot of people are looking at those prices today and they’re thinking, well, I’m late to the party. Uh, are they late to the party? How do you, uh, what, what do you think’s going on there? I think the party’s about halfway through. We haven’t got to the late innings yet. I, I really do think this, and this is why this is the fourth major bull run in gold we’ve seen since we went off the gold standard in 1971. We had a a 20 to one run for gold in the seventies that was built on two oil shocks. 18% inflation and a crisis of confidence in the US then for the next 30 years. You know, 25 years a good part of my career. You know, watching gold was like watching paint dry. It traded routinely between three and $500 an ounce until we got into war, uh, following the nine 11 attacks, Iraq and I, Afghanistan, and we went into deficit spending. Then we had a second financial crisis when the great financial crisis hit another bull bull market in gold. Then we had COVID economic closures, another bull market in gold. Now we’ve got a fourth, but it’s lacking what the first three had, which was fear in the US over either economics or geopolitical events. So this gold price has essentially doubled since March or April of 2024. With no fear and a lot of complacency in the US markets. So my, my thinking is what happens if the economy slows down and, you know, the Fed’s gonna lower rates anyway. We know that’s coming with a new Fed chairman in the next five months, six months, number one, that’s good for gold. What happens if we go into a real economic slowdown and the Fed really has to drop rates, or God forbid, go to QE again, right? Or inflation rears its ugly head because the fed’s too accommodative in it. Situation where, you know, supplies are kind of tight still because of the monkey wrench, president Trump has thrown into the World Trade Order. You know, if we get fear in the US that’s when gold could go from 4,000 to, you know, 8,000. And I’m not saying that’s gonna happen, but I do think the trends have driven gold higher are not gonna change anytime soon. One of the things that you’re mentioning is those trends and like even. You know, in the last 15 years ago when I’ve been sort of involved in the investor world, the, the things that we talk about with trends with with gold have changed. I mean, usually you don’t see AI stocks going up with gold, right? Like, I mean, not that AI was around, but the point is tech stocks, that kind of thing. How is that thesis fundamentally changed? Um, I’m not quite sure I understand your question. Well, what I mean is like if gold was, gold used to be, I think it’s, you know, something again that people would buy when they were afraid of, of what’s going on in the equity markets. Right. Uh, that’s clearly not the case now. No, no, not at all. Right. Talk about that change. When did that change happen? How did it happen? This is a globally driven market. It’s not a US-centric market. This is fear around the world. You know, central banks started to underpin this market in 2022 when they stepped up their buying and doubled it. But this year, because of the uncertainty, uh, and some of the fear that President Trump’s tariffs and the way they’ve been deployed, kind of knee jerky, um, and inconsistently. Certainly not diplomatically, right? You know, it’s caused a lot of concern around the world. And for example, in April when President Trump announced the reciprocal tariffs on April 2nd, what happened? The bond market went into the complete dislocation, yields spiked from 4% to 4.5% in a week. The bond values tumble because investors started pulling money out of the, and taking it back home. Money that’d come in from Europe and Asia started to go back. So what did President Trump do? He pulled back the reciprocal tariffs on every country, but China and China said, well, we’re not gonna drop tariffs on you. And he said, well, we’ll ramp ’em up on you. So we went toe to toe with him. Until a week later, we were at 145% tariffs on China, and they were 125% on us. Well, if you’re a Chinese investor and you have real estate or stocks to invest in, and both of which have done badly since COVID or gold, what are you gonna do when your best customer suddenly says, Hey, we really don’t want your products, because that’s what 145% tariffs say to the Chinese. We don’t want your products. You can’t sell ’em here. You gotta go sell ’em somewhere else, but we’re their best customer. So they bought gold. They bought gold handover fist, and they drove the gold price up $500 by themselves during that month. That’s what I mean by fear outside of the us. Yeah. We don’t get it inside. Well, and and that’s fear outside of the markets too, right? I think that’s, that’s the fundamental shift I was trying to get at is true. It used to be that gold was, uh, gold would react on fear of the markets, but now there’s another level of fear, which is geopolitical. And it doesn’t seem like there’s any time soon that that’s gonna end. No, no. I, I, I’ve called it like a run on the bank only. It’s not a run on the bank of like George Bailey’s run on the bank and it’s a wonderful life. This is a run on the gold market, the physical gold and silver and platinum markets. That’s really what this is, and it’s a global rush to buy. And it’s not just central banks, it’s the public as well. Due to uncertainty, part of it’s fear of missing out now that we’ve had a big run in prices too. That’s FOMO in there too. That’s what I’m trying to, that’s part of what I was wondering too though, is like, you know, again, there’s people out there now who, um, are, are looking at this and they might even be listening to us going, gosh, yeah, it really makes sense and I happen to have no gold. What do I do? You know, what do I do now? Do I buy now? And, and I’ll, you know, and, and the next thing you know. I find out this was a frothy market and, and I’m down 20% for the next three years. I mean, that kind of thing. So I, I think it’s a, it is a tricky time, but, so that sort of, I guess, brings up when you think of gold, um, in a portfolio. I mean, you say, you’ve said in the past, it’s not about getting rich. Well, some people really did get rich this time. Uh, you said it’s about preserving wealth, right? So how should investors think about Gold’s role alongside stocks, real estate, and other assets right now? Well, even I think JP Morgan Chase has said this year, you know, instead of a 60 40 portfolio, you should have a 60 20 20 portfolio with 20% bonds and 20% precious metals. Gold in particular, because of what’s been happening. And now we don’t have a gold culture in our country, like most every other country does. So most Americans don’t get it. And that’s part of. We’ve ingrained because the dollar is the world’s reserve currency and it insulates us from currency shocks in commodity pricing primarily. Uh, without that insulation, you know, they might think things a little bit differently, but you know, any good financial planner will say you should have a little bit of precious metals as part of your portfolio, uh, as a hedge against financial uncertainty. And it certainly worked perfectly well during the great financial crisis. And when COVID hit because. Gold tends to counter cyclically, perform in price against stocks and bonds, and it’s always liquid. Now, you’re a real estate investor, you understand real estate. What couldn’t you get in 2009 alone? Right? Bankers wouldn’t give anybody money, right? But if you had gold, you could get liquidity, right? And gold, you know, almost doubled between 2008 and 2011 at the same time when most assets were dropping 50%. That’s an insurance policy for the rest of your money. That’s why I said, look, it’s a way to preserve wealth and have a hedge against financial uncertainty. But in the market that we’re in now, you know, having more than just the, the minimum, which is five to 10% of assets as a, you know, potentially an investment instead of just an insurance policy. That makes sense. But you’re right, you could buy and you could, you know, tie up money that won’t produce anything for a couple years, maybe longer. You also have an insurance policy in case the wheels do come off like they did during the great financial crisis or during COVID. Yeah. Yeah. I was listening to, uh, another podcast. I listened to the, these, uh, guys, the All In podcast, and, uh, Tucker Carlson was on there, and apparently he’s a, you know, huge, uh, physical gold guy. And, and he said, and I, I think he was serious. He said he buries it in his backyard and then he spreads a bunch of, um. Uh, a bunch of, you know, silver beads, uh, out there too, like, just in case no one can like, use a medical metal detector and find it is gold. Uh, let’s talk about that nuance of, of physical gold versus, you know, buying ETFs and all that stuff. What’s your take? I mean, what, what do you tell people when they say, well, gosh, you know, uh, it might be hard for me to store that gold and, and why shouldn’t I just get an ETF and, and talk a little bit about that? Well, I trade ETFs in my IRA account. When I think the, when I think I can harness price movement, that’s what I use ETFs for. You know, they’re a paper representation of gold, uh, that you can trade at the click of a button, physical gold. Is valuable. It’s, you have to find a place to store it. It’s pretty inert, so you can, you can bury it in your backyard, keep the elements out of it, but then there’s some risk there because it could be found, it could be stolen, so you do have to store it somewhere. You can put it in a bank safe deposit box, but I don’t really recommend that because what happens if there’s a banking holiday and you can’t get to it? So having a home safe or maybe, you know, maybe bearing it in the backyard. Is an option if that’s what you wanna do. Or there are independent professionally run storage facilities. There’s a few of ’em around the country that are run by precious metals dealers that are, you know, big entities. Uh uh. So I think they’re trustworthy and they certainly have the ability to service and aren’t properly insured. So that if something happens, you know your value is protected. And that’s primarily what you pay for as a storage fee is a percentage of value. Not so much number ounces that you have there, but the value percentage, because it is an insurance, uh, related value, right? The value goes up, they’ve gotta get more insurance so they get a higher storage fee for that same amount of metal if the value increases, which is unlike other assets. So I do have a couple of those I recommend that are run by professional. Companies that have been in business for years that we know would trust and have performed perfectly. If you wanna store, um, physical metal now gold is compact. You know, a hundred ounces is smaller than a paperback novel and it’s $450,000 worth of value today. You could, I could literally have one bar in each one of my coat pockets and be walking around with almost a million bucks in my pockets, and no one would know. Silver. You know, silver creates a bigger problem because it takes 70 ounces of silver to equal an ounce of gold. So there’s a lot more volume involved and a lot more weight, which is why sometimes these facilities make more sense if you wanna store something that’s more bulky like silver. But if you’re gonna store gold somewhere, that’s not easy to find. You wanna make sure somebody you trust behind you knows where it’s just in case something happens to you. Right? Yeah. Um. What, um, how difficult is it, uh, Dana, for someone to, I guess, say they wanna sell, say maybe they need to sell one of those bricks in your pocket there? Uh, and, and, um, is that a, um, a process that, I mean, it’s, you know, it’s not as easy as clicking a button at that point, right? But to make sure that you get the best possible price for your gold and all that, I mean, you’re not gonna go to a pawn shop and. Oh, that, so like, I, I’m just curious on the mechanics of that. ’cause I’ve, you know, I’ve, I’ve never sold, you know, physical gold for anything. So, so our, our company’s a physical dealer. We’re a hybrid between Amazon and a financial institution. And that, uh, we sell something online or over the telephone. The price is always changing on a minute by minute basis, but it’s like you’re buying shoes. It’s just, you know, you don’t quite know what the price is gonna be. So we physically, you know, figure out which product you should purchase, what’s best for you, and then we ship it to you if you want to sell it, it’s just the reverse of the transaction. You have to present it for delivery, which means you have to ship it back to, uh, your dealer, or, you know, physically deliver to them, and you get paid immediately upon delivery. So, um, you know, we, we do business like a financial institution. You can call us up, place a transaction over the phone. Uh, if it’s a smaller transaction, we’ll do that without deposit funds. If it’s a bigger transaction, we don’t know, you will want funds first, but once we lock in, that’s the price. Just like when you buy stock and then you pay the balance or, or we ship you the merchandise, whichever comes first. Um. You get it, inspect it, make sure you, you got what you’re supposed to get. In fact, it, you know, in the last two years with this gold price just climbing higher and higher, we’ve got a lot of clients that are complacent. They like the stock market that’s been hitting record highs, uh, and they’ve been shedding gold. We’ve actually bought more gold as an industry, not just our company, but as an industry in the last year than we’ve bought in a single year in 20 years. So it’s very easy to reverse the transaction. But what I would tell you. For your listeners is, and this is important, you should buy sovereign minted products, gold ounces, silver ounces, one ounce gold coins. They’re really just round bars made by the US Mint, the Royal Canadian Mint, the British Royal Mint. The Austrian Mint instead of refinery made. One ounce bars or 10 ounce bars or kilo bars of gold because we have a modest but growing problem with Chinese counterfeits. The Chinese can take tungsten and plate it with gold and pass it off as reel, and they can do that much better with refinery made bars that have plain design pictures stamped onto them. They can replicate those very well, but they cannot replicate the intricate pictures. The US Mint or the Canadian Mint, or the Austrian mint, British royal mint stamp onto that one ounce gold coin. We call it a coin. It’s just a round bar made by a mint that struck with dyes like a coin. And all of the mints around the world have introduced minute anti-counterfeiting design elements into the picture that they stamp on their coins to deter Chinese counterfeits. And it’s working. So the most important thing is, you know, do business with a reputable dealer that’s been around a long time, that has a good reputation, not a, not some new entity, right? You wanna find a, a trusted member of the community and develop a relationship that makes buying again or selling very easy. Once you have a relationship with a dealer, and we know the product you’ve purchased, we’ll take it back very easily. Uh, silver is, you know, people talk a lot about it in the context of, you know, the lump it with gold but has very different characteristics. Um, how do you think about silver today? I love silver today. Uh, it’s, it’s a metal at times as hard to love because every time it makes a big gain, it can give it up pretty easily. It’s more volatile than gold, but gold’s about 90% monetary metal in 10%. Commodity metal silver’s about 50 50, but what silver has going for it is, uh, a couple of unique characteristics that virtually no other metal comes, uh, as close to, which is conductivity of heat and electricity. Silver is amazing in that it’s the best at conducting both heat and electricity. I’ve got a one ounce silver coin on my desk here, and if you take this coin and hold it between your fingers and take an ice cube. You can literally cut that ice cube in half in about 6, 7, 8 seconds with a pure silver coin because the heat from your fingers gets transmitted to the coin and goes right through the ice cube. That’s just a simple example of how conductive silver is for temperature, and we have a structural supply deficit in the silver market that we’ve had for about five years now, where the industry. Is consuming more silver than comes out of the ground on an annual basis. So we’re eating into the above ground supply. Uh, so fundamentally that’s the supply and demand equation favor silver. Uh, plus because gold is moved up so much in price, silver is getting a rotation into it because it’s underperformed relative to gold until just recently where it’s played catch pretty sharply in just the last three or four months. If you measure. How many ounces of gold, uh, how many ounces of silver it takes to equal an ounce of gold, the gold to silver ratio back in April. That was a hundred to one, you know, which was an extreme. Today that ratio is a, is a little under 70 to one. It’s 67, 68 to one. So silver has played up in ketchup in price. Where is that historically? Uh, well. Normally it’s between about 40 to one and 80 to one with about 60 to one as the, as the pivot point where it’s in, they’re in equilibrium. But in the last four or five years with gold leading and silver lagging, we’ve routinely been in the 85 to 90 to one range. Uh, and we actually hit a hundred to one in April of this year, uh, which was the highest it’s been, um, except for when we had a kind of a knee jerk in the medals during COVID, which was an anomaly. Uh, didn’t last. So, but anyway. Silver is playing ketchup because it’s been undervalued relative to gold. Um, and we’ve seen, you know, people that wanna be in the metals, but think gold’s a little expensive. They’ve rotated out of gold, and we’ve seen some of that money move into silver and also into platinum. Now, platinum was under a thousand dollars this time of year ago, and it’s almost $1,900 announced today. So it’s almost platinum’s up, uh, almost a hundred percent now. This year where silver’s up 120% this year and a lot of this demand is driven globally. We’ve seen huge demand in silver in India this year because gold is so, has become so expensive, and that’s what I mean by a global run on the, on the bank. It’s not just China, Japan, it’s India too, and Europe as well. Physical buying and et f buying ETFs are available around the world in precious metals now that really haven’t been very impactful until this year. Um, but that’s what the world’s doing, you know? No discussion these days on gold is complete without at least mentioning Bitcoin. Uh, you know, and, and it’s, it’s interesting because, um, you know, even within the, uh, uh, gold world, I mean, there’s, there’s some prominent people who are really bought in to Bitcoin. Like I, Lawrence Lepert has been on the show multiple times now, and Larry’s all in. Um, just curious as a, you know, as a gold person, what do you see where, what do you see the role or do you not believe in this thing? Do you believe it is a, a parallel? Um, I, there’s so many things that you say about gold. That I’m like, yeah, you can say that about Bitcoin too and carry, you know, millions of dollars in your pocket. You can, you know, it’s, uh, there’s a very little amount of it. Um, obviously it’s new, right? Gold has been around for, since the beginning of time and, and now we’ve got 2009 for Bitcoin. What is your view? How are you seeing it? May, how are your colleagues seeing it in the gold space? Well, a couple different points to make here. Um, you know, when, when Bitcoin came out in 20 10, 20 11, you know, one of my friends in the, in the precious metals business told me I should buy it when it was 20 bucks and I didn’t get it. So I didn’t do it, and that was a big mistake on my part. But Bitcoin has one advantage that no other currency or gold has, which you can move serious money over borders easily. You’re right, you can carry it around in your pocket, in your wallet and, um, you know, you carry a lot of value around and transfer it at the, you know, click of a button. And no co counterparty risk, just like you said with gold, right? Yeah. Well, there’s some modest counterparty risk with, with bitcoin that you, you have counterparty risk with gold and theft as well. Um. Bitcoin is volatile. It’s, you know, it’s, it’s very volatile. It’s still the speculative investment. I mean, it was 124,000, you know, four months ago, and now it’s about 85,000, 90,000. So there’s volatility there that gold doesn’t have. But more importantly, what I’ve seen in my career is a generational divide. The older, older people, you know, 45 and older, like gold and silver. Younger people that grew up with phones in their hands like Bitcoin. The volatility in Bitcoin that we’ve seen in these two big selloff cycles in Bitcoin have not the first one, but the second one have helped to bring some of those younger people into the stability of gold, especially in the year when gold is doing pretty well. ’cause it then it kind of has a little bit of that Bitcoin allure, which is, you know, get rich quick. But, um. Bitcoin’s volatile, but it’s here to stay and it is now the most respected cryptocurrency. Like I almost bought Ethereum, you know, 10 years ago when one of my friends was explaining both to me and said that Ethereum basically had better fundamentals. But you know, it’s kind of inventing, it’s kinda like investing in a. What, uh, beta, beta max instead of VHS back in the day. Some of the older people remember that. You bet on the wrong horse, you know? Yeah, exactly. Well, you’ve, uh, you know, you built this, uh, firm on transparency, integrity, uh, in an industry that doesn’t always have the best reputation. Right? So for investors who decide that precious metals belong in their portfolio. Uh, how can they get a hold of you? Well, our website is, uh, A-M-E-R-G-O-L d.com. Uh, we don’t have, you know, 10,000 items on our website. We have a, we have a small listing of what available products are because we stick with mainstream items, products that are primarily easy to sell, uh, competitively priced, widely traded, and easily understood. Um, uh. Uh, email address is info I nfo@amggold.com. Uh, we have a toll, toll free number 806 1 3 9 3 2 3. Uh, we’re consultative in nature. We’ll, we’ll answer any questions. Happily, gladly, uh, no transactions too small or too large. What we really wanna do, uh, is help people because if we do that, we help ourselves. And when you treat people right, it, it comes back. And our industry does have a chair of bad actors. And, um, you, you wanna make sure that you do business with someone reputable that’s been in the industry a long time. And I understand some people may wanna do this locally where they can actually walk into a place of business. Do this instead of over the phone. So look for dealers that have, you know, longstanding, uh, businesses and good reputations. If you see a reputation that, uh, has some complaints, you know, there are other choices for you. But, um, we just try and help people buck. That’s really what we try and do. We certainly have the reputation for it. Dana. So thank you so much for being on Wellfor podcast. Well, thanks for having me. It’s great to see you again, and I wish you a great success in 2026 and a happy holiday season. You too. You make a lot of money, but are still worried about retirement. Maybe you didn’t start earning until your thirties. Now you’re trying to catch up. Meanwhile, you’ve got a mortgage, a private school to pay for, and you feel like you’re getting further and further behind. Now, good news, if you need to catch up on retirement, check out a program put out by some of the oldest and most prestigious life insurance companies in the world. It’s called Wealth Accelerator, and it can help you amplify your returns quickly, protect your money from creditors, and provide financial protection to your family if something happens to you. The concepts here are used by some of the wealthiest families in the world, and there’s no reason why they can’t be used by you. Check it out for yourself by going to wealth formula banking.com. Welcome back to Show England. Hope you enjoyed it and, uh, I will. Uh, I should admit though, that if you go back and you listen on my, uh, past shows, this is one that I was wrong on. I, I’ve never been a gold bug. My biggest issue with gold. Um, has always been, you know, from an investment thesis that it doesn’t really do anything, doesn’t yield anything, and what’s the point of owning it rather than owning, uh, real estate. And actually, if you just look at what I said, it’s, it’s still, it’s still, it’s still kind of true, right? I mean, you can argue, well, yeah, the real estate markets really did, uh, did struggle over the last couple years. But listen, at the end of the day. The real estate market struggled because of leverage, right? Gold. There’s no leverage, no one’s borrowing, buying gold on leverage, and so it can go up and down and it doesn’t really hurt anybody. If you take the last couple decades and you know how much people made from, uh, real estate versus Bitcoin, even though there’s this huge, uh, huge uptick in Bitcoin now it’s, it’s probably the case that they come out pretty close. If not, uh, you know, real estate still being the winner. But anyway, uh, I do want to say and admit that I was wrong. That, uh, that the gold wasn’t really worth, uh, owning. I think, uh, you know, I wish I had owned some, just like a lot of people wish they’d own Bitcoin at $6,000, right? Um, in fact, I will say that one of the things in hindsight that I think of is gold in many ways for the last several years was on sale. And I haven’t really been talking about this as much, but I’ve been reflecting on this a great deal about making sure that as an investor you wake yourself up once in a while and ask, okay, well, what’s on sale? Well, gold was on sale for a while. Silver was definitely on sale. Right? Um, doesn’t mean you have to go in, have, you know, 50% of your portfolio in something like that, but when something’s on sale, it’s not a bad idea to look around. And maybe get, you know, get a little bit of exposure. I do think that real estate is there right now. I think real estate, you know, if you’re in the credit investor group, you’re seeing on a routine basis 30%, uh, discounted offerings from just a couple years ago. And I do think that’s on sale right now. But there are other things as well, arguably. I mean, I, I actually think that Bitcoin is, uh, uh, sort of on sale right now. I mean, sitting at 86,000, anybody who thinks it’s not gonna go to a hundred thousand at some point in the next, you know, 12 months is, I mean, I think it’s highly unlikely that it doesn’t go to a hundred thousand, right? So think about that right now. That’s like a 14% gain right then and there. Anyway, sometimes it’s good to just look around and see what’s on sale. Uh, that’s my message for this week. Uh, this is Buck Joffrey with Wealth Formula Podcast signing off. If you wanna learn more, you can now get free access to our in-depth personal finance course featuring industry leaders like Tom Wheel Wright and Ken McElroy. Visit wealthformularoadmap.com.

In this special episode of Takeaway Chinese, we're going to learn how to say " honest" in Chinese.

A new trend is emerging across Chinese cities, where young people explore abandoned factories, unfinished buildings, and closed hospitals. They document these journeys online under labels like“urban ruins exploration,” championing a distinct“ruins aesthetics.”However, this popular pursuit is not without real danger. It raises urgent questions about safety, the pressures driving the trend, and what happens in spaces that exist beyond the reach of everyday oversight. / Is the "swag gap" killing relationships (14:41)? On the show: Niu Honglin, Steve & Yushan

Education proved to be a potent issue in 2025, both on the state and federal levels. We'll take a look at what those debates may look like in the new year. Plus, we dig into a popular Christmas culinary tradition: Chinese food.

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas:Acting Texas Comptroller Kelly Hancock is asking Attorney General Ken Paxton for legal cover to exclude private schools with ties to CAIR or China from the state's new private school voucher program: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/paxton-islamic-schools-vouchers-21257343.phpThe recently-unsealed divorce records between Paxton and his soon-to-be-ex-wife State Senator Angela Paxton reveal full blame for the divorce from the Senator upon the AG, and his insistence that she receive "nothing" in the settlement: https://www.chron.com/politics/article/ken-paxton-divorce-records-unsealed-21254129.phpThe San Antonio Express editorial board suggests that Texas voters "flush" Ken Paxton over his "creepy" new tipline soliciting photos of alleged bathroom bill violators: https://www.expressnews.com/opinion/editorial/article/ken-paxton-transgender-bathroom-politics-21252847.phpTed Cruz is said to be formulating a 2028 run for President, setting up a clash with Trump VP J.D. Vance: https://azat.tv/en/ted-cruz-president-2028-vance-maga/See the full list of 2026 races and candidates, courtesy of Lone Star Left, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠HERE ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠HERE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.Check out our web store, including our newly-expanded Humans Against Greg Abbott collection: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://store.progresstexas.org/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Thanks for listening! Our monthly donors form the backbone of our funding, and if you're a regular, we'd like to invite you to join the team! Find our web store and other ways to support our important work at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://progresstexas.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

On today's episode, we discuss how rapidly advancing home robotics could lead to “robot crime,” from hacked cleaning bots to liability questions when autonomous machines injure people or pets. The hosts dive into drone and cyber vulnerabilities, including Chinese-made DJI drones, surveillance cameras sending data back to China, and why Washington is pushing to rebuild secure, domestic supply chains for both drones and naval shipbuilding. They explore the economic shock of a Tyson meatpacking plant closure in rural Nebraska, using examples from Louisiana to show how one-factory towns can hollow out and whether education, tax policy, and new industries can save them. Finally, the conversation ranges from Sonic vs. McDonald's competition strategy and the great “pickle placement” debate, to SpaceX bulk-buying Cybertrucks, China's AI chip race, Trump's new “Golden Fleet” of warships, and drone-heavy future warfare after recent U.S. strikes on 71 ISIS-linked targets in Syria. Don't miss it!

The threat the Chinese Communist Party poses not just to us, but the whole world is truly catastrophic. For example, China expert Gordon Chang recently illuminated the CCP's global predations via immense, and often illegal, fishing operations. Notably, he reports Communist China has fifty-setven thousand industrial fishing vessels that have over two recent years fished in the waters of more than ninety countries for more than twenty-two million hours. Mr. Chang concludes that “thanks to Chinese illegal fishing and other factors, the seas have been stripped bare,” citing an expert as estimating that ninety-three percent of the world's major fish stocks are either fully exploited, overexploited, or significantly depleted. Such “locusts” of the seas imperil billions worldwide, as does the Chinese Communist Party that weaponizes them.  This is Frank Gaffney.

NHK WORLD RADIO JAPAN - Chinese News at 15:10 (JST), December 23

Grains push higher on Black Sea war escalation and Chinese soybean purchases; export sales report for Dec 11; Argentine feed wheat price below US corn.

Empire, Stability, and the Smokescreen of MoralityBy Renaldo C. McKenzieLet us be honest—brutally honest, the way history demands and empire resents.What is unfolding in Venezuela, and across the wider Caribbean basin, has little to do with democracy, human rights, or some sudden moral awakening in Washington. It has everything to do with power—raw, unapologetic, strategic power—and the anxiety that sets in when that power feels challenged.The United States does not intervene because a government is despotic. If that were the case, half the world's strongmen would be facing sanctions before breakfast. The United States intervenes when dominance is threatened—when a small country dares to rearrange its economic loyalties, when it flirts with alternatives, when it whispers to Beijing or Moscow instead of kneeling to Washington.This is not conjecture. This is pattern. Take Venezuela. The hostility toward the Maduro government is not rooted in humanitarian outrage. It is rooted in the fact that Venezuela has chosen to deepen relations with China and Russia—to do business outside the American orbit. That is the unforgivable sin. Everything else—drugs, dictatorship, democracy—is stage dressing.The same script plays across the Caribbean. Jamaica, like many of its neighbors, has welcomed Chinese investment: ports modernized, infrastructure built, capital flowing where Western lenders once stalled. Suddenly, “stability” becomes a concern. Suddenly, sovereignty is suspect. Funny how that works.This is not about policing the world's conscience. It is about preserving a hierarchy. History offers receipts. In Guyana, the United States once supported a government that was neither democratic nor just—one that violently suppressed dissent and oversaw the assassination of revolutionary scholar Walter Rodney. That regime, led by Forbes Burnham, was later found culpable by a commission of inquiry. Yet at the time, it enjoyed American backing. Why? Because it played ball. It served U.S. interests. Morality, apparently, is negotiable.Contrast that with today. Guyana now hosts massive U.S. oil interests, where American corporations extract vast wealth while the Guyanese people receive a fraction. That arrangement is deemed acceptable—commendable, even. But let Guyana decide tomorrow to nationalize its resources, to partner elsewhere, or to rely on itself, and watch how quickly the tone changes. Hypothetical? Hardly. We have seen this movie before.Consider Cuba—decades under embargo, not because it threatens the world, but because it refuses submission. Consider Ukraine, punished by war for seeking stability outside one imperial sphere and into another. When small nations move independently, the ground shakes.The language of “communism” is the oldest smokescreen in the book. It is wheeled out whenever convenient, retired when inconvenient. The real crime is not ideology—it is disobedience.This is the central argument of my forthcoming book, Neoliberal Globalization Reconsidered: Unfair Competition and the Death of Nations. Nations do not collapse simply because of internal failure; they are often pushed—cornered by systems designed to ensure that wealth flows upward and outward, never inward, never locally, never freely.And here lies the uncomfortable truth: empire does not require virtue. It requires compliance.Yes, America wants to remain competitive. That desire is not irrational. But competitiveness built on coercion, embargoes, and destabilization is not leadership—it is fear masquerading as strength. And fear, history tells us, is a dangerous policy advisor.The Caribbean must tread carefully. Sovereignty is costly. Independence comes with consequences. But the alternative—permanent subordination dressed up as partnership—is far more expensive in the long run.Renaldo is the Author of Neoliberalism, 2021) and Neoliberal Globalization Reconsidered, Unfair Competition and the Death of Nations", contributions by Martin Oppenheimer

A seasonal round up from Lucy – her highlights of Season 4 and looking ahead to our next Between the Seasons Book Specials.As well as snippets from a festive conversation with friend of the pod, witchy author, Sarah Robinson as we share how we celebrate Christmas and some of our favourite Christmas traditions – all things mince pies, cranberries and Christmas trees.In the Extended Episode – there's oodles more from just $3/ month on PatreonWe talk Christmas wreathsHyggePlus bonus Seasonal extracts from the book that we co-authored – The Kitchen Witch Companion.ResourcesJoin the Book Club on PatreonThe Kitchen Witch CompanionSarah's autumn episode – Magical WandersPam Grossman's episodeWomancraft Publishing SubmissionsSign up for my new free class: The Multipassionate CreativeAbout SarahSarah Robinson is the best-selling Womancraft Publishing author of multiple books on magic and witches including: Yoga for Witches (now in French, Chinese, Polish and Farsi), Yin Magic, Enchanted Journeys, The Kitchen Witch Companion, The Witch and the Wildwood and Womancraft Publishing's fastest selling pre-order ever, Kitchen Witch: food, folklore and fairy tale. Her newest book Witch Country: Seeking the Witch in the British Landscape is out on October 31st.A yoga teacher and author based in in Bath, UK. Her background is in science; she holds an MSc Psychology & Neuroscience and has studied at Bath, Exeter and Harvard universities. She is host of the Witch Country podcast.You can listen to Sarah's popular episode from Season 1 of Creative Magic – Let's All Run Away and Live in the Woods, and learn from her and myself in the Weaving Magic with Words epsidoe in Season 3, as well as discvoer some of her favourite books in a bonus episode on Patreon – for $6/ month. Join her for her Masterclasses live on Zoom on October 29th and November 5th. Find Sarah online:Website: www.sentiayoga.comInstagram: @Yogaforwitches @thisiswitchcountryPodcast: Witch CountryInsight Timer: Enchanted Journeys with Sarah Robinson Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Zhe Wang, principal of RMI's China program, talks about China's focus on decarbonizing trucking, the fast growth of what he calls new energy trucks, and what is driving this growth. He also talks about the recent Rush to Zero program, which was modeled on NACFE's Run on Less, and the program's role in increasing the confidence in the viability of new energy trucks in the Chinese market.

Fluent Fiction - Mandarin Chinese: Enchanted Reflections: A Solstice Discovery Reveals Legends Find the full episode transcript, vocabulary words, and more:fluentfiction.com/zh/episode/2025-12-23-23-34-02-zh Story Transcript:Zh: 在冬至的前夜，海水反射着月光，创造出一个象银色披风般的海滩。En: On the eve of the winter solstice, the sea reflected the moonlight, creating a beach like a silver cloak.Zh: 海浪轻轻地拍打着岸边，海风将冰冷的空气送到周围。En: The waves gently lapped the shore, and the sea breeze carried the chilly air around.Zh: 魏、林和佳，三位好友，在这样一个寒冷的冬夜来到这片幽静的海滩。En: Wei, Lin, and Jia, three friends, came to this tranquil beach on such a cold winter night.Zh: 魏是个好奇且冒险的年轻人。En: Wei was a curious and adventurous young man.Zh: 他总是对大海抱有极大的热情。En: He always had a great passion for the sea.Zh: 林是他的好朋友，性格谨慎，总是陪在魏的身旁，以免他陷入麻烦。En: Lin was his good friend, cautious by nature, and always stayed by Wei's side to keep him out of trouble.Zh: 佳是村里的历史学者，她对这个地区的传说和历史有着深刻的了解。En: Jia was the village's historian with a profound understanding of the legends and history of the area.Zh: 当魏和林在沙滩上漫步时，眼角的余光突然捕捉到一个奇怪的东西。En: As Wei and Lin strolled along the beach, something strange caught the corner of their eyes.Zh: 一个闪闪发光的物体被海浪冲上了岸边。En: A glittering object was washed up by the waves onto the shore.Zh: 魏充满好奇，立刻靠近了那个物体。En: Wei, full of curiosity, immediately approached the object.Zh: 然而，林却有些害怕。En: Lin, however, was somewhat afraid.Zh: 那东西散发出一种奇异的能量，让他心生警惕。En: The object emitted a strange energy that made him feel wary.Zh: 佳赶到了。她提醒他们关于这个地方的古老传说。En: Jia arrived and reminded them of the ancient legends about this place.Zh: 传说中，这片海滩上有一种神秘的物体，能带领勇者进入过去和未来的幻境。En: According to legend, there was a mysterious object on this beach that could lead the brave into visions of the past and future.Zh: 尽管他的朋友们都很担心，魏仍然下定决心要探明物体的真相。En: Despite his friends' worries, Wei was determined to uncover the truth about the object.Zh: 他慢慢走近，伸出手，触碰到了那发光的物体。En: He slowly approached it, reached out his hand, and touched the glowing object.Zh: 瞬间，映入脑海的是无尽的幻象。En: Instantly, endless visions flooded his mind.Zh: 他看到了过去海滩的辉煌，也看到了它未来可能要面对的威胁。En: He saw the beach's glorious past and also the threats it might face in the future.Zh: 魏被这些幻象深深触动。En: Wei was deeply moved by these visions.Zh: 他明白了这片土地蕴含的伟大故事和它的历史。En: He understood the great stories contained in this land and its history.Zh: 他决定和佳一起努力，保存这个海滩的历史。En: He decided to work with Jia to preserve the history of this beach.Zh: 从那天起，魏变得更加深思熟虑。En: From that day on, Wei became more thoughtful.Zh: 他开始重视知识，而不再仅仅追求冒险。En: He began to value knowledge rather than just seeking adventure.Zh: 他明白，自然世界与它的历史之间有着深刻联系。En: He realized the profound connection between the natural world and its history.Zh: 魏意识到这种联系的重要性，誓言要好好保护这片美丽的海滩，也珍惜朋友们的陪伴和智慧。En: Wei recognized the importance of this connection and vowed to protect this beautiful beach and cherish the companionship and wisdom of his friends.Zh: 月光下，魏、林和佳站在一起。En: Under the moonlight, Wei, Lin, and Jia stood together.Zh: 虽然海风依旧寒冷，但他们心中感受到了温暖，内心的世界与海滩交织在一起，馈赠给他们无尽的故事与灵感。En: Although the sea breeze was still cold, they felt warmth in their hearts, as their inner world intertwined with the beach, gifting them endless stories and inspiration. Vocabulary Words:eve: 前夜solstice: 冬至cloak: 披风reflected: 反射tranquil: 幽静cautious: 谨慎historian: 历史学者profound: 深刻strolled: 漫步curiosity: 好奇wary: 警惕reminded: 提醒mysterious: 神秘visions: 幻境thrilling: 惊险uncover: 探明glorious: 辉煌threats: 威胁cherish: 珍惜companionship: 陪伴intertwined: 交织endless: 无尽adventurous: 冒险emitted: 散发determined: 下定决心reached: 伸出gifting: 馈赠reflection: 映入inspiration: 灵感breeze: 海风

Fluent Fiction - Mandarin Chinese: Dance of Lanterns: A Winter's Tale of Friendship and Festivity Find the full episode transcript, vocabulary words, and more:fluentfiction.com/zh/episode/2025-12-23-08-38-20-zh Story Transcript:Zh: 在雪花轻轻飘落间，园中静谧而美丽，一片白色的宁静笼罩着和谐园。En: As snowflakes gently drifted down, the garden was tranquil and beautiful, a blanket of white serenity enveloping Hexie Yuan.Zh: 辛怡站在小桥旁，脸红扑扑的，双眼望着冰雪覆盖的湖面。En: Xinyi stood by the small bridge, her cheeks flushed, her eyes gazing at the ice-covered lake.Zh: 她的心中有一个目标——筹备一场最难忘的元宵节庆典。En: She had a goal in mind - to organize the most unforgettable Yuanxiao Festival celebration.Zh: 辛怡是一位有决心的活动组织者，她渴望完美。En: Xinyi was a determined event organizer, passionate about perfection.Zh: 但此时，寒冷的天气让准备工作进展缓慢，志愿者人数也不足。En: However, the cold weather was slowing down the preparations, and there weren't enough volunteers.Zh: 每当风吹过，辛怡都会拉紧自己的围巾，内心不免有些担忧。En: Each time the wind blew, Xinyi would tighten her scarf with some worry in her heart.Zh: 与她同行的健宇，是她的好朋友，也是位随和的艺术家。En: Accompanying her was Jianyu, her good friend and an easy-going artist.Zh: 他笑着拍了拍辛怡的肩膀，“别担心，我们一定可以做到的。”En: He smiled and patted Xinyi's shoulder, "Don't worry, we can definitely do this."Zh: 健宇正在帮忙装饰灯笼，他的创意十足，色彩鲜艳的灯笼为白色庭园增添了许多生气。En: Jianyu was helping to decorate the lanterns, his creativity bringing vibrant colors to life, adding energy to the white garden.Zh: 梅琳是辛怡的堂妹，刚从外地回来。En: Meilin was Xinyi's cousin, who had just returned from another place.Zh: 她对未来有些迷茫，不知道如何规划自己的人生。En: She felt uncertain about her future and didn't know how to plan her life.Zh: 辛怡觉得这是个好机会，于是决定让梅琳参与到活动中来。En: Xinyi thought this was a good opportunity, so she decided to involve Meilin in the event.Zh: 辛怡微笑着对梅琳说：“我们缺少一个特别的灯笼，也许你可以设计一个。”En: Xinyi smiled and said to Meilin, "We're missing a special lantern, maybe you can design one."Zh: 梅琳有些犹豫，但在辛怡和健宇的鼓励下，她同意试一试。En: Meilin was hesitant, but with encouragement from Xinyi and Jianyu, she agreed to give it a try.Zh: 她想到了一个概念：一个以家、团圆为主题的灯笼，因为这让她想起了温暖的家庭和节日的情感。En: She came up with a concept: a lantern themed around home and reunion, because it reminded her of the warmth of family and the emotions of the festival.Zh: 活动的准备如火如荼，但就在元宵节当天，突如其来的暴风雪几乎打乱了所有计划。En: The preparation was in full swing, but on the day of the Yuanxiao Festival, an unexpected snowstorm almost disrupted all the plans.Zh: 辛怡忧心忡忡，望着纷飞的雪花，心中满是失落。En: Xinyi was worried, watching the swirling snowflakes, feeling lost.Zh: 这时，梅琳灵机一动，提议将灯笼展示移到室内。En: At that moment, Meilin had an idea and suggested moving the lantern display indoors.Zh: 辛怡立刻觉得这个主意很棒。En: Xinyi immediately thought it was a great idea.Zh: 她和健宇快速组织大家，将灯笼搬进了大殿。En: She and Jianyu quickly organized everyone to move the lanterns into the main hall.Zh: 活动开始时，室内五光十色，热闹非凡。En: When the event began, the interior was vibrant and lively.Zh: 梅琳设计的特别灯笼成了活动的亮点，人们纷纷称赞。En: Meilin's specially designed lantern became the highlight of the event, receiving praises from everyone.Zh: 辛怡看到大家的笑脸，心里充满了成就感和喜悦。En: Seeing the smiles on people's faces, Xinyi felt a sense of achievement and joy.Zh: 通过这次活动，辛怡学会了如何适应变化，她意识到团队合作的重要性。En: Through this event, Xinyi learned how to adapt to changes and realized the importance of teamwork.Zh: 梅琳也在设计灯笼的过程中，找到了自己的方向，决定将来学习艺术设计。En: Meilin also found her direction while designing the lantern, deciding to pursue art design in the future.Zh: 元宵节的故事在无数笑声与欢乐中画上圆满的句号。En: The story of the Yuanxiao Festival concluded with countless laughs and joy.Zh: 灯笼的光亮照耀下，园中的雪景更显得纯净而美丽。En: Under the glow of the lanterns, the snowy scene in the garden appeared even purer and more beautiful.Zh: 辛怡和她的朋友们在这祥和的夜晚收获了友情、信任和成长。En: Xinyi and her friends gained friendship, trust, and growth on this peaceful night. Vocabulary Words:tranquil: 静谧serenity: 宁静enveloping: 笼罩flushed: 脸红扑扑的determined: 有决心的organize: 筹备perfection: 完美volunteers: 志愿者worried: 担忧accompanying: 同行easy-going: 随和creativity: 创意vibrant: 鲜艳hesitant: 犹豫encouragement: 鼓励concept: 概念reunion: 团圆emotions: 情感full swing: 如火如荼snowstorm: 暴风雪disrupted: 打乱swirling: 纷飞praises: 称赞achievement: 成就感adapt: 适应teamwork: 团队合作direction: 方向pursue: 学习glow: 光亮pure: 纯净

Why should most startups avoid hiring a PR agency until after their Series A? Jackson Wightman, founder of a tech PR firm, argues that early-stage companies often waste money on agencies before they are ready. In this interview, he breaks down the right time to invest in public relations and why the playing field has tilted against those who ignore AI. Jackson also reveals how AI has fundamentally changed the agency model—allowing him to grow 15-20% without hiring junior employees. He discusses the problem of "AI Slop" in media pitches, the terrifying reality of a "lost generation" of workers who can't get entry-level experience, and how Chinese manufacturers are aggressively taking over Amazon's "Buy Box" by bypassing traditional branding. Check out the company: https://properpropoganda.net

With the year drawing to a close, I look back at some of the most impactful conversations I've had over the last year. In this episode, inaugural Masterchef winner Julie Goodwin's raw and candid conversation about her mental health; plus 7NEWS journalist Mike Amor recounts being on the ground as the September 11 attacks unfolded in 2001; and journalist Cheng Lei opens up about her experience in a Chinese prison after being accused of espionage. SUPPORT For immediate support in a crisis, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 More resources are available from Beyond Blue LINKS Listen to the full interview with Julie Goodwin here Listen to the full interview with Mike Amor here Listen to the full interview with Cheng Lei here Follow Ant on Instagram, X, and Facebook Learn more about Ant on his website antmiddleton.com Follow Nova Podcasts on Instagram for videos from the podcast and behind the scenes content – @novapodcastsofficial. CREDITS Host: Ant MiddletonEditor: Adrian WaltonExecutive Producer: Damien Haffenden Managing Producer: Ricardo Bardon Nova Entertainment acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land on which we recorded this podcast, the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation. We pay our respect to Elders past and present.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

 In this episode of The Negotiation Podcast, host Todd Embley is joined by Richard Kimber, an Australian and Hong Kong–admitted lawyer who has helped more than 400 companies enter and operate in the Chinese market.Richard brings decades of experience advising international businesses across sectors, including agribusiness, manufacturing, healthcare, technology, sports, and education. His work spans China market entry, international trade, strategic alliances and joint ventures, IP licensing, and compliance—making him a trusted advisor for brands navigating the complexities of doing business in China.The conversation focuses on the realities of manufacturing and sourcing in China today: what has changed, what remains misunderstood, and how brands can protect themselves while still capturing the advantages of China's manufacturing ecosystem.Discussion PointsRichard's personal journey into China and how his legal career evolved alongside China's opening and globalizationThe types of companies and industries he most commonly supports todayThe most common challenges foreign brands face when manufacturing or sourcing in China—and how

Season's Greetings! In this Christmas classic, we discuss the return of Black Adam (he's alive!), Chinese manufacturing, Christmas wishes, condom packets and more. (I also do a piss LIVE on air!!)

Federal officials say Chinese money launderers moved more than $300 billion in illicit transactions through U.S. banks and other financial institutions in recent years. WSJ's Dylan Tokar explores the rise of these highly lucrative schemes and former federal prosecutor Julie Shemitz takes us inside the federal investigation to bring them down. Ryan Knutson hosts. Further Listening: - The Money Laundering Behind TD Bank's $3 Billion Fine - Mexico's New Cocaine Kingpin is Cashing In Sign up for WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we're honored to welcome Stan Lai, one of the world's most celebrated playwrights and theatre directors. He has been called by one critic ‘the major contemporary Asian playwright of his time, perhaps of all time' and by the BBC ‘the best Chinese-language playwright and director in the world'. Stan's Website @Stanlai99 on Instagram Stan on YouTube Born in the U.S. and raised in both America and Taiwan, Stan earned his PhD from UC Berkeley before launching a groundbreaking career in Taiwan that now spans over 40 acclaimed plays, including masterpieces like A Dream Like a Dream and Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land. He's also the co-founder of the Wuzhen Theatre Festival and Huichang Theatre Village in China, and his Shanghai venue, Theatre Above, is dedicated entirely to his work.Stan joins us today to discuss his new book, CreativitRy: Asia's Iconic Playwright Reveals the Art of Creativity, coming in November 2025 from Anthem Press — a transformative guide that blends memoir, Buddhist philosophy, and practical methods for unlocking the creative potential that lives within each of us. https://a.co/d/56PRqeG5 QuestionsThe Source of CreativityStan, you've said that CreativitRy explores “where creativity lives — within each and every one of us.” How did your own creative process as a playwright and director lead you to this realization, and what inspired you to put these ideas into book form?From Stage to Page — Translating Art into InsightYour plays are known for their emotional depth and philosophical reach. How was writing about creativity — in prose rather than in performance — a different kind of creative act for you?Buddhist Wisdom and Creative FlowYou describe the book as rooted in Buddhist thought, guiding readers to unlock creativity through introspection rather than productivity hacks. How do mindfulness and spiritual awareness shape your own approach to artistic creation?Creativity as Education — A New FrontierCreativitRy is being adopted as the foundational text for a new Department of Creative Studies at major Chinese universities. How did that initiative come about, and what does it say about the growing importance of creativity in education and society today?The Universality of the Creative JourneyYou've been praised by artists like Ang Lee and Jack Ma for bridging the arts, business, and human growth. What do you hope readers — whether they're artists, entrepreneurs, or students — will take away from CreativitRy about living a truly creative life?Stan, as we close, what's one piece of advice you'd offer to someone who feels disconnected from their creativity — someone who wants to rediscover that creative energy in everyday life?Thanks to our sponsor, White Cloud Coffee — fueling creative conversations everywhere. Listeners, enjoy 10% off your first order at whitecloudcoffee.com.And be sure to download your free e-book of Your World of Creativity when you visit

She ruled the South China Sea, terrified navies, and ran her pirate empire with ruthless efficiency – meet Zheng Yi Sao, the Pirate Queen of Admin.In this family friendly episode of Dead Funny History, historian Greg Jenner dives into the extraordinary life of Zheng Yi Sao, one of the most powerful pirates who ever lived. Born around 1775 in Guangdong, China, Shi Yang (as she was first known) rose from poverty to command a fleet of 70,000 pirates. Her journey began with a job on a boat where she sold secrets to powerful men, and took a dramatic turn when she married the notorious pirate Zheng Yi.After her husband's death in 1807 – either by cannon or storm – Zheng Yi Sao took command of the pirate confederation. She wasn't just a fearsome fighter; she was a master of organisation. She split her fleet into colour-coded squadrons, enforced strict rules (including ear removal for slackers), and offered perks like pensions and healthcare. Her pirates even had a retirement home.Greg reveals how Zheng Yi Sao's empire grew through clever business tactics. She sold protection certificates to merchants, hijacked salt shipments, and outnumbered the Qing navy three to one. Her pirates wielded massive 8-foot guns called jingals and swam into battle with machete-tipped poles. At one point, the city of Canton panicked just from a polite warning of attack.Despite efforts by the Chinese government – and help from the Portuguese and British navies – Zheng Yi Sao remained undefeated. Eventually, she retired in luxury after being paid off by the empire. She may have run an illegal gambling house in her later years, but she died rich and respected in 1844.With jokes, sound effects, and a quiz to test your memory, this episode is a swashbuckling, spreadsheet-wielding celebration of a pirate legend.Writers: Gabby Hutchinson Crouch, Athena Kugblenu and Dr Emma Nagouse Host: Greg Jenner Performers: Mali Ann Rees and Richard David-Caine Producer: Dr Emma Nagouse Associate Producer: Gabby Hutchinson Crouch Audio Producer: Emma Weatherill Script Consultant: Dr Ron Po Production Coordinator: Liz Tuohy Production Manager: Jo Kyle Sound Designer: Peregrine AndrewsA BBC Studios Production

2. Future Fleets: Decentralizing Firepower to Counter Chinese Growth. Tom Modly warns that China's shipbuilding capacity vastly outpaces the US, requiring a shift toward distributed forces rather than expensive, concentrated platforms. He advocates for a reinvigorated, independent Department of the Navy to foster the creativity needed to address asymmetric threats like Houthi attacks on high-value assets. 1918 SEVASTOPOL

PREVIEW Guest: Mark Simon Summary: Simon discusses the sentencing of Jimmy Lai by the Chinese regime. He expresses doubt that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will use an upcoming business trip to demand the return of Lai, a British citizen, noting that the Prime Minister is currently more focused on his own political survival. QING DYNASTY 1910-1940

Donate (no account necessary) | Subscribe (account required) This special holiday edition of The Wright Report features unscripted answers to listener-submitted questions on the issues shaping America and the world. Bryan begins with Venezuela, explaining how US actions in the Caribbean target drug trafficking, pressure regime change in Caracas and Havana, and aim to push Chinese, Russian, and Iranian influence out of the Western Hemisphere, while also signaling American resolve on the global stage. The episode then turns to immigration and national identity. Drawing on listener prompts, Bryan challenges the claim that American identity is defined only by shared ideals, arguing that the Founders clearly distinguished between legal rights and cultural assimilation. He addresses mass migration, cartel recruitment of teenagers inside the US, the limits of compassion in border policy, and why fear and uncertainty among migrants may be unavoidable if citizens are to be protected. The episode closes with Bryan's reflections on intelligence work and the CIA, including what real espionage looks like, how it shapes morality, and what sustains character under pressure. He also responds to questions about faith, leadership, and unexplained phenomena, offering a candid and reflective holiday conversation driven by the audience's curiosity.    "And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." - John 8:32     Keywords: Wright Report holiday episode, listener submitted questions, Venezuela oil blockade, regime change Caribbean, immigration identity debate, what is an American, assimilation vs ideals, cartel recruitment teenagers, border security policy, CIA reflections, intelligence ethics, faith and leadership

From Project X newbie to a $3M Amazon seller, our guest shares product research, Helium 10 tactics, TikTok Shop commissions, and how she defends her profits from copycats.